L.B.: 7 pages, 6 phone calls

Left Behind, pp. 334-341

Before agreeing to meet the nondescriptly gorgeous woman Buck has brought to his hotel room, Nicolae Carpathia wants to speak to him first, alone:

Here it comes, Buck thought, flashing Hattie an apologetic look and holding up a finger to indicate he would not be long. Carpathia's gonna have my neck for wasting his time.

He found Nicolae standing a few feet in front of the TV, watching CNN. His arms were crossed, his chin in his hand. He glanced Buck's way and waved him in. Buck shut the door behind him, feeling as if he had been sent to the principal's office.

This isn't all bad. The blocking is decent, and the image of the principal's office is apt, if not terribly original. But the scene falls apart as soon as Nicolae starts talking.

"Have you seen this business in Jerusalem?" he said. Buck said he had. "Strangest thing I have even seen."

"Not me," Buck said.

"No?"

"I was in Tel Aviv when Russia attacked."

Earlier Buck said he was in Haifa during the attack, an hour or so north of Tel Aviv. But the bigger problem here, again, is that as inexplicable and astonishing as that experience might have been, it is only the second strangest thing Buck has ever seen. The world-altering strangeness of The Event was, and remains, more inexplicable and astonishing than the Ruso-Ethiopian carnage he witnessed that day in Tel Aviv and/or Haifa. Yet now, scarcely a week after that Event, the authors are intent on portraying everyone from Nicolae to Buck's co-workers as utterly fascinated by the captivating spectacle of the trip-and-fall guys in Jerusalem. Even the parents of the missing children, apparently, are raptly watching CNN's obsessive coverage, intrigued by this new mystery with a curiosity they never displayed about the disappearance of their own loved ones.

Carpathia kept his eyes on the screen as CNN played over and over the attack on the preachers and the collapsing of the would-be assassins. "Yes," he mumbled. "That would have been something akin to this. Something unexplainable. Heart attacks, they say."

"Pardon?"

"The attackers are dead of heart attacks."

"I hadn't heard that."

"Yes. And the Uzi did not jam. It is in perfect working order.

Nicolae seemed transfixed by the images. He continued to watch as he talked.

"... Look at this. The preachers never touched either of them. What are the odds?"

What could have caused this mysterious, almost miraculous occurrence of spontaneous heart attacks and a malfunctioning trigger mechanism? Perhaps it was the result of:

"... Some confluence of electromagnetism in the atmosphere, combined with an as yet unknown or unexplained atomic ionization from the nuclear power and weaponry throughout the world, [that] could have triggered -- perhaps by a natural cause like lightning ... this instant action."

That was Nicolae's dismissive "explanation" for the disappearance of 2 billion people -- an explanation that was immediately embraced as wholly satisfactory. Thus, in our story, no one any longer seems the least bit troubled or mystified by the Event. It's settled, old news. Time to move on, repaint the kids' room and turn it into a home theater.

This is not good writing, but it's not merely bad writing either. Bad writing can produce characters who seem alien and unbelievable due to their failure to respond to events in any recognizably human way, but LaHaye and Jenkins have produced an entire world of such characters. Bad writing entails a failure to convey or communicate whatever it is that the writer is trying to express. L&J have failed at something prior to and more fundamental than that. They began by portraying one whole world -- the post-Event world following the Rapture, and then they abruptly and completely abandoned it for a different one, a different kind of world, in which the next set of preordained events from their End Times Checklist could be imagined.

I'm trying to think of precedents or examples of this elsewhere -- other books or movies that have so utterly and arbitrarily left behind their original premises -- but I can't think of any. This particular literary sin needs a name.

Nicolae shifts topics to his hiring of Steve Plank as press secretary:

"I hope you know that you've crippled the Weekly."

"Ah! I have strengthened it. What better way to have the person I want at the top?"

Buck shuddered, relieved when Carpathia looked away from the TV at last. "This makes me feel just like Jonathan Stonagal, maneuvering people into positions." He laughed, and Buck was pleased to see that he was kidding.

