Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 6

This week I have more 1984 science fiction short stories to review from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Second Annual Collection. 1984 for me was one of personal growth in the area of financial management. I was already living on relatively meager resources when that April I developed and implemented a plan and mindset of frugality and wise economic choices. It was here that I developed within me the notion that there was such a thing as "enough" and that I would never be personally susceptible to ad campaigns that tried to manufacture a want for a product I didn't want in the first place.  But back to those stories...

ROCK ON by Pat Cadigan

This story is a play on the notion that rock n' roll music is based on the rhythm of sex...the setting is into the future a few decades (around now?) when rock stars record their music while connected to "sync-ers"...people with a special ability to transmit the essence of a hit while hooked up electronically...and hooked up sexually as well.  The narrative is about one such sync-er...or "sinner" as the common parlance goes among them...who decides to leave the artist she's under contract with.  And how once she's on the loose she then becomes a target for other acts.  To me this story was a commentary about the demeaning and degradation of popular music in our time...not just in a moral sense but also in that less and less personal talent and creativity factor into stardom nowadays in favor of technology and production...give a listen to local pop mx station Kiss-105 for a little while to see what I mean: yuck....

SUNKEN GARDENS by Bruce Sterling

Another (groan) futuristic short story taking place in Sterling's fictional universe (that the editor seems to love) where Shapers and Mechanists vie for control of the solar system, here the focus is on Mars and its ongoing terraforming.  The organization controlling the project has settled various outcast subgroups of Shapers on its surface and is holding a contest between them at a site called the Sunken Gardens to see which has the best terraforming ideas.  But those in charge, while communicating the fact that the previous ecology there from an earlier project must first be cleared, don't tell the whole story about the life they will be obliterating...

TRINITY by Nancy Kress

This novella is a combination cloning/sibling rivalry/search for God tale.  A woman's seeker sister is staying at an institute where siblings are paired in a machine to generate a strange entity that the scientist running it suspects may be God him-it-her-self.  Knowing from her own past in research that such a study has produced an unusual number of deaths among the participants, she tries every trick she knows to dissuade her sister from participating and to get her out of there.  Complicating matters is the clone her now-late father had made of her sister and the efforts to bring him into the project.  I think my problem with this story is that it had too many different areas of focus...

THE TROUBLE WITH THE COTTON PEOPLE by Ursula K. Le Guin

Set on a future Earth or may another world...the author doesn't reveal this...society is rather primitive with the northern area trading their wine across the Inland Sea for the cotton grown and provided by the southern people.  Only one problem: the cotton they are receiving is starting to be inferior quality...should they send it back, cut back on their wine exports, or do something else?  Finally, they decide a combination of all three, choosing to send a small delegation to the south to ascertain the problem and negotiate a solution.  It is their experiences with the "cotton people" of the south that seem to form the moral of this quizzical tale about how to get along with those one has a dispute with...

TWILIGHT TIME by Lewis Shiner

For me the best story of the five I'm reviewing today, it does use time travel to alter the past...not necessarily the best premise for a story although H.G. Wells and Stephen King have used this device to perfection.  In a near future America...and world, I presume...where proctors have been voted into permanent control of society, a couple of scientists perform an time travel experiment in their rural Arizona town.  The one "going back" discovers evidence of an extraterrestrial craft tearing up a road...and a couple of frightened children convince him that something amiss is happening here.  The story is a puzzle of different pieces that all come together nicely at the end...bravo, author!

Next week I continue with comments on stories from Dozois' anthology covering 1984...

June Features Five Planets Aligned in East Before Sunrise

I don't watch Lawrence O'Donnell's opinion show on MSNBC, nor do I follow him on social media.  However, for some reason I probably would rather not know, a posting of his appeared on my Facebook newsfeed page with a topic I wouldn't normally associate with him and his politically oriented output: astronomy.  It revealed that sky-gazers in this month of June 2022 are getting a special treat...if they are early-risers, that is.  The five planets visible to the naked eye...Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn...are strung out close to each other in the eastern predawn sky along the elliptic, in that order starting from the horizon in the constellation Taurus near the Pleiades (Mercury) and extending westward (up and to the right) in Aries (Venus), in Pisces (Mars and Jupiter, visually close together) and Aquarius (Saturn) on the far west end of the planetary spectacle.  The most difficult planet to spot will most definitely be Mercury, for while it will have enough brightness to be visible, to observe it I'll have to catch it just after it rises but just before the sun...and it'll be just above the east horizon so there can't be any impediments like trees or buildings.  I'm going to bravely try to get up early...totally against my current habits...and see whether I can't get a glimpse of our innermost planet: it will be down and to the left from very bright Venus.  Of course, if it's cloudy or foggy I'll have to try another morning.  But this planetary alignment phenomenon will be out there for most of the month.  By June 24th the moon will even be a part of it... 

