Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 5

Today I continue reviewing 1984 science fiction short stories I read from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Second Annual Collection.  Although for much of the 1984 I owned two (shabby) used cars, my preferred mode of transportation was the bicycle, and the kind of bicycle I preferred you'd never see in a race: strictly basic Wal-Mart material.  Nowadays I don't even own one, and if I did, I'd be a lot more concerned sharing the road with motorists distracted by their gadgets than I ever was about drunk drivers.  And now my reactions to the next eight stories in the book...

NEW ROSE HOTEL by William Gibson

Brutal cutthroat industrial espionage of the not-so-distant future reigns here as the narrator, one of the "spies", flees death from the opposition after his team's attempts to lure a crucial geneticist from one company to another go disastrously. His description of discount hotels as "coffin racks" with the "rooms" being "plastic capsules a meter high and three long, stacked like surplus Godzilla teeth"...oh yeah, sign me up, I want to live there!   

THE MAP by Gene Wolfe

Gardner Dozois is very big on Gene Wolfe, but his stories just don't resonate with me...here's another one. On a fantasy world of the distant future, there is the river Gyoll and the decaying, dead city of Nessus...and a map. The quest is on to find whatever it leads to, but betrayal, murder and frustration are its only fruits.  I see nothing science fiction here, and frankly, not much of a story...maybe you'll have better luck with it...

INTERLOCKING PIECES by Molly Gloss

A woman with a dire medical need of a cerebellum transplant (needless to say we're speaking of the future) uses her high position to gain access to the donor, a man with a certainty of death after he voluntarily rejects another heart transplant.  It is this need to contact and bond between donor and recipient that stands out in this brief tale...

TROJAN HORSE by Michael Swanwick

Elin is a scientist whose brain was damaged during an experiment done in Earth orbit.  She has received a personality transplant...yes, I know this sounds weird...and is recuperating on the moon in a terraformed area under a dome, complete with a lake.  There is a woman, Cleo, living there and she had a similar transplant...and now she thinks she's God.  How she, Elin, and their mutual acquaintance, Tory...a "wetware" surgeon who is involved in both of their cases...relate forms the core of this story in which I, the reader, had some trouble discerning what was real and what wasn't, not always a good sign... 

BAD MEDICINE by Jack Dann

One of my favorite pieces so far from this anthology, this story is all about Native American traditions and religion, with Stephen, a white "seeker" kind of dude dabbling in different projects, agrees to go with his Indian friend John to where one of John's friends is undergoing a special ritual.  Part of the preliminaries involves everyone sitting in a confined, painfully-hot place called a sweat-lodge...it is here that the resentments and grudges building between some of the participants come to a head. An interesting story, but more along the lines of Stephen King's horror genre than standard science fiction...

AT THE EMBASSY CLUB by Elizabeth A. Lynn

This is a brief tale about caste systems, racism, and misogyny...especially toward young women, a clear analogy to some present-day regions in the world and their social structures.  A diplomat from Earth falls in love with a girl on Tanderai...one of those brutally stratified societies...and the two each undergo the consequences of their romance. Great ending, although crossing forbidden class lines between lovers isn't exactly a novel idea for a story...

PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE by Rena Yount

A few weeks ago I wrote a generally unread blog article titled "People Magnets" that describe how certain folks seem to automatically be set apart from others in terms of their looks and opportunities...this story transfers it all to a dreary science fiction future in which people pay through the nose for their offspring to be genetically engineered for looks, intellect, athletics, or whatever their interest is for them.  In turn, the bioengineered get all the good jobs and run society over the "norms", like Evelyn who wants her planned daughter to be bioengineered and neglects her own bright-but-normal son in the process.  Aside from another story about the "beautiful people", this is a disturbing study about how parents can become excessively obsessed about what they want their children to become...

THE KINDLY ISLE by Fredrick Pohl

On a Caribbean resort island, a large hotel has been shut down for years...a company has sent a representative to assess the place for purchase and renovation possibilities.  While there he discovers the presence of a missing scientist formerly involved in biological warfare research.  How these two stories come together steer the course of the story to the ending...for which its title is quaintly apt: another plate of lobster, please, for the sake of humanity...

Next week: more about 1984 stories from the Dozois anthology...

My May 2022 Running and Walking Report

I've been doing these monthly reports on my blog for years summarizing my running activity.  Usually, I reveal how many miles I ran for the month, my longest single run, and how many days I ran.  But in April I decided to stop that, only because my running tends to now be indoors in my own house, running up and down the long hallways and through rooms.  I know I get good training workouts this way...I completed a half-marathon and a ten-mile race earlier this year...but it's next to impossible to accurately translate what I do into actual miles run.  So let me just say that my running is as good as ever and that I will continue doing it primarily indoors with the air-conditioner blasting full force.  If I decide to go outside, then I have a relatively large back yard to run laps around as well.  I had opportunities in May to run on Saturday morning in one of the weekly, free Depot Parkrun 5Ks that Gainesville is fortunate to have. But then something else comes into play to work against that...which is that my evolving emphasis with my running is in pacing, not racing.  And my experiences in that race...I think I've run it some six times so far...are that they tend to stress fast finishing times and personal records, and for good reason: it's a race, after all!  But my vision of where I want my running to go is more oriented to covering longer distances at what I personally regard as a reasonable pace for me...I frankly don't care how my speed stacks up against other runners.  And, with this in mind, I'd like to participate in races of at least 10K in length...since none are on the agenda around here then I'm content to run around the house instead and generally avoid the sweltering summertime heat and humidity.  As for my walking, I just measure my mileage on my Fitbit and record it, most of it coming from the extensive walking I do over the course of the week at my job...   

On This Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day I honor those courageous fellow Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the armed forces.  We are such a blessed nation, and sometimes I feel that not only others, but myself as well, sometimes lose sight of the many things we have to be thankful for.  Included in that are our precious liberties...which brings me back to remembering those wonderful men and women who died protecting them. 

My #29 All-Time Favorite Album: Let It Be by the Beatles

 #29 LET IT BE, by the Beatles, in the summer of 1970 was the final studio album released by them...although it was recorded in January of 1969 and followed by Abbey Road that summer.  It is famous for the two documentary movies made from the sessions...the earlier one focused on the conflicts between the four members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.  The track Get Back, featuring Paul and a wicked guitar riff, was released ahead of the album in 1969, becoming a major hit (and one of my favorites during that year).  The song Let It Be, another of Paul's and one that I didn't care for, came out as a single in the winter of '70.  Then came The Long and Winding Road along with the full album release later that year...yet another McCartney work although he strongly objected to how producer Phil Spector doctored up the track to include an orchestra and female choir.  I loved The Long and Winding Road, though...and still do.  The finished album contains several wonderful pieces...I remember hearing the first track, The Two of Us, featuring Paul and John in great harmony, way back then on the radio and thoroughly adoring it and its wistful spirit during a pretty gut-wrenching period in my life. John's mystical Across the Universe and George's catchy, light-hearted For You Blue were other album favorites as was the Lennon and McCartney collaboration I've Got a Feeling, Side Two's opening track.  They included on this album One After 909, an old Lennon/McCartney rocker from their earlier years.  Tracks that I grew to marginally like were Lennon's I Dig a Pony, Dig It, and Harrison's I Me Mine...but I never was able to make anything of Maggie Mae.  I'll never forget looking at the jacket of my then-new Let It Be album...bought after the Beatles had already broken up, and reading on it the words "This is a new phase Beatles album"...whatever the hell that was supposed to mean, I don't think the person who wrote it envisioned the band dissolving so soon.  Still, it was a great album for all the trouble that went into creating it...   

Last Public Phone in NYC Removed

I was watching Good Morning America this morning and saw that New York City's last public payphone station...the enclosed booths disappeared long ago...has been removed, to be placed in a museum.  I remember in the old Superman fifties TV series how the Man of Steel would use telephone booths as a convenient changing station from his alter ego Clark Kent whenever a need for his superhuman heroics arose.  Then, in the 1978 Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve the first time Kent needed a phone booth he looked at an open-air phone station...like the one they just removed...and realized that it just wasn't going to work.  The old movies are full of folks using those good old phone booths...Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and The Birds, James Bond's Doctor No, and the classic spoof Airplane! instantly come to mind.  Oh, and the 2002 Colin Farrell thriller Phone Booth naturally puts the outmoded old structure center stage.  And there's that old Gomer Pyle episode where Jim Nabors tries to put coins back into the phone that had earlier released them all...and gets arrested for theft.  Just think, back in those primitive bygone years people used to actually go outside without any phones to serve as a lifeline to whatever services they might need to access...scary times, scary times.  I guess it's our era's version of the old cliché where the wise old man would tell the spoiled young'uns that, in his day, he used to have to walk five miles in the snow to school.  Sadly, a smartphone is nowadays often deemed so crucially essential that some even feel hesitant to leave it behind them when they go into another room in their own home.  It's the real-world version of Bilbo Baggin's "precious" ring when one day he realizes he misplaced it and goes into a panic...

