Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I finish examining 1983 science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, spotlighting what the editor deemed as the choice tales from the previous year.  Yet next week 1983 will continue as I switch to a new sci-fi anthology series, that one edited by Gardner Dozois.  But for now, let's look at the last three in Wollheim's book...

AS TIME GOES BY by Tanith Lee

This is a story of time travel paradoxes and second chances, its entire premise unique and bizarre.  You see, in this tale every star system in the cosmos exists in its own peculiar, different time frame...for travelers to interact between systems they must first go to way stations in which time does not exist.  It is at one of these stations that the captain of a ghost ship, supposedly destroyed in space but continually sighted, enters the bar and is confronted by a young woman...the story goes on from there.  The problem with stories like this is that as a reader I guess I'm supposed to be impressed by the paradox involved while at the same time meekly accepting the impossible "rules" the author has laid out concerning time and space.

THE HARVEST OF WOLVES by Mary Gentle

In a nightmare totalitarian future world in which people are only allowed to continue living if the State finds them useful, an elderly woman living in poverty must carefully maneuver around a young man...who she knows is an informant for the State...in order to preserve what little is left of her independence and life.  The moral of this story that has a twisted ending: we all do what we must to survive.

HOMEFARING by Robert Silverberg

In this novella, a man's consciousness is sent into the body of another in the future as part of a scientific experiment, but instead of landing within a human being just decades ahead as planned, he finds himself sharing consciousness with a highly intelligent, evolved lobster in the distant future.  Silverberg presents an intriguing look, not only of the possibilities for eventual intelligent life in the sea, but also a way that life forms could communicate through the medium of water by means of chemicals.  The story is also interesting because, in the second book of Stephen King's Dark Tower series...which I just finished rereading...the protagonist Roland walks through mysterious doors that lead to similarly shared consciousnesses with select individuals from different times.

Next week I continue my look at the year 1983 in short science fiction as I begin the "new" anthology series...

About This Year's NCAA March Madness Basketball

One of the problems with championship playoffs in various sports is that, unless you walk away with the title, your team's final game is bound to be a loss that will get under your skin for the entire off-season.  In each of the men and women's "March Madness" NCAA basketball championship tournaments for 2022, after so many teams struggled for so much in the latter part of the regular season just to "make" the tournament, the initial fields of 68 have been brutally whittled down to 16 in the span of five days...this weekend it will go down to 4.  I remember in 2014 when "my" Florida Gators, then under head coach Billy Donovan, made that Final Four and had visions of yet another championship.  But Connecticut, the eventual tournament winner that year, got hot and eliminated UF in the semifinal...I hardly ever hear of that wonderful season spoken in happy terms...why?  Because the Gators didn't win it all!  I for one did think of it as a glorious season...folks just have to get a better sense of perspective about what winning means...

On the women's side Florida bowed out early, 69-52 to the University of Central Florida.  But they had a great turnaround season with their new coach Kelly Rae Finley...I'm happy for them.  The men's team didn't make the NCAA championship tourney but were invited to the National Invitation Tournament, losing to Xavier in the second round...good for them, too.  Their coach, Mike White, left the team after their conference tournament to work for Georgia...Florida just hired San Francisco Dons coach Todd Golden to replace him after he led them to their first NCAA tournament appearance since 1998.  The Gators men's team, I strongly believe, has had issues for years about poor shooting...2022 was no exception.  Maybe the new coach can emphasize this need in his upcoming recruiting.  As for the remaining teams in the tournament, for the men my favorites North Carolina, Miami and Kansas are still in there...with the women the TV coverage is not only poorer, but there is much less parity between the elite teams and the rest of the field that has made the men's side more interesting to watch: sadly, it's always seemed to be that way. Well, come Thursday we will see the games resume with the Regional semifinals...

Life Coach Podcaster Suggests Journaling

Last week on his Mindset Mentor podcast...which I listen to regularly...Rob Dial urged listeners to engage in the constructive activity of personal journaling.  I've done this sporadically in the past, but in an unstructured way.  Dial suggests that many of us don't do it right, anyway.  He says that for journaling to be an effective device for improving our own lives, we might follow his advice of asking ourselves questions, particularly about how we feel about aspects of our lives, that we can reflect upon and write down...and then to go more deeply in turn by questioning those answers.  His rationale for journaling is that what we mentally ponder is often difficult to follow up on and explore in depth unless we put it on paper to look at.  Of course, one problem many have is that when they are reflecting upon highly personal topics, a frank self-discussion of what they want and where they are going may not be things they would wish to fall into the hands of others.  To this concern Rob Dial replies that if that's what is keeping anyone from journaling then all they have to do is just rip up and throw away whatever they just wrote...after all, it's the process of journal writing in itself that is the catalyst for personal enlightenment, focusing our thoughts on the things that matter.  Although I've been generally faithful in writing this blog of mine, it is (deliberately) far removed from what Dial is talking about regarding personal journaling.  I plan to try out his ideas and see where they lead, in a separate format of course...   

Just Finished Rereading The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

The Drawing of the Three, the second novel in Stephen King's fantasy/science fiction series The Dark Tower, came out in 1987...the series is loosely based on Robert Browning's 1852 narrative poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.  I probably need to interject here that since this is the second volume of a series, then my following discussion of it will necessarily involve giving away some of what happens in the first book...in other words, spoiler alert! The protagonist, a nobleman-turned-gunslinger named Roland Deschain, is from an alternate universe, having grown into maturity on a world that has "moved on" and is in a state of decline and stagnation...although from time to time there is evidence of a previous, technologically advanced society.  Roland is seeking the Dark Tower, an edifice that holds all of reality together...but it has an unwelcome occupant, the Crimson King, whose nefarious ends threaten that reality.  Roland's chief adversary on his quest has been the sorcerer Walter or "The Man in Black", who at the close of the previous book The Gunslinger revealed to him that he will be drawing three people into his life.  In this second book, Roland awakes on the western beach and is attacked by a huge predatory crustacean he calls "lobstrosity"...this sets into motion a life-or-death struggle for him as he also tries to find a remedy for the infection the monster's bites have inflicted on him.  To this end he encounters a door standing by itself on the beach...by entering it he also enters into the mind of Eddie Dean, a heroin addict from New York in the 1980s.  As the story develops, so does the adventure with another figure, Odetta Susanna Holmes, representing the second character to be drawn, from a second door down the shore.  Like Eddie, she is also to be found in New York City...but unlike him her time is in the early 1960s...and she has a dual personality in Detta Walker.  Eddie and Odetta/Detta generate enough drama for Roland to have to deal with while trying to both find medicine for himself as well as keep his body on the door's other side from being eaten by the lobstrosities.  But there is yet a third door, and Walter's prophecy only states to Roland that the third to be drawn is "Death, but not for you".  And thus approaches the book's climactic scene...

The Drawing of the Three enhances the depth of the Dark Tower series by introducing these two pretty complicated characters as they interact with Roland and one another.  On the other hand, although the idea of doors as portals into other realities seemed really cool to me the way Stephen King presented them, I still found the whole idea of Roland's quest and the doors kind of preposterous.  But, after all, it's just a story and I thoroughly dug this book...as well as the series as a whole: what a ride!  Now, on to Book Three, titled The Waste Lands...

Ran the Florida Track Club's Micanopy 10-Mile Race Today

 

This morning I got up at the ungodly time of 5:45 to get myself ready for a ten-mile race I had already signed up for.  The Micanopy event, which begins at 8:00, is a combination five and ten-mile race, starting in front of the cemetery on Smith Street, going down Whiting Road south of town and then turning into hilly dirt roads before heading back, finishing in front of the ballpark at 3rd and 6th.  The extra five miles for my chosen ten-mile run consisted of a loop of slopes and hills while the running surface was uneven, slick, rocky and full of treacherous little depressions.  I listened to my MP3 player the whole way, and once the race had gone on a few minutes we were all pretty much spread out on the course and distanced from one another...the way I like it.  The temperature during the race varied from 63 to 67 degrees and the humidity an unpleasant, muggy 83-87%.  The Florida Track Club holds these kinds of races year-round and maintains a positive, low-key spirit that is infectious.  I had set as a goal beating the time of an hour fifty minutes...when I crossed the finish line my time was 1:48:24. I've noticed a peculiar thing about this race and February's half-marathon: my pace seems to strangely speed up a bit when I'm tackling the hills, even though I often walk stretches of the steepest slopes.  My recovery from the race seems to be going well...Melissa and Rebecca accompanied me out there and enjoyed breakfast and then walked around the town while I ran.  Looking back on it, I, too, enjoyed the experience...maybe this can be the start of a new annual tradition...

