Weekly Short Stories: 1988 Science Fiction, Part 8

Whew, finally I conclude this long, long look at the year 1988 in science fiction short stories, finishing up on the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixth Annual Collection.  Of course, had I been doing this the "right" way (as the publishers probably wanted), I would have been writing these blog articles when these anthologies first came out, with the whole year over which to spread out my reading. Only there were no such things as blogs back then, were they...dang it, here I go feeling old again! What floors me about some of the stories I read is when they point to a time in their near future, but which for me is already in the past...and they often get the trends right but overdramatize them.  Well, here are my reactions to the final five tales in the Dozois book...next week I begin reviews of 1989 sci-fi from the much shorter...and, sadly, final book in the Donald A. Wollheim anthology series...

IT WAS THE HEAT by Pat Cadigan

A married female executive makes a business trip visit to rowdy and raunchy New Orleans, where she encounters a man full of the "heat", which infects her and brings out her passions and sexuality.  Yes, this is a very sensual tale...but I'm not sure it quite belongs in the science fiction genre...

DYING IN HULL by D. Alexander Smith

In the little coastal Massachusetts town of Hull on the outskirts of Boston dwells a single elderly woman who is staying put in spite of the encroaching sea level that is destroying her hometown building by building.  There civil society has broken down into lawless gangs and ruthless smugglers.  Ethel must find a way to deal with them as well as the rising water in her home to survive, yet she cannot bring herself to admit defeat and leave for Boston.  I found this story peculiarly similar in premise to Kim Stanley Robinson's Glacier earlier in the same anthology...

DISTANCES by Kathe Koja

Interstellar travel is developed...but the human travelers are altered volunteers called "glassheads" with their brains and neural systems altered to be able to adapt to the sensory input that the probes provide.  Michael is second-generation and ready for his mission; his "handler" Halloran, is first-generation glasshead and cannot go. Furthermore, she is dying because of this alteration and although she is there to comfort Michael, the two find their roles reversed.  I couldn't quite get into why they had to drastically their nervous systems to travel virtually through space and it kept bugging me as I read...

FAMOUS MONSTERS by Kim Newman

A brief, very tongue-in-cheek look at the tawdry, cheesy side of the fifties' science fiction film industry as a Martian actor, tentacles and all, looks for supporting work in some of the B-flicks.  It's also an alternative history as, for example, James Dean has grown fat and over the hill instead of his tragic death in 1956 after only three acclaimed movie appearances ..

THE SCALEHUNTER'S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER by Lucius Shepherd

More a novella than a short story, a pretty and frivolous young woman makes light of romance in her home village, situated on a bewitched vast, still dragon.  Pursued by her enemies, she escapes to the dragon's inner parts where she finds herself both captive and destined for a special, unspecified purpose.  I thought this story might do well adapted to the screen, but I admit to not getting the point of it all.  A whole lotta suffering going on here...

Next week I start with Donald A. Wollheim's anthology covering 1989 science fiction short stories...

Podcaster Discusses Why People Won't Change Their Viewpoints

On a recent Mindset Mentor podcast of his, personal development coach Rob Dial gives three reasons why it's so hard for people to change their own minds about things as well as change others'.  They are (1) cognitive dissonance, (2) partisanism/tribalism, and (3) confirmation bias.  With cognitive dissonance, someone hears something that conflicts with what they are comfortable with, so they either rationalize or trivialize it...or as is often the case, just get mad at the other person who they perceive as messing up their life by expressing it.  The second one has to do with our tribal social nature, be it following a particular political party or politician, religion, culture, family, work pals, section of the neighborhood...or maybe just what our favorite sports team is.  Folks tend to magnify the faults of those outside their felt circle, especially when they are in direct competition with them, as is the case in politics and sports.  Dial himself says he doesn't come down on either side of the political spectrum, he's in the "center", and doesn't care about all the political things others do.  With that I have a problem: you can be in the center and care more than many on the left or right fringe.  But I'm totally in agreement with him in that people in a group who want to be accepted within it will often, if not usually, bend their beliefs to fit in...even if they are obviously false.  As for confirmation bias, people tend to seek their sources of information that confirm their already cherished beliefs and reject those that challenge them...this isn't helped by Internet algorithms that various social media and search engines use to "perceive" the user's inclinations and then fulfill them with affirming material.  Also, Dial mentions that there is a tendency for people, if they hear something repeated enough times, to accept it as truth...combine that with confirmation bias and the desire to "fit in", and you have whole entrenched sections of the population at odds with one another while "circling the wagons" to  protect own "tribes".  I don't think that this problem with human nature has changed over the centuries, but with our very recent development in mass personal digital communications the effects have mushroomed.  Rob Dial's solution seems to be to avoid confronting people with the truth because you're wasting your time for the aforementioned reasons...up to a point I agree with him, but at some point you have to stand up for what you know is right...

New Year a Good Arbitrary Time to Seek Habit Changes

I like to think of the new year as an opportunity to break away from old destructive personal habits and set out on new goals.  From what I've picked up from others and my own experiences, changing one's life is largely a matter of changing those habits one at a time, and in measures that are attainable.  So, 2023 is a year like the others in that I'd like to improve my skills in certain areas and eliminate any toxic habitual behavior.  The temptation is to try to do a lot of things differently from the beginning, but right now I'm considering how to divide up and prioritize my projects.  Should be fun...of course, it's all a continuum whether it's January or July.  I've heard that it's best to focus on one habit in an area at a time and diligently see the change through for one hundred straight days until it becomes ingrained within me.  But first I need to sit, think, and write down what I want to change...the new calendar year is an arbitrary but convenient time to assess where I've been and where I want to go...

Fins, Jags, Bucs in NFL Playoffs...Whoopee!

It happened back in 1999 when all three Florida National Football League teams managed to make the postseason playoffs in the same season, but finally here we are more than two decades from then and in the same situation after each team...none of them admittedly all that good...scrapped and lucked their way into next week's game lineup.  Tampa Bay had already wrapped up their sorry NFC South title last week and took out star quarterback Tom Brady during today's essentially meaningless contest against Atlanta as the Falcon's win put the Bucs into a losing regular season at 8-9.  They'll most likely be playing Dallas at home next week...although Tampa finished with a worse win-loss record, they did manhandle the Cowboys 19-3 earlier this season.  In the American Conference the South Division title went to Jacksonville at 9-8 when they ran back a recovered Tennessee fumble late in their game to come from behind and win.  And Miami broke their five-game losing streak by staving off the New York Jets 11-6, breaking their tie with a 50-yard field goal with only seconds remaining...the safety was icing on the cake.  But the Dolphins also depended on Buffalo winning against New England, which they did in large part from two touchdown kickoff returns.  It was a little strange for me to be rooting so hard for the Bills, considering that I'll be rooting just as hard against them next week when they play the Dolphins at home.  I don't know whether Miami's injury-prone quarterback Tua Tagovailoa will be back for the Buffalo game, but it seems that playing against this team has not been good for his health, with multiple concussions coming from those games.  Maybe I'll trade an early exit from the playoffs for the Dolphins in exchange for this player to stay healthy.  As for Jacksonville, they will be playing next week at home against San Diego.  Later tonight Green Bay will play at home against Detroit for the final disputed playoff spot...I'll be watching, naturally.  If Seattle loses their ongoing game against the LA Rams, then the winner between the Packers and Lions gets in... otherwise it's Seattle if the Lions prevail.  Besides the three Florida teams, I tend to root for the Seahawks as well as the Kansas City Chiefs...maybe the latter will take it all the way this year to another Super Bowl championship...

