Weekly Short Stories: 1961 Science Fiction, Part 4

Here are my reactions to the final four stories in the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 23 (1961).  The first story I thought was a great classic, but I wasn't so hot on the final three...I guess it's all a matter of personal taste...

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL by Cordwainer Smith
Cordwainer Smith was to me the most imaginative sci fi writer when it came to envisioning future space travel and settlement, and his depiction of life on a remote prison planet in A Planet Named Shayol is so vividly bizarre that it steps over the line into the horror genre...but you'll have to read for yourself this remarkable tale of a convict sentenced to serve the remainder of his life there.  The imagery is like one of those nightmares that you just want to wake up from...but can't.  Cordwainer Smith was the pseudonym for Paul Linebarger (1913-66), a college English professor who preferred a quiet life behind his literary anonymity: his 1955 story The Game of Rat and Dragon is one of my all-time favorites...

RAINBIRD by R.A. Lafferty
Another (groan) time travel story that once again presents the concept of paradox and all the interesting effects that traveling backward in time can have on future events.  In this story, it is 1779 and a young man, destined to be a moderately successful tinkerer and inventor of assorted small items, sets out and turns into the world's premier inventor, producing technology far ahead of its time.  But when he is old, he decides that he could have taken wiser paths in his younger years that would have advanced his inventions much further...and thus steps into the "retrogressor" (time machine) he has also invented, to counsel his young self into the direction he so clearly sees now. And that's what I managed to get of this tale: no one is completely satisfied with their pasts and many of us, from the advantage of hindsight, see certain pivotal times in our lives that would have changed for the better had we acted differently.  But I didn't need another time travel story to tell me what I already knew...

WALL OF CRYSTAL, EYE OF NIGHT by Algis Budrys
In the future, the communications industry is being dominated by advanced subliminal products that detect the viewers' predilections and then manufacture a "reality" that they can experience which meets their expectations.  A tycoon finds himself in a desperate race against his main rival to find the ultimate subliminal technology...and goes to Mars where the Martians reputedly have developed one such machine.  What's real and what's not get all fuzzy in this story, not one of my favorites...although the anthology's editors had all kinds of wonderful things to say about it.  It did give me a creepy feeling, seeing the direction our Internet and social media of today are going with detecting our own interests and then producing content to reflect them...

REMEMBER THE ALAMO! by T.R Fehrenbach
A short alternate-reality story about that famous event, but with the principal players substantially altered.  And wouldn't you know it: another dang-blasted time travel story!  Still, the author has a lot of fun recasting the roles of William Travis, Jim Bowie, Davey Crockett and Santa Anna as a British "traveler" from the future gets a severe lesson in alternate history at the besieged Alamo...

Next week I start my look at the year 1962 in short science fiction...

Just Finished Reading Light in August by William Faulkner

A few years ago Oprah Winfrey selected three of early twentieth century American writer William Faulkner's novels for her book club: The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August.  The first, the most famous of the three, I have yet to read...and the second I read back in 2014.  A couple of years ago I read his 1948 novel Intruder in the Dust...I thought it was a good time to delve into another of his works, so I read Light in August.  As with other stories of his, the locale is Faulkner's fictional Jefferson County in Mississippi during the time he wrote in, the 1920s and 30s.  A young woman, Lena Grove, has largely walked here from her home in Alabama...she is looking for the father of the child she is pregnant with, who came here to find work and had promised to marry her: Lucas Burch, who is now going under the name Joe Brown.  He gets a job at the local mill where he meets with two other of the story's main characters, Byron Bunch and  Joe Christmas.  Bunch is upright and wants to do the good thing for Lena, with whom he has become smitten, while Christmas has led a life believing that since...at least in his own mind...he is partially black, then he consequently belongs to neither of the severely racially segregated communities in the South in this era.  Bunch also confides regularly with a disgraced former minister, Gail Hightower, who has his own story to tell as well.  And the story of Joanna Burden, descended from abolitionists who moved into the area following the Civil War and who now lives in reclusion, adds a further tragic dimension to the story.  The language used by the novel's characters reflects that of the sharply segregated and discriminatory Deep South of the Jim Crow era...it's pretty racist, to say the least, so if you're into retroactive political correctness you might want to avoid the many "n" words sprinkled throughout.  Faulkner bluntly lays out the prejudice against blacks of his white characters and their society at large...this story is definitely not a presentation of America living up to its stated ideals.  He also very intensively goes into the life histories of his characters, meticulously analyzing their distinctively individual personalities and the experiences they had which shaped them.  I felt uncomfortable reading Light in August, and for good reason: I had difficulty bonding with any of the characters the way most fiction presents a clear, central protagonist to focus on.  Hightower and Bunch did present a sense of reason, Christmas' childhood past drew some sympathy from me, Lena's predicament with her situation did as well in its own way, and Joanna Burden's story was compelling...but that Lucas Burch had no redeeming qualities that I could see.  The author did such a good job with his characterizations that I'm tempted to look around me and see this or that bit of a character's personality in different people...including myself.  One other thing: Light in August wildly jumps around in time with multitudes of flashbacks...that, combined with no clear central protagonist, might make this a difficult reading choice.  But I still recommend it for being a cultural snapshot of a time in our history as well as a sobering look at people not at their best moments...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #55-51

We're getting close to the final top 50 songs on my list of 500 all-time favorites...each of the below songs are classics to me and, although each one has its unique sound they are all very serious pieces with some pretty rough elements in either their musical presentation, lyrics, or both.  Only two of them I've heard before on the radio, so there's a high probability you're new to most of them...try them out!

