Whiskey and soda, on the moon rocks
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Care to elaborate?
The obsession with series. You can’t just have, like, a book. Granted, the Culture is all in the same universe, but they’re discrete stories that stand on their own. Granted, I’m slightly drunk and maudlin, but still. what is there that’s like that, dammit?
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Whiskey… there is only whiskey.
Indeed. I am reminded of Barry Malzberg’s chronic harping on this topic, as for example this excerpt from the quasi-fictional essay “Corridors” from his The Engines of the Night collection (1982):
RUTHVEN USED TO HAVE PLANS. Big plans: turn the category around, arrest the decline of science fiction into stereotype and cant, open up the category to new vistas and so on. So forth. Now, however, he is at fifty-four merely trying to hold on; he takes this retraction of ambition, understanding of his condition as the only significant change in his inner life over two decades. The rest of it—inner and outer too—has been replication, disaster, pain, recrimination, self-pity, and the like: Ruthven thinks of these old partners of the law firm of his life as brothers. At least, thanks to Replication & Disaster, he has a brief for the game. He knows what he is and what has to be done, and most of the time he can sleep through the night, unlike that period during his forties when 4 A.M. more often than not would see him awake and drinking whiskey, staring at his out-of-print editions in many languages.
The series has helped. Ruthven has at last achieved a modicum of fame in science fiction and for the first time—he would not have believed this ever possible—some financial security. Based originally upon a short novel written for Astounding in late 1963, which he padded for quick paperback the next year, The Sorcerer has proven the capstone of his career. Five or six novels written subsequently at low advances for the same firm went nowhere but: the editor was fired, the firm collapsed, releasing all rights, the editor got divorced, married a subsidiary rights director, got a consultant job with her firm, divorced her, went to a major paperback house as science fiction chief and through a continuing series of coincidences known to those who (unlike Ruthven) always seemed to come out a little ahead commissioned three new Sorcerers from Ruthven on fast deadline to build up cachet with the salesmen. They all had hung out at the Hydra Club together, anyway. Contracts were signed, the first of the three new Sorcerers (written, all of them in ten weeks) sold 150,000 copies, the second was picked up as an alternate by a demented Literary Guild, and the third was leased to hardcover. Ruthven’s new, high-priced agent negotiated a contract for five more Sorcerers for $100,000.
Within the recent half decade, Ruthven has at last made money from science fiction. One of the novels was a Hugo finalist, another was filmed. He has been twice final balloted for a Gandalf. Some of his older novels have been reprinted. Ruthven is now one of the ten most successful science fiction writers: he paid taxes on $79,000 last year. In his first two decades in this field, writing frantically and passing through a succession of dead-end jobs, Ruthven did not make $79,000.
It would be easier for him, he thinks, if he could take his success seriously or at least obtain some peace, but of this he has none. Part of it has to do with his recent insight that he is merely hanging on, that the ultimate outcome of ultimate struggle for any writer in America not hopelessly self-deluded is to hang on; another part has to do with what Ruthven likes to think of as the accumulated damages and injuries sustained by the writing of seventy-three novels. Like a fighter long gone from the ring, the forgotten left hooks taken under the lights in all of the quick-money bouts have caught up with him and stunned his brain. Ruthven hears the music of combat as he never did when it was going on. He has lost the contents of most of these books and even some of their titles but the pain lingers. This is self-dramatization, of course, and Ruthven has enough ironic distance to know it. No writer was ever killed by a book.
Nonetheless, he hears the music, feels the dull knives in his kidneys and occipital regions at night; Ruthven also knows that he has done nothing of worth in a long time. The Sorcerer is a fraud; he is far below the aspirations and intent of his earlier work, no matter how flawed that was. Most of these new books have been written reflexively under the purposeful influence of scotch and none of them possesses real quality. Even literacy. He has never been interested in these books.
Edit: added publication date.
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Monkey 47 is a fine gin indeed.
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What? I am confused. Made from anything? Spirits are just distilled beer. easier to transport sure, but the sugars for those little yeasts that poop C2H5OH have to come from somewhere.
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Not the publisher’s fault that nobody really comes close to Iain Banks… he was one of a kind. Maybe Elon Musk will clone him or something…
I love this chart. Any chance of a link to a high-res file?
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… is discussed in
in such detail that it’s almost a sub-plot.
Do NOT try this on a child. When I was quite wee and had a cold (or possibly an asmthma attack) I was once given hot tea with some Bourbon and honey. It was literally decades before I cold tolerate any one of those three. And at 65 I am still a bit leary of Bourbon.
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Well, at least pure grain alcohol won’t sap and impurify all of your precious bodily fluids, so there is that.
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Yeah, you should always understand a home remedy recipe. As a child, my wife was made to drink a cup of hot water, honey, and lemon juice… by someone who thought it was one cup of each ingredient.
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PDF
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Thanks!!!
“If there’s anything I like, it’s a quiet uninhibited planet.”
A glass or two will do that.
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Bah! I denounce the anti-vermouth heretics with all of my heart, mind and soul!
It’s perfectly okay if you want to drink your gin neat; more power to you! But if you are going to claim you are drinking a Martini, even a dry one, you are going to put that vermouth in, and you are going to enjoy it. 
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Here’s a thought.
On the moon, cargo space to and from earth is going to be especially precious, which will affect the lunar booze culture.
Beer and cider will have to be entirely locally produced, as shipping (mostly) water around will be prohibitively expensive. Likewise, equipment limitations will channel the local spirit culture towards young spirits like gin and vodka. Barrel ageing will be rare, and if it does happen, then the barrels will have to be reused, leading to interesting new flavour profiles that will be unlike earth booze, so the idea that the lunar bar will be cocktail based is likely to be realistic.
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Looks like @NukeML ‘poured’ you your order. 
I learned about the chart from a draftsperson at work who had it up in her cubicle; she started out as a bartender!
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Home remedies, while often fun and tasty, are rarely appropriate for children.
Your experience brings to mind the time I was 12 and had a cold. Mom and dad always gave me a spoon of robitussin, and I was feeling crap so I drank half a bottle.
Robotripping is really wretched and awful. 1/10 would not recommend.
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