Weekly Short Stories: 1943 Science Fiction, Part 4

I concluded my rereading of the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943) with the final three entries from that book. Here's my reaction to them...

THE PROUD ROBOT by Lewis Padgett
The married writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore collaborated on many writing projects under the pseudonym "Lewis Padgett"...they are responsible for this story and the book's finale.  The Proud Robot is set in a future when the advent of television has coopted the film industry with two television programming companies vying, with their patents, for control over the industry.  The head of one of them has hired an eccentric inventor to save his company...but the inventor, who can only think clearly when he is intoxicated, remembers nothing of their initial meeting, although he apparently invented a robot whose function he doesn't know but which spends all its time in front of mirrors admiring its own appearance.  How does the inventor save his client's company and determine why he invented such a vain robot?  Read it yourself if you want...it's definitely not one of my favorites from Padgett...

SYMBIOTICA by Eric Frank Russell
Back in 1941 Eric Frank Russell wrote and published a story titled Jay Score, which I reviewed in a previous entry.  He's expanded it into a sequel as Jay Score and his spaceship's crew land on a remote planet in another star system.  They immediately encounter a strange, aggressive alliance among the native life forms...including trees and bushes...against the human visitors which they regard as hostile invaders.  Russell's narrative language, as told by one of the crewmen, is kind of campy but his vision of such a complex system of completely alien life forms and their survival strategies is impressive.  Of the three stories I'm looking at today, this is the one I think would transfer the best to film or television...

THE IRON STANDARD by Lewis Padgett
Kuttner and Moore, as they did with The Proud Robot, once again examine the notion of patents used as an economic weapon in The Iron Standard...albeit in a completely different setting. A space expedition from Earth to Venus...intended to establish relations between the two intelligent races of each planet...finds itself stranded due to needed repairs and must depend on the goodwill of the native Venusians to survive.  But they have an "iron standard" and stubbornly refuse to provide any food or assistance without payment in that metal, which the visitors are sorely lacking in.  To get money, they are told to get jobs.  But jobs, as well as virtually all conceivable patents, are controlled planetwide by the guild and one must be a member to become employed.  But to do that requires paying a steep membership fee to the guild...and of course they haven't any money!  This fruitless cycle reminds me a bit of what destitute people nowadays often have to go through in order to reestablish themselves on a higher level in our society.  The Earthmen, threatened with starvation, do come up with a winning strategy to break the stranglehold that the stagnant and passively hostile Venusian society has imposed on them...a good story with some application to today's world as well as quite a bit of implied satire...

So that's it with science fiction short stories from 1943.  Next week I'll begin with Asimov's anthology relating to 1944...

Cold Weather Burst and Upcoming 5K Race in Tioga

I'm sitting here in my living room looking out the window...it's around 50 degrees and lightly raining, a brief respite from the overheating we've been experiencing here in northern Florida during this supposedly "winter" season.  The temperatures aren't expected to rise today and then they will dip for the next two nights to near freezing, just when I thought we were through with cold weather for the year.  I used to be able to go throughout the winter without having to mow my lawn...now it looks like a cornfield out there and it's already been mowed a couple of weeks ago.  Well, I actually like getting out the push mower...and so does our fourteen-year old dog Freckles, who goes into an exuberant barking, tail-wagging fit whenever I pull the contraption out of the shed...

On a different subject, I had previously decried the ending of the Run for Haven 10K/5K running race that had been held at the Tioga Town Center annually around St. Patrick's Day.  Well, although that particular race is gone, a new race, called Miles for Meridian 5K, will take place on Saturday, March 16th at Tioga...again with a St. Patrick's theme.  Although I preferred the 10K (6.2 miles) distance and the 4 pm starting time with the Haven races and Meridian's is only for 5K (3.1 miles) and starts at 8:30 am (ugh!), I'm considering entering it in hopes of resuming a tradition in March at Tioga, a pretty residential community with shops a few miles west of Gainesville off Newberry Road.  True, I can go to Depot Park any Saturday morning and run a timed and posted 5K race without an entry fee and Miles for Meridian costs a few bucks, but it's all for a good cause...Meridian Behavioral Healthcare treats mental illness and substance abuse...and a change of venue is always a good thing...

