Even thought the First Selectman is my neighbor I’ve never been the biggest fan of his chronicler; H. P. Lovecraft. His style is a little bit much for me. But I’ve always kind of enjoyed this short story. And this fellow Ian Gordon uses a highly dramatic speaking style that I find amusing.
Category: SF&F Book Reviews
Science fiction and Fantasy book reviews by a classic sf&f fan
Heinlein’s short Stories – The Green Hills of Earth
Here’s another audio file on YouTube of Leonard Nimoy reading one of Heinlein’s short story. You know, Heinlein’s poem is pretty good. Better than anything i could write.
Heinlein’s Short Stories – Gentlemen Be Seated
Today I was rooting around on YouTube and found this audio version of one of Heinlein’s short stories from “The Green Hills of Earth” collection; “Gentlemen, Be Seated.”
I haven’t read that story in fifty years. Unsurprisingly it’s still a good story. Nimoy’s voice sounds very un-Spock-like. I think he does a very decent job.
Cthulhu Attempts to Swallow the Sun and Fails Badly
The First Selectman was miffed about something. Maybe his shadow appeared a little too portly or his reflection in a dank lake was a little too unflattering. Whatever it was he attempted to swallow Earth’s star. Luckily he’s not the Elder God he used to be. All he got was a nasty burn around his mouth tentacles, a case of butthurt and a dose of reality.
I collected this shot at the moment of maximum effort.
Metallic Crystals, Imagination and the Persistence of Memory
In July 1971 I had finished up my freshman year in high school. And I was a poor kid who used the Brooklyn Public Library as my main source of books. So each month I would trek to my local branch and take out the latest (or the closest to latest) issue of Analog Science Fiction magazine. In that month’s edition, there was an illustration on the back page of what was a photograph of what was purported to be a futuristic city that was being eroded by unimaginable eons of time as it lay dead under a dying red star at the end of the universe.
Actually, it was a scanning electron microscope photo of lead-tin telluride crystals.
But it sort of reminds me of the bismuth crystals that I used for today’s photo of the day.
I wonder if the anonymous author of that blurb was John Campbell. But I can understand his imaginative description. It is apt.
Funny how these things stick with you. Wow, that’s almost 53 years ago.
The Future History of the People’s Revolt
Writing my sniper story has been an interesting project. I’ve recently realized that it provides me with a way to escape from the repressive environment that we find ourselves in. I can imagine a world where people find a way to escape from the Left’s stranglehold on our lives. Science fiction was often described as escapist fiction; an escape from the real world. Dreaming of a trip to the Moon or Mars was a highly enjoyable pastime. I remember as a kid going to the library and taking out the Heinlein juveniles one by one and wishing there were a hundred instead of a dozen or so. I guess it’s human to dream about a richer or more exciting or a better world.
And when I was a kid, we then got the Apollo program and we really did go to the Moon. Well, maybe we actually will revolt from the Left. After all, it’s been done. The Soviet Union fell. Communism or Wokeism or whatever anti-freedom regime we find ourselves under is no godlike entity. It’s just people who crave control over others to enrich themselves. Surely such an enterprise can be swept away if it ceases to provide the population with a reason to keep it going.
So, I don’t flatter myself that whatever MacGuffin I invent to carry my story forward; whether it be nuclear powered drilling equipment or fusion reactors or giant lasers; has any special rationale for really coming true. But that’s not really important. Just as the terra-forming capability that Heinlein’s stories are based on, is completely fictitious and the Earthlike conditions on his Mars and Venus stories are completely erroneous does nothing to ruin the enjoyment that these stories afforded and still allows a fan of these stories to imagine that actual planetary exploration is an exciting and worthwhile human endeavor. After all, a manned mission to Mars is something being seriously discussed and planned.
So, I plan to write a series of stories in a fictitious future where a band of plucky heroes upset and upend the oligarchs who currently run our world and make a fight out of regaining their freedom. As with Heinlein’s Future History, not all of the stories may be aligned with each other. I can always cover up my mistakes by pleading alternate realities in the “multiverse.” Sure, why not? If Marvel can have multiple spidermen then why can’t I play fast and loose with the future?
