President Donald Trump just fired his third National Security Advisor after just a little more than two and a half years on the job, and in the typical Trump way as Bob Woodward described in his book Fear. John Bolton apparently realized that he was on the "outs" with the President and offered his resignation, but Trump urged him to wait until the next day. Meanwhile, a few hours later he went behind Bolton's back and publicly Tweeted that he was letting him go. This undignified and disrespectful manner of handling subordinates by Donald Trump has been well-documented and anyone who joins up with his White House team is only engaging in self-deception if they think they will be treated any better...they must all be gluttons for punishment...
I admit to not being a fan of John Bolton's penchant for promoting military solutions to international problems. On the other hand, his presence in the Trump Administration's inner circle gave both a sober, honest appraisal of our adversaries like Putin's Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the Taliban as well as an accountability check...if only in advisory status...to Trump's proclivity to suck up to autocrats. His advice about potentially going to war was just that: advice, and the President was always free to reject it...at least on this level I am grateful that Trump does not want us to become further entangled in protracted wars abroad...good for him! But with Bolton's departure Trump has once again shown that he does not welcome a diversity of informed opinions on policy matters, but rather sycophants who will jump to agree with whatever he says...even when he misrepresents the facts or wildly changes his mind. You may or may not think highly of Barack Obama's presidency (although I supported him in both 2008 and 2012 I've expressed my own share of criticisms) but he did consistently surround himself with informed advisors espousing opposing views and did not take dissenting policy opinions personally. For whatever shortcomings in his governing style and policy decisions there may have been, I miss this quality of the previous president...and quite frankly, of just about all the others who preceded him from either party...
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Weekly Short Stories: 1951 Science Fiction, Part 1
I began my look back at some of the more highly regarded science fiction short stories in 1951 by rereading the paperback anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 13 (1951). The five stories I'm discussing below all have familiar names as authors, so without any further delay let's take a look at them...
NULL-P by William Tenn
William Tenn, whose real name was Philip Klass and was an professor of English at Penn State, was known to go a bit off on the satirical side in his stories, and this one is a case in point. Following a disastrous world war that nearly destroyed the planet, everyone gets taken up with George Abnego, whose statistically average scores on just about any test done on him has revealed the return of the "normal" to the world...to its collective delight. I can't help but think of Warren G. Harding's slogan of "Return to Normalcy" in his wildly successful isolationist presidential campaign of 1920 following World War I. A few folks, however, see only mediocrity instead of "normalcy"...or normality as it is more properly called, and Tenn lays it on thick showing post-war society exalting themediocre normal as he takes this trend to its logical conclusion...
THE SENTINEL by Arthur C. Clarke
This tale was the forerunner to Clarke's great work 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which he collaborated with Stanley Kubrik. There are notable differences: in The Sentinel humanity doesn't get a piercing sound coming from the monument left on the moon (like in the later movie), which leads to a different reaction and a possibly foreboding ending...
THE FIRE BALLOONS by Ray Bradbury
Father Peregrine, on his first assignment to an already-settled Mars in the future (from both 1951 and now), is eager to save souls and squash sin. But when he arrives he discovers intelligent, sentient disembodied native life in the form of spheres of light...or "fire balloons". They are elusive, but present themselves in emergencies to rescue humans from accidents...Peregrine recognizes this and sets out with his skeptical colleague Father Stone to present the Gospel to them. But what can he use to first attract them for an audience and then how can he illustrate his message? An interesting speculative tale with something positive at the end...
THE MARCHING MORONS by Cyril Kornbluth
The premise of this story, which was very popular at the time of its first publication... is bogus: that intelligence is primarily hereditary and that certain demographic "groups" produced smarter offspring than certain others...you can probability guess which groups the author had in mind...sigh. It is many centuries off into the future and the world has a human population primarily with an average IQ of 45...constantly cared for by a superintelligent minority which is based at the poles and whose members conceal their caretaker role to the "dummies". They want to discover how to rid themselves of their "problem" and finally find their answer from the ideas of an average human who had been in a state of suspended animation for centuries. This story has so many things wrong with it that this anthology's editors took care to dissociate themselves from it, finally deciding to begrudgingly include it because it had made the Science Fiction Hall of Fame...
THE WEAPON by Fredric Brown
A little more than two years ago I discussed this very short but very profound story...here's a link to that article: [The Weapon]. A scientist is developing a new doomsday weapon for his government. A pleasant stranger visits him and his mentally arrested son, befriending them both while pleading with the scientist to halt his work for the sake of humanity. Read it: the final line is unforgettable...
Next week I plan to continue discussing more science fiction short stories from 1951...
NULL-P by William Tenn
William Tenn, whose real name was Philip Klass and was an professor of English at Penn State, was known to go a bit off on the satirical side in his stories, and this one is a case in point. Following a disastrous world war that nearly destroyed the planet, everyone gets taken up with George Abnego, whose statistically average scores on just about any test done on him has revealed the return of the "normal" to the world...to its collective delight. I can't help but think of Warren G. Harding's slogan of "Return to Normalcy" in his wildly successful isolationist presidential campaign of 1920 following World War I. A few folks, however, see only mediocrity instead of "normalcy"...or normality as it is more properly called, and Tenn lays it on thick showing post-war society exalting the
THE SENTINEL by Arthur C. Clarke
This tale was the forerunner to Clarke's great work 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which he collaborated with Stanley Kubrik. There are notable differences: in The Sentinel humanity doesn't get a piercing sound coming from the monument left on the moon (like in the later movie), which leads to a different reaction and a possibly foreboding ending...
THE FIRE BALLOONS by Ray Bradbury
Father Peregrine, on his first assignment to an already-settled Mars in the future (from both 1951 and now), is eager to save souls and squash sin. But when he arrives he discovers intelligent, sentient disembodied native life in the form of spheres of light...or "fire balloons". They are elusive, but present themselves in emergencies to rescue humans from accidents...Peregrine recognizes this and sets out with his skeptical colleague Father Stone to present the Gospel to them. But what can he use to first attract them for an audience and then how can he illustrate his message? An interesting speculative tale with something positive at the end...
THE MARCHING MORONS by Cyril Kornbluth
The premise of this story, which was very popular at the time of its first publication... is bogus: that intelligence is primarily hereditary and that certain demographic "groups" produced smarter offspring than certain others...you can probability guess which groups the author had in mind...sigh. It is many centuries off into the future and the world has a human population primarily with an average IQ of 45...constantly cared for by a superintelligent minority which is based at the poles and whose members conceal their caretaker role to the "dummies". They want to discover how to rid themselves of their "problem" and finally find their answer from the ideas of an average human who had been in a state of suspended animation for centuries. This story has so many things wrong with it that this anthology's editors took care to dissociate themselves from it, finally deciding to begrudgingly include it because it had made the Science Fiction Hall of Fame...
THE WEAPON by Fredric Brown
A little more than two years ago I discussed this very short but very profound story...here's a link to that article: [The Weapon]. A scientist is developing a new doomsday weapon for his government. A pleasant stranger visits him and his mentally arrested son, befriending them both while pleading with the scientist to halt his work for the sake of humanity. Read it: the final line is unforgettable...
Next week I plan to continue discussing more science fiction short stories from 1951...
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Our Visit to Chicago's Navy Pier
Our Navy Pier visit was, to be sure, marred by inclement weather, but by deciding to make the most of an adverse situation we ended up creating some interesting experiences and memories. The next day there would also be some rain, but we also walked right on through it as well...
Monday, September 9, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #480-471
As I continue unraveling this list of my personal all-time favorite songs, I need to reiterate that even at this "low" stage of the list, the songs appearing here carry a lot of meaning to me. This should be apparent when you consider the thousands of songs I've heard over the past several decades...I first became a serious pop music listener in early 1964 at the age of seven as I would assiduously switch back and forth between Miami's WQAM and WFUN to hear the next song. Also, a lot of songs get a higher ranking not because of their innate artistry or greatness, but rather because I associate them with certain events or a period in my past...isn't that how it works with you, too? Here are the next ten songs, all of which you can search and hear online...
480 VICARIOUS...Tool
When you consider all the gratuitous violence and killing that has gone on for decades on TV and the big screen and how the depiction of wholesale slaughter of others...especially with the component of terror involved...seems to attract a bigger audience response, then you're all set for this brutal verbal indictment of people's sick vicariousness. It's musically arranged in such an unsettling, beautiful way that, with my acknowledged lack of training in music theory, seems to border on the complexity of classical music...a pretty complex piece of heavy metal music. Whether it's for the message or the music, this one's a "can't miss"...back in 2006 I picked Vicarious as my favorite song of the year...
