After finishing the 25-volume yearly "year's best" series covering science fiction short stories from 1939 through 1963, I'm now reviewing the anthology Robert Silverberg Presents the Great SF Stories (1964), in which the editor, a noted science fiction writer himself, along with Martin H. Greenberg from the previous series, selected in the year 2001 what they deemed to be the best stories from '64. For the years 1965 through 1989, which I plan to review in the future, I'll be using a different anthology series. For me in 1964 I was seven going on eight and living with my family in West Hollywood, Florida, starting the year off in the second grade at Boulevard Heights Elementary School and finishing it there in the third. I remember being big on star-gazing, following the Beatles and rock n' roll on the radio, new TV series like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Bewitched, My Favorite Martian...and that great sci-fi series The Outer Limits. We were a "cat" family at the time with such beasts as Tiger, Panther, and Smoky...the first was with us into 1966, the second was so disruptive that we had to return him to the humane society, and giant, semi-feral Smoky one day just up and left us, as sometimes is the case with cats. Oh, and I was definitely getting into reading back then, too. Here are my reactions to the first three tales in the book...
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Weekly Short Stories: 1964 Science Fiction, Part 1
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Received General Election Absentee Ballot Saturday
Saturday we received our mail-in, absentee ballots for the upcoming general election. As expected, the presidential race is the first item listed, followed by the House of Representatives District 3 contest and two local Alachua County Commission races. Then we have some judge retention questions, Florida State Constitution amendment questions and, finally, several of a local nature. If it were only a matter of voting in the political races between candidates, this would be a fairly quick process. The judge retention questions are problematic since I'll need to figure out whether any of them has a cloud of impropriety over them...probably not, I imagine. The constitutional questions are problematic in a different way. It used to be that a simple majority vote on any of them would add them to the constitution, but a few years ago they raised the bar to at least 60% "yes" votes for passage. But the last time I got to vote on amendments I voted in favor of allowing convicted felons in Florida who served their sentences to have their voting rights restored...the measure was passed statewide. But then the legislature, governor, and courts took over and mandated that felons pay back court and processing costs to the state beforehand. That's not what I voted for, and I wonder with each of these measures before me this year what hidden clauses and agendas are behind them. There's even one measure proposing that amendments would only be accepted after they are passed twice...are you kidding me?! I'm going to need to research the local questions as well...sigh, it's going to take a little longer than I had planned to get through this...
On a related note, when running and walking through my home Northwood Pines and the adjacent Northwood Oaks subdivisions I've noticed that many homes have Kayser Enneking campaign signs out in front. Enneking is a Democrat running for the Florida House District 21 seat currently held by Republican Chuck Clemons. That's cool...except for the fact that our neighborhoods are in the more eastern District 20 and won't be voting in their election. Now in the previous election for our State Senate seat, we were included in the race that Enneking ran against Republican incumbent Keith Perry...I wonder whether my neighbors got a little confused when they discovered she was running again: some of them even have her old "Enneking for State Senate" signs out...
I don't plan to wait too long to get this ballot back out in the mail, maybe two weeks maximum as I sort through the different questions on it. And I will, as I did with the previous August primary election, track my ballot's progress online until it is safe and sound in the elections office: I recommend you follow suit if you're voting by mail, too...
Monday, September 28, 2020
My All-Time Favorite Songs: #19-17
Sunday, September 27, 2020
Just Finished Reading Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle, which I just finished reading, is a 1963 novel by Kurt Vonnegut. The protagonist is the first-person narrator Jonah (or John), who encounters the Hoenikker family as he researches a book he is writing about what different people did on the day of the Hiroshima bombing in August, 1945. The Hoenikkers...fictional products of Vonnegut's imagination...are important here because the surviving three children's father was a scientist credited with being the father of the atom bomb. Professor Felix Hoenikker appears to represent all scientists who go about their work with blinders on about the implications for the world regarding their discoveries...a case in point is his invention of a crystalline water form called "ice-nine", suggested to Hoenikker in passing one day by a military man referring to the problem of marines getting bogged down in mud...and wouldn't it be nice if somehow we could freeze the water in it under normal temperatures to provide a solid surface. The old professor, without any regard to how this might affect the world at large, then goes about producing the ultimately very dangerous substance...
