Just Finished Reading A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

A Princess of Mars was a serialized 1912 science fiction/fantasy pulp fiction novel by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first of his Mars series...this story's hero is John Carter, an ex-Confederate soldier at the close of the American Civil War who has gone to the Southwest to search for gold with his friend.  Wary of the warlike Apaches, who claim the same ground on which they prospect, one day they discover their object...and his friend leaves to set up the gold's delivery and payment, only to be killed by pursuing Apaches.  Upon this tragic discovery, Carter finds himself pursued as well and hides in a cave...the enemy find him, though, and the life-or-death battle ensues.  But just before that happens, he has stood outside the cave and observed the planet Mars, musing upon it.  Back in the cave, Carter is now dying...but he wakes up mysteriously transported to the Red Planet, which as it turns out is populated by intelligent humanoids divided into different bellicose races, mainly the vicious greens with multiple appendages and the reds, who seem more to represent the original civilization.  They are at war with each other, and John Carter first encounters the aggressive greens, who are impressed by his superhuman strength, speed and jumping ability in the thinner Martian atmosphere.  They intercept a crashing ship of their red enemies and capture their princess...naturally, Carter protects her and falls in love.  Then all sorts of intrigues and bloodshed ensue...

This novel was said to inspire Carl Sagan as a kid to explore the field of astronomy...since I'm now 65 after first reading it I can make no such claim, but when I was seven my father introduced me to the night sky with its constellations and general principles of celestial motion, which I gleaned from the handbooks he gave me.  I read A Princess of Mars on my friend and former colleague Becky's recommendation as it was a childhood favorite of hers.  What impressed me the most about it was how the author got around the difficulties of space travel and, instead, made the protagonist have to die on Earth in order to be transported to Mars.  The ending had a kind of C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia feel to it...since Burroughs' work predates that of Lewis by decades, I wonder whether the latter got some of his ideas from the earlier writer. I understand that this story was made into a feature-length film a few years ago, but I'm a little hesitant to watch it since much of the book's charm derives from John Carter's first-person narration and his compelling introspection, which I fear may be a little bit too difficult to effectively transfer to the big screen...

Great Old TV Episodes...from The Twilight Zone

FOUR O'CLOCK  was a Season Three episode of one of my all-time favorite series, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone.  It first aired in April of 1962, but nearly sixty years later is more relevant than ever.  Starring Theodore Bikel as the hate-mongering, angry "man of justice" Oliver Crangle, the episode examines the mental makeup of people who make it their business to mind that of others while spinning a fantasy world of conspiracy everywhere around themselves.  Crangle, holed-up in his big city apartment with his obnoxious parrot Pete, has built up an extensive file system of papers and cards giving him detailed personal information on everyone he knows...and to Crangle, they are mostly evil.  On his self-imagined mission to do good, he calls different people's employers to expose their "evilness" and get them fired or otherwise punished...the seed of the cancel culture around us today, except that now the Internet replaces Crangle's filing system from which to draw accusatory information.  He finally comes up with a demented notion: at 4:00 pm he will have all the evil people in the world turn to two feet tall!  Calling an FBI agent to give him advance notice so that the agents can start their sweep of arrests, he is rebuffed as a mentally disturbed crank...but Oliver knows better: that agent has to be one of the evil conspirators!  The episode's ending is pure poetic justice, but I wonder whether even at this late juncture he ever was willing to come to terms with what he was all about.  Four O'Clock hit home to me in 2021, not only with its cancel culture ramifications but also with the demented, fantasy conspiratorialism prevalent in Crangle's mind and in that of millions of my fellow citizens today...the QAnon, Stop the Steal, "faked" mass shootings and pandemic denial movements stand out.  And what about the ghouls who seem bent on spending their hours going back through public figures' old social media posts and decades-old innuendoes in order to smear their reputations? So in a way this episode was a prophetic indictment against both politically left-wing excesses like cancel culture and predominantly right-wing crackpot notions.  Even before all this nonsense started to go down around us, I appreciated Bikel's great performance in this episode of a self-righteous meddler with no inner peace or ability to empathize...I think you will as well...

