News of the Obscure

 Just deleted my Twitter account.

Stopped using Facebook long ago, and the only reason I don't ditch Blogger is that I'm not quite ready to completely give up the blog, but the alternatives I know of all are all for pay. I see no reason to shell out $$$ for a non-monetized blog as, well, obscure as this one. (Or even ¢¢¢.)

Unfortunately, if you want a smart phone these days, you options are to get involved with one of two evil Commifornia Big Tech outfits. 

Somebody -- Kevin Baker at Gun Blogger Rendezvous, maybe -- had a t-shirt that was lamenting to the effect of having been a science fiction fan all his life, and getting the dark dystopian future of his teen aged years.

Heinlein's Crazy Years aren't even fully launched yet, and I'm already tired of them.

QOTD, 07/20/2019

I always knew I'd see the first man walking on the moon. I never thought I'd see the last.

Dr. Jerry Pournelle, scientist, author, raconteur

(Yes, I'm late posting this, thought I'd scheduled it and screwed that up...)

"Darmok"

In my previous post, LOL of the Day, I shared a meme which, quite frankly, I knew a lot of people wouldn't get.

And that's OK. I even know some Star Trek fans who had forgotten the episode "Darmok".

Now, that particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation happens to be my favorite for several reasons.

A quick synopsis, for anyone not familiar with the episode:

• The Enterprise is dispatched to meet an alien race. 
• Picard is beamed off the ship as the aliens cast a "scattering field" which prevents Enterprises transporter from beaming Picard back up.
• Picard discovers that the intent of the alien captain is that he and Picard cooperate to fight a creature.
• Slowly, Picard realizes that the reason that the Federation has never been able to communicate with this alien race is that they only speak in allegory and metaphor; likewise, they find straightforward speech baffling.
• The alien captain dies, but Picard is now able to communicate with the aliens, so Everything's Fine.

How many Standard Star Trek Tropes did you spot in that executive summary of a synopsis?  (More at Darmok - Wikipedia and Star Trek One Trek Mind: Deciphering "Darmok".)

One of the reasons I like this episode is that it is one of the few examples of science fiction in media where there was an honest attempt to live up to SF's nickname "The Literature of Ideas." While any literature can be described as starting from the question "What if...?" -- "What if the teenage children of two feuding families of Verona fell in love and secretly married?" -- in Speculative Fiction the "What if?" gets to be (one might argue should be) more out of the ordinary.

In this case, "What if we met a race/culture that only communicated in metaphor and allegory?"

This is cool.

Mind you, it is also absurd, because, as is pointed out in the article "Deciphering 'Darmok'" I linked above,

Yet there's one annoying thing about “Darmok.” If the Tamarians only speak in these metaphors, how did they ever learn the words that later came to be used in the phrases? How did they know that walls fell around Shaka if they need a phrase to symbolize the word “wall?”

They had words for stuff, but they couldn't just use a word? They couldn't say "Here", meaning "take this", they had to say "Temba, his arms open"? How did they learn what "arm" or "arms" or "open" were? Or "his"?

Not to mention, how does a race that only speaks in metaphor develop the science and math needed to become a space-faring race?

My assumption has always been that there were certain ceremonial occasions on which it is an unbreachable imperative that one speak in these metaphors, not unlike a Vulcan's dedication to logic. We know Vulcans are actually susceptible to emotion and illogic, and that they must fight to maintain their control, so perhaps this alien outreach mission would be regarded as a failure if they didn't play by their own internal rules. ("Deciphering 'Darmok'" posits a race that is partially telepathic.)

Another thing I liked about the episode is that they routinely broke every other magic double-talk generator device on the show, but this is the only episode I remember where Universal Translator failed.

Given Roddenberry's known utopian vision for the future -- routinely ignored on the show, when it was convenient, but don't dare suggest to him that he was full of shit! -- he probably had some Chomskian notion of a "language organ"...

Well, Hell. RIP, Harlan Ellison (EDIT)

Writer Harlan Ellison Dead At 84

Susan Ellison has asked me to announce the passing of writer Harlan Ellison, in his sleep, earlier today. “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”—HE, 1934-2018. Arrangements for a celebration of his life are pending.