55 SUNNY CAME HOME...Shawn Colvin
This was a big radio hit in 1997, as well as the only one by Colvin...should have been more as she is quite a good singer, and if this song is an example a good songwriter as well.  The topic is severe as a woman takes matters into her own hands with fire...not something I would recommend.  So you have this very sweet-sounding, sad song with its haunting mandolin accompaniment and lyrics and before long it gets under your skin as it did with me.  Sunny Came Home won the Grammy Award as the song of the year...

54 NEON BIBLE...Arcade Fire
The title track to Arcade Fire's outstanding 2007 Neon Bible album, it only lasts two minutes...and is a slow-moving song for such a short duration.  The band's lead singer Win Butler reportedly wrote it to mix together some of his thoughts about religion and culture...but it's the kind of song that releases the listener to derive their own meanings from it.  The chorus features Butler's wife Régine Chassagne with a childlike sing-song melody...the lyrics seem to be directed at "every boy and every girl".  The crackling sound of a neon light flickering off and on adds a interesting effect to the song as well.  The Neon Bible album, the band's best in my opinion, contains many excellent tracks...

53 AGAIN...Alice in Chains
For such a rough, menacing song combining grunge, the blues, and heavy metal, Again's lyrics are surprisingly sensitive as the singer laments repeated betrayal by someone he had trusted and befriended.  Released in 1995, I listened to it a lot the following year on Gainesville's Rock 104 radio and later crowned it my "song of the year" for 1996.  Lead vocalist Lane Staley had his share of drug problems, which contributed to his early death a few years later...Staley and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell to me were the great, soulful singers of the grunge era in rock...

52 THE GOOD'S GONE...The Who
I had never heard of this brilliant old song by the old British rock group The Who until I bought, at a steal, their first four vinyl studio albums at Hyde and Zeke Records nearby the University of Florida campus some time in 1994.  From their 1966 album The Who Sing My Generation, The Good's Gone is a relatively lengthy track, driven and relentless, with Roger Daltrey singing his gruff best and the electric guitar dominating...especially the long mid-song instrumental break. Jimmy Page once claimed to had contributed guitar work on some of The Who and Kinks' old recordings...it sounds like him here...

51 FIERY CRASH...Andrew Bird
Not a song ever to played on a plane or at an airport, Fiery Crash, from Andrew Bird's 2007 Armchair Apocrypha album, is nonetheless something you should experience...in a safe, secure place, that is.  Bird is known as a multi-instrumentalist...his trademark "instruments" are the violin and his own whistling virtuosity, both of which he exhibits on this song.  Chances are you've never heard of this talented Chicago-based musician, but he's put out several albums and his music always pushes the frontiers of creativity.  My favorite part of Fiery Crash is the break in the middle when it eerily resembles the Beach Boys' classic hit Help Me Rhonda.  Then again, this song in its entirety is pretty eerie...

Next week: #50-46...

Historic American Space Launch Astronauts Returning This Afternoon

After two months at the International Space Station, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, the first two American astronauts to launch from U.S. territory in nine years, are returning to Earth this afternoon, reentry in the atmosphere to commence at 1:51 and splashdown at 2:48, somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida panhandle coast around Pensacola and Panama City.  They successfully launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral on May 31 and will be in the same Crew Dragon capsule when they return...a joint team from SpaceX corporation and NASA will pick them up from the ocean...the rescue process should take about an hour and then they'll be flown to Houston.  I'm about to watch the TV coverage of it all...I was going to mow the lawn but one of the northern bands of Tropical Storm Isaias, which is creeping up the Florida east coast (and which caused the proposed splashdown site to switch to the Gulf from the Atlantic), just swept through us with rainfall...think I'll just stay indoors and watch the tube.  C-Span is covering it all live although I imagine the other cable news channels will break from their typical news stories to temporarily feature it as well.  I was happy two months ago with the successful launch, but a mission isn't truly a success until the astronauts are back at home, safe and sound...well, I might have to qualify that in this pandemic era...

