(1) TRUTH IS STRANGER. Norman Spinrad has posted on Facebook the original English version of the afterward commissioned by the French publisher for the special 40th anniversary edition of the first French edition of Bug Jack Barron. That anniversary is now far enough in the past that Spinrad finally lost patience with the book appearing and gave the piece its freedom. Heinlein features in this afterward.
JACK BARRON & ME
by Norman Spinrad
It must have been 1969 because I had returned from London to Los Angeles and was writing for The Los Angeles Free Press, and the Charlie Manson trial was going on. We were covering it locally, it was a big national story and it came out that Robert Heinlein’s novel STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND was one of Charlie’s fave raves.
In this novel, the sympathetic lead character “discorporates” people who piss him off, always for a righteous reason of course, and Charlie Manson believed that Heinlein’s fictional justification for this likewise justified his own self-given license to do likewise.
I chanced to run into Bob Heinlein at some science fiction convention, and I just had to ask him how he felt about the widely accepted notion of his novel having inspired the Sharon Tate Murders or at least served as Charlie’s moral template for giving the marching order to his murderous posse.
He looked at me deadpan straight in the eye and hit me with a punchline that has stood me in good stead from then until. now.
“The manufacturer,” said Robert Heinlein, “takes no responsibility for the misuse of the product.”
Thus as the author of BUG JACK BARRON I thereby absolve myself of responsibility for the successful political campaign for Congress of Robert K. Dornan, the unsuccessful campaign of Pat Buchanan for the Republic Nomination for President, the march to the far reaches of the far right by the Republican Party, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation….
(2) ANCIENT BRITFANDOM. Martin Morse Wooster is enjoying Rob Hansen’s history of British fandom, THEN (recently published in book form by the redoubtable Ansible Press). Here’s his latest favorite anecdote:
This is from the memoirs of British fan Jim Linwood. LXI con was the 1961 British national sf convention, where Kingsley Amis was GoH.
“The other famous author who made his debut at LXICon–Martin Amis. He was 10 years old and spent most of his time running screaming throughout the corridors to the annoyance of the attendees. A few years later, Kingdon Road fans cheered when we saw him fall to his death from the rigging of Anthony Quinn’s pirate ship in A High Wind in Jamaica — his only film performance.”
(3) DON’T TRIP ON TROPES. At Tor.com, “Charlie Jane Anders, Alyssa Cole, and Rumaan Alam on Avoiding Blind Spots When Writing Outside Your Experience”.
All agreed that tropes are an important tool for playing with genre expectations, as you can set up a particular familiar trope and then change them in a way that’s fresh and exciting for readers. Tropes “can help, can hurt,” Anders said, as they can be “a way of focusing your intentions in the story” but might also lead a writer astray by binding them to the often outdated, cliché, or downright offensive depictions of certain characters that genre. These blind spots occur when writers fall back on their knowledge of a movie for a certain character’s background rather than doing independent research into the personal histories and experiences of people other than the writer. “You should stop and educate yourself,” she said; if instead you think, in this kind of story, this always happens, “that’s death—that’s death of storytelling.”
When asked how to recognize when you’re in a blind spot, the panelists all shared their experiences and key pieces of advice:
- Get beta readers and sensitivity readers who are familiar with the backgrounds of the characters you’re trying to write. “If you know you have a blind spot, you can even think that you’ve overcome a lot of the blind spot, but you haven’t,” Cole said. “The bottom line is, always have beta readers, but especially make sure you have beta readers from the particular group you’re writing about—if it’s not aliens or something.”
- Have more than one sensitivity reader if possible. Cole found that in writing a suffragette novella set in 1917, with a main character from India, that two of her readers were from different regions of India and had different experiences; not necessarily contradictory, but enough that it provided more nuance to her work. And compensate them for their time!
- “You also have to do a gut check 100 times,” Anders said—put the piece aside for a month, then return to it with a fresh perspective.