Jonah intersperses his narration with quips from a fictional religion called Bokononism...resembling Zen Buddhism in places and invented by a man named Bokonon to comfort the impoverished population of San Lorenzo, a small Caribbean island nation which he has adopted as his home. On a job assignment, Jonah travels there where the Hoenniker children, the island's strongarm dictator, ice-nine and Bokononism all intersect to deliver the world's fate...while he tries to derive some meaning from it all...
Cat's Cradle to me was intended as a satirical farce as Kurt Vonnegut used ice-nine to expose the selfishness and shortsightedness he saw within the scientific community, as well as examining the love-hate relationship people...and especially their leaders...have with regard to religion. He also pokes fun at different personality types...this kind of reminded me of Joseph Heller's great novel Catch-22, which came out only a couple of years earlier. Of Vonnegut's three novels that I have read so far, Cat's Cradle is my favorite. If you dig irony and satire, and don't mind having one or two of your own cherished "sacred cows" toppled in the process, you might go for it as well...
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Miscellany: Coffee Shop, SCOTUS, Local Weather
Friday, September 25, 2020
Quote of the Week...from Kurt Vonnegut
Thursday, September 24, 2020
About the Republicans Filling Ginsburg's Supreme Court Seat
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Weekly Short Stories: 1963 Science Fiction, Part 4
With this article I conclude my look at short science fiction from the year 1963 as it appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 25 (1963). It's also the last one of this 25-volume series that began with stories from 1939. I plan to continue with the year-by-year reviews by using other sources, primarily Donald Wollheim's "year's best" series that picks up where Asimov left off and goes through 1989. Also, from time to time I'll take a break and review certain collections of specific authors...
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Just Watched The Social Dilemma Documentary Movie
Melissa, Will and I recently set down and watched on Netflix a very intriguing and disturbing documentary film, released just this year: The Social Dilemma, released for general public viewing just a couple of weeks ago after appearing at the Sundance Film Festival in January. In it former Google designer Tristan Harris, along with several other former major Internet company employees, present their view that uses of social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter...along with simple Internet use of search engines like that of Google, present skewed outcomes because the companies providing these services use complex algorithms deliberately designed to give the user what he or she wants and pander to people's prejudices in order to increase their usage...not necessarily providing truthful or balanced information. Each user has a separate profile that the company analyzes to increase their addiction to the application by feeding back material that supports their own preconceived notions. This is creating among adults a very politically divided, bubbled-off society with each "camp" armed with its own "facts" and perceived outrages perpetrated by the other "side" as they spend their time shouting past each other on the various issues and politicians. But with teens...and preteens as well...social media can become very addictive and personally demeaning, possibly even contributing to suicide...
I just finished rereading A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin's first volume of his apparently never-ending A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series. His fiction may be fantasy in that it involves a mythical world, dragons, monsters up north and the like, but with regard to how unseen forces manipulate the characters into acting against their own interests, it is very, very real and applicable to what is going on now with not only social media and the Internet in general, but also television and radio: the companies obey the bottom line of economic profit, which is provided by advertising, which in turn is driven by viewership...regardless of the truth value of what is being put out there. As with Martin's book with his "puppet masters" stringing the characters along with their strategically-placed provocations eventually pitting the House of Lannister in open conflict against that of Stark, Harris and others reveal that these corporate AI algorithms have come to the conclusion that inciting people's passions about different subjects and themselves is the most cost-effective way to increase onsite activity and get those crucial profits for the company...and this is causing our children to become more withdrawn and insecure while our society as a whole is much more deeply divided and uncivil...