This was funnier and in better taste than Nicolae's earlier joke about the last thing to go through Alan Tompkins' mind when his police car blew up. Yet whether or not such "kidding" is reassuring depends on what kind of laugh it was, particularly since the next thing they talk about is yet another suspicious death:

"Did you hear what happened to Eric Miller?" Buck asked.

"Your friend from Seaboard Monthly? No. What?"

"Drowned last night."

Carpathia looked shocked. "You do not say! Dreadful!"

Having decided that Nicolae will never use contractions, Jenkins insists on having him say things like "You do not say," even when the normal idiom is "you don't say" and "you do not say" is something you do not say. Still, substituting a verbal tic for actual characterization is more than we get for most of the characters in this book.

We're not told whether or not Buck believes Nicolae's insistence that he is shocked -- shocked! -- by the news of Miller's death. But while Nicolae is introducing himself to Hattie, Rosenzweig tells Buck he has a phone call. It's Marge Potter, calling to tell him to return a call to Miller's widow. Back in their comfort zone of telephonic communications, the authors indulge in a full page of the logistics of this bit of phone tag. We'll glide past that to the latter phone call itself.

Carolyn Miller is upset by her husband's death, but she takes a moment first to remind Buck of when they first met, "on the presidential yacht two summers ago." Buck had forgotten this, but I suppose all these women from presidential yachts and presidential hotel rooms can start to blur together after a while.

She had talked to her husband just before he had gotten on the ferry and he had told her he was "tracking a big story."

"... That was the last conversation I'll ever have with him, and it's driving me crazy. Do you know how cold it was last night?"

"Nippy, as I recall," Buck said, puzzled be her abrupt change of subject.

"Cold, sir. Too cold to be standing outside on the ferry, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And even if he was, he's a good swimmer. He was a champion in high school ..."

"What are you saying, Mrs. Miller?"

"I don't know!" she shouted, crying. "I just wondered if you could shed any light. I mean, he fell off the ferry and drowned? It doesn't make any sense!"

"It doesn't to me either, ma'am, and I wish I could help. But I can't."

Jenkins clearly understands the cliches of the reporter who dies under suspicious circumstances while tracking a big story. What he doesn't understand is how to have Buck respond to all of this without coming across like a callous and incurious jerk. After telling the Widow Miller that "I'll be thinking of you," he hangs up.

He decides to track down the phone number on the business card Nicolae gave Hattie, but instead of just dialing the number himself:

He called a friend at the telephone company. "Alex! Do me a favor. Can you still tell me who's listed if I give you a number?"

"Long as you don't tall anybody I'm doin' it."

"You know me, man."

Yeah, man, we know you would never betray your top-secret insider source when he risks his job to perform the ultra-complex reverse directory. The number, Alex says before disappearing from the story as suddenly as he arrived, is for an unlisted private line at the secretary-general's office of the United Nations.

Buck was lost. He couldn't make any of this compute. ... Buck turned back to the phones.

Just to be clear, that's a direct quote from the book itself: "Buck turned back to the phones." This time he calls Steve Plank, the sixth person he's talked to on the phone in seven pages. We're back on track.

"Steve," he said quickly, "your boy just made his first mistake."

"What're you talking about, Buck?"

"Is your first job going to be announcing Carpathia as the new secretary-general?"

I guess Buck could make this compute after all. It's important to read this in context. In Left Behind the secretary-general is not a beleaguered diplomat who shuttles around the globe hat in hand. He is, rather, the King of Kings -- the leader of a global federation who "outranks" the American president in the same way that the president outranks state governors here. This is also how the authors think the real U.N. works. In their minds, Carpathia is about to become ruler of the world.

After making Buck promise to keep this off the record until it becomes official the following day, Steve explains:

"The Kalahari Desert makes up much of Botswana where Secretary-General Ngumo is from. He returns there tomorrow a hero, having become the first leader to gain access to the Israeli fertilizer formula."

"... And he cannot be expected to handle the duties of both the U.N. and Botswana during this strategic moment in Botswana history, right, Steve?"