- “It’s OK to get it wrong,” Alam said. Sometimes you can work the lack of understanding into the book by putting that perspective into the mouths of your characters; that can be just as valuable.
(4) THE POWER OF SFF. Jim C. Hines and Mary Anne Mohanraj will partner in the creation of Invisible 3, a third volume of collected stories shared by authors and fans “about the importance of representation in science fiction/fantasy.”
These stories help to create understanding and connection. They expose the power of our genre both to help and to harm….
We’re looking for personal, first-hand stories between 400 and 1000 words talking about the impact of SF/F stories and what it’s like to see yourself misrepresented or erased, or relegated to the backgrounds. We’re also interested in the ways underrepresented and marginalized writers have worked to reclaim space in the genre.
Accepted works will first be published online, and then collected and published in an anthology. Contributors will receive a $10 payment.
Once author and artist payments have been covered, all additional proceeds will go to the Con or Bust program, helping people of color to attend SFF conventions.
(5) CALL FOR PAPERS. The annual Literary London conference, will be held July 13-14, 2017. Their theme is “Fantastic London: Dream, Speculation and Nightmare.” They are taking proposals for papers until February 1.
Proposals are invited for papers, comprised panels, and roundtable sessions, which consider any period or genre of literature about, set in, inspired by, or alluding to central and suburban London and its environs, from the city’s roots in pre-Roman times to its imagined futures. While the main focus of the conference will be on literary texts, we actively encourage interdisciplinary contributions relating to film, architecture, visual arts, topography and theories of urban space. Papers from postgraduate students are particularly welcome for consideration. Indicative topics and writers who might be addressed:
- Gaslight romance, the urban gothic, London noir, steampunk & speculative poetry
- Future catastrophes, technological dystopias, nightmares of policing & surveillance
- Forms of fictional flight into alternate ontologies of nationhood and urban belonging
- Architectural caprice, replication and ruin in the development of the built environment
- Stories of financial catastrophe, uncertain inheritance and precarious fortune
- The search for ontological wholeness in a divided, doubled or allotropic city
- The uncanny, arabesque and magical excrescences of the urban everyday
- Dramatizing the life of hidden underworlds, anti-worlds & allegorical environments
- The Weird: H. P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Lord Dusany, M. John Harrison
- ‘Elsewheres’: Doris Lessing, William Morris, J. G. Ballard, Jean Rhys, Anthony Burgess
- Urban Gothic: Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Thomas De Quincey, Charles Dickens
- Underworlds: Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Michael Moorcock, Michèle Roberts
- Make-believe: J. M. Barrie, Cassandra Clare, Philip Reeve, Christina Rossetti, John Clute
Please submit all proposals using the links under ‘Conference’ above. If you have any queries, please contact the conference organiser Dr Peter Jones at conference at literarylondon dot org
(6) STAGE PRAISE. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child won a London theater award.
#CursedChild has won the #ESTheatreAwards best play award! pic.twitter.com/vpl4E0nHmx
— Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (@CursedChildLDN) November 13, 2016
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- November 14, 1851 — Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, was first published in the U.S. And one hundred years later, Ray Bradbury wrote the script for the movie.
(8) THE DOCTOR IS OUT. Both Peter Capaldi and new companion Pearl Mackie will leave with Moffat — “Expect ‘Doctor Who’ In 2018 To Be A “Clean Slate… A Brand New Show” says ScienceFiction.com.
Expect a lot of loose ends to be tied up in the upcoming 2017 season of ‘Doctor Who’. After this, showrunner Steven Moffat and star Peter Capaldi will depart the hit series, which unfortunately has seen waning ratings in the past few years. They’ve never come right out and said it, but this is possibly because of the switch-over coming at the end of the new season, but it sounds like the changes will be sweeping!
Insiders are saying that when new showrunner Chris Chibnall takes over for the 2018 season, he will be left with a “clean slate” in order to build his own “brand new show.” Reportedly this “brand new show” won’t be 100% fresh, however. Instead, it is reported that the BBC, which has not only been unhappy with the weaker ratings of the Capaldi era, but the sharp dip in sales of “dolls, books, DVDs and toys” are looking to return to a winning formula….