My July 2020 Running Report

For July I amassed a total of 162 miles run, with my longest single run being 8 miles...I ran on every day of the month.  No races of course, nor naturally any in the foreseeable future due to this awful coronavirus pandemic.  That having been said, I felt pretty good with my running in July and look forward to possibly pushing the upper end of my distances in August when I go out on my weekend long runs around my home neighborhoods.  This coming weekend should be interesting with now-Hurricane Isaias predicted to pass by the eastern coast of Florida...if the rainfall is low I might be able to squeeze in a run.  No, it doesn't look right now as if we'll be staging any running races for the remainder of 2020...the big question now is whether the Five Points of Life Marathon/Half-Marathon race, scheduled here in Gainesville during February next year, will still go on as planned.  If so, I'd like to take a crack at it since they have returned to their traditional course through the heart of the city and the University of Florida.  Guess I'll just have to wait and see.  I did go to my gym once and ran on the treadmill, something I might do more of in the future later on in the evening after work when it isn't quite as busy...assuming it stays open, that is...
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Quote of the Week...from Harry Callahan

A man's got to know his limitations.                  
                                                          ---Harry "Dirty Harry" Callahan, as portrayed by Clint Eastwood.

Not exactly the most likeable character in the history of film...yet adored by millions...the gruff, no-nonsense San Francisco homicide inspector Harry Callahan, played by Clint Eastwood in his "Dirty Harry" series,  has said a few famous one-liners: the above quote, taken from Magnum Force, is my favorite.  It's also the final line spoken in it, in one of the most satisfying closing moments in my moviegoing experience.  Whether you're in the police, athletics, the arts...or just engaging in some work around the home...it's crucial to be aware of what you can and cannot do.  It doesn't mean you are incapable of learning new things, but if you're confronted with a task or challenge you're not up to, then you're better off letting it go or finding someone else to help you with it.  Also, just because somebody's real good in one area or the "alpha dog" leader in a group, formally or informally, that doesn't automatically make them an all-encompassing, wise guru on everything that comes up, and it irritates me to no end whenever a star athlete or entertainer gets full of their own importance and expects me to agree with their opinions outside the scope of their expertise simply on the strength of their fame or popularity: sure, I'll hear what they have to say but their star value means nothing as to their arguments' merits...

In a time when we are being bombarded by messages about how we can do anything with our lives, it's important to recognize that we also are ultimately limited in our choices if what we are seeking is fame and recognition from others.  Better to pick areas that we enjoy and find rewarding for their own sake...and let what comes from others' reactions be their business and not be concerned about it.  Sometimes those goals of fame and fortune can be limiting...how many celebrities, once they get to where they've been struggling for so long and so hard, then turn about-face on it all and try to shut out the world?  Go figure.  And we all know people, going back throughout our years even into childhood, who had special talents and accomplishments (as well as special training and teaching that we weren't provided) that may have caused us to feel diminished about our own lives in comparison.  The solution: don't compare yourself to others like this, and instead rejoice in their success...that's maturity, something a lot of us never get around to attaining, but which is also something that shouldn't be beyond anyone's limitations...

Tropical Storm Isaias Headed Our Way This Weekend

Tropical Storm Isaias (pronounced ee-sa-EE-yas) is headed our way this weekend...if you happen to be living on the Florida peninsula, that is.  Not expected at the current time to strengthen to hurricane intensity, it is speeding along at a fast clip (20 mph), at this writing on Thursday morning about to cross the mountainous region of the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles from the Caribbean Sea and then through the Bahamas.  The projected tracks have its center passing just to the east of Florida and ending up somewhere along the Georgia/Carolinas coastline. Isaias is asymmetrical with the bulk of its stormy areas lying to its east...as it passes on into the open Atlantic this area will be largely unaffected by the Hispaniola crossing.  The models have it passing just east of Miami by Saturday afternoon and then past northern Florida on Sunday, its maximum sustained winds projected by then to be at 70 mph, just beneath hurricane strength.  The ultimate course of Isaias will depend on a trough in the U.S.: how strong it remains and where it goes will steer the tropical storm as it advances.  Not too serious looking right now, but I'd definitely keep my eyes on Isaias if I lived anywhere near its path (which I happen to do), especially along the eastern coastline...just a little shift to the west and more strengthening than expected could affect us in Florida more severely...

Weekly Short Stories: 1961 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reviews of three more science fiction short stories from 1961, as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 23 (1961).  They were all pretty thought-provoking, although I wasn't too keen on the first one below.  But I still think even that one is pretty good reading...I'd welcome your reaction should you decide to tackle it...

DEATH AND THE SENATOR by Arthur C. Clarke
I remember reading this story fifteen years ago while with my son Will, waiting at the Orlando International Airport for the return of Melissa and my daughter Rebecca from her school trip to Washington, DC...after a second run-through I still disagree with the author's conclusions.  A powerful politician has neglected his family over the years in favor of ambition, but now discovers he has a terminal heart condition.  But relief is offered from a source he had campaigned as a senator to cut from funding: an orbiting zero-gravity station shown to be therapeutic and run by the Soviets.  The ending, to which I strongly objected, implied that one's patterns of behavior are so strong in their lives that it would be preferable to just go ahead and die, since it would be fruitless to actually try to change...