"And why should he, when someone is so perfectly suited to step right in?"

With this political masterstroke, Nicolae Carpathia has completed the most astonishing rise to power since Boutros-Boutros Ghali. True to form, ace reporter Buck Williams has scooped all of his rivals and learned the truth before any of them. And true to form, Buck has agreed not to report the story until long after everyone else has.

Buck has one last question for his friend:

"What did Eric Miller get too close to? What lead was he tracking?"

Steve's voice became hollow, his tone flat. "All I know about Eric Miller," he said, "is that he got too close to the railing on the Staten Island Ferry."

Steve's a quick study. One day on the job and already he's helping his new boss cover up a murder. As ominous as his tone seems to be, though, I'm sure he's not worried. Buck may have a long history of discovering shadowy conspiracies, but he never reports on it.

Comments

[damnedyankee]

"I hope you know that you've crippled the Weekly."

You mean more so than their top reporter not having filed any stories in like, ever?

[twig]

Holy crap, new LB already? Christmas comes early!

[twig]

This particular literary sin needs a name.

Wachowski syndrome?

[Geds]

This particular literary sin needs a name.

George Lucas.

[damnedyankee]

They began by portraying one whole world -- the post-Event world following the Rapture, and then they abruptly and completely abandoned it for a different one, a different kind of world, in which the next set of preordained events from their End Times Checklist could be imagined.

I'm trying to think of precedents or examples of this elsewhere -- other books or movies that have so utterly and arbitrarily left behind their original premises -- but I can't think of any. This particular literary sin needs a name.

I propose calling it "highlandering", in honor of the notorious Highlander II, which turned the hero of the original movie and all of his fellow immortals into aliens, entirely abandoning the premise of the first movie.

[twig]

Geds FTW.

[Geds]

Oh, and for the record, how, exactly did Nick Rockies cripple the Weekly? All he did was make a job offer. A completely incomprehensible job offer, yes, but it's not like he had Plank assassinated or bought the company and sent out a memo reading:

"The following employees will be fired:

"Plank, Steve.

"That is all."

Assuming we accept Buck's premise (which we should, given that Buck seems to think that dry cleaning is the only place where it's possible to engage in cost saving activities and doesn't seem to actually work), Plank crippled the company by accepting the offer. Mountain Man did nothing.

[McJulie]

Last summer I read a good portion of Writing the Breakout Novel which is, basically, a literary agent's book about how to write bestsellers.

It's interesting, because it treats the bestseller or "breakout" phenomenon as more or less independent of good writing. The book has examples of good writing (in the paragraph/scene/character sense) that don't do what he's talking about (and weren't bestsellers) and also examples of bad writing (in my opinion) that do what he's talking about -- and were bestsellers. So, I think he must be on to something.

Left Behind is quoted in one of the segments -- I think it was as an example of "keeping up tension" as one of the hallmarks of a breakout novel.

The thing that I think is funny, based on your excerpts, is that they seem to keep up the tension mostly by having people worry about dumb things and act like jerks. And sometimes they worry about things that would worry a real person (like the possibility that a friend or colleague was murdered) but that thing ends up being utterly inconsequential to the plot.

[McJulie]

Um, close italics

[McJulie]

Are they closed?

[Vermic]

I have a question about the timing of this whole "Rapture" business. Specifically, did God jump the gun?

If I understand right, the point of God rapturing people is that the innocent faithful are saved from the Bad Stuff which the coming years will bring. But it's been over a week, and there hasn't been any Bad Stuff, other than the Rapture itself and the problems resulting from it. Other than that, it's just been an ordinary week of phone calls and plane rides for everyone. The world's not in any danger yet, so what was the point of people being raptured when they were?

