Quote of the Week...from Stephen King in 11/22/63

Humans were built to look back; that's why they have that swivel joint in their necks.

                                                            ---Stephen King, from his novel 11/22/63

Stephen King's 2011 novel 11/22/63 is my favorite of his...one of my all-time favorite books.  I just finished reading it for the fifth time...seems that I can't stay away from it too long. The premise here is something worked over a number of times in fiction: the desire to go into the past at pivotal moments of history and change that history.  You might have already guessed...if you haven't yet read the novel yourself...that in this story it's the John F. Kennedy assassination that is the targeted outcome.  The opportunity for time travel presents itself through what Maine diner owner Al Templeton calls a "rabbit hole" he discovered in the pantry of his newly relocated establishment, a portal taking him back in time from 2011 to 1958 that offers him the convenience of also returning to the present.  Originally blown away by the novelty of escaping into the past, Al hits upon the idea of buying ground beef cheap back in 1958 and bringing it back to 2011, thereby seriously underselling all his competitors in the area with his business's delicious, cheap hamburgers.  But eventually he realizes that 1958 isn't that far off from 1963, and he sets out to prevent JFK's assassination.  Unable to fulfill his task due to declining health, he returns to the present and passes his cause on to Jake Epping, a divorced writer who is the first-person narrator and the novel's protagonist.  The above quote is one of the book's many musings, aimed at our tendency to become obsessed with the past.  I've discussed this novel repeatedly on this blog...today I'd like to look at the notion of regret and people's desires to go back at a specific time in their lives and change how they went about doing things, thinking from the benefit of hindsight that by so doing the entire rest of their life would change substantially for the better.  But as King laid out in this story, once you go back in the past and alter something, all bets are off as to what will then ensue...for a completely new future will then follow, one that the time traveler has no notion of how to cope with.  You go back and make one thing better, but the result causes a cascade of unintended consequences that can be much worse than the original regret.  Better to see one's past failures...as well as those historical tragedies of bygone years...as necessary, essential parts of the great tapestry that today defines who we are individually and collectively. On the other hand, I find imaginary time travel a useful mental self-improvement tool.  Say for example I wish that I had studied in high school more assiduously and maintained a disciplined regimen of homework, setting up "shop" at our dining room table going through certain established daily routines.  I can't go back to 1971, but I can still incorporate those thoughts into the present in other areas of my life... 

Puzzled by the FDA's Pause of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccinations

I was watching the Food and Drug Administration give their recommendation Tuesday morning in favor of pausing the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against COVID-19, based on the documented occurrence of six cases, one fatal and one in critical condition, of women age 18-48 suffering blood clotting out of over 7 million vaccinations of the product overall.  As Jim Sciutto on CNN pointed out, what kind of math are these people doing in this regard?  There are already more than 31 million documented cases of COVID in America in a little more than a year, during the same time in which 564,000 people DIED from it...so far.  And another wave with a virulent strain has hit the country, focusing on the Midwest with hospitals in some localities filling up.  How many deaths will result, I wonder, from this "pause" where vaccine shortages will keep people from getting the protection they would have otherwise received?  Having witnessed something similar recently in Europe with their interruption of that region's predominant AstraZeneca vaccine in the midst of a serious upsurge in infections, it completely escapes me as to why the authorities would take such a step, other than just to cover themselves in the event of a future backlash of hindsight criticism.  They say it's to review the clotting cases and formulate an improved policy of administering the J & J vaccine only to those groups less susceptible to the clotting side effect, but really, how much time do they need to take to figure this out and why stop the process at all?  Problems and emergencies arise in life and there are snags...I get it...but the consequences of delay can be catastrophic: what if the folks at NASA had displayed the same attitude around this time 51 years ago during the Apollo 13 mission when an onboard explosion threatened the lives of its crew?  Well, "we just need to 'pause' it all and conduct a review" would have been rightly considered absurd under the circumstances back then! If you say that one woman's death is one too many (and I agree that any death is tragic), then I return again to the math: how does that make the deaths of many more less important if the vaccine is withheld? The FDA claims that there will be enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to fill the gap left by the absence of expected Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but to me it seems there is a logistical problem here, especially when you consider that J & J was strategically being used to reach places where the other two, with their more stringent refrigeration requirements, were less feasible and accessible.  Of course in Europe with AstraZeneca they had no backup vaccine brands to fall back on, making their earlier decision to hold up vaccinations even that much worse in effect on the suffering population.  All I've been hearing on the news is how we're in a dire race against time to to get to "herd immunity" before this pandemic can sprout variations against which the vaccines won't work.  But now suddenly...at least in this case...that doesn't seem to matter, go figure.  At last report Dr. Fauci says the pause will last days, not months...but it's still a real-time problem with the clock ticking and people's lives at stake, with the mathematics going against that decision to pause.  Do your review if you think it's necessary...but don't disrupt the vaccination efforts with big public fanfare while empowering the anti-vaxxers. When Johnson & Johnson is resumed and they get their production back in order, how many will pass on it because of this decision when they would have otherwise been vaccinated...

Weekly Short Stories: 1970 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I'm continuing my review of 1970 science fiction short stories as they appearing in the book World's Best Science Fiction 1971, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and focusing on what they saw as the elite tales from the previous year.   For me 1970 was a seriously challenging year, to put it diplomatically.  No, let me put it bluntly: it was categorically the worst year of my life...partially due to the circumstances I was living through (13-14 years old with a specifically hostile academic and social environment) and partially due to my reaction to those circumstances.  If you're confronted with difficulties and personal storms, there's nothing worse than the sinking feeling that you are helpless in dealing with them...and that's how I generally felt back then, being expected by many to confront adversity with my hands tied behind my back.  But in the tapestry that is my cumulative life with all its experiences and lessons, that troublesome year was instructive and invaluable...in retrospect I feel myself blessed and enriched by having lived through it: after all, everybody's got a "worst year ever" and if '70 was my worst then I must have done pretty well.  And now my reviews of three more sci-fi stories from 1970...