NFL Regular Season Ends This Weekend, College National Championship Monday

The next three days will finish off both the NCAA Division I college football championship as well as the National Football League regular season for "2022".  On Monday Georgia will play Texas Christian University for the national title...in the opening round of the playoffs I departed from my usual pattern and actually rooted for Big Ten Conference powerhouses Ohio State and Michigan, both of which lost close contests.  As for the Wolverines, looks like they're in for some punishment for unspecified NCAA rules violations as their prima donna coach Jim Harbaugh may once again be headed for the NFL.  I'm pulling for neither the Bulldogs or the Horned Frogs....as they like to call themselves for some reason...and, besides, I'll be at work during the game.  Regarding the NFL games this weekend, I'm focused on the Florida teams.  As I wrote a few days ago, all three are 8-8 and could make the playoffs, with Tampa Bay already in due to their lackluster division.  Jacksonville has an evening game today against Tennessee to decide their also-mediocre division's title...even if the Jaguars lose there's an unlikely scenario where they could sneak into the playoffs as an 8-9 team.  Miami has the poorest chance of making it.  First, even if they win their contest against the New York Jets tomorrow, New England must lose (or tie) against Buffalo since the Patriots have the tiebreaker advantage over the Dolphins.  And Miami has lost five straight games and is depending on their third-string quarterback to carry them in the regular season finale.  The Bucs, by the way, will be playing an essentially meaningless game at Atlanta since they're already set to play either the Dallas Cowboys or Philadelphia Eagles at home in the playoff's first round, depending on how those teams do in Sunday's games.  Working in favor of the Jags and Fins is that they will both be playing at home while the Pats will be at Buffalo.  Still, the Bills must depend on Kansas City losing their game this afternoon at the Raiders, an unlikely proposition.  And if the Chiefs win, then Buffalo just might hold back some with their starters against New England, thereby hurting Miami's chances.  But the Dolphins put themselves in this situation of depending on others with their long losing streak...although all of those losses have been close.  I guess by all this you know that I'll be following football this weekend...

Quote of the Week...from Alan Watts

A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.          Alan Watts

Today is the birthday of Alan Watts (1915-73), an English popularizer of Eastern philosophies for Western audiences.  Sometimes people's quotes from the past can quickly seemed dated and obsolete...even wildly wrong.  But Watts had a plethora of material that resounds strongly in today's world...the above quote captures a great truth of how people interpret reality and try to construct an order, however artificial, that fits the narratives they are most comfortable with.  The problems arise when the narratives are blatantly false, or at least severely distorted...but people, having a tribal nature and desperately wanting to fit in with their valued group, stubbornly adhere to them out of fear of belittlement or being ostracized if they think independently as individuals. The emperor may have no clothes, wearing masks and getting vaccinated are effective and safe ways to prevent the spread of Covid and complications from infection, and Biden really did legitimately win the 2020 election. But go up against someone's strongly cherished myth, one from which they derive a sense of acceptance from others in their identified "tribe": I dare you...no, I triple dog dare you!

McCarthy Having Difficulty Becoming House Speaker...Not My Problem

The paper-thin majority in the United States House of Representatives that Republican caucus leader Kevin McCarthy is "leading" has left him short of receiving the votes needed to become Speaker, which Democrat Nancy Pelosi had occupied for the previous four years.  It's all about the extreme wing of a party leveraging their power out of proportion to their numerical strength...well, that's politics!  No fan of McCarthy, I felt he let the country down in the hours immediately following the insurrection on the Capitol building on 1/6/21 when he and two thirds of his caucus took the dangerous, undemocratic...and, frankly, fascist step of refusing to officially acknowledge the counted Pennsylvania 2020 presidential election votes that gave the state to Joe Biden over election-denying sore loser Donald Trump.  This guy has to be the slimiest politician on Earth...and that's saying a lot.  No doubt when whoever does finally take the gavel, the Republicans will resume their endless pointless investigations that nobody believes worth the effort and expense...other than their hardcore, unquestioning FoxNews followers, that is.  Hillary's e-mails will soon morph into Hunter's laptop as a continuous Fox/Republican headline...and there will probably be payback attempts to impeach President Biden as well.  If you want to follow all that crap, you're welcome to it.  But as Soundgarden's late front man Chris Cornell once sang, "Keep it off my wave"...

Weekly Short Stories: 1988 Science Fiction, Part 7

Once again, it's time to examine some bygone sci-fi, appearing in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixth Annual Collection, spotlighting tales of that genre from 1988.  It takes me awhile to get through the year-by-year Dozois books, in contrast to the much briefer ones from Donald A. Wollheim. But Wollheim's final anthology was for 1989...he died the following year, it won't be too long before I'm only reviewing stories from Gardner's series. But for now, let's go back to look at some more stories from '88...

SANCTUARY by James Lawson

Initially about an Arizona police detective in the near future (from 1988, that is), blinded in duty and provided a loyal dog that tends to him long after advanced surgery restores his eyesight.  He is assigned to investigate two employees from the area's competing technological think tanks...they are found calmly lying in a room in one of their offices, apparently physically unharmed but their minds completely sucked out of them.  Quite a quandary, but our hero, with his faithful companion and a sidekick female employee of one of the think tanks, solves it all and then goes one enormous step further. Reminded me of Tad Williams' wonderful Otherland book series and its resolution for a terminally ill character...

THE DRAGON LINE by Michael Swanwick

A speculative resurrection of the Arthurian mythos, with principal characters Merlin and Mordred...the latter the story's narrator...set in modern times. I learned quite a bit about the original story of King Arthur and those around them.  Just about everybody had some serious character flaws...talk about anti-heroes.  It reminded me a little of Neil Gaiman's later novel American Gods...

MRS. SHUMMEL EXITS A WINNER by John Kessel

An elderly woman regularly plays bingo at her hometown's VFW lodge. Already overcritical of others, she objects to a strange young mute man already sitting in her favorite seat.  But then he keeps winning and winning, and the buzz starts to go around the place that he might be cheating somehow.  He tells her she can win, too...at a price.  And the price she is willing to pay makes this story brilliant, like one of Shirley Jackson's best psychological short stories...

EMISSARY by Stephen Kraus

Roger, a friend and former colleague of the narrator and who has recently been missing following his termination from a research professorship, stumbles exhausted into his home and tells his remarkable story, one about his ancestors in a rural England mining town and an incredible discovery there from centuries past.  It's a first contact tale like no other, and has a curiously cyclic nature to it like the great old Time Machine movie from 1960...

Next week I conclude my look at science fiction short stories from the year 1988...

Podcaster Speaks on Designing One's Future

For his last few podcasts, personal development coach Rob Dial seems to have cut back on their length, which usually has been approaching 20 minutes.  This last one from yesterday, titled "Architect Your Life", went on only for about 15.  Still, I think that each of his programs could be distilled to about a minute or two long, truth be told.  In this episode he observes that most people just stumble through each day of their existence, reacting to and coping with whatever comes their way without much foresight as to what direction they want their lives to go in the future besides some generalized, vague hopes and wishes.  Dial goes full opposite in that not only does he stress planning in as minute detail as possible, but that he speaks to himself as if the desired changes have already happened.  This is because he believes that it's crucial to normalize future aspirations in one's own mind, instead of them seeming strange and distant.  I get all that and agree with him about the importance of positive self-talk.  But I also get the flip side of that argument, which is that becoming centered in the present moment and appreciating and being grateful for what I have NOW matters as well.  So, it looks like two different ways of seeing things is being pushed here...apparently another instance of duality.  Duality is when two different agendas or perspectives combine, in spite of their surface contradictions, to present something that is better than the two original parts...seems that's what is going on with this combo of future planning and present appreciation...

Florida NFL Teams: All 8-8 and in Playoff Running at Season's End

I suppose this is what the bigshots of the National Football League had in mind when they added a team from each conference to be in the postseason playoffs: teams with mediocre records are sneaking in.  For my home state of Florida, this is a windfall as two of the three teams here...Jacksonville and Miami...haven't exactly been setting the league on fire during the past few seasons.  I remember the first year I seriously began to follow pro football, 1967, when the Baltimore Colts, undefeated at 11-0-2 going into the final regular season game against their divisional rivals the Los Angeles Rams, lost that contest and thus failed to make the playoffs.  That's the year, if you're old enough to remember, that Green Bay won the NFL championship (before going on the Super Bowl) in the infamous Ice Bowl game against Dallas...the Packers lost four games during the regular season in a weak division.  This year's version of the Tampa Bay Bucs, still with Tom Brady taking the snaps, was similarly blessed with a weak division as they've already clinched a playoff spot in spite of their often-lackluster play so far.  The other two Sunshine State teams, although with the same records, are going in diametrically opposite directions.  Jacksonville, having started 2-6, have since become a winner under Super Bowl-winning first-year coach Doug Pederson with Trevor Lawrence coming into his own as a quality premier quarterback. The Jaguars have a chance to win their division title with a regular-season-closing game next week against slumping Tennessee.  Speaking of slumping, the Miami Dolphins, earlier with an 8-3 record and on top of their division, have now lost five games in a row and are "outside looking in" on a playoff slot.  Their fate this year seems bound to that of third year quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who is now out of action due to his third diagnosed concussion.  They will face rival New York Jets in the season closer...if they win and New England loses to Buffalo, Miami's in.  Too bad they fell like this: in each of their last five games they played tough but lost by small margins.  As far as I'm concerned, it's been a good year for Florida in the NFL this year regardless of what happens next week, since I've always held reasonable expectations for "my" teams, only wanting them to stay in contention toward the season's close. And all three have, although I have my doubts about the Dolphins making the playoffs or the Bucs advancing very far in them.  But who knows what Jacksonville will do...

