Weekly Short Stories: 1942 Science Fiction, Pt. 1

I continued my look back at old science fiction short stories by reading the first four in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4 (1942). This volume contained some amazing...and mostly lengthy...tales, some of which speak to us in our world today.  Here are the first four...

THE STAR MOUSE by Fredric Brown
Old science fiction stories are often full of eccentric, reclusive scientist/inventors with their quirky little projects.  A common theme back then was one who designs the first rocket to outer space...Fredric Brown used it in this story as a kindly old scientist first catches Mitkey, a little mouse formerly living undetected in his home, and then sends him up on a rocket.  While in space an unknown small asteroid, inhabited by very small, intelligent beings, intercepts Mitkey's flight and they infuse the little mammal with human-level intelligence and alter his vocal apparatus to allow him to speak...which he does in the scientist's thick German accent.  When he returns to Earth and asks someone for directions to his old home in New Jersey...well, you can see the farcical direction this is heading...

THE WINGS OF NIGHT by Lester del Rey
Two space workers soft-crash-land their ship on the moon after one of its parts malfunctions.  As they approach a very smooth area to land, the ground suddenly opens up and they go deep under the surface to the distant bottom...where an ancient intelligent being, the last of his kind, lives and has a desperate need for his race's survival.  Can the two parties communicate to help each other out of their predicaments? And what about one of the men, who tends to display bigotry toward beings different from himself?

COOPERATE--OR ELSE! by A.E. van Vogt
It is the future and humans have explored and settled far off into the galaxy, including a place called Carson's Planet. On it live the ezwal, apparently unintelligent animals that provide them food.  On a spaceship a captive ezwal, revealing its species' truly intelligent nature, has taken over the ship and killed all but one of its people...a Professor Jamieson, who escapes on down to a jungle, sea, and monster-infested nightmare of a planet with the ezwal in hot pursuit.  The ezwals want to expel humans from their planet, but to do so involves no one knowing of their intelligence...so Jamieson has to die.  But the professor realizes that in order for either to survive on this extremely hostile world, they must cooperate with one another.  This story was written at the precise moment in history during World War II in which the Democratic allied nations added another ally: the totalitarian Soviet Union, which was suffering a brutal invasion from Hitler's Nazi regime...

FOUNDATION by Isaac Asimov
I've already read and thoroughly enjoyed the five core books of Asimov's Foundation series, in which humanity, so far off in the distant future that they've forgotten their planet of origin, lives under the rule of a galactic empire. A"psychohistorian", Hari Selden, envisions that empire's eminent breakup and subsequent eons of brutal, chaotic infighting before civilization can be restored.  His strategy to drastically shorten this dark period involves setting up two scientific outposts on the opposite ends of the galaxy...but the very scientists he dispatches are ignorant of his true intentions.  Before the novels starting coming out in the 1950s Asimov had already laid out the groundwork in the 1940s with a series of short stories...this was the first.  Great ending!

Just Finished Reading Elevation by Stephen King

Last year Stephen King came out with an unusually small book...I would have missed it had I not one day been browsing the shelves of my local Books-a-Million.  I quickly put my name on a waiting list and checked it out from my library.  The book consists of the title novella plus a short story titled Laurie.  As for the story Elevation, it reminded me a little of Thinner, a much earlier novel King wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.  In that tale a man who gets on the bad side of some gypsies is cursed with losing weight, no matter how much he eats.  Elevation's premise is similar: Scott Carey, a resident of that infamous fictional Maine town of Castle Rock, is progressively losing weight as well...but his paunchy, overweight appearance remains the same and he keeps feeling better!  Meanwhile a married lesbian couple is having difficulty overcoming the prejudice of the townsfolk as they generally shun their new Mexican-themed gourmet restaurant.  It is the interaction and emerging relationship between Carey and the women, along with the foreseen logical ending of his weight loss, that dictate the flow of the story. I enjoyed it without having to commit very much time to getting through it, but in the end I wished it were longer (and had a different ending)…

The short story Laurie is about a recently widowed elderly man living way down yonder in Florida.  His concerned sister gets him a little puppy for companionship: at first he objects, especially when confronted with Laurie's "accidents", but then the two bond.  And there is an adventure at the end waiting for them as they go for a walk one day...

Neither Elevation nor Laurie would make my top ten list of Stephen King stories, but for the characters he introduces with such feeling the reading is worth it.  Sometimes the weird things he makes happen to them don't make a lot of sense, but I can definitely see myself and others I know within those characters' personalities.  Check it out...

