Weekly Short Stories: 1949 Science Fiction, Part 2

As I continued looking at what editors Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg chose to included in their anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 11 (1949), I realized that all of them came out years before I was born in 1956. Each of us has this "zero" point in the chronology of years, with the history predating our existence on Earth somehow seeming not quite as real as that through which we have personally lived. Science fiction stories aren't limited in time as to their content, but their writers are since they write them in the context of the current time setting, in this case seventy years ago in 1949.  I always have to keep this in mind when reading these stories as the language can sometimes get a little politically incorrect, especially with regard to women's roles in society.  Here are my reactions to four more stories in the book...

MANNA by Peter Phillips
A company has created and is marketing a new kind of superfood-in-a-can and has built one of its factories on the site of an old monastery...which is incidentally the dwelling place of the ghosts of two monks deceased centuries earlier.  In order to fulfill their obligations for ascendency, Brothers James and Gregory secretly "spirit" away can after can of Miracle Meal back to their original century when the local population is suffering badly from famine.  In the meantime, the home corporation is puzzled at the food's inexplicable disappearance and the story goes on from there.  I thought this story was kind of silly in that it attempted to merge the ideas of ghosts, spiritual ascendency, and subatomic physics into something that made a kind of sense...which it failed to do for me...

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL by Lewis Padgett
This is what I would call a "loop" story, in which the ending leads back to the story's beginning.  John Fowler, a morally-compromised, shallow, and materialistic young man answers his doorbell one day thinking it is his almost-as-shallow girlfriend.  Instead, a gaunt, featureless man with a haunted demeanor and inability to formulate words enters.  Fowler at first tries to rid himself of the unwelcome and troubled intruder, but soon discovers that he is gifted with technology and is continually coming up with new inventions that Fowler tries to get patent rights for himself.  He keeps the man, whom he dubs "Norman", confined in a room as he exploits his abilities while refusing to help him in his quest for a cure.  This is a story where the protagonist is the villain...but justice will prevail nonetheless in the end. Or is there an end?

ALIEN EARTH by Edmund Hamilton
In my opinion by far the best of these four stories, Alien Earth takes place in the present (around 1949, that is) as a teak merchant explores a remote area of Indo-China before it later became the nation of Laos.  He and his guide encounter an indigenous man whose motions and even bodily functions are at one hundredth the rate of normal people.  He appears at first to be motionless but then is shown to be purposefully moving...at a tremendously slow speed.  Our protagonist discovers him to be just one in a cult of plant worshippers...the adherents consume a special drug that slows their processes and perceptions down to this level...a level at which they can perceive trees and other plant forms as active, sentient beings.  Indeed, what they experience is an alien earth and a fantastic concept.  But what are the trees are going to have to say about this tree-killer when they find him down at their level? Thank you, Edmund Hamilton, this tale is worth remembering...

HISTORY LESSON by Arthur C. Clarke
My sister Anita, older than me by four years, while still in high school one evening decided to read me a few short stories she encountered...tales like Ray Bradbury's The Small Assassin, Bram Stoker's The Iron Maiden, and this one by Arthur C. Clarke.  It is the final line that makes this brief story memorable for most, but upon rereading it many years later I was more interested in the first part, which relates the final extinction of a much-declined humanity eons into the future as the last remnants find themselves trapped between fast-moving, converging glaciers from the north and south.  This group, at the very end, sets up an area to safely store and protect from the glaciers items from their distant past, including an old, never-used-but functional asteroid beacon and something in a disc-shaped container.  Much later, Venusians travel to Earth and discover the beacon and objects.  Clarke wrote many of these kinds of very short stories with zingers at the end.  If there is a lesson to History Lesson, I think it's that it's way too easy to make erroneous assumptions about the past based upon fragmentary evidence...

Next week I'll cover some more science fiction short stories from 1949...

Wimbleton Tennis and Tour de France Bicycle Race Ongoing

It's early July again, which means that two usually ignored sports are in the headlines once again: tennis and bicycle racing.  England's Wimbleton, one of the major Grand Slam tournaments in professional tennis, is underway as well as the Tour de France multi-stage bicycle epic that crisscrosses that country with a different course each year.  I haven't gotten around to viewing any of the tennis, which basically consists of players grunting, shrieking, and moaning as they swing and hit the ball back and forth in a very structured and delineating setting...kind of boring if you ask me.  The bikers aren't much better...that is, if what I'm focusing on is the race itself.  But my attention when I'm watching the Tour de France (which is shown on NBCSports) is mainly on the scenery as the contestants, all pretty much looking the same in their tights and alien-ish helmets, pedal up and down hills and around curves, through countryside and village, as onlookers on the roadside cheer them on.  I caught a little of it this morning, and I can say with the utmost confidence that I have no idea whatsoever who is currently in the lead, which is probably just as well since I wouldn't recognize any of the names anyway.  Four-time Tour champion Chris Froome, whom I would have recognized, isn't participating after suffering a horrible wall crash in a race last month that caused multiple fractures...