Ran New Year's Day Depot Parkrun This Morning

I thought I'd get the 2023 New Year off on the right note as I got up early and drove down to Gainesville's Depot Park to run in their special event on this holiday Sunday morning, departing from their Saturday pattern.  The weather, while not raining, wasn't exactly cooperating, though.  The temperature at the 7:30 race time was an unseasonably warm 65 degrees with an extremely muggy 97% humidity (with fog everywhere), bringing to memory the horrible conditions for last November's Tom Walker Memorial half-marathon I struggled through.  This time around I was wiser, taking the first couple of laps in the 3.1 mile course easy...I had to anyway as the asphalt/concrete trail was moist and slippery.  No, my goal was just to reasonably get through this run, and I accomplished that, with a modest finishing time of 32:59...click HERE to see the complete race results.  There were only 42 finishers this morning...no problem finding a parking space this time!  I'm still thinking of entering the Florida Track Club's half marathon race two weeks from now, but I'd first like to get an idea what the long-range weather forecast will be for that morning and will need to wait another week to find out.  It's being held on the Hawthorne Trail, originating and ending at its endpoint in the town of Hawthorne near the high school...   

Year-End Running and Walking Report

For December 2022 I ran each day of the month, amassing a good amount of mileage and keeping myself generally in shape.  I did run a public race, the 5K Depot Parkrun on the 10th, although due to online registration misinformation I missed running the Tyler's Hope 15K I had intended to run on the same day...sometimes I think that with the charity events, the organizers get so caught up with their admittedly worthwhile causes that they forget about providing reasonable conditions and pertinent information for the participants.  I had run this race twice in the past and, should circumstances permit, will seek it out next year.  As has been the case recently, my walking mileage comes naturally over the course of my day, especially with my walk-intensive job.  Unfortunately, my eating habits of late have created a creeping weight gain over the course of 2022 that interferes with my running...a few small habit-change corrections should solve that issue.  As for 2023, in January the Florida Track Club is holding a marathon/half-marathon/10K race on the 15th and the Newnan's Lake 15K will take place on the 29th...both on Sundays.  The Five Points half-marathon will not happen in '23, but they are still holding the 5K race in February...not that I intend to be in it.  I am a member of the Florida Track Club, and they offer a 10-mile run in Micanopy on February 11th...I ran it earlier this year, enjoying the course.  Being 66 and not getting any younger, I know that my finishing times in different distances aren't going to improve very much...most likely it's going to be a gradual slowing instead.  That's all right...one of the things I look for when scanning posted results of races that I just ran is to see who the oldest runners are...with this I'm usually among the "top" finishers.  Here are the races I ran in 2022:

DATE   RACE-NAME                          DISTANCE   FINISHING-TIME

2/12     Depot Parkrun                                5K                    31:28

2/20     Five Points Half-Marathon       Half-Marathon   2:33:51

3/19     Micanopy Ten-Mile                    10 Miles           1:48:24

3/26     Depot Parkrun                                5K                    30:45

4/9       Headwaters                                     5K                    29:28

10/15   Tom Walker Preview                     10K                1:04:55

10/22   Run the Good Race                       10K                1:03:20

11/06   Tom Walker Memorial              Half-Marathon   3:05:29

11/12   Depot Parkrun                                5K                    31:38

12/10   Depot Parkrun                                5K                    31:46

Note the six-month gap in the middle of 2022 with races...yet during that period I trained an awful lot.  I don't train because I want to run in public races, I run in public races because I train.  Still, it would be nice to run in a few more next year, although I'm disappointed that there won't be a Five Points Half-Marathon, an event that had become a strong Gainesville tradition since 2006, with only the Covid pandemic interrupting it in 2021, and one that I had run in six times starting in 2010...

My Favorite Songs in 2022

Today at year's end, I'm taking a break from my weekly Friday quotes feature to list my top ten favorite songs of 2022.  This year I derived most of my favorites from 2022 album releases by Regina Spektor (Home, Before and After), The Smile (A Light for Attracting Attention) with Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, Spoon (Lucifer on the Sofa), Arcade Fire (We) and Kasabian (The Alchemist's Euphoria).  I also liked listening to alternative rock band Metric's 2014 album Pagans in Vegas as well as pianist composer Ludovico Eunaldi's 2015 piece titled Night, from his Elements album. The songs below all come from those albums...there's a lot of good material on them besides what I have listed below.  With each top ten song I've included a brief commentary...they're all very good.  It's interesting that I heard none of these songs and their albums in the first half of 2022...it all began in July when Spektor released her long-awaited new album... 

1 SPACETIME FAIRYTALE---Regina Spektor...nearly 9 minutes long, a dreamy song that actually teaches you astrophysics (well, a little anyway)!

2 LOVEOLOGY---Regina Spektor...quite an accomplishment to elicit both tears and laughter within the same song.

3 THE OPPOSITE---The Smile...brilliant jazzy rock jam, every instrument spotlighted, along with Yorke's trademark voice.  

4 THE AGE OF ANXIETY II (RABBIT HOLE)---Arcade Fire...simple lyrics, powerful instrumentals, 7 minutes long.   

5 THE FACE, PART I---Metric...chiefly instrumental, this is a great wake up song, forceful and positive. 

6 WILD---Spoon...beat resembles Safety Dance from the 80's, lyrics are inspiring. 

7 THE SAME---The Smile...spooky, mysterious opening track on album with a universal message. 

8 RAINDROPS---Regina Spektor...a sweet love song I'd like to learn to play on the piano.

9 FORTUNES---Metric...Emily Haines and her amazing voice take over this somewhat cynical song.

10 HELD-Spoon...one of the best opening album tracks, a pounding beat, guitar riffs everywhere and energizing message. 

Honorable Mention:

Regina Spektor: Coin

The Smile: A Hairdryer, Waving a White Flag

Spoon: On the Radio

Metric: Cascades

Kasabian: Scriptvre, Rocket Fuel  

Ludovico Eunaldi: Night 

Enjoying Jigsaw Puzzles Over Holiday

 

A few days ago, Melissa bought a Christmas-themed jigsaw puzzle for us...together with our grown children Will and Rebecca...to work on as a collective, fun effort.  We had a good time with it, and it turned out that Melissa and Rebecca each in turn gave me new puzzles, both pet themed.  I enjoyed doing both the dog and cat puzzles...the three ranged from 550-750 pieces.  For me it's a lot of fun to discern different patterns out of the chaos of the unassembled pieces and making them all come together.  Guess I'll now take a short break before tackling some more...

Weekly Short Stories: 1988 Science Fiction, Part 6

Today I continue looking at short stories I've read from the year 1988 as they appear in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, 6th Annual Collection.  I'm not sure why, but as far sports are concerned, I have few memories of '88 even though I was a Florida Gator and Miami Dolphins football fan, and both the Winter and Summer Olympics happened then, in Calgary and Seoul, respectively.  I do remember, though, the Dolphins, with Marino as QB and Shula as coach, finishing in last place, failing to win a single game within their division...tsk, tsk. And that year's Super Bowl, held following the 1987 season in January of '88, featured former Bucs quarterback Doug Williams delivering perhaps the greatest championship game performance ever with his first half play for Washington versus Denver.  But enough of sports, back to those stories...

HOUSE OF BONES by Robert Silverberg

A man is selected as part of a science experiment to travel back in time to the Cro Magnon era, where he is taken in and assimilated into the nearby tribe. One day he is given an assignment that challenges his personally held ethics...and discovers something new about his new friends deep in the past...

DO YA, DO YA, WANNA DANCE? by Howard Waldrop

Not a part of the sixties-era counterculture, I was always amused hearing of others bewailing its decline and end. This story plays into that narrative as a 20-year high school reunion in 1989 promises to bring back an old rock band to restore the old spirit. What's sci-fi is the story's ending...