Hooray to Atlanta Braves, 2021 World Series Champs

Last Tuesday evening the Atlanta Braves won their first baseball World Series since 1995, beating the Houston Astros 7-0 to seal victory, 4 games to 2.  Years before the state of Florida got its own Major League Baseball franchises, I was rooting for Atlanta going back to 1979, when I would watch the then-last place team's games on "Superstation" TBS, which for years back then carried Atlanta's entire season. The following year they hired as manager Joe Torre, who brought them to a higher caliber of play...the high point was them making the playoffs in 1982 with stars like Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, Chris Chambliss, Claudell Washington, Phil Niekro, and Rick Camp.  Later on in the 1990s and 2000s their strong starting pitching, led by Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Greg Maddox...with Chipper Jones providing consistent hitting among others...gave them a long string of divisional championships, but only one world title.  Interestingly, in the same era their divisional (and geographic) rival Florida Marlins won two World Series as a wild card team in 1997 and 2003.  This year, after Tampa Bay made an unexpected early exit from the playoffs against Boston, I had been looking to the Braves as my favorite surviving team. Others' expectation for them were low: of the 10 teams making it to this year's playoffs, Atlanta had the worst regular season record at 88-73.  But it's all a matter of who's hot at the right time, and who can pull off those difficult victories in close games. Hooray, Atlanta!

Quote of the Week...from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.            --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a 19th century American philosopher and essayist, a proponent of transcendentalism, which he presented in his essay Nature...I haven't read any of his works, only picking up the above quote on my Music Choice Soundscapes TV channel. Emerson clearly was an advocate of folks getting off their butts and getting outside and active, and I have to admit that he had a point here.  When I look back on my life, some of the happiest times were when I was in the great outdoors, be it running long courses or riding my bicycle or experiencing the beach or hiking down a wooded trail or eating outside or climbing a tree or taking a walk in the neighborhood or riding a theme park roller coaster or star-gazing or just sitting out on my porch.  That having been said, until just recently the weather here in northern Florida has been nothing short of awful, with heat and mugginess defining the conditions.  Once it finally began to cool and dry up a bit, I enjoyed outdoor activities once again.  But yesterday, although it was pleasantly cool early on, the humidity was way too high, and today (and tomorrow) rain and storms will prevail.  So sure, Ralph, I'll live in the sunshine (when the sun is out), swim the sea (when there aren't sharks, jellyfish or rip currents), and drink the wild air (when there aren't forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes or sand/dust storms).  Come to think of it, on this rainy, slushy morning the idea of just hunkering down here within the secure confines of my house sounds pretty appealing...

The Majestic Angel Oak Tree West of Charleston, South Carolina

During our vacation in late October, Melissa and I stopped off for three nights at Charleston, South Carolina...it's the first time either of us had set foot in that state although both of us were born in adjacent Georgia.  My brother-in-law Jim, who went to college in South Carolina, recommended we visit the Angel Oak Tree, which stands a few miles west of Charleston, on Johns Island and accessible via Route 700, Maybank Highway.  So we did just that, after a tour through a tea farm further down the road.  The tree is spectacular, with its main truck 28 feet in circumference, rising more than 60 feet with some branches extending far beyond 150 feet...many of them lie on the ground.  Seeing it up close brought me back to my old tree-climbing days when I was ten (in 1967) and it didn't take long for me to see that, were tree-climbing not prohibited here, all I would need to do is gradually climb up one of the many grounded branches, many thicker than most tree trunks'.  After reading up on the tree, estimated to be 400-500 years old, I ran across an impressive video made by Dayvee Sutton...she makes the case that lynching of blacks most probably occurred here in the past, casting a shadow on its majesty: click HERE to watch it.  Of course, the park's gift shop was all about the tree itself, and I bought a handy-dandy coffee mug depicting it, along with taking a number of pictures.  After the visit we drove down the road and around the corner, lunching at an excellent little establishment called Blackbird Market...I had a half-rack of fried ribs with a special sauce.  If you're traveling around the area, I suggest the Angel Oak as one of your stops...

Weekly Short Stories: 1978 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue my examination of old science fiction short stories with this second installment from 1978, using the retroactive anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1979 Annual World's Best SF, presenting the editor's choices for the previous year's works.  1978 was somber, sad and a little scary regarding the news...especially with the Jonestown Massacre that November.  More than 900 people either committed cyanide poisoning or were thus murdered when People' Temple cult leader Jim Jones made that call following the shooting death of a congressman investigating allegations at their remote site in western Guyana.  I remember cult members who weren't there afterwards acting in complete denial of the chain of tragic events and their leader's culpability...it's scary because I'm now experiencing much of the same with those who idolize former president Trump and can see no wrong in him.  But back to those stories...