I think I'll start watching some of Wimbleton in the days to come...probably with the sound down to avoid those annoying sounds coming out of the players' mouths.  One of the interesting things about these two events is that since they're both from western Europe, they take place live in the morning hours and also get replay coverage later on in the day.  I can't say I'm a terrific fan of either sport, but sometimes it's fun to switch from time to time and watch something different...

New Tropical System Forming from Mainland U.S.

A tropical low weather system, currently over the southern U.S. mainland, is expected to reach the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida peninsula in the next couple of days, strengthen at least to tropical depression level, and consequently dump a lot of rain and stormy weather on northern Florida later on this week.  The "experts" generally expect it to drift in a more westward direction, away from us in north central Florida. Normally I wouldn't even mention this on my blog, but I read on social media where one meteorologist...name unknown since I can't recover the post...noted that this phenomenon of a tropical system originally coming off the U.S. mainland is unprecedented in his experience. All the other Atlantic systems that got their start over land have originated in western Africa, even those that eventually made their way into the Gulf of Mexico.  Since that area in western Africa is essentially scorched hot and dry desert land, I'm not sure what this says about what's in store for us in the southeastern U.S....who knows, maybe this will "blow over" and just be a rare curiosity.  Then again, if this begins a new recurring trend, then I want to record its beginnings here on this blog.  After all, can you remember plotting the course of a tropical system by starting with Georgia?

USA Women's National Soccer Team Wins Another World Cup

Congratulations to the United States women's national soccer team, led by Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd, and Alex Morgan, for winning the 2019 Women's World Cup today after defeating Netherlands in the final match, 2-0.  Rapinoe scored the Americans' first goal on a penalty kick in the second half and Rose Lavelle kicked in a spectacular shot just a few minutes later.  They're celebrating now in France with their second straight World Cup and fourth overall, while the U.S. men's team is playing Mexico right now in Chicago for the CONCACAF Gold Cup.  CONCACAF...international soccer really likes to go overboard with the acronyms...is the division of FIFA (the umbrella soccer organization) that encompasses the nations of North America.  Mexico would rather be playing in CONMEBOL, which is just a ridiculous way of saying South American soccer, since the teams there are more competitive and would challenge them more in their training for the next Men's World Cup tournament in 2022.  The CONMEBOL Copa America match between Brazil and Peru was also played today with the heavily-favored Brazilians prevailing 3-1.  Rapinoe was very critical of FIFA for having scheduled the finals for both men's national team tournaments on the very same day as the Women's World Cup championship match...and I have to agree with her viewpoint on this.  Still, it's rather handy for me, being off from work and all today, to be able to follow the action at my leisure...although I couldn't find any stations broadcasting the Brazil-Peru match.  As for the Mexico-USA contest, I hope I don't sound too unpatriotic but I'm finding myself rooting for our friends from south of the border since I follow their premier professional league more closely than our own Major League Soccer, the UANL Tigres from Monterrey being my favorite team (and the current league champion).  It will be fun to see how this match turns out...it's still scoreless in the early going...

Currently Rereading Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series

I'm not sure if this is the third or fourth time around, but I am currently rereading the late Isaac Asimov's celebrated science fiction series Foundation, which he began writing as a 1942 short story but didn't publish the first three novel-length volumes until the 1950s...and then finished the main five-part series much later during the 1980s, along with a couple of prequel novels.  I just finished book number two, titled Foundation and Empire, and am now reading Second Foundation.  I did review these books earlier in this blog...here are links to those articles:

#1 FOUNDATION
#2 FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE
#3 SECOND FOUNDATION
#4 FOUNDATION'S EDGE
#5 FOUNDATION AND EARTH

Other: PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION

I haven't yet read the other prequel, title Forward the Foundation, nor have I read any of the spinoff Foundation novels written by other science fiction writers after Asimov's death in 1992.  For now, I'm content with going through the books I've already read...