THE GROWTH OF THE HOUSE OF USHER by Brian Stableford

Reminding me of an old Star Trek Next Generation episode titled Tin Man, it's a few centuries into the future as architecture is evolving to use special bacteria in structures, making buildings more durable and adaptable to change. One architect, though, has taken "living buildings" to an entirely new level as a guest discovers...

GLACIER by Kim Stanley Robinson

Glaciers are quickly descending southward through America...a Canadian family has already been driven from Toronto to Boston, where they encounter social resistance to their presence. Alex hears of his father's employment struggles while trying to befriend their skittish adopted cat and exploring the massive glacier close to his home with bullies always lurking around. A good description of what a real glacier would be like...

Next week I conclude my look at science fiction short stories from 1988...

Just Finished Rereading Insomnia by Stephen King

Back in the first decade of this century (the "Aughts") I was tearing through nearly all of Stephen King's books to date, both novels and collections.  One of my favorites...the first time I read it...was his 1994 Insomnia, a story set in his imaginary, sinister Maine town of Derry, site of the events in his earlier tumultuous novel It but set in 1991, six years after that tale's climax.  The protagonist is 70-year-old retiree Ralph Roberts, recently widowed and spending his time hanging out with the loose association of fellow elderly friends they collectively dub themselves "the Croaks".  As the peculiar change in a younger friend, Ed Deepneau, shows him becoming a violent and dangerously delusional man, the issue of abortion takes center stage and Ed and Ralph's closest friends, Bill McGovern and Lois Chasse, become more and more prominent in the developing narrative.  Ralph finds himself in the unsettling position of falling asleep at night easily enough...but he keeps rising out of bed fully awake earlier and earlier each morning until, eventually, he no longer sleeps.  At the same time, he begins to see an enhanced hyperreality of auras and strange "people", among them three figures who seem to have both the power and duty designate who will be next to die.  Eventually, a lot...maybe a little too much...gets explained as Ralph gets sucked into the monumental struggle that King covers much more deeply within his Dark Tower fantasy series.  What appealed to me then...and now...about Insomnia was the attention that King paid to the elderly and their attitudes and concerns.  This aspect of the novel gets magnified each time I reread it...this is my third, the last in 2017 (click HERE to read my review from then)...and I'm only four years removed now from Ralph Robert's age.  Yet I have to admit that while I considered Insomnia in years gone by as a favorite, I didn't particularly enjoy it as much this time around...I never could get into Stephen King's Dark Tower universe although I read all seven core novels twice, as well as the associated Wind Through the Keyhole.  King himself has been critical of this novel, earlier stating that it diverged from his usual writing pattern as he atypically outlined the story in advance...and the Dark Tower series itself seems to distance its narrative from that in Insomnia.  But perhaps the most disturbing thing about this story is something that, if I bring it up, is bound to be a plot spoiler...so stop reading this article NOW and go no further if you're planning on reading Insomnia in the future.  Still sticking around? Okay, here goes...

Sometimes when I watch certain movies and TV series, especially the ones dealing with crime and violent acts, I wonder whether the writers who dreamed up these fictional scenarios were aware of the many mentally or morally disturbed viewers who might take those ideas and copy them in real life.  Insomnia has someone flying on a suicide mission in a plane with the intent of crashing it into a crowded building where a rally is going on.  I wander what Stephen King felt seven years later on the morning of September 11, 2001, when this idea was implemented on a much more massive scale.  Is there any concern felt by writers that the villains of this world might just adopt some of their material?  Not that this sort of thing was original in Insomnia: it goes back to the desperate Japanese suicide kamikaze attacks against American ships during the final months of World War II.  By the way, the excellent 1975 Robert Redford spy thriller Three Days of the Condor takes up this concern of life imitating fiction as well. Anyway, I've read Insomnia three times now...that's probably enough, especially considering all the other books out there waiting for me.  But I still think that King did a wonderful job with his characters and his empathetic treatment of the elderly...

Constellations of the Month: Aries and Triangulum

Even since I learned the constellations, their star patterns and locations back in 1964, I have always grouped small Aries (representing a ram) and even smaller Triangulum (representing, er...uh, a triangle) together as a combo deal.  They're just east of the dismally dim Zodiac constellation Pisces, although the two aren't endowed with bright stars, either.  They also tend to get overshadowed by the brilliant display of stars to their east, with Taurus (including the nearby beautiful cluster the Pleiades, visible to the naked eye as a smudge in the night sky) and spectacular Orion drawing the star gazer's attention away from them.  Triangulum does have a deep space object, M33, which is a spiral galaxy visible without binoculars, but only when the sky is very dark.  The three main stars in Aries also form a triangle, duh...I don't know why they didn't just graft what is Triangulum onto the Ram and make one more substantial star group, but I didn't live way back in ancient times when they came up with these designations.  As a kid watching the night sky, I always regarded making out Triangulum and Aries as a sort of visual test...this task is made easier when they pass nearly overhead this time of the year around 9 pm Standard Time, making them less susceptible to city lights.  Triangulum has a southern counterpart constellation, dubbed "Triangulum Australe"...I've actually seen star maps with it represented by a crude quadrilateral of connected stars...really???   And I can't finish this article without mentioning what you probably already know: Aries is a Zodiac constellation, so the elliptic, the imaginary celestial "line" representing the plane of our solar system through while the sun, moon, and planets seem to travel, passes through it...

Next month I'll pick another constellation (or two) to discuss...

Merry Christmas

I think I'll take a couple of days off from this blog as I wish you and your family and friends a most Merry Christmas.  Right now, as I am writing this the temperature here in Gainesville, Florida has climbed all the way up to 30 degrees...elsewhere in the eastern and central U.S. it is much colder with snow covering much of the land.  No snow here, but for a lifelong Floridian this is definitely uncomfortable, and it's supposed to get to about 20 tonight.  They say around the New Year, temperatures are supposed to be warmer than usual, but for me that's an awfully long wait.  Again, Merry Christmas!

Quote of the Week...fron Neil deGrasse Tyson

While casting shade on Elon Musk for what he's done, is doing, or will do, try to pause and remember that he made electric cars a normal thing in society and he commercialized space...for cargo, satellites & people. Count him among those who are inventing civilization's future.   ---Neil deGrasse Tyson

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may know that I'm a fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson, science popularizer and astrophysicist, the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, the narrator of the Cosmos TV series after the death of its originator, Carl Sagan, and a strong advocate for space exploration, both manned and unmanned. I think he hit just the right chord with the above Tweet (I'm a follower of his) about the exorbitantly wealthy entrepreneur Elon Musk, recently much praised and maligned after buying and taking over this social media site. Tyson's politics are clearly far to the left of Musk's, who has signaled with some of his Tweets a willingness to pander to the Trump crowd and their conspiracy theories and agendas. Yet Musk has indeed pioneered the mass production of electric cars with his Tesla and worked with liberal president Barack Obama to develop a future manned Mars project under his SpaceX company...breaking the multi-year dependence on Russia to launch our own astronauts into space. There are two chief points I'd like to make. One, the very nature of being a public figure/leader, be it in any field like politics, business, sports, academics, or entertainment, jettisons one into public scrutiny and there will always be something objectionable about their behavior or views that comes out, either with their own consent or not. Two, we seem to be suffering lately from what I term the "Fonzie Syndrome" where just because someone is thought of as "cool" or thinks himself or herself cool then whatever they say is supposedly Infallible Wisdom and Truth...millions of Trump worshippers are totally into this fallacy: for them the Orange Man IS the Fonz. And I suppose super-rich folk can get a swollen head about themselves and pretend expertise in areas beyond their specialties...Elon's foray into Twitter I believe betrays this very human frailty. I wish he would focus his attention more on the transformational technology for which he will ultimately be honored in history instead of this current misguided detour.  The latest breaking news is that he just resigned as the company's CEO, although since he's still the owner I don't know how much that's going to change things...

Give Billy Napier the Time He Needs to Restore Winning Gator Football

I was just discussing with a coworker how he felt about University of Florida football head coach Billy Napier after his first season, going 6-7.  We both agreed that Napier had replaced previous coach Dan Mullen because Mullen was perceived to have done poorly with his recruiting...basically, the team that Napier was forced to deal with in his first season was Mullen's product.  The sports gurus who others think are knowledgeable about this sort of thing have just ranked the Gators as #12 in this year's recruiting, so maybe the new coach is performing as hoped.  Only real games, starting next year, with reveal the trend as my friend and I feel inclined to give Napier the time he needs to build up a higher quality football team.  After all, I reminded him, Charlie Pell went 0-9-1 in his first year coaching UF (1979).  As for my expectations for Florida football, I don't expect a national championship or SEC conference title every year, but I do want them to at least be in contention for the title game late in the regular season and finish with a higher than 2:1 ratio with their win-loss record.  If they accomplish that, then I'm happy...even if many of my prima donna fellow Gator fans aren't...

