Author: photog

Just Something that Came to Mind

photog Book Reviews, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , ,

Lately there have been a lot more options if I wanted to talk about what’s in the news.  There’s all kinds of Jimmy Kimmel talk.  He’s off the air, he’s back on, he’s gonna apologize, his show won’t be carried in a quarter of the country, blah, blah, blah.  And Donald Trump just got through trashing Joe Biden and the UN in front of the General Assembly.  There are psychopaths shooting up innocent victims everywhere you look and Democrats are desperately kowtowing to Mamdani hoping he can provide the magic bullet needed to bring back the millions of voters who are jumping ship.  Yep, there’s all kinds of madness everywhere you look.

But I can use a break from it from time to time.  I just get fed up with the awfulness of the world and the awful people doing awful things.

So, let’s talk about something less depressing and maybe more interesting.  A while ago I mentioned I bought a copy of a book I owned back in the stone age.  It’s an anthology of science fiction stories published in the 1950s, edited by Robert Heinlein, called, “Tomorrow, The Stars.”  There are fourteen short stories in the book’s two hundred and forty-nine pages.  They’re all between ten and twenty pages long and were written by authors “famous and less well known” at the time.  Interestingly, one of the less well-known authors was a certain, “Kurt Vonnegut Jr.”

So, I’ve been rereading these stories, some for the first time in over fifty years.  I won’t pretend that they’re all equally good or that any of them are timeless prose.  They’re not.  They’re pulp fiction or maybe slightly better than pulp fiction.  But they’re also entertaining.  They amuse.  They keep the reader’s interest.  They tell a story.  All that good stuff.  But what’s my point?  I’ve read lately that science fiction short stories are an unsellable product.  All the magazines and the anthologies are going bankrupt.  No one will buy them.

Back in the dark ages magazines like Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction made plenty of money selling monthly editions filled with mostly just short stories.  Sure, they would also serialize some novels but mostly we were reading short stories by authors, “famous and less well known.”  Now I am well aware we are living in a new age.  Theft of intellectual property has been the downfall of all the formerly lucrative entertainment forms.  CDs, DVDs and books have been pirated out of existence.  Young people have been conditioned not to pay for anything.  Everything is a streaming service.  Amazon sells books by the penny/a page method.

Yes, yes.  I get all that.  But these are just the technical details of our age.  Piracy has always been around.  What it takes to sell a product in the face of these kinds of obstacles is the same thing that is needed in any other place and time; creativity and psychology.  And in fact, a short story would seem to me to be the easier sell.  You can read (or hear) a short story in a car ride or a subway commute or a high school class that you don’t want to listen to.

Sometimes you don’t want a four-hundred-page epic fantasy.  Sometimes you don’t even want a novella.  Sometimes you want a ten-to-twenty-page story to take you out of your life for a half hour.

Just something that came to mind.

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) – A Movie Review

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The Asphalt Jungle is a heist film noir co-written and directed by John Huston.  It stars Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern and Sam Jaffe with a supporting role for Marilyn Monroe.  Sam Jaffe plays “Doc,” a criminal mastermind who was recently released from prison and is now recruiting a team to steal a million dollars-worth of gem stones from the safe of an upscale jewelry business in the unnamed mid-western city in which the story takes place.  Local racket boss Cobby points Doc to Alonzo Emmerich (played by Louis Calhern) as the fixer who can finance the caper and line up the fences to sell the jewels.  He also finds him a getaway driver (James Whitmore as Gus Minissi), a safe cracker (Anthony Caruso as Louis Ciavelli) and a “hooligan” (Sterling Hayden as Dix Handley).