479 I'M COMING HOME...Johnny Mathis
I'm Coming Home was a big Adult Contemporary hit for Johnny Mathis, who had a long, illustrious career before this 1973 song that I used to listen to on 97/"A1A Radio" back in South Florida. The lyrics are about the singer moving away to make his name and fortune and, after finding that achieving success involved too many compromises on his own character, wearily and beaten he decides to go back home. It's sad and sweet, and Johnny made the listener feel that these were his own experiences...and I never forgot it...
478 HOCUS POCUS...Focus
Also in 1973, during the springtime, an previously unknown band named Focus came out with one of the weirdest hard rock songs ever: Hocus Pocus features, among all the severe electric guitar riffs, yodeling and whistling. At the time listeners either loved it or hated it: I picked the former. There's a long album version and a shorter, singles version...I own the single, which pretty much says what has to be said...which as far as I can tell, is nothing but a lot of nonsense. But Hocus Pocus is an exquisitely unique, strange kind of nonsense...
477 SIT DOWN, I THINK I LOVE YOU...the Mojo Men
I had always liked this short, feel-good love song from 1967, but as is the case with many other songs on this list, I came to better appreciate it years later on for the pretty background keyboards and mandolin. Also, I never knew that Stephen Stills wrote it and that his band Buffalo Springfield first recorded it...albeit without the lush instrumentation that the Mojo Men provided...
476 IDIOTEQUE...Radiohead
Back in late 2010 I was much more fanatical with my distant running, often going out on 15+ mile jaunts through personally-designed courses up and down streets in far-northern Gainesville. What does this have to do with this song? I had Radiohead's albums all on my MP3 player and I would randomly listen through their catalog of tracks while running...so I automatically associate Idioteque with being on a long run. On its own merits, this is another successful musical experiment from their 2000 Kid A album, . No, I don't know what the lyrics mean, but the whole flavor of the song hints of a dystopian, impersonal future...not that I'm in any hurry to go live there...
475 WALK DON'T RUN...the Ventures
Walk Don't Run was a big radio hit in 1964 and I heard it a lot on Miami's 560/WQAM. I always looked forward to them playing it and wonder whether it might not have been more popular had there been some singing on it. It's basically a guitar rock n' roll band displaying their guitar virtuosity while staying true to the song's compelling melody. According to Wiki, jazz guitarist Johnny Smith wrote it years before and yes, there are lyrics to it...although singing wasn't the Ventures' "bag"...
474 LONG LONG TIME...Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt's big career breakthrough was the 1967 hit Distant Drum, which she sang as a member of the group Stone Poneys. As a solo singer she would record a number of hits during the seventies...Long Long Time was the first of these and came out in 1970. But I didn't fully appreciate this song until years later...she put everything she had into this agonizing ode to love and heartbreak and although I liked some of her later works, I was always looking for a "Long Long Time Part 2" that never happened. What a talent...
473 SILENT LUCIDITY...Queensryche
Through the late 1980s and early 1990s I'd be listening to my local "hard" rock station here in Gainesville, Rock/104, and one hard rock band after another...after registering moderate hits with their hard rock songs...would inevitably come out with a slower, ballad-form song. This would usually become their most popular piece, although I usually despised these ballads which I regarded as the bands selling out for the sake of popularity. The one major exception was Queensryche: Silent Lucidity is by far the best song I've heard from this Seattle forerunner of grunge. When Rock 104 would play it, I'd have to stop what I was doing so I could listen to it with all my attention...well, I'm not quite as nuts about it now, but I still like it a lot...
472 SHE'S LEAVING HOME...the Beatles
I usually preferred the Beatles songs in which it's clear that both Paul McCartney and John Lennon were full, participating partners. She's Leaving Home, a deep track on their acclaimed 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, is one such example with the former writing and singing the song's verse and the latter doing likewise with its chorus. The "third" Beatle responsible for recording this song...George and Ringo weren't involved...was producer George Martin, who arranged the instrumentation and, after their retirement from touring after 1966, was a Beatle in everything but name. When I was a kid during this era I had retreated a bit from the Beatles and, although I dug their singles hits All You Need is Love and Hello/Goodbye, I wouldn't return as an "album" fan until the early 1970s when my sister and I began to collect their later LPs. Later on, though, I came to like this song, schmaltzy lyrics and all...
471 HOW CAN I BE SURE...the Young Rascals
Yet another 1967 song I didn't fully appreciate until years later...I never understood the substantial contribution that the Young Rascals, who later shortened their name to just the Rascals, made to the American popular music scene. They'd keep unobtrusively coming out year after year with blockbuster hits while seeming to avoid the celebrity status and scrutiny that other, bigger names were receiving. Yet they produced some fantastic songs..."How can I be sure in a world that's constantly changing" totally captured the angst some of us were beginning to feel in an ever-quickening world with its wars and impending disasters...
Next week: #470-461...
480 VICARIOUS...Tool
When you consider all the gratuitous violence and killing that has gone on for decades on TV and the big screen and how the depiction of wholesale slaughter of others...especially with the component of terror involved...seems to attract a bigger audience response, then you're all set for this brutal verbal indictment of people's sick vicariousness. It's musically arranged in such an unsettling, beautiful way that, with my acknowledged lack of training in music theory, seems to border on the complexity of classical music...a pretty complex piece of heavy metal music. Whether it's for the message or the music, this one's a "can't miss"...back in 2006 I picked Vicarious as my favorite song of the year...
479 I'M COMING HOME...Johnny Mathis
I'm Coming Home was a big Adult Contemporary hit for Johnny Mathis, who had a long, illustrious career before this 1973 song that I used to listen to on 97/"A1A Radio" back in South Florida. The lyrics are about the singer moving away to make his name and fortune and, after finding that achieving success involved too many compromises on his own character, wearily and beaten he decides to go back home. It's sad and sweet, and Johnny made the listener feel that these were his own experiences...and I never forgot it...
478 HOCUS POCUS...Focus
Also in 1973, during the springtime, an previously unknown band named Focus came out with one of the weirdest hard rock songs ever: Hocus Pocus features, among all the severe electric guitar riffs, yodeling and whistling. At the time listeners either loved it or hated it: I picked the former. There's a long album version and a shorter, singles version...I own the single, which pretty much says what has to be said...which as far as I can tell, is nothing but a lot of nonsense. But Hocus Pocus is an exquisitely unique, strange kind of nonsense...
477 SIT DOWN, I THINK I LOVE YOU...the Mojo Men
I had always liked this short, feel-good love song from 1967, but as is the case with many other songs on this list, I came to better appreciate it years later on for the pretty background keyboards and mandolin. Also, I never knew that Stephen Stills wrote it and that his band Buffalo Springfield first recorded it...albeit without the lush instrumentation that the Mojo Men provided...
476 IDIOTEQUE...Radiohead
Back in late 2010 I was much more fanatical with my distant running, often going out on 15+ mile jaunts through personally-designed courses up and down streets in far-northern Gainesville. What does this have to do with this song? I had Radiohead's albums all on my MP3 player and I would randomly listen through their catalog of tracks while running...so I automatically associate Idioteque with being on a long run. On its own merits, this is another successful musical experiment from their 2000 Kid A album, . No, I don't know what the lyrics mean, but the whole flavor of the song hints of a dystopian, impersonal future...not that I'm in any hurry to go live there...
475 WALK DON'T RUN...the Ventures
Walk Don't Run was a big radio hit in 1964 and I heard it a lot on Miami's 560/WQAM. I always looked forward to them playing it and wonder whether it might not have been more popular had there been some singing on it. It's basically a guitar rock n' roll band displaying their guitar virtuosity while staying true to the song's compelling melody. According to Wiki, jazz guitarist Johnny Smith wrote it years before and yes, there are lyrics to it...although singing wasn't the Ventures' "bag"...
474 LONG LONG TIME...Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt's big career breakthrough was the 1967 hit Distant Drum, which she sang as a member of the group Stone Poneys. As a solo singer she would record a number of hits during the seventies...Long Long Time was the first of these and came out in 1970. But I didn't fully appreciate this song until years later...she put everything she had into this agonizing ode to love and heartbreak and although I liked some of her later works, I was always looking for a "Long Long Time Part 2" that never happened. What a talent...