— Christine Valada (@mcvalada) June 28, 2018

Harlan Ellison Dead: Hollywood Reacts: “No One Quite Like Him” Stephen King Says | Deadline
Probably the truest thing King ever wrote...

 Harlan Ellison, one of science fiction’s most controversial authors, has died - The Verge
Ditto The Verge.

EDIT: Adding this link.  Goodbye To Harlan Ellison, 'America's Weird Uncle' : NPR Yes, its NPR. This one, I approve of.

I have no personal stories of Harlan Ellison. Never met him. Certainly never argued politics with him.

Things I remember hearing or reading, though...

I know he was Guest of Honor at a con thrown by the SF club at Eastern Michigan University before I joined, someone heard he would be in the general area visiting family, and got hold of his phone number, and called him in the middle of the night, when he was coherent enough to answer the hone and say "sure", but not coherent enough to say "No."

Or, famously, "Fuck you, pay me." (Typically, the GoH at a con gets their travel and room comped, but not even that always happens. I understand Heinlein always paid his own way. So far as I know, Ellison never actually demanded pay for a Con appearance, but I don't know.)

There was an essay where someone had referred to him  as a "gadfly"; ISTR that this was about the time I saw him referred to in a letter column in Analog magazine as "Harlan 'I Am All Mouth And Therefore I Scream' Ellison". Anyway, he refuted the "gadfly" claim, because gadflies are mere nuisances, not actually accomplishing anything.

There was a column in, ahem, a man's magazine IYKWIMAITYD in which he described his half-day of employment at Disney. Apparently, at lunch he was hanging with a bunch of other writers who had been brought in to "reimagine" Disney product, or something. He started in on "we should do Disney porn" and riffing on the roles of The Mouse, The Duck, The Big Stupid Dog, doing expert impressions of all their voices and really getting into it...

And Eisner was at the next table. So much for that job...

Ellison had beat out Larry Niven for a Hugo. later, Niven was sitting in the Author's Lounge, with some adult beverage in a brndy snifter, cooled with dry ice. So all the water is sublimating out in a cloud of steam. Ellison walks in, Niven holds the snifter out and says (slurs) "Harlan, ol' buddy, have a drink." Ellsion recoils and exclaims "Don't tell me this bastard doesn't hold a grudge!"

While I was attending the Defense Language Institute the first time, one of my classmates mentioned to me that "They've republished the collections of the TV criticism Harlan Ellison did for the LA Free Press." Yes, they had, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat. I picked them up, and the articles I most remember are the ones he did on the "Junior Miss" pageant -- "Can you say 'child pornography'?" -- and the one about the time he appeared on one of the early Dating Game shows.

He claimed Barris had the tape burned, after he (Ellison) told the woman that they would spend their dream date down at the city dump, shooting rats with chrome plated 1911s...

I told Bill Quick that story, and he said "Harley's a commie, you know."

I said "Duh."

And, really, just re-reading TGT and TOGT, I have to wonder what Ellison thought of the state of political discourse today. He not only predicted AntiFa, Black Blok, the Occupy Movement, BLM, Maxine Waters, Peter Fonda, Cathy Griffin, the whole vile lot... He was calling for it!

I suppose it is possible that Harlan repented of these opinions, or his extreme statements of them, as he aged; he might have seen what he and his ilk had wrought and realized that maybe this would not work out so well after all...

Still, I look at his politics, and wonder if growing up Jewish in small-town Ohio was really so traumatic that calling for violence was a rational outcome. I dunno, I didn't grow up Jewish in small town Ohio.

So I while will try to remember the talent that was responsible for some of the most imaginative speculative fiction ever -- "'Repent, Harlequin', said the Ticktockman", "A Boy And His Dog", "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream", not to mention the Star Trek episode "City On The Edge of Forever" and his contributions to Babylon 5, and I will continue to admire one who relentlessly refused to cave in to mainstream thought and convention just because it was convenient.

