A speculative mind

  It is nice to read a book that celebrates words. All books celebrate words in some sense, but Babel by RF Kuang celebrates words for word’s sake. Their origin, their interconnectedness, their power. Power. There is power in words, and power is what this story is about: Who has it, who lacks it, who doesn’t want to lose it. Set mostly in England, mostly in Oxford in the 1830’s, this is a fantasy and alternate history. There is magic in this world. The magic runs on silver and those who can find the right words in the right languages to use that silver. If you etch the right pair of words into a bar of silver, you can make it do amazing things, sometimes mundane things like making a carriage ride smoother, sometimes spectacular things like holding up a bridge. But finding the right words with similar meanings but in different languages requires translators. Our protagonist, an orphan from Canton given the anglicized name Robin Swift, is groomed by his guardian to join the famous...

  Last week I said I would post my journal entry about the play we performed for the inmates at a prison. I hesitated to post this because it is rather long. But it is somewhat insightful about what can go wrong with any planned adventure and there are some amusing moments. So continue on . . .   if you dare. This trip was to Two Rivers Correctional Institute in Umatilla, Oregon to put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida for a select group of inmates. There were four vehicles going on the trip: the bus, Van’s car, John on his motorcycle, and Andrew and Terry in their car coming from Portland. We got on the bus which was a former airport shuttle (that had seen better days). The Myrmidon shields were already stacked and bungeed to the second door. Baggage was piled up against one wall. The bus had several bench seats and a large open floor area. There was a foam pad in the back for people to sit/lay on. We got started a little late which concerned me beca...

 I have never been incarcerated, not in a jail, or a prison, I never even got detention in school. But I have had a few opportunities to see the inside of a prison. There is a lot of gray in a prison: cinder block walls, gray paint on the bars, gray uniforms. Ironically there is nothing gray about the way society views prisons and prisoners. We all have our preconceptions of what the inside of a prison looks like. We have our preconceptions about prisoners. They are there for a reason, right? End of story, Black and white. No gray. Lock the door. Throw away the key, and never think about them again. The first time I went into a prison, it was not a pleasant experience. I was applying for a job in a lab that would be testing samples (mainly from parolees) for drugs. You walk in and the iron door clanks behind you. Then another iron door opens to let you through before clanking behind you again. There is something very final about that clanking sound. A tiny part of your brain worr...

  Science fiction has given us plenty of stories about robots or computers that become self-aware and go on a rampage at the expense of humanity. As we seem to be making more advances in the realm of artificial intelligence, this seems like a valid thing to worry about. But science fiction has also given us the Three Laws of Robotics. Isaac Asimov came up with the Three Laws of Robotics in an early science fiction story he wrote. He liked it so well that he used it as a fundamental background in all his future stories about robots. The three laws caught on, and now it is not just science fiction people who talk about it. It seems to be taken seriously in popular culture, not only for robot but for artificial intelligence in general. Asimov’s three laws of robotics: 1.        A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2.        A robot must obey orders given it by h...

  At first glance Fairy Tale reminds me a bit of 11-22-63 by King. There is an otherwise normal protagonist who is led to a portal that takes him to another where or when. Our protagonist is Charlie, who is just a normal kid dealing with the loss of his mother. His father has turned alcoholic after the death of his wife. Charlie sees his world crumbling around him. He makes a prayer saying if God will help his dad, he will do whatever God asks. Whether it is a coincidence or not, Charlie’s father gets help the next day. So, Charlie feels he has to fulfil his end of the bargain. Enter the mean old man who lives in the spooky house with a legendarily vicious dog (“like Cujo” Charlie’s friend tells him). Charlie rides by the old man’s house one day to discover that he has fallen and broken his leg. Charlie helps him and the man asks Charlie to take care of his dog (who is not really vicious and is quite old and arthritic at this point. Charlie sees this as his obligation (under th...

  The first famous death I remember was President Kennedy. The president’s death was shocking and it is etched in my brain forever, but before he died, I hardly knew President Kennedy. I knew the name, and knew he was the leader of our country, but when you are four years-old, you hardly pay attention to such people. You certainly don’t know anything about policy or politics. I may have heard him speak on the news a few times. So, it was shocking, but I didn’t really know him. The first death that really touched me was the death of Walt Disney. Walt Disney I knew. I saw him every Sunday night on TV as he introduced the Wonderful World of Color , which after his death would be changed to The Wonderful World of Disney . I had been to Disneyland, the most fun place on Earth and it had his name on it! As young as I was, I had seen many of his movies. For such a person to die, to be no more, was a blow to my eight-year-old self. I couldn’t believe it. I thought it must be wrong. Surel...

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...