Here's a link to the race results...

Quote of the Week...from Rick Pitino

Set higher standards for your own performance than anyone around you, and it won't matter whether you have a tough boss or an easy one.  It won't matter whether the competition is pushing you hard, because you'll be competing with yourself.                                   ---Rick Pitino

Rick Pitino is the current head basketball coach of Iona College, whom my Florida Gators just played (and somehow defeated) in the opening round of this year's National Invitation Tournament.  He's coached several teams over the decades, most notably Kentucky and Louisville, consistently taking them deep into the NCAA championship "March Madness" tournament and winning a couple of titles.  He mentored his assistant coach Billy Donovan, who would in turn coach Florida for many years, earning them consecutive national titles in 2005 and 2006.  But Pitino also fell from grace in scandal as in 2017, as part of a sweeping NCAA investigation covering many schools, as his program was found tainted by illicit escort services and bribery for players...he was first suspended and then fired, later suing Louisville on account that they did not provide him due process...the two parties ultimately settled.  I'm sad about all that, but also realize that people do fall from time to time in their lives from their own flaws, and the more famous they are the harder and louder they hit the ground.  That's too bad for Pitino as he absolutely did not need to cut any corners to generate competitive, winning teams: he was and still is a great, motivating coach...as his above quote indicates.  It's been my experience over the years that keeping high working standards for myself and consistently adhering to them, while possibly (and irrationally) perceived as a threat of sorts by insecure bosses and colleagues, over time works to liberate myself from others' control, whether it be from micromanagement or peer pressure manipulation.  It helps that I've seen as role models over the course of my life other people who have exhibited this independent consciousness to their assignments and always noticed how they tend to deflect controversy and intrigues away from themselves.  I'm not perfect in this regard, but along with another quote, from Max Ehrmann's Desiderata, I think I'm making a little progress: "Avoid loud and aggressive persons: they are vexatious to the spirit.  If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."  I wish Rick Pitino the best for the rest of his career and life...it was great seeing him coach his team against the Gators Wednesday evening...

Constellation of the Month: Canis Minor (the Lesser Dog)

 

Canis Minor is a small February/March evening constellation, just north of the faint constellation Monoceros (and further north of Canis Major (last month's featured constellation).  It lies just south of the Zodiac, at the junction of Gemini and Cancer.  Although small...only two stars are brighter than 4th magnitude...it is still more prominent than many other constellations, including the aforementioned Cancer and Monoceros.  It features Procyon, the seventh-brightest star in the night sky and one of the nearest, only 11.4 light-years distant.  The other readily visible star is Gomeisa at third-magnitude brightness but much more distant, around 160 light-years.  The easiest way to see Canis Minor from latitudes north of the Equator is to either go straight up from Sirius, the brightest star of the night sky, or fix on Orion and go due East (left) from the star Betelgeuse in the north part of that constellation.  In the evening sky, when spring rolls around the stars above are much dimmer...a look toward the west will reveal all those bright stars and constellations of the winter, now following the sun to the setting horizon.   But I always have a soft place in my heart for the springtime, for it was during this season back in 1964 when my father introduced me, at age seven, to the constellations, pointing them out to me in the sky...what a great memory!  Next month I'll pick another constellation to discuss...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue looking through 1983 science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his picks of the choice works from the preceding year.  In 1984 another sci-fi anthology series began, this one edited by Gardner Dozois and it would last through 2018.  Like with Wollheim, his books also spotlight stories published the year before.  I intend to include it as well in my reviews...there's not much overlap between Wollheim and Dozois, so my weekly advance through the years is necessarily going to slow down as I go through more material.  Here are my reactions to the next three tales in Wollheim's book...

IN THE FACE OF MY ENEMY by Joseph H. Delaney

Kasioma, or Casey as others commonly call him, is an American Indian man who works on a crew for a space development company.  He has a secret, though...at a distant time in his past...hundreds of years before...an alien culture rescued him from a violent death and not only resuscitated him to life but modified his body so that he is virtually immortal.  On the planet Campbell they've discovered an alien structure and want to keep the authorities ignorant and distant...Kimberly Ryan (the narrator) has been sent to investigate but her flight is sabotaged and crashed. She and her bodyguard, who just happens to be Casey...survive and solve the mystery.  The story's plot was a little too convoluted for my tastes...

THE NANNY by Thomas Wylde

Humanity has foolishly blown itself up in war and its last dying hope is a ship dispatched from Earth orbit to Alpha Centauri, carrying wo astronauts and many eggs that carry the future of the human race.  An explosion midtrip awakes one of the crew, who discovers the other is dead and that the eggs must be unfrozen and incubated.  What follows is a race against time and a lesson in the positive, sacrificial virtues that people can demonstrate...often from those one would never suspect.  The ending was unexpected and encouraging.  I was also impressed with the hard science used to drive the plot...

THE LEAVES OF OCTOBER by Don Sakers

Unlike on Earth, tree life in the cosmos, the Hlut, is not only sentient but also telepathic, and the story's narrator is one such life form, describing its odyssey of assignment to Earth to assess for the "others" the intentions and possible threats of humans as they explore space and ultimately establish a military-based empire.  This story stood out by depicting things from a plant's viewpoint...pretty intriguing...

Next week I conclude my look at the 1983 stories from Wollheim's book before I start with those from Dozois...

Just Finished Rereading The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Having gone through a number of revisions over the course of years, The Gunslinger is the first of seven books in Stephen King's fantasy/science fiction Dark Tower series.  Here's an excerpt of my blog article about the series from January, 2009:

But let’s go over now to Stephen King’s history of writing a series. He conceived of the Dark Tower series during the late 1960s, beginning writing on the first installment, The Gunslinger, in 1968. The finished first volume was published in 1982. He built up a loyal readership with this series although the next three books were relatively spaced apart in publication: 1987, 1991, and 1997. Then, following the fourth book of the series, The Wizard and Glass, no more books came out for a while. Finally, after King was almost killed by a distracted motorist while walking down a Maine road in 1999, he resolved to complete the series. And in a torrent of writing, he rushed out the last three (lengthy) volumes in 2003 (#5), 2004 (#6), and 2004 (#7)!

Back then I didn't mention that King in 2003 made a number of revisions to The Gunslinger to bring it more in line with the rest of the series narrative...I think I must have read an earlier version the first time I read it fourteen years ago, but this time around it's clear that it had been updated.  The setting to the story is an alternate (but similar) universe set some time in the future, after the world has "moved on"...but is it really the future?  There is a sense of everything having run down, including civilization and the clues of a technology-based society destroyed by a past cataclysm.  Roland Deschain is the protagonist, the Gunslinger who in his boyhood was a young noble whose world was turned upside-down in a revolt...he is now on a quest to find and catch the "Man in Black" behind it all.  Along the way he encounters oracles and a boy, Jake Chambers, who claims he was in a completely different reality, in a big modern city, and was pushed into the street to his death by none other than the man Roland is pursuing.  There is a lot of prophecy and symbolism here...part of Roland's problem is that he doesn't really know yet what he's after, and meeting with the Man in Black is his hope to find some answers.  Much of the story is spent in flashback...there's even a flashback embedded within another flashback...of Roland's childhood experiences, family and friends as well as that of the doomed town of Tull that Roland had earlier encountered on his journey.  Stephen King is known for his ability to draw out the depth in his characters' personalities, and The Gunslinger is no exception.  Now I've begun rereading the second book, titled The Drawing of the Three...I'm already past the opening section about those darn lobstrosities...