Quote of the Week...from Epictetus

Be careful whom you associate with.  It is human to imitate the habits of those with whom we interact. We inadvertently adopt their interests, their opinions, their values, and their habit of interpreting events.                          Epictetus

Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher from the late-first to early-second century A.D. and whose quotes are full of wisdom...here's a link to another of his I discussed three years ago: [link]. It seems that it's very popular nowadays to encourage people to be introspective about their childhood, paying attention to any early traumas they might have experienced that would lead to negative manifestations in adulthood.  I, on the other hand, believe more significant than this is that as children we unconsciously imprint ourselves after the personalities and habits not only of our own parents...be they beneficial or harmful...but also after others in our family as well as our friends, teachers...and even enemies.  And furthermore, with our age of mass media in full swing, by simply viewing them and listening to them regularly we can "associate" with complete strangers and emulate their worldview and demeanor, often without even knowing the source of what we are doing.  That's one reason why I have issues with what I see on my television screen with politics.  On one hand we have a president who takes everything said about him personally...positive or negative...and "doubles down" by attacking any critics in the most insulting personal terms.  You can object to his character and still unconsciously adopt some of his behavioral patterns...after all, he is the model of a success story in this world that exalts celebrity, politics and wealth.  On the other hand, we have a slew of people who repeatedly demonstrate their inability to discern the context of some of the more legitimate statements that Trump and others often make, commonly applying political correctness standards to them in order to condemn them as "racist" or some other condemnatory appellation...Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro's recent accusation of conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham as "a white supremacist" is just one example of many.  I don't want to be like either Trump or Castro...both model a kind of knee-jerk reactiveness to others with aggressive and demeaning speech...it's kind of hard, though, to avoid them if I'm a regular follower of the news.  Still, I think that much more pervasive than these media figures are those with whom we personally associate as a matter of course in our daily lives.  I've said it before that in interactions with others I tend to remember much more clearly my own part in them other than others' contributions...yet I need to keep in mind that as a human being I am wired, as the great Greek philosopher has intimated, to emulate those around me whether I like them or not and whether I know what I'm doing or not.  Consciously avoiding loud and aggressive people, as Max Ehrmann wrote in his prose poem Desiderata, is a good step toward protecting myself in this regard...

Just Finished Reading Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming was a British naval intelligence officer who, after World War II, became the highly celebrated creator and author of the James Bond spy series in the 1950s and 60s, which became an incredibly popular and long-lasting movie franchise with other writers continuing the exploits of Secret Agent 007 long after Fleming's death in 1964.  His first novel, the 1953 Casino Royale, was initially made into a puzzling satirical movie in 1967 having little relation to the book and later on with another same-titled movie, starring Daniel Craig as Bond, that followed the story line more closely.  Still, the characters, settings, and plot of Craig's Casino Royale sometimes diverge quite a bit from Fleming's original novel.  For one, the author characterizes his protagonist as more naïve and prone to mistakes and self-doubt than the cinematic version.  In Fleming's story, Bond plays a high-stakes baccarat card game against villain Le Chiffre, a double agent for the Soviets, at a French casino...in the movie the game is poker, Le Chiffre is more of a free-lancer with a debt to a shadow organization (later identified as "Quantum"), and the setting is Montenegro.  Timewise Fleming's book is the middle of the Cold War while Craig's movie is in the present time, loaded with advanced computer technology. Little of the movie's background story leading up to the casino drama is in the book, and Rene Mathis, here a French intelligence officer, like Felix Leiter of the CIA is shown with no suspicion about his unimpeachable integrity.  Some of the scenes are eerily the same, though, and the enigmatic figure of Vesper Lynn leads our hero astray in both stories.  I liked both versions and look forward to reading Ian Fleming's second James Bond book, Live and Let Die...

Weekly Short Stories: 1949 Science Fiction, Part 1

I began my look at some of the best in short science fiction from seventy years ago, according to the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 11 (1949).  Today I'll be reacting to the first three tales in the book from the year in which NATO was formed, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic weapon, and Harry S. Truman was beginning his first and only elected term as U.S. President after he served almost all of the late Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth term.  Here they are...

THE RED QUEEN'S RACE by Isaac Asimov
I just finished reading Asimov's 1955 novel The End of Eternity, which examines travel back in time and the paradoxes it can produce.  In The Red Queen's Race, a idealist scientist devises a method to send a modern chemistry text, translated to ancient Greek, back to that era in hopes of redirecting the flow of history away from the devastating wars experienced in the twentieth century...and to forestall the threat of nuclear warfare.  The ending reveals the results of his efforts...which kind of reminds me of what happened when Harry Potter and Hermione Granger tried their own version of time travel in J.K. Rowling's third book of her series, The Prisoner of Azkaban...

FLAW by John D. MacDonald
A short, short story with a major knockout revelation at the end, Flaw is about the first mission to send men to Mars and back.  Like our Apollo 10 flight around the moon, this one will circle the Red Planet and return to Earth.  A young woman, engaged to one of the astronauts on the mission, anxiously awaits his return...they've exchanged rings and he's wearing hers with a ruby and a flawed design.  That ostensibly insignificant fact turns into a major factor at story's end as we're informed of very somber news about our place in the universe...

