Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Category: Fiction

  • What Are We Reading – August 2018

    Riven

     

    mexican sharpshooter

    I decided to pick up a book from one of those “Intellectual Dark Web”…people.  Since pretty much everyone here is familiar with Jordan Peterson I picked something different.  Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker is what I picked, and ordered here.  I finished it while traveling home last weekend from Kansas City.  What interested me was his interview on Joe Rogan (leave me alone) where he came across as a soft-spoken, somewhat bumbling professor type which more or less is his persona.  The podcast left me thinking he was a left-wing professor that happens to stick his head out of his bubble every now and then and honestly reports what he sees.  He does have a lot of good musings over individual rights, free markets, and authoritarian governments.  His overall message is to look at the history, look at the data and be smart about how you form your opinions because where many fall short is their opinions are not backed up by objective fact.  Where he will probably fall short around here are his arguments against libertarianism, a good rundown of his arguments in his book are located at this link here.  One thing that I kept noticing is while he recognizes where the rights for the individual have led to positive impacts, he still advocates for actions on certain issues that some here will find antithetical to his message.

    Otherwise, his premises are explained clearly, cited thoroughly, and he shows them visually (there are 75 graphs and 40 pages of notes).  If there is any interest I can do a more thorough review.

    Brett L

    As part of our hate-reads, SF dared Jesse and I to read Happy Doomsday. This is the worst professionally written book I have ever read. Seriously. There is nothing good about it. Two too many of the characters survive the apocalypse. Do not read it. No, no. Don’t get curious about how bad it can be. DO NOT READ IT. SF did make it up to me by passing on to me Hardwired by Walter John Williams. This is 80s Mirrorshade Cyberpunk at its most fun. Aside from an irrational hatred of Texans common to many border-staters, it is great. Cyborgs jacked directly into hovercrafts, street samurai with cybernetic snakes implanted in their throats, a monomaniacal corporate titan who thinks he’s plugged into the heart of the silicon. I loved it. I also read Nathan Lowell’s latest two books in the Solar Clipper series. Suicide Run and Home Run. I really like the original story line. You just have to believe me when I say that he makes working the mess deck on merchant marine in space seem interesting. It gets more interesting from there, but somehow getting the coffee out on time seems like a worthy challenge.

    jesse.in.mb

    Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal. Not gonna lie, I was grabbed by the name and the first third of the story felt interminably slow. The main character was a wee bit too SJW and the person we assume is her antagonist a little too self-satisfied and traditional. There were erotic short stories embedded throughout, which I suppose I should’ve expected, but was a little scandalized by. Once the story starts rolling it’s engaging and endearing and you’re satisfied with the ending even if it’s a bit fairy-tale perfect.

    The World of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt. I had to keep reminding myself that this was classic sci-fi…and that the copy I purchased on Amazon still managed to be a shittily transcribed/scanned version. It was a jaunty read and the [scifi jargon] + [household item] formula was charming in an old-timey way.

    All New Square Foot Gardening (2nd Edition) by Mel Batholomew. One of these days I’ll get my ass in gear and at least grow tomatoes again. This book is pure garden-project pornography. One disappointment is that the book seems better suited for people who have a winter, and while they make occasional mention of plants that’ll grow in more temperate climates, instructions about harvesting after the first light frost but before the first hard frost are…unhelpful in climate zone 10b.

    Happy Doomsday: A Novel by David Sosnowski. Someone’s mother (not mine, obviously) always used to say “if you can’t say anything nice about a book, don’t say anything at all.” I did not prefer the characters in this book, which made it difficult to finish. I blame SugarFree’s enthusiasm for “this will be so bad it’s good” which he then abandoned in favor of “it’s so bad I refuse to continue” leaving Brett and me to struggle through. SP wisely chose a different Kindle First Reads book and mocked Brett and me for our “suicide pact.” I notice Brett has recommended that you not read it, but he’s just being a little theatrical, I’ll point out that it’ll continue being free to Prime members until the end of the month.

    While engaging in some Happy Doomsday avoidance I listened to the first (and second) novel in the Whiskey Business series, which SP is also listening to. It’s a fun light mystery with a built-in explainer for making and drinking whiskey. I also listened to Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection, which could’ve been written by one of you. I don’t know that it’d hit everyone’s funnybones the way it hit mine, but I would recommend it if you’re looking for a very light superhero caper in a world where superheroes are privatized and an uplifted lady-rhinoceros with an assault rifle discusses her masturbatory habits during a mandatory sexual harassment training.

    JW

    Chelsea Clinton – She Persisted

    SP

    I have nothing interesting to report as my reading time has been taken up by a pharmacology textbook. Not exactly a bedtime page-turner.

    Oh, I am also listening to this book’s Audible version this week while working out, cleaning, and folding laundry. (It’s a full life.) The story itself is OK, but the female narrator sometimes loses me between the heavily-Scots-and-English-accented male characters, making me have to hit the 10-second rewind button, which annoys me when I am wearing nitrile gloves.

    SugarFree

    Great Googly-Moogly, Happy Apocalypse was terrible. I made it 15% in and had to stop. Just bad. Bad, bad, bad. I could only read about 500 words at a time before I had to put it down. In-between the pain, I read James Tiptree Jr.‘s Her Smoke Rose Up Forever story collection. Tiptree is the most celebrated act of literary transvestitism in science fiction, being the nom de plume for Alice Sheldon. It was a fairly open secret that Tiptree was a woman, and I have a hard time believing that anyone of any sophistication who read more than a couple of stories by her couldn’t have figured it out.

    Still not able to shake trying to read Crappy Apocalypse, I turned to intellectual comfort food and re-read the first Uplift Trilogy, by David Brin. Despite Brin’s turn to loathsome politics,* my dozenth pass through his universe of plucky humans, adorable neo-Dolphins, and courageous artificially-evolved Chimpanzees is like a meaty, starchy, filling plate of Thanksgiving food. (The 2nd Trilogy sort of disappears up its own ass in striving for cosmic apotheosis, and I can’t recommend it.)

    *Brin has deleted his call for “climate justice” tribunals, so I’ve linked to an H&R thread where I posted some of his deranged screed. Brin used to write for Reason, by the way, before the madness settled in.

    Old Man With Candy

    There were two authors from my childhood who set me on my life-path to become a scientist. One was Roy Chapman Andrews (truly one of the most interesting humans to ever walk the Earth). The other was Arthur C. Clarke. When I was about 8 years old, my father handed me a copy of Profiles of the Future, which totally captivated me. It was an overview of common futuristic tropes of the sort that would fascinate an 8 year old science geek (invisibility, giants and Lilliputians, alien intelligence, matter replication, interstellar exploration) with some technical analysis of what was possible and what was sheer fantasy, and why. I read and re-read it so many times that it eventually fell apart. So I was determined to give this to my son as well, and found out that there was an updated edition from about 2000. I bought it for him and… well… let’s just say he’s more of a YouTube guy than a reader. It languished on our bookshelves for some years until I picked it up and dusted it off last week, then put it in the Room of Honor. Re-reading it, I can see why it grabbed my attention. Much of it hasn’t aged well, but much of it is frighteningly prescient. And of course, it’s Clarke, which means superbly clear and absorbing writing. I had the chance to meet Clarke once (as a college student) and was not disappointed, other than him avoiding the question about what the Ramans looked like. I cannot be the only one who has told him that he was the one who made them choose a career in science, but he acted as if I had said something special. What a great person.

  • I Fucking Love Astrology: The Horoscope for the Week of August 12

    This week, we explore new frontiers in how-late-can-I-submit-something-and-still-make-its-slot?

    If I told you exactly how busy I’ve been, I wouldn’t have time to tell you anything else.   Suffice it to say:  Germans.

     

    Fortunately, this week the skies are pretty straightforward, if not particularly happy.  The big indicator is a FIVE (5!) planet alignment of Sol-MERCURY RETROGRADE-Terra-Luna-Mars(retrograde). None of these are good signs in and of themselves, and when you line them all up together you get bad shit happenin’ yo.  Everything is representing bad change, loss, destruction etc.  There is an interlocked alignment of Sol-Venus-Saturn(retrograde) indicating that part of this general shittiness will be the end of a loving relationship, or (possibly) a bit of pleasant novelty in the rump-pumpy aspect of life.

    Sorry.

    There is one bit of good news; Venus is in Libra.  This means that the second interpretation of the the second alignment is more likely.  Thank Bob for small favors.

    Leo, which had been enjoying niftiness is going to have a week of chaos and general shitstorms, what with MERCURY RETROGRADE and the moon causing havoc.  Huh.  Maybe I’m a week behind in my charts, because if next week is more hectic than this one…  well, it was nice knowing you all.  For the rest of you, DO NOT get a haircut this week.

    Rufus’ life remains stable.

    Jupiter really should be doing something about the general state of the skies, but instead is just vaguely helping out chemo patients in Scorpio.  I guess I can’t really bag on him too much for that.

    TW:  Hipster Porkpie, Trilby Neckbeard, 70’s Drummer, Blonde Asian, (((Redhead))), and Brunette Bassist Babe.  God Bless America.

     

  • What Are We Reading – July 2018

    jesse.in.mb

    Do not let my colleagues fool you with their nay-saying about James Swain’s The King Tides (Lancaster & Daniels Book 1). It is an entirely adequate beach read with a chipper pacing and zombie-like kiddie predators. To my mind, the main drawback to this book is the sponsored content, or the weird brand name dropping plus generic non-affiliated copy material–depending on if the author was paid for this or just lazy and trying to meet a word-count. It was jarring to be reading about the author’s disappointment that a kiddie diddler had smashed his phone only to be rescued by Verizon!

    “His phone was new, courtesy of his ex-girlfriend tossing the old one out of a moving car. Replacing it had been a snap. A quick trip to the Verizon store and forty-five minutes later he’d walked out with a new Droid, his contacts and apps restored. Kenny’s phone was also a Droid, and he wondered if Kenny had bought it from Verizon, which had more locations than a hamburger chain. If he had, then all his data was stored in the cloud and could be easily restored.”

    Spoilers: he also upgrades his phone from a Droid to a Moto Z2 Force during this exchange for only $40! I’m not sure that I’d recommend this book on its merits, but there are now enough people who have frog-marched themselves through it that it’s part of the current Glibertarian cultural canon. Don’t be left out!

    JW

    Have you ever read all the information that comes with penicillin prescriptions when the pharmacist fills them? Vomiting. Check! Mild skin rash. I wonder what “mild” means? Upset stomach. Check! Diarrhea. Uh-oh! I’ll be right ba….