THE QUAKER CANNON by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth
In a war implicitly between the West and the Russians (called "yutes") taking place way off into the future, in the 1980s that is, an American officer, who had been earlier captured, subjected to torture and interrogation...and subsequently talked, is given another chance as the personal aide to the general responsible for the upcoming major attack against the enemy.  He is informed of a major ruse in their strategy: like Patton's phony army in World War II, another fake force is being assembled to make the yutes mobilize against them instead of the true invasion group.  How this story ends is pretty brilliant...

THE MOON MOTH by Jack Vance
Vance posits the argument that when a society becomes self-sufficient and comfortable, then it will retreat into an intricate system of rituals and rules, stratifying everyone's role within it while being sharply opposed to anything innovative or different.  As a consular representative of the "federation" to such a world, the protagonist finds himself caught up in a web of "musts" and taboos, having to wear a mask...not any mask, but the exact, appropriate one...while speaking to others in a completely roundabout manner to the accompaniment of any of a number of specifically-applicable native musical instruments.  He is suddenly given an assignment to catch a dangerous assassin who had just landed there...and tries to plow through the entrenched, extremely individualistic social system to stop his foe.  A very satisfactory ending with all the story's pieces falling together nicely. By the way, I'm starting to notice our own masks of today's coronavirus world becoming more stylized to reflect their wearers' sense of identity: watch out...

Next week I conclude my look back at the year 1961 in short science fiction...

COVID-19 Outbreak with Marlins Calls into Question Baseball's Strategy

I'm not sure how this is all going to eventually "play" out, but after reading my computer's newsfeed yesterday morning on which it was revealed that after only three games fourteen Miami Marlins players and staff had tested positive for COVID-19...later revised to thirteen...it looks as if Major League Baseball is in for a rough couple of weeks ahead as games are being postponed and the league's non-bubble strategy of playing at home ball parks...with players and staff able to be with their families...is being placed under increasing scrutiny.  By contrast, Major League Soccer has played according to the isolated bubble format...no problems at all so far with any coronavirus contamination, and they've already played their three-match group stage and are now in the midst of the sixteen-team knockout round.  The soccer format not only isolates the players and staff but also limits the total amount of games, with the number of participants set to halve with each proceeding round.  Likewise, with the National Basketball Association pursuing a similar bubble strategy as they try to close out the 2019-20 season and resume play in a couple of days, they should be better prepared than baseball to avoid mass infections.  But the upcoming National Football League and college seasons are now clearly in jeopardy...not so much because of the in-game contact between players but rather because of the players' greater exposure to the outside world between games.  It's not working for baseball, which plans to play a sixty-game regular season...should be interesting to see where they go from here and if the threat can still be reasonably contained to continue on with play: I still remember the NBA season being abruptly stopped after just ONE player tested positive...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #60-56

The five songs on this segment of my list of 500 all-time favorite songs are all pretty old, the most recent one from 28 years ago.  Four of them you probably have heard before, the other being the first one listed below.  After thinking about each of them, it occurred to me that they're all pretty introspective, thoughtful pieces with memorable melodies and compelling instrumental arrangements: I think you'll like them, too...

60 LAZY DAY...the Moody Blues
One of my all-time favorite album sides...when they used to exist before the advent of the compact disc...is Side Two of the Moody Blues' 1969 On the Threshold of a Dream.  Lazy Day is the second track, but all the songs are wonderful...and they smoothly transition one into the next.  There is something very "English" about this song, and something subtly sinister about it as well, although the lyrics seem perfectly innocent describing life in a small town.  It was one of the many great compositions and performances I love by bandmember Ray Thomas...he's got a couple of higher-ranked songs on this list of mine...

59 NOT ENOUGH TIME...INXS
Not Enough Time, from 1992, to me was the final great song from the wildly talented and creative Australian band INXS.  It is one of their slower pieces, with the lyrics very romantic and passionate and the music dreamy.  I thought INXS would be around for a long time, but their popularity and music began to decline as the 1990s wore on, and then the tragic death of singer Michael Hutchence was devastating.  But I still have their backlog of great works to listen to...

58 LONELY PEOPLE...America
This is a real inspirational, uplifting song designed to help anyone listening who is suffering from discouragement and despondency.  It came out in early 1975, during a time in which I was having a lot of conflicting thoughts about society and my future place in it.  Great lyrics..."This is for all the lonely people thinking that life has passed them by, don't give up until you drink from the silver cup and ride that highway in the sky".  During their popularity in the seventies I had something of a love-hate relationship with this band: most of their stuff I could do without but then they'd come up with a song like this treasure...

