In December I ran a total of 102 miles, missing training on three days with 9.3 miles being my single longest run. That run occurred on December 7, the second year in a row I ran the Seasons of Hope 15K along the Hawthorne Trail southeast of Gainesville. I had reported on this blog a couple of hours after the race that my recovery seemed to be going well...unfortunately, later that evening my body was aching badly and it was painful moving and resting in certain positions. The next day it cleared up substantially, with the aching completely disappearing the following day. I'm going to need to reconsider my recovery strategy following a race, rehydrating much more and cutting out the coffee (I drank several cups going into late afternoon that day). I also wonder whether I pulled something as I was straining at the end of that 15K race...no more straining for me!
I am still considering trying out that Ocala Half-Marathon on January 19...I hadn't run it since 2013. If I do, though, I will be going at it slow with walking breaks every few minutes. And there's the Newnan's Lake 15K race at the end of the month as well, something I've grown accustomed to running in recent years. I'd like to continue with my long weekend training runs as well...I have the courses already mapped out. And thanks to my wife Melissa, who has become quite a walker, I plan to increase my fitness walking in the months to come...should running become untenable to me as I journey through my senior years, it seems to be the logical next "step" for me...
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Monday, December 30, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #320-311
Here are the next ten songs from my list of 500 personal all-time favorites. It's pretty clear that I tend to associate the songs with my own life memories...I'm sure that with the songs from the list that you recognize, you probably connect them in some fashion with your own personal memories. It's one of the curious things about popular music through the years, how they serve as memory markers...
320 YOUR WILDEST DREAMS...the Moody Blues
Your Wildest Dreams, from 1986, was one of this durable British rock band's final singles hits although they would record three more albums and successfully tour for decades...last year they were belatedly inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. It's a dreamy, wistful song about a relationship separated by many years and an implied question: "What's going on with you these days?", something that 33 years later with our social media era is generally a lot easier to answer...
319 I'LL HAVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU IN A SONG...Jim Croce
I remember this beautiful love song by Jim Croce being a radio hit a couple of months before I graduated from high school in the spring of 1974...Croce tragically had died the summer before in an airplane crash just as his musical career was taking off. Later in '74 I bought his "best hits" album titled Photographs and Memories...lots of great tracks on it. Croce's music was divided between funny, folksy pieces like You Don't Mess Around with Jim and Bad Bad Leroy Brown and the more sensitive songs that I preferred, such as this one. More from Jim to come down the line on this favorites list...
318 ONLY TIME...Enya
The 9/11 terrorist attack on our country was very traumatic to the national psyche: this calming, sweet song by Enya...at the time a radio hit...presented an alternative reaction to the fear, paranoia and war-chanting going on at that time. There are two versions: very slow and normal speed, the latter of which was played more on the radio back in '01, although the former has endured as the generally more preferred one (and with me as well). Only Time was my favorite song of 2001 as I lived through it...
317 BORN ON THE BAYOU...Creedence Clearwater Revival
There are songs that have a relentless, driving nature...this is one of the best examples of one that worked well. It originally came out in 1969 although it wasn't really for another couple of decades before I heard it one night on classic rock radio and had an epiphany: it's a masterpiece of Southern rock, although CCR was a San Francisco-based band. It's singer John Fogerty at his Cajun-drawling best: "And I can still hear my old hound dog barkin', chasing down a hoodoo there"...
316 HAVE YOU NEVER BEEN MELLOW...Olivia Newton-John
This singles hit in the spring of 1975 came out at a time when I felt the world around me was pressuring me to be anything but mellow...and my spirit rebelled. At least Olivia seemed to think that chilling out and taking things at a more relaxed pace was a viable option...this was the first of several songs of hers that I truly liked. The personal pressure continued, though, for pretty much the whole year and never completely abated...I guess part of it has to do with growing up. This song is one of those timeless treasures...
315 MAILMAN...Soundgarden
In early 1995 an obscure Gainesville AM radio station (on 1390 kHz) was playing complete Doors albums. I enthusiastically listened, but suddenly they started playing Soundgarden's 1994 Superunknown CD...that's when I first heard this deep track on it. It's a grindingly slow, angry and menacing piece with the late Chris Cornell delivering one of his more compelling performances. Soundgarden, in my mind, was Seattle's greatest grunge band and Superunknown is definitely high on my list of all-time favorite albums, not a weak song anywhere. But I warn you, there's a lot of rage on it: definitely no Enya or Olivia Newton-John here...
314 YOU'RE SO VAIN...Carly Simon
This was a monster hit in December 1972/January 1973...I was crazy about it when it first came out and listened to it so much that I finally got a little tired of hearing it. The line "I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee" has universal appeal and stuck with me, back then and through the years. Mick Jagger provided backup vocals after he happened to drop by the studio during the song's recording. December '72 was a pretty cool and upbeat time in my life and I was just beginning to take up running as a more distance-oriented sport (I used to just sprint short distances very fast)...I think it drastically improved my disposition and outlook...
313 CRAISE FINTON KIRK ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS...the Bee Gees
For brevity's sake I simply call this track from the band's 1967 Bee Gees' 1st album "Craise Finton Kirk". My parents initially loved the Bee Gees at the time, bought this album and played it over and over again. This was the one song on it neither of them cared for and they couldn't understand why I liked it so much. Robin Gibb sings it solo with just a piano backing him...beauty in simplicity. The Bee Gees were so talented...I wished they had steered clear of the disco mess in the late '70s...
312 I CAN'T GET NEXT TO YOU...the Temptations
1969 was a peculiar year with my popular music listening. I wasn't keeping up with the current radio hits then, and many songs I would later embrace as favorites I disliked at the time. This one by the Temptations is a good example...I began to better appreciate this talented singing group's backlog of hits a few years later. There's the real high-pitched guy (Eddie Kendricks) and the real low-pitched guy (Melvin Franklin) ...and then the lead singer (in '69 it was Dennis Edwards) and the rest. I Can't Get Next to You is short, fast-paced, abrupt, and passionate...
311 MICHELLE...the Beatles
Michelle was one of my family's favorite Beatles songs from 1965...when my dad brought home a rescue cockapoo puppy in February 1966 we had a ready-made name for her: Michelle had a long, happy life with us until her passing in 1981. This Paul McCartney ode to an English-challenged French girl also served as my personal introduction to the French language: "Michelle ma belle, sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble"...
Next week: personal favorite songs #310-301...
320 YOUR WILDEST DREAMS...the Moody Blues
Your Wildest Dreams, from 1986, was one of this durable British rock band's final singles hits although they would record three more albums and successfully tour for decades...last year they were belatedly inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. It's a dreamy, wistful song about a relationship separated by many years and an implied question: "What's going on with you these days?", something that 33 years later with our social media era is generally a lot easier to answer...
319 I'LL HAVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU IN A SONG...Jim Croce
I remember this beautiful love song by Jim Croce being a radio hit a couple of months before I graduated from high school in the spring of 1974...Croce tragically had died the summer before in an airplane crash just as his musical career was taking off. Later in '74 I bought his "best hits" album titled Photographs and Memories...lots of great tracks on it. Croce's music was divided between funny, folksy pieces like You Don't Mess Around with Jim and Bad Bad Leroy Brown and the more sensitive songs that I preferred, such as this one. More from Jim to come down the line on this favorites list...
318 ONLY TIME...Enya
The 9/11 terrorist attack on our country was very traumatic to the national psyche: this calming, sweet song by Enya...at the time a radio hit...presented an alternative reaction to the fear, paranoia and war-chanting going on at that time. There are two versions: very slow and normal speed, the latter of which was played more on the radio back in '01, although the former has endured as the generally more preferred one (and with me as well). Only Time was my favorite song of 2001 as I lived through it...
317 BORN ON THE BAYOU...Creedence Clearwater Revival
There are songs that have a relentless, driving nature...this is one of the best examples of one that worked well. It originally came out in 1969 although it wasn't really for another couple of decades before I heard it one night on classic rock radio and had an epiphany: it's a masterpiece of Southern rock, although CCR was a San Francisco-based band. It's singer John Fogerty at his Cajun-drawling best: "And I can still hear my old hound dog barkin', chasing down a hoodoo there"...
316 HAVE YOU NEVER BEEN MELLOW...Olivia Newton-John
This singles hit in the spring of 1975 came out at a time when I felt the world around me was pressuring me to be anything but mellow...and my spirit rebelled. At least Olivia seemed to think that chilling out and taking things at a more relaxed pace was a viable option...this was the first of several songs of hers that I truly liked. The personal pressure continued, though, for pretty much the whole year and never completely abated...I guess part of it has to do with growing up. This song is one of those timeless treasures...
315 MAILMAN...Soundgarden
In early 1995 an obscure Gainesville AM radio station (on 1390 kHz) was playing complete Doors albums. I enthusiastically listened, but suddenly they started playing Soundgarden's 1994 Superunknown CD...that's when I first heard this deep track on it. It's a grindingly slow, angry and menacing piece with the late Chris Cornell delivering one of his more compelling performances. Soundgarden, in my mind, was Seattle's greatest grunge band and Superunknown is definitely high on my list of all-time favorite albums, not a weak song anywhere. But I warn you, there's a lot of rage on it: definitely no Enya or Olivia Newton-John here...
314 YOU'RE SO VAIN...Carly Simon
This was a monster hit in December 1972/January 1973...I was crazy about it when it first came out and listened to it so much that I finally got a little tired of hearing it. The line "I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee" has universal appeal and stuck with me, back then and through the years. Mick Jagger provided backup vocals after he happened to drop by the studio during the song's recording. December '72 was a pretty cool and upbeat time in my life and I was just beginning to take up running as a more distance-oriented sport (I used to just sprint short distances very fast)...I think it drastically improved my disposition and outlook...