    Brett L

    As part of an experiment in group self-abuse, I read James Swain’s The King Tides (Lancaster & Daniels Book 1). This book is terrible. Random shit not at all relevant to the plot, rogue FBI agents distributing kiddie porn (actually the most realistic part of the story), super-fit former Navy SEALs with beer guts congenital conditions that somehow didn’t disqualify them from that competitive system, kidnapping attempts of hot teen-aged white girls that the police don’t care about. I regretted reading this, even though it was free. Don’t buy it. Please do not encourage Mr. Swain to write any more books.

    In my literature entry for the month, I read Without a Country, a Turkish work translated into English. It’s an interesting family history starting with German Jews fleeing Hitler to populate Ataturk’s new university system, where hope and religious tolerance flourish, and tracks the changes in Turkish culture from the Muslim secular hope of Ataturk to the more fundamental Muslim sympathies. It was a good book. I enjoyed the writing.

    I also read Curious Tales from Chemistry: The Last Alchemist in Paris and Other Episodes by Lars Öhrström. As a chemistry geek, these are fun little tales about substances, some basic chemistry like orbitals, and history. Places, people, and things interesting to their history (like the guy tasked to steal British steel-making secrets for the Swedes). 

    Old Man With Candy

    In Jewish tradition, the Torah is divided up into sedras, roughly analogous to chapters. Each Sabbath, a sedra is read, sequentially, until at the end of a year cycle, the last sedra is finished. We have a nice holiday to celebrate it, Simchas Torah, then the process is begun again. For years, I had a similar ritual, reading a chapter at a time out of The Feynman Lectures on Physics each week until I was done the three volume set, then I’d begin again. This kept my basic physics sharp and it was, for a geek, remarkably enjoyable. The Lectures were a series of notes from a one year freshman physics sequence taught by Richard Feynman (arguably the greatest physicist of the 20th century), and transcribed and edited by two other physicists, Robert Leighton and Matthew Sands. The collaborators did a wonderful job capturing Feynman’s voice and unique style, and this set of books might be among the greatest works in the English language. Anyway, for reasons of life, I stopped doing my ritual some years back, and recently, it occurred to me that my brain suffered from the absence of Feynman’s ghost. So I started again. And it’s every bit as delightful and wonderful as I imagined, the exact opposite of dry technical books. Even if you’re not mathematically inclined, there’s so much clear and common-sense explication of how the universe works that you’ll come out of the experience much smarter than when you went in.

    I linked Volume 1 of the set because that’s the one that is likely to have the most appeal to non-physicists. It covers a sweeping range of topics; though focused on classical mechanics, Feynman talks about probability, thermodynamics, cosmology, biology, psychology, wine, and as a bonus, he offers his rather tart observations about philosophy. More so than anyone else writing about science, he is rigidly clear about what things are “this is the way it is, we can describe it, but we can’t say why it is this way” and what things are “here’s something about which we know why.”

    Strange as it may seem, we understand the distribution of matter in the interior of the sun far better than we understand the interior of the earth. What goes on inside a star is better understood than one might guess from the difficulty of having to look at a little dot of light through a telescope, because we can calculate what the atoms in the stars should do in most circumstances.

    One of the most impressive discoveries was the origin of the energy of the stars, that makes them continue to burn. One of the men who discovered this was out with his girlfriend the night after he realized that nuclear reactions must be going on in the stars in order to make them shine. She said “Look at how pretty the stars shine!” He said “Yes, and right now I am the only man in the world who knows why they shine.” She merely laughed at him. She was not impressed with being out with the only man who, at that moment, knew why stars shine. Well, it is sad to be alone, but that is the way it is in this world.

    Here’s an example of Feynman’s presentation methods, talking about the incredibly important and almost universally misunderstood topic of entropy. If you like this and the lightbulb goes on, pick up Volume 1 of the Lectures and prepare for a wild and crazy ride through the way the universe works.

    SP

    I also selected The King Tides (Lancaster & Daniels Book 1) for my free Kindle book this month since there was nothing else even remotely interesting. (How much do the authors pony up for this? I can think of no other reason for the choices.) However, being smarter than my dear Glib friends, I waited until they had all reported in, then quietly deleted it from my Kindle unopened.

    In enjoyable reading, I am swiping through How to Speak Midwestern by Edward McClelland. Things I’ve learned so far include: where Little Egypt is; what a frunchroom might be; where a gangway is located and for what it might be used; who Trixie is and what she’s up to with Chad.

    SugarFree

    I read the Joe Pitt series by Charlie Huston. Hard-boiled vampire private detective in a Manhatten ruled by vampire clans as bitchy and mean and petty as any 8th-grade clique of half-pretty girls. They are competently written. but mostly crib from various other, better detective novels for plot: the spoiled heiress with the monstrous father from The Big Sleep, the cynical operator playing all sides against each other of Red Harvest, Mike Hammer’s blase cruelty of those he has decided are guilty. The best book is the third, Half the Blood in Brooklyn, with Joe fighting off a thoroughly crazed sect of Hassidic vampires and their odd workaround for obtaining “kosher” blood. Overall, the series isn’t bad, it just also isn’t very good.

    I read/watched Ira Levin’s The Boys From Brazil. Gregory Peck as Dr. Mengele is one of the more inspired casting decisions in movie history, constantly walking the line between terrifying and absurd. The biggest knock on the movie from a production standpoint is the blue contact lens they had to put on young Adolf–they are distracting in our 1080p world.

    I also read/watched that old stand-by, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. Chock full of juicy Catholic guilt and atheist hate, the movie satisfies like no other. The Zodiac Killer said of the film “I saw and think ‘The Exorcist’ was the best saterical [sic] comidy [sic] that I have ever seen.”

    I made it through two chapters of The King Tides. It was terrible.

    Web Dominatrix

    I picked up a couple books this past week.

    Originals by Adam Grant and Talk like TED by Carmine Gallo. Originals is about how non-conformists influence and change the world, while Talk Like TED is about public speaking a la TED Talks.

    I have no interest in public speaking (or really doing anything that requires me showing up somewhere on someone else’s schedule), but I am into livestreaming and video marketing.

    So far Originals is really interesting. Adam Grant is a great writer and he pulls in some compelling studies and references. I haven’t cracked open Talk Like TED yet.

     

    ZARDOZ

    ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN READING ONES. BOOKS CAUSE NOTHING BUT TROUBLE! OH AND IXNAY ONYAY ETHAY IZARDWAY OFYAY OZYAY!

    ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.

     

     

     

     

    Swiss Servator

    Upon recommendation (and loan) of a regular at my local, I read “The Last Days of Night” Edison vs Westinghouse (as in Thomas Alva vs George) and Nikola Tesla wanders into the picture. The story is from the point of view of Westinghouse’s young lawyer in the fight against Edison over the patent of the light bulb. Mostly based on actual events, it is a fairly interesting look into inventing, what drives/drove the inventor/inventors of the time. A little electricity learnin’ and some fancy laweryin’ too. Reads quickly, and has some very, very short little chapters…almost like the author was not sure where he was going at first.  Probably would make a decent movie if cast right. Give it whirl if you have some time.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    STEVE SMITH

    STEVE SMITH BUSY WITH CASCADIA INDEPENDENCE. HIM NOT HAVE MUCH TIME READ. JUST TREATIES AND FOREST LAW (HIM PROMINENT FOREST LAWYER!). READ MONTHLY QA REPORTS ON HIKER ENCOUNTERS TOO. BY ENCOUNTERS, MEAN RAPE.

  • delta Vee

    I was trying to sleep off my hangover when the long-range radar annunciator went off. I had been dreaming of Crystal and was trying to hold onto the wisps of the dream as I groped for the tether. It wasn’t clipped to my belt. Then I saw it, floating gently, just out of reach a half a meter to my left in the weightlessness of the cabin.

    This was frustrating. I have been a spacer for almost ten years now and had fallen for the most basic groundhog mistake. I hadn’t checked my tether before falling asleep. Now I was at the mercy of those pesky three laws from Newton.

    On my second lift from Phobos we had a new recruit who had made the same mistake. He had flailed the air in a panic, slowing rotating while the rest of the off-duty crew laughed at his antics. Eventually someone took pity and snagged him. Now I knew how that recruit felt. Thinking of him I managed to quell my own panic.

    Except that I was painfully alone since Crystal stormed out at our last stop three days ago. I was going to have to get out of this by myself. The air circulation system would eventually give me some delta Vee toward the bulkhead; it was designed to do so. But I didn’t want to wait for it. And the beeper from the radar was starting to get really annoying.

    I tried to grab the tether, even though I knew it was out of reach. My legs reflexively kicked but there was nothing there to kick against and I again felt the rush of panic. “This is stupid,” I said aloud.

    To settle myself, I took a look around to assess the situation.

    Somewhere along the line I had picked up a little roll roughly along the line from head to toe and I could see the entire interior of my ship every couple of minutes.

    I was in the sleeping area at the rear of the habitat and could see the control room at the front down the length of the ship. The light was flashing on the radar controller in tune with the beeper. I could be heading toward a collision. I had to get out of this and see what was going on.

    The bulkhead opposite the tether was close but still just out of arms reach. If I could get turned around then I might be able to get close enough to get a little push with my feet.

    It wasn’t any good. I could twist around and create rotation but I couldn’t move myself to a position where I could touch the inside of the ship. All of the twisting had me huffing and puffing and the pounding in my head was so loud that I had to stop for a few minutes to get my pulse rate down. Breathe in, breathe out. I closed my eyes to try to relax.

    Wrong idea.

    Closing my eyes increased the swirling in my head and my nausea instantly took over. I quickly opened my eyes and began swallowing saliva to quell the rising gorge. I’ve seen space sickness and its disgusting results and I knew that I did not want to spend the next several hours chasing down little balls of vomit. That sick little part of my brain, however, pointed out that the delta Vee of the outgoing projectile puke might be enough to enable me to reach the wall. It was not a convincing argument.

    I had no choice but to wait for the air currents to push me to a place where I could get a handhold, a toehold, an anythinghold. Once I could get something to push against I could generate some delta Vee and get going the direction I needed to.

    In the meantime that damn buzzer was just about to blow the top of my head off.

    It seemed to take forever but eventually the nearer bulkhead rotated into the correct location. I pushed downward and felt a comforting resistance at the end with my toes. I slowly floated over to the other side of the bulkhead. Finally! I grabbed a handhold and launched myself forward toward the control room.

    Living on a spaceship is a little bit like living underwater because you’re always giving yourself a little push and floating toward your destination. Spacers can make it the length of the ship with a single pull. The groundhogs use the handholds and crawl from section to section, their legs flopping uselessly behind them.

    I killed the beeper and checked the screen as I grabbed the handrail around the control room to check my momentum. Proximity alarm. I had set the deep space radar at maximum when I had cleared the traffic around Ceres Base days ago and had promptly forgotten it after my row with Crystal. I pulled myself down into the seat, tightening the straps so that I wouldn’t drift away from the controls.