From both a dramatic and a common-sense standpoint, it would make a lot more sense for God to snatch up his faithful just before the point where the poo hits the fan, apocalyptically speaking. If I were writing this scenario, I'd have put the Rapture at the end of Book 1 instead of the beginning. We'd spend the first book exploring our main characters and the wicked, secular, just-prior-to-End-Times world they live in. We'd witness the rise in power of Nicolae Carpathia from obscurity to political superstar, and most of the plot would center around Buck and his investigation of a grand conspiracy. (Rayford would be introduced, but he wouldn't have much to do at this point -- he could fill the "regular guy" role, watching Nicky on the TV and remarking what a charismatic fellow he is.) Ultimately, through various maneuverings, Nicky finally gets himself into the position of UN Secretary-General (pretending, as L&J do, that this somehow counts as real scary big power). Nicky is on TV, reciting his inaugural oath or whatever -- and it is NOW that the Rapture happens. Poof! End of Book 1. Book 2 would then be all about the aftereffects of the Rapture on the world.

[ProfessorPlum]

Nicolae Carpathia has completed the most astonishing rise to power since Boutros-Boutros Ghali.

Heh heh.

[the opoponax]

delurking to say that I'm like 80% sure that there is no "outside" on the Staten Island Ferry. Or at least not for passengers. There's a sort of exposed "upper deck" area, but it's not really outside, as it's completely under a shelter, with only spaces the size of windows actually exposed to the elements. It's also not someplace you could fall from easily, at all, ever, no matter the temperature. If for some reason you were able to fall over the 4-foot high mesh guardrails, you'd fall onto the roof of a lower deck, not into the water. Nobody accidentally falls of the Staten Island Ferry.

Which should have been tip-off #1 that this wasn't exactly an accident.

[Rozzen]

This is also how the authors think the real U.N. works.
Actually I'm not sure of that. In an interview on NPR's Fresh Air a few years ago LaHaye called the UN "an easy fall guy", basically because they needed a World Government in their books and the UN was the closest they had. I think he did say that he didn't expect the UN would be the actual WG; it was just the closest approximation that existed today.

I wouldn't be surprised if average PMDs did believe that about the UN though.

This particular literary sin needs a name.
I'd refer to the Simpsons, who start every episode with what looks like the storyline but is actually a pretext to introduce the real, totally different storyline. (just an example in case you hadn't noticed it before, or don't watch the Simpsons : Marge is doing chores when she realises she's losing her hair. At first it's limited but it gets worse and worse, until her hairdo is full of holes. Homer reassures her that he'll teach her how to comb it over so that nobody notices a thing. Understandably she breaks down at the image, and they go see a doctor about it who identifies stress as the cause. Maybe they could hire a governess to take care of the kids while she relaxes ?
And from there the story becomes that of Sherry Bobbins, the not-derivative-at-all miracle governess)

But I wouldn't want to insult the Simpsons, or dignify what L&J do with such a comparison.

[Geds]

Vermic:

There are two problems with your theory. Each of them alone could destroy Left Behind, but together they are far too powerful.

1. It would mess up the finely tuned timeline of the end of the world handed down to us by the Bible.*

2. It would probably be a really good book.

* Through Hal Lindsay, et al, including John Darby and a fourteen year old Scottish girl with probable mental issues...

[mmack]

His arms were crossed, his chin in his hand.

The Devil must be either a contortionist or Stretch Armstrong, because I can either fold my arms across my chest, or place one elbow in one hand and put my chin in my other free hand. Either that or Timmy and Jerry don't understand the human anatomy. Given their tenuous grasp on writing comprehension, this is a distinct possibility.

What could have caused this mysterious, almost miraculous occurrence of spontaneous heart attacks and a malfunctioning trigger mechanism?

A sedantary lifestyle coupled with not using an AK-47? I'm not sayin', just sayin'

"... That was the last conversation I'll ever have with him, and it's driving me crazy. Do you know how cold it was last night?"
"Nippy, as I recall," Buck said, puzzled be her abrupt change of subject.

"Cold, sir. Too cold to be standing outside on the ferry, wouldn't you say?"

One wonders if It was a dark and stormy night . . .