Podcaster Distinguishes Between the Journey and the Destination

Recently I've been writing weekly posts about a personal development podcast, called The Mindset Mentor, and hosted by Rob Dial.  Some shows are better than others, and while I don't always agree with Dial there is usually at least one episode that resonates with me.  Such was the case this past week when he discussed how people who are trying to improve their lives find themselves stymied and discouraged because the problems they thought they were overcoming keep coming back.  To this he replied that it's all a journey and that there is no destination...and that whatever bad habits you overcome you never completely rid yourself of them.  So ten years ago something might have made you mad for a week...five years later the same kind of thing would only set you back a day, and now maybe five minutes...but the potential for relapse is always there.  And if you screw up, then realize that the journey is what matters.  I'd only add to what he said by mentioning that while life is definitely a journey...or process...it's still important to have direction to it.  Just stop beating yourself up whenever you come up short...that's a necessary part of it all: I call it a "growth opportunity"...  

My #28 All-Time Favorite Album: Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? by Metric

#28: OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND, WHERE ARE YOU NOW?  by Metric

Metric is a longstanding Canadian alternative rock band, in existence since 1998 with several albums out between then and now.  Emily Haines is their lead singer and, with guitarist Jim Shaw, created the band.  Later came bassist Joshua Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key to complete the lineup.  All of them take songwriting credits on their tracks, which over the years have come to more heavily rely on the synthesizer and less on the harder guitar riffs epitomizing their earlier works.  Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?  in 2003 was their second recorded album but the first one actually released...it spawned the catchy anti-war single Combat Baby, which I heard played the following year on my local alt-rock station WHHZ on 100.5.  That's all I knew of this band until 2009 when I explored some of their music on YouTube, eventually getting a copy of this album.  If you liked Debbie Harry's new wave Blondie group from decades earlier, then Metric in their early years was a more hard-rock version of them...both Harry and Haines are very good, emotionally expressive singers.  Of Old World Underground's tracks, here is my ranking of my favorites, with a brief comment following each:

1 Calculation (Theme)---A cryptic song with pure synthesizer background, Haines sings from the viewpoint, it appears, of a computer.  The ending is chilling and poignant.

2 Love is a Place---The album's short closing track is a combination of Haines' soothing voice and one of the most wicked guitar accompaniments I've heard in a while.

3 Combat Baby---One of a couple of songs on the album hinting at protest against the Iraq war, its music stands on its own as a melodic, catchy mainstream pop/rock hit...which is probably why they chose it as their first single.

4 The List---An anthemic track that seems a bit autobiographical, I loved the musical flow.  Plus, I'm partial to lists if you've known me for a while...why, look, here's one!

5 Hustle Rose---A sad, beautiful exposé of the lifestyle of someone who derives her livelihood from "hustling".  It's a story in itself as well an extremely danceable song (so are #3 and #4).

6 Succexy---Harshly critical of the military and the pro-war spirit dominant during this era, this is probably the most political of all their music...

7 Wet Blanket---I can't help but think that Metric deliberately set out to pay a musical tribute to The Knack for their monster 1979 hit My Sharona and that unmistakable, singular guitar riff that permeated it, copied here.

Other album tracks were IOU, On a Slow Night, and Dead Disco...I didn't care too much for these, but it's nearly impossible to listen to an album and like every song.  Old World Underground, Where Are You? is primarily a rock album, with some slow ballads and several danceable tracks.  And you can't beat the voice of Emily Haines...

