The Sea of Tranquility: One of My Favorite Books of 2022 That Made Me Cheer

This might be my favorite book of fiction for 2022 and I didn’t even pick it.

I’ve been a part of a four-guy science fiction book club since 2009. Each month, one of us picks a book and we meet the first Tuesday of each month. Over the past year or so, I’ve started a new thing: on the books I don’t select, I don’t read the book description. I just download the audiobook and start listening.

I want the book to reveal itself it me without any preconceived notions. Now, typically, around the 20-25% mark, I might circle back and read the description but not always. I ended up doing that for this book because after the first section, I was genuinely curious what kind of book this was.

Think about it: when you hear the words “Sea of Tranquility,” what do you think of? The moon, right? Me, too. Well, there are scenes in this book set on the moon, but I think the title speaks to something more.

So, what is this book about? Well, it involves multiple characters over multiple times. Oh, and there’s time travel (but don’t worry: there’s not a lot of science to get in the way of a good story).

In 1912, a British scion from a prominent family is walking in the woods in British Columbia when, suddenly, he has the feeling of being somewhere else. He’s inside a great room he interprets as a train station. He hears something mechanical that he cannot identify. And he hears violin music.

In late 2019, at a party in New York, a woman is approached by a man. He asks her about her brother, a performance artist, who includes a snippet of video they shot in the forests of British Columbia when they were teenagers. On the video, the camera catches something that appears to be a hanger, and a few notes of violin music.

In 2203, a famous author is on a book tour and she’s in an airship terminal in Oklahoma City and, as the airships disembark, she sees a man playing violin and she has the sudden feeling that she's in a forest.

And in a future time (honestly I forgot what year this part takes place in), a time travel agent volunteers to research the strange anomalies that may or may not link all of these people.

Had I read the description, I would have been all in, but experiencing it the way I did—just the opening chapters set in 1912 then instantly jumping to 2019 with a reference to the upcoming pandemic—was a bit jarring. But I was hooked.

And the book didn’t let up. With each shift of characters, Mandel also shifts the point of view. Oh, and the audiobook was fantastic: with each POV change, it was a different narrator, so if you enjoy audiobooks, you’ll love this one.

I am not going to give away any more details because if I do, you might be able to infer the ending. I’m happy to say that I didn’t see it coming, but when it did, I literally cheered in my car as I drove to the office. It is a great ending to a wonderful book.

In the days since, I’ve told the story to my wife, my parents, and to a fellow saxophone player in my orchestra who went out and bought the book herself.

Of all the books I’ve read in my SF book club, if I’m measuring by emotional impact, then John Scalzi’s Redshirts still takes the prize. But The Sea of Tranquility will now be ranked as one of the best books I’ve read, both this year and of the entire and ongoing book club.

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@Barrie Summy

Mary Robinette Kowal and the Five Words That Sold Me a Novel

She had me with five words: The Thin Man in space.

Still, I hadn’t read the book yet so I honestly waffled over whether or no to attend Mary Robinette Kowal’s author event promoting her new novel, The Spare Man, at Houston’s Murder by the Book. I ended up saying ‘yes’ and I’m so glad I did. Not only was the event one of the more entertaining I’ve been to, but the writing advice—and the personal advice—was more than I could have expected.

Knowing next to nothing about Kowal other than she wrote The Calculating Stars (a book I’ve not read but know it won multiple awards), one of the questions I was going to ask if I got the chance was how she came to be the narrator of her own books. Well, that question never needed asking because soon after her event began, she did a reading. Or, rather, she performed a passage from her new book. She had a narrator voice, a female voice as her main character, and then a good male voice as that character’s husband. Not only was she reading, she acted as well as she could holding up her laptop. Moreover, unlike some narrators who are challenged when speaking for the opposite gender, Kowal does a great male voice. Now that I've started listening to The Spare Man, I can say that not only does she do good male voice, she does multiple ones. I know I'll have a lot of great listening time as I consume her audiobooks.

(Speaking of the audiobook of The Spare Man, literally as I'm typing this post (on Thursday), Kowal just posted on Instagram that Audible has named the book one of the Best of the Year.)

The folks in the audience were clearly existing fans of Kowal because they asked specific questions almost as if it was a continuation from an earlier speaking event. A curious one was about her cat, Elsie, who, evidentially, can communicate with her. At the live event, Kowal described a panel of buttons in which a word (spoken by Kowal) is activated when Elsie presses the button. It is a fascinating idea and I had to see for myself. There are multiple videos on her Instagram page (MaryRobinetteKowal) and it's so fun and cool to watch. The funniest story she told to those of us gathered at the bookstore was a time when Elsie pressed the buttons to say "lie down, sleep" and Kowal interpreted that as Elsie wanted a nap. When her cat hadn't joined her on the bed after a few minutes, Kowal investigated and discovered Elsie eating Kowal's sandwich.

But this is an author event and the focus turned back to books, the writing of books, and how her experience as a puppeteer helps her create good prose. Using a small stuffed dog--to represent Gimlet, the little dog the two main characters in The Spare Man own (modeled after Nick and Nora Charles's dog Asta in the Thin Man movies)--she explained how puppeteers create emotion with only movement. Her ingrained knowledge of that craft permeates into her fiction as she breaks down the body language her characters show and reassembles them into words.

When I rose my hand, I asked her how she came up with the concept of The Spare Man. After all, I told her, she sold me the book in five words. She revealed she often has an elevator pitch to describe her current writing projects because it gives her more focus on what the story's DNA is. Too often, we writers, when asked about a book we've written, start to blather on and on about this character or that setup. It happened to me just a few weeks ago. Having the story's idea condensed to a few sentences at the beginning of a project can sure streamline the writing. I've actually got that in mind on my current work in progress and I'll admit, it's a great idea.

If these pleasantries were all that Kowal offered, it would have been worth the trip. But what I wasn't expecting was some excellent writing insight, and it was prompted by a question about NaNoWriMo.

Kowal was diagnosed with ADHD at age 49. Like many folks with ADHD--I likely have it although not formally diagnosed--there are moments of hyper focus and then there are other moments when you just can't get things done. One of the reasons why Kowal mentioned she enjoyed NaNoWriMo so much was of four factors: Novel, Interesting, Challenging, and Urgent.

In this case, Novel is both the literal novel someone is writing as well as the other meaning of the word, 'new.' Typically, writers who do NaNoWriMo start a brand-new novel in November. Thus, we're all excited. Interesting is self-explanatory. You have to be interested in your story for you to actually write it. Challenging is also self-evident. It is challenging to write a book, but it is even more challenging to do NaNoWriMo which is 50,000 in the 30 days of November (that's 1,667 words per day). I've done it numerous times but I have also failed so I know what it's like to be on both sides. But when you hit the groove, boy is it something. And Urgent. Again, with the 1,667 words-per-day threshold hanging over your head, if you miss a day or two, it can be daunting to catch up. Thus the urgency embedded in NaNoWriMo is a motivating factor.

When Kowal mentioned these four things, a light bulb went off in my head. It helped to explain, in part, why I've been so challenged this year in regards to writing. There are other major factors as well, but her short list helped me see myself in a different light.

It also made me wish I'd have started NaNoWriMo this year. But there's always next year.

In my research on Kowal, I found two immensely helpful posts. One is an interview on the Strange Horizons website entitled "Writing While Disabled" (2021). In this lengthy interview, Kowal uses her own experiences and diagnoses to explain how she works through her challenges and produces the award-winning works she does. I ended up printing it out and highlighting multiple passages.

The second is from her own website (and it's referenced in the interview). In a 2015 post called "Sometimes Writers Block is Really Depression," Kowal describes how her depression knocked her away from writing and the tools (both tech as well as interpersonal) she uses to overcome her challenges. The links she provides might be helpful to some writers who might be struggling.