This past Sunday evening I was watching the end of an exciting, close football game between the (boo) New England Patriots and the (hooray) Seattle Seahawks. My 'Hawks managed to squeak out a close victory on the last play of the game, but what if the broadcasters behaved the way of social media or search engines? While not denying the final score in favor of Seattle, NBC, knowing my preferences, would have exalted everything Seattle did while casting New England in the role of dastardly, evil villains...and the officials were of course biased against the Seahawks. But for my neighbor who likes the Patriots, the presentation by the same NBC on his TV would portray his chosen team as the heroes robbed of a victory by Seattle's cheating and poor officiating: New England really did win, even if the score says otherwise...must be some kind of hoax. That sounds crazy, but if The Social Dilemma is right then in a way that's a lot of what we're getting on our smartphones and computers. Users beware: they're taking us for a bunch of damned fools, and maybe they're right...I highly recommend this documentary and let the wise among us wake up to the danger...
Monday, September 21, 2020
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #22-20
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Just Finished Reading The BFG by Roald Dahl
The BFG, published in 1982, is the third Roald Dahl children's book I've read...after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. The late Welsh writer had the most wicked sense of humor and remarkable characters in these sometimes macabre modern fairy tales and this latest reading is no exception...once again I found myself chuckling as I followed the story. Sophie, a little girl living in an orphanage, one night looks out her bedroom window to see a tall shadow skulking down the street. Upon deeper examination she sees it is an incredibly tall man with a trumpet, which he loads with something from a glass jar and then blows into other bedroom windows. Having extremely acute hearing, he eventually detects her, reaches in her room and spirits her back to his homeland where he and nine other giants live. But Sophie's captor is friendly, as he identifies himself as the BFG, short for Big Friendly Giant, and unlike the others refuses to eat people...much to the girl's relief. His abduction of Sophie was done to avoid her telling others of his and the other giants' existence...the idea of living like a confined zoo animal understandably frightens him. So the two learn to live together as the BFG reveals his good nature as he struggles with the English language, making all sorts of comical mistakes with it...and tries to protect her from the other mean, bigger human-eating giants. How does it all end? Quite royally, although to get the full gist of my words you'll need to read it for yourself...
Roald Dahl is now three-for-three with his children's novels...but I'm seeing them as an adult and I wonder whether some sensitive children might be subject to nightmares in this latest one with the talk about giants snatching people, even kids, from their beds and eating them up. Then again, many if not most of the traditional fairy tales I grew up with were full of gruesome and violent imagery: maybe it serves some backhanded purpose in preparing them for this often dangerous and tragic real world they will be living through as adults. Now on to the next Dahl book...
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Beta Already Reached in 2020 Atlantic Tropical Storm Names
You know you're in the middle of an extraordinarily active Atlantic hurricane season when one day you turn on the Weather Channel and, just past the peak time of mid-September they've already gone through "V" with only "W" left to name a storm before going into the Greek alphabet...and naturally there's another developing tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico about to become "Wilfred". But you know it's much worse than that when the following day you discover that this now-tropical storm didn't get the name Wilfred...or even Alpha, the first letter in the Greek alphabet: no, there's so much activity right now in Atlantic that those two names quickly went to other storms. We're now at the Beta stage in tropical storm names, already the most ever since 2005 when we went through Zeta, the sixth Greek letter. To contrast 2005 with 2020, by this date fifteen years ago we were only at the "R" point in names, with Rita in the process of developing into a powerful hurricane that would devastate the eastern Texas coast. Since there is still so much time left in 2020, I'm wondering whether, if an upcoming "Greek" hurricane causes so much damage or loss of life that its name would normally be retired, what would they replace it with...a comparable letter from another language's alphabet, or maybe just skip over that letter the next time it comes up?
I don't think that Tropical Storm Beta will develop into a strong hurricane due to wind shear on its northwest side, but it's forecast to slow down, stop, and just sit along the Texas coast and inflict its winds, rain, and storm surge on the area for a couple of days before moving eastward along the coastline. That's the problem with Gulf storms: they're bound to hit somewhere...