    Something was in my neighborhood and I adjusted the radar screen to see what it was. The object was definitely metallic; its radar signature glowed brightly on the screen. I did a scan of the common frequencies. If it was another scout ship or some other traveler through the belt then it would show up on the EM bands. Nothing and, significantly, no markers. This rock was totally quiet across the spectrum. I started to get excited. If it was an undiscovered metallic asteroid then I could be rich.

    I fired up the Doppler radar to get a fix on the object. After a few moments its bearing and location came in and I transferred the information to the astrogation computer then ran the location through to database. I was in luck; nothing matched my new neighbor’s location. I had to get closer. In order to file a claim with Ceres I would have to affix a marker beacon and provide accurate location data. I was grinning and my headache was forgotten as I updated my heading.

    Nothing happens very fast in space. After I punched the course correction into the computer there was not much more I could do. It would be almost seven hours before interception. I pushed the console away and stretched. Fingertip to fingertip, I could almost reach the switches on opposite sides of the control room.

    It’s not much of a control room. When I was an apprentice I got a chance to see the control room of one of the big space liners that ferry rich fat cats around the Colonies. It was larger by far than my whole ship, now. The whole habitable space of my ship is only about ten meters long by four meters in diameter and the inhabitants have to stash everything needed to live on in this volume. The control room on the liner had consoles for more than 25 people, ringed around a huge holoscreen in the middle. My ship was designed for two people, provided those two people didn’t mind being a little cramped. Still, it was a marvel of design with everything needed to be self-sufficient. And it had an amenity missing from the control room on the space liner; I had four portholes. It was a minor victory, however. There was nothing to look at except billions of stars.

    I felt the gentle bump of the thrusters as the new course came into effect. The delta Vee always seemed out of place after long periods of weightlessness. I waited until the seat cushions stopped pushing back, and then unbuckled my straps. Grabbing the handrail, I pulled myself out of the seat and went back to the galley to fix some coffee and breakfast.

    A few hours later I strapped back into the control seat and took another look at my target. I frowned as I sipped some coffee out of the bulb. It was small. So much for my dreams of fortune. As an independent contractor my share would be limited. It would take a big chunk of rock to pay off my ship and have enough left over to live on for a while and this couldn’t have been more than a few tens of meters in diameter.

    Most people think that there are chunks of rock everywhere in the asteroid belt. I guess that’s true in a way, but space is vast and everything is relative.

    All of the big objects are well known and active mining is taking place on many of them. You can sign up for a five-year contract with one of the companies to dig rock and return to Terra at the end with a fair chunk of money in your pocket if you can avoid the temptations of Nuevo Las Vegas during the layover at Mars.

    Or you can complete that Degree in Mining so that you can sign a lifetime contract. Lifers have it pretty good and there are always a few of them on one of the space liners, ordering the staff around like they were back at the mines. At least that’s where I met them. They were the closest thing to aristocracy in the relative lawlessness of the belt.

    Then there are the folks like Crystal and me, prospectors drifting through the belt looking for ore-rich rocks that are normally too small to be detected. Once located, we survey and analyze the find, set a beacon and send a claim back to Ceres Base for recording. Then we head off in another direction, hoping to bump into another rock.

    If one of the companies buys our claim then we get to buy some more consumables and travel a bit longer. It’s boring, lonely work, which is why most prospectors are two-person teams. Crystal and I had put up everything that we had for this prospector ship and supplies.

    We met on one of the satellite runs when I was apprenticed to the control room. Looking to stretch my legs, I wandered the various compartments of the ship ending up in one of the gardens. Crystal was there working on the watering systems and she caught my eye. Tall and slender, she had her dark hair cut into a bob to make it manageable in weightlessness. She was kind of tech smart and I was kind of geek smart and in a few days we were lovers. We had a good time and parted when we arrived at Ganymede. She was scheduled for the next leg of the journey and my contract had run out.

    When she found me on Mars I needed help and she was looking for a change. We’d talked before of what we could do and it turned out that we had both thought about scouting the belt. With her savings and chits and cashing in her leave we had enough to live on while we searched for a decent scout ship. All of that hard work and I had blown it in my fight with her.

    * * *

    A few hours later I was back in the control seat trying to figure out my new neighbor. The radar still showed a bright spot and I used the coordinates to line up the optical telescope. I was close enough, now, to make out the shape of a ship, probably an ore freighter. Normally, though, there would be running lights and a purple glow aft from the ion pulse engines. This object produced no light.

    Curiously, too, there was no radar signal from them. I was hitting them with both the distancing and the Doppler radar and I would have expected the same from them, at least to warn against collisions.

    I sent a couple of hailing transmissions that went unanswered. I frowned and drummed my fingers on the console as I tried to think of what to do.

    There were several reasons why a ship would show no lights and answer no hail and most of those were bad. Worst was a radiation leak from the ion propulsion units. Usually, though, those have a way of curing themselves by turning the engines (and all matter within a kilometer or so) into a brief flash of nuclear energy. Even at this range I would be too close for comfort. Fortunately, at least for now, the radiation sensors showed only the usual background counts. I reminded myself to keep an eye on them as I got closer.

    It was also completely possible that this ship could have been attacked by an unlicensed ship. These modern-day pirates with well-armed crews have been known to hijack ore freighters and steal the cargo. The attackers usually leave the crew unharmed as long as they don’t put up a fight, disabling the radio so that no call for help can be sent. Even if an SOS could be transmitted, no help could be dispatched before the raiders slipped away to hide in the belt.

    As I approached the ship it showed no sign of life. This didn’t look like pirates. The ship appeared to be intact with the exception of the forward empennage which appeared to have had some considerable damage. I was close enough now to see more details and I was getting more questions than answers.

    Often objects under thrust use a roll along the longitudinal axis to maintain stability. But in addition to a light roll this object had a very slow rotation around its lateral axis. It was going to be tricky to come along side. I would have to pull up parallel to the other craft, and then try to match its tumble. When I would get all of that down I would then have to match its roll by establishing a lateral orbit. I ran the figures thru the flight computer and frowned at the answer. This was going to cost me a lot of fuel, seven or eight months worth. This derelict was becoming more and more costly to me and it had better pay off.

    Anxious as I was for answers, I had to direct my attention to the approach maneuver. Because of the extra speed I had added I would have used too much fuel in my forward thrusters to slow my approach. So, I had to rotate my ship around and use a long burn on the ion thrusters to match speed with the other ship. It really didn’t matter what my orientation was when I arrived as I was going to have to make several maneuvers anyway. What was frustrating was that during that time my telescope would be annoying pointed in the wrong direction.

    Soon I felt the push of the thruster against my back as the ion engines flared to maximum. It wouldn’t be long now.

    I had dozed off during the deceleration and woke up with a start when the matching radar alarm went off.

    * * *

    After the braking maneuver was competed I rotated my ship so that I could see the derelict from the forward instruments. By this time I was close enough that I could make out considerable detail with just my field glasses. My hangover was a distant memory thanks to the nap and, now, the excitement of this find.

    The rotation was slow enough that I could make out the extensive damage to the flight deck. They must have hit something full-on. Even if it only destroyed the control room the rest of the crew would have been doomed by the sudden absence of air and would have succumbed very quickly. Why hadn’t their radar picked it up? A ship of that size would have had a dedicated radar crew but, rare as they are, collisions do happen.

    The cargo bay looked intact, however, and that is where my interest lay. Spacers seldom have time to worry about other spacers. We know the deal when we sign the papers, the weak and unlucky don’t make it and the rest have the chance of a lifetime. Even this chance is solidly against the average Joe. For every 1,000 spacers seeking pay rock only one will find it, on average. Some of them lose themselves in the vastness of the Asteroid Belt and get swallowed up by infinity, never to return. Most of them will spend every credit that they can lay their hands on for fuel, air, water and grub and spend a few fruitless years chasing ghosts until they limp back to Ceres to try to sell their ship for a ticket back to Terra. And some of these two-man crews go insane and many a salvage collector has recovered a scout craft with two corpses inside locked in a mutual death grip.

    But still they come; the latest version of the pioneers who had worked their way west seeking a new life in the Americas so many years ago. Crystal and I had been caught up in that dream.

    The blowup should never have happened.

    While at Ceres Base we made a stop at the trading dome of Mr. Gower. He had built some converters that were connected to the solar wind accumulators and used this to supply fuel to the traders. He didn’t have enough capacity to open a full-scale recharge outfit but was content to offer departing scout ships a few Megajoules in exchange for buying his wares, and was known to buy certain gadgets that might pass through. It was a well-trusted relationship around the belt and we needed more outfits like his if we wanted a chance for a permanent colony. Right now we had Ceres Base pretty much running the spacing and mining operations, and primary supplier of equipment and supplies. But no matter how well The Organization tried, there were always things missing. Folks like Mr. Gower and his mercantile provided those missing things. Most were legal, some not quite as such.

    Crystal had begged off, wishing to pick up some last-minute items. My afternoon with Mr. Gower had started off innocently enough. He and I caught up on old times while we sampled his various potents and smokems. Then he broke out the whiskey.

    He then told me of one of his latest projects, a distillery. Spacers are nothing if not drunkards, (as my own history had shown,) and he could count on a substantial addition to his income by offering it to the crews passing through.

    This was tempting. I had not tasted whiskey for two years and was sure that I could have a sample with no trouble. I had kicked the habit once; no problem if I had to do it again. I was strong enough to control myself. Except that I wasn’t.

    I had a shot. And then I had another. After that I lost track as we continued to toast each other’s health. Before I left I bought two bottles.
    I was quite pleasantly buzzed returning to the ship with my booty under arm. Crystal was waiting, angry and anxious at the same time.

    “Where were you?” When I told her, she growled, “Are you drinking again?”

    It went downhill from there.

    My drinking had gotten me kicked off of the liners and I had run into Crystal again when I was trashed on Mars. When I bottomed out at Marsport she took pity on me and sobered me up. I stayed at her place and washed dishes by night while working on the scout ship that we had rescued from Salvage in the off time. We had been working hard for two years and it finally paid off with our launch outward to the belt and Ceres Base. I had stayed sober mostly because I couldn’t afford the cost of booze at Marsport but also because I was growing true feelings for this girl who saw more in me than I saw myself. The time was good for me and I felt better than I had for a long time.

    When she saw that I intended to bring the liquor on board, she shook her head. “I thought that you had cleaned up your act,” she said. “First chance you get and you’re back to your old ways. Am I supposed to spend the next year locked up with a drunkard?”

    Drunk and stupid, I stood my ground. We were going to be gone for a long time, I said, and who knows what adversity we might find.

    “When I found you at Marsport I wanted to help you because I thought that you were worth helping,” she said. “It seems to me, now, that you have no regrets for your past. Until you face that and say that you are sorry to those whom you have hurt, you are going to repeat it.”