57 BLACKBIRD...the Beatles
Originally I didn't even know the Beatles had written and originally recorded Blackbird...my first exposure to this song was through a cover version from a Latin band with a female lead singer...I think it was Bossa Rio.  But Paul McCartney's recording is easily superior and I've always considered it to be one of the best songs from their 1968 self-titled "White Album".  It's a great acoustic guitar piece...with a lot of little chirpy bird sounds: I'll have to compile a list someday of songs with birds and other animals in the background...

56 CHANGES...David Bowie
Changes was initially a popular singles hit in the U.S. in 1971...in South Florida where I was a 15-year old at the time, though, only WSRF/1580 in Fort Lauderdale would play it.  Fast forward four years to March of '75...now WQAM/560 for some reason had it in their regular rotation and I associate it with that time as well, including a 14.5 mile run I did one afternoon while humming this song to myself.  But regardless when it was popular or what I associate it with, Changes stands well on its own and contains some good, poetic wisdom about life and the passage from one generation to the next...

Next week: #55-51...

2020 Drags On With All Its Problems, As a Patriot Passes On

Late this morning I watched on TV as the horse-drawn caisson carrying John Lewis' flag-wrapped casket crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama for his last crossing at the place where in March, 1965, he suffered a fractured skull at the hands of state troopers attacking the peaceful demonstration march for civil rights as they were making their way to Montgomery, the state capital.  Only this past March, Lewis, a longtime U.S. representative for Atlanta, had walked over the bridge with several congressional colleagues...he seemed strong and fit although he knew then he was suffering from pancreatic cancer.  That was less than five months ago...wow, it seems like this year time has come to almost a grinding halt.  I remember "long, long ago" on February 16 stepping off our Caribbean cruise ship with Melissa at Port Everglades, with the coronavirus a concern for the U.S. west coast...who would have guessed how it would explode in scope, first in Europe and then New York and the rest of the country, during the ensuing weeks.  And the murder of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, preceded a few days by the killing of Ahmaud Armery in Brunswick while out jogging, and followed by weeks of nationwide protests that have yet to subside, seems to have happened so very long ago.  I liked John Lewis and am saddened at his passing...he was a brave, principled man and a patriot in the highest sense of the word.  But those protest marches he undertook with others like Martin Luther King, Jr. during those bygone years were deliberately and steadfastly peaceful...the violence which happened was perpetrated on them, not by them.  Sadly, I'm now seeing what generally started out as a peaceful, legitimate protest movement against police abuse degenerating into street violence, vandalism of public and private property, and an Orwellian type of attitude pushed about political correctness...not a good direction to go.  Unfortunately, I also see no light at the end of the tunnel for any of this...I guess I should at least be happy that live pro sports is finally coming back (at least for the time being)...

Fauci, Nicknames, and Washington

I was at work Thursday evening when, just before the 2020 Major League Baseball televised debut game between the New York Yankees and the Nationals in Washington, DC, pandemic guru Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the ceremonial first pitch.  I did hear the funny reactions on sports talk radio, prompting me to later check it out.  The good doctor strode up confidently to the mound...and then proceeded to hurl a zinger about 10-15 feet to the left of the waiting catcher.  Not as bad as the radio jocks sounded...I was impressed that Fauci could even throw that far, to be perfectly honest.  Once I had a much worse throw...I was standing nearby a softball game one afternoon while in the sixth grade at Nova Elementary and a stray ball came rolling my way. I scooped it up and then helpfully heaved it back with all my might...only the ball didn't go back, but rather at a 90 degree angle to the left, straight at the school building: it was a very embarrassing run for me to retrieve it, sigh...

Speaking of Washington and sports, the report is out now that the city's National Football League franchise, after finally dumping its moniker "Redskins" following years of harsh criticism, will be moving forward this season as "The Washington Football Team".  And why not, since in soccer you already have teams like "Los Angeles Football Club" and "New York City Football Club".  Personally, I searched myself to come up with appropriate nickname replacements, producing results like "Big Fat Buildings", "Mall", "Museums", "Metro", "Bureaucrats", "Tourists", "Lobbyists"...you see, I visited there a couple of years ago.  But after giving it all due thought, my final suggestion has to be the Washington Jelly Beans, in honor of our late former president Ronald Reagan's penchant for the candy...that should help to soothe all the conservatives miffed at the dumping of "Redskins".  And besides, everybody likes jelly beans, right?  Okay I get it, never gonna happen...