Super Bowl Teams Finalized Next Sunday

It seems like I'm following more of the NFL playoffs this year than I usually do...that's interesting seeing how all three Florida teams experienced losing seasons and missed them.  Yet I enjoyed some of the scenarios, including defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia somehow getting into the playoffs and both Los Angeles teams as well.  Teams I dislike such as New England and New Orleans got first-round byes and then went on from there to the conference championship round.  Sadly, Seattle, a team I've grown to follow over the years largely due to their head coach Pete Carroll and versatile quarterback Russell Wilson, bowed out early to Dallas.  Well, with the Eagles gone as well, my favorite of the four remaining teams has to be Kansas City with its brilliant second-year quarterback Patrick Mahomes.  They'll be hosting the Patriots in the American Conference championship game next Sunday the 20th at 6:40 PM, broadcast on CBS.  Earlier that day will feature the National Conference finale with New Orleans at home against the Los Angeles Rams, the game set for 3:05 PM with Fox carrying it.  My ideal scenario would have a Chiefs-Rams Super Bowl, but the Patriots and Saints, each franchise with its legacy of cheating and subsequent punishment, will probably prevail next Sunday...in which case I'd be forced to pull for New Orleans against despised New England.  But we'll see...

The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Me Still Hobbling Onward

The day after I wrote on this blog my tentative plan to enter an Ocala long-distance running race a week from now, my sporadic lower back pain returned, causing me to hobble around in much the same way as comedian Tim Conway's "old man" character.  I'm confident I'll recover as I have a number of. times in the past and eventually get back to hitting the road, albeit not to Ocala or anywhere else very soon.  In the meantime I'm looking at ancient rock bands like the Rolling Stones and The Who and marvel at them as they keep on touring and (very occasionally) recording.  It's a bit ironic that with the latter, their creative force, Pete Townshend, had left the band in 1983 because, like with the Beatles in 1967, he was tired of touring and wanted The Who just to be a studio band...the others strongly disagreed with him on this.  Now he's all over the place touring, and the last studio album the band released was in 2006.  But wait, they just announced a brand-new album to come out later this year!  Meanwhile, the Stones keep on touring and touring without any plans of coming out with any new original material...but with more than 300 songs in their catalog why should they?  And, after all, they did release in 2016 an album devoted to covers of old blues songs...

Oh, by the way, Paul McCartney, not to be outdone by his old rivals in the music business, has come out with yet another LP, this one titled Egypt Station.  I didn't care all that much for his music after he left the Beatles, although his first two solo releases, McCartney and Ram, were very high-quality. Yet I wonder if I shouldn't have given him more of a listen in his later works...the last song he recorded that I heard was The World Tonight from his 1997 Flaming Pie album and I thought it would have stood well as a Beatles track...

I'm still listening to the radio and trying to like the current output of "hits", but to little avail.  I'm thinking of making a listening project this year to go through the collective output of artists like McCartney, The Who, Rolling Stones, and others...including those later albums in their careers that never get any radio exposure.  And one more "by the way": Pearl Jam's releasing a new album later this year, too.  I have a strong suspicion that the worst songs of these legends of rock are still on a higher level than most of the "popular" music played today...
 

Just Finished Reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

When I go to my local public library I often go to the audiobooks section, often coming across books recorded in the Playaway format.  Playaway audiobooks consist of a small cartridge resembling a large MP3 player...you supply your own earphones and AAA battery.  The other day I checked out a Playaway edition of American Indian writer Sherman Alexie's young adult novel titled The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, first published in 2007.  It is told in the first person by a Spokane Indian boy, Arnold "Junior" Spirit, describing his life from his hydrocephalic condition as an infant...causing early problems and an enlarged head...and on throughout his youth in the Spokane reservation in eastern Washington state as he deals with widespread bullying and other issues.  One of his reservation school teachers notes that he is bored with the low level of education provided there and suggests he attend a "white" public school in a nearby town...Arnold does so and becomes shunned as a traitor by others in his reservation, including his best friend Rowdy.  The story continues on from there...you'll have to read it for yourself to see where it goes...