Weekly Short Stories: 1988 Science Fiction, Part 5

Today I continue looking at 1988 science fiction short stories as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixth Annual Collection and featuring Dozois' selections. They're all good stories with interesting premises...three of them are intimately connected with the future fate of animals on our planet while the others are split between a serial killer, an indigenous culture fighting submergence and a tribute to northern European mythology.  Sometimes with short stories it can take a bit of effort to figure out exactly what's going on...the second and third stories below fit that bill.  My favorite of the bunch? Judith Moffett's The Hob.  And now, to the stories and my reactions...

KIRINYAGA by Mike Resnick

The Kikuyu people of Kenya, like so many other groups, had to endure the oppression of European colonialism, not only dominated economically and politically but also socially and culturally, with the colonists' ethics and values supplanting their own.  In this story it's a future where humans are abundantly settling other worlds, and the Kikuyu are accorded their own planet...but the outside organization monitoring and supplying them is still bound to interfere whenever a traditional practice conflicts with their own values.  The response from the Kikuyu is traditional, sad...and effective...

THE GIRL WHO LOVED ANIMALS by Bruce McAllister

On our world in the future the extinctions of animal life have progressed to the point that going to a zoo is basically looking at holograms of the animals as they appeared in the past.  A young abused, low-IQ woman is pregnant, having accepted money to be a surrogate mother...but it isn't a human she is carrying.  The protagonist breaks her out of state custody for the sake of her own well-being and that of her growing baby in the face of adverse social and legal actions...

THE LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOES by Connie Willis

Sometimes the author in a story will quickly switch without warning back and forth between two different times and experiences...it can be a bit confusing, especially at the beginning when the reader has not picked up on the narrative's parameters.  That aside, this tale of the "extinction" of Winnebagoes and other RVs is dwarfed by the realization of a much larger extinction...as well as what can happen when one regulatory agency accrues too much power for itself...

LOVE IN VAIN by Lewis Shiner

A Texas D.A. travels from his home in Dallas to a town jail just outside Austin, where dwells an accused serial killer.  Only problem: Charlie has confessed to thousands of killings with detailed knowledge...killings he could not have possibly done.  As the D.A. digs deeper into this mystery, his own unraveling personal life is revealed.  I felt this could have been the start of a series, what with the personal back story...

THE HOB by Judith Moffett

A hairy, long-living humanoid group is coming out of its secluded hibernation in the remote Yorkshire heath country in northern England.  Elphi awakes first and discovers one of his fellow hobs has died...how to get rid of the body without arousing suspicion among the surrounding humans?  Along the way he accidentally encounters a young woman hiking through the area, and his story is eventually told.  Sounds like a fantasy story Tolkien might have dreamed up, but there is a real science fiction angle when space travel enters the picture.  A sweet story, well told... 

OUR NEURAL CHERNOBYL by Bruce Sterling

A tongue-in-cheek look, from the middle of our current century, at a genetically induced biological disaster as in the 1990s genetic hackers run rampant altering human's DNA through the use of the RNA involved in HIV.  If it had just ended messing up a few people's lives it would have been one thing, but the enhanced neural activity and markedly higher intelligence produced through one of the experiments inadvertently crosses species lines, producing the sometimes-comic effects the author seemed to have fun with...

Next week: more from 1988...

Podcaster Discusses Momentum

On his Mindset Mentor podcast yesterday, personal development coach Rob Dial brought up the subject of momentum.  Giving the word picture example of getting a car moving from a still position, he stressed that getting started in anything can be an arduous task...even becoming more difficult after the initial actions...but that once it all is in motion, that is, the habits begin to set in more and more, it begins to pick up momentum, which provides positive feedback and encourages more effort.  Then it is a matter of keeping with it and not interrupting the flow of your efforts, for once the car comes to a rest again, the whole process of getting it moving has to start from scratch.  I think that sometimes we confuse taking necessary small breaks from an endeavor, or even just a little rest, with walking away from it "for a season"...that latter break has a tendency to be a momentum destroyer.  Also, there is nothing like having people around you who see the intensity of your initial efforts in something as a kind of unhealthy fanaticism that must be curtailed and balanced...just contending with this kind of opposition can be discouraging: in my childhood I felt I was victim to this sort of negativity, with no recourse to the kind of personal boundary-setting that folks like Dial like to suggest.  But even without outside interference, it can be imposing to get started moving that "car" along, and not only that, but you're more likely to see how immense your undertaking is once you're finally moving down the road, with the possible inclination to put on the momentum-destroying brakes...

Interesting Winter Weather Hitting Gainesville as Christmas Approaches

Looks like an unusually wet and cold upcoming week in Gainesville as Christmas on Sunday approaches.  Whenever precipitation is forecast and the temperature is below freezing, the obvious inference is that it's gonna snow...such is the case this coming Friday, two days before the big holiday.  All I know is that in the next few days we're going to get a lot of water...in whatever form...falling from the skies and plummeting temperatures as the weekend approaches.  At last glimpse The Weather Channel has Christmas day's high in my hometown here in northern Florida at 45, bracketed with lows in the 20's.  My main concern in all this...and perhaps yours as well...will be potentially icy roads: hardly anyone here, including myself, is prepared to handle driving over them.  The last time that happened in Gainesville to any substantial degree was just before Christmas in 1989 when roads iced up overnight.  I was at work in the downtown post office in the wee hours of the morning and after my shift spent several minutes trying to clear my car's windshield of the thick ice.  Then the treacherous 6-mile drive home...I managed to make it nearly into my own neighborhood before the car began briefly to skid on the frozen road.  And then it began to snow in earnest while icicles formed all around my house.  Nothing like that has happened here since...until possibly this coming Christmas weekend.  Should be interesting...

Just Finished Reading Starry Messenger by Neil deGrasse Tyson

I've previously read two other books by astrophysicist and popularizer of science Neil deGrasse Tyson: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and Cosmic Queries (cowritten with physicist James Trefil)...click on the titles to read my reviews.  Starry Messenger, just out, is the latest in a string of popular science books by Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and Carl Sagan's long-time replacement as narrator of the recurring Cosmos TV series. As in other books of his, he presents a diverse set of perspectives in science and society, this time claiming a special perspective from the viewpoint of space, looking down at our planet.  In everything he extols objective truth, as opposed to the highly subjective personal and political truths so many of us adhere to, and also claims for it a kind of transcendent aesthetic beauty that enhances, not diminishes, what the subject of focus is.  Then he goes on to discuss how scale...the extremely fast/slow, large/small and distant...can distort our perceptions of reality.  Tribalism, a subject that I only sadly know too much of from my own life experiences, gets the Tyson treatment: seems we're in the same "tribe" on the subject.  How people like to label themselves these days goes beyond ethnic, national, religious and socioeconomic distinctions...sexual identity and even the ethic of being a vegetarian versus eating meat come into play and are subject to, well, subjectivity.  Finally, the author discusses the highly subjective nature of race, law and order, presenting as a whole a smorgasbord of topics under the perspective of seeing us from "above", either in a literal or figurative sense.  Since I tend to see eye-to-eye with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I suppose this is an instance of reading for the sake of picking up talking points, rather than to have my eyes opened to a differing perspective that would challenge my beliefs.  I enjoyed Starry Messenger...maybe you will, too...

Overslept for Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning, Checked the Park Out Later

 

This morning I had been thinking about going down to Gainesville's Depot Park for their weekly free 5K run, but since I get off from work on Fridays at 10 pm, I am already cutting into my night's sleep if I get up early to get ready and drive the 6 or 7 miles to the park for the 7:30 run...as it happened, I got up at 9:30!  Still, I thought why not go down there around 1 this afternoon and run there...so I did.  I was a bit shocked by how crowded the park was...I was lucky to find a parking spot.  And, you know what?  People were walking and running on the path in both directions, with me sometimes having to cut over the grass to avoid them...it was like the Matrix training program, if you've seen that movie.  Suddenly, I noticed there was a kiddie play area loaded with rides (and now, kids) as well as a wine/eatery place that had always hitherto escaped my attention.  I had especially wanted to see how I would react to running with heavier, but more padded, shoes: the jury is out on that, since I already was feeling a little out of sorts with so many people there...the above photo is at the start of the 5K run, probably the only time there weren't loads of people immediately around me.  If you only go to Depot Park early on Saturday mornings, I learned, you're bound to get a false impression of how popular it really is.  Later on in the day, it's more like New York City's Central Park...