To top off this wonderful author event, in each chair were the best handouts I've ever seen. Here's what she provided.

That's a "brochure" for the inter-planetery cruise liner the characters in The Spare Man are in. That's Gimlet, by the way. The laminated card on the left is a "baggage tag" while the center one is a "boarding pass" (the number on which was used for a drawing to give away the plush of Gimlet). And, of course, an actual "do not disturb" door hanger (with "service requested" on the back). Seriously, how cool is that? Plus check out the design. It is so 1930s.

Mary Robinette Kowal has been on the peripheral of my radar for a few years now, but with The Spare Man, she is firmly in my sights. In fact, I already have my next selection for my science fiction book club already picked. Have a look at her website. I bet there is something there that you'd like to read. For mystery fans, I'd recommend starting with The Spare Man.

I mean, why not. She sold me in five words.

How about you?

The Surprising Humanity of Resident Alien

I really enjoy being surprised by stories and characters.

I started watching the TV show Castle because of the premise and Nathan Fillion, but over time realized that Stana Katic’s Beckett was a deeply emotional character that arguably had the biggest character arc of the entire series. John Scalzi’s novel Redshirts was advertised as a Star Trek parody but ended up delivering an emotional ending so vivid that on the day I finished the story, I couldn’t even talk through the ending to my wife without breaking down.

Add to this list the TV show Resident Alien on the Syfy Channel (still dislike that styling). Billed as a starring vehicle for Alan Tudyk, Resident Alien follows Tudyk’s alien character as he crashes in a small Colorado today. He assumes the physical form of the town doctor—Harry Vanderspeigle, a human who does not survive—and attempts to go about his mission to destroy all humans. In the process, however, he meets and interacts with the residents of Patience, Colorado, and learns what it means to be human and all the messiness therein.

Let’s be honest: Tudyk is a gifted actor who can make you laugh so hard you’ll stomach will ache. A great example of this is the movie “Death at a Funeral,” the original British version. Here, Tudyk’s Harry has an odd way to “smiling,” a childlike wonder at the world, a love of “Law and Order,” and a penchant of saying exactly what he’s thinking without any nuance. In every episode, there will be moments that will definitely make you laugh out loud.

A show like this might need someone of Tudyk’s caliber to get it greenlit, but the supporting cast is what makes the difference, and in Resident Alien, the cast is wonderfully just…normal. And human.

Sara Tomko plays Asta Twelvetrees, a Native American nurse who works with Tudyk’s Henry very close. She’s a town native—nearly all the characters are, a trait that plays into the interactions—who gave up her daughter when she got pregnant in high school, the father being a pretty abusive guy. That decision haunts Asta as it would anyone, which is especially hard when the daughter is now in high school herself.

Asta’s best friend, D’Arcy Bloom (Alice Wetterlund), owns the town bar after a skiing accident at the Olympics derailed her career. She’s a borderline alcoholic who so often makes the wrong decisions that you basically think her lot in life is already cast. She thinks that, too, so when she interacts with everyone, there’s general assumption D’Arcy will just always choose wrong.

Sheriff Mike Thompson (Corey Reynolds) and Deputy Liv Baker (Elizabeth Bowen) provide a steady dose of comedy (just in case you think I’m only zeroing in on the everyday drama). Mike’s a veteran cop from Washington, DC, who left the big city for the small town after his partner was killed. He often doesn’t have the right ideas but hides that fact behind over-the-top bluster. Liv is basically ignored by Mike even though she has her brain in the police game and is often correct about the central mystery of the story: what really happened to the real Harry and why are the government officials snooping around. Bowen deadpan delivery, laced with a real-world resignation that she knows she’s too good for the department but doesn’t know how or where to move.

The mayor is a young Ben Hawthorne (Levi Fiehler), a slight man who likes to make candles and takes a backseat in nearly everything and from everyone, especially his more dominant wife, Kate (Meredith Garretson). He dated D’Arcy when they were in school together and Kate sometimes wonders if there’s still a spark.

There a pair of child actors work mentioning as well. Judah Prehn plays Max Hawthorne, the only child of the mayor and his wife. He and his best friend, Sahar, (Gracelyn Awad Rinke) can see Tudyk’s true alien form. Initially they’re scared but soon some to realize they can get things just by threatening Henry.

This may seem like a lot but the story lines are woven pretty well. There is the overarching story of Tudyk’s true mission and which humans ultimately come to know the truth. That’s almost always played for laughs and the laughs are full and genuine.

But it’s the small moments that makes this show rise above others and shine, and this week’s episode was a great example. Asta did a thing that tormented her so Harry used his alien ability and wiped her memory of the incident. The ripple effect meant she missed not only that memory but other things as well, things that hurt others. It was then that Asta told Harry that everything humans experienced, the good as well as the bad, is equally important. For Harry, he’d just as well just be happy, yet that’s not always possible.

D’Arcy’s actions the past few episodes, relationship-wise, were like walking on thin ice. Would she keep making the bad decision and self-sabotaging her life? That’s what she’s always done and there was a moment in this week’s episode when she fell back into the same habit. She had a moment of reflection and made her choice.

Lastly, there was a recurring theme of death, specifically end-of-life. Henry doesn’t understand it and wants to just have it happen away from him. But as a doctor, he needed to be with a dying man who told Henry how good his long life was and how ready he was to see his deceased wife.

Within the span of about ten minutes of the episode, I went from laughing and literally holding my sides to wiping away the sting of tears.

That’s the kind of show Resident Alien is because that’s the way life is. This is a great show and I highly recommend it.

Star Wars Through the Decades

Today marks 45 years since Star Wars debuted. While I didn’t see the movie opening day in 1977, by the time I did, I was hopelessly immersed in a galaxy far, far away. Not only that, but it opened up the broader world of science fiction for me, a world I’ve loved and appreciated these past decades.

I got to thinking about Star Wars and what it meant throughout the years so I did a fun little exercise: how did I perceive Star Wars every five years for the past forty-five years. 

Star Wars at 5 Years (1982)

This was a year from Return of the Jedi—was the title already announced in 1982 as Revenge of the Jedi? This was the spring of my 7th grade year. I had many, many Star Wars toys, the bulk being from the Empire Strikes Back collection. Legos were still a thing as was other science fiction properties, especially Star Trek. I was gearing up for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan debuting in June 1982. Star Wars was always on the radar but with the last movie a year out, it was probably not front and center.

Still, I was and remain a charter member of the Star Wars Generation. It changed me and helped to shape the things I enjoy watching and reading and listening to.

Star Wars at 10 (1987)

I was a senior in high school thirty-five (!) years ago this month. I was heading up to The University of Texas at Austin in August. Music, including high school band, often took center stage of my life, so much so that I tried out for and joined the Longhorn Band.

I actually have no conscious memory of Star Wars from May 1987. The Marvel Comics run had been cancelled in 1986. I still own most of that run, but can’t barely remember any of the storylines. An interesting sidenote to 1983, the year Jedi was released. I was all in on seeing the movie—even paying extra to see it the day before its premiere—and saw it multiple times throughout the summer. But I never bought any Jedi toys. I was moving on from eighth grade to high school. Things were changing for me, just like they were in May 1987. Star Wars, for all intents and purposes, was done. It was wonderful and great and a vital part of my formative years, but that was in the past.

Star Wars at 15 (1992)

Star Wars was back…at least in print. May 1992 saw the publication of Dark Force Rising, the middle book of a new trilogy by Timothy Zahn. 1991’s Heir to the Empire reignited my love of Star Wars, bringing back wondering memories of the franchise and that time of my life. I started talking about Star Wars with college friends and reminiscing.

