Weekly Short Stories: 1978 Science Fiction, Part 4

With today's article I reach the final three science fiction short stories from 1978, as presented in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1979 Annual World's Best SF...providing the editor's selections from the previous year.  If you know me well, then you might have noticed that I have a propensity to memorize long lists of things of diverse topics...this was the year that all that got started.  I haven't written very much on this blog about that aspect of myself since for some reason I feel it's a bit personal, but since this IS a record of my thinking for the general world's reading pleasure and "enlightenment", I might just share some of my experiences with lists in future articles.  For now, here are my reviews of those last three stories....

WE WHO STOLE THE DREAM by James Tiptree, Jr.

Told from the point of view of the aliens, a humanoid race is oppressed on a distant planet by colonizing humans, but they have over the years furtively and meticulously plotted their escape by commandeering a human spaceship. They also are aware of the existence of their own kind living on the other side of the galaxy and set out to meet them...the resulting encounter sadly reveals the author's position that human nature can transcend even humanity...

SCATTERSHOT by Greg Bear

An alien enemy has hit an Earth spaceship with a device that explodes it through many dimensions. The only known survivor, a woman named Francis Geneva, explores the resulting strange new conglomerate ship with different survivors of the same attack in other dimensions.  Now to get everyone...and they're quite different from one another...back to where (and when) they belong.  A mind-stretching but ultimately frustrating story with its numerous demands on the reader's ability to imagine the author's strange new world with its strange new creatures and rules about time and space...

CARRUTHERS' LAST STAND by Dan Henderson

Carruthers is an anthropologist selected to initiate meaningful communications with a lizard-like alien race 500 light years distant.  He's stationed on the moon, delighting in times when he, pretty much a loner, can get away from the annoying bureaucrats pressuring him with their agendas.  Technologically-generated psychic contact is made between Carruthers and Hun, his alien counterpart. According to the social norms of Hun's world, the two have to constantly exchange colorful insults (very funny), and new technologies are subsequently revealed to humanity.  But joy turns to fear as the Earth bigshots are now worried that they could be attacked by the others.  Carruthers, though, has learned something he realizes he'd better keep from his superiors.  The story's a bit murky toward the end, but redeemed by the ending...

Next week I begin my examination of short science fiction from the year 1979...

As I Age, Medical Interactions Increase

For the most part...until the last decade or so...I have lived my life relatively free of doctors, medications, hospitals and "procedures".  Never having suffered a serious enough illness or injury...not even a single broken bone...to be hospitalized other than inguinal hernia surgery in 1973 when I was 17, I tended to avoid anything resembling the medical establishment. After getting married I finally got around to visiting the doctor from time to time, but always breathed a sigh of relief when exiting the office.  But in late 2011, after visiting an after-hours clinic because of a sinus infection, the attending physician detected a heart murmur and strongly recommended I see my regular doctor about it. She in turn had me examined and it was discovered that not only did I have an aortic aneurism, but that I had a serious birth defect: a bicuspid (instead of the normal tricuspid) heart valve that was responsible over the years for the swollen aorta.  From 2012 through 2021 I underwent annual exams with a UF Health specialist surgeon to see if the aneurism had expanded: beyond a specified threshold he would recommend surgery. But the aneurism remained the same size even at the last exam this past April...still my physician decided I needed to undergo the surgery because my valve had a worsening calcium buildup.  On July 15 I underwent open heart surgery to replace the valve and repair the aneurism...successfully done although there was the complication of atrial fibrillation based on my heart's initial reaction to the operation. This was resolved with the Cardioversion procedure just before I was discharged from the hospital.  Recovery lasted several weeks, primarily to allow my sternum, sawed apart to allow access to my heart for the operation, to fuse back together..as well as strengthening my body, especially the upper part.  Still, at this point with me back at work for more than a month and exercising to the point of running at pretty much my pre-operational level (but more slowly), I am now entrenched in the medical system with two cardiologists, a thoracic surgeon, a gastroenterologist, potentially a urologist, and of course my primary physician, their office and examination appointments strung out into the future.  Besides issues related to my heart concerning continuing recovery and maintenance, there are three areas of my health/body unrelated to what I just went through that have to be addressed...groan!  I suppose this sort of thing just naturally happens when one gets to my age (65)...all kinds of screenings are recommended, usually to detect cancer in different parts of the body.  Well, I think I'm long finished with the part of my life when I avoided doctors and hospitals and pretty much freelanced it with my personal health.  The trick now is not to succumb to the temptation to "self-enfeeble" because of doctors' overactive concerns, while at the same time following the gist of their advice and availing myself of their prescriptions and procedures. I have a very strong instinct that a physically active lifestyle, to which I am accustomed, is important to both physical and mental health, regardless of my age, and I don't have any intention of fearfully tiptoeing through the remainder of my life...