313 CRAISE FINTON KIRK ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS...the Bee Gees
For brevity's sake I simply call this track from the band's 1967 Bee Gees' 1st album "Craise Finton Kirk". My parents initially loved the Bee Gees at the time, bought this album and played it over and over again. This was the one song on it neither of them cared for and they couldn't understand why I liked it so much. Robin Gibb sings it solo with just a piano backing him...beauty in simplicity. The Bee Gees were so talented...I wished they had steered clear of the disco mess in the late '70s...
312 I CAN'T GET NEXT TO YOU...the Temptations
1969 was a peculiar year with my popular music listening. I wasn't keeping up with the current radio hits then, and many songs I would later embrace as favorites I disliked at the time. This one by the Temptations is a good example...I began to better appreciate this talented singing group's backlog of hits a few years later. There's the real high-pitched guy (Eddie Kendricks) and the real low-pitched guy (Melvin Franklin) ...and then the lead singer (in '69 it was Dennis Edwards) and the rest. I Can't Get Next to You is short, fast-paced, abrupt, and passionate...
311 MICHELLE...the Beatles
Michelle was one of my family's favorite Beatles songs from 1965...when my dad brought home a rescue cockapoo puppy in February 1966 we had a ready-made name for her: Michelle had a long, happy life with us until her passing in 1981. This Paul McCartney ode to an English-challenged French girl also served as my personal introduction to the French language: "Michelle ma belle, sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble"...
Next week: personal favorite songs #310-301...
Sunday, December 29, 2019
Yesterday's College Football Playoff Games, NFL Regular Season Ends Today
I enjoyed watching the college football playoffs yesterday on ESPN, especially that second game between Clemson and Ohio State...I guess it also helped that the two teams I had decided to root for both won. Still, after LSU had run up an incredible 49-14 halftime lead over Oklahoma in the first game...with Tigers QB Joe Burrow throwing 7 touchdown passes in the process...it wasn't all that much fun getting through that contest's second half. With Clemson vs. Ohio State, it looked as if the Buckeyes were clearly the better team by far early on, but three of their drives stalled out in the Red Zone and they had to kick field goals each time...they could have been ahead by far more than 16-0 before Clemson finally woke up and began their penalty-aided comeback. Not that I'm complaining about the officiating, other than that one blown call when a Clemson receiver clearly fumbled the ball...recovered by Ohio State...that was ultimately deemed an incomplete pass. The final score was 29-23 in favor of Clemson, so we now have a Tigers-Tigers championship game slated in New Orleans on January 13th next year. I'm going to pull for Clemson although just going by yesterday's games it looks as if they will have an uphill battle getting past Burrow...
The National Football League regular season ends today...I'm writing this before the afternoon and evening games. The Miami Dolphins, even though their management all-but declared 2019 to be a "tanking" season, have amassed a 4-11 record through the efforts of the players under first-year head coach Brian Flores, who clearly understands the importance of establishing discipline and a culture of winning. I know with that record this may sound strange on the surface, but I think a lot of people were expecting the Dolphins to go winless this year...hats off to them for confounding the critics! As for the other teams I'm following, Seattle plays San Francisco to determine who wins the NFC West division and who enters the playoff as a wild card team. Philadelphia wins the NFC East if they can get past the erratic New York Giants, else Dallas still has a shot to win it against Washington. Minnesota, New Orleans, and Green Bay are already in the NFC playoffs...the exact seedings will be determined today. In the American Conference Baltimore has the number one seed throughout the conference playoffs and New England...if they get past Miami in their game today or Kansas City loses...will be seeded number two, with first round byes. Since the Dolphins won't be in the playoff picture this year I like the Chiefs...and if not them, the Ravens. Houston and Buffalo are already in the playoffs with the last wild card slot going either to Pittsburgh or Tennessee, depending on how today's games go. The way things stack up right now with teams currently still in the running, my ideal Super Bowl for this season would pit Seattle against Kansas City, with Philadelphia and Baltimore representing the secondary teams I'm rooting for...and then Green Bay and Pittsburgh. The "worst" Super Bowl scenario for me? New Orleans vs. New England, definitely an unwanted possibility...
The National Football League regular season ends today...I'm writing this before the afternoon and evening games. The Miami Dolphins, even though their management all-but declared 2019 to be a "tanking" season, have amassed a 4-11 record through the efforts of the players under first-year head coach Brian Flores, who clearly understands the importance of establishing discipline and a culture of winning. I know with that record this may sound strange on the surface, but I think a lot of people were expecting the Dolphins to go winless this year...hats off to them for confounding the critics! As for the other teams I'm following, Seattle plays San Francisco to determine who wins the NFC West division and who enters the playoff as a wild card team. Philadelphia wins the NFC East if they can get past the erratic New York Giants, else Dallas still has a shot to win it against Washington. Minnesota, New Orleans, and Green Bay are already in the NFC playoffs...the exact seedings will be determined today. In the American Conference Baltimore has the number one seed throughout the conference playoffs and New England...if they get past Miami in their game today or Kansas City loses...will be seeded number two, with first round byes. Since the Dolphins won't be in the playoff picture this year I like the Chiefs...and if not them, the Ravens. Houston and Buffalo are already in the playoffs with the last wild card slot going either to Pittsburgh or Tennessee, depending on how today's games go. The way things stack up right now with teams currently still in the running, my ideal Super Bowl for this season would pit Seattle against Kansas City, with Philadelphia and Baltimore representing the secondary teams I'm rooting for...and then Green Bay and Pittsburgh. The "worst" Super Bowl scenario for me? New Orleans vs. New England, definitely an unwanted possibility...
Saturday, December 28, 2019
Enjoying New Disney Plus Service on TV, Especially Winnie the Pooh
Having just received a Christmas gift of Disney Plus, I can now reference many movies and television series on Roku that had been unavailable to me. I'm especially a big fan of the cartoon Winnie the Pooh series and associated movies. I'm now going through the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episode by episode, in the original chronological order from 1988 to 1991...and once again enjoy the distinctive personalities of the different characters: phlegmatic, honey-loving and absent-minded Winnie, melancholy and wise Eeyore, fun-loving and gregarious Tigger, timid and empathetic Piglet, hard-working and choleric Rabbit...along with Kanga, Roo, Gopher, and Owl...are the main citizens of the Hundred Acre Woods and the product of little boy Christopher Robin's vivid imagination with his stuffed animal toys. Of course, it's all based on the original books written by A. A. Milne in the 1920s. The movies are available as well, Pooh's Grand Adventure: the Search for Christopher Robin being my favorite of the lot. So now when the vast wasteland of the current state of affairs on television inevitably rears its ugly head to me late at night (sorry for the mixed metaphors), I now have something else to resort to besides old reruns of The Prisoner and Mr. Bean...
Friday, December 27, 2019
Quote of the Week...from Neil Gaiman
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something. ---Neil Gaiman
I've read and enjoyed most of English writer Neil Gaiman's novels...they're usually a combination of fantasy and horror, often with some good old satire thrown in. Gaiman started out writing comic books and graphic novels...I'm glad this gifted writer decided to try his hand at the more conventional novel format. The above quote of his tells me that Gaiman himself realized that if you're ever going to grow or get anything substantial or meaningful accomplished in your life, then you have to plunge into what you're doing with the foresight that you will screw up bigtime on a lot of things and that it's important to learn from those failures as you experience them in order to achieve excellence. Many years ago I took a Russian language class in which the professor told the class that they could say anything in Russian to him they liked...but they had to say it correctly. I instantly thought that was a lot of BS, and I noticed the following year while around some Vietnamese refugees I worked with that the ones who threw off their pride and uninhibitedly spoke English knowing that much of what they said would be incorrect...even laughable...were the ones who achieved fluency the fastest. So I say the New Year's always a cool time to consider new ventures...but just remember that if you're a novice at something it's important to be humble around others and eager to learn from your mistakes. As a matter of fact, unless you're taking up something like sky or cave diving that you'd better get perfect from the start (or else), you should expect those shortfalls in your early efforts, else you're not really trying hard enough...
I've read and enjoyed most of English writer Neil Gaiman's novels...they're usually a combination of fantasy and horror, often with some good old satire thrown in. Gaiman started out writing comic books and graphic novels...I'm glad this gifted writer decided to try his hand at the more conventional novel format. The above quote of his tells me that Gaiman himself realized that if you're ever going to grow or get anything substantial or meaningful accomplished in your life, then you have to plunge into what you're doing with the foresight that you will screw up bigtime on a lot of things and that it's important to learn from those failures as you experience them in order to achieve excellence. Many years ago I took a Russian language class in which the professor told the class that they could say anything in Russian to him they liked...but they had to say it correctly. I instantly thought that was a lot of BS, and I noticed the following year while around some Vietnamese refugees I worked with that the ones who threw off their pride and uninhibitedly spoke English knowing that much of what they said would be incorrect...even laughable...were the ones who achieved fluency the fastest. So I say the New Year's always a cool time to consider new ventures...but just remember that if you're a novice at something it's important to be humble around others and eager to learn from your mistakes. As a matter of fact, unless you're taking up something like sky or cave diving that you'd better get perfect from the start (or else), you should expect those shortfalls in your early efforts, else you're not really trying hard enough...
Thursday, December 26, 2019
Weekly Short Stories: 1955 Science Fiction, Part 1
In opening this review of the stories appearing in the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 17 (1955), only three tales appear below...that's because the middle one is actually a novella and pretty long for inclusion in such a book. Each story has its own particular message to impart and in its own way eerily predicts things that have come true over the years. Here are my reactions to them...