Perhaps the most startling change is that Pearl Mackie, who has yet to even debut as new Companion Bill, is also expected to depart the series along with Moffat and Capaldi. Often, Companions are used to help transition between Doctors and in a sense serve as guides until the new Doctor gains his bearings, as was the case with Clara Oswald, who bridged the gap between Matt Smith’s version and Capaldi’s.
But reportedly Mackie only signed on for a one-year contract. She, Capaldi and Moffat are expected to make the 2017 Christmas Special their swan song.
(9) IT’S ABOUT NOT MUCH TIME. Did you know Time Tunnel only ran one season? That’s one of MeTV’s “8 time-defying tidbits about The Time Tunnel“. ABC network programmers then screwed the pooch picking the successor —
The replacement didn’t fare much better.
The Legend of Custer went on to replace The Time Tunnel on Friday nights, but the new series only lasted 17 episodes. Ironically, an episode of the sci-fi series took place during the Battle of Little Bighorn, a.k.a. Custer’s Last Stand.
“Let’s make a series about a young guy with long blonde hair who doesn’t surf or play in a rock’n roll band,” said the executive, who hadn’t noticed it was the middle of the Sixties.
(10) MORE VINTAGE SF TELEVISION. Echo Ishii continues her SF Obscure series.
So for this week’s post I decided to cover the half hour, SF/action show CLEOPATRA 2525.
The year is, uh, 2525. Humanity has been driven underground because the surface is controlled by giant floating robot armchairs (That’s what it looks like anyway) called Baileys. Two fighters Hel(Gina Torres) and Sarge (Victoria Pratt) are resistance fighters who battle the robot overlords. helped by a mysterious voice called ‘Voice’ that taps into Hel’s brain. Anyway, Sarge gets hurt and needs a kidney so they go and get one at the local buy-a-body-part depot. Thus, the meet Cleo (Jennifer Sky), a women cryo-frozen in 2001 when her breast augmentation surgery went awry and she was stored until humanity had the tools to save her life. I am not making this up.
(11) BELLS AREN’T RINGING. A Wyoming bookstore banned the use of electronic devices on the premises.
A Wyoming bookstore is aiming to remind customers that its “a place for books” by refusing to offer WiFi and banning use of electronic devices.
A sign posted at the entrance to Wind City Books in Casper informs customers that there is no public WiFi available and calls on them to keep their laptops and cellphones out of sight inside the shop.
(12) ANALOG MONSTER.
https://twitter.com/DougWallace1973/status/797199740693868544
(13) GRIND ZERO. I don’t know if it’s a good column about writing, but Dave Freer sure has a lot of insights about “Making Sausage”.
There are myriad sausage recipes. Sausage made of everything from bear to squirrel, pork to beef, turkey to fish. Even vegan. Sausages with everything from cranberries to chardonnay in them. But oddly they have two essential ingredients, in essential proportions. Stray too far from either and your sausage doesn’t work. And those are fat and salt. Not the obvious – people say it’s a bear or boar or chicken sausage. They don’t say ‘it’s a fat sausage’. “Yuck!” would be the response. And indeed yuck is appropriate if you don’t get that proportion (around 20%) right. Too much and it becomes a greasy horrible thing. By the time it cooks out the sausage meat and other ingredients taste greasy and overcooked. And too little and it is dry and tasteless. Vegan is particularly difficult because of the whole ‘fat’ thing. I gather it’s considered bad to suggest using plump ones. But I gather one can buy vegan suet.
For me, in writing, that’s the story, the action, the adventure. In some shape or form it has to be in every worthwhile read. Yes, actually you can have too much. Or too little, and vast focus on the other ingredients – be they the setting or the social justice outrage of the week – they tend to dry and un-appealing. And the salt… well those are the characters. And yes, once again there is such a thing as too much – or too bland when it is merely count the pre-expected tokens. I wait with amusement for the first orange haired villain s to appear…
(14) THE BULLET BOX. Larry Correia provides “A Handy Guide For Liberals Who Are Suddenly Interested In Gun Ownership” at Monster Hunter Nation.