Quote of the Week...from Jean Yoon

If every time men had sex, they risked death, physical disability, social shunning, a life altering interruption of their education or career, and the sudden life-long responsibility for another being, I think they'd expect a choice in the matter.                                    ---Jean Yoon

I only know of the above quote by American-born Canadian actress/writer Jean Yoon because I've seen it reposted on Facebook a number of times in recent days...I haven't seen anything she acted in or read her writings before.  But her statement concerning too many men's attitudes regarding a woman's right to make her own reproductive choices to me expresses their fundamental hypocrisy on the subject when they justify their pro-life/anti-choice stance on "principles".  Principles, I might add, that don't apply to them since, as expressed in Yoon's quote, they aren't subject to the physical, social and economic consequences of pregnancy that the woman must endure, "chosen" or not. I recognize that this is a very sensitive issue and that well-meaning people, men and women both, have wide-ranging and often very passionate opinions about it.  But as I have stated before in earlier blog articles, it would be a good thing for everyone concerned if each of us showed a little compassion toward those with whom we disagree and at least tried to empathetically see things from their viewpoints...Jean's quote stresses this point.  But I see where our society is going right now and sadly doubt that my suggestion will be widely practiced anytime soon...

Taking in Daisy as Our Newest Family Addition

 

Back in 2019 our family dog Freckles, a mixed-breed rescue dog we adopted as a puppy, passed away after 14 years with us.  It's been a while, but the Saturday before last, PetSmart on Archer Road here in Gainesville was holding a pet adoption fair through one of the non-profits and we went...and little Daisy was the result.  She is also a mixed breed rescue dog, two months old and very motivated to bond with us while establishing her supremacy throughout the house.  Naturally, the first few weeks are a bit tedious, with us laying down the rules and (trying to) train her to wait to do her "business" outside...crate training seems to be helping with this although she tends to whine and howl sporadically as you would expect.  As for me personally, although everyone else in my childhood and adult nuclear families are very keen on pet ownership, I have never felt the inner urge to go out and get some critter to hang out with and give me some kind of psychological lift.  Not criticizing those who "have it"...just about everyone in my family is crazy about dogs and cats.  I like them, too, but in all the years I was single and on my own I never once had the remotest urge to take in one as a pet.  Still, I love other people and through them I bond with the pesky little animals.  Daisy is a real sweetie, no doubt about it... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I start reviewing 1984 science fiction short stories I read from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Second Annual Collection. Among the first seven stories in the book are three from Donald Wollheim's series that I already read and discussed: Salvador by Lucius Shepard, Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler and Press Enter by Varley.  Each of them is remarkable and unforgettable in its own way...don't forget to read them.  Of the other first four stories, here are my reactions...

PROMISES TO KEEP by Jack McDevitt

Set in probably our own times (sci-fi writers tended to be wildly optimistic about our space progress), a group of astronauts...along with a journalist...are on Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons.  Humanity is out here exploring while enthusiasm at home on Earth has dwindled with funding for future missions and innovation seriously in doubt.  As the group's lander ship makes a rendezvous with the main ship before returning home, a crisis happens...this story reminded me a lot of those I read from the 1940s and 50s, especially the ones penned by the great Robert Heinlein...  

BLUED MOON by Connie Willis

When I discovered the gimmick in this story early on, I just groaned to myself, sucked it up and read on to the end. Out in the western desert a company is testing whether hydrocarbon wastes launched into a strategic part of the atmospheric would have a beneficial effect on protecting and restoring the crucial ozone layer.  When folks discover that the moon has turned blue, then all sorts of hijinks result (along with my groaning).  I take it as nothing more than a light-hearted tale capitalizing on a worn-out cliche...

A MESSAGE TO THE KING OF BROBDINGNAG by Richard Cowper

An altruistic agricultural scientist has discovered the means for a crop plant to generate its own fertilizer, giving it independence from the soil in which it is nurtured. The test sites for his project involve one in Australia, which he visits and which occupies the story's ominous, nightmare ending...one that I fear could actually happen.  What a shockingly scary and effective story!

THE AFFAIR by Robert Silverberg

In this story telepaths exist, and it's possible for them to communicate over long distances with each other.  The problem for Chris, a secret telepath himself, is that he discovers that most of them are insane.  But one day in his mental wanderings he encounters a woman, living hundreds of miles away...and she is very, very sane.  The two, both married, begin to develop a telepathic romantic affair...eventually Chris insists on a personal meeting.  They go back and forth about the guilt of seeing one another...how it resolves itself is up to you, the reader, to find out. Of course, things like telepathy, time travel, and faster than light speed travel are staples of so-called "science" fiction...but I think this story of Silverberg does lend itself to non-telepathic analogies...  

Next week: more from Dozois' anthology....

About the Primary Results Last Tuesday

We're now thick into the 2022 election season now, albeit in the "preliminary" party primary phase.  This is when fringe candidates often snatch up nominations by attracting more fanatical voters than more traditional politicians, sometimes leaving poor choices on the November ballot.  I was interested particularly in the Pennsylvania seat of the US Senate being vacated next January by retiring Republican incumbent Pat Toomey.  Television doctor Mehmet Oz was running to replace him, with the full support of Donald Trump.  As the results started coming through that evening for last Tuesday's primary election, it became clear that it would be very close between Oz and Dave McCormick...at this writing a week later it is still undecided.  I deliberately chose to watch Newsmax and Fox News for the results for how their favored "guys" were doing in the spotlighted races. I found myself further resenting how dictator-wannabe Trump has managed to coopt conservative politics, some of which I'm in agreement with, to the point where it is little more than a personality cult where politicians compete to seen as the most loyal...not to the people they claim to want to represent...but rather to just one sorry, self-absorbed man. Pathetic. Georgia...along with Alabama and Arkansas...will be holding their primary elections today.  On the Republican side in my birth state of Georgia, football hero Herschel Walker, endorsed by Trump, is running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Raphael Warnock while incumbent governor Brian Kemp is facing a number of opponents in his party's primaries, including former U.S. senator David Perdue...Trump's stooge in this race. To align himself with the Orange Man after that earlier endorsement, Perdue had joined the crowd of 2020 presidential election deniers in order to curry his favor. Should be interesting to see the results from Georgia tonight: I think I'll just skip the propaganda channels, though (all of them, left or right-leaning) ...or at least mute the sound.  Better yet: skip the TV and get the results off my smartphone...

Personal Development Podcaster's Take on Technology Addiction

On one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, life coach Rob Dial discussed how to get ahead of everyone else...quickly. It's not so complicated: while the population in general is becoming more and more dependent on their digital technology like smartphones, television and innovations like virtual reality and the Metaverse, he's decided to take a different path, trading in the time and effort put into entertainment for education and action...in the real world.  Dial maintains that studies show that (not necessarily a good lead-in line) people over the past few decades have much shorter attention spans, and he attributes this to their excessive use of media and digital devices.  For himself, he says that being around his cellphone too much makes him less focused and more anxious, and deliberately puts it away in another room when he has other things planned to do.  Dial is not opposed to using smartphones, social media, Netflix or other manifestations of the modern digital era per se, but the question becomes, who is the master, yourself or the technology to which he claims many are addicted.  Where do I stand on all this?  I agree with Rob Dial's suggestion that we all read and learn more instead...yet I use my Android both as a Kindle device and an audiobook.  YouTube in itself is an incredible teaching device...I recently saved a "load" of money replacing a simple worn-out part in my dryer by following a video on that platform.  Still, I admit that while I'm not anywhere near as attached to Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites as many others I know (as well as probably Dial himself), I do tend to engage in some game playing on it...but not all that much when I think about it. Still, I can see how folks can become addicted to all this stuff...being 65 with a lifetime of sitting in front of a TV set, I think that's probably the closest I come to being "addicted" to a form of technology...and yet in recent times I've become more discriminating in what I watch, often switching to a music channel or just turning the confounded thing off. On the other hand, as I related in my recent Saturday article, I get a big kick out of watching sports on TV...that ain't changing.  My big problem with people stuck on their devices is that they tend to be on them while driving, and that poses a direct danger to myself and my loved ones...not to mention that it makes me skittish about ever again riding a bicycle outside my neighborhood when in bygone years I used to bike all over the place...

My #30 All-Time Favorite Album: On the Threshold of a Dream by the Moody Blues

ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM, my #30 all-time favorite album, is the British rock band The Moody Blues' third studio album after they regrouped following the departure of their founding vocalist Denny Laine and bassist Clint Warwick.  With guitarist Justin Haywood and bassist John Lodge joining original members drummer Graeme Edge, flutist/guitarist Ray Thomas and keyboardist Mike Pinder, they embarked in 1967 on a string of concept-based albums with a classical music-sounding background highlighted by Pinder's mellotron...definitely a turn toward progressive rock.  On the Threshold of a Dream is themed on, well, dreaming...especially Side Two, in my opinion one of the greatest ever album sides, back when there used to be such a thing as album sides.  Recorded in London in January 1969, not far from where the Beatles were at the same time recording their Let It Be tracks, it was released that April...but I didn't hear any of its songs until much later, in the 1990s.  This album, as with the Moodies' others, is a full creatively collaborative effort, with everyone contributing tracks.  Two of them, the opening, quirky In the Beginning and the beautiful, haunting The Dream on the second side, feature Edge, well-known for his beautiful soliloquy at the close of their hit Nights in White Satin (from Days of Future Passed).  Then the album progresses to pleasant tracks by Haywood (Lovely to See You), Thomas (Dear Diary), Haywood & Lodge (Send Me No Wine), Lodge (To Share Our Love) and Pinder (So Deep Within You).  Although the tracks flow without interruption from one to the next on both sides, the songs on Side Two end up seeming like a coherent, complete work.  Never Comes the Day, by Haywood is a sad, sweet lead-in to one of my all-time favorite songs, Ray Thomas' Lazy Day...a curious combination of quaintness and the sinister.  This in turn leads to another personal favorite, John Lodge's Are You Sitting Comfortably, a wistful fantasy piece reminding me of (vicariously) hiking through Tolkien's Middle Earth.  Then comes that intense Edge piece The Dream, leading into the finale: a combination of the Haywood song Have You Heard and a psychedelic, orchestral-sounding instrumental The Voyage.  Yes, that Side Two is always a special listening experience for me...

