Part 1 of a Private Pain

A Private Pain

By Patrick Prescott

I shiver huddled in a lonely cave

I shout, I rant, I rave.

The game of life has been played

Though I don’t know how I strayed.

The ache within my chest

Will give me no peaceful rest

Oh God

Oh God

OH GOD!

(silence)

I hurt.

II

I am Niqmiepu of the farmer Grails

We farmed with the ivory in our tails.

We sowed the ground in a single pass

Now all around me is not a single blade of grass.

Hunters from the sky

Came to kill and we didn’t know why

They traded with the Prails

And allied with the Drails

To chase us down

For slaughter in every town.

It was the ivory they sought,

Too late we vainly fought.

With all the farmers killed

None of the land is tilled

As fallow our soil does lie

The Prails and Drails now die.

Finally there was only Ishme

Who was my wife, and me.

We hurriedly fled

Our feet sorely bled

Till we rested by a tree

There was no one we could see.

Ishme, my wife was hurt

And her face was covered in dirt.

We holed up in this cave

Where for food we began to crave.

She grew thin as a rail

And as white as her tail.

While in a fever I perspired

Ishme’s breath gradually expired

Panting on her side she did lie

Slowly I watched her die.

I buried her with dust and tears

She was the last of my peers.

Come sweet death

Take my lonely breath

My race is lost

At tremendous cost

My tail I kept

My eyes have wept

For those who died

And for those who tried

To save my race

Now there is no place

For us to live

And no love for me to give

Come sweet death

Take my lonely breath.

# # # # #

Moon Fall

PAIN!!!!

AGONY!!!

WHY CAN’T I SSSSCCCCRRRREEEEAAAAMMMM!!!!!!!!!!

Mater observed Yeoman Lotz stir in the stasis tube. The beginning of thawing. She whispered softly to the 25-year-old woman, “This will be over soon. You’ve been in stasis for ninety years.”

Yeoman Lotz never heard the computer. She was in cellular rejuvenation and as each cell in her body thawed it stimulated the central nervous system which broadcast the sensory overload to the cerebral cortex. Unfortunately, the brain was not sufficiently thawed to release endorphins to lessen the pain.

Slowly Izzy Lotz became aware of more than the excruciating pain. Memories came back of boarding the Virgo Exploratory Ship Arrow. Being put into the stasis tube. It felt like only a few minutes before the burning began.

A year before graduation from the Virgo Corporation Exploratory Academy, she was placed in stasis for a month. It was painful upon awakening, but that was a pin prick in comparison to being skinned alive.

The stasis tube extended and the top opened. Hands reached down and lifted her onto a gurney. The sheets she rested on were warm and the ones placed on top of her were even warmer. Slowly her eyes opened to a dark room. There was just enough light for her eyes to focus on a shadow hovering over her. 
Something was in her mouth. A tube was forcing air into her lungs. She tried to lift her hands, but they as well as the rest of her body was in restraints.

“Yeoman Lotz, can you hear me?” A soft voice asked. “If you can, blink your eyes.”

She blinked.

Mater continued, “Commander Corbin is going to remove your breathing apparatus. Do not struggle or try to speak. Do you understand?”

Izzy blinked again.

The shadow reached down and pulled out the tube. Warm air rushed in causing intense pain along her airway and each alveoli filled it intensified the agony. The restraints kept her from thrashing around and the apparatus that held the tube in place held her vocal cords firm so she couldn’t scream which would have shattered them.

Don’t struggle, the stupid computer says, she thought. Does she think I’m made out of wood?

Once the strain against the bindings eased up, the hands started pulling out the apparatus. The hard rubber stopper secreted fluid before sliding out and the pain was minimal.

Mater observed Yeoman Lotz start moving her jaw. The computer slowly started loosening the bindings. The lights began to brighten so Izzy could see Commander Corbin hovering over her.

Lieutenant Commander Judy Corbin slowly lifted the young girl to a sitting position. “The first times always the roughest,” she said.

Izzy tried to say what she was thinking but with her vocal cords still stiff and tongue not any better, it came out as “AGGRRRRAAARRRGGAAAA”

Judy smiled at her, “That’s what we all say upon awakening.”