That title isn’t joking. This post is aimed at my liberal readers. I’m a libertarian leaning Republican and gun expert, who thinks you are wrong about a lot of stuff, but I’m not writing this to gloat about your loss. For the record, I disliked all the presidential candidates.
Judging by your social media over the last few days many liberals have been utterly terrified that your government might turn tyrannical or that evil people will now be emboldened to hurt you. I’m going to let you in on a little thing the other half of the country is familiar with to keep those unlikely, yet catastrophic, events from happening.
And that my lefty friends, is 2nd Amendment.
Having just gone through a war against a tyrannical government, the Founders understood that governments can go bad, so they made sure to note our God given right (or we’ll say naturally occurring right, since a bunch of you are atheists) to keep and bear arms in order to defend ourselves. The 2nd Amendment isn’t about hunting or “sporting purposes”, it’s about having weapons that you can fight with. As an added bonus, being able to protect yourself from a tyrannical government means that you’re a lot better equipped to deal with any common criminal who decides to hurt you. Before I get into the details about how to enjoy your newly discovered 2nd Amendment rights, let me just say that I get you’re sad, angry, bitter, and fearful. But just like my people over the last few elections, you’ll get over it. The really hyperbolic freak outs about Literally Hitler make you sound just like the Alex Jones crowd worried that Obama was going to herd Christians into FEMA camps last time. So take a deep breath and relax. Your friends and neighbors are the same as they were last week. The vast majority weren’t voting because racism, they voted against the status quo and a really unlikable Democrat. And no, they aren’t going to round you up into cattle cars….
(15) CROTTLED PEEPS. Daniel Dern advises, “Be sure to watch to the very end. Even better than when a character on The Good Wife said ‘A Lannister always pays his debts.’” Shared at io9 by James Whitbrook: “A Breakdown Of My Scattered, Confused Thoughts While Watching This Game of Thrones Sodastream Ad”.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Jim C. Hines, Martin Morse Wooster, and Daniel Dern for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cadbury Moose.]
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(15)
Because if they’d been glass bottles (good luck finding those) they’d have been dropped and broken. Plastic can be recycled. Into grocery bags, among other things. /not-quite-snark
(8) THE DOCTOR IS OUT.
Oh yeah, I forgot that Chibnall was taking over Doctor Who. I enjoyed his work on Life on Mars and Torchwood. But was sorely disappointed by Broadchurch. Probably not enough to rekindle my interest in DW, unfortunately.
Love how the Beeb’s priority is selling more merch.
P.S. Why did I lose interest in Doctor Who? Because “The Angels Take Manhattan” was an hour of farm-fresh bullshit, that’s why. (Fight me.) 😉
(8) Capaldi is my favorite Doctor, so I’m sad both that he’s leaving and ratings are declining. Oh well, he couldn’t have stayed forever.
(8) THE DOCTOR IS OUT.
The source is The Mirror, so this should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
I think we’re all Pixels on this scroll.
Re-posting my comment from the end of the last Scroll:
My mother and I have very little overlap in our fiction tastes: she finds SF & F fundamentally baffling, I find most literary fiction somniferous. She just asked me if I’d heard of Elena Ferrante’s novels, and I said of course, but they’re not the sort of thing I read.
She tried to read “My Brilliant Friend” and gave up partway through, because it was too much like a fairy tale. To quote Wikipedia:
My mom explains that Lila’s shoe designs are the most beautiful ever seen, the pinnacle of Italian shoe-ness, and her wedding is also the most beautiful ever seen. Also, she is 15 years old.