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

As the team assembles Doc privately discusses with Dix his distrust of Emmerich and tells him that he will depend on Dix to protect the loot in case Emmerich attempts to double-cross them.  There is a subplot around a dirty cop; Lt. Ditrich who receives protection money from Cobby but is being pressured by the police commissioner to find Doc.  And we learn more about Emmerich’s personal life and his problems.  Emmerich has an aging bed-ridden wife and a young beautiful girlfriend; Angela Finlay (Marilyn Monrie) that he keeps in a love nest downtown.  And maybe not coincidentally he’s broke and can’t fund the heist.  But his associate     Bob Brannom; a hard-boiled private detective who doesn’t see crime as an obstacle to making money, talks Cobby into fronting the heist expenses and throws in with Emmerich in a plan to steal the jewels and leave the heist team out in the cold.

At this point we watch the team in action.  And it’s like clockwork.  Right up until the point when the nitroglycerin blows the door off the safe.  Somehow the blast triggers an alarm at a bank down the block from the jewelry store.  And when the security guard shows up at the back door Dix flattens him with one punch to the jaw.  But his gun flies out of his hand hits the ground, discharges and shoots Louis Ciavelli in the gut.  Gus takes Louis home and tries to get a doctor who will keep his mouth shut about the gunshot wound while helping his friend.  Meanwhile Doc and Dix show up at Emmerich’s to transfer the loot and get their cut.  But when Brannom sticks them up Dix shoots it out with him.  Dix is wounded in the side and Brannom ends up dead.  Doc convinces Emmerich to fix his mistake by using his legitimate connections to work a deal with the insurance company to get $250,000 in return for the return of the jewels.

Meanwhile the police have offered a reward for the capture of Doc whom they assume is responsible for the theft.  A witness comes forward saying that Doc had been seen entering Cobby’s gambling house and Lt. Ditrich is given an ultimatum to find Doc.  Ditrich slaps Cobby around until he confesses and gives up everyone involved in the heist.

The police go to arrest Emmerich and he shoots himself to death rather than go to jail.  They arrest Gus and go looking for Louis but he has already died of his wounds.  Dix has a girlfriend Doll who hides him and Doc while the police search the city for them.  Doc decides to head out on his own and catches a cab that will take him to Cincinnati.  But stopping off at a café he indulges in watching a young woman dance provocatively to a jazz tune a little too long and a couple of state troopers recognize him and arrest him.  Dix and Doll drive out of town, heading for Dix’s boyhood home in Kentucky.  But Dix has been slowly succumbing to his gunshot wound and just as he reaches the farm his family used to own, he collapses and dies.

This sounds like a pretty wild story and it is.  But it’s very well done.  Jaffe, Hayden, Whitmore and Calhern do a splendid job portraying their characters and selling the plot.  And even the secondary characters like Monroe and Caruso are very strong and provide an entertaining atmosphere for this noir.  I may be biased but I’ve always thought this was one of the best crime dramas ever made.  And this was done in the days when the Hays Code limited the amount of violence that could be displayed in a motion picture and when special effects were basically non-existent.  I would say this movie gets my highest rating for fans of crime and noir films.

The Crazies are Out There and They’re Mad as Hell

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I think we’re going to have to get used to mass shootings and assassinations for the foreseeable future.  I’m not saying this rhetorically or to be facetious.  I literally believe we will see any number of school shootings and other psychotic attacks from now on.  The reason I think this is there are a large number of “trans-people” walking around.  And a lot of them are extremely unhappy.  And by unhappy, I mean suicidal and full of rage.  Basically, they realize that they’ve destroyed their lives and their bodies and they want to revenge themselves on the world.  I think that’s the most likely reason.  And so, they’re striking out against those whom they identify as their enemies; basically, normal people and especially those who publicly deny the validity of the trans-identity.

Now this is a horrible situation we’re in.  There are thousands of these people and even if the murderous subset is less than a fraction of a percent that is still a lot of murders to have to endure.  The only positive in this situation is the fact that the frequency of trans-killers is beginning to become apparent to the population at large and this realization will go a long way to making law enforcement begin to track the commonalities of these killers and find any communications and planning going on in this “community.”