"Wrongthink SF Giveaway"

Appropriately for the 242^nd anniversary of the start of the American Revolution, the Wrongthink Sci-Fi Giveaway is giving away works of Science Fiction by authors who have been marginalize by the Social Justice Warriors who think fiction should be ideological agenda driven.

Enter at this URL: http://badnovelist.com/giveaways/wrongthink-sci-fi-giveaway/?lucky=9667

Happy Birthday...

...Schlock Mercenary.

Which, if you've never read it -- and why not? -- is a webcomic Comic Space Opera by Howard Tayler.

Which actually launched 16 hears ago yesterday.  As Howard says

Commentary: Today's strip is the 5,845th daily installment of Schlock Mercenary. The strip has been running for 835 weeks, Monday through Sunday, which means that today it has been online for sixteen years and one day.
When Schlock Mercenary first aired on June 12th of 2000 the #1 song on the Pop charts was Santana's "Maria, Maria" and the #10 song was Britney Spears' "Oops!.. I Did It Again." Tony Blair was the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Bill Clinton was the President of the United States, and Americans had yet to be introduced to the term "dimpled chad."
There was no Facebook, no Twitter, and LiveJournal was just 14 months old. MySpace hadn't been born yet, nor had two of the kids living at Chez Tayler with Sandra and Howard. Beginning with today's Schlock Mercenary strip, Americans born after Schlock Mercenary launched will start being able to drive...

 He left out "SFC D.W. Drang was still in Korea, waiting for his retirement leave to start", but one cannot expect artists to keep track of these things.

Maybe it's just me...

...but all these shows in which an alien race has arrived and has to a greater or lesser extent taken over, is now controlling everything...

..I cannot for the life of me conceive how in the hell anyone can write these stories and have collaborators with the alien overloads as protagonists.

So Bad It's... Bad

So, it seems that Amazon had a 4-DVD set of The Starlost.

For those of you who were fortunate enough to have missed this, it was the CBC's early 1970s attempt to blahblahblah Star Trek.

They somehow talked Harlan Ellison into being their creative consultant.

Well, OK, they offered him money, and he said something to the effect of "Hey, you're Canadian TV, you have a  limited budget, I have some ideas for how to do a quality SF show on video" which...

OK, if you didn't grow up within broadcast TV range of Canadian TV pre-cable/satellite TV, you may have developed some weird ideas about it, based on the fact that there are some pretty good shows coming out of the Great White North these days, not to mention a lot of US shows that are made up there, due to tax breaks and incentives and subsidies and the like.

Before the 1980s, Canadian TV was execrable. All the talent was fleeing to the US, where it could get rich. Canadian TV, OTOH, was a government thing, and lived down to the assumptions we make about government monopolies. (The BBC notwithstanding.)

So, anyway, Harlan had these Ideas, and they said "Great!", and proceeded to ignore just about everything he said, and make a series that was every bit as bad as everything else they were making back then.

It was so bad that after an episode or two Ellison bailed, while exercising the clause in his contract tat said they still had to give him credit, using the name he specified.

He specified "Cordwainer Bird."

When they tried to get Ben Bova to take over, he asked them why Ellison bailed, and they claimed they didn't know, so Bova asked "What name did he specify in the credits?" and they said "Cordwainer Bird" and he said "I'm out. That's Harlan giving you the finger!"

So it got worse.

Anyway. Series lasted all of 16 episodes. The story lines ran along the lines of the Original Star Trek episodes "Specter Of The Gun" and "Spock's Brain." The CBC wasted much of the budget building a "Bridge" set, even though there was no need for it; the show "bible" envisioned it as being revealed in the final episode, never written. It featured such Hard Science as references to "solar stars."

I remember in high school we were all excited that a new SF series was coming on. I think we managed an average of 3 episodes before giving up.

When Mrs. Drang was making a list of SF series she missed this one; I mentioned it and she said she hadn't seen it.  I congratulated her on her good fortune.

It was, as I said, "So bad it was... Bad."

So. You have been warned.

