This Blog to Leave Facebook Starting Tomorrow, 1/1/21

My blog URL is wmirwinsblog.blogspot.com.  I mention this because starting New Years Day 2021, tomorrow, I will no longer be posting links to it on Facebook or Twitter.  I am fed up with these social media platforms for a number of reasons and decided that I couldn't take them anymore...if you can, then the more power to you.  I don't know whether or not I'll eventually shut down my accounts, but for the time being I'm done with posting on them, and with no intention to return.  For those of you who like to read this blog, and for the smaller number who like to give me feedback, I'm still continuing with it as usual and can be accessed with the above URL.  I also welcome comments, which you can make by viewing the blog article in question in web format (not phone app format)...at the bottom is a window to write your reaction, which I'll receive and review before posting it.  And with this system, you can comment and request that I don't publish it, and I will comply!  When I began this blog project in 2007 I intended it to be a disciplined exercise in daily writing, and my goal is still the same.  For the first two or three years I received comments ranging the globe and felt I was a part of the burgeoning community of bloggers.  But then Facebook exploded onto the scene and the number of active blogs and bloggers drastically contracted...my solution was to post links to my articles on that social media site, with mixed results.  So now I'm off Facebook (and Twitter), but my blog's still out there in the great, wide blogosphere.   Wishing all of you a healthy and prosperous New Year!

My December 2020 Running and Walking Report

For December 2020 I ran a total of 92 miles and walked for 118.  I missed five running days for various reasons and my longest single run was for 7.5 miles and another one at 6.7...both coming near the beginning of the month. I don't see much change in my running and walking for the near future and don't see myself, in this COVID pandemic environment, engaging in any public races whether they're offered or not.  I'm basically in a holding pattern with running and walking right now...maybe in the future after things start to get back to normal I might hit the gym more and try longer distances again.  But not right now...

Weekly Short Stories: 1967 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here my reactions to the next four entries from the retroactive anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and covering what they selected from the previous year's works.  One of the attractions to these kinds of year-to-year anthologies is the introduction section, both to the book and to each individual story.  By reading them you get a better sense of the authors' writing approaches, as well as some suggestions leading to other recommended stories of theirs.  Looking back on 1967 in my life, I spent a good part of my time that summer climbing trees...behind my old elementary school near my house they had some Australian pines tailor-made for that activity.  Now whenever I walk past a tree in my own neighborhood...or anywhere else for that matter...I feel compelled to appraise it for its possibilities and how high up I could go (at least if I were still ten years old like I was in '67)... 

BILLIARD BALL by Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov went through a few years in the 1960s when he was focusing on nonfiction writing...here's one of his science fiction stories of that time.  A theoretical physicist and an entrepreneurial engineer capitalizing on the former's discoveries have had an ongoing association for years in which the competition between them has become heated and bitter.  It culminates when the businessman sets up a public demonstration of imparting zero mass to objects...something the theoretician claimed not feasible in spite of his own theory...in order to humiliate him.  The story transforms into a murder mystery...a genre of fiction that Asimov was also good at...

HAWKSBILL STATION by Robert Silverberg

The setting is the Cambrian Period of Earth's geologic past when no land-based life existed but invertebrate animal life proliferated in the oceans.  It's the setting where political prisoners from early in the 21st century (remember this was written in 1967) are sent back in time to live out the rest of their lives in forced exile...trilobites in all their varieties are the main dish. Barrett, an old-time exile resident of Hawksbill Station as it is called...and their de facto leader...has a new challenge as a new inmate is transmitting back in time to his era through the time portal they call "The Hammer".  Just who is this Lew Hahn and what is he up to?"  Although a time travel story, Hawksbill Station was more a look at what conditions were like during this fascinating period in our planet's distant prehistory. Silverberg later expanded it into a full-length novel...

THE NUMBER YOU HAVE REACHED by Thomas M. Disch

An astronaut is returning from an exploratory mission to Mars in which his two partners accidentally died...alone he lands on Earth to discover that nuclear war has wiped out all humanity, save himself.  Living on the top floor of a tall city building, he sets up his daily routine...which is rudely interrupted when he gets a phone call, an angry, accusing woman on the other end.  His reactions to her...and her attitude toward him...are the intriguing elements of this very brief tale..

THE MAN WHO LOVED THE FAIOLI by Roger Zelazny

In the cosmos there is an angelic type of female entity call the Faioli that comfort men who are on the cusp of death...and then mercifully end their suffering while consuming them.  A man with a special condition that allows him to enter and leave life is the perpetual caretaker of an interstellar graveyard.  A Faioli visits him but cannot detect his presence until he turns his own life back on...what an incredibly interesting and unique premise for a story.  This one's my favorite of the tales I reviewed today, although I was partial to Hawksbill Station as well...

Next week I continue discussing some of the best in short science fiction from the year 1967...

Just Finished Reading Empire by Clifford Simak

Clifford D. Simak (1904-88) was primarily a short story science fiction and western writer for about twenty years before he began to tackle the longer novel form...Empire was his third published novel, from 1951.  The story's premise is simple and understandable enough...that is, until the author gets bogged down with his presentation of the "science" behind the outlandish discoveries dictating its resolution.  Humanity is sometime off in the not-too-distant future and has settled several planets and moons in our solar system.  But the kind of explosive progress in space exploration and settlement that could happen is being stymied by one company's monopoly on energy throughout the system. Two pipe-smoking scientists, however, are working on a discovery that promises to revolutionize the extraction of energy and shift the rules of the game away from the monopolist and put them into the hands of the people.  Spoiler warning: I'm now going to discuss the novel's ending, so if you're planning to read it you might want to stop here. Empire's characters were okay but the way the two hero scientists manipulate time and distance to defeat their monopolistic foe reminded me of TV shows like Bewitched in which ordinary people are made to look like fools whenever Samantha decides to twitch her little nose.  The ending made little sense to me...the way was made open for folks to freely settle the planets and other star systems and establish their mines: for what?  For with their "two fields" theory, the scientists can instantaneously provide essentially free energy, instantaneously see and hear anywhere (in the universe), instantaneously go anywhere (in the universe), and travel in time.  And they're going to make these gifts available to everybody: sounds like a nightmare scenario to me instead of a happy ending.  I like Clifford Simak's writing, with The Big Front Yard and City ranking high among my favorite science fiction short stories and novels, respectively.  Empire, though, represented a step backward from his deserved greatness.  Still, it's a short read and you might find yourself laughing at it as I did...

My Personal Top Favorite Songs of 2020

The below list of my top favorite songs of 2020 bears a little explaining.  First of all...with the notable exception of Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien's brilliant singles release Shangri-La (under the name EOB), I heard no actual 2020 releases through the normal means of broadcast radio or music channels.  The rest of my list is split between tracks from Sufjan Stevens' wonderful 2020 album The Ascension and various songs I've become attached to as I have been exploring the late Prince's vast collection of albums.  With each title I have indicated the artist, followed by the song's album...and with Prince, the year of that album's release.  With Prince's Black Album, it was originally recorded and slated for release in 1987 but he had second thoughts and stopped it...it later was released in 1994 on a limited basis.  As for the #2 entry, it's actually two successive tracks on Stevens' album that naturally run together as one song...