PRIVATE EVE by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore)
If my memory serves me correctly, the People's Republic of China has set up a surveillance state in which hundreds of millions of cameras are currently spying on the population, setting up an essentially totalitarian society.  But even here in America it's difficult to go into public...at least in more urban areas...where the cameras around aren't recording your movements as well.  Private Eye is set in a future where the walls themselves record everything everybody does...but there are privacy laws and only those charged with serious crimes are subject to having their past actions reviewed and scrutinized.  The protagonist in the story wants to commit a murder but knows that in the future, once it's over, the authorities will be able to see his every past action leading up to it and hear everything he has said along the way. So given this almost omnipresent surveillance, how does he plan out and execute his crime?  Even more than a sci-fi crime tale, this is an examination of adult psychology...but that's not surprising since the authors, actually the married writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. "Catherine" Moore, were probably the greatest at probing into people's personalities and motivations in a science fiction context...

Next week: more short science fiction from 1949...

Just Finished Reading The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

The End of Eternity is a 1955 science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, technically unconnected with his many other works about the rise and fall of the robots, the Empire, and Foundation.  In it there is a clandestine organization on Earth called Eternity that operates outside the normal rules of time and whose operators...recruited and trained humans called "Eternals"...observe and analyze over the centuries of time the different societies and make small changes to affect the progression of human history in a benign direction, with their means of temporal transport involving rapidly traveling up and down the time spectrum in something called a "kettle".  The problem is what constitutes "benign" and ultimately leads to the story's climactic crisis.  The catalyst for critically examining Eternity's role in determining the fate of humanity is Andrew Harlan, a young man who has just recently become an Eternal and pretty much has the run of time itself as a Technician, i.e. an Eternal who actually effects the needed changes.  He finds in the course of his work that Noyes, his love interest from a much different century than his own of origin, will never have existed if a planned change is made...so he spirits her away to a hidden time far off in the future and the trouble starts to mount.  There is a very important lesson of analogy about our own growing Nanny State here in America where the government seems determined to tell us what we can produce, consume, and engage in based on their determination of what is good or bad for us...Asimov's story makes the point that danger, risk, and crisis are crucial elements to a society's growth and even its very survival: take them away and it will stagnate, weaken, and ultimately die...

I've read books by Isaac Asimov and Stephen King, both wildly successful writers, on how they set about to write a story.  King likes to take ordinary people that the reader can identify with and place them in extraordinary circumstances from which they must struggle to overcome and survive...he rarely outlines in advance how he will end a story and has stated that he often does not know its conclusion before he actually writes it.  Asimov, on the other hand, outlined his fiction, which in the case of The End of Eternity was absolutely indispensable: there's no way he could have come up with such a satisfactory, conclusive ending had he employed King's "let's just see where this goes" writing strategy.  I guess there's room for both approaches to writing: a loose outline with allowances made for divergent forks in the road.  As it is, I happen to like both Isaac Asimov and Stephen King as fiction writers...and The End of Eternity is a big "thumbs up"...

Obstructive Ornamental Horticulture

I realize that even if I do everything I can while driving to be safe, there will still be a risk of something happening beyond my control.  Yet it angers me when I consider the strange phenomenon of ornamental horticulture in parking lots that seem to deliberately obstruct my view of moving traffic when I have to make a decision while at a stop sign whether to go or not.  The above two photos I took this afternoon at my local Publix shopping plaza illustrate my point: one moment it's clear and then suddenly here comes this vehicle barreling down past the hedge row...which seemed to be consciously planted in such a fashion as to obstruct my view and is continuing to be trimmed to maintain that concealment of potential traffic.  I don't get it...I myself love ornamental horticulture and the cultivating and shaping of plants is something that I appreciate seeing, especially in what would otherwise be barren, desolate asphalt lots.  But why can't those contracted out to design and maintain this horticulture show some common sense consideration for drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians and be careful to make sure that the view is clear at intersections and that vision of oncoming cars isn't blocked?  Yet I never hear anyone but myself complain...backing up just two or three feet further from the road before they start with the shrubbery would greatly enhance safety and still beautify the area.  I've seen much worse obstruction than in these two pictures, and my workplace employee parking lot is ridiculous in this regard.  You'd think that with all the regulations that businesses have to undergo at the local level that there would be ordinances to restrict this sort of thing...especially here in Gainesville where the local government seems to have some sort of phobia about businesses displaying signs.  Go figure...