Now that this weekly unraveling of my thirty personal all-time favorite albums has begun, you might be interested in how I break them down.  Well, it's overwhelmingly weighted in favor of well-known acts, mostly bands and many from Britain and many leaning toward hard and progressive rock with other more recent ones in the alternative/indie rock genre.  I'm sure that if you've been into classic and alternative/indie rock to any degree you're probably going to be familiar with many, if not most of my picks.  My biggest problem in compiling this list, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, was deciding which albums to leave out as there are so many great ones.  At this writing the full On a Threshold of a Dream album is available on YouTube: check it out if you can...

Watching Golf and Horse Racing on TV Today

As I await the pivotal third game in the NBA Eastern Conference championship series between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat (go Al Horford and Jimmy Butler!) this evening, two more "minor" sporting events are going on this afternoon: the PGA Championship tournament (third round) in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, Maryland.  If I told you that the temperature at one of these events was 57 degrees and for the other it was 91, you might think the golfers were sweating it out while the horse racing attendees would be wearing sleeves...not so, there's a record-setting heat wave going on right now in the American northeast, while the weather has been wreaking havoc with the golfers in Tulsa, for the first two days blasting hot air with strong winds from the south and today abruptly switching to cool, strong winds from the north...the wildly changing scores are reflecting the tumult. As expected, Tiger Woods...and I wish him the best...received an excessive amount of attention even though he just barely made Friday's cut and shot a 79 today to go into the final round, at this writing some 22 strokes off the lead.  I expect the leaderboard to change a bit leading into an exciting final round...at this writing a couple of relative unknowns (Zalatoris and Pereira) are leading it while more recognizable names like Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson and Cory McIlroy are right behind them.  As for the Preakness, the "second leg" of the annual Triple Crown of horse racing for three-year old thoroughbreds, Rick Strike...the surprise Kentucky Derby winner...won't be running in it.  Still, the race should be interesting with Derby runner-up Epicenter the strong favorite and Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath the second favorite.  The field has only nine horses...other than Epicenter, Simplification and Happy Jack the entrants did not run in the Kentucky Derby.  The media fanfare is also much less than with the Derby, NBC televised pre-race coverage slated to start at 4 pm Eastern Time, with the race to take place at 7:01.  I think I'll go for Secret Oath.  The PGA Championship is being televised on CBS...wonder what kind of weather they'll get tomorrow...

Quote of the Week...from Regina Spektor

There's an artist I listened to for the first time, and I really didn't like them.  I had some kind of adverse reaction, and later, it became my favorite thing.                     ---Regina Spektor

I can relate to Regina Spektor's above quote, because over the course of my listening to popular music... going all the way back to the early 1960s....there have been several acts that I initially disliked...well, some I even despised.  Yet, a few of them redeemed themselves to me and I now regard them as favorites...some of them have made great albums that I have included in my Top 30 Personal Favorite Albums list that I will begin going through each week, starting in a couple of days this Sunday.  And Regina, one of my favorite musical artists of this current century, figures to be on it.  When compiling my list, it pained me to leave out many very worthy albums, but had I not done so then this project would have been too long...thirty albums over thirty weeks sounded more reasonable.  Speaking of Regina Spektor, her new studio album, titled Home, Before and After, is set for release next month: I can hardly wait!

Constellation of the Month: Virgo (the Maiden)

 

Virgo, the maiden or virgin, is the zodiac sign between Leo and Libra as well the constellation on that celestial belt, prominent in the south in the May evening sky (from the perspective of northern latitudes).  I'm inclined to believe it's also the biggest of the zodiac constellations, taking up a large section of that sector of the sky.  Virgo has one bright, first-magnitude star in Spica, a binary star some 250 light years distant, and which stands out starkly to the naked eye against its relatively faint neighboring stars. A funny, trivial event about Spica occurred when I was in high school...if I still remember it I guess it wasn't so trivial, though.  I was in my senior year sitting in the math library doing homework when a kid a couple of years younger, who attended the same astronomy club meetings as myself, approached me holding a book.  He pointed to the star Spica and asked me how I pronounced it.  I replied "spike-uh" and he triumphally responded "You're wrong, it's "spee-kuh" and pointed to the book's pronunciation guide, which turned out to confirm my version, not his.  Flustered, he just walked away, defeated.  I think I remember that weird, random event because it exemplified the general smartass, know-it-all attitude I encountered among my classmates back then...even decades later, after I began this blog, I got hit with the same hypercompetitive type of petty one-upmanship from kids...now supposedly adults...with whom I attended that high school: I never gave a hoot about how you pronounced something as long as we both understood what we were talking about.  But back to Virgo: this constellation does contain several deep-space Messier objects in a region (see above map for the Virgo Cluster), all of them other galaxies: M49, 58, 59, 60, 61, 84, 86, 87, 89 and 90...whew, that's a lot! But then consider that not only does this cluster contain some 1300-2000 galaxies, but that astronomers regard it as being "small"...I don't know about you, but that makes me feel really, really small in the grand scheme of things...  

When I step outside this time of year to view the night sky, the first star I look for, facing east, is Arcturus in Boötes (the first constellation I wrote about, in June of 2020)...then I trace a line south and west (down and to the right) and there's my old, far-away friend Spica.  And with this article, I've now gone around the sky twice, covering 24 different interesting constellations. Next month I plan to begin Year Three...

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reactions to the final three 1984 science fiction short stories appearing in Donald Wollheim's anthology The 1985 Annual World's Best SF, featuring choices from the year before. Let's see...1984 was a special year for me in spectator football: the University of Florida Gators, under head coach Charlie Pell, won their first Southeastern Conference championship ever, but wait: Pell violated some important rules, the championship taken away, and all we got was a new coach, Galen Hall.  The Miami Dolphins had a storybook year under second-year quarterback Dan Marino...it looked for a while as if they might go undefeated.  But their stellar defense from just two years earlier was depleted and they got kicked in the Super Bowl against Joe Montana's San Francisco 49ers.  And now, those stories...

BLOODCHILD by Octavia E. Butler

Not a story for the squeamish, Bloodchild exposes the adaptability of humans to one of the most extreme of conditions: complete subjugation by an alien race that reproduces by infesting their bodies with larvae.  Gross, utterly gross...and fascinating, especially all the rationalization going on from the humans' perspective: it seems that it's possible to develop a good-sounding doctrine for anything, good enough for folks to swallow hook, line and sinker...

THE COMING OF THE GOONGA by Garyl W. Shockley

Sometimes in science fiction stories the aliens are humanoid and very similar to ourselves...in this story they are vastly different, not only in chemistry and structure but how they view their own deaths.  A human exploratory party on such a planet goes into war mode after one of them is killed by a goonga, a native organism their sentient adversaries use as a weapon.  The story is unique, written by an alien after its death...reminds me of a hilarious old John Belushi Saturday Night Live skit where he's a demented sailing ship captain and ends with "Chapter 2: I Was Eaten by Sharks"....

MEDRA by Tanith Lee

Medra is a woman living in isolation on a distant planet, on the 89th floor of the hotel her father had built in a completely abandoned metropolis.  Her waking life is lonely, she being the only human left on this forsaken world, but her dreams liberate her to travel across the universe.  A man lands there on a paid mission to find a fabled weapon of universal destruction.  How she handles him, and what her own true mission is, comes out at the story's end.  It is a brief but beautiful and sad little tale...in a funny way it reminded me of Stephen King's Dark Tower series that I am now rereading...

Next week I start examining 1984 stories from the Gardner Dozois anthology...

NBA Conference Finals Set

Being off more than usual recently has enabled me to better follow what's been going on with the National Basketball Association playoffs, which Sunday entered the conference finals stage with Boston handily beating Milwaukee in their Game 7 and Dallas doing likewise to favored Phoenix.  Now it's Boston vs. Miami and Dallas vs. Golden State, the former starting their series tonight and the latter tomorrow, with subsequent games to be played on alternating evenings.  With the Celtics and Mavericks prevailing, I saw two teams overcoming their opponents' star talent by coalescing as a team and beating their foes to the ball, play after play...that was especially true with the final Dallas-Phoenix game, although the Mavs' Luka Doncic is a premier player, a star on anyone's team.  Three of the four series in this previous round went my way...Phoenix's disaster at home against Dallas was the exception.  But I like who's left in the playoffs and can live with any of them taking the title, although I'd still like to see the Heat face off against (and beat) the Warriors in the final series.  Well, at least through this coming weekend I should be able to watch some of the games until I need to return to work....