I’ve been reading a number of accounts of young men and women who have de-transitioned after realizing that they had made a huge mistake.  Now these people are extremely upset but they have backed away from the unreality of the trans-identity and attempted to salvage their lives in their original identities.  Many are physically mutilated but they are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and reconnect with their families and friends as their old selves.  And I have enormous respect for their honesty.

But that is not the profile of the trans-shooters.  They may regret their adoption of a trans-identity but they want to pin the blame for their failure on society for not “affirming” their identity hard enough.  They’ve probably seen thousands of bystanders look at them with shocked or disapproving expressions and this continuous denial of their normalcy has finally worn down their resolve.  Deep down they know they’ve reached a dead end.  Their new identities don’t give them the joy they expected.  Quite the contrary, their lives are full of frustration and pain.

It seems to me conservative groups should attempt to put together public service materials to be made available to parents to try and protect children from the inaccurate portrayal of what actually happens to someone who tries to change his sex.  It should speak to the physical dangers and health impairments but it should also address the mental health dangers that are on display by many members of this movement.  Trying to limit the spread of this dangerous cult should be one of the most important public health initiatives in our country.  Hopefully the red states aren’t just depending on bans on pediatric “affirmative care.”  They need to alert parents and make them aware that the schools in certain districts are working against their interests by sponsoring and encouraging the trans-gender movement at school and behind parents’ backs.

So, buckle up.  The crazies are out there and they’re mad as hell.

And I Believe That to be the Truth

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Well, I’m glad I got Thursday’s post out of my system.  Knowing just how deep the divide in this country is can be really depressing.  But today I made a point to stop viewing horrible people saying the horrible things that they believe.  And that has made a big difference.

I looked around and found plenty of good people talking about the constructive things going on all over this country.  I went to the Dunwich Republican Town Committee meeting and we got three new members and we finished the meeting in half the time we usually take and that’s some kind of record.  So, the world isn’t better or worse than it was a week ago.  All that’s changed is we know a lot more clearly just how many awful people are walking around in the country.  There are millions and millions of them.  Some are careful about speaking their true opinions and some are so full of entitlement that they’ll just spew their poisonous hate right out loud.  But regardless, they all hate us and what we value, to a degree that’s hard to exaggerate.

And this exposure, this unmasking is one of the greatest gifts we could hope to receive.  This will awaken the oblivious.  Of course, not all of them.  It won’t awaken the walking dead from the neck up.  But lots of normies have gotten a wake-up call that they’ll remember.  They’re finding out that trans-people aren’t these kind, gentle invalids that we have to handle with kid gloves or they’ll perish of sadness.  No, they’re delusional psychopaths hopped up on drugs and hormones and full of anger and resentment against anyone who doesn’t affirm their psychoses or just wants to avoid them.  And that is exactly what is needed; recognition of reality.  These people are delusional and if you attack their delusion, they and their friends feel completely justified by “defending themselves” by murdering you!

I was also enheartened to hear President Trump has declared Antifa a criminal terrorist entity.  I was listening to some guy on a podcast say that Antifa doesn’t fit the correct definition of a domestic terror organization.  He was some kind of think-tank expert.  Well, that may be technically true but I doubt that it will stop Donald Trump from attacking these people wherever and whenever he can reach them.  And after watching Kash Patel telling the moronic Democratic senators what he really thought of them I’m feeling more comfortable with the FBI’s current posture with regard to domestic terror.  Maybe we’re finally going to see a bunch of black block foot soldiers get squashed.

And jus to round off my improving week, I sent out a bunch of copies of my manuscript of “The Sniper” to some beta readers for comment.  I’m very excited to get honest feedback.  And I told my readers to be as brutally honest as the can be.  I’m very interested to see if they identify the same strengths and weaknesses in the story that I find.  Of course, if they all say it’s boring worthless dreck that may put a damper on my spirit.  But the Good Book says, “The truth shall set you free.”  And I do believe that.