WATERCLAP by Isaac Asimov

On Earth of the not-too-distant future (from 1970's perspective) the moon has been settled and people born and raised there...on our overcrowded planet the ocean's deeps are also being explored and settled.  Space and the sea bottom are competing for government funding amid a dulled and apathetic population, turned inward on itself...hey, kind of like the way it is nowadays!  Sensing that his lunar settlements are being threatened by the promotion of oceanic development, a Lunar man goes deep in a bathyscaphe to visit one of those ocean floor installations, ostensibly as a safety expert but really to sabotage the operations there.  This story gives a pretty reasonable picture of what such an undersea settlement might look like and how it would operate.  When we finally get to the point where they are built and house populations, I wonder if the scientists and engineers will draw upon Asimov's old tale from over fifty years ago...

CONTINUED ON NEXT ROCK by R.A. Lafferty

The reader needs to take care approaching this story, which is more a cryptic puzzle than an actual flowing narrative.  Six people working on a archaeological dig site progressively uncover newer relics on the chimney rock formation...opposite of what should be as lower finds are supposed to be further in the past.  They keep digging up inscriptions that use graphically gross and violent language in the context of "love".  And the workers themselves are problematic, each one also a puzzle, especially the psychic young woman Magdalen and the mysteriously appearing man Anteros.  But the professional archaeologists themselves display peculiar behavior as the dig site seems to be working profound changes on them.  I have a problem with stories like this that seem to be deliberately written to confuse me...other readers for some reason think they're the pinnacle of art, though...

THE THING IN THE STONE by Clifford Simak

Following a devastating car accident three years earlier in which a man lost his wife and daughter...and suffered a brain injury...he has been living in isolation on his Wisconsin farm, caring for his livestock and having to deal with a very contemptuous (and contemptible) neighbor to keep him. He has discovered...probably due to that injury...that from time to time he not only can picture the surrounding countryside as it existed eons earlier, but can also listen to the stars.  But more than any of this, from a cave embedded within a cliff on his property he can hear the thoughts of a strange intelligent being trapped in the stone hundreds of feet below.  Aside from how this all is resolved at the end, my main take from this story by my favorite science fiction writer is the juxtaposition of two clashing philosophies: the contemplative, contented and guileless protagonist and his materialistic, jealous and scheming neighbor.  It reminded me of a novel I think I first read back in 1970: James Hilton's Lost Horizon, which presented a similar philosophical contrast between two key characters...

Next week: more from the year 1970 in short science fiction...

Game of the Week: Jumanji

 

I first became aware of the 1995 adventure movie Jumanji...based on the same-titled 1981 children's book by Chris Van Allsburg...while shopping in the late 90s at my local Sam's Club store, then on NW 13th Street.  They were promoting their big-screen television sets and were playing it on DVD...I was impressed with the movie's special effects, especially the stampeding wild animals, to the point that I wasn't all that into shopping that day.  Later on I got to see the entire movie, which starred Robin Williams as a boy from 1969 stuck within a sinister, supernatural board game for 27 years, finally rescued from his dangerous jungle confinement when two other kids hit upon the game and begin playing it in 1996.  Jumanji, one of my favorites, had its spinoffs and remakes, all of which I have consciously avoided; I have also stayed clear of recent versions of classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, and Total Recall...to name a few.  But I did go back and read Allsburg's original book, 35 pages long and about half of which are full-page pictures.  His story is simpler as a brother and sister take home the Jumanji game they found under a tree in their nearby park and play it when their parents go out...it wreaks havoc in the house as each roll of the dice brings forth dangerous animals and manifestations, threatening them and wrecking the house: but like Doctor Seuss's classic The Cat in the Hat, all is made well before mom and dad get back home.  The movie version is more complicated with subplots abounding, both in the 1969 and 1996 time settings.  It was well-acted, funny, suspenseful, intriguing, and compelling...a great mix.  Since this blog feature is about games, this may be the weirdest entry since Jumanji cannot, by dint of being magical in nature, be a real game.  But it takes the outward form of one of those board games (like Parcheesi, for example), where the contestants advance their tokens along the path on the board with each roll of the dice and deal with the consequences of where they land, until the ultimate winner gets to the center of the board, representing the golden city of Jumanji, and chants that name, ending the game and reversing all the mayhem.  Then the players, thereafter understandably wary of this traumatic game, bind it up and get rid of it...but of course Jumanji eventually makes its convoluted way to another set of players.  Jumanji, although very, very problematic while being played, nevertheless served as a great catalyst for transforming the lives of its players and directing them to what should be their priorities...the best games will do that, though I think I'll take a pass on the lions, giant mosquitoes, stampedes, bats, murderous hunters, spiders, predatory plants, crazy monkeys, floods and earthquakes, thank you...