Podcaster Discusses Pervasive Brainwashing in Our Time

On one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, motivational coach Rob Dial discusses how our modern society provides ample opportunity for brainwashing us.  To give an example as to how pervasive this is, he cites a Yale University study in which people were asked to read a short passage on an individual and then answer questions regarding him.  But on the way to the study, participants were escorted to the elevator by one of the hosts and then asked to briefly hold a cup of coffee while he tied his shoe...lasting only about 10-15 seconds.  Some participants were handed cups of cold coffee while with others it was hot.  With that being the only difference in how they were treated in the study, the results showed that those who handled the cold cup had a more unfavorable opinion of the story's character, ascribing traits to him like cold and unreliable...the ones with the hot cups answered more that he was engaging and strong.  The point Dial is making is that even with our carefulness about filtering through biased data from media, much more subtle, unconscious "brainwashing" is shaping our opinions.  Maybe we can't catch everything coming at us, but at least we can control to some extent what...and who...we expose ourselves to in order to avoid undue and unwelcome influence.  I don't know if there really exists a reliable news source that isn't trying to influence how I think...just the simple selection of a topic and the order and duration of its presentation send a lot of conscious and unconscious signals.  I'm trying to tone down my exposure to TV news with all the nonverbal cues that are given along with the "facts" that divide the stories into the good people and the bad...maybe the old-fashioned newspaper is due for a comeback, its own built-in bias notwithstanding: at least there the reader can skip over what the editor deems as most important to other more pertinent stories.  Dial also stresses that the very people we interact with, as well as the shows and movies we watch and the music we listen to, can cumulatively play a large role in shaping our opinions and outlook...although we may claim that they are only reflections and affirmations of what we already believe.  In the past few years, I've noted how people on a mass level are irrationally swayed by emotion-tinged issues and how they are presented on social and mass media.  Look, I can't even watch a random commercial anymore without the creepy feeling that I am being taught a lesson in social engineering.  And speaking of commercials, Rob Dial also mentioned them and the shift in advertising strategy over the past few decades from stressing the need for the promoted product or service in favor of creating an emotional desire to purchase it, often through associating it with positive, unrelated symbols and humor: get the suckers to feel better and they're more likely to open up their wallets...

Just Finished Rereading Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

I first read Stephen King's novel Wolves of the Calla, the fifth installment of his seven-part The Dark Tower fantasy/sci-fi series, around 2008 if memory serves me correctly.  A pretty long book, it was published in 2003...with the series' last two volumes, also fat, released just the following year.  It shows how an accomplished writer like Stephen King could sit down and get stuff done, including finishing a long, drawn-out series, if he is really serious about it: understand, George R.R. Martin?  Wolves of the Calla, unlike the previous book Wizard and Glass, has several stories running concurrently and hops back and forth between them.  The main story, reflecting the book's title, is set on an alternate Earth and the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis, in which every generation or so is beset by what it calls "wolves" invading it and abducting one of every twin pair of children...twins for some reason predominate there.  The taken children are gone for some months and then return with their intelligence mostly gone, to live out the rest of their short existence as "roon".  One of the townsmen, his own children threatened as the robot Andy has forecast the wolves to be coming again soon, rallies the others to finally stand up and fight the wolves...the "priest", a Father Callahan, helps him by saying that there is a group of gunslingers approaching that may be able to help.  The group, or "ka-tet", is none other than series protagonists Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy.  What happens between them and the townsfolk and the eventual encounter with the so-called "wolves" form the basic skeleton of the book, but there are other important subplots including Father Callahan's story and his origin in an earlier Stephen King novel, Susannah's pregnancy and a new multiple personality, and the heroes' attempts to save a cryptic empty Manhattan lot from being bought by nefarious interests...this last story goes to the heart of their quest to find and rescue the Dark Tower, which holds all of reality together through beams that are being destroyed through the efforts of the villainous Crimson King.  Well written and easy to follow, I enjoyed going through this book once again and look forward to the next one, which I'll start reading as soon as I check it out from my library...

Full Lunar Eclipse for Sunday Night/Monday Morning

Melissa brought to my attention that this Sunday night we're having a full lunar eclipse, dubbed "Blood Moon" by apparently melodramatic folks, that should be visible in Gainesville, barring overcast skies or fog.  It is set to begin at 9:32 pm with the penumbral eclipse, progressing to partial eclipse starting at 10:27 and then on to the full eclipse starting at 11:29.  The eclipse reaches its maximum point at 12:11 am Monday morning.  Then the eclipse reverses, the full eclipse ending at 12:53, the partial at 1:55, and the penumbral at 2:50.  A lunar eclipse is different from a solar in that in the latter the effect is caused by the moon blocking the sun while in the former the moon is on the opposite side of Earth from the sun, entering our planet's shadow (or penumbra) to cause the eclipse.  This particular eclipse should be visible for most of North America and South America, but not for the rest of the world.  I'm looking forward to watching it...

Quote of the Week...from Corrie ten Boom

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow.  It empties today of its strength. 

                                     ---Corrie ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom was a resistance fighter for the Dutch against Hitler during World War II.  Other than that, it's all I know of her...her above quote is another one I lifted from the Music Choice Soundscapes channel I get on my Cox Cable TV service.  Regarding the future, I can't blindfold myself and pretend it's not there and that some things aren't coming my way that I need to address.  No, being aware of the future is different from worrying about it, though.  Only in the "now" can one deal with what's on the way, and if no action is necessary or available then there's no point in dwelling on it, is there?  Besides, a lot of stuff that folks worry about never happens, and if it does then it's more likely than not to be less severe than anticipated.  Still, if a pandemic hits us I want to be prepared for it by following the recommended (and sometimes mandated) measures put forth by the medical community...but sitting around deploring what might happen doesn't do anyone any good.  I say, do what you can to meet future challenges...and then be at peace with it...

People Magnets

Some people are like walking Facebook accounts, attracting "likes" and real-life emojis everywhere they go.  I call them "people magnets" as a general term, although the reasons for their popularity are usually more specific.  It's hard for me to criticize any of them for this alone...it's the people hanging all over them that bother me.  Yet, if for the sake of argument at school or my job I was assigned to tutor or train, say, famous pro basketball jock Kevin Durant or rock legend Mick Jagger, in a subject or my assignment for two or three days while in a public setting, I doubt that I could get very much done because of the clear distraction that their presence would cause with others continually dropping by to chime in with them and pour out their affection.  Yet although I actually like both Durant and Jagger, I would be stuck in a situation where I was yoked with someone open to distraction and still being expected to perform my job duties in the middle of it all while both being thoroughly marginalized and thrown completely out of my normal work routine.  But one doesn't need to be a famous athlete or entertainment celebrity to be a people magnet...people attractive to the opposite sex, as well as certain individuals with underground connections and influence, can fulfill this role and, I imagine, are much more likely to plague my humble existence.  But the result is the same: instead of being able to function at work in a respectable manner I would have to endure the repeated encroachment of other people on what I am being forced to do along with being demeaned throughout the process. The only solace is that the "people magnets" tend eventually to move on to other conquests and leave me alone...

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 2

Below are my reviews of three more science fiction short stories from the year 1984 as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1985 Annual World's Best SF, presenting his choices from the preceding year.  Seems like I watched a lot a CNN in '84 as the presidential campaign heated up, incumbent Ronald Reagan suddenly enjoying the benefits of the country's big economic turnaround from recession to boom...the Democrats had a vigorous primary season with candidates like former vice-president Walter "Fritz" Mondale, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, and upstart Colorado senator Gary Hart.  I thought Mondale, who won his party's nomination, did very well in the debates against Reagan...didn't help him, though, in the general November election that year when Reagan swept to reelection in a landslide.  Oh well, I liked Walter, who passed away just three weeks ago, and thought he would have been a good president.  But back to those stories...

SALVADOR by Lucius Shepard

Sent into a Vietnam-like jungle quagmire of a guerrilla war, this time in Central America, a young soldier has to survive not only the enemy and his own platoon's sadistic leader, but the jungle as well when its own consciousness arises against the carnage inflicted on its people.  Except for the supernatural element, this story reminded me greatly of the movie Platoon in a number of ways.  It also reflected ongoing concerns among many in the 1980s that the U.S. would soon be fighting down there against the leftists...

PRESS ENTER by John Varley

In one of the greatest stories from the 1980s, long before the Internet revolution with all of its ramifications...both for good and for evil...Varley depicts a world wide web with hackers and software algorithms that seem to be able to exert control over the user's mind to the point of brainwashing...any of this remind you of our own day and age, 38 years later?  Chilling: if you already have paranoid tendencies, maybe you should pass on this novella as Big Brother is freaking scary...

