Weekly Short Stories: 1944 Science Fiction, Part 2

As I read through the middle of the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 6 (1944), I encountered five memorable and significant tales...three of them by one author, Clifford Simak.  Here is my reaction to each story...

CITY by Clifford Simak
The three stories here that Simak wrote he later integrated into a novel, also titled City...I read and reviewed it a little while back.  In the title short story, he paints a picture of a society that has almost completely moved out of the city life and into country estates...and why not, with the atomic helicopter cheaply replacing cars and the need to upkeep roads, long distances can now be covered in a short span of time.  There are still just a few residents left in the story's city as the government struggles to hang onto power and squatters are reclaiming the abandoned houses.  The hero, John Webster, defends them against the city burning down their homes...the ending sets the larger story into motion...

ARENA by Fredric Brown
There's an old Star Trek episode with the same title, where Kirk and a dinosaur-like representative of the Enemy are pitted on a rocky, desert planet in a struggle to the death to determine their respective races' futures.  The original story, on which that episode was based, differs in some details as well as how it is all resolved at the end.  In Brown's tale, the aliens are invading our solar system and a scout ship pilot is abducted to the large domed arena...with blue sand and bisected by an invisible wall seemingly impenetrable to living things.  On the other side he sees a horrid, red sphere and he instantly knows who his opponent is.  I read it as a kid before I saw the Star Trek version...the original is better.  In both, it is a very advanced consciousness that snatches the combatants, places them in the "arena", and lays down the rules for their war's outcome...

HUDDLING PLACE by Clifford Simak
It is a few generations later in Simak's vision of humanity's future and another Webster...this one Jerome, a renowned surgeon celebrated for his work on the nervous system of Martians, resides in reclusive comfort in his remote estate.  That works for him as he has a network of his own android talking robots...headed by Jenkins...that attend to his needs, as well as virtual communications that enable him to interact across vast distances with others without the need to travel.  Jerome, who once travelled to Mars in his work and met and befriended that planet's greatest thinker, is now a prisoner in his home, suffering from extreme agoraphobia, or fear of open spaces...which he has discovered now afflicts a large segment of humanity.  When his Martian friend suffers a catastrophic medical emergency and needs him to travel there to operate, how will Jerome respond?  It's a great story with a sobering ending...

KINDNESS by Lester del Rey
A genetic mutation vastly improves the mental capacity of humans to the point where a new race forms and eventually fights its way to domination over the dwindling remnant of homo sapiens.  Danny is the last human as we know it, and the surrounding people try to make his life as meaningful for him as possible.  But he cannot stand being treated with such condescension and plots his escape from Earth.  The meaning of the story's title comes into play at the end, and it raises the question of what kindness is and how sometimes deception is used in its exercise...

DESERTION by Clifford Simak
Still later in Simak's timetable for his novel City, this story takes place on Jupiter as a new technology, conversion, allows for people to be transformed into a different life form (and back again)...in this case one that is wholly suited to withstand the enormous pressures and completely different chemical structure of Jupiter's atmosphere and surface.  Only one problem: they keep sending people, after conversion, out into the Jupiter wilderness but none ever come back. Finally, the man running the station decides to take things into his own hands and along with his pet dog, they together make the conversion and begin their Jovian adventure.  If you love dogs, read this story.  Heck, even if you don't, read this story!

Next week I'll conclude my review of the best in short science fiction from 1944...

Just Finished Reading Camino Island by John Grisham

Legal fiction writer John Grisham doesn't always write about lawyers, cases, and trials: his 2017 Camino Island is a "case" in point.  Five original handwritten manuscripts of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous books, worth several million dollars, have been stolen in an elaborate plot from Princeton University.  The culprits number five, and they experience vastly different fates following the heist.  The question that investigators, including the FBI and an independent private organization, have is who possesses the documents now?  The private firm, hired by the university's insurer, believes it points to a small bookstore on Camino Island just north of Jacksonville, Florida run by a rare books collector/dealer.  They recruit a frustrated young female writer to go to the island, get to know the locals, snoop, and feed back important information.  The details I leave to you, the reader, to discover for yourself...

Three things I picked up from Camino Island.  The first was that no matter how carefully and meticulous to detail one plans and executes an elaborate crime like the one in the story, people are bound to make mistakes...the thieves here blundered badly in various ways.  The second was Grisham's wonderful portrayal of a close-knit community of writers, some successful and some...like Mercer, the protagonist...suffering from writer's block and a lack of confidence.  And third, it may well be that the small locally-owned used bookstore may soon be a relic of the past...Gainesville used to have many of them, but now I only know of one in my hometown, although there is a national chain used bookstore as well.  On our recent trip to Savannah, with all its antiques and history, we only ran across one as well...at least in the Historic District.  Maybe, like the shop on Camino Island (which many think is really Amelia Island), future small bookstores will be run by rare book collectors who sell used books as a side venture...

Camino Island is a good book, not too long and easy to read, with an interesting ending that surprised me a little.  Maybe a sequel is in the works...

More on Starbucks, Schultz, and the Gators

Well, let's see...about yesterday's views on Starbucks, Howard Schultz, and the Florida Gators basketball team, a day has passed and here are some slightly revised opinions...

Regarding Starbucks, they provide a service and product and, like every other company on Earth, have imperfect human beings working there.  I get a little taken aback at how pretentious they can be, putting out the high-brow, gentrified image for themselves, but their overpriced drinks are passable and they do provide a decent public setting for customers to sit, either by themselves or with others.  I often go there to write, and after yesterday's little hassle about a newspaper...which I mistakenly allowed to anger me...I still plan to stop by from time to time.  On the down side, this corporation tends to strangle out of business local coffee shops that might have been better places for me and others to frequent.  Maybe I should start going to some of the few that remain...

I still agree with virtually everything I wrote yesterday about former Starbucks CEO Howard
Schultz, who is considering...or more accurately, threatening...to run for president as an independent.  This action would be a windfall for Donald Trump, who won the presidency in 2016 by a few thousand votes in a tiny number of crucial swing states...Schultz could easily pick up enough votes there tip the scales again in his favor in 2020.  Meanwhile the Democratic Party seems determined to portray itself as being completely out of the mainstream of what most Americans want from their elected leaders as their presidential candidates collectively lurch strongly to the left.  We Americans need viable candidates in this coming election...within the two major, dominating parties and not as independent spoilers...who represent something more reasonable than what the far left and far right currently offer...

And the Florida Gators made the NCCA basketball tournament!  They'll play in the West Regional, seeded #10 and playing Nevada this Thursday evening.  If they win two tournament games they will have once again succeeded in reaching the "Sweet Sixteen", but to do that they'll not only have to get by Nevada, but also past Michigan, assuming the Wolverines win their first-round contest as expected...

Miscellaneous Thoughts on Starbucks, Howard Schultz, Gators Hoops

Today, after entering my nearest Starbucks and they refused to sell today's Sunday Gainesville Sun newspaper to me at the clearly-stated price of $2, insisting on ripping me off for $3 instead...after which I most diplomatically replied that they could "keep" it, I'm sitting in the same place...possibly for the last time, here with my overpriced iced coffee, which the McDonalds down the road makes tastier and much more cheaply.  No, trying to rip off customers at 50% above stated retail price for something that they didn't even produce may well be the final straw between me and this company that should be nominated for Most Overrated Business of the Universe.  It takes a certain mixture of smug arrogance and outright gall to pull that kind of stunt with their loyal customers, whom Starbucks obviously takes for granted...

Well, now that I've got that little peeve out of my system, on to another one.  It saddens me that a potential centrist presidential candidate like Starbuck's former CEO Howard Schultz, who appeals to me as generally responsible and ideologically a centrist, feels that neither of the two major political parties that run our political system in this country offers a place for him, his views, and his candidacy.  Actually, though, I feel that Schultz might be more welcomed by the Democrats than he imagines, at least by Democratic voters...I certainly would be more receptive to his ideas for America's future.  But he's stated that if he runs, it will be as an independent, and as such will more likely syphon away votes from a Democratic nominee than from Trump in the November 2020 presidential election.  Sure, by running as an independent candidate Schultz will be able to escape the grueling party primary campaigning that has already begun so early, a year and a half before the election.  But were he to run as a Democrat, he would exert a more moderating pull on that party's discussions of the ongoing issues...now it seems the candidates are tripping over each other trying to see how radically leftist they can sound.  I could vote for Howard Schultz as a Democrat...even as a Republican...but never as an independent.  Like it or not, on the presidential election level we have a two-party system: it's binary, stupid!

