I am a Runner in the Mold of Martinus Evans

 Martinus Evans wants us to come on out, feel it,and declare openly, "I am a runner!", even if we're a bit reticent on signing up and taking part in races.  I remember how I would use our spacious back yard to design feasible, relatively flat running paths in order to enhance my  endurance.  After 2009, i would get home from work.  Rebecca and Will, at home, greeted me.  but then I'd dress up for a short night run and then go out and tackle it...I did this more or less regularly for several days.  Then, in 2016 after David Bowie's passing in January from liver cancer, I rediscovered his vast catalogue of excellent music and put past albums I liked on my mp3 player.  Then I'd go out into our back yard and spend time (and dry-hacking) running back and forth for months, thoroughly  unpleasant from my irritated throat and esophagus but still able to cover the longer runs (and enjoying David's musical treasures).  And now here we come to mid-spring 2026 and the back yard is now even more open and available.  I'm still struggling to regain my running endurance after surgery and some cancer treatment, and I've found a champion in Martinus Evans, who has informed and encouraged me through his recent book that I just checked out from my public library...and the audiobook version on their Libby app.  Now that I've finally recovered enough to finish a Depot Parkrun 5K and get scanned and posted online, it's time for me to reclaim my identity as a runner.  Running a little during the day will doubtless challenge me, but my intention at this stage is to wear the good Brooks running shoes I've been using and jog on the uneven grass, challenging my mind and body to grow.  Then once Saturday morning rolls around again...it'll be May 2nd...I can strive to maintain progress walking the Depot Parkrun 5K course,throwing in some small jogging stretches at the end.  The worst case scenario? I'll poop out during the race and have to cut it short.  But now I think it's a foregone conclusion that I'm a runner.I'm back in business with my early morning rising, coffee brewing, home exercise and blog writing.  Now it's time to return to the back of the house and rile up sweet Peewee Daisy (who wants to get riled up) after I flick on the air conditioning...

Quote of the Week...from Captain Walker Keel

Damn it, Jean-Luc, I tell you that Star Fleet's top command people are changing! This could affect the very core of our organization.  Officers I've known for years are bluffing their way through talk of old times. 

   ---Captain Walker Keel from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Walker Keel is a guest character appearing in the first season episode Conspiracy in the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.  He is the captain of the starship USS Horatio and has called Captain Picard of the Enterprise, along with two other starship captains, to an isolated abandoned planet to discuss what he sees as an insidious conspiracy overtaking the United Federation of Planets leadership.  It's a great episode, my favorite in the series...I highly recommend it!  Yet conspiracy isn't why I quoted this fictional character.  Rather it's what Keel says about "bluffing their way through talk of old times" that reminded me of some strange experiences I've had with people...some of them close to me...over the years and recently as well.  In each case I'll bring up some anecdote they were involved with, to which they deny everything and sometimes even come up with an alternate reality version of events.  And there's no compelling reason for them to lie or conceal anything...these are all harmless memories.  With one person I might say they are deluded with the memory in question, but when I see it with others then I wonder whether their memories are truly intact and that, over the years, they might have rolled over with their identities and conscious memories into another reality.  It reminds me of another sci-fi experience, the end of the Matrix Reloaded movie when Neo meets the Architect and sees all these different versions of himself on the above screens.  Are people just naturally slipping over time from one state into another?  Or perhaps maybe I myself am deluded.  Anyway, it's fun to speculate while going on with life as it is (or seems)...

Weekly Short Story: Imposter by Philip K. Dick

I first read Imposter, which is the first story by the great, late science fiction writer Philip K. Dick that I had ever read, many years ago.  It's the fourth short story I'm reviewing from the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953).  Maybe you know of it from the 2002 feature-length film starring Gary Sinise, but Dick's original tale only was only 17 paperback pages long...the movie obviously added a lot of extraneous material, something I don't dig at all...

The premise of Imposter is simple enough: Earth in a not-to-distant future time is at war with unseen beings called Outspacers, from Alpha Centauri.  The enemy's technology is developed to the point where they can create duplicate android robots that are indistinguishable from real people...and they can tailor them to copy specific persons, even their own memories.  Spence Olham is employed on a crucial project to develop a super weapon and gets up one morning with his wife Mary to get ready for another grueling day of work.  When the "bug" comes by to pick him up, he sees his friend and colleague Nelson...accompanied by a stranger, whom he learns is Major Peters.  After a little conversation, Peters explains his mission: the arrest of Olham, accused of being a robotic Outlander spy! Nelson and Peters grab and restrain Olham and then transport him to the moon for safe disposal, for they have been informed that the robot has a very destructive u-bomb within him and that it is activated by an unknown, specific phrase spoken aloud.  Olham loudly proclaims that he is himself, not an imposter...but Peters and Nelson always have an answer to each protestation...and Nelson seethes with hatred as he believes that the imposter killed his best friend in order to replace him...

The rest of this short story deals with Olham's struggle for survival and determination to clear himself by finding the real robot, which he believes is in a crashed ship in the woods nearby his home.  You can read it all for yourself (here's a link to it: [link]), but I'll just say that the ending was pretty surprising and abrupt...with a memorable final line.  I rather doubt that a drawn-out movie with its distracting subplots could have come anywhere close to capturing this compact tale's feel and effect...

If our memories are based within the complex neurological framework of our physical brains...and these can be duplicated...then it raises the question as to what constitutes one's sense of selfness, that is of having an identity, of being "me".  Have I been "me" my whole life and how could I prove it: no matter what calendar moment the "now" is resting on, at that moment I have access to my physically-based memories...but that in itself just means that I am "here" at this moment with access to them and not that I have been here in the past forming them.  This can get a bit overly metaphysical and speculative, but that's a trademark of Philip K. Dick, who was always trying to get his readers to stretch themselves...