THE ALIENS WHO KNEW, I MEAN, EVERYTHING by George Alex Effinger

Human-like aliens land on Earth to help us all...and to tell us what's good and what isn't, even to the point of which movies to watch or music to listen to.  They are solving all our major problems like hunger and war, even providing us with interstellar travel technology.  That's great, but no one can stand them with their superior, critical attitude.  A very funny story that made me wonder if it had anything to do with how others in our real, present world think of Americans...

Next week I conclude my look at Wollheim's book of short science fiction from 1984 before moving on to the Gardner Dozois anthology covering the same year...

Rough Ocean Reminds Me of Upcoming Hurricane Season

Yesterday at Daytona Beach Melissa noted to me that the ocean seemed "angry", with lots of choppiness and medium-to-large waves...the color tended to be greyish-green, kind of stormy looking in spite of the clear skies.  It was very windy as well...must be something brewing offshore.  I was watching The Weather Channel this morning and Stephanie Abrams was discussing a big Atlantic coastal storm, centered off the North Carolina coast and causing problems on their shoreline. The whole storm thing reminded me that we're coming up on the start of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, officially beginning on June 1st.  Normally talking about tropical storms this early would seem a bit premature, but in recent years we've seen quite a few named storms in the first couple of months of hurricane season...and even earlier.  In any event, here are the names for 2022...at least through the letter "W": Alex, Bonnie, Colin, Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Ian, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Martin, Nicole, Owen, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tobias, Virginie, Walter.  In case some of these names seem familiar to you, they're all recycled from 2016...except for M and O (Matthew and Otto were bad enough six years ago to retire).  The general forecasts are for a slightly more active than usual season, so I imagine I'll be tuning in to TWC even more often than usual.  Of course, my favorite scene is of one of their meteorologists "roughing it up" on a threatened beach while pedestrians are casually walking by in the background...I'm sure I'll be watching a few of those this summer/fall...

Podcaster's Not-So-Secret Ingredient for Success: Rest

In one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, personal development coach Rob Dial stressed the need for rest as an essential element of successful endeavor.  Well, I've always felt the same way...whether you are learning something new, working out at a sport, or tackling projects, taking breaks is an important part of consolidating gains and building the body and mind back up.  Dial claims that there is evidence that the brain uses these periods of nonactivity to prioritize what matters most and build the necessary neural networks...sounds right to me.  But in advocating rest, he emphasizes that crashing out in front of the TV or getting hooked for hours on social media or video games doesn't fill the criteria he means for refreshing, reinvigorating rest.  Better to find a quiet, pleasant place to sit or lie and either let the mind focus on the immediate surroundings or give it a positive theme to think about...no point in trying to turn off the thinking since your brain always thinks, just as your heart always beats and your lungs always breathe...but you do have a degree of control over what you're thinking about.  As for me, I find at work that just sitting down for a few seconds at times, taking some slow, deep breaths and looking at the wall facing me...temporarily putting my immediate work out of my thoughts...helps to greatly reduce built-up anxiety and makes me sharper as I return to my tasks while helping to interrupt any negative thinking that I had been engaging in.  On a broader scale, it's also fun to take a day or two off every now and then and either hang out at the house or travel to a pleasant location, which is what Melissa and I just did the last couple of days with our trip to the beach...

The Movie You Can't Take It With You

You Can't Take It with You, which I watched on DVD yesterday, was a successful Broadway play, adapted to screen in 1938 and directed by Frank Capra.  It starred Lionel Barrymore, Jimmy Stewart, and Jean Arthur and garnered the Best Picture Academy Award for that year.  The setting is Manhattan in New York with two families, the rich banking Kirbys and the eccentric Vanderhofs...headed by elderly Martin Vanderhof (Barrymore)...vying for control of a small, strategically located city block.  The Kirby firm's young vice-president Tony (Stewart) has fallen in love with his secretary Alice (Arthur), who happens to be Martin's granddaughter and lives with him in their big house, along with her other sister (and her husband), her mother and father, and two friends invited to stay with them.  Each resident is encouraged to engage in their own personally fulfilling projects, no matter how silly they seem or how much (or little talent) they have...a direct challenge to the "push-push-push" mindset characteristic of the dominant rat-race culture exemplified by the Kirbys.  A culture clash between the two families in inevitable and it unfolds in great comedic form.  It's clear that the Vanderhof way of life is the preferred way and that folks like the Kirbys need to just pick up a harmonica and play along, abandoning their pointless pursuit of worldly wealth: after all, you "can't take it with you".  Although the Vanderhof philosophy of "doing your own thing" is tempting...and I follow it to an extent...I also believe in paying my taxes and see going to work in itself as good, too.  Even Martin Vanderhof employed a couple for housekeeping and cooking at their home: these two weren't in a position to just stay at home and collect stamps.  I thought the movie was great, but I first saw You Can't Take It with You on TV in a PBS Great Performances Broadway show in the 1980s starring Jason Robards as Martin Vanderhof...he was remarkable.  As for Frank Capra, who directed several memorable movies of that bygone era, my first exposure to his work curiously wasn't with feature length movies, but with the Bell Science films we used to watch in elementary school during the late 1960s...my favorite one that Capra directed was The Strange Case of the Cosmic Ray.  Going back to You Can't Take It with You, I guess the main thing I got from it is that you have to be true to yourself and not let your life become submerged and dominated by others... 

Enjoying Watching Televised Kentucky Derby Coverage This Afternoon

I've been sitting here at home today watching the afternoon's buildup to the annual Kentucky Derby, three-year-old thoroughbred horse racing's first jewel in the Triple Crown.  Last year Medina Spirit, trained by Bob Baffert, won a close race over Mandaloun but was eventually disqualified over the failure of a post-race drug test while Baffert was suspended...technically, he is barred from active participation in any of this year's Triple Crown events although he has trained two of the more favored horses in the field of twenty, Taiba and Messier up to six weeks before race time.  Other favorites in 2022 are Zandon, Epicenter, White Abarrio and Mo Donegal.  I like Baffert and miss his presence...seems at least to me like the violation was a kind of "gotcha" thing that some in racing authority wanted to hang on him...well, that's just my own take.  Still, I'll be rooting for both Messier and Taiba to do well when the race goes off, planned starting time around 6:57 pm...I also like White Abarrio.  The event at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky is always a big fashion event with outrageously colored outfits worn by both women and men as well as heavily ornate hats...if you're into that sort of thing.  NBC's ongoing coverage is showing other races on the program at Churchill Downs leading up to the headline Derby...it's fun picking a horse and seeing how it runs.  If I were into horse racing more, I would be following earlier qualifying races in other locations such as the Florida Derby, Blue Grass, Wood Memorial, Santa Anita, Louisiana and Arkansas...I'm sure it would make what happens later today more meaningful.  I just hope that whichever horse wins the Derby this year won't have the victory later snatched away...

*********

Afterward...wow, in one of the greatest upsets in the history of horse racing, 80-1 longshot Rich Strike came from behind at the end, edging race favorite Epicenter for the victory. This horse, a couple of days ago, wasn't even in the field of twenty but only got entered at the last minute when another horse was scratched. UNBELIEVABLE!

Quote of the Week...from Eleanor Roosevelt

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.   ---Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt, America's First Lady during her husband Franklin Delano's tenure in office from 1933 until his death in 1945, has several good quotes...this one I picked up off my Music Choice Soundscapes channel.  I personally dislike breaks in the continuity of my routine existence, but unpredictable "stuff" happens and I'm sometimes forced to deal with unfortunate events and their consequences.  A discouraging medical diagnosis, auto accident, one of my loved ones having employment or financial issues...these things and more can cause one to feel as if life is throwing a curve ball at them.  But as Eleanor Roosevelt said, it's the unpredictability in life that gives it its flavor...well, some of the flavor at least, and that flavor isn't always palatable.  When a hurricane strikes...or a pandemic or war...those are not exactly desirable things to have to endure, not to mention demagogic fascist politicians and their throngs of brainless worshipers rising out of the general population like the living dead.  But they do make life more interesting, although the flavor is sometimes nauseating.  For me, though, I can come up with my own projects to challenge me, thank you, and can do without such unwelcome intrusions...still, I try to maintain a sense of perspective about it all.  What hurts me, though, is when those I care most about and deeply love are adversely affected by unanticipated reversals and are unfairly suffering the consequences, especially when those causing the trouble are walking around acting so high and holy...if there's no accountability for these lowlifes in this world then perhaps there will be in the world beyond...