473 SILENT LUCIDITY...Queensryche
Through the late 1980s and early 1990s I'd be listening to my local "hard" rock station here in Gainesville, Rock/104, and one hard rock band after another...after registering moderate hits with their hard rock songs...would inevitably come out with a slower, ballad-form song. This would usually become their most popular piece, although I usually despised these ballads which I regarded as the bands selling out for the sake of popularity. The one major exception was Queensryche: Silent Lucidity is by far the best song I've heard from this Seattle forerunner of grunge. When Rock 104 would play it, I'd have to stop what I was doing so I could listen to it with all my attention...well, I'm not quite as nuts about it now, but I still like it a lot...
472 SHE'S LEAVING HOME...the Beatles
I usually preferred the Beatles songs in which it's clear that both Paul McCartney and John Lennon were full, participating partners. She's Leaving Home, a deep track on their acclaimed 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, is one such example with the former writing and singing the song's verse and the latter doing likewise with its chorus. The "third" Beatle responsible for recording this song...George and Ringo weren't involved...was producer George Martin, who arranged the instrumentation and, after their retirement from touring after 1966, was a Beatle in everything but name. When I was a kid during this era I had retreated a bit from the Beatles and, although I dug their singles hits All You Need is Love and Hello/Goodbye, I wouldn't return as an "album" fan until the early 1970s when my sister and I began to collect their later LPs. Later on, though, I came to like this song, schmaltzy lyrics and all...
471 HOW CAN I BE SURE...the Young Rascals
Yet another 1967 song I didn't fully appreciate until years later...I never understood the substantial contribution that the Young Rascals, who later shortened their name to just the Rascals, made to the American popular music scene. They'd keep unobtrusively coming out year after year with blockbuster hits while seeming to avoid the celebrity status and scrutiny that other, bigger names were receiving. Yet they produced some fantastic songs..."How can I be sure in a world that's constantly changing" totally captured the angst some of us were beginning to feel in an ever-quickening world with its wars and impending disasters...
Next week: #470-461...
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Just Finished Reading Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is a renowned, award-winning author of many books, going way back to the late 1960s...she is currently 81. When I checked out her novel Hazards of Time Travel, I came to two early mistaken conclusions: one, that this was a budding writer within the genre of young adult dystopian fiction and two, that since much of the future dystopia that Adriane, the young protagonist, finds herself struggling in has been based on a drastic elimination of personal liberties following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, so it must have been written soon thereafter. But as I stated before, Oates was already well established and the story was published just last year...
The setting is the year 2039 and what used to be the United States, Canada, and Mexico has merged into a "democracy" that in practice is a plutocracy...government by the very wealthy for their own benefit. The State uses the "threat" of impending terrorist attacks as a pretext to clamp down on free speech and inflict punishment on "traitors", that is anyone who even slightly raises any questions or doubts about the world they live in. Adriane finds herself arrested for preparing a valedictorian high school graduation speech that asks forbidden questions and as a result is sentenced to "exile" for four years, as a college student in a small liberal arts school in Wainscotia, Wisconsin...back in the year 1959. She is prohibited from revealing her status as an exile from the future to anyone there on penalty of being instantly vaporized...or "deleted" as they call it. But Adriane cannot resist the temptation to search around for others who are suffering through the same exile...and here is where I leave you, the potential reader of this novel, to discover for yourself what happens. I will say something, though, that perhaps if you're planning to read this book someday, might be construed as a plot spoiler...so potential reader, look away from the next paragraph...
After finishing Hazards of Time Travel, the ending of which was totally unexpected, I began to reflect on some possible sources of inspiration for the author in writing it...especially with regard to that problematic conclusion. So, with SPOILER ALERT printed in capital letters, I'll just say that the movies The Matrix and Inception...especially the role of a totem in the latter...have within them elements that closely sync with the story. There...hope you didn't read that if you planned to read the book, but I did warn you...
Oates not only wrote of a dystopia that makes a mockery of democracy and eliminates freedom of speech, but also of a society in the not-so-distant future where the racial divisions and prejudices we've been struggling against for so many years have once again became entrenched and institutionalized, even to the degree of a rigid, stratified caste system. Maybe she thinks this is the sad direction we're heading toward now...I sure hope she's wrong. I looked through some of the reviews on Goodreads and found that readers either loved Hazards of Time Travel or hated it...it's that kind of story...
The setting is the year 2039 and what used to be the United States, Canada, and Mexico has merged into a "democracy" that in practice is a plutocracy...government by the very wealthy for their own benefit. The State uses the "threat" of impending terrorist attacks as a pretext to clamp down on free speech and inflict punishment on "traitors", that is anyone who even slightly raises any questions or doubts about the world they live in. Adriane finds herself arrested for preparing a valedictorian high school graduation speech that asks forbidden questions and as a result is sentenced to "exile" for four years, as a college student in a small liberal arts school in Wainscotia, Wisconsin...back in the year 1959. She is prohibited from revealing her status as an exile from the future to anyone there on penalty of being instantly vaporized...or "deleted" as they call it. But Adriane cannot resist the temptation to search around for others who are suffering through the same exile...and here is where I leave you, the potential reader of this novel, to discover for yourself what happens. I will say something, though, that perhaps if you're planning to read this book someday, might be construed as a plot spoiler...so potential reader, look away from the next paragraph...
After finishing Hazards of Time Travel, the ending of which was totally unexpected, I began to reflect on some possible sources of inspiration for the author in writing it...especially with regard to that problematic conclusion. So, with SPOILER ALERT printed in capital letters, I'll just say that the movies The Matrix and Inception...especially the role of a totem in the latter...have within them elements that closely sync with the story. There...hope you didn't read that if you planned to read the book, but I did warn you...
Oates not only wrote of a dystopia that makes a mockery of democracy and eliminates freedom of speech, but also of a society in the not-so-distant future where the racial divisions and prejudices we've been struggling against for so many years have once again became entrenched and institutionalized, even to the degree of a rigid, stratified caste system. Maybe she thinks this is the sad direction we're heading toward now...I sure hope she's wrong. I looked through some of the reviews on Goodreads and found that readers either loved Hazards of Time Travel or hated it...it's that kind of story...
Saturday, September 7, 2019
Happy Anniversary, Sweet Melissa!
So it's been 33 years and I love you more than ever, my beautiful, sweet Melissa. Why God chose to bless me of all people with someone as caring and discerning as you is totally beyond me...a truly divine mystery...but I going to take it and run with it!!! Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart!
Friday, September 6, 2019
Quote of the Week...from Joyce Carol Oates
Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read. ---Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is a widely acclaimed writer with 58 published novels and many collections of her short stories dating back to the late 1960s and continuing through to the present. I just finished reading her 2018 novel Hazards of Time Travel and will discuss it in a future article. According to the Wikipedia article about Oates, she holds to a tightly disciplined regimen with her writing and performs it longhand...yet another successful professional writer who practices this strategy. In light of what I just heard about the head of a Catholic school banning all copies of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series from its campus, I thought that her quote pretty much says it all. The irony to the banning of Harry Potter would be clear to anyone who actually had taken any time or effort to read this wonderful series, which is an allegory of the battle between clearly delineated forces of good and evil in our real world and how ordinary people often become unwitting accomplices of the "dark side" through their apathy, expedient rationalizing, and denial...
I do pretty much as Joyce Carol Oates suggested and read whatever I want, even so-called "young adult", "junior", or "children's" books...which often have a submerged, more mature message. I read the opinions spanning the political spectrum, from far right to far left in orientation...owning (and enjoying), for example, books by both Greg Gutfeld and Al Franken. I also love history and popular science literature...and if you've read this blog for any length of time you already know that I am a sucker for fantasy and science-fiction stories. My favorite author has long been Stephen King, and I'm looking forward to reading his new book The Institute...and plan to soon read (for the third time) my all-time favorite King novel, 11/22/63. From time to time I'll tackle more classic literature, and sometimes, as with the case of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and James Joyce's Ulysses, I'll walk away from the experience with a lot of confusion and frustration...and even a little anger. I write reviews for what I've read on this blog, but that's not why I read. I read because...pure and simple, it's FUN!
Joyce Carol Oates is a widely acclaimed writer with 58 published novels and many collections of her short stories dating back to the late 1960s and continuing through to the present. I just finished reading her 2018 novel Hazards of Time Travel and will discuss it in a future article. According to the Wikipedia article about Oates, she holds to a tightly disciplined regimen with her writing and performs it longhand...yet another successful professional writer who practices this strategy. In light of what I just heard about the head of a Catholic school banning all copies of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series from its campus, I thought that her quote pretty much says it all. The irony to the banning of Harry Potter would be clear to anyone who actually had taken any time or effort to read this wonderful series, which is an allegory of the battle between clearly delineated forces of good and evil in our real world and how ordinary people often become unwitting accomplices of the "dark side" through their apathy, expedient rationalizing, and denial...