Now I’m not doing anything that isn’t already out in the world. In about two weeks a movie is opening up called “Civil War.” And this movie has the United States broken into warring factions and a ground assault on the White House. So, my stories will be well within the mainstream. The only difference is that probably this movie and any other movies or “best sellers” that come out will cast the Left as the heroes and the Right as the awful traitors. Well, that’s alright. To each his own I always say.
So, thanks, to Uncle Bob Heinlein for his inspiration. I’m officially in the future prediction business. But in the words of L. Sprague de Camp “It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.” So, I better learn to be vague.
Guest Contributor – Xavier – 23MAR2024 – Genre vs Literature
This post raises two important and related questions. One is the question of genre fiction versus fiction/literature or entertainment versus literature. The other, how technology impacts this balance.
On the first point I think the best guide for the use of imagination in narrative fiction or really any literature is could it be real. That is, literature always fabricates events, but only events that could be real, at least to the viewer. This may seem overly restrictive, but even if we look at even the most fantastic events in literature, they are literature precisely because they are convincing. The narrative is not just believable, but super believable, as the clumsy moniker of surrealism suggests. The reader has to have a reason to suspend disbelief and that reason has to be both compelling and convincing.
This is why Macbeth can include incanting witches and Hamlet a ghost. Same for Dickens, Joyce, etc. We don’t mind Old Hamlet showing up every night to drive the action. His presence is utterly real to mind of any son that lost a father to murder. That reality may be the reality of a dream or some subconscious memory acting on a son’s emotions, but it plays as real almost universally.
The second question relating to our kids watching stories inside game applications like Minecraft and its relation to literature and media has a very direct precedent in movies. As soon as movies got past the novelty stage when they were sequestered in menageries they looked to literature to augment the spectacle. I can be argued that screenplays almost never satisfactorily translate literature, not even drama where the analogy seems direct.
I believe literature doesn’t translate well because movies, like radio, video and now video games, are essentially entertainment media mixed with mass communication. It is not novel to say that the commercial dimension of these media plays a much greater role than they do in traditional art forms, which were mostly centered around patrons.
Some radio dramas, such as those produced by there Mercury Players, seem to approach the experience of attending a play. So maybe these mass media/entertainment forms can become like literature if they survive long enough to establish the required conventions to seem real. But movies and radio were quickly supplanted by TV and now video games. So perhaps the balance for literature requires a limit of commerce and reliance on technology, as these certainly are not timeless.
Most traditional “critics” would say that the need to seem “real” is undermined, rather than supported, by technical or futuristic artifacts. They don’t make good literature impossible, but they raise the bar to get an audience to suspend disbelief and to tell the underlying story that the reader wants. This is why genre fiction is such good fodder for farce. If the story doesn’t need these obstacles, it’s probably better off without them. But if the fun in writing with them can overcome their drag, the story could soar even with rockets. They’re just a heavy narrative load to bear.
What Should Science Fiction Be About?
There is an endless debate about whether science fiction should be literature or genre fiction. By that I mean should the story be about the humanity of the characters or about the rocket ships and ray guns. Now this is an artificial dichotomy. Even in the pulpiest of space operas, the humanity of the protagonists, even the humanity of the non-humans is always a factor. But when the story basically becomes “Pride and Prejudice” with only a stray rocket ship thrown in as a fig leaf then we’ve stepped over the line to lit-sf.
A hundred years ago the pulp market said science fiction was about the rocket ships. And that school of thought dominated during the first half of the twentieth century. Sometime in the 1960s literary science fiction began. I’m sure its roots go further back and it as yet was only the beginnings of what it would become, but the earlier dominance of space opera and pulp type stories began to give ground to more sophisticated writing styles and psychological and sociological considerations in the stories. Women authors and progressives began to address social justice issues.
Sixty years later the pendulum has probably swung as far in the direction of literary science fiction as it can go. Almost every science fiction publisher employs editors who probably wouldn’t allow a story published that ignored the social justice pieties that define the acceptable mindset of this editorial class. And these approved stories have not been wildly successful. In fact trad publishing is in pretty bad shape. But with the advent of self-publishing the possibility exists for other types of stories to begin circulating again.