1 THE ASCENSION...Sufjan Stevens (The Ascension)

2 DEATH STAR/GOODBYE TO ALL THAT...Sufjan Stevens (The Ascension)

3 ALPHABET STREET...Prince (Lovesexy, 1988)

4 CINDY C...Prince (The Black Album, 1967, 1994)

5 LANDSLIDE...Sufjan Stevens (The Ascension)

6 MOUNTAINS...Prince (Parade, 1986)

7 SHANGRI-LA...EOB (Earth)

8 POSITIVITY...Prince (Lovesexy, 1988)

9 LE GRIND...Prince (The Black Album, 1987, 1994)

10 AMERICA...Prince (Around the World in a Day, 1985)

11 URSA MAJOR...Sufjan Stevens (The Ascension)

12 HOUSEQUAKE...Prince (Sign o' the Times, 1987)

13 POP LIFE...Prince (Around the World in a Day, 1985)

14 LOOSE!...Prince (Come, 1994)

15 CINNAMON GIRL...Prince (Musicology, 2005)

Great Old TV Episodes: from The Twilight Zone

THE OLD MAN IN THE CAVE from The Twilight Zone (1963)

I'm considering today's entry on this blog as the first one in a new weekly series, where I pick a particular episode from one of the old television series I used to watch and discuss it.  Before long you might discern that the pool of TV series I draw from is relatively limited...sad to say, in the past thirty years or so I haven't been all that enchanted with what's been offered out there.  Still, having grown up a complete TV addict ever since I was a crib-shaking, paint-eating rebellious little baby, I have plenty of material to keep this going for quite a while.  For today I picked an old Twilight Zone episode, from 1963: The Old Man in the Cave...

It's ten years after a nuclear war holocaust and one man is leading his small group of people through survival.  He goes off and consults periodically with an "old man in the cave" who gives reports of radiation levels and which foods are edible and which are contaminated and deadly.  The people want desperately to return to the old "normal" times but grudgingly follow their leader...that is, until three armed renegade soldiers, led by a young, charismatic James Coburn, convince them to overthrow him and eat and drink all their canned and bottled items.  After all, it looks and tastes good, so it must be okay, right?  The old man in the cave represents the knowledge and authority of science while Coburn's character stands for the demagogues who feed off the fears and inconvenience experienced by the population to lead them astray.  The applications of this episode to today's situation with the coronavirus pandemic and those who deny it and refuse to wear face coverings, socially distance, or avoid large gatherings should be obvious...

Next week: another TV episode from the past...

Sitting at Starbucks Recalling Old Training Run

I enjoyed Christmas yesterday with my family...I hope you're enjoying the holiday season as well.  I'm going in to work today, even though it's my "off day"...looks like they're seriously short-staffed: no problem!  Right now I'm sitting outside my nearest Starbucks with the temperature here in Gainesville around 40 degrees, a little past noon on what may be the coldest day (and night) of the year.  I'm looking at a couple, heavily clad, jogging down the path on the other side of NW 43rd Street, reminding me of my memorable Christmas run ten years ago.  That afternoon Melissa had been called in to work, and I decided to go out to see how far I could run.  It was around 60 degrees and overcast to the point of being dark even though it was only mid-to-early afternoon when I began the run, which took me winding through one subdivision after another until I was far west of Devil's Milhopper on NW 53rd Avenue...then I made my way gradually back.  Through the entire run I encountered almost nobody...it was a virtual ghost town that yuletide day in 2010 with one stark exception: while passing through Felasco Park off NW 43rd Street...just a short walk from where I'm sitting right now...I passed a huge family of people walking the other way: they seemed Middle Eastern or Iranian in appearance as we smiled at each other.  By the time I was back in my own home area the skies were turning black with the night...just when I reached my "runner's block" at around 20 miles it began to rain and I returned home soaked.  Now that's the kind of training run I long for!  I'd still like to try it all again, but I think it would be at a much slower pace, with more walking breaks interspersed.  Well, I think I'd better fold up this laptop before my hands freeze off and get on to work...

Merry Christmas

I'd like to take this moment to wish all of you a happy holiday today...Merry Christmas!  May peace, joy, health, prosperity, wisdom...and love...all be abundant in your lives!

Free Pluto TV Has James Bond Channel

Around my family recently the question came up about what I wanted for Christmas...struggling to come up with something, I responded that I'd like a James Bond DVD since I enjoy watching that spy movie series.  My daughter Rebecca then informed me that there is a free channel on Roku called Pluto which plays James Bond movies 24/7, with other channels devoted to genre-based films and specific television series like Star Trek and MacGyver.  I checked it out and can now confidently state that at any given moment in time (when I'm free to watch TV) I can find myself watching one of the 007 movies, stretching back from the first, Dr. No, from 1962 all the way through Die Another Day, from 2002...it does seem that the most recent ones featuring Daniel Craig as Bond are excluded, though, and you don't pick the movie but rather watch what's been scheduled: that works for me.  The channels on Pluto do include commercial breaks, which I am totally okay with...gives me opportunities to run to the kitchen or bathroom! Another channel, Tubi, provides all 17 episodes of the British science fiction series The Prisoner starring the late Patrick McGoohan...and it's also possible to access McGoohan's previous spy series Danger Man, marketed in the U.S. as Secret Agent Man with the famous Johnny Rivers theme song.  Not that I have the time to watch all this stuff, but it's nice to have this option with the Bond flicks.  Now all they need to do is come up with a Clint Eastwood channel...

Weekly Short Stories: 1967 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin to examine some of the selected science fiction short stories from 1967 as they appeared in the following year's anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr.  In 1967, still living with my family in west Hollywood, I was finishing the fifth grade and transitioning into the sixth at Nova Elementary in Davie.  Summertime in between was full of tree climbing and outdoor games, highlighted by Slam, a tamer variant of basketball more suited to klutzes like myself.  I was a Monkees fan back then...at least early on in the year, and pretty much was ignoring the Beatles except for their releases of All You Need is Love (which they recorded live on a June special TV show called Our World) and Hello/Goodbye.  At the start of the school year in late summer I became ill with a high fever for several days: then, upon returning, the teachers went on strike statewide, my home room teacher never coming back.  In the news, the Vietnam War was raging and escalating with no end in sight...although I began to hear the cliché "light at the end of the tunnel" this year.  But we're discussing sci-fi of the time, aren't we, so without further ado here are my reactions to the first four stories in the book...

SEE ME NOT by Richard Wilson

Avery, a suburbanite living in the present time (c. 1967) with his wife, and two kids, wakes up one morning to discover that he has become completely invisible.  The story develops as he stumbles around with his affliction, shocking his wife and daughter while delighting his bold little son...then his secret leaks out and you get the different, predictable varieties of reaction among the surrounding people.  I thought it was a cute, funny story...it actually has an explanation and a reasonable resolution, which helps to firmly place it square in the science fiction genre instead of fantasy... 

