A speculative mind

  Harmony is a happy blending. In music it is a mixing of tones that make a new sound. A synergy, the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Webster says that it is also a pleasing arrangement of parts. Harmony is something special. In Ancient times, the best science of the day came up with the concept of celestial spheres. Ancient astronomers knew that the stars moved across the sky each night in a fixed relationship to each other. They did not know that the Earth was turning which caused the apparent motion. They thought the stars must be fixed to a giant sphere which slowly rotated. But there were a few things in the night sky that did not move with the other stars. These things appeared in a different position each night in relation to the stars. They just wandered through the stars on a course of their own. So they called them planetes asters which means wandering stars in ancient Greek. The name “planet” stuck. Since the planets moved independently of the stars a...

  I have read quite a few of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels. They are enormous fun, though they do get a bit repetitive as you progress into the later books in the series. I just recently read the Recovery Agent which is the start of a new series by Evanovich with the protagonist Gabriella Rose. She is an independent contractor who works mainly for insurance agencies to find items that have been lost. Unlike Stephanie Plum, Gabriela Rose is very competent at her job, is well established, and is making a good living. This first outing of hers concerns a job she is doing for her own family: finding a legendary treasure that will help her to save the family home and town. My main criticism with the book is that things happen too easily. They encounter problem after problem, but each problem is not carried out to its logical conclusion. Things just fall into place for her usually without consequence. They find the strongbox under the floorboards, just where the ghost Annie ...

  Robot stories can, if well-written, get you to feel for the robot and tug at your heartstrings. Asimov did it. Bradbury did it. Kazuo Ishiguro, being a Nobel laureate, certainly has the writing credentials, and his novel Klara and the Sun , does not disappoint. We meet Klara and her friend Rosa on display in a shop. We are never explicitly told they are robots. They are referred to as AFs which we eventually learn means Artificial Friends. These robots are intended as companions for children of rather well-to-do families. We see the world through Klara’s eyes. In the beginning that world consists of the interior of the store and what little that can be seen out the display window (when they are lucky enough to be on display). I found myself reminded of stories about orphans. Just as children in an orphanage pine for the day when the right couple will come and give them a forever home, so the AF’s wait for the child who will make a connection with them and take them home. It is ...

  Dystopian fun, sound like an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Dystopian fiction takes place in the future (usually) where things are not going well, where there is hardship and suffering. Examples include the novel 1984 by George Orwell, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Make Room, Make Room by Harry Harrison, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Or instead of being set in the future, it can be set in an alternate history like Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle . Dystopia is the opposite of utopia. In short, it does not sound like a fun place to be, right? But I recently read a novella by Charlie Jane Anders called “Rock Manning Goes for Broke.” It’s a hoot. It takes place in a near future where the government and militias are sort of competing to see who can be worse. Yet the Novella has more in common with silent movie comedies than it does with 1984 . The protagonist, Rock manning, is a young man who seems to be a modern Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton. He...