Rob Dial's Podcast Discusses the Need for Action, Not Overthinking

The other day on The Mindset Mentor podcast, creator and host Rob Dial discussed a subject he's often stressed: the need to just get out there and start doing whatever it is you're trying to achieve in live...and stop the destructive overthinking and procrastination that is just a disguise, a self-deception masking the fear of being humbled and exposed as a failure.  Dial makes clear that the only time you fail in something happens either when you never start or when you give up...messing up in itself is an integral part of the ultimate success you will enjoy.  He likes to repeat his mantra of "Ready, Fire, Aim", deliberately juxtaposing "fire" and "aim" to emphasize that first you've got to get out there doing stuff...and then you can make the needed adjustments.  Dial also stressed that it does no good to dwell on the enormity of the quest you're on, as if you have to accomplish it all in a day. Instead, focus on what you're going to do today and let tomorrow...and the next ten years...unfold a day at a time.  Get closer to your goal by focusing on your direction and taking action, with less emphasize on your speed. The host gave as example that on a long road trip the driver takes in one stretch of the route at a time, not being concerned about what...say mile marker 240...will bring.  Dial says that people make things out to be much harder than they really are and that if they've never done something before then they tend to think that they can't do it...all symptoms of overthinking.  Instead, act like you're always "in the headlights" and immerse yourself in the area for which you've set your goals.  Will you screw up from time to time and, God forbid, reveal to others that you're not perfect and could stand some improvement? Sure, but's that's an important part of it all.  As for me, this broadcast hit home as I tend to delay starting new things because I'm usually at such a low level of competency in them...of course I am since I haven't started them yet!

NCAA and NIT 2022 Tournament Brackets All Set to Go

Today is the day that the men and women's major college basketball teams are selected for their respective championship tournaments' 68-team fields...along with the second-tier National Invitation Tournament.  My hometown women's University of Florida team made a dramatic improvement this year at 21-10 and made the NCAA tournament...they'll play the University of Central Florida in the first round.  The men's team not only didn't make it to the championship tournament this year, but they also lost their coach, Mike White, who left the Gators to fill the head coaching vacancy at Georgia.  Florida...with a 19-13 record... did make it, though, to the N.I.T. and will play their first-round game against Rick Pitino-coached Iona...some fan made the perfectly reasonable comment (reasonable to me, a Pitino fan) that Gainesville shouldn't let him leave town before signing him on as Florida's new coach.  For me, I like my local teams to do well, but as far as the NCAA tourney is concerned, by this time next week the surviving teams for each one will be down from 68 to 16.  Texas A&M, which beat Florida in the Southeastern Conference tournament a few days ago and made it all the way to the finale, was thoroughly ripped off by the NCAA selection committee and snubbed...they're in the N.I.T. as well.  As for the men's NCAA tournament, I plan to root for Miami, North Carolina and Kansas...and just enjoy the other games I'm able to watch.  I'm not sure about the exact dates for the tournaments, all of which are commencing this week...my strategy is since I'm scheduled to work until 10 pm Monday through Friday I'll just check out what's currently showing on TV when I do get home...

Just Finished Reading Death and a Dog by Fiona Grace

Second in the "cozy mystery" series by Fiona Grace featuring antiques dealer Lacey Doyle, Death and a Dog continues...and to an extent repeats...the protagonist's adventures and trials as she adjusts to life in a small English coastal village following her divorce from a deadbeat husband back in New York who gets spousal support from her.  After reading the first book Murder in the Manor last month, I concluded that "Fiona Grace" in all likelihood is a fictitious name since "she" has come out with 33 books in several different series in less than 3 years!  With this second installment of the series I'm reading, I was disappointed that, although new characters were introduced and technical aspects of the plot were different from the first (including the first time I've seen a sextant used in a story), I still experienced too much repetition...especially regarding how Lacey is always the first one to find the murder victim's body, the two clueless cops on duty always suspect her, the village's petty, gossiping people alternate between adoring and shunning her, and her mother and sister back home...and her ex...are overly negative and hostile. Neither the background stories of the romance between Lacey and Tom nor the mystery of her father's death in the area years before is advanced...I could go on.  Like the first book, the murder's solution in the end was lame...and yes, Lacey's adopted superdog Chester saves the day as the book's title clearly telegraphs.  I don't have a problem with the series being written by probably underpaid anonymous hack writers as much as I do about Lacey continuing to alternately seem spunky and assertive when around the cops and certain other people while playing the passive eternal suffering victim role around her own family and the fickle villagers around her. But maybe this is actually the one aspect of it all that rings true: don't we tend to stand up to some folks while folding to others?  Call me a glutton for punishment but I'm going to continue with this series.  I want to see if the "author" has the nerve to string out the repetition into a third book...

Quote of the Week...from Kyle Lowry

Go out there and play hard, understand your teammates, understand the other team's gameplan, understand your coaches' philosophies and what they want you to do.            ---Kyle Lowry

Kyle Lowry is a repeat all-star National Basketball Association point guard who helped guide the Toronto Raptors to several winning seasons as well as a league championship in 2019.  I've always admired his teamwork and positive demeanor on and off the court...now I'm really encouraged because this year he's playing for the Miami Heat, a team I usually root for since I'm from that area.  He joins another player I've followed for years, Jimmy Butler, a small forward/shooting guard who caught my attention years ago with the Chicago Bulls.  Back in that 2019 Raptor championship playoff run, Butler was on the Philadelphia 76ers opposite Lowry...that was one of the all-time best playoff series ever!  Lowry's philosophy is a formula for success, and I believe that the truly wise players all follow its basic tenets.  Other players that I've noticed with a team spirit combined with skill, athleticism and sportsmanship are Golden State's Klay Thompson and New Orleans' C.J. McCollum, who used to be with Portland for several years.  I tend to look for these kinds of "stars behind the stars" and pull for the teams they're playing on.  The other night Miami was playing Phoenix...unfortunately they got blown out by 21 points and Butler was out due to sinus issues.  I did see Lowry on the court, but he was in more of a supportive role than I usually see.  Still, Miami's currently leading the entire Eastern Conference and come playoff time, I'm looking forward to seeing how Lowry and Butler do, along with Thompson and McCollum on the other teams...

A Visit to the Dentist...and Starbucks

After my (ugh) teeth-cleaning procedure yesterday morning I thought I'd reward myself for having survived it all by going a few blocks down 13th Street and getting an iced coffee from Starbucks...but no, that outlet is often backed up to the street with its drive-through line, clogging up the parking lot even for those like me who prefer to drink their coffee on-site.  So, I instead went to my familiar Starbucks haunt, a store that's been there since 2000 and never converted to one with a drive-through.  I understand the Starbucks Corporation's policy about rebuilding and moving existing stores to ones with that option for customers...I'd do it, too if I were in their shoes.  But my preference has always been for coffee shops WITHOUT drive-throughs, and I bemoan the loss of several Starbucks that, in the past, I had frequented and spent time studying and enjoying the ambiance.  I miss the ones in Tioga, Hunter's Crossing, Newberry Road (near the Royal Park Cinema), Archer and 34th, and 13th Street and 16th Avenue...these five were great places to visit and were highly popular. I have always enjoyed hanging out in coffee shops and have found their slightly nerve-wracking public surroundings an excellent setting for energizing my mind and focusing my thoughts on creative writing and introspection.  I'm writing this article in that favorite Starbucks in NW Gainesville's Magnolia Parke...may it never close down!  Before Starbucks arrived in my hometown, I often used to go to Krispy Kreme on NW 13th Street and 3rd Avenue, close to the University of Florida campus...I just got a gift card for KK so maybe I should check them out again.  I've also been in the habit of going to fast food places and just ordering a coffee, accomplishing the same thing for less money than at Starbucks.  I've tried this at my public library...it's just not the same.  As for that teeth-cleaning, in the past I had always regarded visiting the dentist's office as a traumatic experience...this time, though, using Eckhart Tolle's principles of think-less/observe-more from his book The Power of Now, I mentally sank into the background and put my old thought reactions on hold during the procedure.  It worked, producing the most pleasant dental visit I've had in quite a while...if you can really properly place the words "pleasant" and "dental visit" together in the same sentence. Also, the experience of open-heart surgery the previous July...along with the following two-week hospital stay and subsequent weeks-long recovery period...puts relatively minor things like a simple teeth-cleaning appointment into sharper perspective...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I start reviewing science fiction short stories from the year 1983 as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from that genre for the previous year.  In '83 I was living a frugal, single life in Gainesville as a cook in a local Chinese restaurant, studying foreign languages on the side like Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese...almost a monastic kind of existence, looking back on it.  This was also the year in which the Nuclear Freeze movement took off in Europe, while a very important TV movie on nuclear war was shown here in the States: The Day After.  More on this special year next week...right now let's a take a look at those stories...