DRIFTGLASS by Samuel R. Delany

In an overpopulated Earth of the future, the option has been developed whereby some people can be genetically transformed to have gills, webbed feet and hands, and scales that allow them to freely exist both in the sea and on land.  One such person is a man disabled from burns from a terrible underseas volcanic eruption while trying to lay down cable on the ocean floor.  The project that injured him is now going to be attempted again, and he naturally has mixed feelings on it all.  This is more or less a piece whose value lies in creating a plausible future scenario: genetic adaptation to underwater living, and I found it very intriguing...

AMBASSADOR TO VERDAMMT by Colin Kapp

On a newly explored planet humans encounter what is most definitely an intelligent life form there, but it is so strange that it cannot be contacted directly...they call for a special ambassador from Earth to serve as translator.  A skeptical technician ignores others' warnings and sets out to investigate these elusive beings...what a mind trip!  This story...especially its ending...reminded me of one of my all-time favorite science fiction short stories: the 1942 classic Mimsy Were the Borogroves by Lewis Padgett...

THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS by R.A. Lafferty

A "man of the future" makes a wager with other skeptical residents of a rural small town that he has the power to make a man disappear...and goes about causing it with all looking on. But it looks like he bit off a little more than he could chew when the wager's results become evident.  This story is an example of someone with great talent, yet behaving in a completely foolish manner with it...no telling what he could have done with it if his own mindset hadn't been so petty.  The ending shows, in mirror effect, another way to make a man disappear...

Next week I continue with my look at 1967 in short science fiction...

Just Finished Reading Glory Road by Robert Heinlein

Robert Heinlein was considered one of the greatest American science fiction writers of the past century, penning such works as Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers.  He's also written many renowned short stories in the genre, which I've reviewed on this blog.  I just finished reading his 1964 novel Glory Road, which I didn't like as much as the others although it was acclaimed at the time.  In it a young man, Gordon, has just left the army after a stint in Vietnam in which he was classified as a "military advisor" but engaged in actual combat...he is something of an adventurer and is uncertain about what he wants to do with his future.  He meets a beautiful young woman, Star, and eventually gets drawn with her on a quest as he progressively discovers her importance, not only on Earth but throughout the multiverse.  Although on the surface Glory Road presented itself as a fantasy adventure with a lot of action sections, I got the distinct impression that Heinlein used the story primarily as a framework in which to insert his personal views of military valor and toughness and a libertarian perspective on society...especially concerning relationships and sex.  His protagonist Gordon, later named "Oscar", tells the narrative from the first-person viewpoint, complete with his own assumptions about people along with a liberal use of colloquial, idiomatic and slang language...that part I kind of liked and thought funny.  As I said, I didn't think that Glory Road was his best novel, but I'm glad I read it and think that it captures a certain mindset that prevailed among many living back then and even now...

My #1 All-Time Favorite Song: These Are My Twisted Words by Radiohead

THESE ARE MY TWISTED WORDS, by the British rock band Radiohead, is my all-time top favorite song.  It never was released as a single and appears on none of their albums.  The only reason I ever discovered its existence was that in late 2010 I happened to be on the band's website and they were offering it as a free download.  Download it I did, then put it on my MP3 player...and during the dark and dreary days of that winter...the last truly cold one we've experienced here in Gainesville... I listened to it often on my ultra-long distance runs through one neighborhood after another.  Looking back I cannot listen to it without associating it with that wonderful and interesting time...but association alone doesn't make a song Number One, does it? These Are My Twisted Words begins with a two-and-a-half minute dreamy instrumental sequence of layered guitars...along with an electronic cello-sounding background: definitely a "going down the rabbit role" kind of listening experience.  Eventually front man Thom Yorke breaks in with his plaintive singing style...he tackles his role here with much passion, evoking a sense of forlornness that I've seldom heard in a song.  It's a very moody piece, appealing to an often very moody person...namely, myself.  Although Radiohead didn't promote it in their recordings, they have performed it in concert...why it's such a relatively unknown work of theirs is beyond me.  In a funny way it shows that great rock doesn't have to be complicated...this song certainly has a simple basic structure, beyond the instrumental texturing.  It's been going on ten years now since I first heard it and my estimation of it has only increased...sometimes those overlooked, lost tracks are the best...

And that's it with my Top 500 list of personal all-time favorite songs.  Guess I'll be starting on a different "top favorites" list about something else before long...

The Great Conjunction of Planets Jupiter and Saturn Tomorrow Evening

Tomorrow evening...assuming there are clear skies above us...we should be treated to a rare astronomical event as the planets Jupiter and Saturn will appear the closest to each other they ever have from Earth's perspective in nearly 400 years.  This doesn't have anything to do with the two planets' distances from each other, though, and we're fortunate that both have moved eastward on their respective zodiacal paths so that when Monday's conjunction occurs they should be visible just above the southwestern horizon when the sun sets and the sky darkens.  Last night here in Gainesville the skies were overcast and the same is predicted tonight...tomorrow, though, they will be clear: alas, I'll be at work then.  Still, for the past few months I've enjoyed looking at the two largest planets in our solar system close together in the sky, in the constellation Sagittarius (just west of Capricornus, where they are now to be found).  Once you've seen them "hug" each other tomorrow evening in their celestial dance, then swing over to the high eastern sky and behold Mars, still much brighter than it is usually seen.  And, of course, the moon is right there in the middle of it all... 

Prince's Black Album...and Self-Censorship

Several weeks ago I wrote that I was going to explore the collective studio album works of the late, great popular musician Prince...I've heard about half of his 39 albums to date and think well of all of them, although naturally I like a few better than others.  One of these that I instantly took a liking to the first time I heard it...this time from YouTube...is the so-called "Black Album" which I originally thought was recorded and released in 1994.  Like the Beatles' so-called White Album from 1968, the Black Album is actually untitled, released in a black jacket.  Prince recorded it around 1987 and reportedly, with his backup band, took more time and effort to put it together than any other work of his...yet when it was released he suddenly did an about-face on it, proclaiming it "evil" and urging his fans not to buy it.  The release was stopped after just a few sales and the album would eventually be rereleased on CD in a limited edition eight years later.  Apparently, Prince disliked what he perceived as the album's negative bent, although its most negative track by far, Bob George...which had a very similar theme to Jimi Hendrix's rendition of Hey Joe...was something the artist continued to perform in concerts afterwards.  I thought it was an energetic (and often very funny) album with a great mix of musical styles...not my favorite Prince album but right up there with some of his best.  The point here that I'm trying to make is that anyone who creates music, art...or something on social media like Facebook or Twitter...can have times when they produce something they later think was inappropriate and would like to take back even though it's too late to do so.  It's a problem that all serious artists and writers have to face: you want to be true to your feelings and even passions...including the negative ones...but also are concerned about how they will be received by your audience and if there might not be pushback.  The way I handle this sort of thing on my blog...and I'm admittedly no wise guru on the subject...is to stay away from profanity and intentionally avoid singling out individual people for criticism...unless they are public figures like entertainment and media celebrities or politicians...and instead make more general comments about trends I see within society.  But beyond my own standards, employing self-censorship will only produce insipid, insincere, namby-pamby results that aren't worth anyone's attention.  It's a shame that Prince's Black Album was suppressed, but I suppose it was his call to make, not mine...

