Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 4

I conclude my look back at the year 1954 in short science fiction with discussions of the final five entries in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954). I like this series in large part because the two editors, Martin H. Greenberg and Isaac Asimov, contribute brief introductions to each of the stories, often referencing other works of the author in question.  Each book also gives a synapsis of that year in history...not only the headlines news but also what was happening in entertainment and the arts, including of course science fiction literature...

THE FATHER-THING by Philip K. Dick
In what on the surface seems to be a typical suburban American family setting, the mom tells her son to call his dad in to dinner...but the boy, having just seen two identical "dads" in the garage, doesn't want to go.  What eventually happens in this horror-turned-science fiction story reminded me a famous 1956 sci-fi movie and made me wonder whether they derived their movie idea from this Philip K. Dick tale.  Upon further investigation I discovered that the movie was derived...but from a story earlier than Dick's...so maybe it was Dick who picked up on someone else's idea.  Regardless, this is a pretty scary story...

THE DEEP RANGE by Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke, who lived for many years in Ceylon/Sri Lanka, was an accomplished skin diver with a great love for the sea and its life.  This optimistic story is set in a future time when the ocean depths are the source of farming and ranching that easily feed the world's population, forever putting an end to famine.  But within one of the herds of whales, it seems a predator has slipped through the barrier and the protagonist, along with his two dolphin colleagues, go down to investigate...

BALAAM by Anthony Boucher
I'm really not a fan of overtly religious analogies and speculation within the science fiction genre...the ending to the Matrix series left me a bit cold.  Boucher has already gone down this road with his The Quest for St. Aquin and once again I'm being subjected to yawn-inspiring theological arguments in sci-fi disguise.  Balaam seeks to recreate the parameters of that Old Testament story as a Jewish rabbi on Mars is ordered by his military commander to curse that planet's alien invaders...

MAN OF PARTS by H. L. Gold
In an interstellar war of the distant future, a spaceship pilot who had just bombed a crucial site of the enemy's crashes on a nearby world populated by rock-and-metal-based intelligent creatures completely unaware of the conflict going on in the stars above them.  One of their surgeons rescues most of the pilot's brain and his two arms by putting them into the largely metallic body of a miner, a completely different, non-humanoid life-form.  The resuscitated pilot finds himself in a deep conflict trying to reconcile his original human nature with his new life and its parameters...along with his new society's values, priorities, and assumptions.  Very interesting, and I found the ending to be funny in a kind of macabre way...

ANSWER by Fredric Brown
Brown was famous for writing extremely short stories with knockout endings...here's another one, less than a full page in length.  In the future, all the computers spanning the cosmos have been connected and now humanity can use them to solve what heretofore had been considered to be unsolvable problems.  Upon closing the switch that establishes the connection uniting the computing systems of 96 billion planets, Dwar Reyn poses the first (and possibly final) question...now get ready for the punchline...

Next week I'll start reviewing selected science fiction short stories from the year 1955...

Upcoming Militarization of Space Will Finally Make It Interesting

I was standing outside the other evening looking at the clear sky, full of the bright wintertime stars and recognizing old celestial friends from my childhood...they never seem to change.  But the vastness of space, the great distances between stars and even the planets in our solar system, and the lengthy span of time it times to travel in anywhere in space...combined with that seldom (or very slowly) changing nighttime celestial theater...all contribute, sad to say, to a general apathy toward astronomy and space exploration on the part of the general public.  Instead, people would rather go watch the latest Star Wars movie, where the fictional characters can cross vast regions of space in the blink of an eye and...well, since there's always a war going on, then that's exciting, right?  And so with what seems to be an incremental militarization of space and our president's call for a "space force" to counter actions by Russia and China we may be finally...and dismally...finding a way of looking at astronomy and the space program as something more interesting...and deadly.  But let's face it: every crucial development in human transportation, from riding horses and other animals through steam locomotion, trains, ships, motorized vehicles, dirigibles, planes, and submarines, has always been quickly applied to war-making and gaining an advantage over the adversary...sooner or later we should have known that space would be the next military frontier.  As a matter of fact, shooting rockets into space was a direct outgrowth of the Nazi Germans' V-2 rocket program whereby scientists and engineers like Wernher Von Braun developed a new type of locomotion for war use...after World War II he and others were picked up by the U.S. and the Soviets to work on their own Cold War projects.  And being able to project missiles accurately over very long distances directly led to the race to the moon between the two sides in the 1960s...

Well, the people have spoken and they think space warfare is interesting and maybe a nonmilitarized space future with comprehensive international cooperation and goodwill would be just too boring to attract their attention and enthusiasm.  And since...at least here in America...public opinion counts for a lot in what our elected politicians decide to spend money on, I'm afraid that folks are in danger of getting in "real" life what they happily spend their money to achieve in "reel" life.  Now I'm not criticizing the president's 2018 plan for a space force...it may indeed be necessary and I'm not in a position to go over all the classified information about what other countries are doing up there...but maybe it's not going as planned as the current spending deal just negotiated between the politically-divided Congress and the White House cut a whopping $32 million in appropriations for it from the $72 million the administration asked for...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #340-331

With today's ten songs, this list is now a third of the way through...so there's a lot more good music to come.  It's interesting that the digital era we are now enjoying in 2019 affords us the opportunity to deeply investigate different artists' collective output from decades past when such an undertaking during their time of stardom would have been daunting.  Here are my takes on the next ten songs on my all-time favorites list...

340 MUSIC...John Miles
John Miles is one of those accomplished musical artists who achieved much more success in Britain and Europe than in America.  This 1976 song got a lot of album-rock radio airplay then (I used to listen to Miami's "Zeta-4" on 94.9).  It has an epic sound to it, and the lyrics are limited but poignant: "To live without my music would be impossible to do, in this world of troubles my music pulls me through".  It also has some pretty cool orchestrated instrumental breaks in it.  I associate Music with that great year in my life, especially the summer...it's one of two songs with that title on this 500 favorites list: can you guess who did the other one?

339 NO TIME...the Guess Who
While I was living through the Guess Who's mass popularity from 1969-71, I caught on late to their high quality music, becoming a fan of this Canadian band in '71 and catching up on their earlier works, of which this is one.  The Guess Who could have been like their similarly-named British counterpart the Who and lasted longer, but alas, some groups simply do not have the inner chemistry that invites long-term collaboration...the Animals and Creedence Clearwater Revival were other examples of stupendous acts that broke up too early. No Time has a double meaning: the singer is fed up with whom he's singing to and is ready to move on...but also, it's a general complaint about simply not having enough time, period...

338 A MATTER OF TRUST...Billy Joel
I didn't care for Billy Joel's later music that he produced, starting with his An Innocent Man album in 1983...except for this one 1986 song, which has a strong rock element to it.  He's all relational as he coaxes his listener to hang in there, it's all gonna be okay: "The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned, but that won't happen to us cause it's always been a matter of trust"...

337 I'LL CRY INSTEAD...the Beatles
Appearing on both the Beatles' 1964 A Hard Day's Night and Something New albums, this song is extremely short at less than 1:50, but both musically and lyrically I've always liked it...and time seems to have aged it quite well.  I'll Cry Instead is a John Lennon song and hints at his increasing disillusionment about the band's fame and mounting pressures, as expressed in subsequent songs of his over the next two years...

336 NOT FADE AWAY...the Rolling Stones
One of the Rolling Stones' early singles, this is another very short song from 1964...written by Buddy Holly and using the renowned Bo Diddley beat.  You can clearly hear multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones' influence on this song as his harmonica and guitar virtuosity meshes well with Mick Jagger's rough-edged singing.  Jones had played a major role in bringing the Stones together and choosing their early successful cover hits. Unfortunately, he either couldn't or was unwilling to write his own songs and Jagger and Keith Richards...who did...eventually took over control of the band...

335 AUTOBAHN...Kraftwerk
Autobahn is the first of three "mega" songs revealed on this list of my all-time favorites, taking up an entire (vinyl) album side at 22+ minutes of duration.  The band and song's lyrics are both German and describe travelling down the German Autobahn, in one section even mimicking the Doppler Effect of traffic passing in the opposite direction.  The recurring melody with the lyrics "Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn" reminded me of Mussorgsky's classical masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition and how its Promenade theme would wind its way around the other elements of the piece.  Autobahn is probably the greatest product of the techno genre of music...I recently discovered it's also great to listen to while running...

334 BAKER STREET...Gerry Rafferty
Gerry Rafferty, the lead singer from his earlier band Stealers Wheel, exploded on the music scene in 1978 as a solo artist with his album City to City, from which Baker Street was released as a single.  Rafferty's mellow singing voice contrasted sharply with the heavy saxophone and guitar riffs on this big hit.  And that wild, weeping guitar ending...whew.  When I think of the summer of 1978, this great song inevitably comes to mind.  And more than forty years later I keep hearing it played on a number of radio stations. Rafferty himself was ambivalent about his musical stardom and eschewed performing in concerts...

333 BLACK MIRROR...Arcade Fire
Black Mirror is the opening track from the alternative rock band Arcade Fire's brilliant Neon Bible album from 2007.  It's also the first song I heard and identified with this band...and motivated me to check out some other of their songs, some of which I'll discuss later on this list of mine.  I heard it played on Gainesville's WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz" just before they decided to steer their programming format to acts like (shudder) Nickelback, Offspring and Shinedown and away from the more indie-oriented music I had grown to follow...