NOTE: The Ed Bryant novelization of Ellison's original screenplay, with commentary by Ellison, is available on Kindle: Phoenix Without Ashes: Harlan Ellison, Edward Bryant: Books, as is Ben Bova's spoof of the experience: The Starcrossed, Ben Bova.

Inboxing

Some things that have been gathering electronic dust in my inbox...

Source: Instapundit.
Story: Global eavesdroppers: In World War II, dozens of radio operators in Scituate dialed into enemy conversations worldwide - News - providencejournal.com - Providence, RI
In case you ever wondered how a US Army unit that never left the Continental United States could win a Presidential Unit Citation for the battle of the Atlantic, this related story gives a clue, although only part of one. (I thought I'd posted this one before, but I guess not...)

Source: Dunno.
Story: Why Science Fiction Pioneer Hugo Gernsback Matters 131 Years Later | Inverse
Could be more fact-heavy, and the author is pretty clearly in the CHORF camp of the Sad Puppies controversy (if you don't understand, congratulations!), but, while I'm not sure Hugo Gernsback invented Science Fiction As We Know It, he sure laid the groundwork.

Bit of a change-up in this article from The Atlantic: How JSOC Became a Manhunting Machine, From Panama to Iraq - The Atlantic

Speaking of which, Insty pulls a few related pieces fom the archives: Instapundit » Blog Archive » AS WE FIGHT THE WAR ON TERROR DOMESTICALLY AGAIN, A FEW RELEVANT PIECES FROM OVER A DECADE AGO…

Sometimes coming back is pretty much the point:  A ‘monumental’ rescue: Coast Guardsman swims a mile in choppy seas to save four fishermen, one at a time - The Washington Post

A further change of pace: How to reclaim your privacy in Windows 10, piece by piece | PCWorld (Beware auto-play!)

Finally!

Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen is finally available on Kindle!

John Carr is up to 6 or 7 sequels, by the way. More at Hostigos.com : The home of H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan saga

Question Of The Day?

Why aren't more works of Roger Zelazny available as ebooks?

Amazon's Roger Zelazny Author Page lists 124 titles*, of which a grand total of eight are available for Kindle.

Some of which, typically, are reviewed as "horrible OCR travesties." and one of which is the novelization of Damnation Alley, predating the cinematic travesty, but Zelazny said he preferred the short story.

And none of which are Amber novels, or Creatures of Light And Darkness,  or Lord of Light, or Shadowjack, or A Rose for Ecclesiastes, or...

Well, I guess we'd better get hitting the "I Want To Read This on Kindle!" button.





*Many redundant, as is common on these, with multiple editions of the same title being offered by some used book seller.

TV Show Review Commentary

Mrs. Drang has been watching this show Defiance on the SiFiFoFum Channel since it started.

I don't know why.

Exactly no one on the show is likeable.

One thing it's accomplished, is I am now of the opinon that, when aliens show up in orbit, we should blast them out of the sky immediately.

In fact, we shouldn't even wait for them to make orbit.

QOTD, 3/16/15

Seen on Michael Z. Williamson's Facebook page:

Time travel is a 4-Edged Sword
Bill Dunbar

RIP, Leonard Nimoy

Random thoughts

Remember: The guy who said "A more elegant weapon for a more civilized era" was impressed by Imperial Stormtrooper precision.
— Drang (@DWDrang) September 6, 2014

So there I was on Facebook...

...minding my own business (yeah, yeah, I know, no one on Facebook minds their own business, I mean, that's the whole point, but work with me here) and reading one of the posts by Michael Z "Mad Mike" Williamson demolishing the absurd claims that enabling women to defend themselves from violent assault somehow enables "rape culture" itself, (of late, he and Larry Correia have been tag teaming a whole passel of Social Justice Warriors, AKA SJWs, AKA gutless progressive crypto-commies) when someone opined that

I'd kinda like a picture of Charles Darwin saying "John Browning gave the female gender a way to teach the male gender not to rape via natural selection."

I live to serve*...

*Not really.  Get your own damn' sammich.

Lightning Fall

Bill Quick's novel Lightning Fall is out in Kindle format, on Amazon.  Buy it here: Lightning Fall: A Novel of Disaster. Bill says a dead tree edition will be available shortly.