    She touched me on the cheek with her hand. “Besides, my oh-so-serious bunkmate, you are worth saving even though you don’t have a clue as to why.”

    She said she’d be staying with a friend and I stayed on board. Several hours later the ship lifted with a drunken me at the controls. I roamed a bit, and then began punching random course settings to the up-beat of ribald songs of my own making. It would have been a horrible thing to watch. I kept it up for a couple of days and had a great old time until the booze ran out. Then I passed out without connecting my sleeping tether.

    * * *

    The matching maneuver was going to be about the toughest that I had ever come up with. I had to match the tumble of the derelict about the longitudinal axis and also had to match the slow roll of the ship in order to pass a lanyard. It was this last procedure that had me stumped. I would have to circle that ship at a Vee that would not allow a stable orbit; our masses were too small. Every approach that I programmed became unstable after a few tries. This was frustrating! A potential fortune was a stone’s-throw away and I couldn’t mate up with it!

    If I pulled in close then my angular velocity would throw me out. If I stayed at the limit of my tether then I would have to apply thrusters frequently to keep me aligned.

    In the end I chose a compromise between the two options, far enough out that I could hold an orbit with minimal fuel expenditure yet close enough to allow the tether to give or take slack as needed. It meant the two ships would be chasing around each other side by side like a couple of movie theatre hot dogs in a warming shelf, only taking the same shelf and rolling it down a set of stairs long ways. After a couple of hours of sweat I finally was within reach of my destination. I was going to burn a lot of fuel per hour but I figured that I was going to spend minimal time around this ship, hopefully about half an hour or so.

    I had to go through the EVA procedures carefully as I was alone. While very routine for two-man crews, I had to be extra cautious without someone to back me up. I had brought my craft to within ten or so meters of the derelict but it was still going to be a tricky transfer. In my mind, though, was only the thought of the contents aboard the spacecraft just outside my window. My headache and hangover were becoming a distant memory in my excitement.

    I ran through the checklist as I donned my suit, acutely aware that I didn’t have a backup person as procedures required. I took longer than normal, double-checking the seals to make sure of my suit integrity but my heart was still pounding as I cycled the airlock. The magnetic boots were clumsy after months of free-fall and my legs struggled to make each step.

    When the door opened I could see the derelict so close it seemed that I could touch it. When the tether was ready I aimed at the ship and fired. The cable shot across the separation until it contacted the other ship. The magnetic latch connected and the retraction wheel took up the slack as I attached it to my ship. Time to check out my find.

    I connected the carabiner to the cable and prepared to launch myself across the void. “Piece o’ cake,” I told myself. I grabbed the cable and timed a pull to my jump to clear the reluctance of my magnetic boots.

    As I watched the cable stream through the carabiner I though of how much depended upon those two pieces of metal, each less than a centimeter in diameter. I should have added a second carabiner for safety since I wasn’t using a thruster pack and didn’t have a backup watching me. Scout ships like mine (ours!) only have limited room for storage and thrusters were notorious fuel hogs which meant even more space for fuel. We carried the required emergency packs with a single fuel load each but we never thought about using them. Our task was to mark likely rocks with beacons from the cozy safety of the control room. EVAs were always risky and I was pushing my luck with this one.

    In less than a minute my magnetic boots clumped to the surface of the derelict ship.

    It took me a moment to find my balance. I had landed on my feet forward of amidships, with the control room forward to my left and the cold engines a hundred meters aft to my right. That was when it really sunk in how big this ship was. Even if the holds were empty I could sell the hulk for enough to keep me going in the dives of Marsport and Venusburg for a very long time. Depending upon how damaged this ship was, we could sell our scout ship to pay for the repairs and run our own freighter to the inner system. Why, hell, with no payment we’d be clearing maximum haul each direction. In no time at all we could have our own fleet traveling the Great Circle to the planets and satellites and Crystal and I could. . .

    Oh, right. Crystal. . .

    I unclipped the carabiner and turned left to clomp my way to the control room.

    * * *

    Before I could stick my salvage marker on the ship I had to ensure that there was no one left alive on board. Because of the rotation I had fastened my tether as close as I could to the center of mass and I was going to have to work my way forward to inspect the control room. It was bad enough that I was having to re-learn walking in the mag-boots and as I made my way I could feel the forces pushing on me. The increasing angular velocity was causing a spin on my inner ear that was only making my hangover rear its ugly head again. I had to force myself to not think about it; space sickness in a space suit is something to be avoided at all costs.

    In addition I was increasingly feeling the centripetal forces making me feel more and more like I was going to fall forward onto my knees. I had to be careful of this as my only tie to the ship was the magnets in my boots. Once again I keenly felt the lack of a booster pack and a safety observer. There were no handholds at this part of the ship and I finally reached the point where I had to turn and back my way to the front of the ship. I stopped every few meters to note my progress and as I proceeded I began to see the damage that had disabled it.

    When I felt I could go no further I got into a comfortable position and took a good look. These poor bastards had taken a boulder to the main control deck and had quickly lost their atmosphere. The same chunk of rock had caused the rotation that was making it difficult to hold my place. Why didn’t they see it coming? By a blind stroke of bad luck it must have come from an angle that is in one of the radar blind spots. I wanted to take a look at the forward radar but I didn’t feel that I could move another millimeter more forward. I had seen enough and it was time to scramble my way back aft.

    The damage that I had seen was enough to convince me that there was no one left alive. The ship was mine! This in itself meant a small fortune. I wanted to look inside the hold to see if my small fortune was a large one, instead.

    Walking was easier as I moved towards amidships and I soon arrived back at the tether. There was still a little bit of play in the take-up reel so I figured my course-correction software was working okay. A glance at my watch showed that I was doing well on time; my trip forward had taken less than ten minutes. I untied the marker beacon from my belt, twisted it to activate it and placed it on the hull of the derelict. Then I stood up and hooted and hollered and punched the space around me in joyous glee. I was rich! I had hit the triple sevens, the number on the wheel, the prize behind Door Number Three. All trace of the hangover had disappeared. This was shaping up to be a great day after all.

    The outside controls for the hold access were around the waist of the ship where I stood next to the tether. I was going to have to walk about 20 meters or so up-spin which meant that Coriolis was going to pull me to the left and I was going to have to lean right to compensate. I concentrated on where I thought the control panel was and, when the panel rolled into sight I looked toward it. I had to concentrate on the fixed spot on the surface; if I tried to watch the stars I would soon be on my hands and knees suffering from extreme vertigo. It had to get the trajectory straight in my head (a tumbling rifled bullet) and match it to my own (start rollin’? or tumblin’?). I’m pretty sure that I saw Jupiter rise about three times from three different horizons.

    Finally I came to the external control panel for the forward hold. This is what I needed. Freighters generally loaded their aft holds first for stability against the thrust and for protection from the radiation of the engines. If the forward hold was full then I needed to look no further; the ship was full. If the forward hold was empty it offered an interior way for me to check the aft hold. I was still uneasy with the mag-boots and was uncomfortably aware of how easily I could come off of the surface.

    The controls were straight-forward and I quickly punched in the responses to the safeties and twisted the lever.

    There was a shudder as dozens of dogs were forcibly removed from their latches and levers strained to release. Suddenly the last catch gave way and as the door jumped open several meters I saw ice crystals quickly form from the air suddenly released. The ship gave a sudden lurch forward and I reflexively fell on my knees to keep balance. The hold had air pressure! The interlocks on the controls normally would have kept me from being able to perform the sudden decompression but the emergency bypass had allowed me to do it.

    The force of the out-gassing air was going to alter the delta Vee of the ship and my preset program was not going to be able to keep up. As soon as I realized this I stood up and began clomping back toward the tether point as fast as I could.

    I could tell I wasn’t going to make it. I had twenty meters to close while wearing these dammed magnetic boots. Already I could see the tether stiffen with the new stresses. Only a few more meters to go, a couple of more seconds. I could see the tether straighten, tension, and then, horror of horrors, I saw the magnetic foot detach and spring away under the tension of the cable. I was running now, desperate to grab that cable. Five meters to go, three meters to go. It was near the level of my head. I straightened out my legs to push against the magnets in my boots and timed the last few steps, closer to leaps. Two, one NOW and I strained to reach the cable. I could feel the sensation of the cable brushing against the surface of my gloves but my desperate snatches could not make home. I found myself in a slow lateral revolution between the two ships and without any apparent means of approaching either one. And drifting slowly away.

    * * *

    It is probably best to not print the exclamations that I emitted in the next few moments. Let’s just say that I was frustrated, panicked and extremely angry at myself. At that exact instant I did not know where the ships were, much less the direction to the cable that would take me to at least one of them.

    I forced myself to calm. I was still breathing hard from the exertion to reach the cable. I tried to settle my breathing.

    I knew what had happened and I tried to assess the situation. I knew that I had missed the cable by a matter of centimeters, millimeters really, so I just had to get back to where I came from. I was probably less than a meter away and our Vee was in mostly the same direction. I probably only needed to cover the couple of centimeters to put me within reach of the cable.

    I wiggled around to give myself some lateral rotation so that I could see where I was. The derelict was a few meters under my feet; my ship a seemingly impossible distance away and the tether, the tantalizing, tempting tether, less than a meter away.

    I needed delta Vee. With sudden clarity I knew what I had to do. I needed a jet and I had but one way to generate it. Before I could talk myself out of it I reached over with my right hand and unscrewed my left glove. I could feel the atmosphere running down my arm and out my sleeve as I pointed my arm in the direction that I figured was opposite of the tether.

    Several things happened at once. My ears instantly clogged with the change in pressure, and I instinctively swallowed to try to clear them. I felt an intense cold on my left hand that grew worse, the pain becoming intense. I suddenly had an alarm in my ear that I hadn’t had before, screaming about a pressure loss. And I was moving.

    I knew that I had been rotating by seeing the stars out of the corner of my eye. The sudden rush of pressure out of my left sleeve was giving me the push that I needed, but was it giving it in the right direction? My question was answered almost instantly as I felt the tether rub against the back of my suit. I grabbed the cable, tucked it under my arm, and then fumbled to replace my glove.

    I had a problem. The pressure under my skin swelled my hand so much that I couldn’t get my glove back on. The sound of the air rushing by was decreasing as I fought with it. I was letting air out of my lungs to match the pressure loss in my suit and pretty soon it wouldn’t matter; I was seconds away from blacking out. The air bottles could not maintain a breathable pressure with the arm hole open. I fumbled with it for a moment then gave up. There was no way that glove was going to fit over that monstrosity my hand had become. I noticed, however, that the swelling of the hand had just about sealed off the air leak and I was able to pull my arm against the cuff. In addition the insulation from my sleeve was clogging the air leak. This slowed the air loss enough that the bottles could keep up, giving me enough pressure to maintain consciousness. I’d deal with the hand later. Wrapping my arms around the tether I gave a mighty jerk and launched myself towards my ship.

