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...

  When I was a teenager, my parents bought a cabin at the beach as a little getaway for the family. My brothers and sisters had moved out by then, so it was mostly just me and the parents. The cabin was about an hour’s drive from our home, and my parents liked to spend about one weekend a month at the beach cabin. Activities there included going to the beach to collect agates and shells or staying in and playing cards or reading. This was long before computers, the internet, or cell phones. Importantly, there was no TV at the beach cabin. My parents did not want a TV there. They were trying to get away from the cares of the world for a little bit. For a teenager, this experience was like death warmed over. I dreaded these weekends. No TV. Are you kidding me? What was I supposed to do all weekend? I was not a big reader at that point in my life. Card games, yeah, okay, but how many waking hours can you play pinochle? Staring out the big picture window at the ocean was interesting ...

  I have a secret. I deceived my mother. Okay, it was like 50 years ago and she is gone now, but still . . .  I was generally a good boy. I did as I was told. My family lived a pretty strait-laced, middle-class, fairly conservative life. We were a G-rated family, well, until my older siblings broke the mold, but at this time, I was still in the mold. My friend Rich and I made a plan. Rich had asked me if I wanted to see Cabaret . He said he didn’t think much of Liza Minnelli, but he wouldn’t mind seeing her take her clothes off. We were like 13 years old and sex was ever-present on our minds as much as it was absent in our households. Cabaret was not rated R. It was rated PG. The ratings system has changed since that time. There was no PG-13; there was just the choice of G, PG, and R  (X was not an official rating).  Apparently the makers of Cabaret satisfied the ratings commission enough to escape an R rating, so it was PG.   There was therefore no law or ...

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...