[Geds]

The Devil must be either a contortionist or Stretch Armstrong, because I can either fold my arms across my chest, or place one elbow in one hand and put my chin in my other free hand.

mmack 1, antichrist 0

[Angelika]

The world-altering strangeness of The Event was, and remains, more inexplicable and astonishing than the Ruso-Ethiopian carnage he witnessed that day in Tel Aviv and/or Haifa. Yet now, scarcely a week after that Event, the authors are intent on portraying everyone from Nicolae to Buck's co-workers as utterly fascinated by the captivating spectacle of the trip-and-fall guys in Jerusalem.

This particularity had me wondered until I had a epiphany three days ago: My husband finished the new chicken-coop and we had to move the chickens in. While we raptured the saintlier ones, aka. those stupid enough to get caught first, into their new home, the rest of them went on scratching and pecking as usual as soon as we left their fenced yard. So L&J got it right describing a rather disinterested reaction to The Event, they just got the species mixed up...

[cjmr's husband]

highlandertwoing.

You can't call it highlandering, because that was a GOOD movie, and apparently the TV series was good too.

But that sequel.... only movie we ever walked out of. Best review: "Sean Connery fights a bad script, and loses."

[cjmr]

Who is this 'we' you refer to? *I* didn't go see Highlander 2 with you...

[Rozzen]

The Devil must be either a contortionist or Stretch Armstrong, because I can either fold my arms across my chest, or place one elbow in one hand and put my chin in my other free hand. Either that or Timmy and Jerry don't understand the human anatomy. Given their tenuous grasp on writing comprehension, this is a distinct possibility.

Well, he could be resting his elbow on the middle of his forearm. Not very confortable and arguable not crossed arms at all, but it could be an interpretation...
Still I agree with you. Regardless whether we can think up a way to do it, a description of a position that makes you go "whoa ! He's doing what exactly ??" means you should rethink your description.

No wait, he could also be holding his chin in his hand, and have his other arm go through the crook of that elbow.
Doable with little effort, but totally not a normal position.

A sedantary lifestyle coupled with not using an AK-47? I'm not sayin', just sayin'
Right. It would be a coincidence, but a totally believable one compared to radioactivity making 2 billion selected people disappear leaving their clothes behind.
Without coincidences though : poison (a million ways it could be administered). A set-up. Some kind of sonic weapon.

[mmack]

Carpathia kept his eyes on the screen as CNN played over and over the attack on the preachers and the collapsing of the would-be assassins. "Yes," he mumbled. "That would have been something akin to this. Something unexplainable. Heart attacks, they say."

"Pardon?"

"The attackers are dead of heart attacks."

Does this mean Moe and Eli are as serious as a heart attack that the End Times have come?

[twig]

Best review: "Sean Connery fights a bad script, and loses."

Odd, that sounds like the plot of 'League of Extrordinary Gentlemen". And "The Avengers". Although I'm not sure "The Avengers" had a plot.

[Ursula L]

Plank crippled the company by accepting the offer. Mountain Man did nothing.

Mountain man was able to make Plank an offer too good to refuse. That's not quite nothing.

And he managed this, even though he's just the president of Romania, and shouldn't have the resources to be hiring off of the top of the NYC income bracket, and also probably should be hiring, well, Romanians for his advisers.

[cjmr's husband]

Yes you did; you and Marie only lasted about ten minutes; Bill and I watched almost an hour of that godawful thing.

[Rosina]

Nicky North Downs could cross his arms, then turn the upper hand palm up and lower his head so that his chin rests on it. I just managed that. I look more like Quasimodo than Sundance though.

[Vermic]

Oh, and this is an awesome hunk of badness right here:

"The Kalahari Desert makes up much of Botswana where Secretary-General Ngumo is from. He returns there tomorrow a hero, having become the first leader to gain access to the Israeli fertilizer formula."

Let's table for the moment the misconception of a UN representative being a "leader" of his or her home country in any way. (Bow to the power of Zalmay Khalilzad!) And let's also ignore the scandalous conflict of interest that would result from a UN Secretary-General obtaining the coveted Miracle-Gro formula solely for his own country's benefit.