Friday, September 18, 2020
Quote of the Week...from Stephen King
If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you. ...Stephen King
Being a major fan of Stephen King's writings, I also follow him on Twitter...often he gives good reading recommendations in his posts. The above quote was from a list provided on a website...I'm not sure whether it's from a book of his or his own standalone quote. That I agree with it is the reason for this article. There's a good reason for the existence of the term "teenage angst": going through this transformative life stage carries with it many opportunities for emotional difficulties as the body develops from childhood to being an adult and society in so many ways places pressure and stress on the young person who for the most part is simply trying to get along in life and fit in with his or her peers. Bruce Springsteen may think of that time as "glory days"...and to be sure there are glorious, positive moments embedded within those years...but for me life was nothing like that back then. Without going off on a rant about what a pathetic victim I was and how badly others treated me...yeah, like you want to hear all that...let me just say that it wasn't the fun kind of experience I would want to relive. Teens are struggling enough with the monumental changes going on in their bodies as they grow from childhood to adults without, on one hand, being restricted as minors by their parents and other authority figures and, on the other, having to worry and be held accountable like adults when it comes to their academic records and futures in college and business. The full development of the human brain, it has been discovered, isn't complete until around age 25...and it's areas like judgment and discernment that are part of that later growth stage to full maturity. I've written before that by the time I was eighteen I felt like an old man...the supreme irony, and a very good sign for those undergoing those "teenage angst" years as I did, is that I haven't felt that way for many years...even though I'm turning 64 next month. I used to feel at the time that my teenage experiences were uniquely awful and felt a kind of shame about them, but after the many ensuing decades of hearing others' stories, reading, and watching movies and television, I feel instead like I'm more a part of the suffering-yet-enduring masses of teen-year survivors: a kind of fellowship in itself...
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Constellation of the Month: Cygnus (the Swan)
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Weekly Short Stories: 1963 Science Fiction, Part 3
This is a short story with a "you reap what you sow" theme I've often seen in many Twilight Zone episodes, which incidentally was in its third and fourth seasons in 1963. In this tale we're off in the future a few years and society has turned into an ugly consumer cesspool of vicarious thrills...the latest craze enables "viewers" to temporarily feel the ongoing pain of real injury victims, with media companies even stooping to the level of paying hospital patients to undergo surgery without anesthesia and transmitting their agony to the hungry masses. I keep thinking of that brilliant 2006 Tool song Vicarious...seems we're well on our way to this disgusting scenario...
Next week I finish my look back at science fiction short stories from the year 1963...
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Just Finished Reading The ReWired Brain by Ski Chilton
The ReWired Brain is a newly published book by Dr. Ski Chilton, professor of medicine, writer, and entrepreneur...along with Dr. Margaret Rukstalis and A.J. Gregory. Melissa introduced me to it and I just finished reading it...here are my reactions...
Dr. Chilton in this book lays out the thesis that anyone can "rewire" their own brain and thus transform their life due to recent discoveries in neurological research. He introduces and explains the concepts of brain plasticity, epigenetics, dual process reasoning (Systems One and Two) and the undifferentiated and differentiated minds. He challenges, through the presentation of epigenetics, the commonly held notion that one's genetic makeup greatly restricts their capacity to change and that one's mental makeup is pretty much determined in their younger years. Instead, Chilton explains that our nervous system is designed for change throughout our lives and that what we now choose to think in itself directly causes physical changes that affect our future. Roughly stated, with dual process reasoning, System One corresponds to the subconscious mind and the lower brain functions while System Two, which defines our humanity in his opinion, rests within the cerebrum...the key is to keep them in balance, and especially work to avoid letting System One rule over what we say and do. What I appreciate about this book is the personally liberating idea that I can design and change my brain and thinking to whatever I want it to be...the catch is that I not only have to know where I want to go, but also that I need to understand where I'm coming from right now: this is where the concept of differentiation comes into play. For much of what we take for granted as truth comes from early childhood experiences, some of which may have involved abuse or exposure to destructive belief patterns. It is important to recognize them in order to "differentiate" our past experience from what we truly are and want to become...
Ski Chilton writes from a personal perspective, drawing upon his own life story and his faith as a Christian. You do not have to be a fellow believer in order to derive benefit from his writing, though...just realize that he is simply honestly expressing things as he sees them. He also presents self-exploration questions at the end of chapters designed to get the reader more involved...very useful. I've grossly simplified the good author's message in this necessarily brief review...let me just say in closing that there's a lot of new stuff here to learn and I'm confident that before long I'll find myself reading it again. Thumbs up on this book...