I do pretty much as Joyce Carol Oates suggested and read whatever I want, even so-called "young adult", "junior", or "children's" books...which often have a submerged, more mature message. I read the opinions spanning the political spectrum, from far right to far left in orientation...owning (and enjoying), for example, books by both Greg Gutfeld and Al Franken. I also love history and popular science literature...and if you've read this blog for any length of time you already know that I am a sucker for fantasy and science-fiction stories. My favorite author has long been Stephen King, and I'm looking forward to reading his new book The Institute...and plan to soon read (for the third time) my all-time favorite King novel, 11/22/63. From time to time I'll tackle more classic literature, and sometimes, as with the case of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and James Joyce's Ulysses, I'll walk away from the experience with a lot of confusion and frustration...and even a little anger. I write reviews for what I've read on this blog, but that's not why I read. I read because...pure and simple, it's FUN!
Thursday, September 5, 2019
A Walk Through Chicago's Wicker Park
Wicker Park is a small commercial and residential area of Chicago, surrounding a little triangular park of the same name and located a little to the northwest of the downtown area, just west of I-90. Melissa and I probably would have missed it on our recent visit here were it not for our son Will, who made the journey with us, mentioning a few places he wanted to check out there. It's a place known for attracting hipsters and being a little counterculture in nature, not exactly Greenwich Village but more working class. After our excellent Architecture Tour on the morning of Monday August 12th, we got on the C.T.A. Blue train at Lake and Clarke and rode to Wicker Park, getting off at the Damen Avenue station. Like myself, Will digs bookstores and coffee shops, so we checked out Quimby's on North Street and Myopic on Milwaukee Avenue for their books, after which we stopped off at Wormhole Coffee further down Milwaukee. Quimby's Books more or less specialized in radical and counterculture-themed books and was big on poetry as well...I imagine that it would be the kind of place that the Goth Kids on South Park would hang out at. Myopic, on the other hand, was loaded with many, many used books, fiction and nonfiction, and reminded me of the sorely-missed Book Gallery on Main Street many years ago in Gainesville...now that kind of bookstore I could relate to. Wormhole was cool, the coffee was good, the alternative rock music was good and loud, and the barista there recommended Handlebar, a vegetarian restaurant further west on North, as a good place for lunch. Handlebar's food was great, although I'm not a vegetarian. I ordered their sloppy joe and a side of chili...both meatless and delicious. After lunch the rain began to fall and we made it back to the train station before needing to take out our umbrellas...
Wicker Park...at least the North Street and Milwaukee Avenue section we walked through...seemed more to be oriented for tourists as the sidewalks were full of people who were obviously visitors and not just residents. I imagine that Chicago has a lot of little enclaves like this, each with its own personality and attraction...but we simply did not have the time to explore around. The brick buildings in various shades of brown were a lot shorter than the downtown Loop's skyscrapers, so for a change of scenery and atmosphere Wicker Park suited us just fine...
Wicker Park...at least the North Street and Milwaukee Avenue section we walked through...seemed more to be oriented for tourists as the sidewalks were full of people who were obviously visitors and not just residents. I imagine that Chicago has a lot of little enclaves like this, each with its own personality and attraction...but we simply did not have the time to explore around. The brick buildings in various shades of brown were a lot shorter than the downtown Loop's skyscrapers, so for a change of scenery and atmosphere Wicker Park suited us just fine...
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Weekly Short Stories: 1950 Science Fiction, Part 5
Today I finish my look back at quality science fiction short stories from the year 1950, taking them from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 12 (1950). In retrospect I rather liked the 1950 selections and its interesting how many of them have withstood the test of time to still be relevant today. Here are my reactions to the final three stories...
PROCESS by A.E. van Vogt
Presented from the viewpoint of a forest on a distant world with a collective single consciousness, the story explains how alien ships land there...presumably humans from Earth. The forest tries different means to drive away the enemy, all to no avail until it discovers a successful strategy...and then employs it each time a new ship lands. Victory!, thinks the forest...but what do the "invaders" think? A very clever little tale...
THE MINDWORM by Cyril Kornbluth
A monster has come into the world, born with a genetic composition that allows him to read minds and manipulate them so that, at the height of his victims' emotions and passion, he can mentally suck their life essence from them. He thinks he has the run of humanity as his prey, but how unique is his gift actually? Read to find out in this story that more appropriately belongs to the horror genre than science fiction...
THE NEW REALITY by Charles L. Harness
Harness lays out a brilliant hypothesis in this story: before milestone scientific discoveries were made about different aspects of the nature of reality, reality itself was different. Hence the Earth really was flat before its discovery to be nearly spherical, many of the elements in the Periodic Table did not exist before they were predicted and found, and electric current did not exist before its discovery...hence lightning used to not be dangerous, as evidenced by no reported fatal lightning strikes throughout history before it was found to be dangerous...and so on. A renegade scientist, believing that "reality" as people see it is the product of their own notions and expectations, seeks to radically change its nature by proving something believed to be scientifically impossible. And it's here that the story deteriorates into a very common, annoying ending. Still, the notion that one creates his or her own reality isn't that far off the mark...how many of us go through our lives totally submerged within our own narratives of "how things are", assimilating corroborative input and rejecting or ignoring anything contradicting our own biased perceptions of reality...
Next week I'll begin to look at short science fiction from 1951...
PROCESS by A.E. van Vogt
Presented from the viewpoint of a forest on a distant world with a collective single consciousness, the story explains how alien ships land there...presumably humans from Earth. The forest tries different means to drive away the enemy, all to no avail until it discovers a successful strategy...and then employs it each time a new ship lands. Victory!, thinks the forest...but what do the "invaders" think? A very clever little tale...
THE MINDWORM by Cyril Kornbluth
A monster has come into the world, born with a genetic composition that allows him to read minds and manipulate them so that, at the height of his victims' emotions and passion, he can mentally suck their life essence from them. He thinks he has the run of humanity as his prey, but how unique is his gift actually? Read to find out in this story that more appropriately belongs to the horror genre than science fiction...
THE NEW REALITY by Charles L. Harness
Harness lays out a brilliant hypothesis in this story: before milestone scientific discoveries were made about different aspects of the nature of reality, reality itself was different. Hence the Earth really was flat before its discovery to be nearly spherical, many of the elements in the Periodic Table did not exist before they were predicted and found, and electric current did not exist before its discovery...hence lightning used to not be dangerous, as evidenced by no reported fatal lightning strikes throughout history before it was found to be dangerous...and so on. A renegade scientist, believing that "reality" as people see it is the product of their own notions and expectations, seeks to radically change its nature by proving something believed to be scientifically impossible. And it's here that the story deteriorates into a very common, annoying ending. Still, the notion that one creates his or her own reality isn't that far off the mark...how many of us go through our lives totally submerged within our own narratives of "how things are", assimilating corroborative input and rejecting or ignoring anything contradicting our own biased perceptions of reality...
Next week I'll begin to look at short science fiction from 1951...
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Just Finished Reading Down River by John Hart
Having just finished reading novelist John Hart's recent book The Hush, a sequel to an earlier work titled The Last Child and both of them excellent in my estimation, I decided to try out another of his books, settling on his second novel, the 2007 Down River. As with the other two Hart books I read, the setting is rural North Carolina as a landowning family with a long history there is coming apart over a murder case from years before. Adam Chase once stood to inherit the vast property encompassing farms and woodlands, but he was accused and tried for a murder in the nearby town...with his own stepmother testifying that he committed the deed. But Adam was found not guilty, although the court of local public opinion weighed heavily against him and even his own father sided with his wife against Adam and told him to leave following his acquittal. Now, several years later after doing well in New York, Adam has returned at the urging of an old friend who won't reveal his reason. The story takes off from there and Adam finds himself embroiled in one mystery after another...and the murders continue as he has to cope with antagonism from both his family, his old girlfriend (a cop), the local police, and even his own family...which is being pressured by others in town to sell a section of their own estate to build a nuclear plant...
Down River is written in the first person from the perspective of Adam, and the language reflects this through short, clipped sentences and a very blunt, no-nonsense tone...it reminded me of the old pulp detective stories (The Maltese Falcon comes to mind). Although it was another Carolina story, this one felt quite different from the others I read. Still, I recommend it...let's see, I think I still have a couple more novels to explore from this talented young writer...
Down River is written in the first person from the perspective of Adam, and the language reflects this through short, clipped sentences and a very blunt, no-nonsense tone...it reminded me of the old pulp detective stories (The Maltese Falcon comes to mind). Although it was another Carolina story, this one felt quite different from the others I read. Still, I recommend it...let's see, I think I still have a couple more novels to explore from this talented young writer...
