Weekly Short Stories: 1978 Science Fiction, Part 1

This week I begin looking at science fiction short stories from 1978, as presented in the following year's anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1979 Annual World's Best SF.  I spent almost all of '78 at the University of Florida and, probably more than any other time, formulated much of the philosophy of life and worldview that I have held up to today.  Besides drinking a copious volume of coffee then, I also walked an incredible number of miles, especially at night...which partially explains why my "song of the year" was The Sweet's Love is Like Oxygen, with the line, "I walk the streets at night, to be hidden by the city light".  But back to this article's topic: here are my reactions to the book's first two stories...  

COME TO THE PARTY by Frank Herbert and F.M. Busby

The folly of humanity with its supposed highly advanced technology and insights into what's best for life forms it is far from comprehending gets the spotlight in this often funny story set on a distant planet, dominated by one species (the Alexii) which preys upon another (the Delfans with their four sexes and peculiar mating ritual).  Treating the former as savage beasts that must be stockaded to protect what they perceive as the more civilized and intelligent Delfans, the humans leave a system in place that they think will control the Alexii while keeping the Delfan population steady, governed by a single robot they leave behind.  But all goes askew, with much greater consequences than anticipated.  I liked how the story mushroomed at the end... 

CREATOR by David Lake

This is another one of those banal stories that reframe religion as something imposed on humanity by external alien beings and technology...ho-hum.  On a planet named Olympus, a citizen named Jay Crystal has just had his new creation machine...called a creatron...installed and he's gung-ho about creating his own personal universe on it.  Advised by his friend Sam Harriman, Jay realizes that the only species that survive to develop and evolve intelligence and civilization are the cruelest and most violent...he makes sure that the special humanoids he's most interested in have plenty of that.  Our ancient history gets progressively referenced as Jay observes it...and then he decides to press a forbidden button on his machine that allows himself to fully participate in it as one of them.  Look closely at his name and see what I mean about this story being banal...

Next week: more sci-fi short stories reviews from the year 1978...

Game of the Week: Split (Not the Card Game)

When I was 9 years old in the fourth grade back in the first year's existence of Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in Davie, Florida, the kids in my class were adept at creating different games...usually played by either the boys or girls, but not both.  There was a lot of complex patty-cake hand-clapping gaming among the girls back then while the boys came up with their own diversions...one of these was the peculiar-looking game of Split.  Split was always played outside on the ground (not asphalt or pavement) for obvious reasons: it involved throwing a pencil (or pen or any sharpened stick) down so that it would stick in the dirt.  The two players stand facing each other, initially their legs straight down, and then take turns throwing the pencil into the ground to the left or right of their opponent's feet.  Then the opponent has to stretch out  his nearest foot to touch the embedded pencil, pick it up, and likewise throw it into the ground on his adversary's side.  After a few throws, the game's title becomes apparent as both players are struggling to maintain their balance with their feet increasingly split more and more apart...one player wins when the other either can no longer stand straight or if his throw bounces off the ground instead of sticking in it.  At one time that year (~1965-66) the schoolyard before classes, after them, and during recess would be full of paired-off boys playing this interesting game.  The funny thing is that after that period, I never saw anyone play Split again, and after doing a search on the Internet have failed to remotely find any reference to it, only to a card game with the same name.  Maybe it more commonly goes by a different name.  Have you ever heard of anything like this?