My June 2019 Running Report

In June I ran a total of 157 miles, missing one day with 9 miles being my longest single run.  It's been a struggle against the outdoors oppressive heat and humidity...and the heavy rainfall we've recently experienced has been an impediment to me.  Whether or not this trend of increasing mileage keeps up for me depends on how my body reacts to it all...I'm probably going to need to take more days off from running for recovery in the future as a set policy.  I didn't run in any races this past month, and although 5K free races are held at Gainesville's Depot Park every Saturday morning and July 4th will feature the annual three-mile Melon Park at Westside Park, as of now I don't feel any special desire to participate in any of them. Looks like it won't be until the fall before I run any public races...

Just Finished Reading Four Three Two One by Courtney C. Stevens

Usually when I visit my local public library (Millhopper on NW 43rd Street) I browse around the cart that contains "Play-Around" audiobooks. They are basically listen-only MP3-like small cartridges containing an entire book, with me only having to supply my own AAA battery and earphones.  The other day I ran across the 2018 young adult novel Four Three Two One, by Courtney C. Stevens, in this format and checked it out.  I just finished it and, although it probably wasn't targeted at my age group, I still came away from it thinking that it had a universal message that applies to everyone...

Golden, or "Go", Jennings is a seventeen-year-old survivor of a New York City bus bombing the summer before that killed nineteen...including the young psychopathic bomber...and spared only four, including Go.  The other survivors are her boyfriend Chandler from Kentucky, Rudy...who had flirted with her just before the disaster, and Caroline, the bomber's girlfriend.  One of the first-responders who helped save the four has started a college scholarship drive for them, had the destroyed bus rebuilt from its ruins, and is staging a reunion in New York to celebrate them and their lives.  The story line, told mainly from Go's point of view, examines how each of the four survivors struggle with the torment of guilt, not only of surviving the attack when others didn't, but also of their common believe that each of them in their own way contributed to the disaster and are therefore unforgivable.  It is the ongoing interaction...much of it in conflict...between these four and others that sets the theme of the story.  And Go's new friend Vicky gives a classic lesson on how to be supportive of survivors in situations like this.  It's a timely tale, very appropriate in this sad time of public shootings in schools and workplaces, and addresses the all-too-often occurrence of suicide on the part of survivors.  A good read, I recommend it...

Quote of the Week...from Charlie Daniels

So I jes' reached out an' kicked ol' green-teeth right in the knee. ---Charlie Daniels

The above quote...if you're from my generation...is probably one you're familiar with.  It's from the Charlie Daniels Band 1973 hit Uneasy Rider, one of the funniest songs ever recorded.  It relates the experiences of a long-haired traveler of the time who finds himself in a "redneck-lookin'" Mississippi bar, surrounded by hostile locals making disparaging comments about his appearance and looking for a fight.  The quick-thinking narrator, sensing his impending beating, thinks up a distraction and kicks one of the "regulars", then going off on a rant about green-teeth infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan and working undercover for the FBI.  It's good enough for him to escape and reroute his trip to L.A. "via Omaha".  This song came to me as I already knew that Joe Biden, although not possessing any green teeth that I know of, was destined to figuratively be kicked in his knee during last night's second Democratic presidential candidates' debate...the question was who would be doing the kicking.  I had thought Cory Booker would have gotten the assignment, but alas, he was separated from ol' Joe after being placed in the first debate on Wednesday.  So it turned out that California senator Kamala Harris did it, repeatedly and directly criticizing Barack Obama's hand-chosen two-term vice-president on the issue of race, even dredging up his opposition forty-plus years ago to forced school-busing.  The mainstream media reaction to their onstage exchange was that Biden had lost and Harris had rebooted her campaign, in which she had fallen nationwide to around the fifth-place level among the contenders.  Now don't get me wrong: I am not at all critical of Kamala Harris for her strategy of going after Biden...any more than the dude kicking that guy with the green teeth was wrong for using misdirection to get out of his own predicament.  My problem is with the spin going all around in the media about how great she was and not pointing out the so clearly obvious and cynical motivation behind her action.  One of Joe Biden's greatest assets so far has been his relative popularity above the other candidates among the African-American community...besting even Booker and Harris, both black.  The debate ploy that Harris used was intended to chip away, if not destroy, this level of support and bring green-teeth's Biden's polling numbers down and elevate her own among this demographic group.  Like I said, this is politics and I don't disparage her having done so...but I'm getting the feeling that the "fix" is on and the media talking heads out there don't want the former vice-president to be the Democratic Party nominee.  We'll see whether this turns into a trend and whether I begin to echo the current White House occupant that it's all rigged...