Life is Sometimes Like Being on Jury Duty in a Never-Ending Trial

The current televised murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin over the death-in-custody of black resident George Floyd last April has brought back memories of the times I was drafted into jury duty over the past few years.  I detest serving on juries so much that I studiously avoid watching these public trials and always avoid those annoying "Judge Bozo" types of programs...heck, I won't even watch Perry Mason!  I never was on a jury detail when either my workplace or the court's clerical staff didn't make my jury duty documentation difficult for me to return to work afterwards...so many times have I sat there in the courtroom or stood outside in the hallway in a state of anxiety wondering if I was getting into trouble for doing something I was required by law to do...instead of actually paying my full attention to the proceedings.  The uncertainty and open-endedness involved in jury selection is very problematic as well...I go there with no clue as to what my future will be for the rest of the week and possibly further on.  The attorneys arguing both sides of the case in question never cease to irritate me with their self-importance...they remind me of an old classmate of mine in high school who used his debate skills to intimidate others (including me).  And I have never to date deliberated as a juror on a case in which there was an obvious witness or crucial piece of evidence that wasn't deliberately withheld from the jurors' consideration...so as a result the verdict probably didn't reflect what the judge, lawyers, defendant and probably a few witnesses actually knew to be true about the case.  Also, in every jury experience I've had there was always a pain-in-the-ass fellow juror trying to prod everyone else into giving a quick verdict...as if the rest of us had nowhere else we'd rather be.  But even though it's been more than two years since I was last subjected to this humiliation, I have noticed that in some ways just going through my day-to-day experiences in life mirrors some things about serving on juries.  I don't think there is a social institution I've ever been involved with in which important information hasn't been withheld from me...yet I am held accountable nonetheless to exhibit proper judgment in my actions and speech.  The entire legal/law-enforcement environment prevalent in the courthouse is designed to humble people...just as so many other institutions seek to control people like herded sheep.  The behavior of the opposing attorneys toward witnesses, depending on whether they support or oppose their case, hits me hard: if a witness agrees with the questioning attorney then they are honest and decent...if they offer testimony running counter to the "agenda" then they are cast as liars and...well, maybe deluded or confused.  Isn't this how the hosts on TV opinion shows and talk radio treat people of different political persuasions?  So no, I'm not too keen on jury duty, and I'm more than a little cynical about the way our society seems to be structured to manipulate and control me in ways similar to being a drafted juror...then again I've always been pretty much a solitary type anyway and naturally suspicious of those trying to put their hooks in me...

Great Old TV Episodes...from Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

                                  

THE LOST WORLDS OF PLANET EARTH is Episode #9 of the thirteen-part 2014 television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.  Narrated by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, this series resurrected the spirit of the original Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, from 1980 and featuring the late astronomer Carl Sagan.  The Cosmos series are an excellent introduction to science and the history of scientific discoveries and those who made them...this particular episode is no exception.  It focuses upon a subject that has always fascinated me: Earth's cataclysmic mass extinctions, of which the Permian Extinction was the most severe.  It occurred about 250 million years ago, wiping out some 90% of the world's species and caused by massive supervolcano eruptions over the course of hundreds of thousands of years in what is now Siberia and their toxic interaction with masses of underground coal deposits and undersea methane stores.  This episode also goes into the late Cretaceous meteor strike that caused another mass extinction including that of the dinosaurs, the development of the theory of plate tectonics that explained continental drift, and how gravitational effects from other planets may have influenced our past ice ages.  Tyson, like his predecessor Sagan, is a compelling and effective communicator: I highly recommend both the 1980 and 2014 series. Last year a third Cosmos series (subtitled Possible Worlds) also aired, but I have yet to see any of its episodes, again hosted by Tyson.  When I was a kid in elementary school, we had a film series presented by Bell Science with Dr. Frank Baxter as its host, produced in the late 1950s and early 60s for television.  I feel that Cosmos is the continuation of a great tradition of popularizing science that these old programs began... 

Just Finished Reading (Again) The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

I first read thriller fiction writer Robert Ludlum's 1980 novel The Bourne Identity in 2013...never got around to read the entire trilogy, though.  Recently I ran across the same-named 2002 movie starring Matt Damon in the TV listings, so I decided to take the plunge and read all three books, starting by rereading the first one.  In it a young man finds himself shot repeatedly out in the Mediterranean Sea in a boat, and then loses his memory of who he is as well as his past...yet he retains great fighting and espionage skills.  A disgraced expatriate English doctor cares for him and gives him the implant removed from his hip giving an Swiss bank account number...the man after six months of recovery goes that Zurich bank in search of his own identity.  While discovering he is apparently "Jason Bourne" with several million dollars to his account, he is also pursued by gunmen bent on killing him.  He takes as hostage a Canadian woman who is in Zurich for an economics convention...the two have their adventures, which point to Paris as the next logical place.  The background for this story is that of Carlos, an international terrorist/assassin who apparently really existed...Ludlum opened his novel with real newspaper accounts.  As Jason...or whoever he is...gradually learns more about himself, he becomes gravely concerned that he, too, is a terrorist.  His connections with American intelligence become revealed as well as his past leading up to the present crisis.  I felt that the author did a masterful job at presenting his characters...be they good or bad...as complex people, each with their own stories and perspectives.  After finishing it (again), I checked out that 2002 movie from my library and began to watch it, only to discover that it bore very little similarity to the book other than the characters Jason Bourne and Alexander Conklin and that even those two had vastly differently personalities and backgrounds.  Yes, there was a wounded, amnesiac Bourne rescued at sea and Zurich and Paris...American intelligence was involved here, too, but in the movie it was presented as more cutthroat and amoral, not at all like in the book.  So I say that if you haven't experienced The Bourne Identity in either book or movie form, go for the book first.  That's not to say that the acting and action in the movie wasn't excellent and gripping: it's simply a different story.  My plan now, though, is to skip the movie sequels and just stick with Ludlum's books...

Quote of the Week...from Zbigniew Brzezinski

Anniversaries are like birthdays: occasions to celebrate and think ahead, usually among friends with whom one shares not only the past but the future.                        ---Zbigniew Brzezinski

Why am I publishing a quote about anniversaries?  Because this blog of mine is 14 years old today.  During that span I have written 4,654 articles about a wide variety of topics...while living my life one day at a time.  Every now and then I go back and read earlier articles, expecting to find material I now strongly disagree with or find embarrassing, either for my opinions or writing style.  But although I often find grammatical and word usage errors to correct, beyond that I leave it as it is, instead marveling at how much I do still agree with my past writings...the greatest divergence usually happens when I've praised a public figure, usually a politician, only to later feel betrayed by their subsequent behavior or words.  As a reader you are invited to read any of these articles, going back to April 2007, and send comments to me on them: I have comment moderation primarily to avoid spam comments, and will then publish them unless you desire to keep them private...also, I believe you need to be on the blog's web version (not the phone app) to place comments.  And you're welcome to comment anonymously if you prefer.  Thank you for taking some time out of your life to read it and I hope it will be interesting for you in the future.  By the way, Brzezinski was Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981 and passed away in 2017...his daughter Mika is married to Joe Scarborough and co-hosts their morning MSNBC show...