But, after I’d read Dark Force Rising, that was about it. Batman Returns was a month away and I was eagerly anticipating it. Interestingly, my other childhood favorite thing—KISS—had released their new album, Revenge, in May 1992 and I was spinning that CD constantly. 

Star Wars at 20 (1997)

Star Wars was back…on the big screen. I owned the movies on VHS (still have them) but hadn’t seen them on a theater screen since the early 80s. Now, new special effects were being added to all three movies with the biggest expectation being the Han Solo-meets-Jabba scenes in Mos Eisley. This was awesome stuff. And I really wanted the Biggs/Luke scenes from early in the film to be in there as well. Alas, it wasn’t, and now Han shot second?

But here’s the thing: I loved seeing the old movies again, relishing in my past life, and shrugged off the weird nesses. I knew the movies backward and forward so instantly knew when changes had been made. And I realized during these viewings that this franchise, especially the first two movies, were time capsules. If I let myself just sit and watch, I could be transported back to my younger self. It was magical. 

Star Wars at 25 (2002) 

Yay, a new movie—Attack of the Clones—in the Prequel trilogy. Surely it was going to be better than The Phantom Menace, right? I mean, there’s Anakin as a teenager. Obi-Wan as a badass Jedi. Jango Fett. Samuel L. Jackson and his purple lightsaber. And Yoda as CGI?

Well, AOTC had its moments, but was it better than Phantom Menace? Not really. Looking back to 1999, it is difficult to overstate how excited I was about a new Star Wars movie. That first trailer was so good, but it didn’t live up to expectations. Could it have? Probably not, but at least we were getting new Star Wars movies, right?

I did not follow through and watch the animated series however. Not sure why. I had long since stopped trying to keep up with the novels as well. I read the big ones—especially the novelizations of the movies because they went into additional detail and made for a better story—but that was about it. Star Wars was still important, but it had become one of many things I loved.

Star Wars at 30 (2007)

Honestly, when I think of this year, no Star Wars thing pops into my mind. 2005’s Revenge of the Sith was the best of the Prequel movies. This movie’s novelization was itself the middle book of a little trilogy and I listened to all of them. A nice tidy little story, but then I didn’t read another Star Wars book until 2013’s Scoundrels.

I had finally started reading the Harry Potter books, and in May 2007, I was reading all six then-existing books leading up to the publication of the seventh book in July. Star Wars just wasn’t on my pop culture radar. It was Pixar movies (Ratatouille was in 2007) and things my young son enjoyed.

Star Wars at 35 (2012)

More of the same, to be honest. I’d pull out the soundtracks from time to time and give them a listen. The novels of the Extended Universe were still being published at a rapid rate and I was reading none of them.

I can’t remember exactly when I showed Star Wars to my son. Maybe it was in 2012. But in May 2012, The Avengers had been out a month and I was enjoying the new Marvel cinematic universe. And there was a new Batman movie coming out in July. Star Wars was just one of the things I enjoyed, and mostly not on a day-to-day basis. 

Star Wars at 40 (2017)

In May 2017, we were seven months away from the next movie in the sequel series, The Last Jedi, a movie I enjoyed immensely. The trailer had dropped in April and Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker was back (and speaking!). We were about six months after Rogue One, one of the four most original Star Wars movies made to date. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was the brand-new Marvel movie and Wonder Woman would debut in June.

Had Star Wars been the only major franchise to vie for my attention, it would have earned more attention. But it was just one of many. Perhaps that was one of its lasting legacies.

Star Wars at 45 (2022)

Forty-five years ago today, it started. Ironically, just this past weekend, Colin Cantwell, the guy who designed the X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and the Death Star passed away. We’re getting a hotly anticipated new TV show, Obi-Wan Kenobi, something I’m really looking forward to, not the least of which being a new theme by John Williams.

Television seems to be the place where Star Wars shines nowadays. You have the chance to see new characters, allow them to grow, and not always show the vast galaxy only from the perspective of a single family. I’m happy to follow along with every new Star Wars TV show, watching all the live-action ones (still haven’t started any of the animated series). And I might pick up a book or two along the way. But, like in the heyday of the Extended Universe, I just can’t keep up. It’s a good thing (?) that there is so much because you can drop in here and there, picking up things that interest you and letting other things rest. I know that there are folks out there who memorize every little detail like I did back in the day, but it’s so much more difficult.

Conclusion

Star Wars is special. It’s one of the pop culture cornerstones of my life. It’s a joke in my family that I can’t remember to call a plumber but can still (!) remember random facts from the first movie (like the trash compactor number). Star Wars just is. And it always will be. My interest may ebb and flow, but it never disappears. It’s a part of me, just like it’s probably a part of you, too.

So let’s celebrate Star Wars for what it *is* and not necessarily what you want it to be. It is a multimedia franchise that started forty-five years ago today. It was and remains a story about a boy, a girl, a pair of robots, an old man, a scoundrel and his best friend, and an evil dark lord who welds a mysterious force and a laser sword. It is good vs. evil, the call to adventure, the hero’s journey with a sublimely wonderful soundtrack, and the willingness to stand up to the bad guys, even when all hope is lost. Because one person can make a difference, be it a pilot in an x-wing who can guide a proton torpedo through a 2-meter-wide exhaust port or a film director who has an idea about a movie he’d like to make to recapture the spirit of the movies he himself loved as a younger boy.

It’s that spirit that is at the essence of Star Wars. May that spirit always have a spark of creativity and keep the story going, yet always remembering where it started: in movie theaters forty-five years ago today.

Seventy Years On, The Thing From Another World Still Delivers the Goods, And a New Warning

After watching Them! the other week, I decided to keep going and watch my other favorite science fiction film from the 1950s, The Thing From Another World. Released in the spring of 1951, this is a Howard Hawks's production based on "Who Goes There?" a novella by John E. Campbell from 1938. Chances are good you probably already know the plot--either from this film, the 1982 version starring Kurt Russell--but I'll give you gist.

Up in a remote scientific station in Alaska, a team of Air Force men led by Captain Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) and reporter Ned Scott (Douglas Spencer) are sent up to investigate reports of a nearby crash. Dr. Arthur Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) heads the scientific team and his secretary is an old flame of Hendry's, Nikki Nicholson (Margaret Sheridan). The men fly to the crash site and discover what looks to be a tail of an aircraft sticking out of the ice. They spread out to the edges of the dark shape under the ice and what results is one of the my favorite shots in all of science fiction films: they're standing in a circle and they've discovered a flying saucer.

The team also discovers the pilot, frozen in a block of ice. Naturally, they haul the block back to the station and thus ensues the human conflict. Carrington wants to study the alien while Hendry follows the last orders he'd received prior to a winter storm: leave the creature in the ice. No one is happy, least of all one of the guys who is standing watch over the block of ice. He covers the block with a blanket--that just happens to be an electric blanket which is plugged in--and soon, the creature is defrosted. 

After the team recover the Thing's severed arm--the result of a fight with the sled dogs--the scientists realize the alien is actually an advanced form of a plant. Convinced it is intelligent and envious of all the things he could learn from it, Carrington wants to communicate with it. Captain Hendry wants to kill it, especially after they learn the Thing feeds on the blood of the sled dogs and, naturally, two of the scientists it has killed. Interestingly, Carrington is willing to die for science and thinks all the others should be equally as willing.

The ensuing scenes follow the team as they try and figure out how to kill the Thing with the limited resources they have on hand. With this being a black-and-white film, we get some great shots. There's the one in the doorway.

The Thing on fire.

Carrington's attempt to "grow" new aliens from the blood plasma they have on hand for emergencies.