Quote of the Week...from Ludwig van Beethoven

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly about how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius appears as a distant, guiding sun.                      ---Ludwig van Beethoven

No one is exactly sure...other than Charles Schulz's piano plunking little Schroeder from Peanuts...exactly which day the great classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven's birth falls on.  Heck, they're not even sure which year he was born in! But for the sake of this article, I'll bow to fictional Schroeder's high opinion of his idol and say it's today.  I rummaged through some of Beethoven's more famous quotes and found that they were a mixture of extreme narcissism and pride for his own greatness with times of self-doubt and recrimination.  The above one is actually right in the middle, and pretty profound at that.  I doubt there are few of us who were so specialized and extensively skilled and accomplished in our chosen life endeavors as he, so here's someone who knows what he's talking about.  The more skillful and productive you get in an area, the more knowledgeable you are about it and how painfully much you lack in ability to fully master it.  A little baby who finally learns how to walk may suddenly feel he or she can do anything, but artists, athletes, scientists, or anyone else or who have dedicated themselves to their special field can feel a deep personal lacking and feeling of shortcoming that others may be confounded at, seeing only how they excel.  Not that I am remotely as accomplished in any of these areas as, say, a Beethoven...I am horribly spread out over many areas and with my skills and works in any one of them much lower than if I had decided to concentrate my efforts. But it's true: pick up a beginning foreign language book and after the first two chapters you'll think you can speak the language... a couple of years later you may think you never will.  As for Schroeder and the rest of his Peanuts buddies like good ol' Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy, they were always on the front of my Sunday newspaper comic section as a kid, but I really got into the strip when I bought a couple of paperbacks featuring nothing but the oldest Peanuts comics going back to the 1950s.  I'm grateful both for Schulz and Beethoven...and others whose dedication to their crafts have enhanced my life's enjoyment over the years...

Artemis I Successfully Returns, Future Lunar Missions Scheduled

The Artemis I NASA mission to the Moon and back was finally completed with a successful splashdown return on December 11th.  It was unmanned and designed to test the SLS launch rocket and Orion spacecraft and systems, as well as the Earth-based command center.  After some delays lasting months, it was finally launched on November 26th, with the Orion craft eventually making many lunar orbits over a span of six days, performing various maneuvers and taking spectacular photos both of the Moon and Earth off in the distance before returning to Earth.  I'm happy to see this concerted return to human deep space exploration after nearly half a century of doing little more than go around Earth in low orbit.  The next Artemis mission is scheduled for May, 2024 and will featured a human crew that will also orbit the Moon and return...after that, the way should be open for the first human landing on our Moon the following year, for the first time in 52+ years.  This time around, hopefully, we'll keep our presence there permanent with a planned Moon base.  The media coverage for all this is scant, with little popular interest...I'm not sure that this is a bad thing after thinking about it: it's all those voices complaining about investing money, time and effort into space exploration instead of pursuing their agendas that has, in large part, created this unnecessary gap in human deep space exploration and settlement.  May the future Artemis missions continue to be successful...

Weekly Short Stories: 1988 Science Fiction, Part 4

As my reviews of short sci-fi stories from 1988 continue to the fourth week, I switch my focus to the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixth Annual Collection.  There is a small overlap of stories with the Donald A. Wollheim anthology I had been covering for the previous three weeks: Peaches for Mad Molly (Harry Turtledove), Schrödinger's Kitten (Howard Waldrop) and Skin Deep (D. Alexander Smith) are in both books.  As I've stated before, I can't believe Dozois didn't pick Ripples in the Dirac Sea (Geoffrey A. Landis), but I suppose there's no accounting for taste, sigh. And now, here are my reactions to the first (non-overlapping) tales in Gardner's anthology...

SURFACING by Walter Jon Williams

On another planet presumably in a future of human space exploration and settlement, a man with a cynical, angry attitude toward life and others is using humpback whales that he transported into its seas to detect and understand the deep-dwelling, intelligent indigenous beings there. Meanwhile, a shape-shifting alien has landed there and then presumably left...but then suddenly a woman scientist arrives on the scene, alternately competing with the man over his project and seducing him.  I was frustrated reading all this and felt the author stuck too many diverse elements into the story, which could have been simpler and shorter...

HOME FRONT by James Patrick Kelly

Will is an American teen in the near future (from 1988), putting up with his two loser friends and trying to do well enough in high school to stay out of the military draft and be sent off to fight in one of the never-ending wars abroad. One of his friends is playing the lottery to see if he can't become the next "Johnny America", the starring soldier in a TV show glorifying war and actually serving in it.  And then there are the Selective Service sweeps through high school to pick up fresh soldiers.  Pretty cynical, but at least nowadays Will's dismal situation would be less applicable to Americans...but much more so to Russian teens, sadly...

THE MAN WHO LOVED THE VAMPIRE LADY by Brian Stableford

Gardner Dozois must have thought that every alternative history tale automatically belongs to the science fiction genre, because he has so many in his collections...here's another.  This "time" it's 1623 and vampires not only really exist, but they are the dominant ruling class.  A "normal" human, a mechanist corresponding to our notion of a scientist, has made a discovery that could threaten the vampires.  He suspects mortal danger for himself as his old vampire lover is paying him a visit, not good...

THE LAST ARTICLE by Harry Turtledove

Ditto with this story regarding my previous comments about Dozois, alternative histories, and sci-fi.  This one is set in the late 1940s as the German Nazis, winners of World War II, are replacing Britain as the new occupying power in India, setting up a confrontation between their ranking officer there and peaceful resister Mohandas Gandhi. But Gandhi is in for a rude awakening as he has believed that all occupiers are essentially the same and susceptible to nonviolent resistance...

STABLE STRATEGIES FOR MIDDLE MANAGEMENT by Eileen Gunn

This brief story reminded me of Kafka's Metamorphosis as a future business executive, having consented to bioengineering on her body to further her career, wakes up one morning to discover the many insect-like features she is growing. I guess this was supposed to be a funny satire on human failings and overdependence on science...I did like how the protagonist handled her boss problem at the end, though I would never recommend it...

IN MEMORIAM by Nancy Kress

It's discovered in the future that our own accumulation of memories is a major factor in our aging and eventual death.  But a method...the memory wipe...can restore lost youth and create a longer, more active life to those who choose this path.  An aging woman, faced with the pressures of her flagging health and her own family's urging, must soon make the crucial decision. The ending was sad, profound and surprising...

Next week: more reactions to 1988 stories in the Dozois anthology... 

Comments about Football and Football

In football, the Sunday night national stage...which has pretty much supplanted the famed Monday Night Football spotlight of decades earlier, "my" Miami Dolphins were in the spotlight as they were finally in a featured game, this one on the road against the "Los Angeles" Chargers.  I put that location in quotes because I still think of them as belonging to San Diego. It seems that ever since they went into general decline following Jimmy Johnson's retirement as head coach after the 1999 season, Miami has been pushed to the background with network sports attention, only getting coverage when something negative is going on.  But this year they are doing better in the standings with first year head coach Mike McDaniel being heralded as some king of genius (they say it, I don't) and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa seeming to hit his stride, with star receivers Jaylen Waddle and Tyreek Hill beginning to resemble Dan Marino's famed receivers of the past, Mark Clayton and Mark Duper.  NBC sports announcer Chris Collinsworth even went so far before the game to proclaim the Dolphins as Super Bowl bound...ha, ha, ha, I'll believe it when I see it!  True to form, the Dolphins, already known for being a poor road team on the Pacific Coast, quickly fell behind to the Chargers as Tua seemed to choke up earlier under all the media focus and the highly touted Dolphins defense found itself full of holes for San Diego Los Angeles to run right through.  Still, they nearly pulled the game out but now have lost two in a row, with a difficult road contest against Buffalo next week...