Now as Mom says, this is basically a fairy tale. Is it Rumpelstilskin? Cinderella? Something characteristically Sicilian? I said I knew a lot of people who read (and write!) modern versions of fairy tales, but they generally are playing off them in some way, changing or critiquing the old stories in a way that’s fresh and/or ironic. Mom says, “No-one is talking about Ferrante that way, and I’m not going to read 3 volumes to find out whether it’s ironic.” So she gave the book away “to one of my silly friends who likes that sort of thing.”
Have any of you guys read Ferrante? Do you think it’s *intended* to be a fairy-tale re-write?
(14) THE BULLET BOX.
I’ve lost count how many times over the last week I’ve seen entitled, privileged white guys telling minorities, women, and LGBTQ to just chill, that they are “overreacting”, and “no one is coming to get you”.
These posts have, of course, been interspersed with all the reports, from reliable news sources, of the hate crimes which have been committed since the election. 😐
Okay, has anyone here already read Crosstalk? I’ve read pretty much everything Willis has published, enjoyed all of it and really, really loved a fair bit of it, and this… this is something else entirely.
I’m 37 pages in, two chapters completed, and every single one of these people is so incredibly annoying and idiotic that I would as soon pitch them all out of the window as hear from them. Even the one character I thought for sure I would like is just a milder level of incredibly annoying. I’m about ready to invent a new Ten Deadly Words: “I hope all of these characters die in a fire”.
Does it get any better? Or should I just give up now? 🙁
I have read neither Crosstalk nor Elena Ferrante, sorry. Though it’s interesting that in spite of the huge hype, most German literary critics didn’t like the books.
13) This isn’t the first Dave Freer column where he’s comparing writing to butchering/sausage making, etc… Seems he missed his calling as a culinary writer, especially since he actually makes sense when writing about meat preparation.
14) Could Correia be any more condescending? You’d figure writing about his favourite subject, guns, would make him sound more reasonable (hey, it works for Dave Freer), but no. Though he confirms that the ammosexual interpretation of the US second amendment is not about hunting and sport shooting (both of which are legitimate reasons for owning guns) nor about police/military, but about paranoia and the fantasy of shooting people they don’t like. Besides, while I’ve heard from a lot of people on the US left that they are scared, I haven’t seen anybody express the desire to buy a gun.
He also makes the mistake typical of that ilk that a white man shooting a black teenager allegedly in self-defence and a black person shooting a white man allegedly in self-defence would be treated even remotely the same in court. He also hasn’t grasped that no matter how many guns an individual has, the government always has more.
15) I’ve also seen a Walking Dead themed Sodastream ad, though it didn’t feature any actual actors from the series as far as I know (I gave up watching years ago).
BTW In Germany, glass bottles for mineral water and softdrinks are still very common and many brands offer both glass and plastic bottles. For example, I only buy plastic bottles for “on the road” use and glass bottles for use at home. Both can be recycled BTW.
14. Correia’s historical illiteracy continues. The Founding Father’s didn’t think people should have guns so they could fight tyrannical governments. They thought people should have guns so they could be in the militia and serve the government against foreign invaders. Up through the end of the War of 1812, American military thought was that the defense of the nation was to be built upon the idea of citizen-militias that could be called up in times of war.
As to what the Founding Father’s thought about armed insurrection, the Whiskey Rebellion is an instructive example.
There was always pixels scrolling.
There was always a way to write…
ticky
On the other hand, comics creator Jim Starlin’s Sodastream appliance exploded on him yesterday, giving him a scratched cornea, facial lacerations, a damaged drawing hand and a possible fracture.
In the Game of Sodastream, apparently, you win or you die. I’ll stick with cans.
http://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/15036402_1472987002716333_7962381723436850750_n.jpg
http://www.comicsbeat.com/fight-jim-starlin-vs-his-sodastream-soda-maker/
In marginally related news, since there’s a lot of crossover between sf and mystery fans, the 60th Anniversary issue (December 2016) of ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE is scheduled to hit magazine racks tomorrow.
I have a story, “Beks and the Second Note”, in it. This was my first sale since starting to write short stories again about four years ago, and my first sale to a specifically-mystery market.