Some More About Recent Savannah Visit

When Melissa and I enjoyed our brief visit to Savannah, Georgia last month, we naturally took a few photos...let me discuss the above six.  At the top is a nighttime shot of the "Waving Girl" statue of Florence Martus, who for decades greeted every ship passing by on its way to Savannah Harbor. We were walking along the river, watching the different ferries as well as other people...there was a big formal dance party about to board one boat and a mass of very formally-dressed and made-up young couples were assembled, very charming.  Then again, most everyone else there seemed to be tourists like us, traipsing around to find something interesting.  The Waving Girl is on the east side overlooking the Savannah River.  The second picture is of Melissa standing on the outer stairs of one of the many beautiful old buildings in the Historic District...she noticed the cherry blossoms and we set up a shot.  The third photo is of the Mercer Williams House, which is the main setting of the famous John Berendt 1994 nonfiction novel Midnight in the House of Good and Evil.  We went inside and enjoyed a tour of the place, including the room where the infamous shooting depicted in the story occurred.  The next picture is of Union General William Sherman's headquarters while his troops peacefully occupied Savannah following the March to the Sea through Georgia in 1864 during the Civil War...another beautiful old mansion.  Picture number five is of one of the more than twenty squares interspersed throughout the old part of town...almost all of them mini-parks with walkways, horticulture, benches, and fountains or statues.  It's one of the prettiest features of Savannah.  And as for the last picture...

Today happens to officially be Casimir Pulaski Day, at least if you happen to live in Illinois where it is an official state holiday with a large ethnically Polish population.  Pulaski, regarded as the father of the American cavalry, was originally a Polish officer fighting for independence against Russia.  He was recruited by Benjamin Franklin and Lafayette to join Washington's army and later died during the siege of Savannah, to where the British had retreated from Charleston in 1779.  The picture is of a monument to Casimir Pulaski, and his remains are believed to be buried beneath it.  It stands in Monterey Square, which is adjacent to the Mercer Williams House and also featured in Berendt's book...

There is a lot of history concentrated within easy walking distance among a few blocks in Savannah.  John Wesley once delivered sermons at a church here, and writer Conrad Aiken, musician/composer Johnny Mercer, and Girl Scout founder Juliette Gordon Low grew up within blocks of each other, although in different times.  I'm looking forward to a return visit...



Being Gracious and Polite is No Longer Politically Correct

The other day our previous vice-president...and possible 2020 presidential candidate...Joe Biden happened to mention the current VP, Mike Pence.  Biden, in the noble tradition of speaking kindly of another political leader from the opposing party, graciously stated that he thought Pence was a decent man.  That's all.  And you would have thought ol' Joe had said "Heil Hitler" from the reaction he got from his own party.  You see, it's not politically correct anymore to state your own beliefs and respectfully point out how another's differing perspective might be mistaken and worthy of correction.  No, nowadays in order to get in good with your own crowd, you have to personally denigrate the other's character and completely reject them as either insane, stupid, crooked, treasonous, bigoted...or a combination thereof.  After receiving a firestorm of criticism for his respectful depiction of a figure who is worthy of that deference if for no other reason than that he occupies such a significant place in our elected government, Biden backed down and tempered his remark to limit it to his assessment of Pence in the context of foreign policy.  In my opinion, Biden shouldn't have done that...he had been correct and proper in the first place for being courteous toward Pence. The particular special interest group that is so hatefully opposed to our vice-president and which called out Biden for his "decent" characterization of him is a victim of its own self-victimizing narrative, having distorted and misrepresented some of Pence's recent statements and positions regarding them.  I lost a bit of respect for Joseph Biden because of his hasty retreat from civility and wonder from this incident whether he could truly be a strong and effective president should he somehow manage to find himself elected to that office next year...he's starting to sound awfully weak to me...