Monday, September 2, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #490-481
Now in my second week of this long weekly blog project, I've come to realize that by the time I get to #1, I'll probably have changed my musical tastes enough to want to move the songs around on this personal top 500 list...but I've already composed it and it represents both a snapshot as to what I like now and what I've liked at earlier times in my life. Who knows, if the opportunity presents itself many years from now I might produce a new list. Here are the next ten songs...
490 CREATURE COMFORT...Arcade Fire
The one significant track of a recent disappointing (to me) album of theirs, Arcade Fire tackles head-on the issues of teenage angst and the danger and tragedy of suicide...this is a blunt, in-your-face statement that will probably make a few squirm. And the music behind it is sharp and intense...
489 FRESH TENDRILS...Soundgarden
Speaking of the tragedy of suicide, it really hit me bad when I heard that Chris Cornell, the wonderfully talented voice of this Seattle grunge band, had recently taken his own life. This song, a deeply buried track on 1994's Superunknown...in my opinion the best grunge album ever made and one of the best albums period...is grating, angry, and unforgettable. It's one of the few songs on this very long list of my favorites that I instantly took a liking to from the first time I ever heard it...
488 MAN IN THE MIRROR...Michael Jackson
Honest introspection is the theme of this terrific Michael Jackson song from his Bad album and which was a monster hit in early 1988, toward the end of the time I actually enjoyed regularly listening to Top 40 radio stations like Gainesville's Kiss/105. Michael's message here is clear: making the world a better place means taking a look at yourself and changing...and to me that necessarily involves opening up my own personal narrative to honest self-scrutiny and learning to respect...even if not agreeing with...the personal narratives of others by putting myself in their place...
487 I GET AROUND...the Beach Boys
This very brief singles hit from 1964 is another of those old songs which I didn't care for back then but later grew on me. Hey, I was only seven when it came out and the lyrics really expressed the mindset of rebellious adolescence. And I've always had a soft spot in my heart for "identity" songs like this, even if in my own life I didn't personally subscribe to their messages...
486 STARLIGHT...Muse
Muse is an alternative rock band that received much airplay a few years ago on my local alternative station 100.5/"The Buzz"...many of their songs have cosmic themes and titles...Starlight to me is the best of the lot, even to the point where I ranked it as my favorite song of 2007. It's a sweet, romantic love song with Matt Bellamy's vocals largely unrivaled...a real tearjerker, I say...
485 FLY LIKE AN EAGLE (full version)...the Steve Miller Band
I strongly stress you have to hear the full version, with its lengthy instrumental beginning and conclusion, to fully appreciate this very successful musical experiment fusing psychedelia from the 1960s with mainstream rock in the 70s. It's dreamy trance-rock at its best...and compels the listener to speculate about time. Miller says it slips into the future, but others would counter that it slips into the past...or are the future and past mere illusions we've manufactured and the present "now" moment is the only reality? This great song plays with your head like that...
484 BABA O'RILEY...the Who
More commonly known as "Teenage Wasteland", Baba O'Riley has long been a staple of album-oriented rock stations...years ago I would have ranked it much higher but I listened to it so many times that its complete familiarity began to weigh against it. My favorite parts are the synthesizer beginning and the violin ending, the latter of which was drummer Keith Moon's inspired idea...
483 CARS...Gary Numan
In 1980 the musical genres of new wave and techno were making themselves heard as an alternative to the then-rapidly declining disco era...and I'm grateful to them if only for that! Gary Numan was one of the new stars and he came out with this catchy single that year which I still find myself singing from time to time...when I'm in my car, of course...
482 OPTIMISTIC...Radiohead
I mentioned on #489 that Soundgarden's 1994 album Superunknown was one of my all-time favorites...likewise Radiohead's 2000 masterpiece Kid A stands as my favorite of this British alternative band, producing several great tracks, some of which you will meet up with later on this list. Last year I "rediscovered" the song Optimistic...which in spite of the hopeful-sounding title is anything but...
481 5:00 WORLD...the Vogues
When this song hit the radio airwaves in late 1965 I was nine years old and took an instant liking to it (like I also did when I first heard #489). 5:00 World has a similar kind of background vocals to Sam Cooke's classic old hit Chain Gang, although the latter had a sad message and this one is all about the singer toiling all day and looking forward to 5:00 when he gets to clock out and be with his woman. The music somehow sounds mysterious, which contrasts with the simple, upbeat lyrics. But it all "worked" for me back then and I've never tired of it. And is that yodeling I hear?
Next week I'll be covering #480-471...
490 CREATURE COMFORT...Arcade Fire
The one significant track of a recent disappointing (to me) album of theirs, Arcade Fire tackles head-on the issues of teenage angst and the danger and tragedy of suicide...this is a blunt, in-your-face statement that will probably make a few squirm. And the music behind it is sharp and intense...
489 FRESH TENDRILS...Soundgarden
Speaking of the tragedy of suicide, it really hit me bad when I heard that Chris Cornell, the wonderfully talented voice of this Seattle grunge band, had recently taken his own life. This song, a deeply buried track on 1994's Superunknown...in my opinion the best grunge album ever made and one of the best albums period...is grating, angry, and unforgettable. It's one of the few songs on this very long list of my favorites that I instantly took a liking to from the first time I ever heard it...
488 MAN IN THE MIRROR...Michael Jackson
Honest introspection is the theme of this terrific Michael Jackson song from his Bad album and which was a monster hit in early 1988, toward the end of the time I actually enjoyed regularly listening to Top 40 radio stations like Gainesville's Kiss/105. Michael's message here is clear: making the world a better place means taking a look at yourself and changing...and to me that necessarily involves opening up my own personal narrative to honest self-scrutiny and learning to respect...even if not agreeing with...the personal narratives of others by putting myself in their place...
487 I GET AROUND...the Beach Boys
This very brief singles hit from 1964 is another of those old songs which I didn't care for back then but later grew on me. Hey, I was only seven when it came out and the lyrics really expressed the mindset of rebellious adolescence. And I've always had a soft spot in my heart for "identity" songs like this, even if in my own life I didn't personally subscribe to their messages...
486 STARLIGHT...Muse
Muse is an alternative rock band that received much airplay a few years ago on my local alternative station 100.5/"The Buzz"...many of their songs have cosmic themes and titles...Starlight to me is the best of the lot, even to the point where I ranked it as my favorite song of 2007. It's a sweet, romantic love song with Matt Bellamy's vocals largely unrivaled...a real tearjerker, I say...
485 FLY LIKE AN EAGLE (full version)...the Steve Miller Band
I strongly stress you have to hear the full version, with its lengthy instrumental beginning and conclusion, to fully appreciate this very successful musical experiment fusing psychedelia from the 1960s with mainstream rock in the 70s. It's dreamy trance-rock at its best...and compels the listener to speculate about time. Miller says it slips into the future, but others would counter that it slips into the past...or are the future and past mere illusions we've manufactured and the present "now" moment is the only reality? This great song plays with your head like that...
484 BABA O'RILEY...the Who
More commonly known as "Teenage Wasteland", Baba O'Riley has long been a staple of album-oriented rock stations...years ago I would have ranked it much higher but I listened to it so many times that its complete familiarity began to weigh against it. My favorite parts are the synthesizer beginning and the violin ending, the latter of which was drummer Keith Moon's inspired idea...
483 CARS...Gary Numan
In 1980 the musical genres of new wave and techno were making themselves heard as an alternative to the then-rapidly declining disco era...and I'm grateful to them if only for that! Gary Numan was one of the new stars and he came out with this catchy single that year which I still find myself singing from time to time...when I'm in my car, of course...
482 OPTIMISTIC...Radiohead
I mentioned on #489 that Soundgarden's 1994 album Superunknown was one of my all-time favorites...likewise Radiohead's 2000 masterpiece Kid A stands as my favorite of this British alternative band, producing several great tracks, some of which you will meet up with later on this list. Last year I "rediscovered" the song Optimistic...which in spite of the hopeful-sounding title is anything but...
481 5:00 WORLD...the Vogues
When this song hit the radio airwaves in late 1965 I was nine years old and took an instant liking to it (like I also did when I first heard #489). 5:00 World has a similar kind of background vocals to Sam Cooke's classic old hit Chain Gang, although the latter had a sad message and this one is all about the singer toiling all day and looking forward to 5:00 when he gets to clock out and be with his woman. The music somehow sounds mysterious, which contrasts with the simple, upbeat lyrics. But it all "worked" for me back then and I've never tired of it. And is that yodeling I hear?