The first half of my review is here: The Clue Meter: "Lightning Fall", A Review (Part I)
The second half, um, never got posted.

Insert embarrassed emoticon here.

So, the bit (in comments) where I said Lightning Fall isn't as "dark" as One Second After?  Yeah, after that it gets gritty and rather  dark.

A quick synopsis:

Lightning Fall tells the tale of the aftermath of an attack on the USA.  In the near-future, an enemy launches three nukes with the intention of having them detonate in orbit,creating a High-altitude Electro-Magnetic Pulse (HEMP) effect, which, as all connoisseurs of man-made disaster know, will have the effect of frying the Grid, and most of not all electronics.

The attack on the West Coast succeeds, and basically wipes out all services west of the Rockies. The attack on New Orleans fizzles (or does it?), and nukes the city.  "Oh, it fizzled, hooray!"  Well, no, because it closes the Mississippi. The attack on the East Coast is delayed just enough that the missile in intercepted.

Adventures ensue.The story follows characters in California, a news crew that is (at the point in the book I'm at) trying to get to California, Indiana, Louisiana, and Washington DC. 

So, the news crew makes it to San Fran, doesn't like what it sees, and finds some ham radio operator (whose name you'll recognize, see the Wiki article on Tuckerization) with a recording that kinda ruins things for the President, whom, by the way, you will ALL recognize despite names being changed to protect the innocent author from lawsuits.

I enjoyed it, a real "screen swiper", as it were -- do we need a new term for "page turner"?  I know enough about prepping and the science involved in this particular threat that it is all plausible, although, as I noted in my first review some may shriek "Deus Ex Machina" at things that seem implausible to them -- like a prepper in San Francisco. As I also noted in my first review, they can try and discuss Bill's lifestyle with him, although I suspect he will tell them to pound sand if they try.

Product Placement

Pretty sure it wasn't deliberate, actually, but, still...

As I posted to Facespace

So I'm sitting here watching Serenity on TV and they come to the part where they go to Miranda and see the recording about how The Pax (G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate) was effective on 99% of all people, but incidentally turned the other 1% into Reivers.

Right then they cut to commercial for some medication, and I half expected the obligatory "side effects" warning at the end to include "May lead to a loss of interest in any activity at all. In extremely rare cases may lead to aggressive behavior, possibly including unspeakable acts such as self-mutilation, cannibalism, and rape.  Seek Blue Hands Group help if you find yourself wearing your victims skins."

Well, whaddaya know?

A search on Amazon for "libertarian science fiction" returns some interesting results.  L. Neil Smith and J. Neal Schulman (what is it with Neil/Neals?)m of course, a refrigerator magnet of Heinlein in midshipman uniform, the complete F. Paul Wilson (again with the initial initials!) LaNague Federation stories (staring with "Lipidleggin'")...  C.M. Kornbluth and A.E. Van Vogt.  (Met Van Vogt, way back when I was a Neo in fandom.  At the time, the thought of a Canadian writing books based on the premise that THE RIGHT TO BUY WEAPONS IS THE RIGHT TO BE FREE was not particularly ironic...)
Vin Suprynowicz is there.
Lots of what seems to be self-published stuff, speaking of which, DO NOT buy Carl Bussjaeger's books from Amazon, they're pirated editions.
Anthony Pacheco is there.  So is a lot of NOT science fiction...
...A lot of which seems intended to bash libertarianism.
Or Ayn Rand, specifically.

Oddly enough, a "sponsoring link" showed up at the bottom of the page for one of Washington's Representatives, Cathy McMorris Rogers.  Less dodly, another one was for The Libertarian Futurist Society.

I want serial# "Oh, John Ringo, no!"

AR15 Stripped Lower Receiver
Apologies to anyone who doesn't get the layered inside jokes there.

They're also the ones making this one: AR15 Stripped Lower Receiver

EDITS:  Had to delete the photo, it was borkking the page and I couldn't figure out how to edit the code before my morning coffee.  Also added link to the "PEWPEWPEW" edition.