Our Visit to the Charleston Tea Plantation (Garden) Last Month

On this past October 25th, the morning after driving in to Charleston, South Carolina from Asheville, North Carolina, Melissa and I decided to go west and explore two of the area's features: the Angel Oak Tree on John's Island (click HERE for my article) and the Charleston Tea Plantation, which seems to be in the process of being renamed Charleston Tea Garden most likely because "plantation" carries with it connotations of slavery.  In any event, we managed to get past the morning precipitation by the time we arrived there, beyond the aforementioned Tree and onto sparsely populated Wadmalaw Island.  The first thing you notice driving into the place are the rows upon rows of shortly and very evenly-cropped hedges of tea plants.  This is because the choice leaves are cut from branches grown past a certain height by a custom-designed harvester they call the Green Giant (which is in the above pics)...this machine drastically cuts down on the labor formerly needed to tend and harvest the plants.  We parked and went inside, just in time to go on their trolley tour around the farm, with the driver and a recorded tour guide giving out probably more information about tea farming history and its cultivation than I needed to know.  When we got back to the main gift shop area we sampled some of their teas, browsed around, and then went into the back on a walking tour of the facility's tea processing machines.  I hadn't been aware that different kinds of tea didn't necessarily grow on different types of tea plants, but were rather the products of different stages in processing.   At the end, we naturally bought some of their teas and left with a sense of tranquility from our visit...everyone there was friendly and obviously enjoyed their work.  During the tour it was claimed that this is the only substantial tea farm in the continental U.S. and that the site was selected because of the soil quality here as well as the location in a wet lowland area at this latitude.  Bigelow Tea Company now owns it...I enjoyed the experience but most definitely would have enjoyed it more if it were instead about my preferred drink, coffee...

Election for Gainesville City Commission At-Large Seat This Tuesday 11/16

This Tuesday, November 16 the Gainesville City Commission is holding its election to replace Gail Johnson for the At-Large Seat B, from which she resigned a few months ago.  Residents of Gainesville have the opportunity today (until 6 pm) to vote early, either at the Millhopper Library on NW 43rd Street or the Supervisor of Elections office on NW Main.  Both Melissa and I voted by mail-in ballot a few days ago.  I know this election is not for the presidency and has just a one item on the ballot, but I suggest that this is the perfect opportunity for anyone to get started with the self-discipline of consistent, informed voting.  I am sick and tired of people in my party (Democrats) complaining that the other side is robbing them of the right to vote when they themselves won't avail themselves of this right (which I regard as more of a RESPONSIBILITY)...after all, the previous commissioner, Gail Johnson, won with only an 11% voter turnout in this predominantly Democratic city. If you're perplexed as to why so many "blue" states have Republican majorities in their legislatures and even some Republican governors, the answer is partly due to the fact that conservative voters tend to display that self-discipline when those off-year elections come around while too many Democrats seem to be of the mindset that once a president in their own party is elected then that settles everything for the next four years...folks, that ain't how it works.  In Clinton's second year, 1994, and Obama's in 2010, Democratic voters sat on their hands and allowed the Republicans to win back the House of Representatives in Obama's case and both houses of Congress in Clinton's.  And in 2014, two years after Obama had been reelected, they stayed away from the polls again and let Mitch McConnell's party take control of the U.S. Senate, thereby enabling the new Senate Majority Leader to steal a Supreme Court seat by refusing to consider the duly-elected president's nominee, Merrick Garland.  But sadly, I expect more of the same ignorant complacency from my party in 2022...if there's anything I've learned over the past few years it's how precarious of a situation I am in with this "representative democracy" of ours, considering the gullibility and foolishness of much of the electorate: sometimes it feels like I'm on a runaway train with no one at the controls...