332 YESTERDAY'S GONE...Chad and Jeremy
With a beat that bears similarity to the Beatles' I'll Cry Instead (#337), Yesterday's Gone predates that song by a couple of years.  It was released in the USA in June of 1964 but my Miami radio station WQAM wouldn't play it...later on it was recognized as a "golden oldie", and well-deserved at that.  The music and lyrics impart a feeling of wistfulness and a sense of closure about a relationship that had run its course.  I ended up buying the single in 1976...

331 YOU WERE ON MY MIND...We Five was a one-hit-wonder American band that produced this hit song in 1965...they broke up a couple of years later but eventually reunited, probably seeing the lucrativeness of trading off on their established name.  I think they're still together.  Lead singer Beverly Bivens sang this tune with such feeling that I had to take note...it's a song that I've only increased in appreciation over the years...

Next week: songs #330-321...

Enjoying Watching Mr. Bean Reruns

Mr. Bean was a British sitcom series that originally aired from 1990 to 1995, comprising 15 total episodes.  It starred comedian Rowan Atkinson as the title character, a man who finds himself in all sorts of predicaments involving everyday living and who never talks while coming up with novel ways to get around the "system".  It's all in the great old tradition of slapstick comedy from the silent films of the 1920s...Buster Keaton comes to mind as one of that era's biggest stars.  Somehow Facebook decided that I needed to watch some clips of Mr. Bean and put it on my newsfeed...that's how I got hooked on the series.  YouTube has several of the episodes as well, although each episode is actually a composite of several smaller stories that stand well on their own.  The latest clip I saw has Mr. Bean getting on a roller coaster ride, hogging the front seat all to himself and then finding, while the ride is going on, that the screaming passengers behind him are annoying and it's all so boring...he falls asleep and has to be roused after it's over: hilarious...

Apparently a cartoon spinoff series about Mr. Bean was also made, as well as two feature-length films.  But for the time being, I now have something else worth watching on TV after I get off from work late at night besides reruns of The Prisoner...what is it about those old British series, anyway...Fawlty Towers, Dave Allen at Large, and Benny Hill were also classics...

Just Finished Reading Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

The novel Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, which was just published a couple of months ago, is a fantasy/horror story that focuses on the eight so-called "secret" societies of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut that have housed some famous people including the two George Bushes and John Kerry.  The title refers to Lethe, the house that the others have set up over the years to monitor their activities and ensure that their magic doesn't get abused...oh, yeah, this story assumes that the hocus-pocus BS behind the different groups' rituals is real and that each of the houses stands on a "nexus" of magic that empowers them.  Galaxy Stern, or "Alex", is in that ninth house largely because of her special gift: she can see the ghosts...or "greys" as they are called here...around her without having to drink a highly toxic potion that the others in her house must resort to.  Alex had a troubled youth and is coming off surviving a traumatic multiple homicide: her unlikely entrance to Yale is an opportunity for her to begin her life afresh...or is it?  Darlington, her main colleague (and love interest) at Lethe, figures heavily into the story's flow as the murder of a young woman who was a "towner" (not a Yale student) casts suspicion on the different houses.  Alex plays the detective in trying to find the guilty party and soon uncovers a wide assortment of depravity and likely culprits.  The story worked for me, although it does have some pretty dark themes and a lot of violence...definitely not for the squeamish...

Ninth House for me inevitably brings up comparisons with two fantasy series I've read: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and Lev Grossman's The Magicians, both of which involved magic at schools.  But unlike those two "fantastic" series, Yale is a real place in a real city, New Haven.  The author attended Yale herself and actually was a member of one of the secret houses.  Whereas with Rowling and Grossman's scenarios the magical world was one of wonders fraught with some danger, Bardugo's vision is overwhelmingly dark and foreboding...not anything that the reader would be liable to fall into a daydream about being a part of.  And the notions of privelige, ambition, and elitism pervade the author's negative portrayal of student life at Yale: it's as if everyone here were a Slytherin! By the way, without giving away the ending it did seem apparent to me that this may be only the first book in yet another fantasy magic/school series. Should that be the case, count me in for the duration...but if you can't handle horror fiction I'd steer clear of it all...

Quote of the Week...from Robert Pirsig

To live only for some future goal is shallow.  It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.                                                        ...Robert Pirsig

Robert Pirsig, who passed away in 2017 at age 88, was a modern-era American philosopher who concerned himself with the interrelationship between the concepts of Truth, Quality, and Good...among other things.  He is most known for his best-selling 1974 philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read during my work breaks in 1990.  The above quote of his resonated with me, although the single word only in the first sentence is crucial to its truth.  I think it's very important to have a whole series of goals in different areas of my life...some folks sadly become so single-minded about one in particular and then, regardless whether it is actually achieved or not, they will often suffer deflation, disappointment, and disillusionment.  Didn't Peggy Lee once sing "Is that all there is" when she recounted the experiences she had once looked so forward to but which...as expressed in the book of Ecclesiastes...turned out to be nothing more than a "chasing after the wind".  But, as Pirsig intimated, if I elevate the process as well as the result of my endeavors...starting from the moment that I envision a goal and begin to set out to its accomplishment, then my life will be enriched in each and every day I strive to better myself.  Back in 2010 I trained hard and long to build up my endurance to run a marathon race early the next year.  The final result was a setback: although I finished the actual race, I had suffered a leg strain injury and had to walk the last 7 miles of the 26.2 mile distance.  But my training over the span of several weeks was very meaningful and enjoyable to me...I'd go up and down many roads in a wildly convoluted course and enjoyed experiencing the sights and sounds around me, not to mention a wide variety of weather conditions.  And I'd listen to some fantastic music as well off my mp3 while running.  The upshot was that I have fond memories of that adventurous time and no regrets about not reaching the "mountaintop" in the way I had wanted...

While elevating the process of endeavor in my mind is akin to Pirsig's notion of thriving on the mountainside, I think that it can also be fruitful to design my goals in such a way that their accomplishment will lead to further endeavors to accomplish future goals, many of which may not even be in my mind at the present time.  I think it's important to strive for things...it's a positive part of our human nature...and going through the triumphs and trials in doing that makes life a lot more interesting...

Here Comes a Nameable Decade and New Opportunities

It looks like we're finally approaching a time...it's been twenty years...in which people can once again comfortably refer to the decade that they're living through.  After the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties of the last century, we ran into the "units", "zeros" or "aughts" of the early 2000s and then the never-used "teens" of the ten-year span we're almost through with...I noticed that CNN stopped their shows about the past decades after the "nineties"...if you can't name something, then how can you talk about it?  And while we're at it, can we finally stop saying "two thousand twenty" and starting calling the years like we did in the good old days as combinations of two-digit numbers? . "Twenty twenty" sounds good to me, but so does twenty nineteen, for that matter...in spite of folks still saying "two thousand nineteen"...

In anticipation of entering a decade that actually has a name, I think that here is an opportunity for personal reflection as to what I want to accomplish, not just in the year to come but also during the approaching twenties.  Getting rid of bad personal habits, instilling good ones, learning new things, experiencing adventures, being responsible with the health and prosperity I've been blessed with, enriching my relationships with my loved ones...all are worthwhile ventures.  But with time inevitably come trials and setbacks...developing the character and compassion to deal with my own and those of others is going to be a crucial element of the coming years, I am sure.  One thing I am certain of: change does not come in the future but rather in the present moment as I live though my life, one day at a time...

Hey, whaddya know, CNN has actually been reviewing the first two decades of this century...they just call it the 2000s without designating either of the two decades we've gone through...

Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reactions to four more science fiction stories from the year 1954, as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954).  To be perfectly honest, I wasn't all that thrilled with the first three below...sometimes when you're reading anthologies and collections, though, you have to cross some deserts of dry literature in order to access fertile lands of imagination and insight...

LETTERS FROM LAURA by Mildred Clingerman
I think this brief story may have been considered back in 1954 to have been a little provocative, which then enabled it to gain some notoriety...you'll have to read it to know what I'm talking about.  Anyway, a young woman writes a series of letters...first to her mother and then to a friend...about her time travel experience: in her time in the future, they have time travel tour companies.  Her trip is to ancient Crete, where a certain monster is reputed to dwell...

TRANSFORMER by Chad Oliver
Another story that reads more like a Twilight Zone episode...I'm thinking mostly of that Five Characters in Search of an Exit episode...Transformer is told from the perspective of a toy figurine woman stuck in a bratty boy's model train setup.  She describes the abuse he inflicts on the other "inhabitants" there...actually, this sounds more like Toy Story, doesn't it?  The gimmick to this tale is laid out in the beginning, so I'm not giving anything away.  It just didn't work for me...

THE MUSIC MASTER OF BABYLON by Edgar Pangborn
It's toward the end of the 21st century and, after nuclear Armageddon and the resulting overwhelming depopulation of Earth and breakup of social structures, a man finds himself spending the final decades of his life in solitude on the northern edge of what used to be New York City...and has sole access to a great old museum there, one that features a grand room with a piano.  A player himself, he wants to properly play a piece that a latter-day composer had composed a century earlier when the world was beginning to come apart.  One day in the museum he discovers he isn't alone...this story is more a somber post-apocalyptic mood piece, something you're either going to like a lot or not at all...