About Old Elementary School Classroom Pictures

I like to look at old class pictures, and they don't necessarily have to include me in them.  This is especially true with elementary school, in particular the 4th through 6th grade pictures taken at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in Davie, Florida.  For my 1st through 3rd grade years I attended Boulevard Heights Elementary in West Hollywood...just a couple of blocks from my home.  In those years the kids in a particular grade were divided into a few separate classrooms with teachers...and they stayed in those classrooms the whole school year, apart from students in other classrooms in their same year.  When I got to Nova Elementary in 1965, it was a completely different situation. There the 4th graders were assigned to Suite C, comprising five "home stations" (classrooms) and the 6th graders were in Suite B, split among six home stations.  The 5th graders were rather arbitrarily divided between Suites B and C.  Now the home station was where I would meet with the other assigned classmates at the start of the school day and its end, but in between the students of the entire suite would mix in various classes, so I ended up getting to know quite a lot of them within a relatively short time.  But our yearly class picture was always of those kids in the same home station.  Since my parents were responsible for deciding, year-to-year, whether to purchase classroom pictures, I was fortunate to get my 4th grade picture from home station #7 with Miss Kidder as the teacher, but for the 5th and 6th grades, which I spent at home station #18 in Suite D (renamed from Suite B) with Mrs. Williams as the presiding teacher, we didn't buy the class pictures...I believe that in one or both of these years I was out sick when they were taken.  But since the kids in a particular suite pretty much got to know one another over the course of a school year, any of the other home stations' class pictures were fun to examine...as I have recently on a Facebook Nova alumni group page.  Marjorie, with whom I went to Nova from the 4th through 12th grades, put up her 4th grade class photo (Mrs. Jenkins, Station #9), 5th grade (Mr. Boyle, Station #13), and 6th grade (Ms. Bryant (I don't remember her), Station #16).  And Alan, another classmate with whom I attended through those same years, posted his class's picture from the 6th grade (Mr. Niedermeyer, Station #17).  And although he attended the "second" Nova Elementary School and not the "original" one I was at, I appreciated someone else's classroom photo as well since it included many kids who later attended Nova Junior and Senior High with me.  A few years ago I posted on this blog my old 4th grade picture...I'm seated in the back/left next to my friend Eddie Simmons: click HERE for a link to it.  One thing about these classroom pictures that bugs me, though, is that if you don't remember the name of a particular student then since they're not identified there's no way of knowing who they are...there were several of these in Marjorie and Alan's pictures. What's really frustrating is when I distinctly remember them by their faces but still can't name them.  Ah, nothing like a mystery demanding to be solved... 

Great Old TV Episodes...from the Andy Griffith Show

 

DOGS, DOGS, DOGS, from the comedy classic Andy Griffith Show, was first broadcast during its third season in April, 1963. A slew of friendly dogs of all shapes and sizes has descended on the Mayberry courthouse, and Andy and Barney have to figure out what to do with them before the man from Raleigh arrives to assess their request for extra funding.  While Andy is out, Barney has an idea and takes the dogs miles away to an open field, releases them and drives back, smug in his own ingenuity.  But as a severe thunderstorm approaches and Andy and Barney are sitting there in the courthouse...along with Andy's very concerned little boy Opie...Barney goes off on a guilty soliloquy about how dogs are naturally built for withstanding heavy rain and lightning while looking out for each other, unlike giraffes, "But dogs are short and they take care of their own...giraffes don't, no, giraffes don't at all. Boy, giraffes are selfish! They just run around looking after Number One, getting hit by lightning...but dogs..."  Don't worry: everybody, including the dogs, ends up safe and sound with a typically happy ending.  But Barney's few seconds of rationalizing has to stand as one of the high, sidesplitting moments of the entire series...it's a shame that Don Knotts, who played him, decided to leave the series a couple of years later...

Still More Jigsaw Puzzles

 

I've gone through three more jigsaw puzzles recently...all of them were fun and interesting.  I have become more selective about the brand of puzzle I will work on: the pieces need to be cut into shapes that don't invite mistaken pieces put together when they are both the same color and without a pattern...all of the above puzzles fit the bill perfectly.  The bottom one, showing a beach scene from inside a cottage, was a 1000-piece puzzle that challenged me space-wise: I had just enough room on the tabletop to fit the completed puzzle, but I had to set different groups of similar pieces aside in bowls while I worked on the rest...just so that I could fit enough of it on the table.  But this new system may well open the way for me to do perhaps 2000-piece puzzles as well...all I have to do is ensure that the specified dimensions of the final completed picture fit the tabletop while I pre-separate most of the pieces by color and/or pattern, working on one bowl at a time...

Quote of the Week...from Dr. Seuss

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient of living.