When I got my contributor’s copies today, I fund to my surprise and delight that not only did I have the extra bit of egoboo of being published in a major anniversary issue… it was the lead story. Whoo!
The issue also has stories by Lawrence Block, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and others
Bruce Arthurs: it was the lead story. Whoo!
Fantastic — congratulations!
Larry would also presumably be shocked at the number of liberals who own guns and know how to use them–responsibly.
Bruce Arthurs: The issue also has stories by Lawrence Block, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and others
That’s some pretty august company you’re in there, and to have the lead story… well, congratulations. May there be many more. 🙂
Dawn Incognito, I agree with you. The first episode with angels was good. I wish they had left them as a fantastic one-off.
I bought Crosstalk but haven’t started it.
I’ve never read Farrante.
@Bruce Arthurs, congratulations. That is indeed august company. I’ll look forward to reading your story.
@Lis Carey – Larry would also presumably be shocked at the number of liberals who own guns and know how to use them–responsibly.
I suspect the idea that people could own and use guns without being completely bananapants about a Second Amendment so stretched out from the original intent as to be unrecognizable to its framers would probably break Correia’s brain. But, yes, it’s quite possible to be a left wing gun owner. I know quite a few, including one of my sisters.
(10) MORE VINTAGE SF TELEVISION. Hahaha, yeah, “Cleopatra 2525” was fun, if a little goofy. Good popcorn TV!
(11) BELLS AREN’T RINGING. Of course, most folks have cell service. I’m curious how well their “please don’t pull our your device” attempt works, though. Of course, in a bookstore, I generally have legitimate book-related reasons for pulling out my phone (check my book database, Google an author or book, etc.).
@Cora re. #14: “Could Correia be any more condescending?” – Ugh, yeah, I couldn’t read past the first two paragraphs, he was so over the top condescending. Unsurprising, but still quite eye rolling.
Ah Larry – the liberals are overreacting and also they should get ready to shoot people school of political philosophy
15, *snork* Seeing the cameraperson at 1.41
@JJ:
Re Crosstalk – I found the first couple of chapters a bit chaotic, but it transforms into a hilarious comedy of errors once the surgery’s done (around page 50 I think). So I’d hold on till that point.
(2) ANCIENT BRITFANDOM
I picked this up when it was featured here a while ago, and am slowly picking my way through it. Fascinating stuff.
(6) STAGE PRAISE
*checks* yep, still horribly sold out unless you want to pay several times their face value to someone.
(8) THE DOCTOR IS OUT
I was going to boggle at such a short companion run in the modern era, but as it’s via the Mirror I’ll just take my rumours with plenty of salt, thank you.
14) He keeps letting me down. I don’t mind the snark, but I’d hoped for useful advice mixed in with it. Instead, we got coverage of home defense that never used the word “shotgun”. I’m sure the man can shoot straight. If only he’d talk that way about shooting!
8) That would be a weirdly short run for a companion, but as noted by Mark, its the Mirror, so several pounds of salt would be required.
As far as declining ratings—I suppose that;s inevitable.
@Cora re Correia: people in the US, in the aggregate, and especially Law enforcement individuals fundamentally treat white people who carry guns differently than minorities who do. And we’ve had numerous tragedies as a result of that fundamental difference. I don’t see why Correia doesn’t see that.
@ Paul Weimer: longer than Katarina!
14) It seems that, when you own a gun shop, every problem looks like an excuse to hawk guns. For Correia, are there any social problems which can’t be solved by increased gun ownership?
Paul Weimer: Law enforcement individuals fundamentally treat white people who carry guns differently than minorities who do. And we’ve had numerous tragedies as a result of that fundamental difference. I don’t see why Correia doesn’t see that.
But he’s a minority! Just ask him! He’ll tell you he’s a Latino! And I have to agree there’s a huge danger that when he walks down the street, he will be harassed or attacked by racists just for looking like one of those people who needs to be sent back to Mexico, or that the police will shoot him for carrying a gun because he looks like a dangerous Latino! So when he tells minorities that they’re overreacting and have nothing to worry about, he should know! 🙄
Oy. Corriea. Even police officers get it wrong, and they supposedly receive thousands of hours of training.