New Reading Project: Homer's The Odyssey & James Joyce's Ulysses

Once at my local public library I ran across a copy of Irish writer James Joyce's enigmatic 1939 book Finnegans Wake...intrigued enough, I checked it out and tried to figure out exactly what the dude was trying to say with stream-of-thought language totally overrunning any semblance of a narrative.  It was quickly clear to me that in order to understand any of it I would have to be well-acquainted, if not fluent, in a number of European languages as well as have a deep background in the continent's culture and history, especially that of Ireland and Britain.  Plus, Finnegans Wake was supposedly based on a real funeral dirge and its lyrics.  Some day I'd like to come back and tackle Joyce's problematic book, but first I thought I'd prepare by reading his much more widely acclaimed novel Ulysses, which came out in 1922.  Like Finnegans Wake, Ulysses is very loosely based on another work: the ancient Greek epic poem The Odyssey, traditionally attributed to Homer and whose protagonist is also named Ulysses, the Roman designation for Odysseus.  Seeing how I would in all probability otherwise miss out on what Joyce's Ulysses had to convey, I decided to take on Homer's work first...which I've just started, reading of course an English translation from the ancient Greek.  It all should be a very interesting, as well as I'm sure confounding and often frustrating, experience...I'm a little more than halfway through The Odyssey...

Quote of the Week...from James Joyce

Shut your eyes and see.                                ---James Joyce

The first reaction I had upon reading the renowned early twentieth century Irish author's above quote was that it's probably not a very good idea to do that if you're driving!  But I think James Joyce was using the word "see" in a more expansive way, meaning "perceive", "reflect" and "receive enlightenment".  As for myself, I am very sensitive visually to my current environment, especially in social settings...just sitting there watching everything and everyone around me doesn't make very much sense and can actually be a bit distressful.  I am a perceiver of patterns and tend to unconsciously connect them together to form principles and trends, as was, I suspect, Joyce: once you "see" how things are, then why keeping looking?  Not that I am endorsing his life, reportedly fraught with personal difficulties including perhaps mental illness.  But he was also a great writer and is responsible for Ulysses, a novel that I will soon embark upon reading and which many regard as the apex of English language literature.  I liked this quote of his...not knowing its exact context or when he made it...because of its brevity and that I often find myself closing my eyes in order to sort through thoughts while cutting out the distractions of the world around me.  Again, this is NOT something to do while driving...

Also, "Shut your eyes and see" can mean that sight isn't the only one of my senses that matter...hearing, in particular, is often made secondary to seeing, but can be an important source of information beyond the visual.  Between television and radio, the former has a tendency to rivet my mind in a semi-trance as I sit before it, demanding my complete attention...but the latter accords me the mental freedom to pick and choose the degree to which I pay attention while I go about my other tasks in life...or maybe just choose to shut my eyes for a little while...

My February 2019 Running Report

In February my running mileage increased, largely due to me feeling better and not having the back issue that nagged me in January: 107 total miles.  I ran each day, and managed a 9.3-mile semi-jog designed to just cover the distance without regard to speed.  On the 9nd I ran the local weekly Saturday morning Depot Parkrun 5K race...I'd like to make this a monthly tradition, realizing that entering it every week probably isn't feasible.  As for other future races, until the fall I'd like to restrict the distance to 10K (6.2 miles). There is a such a race, called Run the Good Race, scheduled for April 27th and to take place around the North Florida Regional office park area across Newberry Road from the Oaks Mall. A couple of trail races are set in the Gainesville vicinity for March, but I'd rather stick to the road instead of getting stuck in the mud.  Sadly, what I had hoped to become an annual tradition, the Run for Haven 10K/5K race in mid-March with a St. Patrick's Day theme in Tioga (a few miles west of Gainesville) is no more...2017 seems to have been its last year.  I don't know why the race ended as it was extremely popular and had many participants.  Well, I think instead I'll just stick to my daily training runs during the next few weeks and occasionally go to Depot Park on Saturday morning...

Weekly Short Stories: 1943 Science Fiction, Part 3

The next three science fiction short stories I read from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943) are by familiar authors: Frederic Brown, C.L. (Catherine) Moore, and A.E. van Vogt.  I have been a fan of Brown and Moore for decades while van Vogt had a penchant for writing extremely convoluted plots...some worked and some didn't.  During 1943 all were writing at the peaks of their respective careers, and these three tales reflect this...