                                                                                                      ---Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-91), was responsible for much happiness in my childhood of the early 1960s...I regularly checked out his funny books from my elementary school library and wasn't the only one who thought his stuff was the best: my favorite Seuss book was easily The Cat in the Hat, which I was happy to relive through the excellent Cat in the Hat ride a few years ago at Universal Islands of Adventure/Orlando. And regarding television adaptations, is there anything better than the animated half-hour version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas? Well, if the good doctor is right with his above quote, then I must have very attentive, alert brain cells.  For it seems I've spent a great portion of my life bent toward nonsense and fantasy...much of it through Walter Mitty-like daydreaming.  And I have always felt a special bond with fantasy fiction, both the kind that emphasizes kids with special magical talents and that focused on medieval-like societies with archetypical hero types and epic conflicts. But having made my own case of plunging into the world of make-believe, I feel the need to establish one crucial caveat: I always KNEW it was make-believe, never succumbing to any potential temptation to believe that any of it was real.  And that's what I'm seeing others doing with preposterous conspiracy theories and a fantasized reframing of reality pitting the all-good guys against the all-bad guys as if it is all an apocalyptic war between followers of Sauron and Gandalf.  Hey, I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but when the day is done it's just a dumb-ass conspiracy theory and I'd be a dumb-ass to believe it...

Just Finished Reading Lev Grossman's The Magicians Series (for 3rd Time)

Earlier this century Gainesville was fortunate to have a great bookstore: Borders, on Newberry Road just west of the Oaks Mall...sadly it closed although DSW, a large shoe store which replaced it, is pretty good in its own right...but I digress.  One day I was browsing the store and came across a slick-looking paperback novel, The Magicians by Lev Grossman.  At the time J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series was nearing the end of its fantastic run and I was into this genre of fantasy literature.  I read that first book of three in the series and became an instant fan. The protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, is a young man just graduated from high school and applying to different colleges.  Socially inept and awkward, he is an academic genius and is looking forward to the more competitive world of college.  Quentin is also prone to fantasy and daydreaming, and has never gotten over his childhood fantasy series Fillory, still going back to the old books to reread.  Julia, whom Quentin has futilely adored for years, accompanies him with her boyfriend Steve for a college interview. When they discover the interviewer is dead the journey for Quentin through the rabbit hole of magic begins...as it also does for Julia in her own way. The novel...and ultimately the series...deals with the lives and struggles of Quentin and Julia, the former within the "official" academic setting of Brakebills Academy for training as a magician and the latter on the craft's outskirts, going from one secret place to another where skills are developed and contacts made.  Along with this are the other people in their lives as well as the magical land of Fillory, which turns out to be very real, no fantasy at all.  I've looked back on the series...now having just finished reading it for a third time...and have concluded that not only were the story line and characters well developed and compelling, but I dug Grossman's general writing style as well.  There is a lot of humor in this trilogy, and much of what happens to the characters is reflected in their personal growth over time.  I contrast this with what I've seen in the first two episodes of the SyFy Channel's television adaptation of The Magicians: wildly divergent story lines and characters' personalities, and with virtually no humor at all to be seen anywhere...very disappointing!  On TV, the bigshots all seem to think of Quentin as "The One" like Harry Potter or Neo in The Matrix, around whom the success or failure of everything rides...the books were nothing like this.  Also, I got tired in a hurry of Quentin being portrayed as mentally ill instead of simply being very unhappy with his life and the world. Apparently, though, a lot of viewers have taken to the television series, but I suspect few of them have ever bothered to pick up the books.  If they had, I believe their conclusions about it all might be vastly different...

Weekly Short Stories: 1977 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I finish examining some of the best science fiction short stories from 1977, as presented in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1978 Annual World's Best SF, providing his choices from the previous year.  Enrolling in the University of Florida that fall was a major culture shock to me and a letdown as the teaching level there was far behind the more engaging level I received in community college...you might have thought the reverse would be true.  Still, I have fond memories of this time...especially of the Reitz Student Union, Library East and old Weil Hall (across from the football stadium), site of the then-much more primitive, massive computers with their punched cards and miles upon miles of printed paper readouts with frustrating error messages: that's what taking computer classes back then was all about.  And now I will reflect on the final three stories in Wollheim's book...

EYES OF AMBER by Joan D. Vinge

On Saturn's moon Titan, although the atmosphere is totally poisonous for Earth-based life, probes have discovered that this world with a completely different chemistry hosts its own life, including intelligent beings...but how does one communicate with them?  A linguistics expert uses a landed probe to establish contact with a woman assassin there as she regards the new presence as her "demon" with its many "eyes of amber".  Meanwhile on Earth, the man in charge of the mission wants to make it all a public spectacle in order to attract interest (and more funding), much to the linguist's chagrin.  It kind of reminded me how the moon missions of the early 1970s were hyped and designed in order to jimmy up flagging public interest...