Tropical Disturbance Floods Out South Florida

After eastern Pacific tropical storm Agatha crossed Mexico and dissipated into stormy weather after emerging in the Gulf of Mexico, it headed quickly toward South Florida, this morning dumping 6 to 9 inches of rain in just a few hours' span.  The Weather Channel thankfully suspended its usual boring late-night programming to cover the storm...but their repeated warnings didn't prevent locals from driving their vehicles through flooded areas, stranding themselves and most likely ruining their cars.  When you see water on a road, all you're seeing is the surface and not how deep it goes. Even if you've gone down the same street repeatedly, you may not be aware how it dips in elevation from one place to another...and that's causing a lot of the turmoil in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area.  By the way, this storm has no official name because the meteorologists don't detect adequate tropical circulation in it...they simply call it "PTC 1" (Potential Tropical Cyclone 1) in spite of the fact that the Weather Channel routinely gives names to winter frontal storm systems and even heat waves.  As for South Florida, I haven't been back down there since 2013 when my father died, living in the northern part of the state since 1977...even long-established sports franchises like the Miami Heat, Florida/Miami Marlins and the Florida Panthers came into existence long after I had departed the scene.  The last times I was there we walked along Hollywood Beach, but it felt more exotic instead of a homecoming...the numerous Russian-speaking people there probably added to this effect.  I can't think of any compelling reason for a return visit, unless they finally get around to establishing a decent theme park with real roller coasters.  Even the earlier quaintness of the western fringe of the populated area with many rural pockets that I remember when growing up in the 60s and 70s (I lived two blocks from a cow pasture and went to school in a town with horses on the street and rodeos) is largely gone with the unrelenting expansion of urban and suburban sprawl...it's now all just one huge, ugly unnamed city going on for miles north, south, and west....

Quote of the Week...from Jim Carrey

Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don't let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.            ---Jim Carrey

I've noticed that comedic actor Jim Carrey has become something of an armchair philosopher, and I find myself in agreement with a lot of what he has to say.  The above quote of his struck me in particular since for much of my life my unconscious strategy to get by was to make myself as invisible to others as possible...not so much because I craved acceptance from them, but rather so that they would stay away and not bother me.  In being like this I missed out on an important principle: like people attract like people, and for the things that mean the most to me, loudly broadcasting them to others...while possibly generating opposition and even persecution, also lets those with the same outlook and interests as me know that I'm one of them.  Eventually I would find myself in a circle of like-minded souls...no longer any need to be "invisible".  That's not exactly what I think Carrey meant...his message is that if people don't risk standing out before others, then their lives diminish as a consequence, invisible to others and, worse, invisible to themselves.  But old habits are hard to break...fortunately I think I have some keys to breaking this one, one "atomic habit" at a time...

Just Finished Rereading Song of Susannah by Stephen King

Song of Susannah is the sixth of seven books in Stephen King's Dark Tower fantasy/science fiction series, published in 2004...just a year after the sixth book, Wolves of the Calla and in the same year as the very lengthy finale, The Dark Tower.  The series' premise continues, with the "ka-tet" of Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers and Oy the billy-bumbler as they seek the Dark Tower, which binds all of reality together and is threatened by the evil, powerful, and most probably insane Crimson King.  Here Susannah is going through her pregnancy induced when having sex with a demon while trying to save Jake from captivity in an earlier book. An alternate personality in her own body, Mia, takes control of it and steers the "two" of them to where the bad guys are preparing for what is most likely a demon child's birth.  Meanwhile the rest of the heroes, along with Father Callahan from the previous book and King's early novel Salem's Lot, seek to buy a crucial empty lot in east Manhattan where a single red rose seems to hold the key to the Tower.  To this end they end up in Maine, where they discover King...which starts a curious mirror effect in the series where readers are reacquainted with his earlier works as well as his personal life history and habits.  Even reading through all this a second time around, I found the book to be a bit confusing to say the least...but I think its main function was to serve as a link to the series' final volume.  And with this I think it succeeded, and now it's onward to that amazing ride in King's massive conclusion to the Dark Tower series...

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 5

Today I continue reviewing 1984 science fiction short stories I read from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Second Annual Collection.  Although for much of the 1984 I owned two (shabby) used cars, my preferred mode of transportation was the bicycle, and the kind of bicycle I preferred you'd never see in a race: strictly basic Wal-Mart material.  Nowadays I don't even own one, and if I did, I'd be a lot more concerned sharing the road with motorists distracted by their gadgets than I ever was about drunk drivers.  And now my reactions to the next eight stories in the book...

NEW ROSE HOTEL by William Gibson

Brutal cutthroat industrial espionage of the not-so-distant future reigns here as the narrator, one of the "spies", flees death from the opposition after his team's attempts to lure a crucial geneticist from one company to another go disastrously. His description of discount hotels as "coffin racks" with the "rooms" being "plastic capsules a meter high and three long, stacked like surplus Godzilla teeth"...oh yeah, sign me up, I want to live there!   

