A speculative mind

You may have heard me talk about The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (maybe just once or twice). I have said it is my favorite novel of the past decade. That book was the first installment in her “Lady Astronaut” series. It was followed up by The Fated Sky . I have now just finished the third book in the series The Relentless Moon . The Fated Sky was a welcome sequel that fulfilled its promise, and The Relentless Moon does not disappoint. The first two novels follow the journey of Elma York as she fights her way through the prejudices of her times to be taken seriously as an astronaut. It was a journey that I was glad to follow. Even though she is completely different from me, Elma was a character that touched me. The books dealt with social issues of an alternate history (which has much the same social issues of our own history), but the books were never weighed down by lecturing. They were, in fact, fun. Remember fun? I was a little concerned as I started...

In 1999 Oregon voters decided to make all of our elections 100% vote-by-mail. Being an Oregon resident myself, I remember that I was not wild about the idea. I may have even voted against it. I can’t remember why I didn’t like the idea. Maybe I disliked the idea of change, or maybe I thought there were too many ways it could get fouled up. Whatever the reason, I didn’t like the idea. But having had vote-by mail for the past 20 years I can tell you that I do like it now (it didn’t take 20 years. After the first election or two I was a convert). I am not alone in that opinion. Almost everyone in Oregon likes our election system, Republicans, Democrats and independents. It is convenient. The results are processed quicker. There are no lines, no fraud, no problems. I say there is no fraud, but of course there is always someone trying to game the system, but what I mean is that there is no more fraud than any other system, and that amounts to a minuscule fraction of the ballots. A...

The pandemic of 2020 has been a terrible blow to many, many people. I don’t have to enumerate the ways. Everyone has been affected in one way or another. And yet, if you look for silver linings in bad times, you can usually find some. They in no way, make up for the bad aspects of pandemic, but you need to appreciate the little tokens that chance throws your way. A case in point: I am a lover of science fiction, but have never made it to (nor probably ever will make it to) the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) to see the Hugo Awards. This year it was set for New Zealand, and much as I would have like to have seen it, New Zealand was just never going to be in the cards for me. But because of Covid-19, The Hugo Awards were live streamed this year. I actually got to watch it live and hear acceptance speeches and everything. There were a few technical glitches, but that is to be expected, and they didn’t detract from the overall presentations. This year’s winner for Bes...

The other day someone asked me what I was like in High school. I said I was a rather strange combination of nerd and jock. Is that even possible? Can someone be a nerd and a jock at the same time? While that may sound like a contradiction in terms, it is not as much as you might think. I know there are others like me out there. Make no mistake about it, I started out as a full-blown nerd. I loved sitting around and watching Star Trek or the Twilight Zone , anything science fiction. I liked playing board games and other indoor activities. I was fascinated by science. I saw myself when I grew up, as either being an astronaut (my first choice) or an astronomer, chemist, or some other cool (in my mind)   scientist. Some of my classmates dreamed of becoming a professional baseball, basketball, or football player. I knew I was fast, based on activities on the playground, but in my fantasies of adulthood, “athlete” never even made my radar. Another adult activity that I never thou...

Back in the end of 1959 a new television show debuted. It was called The Twilight Zone and was the brainchild of writer/producer Rod Serling. Serling did other notable things besides Twilight Zone. His deep staccato voice got him many gigs as a narrator, like on The Undersea World of Jaques Cousteau . He wrote the Screenplays for Requiem for a Heavyweight , Seven Days in May , The Planet of the Apes (the original), and many others. But it is The Twilight Zone for which he will be best remembered. It was not the first speculative fiction series on TV, far from it. But it was not your standard 1950’s scifi with bug-eyed monsters, ray guns, and space ships. There was a bit of that in The Twilight Zone , but mostly these were stories about what it was to be human. The perils and pitfalls of the human race. Sometimes our egos leading us to destruction with Mr. Serling delivering the moral. And sometimes with a twist of the imaginative cords of fate showing us how lucky we ha...