Just Watched the Movie Hamilton

Hamilton is a 2020 movie of the same-titled Broadway musical, filmed at its Richard Rogers Theatre on 46th Street in Midtown Manhattan, just a block or so from where I stayed at the Marriott Marquis while visiting with my family in 2010.  At that time we saw the Broadway production of South Pacific at the Lincoln Center...today it was Melissa, Will and I sitting in our living room watching my second Broadway play on our television screen, thanks to Disney Plus which carried it in their listings.  The first few minutes quickly knocked me off my feet with the diverse cast and fast-paced rap, music and action...at first I had to ask if this show was about the same Alexander Hamilton I knew from studying American history.  An immigrant from the Caribbean West Indies, Hamilton was a patriot during the American Revolutionary War and served under General George Washington, a role which would later lead to his appointment as the first president's Secretary of the Treasury.  Along the way he got to know others like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr...the Broadway play makes his relationship with Burr much more extensive than it apparently was in real life.  Those at all familiar with the real Hamilton know of the tragic end of his life, but I felt the show did an admirable job of presenting it and the aftermath...well, the ending was a real tearjerker!  It's a pretty long film at 2 hours and 40 minutes, so plan in advance some free time to watch it.  I felt that the music was incredible, and may be the first time ever that I had experienced rap on such a high artistic level...amazing.  Later on I read up on Hamilton and found the the Broadway play, which debuted in 2015 and won numerous awards, was not only coproduced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who portrayed Alexander Hamilton, but he also wrote it and composed its music and lyrics: what an incredible, daunting accomplishment!  All of the acting was fantastic, but I especially appreciated that of Leslie Odom, Jr. as Aaron Burr.  If you're interested in history, then I would suggest this movie as a point of departure and not the final word on what really transpired.  I would rather have been there in person to see Hamilton performed live on stage, but still feel very privileged to have been able to experience this beautiful work of art even if only at home on a wide flat-screen TV.  Why not try it out for yourself?

Quote of the Week...from Alex Roe

Everyone deals with grief in their own way.                         ---Alex Roe

A couple of days ago, while in the midst of my own health issues, I was informed within the span of 24 hours that four dear, sweet people whom I personally knew had passed away. I would be saddened by any of these deaths, but four at one time?  And there are others in my life who are undergoing their own personal health crises right now...I'm not sure I'm liking this new trend, if trend is what it really is instead of an aberration. But as George Harrison titled his landmark 1970 album, all things must pass, and I knew a long time ago that all living beings will indeed pass from this world, including eventually all my loved ones and even myself. Still, knowing this doesn't make it hurt any less when it happens, especially at this level.  By the way, I picked the above quote by Alex Roe although I've yet to see any movie or show this young actor has been involved with...but he was right on target with his statement...

Just Finished Reading Billy Summers by Stephen King

In my reading I tend to use my public library system and check out the books.  With new releases from popular authors, this can take a while, though, and I had to wait several weeks before Stephen King's latest novel, Billy Summers, was available because of the large backlog of holds on it.  I was able to obtain it as an audiobook and read it while at work.  Billy Summers, naturally, is the story's protagonist and would fit the classification of an "antihero", that is someone who compels the reader's sympathy and loyalty but who is also involved in illegal or antisocial activity...you know, someone like Bonnie and Clyde, the Godfather or numerous characters Clint Eastwood has portrayed.  In Billy's case it's that he is a professional hitman, albeit one who only kills people he knows are bad...those hiring him are aware of this precondition and take care to let him know the full depravity of his next target.  He is met and driven to a mobster figure he's known and worked with to get his next assignment: another hitman, arrested on unrelated charges and who is threatening to turn state's evidence on some very important people.  They in turn want this dude vanquished before he can spill the beans, and so here's Billy Summers to solve the problem.  Convinced that the hitman is bad, Billy accepts the assignment and the story progresses from there, with him living for several months among others in a lower-middle class neighborhood and getting to know them more than he had intended.  There is a specific moment when Billy, whose value in the "trade" derives from his sharpshooting expertise at sniping, has to be at a certain window trained on a specific spot below.  That's all well and fine, but Billy...who has pretended to be a lot dumber than he really is...can put the pieces together and realizes that whoever put out the hit on the hitman would most likely want him eliminated as well to cover up the trail.  So he develops an elaborate escape plan involving a secret identity...how it all works out is something that you, the potential reader of this fine story, will have to discover for yourself.  I will say that King splits his narrative into two main sections: the ongoing hit job Billy is tackling and his earlier life, progressing from childhood through his military experiences in Iraq...and particularly "La-La-Fallujah"...as a sniper.  In the novel's second half the reader discovers that this story is a part of Stephen King's fictional universe as his earlier novel The Shining is indirectly referenced through the Overlook Hotel's burnt remains and another eerie phenomenon...I like King's propensity for doing this kind of thing.  And the novel's ending had a peculiar little twist to it, making the reader first think that it is going in one direction until the story's real conclusion is revealed.  I liked Billy Summers a lot and recommend it...Stephen King is my favorite author and this book just reinforces that sentiment...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1978 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I examine three more science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1979 Annual World's Best SF, presenting the editor's choice of his favorites from 1978.  I was 21-22 at the time, struggling with difficult college classes and suffering from an overwhelming feeling of social alienation.  Nonetheless, I feel it was a time of personal growth and maturity, preparing me for what was to come in my life.  But enough of me, here are my reactions to those stories...