THE MAP by Gene Wolfe

Gardner Dozois is very big on Gene Wolfe, but his stories just don't resonate with me...here's another one. On a fantasy world of the distant future, there is the river Gyoll and the decaying, dead city of Nessus...and a map. The quest is on to find whatever it leads to, but betrayal, murder and frustration are its only fruits.  I see nothing science fiction here, and frankly, not much of a story...maybe you'll have better luck with it...

INTERLOCKING PIECES by Molly Gloss

A woman with a dire medical need of a cerebellum transplant (needless to say we're speaking of the future) uses her high position to gain access to the donor, a man with a certainty of death after he voluntarily rejects another heart transplant.  It is this need to contact and bond between donor and recipient that stands out in this brief tale...

TROJAN HORSE by Michael Swanwick

Elin is a scientist whose brain was damaged during an experiment done in Earth orbit.  She has received a personality transplant...yes, I know this sounds weird...and is recuperating on the moon in a terraformed area under a dome, complete with a lake.  There is a woman, Cleo, living there and she had a similar transplant...and now she thinks she's God.  How she, Elin, and their mutual acquaintance, Tory...a "wetware" surgeon who is involved in both of their cases...relate forms the core of this story in which I, the reader, had some trouble discerning what was real and what wasn't, not always a good sign... 

BAD MEDICINE by Jack Dann

One of my favorite pieces so far from this anthology, this story is all about Native American traditions and religion, with Stephen, a white "seeker" kind of dude dabbling in different projects, agrees to go with his Indian friend John to where one of John's friends is undergoing a special ritual.  Part of the preliminaries involves everyone sitting in a confined, painfully-hot place called a sweat-lodge...it is here that the resentments and grudges building between some of the participants come to a head. An interesting story, but more along the lines of Stephen King's horror genre than standard science fiction...

AT THE EMBASSY CLUB by Elizabeth A. Lynn

This is a brief tale about caste systems, racism, and misogyny...especially toward young women, a clear analogy to some present-day regions in the world and their social structures.  A diplomat from Earth falls in love with a girl on Tanderai...one of those brutally stratified societies...and the two each undergo the consequences of their romance. Great ending, although crossing forbidden class lines between lovers isn't exactly a novel idea for a story...

PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE by Rena Yount

A few weeks ago I wrote a generally unread blog article titled "People Magnets" that describe how certain folks seem to automatically be set apart from others in terms of their looks and opportunities...this story transfers it all to a dreary science fiction future in which people pay through the nose for their offspring to be genetically engineered for looks, intellect, athletics, or whatever their interest is for them.  In turn, the bioengineered get all the good jobs and run society over the "norms", like Evelyn who wants her planned daughter to be bioengineered and neglects her own bright-but-normal son in the process.  Aside from another story about the "beautiful people", this is a disturbing study about how parents can become excessively obsessed about what they want their children to become...

THE KINDLY ISLE by Fredrick Pohl

On a Caribbean resort island, a large hotel has been shut down for years...a company has sent a representative to assess the place for purchase and renovation possibilities.  While there he discovers the presence of a missing scientist formerly involved in biological warfare research.  How these two stories come together steer the course of the story to the ending...for which its title is quaintly apt: another plate of lobster, please, for the sake of humanity...

Next week: more about 1984 stories from the Dozois anthology...

My May 2022 Running and Walking Report

I've been doing these monthly reports on my blog for years summarizing my running activity.  Usually, I reveal how many miles I ran for the month, my longest single run, and how many days I ran.  But in April I decided to stop that, only because my running tends to now be indoors in my own house, running up and down the long hallways and through rooms.  I know I get good training workouts this way...I completed a half-marathon and a ten-mile race earlier this year...but it's next to impossible to accurately translate what I do into actual miles run.  So let me just say that my running is as good as ever and that I will continue doing it primarily indoors with the air-conditioner blasting full force.  If I decide to go outside, then I have a relatively large back yard to run laps around as well.  I had opportunities in May to run on Saturday morning in one of the weekly, free Depot Parkrun 5Ks that Gainesville is fortunate to have. But then something else comes into play to work against that...which is that my evolving emphasis with my running is in pacing, not racing.  And my experiences in that race...I think I've run it some six times so far...are that they tend to stress fast finishing times and personal records, and for good reason: it's a race, after all!  But my vision of where I want my running to go is more oriented to covering longer distances at what I personally regard as a reasonable pace for me...I frankly don't care how my speed stacks up against other runners.  And, with this in mind, I'd like to participate in races of at least 10K in length...since none are on the agenda around here then I'm content to run around the house instead and generally avoid the sweltering summertime heat and humidity.  As for my walking, I just measure my mileage on my Fitbit and record it, most of it coming from the extensive walking I do over the course of the week at my job...   

