>I'm a little sad about this, if only because historically I've
>generally tried for the opposite effect ("you didn't have to be
>there") with imported material, and in the past have had (or at least
>been told I've had) some success with it. If I've fallen down on that
>lately, that bears acknowledging.
>
>It's always been tricky - there's explication and then there's
>exposition - but I guess I used to be better at it.

For what it's worth, I think you do an absolutely fantastic job. I'm a big fan of the genres you tend to include, but due to various reasons (time and money, generally), I'm not anywhere as familiar with them as I'd like to be. I muse on this regularly, that my biggest exposure to so many things is directly due to reading the things you write. And since I agree with the general consensus that you to a better job with their characters than the original authors do (cf. the entirety of the Marvel Universe), that works for me.

Any time you introduce something that I wasn't familiar with, I'll spend a bit of quality time with Google filling in the deeper details and background that weren't necessary (or didn't happen in the UF-verse), and afterwards I'm always amazed at how seamlessly you integrate such disparate sources into what I generally explain to people as The Literary Equivalent of the Theory of Everything.

-Simonz