    The out-gassing from my sleeve was whirling me around as I held onto the tether for dear life.

    The few seconds to travel to my ship seemed like hours. In order to get the door closed the tether had to be rewound and I gritted my teeth in pain and impatience as the cable retracted. As the airlock pressurized the stress and excitement caught up with me. I removed my helmet; the inside was already dotted with flecks of blood from my nose and ears. First I vomited, then I passed out.

    I was only out for a moment, though, as the pain on my left arm brought me back awake. The agony was now up to the shoulder. The flesh was purple but much of the swelling had gone down under the air pressure of the ship. I slowly peeled my suit off as best as I could one-handed. I had a moment of worry that I wouldn’t be able to get the pressure suit past my wrist. I kneaded the battered flesh and was able to slowly slide my wounded hand through the ring at the end of the sleeve.

    At last I made it to the medical station and injected myself with pain-killers. The hand looked pretty bad but I could painfully flex my fingers so I didn’t think that I would lose it. Now that I no longer needed to save fuel for prospecting I could shoot a direct course to the medical facilities at Ceres Base at maximum thrust.

    In spite of the pain I had a grin on my face that would have been tough to wipe off. I had claimed a salvage ship with cargo and, more importantly, I had pulled myself out of a situation that should have killed me. I thought of Crystal and I wished she could have been a part of this special moment. No, part wasn’t enough; I knew how badly I needed her.

    I had looked death in the face and knew how close I had come. I knew there and then the hurt that I had caused the person that I loved the most. My life was no longer a rambling search of existence; I now knew the value of sharing the best and the worst of life with someone who enjoyed it with me. I had hurt the person whom I loved the most very badly and I had to repair that damage. My drinking had caused every problem in my life. I had quit once before and I was now determined that I would control my own life. It was going to be a long haul but I was ready.

    I sent two messages to Ceres Base. The second was the location and frequency of my marker beacon, along with the details of my salvage application. The first was a personal to a certain lady staying at Gower’s Landing. It was much simpler. All that it said was, “I’m sorry.”

  • Trashy tries creative writing, sci-fi style [Part 1]

    I occasionally get the fiction writing bug and put together a short story. Usually they suck because I’m not a creative writer and I’m usually just blowing off some creative steam since I write highly technical documents at my day job. Anyway, I have a start of a short story I’d like to share for the hell of it. If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll write and post more of it on here.

    ————

     

    A subtle jolt signaled the end of the ride for Lt. Van Balych. The doors to the elevator slid open with a light rumble, and his first step onto the gravitative section of the NASS Umbique was a bit shaky. He hadn’t been in space in quite a while, and he had forgotten that it takes a day or so to get one’s space legs under them. The hallway he stepped into seemed neverending, an artifact of the wholly uninspired design of the Nakayama-class orbital patrol frigate. “Brutalism meets Flash Gordon,” quipped another Ensign during then Ensign Balych’s first space assignment, also on a Nakayama-class orbital patrol frigate.

    These frigates were disproportionately sized for their role in the North American Space Force, almost 80% the size of a Xie-class cruiser. However, the asteroid belt wasn’t nearly as contentious a place as had been expected, and the cruisers spent most of their time doing the job of orbital patrol frigates anyway. In a political “compromise,” the newest generation of orbital patrol frigate, the Nakayama-class, was designed to be the best of both worlds, a frigate with the resources of a cruiser. The result was a 700 meter long ship that looks like a boxy rolling pin. An ungainly angular command section contains a bridge, a forward engineering compartment, and a forward weapons array along with an associated magazine. The middle 500 meters consists of a spindly core around which the gravitative section rotates. The gravitative section is a 5-deck modular cylinder kept at 0.85g. Each module is a 500 meter by 50 meter rectangular strip that can be fully isolated from the other modules in case of emergency. The modules interconnect with adjacent modules through bulkheads every 100 meters. The rear section is a bulbous EM drive section. There is an aft engineering section and an aft weapons array, but they are usually remotely controlled unless heavy damage is taken at the front of the ship or maintenance is required.

    Van looked at the instructions projected on his glasses and began walking down the monotonous beige corridor, passing door after door of crew quarters. One of the nice things about having a ridiculously oversized ship was the fact that everybody got their own room. “26-B-12,” he mumbled under his breath, passing an Ensign in a purple trimmed uniform, indicative of a weapons controller. Yes, NASF ripped the whole colored uniform thing from Star Trek. It was supposed to be a morale boost, but it is more of a fleetwide embarrassment than anything. Van looked up from his half-aware cadence down the hall to see 26-B-17 on a door to the left. He shifted his gaze to the other side of the hall and acquired 26-B-12 a few meters further down. As he reached his arm out to push the entry button on the wall, the door recognized his wrist implant and opened with a mechanical whirr. “It’s an accordion door, of course, because that’s the least complicated type of door to design and maintain. These doors never fail!” Van sarcastically thought, remembering back to the multiple occasions during his stint on the Svenson when the door to his quarters jammed.

    Van stepped into his new quarters and was hit with a familiar smell. Despite the Umbique being almost two years old, nobody had been in this room since the pre-launch inspection. The new quarters smell was unmistakable. He dropped his duffel on the downright luxurious queen sized bed and scanned the room. The configuration was familiar, bathroom to the left, closet to the right, bed in front, desk next to the bed. Around the edges of the floor were angled windows that reminded Van of prisms. They were an attempt to give a view of the starscape that wasn’t just a porthole drilled in the floor. Officers were assigned quarters on deck 5, and non-comms were assigned windowless quarters on deck 4, a not-so-subtle insult given that the quarters on deck 5 could hold the entire 220 person crew thrice over.

    Van stepped into the bathroom, which automatically illuminated upon his presence. He looked into the mirror and swept off the remnant disheveledness that lingered from the four hour ride to orbit and then to the Umbique. He had been greeted by a Lieutenant Commander at the airlock and couldn’t remember her name. She was cute, if a bit swallowed up by her high-collared uniform. Balych toggled through the menus on his glasses with a sensation that resembled muscle memory and called up the ship’s crew roster. In a matter of a few seconds, he had filtered the list and found a picture of a soft-faced Lieutenant Commander trying her hardest to look tough. “Lt. Cmdr. Aria Snelling,” the dossier headlined. As quickly as he had looked up the information, he shut down the search and focused back on his reflection, running his hand across his cheek. He frowned at the rough feel of the five o’clock shadow and returned to his duffel to retrieve his laser razor. A quick two minutes later, he was baby faced and bald, which was how men were expected to groom themselves these days. He had a mild shudder as he thought about growing a beard and hair, which were considered old fashioned and a little bit tacky. Van gave his quarters one last glance before walking out and heading for the bridge.

    Lt. Balych had been assigned to the Umbique as Chief Compliance Officer, a natural extension from his prior role as a Senior Compliance Liaison at Space Consulate Canaveral. His task on this cruise was to ensure the regulatory compliance of all transports flying the common transit routes between the asteroid belt and the Inner Ports. Human space travel was still in its infancy, and very little exploration had been done outside of the asteroid belt. However, a few colonies had been established on the Moon and on Mars for various industrial purposes, including ore refining, spaceship manufacturing, and automated manufacturing for Earth consumption. These Inner Ports, including the many ports on Earth, were abuzz with commerce. The transit routes that connected the Inner Ports with the asteroid belt were traveled by a unique group of people, the Boomers.

    The elevator slowed to a stop with a small jolt and Van felt the last of the gravity go away. He held onto the railing until the doors slid open. With a small push, he stepped into a small corridor and eased back down onto the floor. The command section did not rotate, and technically had no gravity, but a magnetic field interacted with metallic microfibers woven into his uniform to provide the illusion of a minimum of gravity, something like 0.2g. It was enough to be able to walk around, but took some getting used to. Regulations stated that a crewmember could only spend 6 hours per day maximum in magna-grav sections of the ship to prevent the onset of microgravity ailments like bone density loss. Van walked past a couple of doors that led to command crew conference rooms and stepped up to the door at the end of the hall marked “Bridge”. He almost smacked his face into the door as a buzzing noise accompanied a red flashing light to signal his denial of access. A moment later, he heard an alarm sound from the tactical station on the other side of the stubbornly closed doors. Van quickly located the access list for the bridge on his glasses and scanned the list for his name. He found it instantly and confirmed that the access code on file matched to his wrist implant. He stepped forward again and the door slid open. The tactical officer pivoted in her chair and quizzically looked at Lt. Balych as he rolled his eyes. The bridge was vaguely reminiscent of the old NASA mission control center in Houston. He had never seen it in person, but there was a faithful mockup at Space Consulate Canaveral that he had seen many times. Three rows of computer stations were stacked in front of one another, all facing a bank of three screens at the front of the bridge. Van stood on a riser near the rear of the bridge and was looking downward at the command center. Three chairs sat in the middle of the large riser, a surprisingly large space for only three chairs and an emergency console on the back wall. The flurry of activity overwhelmed Van’s senses for a moment before his mind was able to adjust.

    The bridge crew consisted of a Captain, two Commanders, four Lieutenant Commanders, and six Lieutenants. The Captain and Commanders inhabited the three throne-like chairs in the back of the room. Lt. Balych approached the throne and cleared his throat. It was time to put on a show. In his best Swahili, he addressed Captain Mbeke. “I have been transferred under your command as of today, March 18, 2162. I am glad to be of service to you.” He intentionally and expertly avoided any offensive gendering, sideways glances, and assertiveness. It was especially difficult to keep his eyes from wandering when addressing Captain Mbeke. Xhe was a mountain of a woman, err, gender-nonspecific human. The image kept popping into Van’s head of mashed potatoes, because Mbeke’s morbidly obese body had the color and texture of mashed potatoes with gravy. Lt. Balych had addressed morbidly obese Captains before. 40% of Captains required a mattress instead of a command chair because they were too big for the command chair (which was already designed for a person of 450 pounds). However, Captain Mbeke had wedged xherself into the command chair, clearly in denial about xher 600-plus pound girth. Van had researched Captain Mbeke prior to boarding the Umbique, and knew much more about xher than likely anybody else on the ship. Captain Mbeke was born Stephanie Dawson, and was the daughter of Second Consul Blandon Dawson, one of the most powerful politicians on Earth. After spending 6 months living in South Africa, Stephanie Dawson became trans-racial and transgendered, and eventually changed xher name to Salani Mbeke, coopting a traditional Congan surname. Most senior officers were appointed directly to their positions due to political connection, and Captain Mbeke was no different. She was 32 when she was appointed to the Captaincy of the Umbique, without even stepping foot at officers’ school. Similarly, the Commanders and Lieutenant Commanders had all likely been appointed to the vessel as political favors.  Running an orbital patrol frigate was seen as a cushy job for the elites, given the low danger, the high amount of control, and the sumptuous allure of harassing the junior officers and non-comms. Normal people like Lt. Balych capped out at Lieutenant, with a select few making it to Lieutenant Commander.