CHILD OF THE SUN by James E. Gunn

Johnson is a time traveler from a disaster-ridden future he wants to change, but he loses his memory at the beginning of each mission and relies on a tape recording that he had earlier made for himself.  In this story, he must find the kidnapped daughter of a solar energy research administrator...the girl is destined to grow up to revolutionize science in a positive way, but first she must be rescued.  This kind of circular time travel tale reminded me of two things: the television series Quantum Leap that pursued a similar theme, and Robert Heinlein's great old stories about this topic that have a circular, repeating aspect to them...

BROTHER by Clifford Simak

Edward Lambert, an elderly man living isolated in the rural northeast, is a naturalist and author.  He often thinks of his identical twin brother Phil, who in his youth left the family farm to join the many seeking adventure in space travel.  Over the years Phil would briefly return and then go back to his chosen profession.  After many years of not seeing his brother, a professor visits Edward and tells him that there is no record of him ever having a brother.  So what gives?  The resolution of the apparent contradiction at the story's end was unexpected, and also reminded me of another: Stephen King's novel The Dark Half.  Simak may well be my favorite science fiction author, and I have read him from childhood...

Next week I begin my look at science fiction short stories from 1978...

Game of the Week: Bowling

I am hardly an avid bowler...probably has something to do with the fact that I'm not very good at it.  The first time I went to a bowling alley was back in 1968, with my seventh-grade physical education class.  Although I received little instruction on how to play the game, I did learn the arcane method of scoring in bowling.  My first game had me bowl a 33...I believe before those school outings ended I got my score up into the upper 70s.  As an adult I've bowled on a number of occasions around Gainesville and Leesburg, the latter with its shorted-out neon sign "LEESBURG OWL" being the site of my personal high game: 177, back around thirty years ago.  Since 2017 when I suffered some nerve damage interfering with the bending of my right thumb, I haven't tried the sport...who knows, maybe my impediment wouldn't affect my game.  Easily the most annoying thing about bowling is the requirement to rent out old shoes that others have worn...and worn...and worn.  This must be the only situation in life where you actually shell out money in order to put on strange, smelly used shoes.  Regarding the actual aiming and release of the ball, I know that the better bowlers put a good spin on it and make it follow a curved path, hitting the head pin at an angle and causing a cascade of falling pins that often leads to strikes...but I've only been slightly successful with my own efforts.  Instead, although I do spin the bowl a little my focus is aiming it at the pins...with predictably mixed results.  Oh well, although I have seen others bowl by themselves, for me it's a social activity that I have shared with classmates, friends, and family... and that has made it worthwhile, crappy shoes and all...

Nearby Starbucks (Again) Reopens Indoor Seating

This past Thursday I went to my favorite Starbucks in northern Gainesville, only to discover that they had reopened the indoor seating...awesome.  I went up to the counter, picked up my decaf iced caffè americano that I had ordered online...and then proceeded outdoors to sit.  Although I've had both Covid Pfizer vaccines earlier in the year and my booster shot a week ago (along with my annual flu vaccine), I'm still a little uncomfortable in cramped public spaces... but I think it'll get better in time.  I'm still confounded by the widespread refusal of millions to get vaccinated and greatly dismayed by supposed role models Kyrie Irving and Eric Clapton for steadfastly opposing it in a public way...I'm not surprised that Ted Nugent is also on the wrong side of the issue. It looks like, though, that the coronavirus's Delta variant has run most of its course through the unvaccinated "community", killing and debilitating so, so many: what a tragic, COMPLETELY AVOIDABLE waste! Well, humanity is never short of foolish beliefs and behavior...what kind of idiocy will we see next? I don't imagine the wait will be long...