Next week I'll be covering #480-471...
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Our Chicago Architecture Boat Tour
Saturday, August 31, 2019
My August 2019 Running Report
In August I ran for a total of 70 miles, 7 of them on the 1st...my longest single run of the month. I missed running on 11 days, having taken some time off for our trip to Indiana and Chicago and some as a reaction to respiratory allergy attacks after our return to the Pollen State of Florida. No, this past month wasn't one of my best, but I plan to work on training for longer distances in September and the months beyond, God willing. I still would like to run in the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon in November...
Friday, August 30, 2019
Quote of the Week...from Nick Saban
If you want to talk s___ to the other team, join the g-- d---- debate team. ---Nick Saban
You can fill in the appropriate blanks to get what Alabama head football coach Nick Saban really said in a comment about some of his players to an Alabama website to get the full impact of his barely-repressed anger about competitive athletes...especially those under his authority...who are completely into trash talking their opponents, rivals, and critics. In the age of Twitter and Facebook, a player no longer needs to wait for an interview in order to make his or her views known, and often on a very immature and insult-laden level. When I heard of Saban's comment this morning on my MSN newsfeed, I was immediately reminded of how last Saturday our own University of Florida quarterback Feleipe Franks, already in his junior year, couldn't resist turning around on his sideline bench and shouting down some Miami fans. Franks has a problem about perceiving disrespect, and it seems to pervade every aspect of his game...he's been known to verbally go at it with officials when a call goes against him. But when players conduct themselves with dignity and focus on what the chain of command on their team is communicating to them instead of distractions from the outside, then they will automatically engender not only a greater sense of personal dignity but also resistance to worrying about being "dissed". It's a vicious cycle, demanding that others respect you while you retaliate against perceived sleights...real or imagined...by going after others. It's the complete reversal of the Biblical "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" mantra...unfortunately, our president seems to be suffering from the same problem and is only encouraging others to emulate him through his poor example. Then again, Saban himself could probably benefit by pausing and reflecting on his own sometimes bellicose and undignified behavior toward his perceived adversaries...
You can fill in the appropriate blanks to get what Alabama head football coach Nick Saban really said in a comment about some of his players to an Alabama website to get the full impact of his barely-repressed anger about competitive athletes...especially those under his authority...who are completely into trash talking their opponents, rivals, and critics. In the age of Twitter and Facebook, a player no longer needs to wait for an interview in order to make his or her views known, and often on a very immature and insult-laden level. When I heard of Saban's comment this morning on my MSN newsfeed, I was immediately reminded of how last Saturday our own University of Florida quarterback Feleipe Franks, already in his junior year, couldn't resist turning around on his sideline bench and shouting down some Miami fans. Franks has a problem about perceiving disrespect, and it seems to pervade every aspect of his game...he's been known to verbally go at it with officials when a call goes against him. But when players conduct themselves with dignity and focus on what the chain of command on their team is communicating to them instead of distractions from the outside, then they will automatically engender not only a greater sense of personal dignity but also resistance to worrying about being "dissed". It's a vicious cycle, demanding that others respect you while you retaliate against perceived sleights...real or imagined...by going after others. It's the complete reversal of the Biblical "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" mantra...unfortunately, our president seems to be suffering from the same problem and is only encouraging others to emulate him through his poor example. Then again, Saban himself could probably benefit by pausing and reflecting on his own sometimes bellicose and undignified behavior toward his perceived adversaries...
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Approaching, Dangerous Hurricane Dorian Ruins Labor Day
This week has been...and will continue to be...all about Hurricane Dorian as it first passed through as a strong tropical storm through the Windward Islands and then veered more northerly just east of Puerto Rico as it attained hurricane strength. Although its projected strength upon mainland U.S. landfall has changed a lot...from Tuesday morning to 24 hours later it jumped from 70 to 115 mph sustained winds and now it is at 125...the dreaded red "cone of probability" has consistently been the entire Florida peninsula, with the most likely area of its eye's landing being the central part of the state. Talk about ruining a perfectly good holiday, Labor Day: its landfall is forecast to take place that Monday. As for Gainesville, I don't think we've yet experienced hurricane-force winds since I moved here in 1977, although Irma in 2017 and Frances and Jeanne in 2004 produced sustained tropical storm levels. Hopefully, the storm will quickly pass on through, while being inland in the middle of the peninsula helps us with the winds, which if it strikes us will have diminished a bit from the level it was at on the shore...but now is the time to stock up and make preparations. And there are plenty more days till Monday for the Weather Channel to "up" its predicted intensity. Wonder which beaches the celebrity meteorologists will be assigned to...
Now it's 11 am and the new forecast has Dorian reaching maximum sustained winds of 130 mph at landfall. Maybe I should just stop watching the Weather Channel, sigh...
Now it's 11 am and the new forecast has Dorian reaching maximum sustained winds of 130 mph at landfall. Maybe I should just stop watching the Weather Channel, sigh...
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Weekly Short Stories: 1950 Science Fiction, Part 4
I continued reexamining my old anthology of outstanding science fiction tales as published in the paperback Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 12 (1950) with four more entries to discuss today. So without any further ado, here they are...
MISBEGOTTEN MISSIONARY...Isaac Asimov
The notion of an entire planet under a collective consciousness...even encompassing inorganic matter...is the focus here as a second exploratory mission from Earth desperately tries to avoid contamination and ultimate incorporation into the mass entity after the first failed and had to destroy themselves and their ship. I wonder whether the Star Trek: The Next Generation folks picked up on this theme more than thirty years later when they invented the Borg, another aggressive mass consciousness. Asimov originally titled it Green Patches and used it when he included the story in his own collections...
TO SERVE MAN...Damon Knight
Long considered one of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes with giant Richard Kiel, later known as the villain Jaws in a couple of Roger Moore James Bond movies, as the Kannabit ambassador to Earth. In the written story the Kannabit, an alien race that arrives on our planet in the present time (that is, 1950) and seems to have just about every solution to our technological and social problems, are instead short, thick, and very ugly. Still, humanity blindly welcomes them and accepts their "contributions"...unaware of their true motives until the end. I felt that the Twilight Zone version greatly improved on the original one...
COMING ATTRACTION...Fritz Lieber
If anything is for certain, it is that humanity will adapt itself to any calamity and seek to normalize it. Lieber comfirms this with Coming Attraction, a dark look at a dystopian world that has already just suffered through a nuclear war and is preparing for another...the women in America have adopted veils apparently to conceal the ravages of radiation upon their faces. Written in a tough-guy Mickey Spillane style in the first person, Wysten Turner, a British man on a business trip to New York city, describes a nightmare world of a violent society rising up as a response to the military violence recently imposed on them. Both editors of the anthology described this story as very important and setting the trend for many future sci-fi short stories in the 1950s and later...
A SUBWAY NAMED MOBIUS...A.J. Deutsch
I've read this great story, believed to be the only one that Deutsch, an astronomer accomplished enough in his profession to have a moon crater named for him, had ever published...or even written, for that matter. I reviewed it in May, 2017...here's a link to that article: [Subway]. The premise is simple: the current mass transit rail systems in major cities can get so complex that a map of them can resemble something like a plate of spaghetti. Insert some topological notions about an extra dimension and here is a tale about a train...complete with passengers...that disappears in transit along the line. A mathematician naturally expert in topology is consulted to investigate...I loved the ending and this is one of my all-time favorite science fiction short stories...
Next week I conclude my look back at 1950 in the realm of quality science fiction short stories...
MISBEGOTTEN MISSIONARY...Isaac Asimov
The notion of an entire planet under a collective consciousness...even encompassing inorganic matter...is the focus here as a second exploratory mission from Earth desperately tries to avoid contamination and ultimate incorporation into the mass entity after the first failed and had to destroy themselves and their ship. I wonder whether the Star Trek: The Next Generation folks picked up on this theme more than thirty years later when they invented the Borg, another aggressive mass consciousness. Asimov originally titled it Green Patches and used it when he included the story in his own collections...
TO SERVE MAN...Damon Knight
Long considered one of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes with giant Richard Kiel, later known as the villain Jaws in a couple of Roger Moore James Bond movies, as the Kannabit ambassador to Earth. In the written story the Kannabit, an alien race that arrives on our planet in the present time (that is, 1950) and seems to have just about every solution to our technological and social problems, are instead short, thick, and very ugly. Still, humanity blindly welcomes them and accepts their "contributions"...unaware of their true motives until the end. I felt that the Twilight Zone version greatly improved on the original one...