My General Reaction to the First Democratic Debate Last Night

I didn't hear all of the first Democratic presidential debate last night, which featured half of the field of twenty candidates achieving at least 1% in polling.  But I did listen to the first hour and as such got a pretty good idea about these ten people and their strategies with their respective campaigns.  Most of them seemed to feel that it was necessary to practically shout out their answers to the posed questions in order to establish their credentials as being passionate...Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Jay Inslee, Bill de Blasio, and Tim Ryan stood out in this regard. Beto O'Rourke and Tulsi Gabbard seemed clueless and unprepared...no surprise to me there.  And I appreciated the thoughtful answers from Amy Klobuchar and John Delaney, although the latter had an annoying tendency to go way beyond his allotted time and even ignored the moderator's call for him to stop.  A lot of people seemed to think Julian Castro did well...compared to O'Rourke I suppose he did. Most of the contestants seemed to be in a competition to assert their own far left ideological supremacy over the others...once again it was Klobuchar and Delaney who stood out in contrast to them with their own more reasoned, nuanced answers.   Personally, I think the debate helped Elizabeth Warren probably more than anyone else and put Beto O'Rourke in big trouble from which I doubt he will recover.  From what I did hear, I thought the panel of questioners did a pretty good job of sticking to the issues and away from personalities. Should be interesting to hear the rest of the field debate tonight...

Weekly Short Stories: 1948 Science Fiction, Part 3

I concluded my look back to 1948 at the year's best short science fiction with the final four tales from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 10 (1948).  A dismal outlook on humanity's future and aberrant children are their themes...pretty standard sci-fi fare.  They're not my favorites, but each has its own message.  Here are my reactions...

IN HIDING by Wilmar H. Shiras
Timothy Paul is a thirteen-year-old boy who seems the prototype "average kid"...B-grades in school, doesn't isolate himself socially...but his teacher is concerned about Tim's growing absentmindedness and senses something's wrong, contacting Peter Welles, a psychiatrist.  Most of the story is about how Dr. Welles coaxes Tim to open up about his own life, and it soon becomes clear that he is at super-genius level and has been deliberately concealing that fact in order to avoid trouble with others in society...especially his own grandmother, who is now his guardian after his parents died years earlier from radiation sickness.  And here is where I see a major problem in society: someone begins to stand out with their intelligence and talent and others resent their superiority and set out to "put them in their place". I wonder how many of us as children employed Tim's strategy of concealment...and how many are still doing it, as adults...

KNOCK by Fredric Brown
Knock is a quirky short, little tale about a vastly different alien race that wiped out all animal life on Earth as a preparation for their own settlement, but before they doused the planet with poison spray they took samples of different species for their "zoo"...including two humans.  Walter Phelan finds himself being one of them and has been isolated for two days since the attack, other than his contacts with the strange conquering creatures, who treat him well in his confinement and whom Walter always calls "George".  The horror of such a disaster befalling our planet is only magnified when Walter discovers that since the aliens themselves don't reproduce sexually, many of their "samples" will die off since they don't have both males and females to perpetuate the species.  And he wonders about the other human left alive...

A CHILD IS CRYING by John D. MacDonald
Another story about a super-genius kid, the setting reveals what happens when he...unlike Timothy's concealment in the story In Hiding...openly reveals his talents: the military buys him off from his parents.  The officers, in the midst of nuclear tensions and conflict, seek to extract as much information from him as possible.  This is problematic since little Billy can mentally suggest people to hurt themselves if they get too aggressive...sounds a bit like Stephen King's novel Firestarter, doesn't it?  But when they discover that Billy's incredible reasoning ability gives him the power to predict the future, his interrogators cannot hold themselves back as they desperately seek to discover their own fates...

LATE NIGHT FINAL by Eric Frank Russell
Another conquering race from the stars...this one so humanoid in nature that they can pass for ordinary people, lands on Earth on the outskirts of a small Wisconsin country town in the form of several warships.  Their militarist commander wants the glory of forcefully subjugating the population, which confounds him by being friendly and hospitable.  His own men gradually lose their sense of discipline and loyalty as they encounter the locals and interact with them.  The reader may initially get the impression that this is all a story about the present time, but that's not the case at all.  It felt a bit like a "reverse" Mars is Heaven by Ray Bradbury, which I reviewed last week...but the ending is vastly different and carries a statement about where humanity's best chances for long-term survival lie...

Next week I begin my examining of the best science fiction stories from 1949 as I continue reading this anthology series...