Quote of the Week...from Isaac Asimov

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.                                                        ---Isaac Asimov

I'm not sure when Isaac Asimov penned the above quote, but I do know that he died in 1992...28 years ago.  And yet today, with science denial running rampant in our society on a number of fronts, it couldn't ring truer.  We have so much information now at our nearly instant disposal, and it's portable: you can carry and access it on your smartphone anywhere you go...yet I don't think that people are any more knowledgeable about the issues that affect them and our country this election season than they were when there was no such thing as the Internet.  With this very recent innovation connecting the world over, are people kinder and more gracious and empathetic toward one another than before?  Doesn't seem so to me, looks like many of us are stubbornly digging ourselves deeply in our preconceived mindsets and closing up to anything that might challenge them...no, our "wisdom" is definitely not keeping up with the science.  I wonder what Asimov, were he alive today (he'd be 100), would think about the nonsense going on around us and the way people rationalize their own behavior in the face of facts to the contrary.  I'm guessing that he wouldn't be surprised, not one little bit...

Sports Talk Radio and Television Continue to Ignore Actual Sports

It's been fun the last few days to once again being able to watch live, American major league sports games that matter...I'm referring, of course to Major League Soccer and its group stage of matches in this improvised 2020 pandemic season.  Of course, were you listening to sports talk radio or TV you may not even be aware of the fact of soccer's resumption since they tend to obsess about football and basketball...with just a pinch of baseball thrown in.  And the media sports blabbers aren't really into these sports per se, but rather analyzing with an often overbearing attitude of political correctness what various players, owners and members of management are Tweeting or saying and focusing on their respective conflicts and offenses.  The complete repudiation of professional soccer as a topic of discussion is most likely based on the various announcers' ignorance and lack of interest in it, but you would think that a network like ESPN, which is actually broadcasting MLS matches live, would encourage its own people to bring it up on theirs shows...if only briefly.  Today Major League Baseball will open its own curtailed season and I still expect, in the midst of it all, my local sports radio talk stations to continue their obsession with besieged National Football League Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, as if this were the only "sports" topic worth discussing besides what messages different players will be "sporting" on their jerseys.  In a few days basketball and hockey will resume as well...forget about the latter ever getting any sort of mention.  At least they're actually going to be showing the soccer, hockey and baseball, regardless of the amount of attention they will be receiving from the so-called sports talk "professionals" who are supposed to be knowledgeable about them and who, one might think, would have a vested interest in promoting public enthusiasm about these sports...

Weekly Short Stories: 1961 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are my review of the next four tales appearing in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 23 (1961). One's a mystery, one's a satire, one's a "short-short", and one's a love story of sorts: nice mix...

HIDING PLACE by Poul Anderson
In interstellar space, a spaceship owned and staffed by an eccentric wealthy entrepreneur is racing to avoid being nabbed by brutal space pirates.  They hone in on an alien ship and occupy it, only to find that all the life forms...including the intelligent beings who run that ship...are in cages as it seems to be a zoo of sorts.  The human occupiers desperately need those beings' cooperation to be able to run this ship and escape the pursuing pirates, but how can they distinguish them from the other life forms they are hiding among?  It's a mystery worthy of a Sherlock Holmes tale, and Anderson adds color to the story with the characters' salty language and behavior...nothing like mixing metaphors...

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE? by Isaac Asimov
The story behind this humor piece is that back in '61 Playboy ran an article deriding modern science fiction as being a lot of campy, lurid tales unworthy of readership.  Asimov turned the tables on the popular men's magazine with a story involving aliens abducting to their spaceship an unrelated couple standing in the New York subway, trying to coax them into mating...only the aliens are really clueless as to what actually constitutes mating among animals from Earth.  Surprisingly, I thought the story was funny, too...

A PRIZE FOR EDIE by J.F. Bone
This was a very short story about someone named "C. Edie" being awarded the Noble Prize after being credited as the responsible party for discovering the cure for cancer.  But who is C. Edie...the answer made me groan with dismay, but then I realized that this story came out before all those subsequent others from shows like Twilight Zone, Star Trek and The Prisoner with episodes treating the same subject.  Nowadays you read A Prize for Edie and say to yourself "So what?"...

THE SHIP WHO SANG by Anne McCaffrey
This provocative story is a forum on how to treat the severely disabled from birth and offers a science fiction solution: from infancy have them adapted to pilot and run spaceships...from the inside, with their neural networks tied into the ships' systems.  Helva was one such child, now grown...deformed beyond any ability to function independently and now only with memories of her altered, destined role.  She selects her partner for their ship: a young man who shares her love of music...and the adventures ensue.  The dilemma here is that humans like Helva are altered and adapted long before they are of an age to consent or dissent, but waiting that long in her life would be impossible. In today's world of robotics and advanced prosthetics, I wonder whether anyone could have written this story.  McCaffrey would expand it into a full novel with the same title, published in 1969...

Next week I continue with this anthology of selected science fiction short stories from 1961...