THE TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLD...Frederick Pohl
Every morning Gary Burckhardt wakes up is June 15th and he is coming out of a nightmare of a terrible explosion. Shaking off his unsettling dream, he sets about his morning business and goes to work at the chemical plant. But Gary is starting to suspect something amiss with his life and circumstances...on the surface everything's the same but not exactly...and he can't escape that deja vu feeling. Finally another man, also suspicious, approaches him and the search is on to discover what the heck is actually going on. Pohl delivered a story here about how little control we really have over our own lives and privacy...oddly prescient so many years before the Internet and its intrusion into our own personal information and preferences...
THE DARFSTELLER...Walter M. Miller, Jr.
At some time in the near future (from 1955's perspective), professional stage acting has been completely supplanted by sophisticated robot actors who almost exactly resemble former real stage stars...who had sold the rights to use their names and copy their images. Ryan Thornier was one of the former acting stars but refused to sell out to make way for the robots...he's now a janitor at one of the roboticized theaters, and his boss wants to take away even this job and replace it with an automated service. In an upcoming play, the star male robot...who was to play a role that Thornier knew by heart...is malfunctioning. And the disgruntled actor decides to take matters into his own hands and deliver his final performance. On one level this 64-year old story resonates with the trend of replacing the work force with technology...even in acting, look at how computers have augmented the stars of film (Lord of the Rings, Polar Express, Star Wars). It was, in my opinion, what was said at the end of the story that endeared it to many...but you have to read the story first...
THE CAVE OF NIGHT...James E. Gunn
Written six years before the first human...the USSR's Yuri Gagarin...was launched into space and orbited Earth...The Cave of Night already anticipated the apathy and skepticism that would come to typify much of public and political opinion about the space program. Remember, just a few months after the first manned landing on the moon, TV networks stopped evening live coverage of the Apollo 13 mission...that is, until a mission-and-life-threatening crisis happened on the ship. And then it was all headline news with the world standing united with the three astronauts, who were potentially stranded in space. What does this have to do with this story? Just read it and dig that ending...
Next week: more from 1955 in the genre of short science fiction...
THE TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLD...Frederick Pohl
Every morning Gary Burckhardt wakes up is June 15th and he is coming out of a nightmare of a terrible explosion. Shaking off his unsettling dream, he sets about his morning business and goes to work at the chemical plant. But Gary is starting to suspect something amiss with his life and circumstances...on the surface everything's the same but not exactly...and he can't escape that deja vu feeling. Finally another man, also suspicious, approaches him and the search is on to discover what the heck is actually going on. Pohl delivered a story here about how little control we really have over our own lives and privacy...oddly prescient so many years before the Internet and its intrusion into our own personal information and preferences...
THE DARFSTELLER...Walter M. Miller, Jr.
At some time in the near future (from 1955's perspective), professional stage acting has been completely supplanted by sophisticated robot actors who almost exactly resemble former real stage stars...who had sold the rights to use their names and copy their images. Ryan Thornier was one of the former acting stars but refused to sell out to make way for the robots...he's now a janitor at one of the roboticized theaters, and his boss wants to take away even this job and replace it with an automated service. In an upcoming play, the star male robot...who was to play a role that Thornier knew by heart...is malfunctioning. And the disgruntled actor decides to take matters into his own hands and deliver his final performance. On one level this 64-year old story resonates with the trend of replacing the work force with technology...even in acting, look at how computers have augmented the stars of film (Lord of the Rings, Polar Express, Star Wars). It was, in my opinion, what was said at the end of the story that endeared it to many...but you have to read the story first...
THE CAVE OF NIGHT...James E. Gunn
Written six years before the first human...the USSR's Yuri Gagarin...was launched into space and orbited Earth...The Cave of Night already anticipated the apathy and skepticism that would come to typify much of public and political opinion about the space program. Remember, just a few months after the first manned landing on the moon, TV networks stopped evening live coverage of the Apollo 13 mission...that is, until a mission-and-life-threatening crisis happened on the ship. And then it was all headline news with the world standing united with the three astronauts, who were potentially stranded in space. What does this have to do with this story? Just read it and dig that ending...
Next week: more from 1955 in the genre of short science fiction...
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Merry Christmas, Everyone
On this Christmas Eve, 2019, I'd like to wish all of you a merry Christmas and a happy holiday season. Although I could do without the frantic shopping atmosphere and traffic during the week preceding this important holiday and get a little overloaded on the sweets and Christmas music, I also see it as a time when goodwill and community are promoted as Christ's birth is celebrated...the shopping rush will end soon but let's see if we can't extend some of that goodwill beyond the holiday season. I'm taking tomorrow off from this blog but plan to resume Thursday with my weekly feature on short stories I've read...
Monday, December 23, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #330-321
There's a couple of songs on this week's entry of my 500 all-time favorite songs you may never have heard of, a few you have...and maybe some you just might have forgotten. I got a big kick out of hearing all of them again during the past week...they're all winners to me...
330 PITTSFIELD...Sufjan Stevens
This song is from Sufjan Stevens' 2006 album The Avalanche, which was basically an "extras" LP of songs he had recorded while making his acclaimed Illinois album the previous year. Yet the songs on it are pretty extraordinary in their own right...I'd even say it's the best album of "rejects" ever made. Pittsfield is a bittersweet reflection of the singer's rough childhood in this Illinois (not Massachusetts) town, an open letter to possibly his own mother as he and his sister struggle to make it through their daily lives. Very touching, and a very emotional final crescendo...
329 SOUL MAKOSSA...Manu Dibango
Manu Dibango is a Cameroun musical artist...now 86...whose main claim to fame, at least in America, is his 1973 song Soul Makossa, the music written by him and recorded and originally released the previous year. It is a standout piece, with its funky beat and sharp saxophone (played by Dibango). As for the song's lyrics, other than the word "soul", they are all in Cameroun's Duala language...reportedly composed by one of that west-central African nation's poets: "makossa" means "dance", which is self-evident if you've ever heard it. Of course, at the time in 1973 I knew none of this and just thought it was all extremely cool...here is finally a song that I might actually dig performing on karaoke...it's happy and very intense...
328 NO QUARTER...Led Zeppelin
Definitely not a karaoke piece, this soulful exploration into melancholy is the kind of song that I would reach out to in times when my mood would plummet downward...so it's a cathartic, misery-loves-company kind of listening experience. No Quarter is from the band's 1972 Houses of the Holy album, unusual to me in that I thoroughly liked every single track on it: one of my all-time favorite albums, to be sure. But it took a while for me to get there...it wasn't until Led Zeppelin's box set was released in 1990 and my local rock radio station played it that I realized all that I had been missing with this great band over the years...
327 BIG TIME...Peter Gabriel
Big Time is one of two songs on today's "list of ten" that I took an initial aversion toward because I so disliked the accompanying video...once I shed it and simply listened to the music I realized what a funny, funky piece of brilliant satire this was. One of my favorite lines: "The place where I come from is a small town...they think so small they use small words. But not me, I'm smarter than that, I've worked it out, I've been stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out."...
326 PARANOID ANDROID...Radiohead
I've always been impressed by singers who can hold a single note and strongly belt it out for a protracted time...Radiohead's Thom Yorke gave such a demonstration with this track from their 1997 O.K. Computer album. I'm not sure exactly what the lyrics are meant to convey, but Yorke's cynical style and the band's tremendous instrumentation made this one of my favorites years later when I first heard it and enjoyed listening to it on my extended training runs in 2010...
325 THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD...the Beatles
When this song was released as a single in the late spring of 1970, it was called the "final Beatles song", for Paul McCartney has just announced his departure from the band. Like Paul...who later complained about it in his lawsuit against the other three Beatles...I was initially taken aback at co-producer Phil Spector's lush orchestration and female chorus. Later, though, I came to like it and the song became more of a philosophical piece about the different long and winding roads we find ourselves journeying down at various stages of life...
324 THINK I'M IN LOVE...Beck
The Information...from 2006...may well be my favorite Beck album, and Think I'm In Love is one of my favorite tracks from it. It's a sweet, simple love song with a catchy beat and crisp, sharply delineated instrumental roles. I could see the Beatles in their heyday dreaming up a pop tune like this, with Paul on lead vocals and George and John harmonizing in the background. My favorite line: "Probably lay my head on a wooden floor, tell her I was tired from working the store, counting all the cash from an old shoe box, saving up to buy her something she wants"...
323 TIME AFTER TIME...Cyndi Lauper
This is the other song that I first became acquainted with (and disliked) by watching its video...a really forgettable, maudlin viewing experience. Not that 1984's Time After Time on its own doesn't prey on the emotions as well...it's just that there's such a thing as overkill and the song works very well without any "help". Just listening to it amplified the beautiful arrangement, including that background ticking that made this more serious follow-up single to Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun so appropriate. As it was, Time After Time turned out to be one of my favorite songs of 1984 as I lived through that year...
322 LAYLA...Derek and the Dominos
I'm not referring here to Eric Clapton's later jazzed-up acoustic Layla that only encompassed the vocal first half of this classic he recorded while fronting Derek and the Dominoes...it's the instrumental last half of the earlier version, recorded in 1970 and complete with piano and virtuoso rock guitar, that endeared me to it so much during the summer of 1972 (a very good time in my life) and sold me on it as my favorite song of that year. Legendary guitarist Duane Allman, who died in 1971 in a motorcycle accident, provided much of the guitar "beauty" for this enchanting work...