On This Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day I honor those courageous fellow Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the armed forces.  We are such a blessed nation, and sometimes I feel that not only others, but myself as well, sometimes lose sight of the many things we have to be thankful for.  Included in that are our precious liberties...which brings me back to remembering those wonderful men and women who died protecting them. 

My #29 All-Time Favorite Album: Let It Be by the Beatles

 #29 LET IT BE, by the Beatles, in the summer of 1970 was the final studio album released by them...although it was recorded in January of 1969 and followed by Abbey Road that summer.  It is famous for the two documentary movies made from the sessions...the earlier one focused on the conflicts between the four members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.  The track Get Back, featuring Paul and a wicked guitar riff, was released ahead of the album in 1969, becoming a major hit (and one of my favorites during that year).  The song Let It Be, another of Paul's and one that I didn't care for, came out as a single in the winter of '70.  Then came The Long and Winding Road along with the full album release later that year...yet another McCartney work although he strongly objected to how producer Phil Spector doctored up the track to include an orchestra and female choir.  I loved The Long and Winding Road, though...and still do.  The finished album contains several wonderful pieces...I remember hearing the first track, The Two of Us, featuring Paul and John in great harmony, way back then on the radio and thoroughly adoring it and its wistful spirit during a pretty gut-wrenching period in my life. John's mystical Across the Universe and George's catchy, light-hearted For You Blue were other album favorites as was the Lennon and McCartney collaboration I've Got a Feeling, Side Two's opening track.  They included on this album One After 909, an old Lennon/McCartney rocker from their earlier years.  Tracks that I grew to marginally like were Lennon's I Dig a Pony, Dig It, and Harrison's I Me Mine...but I never was able to make anything of Maggie Mae.  I'll never forget looking at the jacket of my then-new Let It Be album...bought after the Beatles had already broken up, and reading on it the words "This is a new phase Beatles album"...whatever the hell that was supposed to mean, I don't think the person who wrote it envisioned the band dissolving so soon.  Still, it was a great album for all the trouble that went into creating it...   

Last Public Phone in NYC Removed

I was watching Good Morning America this morning and saw that New York City's last public payphone station...the enclosed booths disappeared long ago...has been removed, to be placed in a museum.  I remember in the old Superman fifties TV series how the Man of Steel would use telephone booths as a convenient changing station from his alter ego Clark Kent whenever a need for his superhuman heroics arose.  Then, in the 1978 Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve the first time Kent needed a phone booth he looked at an open-air phone station...like the one they just removed...and realized that it just wasn't going to work.  The old movies are full of folks using those good old phone booths...Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and The Birds, James Bond's Doctor No, and the classic spoof Airplane! instantly come to mind.  Oh, and the 2002 Colin Farrell thriller Phone Booth naturally puts the outmoded old structure center stage.  And there's that old Gomer Pyle episode where Jim Nabors tries to put coins back into the phone that had earlier released them all...and gets arrested for theft.  Just think, back in those primitive bygone years people used to actually go outside without any phones to serve as a lifeline to whatever services they might need to access...scary times, scary times.  I guess it's our era's version of the old cliché where the wise old man would tell the spoiled young'uns that, in his day, he used to have to walk five miles in the snow to school.  Sadly, a smartphone is nowadays often deemed so crucially essential that some even feel hesitant to leave it behind them when they go into another room in their own home.  It's the real-world version of Bilbo Baggin's "precious" ring when one day he realizes he misplaced it and goes into a panic...