THE END OF SUMMER by Algis Budrys
I have to admit I was struggling through most of this story about gained immortality and the need to continually reinstate memories until I got near the end...and then what a revelation that was!  After reading it I understand that absolute immortality carries with it some pretty serious flaws...but if biological research and medical applications continue to advance our life spans, along with a higher quality of life in those later years, I'm all for it...

Next week I'll finish my look back at short science fiction from 1954...

Just Finished Reading Alaska by James A. Michener

A very, very long book, James A. Michener's 1988 historical/geographical novel Alaska may take a while to read through, but I think you'll like it should you have the available time for this undertaking...a friend from high school recommended it to me.  It's my fourth Michener novel so far, following Space, Centennial, and Poland.  Like Centennial, which concerned itself with a fictional Colorado county just east of the Rockies and north of Denver, Michener goes back millions of years at the start of his Alaska saga, describing the geological origins of the area in terms of continental drift, as well as revealing something I didn't know: because of its relatively dry climate, in spite of its far northern location most of Alaska wasn't subjected to the glaciation that ran rampant across the rest of the North American continent.  That's important, because during much of the early history of humanity's crossing over from Asia to Alaska the glaciers served as an effective barrier to immigration to the rest of the continent...one notable exception: the Athabascans, which populated Alaska along with other native groups like the Tlingit, Aleuts, and Eskimos, actually had a split-off group that did make it further south to form the Navaho nation.  Before the author deals with these groups...and the expansionist Russians' brutal treatment of them (especially the Aleuts) starting in the 18th century...he discusses mastodons and then mammoths as early inhabitants of the area...

One common trait, it seems, of Michener novels is the mixture of fictional characters and locations with actual historical events...Alaska was more difficult for me to distinguish the real from imaginary since I was generally pretty unfamiliar to begin with about its geography and famous historical figures.  One common thread through the years that he exposes is the prejudice of the supposedly more "civilized" European cultures against the native people and their exploitation of them.  From the Russians with their sea otter hunting and plans to stamp out native religions in favor of Orthodox Christianity on to the early mismanagement by the United States after they acquired Alaska from the Russians in 1867, Michener presents the historical trends through the eyes of his own fictional characters as those actually living in Alaska find themselves in an essentially lawless place, unable even to legally buy the land they live on. Another theme is unrepresentative rule of Alaska from the outside, be it from St. Petersburg or Seattle. The Gold Rush in the Klondike and at Nome around the turn of the century, political and judicial corruption, the salmon industry, World War II in the Aleutians against the Japanese, the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay, big game hunting, bush plane flying, the push for statehood, mountain climbing, reform efforts to help the native peoples in the late 20th century...all receive their fair share of treatment in this book.  My favorite part was an exploit that a fictional character performed which mirrored the same accomplishment of the very real Max Hirshberg in 1900: a 1000+ mile bicycle ride in sub-zero conditions on the frozen Yukon River!  I also loved the great detail in which Michener describes the tumultuous life cycle of the salmon...from the fish's point of view! And I've left out so much...

Alaska is, to be sure, very lengthy...but it's a worthwhile read.  I'll probably be looking into another of Michener's forty novels in the near future.  For some reason I've had trouble finding them in bookstores, either new or used, so I've been checking them out from the library instead.  Still, even there I'm having difficulty coming across some of his books I want, such as The Source, which another friend recommended.  I might have to order some of them from Amazon...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #350-341

What a joy it is listening to these great old songs...and old most of them are.  Even the two most recent ones from todays' entries are 14-15 years old...man, does time pass quickly or what? Well, here are my comments about the next ten from my top 500 favorites..

350 MY WIFE...the Who
The Who's bass guitarist John Entwistle usually contributed a song or two for each of their albums...in this respect he was like the Beatles' George Harrison, although Harrison's music was by far consistently better.  Entwistle's songs usually had lyrical themes that were a little off-center, like for example Boris the Spider and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In My Wife the singer finds himself in trouble with his better half after he drank too much one night and got thrown into jail...and now she's coming after him!  A little sad and very funny...Entwistle not only played bass and sang on it but also performed the piano and horn parts: definitely his best work ever...you can hear it on their 1971 Who's Next album.  Sadly, John passed away in 2002...

349 ROCKIN' IN THE FREE WORLD... Neil Young
This was one of my favorite songs in 1989, the year after George Bush (before needing to add "H.W." to his name) won a bitterly fought election for president against Michael Dukakis.  I think the dirtiness of the campaign must have angered Young, who co-opted two of Bush's campaign slogans as well as his war service record in the song's line, "We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man, we got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand".  Since I had wanted Dukakis to win, I flowed with the lyrics...later I discovered that, at least in the media, America only seemed to have a terrible homeless problem whenever a "heartless" Republican happened to be president...

348 WALKING WITH A GHOST...Tegan and Sara
In 2004 my music listening was narrowly defined and clear: alternative rock, for which I got my share by listening to my local station WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz".  Strong in its rotation during this time was Walking With a Ghost, a very catchy tune with limited lyrics and a strong feeling of abruptness about it ...Tegan and Sara are identical twins who made a string of successful albums together.  Their songs seem to be largely about relationships and the problems arising from them...this song was about one that went to "ghost" stage...

347 SOMEONE SAVED MY LIFE TONIGHT...Elton John
It takes a great deal of skill to record a very slow song and get away with it...perhaps the slowest one of all time (that was worth listening to, that is) was Led Zeppelin's The Rain Song.  Elton John put a lot of feeling into this piece, which came out in 1975 but which for some reason I didn't really get into until the following year...so I tend to associate it with what was going on with my life down in South Florida during 1976, mostly pretty good stuff...

346 I CAN'T GO FOR THAT...Hall and Oates
Without getting into the details, I was in a very positive, constructive stage of my life during the closing months of 1981 and when this awesome song by Hall and Oates was released as a single during that period I quickly bonded with it...it's a song about boundaries and being reasonable with others without letting them walk all over you.  The whole song, with the instrumentation, lyrics, and lead and backup singing clicks together as a masterpiece of pop music production.  I still dig it 38 years later...

345 THE BOXER...Simon and Garfunkel
Although The Boxer, from Simon and Garfunkel's great and final album Bridge Over Troubled Waters, came out in 1969, it was the following year when I grew to fully appreciate what a beautiful song it was...the summer of 1970 always brings sweet memories and feelings to me and since we owned the album it was easy to just slide it out of its sleeve and lay the phonograph needle on this wonderful track over and over again.  My favorite line? "Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"...

344 DECATUR...Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens' 2005 album Illinois is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest albums of the 21st century...heck, let's just say of all time.  It was the follow-up to his excellent 2003 Michigan album...Stevens had resided in both states and decided to pay tribute to them with songs about their locales and history while filtering through them autobiographical and spiritual themes.  Decatur is about a city in Illinois and you get a little history lesson listening to it...but it's also about the singer's childhood and serves at the end as a praise song.  Sufjan Stevens is a multi-instrumentalist and featured banjo and harmonica on this folksy, clever song...

343 I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM BY FRIENDS...the Beatles
I got used to listening to this second track from the Fab Four's 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album as combined with the opening song, titled after the album...it's logical since that track's ending introduces this song, with Ringo Starr as "the one and only Billy Shears".  Starr then delivers a stunning lead vocal, alternating his lines with the other Beatles harmonically posing him questions: "Do you need anybody? I need somebody to love.  Could it be anybody? I want somebody to love."  Although Ringo sang less on the Beatles' songs than the other three, I find that his voice tended to more resemble other rock singers than did Paul, John, or George...

342 THE GREEN DOOR...Jim Lowe
Although The Green Door was originally a hit back in my birth year of 1956, its popularity endured and I often heard it played in the 1960s on my local Miami rock station 560/WQAM.  The piano work on it is upbeat, jazzy, and a little ragtime...apparently meant to mimic the music played in the illegal "speakeasies" during the Prohibition era where alcohol...and partying...was furnished but only to those who could gain admission.  The singer here is annoyed by all the noise going on next to his room, but when he bangs on their "green" door, they won't let him in.  Good, we got a great song out of his rejection.  Jim Lowe probably had a lot of good music in his catalog...maybe I should check it out...

341 WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES...the Doobie Brothers
This song was a big hit throughout 1979 and rightfully won the Grammy Award for best song the following year...and it was my own personal "song of the year" for 1979 as I lived through it, not one of the most pleasant of years for me, to put it lightly.  Since by this time Michael McDonald had pretty much transformed this resilient and talented band, it's hard to connect his songs with their output from the early-to-mid 1970s.  But to me they're all good, and while enjoying McDonald's singing on What a Fool Believes I also dug the lyrics: "What a fool believes, the wise man has the power to reason away" is brilliant...

Next week: #340-331...

College Football Playoff and Bowl Games Now Lined Up

After yesterday's conference championship games in the SEC, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten, we're finally ready to take a look at the major college football playoff seedings and schedule as well as the overall matchups for the many postseason bowl games.  For the championship playoffs, the pairings for the two December 28 games (the Fiesta and Peach Bowls)...along with the seedings...are LSU (1) vs. Oklahoma (4) and Ohio State (2) vs. Clemson (3).  Although due to their supposedly easier regular season opponents, defending national champion Clemson was only ranked #3 in spite of their impressive undefeated record, but neither LSU nor Ohio State wanted to have to play them in the first round...I get it, I think the Tigers (Clemson, that is) are going to repeat this year as champs.  But the Buckeyes were less impressive yesterday against Wisconsin, whom they spotted a two-touchdown halftime lead, while the (other) Tigers of LSU pretty much demolished Georgia in their game.  One-loss Oklahoma slipped into the #4 spot after edging Baylor in overtime...