Great Old TV Episodes...from the Avengers

DEATH'S DOOR, from the British spy/sleuth series The Avengers...starring Patrick Macnee (playing John Steed) and Diana Rigg (Emma Peel)...first aired in October, 1967 and I was right there, watching it in our living room that evening. A high-level, crucial conference with international implications is about to be held, but the man responsible for hosting it and holding the various parties together panics and flees as he approaches the conference door just before it begins.  Steed and Peel are enlisted to investigate the trouble, and it appears that the man has had a prophetic dream of the day at hand, with numerous small incidents coinciding with both dream and actual occurrence.  At the end of the dream, he is grabbed and forced through the conference door (see above picture) and, once entering, is killed by a falling chandelier...hence the panic in real life.  Of course, our heroes figure out the mystery, catch the bad guys and set everything straight...in their typically elegant, clever and witty fashion.  What stood out to me in this episode was the dream sequence, very reminiscent of that experienced by Gregory Peck's character in the classic 1948 thriller Spellbound.  But when I first saw Death's Door, I had only just turned eleven and it wouldn't be for a few more years before I got around to seeing the earlier movie. For special effects alone with the dream sequence I recommend this episode, but then again Macnee and Rigg were fantastic in every one of the Avengers episodes during this period.  I should know: I ended up buying their entire box set on DVD...

Major League Baseball League Championship Series Underway

In Major League Baseball I was greatly disappointed that the Tampa Bay Rays lost their opening-round series against Boston three games to one, with two very close games at the end deciding it.  Now the Red Sox have begun their American League Championship Series against the Houston Astros...I'm rooting for Boston now but yesterday they lost their opening game 5-4.  This afternoon that series will continue, shown on FoxSports1 (Gainesville Cox Channel 62), while in the evening TBS (Channel 67) will show the opening contest of the National League Championship Series between the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers.  Although I was happy to see Atlanta defeat the Milwaukee Brewers in their series to get this far, it was tough seeing how poor umpiring wrecked any chances of the San Francisco Giants, down 2-1 with a runner on base and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in the final deciding game against Los Angeles.  The batter, already with two strikes, clearly checked his swing on a ball outside the strike zone...but the first base umpire called him out, prematurely ending the game and the series.  That's not to say the batter wouldn't have failed on the next pitch or the Giants would have come back to win the game, but it shouldn't have been shut down that way.  In any event, I'm pulling for the Braves to upset the Dodgers...a little strange since Atlanta will have the home field advantage because they won their own division (with an 88-73 record) and Los Angeles qualified as a wild card team (at 106-56).  The worst World Series scenario I see is also the most probable: Houston (groan) with their tarnished legacy of cheating vs. Los Angeles.  If that happens I'm rooting for LA, but Atlanta is now my number one team, followed by Boston...

Quote of the Week...from Alan Watts

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.                             ---Alan Watts

The above quote I've seen countless times on my Music Choice Soundscapes channel, which rotates a number of sayings from various diverse sources.  The source of this one is Alan Watts (1915-73), a seeker who started out as an Episcopalian priest and later delved into Eastern religions and philosophy, one of the "gurus" of the counterculture movement of the late 60s and early 70s.  His quote is figurative: the applied meaning is that in many occasions it's best not to draw out conflicts and troublesome situations by overanalyzing and bringing them up over and over again with other people...once the different parties know where each of them stand and are fully informed of the situation, better to back off and let the matter rest.  That doesn't mean that I don't have my own strongly held opinions on different issues, and I use this blog as a forum to express them...others are free and welcome to do likewise, as setting up a blog like this one is free and easy, even for the Internet-challenged person that I am. Also, although I think that it's useful to go back into my own memories and see where I went wrong at times...as well as when others went wrong...continually replaying past offenses and failures in the present can only magnify their importance.  A good strategy in this regard is, when remembering something negative in my past, for me to stop and write down what I learned from it and then what specific positive change in my current life I can make as a result.  And then walk away and let the muddy waters grow still and clear...

Constellation of the Month: Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish)

 

The constellation Piscis Austrinus...Latin for the Southern Fish...is easily visible in the southern sky for those of us in northern latitudes in mid-evening during October. The constellation's one claim to fame is its first-magnitude star Fomalhaut, which also happens to be the only star this bright in the autumn evening sky...once you get past Deneb in Cygnus. The rest of Piscis Austrinus' "prominent" stars, i.e. the ones that make up the connecting dots of the constellation, are of 4th magnitude or fainter. If you go out on a clear night anytime soon around 10 and look south, you'll see a rather flat triangle there of bright stars: two of them, the ones on the right are the planets Jupiter (in the middle) and Saturn (on the right/west)...Fomalhaut is its left/eastern point.  And if you go out tonight or tomorrow (10/14,15), you'll see the bright moon in the midst of them, just past first quarter phase. Fomalhaut is relatively near, as stars go...only about 25 light-years distant.  It's also been the locale in a number of science fiction tales as well. Even if you discount Fomalhaut's presence, in spite of the other relatively dim stars in it, Piscis Austrinus is easier to pick out of the sky than the Zodiac constellations Aquarius to its north and Pisces to its northeast...