Unless I and all of the sports pundits I've heard are somehow tragically mistaken, it looks as if the 2018-19 University of Florida men's basketball team will manage to make the 68-school field of the NCAA major college tournament, the brackets for which will be revealed in a few hours.  After a very tough out-of-conference schedule and a very competitive Southeastern Conference regular season, the Gators were 17-14 entering the conference tournament.  They made the semifinal round, winning two games before bowing to Auburn in a 65-62 defeat marred by a controversial officiating "non-call" blunder when the Florida player at the end, while taking a three-point shot to tie the score and send the game into overtime, was clearly fouled as three Auburn players converged on him...reminds me of that "non-call" at the end of the Rams-Saints NFL playoff game a few weeks ago...

The upshot of all this is that I want Starbucks to repent of their arrogance, Schultz to wise up and run as a Democrat, and for the Gators to go all the way to the championship...fat chance of any of that happening, though....

********
Later...Starbucks got back to me about the newspaper, stating that marking up the price wasn't their company's policy and wanting to make amends...I accept...still, it's kind of humiliating to be confronted in public at the counter like that and they deserve some rebuke for their arrogance...

Ran the Miles for Meridian 5K This Morning

I'm not what you would call an early morning person by any stretch of the imagination, but as a runner I am resigned to the fact that the overwhelming majority of races are held at that time.  So this morning I got up about 6:30 and got ready for a Saturday morning race at the Tioga Town Center a few miles west of Gainesville.  I had been participating in the Run for Haven 10K event centered around the St. Patrick's Day holiday in March...and happily staged at 4 in the afternoon...but Haven Hospice pulled out last year and Meridian Behavioral Healthcare stepped in as the organization behind it while limiting it to 5K...and changing the time to 8:30 am.  Oh well, a tradition is a tradition and I thought this morning would be a good opportunity to keep a mid-March race in Tioga going for me, so I overcame my drowsiness and went out there to run the Miles for Meridian 5K...
.
There were plenty of entrants, from all backgrounds and of all shapes and sizes and genders and age groups.  The organizers were extremely courteous as were the businesses that provided food and drink for the participants.  The race began and ended just behind the stage at the Tioga Town Center, where there are several stores including a number of restaurants.  The run itself went up and down streets in the residential community of Tioga...more or less a level surface if you're careful to watch out for the nearly invisible slow-bumps.  I ran a slow pace throughout and finished at 31:14...not very fast but gratifying in that at no point in the run did I have that gagging and coughing issue that had been plaguing my runs recently.  Upon crossing the finishing line one volunteer handed me some water and another a cute little participation medal.  The weather was perfect: about 67 degrees, 54% humidity, and no precipitation. I'm wondering whether they will post this race's results...I always like to place a link to them here on the blog.  And I'm wondering about the older runners and where I stood in relation to them.  I'll give 'em a couple more days and if they haven't posted the results I guess I'll email to ask why they haven't...

As for the food and drink provided, it was much scantier than what was available at previous Run for Haven events.  A nearby taco restaurant offered free tacos, a deli gave out free coffee, a biscuit eatery had, naturally, biscuits...and another place gave out beer...yes, beer at a little past 9 in the morning: no thanks!  But seriously, those things weren't why I went out there...the event organizers can above all demonstrate their respect for the paid entrants by getting down to the business of promptly recording and posting the results...

A few days later: here's a link to the results: [start2finish management]…

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.       ---Mark Twain

Within the past year I quoted the great American writer Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) three times...here comes Number Four.  Obviously, Mr. Twain had much the same kind of feeling about our elected political leaders more than a hundred years ago that many of us do nowadays...some of them apparently feel that they are automatically entitled to stay in their jobs as long as they want.  During Truman's presidency, following the four elections won by Franklin Roosevelt, the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, limiting subsequent presidents to two terms.  After that, many states and local governments followed suit, placing term limits on various offices...my own city commission has term limits, but the county commission doesn't...and it seems to me that the diapers there are beginning to stink.  In the U.S. Congress there are no terms limits, which are especially called for in the House of Representatives where some politicians seem welded to their respective seats.  Death and retirement do offer opportunities for "fresh blood" to come in, and election defeats in the more politically divided districts and states can provide some needed turnover as well...although not enough.  On the other hand, there has been a pernicious trend in the last few years of more centrist incumbents, strong on responsibility but weak on ideology, being knocked out of reelection races in their own parties' primaries by more extremist candidates. In my opinion this is making it more difficult to get things done effectively with a greater rift resulting between the two major parties.  Ted Cruz, the junior Republican senator from Texas and former presidential candidate...and whom I once vilified but now respect...has proposed a Constitutional amendment to limit service in the U.S. Senate to two six-year terms and in the House of Representatives to three two-year terms. That may be a little too limiting...maybe three Senate terms and five in the House would be better...but I can't imagine either the Senate or the House imposing any term limits on themselves...politicians seem to act while in office as if they will always be in office...

Start a Radio Station Playing Current Releases of Classic Rock Artists

I've come to a strong realization that there is something seriously amiss with our music industry, and it defies what should be accepted as common sense.  You see all these old artists like Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Pearl Jam, Rush, and others...whenever they go on concert tours...filling the venue with screaming, riotously enthusiastic and loyal fans.  And for the most part these artists continue to produce new music, albeit with their albums spaced a little farther apart then during their glory years.  Yet in spite of their continuing popularity, their later musical efforts are rarely promoted or played on the radio, even though the quality of that music often is as good or better than during the times of their biggest hits.  Considering the pathetically low level of music that passes nowadays for "hit" status, I have a suggestion for a new station format: like the classic rock stations that are commonly found on the radio dial, begin a station that features artists qualifyng as classic rock acts.  But instead of focusing on their few past greatest hits and playing those over and over again, program the music rotation like a current "top 40" station, playing their most current single releases and album tracks.  I think this format would be an instant sensation among the classic rock audience and would in kind put some pressure on the present low-standard top 40 stations to raise their own level of quality and begin to promote some of the older artists.  Just a thought, what do you think?

Weekly Short Stories: 1944 Science Fiction, Part 1

I continued this week looking at anthologies celebrating quality science fiction short stories from the past, beginning the year 1944 using the book Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 6 (1944). Today I'll be examining the first five stories appearing in it...

FAR CENTAURUS by A.E. van Vogt
The first human space mission to the Alpha Centauri star system, our nearest star besides the sun, takes hundreds of years with the astronauts, nearly all the time in suspended animation, alternating waking every few decades of flight in order to document the mission's progress and to make necessary adjustments and maintenance repairs.  After discovering that one of them had died while asleep, the protagonist begins to suspect that another of his crew is beginning to go insane.  As his waking shifts progress and they approach Alpha Centauri, the drama increases until... This is one of those stories that imply that we'll eventually figure out a practical way to overcome the speed of light as an obstacle to space travel...good luck with that, while fifty years after the first moon landing we're just flying around in low Earth orbit (something that I'm hoping will change pretty soon)...

DEADLINE by Cleve Cartmill
Remember that this is 1944, the year before the very secretive Manhattan Project developed and perfected a working atomic bomb, soon to be exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  But Cartmill produced this story in rather graphic detail of how nuclear fission needed to be controlled in order to produce a viable explosion...his story prompted a visit to his editor by "authorities" concerned with a possible security breach.  But the story then delves into speculation that the very explosion of such a device would cause chain reactions that would eventually envelop and destroy the entire planet...whew, I'm at least glad that didn't happen in real life...yet...

THE VEIL OF ASTELLAR by Leigh Brackett
Many years ago I saw a movie, titled Little Big Man, in which an orphaned white settler boy in the late 1800s, adopted by a Cheyenne tribe after his family was ambush by other Indians, grows up with a dual sense of identity...and eventually feels himself to be a traitor to both his Indian and white selves as he tries to negotiate his way through an irreconcilable conflict between the two warring sides. The Veil of Astellar is like that as a space explorer finds himself abducted by a predatory alien race and adopted into its culture...and now he has to ensnare his fellow humans for their purposes.  A lot of soul searching here and a compelling tale...