As for the bowl games, it seems that there is something called a "New Year's Day" bowl that teams unable to make the playoffs were clamoring for the honor of playing in.  Florida got one, the Orange Bowl against Virginia, although that contest is scheduled for December 30, not New Year's Day.  Meanwhile, two other SEC teams that didn't get a "New Year's Day" bowl, Auburn and Alabama, actually will be playing on January 1, Auburn against Minnesota in the Outback Bowl and Alabama against Michigan in the Citrus Bowl.   The Cotton Bowl has Memphis vs. Penn State, the Rose Bowl has Wisconsin against Oregon, and the Sugar Bowl will pit Georgia against Baylor.  Other Florida schools got bowl games, too: Florida Atlantic vs. SMU in the Boca Raton Bowl (Dec. 21), Florida International vs. Arkansas State in the Camelia Bowl (Dec. 21), UCF vs. Marshall in the Gasparilla Bowl (Dec. 23), Miami vs. Louisiana Tech in the Independence Bowl (Dec. 26), and Florida State vs. Arizona State in the Sun Bowl (Dec. 31)...

For the most part my interest in all these games boils down to how the Gators do in their Orange Bowl game, which I will mostly miss since I'll be at work that Monday evening, and the playoffs.  The championship game will be held on January 13 on yet another Monday evening...at least I should be able to watch the two Saturday first-round games on December 28.  As for the playoffs, I think Clemson is the best team but I'm not rooting for any of the contestants in particular or against any of them.  Sometimes it's actually more fun to watch a game when you're not emotionally involved in the outcome: I just finished watching such a contest in the NFL between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints, one of the league's best so far this year...

Ran the 2019 Seasons of Hope 15K This Morning

Last year in early December I ran the Seasons of Hope 15K, held for the purpose of increasing awareness and funding for research and treatment of dystonia, a debilitating neurological disorder.  That race, which took place on Hawthorne Trail in SE Gainesville with Boulware Springs Park as the starting and finishing point, was overflowing with participants...largely I think because one or more local elementary schools were involved.  This morning I tried my hand at it again, but made sure I drove down to Boulware Springs Park in plenty of time to ensure myself a parking spot.  I need not have been concerned, though, because it seems there were much fewer racers this morning...and not a whole lot of kids, either.  The event is split into two races, the 15K (9.3 miles) and the 5K (3.1)...the latter naturally tends to draw more runners, as well as walkers (an activity I'm appreciating more and more as I age).  This morning it was in the low 50s with about 90% humidity at the start of the race at 9:00...by the end it was 63 with 72% humidity.  The earlier forecast indicating rain thankfully was wrong...it was partly cloudy (and now overcast).  Since they stagger the starts for the 15K and 5K races, I enjoyed the unusual situation at the beginning of not struggling to avoid tripping over other runners...especially the ones who would suddenly stop running while directly in front of me.  I kept at a sustainable pace while pushing myself the whole way...I finished with a time of 1:35:48, better than last year's Seasons of Hope time but slower than I've run other past 15K races.  The stretch of the Hawthorne Trail that this race (as well as last month's Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon) uses has a section with a lot of slopes and a couple of small hills...much different from the relatively flat courses I run around my neighborhood while training.  Still, I stayed running for the entire race, chugging up the hills when necessary (but not liking it a bit).  When I finally finished the race, I was spent...a good sign indicating that I was honest with my pace.  The event's volunteers as well as other runners were very supportive, shouting out encouragement when I passed by.  And as usual they had water/Gatorade stations along the route every couple of miles.  The only problem I had was my smartphone losing its internet connection at points along the course...I had been running while listening to classical music from WQXR/New York.  I'm writing this a couple of hours after the race and seem to be recovering well from it...other than some residual leg soreness I seem good to go.  Here's a link to the official results: [2019 Seasons of Hope].  For the immediate future, I don't plan to run any races in December unless I decide on a Saturday morning to run one of those free weekly 5K races at Depot Park in Gainesville.  In January I want to run the Ocala Half-Marathon on the 12th and the Newnan's Lake 15K on the 25th...I've experienced both of them before, even tackling the marathon distance in the Ocala event back in 2011.  In the meantime I'll keep on running...

Quote of the Week...from Tana French

Psychopaths have very low anxiety levels...she fits the clinical definition: no conscience, no empathy, pathological liar, manipulative, charming, intuitive, attention-seeking, easily bored, narcissistic...turns very nasty when she's thwarted in any way.     ---Tana French

The above quote I took from Tana French's crime novel In the Woods, which I just read and reviewed on 12/1.  The character speaking the quote is Cassie Maddox, an Irish police detective who speaks from her own past personal experience with a psychopath and is well-versed on the subject: the "she" in the quote is a teenage girl currently being investigated.  Now I have to be careful about attributing a character's quote to a story's author: sometimes the message is antithetical to the writer's actual beliefs...so I had to use my discernment here and concluded that Maddox is clearly the most reasonable character in the book and generally reflects French's views...I've seen this done on sites like BrainyQuotes where an author will often be quoted from one of his or her fictional works...

Being socially-oriented creatures as we humans are...even someone like myself who is introverted and pretty reclusive...it's very difficult to believe that there are people walking the planet with absolutely no social consciousness or empathy and who lie with impunity about what others may have said or done without it ever causing the slightest feeling of guilt.  But I know they're out there and I feel I've been victimized by psychopaths in the past when out of the blue I seem to be ostracized by others when I haven't done anything to merit any scorn.  I look back on these times and note the presence of certain individuals who I realized were casual liars and enjoyed working up people in conversation while backbiting about others.  Psychopaths will simply fabricate slander about their chosen victim and claim that he or she told them horrible things and committed horrible acts...and accomplish this with the full emotional expression that almost all of us would associate with someone being truthful.  I've concluded that there isn't a lot I can do whenever I suspect someone like that is around, other than avoid the hell out of them and pity the poor suckers who buy into their fiction. Can you think of anyone in the news who fits the above expressed description of a psychopath?  It's easy to look at people like Jim Jones, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson and see them in hindsight for what they were.  But while the deceit and manipulation is going on, it's not so easy...especially if they're acting like they're on your side and they have succeeded in getting you emotionally invested in them...

The Structure and Snares of Our Politics

If you tune in to one of the major cable news channels these days, chances are you're either going to be deluged either by commercials or a longstanding verbal melee between the Republican and Democratic parties that dominates our political landscape...I'm starting to prefer the commercials.  Nowadays with this dead-end impeachment adventure going through the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Republicans scurrying to create counter-narratives to accuse the accusers, all that we as Americans are getting is a horizontal, us-vs-them squabble instead of getting a fair, pro-and-con treatment of the many important issues we face and really care about.  This is easier to see when I watch C-Span2 when the U.S. Senate is in session and speakers from each party talk on the floor about various issues that they deem to be important. Although it gets little treatment in the mainstream media, the immediate concern in the Senate is next year's appropriations funding bill that the two parties are having a major spat about, each accusing the other of deliberately holding it up and being anti-military.  The major bone of contention about this bill, which the two parties had both signed off on this past summer but which afterward the Republicans allotted a diversion of funds for a border security wall that President Trump wants, is never expressed by GOP senators like Minority Whip John Thune, who repeatedly in his speeches hammers the erroneous point that his colleagues on the other side of the aisle are against pay raises for those serving in the military and want to hold up military aid to Ukraine.  This kind of sideways bickering and grandstanding is going on from both parties with plenty of blame to go around, and issues are being placed on the backburner while the rhetoric just keeps getting turned up.

So I've decided to divide how to look at politics into two basic components: vertical politics and horizontal politics.  Vertical politics is issue and philosophy-based, while horizontal politics is the "us-against-them" perpetual battle transpiring between the two major political parties for power and influence in the next election (and there's always a next election)...turn on the cable news channels and chances are you'll see a lot more of the latter than the former, about which I think more Americans ultimately care the most. It doesn't automatically follow that each of us will go along with our own chosen party's positions on every issue...I look at each one on its own merits and then look at how the politicians are aligning themselves on it, not the other way around.  So in this I am primarily a vertical political follower, not a horizontal one who tends to first emotionally bond with his or her "side" and leaders and denigrates the character and intentions of the "enemy" side while seeing the different issues and their treatment as only secondary factors in their own party gaining, keeping, or losing control.  So if you're horizontally oriented in favor of the Democrats you might speak in outrage over the Senate Republicans blocking the advancement of some 250+ bills they have passed in the House since gaining voting control in that body following the 2018 midterm elections.  The Republicans just as horizontally reply that it's the House Democrats' fault for passing partisan legislation that they know in advance has no chance of either passing the Senate or getting the President's signature.  And so they whine and bicker...