What's really awesome is how this passage once again forgets entirely about the Rapture. "Sure, all the children of our country vanished on Secretary-General Ngumo's watch. But on the other hand, he brought us this really cool fertilizer! Viva Ngumo!"

I'm not even sure that Dr. Chaim's fertilizer is even that valuable anymore, given that the world now has, oh, about a BILLION fewer mouths to feed than it did last month.

[damnedyankee]

I actually thought about "highlandertwoing", but it didn't quite meter right to me. Plus, "highlandering" sounds a lot like "philandering", an act of treachery where somebody gets screwed on any number of levels.

Besides, the tv series? I liked it too, but what happened to "There Can Be Only ONE"?! That's a big reversal of premise right there!

[SueW]

This particular literary sin needs a name.

The ol' LB Switcheroo.

Pulling a LaJenkins?

Leaving Behind your own story.

Okay, so I'm not very literary.

[Tonio]

"That was Nicolae's dismissive 'explanation' for the disappearance of 2 billion people -- an explanation that was immediately embraced as wholly satisfactory. Thus, in our story, no one any longer seems the least bit troubled or mystified by the Event. It's settled, old news. Time to move on, repaint the kids' room and turn it into a home theater."

More evidence, obviously, that LH&J really believe that non-Real True Christians are callously indifferent about their children. But Nicolae's explanation for the Event probably reflects equally addled beliefs about science. The phrase "natural cause" is revealing.

My theory is that LH&J see science as a denial of the "truth" of Christianity. Nicolae's explanation is laughable hogwash, and this could be for one of two reasons. Either LH&J know enough about science to make the explanation sound like a desperate attempt to deny that a supernatural event occurred. Or they are deliberately ignorant about science, and they thought they were showing how Nicolae was cleverly deceiving Buck and the others about the true nature of the Event.

[cjmr's husband]

Take a look at the Wikipedia page on Highlandertwoing. Apparently they recut the film, got rid of the aliens, and generally tried to make something watchable out of it.

I also didn't know they made a third movie that basically was a sequel to the first. Shows you how much attention I paid after seeing the disaster.

[cjmr]

Yes you did; you and Marie only lasted about ten minutes; Bill and I watched almost an hour of that godawful thing.

Ah. Okay. I remember that as the evening Marie and I got to spend a long time looking at yarn and patterns at Jo-Ann Fabrics after dropping the two of you off at the movie theater.

[sophia8]

This was funnier and in better taste than Nicolae's earlier joke about the last thing to go through Alan Tompkins' mind when his police car blew up.I don't remember that, but it sounds like the same tasteless joke that went around after F1 Driver Ayrton Senna's death in a race. The punchline: "His engine!"

[cjmr's husband]

I was thinking of "What's the last thing to go through a bug's mind when he hits the windshield?"

[mmack]

I'm not even sure that Dr. Chaim's fertilizer is even that valuable anymore, given that the world now has, oh, about a BILLION fewer mouths to feed than it did last month.

Vermic, that's no issue in Left Behind Land. It just means the the Evil Secular Humanists who practice the Deadly Sin of Gluttony will have more to gorge on.

It all works out in Left Behind Land. Logic problems solve themselves.

[Rozzen]

More evidence, obviously, that LH&J really believe that non-Real True Christians are callously indifferent about their children.

You're being charitable, I would have taken another tack on that one...

Interestingly the movie (that's better than the books probably because while a single hack writer with no editor can do damage, a movie would need equally hackish producers, writers, directors and actors to achieve the same effect) does reference the missing children. At the beginning of "tribulation force" Buck is reading the news on TV and says "a week ago half a billion humans mysteriously disappeared off the face of the planet. Even more terrible, all the children have also dissapeared".

HELLO ? I wouldn't have said it in that order, personally. Or thought to separate both phenomena frankly.

[MGB]

A bit off subject but it relates to Buck being the greatest reporter of all time. I just finished Antony Beevor's book, Stalingrad. Some of the officers and enlisted men in the sixth army mockingly referred to Hitler as GROFAZ, greatest leader of all time

[mmack]

I look more like Quasimodo than Sundance though.