SANITY by Fritz Leiber
Although it's been established that there is a strong case for a physical component to mental illness, many years ago...and to some nowadays as well...it was believed that being "insane" was a relative term denoting the inability of someone to adapt to whatever norms the current society imposed.  In Sanity, this notion is used as ambitious bureaucrat, having clawed his way to what he thinks is the most powerful position in the world, enacts one directive after another mandating how people must live and classifying those who don't abide by them as being insane.  How the others react to this is how the author slyly twisted the meaning of "insanity" to where, all things considered, I thought that he was more concerned with "nonconformity" than with mental illness.  I did love the elevator scene at the end, though...that dude was thoroughly freaked out!

INVARIANT by John R. Pierce
Only five pages long, this was by far the shortest story in the book.  Pierce made a great observation about biological regeneration and how other organisms...like salamanders...can completely grow back limbs and other body parts identical to the ones they lost.  What if there existed a way to alter our own biology that would impart that capacity to ourselves?  Sounds great, but in these very few pages the author dispelled that dream by revealing what should be an obvious...but very serious...side effect...

Next week I'll cover more great short science fiction from 1944, including three amazing stories written by the great Clifford Simak...

Just Finished Reading L. Frank Baum's 5th and 6th Oz Books

I think L. Frank Baum wrote something on the order of twelve books on the magical kingdom of Oz, along with spinoff short stories...plus, others have authored additional books on Oz.  I just read the fifth and sixth books of Baum's series, respectively titled The Road to Oz and The Emerald City of Oz.  The original protagonist Dorothy is prominent in both books as well as her faithful dog Toto...and in the latter her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry play major parts.  How Dorothy enters and leaves the magical land of Oz is different for each book.  In The Road to Oz she is walking with Toto along a country road in Kansas not too far from home when she encounters a friendly wanderer, the Shaggy Man.  Apparently not up-to-date with the present-day injunction against speaking to strangers, she contrives to show him the way to avoid a certain town where the Shaggy Man claims lives a man who owes him money...and he doesn't want it back, so he's avoiding the place, if you can make any sense of that.  They walk a short distance and then realize that they're no longer in Kansas...and run into interesting characters like a little boy named Button-Bright who answers almost every question with "I don't know" and Polychrome, a girl whose father is the rainbow king and got lost at one of the rainbow's ends when it disappeared.  You know they're going to end up in Oz because, well...look at the book's title.  In Emerald City of Oz, Dorothy's Uncle and Aunt are about to lose their farm to creditors and she implores Queen Ozma of Oz for help.  Meanwhile, the evil Nome king plots to invade and wipe out Oz with a devious plan involving a tunnel.  I liked this book more of the two because it actually contains an element of suspense.  At the end, it is implied that this might be the final book of the series, but before too long Baum continued it with another installment...I intend to keep on reading...

The dialog in these Oz stories is simple, funny, and "punny", Baum often having a lot of fun playing around with words and dual meanings.  There is real educational value in these books for children without the reader even aware that he or she is learning anything.  I don't know why they aren't used more in schools...sure, they're about a century old, but the characters transcend time.  I'm looking forward to the next chapter in this fantasy children's saga...

Annoying Seasonal Respiratory Allergies Appearing

This past Saturday I went on one of my four-mile runs through my own neighborhood, the adjacent subdivision, and down NW 53rd Avenue and back.  It was a good run, but afterwards I began to show the signs of seasonal respiratory allergies...sneezing, sniffling and coughing...which have bothered me over the course of several years.  I took a Zyrtec that night, and it alleviated my symptoms.  I've noticed some others in my workplace and in stores and church in different states of allergic distress as well during the last few weeks of this extremely early spring season...my heart goes out to them.  Last night I sat out on my back porch to keep our dog Freckles company as she roamed sniffing around the yard.  No mosquitos yet, thankfully, but I could sense those little particles of plant emissions that have plagued me so much in recent years...time for another Zyrtec.  Still, I enjoyed it out there with the bright stars, a misty fog beginning to sweep in, and the pungent smell of flowers permeating the air.  I'm not going to allow respiratory allergies to ruin my spring...the temperatures are warm but not excessively so and I've noticed that I run the best under these conditions.  With a little help from the pharmaceutical industry to treat my allergies...and possibly a little later from the companies making mosquito repellent...I'm determined to spend more time outdoors during the upcoming weeks...
 

Paul McCartney's 2018 Egypt Station Album One of His Best

When I heard back in January 2016 of David Bowie's death from cancer, I was at the same time stunned to discover that he had just released a breakthrough album titled Blackstar, along with the incredible ten-minute-long title track and bizarre accompanying video.  It gave me pause as I had assumed he was just another aging former rock star with an occasional mediocre album release...hardly the case as I went through his catalogue of great albums, many produced in his later years.  Well, I think I'm discovering the same about Beatles great Paul McCartney, although thankfully he's still going strong at age 76.  Late last year Paul released his latest album, Egypt Station, and it's full of wonderful music, evoking my memories of him as a Beatle and in his first two solo releases with his penchant for rich melodic ballads and a few rockers as well.  His voice seems not to have changed one iota over the years...the lyrics on this album are personal and honest, sung with great feeling.  Not that I liked every track...that's a rare feat for any album...but there are six that I like so much that, at this early stage of 2019, I have to regard them as my top six favorite songs of 2019.  Here they are in order of my liking:

1 CAESAR ROCK
2 I DON'T KNOW
3 HAND IN HAND
4 HAPPY WITH YOU
5 DOMINOES
6 HUNT YOU DOWN/NAKED/C-LINK

If you miss the old melodic genius of Paul McCartney when he was decades younger, I think you're in for a pleasant surprise if you check out this latest album...it's definitely one of his best.  Now, I think I'll check out some of his other later releases.  The dude's still got that musical magic...

Gainesville Mayor and City Commissioner Election Begins Early Voting Today

My home city of Gainesville is holding an election on Tuesday, March 19th to determine its mayor as well as the District 4 commissioner...here, the mayor also serves as a commissioner.  Incumbent mayor Lauren Poe is running for reelection...so is commissioner Adrian Hayes-Santos in District 4.  I don't live in that district, so I'll just be voting in the mayor's race. There's also a question on the ballot as to whether to institute a city charter review panel, to be appointed by the commission...

I don't particularly care for any politician who, when elected, begins to get preachy and condescending toward the very people for whom he or she should be respectfully acting as a public servant...in my opinion, Mayor Poe is one of these.  No, we citizens of Gainesville don't need to be talked down to as children...we should want a mayor who can lead the commission and focus on passing legislation that makes this fair city of ours work better and avoid getting caught up in social engineering and political correctness.  The previous mayor, a conservative, in spite of his personal issues was able to perform his duties as such a public servant as well as provide counterarguments to the other overwhelmingly liberal commissioners' proposals.  I believe we need at least one conservative on this commission to provide a better sense of reality and priority there...that's why I plan to vote for Jennifer Reid to replace Lauren Poe as mayor.  Organized labor seems to be supporting Jenn Powell, and Marlon Bruce is the remaining candidate.  In District 4, Robert Mounts will be challenging the incumbent...I would be voting for him were I residing in that district.  As for the city charter question, I'll probably vote for it unless some questions arise in the next few days about it...

I always vote on election day, but early voting has begun today and will last through next Saturday, the 16th.  The closest location to me for early voting is the Millhopper library on NW 43rd Street.  There's a good chance that in the mayoral election no one will garner a majority of votes...should that happen a runoff election will be scheduled for later...

