Commander Keen is probably the one that I liked the most that is also well known.

My personal favorite was Bass Class, which is weird because I’ve zero interest in real-life fishing, then or now.

Though the split happened because the Soviets thought they should be master of all Communist countries and the Chinese had different ideas on the topic.

Yes, the Diplomatic Revolution for one.

Spoken like a true burglar.

“Revolutionary Paris” had me thinking about this entirely the wrong way.

Good thing he didn’t throw his drinking problem overboard instead.

Fingers crossed it’s Thingumy and Bob.

Yes, but it doesn’t matter enough. The square-cube law means that the mass being supported goes up faster than the area of the layer doing the supporting does. So each additional brick on the bottom still ends up carrying more weight as the pyramid gets taller.

Depends on the compressive strength of the material. Sooner or later the weight of the pyramid above the base exceeds the base’s ability to support it. Considering that a mountain is basically a stone pyramid, Everest has to be in the neighbourhood of how tall you could go – call it 10-12 kilometers high. Other materials would do better.

I had a quick re-read I think you might be right! I’m wondering if I picked it up from the movie instead.

Oh, I’ve read all of his stuff! It’s a red letter day for me when a new story is published. None since 2019, though.

My odd choice of his would be Seventy-Two Letters. I find him most interesting when he follows through in the consequences of an old disproven scientific theory or theological explanation of the universe, and he manages to fit two of them in here.

He’s written some “Notes” on the story when it was printed in his first short story collection and said that it has the same theme but that he wasn’t inspired by it directly. The roots were Paul Linke’s play “Time Flies When You’re Alive” and the principle of least time in optics – if you treat light as a ray, it has to know its future destination in order to know the path with the shortest time it will take to get there (though not if it’s a wave). Then there’s a bunch of diagrams and discussions about the principle’s implications for free will that will stretch your brain. It’s pretty fun.

It’s based on a short story called “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. He’s published only eighteen stories in his career (starting in 1990), nothing longer than a novella and mostly short stories. Despite that they’ve won him four Hugos, four Nebulas, and six Locus Awards. He’s worth reading, is what I’m trying to say.

It’s the only one in English unless you allow things like “The absolute value of -20”.

She might like Little Kitty, Big City. You’re a cat, it’s an open world, you explore, make friends, and wear hats.

There’s a part of Canada that’s south of Crescent City, California.

Worst. Cryptid. Ever.

I’m fond of the Imperial County of Reuss, which was semi-independent in the Holy Roman Empire. The madlads named all their rulers “Heinrich”, resulting such personages as Heinrich LXXII (“Heinrich the 72nd”).

More recently there’s the Saar Protectorate, which the French encouraged to become a fully independent country after WWII. But the inhabitants wanted nothing to do with it and rejoined West Germany.

It would probably be faster to list the things he doesn’t have a negative view about.