She helped Izzy into a warming robe and supported her from the gurney to an anti-gravity chair. Taking her to the IOWS (Internal Organ Warming Station) the hatch opened. Helping Izzy through the hatch and into the webbing, she took the robe and left.

Scientists found centuries earlier that the extremities warmed up easier than internal organs. Once the lungs, heart and circulatory system became operational the stomach, intestines, liver, pancreas, spleen, and gall bladder needed time to function fully. In emergency situations time was something they didn’t have. The scientists found that sexual intercourse helped jump start the other systems, but the body wasn’t capable of vigorous coitus on a bed even at ¼ G, thus the IOWS.

* * * *

Captain John Dennedy was in the engine room running diagnostics with Petty Officer Qupidic Ergoxinj. He’d been awakened two weeks earlier and was getting the feel of the ship before Qupidic and Corbin went into stasis.

This was his third and last voyage. Like all recruits he left on the first mission at age twenty-five. He was now in waking age fifty-five. It was over three hundred since he was born by the Federation chronology.

Every voyage the crew were awake and working on the ship for around twelve years. It took a hundred years to reach their target solar system. All crew worked the year before landfall to get the ship ready for landing. It took another year to build a base camp and erect the Interdimensional Transportation Device or ITD, but everyone called it the “Portal.”

That’s if everything went well, but that seldom happens. If something goes wrong and more hands are needed on deck the crewmember or members proficient in fixing the problem could be active for a year or more and then put back in stasis. On the second voyage he was awake for a year on two occasions and this trip he was needed off and on for five. By the time Arrow reached their destination he’d be over sixty.

As captain of the ship he commanded the last ten years of the hundred-year trip. Protocol dictated that he would spend the last ten years with the least experienced female member of the crew. The perk here was that he got to interview all the recruits and take his pick. It wasn’t an easy choice. The recruits spent ten years learning everything about an exploration ship and were accomplished in every aspect. They were also twenty-five and very healthy.

Looking over their folders and recommendations he was saddened that the demands of an exploration ship prohibited children. All explorers sacrificed reproduction and were sterilized.

He interviewed five of the ten applicants. He chose Izzy Lotz. As they went into stasis and the ship left their last solar system, he had no regrets.

Yeoman Lotz was assigned to replace the previous captain and as protocol demanded they lived together for six weeks to get used to each other as they would be mated for ten years. Any issues of incompatibility and the recruit was rejected. During that time, they would use the IOWS three times. The crew referred to it as the “Coitus Chamber.”

# # # # #

Mater announced, “Yeoman Lotz is in IOWS, Captain.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he said.

Patting Qupidic on his elongated neck (there wasn’t a shoulder) he smirked, “Once more into the breach, dear friend.”
Izzy waited. The webbing was designed for zero G, and until Captain Dennedy arrived it abraded her super sensitive skin. She recalled the six weeks they lived together and the three previous zero G sessions. John was a kind and generous man. He was handsome and his experience helped her overcome any shyness due to her youth and inexperience.

The hatch slid open and she saw him enter. He’s aged. Must have been some problems and he’s been out of stasis.

She helped him enter the webbing and it tightened. The room started spinning and soon they were in zero G.

* 

“Captain Dennedy,” Mater said as the chamber returned to ¼ gravity. “Yeoman Lotz vital signs are now in acceptable parameters.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he said. He gave Izzy a lingering kiss, then climbed out of the webbing.

Mater continued, “Commander Corbin has entered stasis. My sensors indicate that we are currently on course with all systems in operational order. You have the next six hours for rest and recuperation.”

“I’ll take it under advisement, Mom,” John said.

For the millionth time he wished the nerds that designed ship computers didn’t choose a bossy female voice. Some psychologist told them that the sound of a mother’s voice would make the crew respond to its dictates. To him it was just nagging. What he learned on his first voyage, though, was don’t piss off the computer. Mater could make your life a living hell.

“Yeoman Lotz,” Mater continued, you’re scheduled for hydroponics. Petty Officer Ergoxinj is waiting to brief you on the status of all your duties.”

“Noted, Mater,” she croaked. Her voice hadn’t been used for ninety years.

 *

VES Arrow was five hundred meters long and one hundred meters wide. It was built seven hundred years earlier in a zero-gravity shipyard. Its superstructure was a metal frame with thirty square spaces designed to house a fifty-meter squared module. Above the superstructure were six additional modules for living quarters and living sustainability. Under the superstructure were six modules for propulsion. 