And the finale, where they design a method to electrocute the Thing.

Science vs. the Military

In many SF films, there are always opposing sides to any first-contact issue, and they are on full display here. Unlike 1954's Them, the military guys don't trust Carrington and his scientific team to do the right thing, that being kill the alien. There's a line about the atomic bomb here that's used as the reason scientists can't be trusted. Coming only six years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki--and two years after the Soviets also got the bomb--the fear is palpable. Even the sporadic orders Hendry receives from his superiors wants him to keep the alien alive. But what are humans to do when confronted with a life form determined to survive itself using human blood? In Them, the lead scientist has zero qualms about killing the giant ants. In The Thing, the scientist is willing to die for knowledge.

The Limitations of 1950s Filmmaking

If you've read the novella or seen the 1982 version, you'll know that the Thing can actually shape-shift. Well, not really shape shift but more like it can imitate other forms it encounters, including other humans. Back in 1951, that would be a difficult thing to pull off convincingly, so Howard Hawks dressed up James Arness, the future Matt Dillon himself, as the alien and allowed him to wreck havoc on the humans. 

The Last Warning

I've always had a fondness for this version of the Thing and find it perfectly acceptable for its time. It's a great snapshot of American life in 1951, with the camaraderie of the military men and the discussion about settling down. Sure, it's not perfectly aligned with the novella, but the movie works on multiple levels. It's a basic Kill the Alien type movie while still being about American life in general, less than a decade after World War II and in the early days of the Cold War and the Korean War.

This fear is catalyzed perfectly in the last scene with a great, short speech by reporter Ned Scott.* Finally allowed to send out his story, Scott delivers the following:

Ned Scott: All right, fellas, here's your story: North Pole, November Third, Ned Scott reporting. One of the world's greatest battles was fought and won today by the human race. Here at the top of the world a handful of American soldiers and civilians met the first invasion from another planet. A man by the name of Noah once saved our world with an ark of wood. Here at the North Pole, a few men performed a similar service with an arc of electricity. The flying saucer which landed here and its pilot have been destroyed, but not without causalities among our own meager forces. I would like to bring to the microphone some of the men responsible for our success... but as Senior Air force officer Captain Hendry is attending to demands over and above the call of duty... Doctor Carrington, the leader of the scientific expedition, is recovering from wounds received in the battle.

Eddie: [Softly] Good for you, Scotty.

Ned Scott: And now before giving you the details of the battle, I bring you a warning: Everyone of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody wherever they are. Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!

"Keep watching the skies." A perfect sentence that crystallized the paranoia and fear of the Cold War, where Americans have realized their oceans no longer protected them from attack when the enemy could fly planes over the United States and drop nuclear weapons on our cities. Here in 2021, after a year of living through the COVID-19 pandemic In which our oceans also didn't protect us, what else should we keep watching?

*I've always wondered if Gene Roddenberry enjoyed this film enough to name Star Trek's chief engineer Scotty.

Sixty-Seven Years Later, THEM! Holds Up

What do Matt Dillion, Daniel Boone, Kris Kringle, and Mr. Spock have in common? They all battled giant ants in 1954.

I can't remember exactly when I first saw this 1954 film, but there's a sliver of a memory from the early 80s when I spent some summer weeks at my grandparents' house in Tyler, Texas and it might've been then. Moreover, I also can't pinpoint when I was re-introduced to this film directed by Gordon Douglas. Sometime this century. But it has vaulted to one of my favorite 1950s-era science fiction movies.

I watched it again over the weekend, first time in a few years, and boy does it hold up well. It is sixty-seven years old this month, and still packs some genuine suspense, especially during the anticipation of first seeing the ants and, of course, their sound effect.

The atomic bomb tests at Alamogordo, New Mexico, were only nine years old when THEM was released, and the unknowns about nuclear energy were still being learned. It is nuclear radiation that morphs the common small ant into the giant behemoths we see in the film. 

The opening sequence is gripping and unsettling, as we follow a pair of New Mexico state troopers as they discover a little girl wandering in the desert. She's catatonic, in a speechless state of shock. Even as the troopers, one of whom is played by James Whitmore, investigate what happened to her family and a nearby store owner, they can't make heads or tails of the destruction. It's only when we hear that distinctive sound effect of the ants does the girl react. Cleverly, Whitmore and a doctor do not see the girl rise up from her resting spot, terror across her face, only to lie down again, eyes wide in fear.

That sound effect. Most every time, it precedes the visuals of the creatures, and it adds so much suspense for the viewer. I defy you not to have a little chilly twinge crawl up your spine when you hear it. One of the troopers hears the high-pitched sound and goes off screen to investigate. The last thing we hear is his own death scream. 

What struck me with this viewing is how the first half of the film is basically a crime film. There are the investigators--now including an FBI agent played by James Arness (Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke), and a pair of scientists, father and daughter, played by Edmund Gwenn (Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street) and Joan Weldon--just trying to figure out what's going on. The monsters drop out of their own film largely because of costs, I assume, but the unknown facing the investigators makes for quite an urgent story. The investigators scour news reports and interview eyewitnesses--including Fess Parker (star of the Daniel Boone TV show) as a pilot who saw the queen ants flying west but is thrown in an insane asylum because of his wild story. 

There's even a scene where our heroes discover another nest of ants, the workers protecting both a pair of queen ants and their eggs. Reminded me of Aliens (1986) and how many other monster films. 

A young Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek's Mr. Spock) shows up as a soldier relaying information from the teletype machine.

They finally figure out there's a nest in the sewers of Los Angeles. At this point, we jump to a more traditional monster film: humans hunting the creatures in darkened tunnels, the suspense escalating. That a prime weapon is flamethrowers lends itself to some gruesome imagery of the ants being consumed by fire. 

From a historical perspective, what I appreciate about THEM is how the soldiers and the scientists worked together. The military defers to the entomologists in the discovery of the insects, but the scientists don't want to preserve one for study, a trope in many films of this kind. No, the scientists know exactly what they need to do and work to that end. This is also a year after the Korean War where our military and the government is still held with a certain amount of respect by the civilians. Many of the side characters accept what the FBI agents tell them without question. I bet you'd get quite a different kind of movie nowadays. 

We also get a potential lesson at the close of the film, as the last nest of ants are consumed by flames. "When Man entered the Atomic Age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict." Looking to sixty-seven years to 1954 from the vantage point of 2021, we can see how many of the nuclear fears of the early days of the Cold War didn't pan out, and we're all relieved by it. But in our post-COVID pandemic era, when the origin of the virus is still not fully known, what are our fears now? What might the folks sixty-seven years hence--2088--think of our current fears. Will they pan out, or will they fester into something greater?

Hilarity in Space: Space Team by Barry J. Hutchison

I haven't had this much fun with a book in a long time.

I've been a part of a science fiction/fantasy book club with the same group of folks for over a decade now. There are now six of us and each month, we take turns selecting a book. Some choose award-winning classics. Others choose new works by established authors. Sometimes we choose wild cards, new-to-us authors that somehow catch the selector's fancy. It was in the latter category that Space Team by Barry J. Hutchison landed on my to-be-read stack.

I didn't choose it, but I'm sure glad my friend did.

Space Team is the first of a 12-book series. If the cover doesn't give you a sense of the type of book it is, the tagline will: "The galaxy just called for help. Unfortunately, it dialed the wrong number."

Cal Carver is a motor-mouthed con man who is "accidentally" put in a prison cell with a notorious, cannibalistic serial killer named Eugene. Cal only has to spend one night in the cell before he (might?) is transferred, but he takes matters into his own hands and tries to take out Eugene. Surprisingly he manages to do just that, but then the bug things arrive and he is snatched away.