Just Finished Rereading Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

Wizard and Glass is the fourth novel in Stephen King's seven-part fantasy/science fiction series The Dark Tower, published a year before the renowned popular writer was nearly killed when he was run over by a van while walking down a country Maine road...that incident would greatly influence how he concluded this series five years later.  In Wizard and Glass, protagonist gunslinger Roland Deschain and his "ka-tet" of fellow quest travelers Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy have just survived riding on a maniacal train named Blaine, which has deposited them in an area very much like Kansas but different in various aspects.  While they recover there, Roland relates his promised story about what had earlier happened in his life at the Barony of Mejis, in which he and two friends, Cuthbert and Alain, discover evidence of insurrection by John Farson, enemy of the established order and general destroyer of civilized society.  It's all a part of the mystery surrounding the Dark Tower, which seems to hold all of reality together and which is under siege from a sinister power...this is Roland's quest, to find the Tower and restore order.  In Mejis he encounters Susan Delgado, a young woman already promised to bear an heir to the town's mayor ...Roland and she fall in love, and the story is divided between their relationship and the simmering clandestine rebellion known to many of the area's residents.  It's a tragic tale but very exciting, with the evil Rhea the Crone as a kind of witch with possession of an equally evil glass through which she can view others...very much like that globe the Wicked Witch of the West uses in The Wizard of Oz.  Wizard and Glass is the most coherent of the seven main Dark Tower novels, and this alone makes it stand out.  But you really need to read the first three in the series in order to know what's going on.  I first read this series more than a decade ago...it's fun to reacquaint myself with its remarkable characters and vistas... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I advance a year in my reviewing of old science fiction short stories to the year 1984 and return for a while to Donald A. Wollheim's anthology series, this volume titled The 1985 Annual World's Best SF, presenting stories he selected from the previous year.  In '84 I was single, living a frugal existence in southwest Gainesville in a studio apartment across the field on Windmeadows Boulevard from my workplace, where I worked as a cook in a Chinese restaurant.  I had moved to this area because it seemed quieter...exactly the opposite of what it is like today.  But back to those stories...

THE PICTURE MAN by John Dalmas

The protagonist/scientist (a good way to quickly identify a story as science fiction) one night discovers a vagrant rummaging through his garbage.  On impulse he invites him in, feeds him and lets him clean up, providing him with fresh, clean clothes.  In gratitude the man, identifying himself as a handyman with a Finnish background, asks his generous host to take a Polaroid picture of him.  The resulting photos are of different scenes that Jaakko Savimaki's mind unconsciously projects onto film.  When he's recommended to the college's scientists for an interview, the stakes grow to the point where there is a danger of his exploitation or worse. I thought the author could have done better with this interesting idea, but he did make the characters' respective personalities stand out well... 

CASH CROP by Connie Willis

In a future of interstellar travel and settlement, one planet's settlement cannot grow like the others because of the constantly mutating scarlet fever variety there that keeps the population sick and dying.  One little girl seems resistant to it...or is she? A story about how distant settlements might be unfairly treated by the main suppliers, a possible analogy to how in our day wealthy nations treat the poor ones, taking advantage of their natural resources while keeping the population in a precarious state of dependence...

WE REMEMBER BABYLON by Ian Watson

Alexander and Deborah...from different backgrounds in the story's future America...visit a newly resurrected Babylon in the Arizona desert, specially built and designed to recreate as much as possible about this ancient city in order to possibly glean some insight to help humanity get through the future.  The setting is Alexander the Great's final days of sickness in his empire's capital city.  The two visitors get to know the city and its culture...Deborah even goes up the Tower of Babel, which I thought was only mythical.  Alexander has a conversation with his perpetually dying namesake (or should I say the actor who portrays him).  I'm not sure what the point of this story was other than try to give a sense of what Babylon may have been like...which seems like a pretty sorry, miserable place if you ask me.  But to derive some insight from its re-creation with folks from the present filling the various roles seems like an exercise in folly...

WHAT MAKES US HUMAN by Stephen R. Donaldson

It is the future and humanity has travelled the stars, albeit slowly, staying well under the barrier of the speed of light.  One settlement, on the planet Aster, after earlier losing its knowledge of technology, has rebuilt it and is on its own interstellar voyage with all but two of its passengers in deep sleep.  The couple that is awake takes turns with the others in maintaining the ship...on this shift trouble comes in an alien robot ship that has them tagged for destruction.  The story's ending demonstrates the wily boldness that exemplifies humanity at its greatest,...probably what the author had in mind with its title...

Next week: more from 1984 and Donald A. Wollheim's sci-fi anthology...

Three Good Teachers on Teacher Appreciation Day

Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day...I discovered that this morning while watching The Weather Channel...my main source of news this days.  Although I've been critical in general of the educational system I lived through during my childhood and early adult years, there were three teachers who stood out at different stages.  When I first went to school in September, 1962 at Boulevard Heights Elementary School in West Hollywood, Florida, I had skipped the kindergarten year that seems to be such a heavily-stressed requirement for kids nowadays. No problem, for Mrs. Parsons, my first-grade teacher, made sure that we kids covered the basics of reading, writing, counting and elementary arithmetic.  There's no doubt in my mind that I was fortunate to be blessed with this great teacher who got everyone on the right track in their educational "careers".  Years later, in my senior year of high school at Nova in 1973-74, I had what in retrospect was my only truly effective math teacher since the early elementary school years, Mr. Buttles, who introduced us to calculus.  For some reason, schools...at least the ones I went to...had a major problem with teaching mathematics on any level.  In some classes they just sat you down and you went through the textbooks on your own with teachers present only if you needed special help with a problem or concepts while others had the teacher standing up front...not actually teaching anything...letting the students pretty much run the class: these were the so-called "advance level" math classes I regret ever having taken.  But Mr. Buttles stuck to the good old traditional way of teaching, going chapter by chapter and writing on the chalkboard each new concept and patiently explaining them to us...sometimes good teaching is being simple and plain with the presentation.  Finally, in my first year at Broward Community College the very next year, Mr. Hill was the teacher lecturing in general chemistry.  Much of the material we covered there I had already studied in high school, but he presented things in such an organized, deliberate manner that I was able to pick up things that I missed in the previous years.  He was very respectful of the students, pausing several times each lecture to allow for students' questions, which he strongly encouraged.  To this day I hold Mr. Hill as the supreme model of how a teacher should conduct a class and relate to the students...

Parsons, Buttles, and Hill...I appreciate you and remember you for standing out high above the often-mediocre teachers I had to suffer throughout my school years.  I know, that doesn't sound very much like a ringing endorsement of teachers in general, but I do know a good teacher when I see one.  By the way, I never saw any teacher as a replacement for my own parents...even in the first grade...and in turn they never acted like they were personally involved in my welfare (nor did I ever expect them to).  Yet the best of the best conducted themselves in a professional manner and actually taught...

Podcaster Rob Dial Talks about Our Amazing Lives and Gratitude

In his Friday Mindset Mentor podcast last week, personal development coach Rob Dial focused on how life is amazing and how gratitude is an effective tool to turn one's mind to what is truly important in it.  He cites a couple of examples, the first being how people tend to complain about being delayed during their airplane flights instead of stopping to think how amazing that it is traveling this way, especially considering how people used to get from one place to another over the span of our collective existence: imagine, you're actually sitting on a chair in the sky!  The other example he gives was how people either take their smartphones for granted or regard it as a bad thing.  Dial counters that a cell phone is just a piece of technology, neither good nor bad.  Yet it has tremendous power as he lists the myriad uses available from it...including the ability to access a huge portion of humanity's knowledge.  I suppose that the younger you are the less impressed you are by the digital technology that pervades our lives, just as only a few decades ago there were people whose idea of traveling to Europe or other continents was to get on a boat for weeks, instead of hours by jet that we're accustomed to.  Staying within a state of gratitude and aware of the amazing things in our lives, Rob Dial concludes, makes us more readily able to confront challenging situations with a sense of proper perspective while keeping us in a more positive and constructive attitude.  This all sounds totally self-evident to me, but I admit to getting caught up in the stress of day-to-day living and losing sight at times of the remarkable things we have around us today... 

Enjoying Watching Televised Sports This Weekend

This weekend I've been enjoying watching various sports on TV...baseball, golf, soccer and basketball to be specific.  The resurrected United States Football League, a second-tier professional league, has eight teams, each one using the nicknames of those in the old eighties' version of the USFL.  The stadiums where the games are played are essentially empty: this is a purely televised venture.  Although Tampa Bay is represented, again as the Bandits, I have difficulty getting into the games. I think the overriding reason is that these secondary leagues have a dismal survival rate and how the teams do in the standings and playoffs won't matter a whit as, most likely, no one will even remember the league in a few years, much less what happens in 2022...

  

They've been showing the Philadelphia Phillies on TV recently and I've gotten to know the team better...my favorite player of theirs so far is outfielder Kyle Schwarber.  In an earlier game against Milwaukee the plate umpire was way off, calling strikes on many pitches out of the strike zone...at the end of the game Shwarber was called out on strikes from an obviously outside pitch and he lost it, heatedly lecturing the umpire on the parameters of the strike zone and, of course, getting thrown out of the game.  He's a clutch hitter to match his passion for the game...tonight after New York Mets ace Max Scherzer struck out the first five Phillies batters, Schwarber came to the plate and, after Scherzer throw a high inside brushback fastball, knocked the next pitch out of the park.  He then proceeded to hit another homer the next time up...these are the kinds of players who cause me to root for their teams...  

In pro golf, I was watching the PGA Mexico Open tournament this weekend, held at a resort city in Baja California.  Jon Rahm pulled off a one-stroke victory over three other contenders, with several golfers still in contention on Sunday afternoon.  Other than Rahm and Kurt Kitayama, who was one of the three just behind the winner, I didn't recognize the names of the top finishers...definitely a problem I have with this sport.  Still, I enjoyed watching the players work their way through the course...