COMING ATTRACTION...Fritz Lieber
If anything is for certain, it is that humanity will adapt itself to any calamity and seek to normalize it. Lieber comfirms this with Coming Attraction, a dark look at a dystopian world that has already just suffered through a nuclear war and is preparing for another...the women in America have adopted veils apparently to conceal the ravages of radiation upon their faces. Written in a tough-guy Mickey Spillane style in the first person, Wysten Turner, a British man on a business trip to New York city, describes a nightmare world of a violent society rising up as a response to the military violence recently imposed on them. Both editors of the anthology described this story as very important and setting the trend for many future sci-fi short stories in the 1950s and later...
A SUBWAY NAMED MOBIUS...A.J. Deutsch
I've read this great story, believed to be the only one that Deutsch, an astronomer accomplished enough in his profession to have a moon crater named for him, had ever published...or even written, for that matter. I reviewed it in May, 2017...here's a link to that article: [Subway]. The premise is simple: the current mass transit rail systems in major cities can get so complex that a map of them can resemble something like a plate of spaghetti. Insert some topological notions about an extra dimension and here is a tale about a train...complete with passengers...that disappears in transit along the line. A mathematician naturally expert in topology is consulted to investigate...I loved the ending and this is one of my all-time favorite science fiction short stories...
Next week I conclude my look back at 1950 in the realm of quality science fiction short stories...
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Just Finished Reading Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
At that same Orlando airport bookstore where I found John Green's recent "Turtles" novel, I also came across Celeste Ng's 2017 book Little Fires Everywhere...and resolved to make it my next reading project. It is set during the late 1990s...before the age of smartphones and when pocket pagers were considered cool among the high school crowd...in the Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Shaker Heights. The Richardsons are an established, affluent family of six...husband, wife, their two daughters and two sons...all the children are teens...living in comfort in their big house. They rent out to others on their other property, a duplex down the road. Among these tenants is a mother and daughter family, Mia and Pearl Warren. Mia, who moves Pearl and herself a lot from city to city and seems to be concealing an old secret, is getting by working odd jobs and selling her pictures, photography as an art form being her big passion in life. Pearl gets introduced to the Richardson family and develops different levels of friendship with the children...except young Izzy (from Isabel), who looks askance at her family's privileged, materialistic outlook on the world and is very sensitive to matters of justice. The two families eventually look as if they are going to hit if off very well with each other until a bitter child custody case erupts between a baby's natural Chinese mother who had left her at a fire station and the upper-middle class white family that adopts her...
Little Fires Everywhere, although looking closely at the personalities, attitudes, and relationships of teen-agers, is more than a young adult novel. It raises the question of how people in our country, in the midst of so many social safety nets, can still find themselves in such a state of economic desperation that they would take extraordinary measures...such as that young Chinese woman. Also, in custody cases should the natural parents' ethnicity be considered, implying if so that an ethnic/cultural group has collective rights as opposed to individuals? I found it all intriguing and the author masterfully laid it all out, but her portrayals of Pearl and the Richardson children to me was brilliant. My favorite character? Who else but Izzy! Little Fires Everywhere begins with the burning down of the Richardson house, so in revealing this information I'm not spoiling the plot. But who started the fire...and evidence is clearing showing that it was deliberate. A couple of the children already are blaming "crazy" Izzy, who among everyone in the family is nowhere to be seen...guess you'll have to read it to find out the answer...
Little Fires Everywhere, although looking closely at the personalities, attitudes, and relationships of teen-agers, is more than a young adult novel. It raises the question of how people in our country, in the midst of so many social safety nets, can still find themselves in such a state of economic desperation that they would take extraordinary measures...such as that young Chinese woman. Also, in custody cases should the natural parents' ethnicity be considered, implying if so that an ethnic/cultural group has collective rights as opposed to individuals? I found it all intriguing and the author masterfully laid it all out, but her portrayals of Pearl and the Richardson children to me was brilliant. My favorite character? Who else but Izzy! Little Fires Everywhere begins with the burning down of the Richardson house, so in revealing this information I'm not spoiling the plot. But who started the fire...and evidence is clearing showing that it was deliberate. A couple of the children already are blaming "crazy" Izzy, who among everyone in the family is nowhere to be seen...guess you'll have to read it to find out the answer...
Monday, August 26, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #500-491
As promised a few weeks ago, today I am beginning my list, from "worst" to best, of my top 500 favorite songs of all-time. Now keep in mind that I'm not rating these for their artistry or general historical significance but rather am applying very, very personal, subjective standards. Chances are that you've already heard many of them...for the ones you haven't, I suggest you do an online search and listen to them: I think they're worth it. By the way, I found myself painfully having to omit many wonderful pieces of music that just didn't make the "cut"...so even these songs at the "bottom" of my list are pretty special to me. Well, here they are, starting with #500...
500 YESTERDAY...the Beatles
Not one of my very most-liked Beatles songs, but as a slow ballad...and I generally dislike slow ballads...this would easily be near the top of that list. Paul McCartney aced his solo performance of it in '65 on Ed Sullivan. Be prepared to encounter many more Beatles songs later on...
499 100 OTHER LOVERS...DeVotchKa
I'm not sure how I came across this Colorado-based indie group, but this title song of their 2011 album had a chilling, mysterious effect on me that year (and still does). I bet you've never heard of it...
498 WESTERN UNION...the Five Americans
I moderately liked this 1967 hit when it came out...in later years I grew to appreciate it as a well-packaged piece of popular musical art...
497 GREEN TAMBOURINE...the Lemon Pipers
I had the same reaction with this one as with #497...it's from 1968 and I bought the single nine years later while browsing through Peaches on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale...
496 TWO TIMING TOUCH AND BROKEN BONES...the Hives
Combining brash, screaming punklike vocals and intense guitar virtuosity into a two minute experience...the Hives are an underrated Swedish alternative rock band. I first heard this song on my local alternative rock station 100.5/"The Buzz" back in 2005...
495 STUPID GIRL...Garbage
Rock 104, my radio station of choice when I was working the long hours on the letter-sorting machine back in 1995-96, played this song a lot and, the song's misogynous-sounding title notwithstanding, Garbage singer Shirley Manson made me one of their fans with her brilliant performance...
494 NEIGHBORHOOD #3 (POWER OUT)...Arcade Fire
Another song I first heard played on "the Buzz" several times around 2006-07, but without knowing who did it or even what the title was. I later became interested in this band and was surprised to hear it on their Funeral album...
493 THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME...Led Zeppelin
Although I had loved their epic Stairway to Heaven since the early 1970s, I didn't know much of Led Zeppelin's catalog until the first box set came out in 1990...that's when I first heard this song featuring Jimmy Page's incredible guitar talent and singer Robert Plant struggling to keep up...
492 I FOUGHT THE LAW...the Bobby Fuller Four
When this tune hit the airwaves (over local Miami station WQAM "Tiger Radio") in 1966, I generally either ignored it or switched over to WFUN. Now I think it's one of the best songs to come out that year...tragically, Fuller mysteriously died in his parked car the same year, along with his promising musical career...
491 OH VERY YOUNG...Cat Stevens
Cat Stevens during the early 1970s composed and performed many sensitive and emotionally-gripping songs...this one was an ongoing radio hit at the time of my high school graduation in May, 1974...how appropriate a song to this era in my life...
Next Monday I'll cover #490-481...
500 YESTERDAY...the Beatles
Not one of my very most-liked Beatles songs, but as a slow ballad...and I generally dislike slow ballads...this would easily be near the top of that list. Paul McCartney aced his solo performance of it in '65 on Ed Sullivan. Be prepared to encounter many more Beatles songs later on...
499 100 OTHER LOVERS...DeVotchKa
I'm not sure how I came across this Colorado-based indie group, but this title song of their 2011 album had a chilling, mysterious effect on me that year (and still does). I bet you've never heard of it...
498 WESTERN UNION...the Five Americans
I moderately liked this 1967 hit when it came out...in later years I grew to appreciate it as a well-packaged piece of popular musical art...
497 GREEN TAMBOURINE...the Lemon Pipers
I had the same reaction with this one as with #497...it's from 1968 and I bought the single nine years later while browsing through Peaches on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale...
496 TWO TIMING TOUCH AND BROKEN BONES...the Hives
Combining brash, screaming punklike vocals and intense guitar virtuosity into a two minute experience...the Hives are an underrated Swedish alternative rock band. I first heard this song on my local alternative rock station 100.5/"The Buzz" back in 2005...