Next month: another constellation...

Weekly Short Stories: 1977 Science Fiction, Part 3

Below are my reactions to two more 1977 science fiction short stories, as they appeared in the anthology The 1978 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his selections of the best in that genre the previous year.  As I've mentioned before, 1977 was a year of transition as I moved from Hollywood in South Florida to Gainesville in the northern part of the state. Having lived in the same house since I was four and having done very little traveling during my childhood, the change was challenging if not a bit traumatic for me.  Still, the roommates with me in my dormitory were friendly and responsible...greatly putting my concerns at rest...and I managed to finished my first semester at college with decent marks.  And here are my reviews of those two stories...

JEFFTY IS FIVE by Harlan Ellison

The title character to this story is a twenty-two-year old, the same age as the narrator who knew and played with him when they were both five. But Jeffty is very different: in essence he is STILL five years old, never having grown physically or mentally.  But the fact that he still listens to old shows off his radio that had ended years before makes his story all the more chilling. The author makes the point that the barrier between the ongoing present and the past is fragile and can be easily upset...as if the present wants to consume the past.  I can't help but think that this tale is also a sort of analogy about how people hold their own versions of the past close to the vest and can be defensive about it if someone calls on them to live in the present...

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION by Raccoona Sheldon

Not very far into the future a scientist working in Colombia has hit upon the solution to eliminating the disease-carrying screwfly by interfering with its reproductive process.  Meanwhile, across the world there is a quasi-religious cult growing whereby men attack and kill women after they are promised that God would provide a cleaner, holier means of reproduction.  Realizing he is "infected" and won't be able to control his own homicidal urges, he warns his wife in time for her to escape...at story's end she discovers the ominous cause of it all.  The connection between the scientist's work and the cult phenomenon couldn't be more obvious...  

Next week I conclude my look at short science fiction from 1977... 

Game of the Week: Pro Football

Back in March I wrote an article on flag football...click HERE to read my own personal experiences playing the game.  As for tackle football, including obviously the professional National Football League version, I never played it...so my experiences are purely vicarious with this form of the sport through watching on TV or listening to play-by-play on the radio.  Although as a little kid I had some football cards in my collection...showing the strange spacemen-like outfits the players wore...I didn't actually watch a game until the fall of 1966 when, fiddling around the TV channel knob, I landed upon a contest between the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers.  Not that I knew anything about the game's rules then, but I liked LA because of their cool ram helmets...and they won!  The next year my mother was avidly following the Johnny Unitas-led Baltimore Colts and I joined her enthusiasm, finally picking up on the rules but dismayed when the Colts lost their final regular season game to their arch-rival Rams and thereby missed the playoffs.  The next year in '68, although Unitas was injured early on, Earl Morrall capably filled in as quarterback and led the Colts to the Super Bowl, where they disastrously fell to the New York Jets.  That year also saw me become a fan of the third-year expansion team Miami Dolphins...nobody else in my family considered them yet worth rooting for.  In 1970, Baltimore's head coach Don Shula jumped ship and joined Miami, leading them to three early Super Bowl appearances, two championships including a perfect season in 1972 (with Morrall returning to fill in for injured Bob Griese for most of it), two more appearances in the '80s, and only two losing seasons from 1970 to 1995, when Shula finally retired.  In the 80's the Dolphins' first Super Bowl appearance in more than a decade featured a team dominated by defense (the "Killer Bees") with a mediocre offense...just two years later when they returned to the Big Game it was the defense that was weak while the offense, now explosive, was led by second-year sensation Dan Marino.  Miami sported some good teams afterwards but always seemed to have one team above them that was good enough to keep them from ever returning to the Super Bowl.  Statewide, Florida would receive two new more expansion teams in Tampa Bay and Jacksonville...I cheered the Bucs on as they won two Super Bowls in their own right...but I always considered the Miami Dolphins as my favorite team...even after I moved to Gainesville in the northern part of the state. This century Miami's fortunes have flagged with 2007 being their low point, going 1-15.  In recent years I've enjoyed out-of-state teams, notably the Seattle Seahawks and the New York Giants, the latter for whom I was grateful after twice beating Miami's divisional rival New England in the Super Bowl.  Nowadays I still root for the Dolphins but have favorites in each of the other seven NFL divisions...they are all listed below:

MIAMI DOLPHINS (American Conference East)

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (South)

BALTIMORE RAVENS (North)

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (West)

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES and NEW YORK GIANTS (National Conference East)

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (South)

GREEN BAY PACKERS (North)

SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (West)

Of the above only Baltimore, Tampa Bay and Green Bay seem to be doing reasonably well after five weeks in 2021. But I still enjoy watching the different teams play, win or lose...