Please.
PS: after the attacks on minorities, the biggest problem of the next 4 years is going to be the smug, snarky BS we get from folks who suddenly find themselves empowered to hate.
@Steve. Katarina? Okay, you’re just showing off now. 🙂
Congratulations Bruce!
My Sodastream is gathering dust on top of my refrigerator. Glad I stuck with seltzer in cans.
ObBooks: My Hawkmoon omnibus should be at my mailbox today. Wish I could have gotten the Kindle versions but collectively they were around $32. In a burst of enthusiasm, I also ordered a relatively cheap omnibus for the second series (Chronicles of Count Brass) but they won’t be in until December 🙁
[CO2-stalk]
[and another for the checkbox]
I’m curious how purchasing a gun will lead to insurance companies not dropping many of my friends like hot potatoes and making them uninsurable again once the ACA is repealed. I’m curious how gun ownership will allow my trans* friends to use public restrooms without being hassled or arrested. I’m curious how carrying a gun will allow my gay friends to keep getting married.
Please advise.
Way to go, Bruce! The other guys in your issue are indeed in august company.
One time (new topic) in Georgia, I saw the cutest little yellow chainsaw at a yard sale, but was outvoted on whether to buy it. It was just ten bucks, but that was a lot to us in those days.
A couple of moves later (in which we didn’t have to move the chainsaw, so there’s that), we lived in an apartment in Virginia. It was a pretty nice place, just six units in a somewhat house-like structure, and our side didn’t even have a second floor. Apart from the neighbor who put her speakers right up against the dividing wall, we were pretty lucky in who we lived next to, and we lived there about a decade. We had a view from the back door, which looked onto the back yards on the other side of the block. One evening, I sat out there and watched the dusk creep in, accompanied by a twinkling of fireflies who drifted toward me, always rising when they glowed.
In a larger sense, our neighbors were a larger apartment unit in the typical brick box, eight up and eight down, not too different from the place we’d escaped from after our first year or so in the state. These were a stream of transients, who we almost never met. One night, though, I was annoyed enough with someone honking their horn in the parking lot there, over and over, and went over and suggested they either go knock on the door or give it up. They acted like neither option had occurred to them, but it was a civil exchange.
Returning to our green grass and sidewalk, I saw our front neighbor, a white-collar fellow who once told me he was a sort of nephew of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was pretty brave of me, he said, to go over there with nothing in my hand. In explanation of what that meant, he pulled a .45 out of his jogging shorts (in back, I think). Another neighbor who I may have even met once was there and nodded agreement. I don’t remember if they had anything in their hand or not, but it was implied that they could have.
I was a little dazed as I went back in and told Cathy about the incident. “Now you see why I needed that chainsaw,” I said. “A man has to be able to protect his home.”
Perhaps Correia shouldn’t snark that people on the left “sound like the Alex Jones crowd” or whatever the original quote was when Trump is a fan of and planning to continue appearing on Alex Jones. But of course thinking that hard would require decency and intelligence on his part. Idiot.
Cally, I’m pretty sure (from what others have said elsewhere) that guns only protect the right sort of people. They’re magical that way.
My dad was a responsible gun nut for decades, and I got to reload ammo and cast slugs and balls (for the muzzle loaders he’d made) and nock arrows and all kinds of fun stuff. Now that he’s no longer as quick or sharp or grounded (91 years old, and he’s had several strokes), my sister has made sure he can’t find anything that shoots. She said that there were some emergency vehicles back in their part of the woods one time, and he wanted to pick something up and go see if he could help any. (He’s also remarkably hard of hearing, but he’s still a terrific piano teacher. It’s hard to converse with him—he will make agreeing sounds when he hasn’t heard a thing you say—but if I make a mistake on the piano, including trilling from the wrong note, he will point it out.)