Quote of the Week...from Thom Yorke

Sonic the Hedgehog is a beautiful statement on capitalism. You spend your whole life collecting yellow rings and then hit one spike and lose them all.  And there is a fat man who wants to kill you.
                                                             ---Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke is the lead singer and one of the songwriters of the British alternative rock group Radiohead, and is widely known for his many deliberately shocking quotes.  He's obviously suffering some kind of disconnect about capitalism since he and his band have lived the capitalist dream, deservedly enriching themselves with their great music and providing employment to their supporting staff...yet he puts it down in the above statement.  I'm not sure exactly who the "capitalist" fat man is who is supposedly intent on killing you, but in Sega's popular Sonic the Hedgehog video games from the 1990s he is Dr. Robotnik.  I happen to know this because my son Will, then a little boy, was a big Sonic fan and although I myself didn't play much I enjoyed watching him survive from one scene to the next...and finally complete the games after getting past the evil doctor's traps.  When I did play Sonic, that was my strategy as well...not just to collect yellow rings but instead to focus on progressing through the game.  And maybe that's an important part of the capitalist system we live in: it accords people a choice as to what they will emphasize in life, as opposed to some alternative systems that dictate to its people what they must value...

That all having been said, Yorke is right when he talks about people saving the yellow rings and then suddenly losing them all due to a spike...in our country this usually happens due to medical issues that will eventually afflict virtually every family in some way.  Yes, here in America we have state-of-the-art treatment and that's good, but it's also expensive and some of the prescribed procedures and treatments of chronic illness and organ failure can quickly bankrupt, even with insurance.  Since in Britain they have a state-run system, the Radiohead front man may have been referring instead to how a sudden economic downturn can quickly wipe out people's investments.  And if you're running a company, maybe that "fat man" is the bigger corporation about to swallow you up or undersell you out of business...

Just Finished Reading The Odyssey by Homer

I was contemplating reading James Joyce's highly acclaimed 1922 novel Ulysses, difficult as it has been reputed to get through, when I read that it was written as a allegory of Homer's classic epic poem The Odyssey.  So I decided to read that story first...in an English translation from the ancient Greek, of course...in order to give myself the best odds of reading Ulysses to completion without becoming completely lost.  Well, I've finished William Rouse's translation of The Odyssey and have some reactions, naturally...

I never did read The Iliad, which precedes The Odyssey and concerns itself with the Greek siege and attack on Troy, with all the heroes and gods playing their instrumental roles in that drama.  The Greek king Odysseus, later renamed Ulysses by the Romans, plays a major role in their success...but his voyage home to his kingdom of Ithaca is marred by one tragedy after another, delaying him by many years.  It is his effort to return to his house and wife Penelope, who is being ruthlessly courted by nobles outrageously trespassing on the absentee owner's property and killing and eating his livestock, that sets the tone of the story.  His son Telemachus, wanting to drive away the unwelcome interlopers, seeks news of his father's fate.  And so on goes the tale...I'm not going to say how it ends, although there's a good chance you may already know.  Instead, I'd like to offer a suggestion: read the book...and most probably The Iliad as well...as being religious texts in much the same way as the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures.  But the religion is different: these are stories about the Greek gods and their characters, domains, and power over mortal people's lives.  Athena, Zeus, Hera, Hermes, Poseidon...these and others are crucial in directing the fate of Odysseus and the other mortal figures in Homer's narrative.  In everything the righteous man beseeches the gods for favor, sacrifices to them, and praises them in gratitude for every good result.  And when misfortune occurs, it is almost always because he or someone close to him has done something to displease a god...

The other thing standing out to me in The Odyssey is the brutality dished out by the righteous man against his enemies, again reminding me of heroes of the Old Testament like Moses, Joshua, and Elisha.  Odysseus is often characterized as someone, having lost his way and suffering all sorts of personal trials, with whom we can identify...but his nearly superhuman strength and fighting abilities, along with his complete lack of mercy even to those who simply insult him, make him out to be an utterly unsympathetic character.  It will be interesting to see how James Joyce looks at him and The Odyssey as a whole through his own novel Ulysses...

Weekly Short Stories: 1943 Science Fiction, Part 4

I concluded my rereading of the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943) with the final three entries from that book. Here's my reaction to them...

THE PROUD ROBOT by Lewis Padgett
The married writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore collaborated on many writing projects under the pseudonym "Lewis Padgett"...they are responsible for this story and the book's finale.  The Proud Robot is set in a future when the advent of television has coopted the film industry with two television programming companies vying, with their patents, for control over the industry.  The head of one of them has hired an eccentric inventor to save his company...but the inventor, who can only think clearly when he is intoxicated, remembers nothing of their initial meeting, although he apparently invented a robot whose function he doesn't know but which spends all its time in front of mirrors admiring its own appearance.  How does the inventor save his client's company and determine why he invented such a vain robot?  Read it yourself if you want...it's definitely not one of my favorites from Padgett...

SYMBIOTICA by Eric Frank Russell
Back in 1941 Eric Frank Russell wrote and published a story titled Jay Score, which I reviewed in a previous entry.  He's expanded it into a sequel as Jay Score and his spaceship's crew land on a remote planet in another star system.  They immediately encounter a strange, aggressive alliance among the native life forms...including trees and bushes...against the human visitors which they regard as hostile invaders.  Russell's narrative language, as told by one of the crewmen, is kind of campy but his vision of such a complex system of completely alien life forms and their survival strategies is impressive.  Of the three stories I'm looking at today, this is the one I think would transfer the best to film or television...

THE IRON STANDARD by Lewis Padgett
Kuttner and Moore, as they did with The Proud Robot, once again examine the notion of patents used as an economic weapon in The Iron Standard...albeit in a completely different setting. A space expedition from Earth to Venus...intended to establish relations between the two intelligent races of each planet...finds itself stranded due to needed repairs and must depend on the goodwill of the native Venusians to survive.  But they have an "iron standard" and stubbornly refuse to provide any food or assistance without payment in that metal, which the visitors are sorely lacking in.  To get money, they are told to get jobs.  But jobs, as well as virtually all conceivable patents, are controlled planetwide by the guild and one must be a member to become employed.  But to do that requires paying a steep membership fee to the guild...and of course they haven't any money!  This fruitless cycle reminds me a bit of what destitute people nowadays often have to go through in order to reestablish themselves on a higher level in our society.  The Earthmen, threatened with starvation, do come up with a winning strategy to break the stranglehold that the stagnant and passively hostile Venusian society has imposed on them...a good story with some application to today's world as well as quite a bit of implied satire...

So that's it with science fiction short stories from 1943.  Next week I'll begin with Asimov's anthology relating to 1944...

Cold Weather Burst and Upcoming 5K Race in Tioga

I'm sitting here in my living room looking out the window...it's around 50 degrees and lightly raining, a brief respite from the overheating we've been experiencing here in northern Florida during this supposedly "winter" season.  The temperatures aren't expected to rise today and then they will dip for the next two nights to near freezing, just when I thought we were through with cold weather for the year.  I used to be able to go throughout the winter without having to mow my lawn...now it looks like a cornfield out there and it's already been mowed a couple of weeks ago.  Well, I actually like getting out the push mower...and so does our fourteen-year old dog Freckles, who goes into an exuberant barking, tail-wagging fit whenever I pull the contraption out of the shed...

On a different subject, I had previously decried the ending of the Run for Haven 10K/5K running race that had been held at the Tioga Town Center annually around St. Patrick's Day.  Well, although that particular race is gone, a new race, called Miles for Meridian 5K, will take place on Saturday, March 16th at Tioga...again with a St. Patrick's theme.  Although I preferred the 10K (6.2 miles) distance and the 4 pm starting time with the Haven races and Meridian's is only for 5K (3.1 miles) and starts at 8:30 am (ugh!), I'm considering entering it in hopes of resuming a tradition in March at Tioga, a pretty residential community with shops a few miles west of Gainesville off Newberry Road.  True, I can go to Depot Park any Saturday morning and run a timed and posted 5K race without an entry fee and Miles for Meridian costs a few bucks, but it's all for a good cause...Meridian Behavioral Healthcare treats mental illness and substance abuse...and a change of venue is always a good thing...

