All right, let's.

One of the more entertaining parts of writing these postings is coming up with the titles.* Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's a struggle.  Sometimes I don't know what the title will be until the end, and sometimes I start with a title and then change my mind after writing the content.  Some of them are just obvious statements on the content, such as last month's "And a bottle of rum." for the posting about piracy, and on other occasions I've drawn upon the titles of famous science fiction novels, lines from favourite songs, bad puns, and quotations from a plethora of sources.

The science fiction and fantasy market is probably more famous for changed titles than the general rank and file of book headings.  Offhand I can think of several novels that were the victims of editorial alterations, either for better or worse, and ended up being published under titles other than the ones that the author had picked.  The Stars My Destination?  Original title Tiger! Tiger!.  Daybreak - 2250 A.D., later renamed to Star Man's Son.  Or The Space Merchants, whose original title of Gravy Planet suggests a far more intriguing novel, at least to my ear.

Some titles are a mystery until a moment of revelation.  When I originally read Terry Pratchett's The Monstrous Regiment, about a group of army recruits who are all eventually revealed to be women masquerading as men, I didn't give the title much thought.  After all, one of the soldiers is a vampire, another a troll, it didn't seem that noteworthy.

However, earlier this year I was reading a blog posting by an unhappy female teacher who was complaining about the conduct of some of her male students.  In her posting, she made reference to a 1558 treatise by reformer John Knox, in which he rails against the possibility of women ordering men around.  The title of this extended rant regarding the Bible and its position on the position of females?  The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.  Full points to Mr. Pratchett for a title which is both appropriate and obscure.  (Well, obscure to me, for all I know it's a common reading in British public schools.) 

And then there are the titles that speak for themselves.  I just finished watching the mid-season finale of Doctor Who - yes, mid-season, they're taking a break for some unknown reason.  Normally at the end of the episodes they show a little preview of the next program, but in this case they just gave us the title:

Kudos to whoever came up with that clever little three-word teaser, which manages to be mysterious yet undeniably informative at the same time - and really, isn't that what a good title should do?

- Sid

* The most difficult part is coming up with the final paragraph.  More than one posting has languished as a draft file until I could come up with a punchline.