    Captain Mbeke, leaned up into an erect sitting position, a fire building in her eyes. A guttoral exhale signaled that the fury was about to be unleashed, a song and dance Lt. Balych had experienced many times before. He tried to act and look as unimposing as possible, hoping to let the gale pass with minimal damage. In perfectly unaccented English, Mbeke screamed, “YOU DARE BUTCHER MY LANGUAGE?? YOU HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN ON MY SHIP AN HOUR AND YOU INSULT ME??” Her arms shook with rage, the dangling fat counter-rotating and flapping like a flesh-colored flag in a hurricane. The sound of skin-on-skin slapping was vaguely sexual, but only disgustingly so. Van purged the thought from his mind before the thought of a walrus mating with a bowl of jello made him visibly cringe and offend the gelatinous woman even more. Mbeke shifted over to look at one of the Commanders and said in a broken voice, “The safety of this bridge has . . . been. . .  violated!” Her lower lip began to pout and water glistened deep in her fat-swollen eyes, her words punctuated by a rhythmic heaving whistle unique to such a morbidly obese person trying to suppress her sobs, “I’ve. never. been. so. humiliated. in. my. liiiiiiiiiiii-hi-hi-hiiiiiiifffffffffffe!!” She broke down into a blubbering mess, her pasty mashed potato skin turning bright red with the effort. The Commander to her left motioned to one of the Lieutenants who escorted Lt. Balych off the bridge and into one of the command conference rooms. Van was happy that the ceremonial victimization of the Captain was finished. Tradition or no, he could never shake the thought that it was a bit ridiculous. There were better ways to put new junior officers in their place.

    Lt. Eva Baxter dropped the portable reading device on the conference table with just enough gusto to signal to Van that she didn’t want to be there dealing with onboarding a new bridge officer at the moment. Even though Baxter was likely a normal person who went to officer training school and didn’t come from a life of privilege, the systemic disdain held by the appointed senior officers tended to infect the rest of a ship like a virus. “Here is all the information about your job responsibilities, the layout of your bridge console, access parameters, your shift assignments, and protocols for communicating with senior officers. Read it all and memorize it,” she gruffly monotoned, punching buttons on the reading device. With a final button click, the entirety of the manual was uploaded to Van’s glasses, as indicated by a progress bar projected on the bottom of his left lens. She then proceeded to look him head to toe, a gesture he knew all too well. “We run the consort system here, have you been a consort on any of your previous assignments?” her disinterested demeanor staying unchanged, despite the shift to a sexual conversation. “Yes, I was consort to a Commander on my previous space assignment,” Van responded, momentarily flashing back to a memory of a sexual encounter with Cmdr. Bordreaux on the Svenson. “Good,” the emotionless Lieutenant dismissively muttered, “you’re not the Captain’s type, and the Commanders both already have enough consorts, so you may end up with a Lieutenant Commander.” An unofficial policy adopted on some of the most female dominated ships in the fleet assigned the male junior officers to female senior officers for sexual liaises. Neither the men nor the women needed the sex, as sexbots and sex toys were more than adequate to satisfy any sexual desire they had. However, the consort program gave the female senior officers another avenue to show their disdain for the junior officers, and especially for the wholly emasculated male officers. Consort sexual encounters were notoriously humiliating to the men. Some of the women even took perverse joy in pegging their men while making every effort to let the men know that they were less than trash. Lt. Balych had been lucky the first time. Cmdr. Bordreaux was a bit more traditional, and wasn’t particularly comfortable with the dominant role she was supposed to take in the consort relationship. Mostly, she just wanted companionship. Van was nervous that he’d get a true believer in the consort system this time around. His ass clenched at the thought.

  • What Are We Reading – June 2018

    Read a book, read a book, read a motherfuckin’ book.

    Old Man With Candy

    I always have a geek book at hand, and this past month, my constant companion has been Electrochemical Methods: Fundamentals and Applications  mostly because I have suddenly been given a new role at work which requires some of this expertise, and there’s not much opportunity to fake it. I was immediately and uncomfortably made aware of how much physical chemistry I have forgotten in the mmmmph years since I was in college. Well, at least I remembered the Nernst equation.

    A discussion with SugarFree got me to pick up my copy of The Eyre Affair, the first of the Thursday Next series. I bought this the last time I was in England visiting my favorite author- he and I went book shopping and he urged me to give Jasper Fforde a try. He was right. Delightful mix of surrealism, science fiction, alternate history, and literary geekiness, sort of a Douglas Adams with better writing.

    SugarFree

    I’ve been on a horror kick. I re-read The Tommyknockers for the first time since it first came out. It remains one of the more interesting failures of Stephen King’s long career. The basic premise is sound and portions of the book are fantastic but–like much King’s work–it needed an editor, a very heavy-handed editor. It could lose a hundred or so pages and be a masterpiece for it. The TV miniseries is a rather dreary affair, hampered by poor casting and bad special effects.

    I read a dozen or so King short stories afterward as a palate cleanser–most of Night Shift and parts of Skeleton Crew–and watched all the TV and movie adaptations where they have been made. The only thing I really have to say is that Linda Hamilton might be wearing the least erotic pair of shorts ever produced for the female body in 1984’s The Children of the Corn.

    I read Nick Cutter’s first two books, The Troop and The Deep. The Troop is an effective and nasty little piece of splattercore, so efficient and complete that I cannot understand how it isn’t a movie yet (it even acknowledges a structural debt to Carrie that a movie adaptation could ignore.) The Deep is more ambitious, but I found it a little too derivative to be truly enjoyable, mashing up Solaris, Event Horizon, Sphere, The Abyss and any number of demonic possession stories to surface to an ambiguous ending.

    Finally, I read The Soldier, the first book in a new trilogy by Neal Asher, set once again in his sprawling Polity Universe. It is his usual sort of meth-freak out science fiction overdrive that you either adore or hate. The new trilogy is picking up my favorite narrative thread of his work and my least favorite narrative thread and tying them together into an interstitial tale that doesn’t quite break his continuity but does manage to whack it in the knee with a length of pipe a few times. I’m along for the ride, though, Neal.

    Riven

    I have really been slacking. The only books I’ve read this month were the childhood books I incidentally read while unpacking the last three boxes my parents were very graciously still storing for me in their garage. I kid you not when I say that my sister and I read this edition of Mother Goose to pieces. It was already well-loved by the time I “inherited” it from my sister, who is only five years my senior. If you are looking for a good book for a very young child, look no further. The illustrations are beautiful and are more than enough to capture the imagination of a child who can’t read yet. And it’s a great book for a kid to grow in to because the rhymes are simple and easy to read.

    Other notable childhood mentions are: Mooncake, Dinotopia (The World Beneath), Four Little Kittens, and The Poky Little Puppy. So, if you want to raise a crazy little libertarian chick, there’s a few ideas. Don’t forget to include plenty of Berenstain Bears (just be sure you pronounce it correctly), and go ahead and throw in some age-occasionally-appropriate spooky stories like Goosebumps, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Eyes of the Dragon, and (one of my favorites) The Iron Dragon’s Daughter.

    mexican sharpshooter

    Yesterday, I read the Very Hungry Caterpillar to my son.  Its a classic coming of age tale of a caterpillar coming to terms with a body shaming public that refuses to accept his outward appearance.  They simply do not understand the caterpillar and drives him to seek refuge in food as a coping mechanism.  The joke however is on society, as the caterpillar shelters himself away from the world, and shows them all what he becomes.

    SP

    Lots of mindless reading this month while on the road to and from Montana, most of which doesn’t deserve mentioning, so I won’t.

    Sorta enjoyed the latest Agent Pendergast book, City of Endless Night, but it seemed much weaker than previous works in the series. As usual, I knew the identity of the villain as soon as xe was introduced.

    I’ve started Robert Dugoni’s David Sloane series. I’m only a bit into book 1, The Jury Master, so haven’t quite formed an opinion yet. I am not generally a huge fan of lawyer novels (or lawyers, with a couple notable exceptions), but this seems less wrapped up in the legal story lines than most in the genre.

    In audio, I’m currently listening to The Final Cut by Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison. It has two narrators, Renee Raudman and MacLeod Andrews, neither of whom I’ve heard before. I like it so far, but I’m not that far into it since I only allow myself to listen to books when on solo roadtrips or as a reward while cleaning (of which I’ve not been doing much!).

    Brett L

    I toted along the first book in the Kvothe Series (I think its officially called the Kingkiller Chronicles, but since the author has spent seven years NOT RELEASING THE BOOK WHERE A KING GETS KILLED, I’m just going with the the name of the main character) to the beach to re-read. And then I read the 2nd volume and then I read the final oh wait, no. Rothfuss and GRRM are still having that contest about who gives less of a fuck about finishing his series. I read the Racing Weight book on the advice of Deadhead in the Glibfit series. I started the plan but then bombed out. Will attempt a restart on Sunday.

    Finally, I have been listening to Jordon Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos on and off. I won’t say it changed my life, although I appreciate his perspective on some things. It’s like listening to the reverse version of a preacher who uses science and psychology. Or maybe it like taking an ethics class from a Jesuit? I don’t know how else to describe Dr. Peterson’s somewhat unique insistence on the Bible as a central allegory to our current civilization, while fully acknowledging an embracing FW Nietzsche’s critique of religion. What comes through clearly on the audiobook of Dr. Peterson reading his own book is that he believes what he wrote. I am glad to have listened to it, even if I’m not going to choose to clean my room, today.

     jesse.in.mb

    Recently had some flights and managed to put away quite a bit this month. The Dark Monk (A Hangman’s Daughter Tale Book 2) by Oliver Pötzsch: I enjoyed this one (I wrote about the first book in March) although there’s some minor element of the passing that I find off-putting, but not so off-putting I won’t read the next book. Finding Camlann: A Novel by Sean Pidgeon: frumpy archaeologist and a pretty Welsh linguist with turbulent personal relationships with other people investigate rumors of Arthurian legend and find each other. Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir by Cinelle Barnes makes me appreciate my…uh…problematic parents much more. While some part of me wonders if it suffers from some of the issues associated with I, Rigoberta Menchu, the story she tells is riveting.

    Web Dominatrix

    I haven’t been reading much this month since I’ve been so busy, but I just ordered (yet again) a copy of The Enneagram Made Easy. This book is my go to for all things Enneagram and really helps me understand myself better and those around me.

    I’ve had to order it again because I keep giving it away to people when I realise they’ve never read it because it really is that useful and interesting.