Managed to See Comet NEOWISE Sunday Evening

Sunday at twilight I dragged a folding chair across my backyard, bringing with me a cup of coffee, and then sat there as the blueness gradually receded and the darkness began to reveal one star after another.  My purpose in this venture was to catch a glimpse of Comet NEOWISE, only discovered less than four months ago, and which is visible to the naked eye...if you're at the correct latitude, that is, and clouds aren't obscuring the sky.  Sunday it was wonderfully clear and I first noticed the star Arcturus high in the sky, followed by Vega in the east, the north star Polaris, and the stars of the Big Dipper, a popular asterism within the constellation Ursa Major...in which Comet NEOWISE was to be located on its western side.  As the sky darkened and more stars became visible, I was frustrated at not being able to make out the comet.  Melissa then came outside and joined me in looking for it...she found it first and eventually so did I, around 9:30 pm.  The Big Dipper was turned on its side in the northwestern sky with the pan in the bottom and the handle on top.  I went down from the Dipper about halfway to the horizon, and a little to the left...and there it was, a faint smudge in the sky trailing off to the upper right: I could see it better if I looked a little to the side, not directly at it.  Okay, good, I saw it in person...and frankly, noting how the summer skies here in northern Florida tend to get overcast lately in early evening and that I'm going to be indoors at work this time of the day until next Saturday, this may have been my final opportunity to view it...glad I did.  I first heard of this comet on a Tweet by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, whom I follow, and then kept up with it through some posts by Julie, a Facebook friend.  A few days ago it was in the constellation Auriga, then drifted eastward to Lynx and is now in that far western section of Ursa Major: its position among the starry background changes due to the comet's own motion as well as the Earth's revolution around the Sun.   By the way, the reason the name is in all capital letters is that the discovery came about under a project (NEOWISE) using the space telescope WISE, which stands for Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer...at least that's what Wikipedia said...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #65-61

Here are my reactions to the next five songs on my 500 all-time favorites list.  You probably know two of them very well and never heard of the other three...why not give them all a listen, you never know: one or two of them might eventually find their way onto your own "list"...

65 STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN by Led Zeppelin
Stairway to Heaven, which was released in November, 1971 along with the rest of the band's untitled fourth album, was being heavily played on my favorite Miami rock station in October, 1973 when I underwent my only open surgery to date at age 17...a hernia correction.  I remember a lot about that Hollywood Memorial Hospital experience: maybe too much, and it did little to improve my opinion of human nature...I think I might write about that some other time.  But I was able to listen to the radio during my stay and loved hearing this fantastic song.  My favorite part, aside from the instrumental acoustic guitar/flute opening fanfare, is singer Robert Plant's line "There's a feeling I get when I turn to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving"...

64 RED BARCHETTA by Rush
Back in 1993 we in Gainesville were blessed with a great alternative rock station on 97.7...late Saturday nights they had a show called "Saturday Night Six-Pack" on which they'd play six complete CDs one-by-one, on into the early morning hours.  This is how I was introduced to the Canadian band Rush's 1981 masterpiece Moving Pictures, on which Red Barchetta is the second track.  Great guitar riffs by Alex Lifeson accompany drummer Neil Peart's compelling lyrics...sung by Geddy Lee...about his youth experience driving his uncle's antique Italian sports car in the countryside at breathtaking speed. Peart, both a terrific drummer and songwriter, sadly passed away this past January, I'll miss him...

63 UNDER PRESSURE by Queen with David Bowie
Also sadly, neither David Bowie nor Queen front man Freddie Mercury are with us any longer, but this collaboration from 1981 was special...the video contained classic silent screen film clips.  And the background bass beat was shamelessly exploited by dubious rapper Vanilla Ice, which more than anything probably made the original more popular.  Under Pressure's lyrics are great...such as "Turned away from it all like a blind man, sat on a fence but it don't work, keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn".  Yeah, that pretty much expressed how I felt about it all.  This was a song that I ignored when it first came out but which grew on me over the decades...

62 IN LIMBO by Radiohead
One of the most mind-blowing pieces produced by a band already widely acknowledged for its creativity and innovation in the studio, In Limbo is from Radiohead's terrific 2000 album Kid A...with another track from it ranked even higher up on my list of all-time favorites.  It's a drifting, very dreamy and sometimes jazzy mood piece that bears little comparison to anything else I've heard.  And the lyrics are a haunting jump down the rabbit hole: "I'm on your side, nowhere to hide, trap doors that open...I spiral down".  Beats anything I ever heard from the sixties' psychedelic era.  Sometimes In Limbo is played together with its preceding track, Optimistic, another great song...

61 TREAT by Kasabian
The British alternative rock group Kasabian's 2015 album 48:13...named after its duration...was generally a disappointment to me, especially in comparison to their first four albums.  But one track, the 8-minute Treat, stood out and would became my 2015 "song of the year".  I still like it a lot...it has that old Beatles kick to it with a little Led Zeppelin/Jimmy Page kind of guitar riff thrown in for good measure.  And on top of that, it sounds pretty danceable...if you're into that type of thing, which I'm not. Unfortunately, I recently discovered that the band just fired their lead singer Tom Meighan, who got into hot water over a domestic assault against his fiancée.  I felt a bit betrayed by Meighan upon hearing that because I'd become a big fan of his singing and the band as a whole.  But Treat is still great...