Quote of the Week...from Ray Bradbury

 You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.  Just get people to stop reading them.

                                                                     ---Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury, who wrote prolifically and is responsible for many renowned works like Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles, The Pedestrian...and perhaps his most famous, Fahrenheit 451, was a great lover of reading.  That last book I mentioned is what probably prompted the above quote as its setting was a future dystopia in which books were banned and burned.  I think that reading as a regular discipline or even as an enjoyable hobby has never been something that the majority of any given population...in any era...has taken to.  I also think that in today's world of Amazon, Kindle, and audiobooks, books have never been so available. Yet as I've mentioned before on this blog, those publications that haven't been digitalized and are out of print can be very hard to come by...quite unlike the music industry that has so successfully gone back to the vinyl record era and digitalized most of what has been recorded.  Regarding Bradbury's above quote, I would like to tweak the last sentence a little to read "Just get people to stop reading them critically, with discernment".  This goes especially for nonfiction works that advocate specific positions and ideologies on politics, society, history, lifestyle, dieting and the like. To enhance a culture rather than contribute to its destruction folks shouldn't just read stuff that panders to their preconceived notions and demonizes opposing perspectives and those holding them.  You need to take what's written and process it as to its truth value, as well as try to understand why the author is saying whatever he or she is saying.  Trump worshippers aren't going to expand their horizons by reading the latest Sean Hannity book, and likewise his detractors won't achieve a more broadened perspective taking up the book written by the president's niece, Mary Trump.  I'm not suggesting, either, that the two sides flip and read the "other side's" books...better instead to pick material that is light on the venom and innuendo and heavy on civil discourse.  I saw a Twilight Zone episode once where two aliens come down to Earth to abduct the greatest human in history...turns out the man in question was the world's biggest liar, but the aliens automatically believed everything he said, not possessing the capacity to discern truth from falsehood.  We can do better than that, and we can start by reading stuff that challenges us, not just whatever props up our prejudices... 

A Belated Happy 250th Birthday, Beethoven

On either the 15th or 16th of December, 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest classical composers of all time, was born.  I listened the other evening on my phone to New York's classical music station WQXR as they were appropriately devoting their programming to his life and legacy during this celebration of his 250th birthday.  Beethoven's gradual loss of hearing, culminating in deafness, has always floored me: how could anyone like this compose something as complex and beautiful as his Ninth Symphony, along with the other late works of his career?  I've always loved that symphony, especially its second movement...which used to be played during the closing credits of the Huntley/Brinkley national news report on NBC during the 1960s when I was growing up.  I love listening to classical music, but at the same time usually feel a bit intimidated: I have no special musical training other then a brief period a few years ago when I took beginning piano.  There's a highly technical side of it all that completely escapes me...what I'm left with as a lay listener is the way the instruments interact during the particular piece's flow to impart feeling. Sometimes it's easy to "get" a classical work, as was the case with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Bach's 140th Cantata, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and Debussy's Nocturnes...other times it's harder, as has been the case for me with some of the symphonies of Mozart, Haydn, and Mahler...and even some of Beethoven's.  In any event, I usually have my car radio on Gainesville's classical music station on 102.7...if you're in town why not give it a listen?   

Weekly Short Stories: 1966 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I conclude my look back at the year of 1966 in science fiction short stories with the final entries in the retrospective anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1967...edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr.  While these stories were first appearing in various magazines I was nine years old...going on ten...living in Hollywood, Florida with my parents and sister and attending Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in Davie, going from the fourth grade there into the fifth. In February we were blessed with a spunky little cockapoo puppy, which we named Michelle after the ongoing hit Beatles song...she would be with the family for fifteen wonderful years.  Lyndon Johnson was riding high in the presidency and seemed hellbent on getting the country inextricably drawn into an endless war of attrition in Vietnam with the military draft going on strong, sending non-volunteers into enemy-held territory to draw out their fire: what a cynical strategy. I remember earlier that year a "patriotism" class at Nova in which the idea of how noble it is to die for one's country was promoted...the librarian's son was in 'Nam at the time and she put in her two cents worth for the war. All I could think, at age nine, was is this what's in store for me in my life?  Well, here are my reactions to those four stories from the book...

 

THE WINGS OF A BAT by Paul Ash

Industrial mining meets time travel technology as such a firm finds itself doing just that, back in the Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs roamed and pterodons...winged dinosaurs...flew.  The physician on duty finds himself the nanny of a baby version of such a creature...wing spans up to twenty feet when grown.  It's a bit comical how the doc, who's telling the story, reluctantly puts up with the antics of this creature.  Fiona, she's called, grows up and eventually gets her flying instincts and skills going and flies away, never expected to return to the camp. Yet you know that somehow in the end it's all going to come back as a terrible storm is brewing and our physician hero is caught in the middle of it all.  Although it was (ugh) a time travel story, this one was set completely in the past so they didn't pull out all those annoying paradoxes that they do in other such tales.  Also, I thought it was kind of sweet... 

THE MAN FROM WHEN by Dannie Plachta

Speaking of annoying time travel stories, the only redeeming thing about this one is that it was very, very, short, taking up just a couple of pages.  Out in the country somewhere a man contemplates the scenery while about to mix his favorite drink.  Suddenly, just a few hundred yards away there's a big explosion...and a stranger emerges from the surrounding mist and approaches him: naturally he's from the future, performing a time travel experiment.  What he tells the dude standing there reveals what we sometimes think about doomsday predictions of our future: if they're far off ahead of us then we tend to shrug them off...otherwise...

AMEN AND OUT by Brian Aldiss

In a future Earth when a select few, through special injections, have become immortal and computers and machinery pretty much run people's lives with each person carrying around with them a computer-run shrine to pray to, one indigent outcast has a bold plan to rock the boat as he tries to convince one of the immortals to be the first one ever to leave their place of confinement for centuries.  This story delves into topics like how much people increasingly depend on their machines...and the reference to the shrines made me grin, thinking how much folks nowadays revere the smartphones they absolutely must have in their possession 24/7 and how much meaning they derive from them.  Also, it's a bit philosophical about the implications of immortality and how such people might see things differently from us mortals. The story's final line is a classic...

FOR A BREATH I TARRY by Roger Zelazny

Many thousands of years into the future there is no more human life on Earth, but the machines they built continue "living" on and have created new machines that serve them.  Originally there were two main machines, Solcom as a satellite orbiting Earth, and Divcom, deep underneath the surface, who are now vying for machine supremacy and trying to convert the planet's smaller machines to their respective sides.  On the North Pole dwells the huge, cubical machine Frost who, besides his assigned duties on behalf of Solcom, has an interesting hobby: the study of Man through his relics, books, and movies.  It is this quest to understand what humanity was all about and how they differed from machines that drives the flow of this interesting story.  Frost's fascination with humanity leads him to a wager of sorts with the other machines, leading to a most intriguing ending...