Perfectly happy living in a country where even the police aren’t routinely armed thanks. As are the police for that matter. I remember hearing a recent report on the number of times the police (England and Wales) discharged their weapons in the year to March 2016.
Seven times.
I stopped watching New Who as I just didn’t like Tennant’s Doctor, and in general the whole tone of the show didn’t work for me. I’ve watched the odd one since with each new Doctor but the tone has never changed so I’ve never got into them either.
What a week it’s been: I saw the picture of Jim Starlin and immediately assumed he’d been beaten up.
Actually got a decent night’s sleep: no politics after 10:30 (ish), up to Chapter 17 of Summer in Orcus. WHOOPS that means I’m almost caught up and will need something else super-comforting.
(11): I don’t get this. Like Kendall, I use my phone in bookstores all the time, for book-related reasons (mostly looking up reviews while browsing, to see if something that looks interesting is worth buying).
@Bartimaeus: my problem is that, as much as I admire some of Connie Willis’ work**, I generally find her ‘comedy of errors’ stories simply exasperating and not terribly funny.
**If I were editing an anthology of Great Short Stories of the 20th Century, ‘Chance’ would take one of the top slots.
I’ve ordered THEN. But must keep it separate from the Jon Ronson book THEM, which is about paranoia.
The BBC lists TV shows that were never made. About half are SF, although only one says it was canceled due to (effects?) costs. Interesting to note that Star Trek: The Motionless Picture came out of the ashes of a 1977 reboot attempt; given how bad the movie was, I wonder how quickly the TV show would have been axed.
@Cora: “Could Correia be any more condescending?”
Somehow, in spite of his disclaimer, I doubt his purpose in writing the piece was to either help or comfort liberals.
Re: Time Tunnel: I chatted a bit with Lee Meriwether when she was at last year’s SDCC. She mentioned that a fair number of women scientists had come up to her over the years to say that her scientist role on Time Tunnel had been an inspiration to them. Although not completely escaping the attitudes of the day, in general her role was portrayed as a competent and respected member of the team.
Oddly enough, for a show that debuted the same time Star Trek did, one character is named General Kirk, and in an early episode there’s a mention of someone being assigned to the Enterprise (in this case, the naval vessel just before Pearl Harbor).
Re the Scroll title: I think I preferred P.I.G. to R.O.B.O.T. Classic juvenile SF from Harry Harrison.
You guys are really reactionary and throw tantrums about Larry irregardless of what he says. You have a right to defend yourself. If you feel in danger, you dont have to live in fear. Guns are the great equalizer and minorities have the same constitutional right to use them as white people. Even if it means you are treated differently for having one by police. You have a right to it.
If You defend yourself from a racist shitbag and some idiot charges you, I recommend you screen for NRA members and get us on the jury. We know the meaning of self defense. I have no problem voting not guilty even if I am on a jury with 11 nazi members and they are threatening me.
The NRA provides self defense training irregardless of race, gender, or sexual preference. After the gay night club massacre Larry did a shout out to LGBTQ friendly self defense trainers. He found a vast number all over the country. He has it in a blog post.
If you are in an at risk group, you have more need for this than straight white males. Many of you lefties would be very surprised that the vast, vast, vast majority of the NRA supports you in your right to defend yourself. Before you go back to the standby of victim blaming, I am jewish. They hate me too. I would likely jury nullify the killing, maimimg, whatever of a klukie or nazi irregardless of the justification. Fuck em. Gets them out if the gene pool.
Complaining on the internet will not get them to leave you alone.
+1 to the count with yet another straight white male who just doesn’t get it.
Also, look up the meaning of the word “reactionary”. You are using it wrong.
@Guess– Unfortunately, “minorities treated differently than whites by police when armed” = “minorities often shot dead by police for having gun when nothing else at all was going on.”
That’s not a risk to take lightly.
Also, you seem to have missed the comments about Larry being a condescending ass who assumes no liberals have guns.