Bug things, you ask? Why yes. Little nanobots were sent by aliens with the sole purpose of enabling said aliens to abduct “the person in Eugene’s cell” and deliver him to the spaceship. The aliens kidnap the one person in the cell. That’s Cal. Why? Well, Eugene is needed for a very special mission. See where I'm going with this? Cal is mistaken for Eugene the Cannibal.

But that's not even the worst part. Once he is aboard his very first spaceship, he learns about the mission and the entities with whom he is supposed to carry out said mission. There is the blue-skinned female soldier who just follows orders and tries to fend off Cal’s advances. There is the werewolf female alien who barely keeps her temper in check while she puts the moves on Cal. There’s Mech, a cyborg who has a dial that can turn him either all logical or all berserker. And there’s Splurt, a shape-shifting alien described best as Silly Putty with eyes.

This band of misfits—aren’t all memorable teams misfits?—is given a mission to warp across the galaxy and deliver some crucial information to a notorious alien bad guy. In exchange, the misfits will earn immunity from the crimes they committed and will we handsomely rewarded.

So you have the type of story that works so well in just about any version of science fiction or fantasy: a newbie lead character who is teamed with veterans who get to explain all the new things the newbie encounters. Along the way, newbie is able to play to his strengths. In Cal’s case, that’s his quick-witted responses to all the stuff thrown in the team’s path.

There is a high level of frivolity in Hutchison’s book and he writes the characters quite well. With Cal the central character, he is played off each being on the team. His back-and-forth with Mech is hilarious, with Mech constantly wanting to throw Cal out the airlock for the Earthling’s incessant talking and adding the word “space” in front of every new thing he sees. Thus, the title of the book. Cal genuinely cares for Splurt and goes out of his way to include the oddball alien in the group.

The Audiobook is Fantastic

I’m an avid audiobook listener and get more than half the stories I consume in this manner. Narration is key. A good narrator can add that special sauce that heightens the story above where the author wrote.

That is the case here with Phil Thron. This is the first I’ve heard of him, but it won’t be the last. He nails the four main characters aurally so that you don’t need the ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ attributions. Cal is basically Phil’s voice. Mech goes back and forth depending on where his dial is. When he’s the emotionless, all-logical version, Thron uses a British accent. But normally, he’s like a gruff drill sergeant who’s had it up to here with Cal’s yammering. Lauren is a pretty good male-actor-reading-a-female part, not always easy to do. In fact, I haven’t heard it this good since Johnny Heller and Robert Petkoff each did the Nikki Heat books. For our werewolf lady, Thron puts just enough California valley girl into his voice to give that extra sous son of goodness.

The Accidental Discovery via the Audiobook

I listen to many audiobooks, so many that often, I’m down to a week to listen to the latest SF book from the club. If I find myself with too few days and too many hours in a book, I’ll up the narration speed on the Audible app. This does not make the narrator sound like a chipmunk. Rather, it has the effect of shortening the silences between words and sentences. For Space Team, I bumped up the playback speed to 1.4.

And it played perfectly with this book.

Remember how I said Cal was a motor mouth? Well, by playing Phil Thron’s narration at this speed, Cal’s mouth flies by and actually makes him come across like Nathan Fillion in Castle. Now, that TV show is one of my all-time favorites so I was in aural heaven.

I think you can figure out how much I enjoyed this book. I laughed out loud numerous time. And there’s a moment, late in the book, when Mech speaks a simple phrase and dang it if I didn’t literally cheer aloud. I was trimming and bundling hedge clippings so no family member looked at me askance.

How much did I love this book? I’ve already gone back and purchased books 2 and 3 (actually the first three books are available as a single unit on Audible).

Highly recommended.

For a list of all the other books in this month’s book club, click the icon.

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@Barrie Summy

Recursion by Blake Crouch: A Time Travel Book with Heart and Thrills

 

(Imagine my surprise yesterday when I finished this review and went to post it on DoSomeDamage...only to discover my fellow author, Beau Johnson, also reviewed it. No, you are not suffering from False Memory Syndrome. Perhaps that is yet another key indicator of how good this book is.)

How often do you read a book in which the last sentence is the perfect end to the story?

Well, I finished one this week, and the last line was awesome.

Recursion by Blake Crouch is a thriller with a huge scoop of science fiction, specifically time travel. It was the most recent selection for my SF book club although I wasn't the chooser. We generally keep our selections within the genre--I actually picked the Sherlock Holmes book The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz--but occasionally we get books like this one. But this is one that really leans into the thriller aspects and it kept me engrossed all the way through.

As the story opens, New York police detective Barry Sutton has lived eleven years without his teenaged daughter who was killed in a hit-and-run accident. He's meeting his now ex-wife to commemorate their daughters birth. There have been a lot of things called False Memory Syndrome, a condition where folks remember whole other lives. 

In the reality of the story, these are alternate timelines.

Soon, Barry meets Helena, a scientist with a mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Her goal is to invent a tool that can help map her mom's memories before they are all gone. What another character realizes is that this machine can be used to travel back in time to a specific, vivid memory. And, when a time traveler arrives at the point in time where the traveler actually left, all the other timeline's memories cascade on them...and everyone else.

And there's a race...against time. 

I really enjoyed it. Loved it, actually. As recent as this past weekend, I hadn't even started it. I started listening while doing chores...then started finding new chores to do so I could keep listening. The Houston Texans helped by sucking so I stopped watching and started listening to this book. The premise drew me in pretty quickly and just kept me going.

The alternating narrators really worked in the audio. Enjoyed both of them. 

Really liked the moments when a certain timeline caught up with a character. When I was explaining this to the wife, what came to mind (but not during the reading) was the end of the movie Frequency back in 2000. Also had lots of echoes to Replay by Ken Grimwood.

Go no further if you don't want the spoiler, so if you don't, I thoroughly enjoyed Recursion and would highly recommend it.

SPOILERS for the end

Lastly, it is very rare that a last line of a book is this awesome, but this one is. Again, this is where listening to an audio version really brought it home. I was standing in line at the DPS on Tuesday. Outside, morning sun, looking at all the other folks doing what I'm doing. Crouch is talking from Barry's POV and building it up to talk to Helena. This is after he's killed the bad to prevent the whole thing from even starting. And he has realized that life has pain and that, as humans, we just have to deal with it. 

And then the last line! "And he says...."  I barked out a "HA!" as the credits rolled, grinning big time. Loved it! Crouch let the reader finish the story, creating our own, unique timelines.

Back to the Future and George McFly: When Did He Know?

On Friday, when asked what movie he wanted to watch that night, my boy suggested Back to the Future. Easy sell for me. BTTF is one of my all-time Top 10 movies. It is wonderfully self-contained and perfect. The music. The acting. The actors: Christopher Lloyd's facial expression! Lea Thompson's Loraine as a teenager. Her falling in love with George after he belted Biff. Even Biff's transformation in the new 1985 was spot on.

But I got to thinking about the time travel aspect as well as the characters themselves. Despite what Avengers: Endgame posited, let's keep BTTF's time travel idea in mind: Marty travels back to 1955, meets his parents, and, as a result of the differences, returns to 1985 with a new life. In this new life, his siblings are successful and his parents are happy and in love. We already know George loved science fiction. We know that George as a teenager was visited by an alien named Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan. Which brings us to a simple question:

When did George McFly know his own son Marty was the same Marty from 1955?

The Star Trek Coincidence

I think most of us over the past 34 (!) years have wondered about a couple of things, both of which have to do with his parents. Let's zero in on George McFly in particular. As a teenager in 1955, he meets Marty who basically appears out of nowhere and helps George learn how to stand up for himself. A part of that is Marty, dressed up in his radiation suit, visiting George's room. He refers to himself as "Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan."