Political Toxicity Mushrooming

Politics has become so toxic nowadays that I'm hesitant to write articles about it, especially since what I express is often bound to sound toxic in itself.  On January 6th Donald Trump attempted to overthrow democracy and install himself as unelected dictator through his flunkies...I'm not talking about the loser Capitol building rioters but rather the elected representatives who chose to vote to overturn the election...some two thirds of the Republicans in the House of Representatives and seven in the Senate (including my own representative and one of my senators). In my next-day article I called them all fascists, and explained why, bringing up the term's commonly accepted definition.  I don't believe hardly any of those politicians who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election actually believed that the election was stolen, but they were taking their cues from Trump...the biggest fascist of them all...who seems to have a Jim-Jones-like hold on millions of adoring Americans who apparently have long pined for an authoritarian strongman to affirm their own talking points and smash down the Enemy (i.e. those who disagree with them). HBO host/comedian/egghead Bill Maher recently warned that the 2024 election may well portend the end of democratically-elected representative government if Trump runs and loses a close election again. The former president has already begun to call for a civil war, and several state legislatures have passed new laws giving themselves carte blanche authority to arbitrarily decide elections held in their own states...even the presidential vote...based on any "trumped"-up phony fraud claims.  In such an environment I don't know how one cannot feel toxic about our political situation here. The only reason Donald Trump has any political influence is because a large segment of our adult voting population has relinquished their own responsibility to discern the character of their leaders and has decided to accept any foul or deceitful thing coming from their chosen idol's mouth.  No, I don't always agree with Maher, but I think he's got it right this time.  As someone who often agrees with the conservative take on issues, I am dismayed by today's extremely toxic Trump phenomenon that precludes me from supporting any Republican candidate...

Also referring back to political toxicity, I am dismayed to see moderate elected Democrats who represent more conservative constituencies being raked over the coals for the crime of having a backbone when legislation is foisted upon them to support that they feel is excessive, either in terms of spending or government overreach.  The "progressive" Democrats who attack these public servants to me are incredibly short-sighted as well as ignorant: short-sighted because without the moderates in the Senate and the House, their own party would be in the minority and powerless to introduce legislation or confirm (or reject) federal judges and Supreme Court justices...and ignorant because historically the only stable legislation that doesn't tend to be undone when the other party comes to power is that passed with at least some semblance of bipartisan support as the result of negotiation and compromise...

Great Old TV Episodes...from The Twilight Zone

 

AND WHEN THE SKY WAS OPENED was a chilling Season One episode of the original Twilight Zone series, first aired in December, 1959...I was only three at the time and wouldn't see it until years later. This is television that is pinpointed in history, a speculation about what might happen should humans endeavor to go into space...a little more than a year before that actually happened with the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin in April of 1961.  In this episode, a three-man astronaut crew fly an experimental space plane some 900 miles above Earth...but during its flight radio contact is broken for several hours and the plane is found crash-landed in the desert, all hands on board alive with one crewman, Gart, suffering a broken leg.  In the hospital the expedition leader Forbes, played by Rod Taylor (who would star in the original Time Machine movie the following year), tries to convince his bedridden colleague that there were THREE of them on the mission...but even the newspaper shows only two. Taylor then recounts what happened to the other man, Harrington, an old friend, as they both left that same room the day before with the paper (pictured above) showing all three of them.  But at a nearby bar with Forbes something happens to Harrington's thinking...as if he didn't belong there...and he vanishes.  Distraught over his buddy's disappearance, Forbes finishes his story to Gart and then starts to feel the same way as Harrington.  The ending was unexpected and ingenious...