DAYMARE by Fredric Brown
Many years in the future humanity has explored and settled into our solar system, including Venus, Mars, and some of the gas giants' moons.  On Jupiter's Castillo the settlements are divided into sectors: in Sector Three an unspeakable event has occurred: a murder, never having happened there before.  But the victim, an eccentric inventor suspected of dallying in forbidden subversive and technical literature, appears to have died of a different cause by each person who sees his corpse...a major mystery! Frederic Brown weaves into this tale of conspiracy and deception a future society that is so frightened of war and unrest that it has gone to extraordinary measures to censor anything from the past that the authorities regard as dangerous...

DOORWAY INTO TIME by C.L. Moore
An alien, in self-imposed isolation, has constructed for himself his own museum of prizes he has stolen, often at great peril to himself, from other worlds...including some of their inhabitants.  He considers himself a hunter and is addicted to the thrill of the chase and its accompanying danger, although he knows that he ultimately always has the upper hand.  After walking his halls he becomes bored and ventures through his "doorway into time" to take for his collection a young woman from Earth...but the man accompanying her has different ideas.  This story, to me, seemed to be a not-so-subtle slap at trophy hunters who, with all the odds on their side, go to wilderness areas and slaughter wild animals just because they can...and then stuff and mount their carcasses as if they actually accomplished something worthwhile...

THE STORM by A.E. van Vogt
In the distant future we're dealing with human expansion into the galaxy.  Biological android robots...sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it...are hiding and in conflict with the rest of humanity, which considers them as subhuman.  Now their home planet looks to be occupied by the enemy and they hatch a plan: draw the advance ship into a very concentrated, invisible and lethal cosmic ray storm to destroy it.  The Storm is, to me, an allegory about prejudice in general...something I appreciate from a writer back in 1943...and its final resolution I really appreciate...

I'll conclude my look back at 1943 short science fiction next week...

Just Finished Reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

The city of Savannah, Georgia during the 1980s is the focus of John Berendt's 1994 primarily nonfiction novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, later made into a movie starring John Cusack and the lately-disgraced Kevin Spacey.  In it Berendt, as narrator, plays the role of a New York journalist who travels to the southeastern Georgia town at the start of that decade, being introduced along the way to its very interesting history, landmarks, famous buildings...and ultimately some very quirky, eccentric people with their own special stories.  I read it because I was going there on a weekend recently with Melissa and wanted to find some places to explore while better understanding the city.  For this purpose the novel was an unqualified success as we toured the Mercer Williams House, prominently featured in the book, as well as walking up and down the streets of the Historic District and the riverfront area...not to mention visiting Forsyth Park and Bonaventure Cemetery, the latter serving as a setting for a couple of the story's scenes.  Berendt, after his book came out, noticed that tourism to Savannah had dramatically increased, and during our stay we were surrounded by droves of other sightseers.  Berendt's associations in Savannah revolve around Jim Williams, a wealthy antiques entrepreneur who was a driving force in the renovation of downtown Savannah, as well as the owner of the majestic (then) Mercer House.  Also, other characters emerge, like the irresponsible, continually partying attorney Joe Odom, the mentally disturbed inventor Luther Driggers, the troubled street hustler Danny Hansford, the voodoo charmer Minerva, and the drag queen Chablis.  The plot of the story, which is interspersed by these and other characters and descriptions of Savannah's history and social structure, is driven by the murder trial of Williams after he shoots to death an employee in his office at Mercer House.  Well, I think that's about as far as I want to go in with the storyline...I don't want to spoil things in case you want to read it for yourself...

Although the sights and history of Savannah were things from the book I could explore during my visit, Berendt's ability to meet and get to know on a relatively intimate level some of its inhabitants wasn't something I felt like emulating...like most other visitors, I wanted to explore and enjoy the food and ambiance there.  I appreciate books like this that give a stronger sense of context for a place I'm either visiting or plan to visit...Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch did much the same for Manhattan.  I heartily recommend Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, although if you're a little skittish about explicit passages you might want to take a pass. As for the Clint Eastwood-directed film adaptation, I have no plans to see it, although I understand that it was filmed largely on location and in places I just visited...including Jim Williams' office where the alleged murder happened...