321 I WALK THE LINE...Johnny Cash
What can I say about the Man in Black except that whenever I'm dressed in black I invariably think about the late Johnny Cash...what a great, class act! I remember he once had his own TV variety show in the 1970s...one of the features was "Ride This Train" where he would musically treat an important time in America's popular history...I Walk the Line to many was Cash's first and biggest hit. I love the way he would change the pitch of his voice with each succeeding stanza...reminds me of the old "limbo" line: how low can you go?
Next week: songs #320-321...
330 PITTSFIELD...Sufjan Stevens
This song is from Sufjan Stevens' 2006 album The Avalanche, which was basically an "extras" LP of songs he had recorded while making his acclaimed Illinois album the previous year. Yet the songs on it are pretty extraordinary in their own right...I'd even say it's the best album of "rejects" ever made. Pittsfield is a bittersweet reflection of the singer's rough childhood in this Illinois (not Massachusetts) town, an open letter to possibly his own mother as he and his sister struggle to make it through their daily lives. Very touching, and a very emotional final crescendo...
329 SOUL MAKOSSA...Manu Dibango
Manu Dibango is a Cameroun musical artist...now 86...whose main claim to fame, at least in America, is his 1973 song Soul Makossa, the music written by him and recorded and originally released the previous year. It is a standout piece, with its funky beat and sharp saxophone (played by Dibango). As for the song's lyrics, other than the word "soul", they are all in Cameroun's Duala language...reportedly composed by one of that west-central African nation's poets: "makossa" means "dance", which is self-evident if you've ever heard it. Of course, at the time in 1973 I knew none of this and just thought it was all extremely cool...here is finally a song that I might actually dig performing on karaoke...it's happy and very intense...
328 NO QUARTER...Led Zeppelin
Definitely not a karaoke piece, this soulful exploration into melancholy is the kind of song that I would reach out to in times when my mood would plummet downward...so it's a cathartic, misery-loves-company kind of listening experience. No Quarter is from the band's 1972 Houses of the Holy album, unusual to me in that I thoroughly liked every single track on it: one of my all-time favorite albums, to be sure. But it took a while for me to get there...it wasn't until Led Zeppelin's box set was released in 1990 and my local rock radio station played it that I realized all that I had been missing with this great band over the years...
327 BIG TIME...Peter Gabriel
Big Time is one of two songs on today's "list of ten" that I took an initial aversion toward because I so disliked the accompanying video...once I shed it and simply listened to the music I realized what a funny, funky piece of brilliant satire this was. One of my favorite lines: "The place where I come from is a small town...they think so small they use small words. But not me, I'm smarter than that, I've worked it out, I've been stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out."...
326 PARANOID ANDROID...Radiohead
I've always been impressed by singers who can hold a single note and strongly belt it out for a protracted time...Radiohead's Thom Yorke gave such a demonstration with this track from their 1997 O.K. Computer album. I'm not sure exactly what the lyrics are meant to convey, but Yorke's cynical style and the band's tremendous instrumentation made this one of my favorites years later when I first heard it and enjoyed listening to it on my extended training runs in 2010...
325 THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD...the Beatles
When this song was released as a single in the late spring of 1970, it was called the "final Beatles song", for Paul McCartney has just announced his departure from the band. Like Paul...who later complained about it in his lawsuit against the other three Beatles...I was initially taken aback at co-producer Phil Spector's lush orchestration and female chorus. Later, though, I came to like it and the song became more of a philosophical piece about the different long and winding roads we find ourselves journeying down at various stages of life...
324 THINK I'M IN LOVE...Beck
The Information...from 2006...may well be my favorite Beck album, and Think I'm In Love is one of my favorite tracks from it. It's a sweet, simple love song with a catchy beat and crisp, sharply delineated instrumental roles. I could see the Beatles in their heyday dreaming up a pop tune like this, with Paul on lead vocals and George and John harmonizing in the background. My favorite line: "Probably lay my head on a wooden floor, tell her I was tired from working the store, counting all the cash from an old shoe box, saving up to buy her something she wants"...
323 TIME AFTER TIME...Cyndi Lauper
This is the other song that I first became acquainted with (and disliked) by watching its video...a really forgettable, maudlin viewing experience. Not that 1984's Time After Time on its own doesn't prey on the emotions as well...it's just that there's such a thing as overkill and the song works very well without any "help". Just listening to it amplified the beautiful arrangement, including that background ticking that made this more serious follow-up single to Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun so appropriate. As it was, Time After Time turned out to be one of my favorite songs of 1984 as I lived through that year...
322 LAYLA...Derek and the Dominos
I'm not referring here to Eric Clapton's later jazzed-up acoustic Layla that only encompassed the vocal first half of this classic he recorded while fronting Derek and the Dominoes...it's the instrumental last half of the earlier version, recorded in 1970 and complete with piano and virtuoso rock guitar, that endeared me to it so much during the summer of 1972 (a very good time in my life) and sold me on it as my favorite song of that year. Legendary guitarist Duane Allman, who died in 1971 in a motorcycle accident, provided much of the guitar "beauty" for this enchanting work...
321 I WALK THE LINE...Johnny Cash
What can I say about the Man in Black except that whenever I'm dressed in black I invariably think about the late Johnny Cash...what a great, class act! I remember he once had his own TV variety show in the 1970s...one of the features was "Ride This Train" where he would musically treat an important time in America's popular history...I Walk the Line to many was Cash's first and biggest hit. I love the way he would change the pitch of his voice with each succeeding stanza...reminds me of the old "limbo" line: how low can you go?
Next week: songs #320-321...
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Attended Last Night's Christmas Jubilee Jam at the Thomas Center
Yesterday evening, at the historic Thomas Center about six blocks north of downtown Gainesville, Melissa and I went to the annual Christmas Jubilee Jam, which is one of the concerts the group Gospel Meets Jazz conducts there every two months for various charities. This event's proceeds went to fund aid for homeless students attending Alachua County's schools...a worthy cause and one befitting the Christmas season. Lanard Perry leads this project and plays trumpet for the group onstage...I don't know the names of the jazz pianist, drummer, or guitarist, but that pianist rocks! The two-hour show featured guest singers who, along with the band, performed various Christmas and gospel songs...mostly to a jazz format that totally worked. They also had a barbershop quartet that sang acapella several old Yuletide hits...it all was very entertaining and I was impressed with both the musicianship of everyone involved and the sweet spirit and good tidings they shared with the enthusiastic audience...
As I shared before, Gospel Meets Jazz holds its concerts every two months at the Thomas Center on 302 NE 6th Avenue. The music is faith-based and uplifting...and exciting! I'm thinking about going to another or more of their shows next year...their dates: Feb 21, Apr 24, June 19, Aug 14, Oct 16...and then on to the next Christmas Jubilee Jam in December, 2020. You probably want to purchase tickets in advance...the show we just went to had sold out. Here's their website link: [gospelmeetsjazz]...
As I shared before, Gospel Meets Jazz holds its concerts every two months at the Thomas Center on 302 NE 6th Avenue. The music is faith-based and uplifting...and exciting! I'm thinking about going to another or more of their shows next year...their dates: Feb 21, Apr 24, June 19, Aug 14, Oct 16...and then on to the next Christmas Jubilee Jam in December, 2020. You probably want to purchase tickets in advance...the show we just went to had sold out. Here's their website link: [gospelmeetsjazz]...
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Maybe Joe Biden Doesn't Need to Be So Lucid
Joe Biden is starting to sound more lucid...I'm not sure that's a good thing as he clearly answered a question during Wednesday night's Democratic presidential candidate debate on CNN that yes, he would be willing to sacrifice blue collar jobs in his fight against climate change if elected. Maybe if he had been a little more confused and incoherent as in earlier debates his answer might have escaped the attention of those many former Obama voters who switched parties and voted for Trump in 2016 in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (and by this electing him president)...I doubt that our former vice-president is even remotely aware that through his comments he's driving them all back into the arms of the Orange Man in 2020. But the CNN talking heads after the debate thought that ol' Joe had performed really well...of course, none of them are blue collar workers, are they? I'm not against Biden being against global warming and having us as a nation being better stewards of our resources, but you don't just flat come out and say you're bad news for working people and then expect their votes, sheesh. As for President Trump, it saddens me that he has thrown his lot in with climate change deniers as I thought he could have pushed for a more equitable Paris Accord agreement that actually put some pressure on China to be responsible about its carbon emissions...under the current pact they can keep building coal burning plants and increasingly spew carbon dioxide in the atmosphere until 2030 when they're supposedly going to then "cap it": that is completely unreasonable, in my opinion, especially when other signatory nations had much more stringent standards to uphold. But unlike with trade Trump doesn't want to negotiate anything about climate change since he thinks it's just another hoax. I am equally at odds with Democrats who think that by punishing our own economy regarding the use of our energy resources we'll somehow be setting some kind of shining example for the rest of the world to follow: tell that to China and give our own workers a break, please...
Friday, December 20, 2019
Quote of the Week...from Frank Zappa
The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced. ---Frank Zappa
I've seen comic Bill Maher get on his HBO show and often joke about how much he likes to smoke pot (years before eight of our states legalized casual use) and has had guests on the air who seemed to be stoned...and then I look at the statistic of over 600,000 people arrested for simple marijuana possession last year. Not that I'm a fan of marijuana: I've never used it and never will...and am skeptical of those who practically idolize the weed. Still, I have to disagree with the substance of late avant-garde rock musician Frank Zappa's above quote although I agree with its spirit: our laws are not randomly enforced...if they were, things would be fairer. For Kamala Harris, current U.S. senator from California and that state's former prosecutor, to kid around about having smoked pot after she prosecuted others for the same offense isn't random enforcement, either: it's elitism, saying that some people in society are to be judged by different standards under the law than others. And when you see this circus of result-oriented Federal and Supreme Court judge nominations that has been going on during different administrations during the last couple of decades at least (from both political parties), it becomes apparent that "justice" and the "law" are now being interpreted in a very political and ideological way that diminishes fairness and elevates agendas...