China, Russia, and the USA: It's Complicated

Although I was a history major in college, I make no claim to be an expert in that area...or in the highly complicated field of international relations.  But it should be clear to anyone that for the United States, China and Russia represent serious challenges.  Both are vast autocratic nations with great military power and highly developed intelligence services, designed both to steal business and government secrets as well as unduly manipulating American public opinion through false plants in social media.  Both nations have demonstrated aggression in their foreign policy...one might claim that we in America have as well...and to an extent the argument can be made that as great nations they are asserting themselves within their respective spheres of influence.  But as I see it, both Russia and China are much, much more sensitive to American and Western criticism of their treatment of their own people than of their foreign policy.  I think the reason is clear: neither nation sees much of a military threat from others, but their respective regimes depend on suppressing any dissent within their borders from catching on and growing into a movement that challenges their hold on power. Trump never called Russia on its internal human rights abuses, but after Biden became president relations between the two countries have cooled considerably...our President, as Head of State, should have been more reserved with his comment about Russian president Putin.  China brokers no criticism whatsoever of their reported policies toward Hong Kong, the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and their role in the COVID-19 outbreak, often invoking charges of racism in regard to their critics.  Since last year the United States have seen a sharp increase in assaults and intimidation of Americans of Asian descent, the main reason seeming to be that they are somehow to blame for the coronavirus pandemic as scapegoats.  Equating the actions of a foreign country or organization with its primary ethnic composition and acting in a hostile, racist way isn't new: following 9/11 nearly twenty years ago, Americans appearing to be Middle Eastern...even Sikhs...were exposed to attack and harassment, as if any of them had anything remotely to do with the events in the news.  President Trump kept calling COVID-19 the "China Virus", but his sloppy criticism was always directed at the communist Chinese state and what he saw as its mishandling of the initial outbreak in Wuhan along with suppressed and misleading reporting henceforth.  And here's an interesting problem: if people criticize the Russian government and policies, nobody says they are racist or are inciting people to attack Americans of Russian ancestry...after all, most of them are white and blend into the background population.  But critics of China's policies often find themselves wrongly accused of prejudice against Chinese people, an idea which that government itself promotes.  Russia and China clearly have adversarial relationships with America, but we also have productive, positive relationships in different areas.  In space exploration, Russia and the USA have cooperated throughout the bumpy roads the two countries have gone through over the years, and with China we do an incredible amount of business (like both Trump and Biden, I think some of the ground rules need reform, though).  And that's the way it should be, if great, rival nations like these three are to live together in peace with each other.  Should I ever find myself privileged to visit Russia or China, it will not be my role while there to criticize their political systems or leaders but rather to comply within the parameters of what it means to be a guest in a different culture while under its authority during the course of my stay.  Do I wish they had more democratic political systems and greater individual liberties? Sure, but I also know that this is my country and they have theirs.  As an American I reserve my right to give my opinion about any government and its leaders...especially my own.  But that commentary does not necessarily imply condemnation...on the contrary, I like both Russia and China and their people, to the extent where I have extensively studied both the Russian and Chinese languages: they are great societies with absorbing histories and much to offer the rest of the world...

Weekly Short Stories: 1970 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I move into another decade from the past, the seventies, as I beginning examining sci-fi short stories from 1970 as they appeared in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1971, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and featuring their selections from the previous year.  By early '70, President Nixon's honeymoon period in office was clearly over as the country erupted in protests and a "moratorium" over his decision to invade Cambodia and enlarge the scope of the Vietnam War: the Kent State shootings were a tragic byproduct.  Also, Earth Day began...I remember a witty little song on the radio, The Pollution Song, which went like this: "If you visit American city, you may find it very pretty.  Just two things of which you must beware: don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!"  Around the time that spring when this song was getting airplay, Apollo 13 made its fateful voyage, the crew's lives saved after an onboard explosion in space and some very quick, innovative thinking by the three astronauts and those on the ground.  Here are my takes on four stories from that year...

SLOW SCULPTURE by Theodore Sturgeon

A middle-age man living in rural isolation tends to his estate with its plants and his experiments...in his home is a bonsai tree, which requires more than mere caretaking if it is to be "sculptured".  A young woman, distraught that she may have cancer, visits him one day and he offers a cure.  His brilliance on so many levels intrigues her and she wonders why he hasn't made his genius more available to others.  His response hit me hard, for I have during much of my life experienced reactions similar to what he had gone through: the feeling that anything I said or did of quality value either went down like a lead balloon, was simply ignored, or interpreted in the most cynical light to make me look bad.  The man healed the woman...and now it's her turn to heal him.  The bonsai in the story serves as an analogy to a workable philosophy of living.  I can see why the editors chose to lead off with this compelling tale...

BIRD IN THE HAND by Larry Niven

An appropriate story for the budding environmental movement (see my above introduction) as it is far off into the future and Earth's atmosphere and water are polluted to the point of being poisonous...the small variety of life that remains, including humans, have biologically adapted to be able to breathe carbon dioxide-saturated air.  All of Earth and its extraterrestrial settlements are ruled by the Secretary General, now a hereditary position currently (in the story) occupied by an intellectually challenged boy.  The Institute for Temporal Research, concerning itself with time travel, is in a rivalry for influence against Space...to enhance its own image, its agents go back in time to find old extinct animals like elephants or ostriches to copy and bring back for the ruler's private museum...they discover that the ostrich is an example of neotenous evolution, which to me as an frustrated reader of time travel tales was a refreshing new theme that seemed to have possibilities.  A glitch in an effort to recover the "first car" accidentally cleans up the air in the "present", causing all kinds of problems, including with the bird which has genetically altered to grow into its full adult form as a roc...