But the question still needs to be asked what are the relative sizes of the markets for “literary sf versus stories about rocket ships. My guess is that if the right kind of rocket ship stories were available, they would garner at least half the market. I think it’s the case that many of the boys that currently spend most of their time playing video games would be the market for this kind of science fiction. Currently from what I’ve heard they read a kind of fan fiction that involves stories taking place in the “universe” of the games they like playing. I assume they aren’t attracted to the literary sf but I could see them being attracted to more adventurous types of stories and these would fit more in line with the kind of pulp/space opera stories that used to make up science fiction.
Of course, it can be done backwards where writers of pulp sf could go to work producing this fan fiction to an already existing game universe. But to me this seems restrictive. Having to limit your creative directions according to a video game seems sophomoric.
But in reality, there are markets for all different kinds of stories. The odd thing is that the traditional publishers and even Amazon act as gatekeepers to limit the types of stories that receive publicity and support. In effect their limiting their own profits for ideological reasons. So, this is the takeaway for authors. In order to get seen you have to tailor your work to fit the gatekeepers’ requirements or you have to market your work to an audience that doesn’t know you’re there.
Well marketing is a serious business and based on what I’ve read cracking the Amazon algorithm is not for the faint of heart. But still, I think trying to find an audience for your book is preferable to writing a book you don’t like in order to get an editor to approve it.
So, a marketing I will go.
You and Here
Because of their neurological abnormalities many Leftists are truly miserable people and therefore pathologically envious of normal people for being happy. And that’s why a big part of the leftist project is to make us miserable.
Taking the fun out of our lives is a very big part of their work. That is specifically why they are always in our faces about everything they don’t want us doing. We can’t enjoy sports or activities or entertainment the way we want to because they have to decide how those things get done. And worst of all they say we can’t do them without their participation. And that’s why they especially hate things that they can’t share in. That’s why shooting ranges and normal families are anathema. Those things are bad fun because they exclude them categorically.
And so, whenever we are happy, in a real sense, we are measurably hurting the leftist project. So, there is the justification for the “pursuit of happiness.” But over the last half century it’s gotten harder and harder to just enjoy life. Too many components of it have been compromised and degraded by the Left.
But that makes it more important than ever to find the means to bring joy into our lives. Even if you are a “happy warrior,” fighting the culture war 24/7 is not a recipe for hilarity. Sure, mocking the Left can be fun to some extent but there is a definite tendency to become a grim, glum purveyor of gloom and doom.
And I find that this very syndrome has infected me to a greater extent than I like. And thinking about it today I realized I need to begin prioritizing a lot more fun into my week. Chronicling the outrages of the week is mostly a dour and depressing occupation. Even schadenfreude over some leftist’s misfortune is a weak substitute for some constructive endeavor or even some mindless fun like watching a goofy movie.
As I’ve said previously, I’ll be trying to wean myself off the outrage stuff. To start with I think I’ll start publishing parts of my stories on the site and adding more content on creative topics like photography and science fiction/fantasy. I’ve lately been reading about how difficult it is to get genre fiction discovered on Amazon because the algorithms are specifically calibrated for authors who release materials exclusively through the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program. In addition, the algorithms are optimized for book series that release a new volume every month. For that reason, authors now write at least three series novels in advance in order to get noticed by that algorithm. Now this sounds like madness to me. Following that logic, an author should probably write a decalogy series all at once before finding out whether anyone wants to read it. And in fact, it seems that a really mediocre series has a much better chance of being a hit than a single novel even if it is remarkably well-written and interesting.
Well, we do live in a strange world. So, I figure I should start putting my stuff out there and at least have the satisfaction of publishing it on my own platform. At least I’ll get some constructive feedback from the sf&f fans on the site. And it’ll be fun.
H. L. Mencken is quoted as defining puritanism as, “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” And I think he was exactly right. We need to enjoy life. We will still have to fight the culture wars but we can’t put our lives, our happiness on hold until we win. So let the someone, somewhere being happy be you, here.
“Bugs, Mr. Rico. Zillions of em!”
ZMan takes the Dean of Science Fiction to task on his concept of a soldier only franchise in “Starship Troopers.”
Of course he’s rightly basing it on the book but even the highly toxic spin that the director took with the movie still made it a fun experience to watch them zap those bugs. Hopefully some of Heinlein’s better novels and juveniles will be brought to the screen the way they deserve.
For fans (and detractors) of the book there is a lively discussion in the comments of the post.