DANCE BAND ON THE TITANIC by Jack L. Chalker

The first-person narrator of this story is man with a recent tragic family past.  He signs on as a crewman on a ferry taking off from a very obscure port in Maine and traveling to one in Canada...but the maps don't even show it exists.  On the boat business is brisk, but the passengers, dressed and speaking from all parts of the world and different time periods, seem to shimmer and flit in and out of reality.  On different voyages a young woman passenger commits suicide by hurling herself over the rails into the boat's workings...can he catch her on her next attempt and stop the tragic cycle?  Yes, this story messes with your mind...the Twilight Zone episode Mirror Image has a similar "alternative universe" feel to it...

CASSANDRA by C.J. Cherryh

Reminiscent of another old Twilight Zone episode, The Purple Testament, a young woman, thought by others to be insane, cannot help but see the future in the world around herself...and it is full of apocalyptic destruction and death.  This brief tale has her going about her mundane daily existence while surrounded by fires, crumbling buildings, and wraith-like people doomed in the impending war.  But then she encounters a "normal" young man at the diner she frequents...can he be her salvation from all this? Don't bet on it...

Next week: more 1978 sci-fi short story reviews...

Game of the Week: Quidditch

Quidditch...at least in the beginning...was a magical sport created by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling as a counterpart to the predominant English sports of soccer and rugby.  In the series' first book, The Sorcerer's Stone, young Potter finds himself unexpectedly pushed into being on the Gryffindor House team at Hogwarts Academy after a professor discovers his broom-flying and catching skills while in a tussle with his arch-foe Draco Malfoy.  In Chapter 11, team captain Oliver Wood brings the Quidditch equipment and gives Harry the low-down on the game and how it's played and scored.  There are four types of players: Keeper, Chasers, Beaters, and Seeker...along with three "balls": Quaffle, Bludgers, and Golden Snitch.  All while flying around on broomsticks, of course, the Chasers on each side try to throw the Quaffle through one of the three-ringed goals guarded by the opposing team's Keeper.  The Beaters have the job of protecting their teammates from Bludgers, which aim themselves at players to disrupt them.  And the Seeker has but one job: find the small, elusive flying Snitch and catch it...once that's done the game's over.  Teams get 10 points for their Quaffle goals, but since the side that catches the Snitch gets an extra 150, it's the Seeker who almost always decides the contest. Naturally, it's for the central, crucial role of Seeker for which our young hero is selected.  In the earlier books, Quidditch is an integral part of the story line, but as the epic conflict between Harry Potter and evil dark lord Voldemort increases in intensity and emphasis, then so decreases the significance and presence of this wizards' sport...the peak was probably at the beginning of the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire, when the Quidditch World Cup is held between Ireland and Bulgaria.  In real-life there is a "muggle" Quidditch version played on a field with certain necessary rule alterations...they've gone so far as to have an "official" Quidditch governing body along with a World Cup and Premier League.  Not that I'm interested in any of that fake stuff, though...I'll just "stick" with Rowling's "real" version.  By the way, although I am often critical of screen adaptations of books I've read, I was very impressed with how the Harry Potter movies vividly showed Quidditch matches...

My October, 2021 Running and Walking Report

For October I ran a total of 85 miles and walked 92.  I managed to get running time in on all but one day, and my mileage was typically composed of short runs spread out over the course of each day. My longest single run for the month was 2.8 miles, a vacation jaunt from my hotel to the Daytona Beach Pier and back three days ago.  I'm looking forward to improving and keeping up with both my running and walking, but it's been a pretty gradual overall process in the months following my July surgery.  The next race I run will probably be one of the weekly Saturday morning 5K Depot Parkruns held at Gainesville's Depot Park just south of downtown, most likely sometime late in November.  In my training right now, only the distance I cover matters, not how fast I run it... 