BLOOD MUSIC by Greg Bear

Predating the late Michael Crichton's interesting novel Prey on a similar theme by nineteen years, this story examines a scenario in which nanotechnology merges with microbiological synthesis to produce an unseen world within one's body that works much faster than does evolutionary change in modifying and "improving" it.  An employee at a company researching such stuff foolishly injects himself with some of the microscopic, synthesized protein material and the change begins to happen...what an ending!

POTENTIAL by Isaac Asimov

It seems that supercomputers have the capacity for breaking down the myriad sections within the human genome to find that which predicts telepathic abilities.  The government's top-secret espionage section is naturally interested in this and discovers that an Iowan teenage boy may well be endowed with such talent.  They visit, interview and test him...tough luck, guess they were wrong.  When they leave, he breathes a sigh of relief...then realizes that they had been mistakenly trying to see if he could read other people's minds... 

KNIGHT OF SHALLOWS by Rand B. Lee

This tale is a look at the world worlds of alternate universes, and it seems that there are certain individuals who have the ability (or curse) to travel in and out of them, each universe containing a different version of that person.  The story's protagonist is one of these and his subsequent adventures have him searching through wildly divergent realities for a murderer (an alternate self), who kills other alternate selves...while our hero collaborates with yet another alternate self.  All within a few blocks in Key West, Florida, centered around a bar.  Intriguing...and a little funny, too...

SPENDING A DAY AT THE LOTTERY FAIR by Frederik Pohl

This brief story, similar in theme to Shirley Jackson's famous 1948 short story The Lottery, takes place in a future of overpopulation as each nation on Earth takes its own path in dealing with it.  In America they hold fancy festivals involving lotteries...but a small percentage of the entrants will die while few believe their "number" will come up because of the low odds.  Yet in this story all abortion and birth control have been banned...while killing off little children in the lottery is okay.  Ultimately, this is a tale indicting the ongoing politics about abortion, with the author siding with those complaining how many of the "pro-lifers" lose interest in the lives they want to protect after birth occurs...

Next week I continue looking at the year 1983 as it pertained to short science fiction...

Just Finished Reading A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

A Beautiful Mind, published in 1998, is Sylvia Nasar's biography of American mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928-2015).  It is better known for its 2002 Ron Howard-directed movie adaptation with the same title, starring Russell Crowe as Nash and which won the Academy Award for best picture that year.  Yet the movie diverges in major ways from the book that took me aback.  In both versions we are presented with the life story of a brilliant, accomplished academic whose young adult life was turn upside-down...as well as that of his loved ones...when he became afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia.  The film version, however, takes great liberties with Nasar's account, weaving its own imaginary tale about John Nash suffering from visual hallucinations (which he didn't) and imaginary friends and foes (again, he didn't).  According to the book, in the late 1950s Nash began to have grandiose delusions of his role in the world with conspiracy theories abounding...in today's dumbass world that would have got him elected president but back then it just got him committed...and released...and committed...and released.  Ron Howard's movie makes the story of Nash's life very compact and simple, omitting the Noble Prize-winning mathematician's earlier affair and love child, for which he denied financial support.  It also omitted the fact that even following his mental breakdown he continued to produce mathematical works, many of which Nasar bravely attempted to describe for us nonmathematical readers: in the film you'd think that all he did of significance was that prize-winning paper on economic equilibrium.  The book and the film each sought to sell a narrative about the life of John Forbes Nash, Jr., but even though the print version was obviously closer to the truth about him, by its very structure and nature it was still far from what really happened.  A life is lived one minute, one hour...one day at a time and attempts to make a narrative tale out of it that conforms to traditional storytelling patterns is bound to distort it.  Although I found the movie version to be much more suspenseful, endearing and entertaining (I even bought the DVD), it's a bit unsettling to see how far it diverged from the true life of this extraordinary and flawed human being after reading Sylvia Nasar's excellent account.  If you saw the film...or didn't, for that matter...A Beautiful Mind will be a great ride through history...not only of one special individual's life, but also of the social and historical context in which he lived.  Sadly, in 2015 both John Nash and his wife Alicia perished in an auto crash in Newark after returning from Norway, where he had been honored with an academic prize...he was 86... 

I got two significant take-aways from the book and film.  One is that it's not prudent to automatically accept the truth and accuracy of a work's narrative and characterizations, just because the author or producer claims it to be nonfiction or based on real events: the very nature of the story structure with the presentation of a moral theme and the aim to be interesting is bound to twist it.  Two is that I think almost all of us, like Nash, believe in nonsensical, irrational...and sometimes farfetched ideas but that for "healthy" people they understand the extreme nature of those beliefs and thereby tend to avoid communicating them to others...unlike Nash, whose narcissistic sense of self-importance precluded this.  But if within society certain wacky ideas seem to become more mainstream then an explosion can ensue with masses of the population expressing adherence to them...do you know what I'm talking about?

Podcaster Rob Dial Lays Out Some Thoughts for Pursuing Goals

A recent episode of Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor podcast had the title How to Turn Your Life Around, but its theme was more precise: how to pursue goals to successful outcomes.  He starts out by acknowledging the current world of instant gratification where someone can just pick up the phone and get most anything promptly delivered...or flick on the TV and choose from an incredibly wide variety of programming.  But making progress in our personal lives still takes time.  And going in the right direction.  And planning.  Dial quoted a motivational guru, Tony Robbins, who said that people overestimate what they can do in a year but underestimate what they can do in a decade.  Instead of expecting success to happen quickly and then becoming discouraged when it probably doesn't, it's better not to hurry but consistently work toward the objectives in the right direction.  And to assure that correct direction, it is necessary to know...as precisely as possible...where in their lives people want to be, say, five or ten years in the future...along with the even bigger picture of the end of their lives.  So, some serious, concentrated soul-searching is in order, as well as the need to sit down with pen and paper and start planning out the strategy to achieve the arrived-at goals.  And the host adds (a bit more colorfully than me), that failure is not messing up...it's a part of the success process...it's giving up that causes failure.  I like how Rob Dial distills and expresses stuff I already knew, but in a more organized, systematic form that I can refer back to...this episode should help me as I figure some things out...

Interesting Pro Golf Tourney in Orlando Today on NBC

Call it "Arnie's Revenge" if you like, but this year's PGA Arnold Palmer Invitational, played at the Bay Hill course near Universal Studios and Walt Disney World west of Orlando, has turned into one of the more interesting and entertaining tournaments I've watched over the past few weeks.  Generally noted for scores well under par, this year it seems that the winds are playing havoc with the golfers...as well as very treacherous putting greens.  I don't think I've ever witnessed so many missed short putts as well as putts shot too hard past the hole.  The leaderboard has been in continual flux as the tournament draws to its close.  It looked like Viktor Hovland at one point was going to run away with it, but his putting woes gave him two consecutive bogies.  Then Scottie Sheffler, who won a tourney just a while back, surged into the lead, only to be passed by Gary Woodland when he eagled...but Woodland would fall back on just the next hole with a double bogey.  The tournament was renamed in 2017 after Arnold Palmer, who passed away the previous year.  Palmer was known for his expressive antics when he missed important putts in years gone by...I've seen quite a few grimaces and head shaking today from pros who seem completely mystified by the tricky slopes presenting by the putting greens.  Yet Tiger Woods won this tournament eight times between 2000 and 2013.  It's showing right now on NBC...I really don't care who wins it, but I want to see how they accomplish it.  Sheffler is the only golfer among the leaders in today's final round that I know of, but I'm gradually accumulating a list in my memory of several golfers over the weeks as Sunday afternoon golf is becoming a regular TV habit of mine...

My Depot Park 5K "Non-Run" This Morning

I deliberately woke up at 6 this morning, making a pot of coffee and checking to see whether I really was going to drive out to Depot Park and run one of their weekly 5K (3.1 miles) races they hold there on Saturdays at 7:30.  After a few minutes of self-assessment I decided to go back to bed...and woke up a little past ten.   It's a bit ironic, I think, that finally after having worked on my off day for several Saturdays in a row that on the morning of one in which I am truly off from work all day I would choose to sleep in...you might think that I'd be more inclined to stay in bed on other Saturday mornings, seeing that I get off from work Friday nights at 10 and sometimes get overtime up to midnight.  But it's how the mind interprets situations, not the situations themselves, that determines one's course of action and here I am, late in the morning and that dang race has gone by me for another week.  The weather was forecast to be great, in the low 50s...a Goldilocks Zone for runners like me...but I might have put too much pressure on myself for considering trying to set a personal record with today's race instead of treating it as a "cover the distance" training run as I had for the previous ones.  There's another opportunity next Saturday morning for a Depot Parkrun, as they like to call it, and then looms on the 19th a ten-mile run in the wilderness south of Micanopy held by the Florida Track Club...that will most definitely be a purely "cover the distance" event...