Next week I begin my look at science fiction short stories from 1967...

Just Finished Reading Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins

After thoroughly enjoying reading the Hunger Games young adult science fiction trilogy by Suzanne Collins, I had decided a few weeks ago to go back further in her writing history and tackle her five-part children's fantasy series, titled The Underland Chronicles.  I just finished book two, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, from 2004.  Gregor is the name of the series' protagonist, a boy living in poverty in New York City with his family: his mother, father, and two sisters, one of whom, the baby "Boots", has accompanied Gregor in his odysseys far down below ground among the huge talking rats, bats, spiders, cockroaches...and other creatures living there with descendants of the humans who first voyaged there some three centuries earlier.  In this story Gregor is taking Boots out to the park...all he has to do is divert his eyes for a couple of seconds and she's gone...taken underground by giant, protective cockroaches.  You see, they have a scroll, the Prophecy of Bane, which states that the babe's life is in danger from the villainous rats.  Gregor has no choice but to return to the scene of his previous adventure to rescue his beloved little sister...and then is informed that the "Bane" in the prophecy is a huge, evil white rat that he must seek out and destroy on his own.  And the story goes on with some good twists and turns...I liked it and felt that there was a message here regarding using compassion and discernment even in the midst of perilous combat situations.  The ending leaves no doubt that there will be a sequel...which Collins dutifully wrote and published the next year.  I'll soon be reading this next installment, titled Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods...a story which, like the first two, is predicated on a different prophecy of the Underland.  No, I'm not a kid but this series is working for me..,

My #2 All-Time Favorite Song: Switchblade Smiles by Kasabian

SWITCHBLADE SMILES, by the English alternative rock band Kasabian, is my #2 favorite song of all-time.  It's from their 2011 fourth album, titled Velociraptor!, which is also one of the album's tracks...velociraptors, by the way, were a type of speedy, predatory dinosaur during the Cretaceous Period.  Although Kasabian made an interesting, dynamic performance video of Switchblade Smiles, it wasn't released as a single and remains as a deep track on the album, which didn't even chart in the United States (although Velociraptor! reached Number One in the United Kingdom).  Because I was already a Kasabian fan from some of their earlier songs like Reason is Treason, Test Transmission and  L.S.F.,  I soon picked up the album and put it on my MP3 player with all the others...in 2013 I was into listening to a shuffle of Kasabian songs while on my long-distance training runs, and that was how I noticed and grew to appreciate what a great, energetic song Switchblade Smiles was...I made it my "song of the year" seven years ago.  I'm partial to songs like this that fuse together different genres of music and make it all work.  The beginning sounds like it's going to be a techno piece with soft, soothing singing...until the heavy drums cut in and then a killer Led Zeppelin-like guitar rift sends the listener sharply in a different direction.  Add to that elements of punk/rap and eerie interludes sounding Middle Eastern and you have a very singular work.  The lyrics are almost impossible to decipher...even when you read them out, so I have interpreted the general message as one of defiance at all the BS going on around me, to put things as diplomatically as I can..it hits me like Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down in this respect .  It's a passionate song by a band that has sadly tapered off a bit with their last two albums...let's see if they can't pick up the pieces after their front man recently left them and bring back the earlier glory...

Just Finished Reading Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick

Solar Lottery, a 1955 science fiction novel of Philip K. Dick and the thirteenth book of his I've read so far, creates a future world that I don't want to live in.  Mathematicians in government have devised a strategy of a worldwide society based on a lottery system...how people do depends on their "luck", which they can (and usually do) trade in for the benefit of contracting their labor (and ultimately, freedom) to different powerful employers.  The protagonist, a young engineer named Ted Benteley, one day finds himself out of a job when his employer he is contracted to has to lay off much of their workforce due to a fire.  Benteley wants to climb the ladder of success and seeks the current Quizmaster, i.e. the lottery-winning most-powerful person in the Solar System, to contract himself out to.  Unfortunately, after taking his loyalty oath he finds out that this individual, Verrick, is no longer Quizmaster and he is once again stuck working for a "lesser" employer.  Here the story takes a sharp turn, as the assassination of a Quizmaster is completely legal and Verrick schemes to knock off the new one, a guy named Cartwright.  Since Benteley is in contract to Verrick, he must go along with his new boss's plans...and there the story works it way through to a pretty interesting conclusion.  Throw into the mix that Cartwright is involved with a cult-like movement led by a man named Preston to colonize a yet-undiscovered outer planet, and you pretty much have a sketchy outline of this tale.  Oh, and telepathy plays a role here...causing me to groan a little on the inside since I'm sick and tired of sci-fi stories featuring the phenomenon as an integral element...I don't hanker much to time travel fiction, either (although Stephen King's excellent 11/22/63 is a striking exception).  But I need to consider that the author wrote it in 1955 and it was, according to Wikipedia, his first ever published novel.  As Philip K. Dick novels go, I thought it was one of his better works. From time to time I'll seek out another story of his...he wrote a lot of novels and not all of them were science fiction, although that is the genre for which he is best known... 

Constellation of the Month: Perseus

 

For December I picked as my Constellation of the Month Perseus, prominent for much of the year in northern nighttime skies, and which crosses the meridian around 9 pm this month.  It represents the Greek mythological hero who, riding the winged horse Pegasus, rescues the fair maiden Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus at Queen Cassiopeia's behest...all are represented by nearby constellations. The 1981 movie Clash of the Titans, starring Harry Hamlin as Perseus, presented one version of the story.  Perseus, although possessing no first magnitude stars, is nevertheless loaded with many bright ones, marked by Mirfak and Algol...the latter, "only" 93 light years away from us, is actually a triple star, with its variation in brightness caused by the stars taking turns eclipsing one another.  Mirfak is much further away and bigger.  Perseus is the focus of the annual Perseids, the most spectacular meteor shower of all and which takes place in the wee morning hours around August 11-13 as the Earth rotates into a cloud of dust particles along its orbit around the sun and ignites them within the atmosphere. I can't begin to count the times, though, in which I tried to watch it but for various reasons was thwarted...often from overcast skies, my schedule, or just falling asleep: let's see if I can't catch it in 2021! I've always welcomed seeing Perseus rising up in the northeastern sky (from my Florida latitude) as it presages the coming of the most interesting part of the celestial sky, that of the wintertime.  Next month there can be only one constellation that stands out above all others for January...well, even for the entire year, for that matter: can you guess which one it is?    

Quote of the Week...from Gail Sheehy

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.                        ---Gail Sheehy

Gail Sheehy was an American journalist and writer who sadly passed away this past August from pneumonia at age 83...regrettably I haven't read any of her works, which deal with numerous ongoing topics in current society including many politically-themed pieces...but her most renowned books are the Passages series focusing on helping more elderly folks (like me) have more fulfilling lives.  I picked her above quote because it is so true, and on more than one level: let me explain...