Monday, September 14, 2020
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #25-23
Next week: #22-20...
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Giving George R.R. Martin One Last Chance
Saturday, September 12, 2020
Just Finished Reading James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Friday, September 11, 2020
Quote of the Week...from Prince
---Prince
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Exploring, Experimenting, and Microchanging as Life-Enhancement Strategies
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Weekly Short Stories: 1963 Science Fiction, Part 2
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Our Weekend Trip to Daytona
Monday, September 7, 2020
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #30-26
30 LUKA...Suzanne Vega
The summer of 1987 had an extraordinarily good selection of popular hits that I liked a lot...this one by folk artist Suzanne Vega about the very serious and sad subject of child abuse was the best of them, so much that I crowned it then as my Song of the Year. I associate it with the brief time that year when I lived in Leesburg, Florida...very memorable. Vega is one of those artists who should have been a big hitmaker like Elton John or Carole King...the only other song she did that was a hit was her Diner. The guitar strumming on Luka is among the among the best I've heard on a record...
29 DIALOGUE (PARTS 1 & 2)...Chicago
I remember first hearing this 1972 song by the horn-dominated rock band one morning in the spring of 1973, during my high school's televised announcements show, and immediately liked it. Singers Terry Cath and Peter Cetera take turns in a dialogue, with the former making a call to conscience and face the different serious ongoing problems in society, while the latter takes on the role of complacency and self-interested denial...gee, that sounds like what's going on today! The song's second part is an instrumental jam of horns, guitar and percussion that exemplified this band's great musical talent and innovation during their early years of success, before they began to churn out a series of tame, boring ballads...
28 DESTINATION UNKNOWN...Missing Persons
For me the quintessential New Wave song, Destination Unknown was a minor radio hit in 1982 for the Los Angeles synthesizer band as lead singer Dale Bozzio performs with her "Betty Boop" style. Destination Unknown was their follow-up singles release to Words, also a personal favorite. The lyrics are a bit deceptively deep, like "When will my time come? Has it all been said and done? I know I'll leave when it's my time to go, 'til then I'll carry on with what I know". I think its greatest appeal to me was in the atmosphere of mystery it imparted. Missing Persons, disbanded in 1986, was another group that I thought should have been more popular, as they were very talented and creative...
Back in the late sixties when this British band was in their psychedelic, Eastern mysticism phase, Ray Thomas wrote, sang and played the flute in this classic album rock radio piece...you'd probably better recognize it by the recurring line "Timothy Leary's dead". There isn't a weak moment in this track from their 1968 In Search of the Lost Chord album...it's sandwiched in the middle of House of Four Doors but stands as well on its own. My favorite section is during the mid-song instrumental break when Thomas' incredible improvised flute playing segues into Mike Pinder's Mellatron imitating deep orchestral strings: you can't beat the dramatic buildup here. Always a "legend in my mind", although the lyrics are admittedly a bit spacey and dated, not to mention seeming to promote LSD, for which Leary had been a major advocate back then...
Next week: #25-23...
Happy Anniversary, Sweet Melissa
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Just Finished Reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King (for the 4th Time)
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Just Finished Reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
I was pleasantly surprised by this very funny tale and look forward to seeing how the two movies will probably twist its tone and message completely out of shape. I'd like to start out with the version starring Gene Wilder from 1972...Sammy Davis, Jr.'s hit song at that time Candyman, which I liked a lot, is part of the soundtrack. The more recent version starring Johnny Depp as the enigmatic Wonka should be interesting as well...I wonder which movie will be more faithful to the book. Now on to the next Roald Dahl book...at least after I've finished reading Stephen King's masterpiece novel 11/22/63 for the fourth time...
