I just read Vorpal Blade by John Ringo and in the book he uses Shiny! as an expletive. I know he got it from an old Sci-Fi book but damned if i can find any reference to it. any of you know? Closest i can figure is a character from Serenity. By the way darn good book if you like Sci-Fi

In Firefly it's used to mean "good" or "nice".

Yeah, all the swearing in the Firefly universe is in chinese

Not all of the gorram swearing is chinese.

btw, John Ringo is a great author if you love "Hard" Sci-Fi.

Vorpal Blade is good, but it's the SECOND in a series, make sure you read the first one (Into the Looking Glass). Manxome Foe will be the third.

He's also a really cool guy with whom to speak and listen. Last Dragon*Con he was on a panel ("How to Kill Your Characters," I think). It was a late panel, around 9pm or so, and he'd forgotten he was supposed to be on it. He'd already tied one (or two, or three) on, but showed up anyway. He was the life of the panel, and absolutely hilarious.

That's awesome. And yeah, killing off a main character is HARD to do. He does it sometimes, and it's... well, it's perfect. It NEEDS to happen from time to time. The main character NEVER dies, or if he does you expect him to come back in some fashion somehow. I love reading, but typically, everything is predictable (at least main plot points).

John Ringo's March Upcountry series is amazingly good in that respect. **** happens. People die. People you KNOW die. Not just random nobodies. You go "wait, WHAT?!" and have to reread it to make sure you aren't insane. It causes character development as well, because the other CHARACTERS have the same type of response and have to keep pushing on. It's excellent.

It's part of why I loved Anne Bishop's Dark Jewels series - you honestly had bad guys as good guys, and the "good guys" were bad. People died. You didn't expect them to come back (even though they did come back, albeit not quite in the same way they left). Things were just... different.