When this episode first came out, no human had ever ventured into space and returned.  So it was intriguing to consider whether "something or somebody out there" didn't want us to ever leave our home planet and might take measures to prevent it. And then there's the notion that maybe the worse thing to no longer existing is to never have existed at all.  And When the Sky Was Opened is my all-time favorite episode of one of my all-time favorite TV series...

Reading Lev Grossman's Fantasy Series The Magicians for the 3rd Time

For the third time I am undertaking reading Lev Grossman's excellent fantasy trilogy The Magicians, which I consider as my favorite in that genre of fiction.  I've just finished reading (again) the first book, also titled The Magicians.  The protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, is a highly introverted, genius high school graduate on his way to a college interview in New York City with his friends Steve and Julia...the latter for whom Quentin has held a long, futile crush. Events cascade, leading to Quentin mysteriously passing through some bushes in the city to suddenly find himself in upstate New York on the grounds of Brakebills Academy, a secret school of magic to train magicians at a college level. They consider him a prospective student, but first he must pass the entry examination...he gets through it and is admitted.  Meanwhile, Julia has also been there taking the exam...but is rejected.  The series progresses through Quentin's relationships and training at Brakebills and Julia's attempts to find the hidden academy while learning more of the craft among peers outside "official" magical society.  Interwoven through it all is the fantasy (or is it real?) alternative world of Fillory, the setting of several novels from the early twentieth century that bear an uncanny resemblance to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series.  Grossman put a lot of insight and development into his characters, of whom the Brakebills student Penny was the most interesting to me.  Unfortunately, the television adaption of The Magicians, running for five season on the SyFy Channel from 2015 to 2020, changed the book version way too much...including making its "Penny" character virtually unrecognizable from the books'.  Initially, when the TV series first aired I tried to follow it but quickly became "disenchanted"...sometimes I think the producers of screen adaptations bring in the original author as consultant not to make sure they conform to his or her intent but rather to lend a false sense of endorsement as they make wholesale changes in the plot and characters: I've seen this happen with other TV and movie adaptations as well.  In any event, I'm now into the second book, titled The Magician King...it goes deeper into Julia's efforts to develop her magical powers and be accepted by the magical establishment.  Yet I also recognize that The Magicians television version had good acting even if it did diverge too much from Grossman's novels. I'm giving it a second chance after I discovered that Netflix had it, but I sadly expect that neither its tone nor story line will conform in any significant degree to Lev Grossman's memorable and compelling literary epic...

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress, but I repeat myself.

                                                                                  ---Mark Twain

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) lived from 1835 to 1910, so his above words...whatever year he made them...refer to the state of politics in his own time, well over a century ago.  In a way, they're reassuring, reminding us that regardless of the tomfoolery and deceit that seem to dominate Congressional politics today, this has pretty much always been the case in Washington.  On the other hand, the "idiots" in Congress, both in Twain's day and ours, tend to be reelected over and over again...so what does that make us, the general population that keeps sending them back for term after term?  Personally, I don't believe that those serving in Congress, be they in the Senate or the House of Representatives, are idiots...even the ones who at times make idiotic statements.  But they ARE perverting the intent of our founding fathers when they established this representative republic.  It all comes down to the concept of "primarying" in which a populist...even demagogic...element of a politician's own party boasts of enough fanatical voters to topple them in the next primary if they don't tow the line to their peculiar ideology.  The result is that the more extreme elements of each party tend to either control who gets their nomination, or...much more prevalently...control the behavior of those already in office, who are afraid of getting on their bad side.  Sometime in the future I plan to write an article about the "rabble", that is the masses of people in any society who tend to be more autocratic, hung up on symbols, and less educated in the civics of how our government is supposed to function.  They are easily manipulated, as recently we have seen mass hysteria about the COVID-19 pandemic...particularly in the areas of masks and vaccines, Trump worship, and widespread denial that Biden won the 2020 election fair and square.  For elected politicians to kowtow to the basest of the "base" reveals them not to be idiots, but rather as lacking in personal standards of ethics and integrity.  And I'm not giving the Democrats a free pass, either...too many of  the rank and file seem to be imbued with the notion that mass protest marches are somehow "democracy at work" while regularly skipping election after election in which there's no emotionally-gripping candidate or issue on the ballot...resulting in state legislatures across the country being dominated by Republicans, even in several "blue" states.  And what's happening nowadays with the put-downs of moderate Democrats is completely unacceptable to me...