    Not Adahn

    I primarily read RPG manuals for entertainment these days. I like them. They have worldbuilding, a peek at how things work backstage (which is something I like) and they can be read in whatever chunks of time I have without interrupting a narrative flow. This month:

    Star Wars: The Role Playing Game, by West End Games. This came out in 1987, so if you want to know how Star Wars geeks thought about how the SW universe worked back in the day (with input from the studios that still had Jedi fresh in their mind), here’s your answer. TL;DR: George Lucas retcons every goddamned thing. Also interesting is looking back and seeing how sacred canon used to be. Unlike today, where every game designer puts his personal self-insert fanfic headcanon into the games they work on (Did you know that all elves in D&D are trans now?) this book treats the movies as inviolable fact. There are only two Jedi masters left, and no, you character can’t meet them. Which really sucks if you want to play a Jedi as the game allows that there might be a few minor Jedi that escaped the purges, but without real training, your character is going to be crippled. But having Obi-Wan or Yoda meet another potential student would completely fuck the storyline so it’s disallowed.

    Ars Magica 3rd Edition, by Wizards of the Coast. Is there any company that has done more to destroy the gaming industry than WOTC? They make one massively successful game, buy up everyone else, then it turns out that they’re not very good designers, they just got lucky once. This piece of crap follows in that tradition. I have a copy of the first edition of Ars Magica (by Lion Rampant games) and like everyone else loved the setting, the concepts behind the game, the alien medievalism, and found the mechanics a bit baffling when they weren’t clear but clunky. This book is literally five times the thickness of the first one, but completely fails at being any more clarifying. It guts the medieval mindset for a modern one and slathers on all sorts of 1990’s-era White Wolf emo crap and d10 rolling. In fact, this is so much a WW game, I had to double check to make sure it was WOTC. Unless WOTC bought WW which could very well have happened. And it became an even less-playable game. In fact, with the mutli-character concept, most of the playing is done solo filling out spreadsheets (which would be an excellent use of downtime between gaming sessions) except that it requires everyone in the group to be there watching you fill out your spreadsheet and approving your choices. Who would actually want to play this? Nobody. Which is why they made advancing your character so freakishly impossible — nobody is going to play this twice so those rules don’t matter. If you want to play an actual “I’m a wizard, I can do everything” game, you’ll need to get a copy of Mage: The Ascension.

  • I Fucking Love Astrology: The Horoscope for June 24

    First up:  This weeks alignments…

    None.  Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  The planets are all being non-conformists, but not doing it together like gothlings. From a heliocentric view, the universe is an empty place devoid of meaning, lifeless planets lumbering along indifferent to the existential horror, blindingly following their paths set by unreasoning forces until all existence dies frozen in ultimate blackness.

    This is going to be a bad week for aspies.  The moon is in Virgo, bringing change to people who don’t like change.  Interestingly, even though The Virgin is typically portrayed as female by the ancients, the personality types predicted perfectly match those of today’s male virgins.  This ability of a theory to correctly predict things centuries later is why astrology is considered such a perfect science.

    Fucking magnets, how DO they work?
    How much more perfect could a science be? None. None more science.

    Remember how I used to predict good fishing?  Well that orbital mechanic has turned around and now fishing is going to suck for a while.  C’est l’etoile.

    Your mental acuity will fade down to normal levels as Sol ceases illuminating Gemini.  on the other hand, Mercury continues in Cancer, so with a bit of effort, you can still be successful in that research you’ve been doing.  If you haven’t been doing any research, disregard that last bit.  For the non-researchers, you will probably forget to log off of something or clear your browser history, leading to  embarrassment.  You should have been researching something.

    Seriously though, clear your cache.  That whole Jupiter retrograde in Scorpio does lend credence to the “your porn history will become public knowledge” thing this week.

    Also this week, there is Aquarius (the water bearer) linked with Mars. (war, conflict).  So some people will be fighting over a water vessel.

     

  • I Fucking Love Astrology: The Horoscope for the Week of June 10

    Between the skies not being terribly helpful, work being more nuts than usual (how can a chiller that works perfectly completely seize up because I moved it 600 yards into a different room?), me planning on heading north of the wall to meet up with a red-haired French teacher in about three hours, this look into the astral influences is going to be sparse.  Or, perhaps you can think of it as me giving you more room to experience your own personal relationship with the stars without having to worry about “rules” or “interpretations” that would impinge on your freedom.  Let’s go with that one.

    Which could happen. You know that line between "roguish teasing" and "You're sleeping on the couch tonight?" I have trouble with that.
    If I have time for stargazing this weekend, something has gone terribly wrong.

    Only one alignment to discuss:  Sol-Mars-Saturn (retrograde), Venus in opposition.  One meaning of that is a woman will be murdered in a particularly horrific fashion.  I really don’t like that one*, so hunting for alternates gives us “fight breaks out at peace talks,” or “some people claim that there’s a woman to blame.”  Expect Angela Merkel to fuck something up.  Possibly Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

    As to the whole planet-in-constellation list…

    Venus is transiting out of Cancer, lessening the overall feminine influences.

    Aquarius should expect a visit from… red? Woman? Scarlet woman? Something like that anyway.  Also, commies will gather by a large body of water.

    Saturn retrograde will not get the fuck out of Capricorn!  There are just so many goat jokes that a non-Welshman can make!

    This week will be good for thinking and intellectual work with Mercury sharing the Sun in Gemini.  The Venus/Cancer connection earlier will extend this to psychotherapy for all you madglibs out there.

    And of course, Jupiter retrograde keeps up governmental misrule, abuse, and general fuckings-over.  Speaking of general fuckings-over, here’s what you get when you get when you ask for recommendations for fun things to do in Ottawa (not intended to disparage any glibs advice, this came from a coworker):

    *It’s a question famously raised (but not answered) by the Dune books: does the prophet see the future, or create it?

  • In Search of STEVE SMITH

    The twin suns were setting, leaving a darkening red mist over the sprawling city.  From my window in the hyper skyscraper I could see the floating car traffic hurtling above the bustling sidewalks.  The glass of the nearby buildings glittered like gems, dazzling my eye stalks as if I was in a dream.  I felt worn out like a used Kyrilomine wrapper.  I thought of going home but the sensor at the door beeped, indicating a client had come into the office anteroom.  I ambled back to the desk, sat on the chair, and hit the button to allow the connecting portal to open.

    A strange creature strode in.  She or he or it was a sad specimen with only four appendages, one pair used for mobilization, the other for grasping.  The hyper-chip in my cortex connected to the Encyclopedia Universal and fed the information directly into my memory glands.  Even before she spoke, I knew she was a female hominid from the Sol system.  With that detail in place I could look past her alien features and see a cascading wave of blonde hair, two brown visualization orbs, an opening smeared with a red, waxy substance, and hips that were wide enough for my nesting table.  Her dress, all shimmering silver, fitted the contours of her body well.  Of course I really wasn’t the sort of fellow who was into cross-species mating, but still the old copulating sac did give a minute twitch.

    “Are you Detective Balanxorp?”she asked.  Her voice was higher than the female of my species.  She spoke the Galactic Trade language stiffly as if she had learned it from a primitive memory impression chip.

    “Yes I am,” I said with an easy cosmopolitan drawl that I used for off-world creatures.  “What can I help you with?”

    “I am looking for my father.  He has gone missing.”

    With a free tentacle, I motioned for her to take a seat in front of my desk.  When she found a comfortable perch on the arch of relaxation, I reached into the desk and pulled out a sapphire bottle of off-world Muuze, the finest alcohol that a poor detective such as myself could afford.

    “Would you care for a snort?” I asked.

    She shook her head, giving me a look that I took to mean distaste.  It’s been my experience that some species want to get straight to business before relaxing with a suitable beverage.  It’s a damn shame, since communications when slightly intoxicated can lead to pleasant results.

    After pouring myself a drink, I carefully put the bottle away.  I took a small sip  and said, “Talk to me.”

    “My name is Elizabeth.  My father and I are originally from Earth.  He and I were taken off the planet years ago, back when I was just a child.” She made a small gesture with her grasping-appendage, which I couldn’t fathom.

    “Abduction?” I asked, already knowing the answer.  Some citizens of this galaxy had a thing for exploring alien anal cavities, supposedly in the name of science.  It was a practice that thankfully was dying out, thanks to the work of ARSE, the Alien Rectal Safety Enquiry.

    “Yes,” she replied smoothly.

    “And your father’s name?”

    “Dr. Edward Tinsdale.”

    In a microsecond, the Encyclopedia Universal returned the biographical data I requested.  It took me another moment to digest the information, quickly sorting through the man’s education, age, and background.

    “The famous cryptid researcher?” I finally asked even though I already knew the answer.

    “The very same,” Elizabeth said with obvious pride.  “My father has been all over the galaxy researching legendary monsters.  He’s had some success, like proving the Slithering Eels of Sexylvania were just a hoax.  But he did prove that Tulpa, the Internet Troll, was real.  I’m afraid the fame went to his head.  He returned to our home planet Earth to find the most dangerous cryptid of all, STEVE SMITH.  He wanted to prove to everyone that the Rapesquatch was real.”

    I knew already that she was from the Sol system, but I directed my network connection to look up some information on Earth.  A top-level warning flashed painfully across my neurons.  It turned out that this planet was under active quarantine, always guarded by a Trade Federation battleship against anyone from exiting the solar system.  Earth was apparently home to three Galactic outlaws: SugarFree, Warty, and STEVE SMITH.

    Expanding the search, I downloaded the thumbnail sketches of these criminals:

    SugarFree: the nom de plume of a writer who was convicted in absentia in the Federation Galactic Court, for his non-fiction musings of popular politicians.  He was also guilty by association for being the official Chronicler of Warty.

    Warty: Powerlifter, eternal enemy of the galactic state, and owner of most efficient “workout” dungeon on the planet.  Considered by many to be the most dangerous creature in the 7th Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.  Warty is the only known survivor of being attached to the infamous Doomcock of Doom; and doing the Deathsquat of Death, which caused the rings of Saturn, a huge gas planet in the Sol system, to form.  His illegal Timesuit allowed movement in all four dimensions, which, in this case, made the Federation battleship useless.

    Pausing momentarily before downloading the next entry, I wondered why the Federation would go through all the expense of leaving a warship in orbit around a third-rate backwater of a planetary system.  The answer was readily ap-parent once my neurons, which revolted in horror, processed the next entry.

    STEVE SMITH: An ancient, immortal Rapesquatch of unknown origin.  Said to have been sent back in time and trapped on the planet Earth during its early formation, this cryptid has sexually conquered most of the species there.  The only safe creatures are the ones that can fly or live in seas.  STEVE SMITH only lives to rape and rapes to live.  One galactic physicist, though considered a crank, thought the very formation of the universe, the Big Bang, was actually the result of this Rapesquatch penetrating a white hole making it explode.  Though only mythical, the secret, ancient transcripts from the Federation archives show the council had taken the threat of this Rapesquatch seriously enough to post a Level-A Star Battleship in the Sol System.