Great Old TV Episodes...from Everybody Loves Raymond

 

RECOVERING PESSIMIST is a Season One episode of the sitcom series Everybody Loves Raymond, first airing in 1997.  I myself had never taken to this series although Melissa liked it and my mother had meticulously taped every episode she saw, stacks of labeled VHS tapes lining the wall in her Hollywood, Florida  home.  The other night we had the television tuned in to TV Land, and they were showing a sequence of Raymond episodes...including the one I'm featuring.  In this episode Ray (Ray Romano) is nominated for Sports Writer of the Year, but his habitual pessimism warns him not to even bother attending the awards banquet...his wife Debra (played by Patricia Heaton) coaxes him into showing up anyway.  Although all that is happening seems to contradict Ray's negative frame of mind toward everything, he refuses to relent until Debra finally convinces him to adopt a more positive, optimistic attitude.  Ray then goes next door to present his new, shinier outlook to his mother, father, and brother...and then gets a big dose of why he had become such a pessimist in the first place.  Although there are probably a few funnier episodes in this nine-year series, I picked this one because of Ray's negative next-door experience with his childhood family.  For myself, I've noticed in a number of diverse social situations over the years where I would enter them with a very upbeat, optimistic mindset only to be practically knocked off my feet by the overwhelmingly dark, oppressive atmosphere around me.  And it's true: if you have spent a great deal of your early life surrounded by others hell-bent on spinning the events of their lives and others' in derisive, angry or frightened terms, then like Ray in this hilarious episode you'll possibly adopt a similar attitude.  By the way, my favorite character in Everybody Loves Raymond is Ray's policeman brother Robert, superbly portrayed by Brad Garrett...

Back Home Today from Vacation Outings

Melissa and I just got back into Gainesville from our ten-day vacation trips to the two Carolinas and Daytona Beach.  First we stayed in Asheville, North Carolina, partaking of the area's very hilly ambiance and some local attractions.  Then we drove down to Charleston, South Carolina, staying there three nights and then to Daytona Beach to close it all out.  In the next couple of weeks or so, I will mention some of the places we went and my reactions to them.  We both greatly enjoyed the trip, but are also very glad to be back at home...

Quote of the Week...from John Maxwell

Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.                         ---John Maxwell

John Maxwell is a popular motivational speaker and writer, focusing on what it takes to be an effective leader.  Like many others in his trade, he has a knack for coming up with one-liner quotes that put things into a more positive, constructive framework...the above one is a good example.  The more commonly-used phrase, of course, is Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. In Maxwell's rephrasing, he cleverly renders "losing" equivalent to "learning"...not that you can't learn a bit from victorious experiences as well.  But to a lot of people, sadly, coming up short in anything is so deflating and humiliating that they would rather not undertake any venture that, naturally, would expose them as not being perfect.  And perfectionism in this regard is the "perfect" way to ensure that the more realistic, farther-range goals of competency and expertise will never be achieved.  I always felt that the grading system in my school years had an inbuilt flaw in that a student's progress in class was negatively skewed by overemphasizing their errors...in my opinion there should have been a two-tiered system whereby a paper, presentation or test/quiz, once corrected, would be repeated with only that second score recorded as the final grade. But that's just me...those kids who regarded school work as a crucial judgment on their own worth...either to others or themselves...would likely disagree, as would most of the teachers whose classes I suffered through over the years.  But I'm no longer a student and am free to lose learn with impunity...no one's keeping score anymore. Now getting something right should be properly recognized and rewarded, whether it's academic, athletic, altruistic, relational, financial, or another area of endeavor.  But to get to that point, folks just need to exercise a little humility and allow themselves to screw up and learn from those mistakes.  As Frank Sinatra once said, "Dare to wear the foolish clown's face"...

Interesting Sky Yesterday, Severe Storms Today

Sometimes you step outside and the sky looks dramatic...even scary...as the sunlight reflects off certain cloud formations.  Early yesterday evening was a case in point (see the photo)...nothing really to be concerned about, and the setting sun soon took away the spectacular colors.  Today a severe cold front storm formation is sweeping through north and central Florida, hitting the Gainesville area in the morning hours and later passing through the east coast...prompting a "3" level tornado advisory for much of the area.  Personally, I kind of like stormy weather...that is, if I don't have to be outside in the middle of it, get flooded out, suffer wind damage, or lose my electricity and Internet: maybe I don't like it that much after all...

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...