Or at least Marty Feldman from Young Frankenstein:

"What hump?"

[Vermic]

Vermic, that's no issue in Left Behind Land. It just means the the Evil Secular Humanists who practice the Deadly Sin of Gluttony will have more to gorge on.

You have given me the wonderful mental image of a bunch of morbidly obese atheists seated around a giant steaming pile of produce drenched in butter -- which they now have ALL FOR THEMSELVES -- and tucking their bibs under their double chins as they go "Mwa ha ha ha ha!"

And for that, I thank you.

[Jon]

This particular literary sin needs a name

As an avid reader of comic books for most of my life, in recent years I've been struck by the lack of regard for continuity in contemporary comics. Paying attention to what's come before is regarded as being obsessively fanboyish and is widely regarded with contempt by fans and creators alike, as it "limits" the manner in which stories can be told. Editorial dictates on the subject boil down to "if continuity gets in the way of telling a story, then to hell with it." Thus you can have a comic in which a character tells her origin story, and that same month in another comic - by the same writer - have a totally different and contradictory version of her origin presented.
The term I came up with to describe this lack of regard or understanding of the concept of continuity is "contiwhatity?"
I think it can be applied to LB just as well as to comics.

[mmack]

You have given me the wonderful mental image of a bunch of morbidly obese atheists

Vermic,

If you watch Futurama, think of the episode where Bender became a human:

"Goodbye moderation!"

[Geds]

Interestingly the movie (that's better than the books probably because while a single hack writer with no editor can do damage, a movie would need equally hackish producers, writers, directors and actors to achieve the same effect) does reference the missing children.

Ironically enough, L&J attempted to sue the movie people for screwing up their book...

They can't even get litigation right.

[Rozzen]

Either LH&J know enough about science to make the explanation sound like a desperate attempt to deny that a supernatural event occurred. Or they are deliberately ignorant about science, and they thought they were showing how Nicolae was cleverly deceiving Buck and the others about the true nature of the Event.

Both solutions seem to me equally likely and I can't for the life of me think which one it could be. This says something about L&J's writing I think.
On the other hand, Occam's razor as applied to Left Behind would indicate the second the hypothesis is the right one.

[Vermic]

Holy cow, today's Something Awful feature riffs on the Rapture! It's like divine providence or something! See Google News in 2029:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/google-future-rapture.php

[Chuck]

twig: Odd, that sounds like the plot of 'League of Extrordinary Gentlemen". And "The Avengers". Although I'm not sure "The Avengers" had a plot.

I would argue that League of Extrordinary Gentlemen was a case of "Sean Connery fights bad directing and loses". The script was as faithful as Hollywood would let it be to anything written by Alan Moore.

What made me dislike that movie, though, was when Sean Connery started to swing a punch, and the camera cut away. It's Sean Connery! Punching someone! We want to see that, morons!

[Ian]

Just think: if a significant number of Bell/AT&T/etc. employees had been real true Christians, this book could not have happened.

[patter]

and holding up a finger

There are just so many things wrong with just this one phrase.

[Salamanda]

mmack--
the Evil Secular Humanists who practice the Deadly Sin of Gluttony

O RLY? Have you ever been to a church potluck? ;)

[Paul]

re: opoponax Sep 28, 2007 at 10:53 AM

Actually as a native Staten Islander, I can tell you that, especially in the timeframe that the novels were written, there were several models to the Staten Island Ferry. And while some of them are as you describe, with no real "outside", some of the older ones indeed had outdoor areas. I even have photographic evidence.

http://www.stationreporter.net/sifb.jpg

[Keith]

Retconning is where you retroactively rejigger the continuity of a story, usually serial, to fit in the new plot line. However, it's usually done in later installments, rarely does it happen halfway through the first book.

Imagine if, in the first issue of Spider Man, Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider but later, on page twenty, he tells someone that it was a genetically engineered spider.