ISHMAEL IN LOVE by Robert Silverberg

An interspecies love story, uniquely written from a dolphin's perspective as he pines for his human female companion, an expert on relating to his form of life.  Ishmael, as she has named him after Melville's opening line in Moby Dick, works to clear ducts at a water condensation plant at St. Croix in the Caribbean.  He receives as pay all the fish he can eat as well as books and instruction: Ishmael is literate and well-learned.  His perspective on what makes his crush so attractive from his dolphin perspective is hilarious yet profound...some of our human standards for attractiveness do seem a little arbitrary when you think about it.  I enjoyed this more humorous tale on unrequited love...

INVASION OF PRIVACY by Bob Shaw

Set in the present time, a man's seven year old son recounts to his parents his experience at the local small town's old, abandoned and dilapidated haunted house, having looked into a window one night and seen several seniors sitting around alive in a lighted room...including his recently deceased grandmother.  The boy falls ill and is taken for care by the elderly family doctor.  The father investigates and finds himself going down a rabbit hole of body-snatching and conspiracy...you alien abduction fans and conspiracy theorists would love this tale of someone caught up to the point where he wonders how far down that hole goes...and then makes an interesting decision at the end.  This story had a Steven King horror feel to it...

Next week I continue my look at science fiction short stories from 1970...

Game of the Week: Sagrada

 

Sagrada is a board game invented in 2017 by Daryl Andrews and Adrian Adamescu and produced and distributed by Floodgate Games.  We just recently got it for ourselves and I played my first game with Melissa a couple of weeks ago...1-4 players can play.  There are different sets of cards that are used different ways in the game and which dictate what a player's strategy will be as he or she, over the course of 10 rounds, gradually fills in their "window", essentially a 5x4 grid of squares with colored dice drawn at random from a sack.  There's a good mixture of strategy, skill and luck in this game...although imposing at first, it didn't take me very long to pick up on the rules, to my surprise: now it's part of our regular game rotation between Melissa, me, and occasionally our grown son Will, who likes these kinds of board games.  It's graphically made to look like stained glass windows, and the grids you see the dice resting on in the above photo are really interchangeable, insertable cards that have different patterns on them that govern which dice can be placed where.  The three beige cards, along with the three others below them near the photo's center, vary for each game, so the players have to adjust their tactics for amassing the most points...each new game is therefore uniquely different!  There's even a free phone app for Sagrada out there, but I have yet to try it: I have enough phone app games as it is and Sagrada for me is simply a good way to socialize with my loved ones...

Updated Cumulative Running Race Record

About five years ago I posted a list of running races I had participated in from 20o7...when I resumed running as a personal interest...up to that time in early 2016.  Below I have updated that list to include not only what I've done since, but also those ignominious very early races I had in high school, community college...and one mysterious event I ran in during the summer of 1976.  More than 32 years elapsed between that race and my next one...the most recent gap on the list...following my December 7, 2019 race...happily ended this past Saturday with a local 5K run, but most races around me are still suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. By the way, in listing the specific distances of the different races, m-"miles", K="kilometers", M="marathon" and HM="half-marathon".  Each line displays the date, distance, my finishing time, the event's name, and its location (Gainesville sites are pinpointed within the city)...

3-23-73        2m       11:56      Nova HS at Piper track meet  Piper High School, Ft. Lauderdale

4-10-73         2m       11:35      Broward Country South Division Meet    S. Broward HS, Dania

11-27-74      ~2m      ??            Turkey Trot  (BCC)    Davie, FL

11-?-75      ~2m      ??            Turkey Trot (BCC)      Davie, FL

7-?-76      ~5m      ??            -unknown-                  Hollywood, FL   

10-04-08    5K       25:10      Red Cross                 University of Florida

10-18-08    5K       24:07      Hope Heels               Westside Park

11-01-08    5K       24:28      Dog Days                   Westside Park
2-14-10     HM    2:17:10     Five Points of Life       Gainesville
3-27-10     15K    1:23:55    Climb for Cancer         Haile Plantation
4-24-10      5K        23:05     Run Amuck                  NFR Office Park
5-22-10      5K        25:00     Somer's Sunshine Run  Orange Park
6-05-10      5K        23:23     Cpt. Chad Reed Mem.   Cross City
7-04-10      3m        23:04     Melon Run                    Westside Park
11-16-10    HM    2:01:41    Tom Walker Memorial  Hawthorne Trail
1-23-11      M       6:04:35    Ocala Marathon             South of Paddock Mall
11-12-11    HM    1:59:38    Tom Walker Memorial  Hawthorne Trail
1-01-12      HM    1:56:07    De Leon Springs          De Leon Springs
7-04-12      3m        25:45     Melon Run                     Westside Park
11-22-12   10K       53:10     Turkey Trot                    Tacachale
1-20-13      HM    1:55:20    Ocala Half-Marathon     South of Paddock Mall
3-03-13      HM    1:50:53    Orange Blossom             Tavares
11-09-13    2m     untimed    Gator Gallop                   University Ave, SW 2nd Ave
2-01-14      5K        25:53     Education for Life          Westside Park
2-16-14      HM    2:07:36    Five Points of Life          Gainesville
11-27-14   10K        56:56    Turkey Trot                    Tacachale
12-12-14    HM    2:03:30    Starlight Half-Marathon  Palm Coast
1-31-15     15K    1:18:21    Newnan's Lake            West of Newnan's Lake
2-15-15     HM     1:58:48    Five Points of Life          Gainesville
3-14-15     10K        56:24    Run for Haven                Tioga
12-05-15   6.5m   1:03:52    Lumber Around the Levee   Micanopy
1-30-16     15K    1:31:20    Newnan's Lake            West of Newnan's Lake
3-12-16     10K       59:00    Run for Haven             Tioga
5-14-16       5K       28:36    May Day Glow Run        Tioga