Now, what do you suppose George thought when, as a science fiction fan (and future writer), he watches the 1966 debut of the new TV show Star Trek. "Hey, that's funny. That weird guy I met eleven years ago mentioned he was from the planet Vulcan, just like this Spock character. What are the odds of that?"

The Rug Fire

Cut to, say, the summer of 1976. His youngest child, Marty, is named after that strange kid he knew for a week back in 1955. Sure, he and Loraine named their second son after their friend Marty, but you have to assume George rarely if ever thinks about his high school days. Then, the young Marty accidentally sets fire to the living room rug. A memory ticks at him. Marty, back in 1955, mentions that if George and Loraine had a kid who did what their youngest child just did, to go easy on the boy. Maybe the Vulcan thing is a coincidence, but this? No, this is something more. George's mind turns it over and over. How in the world could Marty the Teenager accurately predict Marty the Eight Year Old would set fire to the living room rug?

How indeed?

Star Wars and the Darth Vader Coincidence

Cut to 1977 when George, now a dad of three kids, takes the family to see the new SF movie, Star Wars. In that film, he learns there is a character called Darth Vader. Maybe's he's shrugged off the Vulcan thing or it rarely enters his mind, but you have to know the memory of that night in his bedroom back in 1955 with that strange alien who called himself Darth Vader.

Now we have two pop cultural references and a very specific moment in young Marty's life that George has experienced. One can assume, considering George's first book was science fiction, that he continued to read and watch science fiction books and movies and TV shows. One can also assume that he would be aware of the concept of time travel over the 60s and 70s and into the 80s. It was in the Twilight Zone, Planet of the Apes, and, of course, H.G. Wells's book and movie.

Time travel was always in the back of his might, right?

His Son Learns the Guitar

Sometime in his high school years, Marty McFly gets the music bug. He picks up a guitar and learns how to make it talk. He's got Van Halen as his modern inspiration, but he also loves the classics. And what better classic riff is there that Chuck Berry's 1958 song "Johnny B. Goode"? Naturally, young Marty sits in his room, guitar in hand, and learns all the chords to that song. You can imagine George, who is now empowered, listening to his youngest son up in his room work out the notes until he has the song down pat. One might even assume a proud Marty invite his parents and siblings up to his room for a mini concert. "I've been working on this for a bit, but I finally got it," Marty might say before breaking out the opening riff.

George's mind would naturally return to that night in 1955 at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance when he and Loraine fell in love.

And that friend of his, Marty: 1955, played this same song. What are the odds of that?

Seeing His Son Look Just Like Marty: 1955

We parents see our children grow older gradually, day by day. But there is always that one moment when you look at your child and it hits you: the child is no longer a kid. He's a youth. He's a teenager. He's all grown up.

Marty McFly and I are the same age. That means the summer of 1985 was the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. If you want, we can make Marty a grade older, say, the summer between his junior and senior year of high school.

Seeing his son age daily, perhaps George might not have "seen" Marty: 1985 as Marty: 1955. But he or Loraine snapped that photograph we see all during the movie. Let's say it was Loraine. She gets the film developed and shows George that night. "Look at how old our kids are, George," she might say.

George would look at the photograph and see not just how old Marty His Son had become but he would also see Marty: 1955.

And it would click.

George Would Know

By the summer of 1985, George has already written his novel, inspired by his real-life events from thirty years before. Chances are good George might've changed what "Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan" said in 1955 because there's already a Vader and a planet Vulcan in pop culture. But he would have realized that the alien who visited him had to have been a time traveler.

And that time traveler was his own son.

George isn't dumb. He would have easily deduced Doc Brown the Inventor was the man responsible for building a time machine. Doc Brown and Marty: 1985 spend lots of time together. It is the only answer.

George McFly, lifelong lover of science fiction and writer of a brand-new science fiction novel, now would know time travel is real and his son has done it.

Which means there is the obvious question: when would George ask Marty:1985 and Doc Brown about it. Because if you're George McFly, you absolutely want to travel through time, right? But George would have to know the exact date Marty left 1985 and traveled back to 1955. For that, he might hit a brick wall. How does he find out?

A Conversation Between George McFly and Doc Brown

If he asks his son about time travel before Marty leaves, George knows he could risk disrupting the space-time continuum. C'mon. He's seen lots of movies and TV shows. He's seen the original Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever" and knows all about not disrupting the timeline.

So he does what any normal parent would do: ask Marty's friend, who just happens to be the inventor of the time machine. Ostensibly, George could show up at Doc's doorstep and just talk, man to man, about the relationship between Marty and Doc. A concerned parent would want to know, right?

But George would have to assume Doc's already working on or have already invented the time machine. George wouldn't know what form it takes, but it has to be in the window from the time Marty met Doc and they started hanging out together (not sure when. Maybe a year or two? So, the freshman year of high school.) and that very day.

George, being a smart man, might indirectly ask Doc about time travel or this and that. Doc would, naturally, be cautious. Why is the dad of my teenaged friend asking me questions about time travel?

But this is the More Enlightened Doc Brown. He read the note Marty: 1985 left in 1955. He knows about the night of the first test of the time machine. He's made preparations and already bought the bulletproof vest.

And Doc's just now realized George McFly, standing in his laboratory, knows about not only the time machine but that Marty is the time traveler.  There's that moment between them. Likely no words are spoken. It's just eyes of a father staring at the eyes of the man who invented time travel.

Doc would be the one to speak first, addressing the one answer any father would want to hear. "I get him back safely."

George would nod. "Thanks. When I finally figured it out, that explains why the Marty in 1955 just vanishes." He pauses, wanting to ask more questions, trying not to jump the most obvious one. "How does it work?"

And Doc would tell George McFly about the flux capacitor and show him the Deloren. He would explain the science and tell his side of things from 1955. He might also remind George about those few times over the past decades where Doc Brown would show up, say, at town picnic or a parade, to see and make sure George and Loraine are still together. Maybe Doc even shows George a newspaper clipping announcing their engagement and marriage.

Doc would then ask George when and how he knew. George would explain. At the end of the afternoon, the two men would have had a nice conversation, stimulating and mind-bending in its repercussions.

George would then, finally, ask his question. "Can I go?"

Doc would smile knowingly. He already knew the question was coming. He just waited for the younger man to ask it. He would already have his answer ready.

"Not until after Saturday, October 26. That's when Marty leaves and to which he returns. After he gets back, I'm going to want to have a go at it." He would smile. "I want to see what 2015 looks like."

George's eyes would get bigger. "The future," he would say in a whispered tone. "I want to see the future, too."

Doc would clap George McFly on the shoulder. "I'll look you up when I get there." He would squeeze George's shoulder and bring him face to face. "But you can't say anything to Marty until after October 26th. You can't even let on that you know. You can't even tell your wife." He pauses, looking at George. "Does she know?"

George knows Loraine is a smart woman, but admits he's not brought it up to her.

"Make sure she doesn't say anything to Marty. We can't risk upsetting the timeline." If he hasn't already, Doc would explain how the photograph of the three McFly children changed and reverted back again.

"It's fixed now?" George asks.

"Yes. But if you let on to Marty you know about him, it'll all be erased from existence."

George would nod. "Got it."

He would inhale and look at the time machine. Maybe he notices the calendar hanging from the wall and notes how far away October 26 is from that day.

Then, maybe a thought strikes George. He frowns.

"What is it?" Doc asks.

"When Marty returns to this time, will he remember the original timeline?"

Doc's eyes narrow in thought. "Maybe. Here, come over to this chalkboard, and let's talk through the possibilities."

