A speculative mind

I have basically finished my novella The Methane Sea . I am exploring my options with it and shopping it around. In the mean time, here is an excerpt of it that will give you a glimpse into the mind of the commander, Dr. Drake at a time when things are not going altogether well. So it has come to this, Drake thought. Mutiny is what they call it on a ship. What was it called on a research mission? She had heard the comment about breaking the door down. They had tried to talk quietly, but there was no hiding from her. Dr. Drake had put on her most formal outfit. The powers that be at Central had chosen her to command this mission. No one was going to take that away from her. Try as you might, I will thwart you. I will thwart all of you. The disgrace of having her mission fail was unacceptable. She would see this through to the end no matter how many lives it cost. Their lives weren’t important anyway. They were mutineers. Scum. Break the door down? They probably could, but she woul...

  The thing that makes John Irving’s writing compelling is truth. The characters may be unusual or even occasionally do things that mystify us, but they are always true to themselves. They are consistent. And the unfolding of the stories reveal larger truths. His stories have some comic moments, but nobody would call them comedies. This is true with the novel The Last Chairlift . For example, the gay and trans characters in the story are unapologetically gay or trans, even though this takes place at a time when tolerance for anyone outside the “norm” in sexuality was even less than it is today. The main character, Adam, is heterosexual. He has an unconventional upbringing, surrounded by unconventional people and ghosts. Even the ghosts exist in their own truth, even though Adam says he doesn’t understand the rules for ghosts. Whether the ghosts actually exist or are a metaphorical construct, I will leave up to you to decide. But Adam and his mother and a few others can see the gh...

  We have a nightly routine at our house. My wife tends to go to bed before I do, and every night I read to her as she is getting ready for bed. For my birthday this year my wife bought me The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal, and I started to read it. I had only gotten a couple of pages in when I thought, “this needs to be a night time reading book.” I knew my wife would like it, because I instantly recognized it as a bit of an homage to one of our favorite movie series. The title should have been a dead giveaway: The Spare Man . While not actually trying to do impressions of Myrna Loy and William Powell, while I was reading, I did try to channel their energy. And if you haven’t yet figured out what movie series I am talking about, I suggest you google William Powell and Myrna Loy, then watch the films! Our protagonist is Tesla Crane a rich and famous roboticist who is on her honeymoon with her new spouse Shal who is a retired detective. Their honeymoon trip is on a cruise ship...

  I just finished watching the 2019 television series version of Catch-22 staring Christopher Abbott. Probably 40 years ago, I watched the 1970 movie version with Alan Arkin. Probably like 50 years ago, I read the novel by Joseph Heller. In Catch-22 we follow Yossarian, a bombardier stationed on an island in the Mediterranean Sea during World War II. Yossarian is told that once he flies 25 missions, he can go home. But as he and his fellow crewmates get close to 25, they raise the line to 30 missions, then 35, then 40, and so on. We see Yossarian trying to navigate this psychological hellscape. As it has been some 50 years since I read the novel, I would be hard-pressed to say how faithful each screen version was to the original source. That being said, I think it would be hard for a two-hour movie to do true justice to the rich characters from the book. A series should be able to do a better job. And it does . . . but I still think we did not get to know Yossarian’s friends a...

  When I was young, my father worked on the Governor’s staff. It was a hard job with long hours, but it did come with some perks. One of the perks was that occasionally he was able to take his family on vacation and stay at “the Chateau.” The Chateau was on the National Guard camp on the coast. I was told it was where the General stayed when he was in residence at the camp. The Chateau was a lovely log cabin design built in the 1930’s, but it was big. To my ten or eleven year-old eyes it was huge. I believe the arrangement was that a member of the Governor’s staff could schedule a stay there if it was available and only pay for a cleaning fee. So, one Christmas we stayed there along with another family who were friends of ours. I don’t remember a lot of detail because this was like 50 years ago. I do remember the house: exposed logs of the walls, beautiful hardwood floors, and a huge rock fireplace. Santa would have no problem fitting in that fireplace. This was just the coolest ...

  It is nearly the end of the year. It is the time when everybody is doing top ten lists. So here is a top ten: my completely unobjective list of the top ten books I have read this year. Many of these did not come out this year, but I read them this year. Those that did come out this year I will mark with a: (2022). Overall, it was a good reading year for me. I have read 52 books this year according to Goodreads. There was nothing that I absolutely hated, though a couple were just so-so. The ten books that follow were not so-so. I rank them in no particular order.   The Martian – Andy Weir The Daughter of Dr. Moraeu – Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2022) Fuzzy Nation – John Scalzi Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens Fevered Star – Rebecca Roanhorse (2022) Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro The Book Thief – Markus Zusak The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – V. E. Schwab A Psalm for the Wild-Built – Becky Chambers Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir   M...

  A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers reminded me a little bit of The Velveteen Rabbit . Not that there were any robots in the Velveteen Rabbit . I remember in college my Philosophy of Education professor discussing existentialism. And then he launched into a reading of T he Velveteen Rabbit as an example of existentialism. This story takes place on a world where robots became self-aware and decided that they did not want to be slaves to humanity anymore. The humans accepted this and the robots were given territory of their own, free from human interference. This all happened 200 years before our story takes place. Our protagonist is Dex (they/them) who is a monk. They make their living travelling a circuit of villages offering comfort and tea to those in need. At one point they read about an abandoned hermitage in the mountains and they decide to drop everything and go visit this site. The road into the mountains is not maintained and the going gets rougher. One night ...