7-4-16         3m      28:22    Melon Run                       Westside Park

11-24-16    10K    1:01:13    Turkey Trot                    Tacachale

2-26-17     HM    2:24:29    Five Points of Life        Gainesville

3-11-17      10K        58:45   Run for Haven              Tioga

5-21-17        5K        33:00   May Day Glow Run       Tioga

1-27-18       15K    1:38:41    Newnan's Lake          West of Newnan's Lake

2-18-18    HM      2:19:37    Five Points of Life        Gainesville

3-17-18        5K        29:17    Chris Lacinak Scholarship  Gainesville

12-8-18      15K     1:37:33    Season of Hope        Hawthorne Trail

1-5-19          5K        30:00    Depot Parkrun           Depot Park

2-9-19         5K        30:36    Depot Parkrun           Depot Park

3-16-19       5K        31:16     Miles for Meridian      Tioga

4-27-19      10K    1:01:52    Run the Good Race       NFR Office Park

5-5-19         5K        30:38    May Day Glow Run      Jonesville

11-10-19    HM    2:35:20   Tom Walker Memorial   Hawthorne Trail

11-28-19    10K    1:02:16    Turkey Trot                    Tacachale

12-7-19      15K    1:35:48    Season of Hope         Hawthorne Trail

4-3-21         5K        32:40    Headwaters                Headwaters Park

5-29-21      5K        30:50    Depot Parkrun            Depot Park

6-12-21       5K        33:06    Depot Parkrun            Depot Park

12-4-21       5K        33:03    Depot Parkrun            Depot Park

Great Old TV Episodes....from The Avengers

THE LIVING DEAD is one of my favorite episodes from the British spy series The Avengers starring Patrick McNee as John Steed and Diana Rigg as Emma Peel.  This series was already on for years in the early 1960s with Honor Blackman teaming up with McNee, but she quit to go into films (like Goldfinger) and Rigg, her replacement, was so wildly popular that in America ABC decided in 1966 to cancel their own similar series Honey West and replace it with this British import.  With Mrs. Peel on board, it was one of my favorite series then...and now as well, so much that when I recently bought the complete set of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. series on DVD, I also bought all the episodes of The Avengers featuring Rigg.  The Living Dead first aired in early 1967 and in retrospect seems like an improved remake of an earlier episode, The Town of No Return.  In a small English town with an abandoned mine due to a fatal accident a few years earlier, one of those thought to have died in it has been seen rising up out of the grave...and ringing the church bells!  Steed and Peel arrive to investigate, and their trail seems to involve murder and ultimately a sophisticated conspiracy that threatens the country.  I loved the suspenseful climactic scene at the end: one of our heroes is running out of time while the other fights their way to a last second rescue.  Well, it was suspenseful the first time I saw it...

Today's Florida Track Club Headwaters 5K

 

This morning my running race drought...the last race was in December 2019...ended with a 5K event hosted by the Florida Track Club at Hogtown Creek Headwaters Nature Park here in northern Gainesville a short distance from my home.  A couple of weeks ago I checked out FTC's website to see what they were doing in the midst of this COVID period and discovered that they were holding races...last month they held both a marathon/half marathon and a 10K trail race.  I became a member for a year's span at $30, which gives me some free races as well as discounts on others.  I had never been to Headwaters Park before...it's on NW 45th Avenue just west of US 441 (NW 13th Street in Gainesville).  As the pictured sign indicates, it has its own trail...but our race course had us leaving the park and going down 45th Avenue past Norton Elementary School to 24th Boulevard, turning right on NW 53rd Avenue, turning right soon thereafter on a bike trail that led back the 45th Avenue and back to the park...nice course: I might just use it in the future for training runs!  The race, which didn't use chips with the runners' finishing times simply recorded on paper at the finishing line, began at 8.  It was an unusually cold morning for this time of year with temperatures in the low 40s...I started out with a light jacket that I took off almost halfway through.  I ran a relaxed, consistent pace throughout, finishing with a time of 32:40.  There weren't too many runners entered, so I didn't have to be concerned about overcrowding.  FTC provided water, Starbucks coffee, bananas, and packaged breakfast foods for us after the race was over.  As for COVID protocols, most of the entrants I saw never wore masks and quite a few seemed oblivious to social distancing.  Still, at the starting line when we were more or less bunched together, a few "fellow travelers" and I put on our masks until the race began...as did the FTC volunteer starting the race.  All of the people there, especially the Florida Track Club organizers, were super-friendly and supportive...I'm looking forward to the next event!

Just Finished Reading Later by Stephen King

Later, just published last month, is the latest novel by the legendary horror writer Stephen King, and it fits that genre well. As his books generally go, it's not very long...and with the protagonist recounting its events in the first person I read it feeling that at least he, young Jamie Conklin, wasn't going to be in mortal danger, all indications at times to the contrary.  Jamie, living in New York City with his single mother Tia, who is struggling in the publishing industry to make ends meet for them, states up front that he sees and can converse with dead people, naturally bringing to my mind that kid in the movie The Sixth Sense with similar "talents".  But Jamie denies the similarity and lays out the way the encounters go: the dead are usually found in places they are used to being in, seem to recognize his awareness of them, and must answer his questions truthfully.  At first his mother doesn't believe he sees the recently deceased, but an encounter in Central Park with an accident victim changes all that.  Jamie's secret was to be between just the two of them, but circumstances give mom what turns out to be a really bad idea, as she enlists his help in talking to a newly dead writer.  The secrecy bubble gets burst...just enough for another person to pick up on Jamie's abilities, eventually putting his life and others' in danger.  The story jumps from incident to incident, starting when the narrator is 6 and ending at the "present" when he is 22.  As I said (and Jaime as well), this is a horror story...but also one about crime and desperation. Sometimes you really don't know someone until you experience them with their back against the wall and nowhere to go...with you as their only way out.  Maybe that aspect of Later is scarier than all the grotesque imagery Stephen King presents here.  I liked the book and I think I left enough out of the review to where I think you might as well...