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was a very compelling and alternately funny and sad view of what it's like to grow up on a remote Indian reservation...I've since read that the author himself is part Spokane and shared much of his own life's story in the novel.  Sadly, I also read that last year some aspiring women writers came out with complaints against him for hitting on them during some writing workshops that he was involved with.  Alexie apologized for his forward behavior, but many in the literary community still have shunned him and even withdrawn past awards.  No way do I condone his past behavior, but at the same time I think that his works should stand on their own merit.  One problem I have with celebrityhood in our culture is the tendency of people to either idolize their favorites or vilify those they dislike, instead of realizing that we're all cut from the same mold and while our misdeeds deserve criticism and sometimes punishment (and sometimes severe punishment), none of us are truly perfect and blameless.  People are complex entities and there's good and bad in all of us, believe it or not.  Sherman Alexie is clearly a flawed man and he admits it...the irony of some of those who have made him into a literary pariah of sorts is that they had earlier lauded his portrayal of people in general as being flawed as well...

Quote of the Week...from Mitch McConnell

Remember me? I am the guy that gets us out of shutdowns. It's a failed policy.     ...Mitch McConnell

The United States Senate's Majority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, made the above quote on August 28th, 2014 while he was still the Minority Leader and Tea Party activists had steered the House of Representatives to shutting down the federal government back then during the Obama administration.  But then is then and now is now and McConnell has turned 180 degrees, now being the impediment in the Senate to allowing a vote on an appropriations bill that would reopen the government and which it had already previously approved, 92-6.  The Democratic-controlled House just passed the identical bill, sending it back to the Senate, which the Republicans under McConnell control 53-47.  The bill would probably not pass by the same overwhelming margin this time around, but still enough for a two thirds margin large enough to override a Trump veto.  The ultimate question then would be whether enough Republicans on the House side would be willing to also vote to override the veto...I'm doubtful about this.  Still, the Majority Leader's quote demonstrates his utter lack of principle as the only thing that matters to him is total partisan victory on whatever issue happens to be at hand...

I'm sure most Americans are very frustrated by this whole business of shutting down the government over a proposed security wall on our southern border.  I think a long-stretching visible barrier would be a good, important component to our border policy and completely reject the notion by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that it is "immoral".  But I do not accept the President's decision to close down the federal government indefinitely, putting so many people in financial distress, in order to achieve "national security"...it's diminished us, not strengthened us.  Neither Trump nor Pelosi seem to be in any mood to compromise, and now it looks as if Trump will declare a national emergency to get his wall funded and built.  To all those who think such a thing would be the act of an authoritarian dictator, ABC News listed some national emergencies proclaimed by the previous three sitting presidents, six by Bill Clinton, eleven by George W. Bush, and ten by Barack Obama.  And Donald Trump has already declared three national emergencies...did you know that?  So maybe this could be an avenue to eventually restore government funding...if the courts don't block it, that is. If you've read this blog, you already know that I am no fan of Trump, but he is the president and as such has as one of his highest duties the protection of America.  Maybe we can disagree on his conclusions, but we should defer to him on this as our president, like him or not...

College Football Playoffs Over, NFL's Continuing

Now that Clemson has won its second major college football championship over Alabama in three years, it finally looks as if Nick Saban's firm hold on college football supremacy is over...at least for now.  Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has established his own claim to the best college football coach...and he's a lot, lot more approachable and likable than the Alabama coach.  Plus, unlike Saban, he didn't abandon a prior commitment to another team in mid-contract in order to get his "dream" job.  In honor of Dabo, I give Clemson honorary status as the "third" Florida team in the Atlantic Coast Conference and plan to support them next year...

In the NFL, the playoffs are down to eight remaining teams...in the wild card round last week only the Philadelphia-Chicago game went my way, and just barely as the Bears placekicker muffed a last-minute winnable field goal following an improbable Eagle comeback.  Philly is playing this Sunday at New Orleans (4:40 PM) while the other Sunday game has New England hosting the LA Chargers (1:05 PM).  On Saturday at 4:35 PM Indianapolis will visit Kansas City while the Los Angeles Rams will be at home against Dallas in a game starting at 8:15.  For these four games I'm rooting for Philadelphia, the Chargers, Kansas City, and the Rams. Although the best-case scenario for me would see an Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl, an all-Los Angeles championship game stands as a tantalizing possibility.  And that would be a kind of justice, wouldn't it, after all the years that this large, great city had been deprived of even one National Football League franchise...

Weekly Short Stories: 1941 Sci-Fi, Part 4

I conclude my look back at 1941's short science fiction with the final five entries in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 3 (1941).