As for the other "football", that is, the sport that most of the world gives this designation, the men's World Cup soccer semifinals are set to be played: Argentina vs. Croatia at 1 pm today and France vs. Morocco tomorrow at the same time.  The overwhelming consensus has Argentina and France winning to play each other in the finale on December 18th.  I've written before about begin bummed out over excessive nationalism in sports, so I haven't been giving all this hoopla much coverage...or thought, for that matter.  I like more to watch different leagues play, most notably the English Premier League and Mexico's Liga MX with my favorite teams in them Leicester City and UANL Tigres, respectively.  On the league level, different teams hire their players across national borders and usually aren't so hung up about national divisions, the opposite of what happens with this highly politicized World Cup scene.  Since I happen to like Lionel Messi, I'm going to root for his Argentina team to win it all, but otherwise I couldn't care less about this tournament of nationalism and waving flags...

Just Finished Reading It by Stephen King

During that personally highly productive decade I've hitherto referred to as the "Aughts", I read most of Stephen Kings novels published to date, including the very, very long 1985 work titled It. "It"'s been adapted at least twice to movies as well as a TV series...after seeing on-screen adaptations of earlier King stories straying too far from the author's original narrative, I decided to pass up on them. Instead, I just finished reading It for a second time, after the more recently written King novel 11/22/63 has a scene taking place in It's setting of Derry, Maine, a fictional and bedeviled town that is also the primary location of his 1993 novel Insomnia (also a personal favorite). It is split into two parallel narratives, between the years 1958 and 1985.  The heroes are seven Derry children, self-dubbed "The Losers", who find themselves united through common circumstances against bullies as well as a sense of benevolence and genuine liking toward each other.  They make common cause against a murderous presence in the town, which takes different forms but primarily as a sinister clown named Pennywise...it killed George, the little brother of "Stuttering'" Bill Denbrough, and that set off the series of events leading to this gang of heroes forming in the strange local marshes called the Barrens.  It's already established at the novel's start that the seven all survived their childhood encounters with the evil entity, which not only kills but invades people's consciousness with negative and violent thoughts.  But whatever happened in 1958 did not lead it to It's demise, for it is back in Derry in 1985 as more people are turning up gruesomely killed...the seven are summoned in adulthood to finish the job they had begun 27 years earlier.  Stephen King delved deeply into the story's different characters, evoking little memories of my own past from snippets of the different children's experiences.  One different thing: the Losers were free to run around loose and form their own friendships, while my own parents were very restrictive and strict about me leaving the house to hang around others (although they, like King's "losers", had no such restrictions placed on themselves in their childhood).  Reading this thriller horror story the second time around was a wholly different experience, primarily because, naturally, I already knew how it would turn out.  One other thing without giving away the story: it was interesting how the protagonists underwent a general memory loss about not only their earlier experiences but also about one another.  I wander if the author was trying to convey something about human nature with this.  It is a good, albeit very scary novel, and requires a generous amount of time devoted to reading it.  My favorite excerpt comes at the very end, with a tumultuous bicycle ride downhill...who knew such a thing could bring tears to one's eyes?  I am currently rereading Stephen King's Insomnia, which as mentioned before is also set in Derry, but in the year 1991.  Not only was I impressed by the sensitivity shown to the elderly in this story, but it is also connected with the author's standout fantasy series The Dark Tower.   I've also been reading Neil deGrasse Tyson's latest popular science book Starry Messenger...I'll have a few things to say about it in a future article...

My #1 All-Time Favorite Album: Led Zeppelin IV

LED ZEPPELIN IV, my #1 all-time favorite album, came out in 1971 although I didn't hear all eight of its tracks for another nineteen years until the British hard rock band produced its first box set and my local rock station, WRUF-FM "Rock 104", played it in its entirety to my amazement.  What a group, and what an album, with guitarist wizard Jimmy Page doing his riffs and studio production, Robert Plant's soulful singing (and harmonica), John Paul Jones on bass guitar and keyboards and the late John Bonham pounding out the drums.  The album is technically untitled, but everyone pretty much refers to it as "Led Zeppelin Four".   My initial exposure to it was during my teens with the playing of the opening track Black Dog and then Stairway to Heaven on the radio...the former I never did care for while I became obsessed with the latter in the fall of 1973 as a strong consensus of its greatness had spread throughout the rock listening community.  During this time and subsequent years, I would also hear songs like Rock and Roll, Misty Mountain Hop, Going to California and When the Levee Breaks on FM album rock radio without taking much notice of them.  But in late 1990 I was ready for their music and the impact of that box set, along with the advent of stations nightly playing Led Zeppelin music at set times, converted me into a die-hard fan, ten years after they broke up following Bonham's death.  Although Stairway to Heaven was on Side One, it was the album's second side with four striking tracks that has elevated Led Zeppelin IV to be my favorite one for all-time.  Below I have its tracks listed by order of my liking, with a little commentary thrown in...

1 WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS---In their early years the band had a nasty habit of lifting old blues songs without crediting the original composer...they rectified it later, including this rock arrangement of a 1929 blues piece by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy.  This is a relentless song about suffering through misfortune as Plant alternately wails and plays perhaps the most compelling harmonica piece I've heard. From 1991 until just recently I regarded it as my all-time favorite song and still rank it very high.  The opening drums/guitar/harmonica segment is matchless...

2 MISTY MOUNTAIN HOP---Making a passing reference to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the lyrics are more a contemporary social commentary and a warning that "you better open your eyes".  Never heard a beat and lyrical buildup as in this ultimately sinister but beautiful Side Two opening track...

3 STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN---The first Zeppelin song I ever took to, I first got to like it a lot while lying in a hospital bed, recovering from surgery and listening to rock radio in October 1973.  The way the song transforms from a slow flute/acoustical piece gradually into a rousing hard rock guitar jam at the end has always impressed me...brilliant...

4 GOING TO CALIFORNIA---A mellow (for the most part) Robert Plant sings of goin' to California with an aching in his heart and looking for a woman who has never, ever been born.  Speaks of sometimes irrational, idealized sentiments that can cloud our own judgments...can I get an amen from anyone on that?  I loved the acoustical guitar on it and wonder how it would stand up instead as a piano piece...

5 FOUR STICKS---Some bands have specific songs in their catalog they avoid performing in live concerts because they are difficult to play... the Beatles' And Your Bird Can Sing, Rush's YYZ...and this one from Led Zeppelin: John Bonham thought Four Sticks was exceptionally hard on the drums.  It's kind of like When the Levee Breaks regarding the sense of deeply felt lamentation and an overriding mystical sense, and, yes, I'm a sucker for all that... 

6 THE BATTLE OF EVERMORE---An excursion into fantasy land as Plant sings of dire events unfolding in Tolkien's  Lord of the Rings setting.  He sings a pretty passionate duet here with Sandy Denny.  John Paul Jones dominates the song's instrumentation with the mandolin...

7 ROCK AND ROLL---Maybe the best anthem extolling rock and roll: exuberant, energizing, and happy.  Dang it, it's hard to hear it without just getting up and dancing around (while playing air guitar)...

8 BLACK DOG---Written literally about a black dog that had wondered into the recording studio one day, this is an exercise in jamming with the band members going off in their own jazzy/rock directions with their instruments and, in Plant's case, voice.  Never did care for it, though, although I can see how others would. Just seemed like they were showboating maybe a little too much here...

So that's it for my all-time favorite albums...guess I'll be cooking up some new feature for future weeks...

 

Ran Depot Park's Free Saturday Morning 5K Today

Having originally intended to sign up and run for a different race for today, that one for 15K, I was curtailed from signing up online with no information provided on being able to do so on race morning. So, I decided instead to go for a known quantity: the Depot Parkrun just south of downtown Gainesville, which holds free Saturday morning 5K events each week, promptly posting results online with an ever-increasing database of past results.  This was my ninth Parkrun since 2019, and I was pleased and honored for Melissa to join me...she hadn't been to this pretty nature-oriented park before and went as a walker, covering half the race's distance and enjoying the ambiance and enthusiasm of others.  As for that other race, they did later send me an email stating that I could sign up on race morning...but they could have expressed that on their website but didn't and, besides, I had already made other plans.  This morning the temperature was in the pleasant upper fifties, but the humidity was a muggy 100%: ugh.  There were lots of people at the part to run it...or, in Melissa's case, walk the sloping and winding course around the park: four laps make the 5K (3.1 mile) distance.  Around the one-lap mark the top of my left foot started to ache some and I wondered if it would get worse and I'd have to stop.  Fortunately, the problem abated, and I ran a consistent-but-subdued pace to finish the race in 40th place out of 92 finishers and second in my age group (M 65-69) with a time of 31:46...click HERE to view the results. With that foot issue I am wondering whether I should just stick with the heavier, more padded shoes I use during regular training and forget about the lighter and less protective racing shoes...maybe I'll try another Depot Parkrun and see.  I recommend this race...the folks are all friendly and helpful, the park is beautiful with its birds and trees and lake, and they have excellent bathroom facilities, something I've grown to never take for granted.  I'll have to check my online running calendar website to see if there are any interesting races left in December...otherwise I'll just stick with my at-home training and this Depot Park event until 2023 rolls around.  Oh, one other thing...there's a cool bagel place, Luke's, on the west side of Main Street just north of the turnoff circle to the park...they're really good, New York style, although you probably will have to wait a while in line for them to take and complete your order...