If politics in Washington, DC were run in a vertical manner, you would see...even in divided governments where regarding the Presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives each party controls at least one branch...issues advanced through Congressional committees, continual contact between the Executive and Legislative branches to see what the President would be willing (or unwilling) to sign, and a spirit of compromise.  In divided governments the final legislative products on some more contentious issues might not address some important aspects that the two sides couldn't agree on, but the issue would still be advanced on the points in which they had common ground...until in a later Congress it is readdressed.  But what we see now is horizontal politics: the Democratic House passes its own bills according to its own ideology without regard to whether the Republican-controlled Senate will be able to approve a reconciliable bill in that body or whether the President will sign it into law.  Now I'm not picking on the Democrats per se...during Obama's tenure as president the Republican house did likewise, passing a slew of measures they knew had no chance of advancing through the Senate, much less into law.  But words like "compromise", "deals", and "collaboration" have become taboo in a toxic political environment where those who dare to reach across the aisle to the other party to forge consensus legislation are in danger of finding themselves targeted for "primarying" by their own party in the next election...I see this more on the political right than on the left as talk show hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Levin regularly denounce Republican lawmakers who they see departing from the "script": just look at how the conservative GOP governor of Georgia is currently undergoing their wrath just because he is appointing as retiring senator Johnny Isakson's replacement somebody who isn't enough of a partisan warrior for them.  I sadly see no end in sight to this present trend, just worsening...

Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are my reactions to four more entries from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954).  By the way, after starting with the year 1939, I have it covered through 1990 with annual "year's best" anthologies of this genre of fiction...this blog feature is destined to be long-lasting...

THE HUNTING LODGE by Randall Garrett
In a somewhat dystopian future dominated by robots and surveillance, a small number of people rendered immortal and who are desperately clinging to that status and their accumulated power and wealth, face violent opposition within their own government.  One of the agencies sends out an assassin...under hypnosis and with an assumed identity...to get rid of one of the worst of them.  Does he survive his assignment and is he successful?  Read it and find out.  I have a problem with stories like this because it implies that there's something inherently wrong with long life...as if outlasting everybody else somehow means you're being unfair to the masses: what nonsense. I'm opposed to any literature that pushes the notion that old people have already had their "chance" and now need to step aside and make room for others...

THE LYSENKO MAZE by Donald A. Wollheim
Trofin Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet-era biologist who postulated the notion that an organism can genetically pass its environmentally-acquired characteristics down to future generations.  Dictator Stalin made his theories official state science, but virtually all of the rest of the scientific community denounced Lysenko as a charlatan.  Wollheim's story centers around a scientist who believes Lysenko was right and who sets up an experiment...using mice and a large, complicated maze...to prove himself to his skeptical colleagues.  This story seems to end one way...until you read the last paragraph.  By the way, Donald A. Wollheim is the publisher of the Isaac Asimov Presents series and himself edited another, which I may be referencing at some future time...

FONDLY FAHRENHEIT by Alfred Bester
The idea that psychosis is a disease that someone can "catch" from another is essential to this story of a planet-hopping man and his android robot...the latter seems to go into an insane murderous rage whenever the temperature around it rises beyond a certain point.  But the owner seems to be experiencing trouble separating his own identity from that of his android.  The story can be very confusing as it is alternately presented in the first person from the android's viewpoint, then from that of the owner, and then in the third person...sometimes even changing the perspective within the same sentence...

THE COLD EQUATIONS by Tom Godwin
On a rescue mission in the interstellar frontier to an endangered small party on a remote planet, the pilot of his small, efficiently-designed spacecraft discovers a stowaway.  But the craft's weight requirements are rigid and pre-planned for no extra weight, otherwise the increased gravity on descent will cause it to expend its fuel early and cause it to crash.  The policy is clear-cut...the intruder must be jettisoned into space for the sake of the mission, but the compassionate pilot and his unwelcome guest must first come to grips with this unsolvable predicament. A real heartbreaking story...

Next week: more from 1954 in the world of short science fiction...

Season of Hope 15K Race Coming This Saturday

When I first glanced at the month of December this year on the running race calendar, I was only looking at half-marathons scheduled in my vicinity.  But I missed on a race I ran a year ago: the Season of Hope 15K race, which benefits research and treatment about the debilitating disease of dystonia and other neurological disorders.  The race will be held this Saturday morning (the 8th) on the Hawthorne Trail, with the parking, registration, start, and finish to be at Boulware Springs Park on SE 15th Street in Gainesville.  Starting time is 9:00 for both the 5K and 15K events...you can read about my experiences last year by clicking on the following link: ['18 Season of Hope].  Since at this early time the weather prognosticators are giving about a 30-40% chance of rain on Saturday, I'll wait until later in the week before deciding whether to run in it.  It's funny...on the same day at 7:30 am the free weekly Depot Park 5K will take place at that site off Main Street and SE Depot Avenue...if I had the wherewithal I could run that one and then scoot down the road to tackle the 15K.  After all, I did plan to go on a long run this coming weekend.  But no, better stick to the 15K if the weather's okay. Then again, if it's raining maybe there won't be such an annoying number of people cramming the parking lot and race course: I know, I know...I shouldn't think like that since it's all going to a good cause. Still, I've never run a race in the pouring rain before...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #360-351

As I continue unraveling my list of my 500 all-time favorite songs...from bottom to top in groups of ten...I think it's important to say that before writing my reviews I listen once again to each and every one of them.  One of the great blessings of having grown up during the years that I did was to be exposed to some incredibly wonderful music...and it's still being produced, if you know where to look...

360 THE WAYWARD WIND....Gogi Grant
Nostalgia radio is something that began in the 1970s, and it was on one of those stations that I first heard...and instantly fell in love with...Gogi Grant's epic, mournful ballad The Wayward Wind.  It was a huge hit in 1956 and reportedly knocked Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel off the top of the charts...yet my local rock stations in the 1960s, WQAM and WFUN, apparently didn't think it qualified to be on their playlist of "golden oldies" alongside Presley's classic hits.  Now, well over forty years after I first heard it, I still think very highly of this song...Gogi Grant passed away three years ago at age 91...

359 ROAD TO NOWHERE...Talking Heads
The rat-a-tat-tat percussion beat defines this song of cynicism, as usual...like other Talking Heads songs...delivered with a strongly humorous bent by their lead vocalist and creative force David Byrne.  The video is also something you don't want to miss...very, very imaginative and funny.  The opening chorus-sung lyrics express people's ideals and rationales, which Byrne then proceeds to utterly deflate.  It came out in 1985 and is yet another song that makes me wonder why it didn't become a major top ten hit: maybe it was just a little too cerebral...

358 MERCHANTS OF SOUL...Spoon
Speaking of songs with a rat-a-tat-tat beat, here's another, and this one actually makes a non-dancer like myself want to get up and move around on the floor...it's that catchy.  Merchants of Soul is from the Austin, Texas alternative rock band's remarkable 2005 Gimme Fiction album, maybe their best.  Spoon is one of the more creative and listenable musical acts today, headlined by singer/songwriter Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno...I'm not usually interested in attending concerts but I'd like to see Spoon perform live: now that's an endorsement!

357 BICYCLE RACE...Queen
The line "Jaws was never my thing and I don't like Star Wars!" deeply endeared me to this counter-mass-culture anthem by Queen...I never was a big fan of either movie and couldn't see what the big fuss was about them.  Also, from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s I was pretty heavily into (cheap) bicycle riding (not racing) as an alternative to motoring, something that I think provided me with a healthy perspective on mass conformity and the rat race...Bicycle Race celebrates more than anything the notion of individuality and that it's totally cool to find oneself out of step with the "times"...

356 ALLENTOWN...Billy Joel
Allentown, from what I deem to be Billy Joel's final masterpiece album, 1982's Nylon Curtain, is a searing, gut-wrenching song of the times, back during the time of its release when a deep recession, coupled with competition from abroad, saw many great factories of America's midwestern and eastern manufacturing base closing down one after another, devastating local economies and putting untold numbers of career workers on unemployment while painting a bleak future for the aspiring young in those areas.  Although the economy was once again "booming" by 1984, I don't think the U.S. ever got completely over those traumatic years of the early 80s...the "Big Company" used to be seen as one of our nation's features of stability: now you never know what they'll do from one year to the next...

355 MAGIC...Olivia Newton-John
Although technically a "disco" song from the soundtrack of a roller-skate-disco movie (Xanadu), 1980's Magic to me was simply a great ballad beautifully sung by Olivia Newton-John, one of my favorite singers of the 1970s and early 80s...it has a kind of mesmerizing effect.  It also has an empowering nature to it: "You have to believe we are magic, nothing can stand in our way"...

354 I AM THE WALRUS...the Beatles
Back in July I read John Lennon's 1964 book In His Own Write, in which he did a lot of play on words, often to comedic effect.  The Beatles' great continued his verbal antics on this song with lines like "Semolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower, elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna, man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe".  The closing track on their wonderful Magical Mystery Tour album, it's also a piece that figured in the fabricated "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory that erupted in late 1969 and is still believed in some quarters to this day.  Naturally, I had to listen to it repeatedly back then for the "clue" near its end...

353 SAILING...Christopher Cross
Hitting the airwaves during the summer of 1980, about the same time as song #355, I loved the overall peacefulness of Sailing...a real tension dissipater.  Cross had such a promising beginning to his career...I wonder why it dropped off after his Theme from Arthur.  I don't know if the actual process of sailing a boat is all that peaceful, though...looks like a lot of stress and hard work if you ask me...

352 INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY...the Beastie Boys
I'll say it up front: I'm not a fan of hip-hip/rap music, but this summer-of-1998 hit by the rap trio Beastie Boys...originally a standard rock act with a female member...stands out because it's so humorously campy about its science fiction message and uses some unusual instrumental accompaniment as well as a strange key change about two thirds of the way through it.  I associate it with where I was at the time on my job and what I was doing then...