In soccer my focus was on the Mexican premier league (Liga MX) as they completed their regular season today.  In Liga MX they have two completely distinct seasons per year...this one, called Clausura, will begin the preliminary playoffs among the 5-12 finishers to determine who gets to play in the "real" playoffs, called Liguilla.  In this, Liga MX is like what the National Basketball Association is now doing with its gimmick of having the 7-10 finishers in each conference undergo a "play-in" series to finalize the playoff lineup.  My favorite Mexican team, UANL-Tigres, finished 2nd in the regular season and I have high hopes for them in the Liguilla...

Speaking of the NBA playoffs, the second round has begun with clear personal preferences for each of the four series: Boston over Milwaukee, Miami over Philadelphia, Phoenix over Dallas and Golden State over Memphis...that's how I want it to happen, anyway.  Boston didn't do well in their first game against the Bucks, but the Warriors managed an exciting one-point road win against the Grizzlies...

Now back to that Phillies-Mets game, entering the late innings with home team New York ahead 6-4...

My April, 2022 Running and Walking Report

Let's just cut to the chase and say that I walked a lot in April and ran much, much more, doing both on all the days of the month and running the Florida Track Club's Headwaters 5K race on the 9th here in northern Gainesville.  With walking I'm not intentionally doing anything other than accumulate mileage on my Fitbit...most of it comes from my workplace, which is a nice-sized warehouse that demands a lot of steps over the course of a shift.  The running I have to purposefully set out to accomplish, mostly during the morning, but seem to be increasing my distances and endurance quite well...no adverse effects that I can detect.  Unfortunately, the seasonal change here where I live in northern Florida spells out an immediate future of hot weather for several months...inhospitable for outdoor distance training and no distance races (10K or longer) in sight until October.  So, in all likelihood I will probably taper my running a little and intentionally walk more.  Also, since Gainesville's free 5K Depot Parkrun takes place every Saturday morning, I'll try to get in at least one race in May.  There is supposedly the Mayday Glow Run 5K scheduled in Jonesville (just west of Gainesville) on Saturday, the 7th, but I plan to be out of town then and, besides, this race's organizers don't seem to be too interested in providing needed information about its scheduled time and registration.  Oh well, maybe they'll figure it all out in time, good luck with that...  

Quote of the Week...from Frank Zappa

 Without deviation progress is not possible.                             ---Frank Zappa

The late Frank Zappa, whose avant-garde music stretched the limits of the art and was fervent in his campaign against censorship, made the above quote which I find pertinent.  Rush's drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, who sadly has also left us, explored it more deeply in his band's important Moving Pictures final track Vital Signs: "Everybody got mixed feelings about the function and the form: everybody got to deviate from the norm".  Although as sentient creatures we tend to fill out a normal statistical bell curve, clumped together in conformity with the general population in specific areas, it is the combination of how we see and do things that often make us stand out against the flow of society and incur notice and even opposition. You can be a Republican or Democrat with much mutual agreement within your own caucus yet pointedly disagree with your own party's stand on certain issues...your expression of opinion can elicit anger from those usually politically aligned with you. Look at the flack that conservative Liz Cheney and liberal Bill Maher have attracted, the former for accepting that Biden legitimately defeated Trump in the 2020 election and the latter after his several statements critical of the "woke" culture on the political left...that's deviation but also an invitation to openly discuss an issue on its own merits...a sign of progress...instead of clinging in fear with same-minded individuals and ostracizing those who stray.  The little boy in the story The Emperor's New Clothes did not practice conformity for conformity's sake, and because he called it the way he saw it and "exposed" the emperor's nakedness after everyone before him had timidly pretended their ruler was immaculately dressed, it was possible to return to reality while at the same time providing a lesson about going overboard trying to fit in with others.  Zappa made deviation a career, but also recognized that others can be different from himself.  I say use the mind that you were given to discern truth and express that truth in your art, writing, speech, and deportment around others, not necessarily trying to be different but recognizing that deviation in itself is neither good nor bad but rather that its quality and truth value are...  

About Marginalization

The other day I wrote a long blog article about feeling marginalized...and refrained from posting it.  After reading it a couple of times, I had felt it had a kind of whiny sound to it...as if I were bemoaning being a kind of victim.  Well, I guess that factors into it all a little, but truth be told I don't particularly enjoy being the center of attention with the spotlight trained on me...better to be a little off to the side of the picture...while still being in it.  And if that inclination of mine communicates to others that marginalization is their best option in dealing with me then I suppose I bear some responsibility in that.  But in situations where no one knows me, or over long periods of time in the same place, there should be a least some kind of acknowledgement of my existence if not participation.  Let me give a couple of personal examples regarding photographs.  If you've read this blog over its existence, you'll know that I'm into distance running...going back to 2007 when I resurrected this activity after a hiatus of 31 years. I've engaged in many races over that period, my finishing times unspectacular-but-fulfilling experiences.  Since we now live in the Internet age, almost all of the races I've run in have had websites with posted results...and some of them show pictures taken during the race of the different runners.  In all the years I've engaged in these races, I have seen myself in only two pictures, both as an unrecognizable figure among many others, one with me partially hidden and the other showing my back from a distance.  Yet over and over again, while running different races, I see folks who I know are volunteers or officials standing there snapping photo after photo of runners passing by, including of me...yet my picture is consistently rejected when it comes to posting it with the others online.  Now go back much further in time, to the six-year period when I attended my junior/senior high school.  Each year they came out with a yearbook, featuring the perfunctory individual studio shots for each class year, arranged in alphabetical order.  But sprinkled throughout each yearbook's pages are also assorted cameo shots of different students.  You'd think that the law of averages alone would dictate that I'd be in at least a handful of them, considering the many photos displayed over a six-year span.  But of course, you probably already guessed it...no photos of me anywhere, even though like with the running races I would see yearbook staff from time to time taking pictures that I knew I'd be in. It all seems a bit whiny of me, doesn't it?  Oh well, we all have areas in our lives to complain about and in the grand scheme of things, griping about being marginalized around others is probably a relatively minor issue, especially considering that I'm an introvert to begin with.  On the other hand, I'm often pressed upon to engage in community relationships with others, but when in those situations, discover that they don't particularly want to engage in community relationships with me...

Before writing this article, I checked the Internet to see if others were like me in feeling unduly marginalized, only to discover that the term "marginalized" had been coopted by the PC/Woke crowd to designate people belonging to demographic groups from which I am excluded...great, even the marginalized marginalize me!

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 8

Here are my reactions to the four remaining stories from the late Gardnois Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, First Annual Collection, which spotlighted the editor's picks from 1983.  I generally like the stories in this book, although they tended to cross over at times into other genres such as fantasy, horror and even historical fiction...I welcome it all.  So, without further ado, let's discuss these works of short fiction...

HEARTS DO NOT IN EYES SHINE by John Kessel

In a future society in which marriages are a much looser contractual arrangement, Connie leaves Harry after discovering that he's repeatedly lied to her.  But Harry suggests that the two of them go to one of the companies that can selectively wipe out those pesky memories of betrayal and dishonesty from both their minds.  Connie reluctantly consents, and they begin their "cleansed" life together anew.  What happens next...guess you'll have to read it to find out.  Let me just say that this tale has a bit more psychological depth to it than I had expected...

CARRION COMFORT by Dan Simmons

Three telepathic psychic vampires who maintain their youth by entering the minds of others to perform murder by proxy are "friends" and meet one day in one of their hometowns...Charleston, South Carolina...to compare notes and renew their ties.  But one of them has decided to give up her lifestyle and has begun to noticeably age...leading to her fears that the other two might come after her.  I have recently visited Charleston and could visualize their boat tour to Fort Sumter, as well as the streets of the Old City.  I wonder if Stephen King got the premise for his novel Doctor Sleep from this story...

GEMSTONE by Vernor Vinge

You get a good sense of the geography of woody northern California from this story of a girl staying one summer there at her widowed grandmother's house.  It seems haunted, especially a strange skull-sized smooth stone with regular markings.  A violent burglary precipitates the story's climax, which I thought was pretty "cool" in spite of the heat.  Also, Antarctic exploration figures strangely in this tale, which reminded me of a certain 1982 blockbuster hit movie directed by Steven Spielberg...

BLACK AIR by Kim Stanley Robinson

Dozois regarded this story as his favorite of the anthology, yet I failed to discover anything science fiction about it...the fifth one in the book that, in my opinion, strays from the genre.  On the Spanish Armada in the late sixteenth century, a boy from a Franciscan monastery, impressed into sailor duty on one of the fighting ships destined to England, has spiritual experiences that directly affect his fate and that of his shipmates.  A great story...I agree with Gardner on that...but sci-fi?  Still, I got more knowledge about ships to add to what I picked up (and mostly forgot) from reading Moby Dick a few years ago...

Next week I move on to the year 1984 with my science fiction short story reviews, returning to Donald A. Wollheim's anthology series...