Some More About Recent Savannah Visit

When Melissa and I enjoyed our brief visit to Savannah, Georgia last month, we naturally took a few photos...let me discuss the above six.  At the top is a nighttime shot of the "Waving Girl" statue of Florence Martus, who for decades greeted every ship passing by on its way to Savannah Harbor. We were walking along the river, watching the different ferries as well as other people...there was a big formal dance party about to board one boat and a mass of very formally-dressed and made-up young couples were assembled, very charming.  Then again, most everyone else there seemed to be tourists like us, traipsing around to find something interesting.  The Waving Girl is on the east side overlooking the Savannah River.  The second picture is of Melissa standing on the outer stairs of one of the many beautiful old buildings in the Historic District...she noticed the cherry blossoms and we set up a shot.  The third photo is of the Mercer Williams House, which is the main setting of the famous John Berendt 1994 nonfiction novel Midnight in the House of Good and Evil.  We went inside and enjoyed a tour of the place, including the room where the infamous shooting depicted in the story occurred.  The next picture is of Union General William Sherman's headquarters while his troops peacefully occupied Savannah following the March to the Sea through Georgia in 1864 during the Civil War...another beautiful old mansion.  Picture number five is of one of the more than twenty squares interspersed throughout the old part of town...almost all of them mini-parks with walkways, horticulture, benches, and fountains or statues.  It's one of the prettiest features of Savannah.  And as for the last picture...

Today happens to officially be Casimir Pulaski Day, at least if you happen to live in Illinois where it is an official state holiday with a large ethnically Polish population.  Pulaski, regarded as the father of the American cavalry, was originally a Polish officer fighting for independence against Russia.  He was recruited by Benjamin Franklin and Lafayette to join Washington's army and later died during the siege of Savannah, to where the British had retreated from Charleston in 1779.  The picture is of a monument to Casimir Pulaski, and his remains are believed to be buried beneath it.  It stands in Monterey Square, which is adjacent to the Mercer Williams House and also featured in Berendt's book...

There is a lot of history concentrated within easy walking distance among a few blocks in Savannah.  John Wesley once delivered sermons at a church here, and writer Conrad Aiken, musician/composer Johnny Mercer, and Girl Scout founder Juliette Gordon Low grew up within blocks of each other, although in different times.  I'm looking forward to a return visit...



Being Gracious and Polite is No Longer Politically Correct

The other day our previous vice-president...and possible 2020 presidential candidate...Joe Biden happened to mention the current VP, Mike Pence.  Biden, in the noble tradition of speaking kindly of another political leader from the opposing party, graciously stated that he thought Pence was a decent man.  That's all.  And you would have thought ol' Joe had said "Heil Hitler" from the reaction he got from his own party.  You see, it's not politically correct anymore to state your own beliefs and respectfully point out how another's differing perspective might be mistaken and worthy of correction.  No, nowadays in order to get in good with your own crowd, you have to personally denigrate the other's character and completely reject them as either insane, stupid, crooked, treasonous, bigoted...or a combination thereof.  After receiving a firestorm of criticism for his respectful depiction of a figure who is worthy of that deference if for no other reason than that he occupies such a significant place in our elected government, Biden backed down and tempered his remark to limit it to his assessment of Pence in the context of foreign policy.  In my opinion, Biden shouldn't have done that...he had been correct and proper in the first place for being courteous toward Pence. The particular special interest group that is so hatefully opposed to our vice-president and which called out Biden for his "decent" characterization of him is a victim of its own self-victimizing narrative, having distorted and misrepresented some of Pence's recent statements and positions regarding them.  I lost a bit of respect for Joseph Biden because of his hasty retreat from civility and wonder from this incident whether he could truly be a strong and effective president should he somehow manage to find himself elected to that office next year...he's starting to sound awfully weak to me...

New Reading Project: Homer's The Odyssey & James Joyce's Ulysses

Once at my local public library I ran across a copy of Irish writer James Joyce's enigmatic 1939 book Finnegans Wake...intrigued enough, I checked it out and tried to figure out exactly what the dude was trying to say with stream-of-thought language totally overrunning any semblance of a narrative.  It was quickly clear to me that in order to understand any of it I would have to be well-acquainted, if not fluent, in a number of European languages as well as have a deep background in the continent's culture and history, especially that of Ireland and Britain.  Plus, Finnegans Wake was supposedly based on a real funeral dirge and its lyrics.  Some day I'd like to come back and tackle Joyce's problematic book, but first I thought I'd prepare by reading his much more widely acclaimed novel Ulysses, which came out in 1922.  Like Finnegans Wake, Ulysses is very loosely based on another work: the ancient Greek epic poem The Odyssey, traditionally attributed to Homer and whose protagonist is also named Ulysses, the Roman designation for Odysseus.  Seeing how I would in all probability otherwise miss out on what Joyce's Ulysses had to convey, I decided to take on Homer's work first...which I've just started, reading of course an English translation from the ancient Greek.  It all should be a very interesting, as well as I'm sure confounding and often frustrating, experience...I'm a little more than halfway through The Odyssey...

Quote of the Week...from James Joyce

Shut your eyes and see.                                ---James Joyce

The first reaction I had upon reading the renowned early twentieth century Irish author's above quote was that it's probably not a very good idea to do that if you're driving!  But I think James Joyce was using the word "see" in a more expansive way, meaning "perceive", "reflect" and "receive enlightenment".  As for myself, I am very sensitive visually to my current environment, especially in social settings...just sitting there watching everything and everyone around me doesn't make very much sense and can actually be a bit distressful.  I am a perceiver of patterns and tend to unconsciously connect them together to form principles and trends, as was, I suspect, Joyce: once you "see" how things are, then why keeping looking?  Not that I am endorsing his life, reportedly fraught with personal difficulties including perhaps mental illness.  But he was also a great writer and is responsible for Ulysses, a novel that I will soon embark upon reading and which many regard as the apex of English language literature.  I liked this quote of his...not knowing its exact context or when he made it...because of its brevity and that I often find myself closing my eyes in order to sort through thoughts while cutting out the distractions of the world around me.  Again, this is NOT something to do while driving...

Also, "Shut your eyes and see" can mean that sight isn't the only one of my senses that matter...hearing, in particular, is often made secondary to seeing, but can be an important source of information beyond the visual.  Between television and radio, the former has a tendency to rivet my mind in a semi-trance as I sit before it, demanding my complete attention...but the latter accords me the mental freedom to pick and choose the degree to which I pay attention while I go about my other tasks in life...or maybe just choose to shut my eyes for a little while...

My February 2019 Running Report

In February my running mileage increased, largely due to me feeling better and not having the back issue that nagged me in January: 107 total miles.  I ran each day, and managed a 9.3-mile semi-jog designed to just cover the distance without regard to speed.  On the 9nd I ran the local weekly Saturday morning Depot Parkrun 5K race...I'd like to make this a monthly tradition, realizing that entering it every week probably isn't feasible.  As for other future races, until the fall I'd like to restrict the distance to 10K (6.2 miles). There is a such a race, called Run the Good Race, scheduled for April 27th and to take place around the North Florida Regional office park area across Newberry Road from the Oaks Mall. A couple of trail races are set in the Gainesville vicinity for March, but I'd rather stick to the road instead of getting stuck in the mud.  Sadly, what I had hoped to become an annual tradition, the Run for Haven 10K/5K race in mid-March with a St. Patrick's Day theme in Tioga (a few miles west of Gainesville) is no more...2017 seems to have been its last year.  I don't know why the race ended as it was extremely popular and had many participants.  Well, I think instead I'll just stick to my daily training runs during the next few weeks and occasionally go to Depot Park on Saturday morning...

Weekly Short Stories: 1943 Science Fiction, Part 3

The next three science fiction short stories I read from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943) are by familiar authors: Frederic Brown, C.L. (Catherine) Moore, and A.E. van Vogt.  I have been a fan of Brown and Moore for decades while van Vogt had a penchant for writing extremely convoluted plots...some worked and some didn't.  During 1943 all were writing at the peaks of their respective careers, and these three tales reflect this...

DAYMARE by Fredric Brown
Many years in the future humanity has explored and settled into our solar system, including Venus, Mars, and some of the gas giants' moons.  On Jupiter's Castillo the settlements are divided into sectors: in Sector Three an unspeakable event has occurred: a murder, never having happened there before.  But the victim, an eccentric inventor suspected of dallying in forbidden subversive and technical literature, appears to have died of a different cause by each person who sees his corpse...a major mystery! Frederic Brown weaves into this tale of conspiracy and deception a future society that is so frightened of war and unrest that it has gone to extraordinary measures to censor anything from the past that the authorities regard as dangerous...