Alliance of American Football Doomed to Obscure TV Coverage

Back in the 1960s during the years of the American Football League, then a new pro league in direct competition with the NFL, their Sunday games were broadcast live on NBC and were thus readily available for viewing across the country, developing as a result a wide following.  Now in 2019 a new league, the Alliance of American Football, with its eight teams and regular season starting immediately following the NFL's Super Bowl, is struggling to even meet its payroll.  There is no pretense as to the AAF being on the same skill level as the NFL; they are simply providing a little more pro football for diehard fans of the sport.  I watched some of the opening week game between Orlando and Atlanta and thought the level of play was relatively good and entertaining...I even wrote an article on the 10th (here's the link) praising the league and its prospects for survival.  But that game I saw was broadcast on the regular CBS network channel...every single subsequent game in the AAF regular season this year has been relegated to "bottom-feeder" channels like B/R Live, CBS-Sports, and the NFL Channel.  I happen to get none of these channels on my cable lineup and for those who do get CBS-Sports and the NFL Channel with Cox Cable in Gainesville, they are buried deep on the selection dial at channels 269 and 250, respectively.  So I ask: is this any way to promote a new league and familiarize it to the masses of American football fans?

Although I initially held high hopes for the AAF as an emerging football tradition, now that I am completely cut off from its games and know that very few others will be watching any of them, I sadly now feel that its days are numbered...good luck on even making it to the end of this season!  It's almost as if CBS and the NFL got the broadcasting rights just so that they could sink the league by placing the games on channels nobody watches...I can understanding why a competing league like the NFL would do this, but why CBS, especially after that Orlando-Atlanta game drew such high ratings?

2020 Presidential Race Starting Far Too Early

With all of these Democratic candidates for president in the 2020 election already officially in the race, and with President Trump already a declaring himself a candidate for reelection immediately after he took office in 2017,  it looks as if we're in store for a flood of really bad, bad ideas for our country's future...as well as uninformed, knee-jerk reactions by the candidates whenever a provocative news story breaks, such as the faceoff between the Kentucky students and the Indian drummer in D.C. or the faked hate crime mugging in Chicago.  Now that our president has everyone conditioned to this foolish reactive behavior, all the candidates now feel as if they have to weigh in on everything...and the lazy media just gobbles it all up and regurgitates it on the air...

Since nobody gets to vote until next year, it's apparent that generating money and name recognition are the two motivators spurring these candidates onward so prematurely.  That they feel the need to constantly stay in the news means that we're going to have one ridiculous proposal after another to put up with...I'm already sick of looking at most of these attention grabbers.  Yet in the end somebody will be elected, not this November, but in the November following.  It's still only February 2019 and I'm already tired of the 2020 race...

Just Finished Reading Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's famed novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn came out in 1884, eight years after The Adventures of Tom Sawyer introduced the title character, who narrates the story in his very regional, uneducated idiosyncratic way...one of the charming aspects to this book.  The setting is rural Missouri along the Mississippi River some fifty years earlier when it was still a slave state and the "n" word was a regular part of people's vernacular, without the taboo overtly racist overtones it carries today.  But from our own convenient, semi-enlightened vantage point we can see that racism runs rampant in Huck's time as human beings are subject to being owned and controlled by others simply for their skin color and African origin.  Huck's alcoholic and abusive father, thought to have died, returns and wants his son's money from the treasure he and Tom won in the previous book, but the judge overseeing the funds won't release them.  Huck's adventures take off when he escapes his father's clutches by faking his own death and taking a raft down the river.  Jim, a runaway slave, runs into him and the two begin their odyssey together along the Mississippi.  I'll leave you, the potential reader, to discover the details and how the story resolves itself...

Twain presents The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of an "innocent", that is a character who is relatively ignorant of the ways of society and sees things in a more straightforward manner...I believe that Dustin Hoffman's protagonist in Little Big Man and Tom Hanks' in Forrest Gump are derived from this literary tradition.  In doing so, the author is able to subtly deliver social commentary and criticism without getting into the reader's face to make his point...pretty crafty, I say.  Mark Twain was a foe of slavery and did not shy away from taking on the subject head-on and honestly, although some...once again conveniently using hindsight from the present perspective...could criticize the speech of Jim and other black characters as being intended for comedic relief.  I dare say that a Mark Twain living in 2019 would treat these characters differently as well...