Quote of the Week...from President Biden

The State of the Union is strong...because you, the American people, are strong.  We are stronger today than we were a year ago...and we will be stronger a year from now than we are today.

                                                  ---Joseph Biden, President of the United States

So concluded our president in his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress this past Tuesday evening.  Although I did not watch it, I later heard that it was widely regarded by the American public in a positive light, garnering a 78% approval rating in one poll.  He touched among a number of topics, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, infrastructure, voting rights, climate change and inflation.  His delivery from the highlights I did see later seemed good and he had a natural kind of folksiness that Democrats hadn't seen from one of their presidents since Clinton in the 1990s.  But his above quote, which he made at the end of his speech...while sounding appropriately optimistic in the setting of any State of the Union address...did not ring true to my ears.  I don't agree that the state of our union is strong.  Fascism is on the sharp rise, with a frightening level of the electorate poised to endorse their own party's overturning of any election result not going their way.  The cult personality worship of an incredibly flawed, authoritarian individual, namely Donald Trump, just won't go away as we approach the 2022 midterm elections in which he stands to gain de facto control of Congress if Democratic voters do what they are known to do every time they elect a president of their own party...which is to sit out the following election and passively allow the Republicans to win control of Congress and state governments.  And in light of the Covid-19 pandemic that has devastated our country (and the world) over the past two years, it has been very dismaying for me to witness the utter selfishness and disregard for public health on the part of such a broad swath of our population as they refused to wear masks in public or even vaccinate against this scourge that has to date killed nearly a million people so far in our country alone and caused many, many more long-term health problems.  Issues like global warming and racial reconciliation are now being treated as highly controversial by a major political party as we find ourselves as a country receding into backwardness, with anti-science and prejudice on the upsurge.  And people now tend to seek out the news sources that are biased to fit their own preconceived views while mass and social media accommodate this increasing refusal to face the reality of what is going on around them...

So no, Mr. President, although I support you and want you to succeed, I'm afraid and sad to say that it's we, the American people, who are going to let you down as we continue to slip further and further into weakness, not strength.  Sorry for the downer today, but I'm just calling it as I see it...you and Jill are still welcome to come over for some coffee and chat...

Music and Math, the Beatles and John Nash...and "Community"

I'm currently in the middle of two different projects, both concerning highly talented and competent people and their working relationships within their respective crafts.  One you already know about if you've been reading this blog: I'm watching the film version of the Beatles and their January 1969 "Let It Be" sessions that Peter Jackson has re-edited and renamed Get Back: it's being shown on the Disney Plus channel, to which I subscribe.  The other is the 1998 Sylvia Nasar biography of American mathematician John Nash, titled A Beautiful Mind and adapted as an Oscar-winning Ron Howard movie four years later.  In both works we get a glimpse into the interpersonal dynamics of those at the top of their respective professions and how the love of what they do often gets greatly distorted by their egos, jealousies, intrigues, suspicion and vendettas.  I don't think this sort of social dysfunction is just a trait of the highly adept and accomplished...I remember in high school how, within certain circles, the same situations arose between students.  And to be perfectly honest...in other social settings I've in which I've found myself as an adult...I've seen the same destructive kind of behavior.  Yet I'm continually being encouraged to seek "community" in relationships with others, something that not only I instinctively resist as a bona fide lifelong introvert but have also bitterly learned tends to be more harmful to me than keeping mostly to myself.  They say the mark of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing and expect different outcomes...I've seen enough in my life over the decades to be distrustful of "community". When I was in school and was found to excel in a subject or course, inevitably the faculty would take me out of my preferred setting where I was better than my fellow students and lump me in with the other "high achievers", immediately thereby canceling out the good feeling I had developed before from working so hard.  Likewise, I imagine that's how some of the musicians and mathematicians felt when in the immediate company of the standouts in their respective fields.  Unfortunately, although it seemed that those portrayed in the film and book seemed to love their work for its own sake, their primary motivation was to be seen as the "top dog" and universally acknowledged to be superior to their colleagues. I'm like this myself, but only to a point...I mainly just want to be considered as a legitimate player.  But it can get to be a little spiritually deflating to be in a field in which, by almost anyone else's standards I am very competent with even a history of achievements but not even recognized as an equal by others within my circle of interests...George Harrison would have understood this only too well as this accomplished and very creative musical artist sat for years, almost as an extra, across from John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  Also, in watching the Beatles film and reading the Nash book I noticed that these people's lives and their choices of projects seemed very chaotic...almost random, as if they were going about their business and relationships like pinballs in a machine, bouncing off one experience into another.  I wonder whether this was really what happened, or was an effect created by the stories' authors and editors.  After all, with both the Beatles and John Nash we have two different versions shaped and presented by third parties according to their own agendas...their real lives were most likely quite different.  Yet one truth did come out: the almost nauseating tendency of people to obsess about establishing hierarchical pecking orders among themselves whenever they meet and engage in "community"...

Weekly Short Stories: 1982 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I finish examining some 1982 science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his choices from the preceding year.  I remember 1982 as the first year I really paid deep attention to Major League Baseball by watching it on TV: the Atlanta Braves were featured on Ted Turner's Superstation WTBS and I followed their Cinderella season with manager Joe Torre, finally rising from obscurity in the National League West with stars like Dale Murphy, Bob Horner and Phil Niekro to win that division by a game over Tommy Lasorda's Los Angeles Dodgers...a terrible late-season slump by the Braves had made it much closer than it might have been.  Well, here are my reactions to those final three tales in the book...

SOULS by Joanna Russ

Many hundreds of years ago a European abbey is besieged by a group of barbaric, conquering Normans, but the abbess in charge attempts to save her own people by offering the invaders a special deal, promising riches that they couldn't imagine as long as they refrain from violence.  Over the course of the narrative, it becomes clear that she is something quite beyond who she is pretending to be, in this world but not of it.  This novella reportedly was only a part of a larger work, but editor Wollheim included it in his anthology...to me it was only marginally science fiction...

SWARM by Bruce Sterling

In the future what is left of humanity is divided in a life and death struggle between the Mechanists who control the asteroids and the Reshaped, who dwell out by Saturn's rings. An agent of the latter is on a mission to a special star system populated by a swarm of highly interconnected organisms...he wants to take their genetics and generate a force of slave labor for his own people.  The unexpected ending is profound and sadly timely, reflecting on mankind's self-destructive nature through war. When this came out, the Cold War was ramping up again...and now with the invasion of Ukraine, here we go again...

PEG-MAN by Rudy Rucker

Reading like a couple of South Park episodes I know, a woman's husband has become something of a video game addict where he works as an arcade mechanic.  Only he claims there is more to his favorite game, "Peg-Man", than it seems. One day she and her old calculus professor pay him a visit at his workplace...like I said, it's like South Park (especially that fifth-season episode with Towelie and the Crab People)...

Next week I'll begin looking at 1983 science fiction short stories...

My February 2022 Running and Walking Report

In February I ran on all the days of the month, totaling 154 miles with the 13.1 mile Five Points of Life half-marathon (in Gainesville) on the 20th being my longest single run.  In the same span I walked a total of 105 miles.  With races, along with that half-marathon I ran a Depot Parkrun 5K (3.1 miles) race on the 12th.  My times for the half-marathon and 5K race were 2:33:51 and 31:28, respectively.  I feel that this past month has been very encouraging with my running, and in March I intend to enter a couple more races, one being for 5K and the other 10 miles.  Besides that, I'm wondering whether or not to speed-walk one Depot Parkrun 5K per month...they hold these races weekly and they're free. I'm also considering possibly adding swimming to my exercise routine...I'll need to first work things out with the gym of which I am a member... 

