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Hey, I made it! It’s the end of the A-to-Z Challenge. Let’s look at some Zaniness, shall we? According to this site, the word ‘zany’ was first used in English by none other than William Shakespeare, although its origins are apparently Italian: Somebody zany is amusingly crazy or clownish. If you object to my definition, then you may be in the company of the compilers of several current dictionaries. It’s a hard word to pin down — we all think we know what we mean by it, but we may find describing it in plain English surprisingly hard. That mayDown the rabbit hole….

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YAHHHH? What on Earth is that? Well, it’s a rough transliteration of the final death shriek of Red Leader at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. He’s just led an unsuccessful attack run on the two-meter-wide thermal exhaust port, failing to get his proton torpedoes to go down the shaft to the reactor (“Negative! It didn’t go it. Just impacted on the surface.”). He orders Red Five (Luke) to gather the remaining pilots (Wedge and Biggs) for one last shot at the exhaust port, before his ship is struck by blaster fire from DarthDown the rabbit hole….

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Wow, we’re almost done with this whole thing. Pretty cool! It’s been fun thus far, and I look forward to next year’s edition. I’ve only missed one prescribed day thus far, which was yesterday, but as the Challenge does not include Saturdays, I can catch up right here and then finish up with Y and Z tomorrow and Monday. As for X, let’s talk about magic words, of which XYZZY is one! XYZZY? What’s that, you may ask? Well, many moons ago, fantasy adventure games on computers had no graphics, so everything was done via text. (Insert voice of PeterDown the rabbit hole….

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Women. No, not like that. Well, OK, maybe a little like that. Sometimes. But not always. And only about the one I married–look, can we get on the topic at hand here? OK? OK. But seriously…I’ve been thinking about women as characters in fiction. This has been brought on by a number of things, such as some online discussions I’ve read, but a bigger factor has been reading George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and by far the biggest factor was writing Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title), inDown the rabbit hole….

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A good adventure tale needs a lot of things: a hero or two or three or four, a problem for them to solve, long odds, improbably escapes from certain doom, high stakes if they fail…and a Villain. It’s often said that a tale of adventure succeeds as much on the strength of its villains as it does on the strength of its heroes. A great villain is fun to watch, and on some small level, we might even find ourselves rooting for him or her…maybe not for ultimate victory, but at least for keeping things tough and interesting for ourDown the rabbit hole….

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Way back when, movies and teevee shows and books and whatnot used to be pretty much self-contained items. But nowadays, in a lot of cases, as specific movies and teevee shows and books and comics branch out into multiple sequels and spinoff series and all of their sequels, what becomes important isn’t so much the original story. Instead, the entire setting of the story takes primacy. Thus, a Universe is born. At what point does a fictional setting become a universe? Star Wars takes place a long time ago ‘in a galaxy far, far away’, but at what point didDown the rabbit hole….

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There’s some part of me that thinks that no matter how far in the future we get, no matter how awesome the spaceships or starships we build, there’s a degree to which human transportation will never exceed railroads for romance, intrigue, and a just plain civilized feel. Trains rule…and judging by fiction out there, a lot of writers and creators agree. What is it about trains? Well, you have a confined setting, but it’s a setting on wheels, and therefore, the setting moves. So you get the best of both worlds: you can lock your characters in one place andDown the rabbit hole….

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Once upon a time, the occasional adventures of one of the greatest of all Interplantery Adventurers Extraordinaire appeared in daily newspapers across the world. You couldn’t be certain of when he would appear, but sooner or later, there he’d be, and we’d thrill to his exploits, as envisioned by a young schoolboy with, shall we say, a fascinating combination of powerful imagination and a very short attention span. Yes, it’s our hero, Spaceman Spiff! Spaceman Spiff is, as most cultured persons know, one of the imaginary alter-egos of young Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes. Spiff tended to turn up inDown the rabbit hole….

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Kings and Queens, Dukes and Duchesses, Princes and Princesses, Lords and Ladies, Czars and Czarinas, and to an extent, Presidents and First Ladies. If there’s one thing about humans, it’s that we sure do love our Royalty. The concept of royalty is almost impossible to escape, even in our democratic, pseudo-egalitarian society. Royalty commands an enormous level of fascination for us all, to the point where we are endlessly fascinated by real-life royalty in countries that have it; we have royalty figures in our public life and entertainment worlds; and royalty is an extremely common theme or facet in justDown the rabbit hole….

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The obvious choice here is to talk about Q, but I couldn’t decide which one. This Q? Or this one? Luckily, this is my personal blog, where the only rules that apply are the ones that I choose for myself, and which I can summarily set aside any time I want, so…let’s talk about both Q’s! Our first Q is less well-known as Major Geoffrey Boothroyd. (The only time we ever hear his name in the James Bond movies is in The Spy Who Loved Me, when he holds a door open for Agent Anya Amasova, and she thanks himDown the rabbit hole….