A speculative mind

  Image by Stefan Keller What follows is an excerpt from a forthcoming science fiction novel of mine which will probably be titled "The Downside of Eternity." Our protagonist, Bobby, is in the middle of an argument with a minister: “. . . You don’t know what it’s like,” I said.   “Fair enough, but can no one talk to you unless they have your condition? Even if that’s true, you should know that there are other people around with your condition besides you and your mother.” Huh? I didn’t know that. I had never met anyone else with the condition. The doctors had made it sound so rare that I would never have the chance of actually meeting someone else with it. The preacher guy must have seen the puzzled look on my face because he said, “about half my congregation has RGA.”   Half his congregation? I was stunned. Here I thought Mama and I were the only ones in the city. This was a revelation. Maybe I wasn’t such a complete freak after all. It was nice to know, but still, in ...

  (T here are some mild spoilers here, so if you want to start watching the show with a completely clean slate, move along). The weird part about Killing Eve is that I find myself rooting for Villanelle or Oksana or whatever the hell her name really is. Villanelle is a psychopath. I don’t generally find myself rooting for psychopaths. But Jodie Comer is just so much fun as Villanelle. She has just the right touch of menace, and humor. There have been other villains who inhabit the humor mantle well. Just look at most of the evildoers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer . But Comer takes it to another level. You can’t take your eyes off her. It is like watching a master class in acting.   The character is also as unpredictable as a . . . well, a psychopath. It is the unpredictability that keeps the show fresh. Even a funny villain who is always in pursuit of evil can get tiresome. Villanelle is never tiresome because we never know what she is going to do next. But it is not like her...

  The Dragon Republic is the second book in the Poppy War series by R F Kuang. This entire series is about war (I am making an assumption here as I have not read the third book yet, but I think it is a safe assumption). This is a fantasy series, but even in a world with magic, where gods interfere with events, the effect of war on the human condition is unchanged. Civilians are always the ones who suffer, both directly and indirectly. Meanwhile, political leaders play their games and move their pawns around the board. Our protagonist is Rin, a girl from a poor provincial town, who often seems to have the deck stacked against her. We see her overcoming, or failing to overcome the obstacles in her path. She has acquired powers, but those powers are not always helpful. Her friend Kitay, has a problematic relationship with her. They were former schoolmates. Theirs is an on again, off again friendship. We root for that friendship to ultimately win out because Kitay seems like the on...

  Art is a wonderful part of the human experience. My two preferred vehicles for producing art are acting and writing. They are both forms of artistic expression, and yet they are, in some ways, quite different. Actor:   An actor is a problem solver. Every night, every performance, something will go wrong. It could be a tiny thing that the audience will never notice, or it could be an apocalypse. Whichever it is, the actors on stage will figure out how to deal with it and move on. The actor knows this, and it is one of the things that plays on his/her nerves before a performance. Who is going to make an error tonight? Will it be you, or you, or me? If it is a big error and the actor does not think quickly enough, chaos will ensue. Chaos is generally a bad thing on stage (unless it is in the script). Writer: A writer is a problem creator. Writers leave mayhem in their wake. A writer will deliberately make something go wrong for their characters, maybe several things. Th...