Quote of the Week...from Jean Yoon

If every time men had sex, they risked death, physical disability, social shunning, a life altering interruption of their education or career, and the sudden life-long responsibility for another being, I think they'd expect a choice in the matter.                                    ---Jean Yoon

I only know of the above quote by American-born Canadian actress/writer Jean Yoon because I've seen it reposted on Facebook a number of times in recent days...I haven't seen anything she acted in or read her writings before.  But her statement concerning too many men's attitudes regarding a woman's right to make her own reproductive choices to me expresses their fundamental hypocrisy on the subject when they justify their pro-life/anti-choice stance on "principles".  Principles, I might add, that don't apply to them since, as expressed in Yoon's quote, they aren't subject to the physical, social and economic consequences of pregnancy that the woman must endure, "chosen" or not. I recognize that this is a very sensitive issue and that well-meaning people, men and women both, have wide-ranging and often very passionate opinions about it.  But as I have stated before in earlier blog articles, it would be a good thing for everyone concerned if each of us showed a little compassion toward those with whom we disagree and at least tried to empathetically see things from their viewpoints...Jean's quote stresses this point.  But I see where our society is going right now and sadly doubt that my suggestion will be widely practiced anytime soon...

Taking in Daisy as Our Newest Family Addition

 

Back in 2019 our family dog Freckles, a mixed-breed rescue dog we adopted as a puppy, passed away after 14 years with us.  It's been a while, but the Saturday before last, PetSmart on Archer Road here in Gainesville was holding a pet adoption fair through one of the non-profits and we went...and little Daisy was the result.  She is also a mixed breed rescue dog, two months old and very motivated to bond with us while establishing her supremacy throughout the house.  Naturally, the first few weeks are a bit tedious, with us laying down the rules and (trying to) train her to wait to do her "business" outside...crate training seems to be helping with this although she tends to whine and howl sporadically as you would expect.  As for me personally, although everyone else in my childhood and adult nuclear families are very keen on pet ownership, I have never felt the inner urge to go out and get some critter to hang out with and give me some kind of psychological lift.  Not criticizing those who "have it"...just about everyone in my family is crazy about dogs and cats.  I like them, too, but in all the years I was single and on my own I never once had the remotest urge to take in one as a pet.  Still, I love other people and through them I bond with the pesky little animals.  Daisy is a real sweetie, no doubt about it... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I start reviewing 1984 science fiction short stories I read from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Second Annual Collection. Among the first seven stories in the book are three from Donald Wollheim's series that I already read and discussed: Salvador by Lucius Shepard, Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler and Press Enter by Varley.  Each of them is remarkable and unforgettable in its own way...don't forget to read them.  Of the other first four stories, here are my reactions...

PROMISES TO KEEP by Jack McDevitt

Set in probably our own times (sci-fi writers tended to be wildly optimistic about our space progress), a group of astronauts...along with a journalist...are on Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons.  Humanity is out here exploring while enthusiasm at home on Earth has dwindled with funding for future missions and innovation seriously in doubt.  As the group's lander ship makes a rendezvous with the main ship before returning home, a crisis happens...this story reminded me a lot of those I read from the 1940s and 50s, especially the ones penned by the great Robert Heinlein...  

BLUED MOON by Connie Willis

When I discovered the gimmick in this story early on, I just groaned to myself, sucked it up and read on to the end. Out in the western desert a company is testing whether hydrocarbon wastes launched into a strategic part of the atmospheric would have a beneficial effect on protecting and restoring the crucial ozone layer.  When folks discover that the moon has turned blue, then all sorts of hijinks result (along with my groaning).  I take it as nothing more than a light-hearted tale capitalizing on a worn-out cliche...

A MESSAGE TO THE KING OF BROBDINGNAG by Richard Cowper

An altruistic agricultural scientist has discovered the means for a crop plant to generate its own fertilizer, giving it independence from the soil in which it is nurtured. The test sites for his project involve one in Australia, which he visits and which occupies the story's ominous, nightmare ending...one that I fear could actually happen.  What a shockingly scary and effective story!

THE AFFAIR by Robert Silverberg

In this story telepaths exist, and it's possible for them to communicate over long distances with each other.  The problem for Chris, a secret telepath himself, is that he discovers that most of them are insane.  But one day in his mental wanderings he encounters a woman, living hundreds of miles away...and she is very, very sane.  The two, both married, begin to develop a telepathic romantic affair...eventually Chris insists on a personal meeting.  They go back and forth about the guilt of seeing one another...how it resolves itself is up to you, the reader, to find out. Of course, things like telepathy, time travel, and faster than light speed travel are staples of so-called "science" fiction...but I think this story of Silverberg does lend itself to non-telepathic analogies...  

Next week: more from Dozois' anthology....

