Updated:
First, what is unchanged is that NESFA Press will publish a collection of Ken MacLeod’s short stories, poems, and essays, and that you should all buy a copy.
I had said that the title comes from his pre-Iraq invasion comment: The rulers of the world should be regarded and resisted as if they were giant lizards from another star, which as far as humanity is concerned they might as well be.
[Emphasis added.]
Patrick Nielsen Hayden wrote that “giant lizards from another star” is a a phrase with some history in connection with Ken’s work, recent SF, recent political discourse, and so forth.
He didn’t say that Ken’s post was the origin of the book’s title. My apologies to Patrick for the earlier version of this post that made it sound as if he was making that claim. I did, but he wasn’t, and I am most likely mistaken as to the origin.
Ken said in a later weblog post I had not read, that he first saw the phrase in a comment on the Yugoslavian war by David Ramsay Steele.
These brave soldiers will be maintained in self-contained biospheres, like giant lizards from another star, which given the moral status of their behavior, they might as well be.