SOLAR PLEXUS by James Blish
Blish, who wrote several of the Star Trek books that came out after the TV series, was already an established science fiction writer for decades...this is one of his first stories.  Brant Kittinger, a lone scientist stationed at the edge of our solar system, is abducted by a ship run by robots...robots imprinted with the memories and neural circuitry of humans, most notably their leader, the late Murray Bennett.  Only one problem: they've lost their reason for what they're doing and Bennett's robot wants to place Kittinger into a robot to help guide them.  Horrified, the scientist has to think fast about getting out of his predicament.  Not one of my favorite stories...

NIGHTFALL by Isaac Asimov
Arguably Asimov's best short story of all time, Nightfall is set in a different star system with six suns...the planet in question, populated by humans with a comparable technology and civilization to ours, never sees nighttime or even darkness because there are always suns to keep everything in light.  But now only one, faint sun is above the horizon...and an astronomer has learned from a cultist group that a heretofore unknown planet is about to eclipse it, causing planetwide darkness for several hours and bringing out the multitude of mysterious stars to vision.  In the past...every two thousand years or so...advanced societies on the planet had suddenly and inexplicably disintegrated into chaos and civilization had to rebuild: was this periodic phenomenon the cause?  Asimov examines not only the phobia of being in darkness that such a situation would create for people unaccustomed to it, but also how complex such a solar system would be and how this would make learning about forces such as gravity much more difficult.  An excellent tale on many levels...

A GNOME THERE WAS by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
Kuttner and Moore were a husband-wife writing team that often wrote under the pseudonym "Lewis Padgett".  This story is about a clueless labor agitator from California who goes uninvited into a Pennsylvania mine to organizer workers there, only to get himself lost and then turned into a gnome.  The gnomes, you see, live in those mountains and have their own society and culture...they fight a lot, eats rocks, bathe in mud...and work, work, work.  Our hero desperately looks for a way to become human again and escape the gnomes.  This story tries very hard to be funny, but I just thought it was awfully annoying.  Not one of the talented Kuttner and Moore's best works...

SNULBUG by Anthony Boucher
Another speculative sci-fi story about the nature of time.  A medical researcher, needing funding for a new lab, has conjured up a demon to help him get his stingy ex-boss to provide the money.  But the diminutive demon, named Snulbug, doesn't look or act as if he's capable of doing much of anything.  The scientist, looking to the future, sends him out to get a copy of the next day's newspaper in hopes of finding something he can use today.  He then discovers that any attempts to change the flow of time will be rebuffed...a different tactic will be needed.  I thought it was strange that someone who was trained in the scientific method would be summoning a demon through magic, and it's here that I have a big problem with this story...

HEREAFTER, INC. by Lester del Rey
An overly pious and self-righteous man deliberately denies himself the pleasures of living, believing that in the afterlife he will be rewarded for his virtuous lifestyle.  He looks down on everyone else, especially his free-living boss.  One day he wakes up to discover that although he still lives in his miserable, scant apartment, his workplace and the city outside have suddenly changed.  This is a call to those who think that they will be rewarded in heaven for their good works and who wish ill on others who don't meet up to their own extremely self-righteous standards...

Next week I begin looking at short science fiction stories from the year 1942...

Looking to Run 15K or Half-Marathon in Ocala on the 20th

Back in the 2011 Ocala Marathon, which featured a course running through beautiful horse country south of the city, I managed to painfully finish it despite an IT-band injury just below my right knee causing sharp pain whenever I ran.  I had gotten to about the 10-mile mark with no real trouble, but that pain then began to make itself known and intensified to the point when I had to alternate short runs with short walks...walking at a moderate pace caused little pain.  By the 19-mile mark I told a volunteer that I was ready to quit the race...she encouraged me to walk out the rest of it so that I could say that I finished a marathon.  Well, I did just that, finishing in around 6 hours.  After that I abandoned marathon races and focused on half-marathons as my distance race of choice...I've completed 11 of them so far, including the Ocala Half-Marathon in 2013 when I finished with my second-best time for that distance at 1:55:20. Since then I've never gone back down there and the race organizers themselves abandoned the marathon event, transforming their annual January race into a choice between the half-marathon, 15K, 10K, and 5K distances.  This year it's coming up on Sunday the 20th, and after being informed that I can wait until race-day morning to register on-site, I'm seriously considering going down there.  But which race would I run...