I don't think that police treat the upper class in our society like those in low-income areas...that's not random enforcement in the strict meaning of the word "random". And in the courts the rich can afford better attorneys...along with private investigators...than the poor, who often must resort to whatever pro bono legal assistance the court provides them...that's not random justice. The randomness in law enforcement is real, though, when laws are on the books that are violated so much by people at large that the police cannot possibly catch everyone and must then take violators in a more randomized fashion...traffic speed traps are a good example of this strategy. But, of course, if profiling is going on in the mind of the stationed law enforcement officer, even that isn't truly random, either...
As for the first part of Zappa's quote stating that laws are badly written, just keep in mind that when a politician is elected to a legislature, be it local, state, or national in scope, he or she will naturally feel the pressure to "do" something...and that means becoming an active part of lawmaking. Like the Geico commercial, it's "what you do" when you're a politician. So a legislative body will brag about all the bills they submitted or passed and politicians will run for reelection touting their list of accomplishments. And sometimes they'll pass laws just to say they passed them...after all, one of the most common election-season rallying points is that the other party is a bunch of "do-nothings". So as a result we often end up saddled with some pretty crappy laws as our elected officials struggle to justify themselves to the next round of voters...
I've seen comic Bill Maher get on his HBO show and often joke about how much he likes to smoke pot (years before eight of our states legalized casual use) and has had guests on the air who seemed to be stoned...and then I look at the statistic of over 600,000 people arrested for simple marijuana possession last year. Not that I'm a fan of marijuana: I've never used it and never will...and am skeptical of those who practically idolize the weed. Still, I have to disagree with the substance of late avant-garde rock musician Frank Zappa's above quote although I agree with its spirit: our laws are not randomly enforced...if they were, things would be fairer. For Kamala Harris, current U.S. senator from California and that state's former prosecutor, to kid around about having smoked pot after she prosecuted others for the same offense isn't random enforcement, either: it's elitism, saying that some people in society are to be judged by different standards under the law than others. And when you see this circus of result-oriented Federal and Supreme Court judge nominations that has been going on during different administrations during the last couple of decades at least (from both political parties), it becomes apparent that "justice" and the "law" are now being interpreted in a very political and ideological way that diminishes fairness and elevates agendas...
I don't think that police treat the upper class in our society like those in low-income areas...that's not random enforcement in the strict meaning of the word "random". And in the courts the rich can afford better attorneys...along with private investigators...than the poor, who often must resort to whatever pro bono legal assistance the court provides them...that's not random justice. The randomness in law enforcement is real, though, when laws are on the books that are violated so much by people at large that the police cannot possibly catch everyone and must then take violators in a more randomized fashion...traffic speed traps are a good example of this strategy. But, of course, if profiling is going on in the mind of the stationed law enforcement officer, even that isn't truly random, either...
As for the first part of Zappa's quote stating that laws are badly written, just keep in mind that when a politician is elected to a legislature, be it local, state, or national in scope, he or she will naturally feel the pressure to "do" something...and that means becoming an active part of lawmaking. Like the Geico commercial, it's "what you do" when you're a politician. So a legislative body will brag about all the bills they submitted or passed and politicians will run for reelection touting their list of accomplishments. And sometimes they'll pass laws just to say they passed them...after all, one of the most common election-season rallying points is that the other party is a bunch of "do-nothings". So as a result we often end up saddled with some pretty crappy laws as our elected officials struggle to justify themselves to the next round of voters...
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Just Finished Reading Two If By Sea by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Two If By Sea is a 2016 novel by American writer Jacquelyn Mitchard...it's my first book of hers I've read. The protagonist is Frank Mercy, a retired cop whose parents and grandparents raised and trained horses back in Wisconsin. Frank has been residing for some time in the Brisbane area of Queensland, Australia, and has married Natalie from one of the families he has befriended there. But on Christmas Eve, a tsunami sweeps the coastline and kills his wife, along with much of her family. Deep in grief, Frank finds himself rescuing from the raging waters a young boy who he soon discovers has a special gift and that some nefarious, ruthless characters are pursuing him for that ability. Frank takes him back to Wisconsin where he begins to train horses himself...read the rest of the book yourself to find out what I deliberately left out (a lot of stuff), not wanting to spoil the story...
There are questions...based on the nature of Ian, the boy that Frank "adopts" as his own son...about Frank's many decisions throughout the story that the author could have addressed but didn't: I think that was a missed opportunity to make the story's message stronger. Plus, it just seemed to me as if Mitchard had some story themes she wanted to throw into a story: Australia, tsumani, family tragedy, strangely gifted little kid, horse training and the equestrian sport, even an English country estate...and decided to stick them all in there and try to make the pieces fit together, which in my opinion they didn't. I also felt that Frank's behavior toward the obvious, established threat that the bad guys posed toward himself and his loved ones was strangely cavalier as he was continually leaving others unguarded and vulnerable. Don't get me wrong: as stories go I liked it and the characters were decent...but looking back, it seemed kind of sloppy and the author tried to put too many disjointed elements into it along with curiously-behaving characters. I'm just guessing, but Jacquelyn Mitchard's many previous works were probably better...
There are questions...based on the nature of Ian, the boy that Frank "adopts" as his own son...about Frank's many decisions throughout the story that the author could have addressed but didn't: I think that was a missed opportunity to make the story's message stronger. Plus, it just seemed to me as if Mitchard had some story themes she wanted to throw into a story: Australia, tsumani, family tragedy, strangely gifted little kid, horse training and the equestrian sport, even an English country estate...and decided to stick them all in there and try to make the pieces fit together, which in my opinion they didn't. I also felt that Frank's behavior toward the obvious, established threat that the bad guys posed toward himself and his loved ones was strangely cavalier as he was continually leaving others unguarded and vulnerable. Don't get me wrong: as stories go I liked it and the characters were decent...but looking back, it seemed kind of sloppy and the author tried to put too many disjointed elements into it along with curiously-behaving characters. I'm just guessing, but Jacquelyn Mitchard's many previous works were probably better...
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 4
I conclude my look back at the year 1954 in short science fiction with discussions of the final five entries in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954). I like this series in large part because the two editors, Martin H. Greenberg and Isaac Asimov, contribute brief introductions to each of the stories, often referencing other works of the author in question. Each book also gives a synapsis of that year in history...not only the headlines news but also what was happening in entertainment and the arts, including of course science fiction literature...
THE FATHER-THING by Philip K. Dick
In what on the surface seems to be a typical suburban American family setting, the mom tells her son to call his dad in to dinner...but the boy, having just seen two identical "dads" in the garage, doesn't want to go. What eventually happens in this horror-turned-science fiction story reminded me a famous 1956 sci-fi movie and made me wonder whether they derived their movie idea from this Philip K. Dick tale. Upon further investigation I discovered that the movie was derived...but from a story earlier than Dick's...so maybe it was Dick who picked up on someone else's idea. Regardless, this is a pretty scary story...
THE DEEP RANGE by Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke, who lived for many years in Ceylon/Sri Lanka, was an accomplished skin diver with a great love for the sea and its life. This optimistic story is set in a future time when the ocean depths are the source of farming and ranching that easily feed the world's population, forever putting an end to famine. But within one of the herds of whales, it seems a predator has slipped through the barrier and the protagonist, along with his two dolphin colleagues, go down to investigate...
BALAAM by Anthony Boucher
I'm really not a fan of overtly religious analogies and speculation within the science fiction genre...the ending to the Matrix series left me a bit cold. Boucher has already gone down this road with his The Quest for St. Aquin and once again I'm being subjected to yawn-inspiring theological arguments in sci-fi disguise. Balaam seeks to recreate the parameters of that Old Testament story as a Jewish rabbi on Mars is ordered by his military commander to curse that planet's alien invaders...
MAN OF PARTS by H. L. Gold
In an interstellar war of the distant future, a spaceship pilot who had just bombed a crucial site of the enemy's crashes on a nearby world populated by rock-and-metal-based intelligent creatures completely unaware of the conflict going on in the stars above them. One of their surgeons rescues most of the pilot's brain and his two arms by putting them into the largely metallic body of a miner, a completely different, non-humanoid life-form. The resuscitated pilot finds himself in a deep conflict trying to reconcile his original human nature with his new life and its parameters...along with his new society's values, priorities, and assumptions. Very interesting, and I found the ending to be funny in a kind of macabre way...
ANSWER by Fredric Brown
Brown was famous for writing extremely short stories with knockout endings...here's another one, less than a full page in length. In the future, all the computers spanning the cosmos have been connected and now humanity can use them to solve what heretofore had been considered to be unsolvable problems. Upon closing the switch that establishes the connection uniting the computing systems of 96 billion planets, Dwar Reyn poses the first (and possibly final) question...now get ready for the punchline...
Next week I'll start reviewing selected science fiction short stories from the year 1955...
THE FATHER-THING by Philip K. Dick
In what on the surface seems to be a typical suburban American family setting, the mom tells her son to call his dad in to dinner...but the boy, having just seen two identical "dads" in the garage, doesn't want to go. What eventually happens in this horror-turned-science fiction story reminded me a famous 1956 sci-fi movie and made me wonder whether they derived their movie idea from this Philip K. Dick tale. Upon further investigation I discovered that the movie was derived...but from a story earlier than Dick's...so maybe it was Dick who picked up on someone else's idea. Regardless, this is a pretty scary story...