DOORWAY INTO TIME by C.L. Moore
An alien, in self-imposed isolation, has constructed for himself his own museum of prizes he has stolen, often at great peril to himself, from other worlds...including some of their inhabitants.  He considers himself a hunter and is addicted to the thrill of the chase and its accompanying danger, although he knows that he ultimately always has the upper hand.  After walking his halls he becomes bored and ventures through his "doorway into time" to take for his collection a young woman from Earth...but the man accompanying her has different ideas.  This story, to me, seemed to be a not-so-subtle slap at trophy hunters who, with all the odds on their side, go to wilderness areas and slaughter wild animals just because they can...and then stuff and mount their carcasses as if they actually accomplished something worthwhile...

THE STORM by A.E. van Vogt
In the distant future we're dealing with human expansion into the galaxy.  Biological android robots...sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it...are hiding and in conflict with the rest of humanity, which considers them as subhuman.  Now their home planet looks to be occupied by the enemy and they hatch a plan: draw the advance ship into a very concentrated, invisible and lethal cosmic ray storm to destroy it.  The Storm is, to me, an allegory about prejudice in general...something I appreciate from a writer back in 1943...and its final resolution I really appreciate...

I'll conclude my look back at 1943 short science fiction next week...

Just Finished Reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

The city of Savannah, Georgia during the 1980s is the focus of John Berendt's 1994 primarily nonfiction novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, later made into a movie starring John Cusack and the lately-disgraced Kevin Spacey.  In it Berendt, as narrator, plays the role of a New York journalist who travels to the southeastern Georgia town at the start of that decade, being introduced along the way to its very interesting history, landmarks, famous buildings...and ultimately some very quirky, eccentric people with their own special stories.  I read it because I was going there on a weekend recently with Melissa and wanted to find some places to explore while better understanding the city.  For this purpose the novel was an unqualified success as we toured the Mercer Williams House, prominently featured in the book, as well as walking up and down the streets of the Historic District and the riverfront area...not to mention visiting Forsyth Park and Bonaventure Cemetery, the latter serving as a setting for a couple of the story's scenes.  Berendt, after his book came out, noticed that tourism to Savannah had dramatically increased, and during our stay we were surrounded by droves of other sightseers.  Berendt's associations in Savannah revolve around Jim Williams, a wealthy antiques entrepreneur who was a driving force in the renovation of downtown Savannah, as well as the owner of the majestic (then) Mercer House.  Also, other characters emerge, like the irresponsible, continually partying attorney Joe Odom, the mentally disturbed inventor Luther Driggers, the troubled street hustler Danny Hansford, the voodoo charmer Minerva, and the drag queen Chablis.  The plot of the story, which is interspersed by these and other characters and descriptions of Savannah's history and social structure, is driven by the murder trial of Williams after he shoots to death an employee in his office at Mercer House.  Well, I think that's about as far as I want to go in with the storyline...I don't want to spoil things in case you want to read it for yourself...

Although the sights and history of Savannah were things from the book I could explore during my visit, Berendt's ability to meet and get to know on a relatively intimate level some of its inhabitants wasn't something I felt like emulating...like most other visitors, I wanted to explore and enjoy the food and ambiance there.  I appreciate books like this that give a stronger sense of context for a place I'm either visiting or plan to visit...Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch did much the same for Manhattan.  I heartily recommend Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, although if you're a little skittish about explicit passages you might want to take a pass. As for the Clint Eastwood-directed film adaptation, I have no plans to see it, although I understand that it was filmed largely on location and in places I just visited...including Jim Williams' office where the alleged murder happened...

Alliance of American Football Doomed to Obscure TV Coverage

Back in the 1960s during the years of the American Football League, then a new pro league in direct competition with the NFL, their Sunday games were broadcast live on NBC and were thus readily available for viewing across the country, developing as a result a wide following.  Now in 2019 a new league, the Alliance of American Football, with its eight teams and regular season starting immediately following the NFL's Super Bowl, is struggling to even meet its payroll.  There is no pretense as to the AAF being on the same skill level as the NFL; they are simply providing a little more pro football for diehard fans of the sport.  I watched some of the opening week game between Orlando and Atlanta and thought the level of play was relatively good and entertaining...I even wrote an article on the 10th (here's the link) praising the league and its prospects for survival.  But that game I saw was broadcast on the regular CBS network channel...every single subsequent game in the AAF regular season this year has been relegated to "bottom-feeder" channels like B/R Live, CBS-Sports, and the NFL Channel.  I happen to get none of these channels on my cable lineup and for those who do get CBS-Sports and the NFL Channel with Cox Cable in Gainesville, they are buried deep on the selection dial at channels 269 and 250, respectively.  So I ask: is this any way to promote a new league and familiarize it to the masses of American football fans?

Although I initially held high hopes for the AAF as an emerging football tradition, now that I am completely cut off from its games and know that very few others will be watching any of them, I sadly now feel that its days are numbered...good luck on even making it to the end of this season!  It's almost as if CBS and the NFL got the broadcasting rights just so that they could sink the league by placing the games on channels nobody watches...I can understanding why a competing league like the NFL would do this, but why CBS, especially after that Orlando-Atlanta game drew such high ratings?

2020 Presidential Race Starting Far Too Early

With all of these Democratic candidates for president in the 2020 election already officially in the race, and with President Trump already a declaring himself a candidate for reelection immediately after he took office in 2017,  it looks as if we're in store for a flood of really bad, bad ideas for our country's future...as well as uninformed, knee-jerk reactions by the candidates whenever a provocative news story breaks, such as the faceoff between the Kentucky students and the Indian drummer in D.C. or the faked hate crime mugging in Chicago.  Now that our president has everyone conditioned to this foolish reactive behavior, all the candidates now feel as if they have to weigh in on everything...and the lazy media just gobbles it all up and regurgitates it on the air...

Since nobody gets to vote until next year, it's apparent that generating money and name recognition are the two motivators spurring these candidates onward so prematurely.  That they feel the need to constantly stay in the news means that we're going to have one ridiculous proposal after another to put up with...I'm already sick of looking at most of these attention grabbers.  Yet in the end somebody will be elected, not this November, but in the November following.  It's still only February 2019 and I'm already tired of the 2020 race...

Just Finished Reading Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's famed novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn came out in 1884, eight years after The Adventures of Tom Sawyer introduced the title character, who narrates the story in his very regional, uneducated idiosyncratic way...one of the charming aspects to this book.  The setting is rural Missouri along the Mississippi River some fifty years earlier when it was still a slave state and the "n" word was a regular part of people's vernacular, without the taboo overtly racist overtones it carries today.  But from our own convenient, semi-enlightened vantage point we can see that racism runs rampant in Huck's time as human beings are subject to being owned and controlled by others simply for their skin color and African origin.  Huck's alcoholic and abusive father, thought to have died, returns and wants his son's money from the treasure he and Tom won in the previous book, but the judge overseeing the funds won't release them.  Huck's adventures take off when he escapes his father's clutches by faking his own death and taking a raft down the river.  Jim, a runaway slave, runs into him and the two begin their odyssey together along the Mississippi.  I'll leave you, the potential reader, to discover the details and how the story resolves itself...

Twain presents The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of an "innocent", that is a character who is relatively ignorant of the ways of society and sees things in a more straightforward manner...I believe that Dustin Hoffman's protagonist in Little Big Man and Tom Hanks' in Forrest Gump are derived from this literary tradition.  In doing so, the author is able to subtly deliver social commentary and criticism without getting into the reader's face to make his point...pretty crafty, I say.  Mark Twain was a foe of slavery and did not shy away from taking on the subject head-on and honestly, although some...once again conveniently using hindsight from the present perspective...could criticize the speech of Jim and other black characters as being intended for comedic relief.  I dare say that a Mark Twain living in 2019 would treat these characters differently as well...

The only part of Huckleberry Finn I have a real beef with is the ending, where due to a highly improbable state of circumstances the title character hooks up again with his old buddy Tom Sawyer and then fades into the background as Tom takes over the story...Twain was probably hedging his bets when he did this, wanting the book to capitalize on its predecessor's success.  But it had the effect of stopping the narrative in its tracks, very frustrating to me...