The only part of Huckleberry Finn I have a real beef with is the ending, where due to a highly improbable state of circumstances the title character hooks up again with his old buddy Tom Sawyer and then fades into the background as Tom takes over the story...Twain was probably hedging his bets when he did this, wanting the book to capitalize on its predecessor's success.  But it had the effect of stopping the narrative in its tracks, very frustrating to me...

So now that I've recently read three Mark Twain books in relatively rapid succession, I'm ready for another.  But which one will it be?  Stay tuned to find out...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Einstein

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.               ---Albert Einstein

Yes, it's okay to make mistakes, and learning from them is indispensable to becoming better at what you're trying to accomplish...no disagreement from me with the distinguished, groundbreaking physicist.  Of course, it's better to learn from others' mistakes, especially the kind where the consequences can be serious...even fatal, like crossing over the median into an oncoming vehicle's path from inattentiveness or getting hooked on a drug, for example.  And then there is the tendency for some, when caught having deliberately committed a crime or a serious ethical lapse, to refer to their misdeeds simply as "mistakes"...no, dude, you knew that what you were doing was wrong and did it anyway.  But that's about how the word "mistake" is used (or misused) and what Einstein was trying to stress is that folks shouldn't avoid trying out new things for fear of looking foolish when they almost inevitably flop at the start.  I'm thinking of getting more involved in chess, but I can confidently state that there's no way I'll ever improve my currently atrocious game without first having to go through several humbling experiences.  But to improve means I also need to develop a knack for discerning my mistakes and incorporating their lessons into how I play the next game, and this in itself may be the trickiest part of it all, requiring a fair amount of insight and wisdom...

Visited Forsyth Park and Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah

During last weekend's brief stay in Savannah, Georgia, Melissa and I pretty much confined ourselves to the historic area north of Gaston Street, with a couple of notable exceptions: Forsyth Park and Bonaventure Cemetery. Bordering Gaston and stretching southward like a green rectangular slab on the map, Forsyth Park is perhaps the best city park I've experienced with its numerous walking trails, open fields, courts, playgrounds replete with swing-sets and the like, bathroom facilities, a bandshell for performances, statues, fountains, and even a Marine Corps monument at its Gaston Street entrance.  It's what I had wished Central Park in New York or the Mall in Washington, D.C. to be...Forsyth isn't broken up like that but is continuous, no streets running through it.  If I lived in Savannah I imagine I'd be spending a lot of time there...the only thing I see lacking is a public swimming pool, but maybe I just missed it.  As for Bonaventure Cemetery, it is humungous, occupying a large area to the city's east and bordering the Wilmington River.  We went there because of the reference in John Berendt's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil where the author is taken there by a local woman to a bench facing the gravestones of the renowned American poet and short story writer Conrad Aiken's parents.  As they sit sipping their martinis she explains the tragic story of their deaths.  He asks her where Conrad was buried...she answers that they were sitting on it: he had his own gravestone fashioned into a bench to invite visitors to sit there and watch the river.  The little plot reserved for the Aikens is very unpretentious...some of the surrounding gravestones and monuments are pretty grandiose by contrast.  By the way, I remember Conrad Aiken as the author of the short story Silent Snow, Secret Snow, which was made in 1966 into a short film narrated unabridged by Orson Welles and shown in its entirety, uninterrupted, as a Night Gallery episode...by far the high moment of that series.  That story made a deep impression on me...you should check it out when you have the chance, and the film adaptation was extraordinary.  The famed musician and composer Johnny Mercer, a longtime resident of Savannah and probably best known for his song Moon River, is also buried at Bonaventure...

The first four photos above are of Forsyth Park...in the third the Marine Corps monument is in the fore with the famous Armstrong House in the background on the other side of Gaston Street. And of course the last picture is in Bonaventure Cemetery...

Weeky Short Stories: 1943 Science Fiction, Part 2

I continued going back through the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943), covering three more stories.  As I did I realized that of the twelve featured in this book, five of them were either by the married writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore or by one of them individually...this may have been their "peak" year, at least as far as their short fiction was concerned.  Now, here is my reaction to this week's stories...