351 WONDERWALL...Oasis
Another song I associate with where I was at work when it was popular in 1996, this is a somber, reflective song that combines lead singer Liam Gallagher's plaintive delivery (his brother Noel wrote it) with brilliant acoustic guitar, piano, and strings accompaniment.  From it the recurring line "I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now" resounds.  Oasis was a promising 1990s British band that unfortunately seemed to spend more time and effort fighting among themselves and insulting others than focusing on putting out the music that I believe they were capable of...

Next week: songs #350-341...

Just Finished Reading In the Woods by Tana French

In the Woods, written by Tana French and published in 2007, is a psychological crime novel set in Ireland...with the emphasis on "psychological".  Adam Ryan, going now by the name "Rob", is a police detective working on the Dublin Murder Squad.  When he was a boy Adam went out in the woods outside his rural Irish hometown with two friends...something terrible and unknown attacked them with only Adam returning with a blocked memory, clothes ripped with someone else's blood all over them.  The disappearances were never solved...Adam later joined the police and changed his name to Rob in order not to bring attention to his earlier crisis.  And now there is a new crisis in almost the exact same location: a teenage girl has been found brutally murdered and on what looks like an ancient sacrificial stone in the area.  Ryan, along with fellow detectives Cassie Maddox and Sam O'Neill, are assigned the case...which reignites all of the old suppressed memories that he had from the earlier experience, while Cassie expresses her views on the nature of psychopaths.  The story is told from Ryan's viewpoint, who is brutally honest with his mistakes and character flaws as he stumbles his way through this case and his relationships with others...

In the Woods is one of those stories that seem to be about one thing in the beginning and then morph into something entirely different...I kind of like this paradigm-shifting in fiction.  But if you're intrigued from the early part of the book into reading on to the resolution at the end, you may find yourself bitterly disappointed: it's an entirely different kind of resolution! An important outgrowth of the story is that angle on psychopathic personality types, a topic I plan to explore in a few days on this blog.  Tana French is clearly a talented fiction writer and I'm going to read more of her works, especially this Dublin Murder Squad series for which In the Woods was the first book...

My November 2019 Running Report

In November I ran a total of 120 miles, missing three days and with 13.1 miles being my single longest run of the month.  I ran two races: the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon (on the Hawthorne Trail) on the 10th and the Gainesville Turkey Trot 10K (at Tacachale) on the 28th. In the half-marathon I ran a slow pace while the 10K was a bit faster.  In the middle of the month I had to take a break from running for three days, as I was undergoing some kind of allergic/inflammatory general attack on my body, which hits me from time to time and makes me feel pretty crappy.  But I recovered and feel good...

I'd like to continue with my established pattern of training, especially with those long weekend runs.  I don't see any particular races coming up for me in December, but in January there is the Ocala Half-Marathon...an event that I've run twice before and has a great course south of the city in horse country.  I still wonder to myself whether I might not again try to tackle the 26.2 mile marathon distance in a future race...for now, I'll just take it from week to week and see how I do with my progress...

Quote of the Week...from Melody Beattie

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
                                                                                 ---Melody Beattie

Melody Beattie is an author of self-help books with a focus on codependency...I first discovered her above quote before I found out anything else about her.  But sometimes the message has such a universal, obvious application that it doesn't matter who said it...unless, of course, the speaker was a real scoundrel.  Yesterday was Thanksgiving and my wife Melissa and our two grown-up children Will and Rebecca enjoyed it together with a fantastic home-prepared meal.  What a blessing for us!  I believe that it's important to instill within oneself a habit of looking gratefully at the good things that life provides...health, good relationships, prosperity...these are things we seek and should not withhold our thanks when God blesses us with them.  I think a lot of us look back with regret at our own pasts, both for our mistakes and missed opportunities as well as with anger at the bad things we perceive that others did to us...but if we temper that negativity with some acknowledgment that there were also good...even wonderful...things going on as well as good people who cared about us, then as Ms. Beattie pointed out, such gratitude does make better sense of our past.  From time to time as I go through my daily life with its many demands, frustrations, and worries, it's also important for me to realistically assess my situation...and that involves taking into account the good things currently going on in my life and being thankful for it all.  It also can be said that even with defeats and failures, gratitude is in order since from those experiences much can be learned. And regarding the future, knowing that I've enjoyed great blessings in the past as well as the present, I can see a future in which more for which I will be grateful is sure to come...let's all plan on a blessed future!

Ran Gainesville's 2019 Turkey Trot 10K This Morning

This morning I drove over to Tacachale, a local residential and care community for the developmentally disadvantaged, and ran their annual Thanksgiving Turkey Trot race.  I've run it  three times before...this year they gave the choice of going 5K (3.1 miles) or 10K (6.2 miles): I stuck with the 10K distance.  After my deliberately slow half-marathon race earlier this month I decided to try running at a more honest pace and finished with a time of 1:02:18, at a 10 minute/mile pace.  The course was pretty crowded...679 5K finishers and 207 for the 10K, but the organizers did manage to stagger the two distances' starting times by about five minutes and varied the course early on, preventing everybody from tripping over each other.  The 10K course took us down paths of asphalt, dirt, woods, and fields...pretty fun!  The parking for the many contestants was well-directed and hassle-free, hydration stations were provided, spaced along the course for thirsty runners, and there was bathroom access near the starting line.  Following the race they had water, Gatorade, bananas, bagels, and cookies.  I thought the whole atmosphere was very positive and encouraging...I enjoyed the experience.  Also, none of the problems I had experienced in runs gone by happened...no cramping or deep coughing and my energy level stayed strong to the end.  The skies were clear and the temperatures stayed in the 60s throughout the run with around 60% humidity...great conditions.  Looking forward to continuing my training...

Here are the results of the Turkey Trot...just click on the following link: [results].

Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin looking at 1954's short science fiction, as published in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954).

THE TEST by Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson wrote a few of the old Twilight Zone episodes and this tale reminds me a bit of them.  It's in the future...not too far off...and the law decrees that old people, every few years, undergo tests to ascertain their viability in society.  And if they don't pass they're killed...sounds like a terrible fate, yet in more primitive cultures the elderly...especially women...were often abandoned to death because their role as contributors fell behind their dependency.  In a family where the aging father has one of these tests looming ahead  to decide whether he lives or not, his son sees...as he coaches him through practice sessions...that he'll probably fail.  A warning tale...to those reading it...not to let our own "real" society to debase itself to this level...

ANACHRON by Damon Knight
Two eccentric brothers live on an obscure island off the coast of Italy.  One collects art and the other tinkers with technology.  The latter accidentally creates a portal in time through a bubble...and so the time travel paradoxes ensue to the point where the author's narrative and all the various "rules" he espouses confused me to the point where at times I lost his train of reasoning.  I was able to follow the story's general parameters, though...but I'm getting pretty weary about this time travel subgenre of sci-fi stories...

BLACK CHARLIE by Gordon R. Dickson
In the future during a time when interstellar travel and settlement takes place, an art trader and assessor is given a tip that a great treasure exists on an obscure planet.  Going there he finds the place inhospitable and swampy...a man presents him a small box and the sculpture inside looks like anything but art.  Surprised and saddened by the trader's rejection, the man leads him through the swamp to the piece's creator, which turns out to be an intelligent, indigenous being...jet-black and resembling an otter.  The creature learns that his art needs improvement and...why not read the rest of the story for yourself. I think that the message of this story is that art comes from the inner self and for one to truly appreciate it he or she needs to understand the perspective of the artist and not simply judge the work on its external merits according to a set of rules.  A story about prejudgment and enlightenment...

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN by William Tenn
Our Solar System...and hence the Earth...is being threatened by an alien race of insect-like invaders...the intense war has been going on for years and battle lines fluctuate between Jupiter and Saturn.  The human population has been so depleted by the conflict that a method of recycling and constructing whole, living bodies from the protoplasm of killed soldiers has been devised, creating in essence a "zombie" armed forces.  A human commander is set to meet a group of these new soldiers that will be working under him and suddenly has to revise his notions of who is accorded the designation...and dignity...of being regarded as truly human.  A very allegorical tale, another one about prejudice...

Next week: more 1954 science fiction short stories...

Baltimore Ravens on Fire, Need to Make Most of This Season

In the NFL's American Conference North Division are four teams, three of which I tend to route against: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, in that order of dislike.  Only the Baltimore Ravens, led by their great head coach John Harbaugh, have ever earned my following.  That Super Bowl season nearly twenty years ago with their tenacious defense, their being the only team Miami beat during the Dolphins' miserable 1-15 2007 season (and I'm grateful to them for that), and that year a little while back when they won that thrilling 35-32 Super Bowl over the San Francisco 49ers...a team I also traditionally root against, all earned my support.  It's true that in the opening game this year they pretty much humiliated "my" Miami Dolphins 59-10, but I don't hold that against the Ravens but rather upper-level Dolphins management, who openly embarked on a tanking strategy in order to accumulate high picks in the next draft. But look at how the Ravens have done in their last five games and Miami's thrashing doesn't look so bad in comparison...they handled Seattle, a regular challenger, 30-16, they handily knocked New England from the ranks of the undefeated 37-20, they routed admittedly hapless Cincinnati 49-13, they crushed a very good Houston team 41-7, and last Sunday pretty much destroyed last year's NFC champs the Los Angeles Rams 45-6.  The Ravens are a complete team on both offense and defense, but much of their success this year is being attributed to the phenomenal performance of their second-year quarterback Lamar Jackson...