Friday, September 4, 2020
Quote of the Week...from Katie Mack
Yesterday I reviewed astrophysicist...and investigator of the origin and ultimate demise of the cosmos...Katie Mack's new book The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking). In it she presented potential scenarios for the destruction of the universe while giving a brilliant introduction to cosmology and astrophysics in the process. This is a very dynamic scientific field in which all sorts of interesting theories are arising about the nature of reality...her above quote from the book alludes to the work of one of her contemporaries. This seems to be a popular quote on Twitter, and in another Tweet a fan wrote that she "is really good at messing with your mind"...to which Katie Mack replied, "It's not me, it's physics". As someone untrained in the deep mathematics and scientific method necessary to more fully comprehend the material she is discussing I can only sit back in wonder at what is being undertaken in this area. Personally, I'm not all that concerned at how our universe will end...astrophysically speaking, of course...but I do very much appreciate Mack's well-written exposition on many different areas of current research and what we know at this point concerning the cosmos. I'm looking forward to reading more from her in future books...
Thursday, September 3, 2020
Just Finished Reading The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack
The Big Crunch...the amount of matter in the universe ultimately causes an end to its expansion and causes it to draw back upon itself and contract.
The Heat Death...with dark energy now a recognized element in the cosmos and causing an accelerating...no slowing...expansion, this scenario has the cosmos reaching a point of complete cooling where entropy has reached its limit and time itself ceases.
The Big Rip...another dark energy-caused scenario whereby the very fabric of existence is torn apart suddenly and without warning.
Vacuum Decay...what we nowadays consider as an absolute vacuum is actually permeated with a gravity field...should that field alter into a higher vacuum state anywhere in the universe the result could be the Bubble of Death expanding to end and replace our own reality.
Multiverse Collison...in a setting comprised of multiple universes, another one colliding with us could conceivably cause our destruction...assuming of course that there are actually other universes.
When I refer to "our" destruction, I'm referring to our cosmos as a whole and not specifically our own Earth and its life, doomed to disappear in a few billion years anyway as the dying sun expands as a red giant and encompasses our orbit. I noticed something interesting about Katie Mack's presentation: the doomsday scenarios...particularly that one about vacuum decay...seem to exist as logical extensions of ongoing theories, theories that are subject to revision with incoming new information. As for the universe's actual, ultimate demise, this sounds like a topic that's a little bigger than me. It's clear to me that Katie Mack loves her job...I liked her book so much that I bought it!
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Weekly Short Stories: 1963 Science Fiction, Part 1
FORTRESS SHIP by Fred Saberhagen
A series of warships in deep space are presenting a problem for human space travelers...from a civilization far away and long gone, these monstrosities are unmanned and automatic, destroying whole fleets and even planets they happen to encounter along their way. Three little Earth ships must coordinate and attack one before it destroys a nearby world...I think one of the old Star Trek episodes was based on this story...
NOT IN THE LITERATURE by Christopher Anvil
I used to watch an old late 70's public television series called Connections that revealed the development of technology over the ages and how different smaller discoveries and inventions were crucial to later innovations. This story presents a scenario in which a society is advancing toward rocketry...but it's missing a particular element of "discovery" in its own scientific/technological history that is causing one failed launch after another. Somebody comes up, however, with the answer (obvious to us)...but he is laughed off by the so-called "experts"...makes me wonder whether we're missing something fundamental in our own approach to things...
THE TOTALLY RICH by John Brunner
Very similar in format to the 1962 Theodore Sturgeon short story When You Care, When You Love that I reviewed just last week, one of the world's very few super-rich, a middle-aged woman, finds a scientist/engineer who has discovered and developed a procedure that could bring back a deceased person...or at least a duplicate, given enough information about his or her immediate environment. It's another trip of speculation as to how the most wealthy on Earth may be essentially invisible to the rest of us and how they choose to live their lives...
NO TRUCE WITH KINGS by Poul Anderson
Some three hundred years after a planetary nuclear war (the "Hellbomb"), Earth is divided into smaller, warring political units...the focus in this story is the former American Pacific west as two sides vie for control. But there is another element here: an alien group has infiltrated Earth and is taking sides in the conflict, hoping to steer humanity's course toward a more civilized, less violent society that will enable it to be admitted to the interstellar community as a participating member. Whew, talk about violating Star Trek's Prime Directive!
Next week: more on science fiction short stories from 1963...