Q.U.R. by Anthony Boucher
The first...and very revealing...thing about this story is its title, once you know what it stands for: Quinby's Userform Robots.  It's some time off in the future and robots are everywhere serving humanity...in android form.  The only problem is that they're failing and breaking down on a mass scale. What's going on? A brilliant inventor, Russ Quinby, realizes that it's in their design: robots should be specifically tailored to their assigned tasks and not all made to resemble humans...hence the coinage "userform".  But robots are made by a legally-entrenched monopoly, so how do the narrator and Quinby, with their new spinoff company Q.U.R., get around this and introduce their specialty robots?  That's for you, the reader, to discover...this story stuck with me because although for years science fiction writers typically saw robots as being android in appearance, Boucher foresaw their actual development as highly specialized thinking machines, which we see all around us today...

CLASH BY NIGHT by Lawrence O'Donnell
This is another tale by Kuttner and Moore written under a pseudonym...it's widely thought that Kuttner wrote this one alone, hence my 2016 review with him listed as the author: read it through this link: [Clash by Night].  There's not much I can add, except to note that when it comes to predicting the future, sci-fi writers can either be completely off the mark or mysteriously on target.  Kuttner saw Venus as full of life...albeit very hostile life...with its planetwide oceans and jungles.  Well, that's obviously not true as we now know.  But he turned around and, two years before the atomic bomb was successfully (and very secretly) developed, chillingly predicted the ramifications of a world-wide nuclear holocaust...

EXILE by Edmund Hamilton
Exile, one of the shorter stories in the anthology, is an exercise in solipsism, which entertains the notion that the universe is a creation by oneself...always fun to encounter these tales.  Along with that is the suggestion that, since all of our memories are presently embedded within our brains, then perhaps there is no such thing as the past...I may "remember" going to high school in 1973 but the memories I access are here in 2019.  Exile is a good story about four science fiction writers who regularly meet and chat about their lives and chosen profession...

More science fiction stories from 1943 (if it really existed) next week...

Back From Savannah

Well, we got back from Savannah yesterday, both Melissa and I enjoying the experience.  I'll probably write a little bit about it on this blog from time to time.  Today it's back to work...I'm glancing outside and at least right now the weather looks as dreary as it did through our stay in Georgia...albeit a bit warmer. News-wise it doesn't look as if I missed much...Trump's throwing the work "treason" around again to accuse some of those in the Justice Department and the FBI and lawsuits are abounding against his national emergency declaration on border security. Some actor in one of those melodramatic, self-important TV series appears to have set up his own hate crime, hiring two men to attack him so that he could blame it on homophobes and Trump supporters...now that ain't cool.  In the meantime, my phone seems to be kaput and I have to do something about it...

Visiting Savannah with Melissa This Weekend

This weekend...and into President's Day...Melissa and I will be staying in Savannah, Georgia and getting to know the city, its culture, and history.  Should be a fun experience...Melissa's physician had suggested she read John Berendt's acclaimed 1994 nonfiction "novel" Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which deals with personalities and events from this interesting city.  I checked it out and got a big dose of Savannah's history in the first few chapters, as well as information about some of its landmarks and famous people associated with it and its downtown renovation project in the 1950s.  This should make our visit more meaningful...but mainly we plan to relax and enjoy the ambiance there.  Melissa's been there before but this will be my first visit. A pleasant three-day weekend well spent...

Quote of the Week...from Shelley Moore Capito

Being a good listener is more than just being quiet.  It's reflecting back on what you're hearing.  It's processing the information to formulate a question, a comment or a speech.
                                                                         Shelley Moore Capito

When Shelley Moore Capito, then a Republican representative from West Virginia, won her U.S. Senate race in that state following the retirement of Jay Rockefeller, it marked the first time since 1942 that her party had won a Senate seat in that state...as a matter of fact Rockefeller, originally a Republican in line with the rest of his political family, had switched to the Democratic Party because it was so dominant there.  Well, times have changed and West Virginia's voters have tended to vote for Republicans of late.  Capito was on the 17-member committee to work out a compromise border security funding bill just recently that kept the federal government from again shutting down.  She is known in the Senate as a likeable colleague who, although true to her conservative principles, works well with members of both parties and is known to try to see things from others' points of view.  On the Senate floor she is one of the more eloquent, informed speakers: Capito's oratory is meant to educate and persuade, not demean and divide.   You might infer from all this that I happen to admire her, and you would be right.  I think she would make an excellent Republican president...