Lamar Jackson, with 24 touchdown passes and only 5 interceptions this season and who is destined for a 1000+ yard rushing season, is an excellent passer, not only in his accuracy but also in reading the defense and being able to quickly adjust to it.  He also rushes a lot, and although he has borne that burden well so far, it makes me a bit squeamish whenever he tears through the line on a play and is eventually hit hard, tackled, and piled on...that's how folks get injured in the game: just ask his backup quarterback Robert Griffin III, who had a spectacular rookie season as a running/passing QB like Jackson until a late-season injury began a chain of physical problems that subsequently plagued his once-so-promising career and now has him in a second-string position.  Carolina's Cam Newton seems to be undergoing the same fate as Griffin as all those hard hits seem to have done their accumulated effect on his body...once almost invincible but now fragile.  Right now Lamar Jackson is standing high on top of the sports world...also seemingly invincible.  But somewhere down the line...and hopefully much later than sooner...I fear that the same fate will befall him that did in his colleagues Griffin and Newton.  That's why I titled this article as I did: the Baltimore Ravens are a solid first place in their division, with a current record that gets them a first-round bye in the playoffs.  They're only a game behind New England for the AFC's best record, and if they can catch up with the Patriots by year's end they'll be home until the Super Bowl since they already beat them this year.  Right now I think Baltimore and those doggone 49ers are the best teams in the NFL and my picks to make the Super Bowl...but wait, they're playing each other this Sunday!  I'm looking forward to that game, which will take place at 1 pm in Baltimore.  Go Ravens, capitalize on your present fortunes and make 2019 your year...and please, Lamar, be careful...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #370-361

Let's see, it's Monday once again, so I think I'll lay out the next ten songs on my all-time top 500 list, along with the customary commentary.  Man, do I ever like these songs...

370 NIAGARA FALLS...Sufjan Stevens
This is one of the songs on my list that was neither a standard album track nor a singles release (or B-side).  Niagara Falls can be found on Stevens' 2003 Michigan album, but only on the vinyl edition's second disc.  I discovered Sufjan Stevens in 2009 and quickly came to like much of his earlier music, including this brief and sweet, nostalgic song of childhood when he could see Niagara Falls from way off in the distance.  In today's Internet-world, Niagara Falls is pretty easy to find: the singer's mellow voice and his trademark banjo highlight it...

369 POSITIVELY FOURTH STREET...Bob Dylan
Possibly the greatest putdown song of all time, the closing line was beyond hilarious: "Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes, you'd know what a drag it is to see you".  I never did care all that much for Dylan's 1965 blockbuster hit Like a Rolling Stone, but when this song came out I had to stop and take notice.  He's got some more entries on my favorites list in weeks to come...

368 THE BITCH IS BACK...Elton John
The summer and fall of 1974 in my life was a time that I look back on as being positive and optimistic...this song captures a lot of that feeling with the singer asserting his dogged determination to succeed and those standing in the way could just step back or get bowled over.  It's one of those "I'm gonna succeed and if you don't like it, too bad" anthems along the lines of Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down.  I wish Elton had recorded more of these strong rockers...

367 GET BACK...the Beatles
The Beatles' monster hit single Get Back...sung by Paul McCartney with guest Billy Preston working wonders on the keyboard...came out in 1969, the year before their final album Let It Be was released. Get Back was a track on that album but they cut off the great ending and ruined it...listen to it from another source than Let It Be.  Back during '69 I remember strongly disliking both of the band's Abbey Road  hits Something and Come Together...it wouldn't be for another couple of years before I listened to the whole album and discovered some masterpiece tracks on it.  Get Back was more of an old-style Beatles song, very fun to listen to...

366 THE PORPOISE SONG...the Monkees
In 1968 when the Monkees recorded Head, their sixth studio album in only two years, during which time they acted in 107 Monkees TV series episodes and went on numerous publicity and concert tours and interviews, the critics panned them claiming that they were a manufactured band.  But how many award-winning, lauded musical acts since then don't write their own music or play their own instruments...the hypocrisy here is outrageous, in my opinion.  Head's The Porpoise Song is a collaborative singing effort of Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz, with a dreamy-sounding accompaniment backing them...the album was recorded after the TV series was canceled and was the soundtrack for the same-named movie starring the band. The Porpoise Song was featured in the movie Vanilla Sky...

365 WILL IT GO ROUND IN CIRCLES...Billy Preston
I enjoyed the summer of 1973, and this song was a big hit then...hence the positive associations with going to the beach.  It's also the second song on today's list Preston was involved in...look back a couple of songs.  He reminded me a bit of Stevie Wonder on this song, a great compliment to be sure.  And Will It Go Round in Circles contains one of my all-time favorite lines: "I've got a story ain't got no moral, let the bad guy win every once in a while".  This comes in handy from time to time, like when I'm watching the Alabama Crimson Tide or New England Patriots play or receiving the disappointing news on election night...

364 WONDERIN'...Neil Young
In the early 1980s, much to his recording company's chagrin and who later sued him for it, Neil Young made a string of narrowly-themed and just-as-narrowly-appreciated albums...one of these, from which Wonderin' came, was a tribute to old-time fifties rock n' roll.  But Wonderin' is Neil Young through and through, and the official music video to it is one of the funniest I've seen...and which to me is the forerunner to Peter Gabriel's artistically-styled Sledgehammer video that came out three years later...

363 WELCOME TO THE BLACK PARADE...My Chemical Romance
This song...as well as its entire 2006 concept album The Black Parade...by this indie/alternative rock band, deals with the unsettling and often taboo subject of death, especially in the accompanying official video.  It's hard to imagine, with the vivid and disturbing imagery of that video, that this piece would be a source of comfort and impart a sweet spirit as a moving tribute to someone recently deceased, but that's the impression I got from it.  One of the reasons I think death is often taboo in our society for discussion and artistic expression is the absolutist way in which religions treat the subject...all of them have their own ideas on exactly what happens and if someone comes out with a creative and imaginative treatment of it, there's not only a possibility but rather a certainly that it will garner criticism.  I thought the song stood well on its own without the video, but that video...

362 BABY LET ME TAKE YOU HOME...the Animals
Back in 1964 when as a seven-year-old brat I thought of the Animals...not the Beatles...as my favorite rock band, this great song was released in the USA following their big hit House of the Rising Sun.  I always looked forward to watching the Ed Sullivan Show when they were scheduled and on one of those evenings came to despise President Lyndon Johnson when the show...and their appearance...was preempted because of his televised nationwide address about some far-off place called Vietnam.  I still think of Eric Burdon as the greatest singer in the genre's history...it's too bad the band couldn't write their own songs the way the Beatles or Rolling Stones did...

361 SAW LIGHTNING...Beck
Saw Lightning is easily my favorite song of this year, by the accomplished LA-based alternative rock artist Beck.  The funny thing about it is that after it came out my wife Melissa and I were walking down Daytona Beach early one evening when the whole western sky erupted into lightning...kinda scary, although some dumbbell beachgoers just stood there out in the ocean staring at it all and others thought it would be just peachy recording it all on their smartphones: the two of us hauled ass back to the hotel.  Later I heard of someone out on Ormond Beach getting struck by lightning and killed...I wonder if it happened when we were out walking.  This song, with a strong blues and religious flavor, is heavy on percussion and awesome riffs...

That's it for this week...next week I'll cover songs #360-351...

Madame Engadine's Elegant Parisian Party

I'll leave you to stew a minute in speculation about the meaning of this article's title...let me just say that my recurring "presence" in that place is due in large part to the abysmally low level of quality in late night television programming when I get home from work during the week.  Other than an occasional live sports event...usually on the west coast...or a very rare South Park episode I like, I have the cable news channels with their perennial, wearisome war of words between the two main political parties...it continues in the opening segments of the popular late-night talk shows, who have substituted angry and vicious political tripe for humor, along with guest "stars" I've never heard of.  So what's left for me? Short of switching to the ambient music station...which usually sends me into a deep sleep...I head off to YouTube to watch what is probably my favorite series of all time, and more likely than not, my favorite episode of that series from the late 1960s.  It is about a British secret agent, played by the late Patrick McGoohan, who angrily resigns, get knocked out, and awakens to find himself in a prison that is in the form of a fancy resort: the Village...location unknown.  I'm speaking of course about The Prisoner, and the fantastic episode is A., B. and C.  So what does this have to do with Madame Engadine's fancy party?

In The Prisoner, the kidnapped agent is told he is now Number Six...all residents there are assigned numbers, both the inmates and wardens.  Running the Village is Number Two, presumably with the mysterious, unknown Number One on top of the ruling hierarchy.  The entire series involves attempt after attempt to lure Number Six into explaining why he resigned...but the agent refuses to break.  In A., B., and C. they come up with a scheme...through the invention of a technique that broadcasts Number Six's dreams on a television screen...to make their target dream of a popular French party he used to frequent and then have him meet in succession there three different contacts, dubbed "A.", "B.", and "C.", one of whom Number Two thinks will solve the mystery of his resignation.  It is this party, hosted by the warm and sophisticated Paris socialite Madame Engadine, that has ultimately become what I now hold to be the impossible standard of what any decent party should be.  Impossible because, after all, the good Madame obviously had a mansion and a lot of money to spend for it and most parties are on a much more modest scale.  Still, I liked hers because the guests were personally greeted and welcomed and then accorded freedom of movement and association without being corralled into overly-organized events such as the idiotic games that plague (and to me, ruin) many parties and social events.  I definitely think that Number Six liked her parties, too. Check out the episode...you may end up watching the whole seventeen-part series.  And dig that party...

