A speculative mind

  It was one of those book club deals. Buy five books from this list and you can have your choice of one of these enticing prizes. The enticing prize I chose was The Story of Civilization by Will Durant  (The later books in the series were coauthored with his wife Ariel Durant).  This is no small thing. It is eleven volumes, eleven thick volumes. And I am not a fast reader, but I do have an interest in history. I knew about the series because my parents had the set, though at the time they bought them there were only seven or eight volumes in the series. I had seen the books on their bookshelf and not paid too much attention to them. When I briefly moved back in with my parents after college, I borrowed one of the books. I think it was the third book in the set called Caesar and Christ . I had been interested in all things Roman since watching I Claudius years before. The book was an interesting look at the history of the Roman Empire, and the history of Christianity, a...

  When I was growing up the record player was a vital accessory for a young person. All record players that I saw always had four speeds: 16, 33 1/3, 45, and 78 RPM (Revolutions Per Minute). I never saw any actual 16 or 78 records, but the speeds were there on the record player. All my albums were 33 1/3. Singles were always on 45 RPM records which were smaller than albums and needed a special adapter to fit the larger hole. In general, the faster a record spins (the more RPMs) the higher the sound quality. This makes sense. You can pack in more data per second if the record is spinning faster. So, 16 RPM records were lower quality and 78 RPM records were the highest quality. Although in practice, the faster the speed also means the faster the record wears out. When bands released an album, it was common to also release at least one single on a 45. Most of the records I bought were albums. I bought a lot of albums. But I can count the singles I bought over the course of my life o...

  I have just finished the book  Insomnia . I have suffered from insomnia. Much like the main character in Stephen King’s book, I found myself waking up after five hours or four hours of sleep, or less. It would be nice if, like in King’s world, the insomnia gave me superpowers! One wonders if Mr. King has himself had bouts of insomnia, and said to himself, “wouldn’t it be great if . . .” After the death of his wife, Ralph Roberts finds sleep to become ever more elusive. He gets less sleep every night. But he is also starting to see things, things that no one else is seeing. One might argue that hallucinations might be a side effect for someone who is chronically sleep deprived. But Ralph and his friend Lois are seeing the movers behind the scenes that pull the levers of reality. These would be supernatural movers, similar to the Fates. If one of these movers cuts your string, you’re dead, just like what happens to marionettes if you cut their strings. Ralph and Lois are g...

  I now have had the experience of being in a banned book. Once upon a time I would have considered it a badge of honor to be in a banned book. If some cretins doesn’t like my book, it just proves that I am not a cretin. But it did not work out quite the way I anticipated. This year both my wife and I had stories selected for a speculative fiction anthology from Purple Toga Publications. The theme of this anthology is color and how color effects stories. To quote our editor:   ”Why does Red Riding Hood's cloak need to be crimson? How could emperors command respect without their royal purple? And what would Terry Pratchett's Discworld be without the mysterious glow of octarine?”   I was delighted to find that I my story had been selected for this anthology. I read the previous anthology by the same publisher, It Takes a Village , because my wife also had two stories in that one. The quality of the stories in It Takes a Village were impressive. I was grati...