The above quote is simply an explanation of Shelley Moore Capito's own pragmatic philosophy...listening doesn't mean you are weak or are in agreement with who's speaking, but rather that you want to learn as much about an issue from all of its angles and arguments.  When there is agreement, capitalize on it and when there isn't, then either stick to your guns if it is a high priority or find a trade-off somewhere where both sides can come away with something.  It is people like her that make things work in our elected government, not the brash attention-grabbing grandstanders with their obstruction, taunting accusations, insults, and weaponized political correctness...

Happy Birthday, Melissa!

On this Valentine's Day I want to wish my wonderful, beautiful wife Melissa a very happy birthday as well!  You are such a blessing to me, Sweetheart!

Weekly Short Stories: 1943 Science Fiction, Part 1

As I continue along with my look at the best in short science fiction, I have begun with the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943) and the first three stories in the book. So without further ado...

THE CAVE by P. Schuyer Miller
The setting is Mars enough years in the future for humanity to have settled there while still battling the hostile environment...both its climate and the native inhabitants.  A grek, the intelligent humanoid life form there, has sought refuge in a cave from one of the extremely fatal storms afflicting this planet.  Once inside he finds several other native creatures huddling for safety there...including a zek, one of their carnivorous beasts.  Yet within the cave predator and prey maintain a state of peace among themselves as long as the storm rages outside.  Meanwhile, Harrigan, a young man caught in the storm, discovers the cave and goes within, only to find said Martians.  His encounter with them will determine his fate in this story.  The Cave is the first of two stories in this anthology dealing with the notion of a collective alliance within an ecosystem when faced by outside dangers.  The grek wonders whether the human in the cave is a part of that ecosystem...or a part of the outside danger.  He gets his answer by how Harrigan behaves at the end...

THE HALFLING by Leigh Brackett
I have never understood the appeal of freak shows, be they in circuses or in Ripley's Believe It Or Not shows and museums.  The Halfling deals with a future circus showing "halflings", in this story meaning native intelligent life in humanoid form from other worlds in our solar system.  This premise is obviously preposterous as Venusians, Martians, and the life forms from various moons of Jupiter are wandering around the set, all a part of the traveling show.  There is a vicious cat-man from Callisto and a Martian dancer...but John "Jade" Greene, who runs the circus, hires a new dancer...a beautiful young woman...to headline the show.  And then they find the old dancer murdered, traceable back to the cat-man.  And so on goes the story.  I didn't like this tale because one...like I said...I don't like freak shows, two, its premise was impossible and silly, and three, it didn't give me any insights about anything to carry off from it after it was over...

MIMSY WERE THE BOROGOVES by Lewis Padgett
As I indicated when I reviewed The Twonky recently, Lewis Padgett was a pen name for the husband and wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore.  They have three entries in this 1943 anthology, but Mimsy Were the Borogoves is by far the best of them...and in my opinion, one of the best short science fiction of all time: it's certainly my favorite.  The title is from a poem by English author Lewis Carroll within his book Through the Looking Glass...Carroll actually makes a brief appearance in this tale toward the end.  A little boy, playing hooky from school on the shores of a river, finds a strange box.  After some difficulty he opens it and finds several strange toys, with which he begins to play...and his thinking begins to change, along with that of his two-year-old sister, also enamored with the little gadgets.  But their parents can't see anything logical about these toys...everything seems random about them and nothing makes sense.  Mimsy Were the Borogoves points out the fundamental difference between how children...especially young children...and adults think, and how our conditioning may fundamentally bias us regarding the true nature of reality.  Unlike the previous story in the book, this one leaves a lot of things to consider...

Next week I'll delve further into what anthology editors Asimov and Greenberg deemed the best science fiction short stories of 1943...