Next week: #60-56...

Just Finished Reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Marcus Zusak's 2005 novel The Book Thief is one title I found myself repeatedly coming across as I recently surveyed the Internet for recommended fictional books...so I naturally checked it out from my library and read it.  It's set during the Hitler era during the late 1930s and early 1940s as Liesel
Meminger is a little girl who grows up in the midst of all the turmoil, persecution and tragedy under that heinous regime.  Death himself narrates the story and does a pretty good job...here he doesn't cause death but always promptly arrives to gently gather up the souls of the newly deceased, reminding me somewhat of how J.K. Rowling portrayed him in the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which came out in '07.  Liesel's father, a communist, has disappeared, presumably snatched and killed by the Nazis, while her mother plans to take her to friends to foster-care her and her little brother as she expects to soon be arrested as well...but little brother dies on the train and little Liesel is left alone, presented to Hans and Rosa Hubermann in a modest home in a Munich suburb.  Her new "parents" are loving, each in their own way, and Liesel gradually adapts to life in her new home.  Starting with that ill-fated train ride, she has begun to snatch books...usually at random...from various sources even though at the start she is unable to read.  But Hans, and later others, will teach her and she becomes quite a reader.  I'm a little hesitant about going any further in describing the plot and characters because I'd like you to read The Book Thief for yourself and provide some feedback on it.  It's a very sobering look at how Jews were persecuted and killed under Hitler's brief (but still much too long) reign, as well as how the German people in different ways responded to the pressures and sacrifices placed upon them.  I became quite attached to the various characters...Zusak was excellent in developing them, making the book seem very real.  I'm not surprised by this novel's popularity...oh, it was made into a movie in 2013, although I'm not sure I want to see it: sometimes the visual images from the big screen displace what my own imagination conjured up while reading a story, and that's a loss...

On the Day of John Lewis' Passing, Georgia Governor and Mayors Need to Negotiate

On this day in which the great civil rights advocate and long-time Atlanta congressman John Lewis died after a seven-month struggle against pancreatic cancer, his home state of Georgia...where I was born...is in the thick of a legal and political struggle concerning how the COVID-19 pandemic is handled there.  The governor, Brian Kemp, has proclaimed a statewide mandate that opens businesses and encourages (but doesn't require) masks in public settings...the recent sharp resurgence in cases has caused several local mayors to enact public face covering mandates in violation of Kemp's rule.  And now he is suing the mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, to rescind that locality's law.  The Georgia governor has been thoroughly trashed in the media for this policy of his in the middle of a public health emergency, but I think he has a point that most media pundits have conveniently chosen to overlook.  You see, these cities that are mandating masks are also considering shutting down their businesses again, like what happened earlier this spring across the country.  Kemp is making it clear in his speeches that he is determined to keep Georgia's economy running and feels that the mayors choosing to defy his policy about masks will...if not checked...then proceed to once again close their city's businesses.  This is what totally frustrates me about this political wrangling: many people at-large automatically associate mask wearing with economic shutdown while in actual policy the former, if universally practiced, will enable businesses to flourish at close to maximal capacity.  Governor Kemp wants Georgians to wear masks but he does not want his state to go into an economic depression with mass-ordered shutdowns...it seems that there should be room for negotiation here: grant the mayors and counties the right to impose and enforce mask mandates while they agree that they will not close down businesses.  Georgia businesses staying open and everybody wearing masks isn't going to make a lot of people happy but it's the obvious solution to this standoff...

Quote of the Week...from Pelé

Success is no accident.  It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.                       ---Pelé

Pelé, from Brazil, is one of the greatest...and most beloved...soccer players in history.  His above quote not only accurately describes his own approach to the game he excelled in, but goes beyond it to apply to me in any challenging area of my life for which I want to achieve success.  The truth is that it's easy to get excited and motivated when starting new projects, and equally easy to coast on successful outcomes.  But when the going is rough, when I am discouraged, anxious or distracted and cannot enjoy or even envision my direction and progress properly, this is precisely when it is important to work, persevere, and sacrifice...to get through those hard times and back on the positive side.  Most people give up in those dark times, but the ones who ultimately succeed and become skillful and accomplished in their chosen areas are the ones who are always working to take things to a higher level, with an ultimate prize envisioned ahead of them.  Above everything, though, as the great Pelé concluded, it is crucial to love what I'm doing or learning to do...beyond what society may say about my current level of competency.  I think a lot of people are hesitant to try anything new for fear of failing before others...it's important that one's interest in an area surmounts that resistance.  As the Desiderata stated, "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself".  It's always been my experience, no matter what I do and how hard I work at it, that somebody will inevitably come along who exceeds my skill and accomplishment, often taking great pains to inform me of this.  So you gotta love what you're doing for its own sake and don't get hung up by the noise coming from others...