Quote of the Week...from Dean Karnazes

Modern man has virtually everything one could desire, but too often we’re still not fulfilled. “Things” don’t bring happiness. Some of my finest moments came while running down the open road, little more than a pair of shoes and shorts to my name. A runner doesn’t need much. Thoreau once said that a man’s riches are based on what he can do without. Perhaps in needing less, you’re actually getting more.

                                                                                       ---Dean Karnazes

I've never been much of a materialist and don't quite relate with those who are...when it comes to material affluence, I believe in the concept of "enough".  Enough to eat, enough shelter, enough transportation, enough whatever. Investing great amounts of time, effort and attention at going far beyond that has never made much sense to me...besides, I've discovered that the greatest things in life don't cost much or involve accumulating "stuff".  I've long been a fan of ultra-distance runner Dean Karnazes, whose autobiographical book Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, is on my Kindle and often referred to.  Running is the ultimate nonmaterialism activity, in my opinion.  Karnazes lays out his life philosophy in this book. Being pretty successful by the world's standards in both academics and business, he realized at a crucial point in his life...specifically his 30th birthday...that the materialistic dog-eat-dog, keep up with the Joneses version of the American dream was empty and meaningless.  And he returned to his earlier love of running and never looked back.  I can relate to his experiences, although to be perfectly frank I don't think I ever bought into the consumer society to which the vast majority of those around me seem to be in bondage.  And some of my own finest moments have also come while running down the open road...if you've never run distance you probably don't know what I'm talking about.  Not that you can't spend a bit of money on running...and I do to the extent that I invest in good shoes (I'm in need of a new pair), have a gym membership that I plan to use more when the pandemic abates, and likewise enter a fair number of races which should hopefully resume in the not-too-distant future.  But to just step out my door and trudge down the road on my own course: priceless...       

My March 2021 Running and Walking Report

For March I ran a total of 114 miles and walked for 137.  My longest single run was 5.6 miles and I ran on each day of the month...even on the day of my COVID vaccination when they say you should take it easy with the exercising (I ran a little "easier").  I wouldn't say that March was a breakthrough month with my running, but it definitely took a turn for the better and I am looking forward to April to possibly get my distance at a higher level.  As for walking, my job within a large warehouse-type building inherently involves quite a bit of it and this has been the primary way for me to build up my mileage.  I've been looking back on my blog at an entry from 2016 where I listed all the running races I entered from 2008 to that time and decided to update it to the present...that entry will appear in a few days on this blog.  I also noted that the vast majority of these races used digital chip technology with the results posted online soon after the event.  Yet when I go back in the year 2021 to try to find them on the Web I am often thwarted...many of the race results have either been removed or they are sunk so far back among all the other information that retrieval is too tricky.  Once I wrote on this blog that there was a great information chasm in our world, between our digital/Internet era and the time preceding it all the way through the distant past (click here to read it).  Yet even with our current ready access to so much information, there are serious gaps in different areas...running race results need to be consolidated and not spread out over numerous sites that often expunge those results: I could use a "Race Results Wiki"...

Update (4/3/21): I found a website, Athlinks.com, that pretty much did what I was searching for, i.e. consolidate my race results.  I have an account now and a list...with links to race results...for most of the races I've run since 2008, including my twelve half-marathons and one marathon.  There are a few still missing, though...I think a lot of that has to do with certain individual race organizers not properly stepping up to the plate and fulfilling their obligation to properly post race results.  If you're a runner you might try this site: I'm impressed...

Weekly Short Stories: 1969 Science Fiction, Part 4

Below are my reactions to the final three stories appearing in the retrospective anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1970, containing selections by editors Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr of what they deemed the best from 1969.  That year saw me become something of a spectator sports fanatic as I followed local teams the Miami Floridians (the American Basketball Association) and the Miami Dolphins (American Football League), along with pretty much the entire 1969 Major League Baseball schedule.  I followed most of the games on the radio...even with the Dolphins their home games were blacked out on TV.  I got to know the '69 Chicago White Sox pretty well since the local station, WKAT, broadcast their games.  That was a tough time in my life as I was an awkward, messed up young adolescent, and since then I've grown to appreciate how sports can help to get people away from dwelling on themselves: it was difficult, I'm sure, for a lot of folks last spring when the pandemic abruptly shut everything down.  But I digress: here's my take on those last three stories...

SHIP OF SHADOWS by Fritz Leiber

This novella examines...from the viewpoint of one of its residents...a large spaceship that has been out there so long that its origins are lost to those dwelling within it.  Spar, a seemingly elderly man who has lost much of his vision as well as his teeth, works at the ship's Bat Rack, its version of a bar, while a talking cat (Kim) has adopted him and dispenses its own very blunt criticisms.  Talking animals, vampires, zombies, space travel, apocalypse...it's all here for you the reader to decipher (if you can) as much of the story's mystery is in figuring what the heck's going on here.  But don't worry, it all explains itself in the end, which didn't make me feel much better about the general state of things...especially that dismal view of the ugly big orange round thing outside the ship's window.  I thought Leiber did a great job here of describing how people might adapt over time to a zero-gravity environment...

NINE LIVES by Ursula K. LeGuin

Libra is a distant planet suitable for little else besides mining, especially for the much needed large amounts of uranium this seismically-active world has in abundance.  Two advance engineers, Pugh and Martin, have been there on assignment for some time and have discovered the ore and laid the foundations for the development party to extract it...their isolation, though, has left them lonely and testy.  But this incoming crew, which turns out to be a ten-person clone of a renowned, deceased engineer, makes matters worse as they are all into each other (on a number of levels) and demonstrate little desire for any meaningful interaction with the "old hands".  But one day while the clones are all down there with the uranium a severe earthquake happens and the demographic equation drastically changes...