    I inwardly shuddered, trying with difficulty to hide my disgust.  If STEVE SMITH escaped, then my very own rectal cavity could be in peril, not to mention my other orifices.  The very tightness of the Universe was at stake.

    With an expression that I took as expectation, she asked, “Well, Mr. Balanxorp, will you help me find my father?”

    My tentacles quivered in agitation.  I took another sip of my drink in a failed attempt to quiet my nerves. I blurted out,  “If your father has been taken by STEVE SMITH, then nothing can save him.  There is nothing I can do!”

    Her eyes were misting with some liquid substance.  “Please!”

    “This meeting is at an end.”  I slammed the desk to punctuate my point.  “You will have to leave as I have some pressing business to attend elsewhere.”

    The creature named Elizabeth ran out the room, making some untranslatable noises.  I hoped I had seen the last of her.  Little did I know this was the very beginning…

    The End. Or is it?

  • What Are We Reading – May 2018

    Old Man With Candy

    After a conversation with Warty, I remembered perhaps my favorite scientific biography ever, Oliver Heaviside: The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age by Paul Nahin, and have been giving it a reread. Heaviside is only vaguely known among people in the physical sciences (I only knew the name because of the Heaviside step function in math), but ought to be far better known; for example, what physicists and engineers think of as the Maxwell equations (the foundations of electromagnetic theory) are actually the Heaviside equations. Maxwell’s formulation was clumsy and complex- Heaviside reworked them into a simple but comprehensive set of partial differential equations, the ones familiar to contemporary students and practitioners. His operational calculus laid the groundwork for Laplace transform methods routinely used in circuit analysis. His work solved the massive problems of the nascent telegraphy and telephony technologies and brought us into the 20th century.

    But that’s what makes him interesting specifically to geeks. What makes him interesting overall is the sociology associated with him. Unlike most prominent British scientists of the era. Heaviside was a true outsider, born into poverty, and completely self-taught. Moreover, he was an odd personality, and if he were alive today, we’d put him somewhere on the autism spectrum. He had almost no social interactions beyond his immediate family, refused to adopt the manners and mores of the gentlemanly scientists with whom he interacted in scholarly journals, and larded his papers and books with thinly veiled invective and humorous insights (“It is wonderful how little work there is when you know how to do it.” “It is as unfair to call a vector a quaternion as to call a man a quadruped.”). Of course, establishment figures fought to keep this outsider outside, but the sheer power of his intellect swept that aside. Trigger warning: to understand what Heaviside did, some equations will inevitably present themselves. If you’re on the other side of CP Snow’s two worlds, you can skip over them and take my word that what he did was brilliant, significant, and vastly influential. This book is fascinating, a study in sociology and psychology as much as it is about physics, an absolute delight.

    SugarFree

    I had been meaning to read Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer since it won the 2014 Nebula for Best Novel, but it wasn’t until the announcement of the Netflix adaptation that I finally got around to it. It involves a scientific expedition into Area X, a portion of the southern United States coast that has been inexplicably quarantined by an invisible and deadly barrier with a single, deliberate opening to allow people to explore. Inside, mutant animals and an inexplicable structure beg to be explored. Almost everyone that goes dies or disappears or comes back insane, with amnesia or riddled with strange cancers.

    I really have to say, I don’t understand the hype around this book. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really anything groundbreaking or even exciting. It is written in a limited viewpoint from an unnamed and probably unreliable narrator in a journal. In fact, none of the characters have names and are just referred to by their job or functions on the expedition, The Biologist, the Linguist, The Psychologist, etc. In an experiment to find the optimum psychological conditions for an expedition that can both survive and return with some sort of coherent information about the conditions inside the barrier, all the members on this trip are women.

    Like much modern music, it seems like VanderMeer took a dozen or so better works, threw them into a blender, and hoped the reader wouldn’t find too many recognizable chunks floating around in the slurry. But I’m good at spotting chunks: There are bit and pieces of Solaris, Roadside Picnic, Rogue Moon and–for the first two–their cinematic adaptations, as well as all the movies and books derived from them (Event Horizon, Cube, et.al,) countless “found” memoirs of the inexplicable, the mind-flaying horrors of Lovecraft and even a solid piece of gristle from Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

    The movie is a pretty disappointing follow-up to the excellent Ex Machina by Alex Garland. It takes a few things from the novel, but otherwise pretty much ignores it to create a strange mash-up of “The Colour Out of Space” and The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard (minus all of Ballard’s Heart of Darkness overtones.)

    Riven

    I finally passed my exam and have been celebrating by reading exactly nothing–except the dialogue in Persona 5. That said, Mr. Riven and I listen to some podcasts when we’re lifting or traveling. Last week we traveled to Missoula for the USPSA Area 1 Championship. Mr. Riven has been especially delighted with his recent find of the Myths and Legends podcast. It dovetails nicely with his current game of choice–God of War. The writer and host covers a wide variety of, well, myths and legends with a good deal of fairly dry humor and a flair for entertaining. Besides the Norse lore that’s so apropos for God of War, they also cover Slavic fairytales, epic Viking tales, and all of the standard classics: Greek and Roman mythology, King Arthur’s court, mythological beasts, etc. There’s plenty more besides what I’ve listed here, and we greatly enjoyed a lot of the Slavic tales on our trip. Fans of John Wick might also appreciate the stories that include Baba Yaga, who is seems to be equal parts hilarious and terrifying (just like an ancient boogeyman should be).

    mexican sharpshooter

    It came to my attention that my younger brother was not a prog, but is still in college, so I decided to pick up a few books he might benefit given his environment.  I got through this one pretty quickly, given Bastiat is pretty straightforward and concise.  I also picked up The Road to Serfdom.  This one is taking me longer.

    I also bought The Federalist Papers since I never read them.  I have to admit, I don’t like Hamilton.  I can deal with his arguments droning on, taking several pages and multiple essays to convey–I’ve read boring stuff before.  I simply find a lot of them ineffective, and he does not always adequately explain why something regulated by a state might be bad but it is totally okay for the federal government to do it.  It might be my biases as a former federal employee, and seeing ineffective, incompetent implementation of seemingly simple tasks for several years.  I do realize I should try to decouple that when reading a historical document.  I found myself flipping through Hamilton’s essays and finding the next one Madison wrote as his seem better thought out.  In all, it leaves me wondering if the natural born clause in the Constitution was intentionally written to keep certain assholes from being president, a certain asshole named Hamilton.

    Web Dominatrix

    I just started (and then finished in swift order) To Sell Is Human by Dan Pink. As a business owner I have to spend time selling, and I’ve hated it for years, which is why I was so delighted to discover this book which explains how to sell without feeling like a sleezeball backed up with case studies.

    I am now reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg as my habits need some major work. There are habits I have that are good, others that are bad, and others that just simply aren’t serving me in the best way.

    Tulip

    I would like to recommend three short story collections. First is American Housewife by Helen Ellis. These are great little vignettes. My two favorites are “The Wainscoting War” and “My Novel Is Brought to You by the Good People at Tampax.”

    The second is Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson. I love her short stories. She is probably familiar to most as the author of The Lottery. She also wrote The Haunting of Hill House. I read that in one sitting when I was fifteen. It was a hot, August day and when I finished, I was in a cold sweat. I’m still not sure why, but that book creeped me out like no other.

    The last is Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold by various authors. Most are based on old tales, but with a modern twist. They are dark, creepy and sometimes funny.

    SP

    I’ve just started reading Bad Things Happen (David Loogan Book 1) by Harry Dolan. I’m enjoying it very much so far. It’s a noir-ish mystery, which I love in books and film. If it stays true to the promising beginning chapters, I’ll most likely pick up the rest in the series.

    Also reading several vegetarian and vegan cookbooks. I’m getting a little tired of the same old plain stuff I’ve been eating during my 60 day 100% plant-based window (in which I’m trying to cement the practice), and need to mix it up some. Highly recommended: The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook: A Fresh Guide to Eating Well With 700 Foolproof Recipes from America’s Test Kitchen. 250 or so of these recipes are vegan. I’ve cooked from this before and everything just works. I’m thinking about putting a post together with brief reviews of several others, if there is any interest.

    And, last, but certainly not least, a quick read through Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening: How to Grow Nutrient-Dense, Soil-Sprouted Greens in Less Than 10 days by Peter Burke has inspired me to begin growing soil-raised sprouts in the house. I love that I’ll be able to do so next winter!

    Brett L

    I finished Mark Lawrence’s latest, Grey Sister. Its probably his least best work, and still better than almost anything out there in the SF/F genre right now. It definitely ends on an Empire Strikes Back note, so I expect the third one to really kick ass. I read John Conroe’s latest collection The Demon Accords Compendium, Vol. 1. I give it a B. I think that universe has mostly run its course. And then Exam Ref 70-532 Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions because this Azure shit is hot and I need to keep my LinkedIn profile popular. Azure is fun and I wish I was 23 and single and could spend 2 or 3 nights a week messing around in it for 3-5 hours at a time.

    STEVE SMITH

    STEVE SMITH READ ABOMINABLE BY HOOMAN WRITER DAN SIMMONS. ABOMINABLE LONG BOOK BUT SHORT ON HOT YETI ACTION; STORY ALL MOUNTAIN CLIMBING AND NAZIS! STEVE SMITH FIND HOOMAN SIMMONS AND STEVE SMITH SHOW HIM WHAT ABOMINABLE REALLY MEANS!

    jesse.in.mb

    AWOL on the Appalachian Trail: I have a confession to make. Travelogues make me bitter; I was miserable thinking about how little I’d traveled while watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty…on a flight to spend a week in Berlin and Prague on my own for New Years, and was bitter *both* times I saw Under the Tuscan Sun (some of you are too young to remember when airlines just played one movie at a time)…while flying back from a month in Rome with side trips through the Tuscan countryside. So I reaaaally shouldn’t have read this delightful travelogue about hiking the AT because his motivations felt familiar and the adventure sounds absolutely awful, but doable.

    Happy Dreams: This novel, about a peasant who moves to the city to be a trash picker, was a constant aggravation and a struggle to read, but I’m glad I kept chipping away at it. Toward the end of the novel I ended up caring about the characters even if their behavior still grated deeply. The author’s afterward really should’ve been the intro. Once I understood where he was coming from the entire story came together as beautiful in its grind.

    Macbeth: A Novel: Audible had it on sale, and it was read by Alan Cumming. I’d never read it or seen the play (unless you count THRONE OF BLOOD), and I figured Cumming reading Macbeth would be awesome…except it’s not Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it’s Macbeth: A Novel. I kept thinking it didn’t *seem* very Shakespearean, and then looked into a it a bit and was annoyed.