Podcast Presents 7 Ideas for Increasing Focus on Tasks

On his Mindset Mentor podcast, Rob Dial recently gave a talk on some of the ways he thinks will help anyone focus more on whatever tasks they deem necessary...he has seven.  The first is to stay away from your phone, an incredibly distracting device: I wonder if some folks are capable of that, as addicted they are to it.  Two, "prepare the brain"...the mind is resistant to a change in focus. Dial suggests some breathing exercises as well as a brief, light transitional activity leading into the task.  Three, eliminate distractions from others by communicating with them (if possible) the need for you to be alone for a little while, and physically isolate yourself by going into another room and closing the door.  Four, Rob Dial opposes multitasking as a general principle because it dilutes the effectiveness and focus of the involved activities and produces less progress and more slipshod results.  Five, keep a notepad with you at all times in order to quickly jot down any significant ideas that come into your head that may be unrelated to what you're trying to accomplish right now...otherwise they tend to play around in your mind, offering distraction.  Six, Dial recommends putting on headphones and playing long tracks of instrumental music to blot out incidental noises that might interfere with concentration.  Finally, he advocates the Pomodoro Technique, in which one works with focus on something for 25 minutes and then takes 5 minutes completely off-task...and then returns to work for another 25 minutes as the cycle continues: this is supposed to be more effective than simply working straight though a task.  As for me, I agree with Rob Dial on most of his principles but have a disagreement of sorts with his exhortation to avoid multi-tasking.  From my experiences his advice is only sound when applied to two similar activities: listening to a lecture while composing a letter produces a conflict but listening to a Mindset Mentor podcast while exercising poses no problem and makes efficient use of time.  As for "preparing the brain" and using headphones more, these are probably the two suggestions I need to focus on the most...what techniques do you use to be able to concentrate better on the task at hand?

Speed Golf: A Viable Alternative to the Original Sport?

I was watching yet another PGA tournament this Sunday afternoon...with yet another group of completely different golfers vying for the title...when it occurred to me what was missing from the sport: timing, which would add more of an athletic dimension to it.  I had all the rules for this new sport worked out in my head, a kind of golf that used the same course, clubs and balls but was much faster and more action based.  And then, just before I set out to write my article on this great invention of mine, I decided to do an online search using the words "speed golf"...sure enough, it's already been invented with professional tournaments going on for ten years already.  According to "their" rules, in an 18-hole round each golfer gets the usual score of total shots, to which is added the total minutes taken to run the course...giving the final composite score.  I don't know if they time the interval between holes...I wouldn't, timing only between the tee and hole.  Also, according to "my" version, I would completely discount how many shots are taken and only go by the time taken to accomplish it...and I'd have the golfers on a particular hole all tee off and play simultaneously...no tedious breaks with players analyzing and lining up shots!  I think that adding the element of timing would make golf more similar to tennis in that the tournaments would tend to go more consistently to the sport's stars instead of being spread out so much among so many.  And, of course, I think it would be a lot more exciting to watch.  Will speed golf ever catch on as a major sport?  I don't know, but reportedly its major tournaments are shown on CBS and ESPN...next time they show one I'd like to see how they do it...

Just Finished Reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

A few weeks ago I was listening to a Rob Dial podcast in which he referenced a book titled The Power of Now but failed to mention its author.  He is Eckhart Tolle, a German metaphysical philosopher and teacher now living in Canada who published the book, full title The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, in 1997.  Reviewing it presents a sort of quandary, in that Tolle maintains that people in general place too much store in their thinking, and that what endures within ourselves is what he says is the "observer", rooted in the here and now.  One's thoughts, he believes, are just so much noise that tends to obscure our true nature. So in reviewing this book of his, I'm giving in to my thinking "self"...forgive me, dude!  The book's format is very readable, in question-and-answer dialog form as the author covers the main concerns about his philosophy, which seems to bear some resemblance to Buddhism although he claims that the kernels of all religions proclaim essential truths...you just have to know where to look for them.  That's the only part of the book I had a problem with: Tolle tends to give his own interpretation of various religions' scriptures...of course, all the references and quotes he uses conveniently fit his thesis.  Lately the notion of "mindfulness", where one pauses during his or her daily routines and worldly endeavors and focuses on what is immediately around them in the present moment, gets star billing here.   Tolle maintains that true enlightenment can only come by shedding the notions of past and future and embracing the here and now where dwells our eternal nature. There is a lot to cover for a book that forswears too much thinking, but Eckhart Tolle isn't against thinking per se...just doing so excessively to the point where one confuses their thoughts with their own true essence.  A very interesting and thoughtful book, one worth going back to but with some accompanying discernment.  A thinking person's book that eschews thinking: sounds Zen, doesn't it...

Quote of the Week...from Leslie Nielsen in the Movie Airplane!

I just want to tell you both good luck.  We're all counting on you.        ---Leslie Nielsen, Airplane!

One of my favorite movie comedies is the 1980 farce Airplane!, a satire of the preceding decade's airplane disaster flicks.  Toward the movie's end, Leslie Nielson's "And don't call me Shirley" character Dr. Rumack is trying to encourage low-confidence stand-in pilot Ted Striker (played by Robert Hays) as he and his co-pilot, flight attendant Elaine Dickenson (Julie Hagerty) try to land the stricken passenger plane safely.  He starts out with the above quote...then keeps repeating it until the plane is on the ground...and then says it again!  To me that was one of the high points of an already side-splitting movie...and the race I just ran this past Sunday reminded me of how preposterous it was.  I was running a half-marathon and had just cleared the hilliest part, with just about three miles to go as my body was aching all over and starting to run out of steam.  And that's when it started, Airplane-style, with people standing on the side of the course repeating the same mantra: "You're almost there!"  Over and over and over and over again, each of them apparently unaware that I still had quite some distance to go while repeating the same tired old line up and down the road.  Finally, just when I turned left on NW 1st Street for my final stretch run, a young woman volunteer yelled out, "You're almost there! I'm telling you the truth!"...apparently, she somehow knew that this had been going on for miles on the course.  I half-expected somebody to repeat it after I had finally crossed the finish line as Leslie Nielson did in the movie...oh well, we can't have everything!  Have you ever experienced this sort of thing, where you keep hearing the same often well-intentioned line over and over again to the point where you're just about ready to slug somebody? 

Fascist Putin, Praised by Trump, Invades Ukraine

Fascist Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, as expected for weeks, today launched his country's invasion of neighboring Ukraine as tanks are rolling in and bombs dropping across this besieged nation.  Putin's biggest American buddy, fellow fascist Donald Trump...who tried to overthrow our dearly cherished free and fair presidential election a year ago...has been full of nothing but praise for Putin, calling his Ukraine strategy of aggression "genius".  And other right-wingers, most notable among them FoxNews' Tucker Carlson, have made no secret of their unbridled support for Putin...what has my country come to?  It's true that under Vladimir Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, Russia shed its previous aggressive communist ideology in favor of social conservatism...lining themselves up nicely with the political right on several ongoing issues in America.  But don't these people see what carnage, damage and disruption this military takeover of another sovereign nation is going to cause?  This isn't like some football game with folks choosing, say, the Rams or the Bengals...this is life and death, and some of my compatriots need to get their heads screwed on right and their hearts drastically changed.  As for my own heart, it goes out to the Ukrainian people in this time of crisis and suffering...

Weekly Short Stories: 1982 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue my look at some of 1982's standout science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his selections from the year before.  The prevailing national mood back then was a bit somber and gloomy, what with a deep recession going on, perceived loss of American industry to Japanese exports, and a scary return to the Cold War between Reagan and Brezhnev's successor Andropov...not to mention an explosive situation developing with Lebanon's civil war in the Middle East.  But here we still are, forty years later, with me reviewing four more sci-fi short stories...

PLAYING THE GAME by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

Jimmy Daniels is a little boy living in a small town...whenever he wakes up from sleep, he discovers he is in a different alternative reality with a different home and parents who, ostensibly the same, have different personalities, states of health, and jobs.  He seeks out the town's cemetery as one of the few places that seem the same regardless which "universe" he finds himself in.  No one around him seems to think anything is amiss, and Jimmy is careful not to let on about his different realities...one of the best really short stories I've read recently and a great ending... 

PAWN'S GAMBIT by Timothy Zahn

An advanced alien civilization, fearful of other intelligent life in their area of space developing into an aggressive threat to them, selectively abducts representative individuals from various worlds and subjects them to board games while analyzing their tactics and ways of thinking to determine their species' threat level.  An Earthman gets kidnapped as well and devises a unique strategy of saving himself as well as his fearsome opponent from another system.  I thought the author hit the mark, revealing humanity's great strength of being able to forge alliances in times of external threat...