On a political or national level, I hear a lot of talk these days about how people need to be secure in the areas of their lives that affect them the most...health care reigns prominently in these discussions. But in any industry that wants to grow and increase its quality of goods and services while making them available to the widest possible group of consumers, there is a need for those running the companies to be able to make free choices as to where they place their money and emphasis, based on the needs of those purchasing their products.  In times of emergencies like war or pandemic, successful companies built upon this freedom to grow have then been able to divert their goals to producing much-needed weapons, equipment, and, yes, vaccines: you don't build such organizations from scratch, by governmental decree.  But within all this is the element of the core, basic economic decision, based on scarcity of product and demand and the profit motive...and with it all comes an element of risk.  I'm one of those Americans who feel that health care should be affordable to all and reform of the system is a good thing...but you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater: profit-seeking, risk-taking companies have gotten us here to the point where effective vaccines for this ongoing scourge of this brand-new form of coronavirus have been developed in awe-inspiring, record time...

On a more personal level, I think that growth is both a process of construction and destruction.  Stress, which tears me down physically and mentally, can result in a replacement of body and mind that is stronger and more fulfilling than before if I go about it in an intelligent manner...but it does involve stepping out of that comfort zone and sometimes out on what seems to be a treacherous, narrow ledge up high. Physical exertion through exercise or labor can be seen as a temporary surrender of security as the body is taxed, but after recovery growth has occurred.  Facing down stressful personal storms and getting through them gives me a sense of lack of security when it's all going on, but on the other side I am more equipped to handle future crises.  And sometimes growth in career or relationships can be a little scary as they take me out of my routines and old habits and force me to subject myself to possible failure and rejection. There's nothing more secure, I suppose, than never trying anything new, but it's also stagnating...

Maybe I should try reading something Gail Sheehy has written...I'm sure some of her stuff is in the library...

Local Weather Finally Cools Down

The weather here in northern Florida in the last week or two has finally turned, it seems, toward more wintery, cool conditions...I'm not sure whether to say "thank you" or "oh, no".  Especially in the morning it's the latter choice as I simply do not like the general chill of the area and can't wait to get some hot coffee within me at the first opportunity.  Once the day is firmly underway, though, I tend to enjoy the coolness and dryness.  And with the nighttime, the stars are so much brighter...and then the cycle renews itself the next morning.  When the last cold front passed through, storms hitting my area during the dead of night, my front yard became covered with autumn leaves...guess I'll have to get the rake out before long (let's see if a few more don't come down first).  I'm also happy to see the end of this horrendous 2020 hurricane season...although Louisiana and other areas were hit hard, my own Gainesville vicinity was largely spared although Tropical Storm Eta did sweep through us a few weeks ago, again during the dead of night, knocking down a few branches.  With this colder weather the mosquito presence should subside as well...my workplace is basically situated on the edge of Paynes Prairie, a large wetlands area just south of Gainesville and as big as the city, serving as a vast mosquito incubation zone.  Now excuse me while I go get that crucial first cup of coffee...

Weekly Short Stories: 1966 Science Fiction, Part 2

Below are my reactions to four more short stories originally published in the year 1966 as they appeared in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1967 with Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr as editors.  Usually each week when I do this blog feature I can find at least one of the stories I'm examining to be likeable...unfortunately I couldn't this time around, and to make the matter worse the first three were excessively long.  Oh well, you can't win 'em all...

BIRCHER by A.A. Walde

Off sometime in the future when murder is very rare, a regional homicide chief investigator is stumped by an unidentifiable body...clearly the victim of a violent murder...that has been dumped within his district.  Since due to the highly advanced forensics and technology it is virtually impossible in his time to find a corpse without any trail of identifiable features, he finds himself in a situation that threatens his own job should he fail to discover the murderer, much less who the victim was.  It's a traditional whodunnit murder mystery in science fiction garb...nothing wrong with that, but as a reader I felt cheated by the extraneous "facts" the author provided at the end to explain it all...information that I would have no way of knowing since it was safely tucked away within Walde's fertile imagination...

BEHOLD THE MAN by Michael Moorcock

This story took the overdone sci-fi gimmick of time travel and used it to make a statement about religion.  A young amateur psychologist with bigtime neurotic and existential hang-ups finds himself presented with the opportunity to travel back in time by using a crackpot inventor's time machine...he goes back to the Sea of Galilee area around 28 A.D., where he plans to find Jesus and discern some ultimate truths.  The story goes back and forth between his experiences in the Holy Land and the events and discussions with others that led to his forsaking of the present.  If you're into the psychological theories of Carl Jung, you might get more from this story than I did.  I did appreciate that the author demonstrated how certain events can be twisted out of shape and exaggerated over time within popular culture to create myth...the time machine angle was absurd, though, and could only be used one time since any subsequent "trips" would have changed the outcome (although the recent Star Trek movie series seems to have figured a way around that)...

BUMBERBOOM by Avram Davidson

This story, written in a language the author projects far into the future on Earth (and is thus harder to understand), deals with a common theme in science fiction: the regression of humanity from an advanced technological state to a backwards, divided world with more genetically differentiated humanoid groups staking out their own territories and reverting to older social forms and norms.  The chief instigator in this change was something called the "Great Gene Shift" and left unexplained.  The story's protagonist, Mallian, High Man to the Hereditor of Land Qanaras, is a traveling adventurer who seeks his own power and fortune by manipulating those he encounters.  He runs across a huge ancient mobile weapon...perhaps it was a tank...called "Bumberboom" and decides to go about arming it and using it to achieve his ends.  The story resembles Don Quixote in its flow and characters, and Mallian even gets a Sancho Panza-like sidekick toward the end.  It's farcical and hard to decipher...if you can get through the muddled language it's kind of funny and sad at the same time...

DAY MILLION by Fredrik Pohl

This was a very short, snide little piece appearing at the time in the men's magazine Rogue, so its subject was heavily sexual and concerned the relationship between two humans of the future 10,000 years from now (1966, that is).  Pohl does throw in some intriguing ideas about the redesigning of people...on both genetic and cybernetic levels...to achieve longer and more active lives and specialized abilities to adapt to certain environments.  But the general aim of Day Million was to titillate the reader, which apparently worked well enough for anthology editors Wollheim and Carr to select it: I wouldn't have...

Next week I continue looking back at short science fiction from the year 1966...