About the Primary Results Last Tuesday

We're now thick into the 2022 election season now, albeit in the "preliminary" party primary phase.  This is when fringe candidates often snatch up nominations by attracting more fanatical voters than more traditional politicians, sometimes leaving poor choices on the November ballot.  I was interested particularly in the Pennsylvania seat of the US Senate being vacated next January by retiring Republican incumbent Pat Toomey.  Television doctor Mehmet Oz was running to replace him, with the full support of Donald Trump.  As the results started coming through that evening for last Tuesday's primary election, it became clear that it would be very close between Oz and Dave McCormick...at this writing a week later it is still undecided.  I deliberately chose to watch Newsmax and Fox News for the results for how their favored "guys" were doing in the spotlighted races. I found myself further resenting how dictator-wannabe Trump has managed to coopt conservative politics, some of which I'm in agreement with, to the point where it is little more than a personality cult where politicians compete to seen as the most loyal...not to the people they claim to want to represent...but rather to just one sorry, self-absorbed man. Pathetic. Georgia...along with Alabama and Arkansas...will be holding their primary elections today.  On the Republican side in my birth state of Georgia, football hero Herschel Walker, endorsed by Trump, is running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Raphael Warnock while incumbent governor Brian Kemp is facing a number of opponents in his party's primaries, including former U.S. senator David Perdue...Trump's stooge in this race. To align himself with the Orange Man after that earlier endorsement, Perdue had joined the crowd of 2020 presidential election deniers in order to curry his favor. Should be interesting to see the results from Georgia tonight: I think I'll just skip the propaganda channels, though (all of them, left or right-leaning) ...or at least mute the sound.  Better yet: skip the TV and get the results off my smartphone...

Personal Development Podcaster's Take on Technology Addiction

On one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, life coach Rob Dial discussed how to get ahead of everyone else...quickly. It's not so complicated: while the population in general is becoming more and more dependent on their digital technology like smartphones, television and innovations like virtual reality and the Metaverse, he's decided to take a different path, trading in the time and effort put into entertainment for education and action...in the real world.  Dial maintains that studies show that (not necessarily a good lead-in line) people over the past few decades have much shorter attention spans, and he attributes this to their excessive use of media and digital devices.  For himself, he says that being around his cellphone too much makes him less focused and more anxious, and deliberately puts it away in another room when he has other things planned to do.  Dial is not opposed to using smartphones, social media, Netflix or other manifestations of the modern digital era per se, but the question becomes, who is the master, yourself or the technology to which he claims many are addicted.  Where do I stand on all this?  I agree with Rob Dial's suggestion that we all read and learn more instead...yet I use my Android both as a Kindle device and an audiobook.  YouTube in itself is an incredible teaching device...I recently saved a "load" of money replacing a simple worn-out part in my dryer by following a video on that platform.  Still, I admit that while I'm not anywhere near as attached to Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites as many others I know (as well as probably Dial himself), I do tend to engage in some game playing on it...but not all that much when I think about it. Still, I can see how folks can become addicted to all this stuff...being 65 with a lifetime of sitting in front of a TV set, I think that's probably the closest I come to being "addicted" to a form of technology...and yet in recent times I've become more discriminating in what I watch, often switching to a music channel or just turning the confounded thing off. On the other hand, as I related in my recent Saturday article, I get a big kick out of watching sports on TV...that ain't changing.  My big problem with people stuck on their devices is that they tend to be on them while driving, and that poses a direct danger to myself and my loved ones...not to mention that it makes me skittish about ever again riding a bicycle outside my neighborhood when in bygone years I used to bike all over the place...