THE BIG FLASH by Norman Spinrad

Reading this story you might think "This could never happen", but since it is all about mass hypnosis with people voluntarily submitting themselves to mind control, sadly something similar is going on today with the manipulation of whole segments of our population by media, both of the mass and social varieties.  Set ostensibly in the "present" time period around 1969, the U.S. government is considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons to decisively beat back the enemy in southeast Asia...but the president is aware that the general population strongly opposes such a strategy.  Meanwhile, a new rock band,, aptly named The Four Horsemen, with an apocalyptic message and show, is storming the country and becoming wildly popular.  After noting that their use of atom bomb explosion graphics in their concerts is swaying the public's opinion in favor of atomic warfare, the president decides to stage one of their concerts in a desert where he will set off a nuclear bomb, hoping to tip the tide of public opinion behind his proposed SE Asia policy.  But the plot gets out of hand because of that mass hypnosis...you can manipulate a mob to a certain point beyond which you lose control over it, a lesson for our times as well...

Next week I begin looking at the year 1970 in short science fiction...

Game of the Week...Hidato

Hidato is a numerical logic puzzle invented by an Israeli engineer several years ago.  I first encountered it while browsing my excellent (but sadly now closed) local Borders bookstore a few years ago in the puzzle book section...I walked out buying a couple of Hidato books.  For a stretch of time it was also featured on my Hewlett Packard printer's daily puzzle page: of late, though, I haven't done Hidato.  Its premise is simple enough: starting with the numbers already given on the puzzle's grid, connect them together in a sequenced counting string, going left, right, up, down, or diagonally.  Above is pictured an excerpt from an old newspaper puzzle section some 10-11 years ago containing a Hidato puzzle in the corner. Like all puzzles of this sort, it's more fun for me to avoid the "hints" section and figure out shortcuts and strategies for myself.  Of course, nothing is preventing me from going online and ordering for myself another Hidato book, but since I do have online newspaper archives at my disposal I thought I'd go down that avenue first...

Just Finished Reading The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell

The Girl Next Door is a 2014 novel by English mystery writer Ruth Rendell, the last to be published before her death.  It's one of those stories that start out going in one direction but transform into something substantially different.  In 1944 in an English town the children there like to play in the "tunnels" underneath a hillside...eventually revealed to be an unconstructed house's foundation.  Michael, one of the kids, has as parents a mother who carries out sexual escapades with various men and a father who by all measures is a pure psychopath...one day he decides to murder his wife and her lover, cut off their hands and save them in a tin box...pretty gross and disturbing, right?  I don't think I'm giving away the story, though, as this all happens in the beginning.  After ridding himself of his wife, the father ships Michael away for his sister Zoe to take care of...the story then shifts sixty years into the future as the children are now around 70 and the creepy old dad is approaching 100, living in a luxurious senior's home after living his whole adult life off the labors and inheritances of others.  The bulk of the rest of the book deals with the relationships between these elderly "tunnel children": besides Michael there is the "girl next door", Daphne, who attracts Alan...one of those tunnel kids and a later teenage flame...into leaving his longtime wife Rosemary for her.  There are other subplots with other characters, but the essence of the story is the lives of the grown children, now on the other end of their life spans.  It lays forth the notion that life goes on with all its complications and drama far into old age...I'm not sure what to think about this since I'm 64 now!  As for my reaction to the novel, I didn't particularly like Rendell's emphasis of the relationships in all their tawdriness over the story's underlying murder mystery...the tone reminded me of J.K. Rowling's "adult" novel The Casual Vacancy:  is this a kind of "English" thing in fiction?  Ruth Rendell's novels are pretty much split in number between her standalone books and those in the Inspector Wexford murder mystery series: I think I'll focus more on the latter category in the future...

Great Old TV Episodes...from SpongeBob SquarePants

 

GRAVEYARD SHIFT, from Season 2 of the enduring Nickelodeon hit cartoon series SpongeBob SquarePants, is one of my all time favorites.  This series, which I took to around 2002-03, features the title character as an annoyingly expressive sponge (in yellow kitchen sponge form) living at the bottom of the sea with his best friend Patrick (silly starfish), next neighbor Squidward (cynical octopus) and boss Mr. Krabs (greedy, stingy crab).  He works with Squidward at the Krusty Krab fast food joint...in this episode Krabs discovers he can make more money if his place never closes: hence, the graveyard shift.  Squidward can't stand it, and SpongeBob thinks it's the greatest thing ever..."Wow, we never have to stop working!".   Fed up with his coworker's unbridled enthusiasm, Squidward decides to play a joke on him and dreams up a ghost story about the "Hash-Slinging Slasher", supposedly a former employee who accidentally cut off his hand, got run over by a bus, and will come back to "Get you!"  It works on SpongeBob, who shrieks repeatedly until Squidward tries to shut him up by telling him it was just a joke...then he switches to  laughing repeatedly (see above picture).  Later that night the clues that Squidward laid out about the Slasher's return start coming true, and the two are left shaking in terror as the sinister figure holding a spatula enters the restaurant...

I have worked the graveyard shift on three different jobs: a weekend shift as a clerk in a traffic management office in Miami Shores, a very brief stint at a Gainesville convenience store, and for around 18 years as a clerk at the post office.  There something just not quite right about leaving for work late in the evening and getting off when the sun has just risen in the morning...I never completely got used to working those hours, and on my off days I would sleep the late night/early morning as if I had more normal hours.  The world outside gets eerily silent in those wee hours of the morning and you can hear some pretty distant sounds...all sorts of nocturnal wildlife like to make their appearance then as well.  Nowadays with my afternoon/evening work schedule it's a major chore for me to just get up at 7 in the morning, much less work all night long.  SpongeBob's Graveyard Shift episode is loaded with laughs...unfortunately, although this series continues on to this day with new episodes, I don't think the ones after the fourth season are very funny: if you haven't seen it yet, I'd focus on those early seasons if I were you...