Ideally, running and finishing a half-marathon is what I want, but I finished a local 15K (9.3 miles) race a month ago and kind of like that distance, too.  Next month I plan to run my 6th Five Points Half-Marathon here in Gainesville (I hear they're going to have a completely different race course, sad to say), so I can defer a half-marathon run to that time.  No, I'm thinking maybe that a 15K in Ocala might do me well this time around, but I probably won't know for sure which race to run until I get there...

About the 2020 Presidential Campaign, Even This Early

Within just a week after the 116th U.S. Congress was sworn in following the 2018 midterm elections, it looks as if the 2020 presidential campaign season has already begun...unless of course you recognize that incumbent president Donald Trump already seems to be in a perpetual campaign.  Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has been campaigning through Iowa, site of the first voting event in 2020, the Iowa Caucuses. She's delivered some fiery, passionate speeches and that's good: I like her.  Only problem is that, at this most early stage in the campaign, it sounds as if she's already lost her voice.  And former vice-president Joe Biden just announced that he will soon be revealing whether or not he will be seeking the Democratic nomination for president.  I'm predisposed to supporting ol' Joe, but I fear that he might not have the tenacity to stick it out through a brutal primary campaign season, much less the general election campaign should he garner the nomination...he's always making a major deal about wanting to focus on his family, as if none of the others have their own families.  It's one thing for him to have sat out the primary season in 2008 and only have to campaign in the general elections of that year and 2012 as Barack Obama's running mate...this time around he'll be facing several candidates politically left of him and bent on portraying him as being too moderate.  I'm also keeping a close eye on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's medical trials of late...she's been contending with cancer and, although she said she'd like to stay on the Court another five years, you can't always chart your own future course with accuracy...especially with the kind of medical issues she's been experiencing.  In 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia passed away during the Democratic Obama administration, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider the president's nominee, Merrick Garland, deferring Scalia's replacement to the winner of that year's election...eventually Republican Donald Trump as he picked Neil Gorsuch instead.  Should Ginsburg or anyone else leave the Supreme Court in 2020, will McConnell stick to his stated and already-implemented "principle" and defer that nomination as well to the winner of the 2020 election?  If I were a betting man, I'd wager that he would weasel out of it all with some lame excuse and quickly allow Trump to handpick another conservative to stack the court.  But it's all still a little early, isn't it...

Just Finished Reading A Cry in the Night by Mary Higgins Clark

Mary Higgins Clark has written many bestselling suspense novels...for some reason I've only read one of them that I can remember, and that was a few years ago.  I recently had the opportunity to read one of her earlier books, A Cry in the Night, from 1982.  It's about a divorced woman with two daughters whose ex-husband keeps hitting on her for money and criticizing her life choices while reneging on his child support obligations.  She meets an emerging young artist while she is working for a Manhattan art gallery. They marry and move back to Minnesota, to his childhood small town on the edge of the woods there...unfortunately her ex has moved there as well and his continuing, unwelcome pursuit of her is starting gossip among the townsfolk.  As the months follow, she discovers disturbing aspects to her new husband's overly-controlling behavior toward her, his callousness about life, and his obsession with his long-dead mother that cause a rift between the two as she tries to show more self-determination in their relationship.  It all eventually leads to a frightening climax, previewed by the scene in the story's opening chapter.  I felt that for the escapist, suspenseful entertainment it provided, A Cry in the Night was a good, short novel, well written and unpretentious in its ambitions.  I like to read books like this from time to time and plan to check out other books by this prolific and skilled writer...

My Preferences for the 2018 NFL Playoffs

In 2018 I was convinced that although the Philadelphia Eagles had enjoyed a storybook regular season in the National Football League, they would sadly go nowhere in the playoffs after their start quarterback Carson Wentz was injured.  Shows how much I know about football: backup QB Nick Foles stepped right in and led the team to perhaps the most exciting Super Bowl victory ever, over the New England Patriots...by far my most hated team in the league.  So as the wild card games take place this weekend, I will wisely make no predictions...but that doesn't mean I won't express my preferences...