THE COMEDIAN by Timothy Robert Sullivan

A very brief tale with a very abrupt ending, it appears that a sick serial child abductor is on the loose with seven kids already disappeared...and it increasingly looks like the man responsible is out to add to the total.  Yet from his viewpoint he is doing good and is doing the bidding of a strange shape-shifting entity who likes to impersonate famous comedians.  It all seems very sinister and dark...turns out that it IS very sinister and dark, but not at all the way the author builds it up...

WRITTEN IN WATER by Tanith Lee 

After a planet-wide plague wipes out almost every human on Earth, the only survivor is an embittered hermit of a middle-aged woman who lives her solitary daily existence as if nothing has changed.  Then one night a star falls from the sky onto the black field adjoining her home...but it is no star, but rather a young alien man.  She helps him recuperate from his shock of landing and although he does not understand her speech the two reach a state of rudimentary mutual understanding.  How the story culminates was pretty disturbing to me, and demonstrates how rigidly people can adhere to their old habitual thought patterns even in the face of cataclysmic change...  

Next week I conclude my look at science fiction short stories from 1982...

TikTok as Forum for Diverse Ideas & Opinions

I have had the short looping video app TikTok on my smartphone for a few months now, never putting out anything on my own but rather just scrolling through the randomly appearing posts of others.  My use of it reflects how I used Twitter: to get people's brief reactions to what is going on around us as well as their general philosophies of life.  Before, when I used Twitter...and social media in general...what I saw was pretty much set in advance by my choice of people I followed and was thereby inherently slanted. When I flick through video after TikTok video (I don't follow anyone or participate in their interactive options of reactions to posts), I'm getting more of a cross-section of viewpoints about most anything, but weighted heavily in favor of current events and issues.  And since the people putting out these videos are for the most part neither celebrities nor anyone I personally know, I am not having to deal with inner conflicts about those individuals whenever I happen to disagree with a posting (and that happens a lot)...I can focus on the message, not the messenger.  Some of the videos out there do stretch the standards of modesty and propriety a bit, but I suppose in a free speech environment it's better to err in that direction than in that of censorship.  Speaking of censorship, just about every mainstream social media platform practices some sort of content regulation and TikTok has its own issues as well...seems that criticism of some autocrats has been suppressed in the past and there was a recent scandal in which a site urged students to vandalize their schools.  I also know that Trump hated TikTok and wanted it banned in the United States...had it not been for him I probably wouldn't have even considered it: thanks, Donald, in a backhanded sort of way.  Is this app perfect? No way...not by far...but it is always interesting.  TikTok as I see it presented is a crazy, chaotic kind of digital bulletin board, a welcome, more grassroots kind of entertainment to check in on whenever I get tired of the contrived and narrative-driven mass media news programs I see on TV.  I'm not necessarily recommending it for you, but I've seen it as a good source for independent opinions and information...although as with everything else it's crucial to be discerning in filtering it all through and not automatically accept everything I read or hear...

Ideas for Breaking Through Mental Barriers, As Related by Rob Dial

On a recent Mindset Mentor podcast hosted by Rob Dial, he laid out three ways to break through mental barriers...and he used for an example an area with which I am only too familiar: long-distance running.  According to Dial, a noted ultra-marathon runner is asked by someone to help his friend get over his running block: he can't surpass five miles for a single run without losing his energy and needing to stop.  The "ultra" man accepts the challenge to help him out but insists that he commit himself to three things: (1) repeat to yourself "I will never quit", (2) don't give your pain a voice, and (3) continually think of things in your life that you are grateful for.  The story goes like this: on their very first run together, the friend not only breaks his five-mile barrier but runs for 100 miles!  With the repeated mantra of never quitting, Dial explains that your body responds to the voice inside your head...another example is the placebo effect in which healing occurs seemingly because the mind is convinced that the ingested "medicine" is effective for the body.  With not giving pain a voice, the point is to not to focus on things you don't want, but instead to switch to emphasizing that which you desire.  And thoughts of gratitude cause the brain to release chemicals that benefit action and reduce anxiety and discouragement.  As for me, I employed these three principles during the half-marathon yesterday...and they worked, although had I not heard this episode of Rob Dial's podcast I think I still would have done all right.  Who knows, maybe I was already practicing these suggestions, albeit in a different form...

Ran Gainesville's Five Points Half-Marathon This Morning

 

This morning I ran Gainesville's Five Points of Life Half-Marathon, the sixth time I've run this event (2010, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018) and my overall thirteenth half-marathon.  Last year's race was cancelled due to Covid, and the 2022 edition features a modified course that winds through the city but in a different direction...although the NW 16th Avenue stretch of hills and the stadium run remain on the course.  I woke up at 5 and managed to get out there in plenty of time, parking in front of the Thomas Center and walking the few blocks to Bo Diddley Plaza in the heart of downtown where the race was to begin and end.  It was cold, in the upper thirties with high humidity, but once we started running the weather wasn't any bother.  The Five Points Half-Marathon uses pacers who run the race just to finish at a specified final finishing time: the one I selected, who incidentally is an ultramarathon runner, held the sign for 2 hours 40 minutes, five minutes slower than my previous half-marathon time in 2019.  She told us up front that she would alternate two-minute runs with thirty-second walks...that was fine with me since I like those brief walking breaks.  After the race began a few delayed minutes past 7, we headed east on University Avenue, turned south on East 7th Street and made our way to Depot Road, which we took to the trail that passes over US 441 just south of the University of Florida campus.  Then we passed through the area of the various UF medical buildings, crossing busy Archer Road and beginning the hilly part of the course.  Eventually we passed Lake Alice, made it back to University Avenue and then ran through the Florida football stadium before running through the heart of the campus.  After that we went north to NW 8th Avenue, cut through to 16th and ran east to 441 before turning right.  After that it was more or less a matter of going back to the downtown area where the finish line stood near the Hippodrome Theater.  I liked our pacer's run/walk strategy until we began to encounter some substantial hills...then I found it tiring since she'd often run up a hill and walk down another.  By the time we reached 16th...home of the really "bad ass hills" as legendary seniors marathoner John Wallace has termed them...I had decided to abandon following a pacer and employed my own strategy of tackling the hills: it worked and my finishing chip time was 2:33:51, more than six minutes faster than the pace I followed for the race's first half.  My feet got sore early on, and by the end I was essentially focused on putting one leg in front of the other until it was all over.  The police (who regulated the surrounding traffic) and volunteers were all very friendly and encouraging...for the last three miles of the run people on the side would keep yelling at me that I was "almost there": that kind of got tiring.  But the end was sweet, and Melissa and Will congratulated me on getting through it...I even got a photo op with Albert, the Florida Gator mascot!  And now it's time for my poor sore, crampy body to recover from the ordeal before I get ready for the next one.  Click HERE to view the race results...

The Burden of Relevancy in Academic Conversation

I have a daydream fantasy, one that I believe few others have.  It goes like this: along with all the inane radio talk shows hosted by political extremists, self-proclaimed experts on money or the law, paranormal promoters, and sports know-it-alls there is one program in which the host, a master of informed questioning, has as guests people who are knowledgeable and competent in diverse academic fields, ranging from medicine to physics to language to mathematics to agriculture to mechanics to economics...or anything else. In each interview they spend the allotted time exploring the actual content of the field for discussion, not necessarily its applications or implications to society or the guest's life history. Now I know this is just cognitive reverie on my part, but what if I were to become like that host and ask those around me about their own fields of expertise?  My guess is that they would mostly be reticent about sharing many details of their specialized knowledge, trying to steer the conversation toward their own life narrative or what career achievements they have won...and question my own rationale in asking them in the first place.  And simple curiosity and a desire to learn new things just don't sound like good enough reasons...there has to be demonstrated relevancy to push the topic forward.  On the other hand, since I haven't tried this how do I know that would happen? I do know that there is an increasing gulf in society between those "in the know" about science and technology and the bulk of the population, which at best takes it all for granted and at worst outright rejects science and advanced learning in favor of nonsensical notions...