Just Finished Reading The Glass Ocean by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White

The Glass Ocean is a 2018 historical fiction novel written by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.  Its focus is the May, 1915 doomed voyage of the passenger ship Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat off the coast of Ireland in the thick of World War I.  The narrative is divided between three protagonists and two times: writer Sarah Blake, with the burden of caring for her early-onset-Alzheimer's mother, is running out of money in 2013 as the proceeds of her book from five years earlier are drying up and she needs a new source of writing inspiration.  Opening up an old chest her mother was storing, Sarah discovers that her great-grandfather was employed as a steward on the Lusitania and died with it...and he left behind some papers that send her on a trail to England to unravel the mysteries surrounding that ship's last trip and demise.  The narrative shifts to 1915 and alternately...with occasional returns to 2013 and Sarah...describes the experiences of Lusitania passengers Caroline, a wealthy American industrialist's wife with a talent for the piano, and Tess, the daughter of a traveling con man who is now teaming up with her sister to commit a great forgery on the ship. The story has the name Langford to unite both eras: Robert in 1915, the dashing love interest of both women then, and his descendant John in 2013, whom Sarah has persuaded to help her with her investigation.  The authors inserted into their tale the notion that there was some significant wartime espionage going on during the ill-fated Atlantic crossing, with suspicion and fear abounding.  As with all historical fiction, I found myself wondering where the truth ended and the fiction began, finally deciding that my knowledge of the true events of the Lusitania sinking wouldn't be greatly enhanced by this tale and to simply treat this book as a good piece of adventure, mystery and romance fiction...which it was. It's not a very long book, and I think you'd enjoy it, too...

Quote of the Week...from Amy Klobuchar

I'm not going to go for things just because they sound good on a bumper sticker and then throw in a free car.  We have an obligation to have people's backs, be honest about what we can pay for, and be smart about how we do it.                                             Amy Klobuchar.

Amy Klobuchar is the senior senator from Minnesota and a Democratic candidate for president in 2020.  The above quote she made at Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate I picked up on a retweet from Utah's independent conservative Republican Evan McMullin, who "liked" her statement.  If you're ever wondering why Senator Klobuchar is my first choice among the candidates for president, what she said pretty much exemplifies my respect for her reasonability.  Not that I agree with all of her opinions...like most of the rest of the Democratic field Klobuchar tends to treat Trump like he's the most despicable creature on Earth: I'm not a personal fan of him either, but my dislike isn't to the extent of the "resisters" and I find myself agreeing with some of his positions on issues, especially those relating to national defense and border security...but then again I recognize that this election is essentially a referendum on Donald Trump and the opposition sees its own unity in terms of going after him.  The Minnesota senator has always been wildly popular in her home state, her constituents recognizing her attention to their concerns by rewarding her with repeat landslide election victories there.  Klobuchar is one of those senators who tend to steer away from "horizontal" tit-for-tat partisan politics in her role there and instead works within her caucus and with the Republicans to try and come up with bills that advance issues she deems important...which I think most Americans want our elected officials to be doing instead of whining and shoving at each other like petulant little babies.  When I'm watching C-Span2, the channel that covers live the U.S. Senate proceedings...and Senator Klobuchar takes the floor to speak, I know that I'm about to be briefed well on an important issue, with the speaker rationally presenting its pros and cons without impugning the integrity of the opposition, expressing her conclusion while encouraging others...usually on the other side of the aisle...to join her effort.  I think she would make a fantastic president and is only far back in the pack of Democratic candidates because the vast majority of her party's potential supporters are placing their current hopes in Joe Biden, who quite frankly has disappointed me so far this campaign season.  It's still a long way off from March's Florida Primary...if I had to vote right now it would be for Amy Klobuchar, although as she is such a reasonable person I don't think she'll stay in the campaign too long after Iowa and New Hampshire if her candidacy doesn't eventually catch on...

Checking Out What's Going On in "My" Pro Soccer Leagues

For this 2019-20 professional soccer season my interest in the sport has abruptly waned...I'm not quite sure why this is so, but there it is.  It's been quite some time since I tuned in to a Mexican Premier League (Liga MX) or Major League Soccer match...and I haven't watched a single English Premier League match all season.  This in spite of me having following all three leagues, many of their games available on my cable service...Mexico's is on Univision, MLS games were shown (their season's now over) on ESPN and English soccer on NBC-Sports.  Out of curiosity I checked the respective standings of these three leagues I follow...I usually ignore the rest of the world's many pro soccer leagues (although I used to lightly follow Germany's Bundesliga) to see who's doing well, who isn't, and how "my" teams are doing...

In Major League Soccer (covering the USA and Canada), whose seasons lie completely within the calendar year and thus don't need hyphenation, the 2019 season is over and the Seattle Sounders defeated Toronto in the championship playoff match on November 10.  For the regular season, Los Angeles FC had the best record and so earned this year's Supporter's Shield award.  I generally support the Portland and Orlando franchises in MLS: the former managed to squeak into the playoffs while the latter once again missed the postseason, finishing a dismal next-to-last in their division.  In Mexico's Liga MX there's only one week left in the Apertura split season for 2019-20 and then the top eight finishers (out of this season's 19 teams) will be eligible for the Liguilla championship playoffs.  My team, the UANL Tigres, has won at least one Liguilla championship in each of the previous four seasons and is again qualified for the postseason...they're fighting for a higher seed which would give them an marked advantage in the playoffs.  In the English Premier League Liverpool is undefeated so far and running away in first place from the others.  Surprisingly, "my" Leicester City is hanging on to second place...defending champs Manchester City have already suffered three losses this season and may find themselves too far behind to make up the difference in 2019-20...

I'd like to watch Tigres play in the upcoming Liguilla, but the match would need to be on the weekend and one that is actually televised.  As for English soccer, their premier league to me is the best in the world for being played at such a high level of skill, combined with a more competitive distribution of teams than is the case in other countries like Spain, Germany, France, and Italy.  If I'm going to revitalize my interest in soccer, my best bet is to make some time on Saturday to watch one of the English matches...

Weekly Short Stories: 1953 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I finish my look back at science fiction short stories from the year 1953, as selected by the editors in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953).  Two of them I've already reviewed on this blog and the last one you might already be familiar with if you're a "classic" television fan...

TIME IS THE TRAITOR by Alfred Bester
I discussed this story earlier on this blog...here's a link to that article: [link]. An uncannily accurate professional decision-maker travels the galaxy while imposing his quirky personality on everyone...including murdering any man with the name "Kruger".  His staff hire a genial ex-boxer to befriend him and root out the cause of his rage...the bribes and hush money are seriously cutting into the company's profits. One important thing I recently picked up while rereading it (for the umpteenth time): when remembering events and people from years gone by, how we ourselves have changed during that intervening span will alter those memories...something that I've been emphasizing of late in some articles...

THE WALL AROUND THE WORLD by Theodore Cogswell
Another of my favorite sci-fi tales that I've previously discussed: click on the following link: [link].  A boy living in a society based on magic that is enclosed by a vertical thousand-foot wall shows an aptitude for technology and machines, severely frowned upon by the authorities in his "world". He wants to scale the wall, whose smooth surface precludes any climbing...and the best broomsticks will only reach a certain height.  It's the ending of this story that to me made it worth reading and brought it all together...a real paradigm-shifter...

THE MODEL OF A JUDGE by William Morrison
On a minor satellite of Saturn there lives a race of savage humanoid beings who would even attack and devour people...one of them, captured, trained, and operated on to restrain his carnivorous instincts and now deemed as a trustworthy member of human society, is picked to be the judge in a baking contest among the settlers' wives.  You can almost see how this one's gonna end once you get all the needed info about the protagonist...it all hinges on a metaphor somebody inadvertently blurts out...

HALL OF MIRRORS by Fredric Brown
A cyclic time-travel story with a special twist, I was impressed with both the logic and resigned decision-making of the protagonist...who incidentally turns out to be the only character.  I also felt that although the story itself gave a couple of examples of time travel into the past, its main thrust...that of time-travel into the future, might well be manageable at some time in the "future".  Given what happened to the time traveler, what decision would you make...and how certain would you be that you would "always" make it?  Check out the story to decipher all these cryptic remarks of mine...

IT'S A GOOD LIFE by Jerome Bixby
This story was adapted into a famous Twilight Zone episode starring the later series Lost in Space's Billy Mumy as a little boy in a rural midwestern American town...complete with surrounding cornfields...who is born with god-like abilities of mind-reading, telekinesis, and the ability to transmute matter.  The point, I think, of this tale was that it can sometimes be a good thing that babies and little children are relatively helpless because of their utter lack of social understanding and inability to see the consequences of their actions.  The written version, which I read first before seeing it on TV, is more sympathetic to little Anthony as he prefers reading the simple minds of the little animals around him and likes to construct places they enjoy going to...the Twilight Zone kid is just simply a little monster with hardly any redeeming qualities...

Next week I'll begin looking at science fiction short stories from 1954...