The following is how I rank the twelve NFL playoff teams according to my liking, not necessarily how good they are:

1 SEATTLE SEAHAWKS
2 PHILADELPHIA EAGLES
3 KANSAS CITY CHIEFS
4 BALTIMORE RAVENS
5 LOS ANGELES CHARGERS
6 LOS ANGELES RAMS
7 CHICAGO BEARS
8 DALLAS COWBOYS
9 HOUSTON TEXANS
10 NEW ORLEANS SAINTS
11 INDIANAPOLIS COLTS
12 NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS

And here are the matchups for today and tomorrow:

Today:
INDIANAPOLIS @ HOUSTON, 4:35 PM on ESPN
SEATTLE @ DALLAS, 8:15 PM on FOX

Tomorrow:
LA CHARGERS @ BALTIMORE, 1:05 PM on CBC
PHILADELPHIA @ CHICAGO, 4:40 PM on NBC

So consequently I want Houston, Seattle, Baltimore, and Philadelphia to win these wild-card games.  As for the following week in the playoffs, the lowest seed wild card winners in each conference will play the #1 seeds (Kansas City in the AFC and New Orleans in the NFC) with the other wild card winners playing the #2 seeds (New England in the AFC and the LA Rams in the NFC).  The only teams I feel any sense of loyalty to are the Seahawks and Eagles...may their games be blowout victories.   And I want to see the Patriots lose big in their game next week.  Other than that, I'd just like to watch some exciting, close, and well-played games...

Ran My First Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Parkrun is an international organization that holds running events in local parks...Gainesville has its own Parkrun in Depot Park at Main Street and SW 4th Street.  Timed 5K runs are held each and every Saturday morning and there is no entry fee.  To participate and have your run timed and recorded you need to register at their website (here's the link: [parkrun]) and then print out the six barcodes you get, taking one of them with you to the race.  This morning was my first Parkrun as well as my first visit to Depot Park.  There were 41 runners and walkers participating this time around, and the parking was no problem.  The course is a meandering loop around the park and involves running almost four laps, always on a paved surface and with interesting scenery to look at as well as some mild slopes that are a refreshing change from the flatness of my own neighborhood streets.  I liked the run and the park...this merits return trips, although I can't say I enjoy getting up early on Saturday morning for a 7:30 run.  I finished with a leisurely 30:00 time and was apparently the oldest man in it although some women exceeded me in age...here's a link to the results page [results].  This morning when the run began it was 51 degrees with 82% humidity. The events depend on volunteers, so somewhere down the line if I continue with Parkrun I'll probably pitch in as well.  And they are friendly to both runners and walkers...that's good since Melissa likes long walks and I plan to walk with her whenever she comes along...

Quote of the Week...from Isaac Newton

If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.   ---Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was the renowned English scientist who discovered the mathematical basis of mechanics, including the General Theory of Gravity.  When asked once about how he was able to come up with that theory, he responded, "By thinking about it all the time." There's no doubt that Sir Isaac was quite the genius, and maybe he was being a little modest in the above quote by claiming that we could emulate his accomplishments were we to think as hard as he did.  But it is nevertheless an important truth that we are what we think, and since all of us do think, it stands to reason that it's worth looking into.  I believe that by regularly reflecting back on our own recent thoughts and evaluating their usefulness, we can train ourselves to live our lives at a higher level...maybe not at the exalted peak that Newton stood on, but at a much more effective and joyful, fulfilling place for ourselves and those whom we influence.  Do we stumble through our days thinking in reaction to the events and people around us or do we chart our own course and focus on the most important things that will lead us to the "mountaintop"?  Of course, in order to reach that higher place we have to know where we're going...

Just Finished Reading The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks

The Elfstones of Shannara is the second volume of the Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks, published in 1982.  The story line, set in a supposedly fictional place called the Four Lands but implied to be Earth of the distant future, jumps ahead two generations from the first book, titled The Sword of Shannara.  The focus here is on the elves, with first-book-hero Shea Ohmsford's grandson Wil dispatched on a dangerous (naturally) quest to accompany elf girl Amberle, the granddaughter of the king, to thwart the demons who are suddenly infiltrating the world, killing people and generally being bad sorts.  The reason, you see, for their breakthrough is that the enchanted, sentient tree called the Ellcrys had been imprisoning the demons in a limbo state...her weakening and impending death has caused breaches in the barrier and the bad guys have gotten through.  Only one of the Chosen...elves whom Ellcrys has picked to carry on her legacy...is left alive: Amberle, but where is she? Only the mystic druid Allanon seems to know, and he sends out Wil to find her.  Their mission is to take the seed of Ellcrys where the Bloodfire is, a place few know of called Safehold, in order to make it grow into a new Ellcrys and send the demons back.  The demons pursue them while amassing for an invasion of the elven kingdom.  Who will help the elves resist the evil demons?  Some surprises are in store with a story that is much more original than the opening book.  There is plenty of suspense as well as character development....The Elfstones of Shannara is a terrific piece of fantasy fiction and I avidly look forward to beginning soon on the trilogy's conclusion, titled The Wishsong of Shannara.  Brooks has written several other Shannara novels besides this opening trilogy...he did very well with Elfstones.  Bravo, Terry!