So now that I've recently read three Mark Twain books in relatively rapid succession, I'm ready for another.  But which one will it be?  Stay tuned to find out...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Einstein

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.               ---Albert Einstein

Yes, it's okay to make mistakes, and learning from them is indispensable to becoming better at what you're trying to accomplish...no disagreement from me with the distinguished, groundbreaking physicist.  Of course, it's better to learn from others' mistakes, especially the kind where the consequences can be serious...even fatal, like crossing over the median into an oncoming vehicle's path from inattentiveness or getting hooked on a drug, for example.  And then there is the tendency for some, when caught having deliberately committed a crime or a serious ethical lapse, to refer to their misdeeds simply as "mistakes"...no, dude, you knew that what you were doing was wrong and did it anyway.  But that's about how the word "mistake" is used (or misused) and what Einstein was trying to stress is that folks shouldn't avoid trying out new things for fear of looking foolish when they almost inevitably flop at the start.  I'm thinking of getting more involved in chess, but I can confidently state that there's no way I'll ever improve my currently atrocious game without first having to go through several humbling experiences.  But to improve means I also need to develop a knack for discerning my mistakes and incorporating their lessons into how I play the next game, and this in itself may be the trickiest part of it all, requiring a fair amount of insight and wisdom...

Visited Forsyth Park and Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah

During last weekend's brief stay in Savannah, Georgia, Melissa and I pretty much confined ourselves to the historic area north of Gaston Street, with a couple of notable exceptions: Forsyth Park and Bonaventure Cemetery. Bordering Gaston and stretching southward like a green rectangular slab on the map, Forsyth Park is perhaps the best city park I've experienced with its numerous walking trails, open fields, courts, playgrounds replete with swing-sets and the like, bathroom facilities, a bandshell for performances, statues, fountains, and even a Marine Corps monument at its Gaston Street entrance.  It's what I had wished Central Park in New York or the Mall in Washington, D.C. to be...Forsyth isn't broken up like that but is continuous, no streets running through it.  If I lived in Savannah I imagine I'd be spending a lot of time there...the only thing I see lacking is a public swimming pool, but maybe I just missed it.  As for Bonaventure Cemetery, it is humungous, occupying a large area to the city's east and bordering the Wilmington River.  We went there because of the reference in John Berendt's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil where the author is taken there by a local woman to a bench facing the gravestones of the renowned American poet and short story writer Conrad Aiken's parents.  As they sit sipping their martinis she explains the tragic story of their deaths.  He asks her where Conrad was buried...she answers that they were sitting on it: he had his own gravestone fashioned into a bench to invite visitors to sit there and watch the river.  The little plot reserved for the Aikens is very unpretentious...some of the surrounding gravestones and monuments are pretty grandiose by contrast.  By the way, I remember Conrad Aiken as the author of the short story Silent Snow, Secret Snow, which was made in 1966 into a short film narrated unabridged by Orson Welles and shown in its entirety, uninterrupted, as a Night Gallery episode...by far the high moment of that series.  That story made a deep impression on me...you should check it out when you have the chance, and the film adaptation was extraordinary.  The famed musician and composer Johnny Mercer, a longtime resident of Savannah and probably best known for his song Moon River, is also buried at Bonaventure...

The first four photos above are of Forsyth Park...in the third the Marine Corps monument is in the fore with the famous Armstrong House in the background on the other side of Gaston Street. And of course the last picture is in Bonaventure Cemetery...

Weeky Short Stories: 1943 Science Fiction, Part 2

I continued going back through the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943), covering three more stories.  As I did I realized that of the twelve featured in this book, five of them were either by the married writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore or by one of them individually...this may have been their "peak" year, at least as far as their short fiction was concerned.  Now, here is my reaction to this week's stories...

Q.U.R. by Anthony Boucher
The first...and very revealing...thing about this story is its title, once you know what it stands for: Quinby's Userform Robots.  It's some time off in the future and robots are everywhere serving humanity...in android form.  The only problem is that they're failing and breaking down on a mass scale. What's going on? A brilliant inventor, Russ Quinby, realizes that it's in their design: robots should be specifically tailored to their assigned tasks and not all made to resemble humans...hence the coinage "userform".  But robots are made by a legally-entrenched monopoly, so how do the narrator and Quinby, with their new spinoff company Q.U.R., get around this and introduce their specialty robots?  That's for you, the reader, to discover...this story stuck with me because although for years science fiction writers typically saw robots as being android in appearance, Boucher foresaw their actual development as highly specialized thinking machines, which we see all around us today...

CLASH BY NIGHT by Lawrence O'Donnell
This is another tale by Kuttner and Moore written under a pseudonym...it's widely thought that Kuttner wrote this one alone, hence my 2016 review with him listed as the author: read it through this link: [Clash by Night].  There's not much I can add, except to note that when it comes to predicting the future, sci-fi writers can either be completely off the mark or mysteriously on target.  Kuttner saw Venus as full of life...albeit very hostile life...with its planetwide oceans and jungles.  Well, that's obviously not true as we now know.  But he turned around and, two years before the atomic bomb was successfully (and very secretly) developed, chillingly predicted the ramifications of a world-wide nuclear holocaust...

EXILE by Edmund Hamilton
Exile, one of the shorter stories in the anthology, is an exercise in solipsism, which entertains the notion that the universe is a creation by oneself...always fun to encounter these tales.  Along with that is the suggestion that, since all of our memories are presently embedded within our brains, then perhaps there is no such thing as the past...I may "remember" going to high school in 1973 but the memories I access are here in 2019.  Exile is a good story about four science fiction writers who regularly meet and chat about their lives and chosen profession...

More science fiction stories from 1943 (if it really existed) next week...

Back From Savannah

Well, we got back from Savannah yesterday, both Melissa and I enjoying the experience.  I'll probably write a little bit about it on this blog from time to time.  Today it's back to work...I'm glancing outside and at least right now the weather looks as dreary as it did through our stay in Georgia...albeit a bit warmer. News-wise it doesn't look as if I missed much...Trump's throwing the work "treason" around again to accuse some of those in the Justice Department and the FBI and lawsuits are abounding against his national emergency declaration on border security. Some actor in one of those melodramatic, self-important TV series appears to have set up his own hate crime, hiring two men to attack him so that he could blame it on homophobes and Trump supporters...now that ain't cool.  In the meantime, my phone seems to be kaput and I have to do something about it...

Visiting Savannah with Melissa This Weekend

This weekend...and into President's Day...Melissa and I will be staying in Savannah, Georgia and getting to know the city, its culture, and history.  Should be a fun experience...Melissa's physician had suggested she read John Berendt's acclaimed 1994 nonfiction "novel" Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which deals with personalities and events from this interesting city.  I checked it out and got a big dose of Savannah's history in the first few chapters, as well as information about some of its landmarks and famous people associated with it and its downtown renovation project in the 1950s.  This should make our visit more meaningful...but mainly we plan to relax and enjoy the ambiance there.  Melissa's been there before but this will be my first visit. A pleasant three-day weekend well spent...

Quote of the Week...from Shelley Moore Capito

Being a good listener is more than just being quiet.  It's reflecting back on what you're hearing.  It's processing the information to formulate a question, a comment or a speech.
                                                                         Shelley Moore Capito

When Shelley Moore Capito, then a Republican representative from West Virginia, won her U.S. Senate race in that state following the retirement of Jay Rockefeller, it marked the first time since 1942 that her party had won a Senate seat in that state...as a matter of fact Rockefeller, originally a Republican in line with the rest of his political family, had switched to the Democratic Party because it was so dominant there.  Well, times have changed and West Virginia's voters have tended to vote for Republicans of late.  Capito was on the 17-member committee to work out a compromise border security funding bill just recently that kept the federal government from again shutting down.  She is known in the Senate as a likeable colleague who, although true to her conservative principles, works well with members of both parties and is known to try to see things from others' points of view.  On the Senate floor she is one of the more eloquent, informed speakers: Capito's oratory is meant to educate and persuade, not demean and divide.   You might infer from all this that I happen to admire her, and you would be right.  I think she would make an excellent Republican president...