My #30 All-Time Favorite Album: On the Threshold of a Dream by the Moody Blues

ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM, my #30 all-time favorite album, is the British rock band The Moody Blues' third studio album after they regrouped following the departure of their founding vocalist Denny Laine and bassist Clint Warwick.  With guitarist Justin Haywood and bassist John Lodge joining original members drummer Graeme Edge, flutist/guitarist Ray Thomas and keyboardist Mike Pinder, they embarked in 1967 on a string of concept-based albums with a classical music-sounding background highlighted by Pinder's mellotron...definitely a turn toward progressive rock.  On the Threshold of a Dream is themed on, well, dreaming...especially Side Two, in my opinion one of the greatest ever album sides, back when there used to be such a thing as album sides.  Recorded in London in January 1969, not far from where the Beatles were at the same time recording their Let It Be tracks, it was released that April...but I didn't hear any of its songs until much later, in the 1990s.  This album, as with the Moodies' others, is a full creatively collaborative effort, with everyone contributing tracks.  Two of them, the opening, quirky In the Beginning and the beautiful, haunting The Dream on the second side, feature Edge, well-known for his beautiful soliloquy at the close of their hit Nights in White Satin (from Days of Future Passed).  Then the album progresses to pleasant tracks by Haywood (Lovely to See You), Thomas (Dear Diary), Haywood & Lodge (Send Me No Wine), Lodge (To Share Our Love) and Pinder (So Deep Within You).  Although the tracks flow without interruption from one to the next on both sides, the songs on Side Two end up seeming like a coherent, complete work.  Never Comes the Day, by Haywood is a sad, sweet lead-in to one of my all-time favorite songs, Ray Thomas' Lazy Day...a curious combination of quaintness and the sinister.  This in turn leads to another personal favorite, John Lodge's Are You Sitting Comfortably, a wistful fantasy piece reminding me of (vicariously) hiking through Tolkien's Middle Earth.  Then comes that intense Edge piece The Dream, leading into the finale: a combination of the Haywood song Have You Heard and a psychedelic, orchestral-sounding instrumental The Voyage.  Yes, that Side Two is always a special listening experience for me...

Now that this weekly unraveling of my thirty personal all-time favorite albums has begun, you might be interested in how I break them down.  Well, it's overwhelmingly weighted in favor of well-known acts, mostly bands and many from Britain and many leaning toward hard and progressive rock with other more recent ones in the alternative/indie rock genre.  I'm sure that if you've been into classic and alternative/indie rock to any degree you're probably going to be familiar with many, if not most of my picks.  My biggest problem in compiling this list, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, was deciding which albums to leave out as there are so many great ones.  At this writing the full On a Threshold of a Dream album is available on YouTube: check it out if you can...

Watching Golf and Horse Racing on TV Today

As I await the pivotal third game in the NBA Eastern Conference championship series between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat (go Al Horford and Jimmy Butler!) this evening, two more "minor" sporting events are going on this afternoon: the PGA Championship tournament (third round) in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, Maryland.  If I told you that the temperature at one of these events was 57 degrees and for the other it was 91, you might think the golfers were sweating it out while the horse racing attendees would be wearing sleeves...not so, there's a record-setting heat wave going on right now in the American northeast, while the weather has been wreaking havoc with the golfers in Tulsa, for the first two days blasting hot air with strong winds from the south and today abruptly switching to cool, strong winds from the north...the wildly changing scores are reflecting the tumult. As expected, Tiger Woods...and I wish him the best...received an excessive amount of attention even though he just barely made Friday's cut and shot a 79 today to go into the final round, at this writing some 22 strokes off the lead.  I expect the leaderboard to change a bit leading into an exciting final round...at this writing a couple of relative unknowns (Zalatoris and Pereira) are leading it while more recognizable names like Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson and Cory McIlroy are right behind them.  As for the Preakness, the "second leg" of the annual Triple Crown of horse racing for three-year old thoroughbreds, Rick Strike...the surprise Kentucky Derby winner...won't be running in it.  Still, the race should be interesting with Derby runner-up Epicenter the strong favorite and Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath the second favorite.  The field has only nine horses...other than Epicenter, Simplification and Happy Jack the entrants did not run in the Kentucky Derby.  The media fanfare is also much less than with the Derby, NBC televised pre-race coverage slated to start at 4 pm Eastern Time, with the race to take place at 7:01.  I think I'll go for Secret Oath.  The PGA Championship is being televised on CBS...wonder what kind of weather they'll get tomorrow...

Quote of the Week...from Regina Spektor

There's an artist I listened to for the first time, and I really didn't like them.  I had some kind of adverse reaction, and later, it became my favorite thing.                     ---Regina Spektor

I can relate to Regina Spektor's above quote, because over the course of my listening to popular music... going all the way back to the early 1960s....there have been several acts that I initially disliked...well, some I even despised.  Yet, a few of them redeemed themselves to me and I now regard them as favorites...some of them have made great albums that I have included in my Top 30 Personal Favorite Albums list that I will begin going through each week, starting in a couple of days this Sunday.  And Regina, one of my favorite musical artists of this current century, figures to be on it.  When compiling my list, it pained me to leave out many very worthy albums, but had I not done so then this project would have been too long...thirty albums over thirty weeks sounded more reasonable.  Speaking of Regina Spektor, her new studio album, titled Home, Before and After, is set for release next month: I can hardly wait!