Weekly Short Stories: 1941 Sci-Fi, Part 3

I continued reading back through the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 3 (1941) and covered five more tales from that pivotal year in our history.  As is the case with many of these stories, three of them delved deep into speculation about the nature of time...some of this speculation can get to be a little tedious when you see the same paradoxes exposed.  So, here are the stories I read...

TIME WANTS A SKELETON by Ross Rocklynne
A space cop crash lands on an asteroid as he catches up with the two crooks he plans to take back to Earth on their ship...but that vehicle gets ruined as well.  Fortunately, a scientific research ship studying the origin of the asteroids happens to land just then and they offer a ride back.  In the meantime, the police lieutenant discover an ages-old skeleton in a cave...wearing the ring of one of the criminals! Their ship slips back in time to when the asteroids were still one single planet...an amazing accomplishment. But other than the eccentric old genius professor running the research effort, the rest of the party seems obsessed with the skeleton...no one wants to be "it".  Time travel paradoxes are all over the place in this story...the ending brilliantly solves the riddle of the skeleton...

WORDS OF GURU by Cyril Kornbluth
A precocious young boy with no internal moral compass is able to see beyond the physical realm and encounters a demonic entity he names "Guru", who gives him "words" to speak that cause terrible things to happen, including the deaths of others.  This is a very short story, told from the boy's viewpoint, with an extremely jolting and disturbing final sentence...

THE SEE-SAW by A.E. von Vogt
Von Vogt had created his own science fiction "universe" that involved a galactic empire and a freedom-loving resistance movement.  Within this movement were "weapon shops" that the author expanded upon in other stories.  In The See-Saw, one such shop suddenly materializes in the present on Earth, and a reporter is allowed in.  When the operators discover their mistake...that his presence threatens the course of history...they get him to volunteer on a most dangerous venture, hence the story's title.  A.E. von Vogt, probably more than any writer of his time, loved to write about time travel and its various ramifications...so get ready for more of this should you decide to read it...

ARMAGEDDON by Frederic Brown
I've already reviewed this story...here's a link to it: [link].  Brown, like Ray Bradbury, was known more as a writer of "soft" science fiction...that is, he did not display much technical scientific detail in his stories to bolster their feasibility.  So a little boy goes to a magic show in Cincinnati and saves the world with his water pistol...not much science going on here.  But Brown's fiction placed ordinary people into extraordinary situations...in this sense he was a forerunner of Stephen King...

ADAM AND NO EVE  by Alfred Bester
By far the best of the five stories I am discussing today, this is an example of "hard" science fiction as Bester goes into some detail discussing how a rocket inventor wanting to fuel his spaceship managed to cause nuclear fission...and subsequently destroy life on Earth from the subsequent chain reaction...using Iron.  But as he instinctively crawls onward to what's left of Earth's seas, has life really been eliminated from this this charred and blackened world?  The story's title points to the answer, one that is paradigm-shifting...

Next week I'll probably finish with the 1941 book and then head on to '42...

As the New Year Begins

I'd like to wish everyone a happy New Year...the number 2019 doesn't sound anywhere nearly as significant as the next one, 2020, but maybe historical or personal events will make it profoundly important, who knows.  As Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist-turned-science popularizer, pointed out this morning, January 1 carries with it no special scientific importance...it's just another day on the calendar, that's all.  But since we're social creatures and collectively view the start of a new year as a beginning...or maybe just a reset...I like to speculate as to how I can change for the better, i.e. to take my life up to a higher level.  So, as do many of you, I listed some things that I feel I can improve upon and will help both me and others around me in the year to come...I'll just keep that list to myself for the time being.  As for what will happen in the news, almost all of it is beyond my control except for how I can adjust in reaction to it.  I can't individually change the political landscape either here in America or the world at large, although I can do my miniscule part by simply expressing my opinions here from time to time and voting when the opportunity presents itself.  Speaking of this blog, I plan to continue writing on a daily basis, although I've recently changed a couple of previously regular items...Tuesdays I used to write about different lists I composed or found and Thursdays I would recap the previous Sunday's sermon at the church I attend.  I've stopped both of these, the lists because the process is too time-consuming and the sermon summaries because one, they were essentially only restatements of someone else's work and not my own creative writing and two, because I was not getting the anticipated feedback and interaction (only 8 people responded from 112 sermon summaries over more than two years).  I still like lists and from time to time will present some, and I still attend and listen to the weekly sermons, which are available through YouTube for anyone to watch in their entirety.  So doing this opens up a couple more days each week...either I'll come up with another weekly theme or I'll just write each day whatever comes to mind...