Just Finished Reading Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

During the last decade Ken Follett wrote a historical fiction trilogy titled Century...Fall of Giants, which dealt with World War I and the years preceding and following it, is the first volume. It features the lives of fictional Welsh, English, German, Russian and American families as they find themselves at the forefront of monumental events in history.  Class divisions and struggles for equal rights vie with the war drums, ignited to actual conflict after Austria-Hungary's Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Bosnia in June of 1914 and the different mutual aid treaties entangling the great European powers drag them all into open hostilities, starting with Austria's invasion of Serbia and then expanding into the German-Russian theater in the east and German's incursion into France through neutral Belgium in the west, leading to a lengthy, disastrous trench warfare stalemate in northeastern France and Belgium between the Allies (first France and Britain and then with the United States entering later) and the Germans.  Before all this the narrative focuses on the Welsh mining family of the Williams, with young Billy entering the mines following in his father's footsteps, with the two adamantly opposed to the owner that Billy's sister Ether works for, a privileged wealthy nobleman named Edward Fitzherbert. Fitz's sister Maude finds herself falling in love with Walter von Ulrich, a visiting German nobleman: not good for them with a war coming on!  Add to the mix the Russian orphaned brothers Lev and Gregori Peshkov and the American official Gus Dewar and you have the book's principal fictional characters, destined to play their own significant roles among real people of the times like Vladimir Lenin, King George V of England, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Leon Trotsky, Alexander Kerensky, and US President Woodrow Wilson...to name a few of the most important.  From what I already knew about this time and its tumultuous events, I felt that once you filter out the fictional characters, the narrative accurately recounts what really happened.  The only problem I had with it was that I felt the author tended to gloss over the calamitous Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-19, which actually killed more people worldwide than the war itself. Had Follett written this story in 2020 during this coronavirus pandemic, I wonder whether he might have emphasized that time's horrible pestilence more.  I thought his characters were very compelling and believable, each of them with their own virtues and faults...and also having to deal with the prevailing social and political winds of their own time.  I'm looking forward to beginning the next book in Follett's series, titled Winter of the World... 

My #3 All-Time Favorite Song: Us by Regina Spektor

US, by the Russian-American piano virtuoso (and great singer) Regina Spektor, is from her 2004 third album, titled Soviet Kitsch...and happens to be my #3 favorite song of all time.  As is the case on almost all of her songs, it's basically Regina's voice and her piano...with a beautiful string background...as she delivers an epic performance that touches upon her old Soviet homeland and the many, many statues constructed there of the State's political heroes, as well as the renaming of cities.  The lyrics, unlike any other song I've heard, carry for me two separate meanings, one more literal and the other more applicable to people in general, as their exploits, good or bad, while at one time recognized and even widely lauded, become over the span of time tarnished...or, worse, forgotten: "They'll name a city after us and later say it's all our fault...then they'll give us a talking to, give us a talking to, 'cause they've got years of experience."  The lyrics about statues vividly brings to my mind that Russian statue graveyard scene in the 1995 James Bond movie Goldeneye.  In America of late they've been doing similar things with old statues of presidents and civil war figures, retroactively accused of terrible behavior from the convenient perspective of our enlightened standards of today.  On a broader interpretation, I feel that the trend today is to puncture anything about the past that speaks of greatness through condemnation...I have no problem with reasonable criticism...or simply to forget about it and let it all rust away as Regina alluded to in her song.  I keep thinking of the prolific writer Isaac Asimov, who passed away only 28 years ago and who published more than 500 books in his lifetime, many of them critically successful and popular.  But I wonder how many people, if you asked a random sample of the population, have even heard of him, much less any of his works?  The desire of immortality is often said to be expressed through people's achievements and the effects they have beyond their death...this dream seems to be becoming more and more difficult to realize, especially for those whose life works happened before the digital revolution came to preserve every absurd expressed thought by anybody with an online connection...now we're all being drowned out by each other's voices, and cancel culture reaches out to condemn anyone from the past who might have said or written something back then that offends somebody today.  I first heard Us in 2009 after I was introduced to Regina Spektor on an online alternative music radio channel...it quickly became a favorite of mine.  Can't wait for your next album, Regina!

My Sports Enthusiasm Cooling Down

In case you're wondering why I haven't been peppering this blog recently with sports articles as I have done in the past, this one's for you. I've still been watching sports on TV like usual, right through this pandemic.  I followed the end of the NBA and NHL resumed seasons as well as Major League Baseball's attenuated regular season and expanded playoffs.  I still keep up with professional league soccer, notably the Mexican premier league and Major League Soccer, and regularly watch football, both college and NFL.  But I'm nowhere near where I used to be as far as caring that much who wins or loses...even for my traditional favorites.  Part of the reason is that I've grown to see sports for what it is: entertainment, not something in which I should invest a large part of my emotions, and I never gamble on games.  Since I'm neither a player nor a coach, I have no input into the result of a game I'm watching, so I'm essentially helpless if I do care who wins...other than switch the channel or turn off the TV.  I'm also fed up with the trend on ESPN and other sports media to be full of their own perceived seriousness, as if they were some force in social consciousness with their political correctness and "historical" programming like that annoying series on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls earlier this year.  I'm tired of sports talk show shock jocks like Stephen A. Smith taunting and deriding certain athletes and coaches they dislike.  But most of all I had an epiphany of sorts when, a few weeks ago following the University of Florida's football loss to Texas A&M, Gator coach Dan Mullen urged for Florida to "pack the Swamp" (their home stadium) in the following week's scheduled game against LSU...Mullen was roundly criticized in the midst of this dangerous COVID pandemic, UF players and staff (including, later, Mullen) tested positive, and the game was postponed. The way I see it, there are too many people in this country who would gladly trade off a few extra deaths in exchange for keeping their supply of sports addiction at the same level that they were used to seeing, flowing freely to them and with full stadiums and arenas...this kind of attitude makes me more inclined to forego even casual sports watching and boycott the entire industry... 

My Architecture Period as a Kid

When my sister Anita, older than me by four years, got hold of a textbook on architecture some time in the mid-to-late 1960s (I'm guessing around 1967-68), she introduced me to the subject and I became fascinated with the different types of buildings...chiefly those of houses...and began to look forward to the weekly Sunday newspaper, not for the comics or sports but rather for the real estate section.  In it were always floor plans of houses that were for sale, and I would imagine myself living in them.  Soon I was drawing up my own floor plans, which...following my sailing ship, world geography, and star map periods, began the next "big thing" for me...in between collecting stamps and trading cards, that is.  At the time, as far as I can remember, I was in the fifth or sixth grade at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary in Davie...Anita's school was across the field at Nova High.   By the way, back then I was fascinated by the pictures of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural works, and I had always thought that the house at the end of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 masterpiece thriller North by Northwest was a Wright home.  But after just looking it up, I discovered that instead of being a real building situated behind Mount Rushmore, it was only a movie set creation in California, built to look like something that the famous architect might have designed.  It was my recent subscription to online newspaper archives that brought my architecture period back to the forefront of my memory as I once again scanned through Sunday paper home sections...the above clip is from the June 19, 1966 Miami Herald: check out the prices!  Nowadays I'm more interested in big buildings, impressed by the towering skyscrapers during visits to New York and Chicago (including the Windy City's fantastic Architecture River Tour)...while equally taken aback by those block-long, shorter office monstrosities in Washington, D.C. (shorter due to the city's height restriction for buildings).  As for houses, you might think I'd be a big fan of the Home and Garden channel...but alas, my interest in house designs is no longer what it was more than fifty years ago...

Quote of the Week...from William Arthur Ward

 It is wise to direct your anger at problems, not people...to focus your energies on answers, not excuses.