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.              ---Mark Twain

It's getting nearly impossible these days to find news sources in which they don't offer commentators to follow up on the selected news stories with their own biased interpretations, or "spin".  The three major so-called "news" networks are guilty of this...FoxNews is the worst offender.  Not only is the commentary one-sided, but the actual topics selected are slanted as well as whomever they might choose as guests to interview.  In reaction we're getting other channels touting themselves as "just the news", but wouldn't you know it, even they can't resist the temptation to hire their own (biased) commentators...just in case you're too stupid to come to your own conclusions about the news you just heard and can't form your own opinions without someone else spoon-feeding theirs to you.  I suppose it's just a part of human nature to take fragments of incoming information and try to create whole narratives from them...or, better yet, fashion them to fit one's own by emphasizing the elements that fit and discarding those that don't.  And if you can't do that for yourself, then help is on the way anywhere you look on the TV dial.  And radio...what a sick joke...

"Aught" We to Stop Referring to Decades?

Dr. Rick, the dude on the Progressive insurance commercials who has committed his efforts to helping young adults to stop acting like their parents, has one less item to work on. The tendency for baby boomers like me to group decades together from the previous century (Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties) came to an abrupt wall with the advent of the twenty-first.  The opening decade of this century is technically called the "Aughts", but I kind of like to use "Zeros" although nobody really uses either term...or even any name at all for this crucial span of time.  Lots of neat stuff happened in my life during this period, and significant events (like the 2000 election, 9/11, the Iraq & Afghanistan Wars, the Christmas tsunami, Katrina, Obama's election) occurred...but the Good Doctor has yet to feel any need to dissuade straying young'uns from grouping it all together as a decade.  No, young and old alike seem to have a mental block about time once the calendar shifted over from "19" to "20". You might think then that once 2010 came around than at least, at that time, folks would resume with the decade talk, calling it the beginning of the "Teens"...but nothing doing.  And now, deep into the Twenties, I had yet to hear any such reference to the times we live in, with most people I imagine thinking more of the roaring 1920s when the term does come up instead with the associations of Prohibition, silent flicks and Calvin Coolidge.  Are we truly finished with the decades talk?  I've heard references made to the "2000s", but as far as I'm concerned, that term covers every year in this century, not just the first decade...

Weekly Short Stories: 1988 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I conclude my look at 1988 science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents the 1989 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from the previous year.  In 1988, Melissa and I lived the whole year with our miniature poodle Taffy at a nice, student-oriented apartment complex just off Williston Road on SE 16th Ave.  I mention that because it's the last apartment I have resided in: the next year we would move to our house in far northern Gainesville.  When I think today of the different apartment complexes I used to live in, I miss their swimming pools...although curiously I never used one while I lived there...not even the one by my dorm when I went to UF.  That how memories can sometimes get clouded by our present priorities, I guess.  And now, let's discuss the final four stories in Wollheim's anthology...

WAITING FOR THE OLYMPIANS by Frederik Pohl

I thoroughly enjoy Frederik Pohl's clear and plain writing style, and this alternative history story of the Roman Empire surviving and thriving into our present times doesn't disappoint.  Everything's just hunky dory as in this world, technology and opportunities seem boundless...if you're free and not a slave, that is.  A spaceship from a galactic-type federation of advanced worlds out there is headed for a first contact with Earth to see if we're worthy of being in their club...suddenly, all communication from the ship ceases.  I figured out early on where this story was going, but enjoyed reading through it anyway...

AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A HOUND DOG by B.W. Clough

An entrepreneur in the mail order trivia business gets a curious string of orders to a remote place in West Virginia.  As the orders swell, he decides to make a big delivery in person to the nearly inaccessible address...and gets a big surprise.  A kinky, funny tale that reminded me of some of Stephen King's short stories...

ADRIFT AMONG THE GHOSTS by Jack Chalker

It's long been acknowledged that our radio and TV broadcasts are going straight out into space and could potentially be picked up...years and years into the future...by intelligent cultures out there.  This is the scenario, not explicitly explained at first, as one of "them" has become quite a connoisseur and expert on all the old shows...this tale is a venture into nostalgia.  But at story's end it all comes crashing down with a somber realization...

RIPPLES IN THE DIRAC SEA by Geoffrey A. Landis

Wouldn't you know it, after railing against time travel stories for so long I would encounter two brilliant ones: Stephen King's epic novel 11/22/63 and this short story by Geoffrey A. Landis. Ripples in the Dirac Sea is the best, word-for-word: the author delves into quantum theory and antimatter science to present a plausible explanation for how time travel into the past could well be possible, and without paradox. It's stories like this that make plowing through many forgettable ones worthwhile: a true classic of science fiction, yet it was accomplished in just a few pages...

Next week I continue reviewing 1988 short stories, but I'll be shifting over to Gardner Dozois' excellent anthology series, although for some reason he didn't feel my favorite one from Wollheim's anthology worthy of inclusion: go figure...

Florida Gators Get Bowl Bid, But Without Season's Starting QB

The University of Florida football team somehow managed to finish their 2022 season bowl eligible, with a 6-6 record reflecting erratic performances.  They surprised the football world early on with an upset 29-26 opening day win over favored Utah...the Utes went on to win their Pacific-12 Conference championship.  And they delivered impressive 41-24 and 38-6 wins over Texas A&M and South Carolina, respectively...the latter went on to upset Clemson.  But the Gators also went flat in other games, nearly losing to a very weak South Florida team and actually bowing to lowly Vanderbilt.  First-year coach Billy Napier gets the customary rookie season pass on the 2022 edition's efforts.  After all, one of the chief criticisms of previous head coach Dan Mullen was that he was coming up short with recruitment...the real season for Florida football is about to begin as "Billy Ball 2.0" is set to go into high gear...will our new coach be another Billy Donovan?  Only time will tell. But first they have one more game in '22: the Las Vegas Bowl in that Nevada entertainment city on December 17th against an exciting Oregon State team that just recently knocked cross-state rival Oregon out of Pac-12 contention with a massive come-from-behind victory.  Since Florida's talented, but inconsistent quarterback Anthony Richardson has decided to enter the NFL draft, they will be hard pressed in that position...apparently many transfer and draft decisions are depleting other football rosters in advance of the upcoming bowl games.  Still, I'm looking forward to the Las Vegas Bowl, which will air on ABC at 7:30...and it will be on a Saturday, so I'll most likely be off from work then...

Podcaster Talks Again about the "Hundred Days"

On his Mindset Mentor podcast, personal development coach Rob Dial tends to recycle the same topics over the course of time.  That's good...there's such a thing as being all over the map and disjointed with your message: better to keep it to a few profound principles.  Last December he had a show about the "hundred days"...the other day he discussed it again.  In a nutshell, Dial maintains that the key to success crucially depends on maintaining consistency in an area...and doing something daily for one hundred straight days is a good way to attain it.  As with the other podcast on this topic, he brought up the example of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who maintained that he kept the habit of coming up with a set amount of new material each and every day...and marking his progress on a big calendar.  So according to Dial (and Seinfeld), you first pick a specific endeavor...not too cumbersome...to habituate yourself to doing, preferably one that if implemented could make a real positive difference for you.  Then you do it every day for a hundred straight days, refusing to give in to pressure from without or negative self-talk from within to take "days off".  And finally, RECORD your progress, either on a Seinfeld-styled calendar or in a journal.  Oh, and Rob Dial strongly hints that it's best to work on one thing at a time for the hundred days.  I don't know which aspect of this is more difficult: coming up with one high-leverage goal or realizing the enormous number of things I want to change for myself.  I think it's a good idea, in any case.  I've done this sort of thing already although not according to any formula, and it works...