Plan to Listen to Upcoming Democratic Presidential Debates

I have a choice with this ongoing presidential campaign between just sticking my head in the sand ostrich-like and trying my hardest to ignore all of the noise around me or becoming as well-informed as I can be regarding the different candidates and their character, ideology, and positions on the various issues. I've decided on the latter strategy and as such will be listening to the Democratic Party debates being held tomorrow and Thursday evening from 9 to 11.  Broadcast from Miami, each debate will feature ten candidates...drawn at random from those polled at 1% or higher...and will be shown on the NBC channels as well as being available with online streaming from NBC.com and other sources.  I said "listening" because I'll be at work or driving home for most of each debate's duration. Of course, I already know that my purely audio impressions often differ from those I get from both listening and watching, as they did during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and Trump's State of the Union addresses...

Even if you're not a Democrat and plan to support Trump in next year's election, you probably might want to tune in as well...I'm sure Limbaugh and the other conservative opinion makers will be doing so.  Looks like Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar will be headlining the Wednesday debate while Thursday's will feature Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris.  And the others, of course, will be looking to capitalize on their brief moment in the national spotlight to kickstart their campaigns and gain some recognition.  As for me, I've always liked Klobuchar for her intelligence, reason, and pragmatism and am repelled by a few candidates who are more into political correctness and emotionally manipulating the electorate...for now I'll leave these unnamed.  And I'm more than a little skeptical about those espousing pie-in-the-sky solutions to our nation's problems that have virtually no chance of becoming law during their administrations should they find themselves elected...

I'm also interested in hearing how the questions are posed and whether they are fair to the candidates or more slanted and tailored to play "gotcha" against one or more of them.  Yes, I'll be tuned in...how about you?

Working on Rebuilding Running Endurance

I've been increasing my outdoor running workouts as I gradually expand my own created course around my neighborhood and the adjacent ones here in far northern Gainesville.  Yesterday I covered 5.5 miles in midday 93-degree conditions while taking regular interspersed walking breaks along with a sports drink to sip on.  Although it got a little grueling at the end with the heat, I feel I made some good progress with my running and plan to go out again likewise tomorrow morning...maybe for a little bit longer as I continue to build up my distance.  I used to have a course that stretched through Northwood Pines, Northwood Oaks, the NW 53rd Avenue trail between 34th and 43rd Streets, NW 37th Street and the neighborhoods past that church, NW 43rd Street past Talbot Elementary and into the subdivision on 62nd Avenue, Felasco Park past the TV-20 WCJB station, NW 52nd Terrace, NW 53rd Avenue to the shaded, winding neighborhood of big homes off NW 57th Way...and back again.  Depending on how long I felt like running (or had some outside limit placed on me such as actually having to go to work), I could end up running quite some distance, topping 15 miles a number of times and achieving 26.6 once (at 4 hours 23 minutes).  But my long distance running endurance has admittedly dwindled a bit over the past three or four years and I'd like to return it to where I was running down all those convoluted roads and pathways and racking up the big miles: should be interesting...

Just Finished Reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac

My experience with beatniks has always been very limited...since they're pretty much extinct by now I suppose that puts me in a better position to discuss them than most people nowadays, although my "contact" was through the early sixties sitcoms Beverly Hillbillies and Dobie Gillis.  Yet the characters in these shows satirizing the Beat aren't all that far off the mark...I know because I finished reading Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road, which defined the movement.  The Beverly Hillbillies beatnik I remember the most from the two or three episodes that focused on them was the dude who just lied there on his back and never talked...now that's the acting role I was born for!  And in Dobie Gillis, goateed beatnik Maynard, played by future Gilligan Bob Denver, stole the show with his antics and speech.  So I had a pretty generally favorable view of the Beat Generation as people who had their own special lingo and appearance, were totally immersed in the present moment and people around them, and had a special thing for jazz.  That pretty much describes Kerouac's experiences as well as he...in the guise of narrator Sal Paradise...crisscrosses the USA...and later Mexico...hitching rides, taking buses, and using other means of locomotion while describing his friends and the land and people they encounter.  And of all his friends, it's Dean Moriarty who epitomizes the beatnik: totally irresponsible with his friends and lovers, he bounces off one experience into another...and then expects everybody else to follow him as he follows only his own whims.  Which they do, including Sal...much to my consternation: you see I have a strong antipathy to loud and aggressive personality types who expect me to fall in behind them as a passive follower.  So no, using the Beat movement's parlance, I didn't "dig" ol' Dean one bit...but it was interesting to see how others in the story kept forgiving him for his many offenses since he had such a charismatic sway over them...