THE DEEP RANGE by Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke, who lived for many years in Ceylon/Sri Lanka, was an accomplished skin diver with a great love for the sea and its life. This optimistic story is set in a future time when the ocean depths are the source of farming and ranching that easily feed the world's population, forever putting an end to famine. But within one of the herds of whales, it seems a predator has slipped through the barrier and the protagonist, along with his two dolphin colleagues, go down to investigate...
BALAAM by Anthony Boucher
I'm really not a fan of overtly religious analogies and speculation within the science fiction genre...the ending to the Matrix series left me a bit cold. Boucher has already gone down this road with his The Quest for St. Aquin and once again I'm being subjected to yawn-inspiring theological arguments in sci-fi disguise. Balaam seeks to recreate the parameters of that Old Testament story as a Jewish rabbi on Mars is ordered by his military commander to curse that planet's alien invaders...
MAN OF PARTS by H. L. Gold
In an interstellar war of the distant future, a spaceship pilot who had just bombed a crucial site of the enemy's crashes on a nearby world populated by rock-and-metal-based intelligent creatures completely unaware of the conflict going on in the stars above them. One of their surgeons rescues most of the pilot's brain and his two arms by putting them into the largely metallic body of a miner, a completely different, non-humanoid life-form. The resuscitated pilot finds himself in a deep conflict trying to reconcile his original human nature with his new life and its parameters...along with his new society's values, priorities, and assumptions. Very interesting, and I found the ending to be funny in a kind of macabre way...
ANSWER by Fredric Brown
Brown was famous for writing extremely short stories with knockout endings...here's another one, less than a full page in length. In the future, all the computers spanning the cosmos have been connected and now humanity can use them to solve what heretofore had been considered to be unsolvable problems. Upon closing the switch that establishes the connection uniting the computing systems of 96 billion planets, Dwar Reyn poses the first (and possibly final) question...now get ready for the punchline...
Next week I'll start reviewing selected science fiction short stories from the year 1955...
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Upcoming Militarization of Space Will Finally Make It Interesting
I was standing outside the other evening looking at the clear sky, full of the bright wintertime stars and recognizing old celestial friends from my childhood...they never seem to change. But the vastness of space, the great distances between stars and even the planets in our solar system, and the lengthy span of time it times to travel in anywhere in space...combined with that seldom (or very slowly) changing nighttime celestial theater...all contribute, sad to say, to a general apathy toward astronomy and space exploration on the part of the general public. Instead, people would rather go watch the latest Star Wars movie, where the fictional characters can cross vast regions of space in the blink of an eye and...well, since there's always a war going on, then that's exciting, right? And so with what seems to be an incremental militarization of space and our president's call for a "space force" to counter actions by Russia and China we may be finally...and dismally...finding a way of looking at astronomy and the space program as something more interesting...and deadly. But let's face it: every crucial development in human transportation, from riding horses and other animals through steam locomotion, trains, ships, motorized vehicles, dirigibles, planes, and submarines, has always been quickly applied to war-making and gaining an advantage over the adversary...sooner or later we should have known that space would be the next military frontier. As a matter of fact, shooting rockets into space was a direct outgrowth of the Nazi Germans' V-2 rocket program whereby scientists and engineers like Wernher Von Braun developed a new type of locomotion for war use...after World War II he and others were picked up by the U.S. and the Soviets to work on their own Cold War projects. And being able to project missiles accurately over very long distances directly led to the race to the moon between the two sides in the 1960s...
Well, the people have spoken and they think space warfare is interesting and maybe a nonmilitarized space future with comprehensive international cooperation and goodwill would be just too boring to attract their attention and enthusiasm. And since...at least here in America...public opinion counts for a lot in what our elected politicians decide to spend money on, I'm afraid that folks are in danger of getting in "real" life what they happily spend their money to achieve in "reel" life. Now I'm not criticizing the president's 2018 plan for a space force...it may indeed be necessary and I'm not in a position to go over all the classified information about what other countries are doing up there...but maybe it's not going as planned as the current spending deal just negotiated between the politically-divided Congress and the White House cut a whopping $32 million in appropriations for it from the $72 million the administration asked for...
Well, the people have spoken and they think space warfare is interesting and maybe a nonmilitarized space future with comprehensive international cooperation and goodwill would be just too boring to attract their attention and enthusiasm. And since...at least here in America...public opinion counts for a lot in what our elected politicians decide to spend money on, I'm afraid that folks are in danger of getting in "real" life what they happily spend their money to achieve in "reel" life. Now I'm not criticizing the president's 2018 plan for a space force...it may indeed be necessary and I'm not in a position to go over all the classified information about what other countries are doing up there...but maybe it's not going as planned as the current spending deal just negotiated between the politically-divided Congress and the White House cut a whopping $32 million in appropriations for it from the $72 million the administration asked for...
Monday, December 16, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #340-331
With today's ten songs, this list is now a third of the way through...so there's a lot more good music to come. It's interesting that the digital era we are now enjoying in 2019 affords us the opportunity to deeply investigate different artists' collective output from decades past when such an undertaking during their time of stardom would have been daunting. Here are my takes on the next ten songs on my all-time favorites list...
340 MUSIC...John Miles
John Miles is one of those accomplished musical artists who achieved much more success in Britain and Europe than in America. This 1976 song got a lot of album-rock radio airplay then (I used to listen to Miami's "Zeta-4" on 94.9). It has an epic sound to it, and the lyrics are limited but poignant: "To live without my music would be impossible to do, in this world of troubles my music pulls me through". It also has some pretty cool orchestrated instrumental breaks in it. I associate Music with that great year in my life, especially the summer...it's one of two songs with that title on this 500 favorites list: can you guess who did the other one?
339 NO TIME...the Guess Who
While I was living through the Guess Who's mass popularity from 1969-71, I caught on late to their high quality music, becoming a fan of this Canadian band in '71 and catching up on their earlier works, of which this is one. The Guess Who could have been like their similarly-named British counterpart the Who and lasted longer, but alas, some groups simply do not have the inner chemistry that invites long-term collaboration...the Animals and Creedence Clearwater Revival were other examples of stupendous acts that broke up too early. No Time has a double meaning: the singer is fed up with whom he's singing to and is ready to move on...but also, it's a general complaint about simply not having enough time, period...
338 A MATTER OF TRUST...Billy Joel
I didn't care for Billy Joel's later music that he produced, starting with his An Innocent Man album in 1983...except for this one 1986 song, which has a strong rock element to it. He's all relational as he coaxes his listener to hang in there, it's all gonna be okay: "The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned, but that won't happen to us cause it's always been a matter of trust"...
337 I'LL CRY INSTEAD...the Beatles
Appearing on both the Beatles' 1964 A Hard Day's Night and Something New albums, this song is extremely short at less than 1:50, but both musically and lyrically I've always liked it...and time seems to have aged it quite well. I'll Cry Instead is a John Lennon song and hints at his increasing disillusionment about the band's fame and mounting pressures, as expressed in subsequent songs of his over the next two years...
336 NOT FADE AWAY...the Rolling Stones
One of the Rolling Stones' early singles, this is another very short song from 1964...written by Buddy Holly and using the renowned Bo Diddley beat. You can clearly hear multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones' influence on this song as his harmonica and guitar virtuosity meshes well with Mick Jagger's rough-edged singing. Jones had played a major role in bringing the Stones together and choosing their early successful cover hits. Unfortunately, he either couldn't or was unwilling to write his own songs and Jagger and Keith Richards...who did...eventually took over control of the band...
335 AUTOBAHN...Kraftwerk
Autobahn is the first of three "mega" songs revealed on this list of my all-time favorites, taking up an entire (vinyl) album side at 22+ minutes of duration. The band and song's lyrics are both German and describe travelling down the German Autobahn, in one section even mimicking the Doppler Effect of traffic passing in the opposite direction. The recurring melody with the lyrics "Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn" reminded me of Mussorgsky's classical masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition and how its Promenade theme would wind its way around the other elements of the piece. Autobahn is probably the greatest product of the techno genre of music...I recently discovered it's also great to listen to while running...
334 BAKER STREET...Gerry Rafferty
Gerry Rafferty, the lead singer from his earlier band Stealers Wheel, exploded on the music scene in 1978 as a solo artist with his album City to City, from which Baker Street was released as a single. Rafferty's mellow singing voice contrasted sharply with the heavy saxophone and guitar riffs on this big hit. And that wild, weeping guitar ending...whew. When I think of the summer of 1978, this great song inevitably comes to mind. And more than forty years later I keep hearing it played on a number of radio stations. Rafferty himself was ambivalent about his musical stardom and eschewed performing in concerts...
333 BLACK MIRROR...Arcade Fire
Black Mirror is the opening track from the alternative rock band Arcade Fire's brilliant Neon Bible album from 2007. It's also the first song I heard and identified with this band...and motivated me to check out some other of their songs, some of which I'll discuss later on this list of mine. I heard it played on Gainesville's WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz" just before they decided to steer their programming format to acts like (shudder) Nickelback, Offspring and Shinedown and away from the more indie-oriented music I had grown to follow...
332 YESTERDAY'S GONE...Chad and Jeremy
With a beat that bears similarity to the Beatles' I'll Cry Instead (#337), Yesterday's Gone predates that song by a couple of years. It was released in the USA in June of 1964 but my Miami radio station WQAM wouldn't play it...later on it was recognized as a "golden oldie", and well-deserved at that. The music and lyrics impart a feeling of wistfulness and a sense of closure about a relationship that had run its course. I ended up buying the single in 1976...