IN ALIEN FLESH by Gregory Benford

On a largely oceanic planet orbiting Zeta Reticuli dwells a huge, whale-like creature called the Drongheda.  It emits enormous quantities of mathematical images and insights, and a three-man expedition is there is record them...but first they have to enter the creature through a small opening.  Reginri, the protagonist, is reluctant for the mission but has been shamed into it by the other two, who had gone on earlier ones.  This time he experiences first-hand the flood of vivid imagery that the Drongheda produces, and it overwhelms him...it's not all mathematical after all.  The story begins with Reginri recovering on a neighboring planet with his wife and recalling it all...the ending reveals something about both the Drongheda's transmissions and human nature...

SQ by Ursula K. Le Guin

In this brief story society has "evolved" to the point where everyone has to undergo a examination to determine their sanity quotient, hence the title.  Before too long, the world's population becomes divided between the insane and the rest...and since there are so many crazies, then the sane remaining population is enlisted for the vast staff needed to care for them.  This leads to fewer and fewer people left to actually run the economy and provide for the rest.  This is obviously a clear case of literary satire and I got the message pretty much after the first page or two...

THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION by John Varley

Set about ten years ahead of the story's writing, Varley presents a world that has undergone at least one catastrophic nuclear disaster (in the Kansas area) and which has a violently fluctuating economy...it's on the downside now, late in the 1980s.  The protagonist, laid off from his financial urban job, has decided to hitchhike and experience the many communes of the American southwest.  He finally arrives at a stone wall-ringed establishment that is populated by deaf and mute people...these are the ones who were born that way to parents afflicted by the measles outbreak in 1964.  The story goes on to describe the commune's history, the protagonist's experiences in trying to communicate with them and assimilate, and where seeing and hearing children stand in relation to their parents in that peculiar society, where taboos are necessarily dispensed with and touching on many levels is developed to a level far transcending "normal" human communication.  The ending was intriguing and reminded me a little of my all-time favorite science fiction short story: Lewis Padgett's Mimsy Were the Borogoves from 1942...

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

Game of the Week: America Says

 

AMERICA SAYS is a TV game show specifically created for the cable station Game Show Network (on Channel 73 for Gainesville Cox Cable subscribers).  It's been around since 2018 and is hosted by John Michael Higgins.  The premise is simple enough: two four-person teams...not necessarily family like the similar show Family Feud...vie against each other for points and bonus round dollars as they fill in the blanks to phrases posed at-large in surveys taken of Americans for their most common answers.  You can see from the above game, with the contestant in the lower left corner, that "home run", "umpire", and "strike" have already been correctly guessed for those blanks on the puzzle screen...the remaining words are hinted at by the lengths of their blanks.  This is not a deliberately racy show with all kinds of dubious sexual references as is sadly the case with Steve Harvey's Family Feud, which I used to watch in the 1970s when Richard Dawson hosted it but now studiously avoid...I like Harvey and thinks he's a talented comedian, but his show has gone in the wrong direction with its emphasis.  On the other hand, I have yet to figure out the somewhat confusing rules on America Says, especially when it comes to team elimination and bonus rounds.  And like just about every game show out there, they spend too much time trying to establish personal rapport with the often very uninteresting guests by asking questions prompted, no doubt, by the questionnaires they filled out beforehand...groan.  No, I can do without all that: what I like is simply competing against the contestants to see if I can't fill in all the blanks.  Another thing making America Says superior to Family Feud is that the puzzle survey is not of the studio audience, with potentially oddball responses, but rather is more likely to be representative of how people really think.  On the other hand, I do like that Family Feud bonus round more...just let me skip the rest of the show.  When I see America Says with all its surveys about often inane topics, it gives me pause as to why there isn't a news cable channel somewhere out there whose only function is to poll the population with pertinent questions about relevant issues affecting Americans today, without any built-in ideological spin...kind of like a Gallop or Harris Poll Channel.  Such a channel would demand a response from our often intransigent politicians when their votes and policies directly contradict the people's will.  But I get it: fat chance of that ever happening...instead we get partisan, biased news channels with their partisan, biased viewership participating in meaningless surveys...

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"...