With On the Road I was initially impressed by the author's vivid, detailed imagination of the different settings, characters, and experiences until I later read that he had actually pretty much lived through it all himself and that the "fictional" characters had real-life counterparts.  It all takes place around 1947-49 as millions of young men, back from World War II, are in states of flux and uncertainty about their futures, with the G.I. Bill being enacted around this time to subsidize their college educations and their eventual upward social mobility into conventional, middle class prosperity.  In the meantime, though, many just drift around, some even adopting the hobo lifestyle traveling by boxcars...something narrator Sal keeps expressing his desire to do himself without ever getting around to it.  There is a peeling away of some of the old gang from Sal and Dean as they marry, get stable jobs, and have children.  But Dean never seems to change as he "keeps the faith"...

The other night I saw a CNN show about the 1960s which examined the hippie counterculture movement in the second half of that decade and how it had its origins in the Beat movement of the fifties and early sixties.  But they also showed a clip of Jack Kerouac criticizing hippies, and I get what he was saying.  Beatniks were into experiencing everything on its own terms, not rejecting everything, while those in the later counterculture movement seemed intent on reinventing their own lives apart from the rest of the real world. Hippies were preachy and superior...beatniks were just cool.  I never did care too much for all that crap that went on in San Francisco and Woodstock, but I always kind of dug beatniks....but not Dean Moriarty...

Press and Rivals Playing Gotcha with Politicians' Comments

Did you ever see the 1970 movie Patton, starring George S. Scott as the brash World War II general?  There were scenes in it where he is allowing the press to ask him questions, and his off-the-cuff, careless answers are almost always taken out of context to paint him as a brutish villain who even sympathized with the Nazis...nothing could have been further from the truth.  I remember this film because I see something going on nowadays...not only with President Trump, whose offhand remarks have become his trademark, but also about politicians on the Democratic Party side.  Leftist freshman representative  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, already known for her flamboyant rhetoric and an outspoken critic of former vice-president Joe Biden on several issues, was recently asked in an interview a pointed question about his well-documented tendency in the past to get all touchy-feely-huggy out in public and that it disturbed some women. AOC...as she is commonly referred to...responded in what I thought was a restrained and respectful way toward Biden. Yet the later headlines made it look as if she were trying to resurrect the issue.  Biden was also criticized by rival Democratic candidate Cory Booker for having commented that even back when there were segregationist senators they were all able to get along better with each other than the broken, polarized situation in that body today...Booker failed to see the point of Biden's argument and instead accused him of praising segregationists.  Biden then angrily replied that he never had a racist bone in his body. Ocasio-Cortez then commented that it was Biden who owed Booker an apology for defending himself against his accusation.  Trump, of course, gets no respect and is even ridiculed for comments he makes that are obviously taken far out of context.  For example, he tweeted that the moon was part of Mars and the jokesters went wild with his supposedly incredible ignorance when all he was saying was that going back to the moon was to be seen as part of the plan of eventually going to Mars...to laugh at him for this reveals one's own stupidity, in my opinion.  Donald Trump may not like Bob Woodward's book Fear, which described the workings of the beginning of his presidency, but it fairly showed that he is tends to impulsively change his mind a lot, has a very short attention span, and is pretty sloppy with his speech and Twitter...all making it very easy for his critics to come up with material.  It's no secret that I dislike our current president...and I'm not all that fond of AOC or Biden, either.   But when they express themselves I try to understand the main ideas they are trying to impart and not just play "gotcha" while trying to distort their message into one that politically harms them...

Quote of the Week...from Stephen Covey

I am not a product of my circumstances.  I am a product of my decisions.   ---Stephen Covey

Stephen Covey is the author best known for his bestseller Seven Habits of Highly Effective People a few years ago.  He is a major advocate of people being proactive and not reactive with their lives.  In truth, the way I see it, we are products of both our circumstances and our decisions.  Albert Einstein once wrote, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." In other words, genius begins with one's reasonable recognition of their own abilities and limitations...that's not being negative, for making such an assessment can point to the areas where their genius and talents can instead be fully realized.  Also, folks tend to get into the habit of living their lives according to narratives of self-victimization, that is they either dwell on mistakes others made in their upbringing or identify closely with a demographic group that has been (or still is) maltreated in society and, well, why bother trying when the system is rigged against you? My response is while discrimination has always been a problem and sadly will probably continue to be one, and just about all of us can find some negative things in our own personal pasts to blame someone else for, sometimes it's better to lay that aside and focus our thoughts and efforts on our own behavior.  For when I look back on trials and setbacks in my own life, my memory tends to focus more on how I reacted to them than the events and situations themselves...including those who may have perpetrated some wrong against me.  But that involves me, for the sake of effective living, ridding myself of the notion that my circumstances define me and instead orienting myself around my own decision-making, which in the long run by far determines who I really am and where I will go in life...