                                                                             ---William Arthur Ward

I picked up the above quote off my Music Choice Soundscapes channel, provided by my cable TV company and which features positive and philosophical quotes to accompany their ambient music.  William Arthur Ward, whom I've quoted before on this blog, was a twentieth century Christian leader within the Methodist movement whose self-improvement maxims were widely published in newspapers and magazines of the time, most notably Reader's Digest.  I'm discussing it here because I agree with it, but as usual I feel the need to tweak it a little.  For after all, many people nowadays equate their problems with certain people, either in their personal lives or on the national stage in politics or the media. For me, sometimes those politicians in charge are the ones I voted for, sometimes not...that's the way it has always gone in this republic where people vote for their leaders: wait a few years and try it again...maybe "my" guy or gal will win next time if they didn't the last.  On the personal level I think a lot of us...myself included...have fallen into the trap of sitting back and judging those around us without taking into account that our own willful interactions (or non-interactions) with them play a big role in their own attitudes and behavior toward us.  For myself, it's important that with each situation I find myself in that I determine what I'm trying to get out of it and focus on getting my goals accomplished...this helps keep me from that nasty habit of "sideways thinking", i.e. devoting my attention to what others are up to and whether they're being treated better than me or getting away with something they shouldn't.  There's a way to address problems with others...like Ward said, focusing on the problem and not the person while, I would add, communicating during most of any interaction about how much I value that individual. Although it's fair and even recommended to honestly recognize the harm that certain people may have done to me when I was but a child and not to sugarcoat those times...I still have to take responsibility for my own life now. To make excuses or play the blame game when things don't go my way isn't just counterproductive...it also tends to create more problems...

Trying to Obtain Use from Basically Useless Resources

Like squeezing water from a rock, some of the media resources surrounding me offer little hope of positive, constructive use...yet in almost all of them there can be opportunities for enlightenment and application if I just apply myself and face the challenge of plowing through mostly meaningless...and often downright dishonest...drivel.  Take conservative talk radio, for example.  Shows like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Michael Savage depend on listeners plugging their brains into them for two to three hours daily and putting their own independent thinking to sleep as they voluntarily submit themselves to the hosts' brainwashing...but I don't have to go down that path: I can be a discerning listener, noticing when the host is being demagogic or dishonest and when he or she is expressing a reasonable opinion worth considering.  In almost every opinion show on radio or TV, be they from a conservative or liberal perspective, there is something worthwhile...even if it only is to figure out why certain individuals around me are believing the weird things they believe.  Still, with this I wouldn't rely on any of them as my primary source for news. As for other areas, I am regularly receiving company and union periodicals in the mail...I survey each of them and quickly dispose of them: maybe a little more intensive examination might reveal a useful tidbit of information I could use.  As for politicians, it's always a useful intellect and character-building exercise to take the ones I support and look for things to criticize while taking those I oppose and looking for something to praise.  Such an exercise doesn't create uncertainty within me, but rather strengthens my arguments pro and con about the issues and those espousing their positions on them.  In browsing through old newspapers online from years gone by, I have noticed that not only do editorial page columns provide insights into the time period being investigated, but also how regular articles are written, as well as advice columns, advertisements, the classifieds, entertainment section...and even the comic strips.  In a world in which the different political and self-identification factions of the population are bubbling themselves off into insulated spheres of feedback loops, each with their own "alternative facts" and subjective realities, I think it would be healthy for each of us to take at least one day every week or two (or month) and just immerse ourselves...as honestly and empathetically as possible...in the "opposition" bubble.  And also try to find some educational or useful experience in everything we encounter, even if it's generally regarded as junk... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1966 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin looking back at the year 1966 with sci-fi short short stories using the retrospective anthology World's Best Science Fiction: 1967, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr...the title year refers to its time of publication, not the stories contain therein. The first three stories I discuss below contain their own feasible innovations...implanted memories, time-capturing glass, genetically altered human forms to live on other planets...while the final one has a more philosophical (and humorous) bent to it.  Here they are...

WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE by Philip K. Dick

The is the Philip K. Dick tale on which the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall was based...which just a few years ago was remade with a different cast (with much worse reviews). The themes are similar, with a man on Earth doing menial work in the not-so-distant future while dreaming of having an adventurous life on Mars after it has just begun to be explored and settled.  There's a company that creates and implants intricate memories into its clients, and Douglas Quail goes there...with the discovery soon made that he's actually been to Mars.  From here on the written story diverges quite a bit from the movie and, in my opinion, has a more interesting, twisted ending...but you'll have to read it for yourself to discover what it is...

LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS by Bob Shaw

In this story Bob Shaw introduces his innovation of "slow glass", through which light takes years to pass ...and therefore provides a window into the past, capturing ongoing images of wherever it faced the measured number of years before.  An unhappily married, quarreling couple is driving through the countryside, where rows and rows of slow glass are up for sale.  The man stops where the owner is sitting to see about buying some of the glass and happens to see a young woman and her child looking out the nearby home's window without seeming to take any notice of them.  This tale has an amazing ending and puts life's petty squabbles and resentments into perspective...  

THE KEYS TO DECEMBER by Roger Zelazny

In a relatively distant future when humanity has explored and settled deep into the cosmos, biological science has naturally leaped ahead and genetically-designed humanoid varieties, suited for more extreme conditions on specified worlds, are being born to "normal" parents.  Jarry is such a "person", a Catform Coldworlder meant to live on a very cold planet with mining interests, but before he can be sent there its star turns supernova and he is stuck in cold hibernation until another home planet can be found.  Finally another is discovered, but it must be environmentally modified over the course of some thousands of years while Jarry and the other Catforms living there spend most of their time in suspended animation, coming out briefly every 200 years or so to make sure the process is running well.  Only one problem: the native life forms on this world are struggling to varying degrees to adapt to the much colder conditions and Jarry sees that one species is much more intelligent than the prospectors had thought.  I wonder whether this might be one of the more realistic scenarios for future space exploration and settlement...

NINE HUNDRED GRANDMOTHERS by R.A. Lafferty

On the asteroid Proavitus dwell a population claiming never to die.  A trading company, with its employees taking on menacing names like Manbreaker Crag and Blast Berg, lands to transact business there. One of its members, a young man named Ceran who has foresworn the toughguy nicknames of his fellow workers, decides to investigate the source of the native folk's immortality, leading on a quest deeper and deeper under the surface as he peels back generation after generation, talking to the sleepy ancestors.  The ending of this very short story is funny...and hints that the secret to never-ending physical life may be a lot simpler...and less important...than one might think...

Next week I'll be continuing my review of short science fiction from 1966...

My November 2020 Running & Walking Report

In November I ran for a total of 102 miles, missing three days of running and with 6 miles being my longest single run of the month.  I also began to record my walking mileage, amassing a total of 105 miles in November.  I expect the walking-to-running mileage ratio to increase as I get older, and will most likely eventually transition into a primarily walking exercise routine.  This doesn't mean that I am forgoing athletics: speed walking is definitely an option for me and might be something to pursue in shorter races, especially the 5K ones.  But for the immediate future I'm still running and the weather this first week in December has made a strong turn to cooler winter conditions, giving me impetus to go out once again on long weekend runs.  As for races, the coronavirus pandemic surge is precluding my participation, even for any races that are being held in defiance of recommendations.  Hopefully, in the not too distant future the vaccines will turn it all around and I'll be able to enter a few in 2021...we'll see...