331 YOU WERE ON MY MIND...We Five was a one-hit-wonder American band that produced this hit song in 1965...they broke up a couple of years later but eventually reunited, probably seeing the lucrativeness of trading off on their established name. I think they're still together. Lead singer Beverly Bivens sang this tune with such feeling that I had to take note...it's a song that I've only increased in appreciation over the years...
Next week: songs #330-321...
340 MUSIC...John Miles
John Miles is one of those accomplished musical artists who achieved much more success in Britain and Europe than in America. This 1976 song got a lot of album-rock radio airplay then (I used to listen to Miami's "Zeta-4" on 94.9). It has an epic sound to it, and the lyrics are limited but poignant: "To live without my music would be impossible to do, in this world of troubles my music pulls me through". It also has some pretty cool orchestrated instrumental breaks in it. I associate Music with that great year in my life, especially the summer...it's one of two songs with that title on this 500 favorites list: can you guess who did the other one?
339 NO TIME...the Guess Who
While I was living through the Guess Who's mass popularity from 1969-71, I caught on late to their high quality music, becoming a fan of this Canadian band in '71 and catching up on their earlier works, of which this is one. The Guess Who could have been like their similarly-named British counterpart the Who and lasted longer, but alas, some groups simply do not have the inner chemistry that invites long-term collaboration...the Animals and Creedence Clearwater Revival were other examples of stupendous acts that broke up too early. No Time has a double meaning: the singer is fed up with whom he's singing to and is ready to move on...but also, it's a general complaint about simply not having enough time, period...
338 A MATTER OF TRUST...Billy Joel
I didn't care for Billy Joel's later music that he produced, starting with his An Innocent Man album in 1983...except for this one 1986 song, which has a strong rock element to it. He's all relational as he coaxes his listener to hang in there, it's all gonna be okay: "The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned, but that won't happen to us cause it's always been a matter of trust"...
337 I'LL CRY INSTEAD...the Beatles
Appearing on both the Beatles' 1964 A Hard Day's Night and Something New albums, this song is extremely short at less than 1:50, but both musically and lyrically I've always liked it...and time seems to have aged it quite well. I'll Cry Instead is a John Lennon song and hints at his increasing disillusionment about the band's fame and mounting pressures, as expressed in subsequent songs of his over the next two years...
336 NOT FADE AWAY...the Rolling Stones
One of the Rolling Stones' early singles, this is another very short song from 1964...written by Buddy Holly and using the renowned Bo Diddley beat. You can clearly hear multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones' influence on this song as his harmonica and guitar virtuosity meshes well with Mick Jagger's rough-edged singing. Jones had played a major role in bringing the Stones together and choosing their early successful cover hits. Unfortunately, he either couldn't or was unwilling to write his own songs and Jagger and Keith Richards...who did...eventually took over control of the band...
335 AUTOBAHN...Kraftwerk
Autobahn is the first of three "mega" songs revealed on this list of my all-time favorites, taking up an entire (vinyl) album side at 22+ minutes of duration. The band and song's lyrics are both German and describe travelling down the German Autobahn, in one section even mimicking the Doppler Effect of traffic passing in the opposite direction. The recurring melody with the lyrics "Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn" reminded me of Mussorgsky's classical masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition and how its Promenade theme would wind its way around the other elements of the piece. Autobahn is probably the greatest product of the techno genre of music...I recently discovered it's also great to listen to while running...
334 BAKER STREET...Gerry Rafferty
Gerry Rafferty, the lead singer from his earlier band Stealers Wheel, exploded on the music scene in 1978 as a solo artist with his album City to City, from which Baker Street was released as a single. Rafferty's mellow singing voice contrasted sharply with the heavy saxophone and guitar riffs on this big hit. And that wild, weeping guitar ending...whew. When I think of the summer of 1978, this great song inevitably comes to mind. And more than forty years later I keep hearing it played on a number of radio stations. Rafferty himself was ambivalent about his musical stardom and eschewed performing in concerts...
333 BLACK MIRROR...Arcade Fire
Black Mirror is the opening track from the alternative rock band Arcade Fire's brilliant Neon Bible album from 2007. It's also the first song I heard and identified with this band...and motivated me to check out some other of their songs, some of which I'll discuss later on this list of mine. I heard it played on Gainesville's WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz" just before they decided to steer their programming format to acts like (shudder) Nickelback, Offspring and Shinedown and away from the more indie-oriented music I had grown to follow...
332 YESTERDAY'S GONE...Chad and Jeremy
With a beat that bears similarity to the Beatles' I'll Cry Instead (#337), Yesterday's Gone predates that song by a couple of years. It was released in the USA in June of 1964 but my Miami radio station WQAM wouldn't play it...later on it was recognized as a "golden oldie", and well-deserved at that. The music and lyrics impart a feeling of wistfulness and a sense of closure about a relationship that had run its course. I ended up buying the single in 1976...
331 YOU WERE ON MY MIND...We Five was a one-hit-wonder American band that produced this hit song in 1965...they broke up a couple of years later but eventually reunited, probably seeing the lucrativeness of trading off on their established name. I think they're still together. Lead singer Beverly Bivens sang this tune with such feeling that I had to take note...it's a song that I've only increased in appreciation over the years...
Next week: songs #330-321...
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Enjoying Watching Mr. Bean Reruns
Mr. Bean was a British sitcom series that originally aired from 1990 to 1995, comprising 15 total episodes. It starred comedian Rowan Atkinson as the title character, a man who finds himself in all sorts of predicaments involving everyday living and who never talks while coming up with novel ways to get around the "system". It's all in the great old tradition of slapstick comedy from the silent films of the 1920s...Buster Keaton comes to mind as one of that era's biggest stars. Somehow Facebook decided that I needed to watch some clips of Mr. Bean and put it on my newsfeed...that's how I got hooked on the series. YouTube has several of the episodes as well, although each episode is actually a composite of several smaller stories that stand well on their own. The latest clip I saw has Mr. Bean getting on a roller coaster ride, hogging the front seat all to himself and then finding, while the ride is going on, that the screaming passengers behind him are annoying and it's all so boring...he falls asleep and has to be roused after it's over: hilarious...
Apparently a cartoon spinoff series about Mr. Bean was also made, as well as two feature-length films. But for the time being, I now have something else worth watching on TV after I get off from work late at night besides reruns of The Prisoner...what is it about those old British series, anyway...Fawlty Towers, Dave Allen at Large, and Benny Hill were also classics...
Apparently a cartoon spinoff series about Mr. Bean was also made, as well as two feature-length films. But for the time being, I now have something else worth watching on TV after I get off from work late at night besides reruns of The Prisoner...what is it about those old British series, anyway...Fawlty Towers, Dave Allen at Large, and Benny Hill were also classics...
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Just Finished Reading Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
The novel Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, which was just published a couple of months ago, is a fantasy/horror story that focuses on the eight so-called "secret" societies of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut that have housed some famous people including the two George Bushes and John Kerry. The title refers to Lethe, the house that the others have set up over the years to monitor their activities and ensure that their magic doesn't get abused...oh, yeah, this story assumes that the hocus-pocus BS behind the different groups' rituals is real and that each of the houses stands on a "nexus" of magic that empowers them. Galaxy Stern, or "Alex", is in that ninth house largely because of her special gift: she can see the ghosts...or "greys" as they are called here...around her without having to drink a highly toxic potion that the others in her house must resort to. Alex had a troubled youth and is coming off surviving a traumatic multiple homicide: her unlikely entrance to Yale is an opportunity for her to begin her life afresh...or is it? Darlington, her main colleague (and love interest) at Lethe, figures heavily into the story's flow as the murder of a young woman who was a "towner" (not a Yale student) casts suspicion on the different houses. Alex plays the detective in trying to find the guilty party and soon uncovers a wide assortment of depravity and likely culprits. The story worked for me, although it does have some pretty dark themes and a lot of violence...definitely not for the squeamish...
Ninth House for me inevitably brings up comparisons with two fantasy series I've read: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and Lev Grossman's The Magicians, both of which involved magic at schools. But unlike those two "fantastic" series, Yale is a real place in a real city, New Haven. The author attended Yale herself and actually was a member of one of the secret houses. Whereas with Rowling and Grossman's scenarios the magical world was one of wonders fraught with some danger, Bardugo's vision is overwhelmingly dark and foreboding...not anything that the reader would be liable to fall into a daydream about being a part of. And the notions of privelige, ambition, and elitism pervade the author's negative portrayal of student life at Yale: it's as if everyone here were a Slytherin! By the way, without giving away the ending it did seem apparent to me that this may be only the first book in yet another fantasy magic/school series. Should that be the case, count me in for the duration...but if you can't handle horror fiction I'd steer clear of it all...
Ninth House for me inevitably brings up comparisons with two fantasy series I've read: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and Lev Grossman's The Magicians, both of which involved magic at schools. But unlike those two "fantastic" series, Yale is a real place in a real city, New Haven. The author attended Yale herself and actually was a member of one of the secret houses. Whereas with Rowling and Grossman's scenarios the magical world was one of wonders fraught with some danger, Bardugo's vision is overwhelmingly dark and foreboding...not anything that the reader would be liable to fall into a daydream about being a part of. And the notions of privelige, ambition, and elitism pervade the author's negative portrayal of student life at Yale: it's as if everyone here were a Slytherin! By the way, without giving away the ending it did seem apparent to me that this may be only the first book in yet another fantasy magic/school series. Should that be the case, count me in for the duration...but if you can't handle horror fiction I'd steer clear of it all...