495 STUPID GIRL...Garbage
Rock 104, my radio station of choice when I was working the long hours on the letter-sorting machine back in 1995-96, played this song a lot and, the song's misogynous-sounding title notwithstanding, Garbage singer Shirley Manson made me one of their fans with her brilliant performance...
494 NEIGHBORHOOD #3 (POWER OUT)...Arcade Fire
Another song I first heard played on "the Buzz" several times around 2006-07, but without knowing who did it or even what the title was. I later became interested in this band and was surprised to hear it on their Funeral album...
493 THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME...Led Zeppelin
Although I had loved their epic Stairway to Heaven since the early 1970s, I didn't know much of Led Zeppelin's catalog until the first box set came out in 1990...that's when I first heard this song featuring Jimmy Page's incredible guitar talent and singer Robert Plant struggling to keep up...
492 I FOUGHT THE LAW...the Bobby Fuller Four
When this tune hit the airwaves (over local Miami station WQAM "Tiger Radio") in 1966, I generally either ignored it or switched over to WFUN. Now I think it's one of the best songs to come out that year...tragically, Fuller mysteriously died in his parked car the same year, along with his promising musical career...
491 OH VERY YOUNG...Cat Stevens
Cat Stevens during the early 1970s composed and performed many sensitive and emotionally-gripping songs...this one was an ongoing radio hit at the time of my high school graduation in May, 1974...how appropriate a song to this era in my life...
Next Monday I'll cover #490-481...
Sunday, August 25, 2019
About Last Night's Gators vs. Hurricanes Football Game
The University of Florida football team usually starts its seasons with one or two home games against smaller college opponents, but of late they've been including major schools: yesterday's game in Orlando against the University of Miami is an example. The Gators started this season ranked #8, for all that is worth, and the Hurricanes, hoping to bounce back from a disappointing season last year, were the clear underdogs. But extremely sloppy play by UF...including 225 yards in penalties and 4 turnovers, the last one a foolish underthrown pass by junior Gator quarterback Feleipe Franks deep in his own territory while trying to protect a flimsy 24-20 lead late in the game...threatened their chances at victory. Still, the Florida defense stood up and stymied Miami's inspired offense when it mattered most, after suffering through a plethora of missed tackles for much of the game. Gators sacked the UM quarterback 10 times and held them to losses on several other downs. And Franks had his moments as well, accurately throwing two 60+ yard bombs...his long-distance passing ability is something Florida had been lacking since Tim Tebow's tenure there. As for the penalties, I understand how a defensive player might inadvertently carry his own momentum into the ball carrier once they were already out-of-bounds, especially when they sometimes will choose to instead make a sideline cut to stay in...that can be a difficult call to make and better decisions along those lines can be made in future games. But the offensive holding calls trouble me a bit, since Franks was already usually pressured and their running game was sporadic at best against the Hurricanes defense. But that just might also be due to Miami's defense and not necessarily be exposing a Gator offensive line problem...
No, the Florida victory over Miami was definitely not pretty, but the way I see it is if they played this way each game for the rest of the season and continually won close, mistake-hampered contests, you know what that would mean? It would mean that the Gators are National Champions. In any event, I am glad the game is behind us and I can go back to enthusiastically rooting for both Florida and Miami as they are my clear preferences within their respective conferences...
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Just Finished Reading Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Having already read his 2004 young adult novel Looking for Alaska about three years ago, I was intrigued by a recent 60 Minutes interview with author John Green, who discussed his ongoing YouTube project as well as his own difficulties with obsessive-compulsive disorder. And he revealed that this topic is a prominent feature of his 2017 book Turtles All the Way Down...I filed that one away in my mind. While waiting for our plane to Indianapolis a couple of Wednesdays ago in the Orlando airport bookstand, I ran across this novel and henceforth decided to delve into it and see what all the hoopla was about. Well, I just finished reading it and have my own reactions...
First of all, I heartily recommend Turtles All the Way Down, which incidentally is another young adult novel...I generally dig this genre. It is coincidentally set in Indianapolis where high school upperclassman Aza Holmes, a straight-A student, has a big problem: part of her mind believes that the microorganisms teeming within her body (and everyone's, for that matter) will eventually consume her...particularly a dangerous bacteria called C. diff....although intellectually she is aware that it's all abnormal thinking. Still, she listens to the thoughts in her head telling her how dangerous contact with others is and continually cuts the healing scab in her finger, applies sanitizer, and rebandages it. Her father died a few years earlier of a heart attack and her mother, a math teacher at the same school, understands her OCD as she has her attend therapy sessions regularly along with prescribed medication, medication Aza usually forgoes. Aza has a close friend, Daisy Ramirez, who challenges her to look for her early childhood friend, Davis Pickett, after his wealthy father disappeared to avoid arrest on corruption charges...you see, $100,000 has been offered for anyone finding him. So there are two main subplots intertwining themselves through this story: Aza's obsessive-compulsive disorder, as experienced by herself, and the mystery of Russell Pickett's disappearance combined with the rekindled relationship between Davis and Aza. I felt that John Green did a masterful job of making all the main characters in the book sympathetic, although in the area of believability I think he might of taken some liberties. For example, he pretty much painted a picture in this story...as he did in Looking for Alaska...of the children being oh-so learned and philosophically deep, especially as opposed to the relatively dim-witted and stuck-in-their-ways adults around them. Davis is deeply rooted in classic literature and poetry, writing stuff on his blogs that one might expect a literary scholar to compose. And Daisy, who in normal discourse sounds a bit shallow and impulsive, has written several short stories (based on the Star Wars Wookiee character)...with thousands of fans worldwide...by painstakingly typing them out on her smartphone. Then again, maybe this precociousness is typical of this generation, who knows. I did like these "super" characters, though...
As for Aza's preoccupation with what was going on in her body on a microscopic level, I think that this is an example of wrongly applying our notions of what is aesthetically pleasing or disgusting on our own scale to a completely different, alien scale. Yes, although we all have billions of miniscule creepy-crawly critters inside us...and always will as long as we are alive...most of us can reconcile ourselves to this without it consuming our thoughts, while others (like Aza) cannot...
Turtles All the Way Down was a good investment of my reading time and I look forward to hearing others' reactions to it. Go ahead and pick up a copy, you know you want to...
First of all, I heartily recommend Turtles All the Way Down, which incidentally is another young adult novel...I generally dig this genre. It is coincidentally set in Indianapolis where high school upperclassman Aza Holmes, a straight-A student, has a big problem: part of her mind believes that the microorganisms teeming within her body (and everyone's, for that matter) will eventually consume her...particularly a dangerous bacteria called C. diff....although intellectually she is aware that it's all abnormal thinking. Still, she listens to the thoughts in her head telling her how dangerous contact with others is and continually cuts the healing scab in her finger, applies sanitizer, and rebandages it. Her father died a few years earlier of a heart attack and her mother, a math teacher at the same school, understands her OCD as she has her attend therapy sessions regularly along with prescribed medication, medication Aza usually forgoes. Aza has a close friend, Daisy Ramirez, who challenges her to look for her early childhood friend, Davis Pickett, after his wealthy father disappeared to avoid arrest on corruption charges...you see, $100,000 has been offered for anyone finding him. So there are two main subplots intertwining themselves through this story: Aza's obsessive-compulsive disorder, as experienced by herself, and the mystery of Russell Pickett's disappearance combined with the rekindled relationship between Davis and Aza. I felt that John Green did a masterful job of making all the main characters in the book sympathetic, although in the area of believability I think he might of taken some liberties. For example, he pretty much painted a picture in this story...as he did in Looking for Alaska...of the children being oh-so learned and philosophically deep, especially as opposed to the relatively dim-witted and stuck-in-their-ways adults around them. Davis is deeply rooted in classic literature and poetry, writing stuff on his blogs that one might expect a literary scholar to compose. And Daisy, who in normal discourse sounds a bit shallow and impulsive, has written several short stories (based on the Star Wars Wookiee character)...with thousands of fans worldwide...by painstakingly typing them out on her smartphone. Then again, maybe this precociousness is typical of this generation, who knows. I did like these "super" characters, though...
As for Aza's preoccupation with what was going on in her body on a microscopic level, I think that this is an example of wrongly applying our notions of what is aesthetically pleasing or disgusting on our own scale to a completely different, alien scale. Yes, although we all have billions of miniscule creepy-crawly critters inside us...and always will as long as we are alive...most of us can reconcile ourselves to this without it consuming our thoughts, while others (like Aza) cannot...
Turtles All the Way Down was a good investment of my reading time and I look forward to hearing others' reactions to it. Go ahead and pick up a copy, you know you want to...
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