My December 2018 Running Report

In December my total running mileage continued to increase, totaling 86 miles, while I managed to run a local 15K race...the Season of Hope 15K along the Hawthorne Trail...in deliberately slow fashion.  That 9.3 mile run was also the longest single distance I ran during the month. I took three days off from running in December...

There's no doubt that I feel my general running endurance is much improved, and I think it's also better than at this date a year ago.  I still plan to run a 15K race later in January and a half-marathon in February...both Gainesville events that I've run multiple times before.  Also in January is the Ocala Half-Marathon, which I've run before in 2013 as well as their marathon race in 2011 (they no longer host marathons): if I can register on race morning I might participate.  I'm looking forward to some more cooler weather that is more conducive to long-distance training...lately here in north central Florida it's either been raining or warm and humid (like today)...yuck!  I've also begun to speed-walk and plan to eventually do it on the same level as my running, most likely integrating the two within races as my age keeps creeping higher...

My Favorite Songs for 2018

I follow former president Barack Obama on my Twitter account...he's a refreshing example of someone whose messages embrace the constructive and positive and I always appreciate his input.  A couple of days ago he tweeted a link to his "favorites" lists for 2018, including the books he's read and his favorite songs from the year.  These lists are long...I've read a few books, too, but as for the music, I found myself turning away from the current radio playlists and album releases in favor of looking at music from the past.  Only one recent song, Arcade Fire's Creature Comfort from 2017, made my top ten favorite songs list for 2018...this sort of thing has happened with me in past years, my belated discovery in 1991 of Led Zeppelin's greatness after the release of their first box set leading me to focus on them for a couple of years back then. Likewise, this year's favorites also delve into music from years gone by...but they do represent the music I enjoyed listening to the most over the course of 2018.  And now here's my list, with the songs' original years of release following the artists' names...I wonder if Barack's heard any of them...

1 LAZY EYE by Silversun Pickups [2006]
2 OPTIMISTIC by Radiohead [2000]
3 MORNING BELL by Radiohead [2000]
4 DARKNESS by The Police [1982]
5 DETROIT, LIFT UP YOUR WEARY HEAD by Sufjan Stevens [2003]
6 JACKSONVILLE by Sufjan Stevens [2005]
7 HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY by Radiohead [2000]
8 BLACKSTAR by David Bowie [2016]
9 THE LIGHT by Regina Spektor [2016]
10 CREATURE COMFORT by Arcade Fire [2017]

Gators Break Jinx Against Michigan, Win Peach Bowl 41-15

The 2018 University of Florida football team ended its already successful season today in Atlanta's Peach Bowl with a convincing 41-15 drubbing over nemesis Michigan, which had beaten the Gators in their previous four games.  At first the game seemed very evenly played between the two teams, with UF holding a slim 13-10 halftime lead.  But early in the third quarter Florida intercepted a Wolverine pass deep in their territory and returned it back...the play flipped the flow of the game as the Gators scored on the ensuing short drive, building up a 20-10 lead and never looking back.  The Florida defense appeared to strengthen as the game wore on and sophomore quarterback Feleipe Franks was spectacular in his running and long passes.  First year head coach Dan Mullen has a lot to be proud of with this 10-3 squad...the one standout thing I'd like to see them improve on the most next year is the tendency of some of their players to engage in unsportsmanlike and embarrassing taunting and baiting against opposing players and fans.  I watched the game on ESPN, and Mullen always seemed to be available for sideline interviews...but nary a word did I hear from Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh: was he pulling some kind of silence-against-the-press act?  Or maybe I just happened to be out of the room when he was corralled for a few words. He's a good coach, but if I were a Wolverine fan I'd probably have tired of his antics a long time ago...

Many of Florida's starters are returning in 2019 and the prospects are high for this team to excel.  Let's see if Coach Mullen can keep it all together...he did a great job this year...