Need Patience at Start of New Projects (or Resumption of Old Ones)

After my operation last July, in which my sternum was cut apart to allow the surgeon access to my heart, I had a necessarily slow recovery to allow for the rib cage to fuse back together. Physical therapy for my lower body could proceed sooner while my upper body was healing. I was walking the day after surgery and a month later began light running in place. I was assigned certain body stretches to perform with my legs while waiting for the sternum restriction protocol to be lifted, afterwards allowing me once again to stretch my arms and upper body...that last stage didn't begin until September.  Being a runner, I was interested in seeing what my prospects in this area were...my surgeon, a runner himself, had given me every indication that once I had recovered from the surgery to repair my aortic aneurism and replace a congenitally defective heart valve, I would be able to resume this activity. The block I live on is relatively long...seven tenths of a mile, but short from a distance runner's perspective. In my weeks of recovery I would regularly attempt to run the whole lap around the block but would rarely make it to the halfway point before needing to stop and walk.  It wasn't until three months after surgery that I was able to run the complete circuit nonstop...and from that point my progress drastically improved.  I ran a 5K race in December and two months ago, a half-marathon followed by a ten-mile race in March. This article seems to be all about running but it can apply to anything I'm undertaking, either for the first time or after a period of interruption or decline.  It may seem at first to take forever to make any progress, and the temptation will be to throw in the towel and give up. That's why the standards at this stage have to be easier and gradual.  Getting started and not giving up are instrumental here...I need to cut myself a little slack when it comes to starting something new that I really want to accomplish. I'm embarking on an ambitious new intellectual project that eventually stands to dwarf my running, but right now I'm taking those slow and easy steps...

Discussion of Standards on Podcast

Standards was the topic on today's Mindset Mentor podcast, hosted by Rob Dial...I thought it was one of his better shows.  Instead of listing X-amount of pointers to better living in some specific area, he gave more of an impromptu monologue on how the quality of people's lives depend on the standards they set for themselves...and how they live up to them.  As I see it, on a collective level there are legal standards we need to meet in order not to get in trouble.  At work there are workplace standards, as is the case at school or for any other social institution.  Families collectively have standards, the crossing of which by different members not wanting to follow them probably causes the most inner turmoil.  But Dial was referring here to one's own personal standards for living, and they break down to numerous specific behaviors regularly performed (or not) over the course of time...and all which involve personal choice.  Do I prepare little things for the next day the night before, what time to I get up in the morning, do I always leave the house in a state of tidiness, do I exercise, read, write, engage with others, account for my money, etcetera.  Standards, habit, and goals intertwine, as setting a standard is a goal in itself to be fulfilled by the inculcation of a new habit, using baby steps to accomplish this.  This all fits in nicely with James Clear's notion of "atomic habits", based on his book with the same title.  The key here in improving one's standards and getting to adhere to them is to be as specific as possible while changing habits a little at a time...over time.  Good episode.  By the way, there are probably a number of ways you can pick up Rob Dial's podcast...on my Android I get it through Tune-In Radio while on my television I use Roku to listen to it on the My Tuner channel. Each episode, put out on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, only lasts about twenty minutes and the host has a friendly, conversational and practical presentation style...

Went to Alachua County Friends of the Library Sale Today

 

For the first time in years I was able to attend the Alachua County Friends of the Library book sale, which takes place at their warehouse in the 400 block of North Main Street in Gainesville.  As usual I parked a few blocks east of the place and crossed Main Street with police stopping traffic for us bookworms.  Once there, I was dismayed to see a long line of people waiting to get in...looks like they were wisely limiting the number of customers inside at one time.  Within twenty minutes, though, I was among the familiar tables loaded with cheap, used books.  I had a specific agenda, heading straight to the mathematics section, and quickly chose several excellent books, their prices ranging from 50 cents to $1.50.  Then I hit the express line, paid, and got back to the car.  The volunteers there wore masks, but nearly all the customers did not...I wore one, though: it ain't quite over yet, folks.  Still, I'm glad to see this great old hometown tradition back and I hope it won't be interrupted again anytime soon.  Because of the pandemic the sale was cancelled in 2020 and April, 2021, resuming in October.  Although I didn't like having to wait in line to go in, I think this is a better system...pandemic or not...as in the past it was way too crowded and sometimes I found it very difficult to maneuver around everyone as I tried to browse the sections.  The sale lasts through Wednesday, opening each day at noon and closing 6 pm...

Too Many Key Injuries in Pro Sports

I have been watching the National Basketball Association playoffs off and on so far during their first round and find the games usually competitive and interesting.  There is one problem, though, that starkly stands out: the tendency for there to be too many injuries, especially of star players.  I can't keep up with it anymore, and there's no telling how a series will go when a favored team, successful largely on the backs of its greatest talents and achievers, falls victim to their injuries during a series with an obviously inferior team.  This has been going on for years, but now it seems that we have the most fragile athletes ever.  The sport of basketball and others...not just football but also even tennis and golf...are played on such an extremely high level in our era with very little margin for error: everything has to be done all-out...every possession, down, point or swing...depending on the sport...must be tackled with the athlete expending all the energy they can produce and straining their bodies to the limit and beyond to avoid being beaten by the opposition.  Name me a series or tournament in which its complexion hasn't been drastically altered due to several key injuries...no, getting hurt is now the rule rather than the exception.  Although the games themselves may still be close and exciting to watch, the ultimate champion...due to the many injuries we're seeing...is often a team or athlete that essentially prevailed by default.  The result, I think, is a general cheapening of the sports and their championships... 

Quote of the Week...from Pearl S. Buck

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word: excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

--Pearl S. Buck

American writer Pearl S. Buck, probably best known for her 1931 novel about China titled The Good Earth (click HERE for my review of it from 2015), made the above quote about excellence in work.  I understand the truth contained within it...but like Melissa, who noted it on TV yesterday morning while we were eating lunch together, I don't completely agree with it either. Sure, it sounds reasonable that if you're really good at something then that fact should contribute to your enjoying it...after all, it's a self-esteem experience.  But there are a lot of jobs out there that people perform with the utmost excellence...I can offhand think of teaching, nursing, air traffic control and law enforcement...but by their nature and the demands and stress put on these workers, they often burn out quickly and suffer greatly in spite of their excellence.  Conversely, to identify oneself with a field of work does not automatically imply that they are highly skilled in it, but the process of getting to that stage...even at the start...can definitely be joyous.  And besides, it's probably a good idea not to get hung up on the word "excellence" anyway, although I frequently use it to compliment others on this blog.  I can be an excellent math student in one high school class...that is, until I get transferred to another class that is on a much more advanced level and then my skill level may suddenly seem to be seriously lacking. Be careful about basing your enjoyment of something largely on how excellent or not you think you are in it...you're liable to be susceptible to others' criticisms, right or wrong... 

Old July, 1965 Newspaper Articles Revealing about Vietnam War

The other day I got on my Newspapers.com site to see...through the Fort Lauderdale News, which was my home Broward County's main newspaper back in the 1960s when I was growing up there...whether any mention was made of the new Nova elementary school that was to open in August of 1965.  I switched from Boulevard Heights to Nova that year when I entered the fourth grade...my sister Anita was already going to Nova Junior High, situated right across the field from the new elementary school in Davie on the site of a converted airfield (along with Broward Junior College).  I began by putting on my screen the front page of the paper's July 1, 1965 Main Edition, on which most of the stories were about the escalating Vietnam War with the U.S. increasing its presence in that troubled southeastern Asia country with armed soldiers on the ground increasing from around three thousand in March of '65 to two hundred thousand by year's end.  On July 1 the paper was reporting Viet Cong attacks against the American base in Da Nang, opposition in Congress to President Johnson's war policies, and  there was a piece describing how the Viet Cong operate in guerilla warfare.  In the Senate, Senator Wayne Morse, of the President's own Democratic Party but one of the two voting against his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution the previous August that authorized troop buildup in Vietnam, urged Johnson to end the war and instead go to the United Nations and build up collaborative relationships with other countries to bring about peace.  On the Republican side in the House, their leader, future president Gerald Ford, proposed that the President remove the ground troops and restrict the fighting there to heavy aerial bombardment in strategic locations...needless to say Lyndon Johnson passed on both of these, precipitating one of the most traumatic, divisive periods in our nation's history.  Malcolm W. Browne's article about Viet Cong guerilla warfare was haunting in its prescience as he describes one such warrior, stationed within an echo chamber in a hole in the ground, enabling him to detect distant helicopter sounds before any others: "The man, wriggling through a short tunnel to the surface, can yell an alarm.  Instantly, shadowy men lounging or cooking at the bases of the tall trees are on their feet and moving fast.  The heavy equipment from last night's battle has been stowed for future use in deep, camouflaged holes.  The bodies have been buried.  The men move rapidly, scattering in many directions in twos and threes.  This is their base area, and they know every feature of the dense jungle in the area...the hidden trails, the camouflaged bunkers and tunnels, the gun emplacements, the mines and booby traps."  You can easily see the wisdom from hindsight in reading this article and others and think of what might have been if information in plain sight, as well as alternative options, were taken more seriously by those with the power and authority to properly understand and use them...think of all the lives that could have been spared.  But hindsight it is, and in 1965 the American public was strongly behind Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam escalation policy...I wonder what information today, also in plain view as was the material in July of 1965, is warning us about where we're going...but of course nowadays we have to sift through all the false crap floating around.  As for my then-new little Nova school, I'm continuing to search for any reference to it...