Summary

This is really a thought experiment. It's all just occurred to me since I re-watched BTTF on Friday night. Maybe there are websites that go into detail about this--I'm sure there are--but I don't know them.

What do you think? Do you think George McFly knew about Marty? What would you do in George's place? And where would you go in time?

Replay by Ken Grimwood

(With a certain famous movie out recently dealing with time travel, I thought I'd post a review of a book that takes a different look at what it would really be like to go back.)

What if your life had a reset button, just like the old Nintendo game consoles? Would you push that button?

First published in 1986, Ken Grimwood’s REPLAY asks that very question and provides one answer. Jeff Winston is a 43-year-old man, a journalist by trade, with a marriage that has meandered off course. One day, sitting in his office, Jeff dies of a heart attack. The next moment, he wakes up in his college dorm room. It’s May 1963 at Emory University in Atlanta. As bewildered as he is, he slowly comes to the conclusion that—somehow, someway—he is living his life over again, but with one huge caveat: He remembers everything from Life Prime, or Life 1.

Seeing this as an opportunity to “get things right,” Jeff decides he’s going to get rich, quick. He bets on a horse race, one in which the outcome nobody saw coming, and makes a substantial amount of money. Next, he convinces a friend—one who committed suicide in Life 1—to journey with him to Las Vegas where he wins even more cash. He also finds a pretty young lady, one you wouldn’t necessarily want to take home to the parents on Thanksgiving, but one who wants nothing more than to quench the lust of the young and spend a lot of money. Isn’t that what every 18-year-old wants? For Jeff, the answer is yes.

Until he wonders if he can change the course of history. It’s summer 1963. Later that fall, President Kennedy will be assassinated, but only Jeff knows where and when. So he does what any Baby Boomer would do: try and stop it. He concocts a fake letter as if from Lee Harvey Oswald and sends it to the White House. Naturally, the Secret Service arrest Oswald days before the 22nd of November. And, yet, Kennedy still dies. The shooter now has a different name.

If you read the description at your favorite bookstore, I’m giving away nothing away when I say that when Life 2 Jeff Winston reaches his 43rd year, he dies again. And again he wakes up at Emory University, May 1963. Only this time, Life 3 is a little past where Life 2 began. All that he knew in Life 1 and Life 2 is still intact in his memory, yet Life 2 is erased from history. Now, Jeff has another 25-year life to live, but this time, it’ll be different. But he’s already starting to realize that on that particular day in his 43rd year, he’ll die yet again. Perhaps, however, he can do something about that. He tries certain things, but I’ll leave you to read and discover the outcome.

This book is simply marvelous. It was a selection of my science fiction/fantasy book club, an informal gathering of five guys that has gone on for seven years. I didn’t select the book, but it’s already in my Top 10. While this book might be classified as fantasy, there is no magic. For all intents and purposes, this is a standard fiction book with the one conceit. Jeff makes his choices and has to live with the consequences. What really makes this book shine is the length to which Grimwood details Life 2 and Life 3. In Life 2, Grimwood has Jeff Winston make the obvious choice many of us would make: I want a life with more money. Jeff reaches a certain conclusion, so that when he starts Life 3, he makes different choices. I’d say that Life 2 and Life 3 take up at least half the book, maybe two-thirds (I listened to the audio). That time really allows the reader to become immersed in Jeff’s world and gives the reader the opportunity to ask the big question: If you could relive your life over again, what, if anything, would you do different?

This book asks so many deep questions of the reader. One is about the nature of history and typical time travel stories. The central idea of time travel is that a person can go back into the past and change history. That’s what Marty McFly did in “Back to the Future.” (As an aside, I can’t help but wonder if the writers of Back to the Future II read REPLAY or if betting on sure winners is just standard fare in time travel stories.) But what if the flow of history is too great a force to overcome? That’s where REPLAY goes. Jeff gets Lee Harvey Oswald arrested, but someone else kills Kennedy. Thus, was Kennedy always destined to die in Dallas? In Grimwood’s version, yes.

REPLAY is one of the best books I’ve read this year. My historian self reveled in the minor details Grimwood changed. My reader self loved diving deep into a character’s mind and seeing him through many lives. I was also richly rewarded with the ending, the nature of which I’ll detail below in an “EPILOGUE.” There will be spoilers, so if you don’t want to know the ending, stop reading now.

You know I love this book. You should give it a try.

Oh, and I have my answer to the first question I posed. Do you?

The Others by Jeremy Robinson

It's not often a writer can bring something fresh to a trope, but Jeremy Robinson did.

A PI in a SF Tale

Dan Delgado is a private investigator who specializes in the usual things: cheating spouses, missing people, digging up dirt on corporations. In a former life, he was a San Francisco police detective, work he enjoys quite a bit more. He's widowed. And, as a secretary, he has Wini, a no-nonsense lady fond of tight skirts for her middle-aged body.

Then he gets a call: an illegal immigrant frantically calls and wants Delgado's help. Her daughter has gone missing. She can't go to the police or she'll be deported. Delgado and Wink go to the lady's house, but can find no trace of her or her missing daughter.

But they certainly hear the deep thwumps of helicopter blades. And there's a warning on his phone. It tells him to flee. Now.

Well-written Hero Shines

Thus begins THE OTHERS by Jeremy Robinson. It's a standalone book, unlike PROJECT: NEMESIS, another book I've read with my science fiction book club. One of the things the five of us often discuss is how so many books are always firsts in a series. Nothing wrong with that, especially from a selling perspective. But every now and then, it's good to read a standalone, a one-and-done book. That's what makes THE OTHERS so good.

Delgado is a likable protagonist. You know exactly what makes him tick, what kind of man he is, and, as the story goes on and things go from bad to worse to really messed up, you can guess his decisions even before he makes them. I say that not as a critique, but as an example of how well written Delgado is.

All of the characters get this treatment. You never leave Delgado's POV, but you know how he feels about them and it's all based on these other characters' decisions and actions. There were a couple of moments when I thought "Well, isn't that little tidbit a little to easy on the plot?" Turns out, Delgado thought the same thing, and then he learns the reality behind said action.

A Fresh Approach

As good as it is to have a one-and-done book, it's also pretty neat to have a new-to-me approach to the whole UFO and abduction phenomena. I'll say nothing more here because the discovery is well worth the wait, but in my limited knowledge of UFOology, Robinson's idea is quite reasonable and understandable.

Action With Thought and Heart

There's quite a bit of action in this story. It would make a terrific tentpole summer movie, best released the week after Independence Day when the summer's just scorching and you just want to recline in air-conditioned comfort and be shown something new. 

But that action isn't devoid of meaning. Delgado and his make-shift family ponder big ideas and big decisions not with a pithy one-liner from a movie, but genuine feeling and worry. I enjoyed him as a protagonist...but do not need a series. Just leave it be.

The narrator of the audiobook, R. C. Bray, was great, really giving Delgado's character a no BS vibe. I found myself actively finding things to do around the house just so I could plug in the earbuds and listen.

My book club pals and I grade our books on a standard school letter grade. There was little I disliked. I give THE OTHERS an A.

Head over to Jeremy's site for a preview.

RIP Gardner Dozois: 1947-2018

Gardner Dozois passed away this weekend, and the modern science fiction community has lost a giant.

He was the editor of Asimov’s magazine for 20 years, a position with which he earned 15 Hugo Awards. But it was as the editor of his annual Year's Best Science Fiction collections that I came to really know him. These massive tomes topped out at hundreds of pages and 100,000s of words. The stories he selected were always cream of the crop, but it was for his in-depth introductions that I always bought these books. In the age before the internet, his summation of the previous year’s activities in all aspects of SF/F was required reading. It still is. Often, I would not get through an entire anthology but I always read Dozois's introductions.