Quote of the Week...from Clint Eastwood

Maybe I'm getting to the age when I'm starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now.  You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends.  Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot.           ---Clint Eastwood

I'm a fan of Clint Eastwood's movies...especially the early westerns...and have noted his political leanings over the years as well. A pragmatic conservative who supports minority rights as well as avoiding overseas military conflicts, he is usually in the general center of the political spectrum.  And I've noticed that this position can bring out a lot of antagonism from folks mired in ideology and partisanship...although not from me.  That's why he disappointed me at the 2012 Republican Convention that nominated Mitt Romney for president when he ranted on for ten minutes at an empty chair onstage, pretending that President Obama was sitting in it and putting vulgar expressions in the absent president's mouth...to the ecstatic cheers and laughter of the attendees. It drew out my scorn for Eastwood...and most likely unintentionally helped contribute to Obama's reelection that year as it did NOT play well on TV.  The irony was that his objection to the president was rooted in the increased military focus on Afghanistan, something that many conservatives supported: politics can get pretty convoluted!  Anyway, fast forward eight years and we find Eastwood opposing Trump and endorsing centrist candidate Michael Bloomberg in the Democratic primaries...so his political leanings are by no means bound to one party.  I've forgiven the dude for that earlier diatribe and see his above quote as a marker for our times.  As for me, I tend to politically divide the people around me not so much by whether they lean Republican or Democratic as by how vocal and adamant they are about openly pushing their opinions on me and others.  Look, I watch the news and can read...I don't need someone regurgitating almost verbatim something they picked up on some talk radio or TV show, usually with an insulting jab aimed at the "other side".  I do know that the hosts of many of these shows specialize in demonizing the opposition, and if you're a regular listener then you're liable to fall under their sway and begin to emulate their contemptuous attitudes.  I used to listen to both conservative and liberal opinion shows but can no longer handle the vitriol that is disguised as public discourse. If that's your cup of tea then good luck with it... just keep it off my wave, as the late Chris Cornell of Soundgarden once sang ...

Constellation of the Month: Canis Major (the Great Dog)

 

If you think dogs are great and that's why the southern February evening constellation Canis Major is translated as "great dog", then you're missing the point that it is so named as to distinguish it from the nearby constellation Canis Minor...the "lesser dog".  Portrayed in the night sky as hunter Orion's dog forever pursuing the adjacent star group Lepus (the hare), Canis Major's greatest feature is Sirius, easily the brightest star in the night sky at -1.46 magnitude, only some 8.6 light years distant making it a celestial neighbor of ours.  Sirius is a binary star, the much dimmer companion a very dense white dwarf star, "the Pup", almost the exact size of Earth but much, much more massive.  The rest of Canis Major contains a number of readily visible stars, making it easy to find in the evening sky, just to the southeast of Orion with that constellation's three-star "belt" roughly pointing in Sirius' direction.  It also contains a Messier object, M41...an open cluster visible to the naked eye at 4.5 magnitude.  It shouldn't be too hard to find this constellation on a clear twilight during February...just look to the southeast (from continental U.S. latitudes) as the sun sets and Sirius should stand out as the first star to become visible as the blue background darkens...

Next month I will examine another constellation...

Weekly Short Stories: 1982 Science Fiction, Part 1

This week I begin my reactions to 1982 science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, featuring editor Donald A. Wollheim's picks from the year before.  In 1982 I was single, living in an apartment in the southwest corner of town, across from a big, empty field which in just a handful of years would be converted into shopping center ringed by shops and restaurants...I had originally moved out there because it was quieter.  Now it's by far the most congested part of Gainesville!  Here are my reviews of the first three stories in the anthology...

THE SCOURGE by James White

A human couple has been sent to a remote planet to see if its intelligent inhabitants qualify for admission into the Galactic Federation.  This world is plagued by incessant meteorites showering down on the land, caused by the breakup of one of its moons over a thousand years before...the cause of that breakup is important. Martin lands on the planet's surface and soon meets Teldin, a high-ranking slave who reveals the regimented master-slave social structure there.  How can Martin communicate the Federation's agenda if they won't speak with him directly, since as a subordinate in his own job he is regarded as a "slave"?  Interesting scenario and story, with some lessons for us today in our real world... 

A LETTER FROM THE CLEARYS by Connie Willis

After a nuclear apocalypse a family in rural Colorado struggles to make ends meet while watching out for dangerous survivors roaming the area.  The daughter goes out to the post office to pick up the mail and discovers a letter from a family back east that was to visit them just before everything went down.  Her family's reactions when she reads it aloud reveal the whole dismal situation.  For such a brief story, the author did a fantastic job of gradually unraveling their plight to its greatest effect. This story reminded me of the 1980s TV movie The Day After...

FARMER ON THE DOLE by Frederick Pohl

On a depopulated Earth, due probably to the worsening environment, robots comprise the vast majority of the remaining "population" with humans disguised among them...but with clear social and legal advantages.  But a movement is growing, that of "robot rights", and robot Zeb, abruptly displaced from his farmer role and reprogrammed as a mugger (of other robots) is caught up in the middle of it. I think Pohl was definitely striking up an analogy to today's world with its underclasses and ruling elites...lots of satire here...

Next week I continue my look at the year 1982 in short science fiction...

Podcaster Rob Dial's Strategy to Manifest Whatever You Want

Podcaster Rob Dial, whose specialty is life coaching and strategies, recently had a show on his Mindset Mentor series in which he explored what he called the "Law of Attraction".  Dial maintains that you can manifest whatever you want by implementing its three basic elements: envision, strategize and execute.  With the first, it's important to not only spend time and effort visualizing whatever it is you want to accomplish as if it has already been attained...but to do so to such an extent that success in that area seems normal.  With strategizing, he suggests an investment of time, writing down the steps you need to take, both in the long run and the short.  And then focus on those more immediate things you need to do.  As for execution, it's all a matter of "getting off your butt", as he puts it, and getting serious: Ready, Fire, and Aim is his motto as he reverses the last two steps...emphasizing that it's important to get out there doing things even if you think you're not ready yet, with adjustments to be made afterwards.  All of this sounds reasonable to me, especially the "envision" part...I think too many of us get started with stuff without thinking it through to what we really want from it...and why.  And with strategizing, it's too easy to get hung up worrying or getting discouraged about long term goals not being fulfilled instead of concentrating on the now.  Which kind of brings up a contradiction: you work in the present to change your habits in the direction you want while visualizing the future as if it's already happened...if I got what Dial said right.  Well, since I haven't employed these principles in the more meticulous way he laid them out, who am I to say it won't work?  Better to test it out by picking one area I want to achieve and applying his Law of Attraction...

Happy Birthday, My Dear Sweet Melissa

Well, Melissa, it's that time of year again...Happy Birthday!  It's also that time of year for me to reflect on how grateful I am to have been so blessed with such a wonderful, beautiful woman as you.  May the days, weeks, months and years ahead be full of joy, love and health for us and those around us...

Just Finished Reading Murder in the Manor by Fiona Grace

It seems that Fiona Grace is a prolific English author of numerous cozy mystery book series.  With the one I'm starting, the Lacey Doyle Cozy Mysteries, she has already published a prodigious 9 novels in just the past three years...but that's nothing: her aggregate total, the way I've figured it, is 33 books from 2019 to now!  You might think that this would interfere with the quality of her writing, but from what I gather after just finishing reading her first Lacey Doyle novel, Murder in the Manor, her writing quality is just fine, thank you. I was curious, though, about how other readers reacted to this story and checked out Goodreads...my eyes were opened.  Review after review dismally panned the book, and there was a consensus that there is no Fiona Grace. Her apparent prolificity is explained by there being a multitude of anonymous writers penning the many books bearing that name.  Makes sense to me, although in the final analysis it doesn't really matter, only the story itself.  Lacey is a 39-year old American woman whose dirtbag husband just pulled a no-fault divorce on her because she hasn't born him any children...and then has the gall to demand for spousal support from her.  She's an antiques dealer working for a New York company...to get a break from her domestic drama she travels to England, to a small quaint village she once stayed at as a child with her family.  There she quickly opens her own antique shop, gets to know various characters...both good and bad, and then a murder happens (she is initially the top suspect).  The narrative progresses to the crime's solution...naturally, Lacey figures it all out.  As stories go, I liked it...especially considering that the book's series title advertises it as a cozy mystery...no pretense here.  If you're going for a literary classic instead of pleasure reading, you probably won't give it raving reviews on Goodreads, either.  Armed with the knowledge that "Fiona Grace" probably isn't writing these stories, I'm still open to exploring other books attributed to her...including other series...