Friday, December 13, 2019
Quote of the Week...from Robert Pirsig
To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. ...Robert Pirsig
Robert Pirsig, who passed away in 2017 at age 88, was a modern-era American philosopher who concerned himself with the interrelationship between the concepts of Truth, Quality, and Good...among other things. He is most known for his best-selling 1974 philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read during my work breaks in 1990. The above quote of his resonated with me, although the single word only in the first sentence is crucial to its truth. I think it's very important to have a whole series of goals in different areas of my life...some folks sadly become so single-minded about one in particular and then, regardless whether it is actually achieved or not, they will often suffer deflation, disappointment, and disillusionment. Didn't Peggy Lee once sing "Is that all there is" when she recounted the experiences she had once looked so forward to but which...as expressed in the book of Ecclesiastes...turned out to be nothing more than a "chasing after the wind". But, as Pirsig intimated, if I elevate the process as well as the result of my endeavors...starting from the moment that I envision a goal and begin to set out to its accomplishment, then my life will be enriched in each and every day I strive to better myself. Back in 2010 I trained hard and long to build up my endurance to run a marathon race early the next year. The final result was a setback: although I finished the actual race, I had suffered a leg strain injury and had to walk the last 7 miles of the 26.2 mile distance. But my training over the span of several weeks was very meaningful and enjoyable to me...I'd go up and down many roads in a wildly convoluted course and enjoyed experiencing the sights and sounds around me, not to mention a wide variety of weather conditions. And I'd listen to some fantastic music as well off my mp3 while running. The upshot was that I have fond memories of that adventurous time and no regrets about not reaching the "mountaintop" in the way I had wanted...
While elevating the process of endeavor in my mind is akin to Pirsig's notion of thriving on the mountainside, I think that it can also be fruitful to design my goals in such a way that their accomplishment will lead to further endeavors to accomplish future goals, many of which may not even be in my mind at the present time. I think it's important to strive for things...it's a positive part of our human nature...and going through the triumphs and trials in doing that makes life a lot more interesting...
Robert Pirsig, who passed away in 2017 at age 88, was a modern-era American philosopher who concerned himself with the interrelationship between the concepts of Truth, Quality, and Good...among other things. He is most known for his best-selling 1974 philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read during my work breaks in 1990. The above quote of his resonated with me, although the single word only in the first sentence is crucial to its truth. I think it's very important to have a whole series of goals in different areas of my life...some folks sadly become so single-minded about one in particular and then, regardless whether it is actually achieved or not, they will often suffer deflation, disappointment, and disillusionment. Didn't Peggy Lee once sing "Is that all there is" when she recounted the experiences she had once looked so forward to but which...as expressed in the book of Ecclesiastes...turned out to be nothing more than a "chasing after the wind". But, as Pirsig intimated, if I elevate the process as well as the result of my endeavors...starting from the moment that I envision a goal and begin to set out to its accomplishment, then my life will be enriched in each and every day I strive to better myself. Back in 2010 I trained hard and long to build up my endurance to run a marathon race early the next year. The final result was a setback: although I finished the actual race, I had suffered a leg strain injury and had to walk the last 7 miles of the 26.2 mile distance. But my training over the span of several weeks was very meaningful and enjoyable to me...I'd go up and down many roads in a wildly convoluted course and enjoyed experiencing the sights and sounds around me, not to mention a wide variety of weather conditions. And I'd listen to some fantastic music as well off my mp3 while running. The upshot was that I have fond memories of that adventurous time and no regrets about not reaching the "mountaintop" in the way I had wanted...
While elevating the process of endeavor in my mind is akin to Pirsig's notion of thriving on the mountainside, I think that it can also be fruitful to design my goals in such a way that their accomplishment will lead to further endeavors to accomplish future goals, many of which may not even be in my mind at the present time. I think it's important to strive for things...it's a positive part of our human nature...and going through the triumphs and trials in doing that makes life a lot more interesting...
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Here Comes a Nameable Decade and New Opportunities
It looks like we're finally approaching a time...it's been twenty years...in which people can once again comfortably refer to the decade that they're living through. After the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties of the last century, we ran into the "units", "zeros" or "aughts" of the early 2000s and then the never-used "teens" of the ten-year span we're almost through with...I noticed that CNN stopped their shows about the past decades after the "nineties"...if you can't name something, then how can you talk about it? And while we're at it, can we finally stop saying "two thousand twenty" and starting calling the years like we did in the good old days as combinations of two-digit numbers? . "Twenty twenty" sounds good to me, but so does twenty nineteen, for that matter...in spite of folks still saying "two thousand nineteen"...
In anticipation of entering a decade that actually has a name, I think that here is an opportunity for personal reflection as to what I want to accomplish, not just in the year to come but also during the approaching twenties. Getting rid of bad personal habits, instilling good ones, learning new things, experiencing adventures, being responsible with the health and prosperity I've been blessed with, enriching my relationships with my loved ones...all are worthwhile ventures. But with time inevitably come trials and setbacks...developing the character and compassion to deal with my own and those of others is going to be a crucial element of the coming years, I am sure. One thing I am certain of: change does not come in the future but rather in the present moment as I live though my life, one day at a time...
Hey, whaddya know, CNN has actually been reviewing the first two decades of this century...they just call it the 2000s without designating either of the two decades we've gone through...
In anticipation of entering a decade that actually has a name, I think that here is an opportunity for personal reflection as to what I want to accomplish, not just in the year to come but also during the approaching twenties. Getting rid of bad personal habits, instilling good ones, learning new things, experiencing adventures, being responsible with the health and prosperity I've been blessed with, enriching my relationships with my loved ones...all are worthwhile ventures. But with time inevitably come trials and setbacks...developing the character and compassion to deal with my own and those of others is going to be a crucial element of the coming years, I am sure. One thing I am certain of: change does not come in the future but rather in the present moment as I live though my life, one day at a time...
Hey, whaddya know, CNN has actually been reviewing the first two decades of this century...they just call it the 2000s without designating either of the two decades we've gone through...
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 3
Here are my reactions to four more science fiction stories from the year 1954, as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954). To be perfectly honest, I wasn't all that thrilled with the first three below...sometimes when you're reading anthologies and collections, though, you have to cross some deserts of dry literature in order to access fertile lands of imagination and insight...
LETTERS FROM LAURA by Mildred Clingerman
I think this brief story may have been considered back in 1954 to have been a little provocative, which then enabled it to gain some notoriety...you'll have to read it to know what I'm talking about. Anyway, a young woman writes a series of letters...first to her mother and then to a friend...about her time travel experience: in her time in the future, they have time travel tour companies. Her trip is to ancient Crete, where a certain monster is reputed to dwell...
TRANSFORMER by Chad Oliver
Another story that reads more like a Twilight Zone episode...I'm thinking mostly of that Five Characters in Search of an Exit episode...Transformer is told from the perspective of a toy figurine woman stuck in a bratty boy's model train setup. She describes the abuse he inflicts on the other "inhabitants" there...actually, this sounds more like Toy Story, doesn't it? The gimmick to this tale is laid out in the beginning, so I'm not giving anything away. It just didn't work for me...
THE MUSIC MASTER OF BABYLON by Edgar Pangborn
It's toward the end of the 21st century and, after nuclear Armageddon and the resulting overwhelming depopulation of Earth and breakup of social structures, a man finds himself spending the final decades of his life in solitude on the northern edge of what used to be New York City...and has sole access to a great old museum there, one that features a grand room with a piano. A player himself, he wants to properly play a piece that a latter-day composer had composed a century earlier when the world was beginning to come apart. One day in the museum he discovers he isn't alone...this story is more a somber post-apocalyptic mood piece, something you're either going to like a lot or not at all...
THE END OF SUMMER by Algis Budrys
I have to admit I was struggling through most of this story about gained immortality and the need to continually reinstate memories until I got near the end...and then what a revelation that was! After reading it I understand that absolute immortality carries with it some pretty serious flaws...but if biological research and medical applications continue to advance our life spans, along with a higher quality of life in those later years, I'm all for it...
Next week I'll finish my look back at short science fiction from 1954...
LETTERS FROM LAURA by Mildred Clingerman
I think this brief story may have been considered back in 1954 to have been a little provocative, which then enabled it to gain some notoriety...you'll have to read it to know what I'm talking about. Anyway, a young woman writes a series of letters...first to her mother and then to a friend...about her time travel experience: in her time in the future, they have time travel tour companies. Her trip is to ancient Crete, where a certain monster is reputed to dwell...
TRANSFORMER by Chad Oliver
Another story that reads more like a Twilight Zone episode...I'm thinking mostly of that Five Characters in Search of an Exit episode...Transformer is told from the perspective of a toy figurine woman stuck in a bratty boy's model train setup. She describes the abuse he inflicts on the other "inhabitants" there...actually, this sounds more like Toy Story, doesn't it? The gimmick to this tale is laid out in the beginning, so I'm not giving anything away. It just didn't work for me...
THE MUSIC MASTER OF BABYLON by Edgar Pangborn
It's toward the end of the 21st century and, after nuclear Armageddon and the resulting overwhelming depopulation of Earth and breakup of social structures, a man finds himself spending the final decades of his life in solitude on the northern edge of what used to be New York City...and has sole access to a great old museum there, one that features a grand room with a piano. A player himself, he wants to properly play a piece that a latter-day composer had composed a century earlier when the world was beginning to come apart. One day in the museum he discovers he isn't alone...this story is more a somber post-apocalyptic mood piece, something you're either going to like a lot or not at all...
THE END OF SUMMER by Algis Budrys
I have to admit I was struggling through most of this story about gained immortality and the need to continually reinstate memories until I got near the end...and then what a revelation that was! After reading it I understand that absolute immortality carries with it some pretty serious flaws...but if biological research and medical applications continue to advance our life spans, along with a higher quality of life in those later years, I'm all for it...
Next week I'll finish my look back at short science fiction from 1954...
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