The SF/F community will definitely miss Dozois’s vision, but if we’ve learned anything from science fiction literature, it’s that we always look to the future, a future Gardner Dozois helped shape.

Starfire: A Red Peace by Spencer Ellsworth

Sometimes, you want a little weird in your space opera. If that’s you, then STARFIRE: A RED PEACE is the book for you.

First, a little parsing of the word ‘weird.’ I don’t use that word in the sense that what you read in this first book a new space opera trilogy is odd (but it is). Rather, I use the term ‘weird’ as the type of genre fiction made most popular by old masters like H. P. Lovecraft and new practitioners like China Mieville. Weird fiction deals with the supernatural in a non-magical kind of way and, in my limited knowledge, a lot of insectoid stuff. It’s an curious distinction, and one I honestly haven’t seen in a mainstream work of science fiction before.*

A Red Peace by Spencer Ellsworth (who landed on my radar after reading this interview by Chuck Wendig) is space opera in the grand old style: space battles between rival groups (a Resistance and an Empire; sound familiar?), interesting ways in which humans have evolved over the centuries with tech, and new-to-me concept like the soul sword (it not only kills you, but the welder accumulates all the memories of the victim). If Star Wars: The Last Jedi merely whetted your appetite for more space opera, Ellsworth’s book is perfect.

The story is told in two different, first person, present tense points of view, allowing you to see this new world from two distinct vantage points. Jaqi, an eighteen-year-old “cross” (not all human) who—and stop me if this sounds familiar— is a navigator taking any job she can get in order to put food in her stomach. Naturally, she gets herself involved in a grander story when she happens upon three human kids. Yeah, they’re human—a rarity in this galaxy from the lost Earth—but they also have the McGuffin (ahem, black box) that John Starfire, the hero of the Empire wants. Does Jaqi help the kids? You know the answer.

The other main character is Araskar, another “cross” who was born out of the vats only five years ago. He’s a soldier under Starfire’s command and, surprisingly, a seasoned veteran in an army that seems only to grow men like Araskar in order for them to be cannon fodder. He’s got a drug habit, but he’s also ready to stop fighting. As you can imagine, Araskar is part of the group assigned to locate the missing children and retrieve what they possess.

Oh, and there are sun-sized spiders and spaceships that are nothing more than the abandoned carapaces of an insectoid race of aliens that Araskar and his soldiers actually get inside of and pilot. Complete with slime.

Yeah, color me intrigued.

What also intrigued me was Ellsworth incorporation of music as a type of "Force." Not sure I've seen that before either.

At only 208 pages (6 hours and 20 minutes in the audio), Ellsworth packs a lot into this slim novel. The pace never lets up as the characters run pell mell through the paces. In a novel as short as this, there isn’t a lot of time for world building. If you’re like me, there’s nothing that grinds a story to a halt than a long discourse into some world building an author feels compelled to write simply because they dreamed it up. Ellsworth often lets the reader just figure things out—not too difficult, really—and occasionally throws in a sentence or two of explanation, usually in the middle of the action. So welcome.

A Red Peace is a splendid book and what better recommendation do you need other than me telling you I’m ready to dive into book 2, Shadow Sun Seven, right now before the third book, Memory’s Blade (out 27 February) is published. Just look at those covers!

*If you know of any other examples, please let me know.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

ESCAPE is the third movie of the original five-movie Planet of the Apes saga. If I’ve ever watched it, I have no conscious memory of it, so, for all intents and purposes, this is my first time viewing it.

BTW, for those keeping score at home, you’ll likely note there is no review for Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). I wrote one for the original 1968 film. It is better this way. I just flat-out didn’t like it and was glad they went ahead with ESCAPE.

ESCAPE opens with a great shot: three astronauts emerging from the same spacecraft Charleton Heston used in the original POTA movie, except this time, when the trio remove their helmets, they are revealed to be apes! From the future! The producers, probably realizing their mistake with BENEATH, brought back the two best apes from the first film, Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) and threw in a third one who dies pretty quickly and I’ve already forgotten his name. Thus, two simultaneous things are at play now: the apes can comment on modern culture circa 1971 and the producers can save a ton of money by needing only to have two actors in make up.

Zira and Cornelius are befriended by a kind scientist, Dr. Lewis Dixon, who takes them on a whirlwind tour of Los Angeles (another way to save money by shooting locally) and letting them experience everything we humans take for granted. In the meantime, the President has started a special commission to determine what to do with the pair of simians and what nefarious means they might or might not have used to overpower Heston’s character in the future.

Naturally, there are misunderstandings and imprisonments, escapes and chases. A few things struck me, however. There is a lot of talking in this film (and the previous two). Characters discuss who should live or die and what it means to be the dominant caretaker special of the planet. The humans, of course, are horrified that the future apes experimented on humans, forgetting that we humans now experiment on nearly all animals considered lower than us on the food chain. It was also nice to see the President being a voice of reason. Too often in films, this is not the case. Lastly, I find it strange that the humans of 1971 care so much about events 2,000 years in the future. We must kill these two apes now to prevent Future Apes from becoming the dominant species. Really? But it’s a decent plot point.

The ending was a surprise when I watched the film but not so much given some more time for thought. There was little where to go with the current story line so it needed to end the way it did. Not nearly as iconic as the original POTA film, but right in line with nearly every other monster movie ever made.

A little nuance struck me while watching the film. If you take the titles literally, then ESCAPE is the three Future Apes escaping back into the past in order to live. However, as the story progresses, you can also interpret the title to mean that we humans in 1971 are the “beasts” and that the Future Apes must escape from 1971. But they have nowhere to go.

Enjoyable film and I’m looking forward to the next one, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

Podcasts I Like: 70s Trek

They had me at the title: “70s Trek.” 

Heck, they had me at "70s"!

I listened to the first episode, then promptly downloaded all episodes up to that point (29 at the time). I binge-listened to all of them in a week’s time, loving every minute of each episode.

I was born during Star Trek’s third season so I grew up with Star Trek. Now, I’ll admit that my memory is a tad hazy and I only came to Trek after Star Wars debuted, but that’s where this podcast comes in.

Hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto are a delightful pair, easy on the ears, with a warm comradery and shared love of Trek in the 70s. In each episode that averages around 30 minutes, Bob and Kelly examine some aspect of Trek. While you don’t have to listen in order, it’s not a bad idea as you’ll get a good overview of how Trek came to be and the influences that went into its creation.

The main focus, however, is the 1970s, as the tagline reads, “The decade that built a franchise.” For us, over 50 years on, Trek permeates our daily lives, from cell phones to tablet computers to speaking to our computers. But Bob and Kelly take us back and remind us what it was like to be a fan of Trek in the 70s. Fans in the 70s didn’t know a lot. They had only a few books. They had a cartoon. Heck, they never even knew if there’d be any more live-action Trek. After all, Trek was actually a cancelled TV show, but it proved to be much more than that.

One of the aspects of this podcast that remains joyful is Bob and Kelly’s sense of wonder. Often one of them will take the lead on a particular subject, leaving the other co-host the first listener. Many times, new facts will be revealed, and cries of “I didn’t know that!” are great fun. What’s also fun is their clear joy at the subject and other things in Trek’s orbit.

So far (remember: I’m still catching up) a particular favorite episode is #3 (What We Knew in 1970), #13 (the Richard Arnold interview), and #9 (Star Trek in Syndication).

This is a love letter to Star Trek, the people behind it, the fans that kept it alive in the 1970s, and everything in between.
70s Trek has now firmly ensconced itself in my weekly podcast schedule. Utterly and completely enjoyable.

Oh, they have a Facebook presence and respond personally to comments. So after you subscribe to the podcast, head over there and join the conversation.

iTunes