The above quote is simply an explanation of Shelley Moore Capito's own pragmatic philosophy...listening doesn't mean you are weak or are in agreement with who's speaking, but rather that you want to learn as much about an issue from all of its angles and arguments.  When there is agreement, capitalize on it and when there isn't, then either stick to your guns if it is a high priority or find a trade-off somewhere where both sides can come away with something.  It is people like her that make things work in our elected government, not the brash attention-grabbing grandstanders with their obstruction, taunting accusations, insults, and weaponized political correctness...

Happy Birthday, Melissa!

On this Valentine's Day I want to wish my wonderful, beautiful wife Melissa a very happy birthday as well!  You are such a blessing to me, Sweetheart!

Weekly Short Stories: 1943 Science Fiction, Part 1

As I continue along with my look at the best in short science fiction, I have begun with the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943) and the first three stories in the book. So without further ado...

THE CAVE by P. Schuyer Miller
The setting is Mars enough years in the future for humanity to have settled there while still battling the hostile environment...both its climate and the native inhabitants.  A grek, the intelligent humanoid life form there, has sought refuge in a cave from one of the extremely fatal storms afflicting this planet.  Once inside he finds several other native creatures huddling for safety there...including a zek, one of their carnivorous beasts.  Yet within the cave predator and prey maintain a state of peace among themselves as long as the storm rages outside.  Meanwhile, Harrigan, a young man caught in the storm, discovers the cave and goes within, only to find said Martians.  His encounter with them will determine his fate in this story.  The Cave is the first of two stories in this anthology dealing with the notion of a collective alliance within an ecosystem when faced by outside dangers.  The grek wonders whether the human in the cave is a part of that ecosystem...or a part of the outside danger.  He gets his answer by how Harrigan behaves at the end...

THE HALFLING by Leigh Brackett
I have never understood the appeal of freak shows, be they in circuses or in Ripley's Believe It Or Not shows and museums.  The Halfling deals with a future circus showing "halflings", in this story meaning native intelligent life in humanoid form from other worlds in our solar system.  This premise is obviously preposterous as Venusians, Martians, and the life forms from various moons of Jupiter are wandering around the set, all a part of the traveling show.  There is a vicious cat-man from Callisto and a Martian dancer...but John "Jade" Greene, who runs the circus, hires a new dancer...a beautiful young woman...to headline the show.  And then they find the old dancer murdered, traceable back to the cat-man.  And so on goes the story.  I didn't like this tale because one...like I said...I don't like freak shows, two, its premise was impossible and silly, and three, it didn't give me any insights about anything to carry off from it after it was over...

MIMSY WERE THE BOROGOVES by Lewis Padgett
As I indicated when I reviewed The Twonky recently, Lewis Padgett was a pen name for the husband and wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore.  They have three entries in this 1943 anthology, but Mimsy Were the Borogoves is by far the best of them...and in my opinion, one of the best short science fiction of all time: it's certainly my favorite.  The title is from a poem by English author Lewis Carroll within his book Through the Looking Glass...Carroll actually makes a brief appearance in this tale toward the end.  A little boy, playing hooky from school on the shores of a river, finds a strange box.  After some difficulty he opens it and finds several strange toys, with which he begins to play...and his thinking begins to change, along with that of his two-year-old sister, also enamored with the little gadgets.  But their parents can't see anything logical about these toys...everything seems random about them and nothing makes sense.  Mimsy Were the Borogoves points out the fundamental difference between how children...especially young children...and adults think, and how our conditioning may fundamentally bias us regarding the true nature of reality.  Unlike the previous story in the book, this one leaves a lot of things to consider...

Next week I'll delve further into what anthology editors Asimov and Greenberg deemed the best science fiction short stories of 1943...

Not So Keen on the State of Television Nowadays

It's been clear to me for some time that I'm a bit out of touch with contemporary popular culture, at least in terms of what's being presented on television.  When I get home from work...usually around 10:30 at night...the only viable options for me are choices between live sports, satiric cartoon shows like Family Guy or South Park (if they are actually showing one of the few episodes I like), old movies, C-Span talk/documentaries, old-time TV on channels specializing therein...and the Music Choice channels appended to my Cox Cable service.  None of the ongoing television series have any appeal for me...I know this because on my breaks at work some of them are shown on the break-room TV.  It seems like whether it's comedy, drama, or comedy-drama as the format, they all seem to be highly pretentious, as if they're bucking for an Emmy with every episode.  As for the late-night talk shows like Colbert, Kimmel, and Meyers, they seem to have substituted what could have been an opening comedic monologue showcase of their talents with hyper-political Trump-bashing...that doesn't take any special skill to do!  I used to watch old Johnny Carson Tonight shows when one of the "retro" channels showed them at 11:30 and got a kick out of the opening monologues...he'd sometimes joke about whoever the current president was, but always in fun and without regard to whichever party was in power.  And he joked about other topics as well...sometimes the gags went flat, which also was funny as ol' Johnny would react to the lack of audience appreciation.  But now they've switched the showtime to 10 pm, too early for me to watch.  And what about these horrid reality and talent shows infecting the programming?  I could do without any of them, thank you...

An article like this wouldn't be complete without looking at the state of popular music today.  I just watched the Grammys and had a hard time recognizing many of the names, all of whom it was assumed were extremely important superstars in their genres. For those I did know, like Katy Perry, Lady Ga-Ga, or Miley Cyrus, I could count the number of songs of theirs I'm familiar with all on one hand.  And the year's "best" music performances were awful to my ears...there wasn't a song on the show that I could stand, not even when the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band that I actually knew and liked a bit, got onstage with one of their tunes.   I don't think that just standing there showing off one's vocal range qualifies their music as outstanding, and I also have never been able to figure out the appeal of hip-hop...but if you do then the more power to you, there's no shortage of it around...

Well, I guess that's enough of me going negative on TV for a while...

Just Finished Reading Two More Oz Books by L. Frank Baum

Although the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz...along with the soulful version called The Wiz from 1978...are what most people think of when the Wizard of Oz comes to mind, original creator and author L. Frank Baum actually wrote a long series of books based on this imaginary land of wonder and magic.  I just read the third and fourth books, titled Ozma of Oz and Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz respectively, written in the years 1907-08.  That latter title probably confused a few people due to its similarity with the more well-known original story.  In Ozma of Oz, Dorothy is on a ship with her Uncle Harry to visit Australia where some of his relatives live, but the visit is more intended to improve his flagging health than anything.  One turbulent night she goes up on deck fearing her father had gone there and was in danger...only to get thrown overboard herself.  A chicken crate also meets the same fate, and fortunately for Dorothy she finds it suitable as a raft...and there is a surviving hen as well to accompany her to their shared destination as they float on the open sea.  Then the hen begins to speak, indicating that they had entered a area where magic prevails.  They wash up on a shore where she uncovers a mechanical man called Tic-Toc.  They are now in the land of Ev...and it turns out to be just across the desert from Oz, now ruled by the girl queen Ozma.  Subsequently, Dorothy, Billina...as she names the hen...and Tic-Toc embark on an adventure to rescue the rightful rulers of Ev from the Gnome King, with all sorts of sidetracks and strange creatures along the way.  In the next book, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, you can correctly assume that our heroine survived her previous perils and is now in a new adventure.  This time, she and Uncle Henry have just returned to the States and are staying a bit in California.  While being driven in a coach with her cat Eureka by a boy named Zeb and pulled by Jim, the horse, a severe earthquake opens up the ground beneath them and they plunge into the depths below.  By the time they are near the Earth's center they have slowed down and soft-land in a strange place where all life is plant-based. Not much later a familiar figure lands there, too: the Wizard of Oz, now working in a circus as a balloonist and also caught up in the quake.  Before long they all realize they'd better escape for their lives...the novel jumps from one underground setting to another, each with its own special "people"...some benevolent and some extremely dangerous.   And yes, there is a connection in all this with the kingdom of Oz, which the book reveals toward the end.  And, naturally, the moment they descend from the earthquake low enough to be in "magical" space, the cat Eureka and horse Jim begin to speak and reveal their own individual, quirky personalities...

These Oz tales are very whimsical, funny, and cute...they remind me of C.S. Lewis with his Chronicles of Narnia series, but without the religious analogies.  I wonder if Lewis got some of his inspiration for it from Baum, who wrote his series some thirty-to-fifty years earlier.  I plan to continue reading the books in the series all the way through the fourteenth and final one...