*   

A year before reaching the target solar system all crew members were awakened and preparation for landfall began.
It took five weeks, but all twenty crewmembers were out of stasis. Six months later science officer Tupac Mupac found the moon most viable for landing. 
“Captain,” he said. “The fourth planet from red star CV145789 is inhabited.”

“Parameters, Mister Mupac?” The captain asked.

 Lieutenant Mupac replied, “Class 2 in size at roughly 60,000 kilometers in circumference. It has an oxygen, nitrogen atmosphere, four continents and is 85% water with polar caps comprising 30% of the water. There are three moons the largest 20,000 kilometers in circumference. Trace amounts of water in frozen form are in the bottom of impact craters. The other two moons are 8,000 and 6,000 kilometers in circumference. All indications are that the moons are undisturbed in mineral extraction. They are pristine.”

“What of the planet's inhabitants?” Dennedy asked.

“Captain, they are at stone age level. They rely on combustibles for heating, but there’s not any indication of metallurgy.”

“Commander Corbin, make your heading for the largest of the moons. We’ll set up shop there,” Dennedy directed.

Looking at the rest of the crew, “We’re six months from landfall as Mr. Mupac mentioned. Let’s put our heads together and come up with more acceptable names for this system than 145789.”

Four days of intense poker resulted in Levi Goldman getting the right to choose the names. CV145789 was named Samuel, the largest gas giant: Isaiah, Second largest gas giant: Jeremiah, Third largest gas giant: Ezekiel. The eight solid planets were named in order of distance from the star: Adam, Eve, Cain, Able, Seth, Methuselah, Noah, and Javan. The habitable planet was Able.

Arrow entered orbit around Alpha Moon Able. The bridge and the skeletal frame would remain in orbit. Thirty modules landed and the process of building a base camp and the portal began.

# # # # #

Four months and the deaths of three crewmembers from accidents; the portal was operational. Erecting the habitats in hostile environments was dangerous.
The coordinates of Virgocorp’s Staging Area a hundred light years away were entered into the computer and Captain Dennedy stepped through the portal. The device sent him to an empty dimension and then to VCSA in a matter of seconds. He didn’t even need oxygen.

He entered an empty room. Sensors picking up his movement triggered an alarm and heavy footsteps converged on his location. He was quickly surrounded by weapons he didn’t recognize.

It’s been a hundred years, they’ve made improvements. Raising his hands, “Captain John Dennedy of VES Arrow. We’ve made landfall.”

One of the armed men approached. Dennedy handed over the data files which included the coordinates to CV-145789 now named Samuel.

He was escorted to a holding cell until the data was analyzed. This was his second time being processed. Those who processed him back in that day were long dead and these are their great-great-grandsons and daughters.

*

The portal started emitting a warning of incoming traffic. Sixteen of the twenty original crew of the Arrow stood in their space suits waiting for corporate arrival.

The first suited men came through running and fanned out in a circle with weapons pointing in all directions. The crew were quickly forced to their knees and under guard.

A delegation of ten emerged. All went to the command module which was the largest of all the modules and the living area. For the next week the crew were debriefed on the last hundred years. What they said was compared to their logs and computer records. Once Virgocorp was convinced, they did not have contact with any of the other thirty corporations in the Terran Federation they were placed back in stasis.

A steady flow of men and material flowed through the portal. Structures were erected and pieces of vehicles were assembled. Hydroponic and aeroponic greenhouses began the process of providing food and producing oxygen.

Captain Dennedy returned after a month long debrief with four new crew members. Two of the crew members who died were men. Yeoman Lotz was the other.
He turned the new crew members over to acting Captain Corbin and returned to Virgo Prime for his well-earned retirement. She had two men to choose as her mate. He knew she'd make the best of it.

# # # # #

One hundred and two years later Captain Corbin passed through the portal to tender her first report after a successful voyage to the next solar system in the Arrow’s path.

She expected to be surrounded by armed men, but these didn’t wear the uniforms of Virgocorp. They were Federation Marines.

“Your name and ship.” The man walking towards her demanded.

“Captain Judy Corbin of the VES Arrow,” she answered. She put out her hand with the data chip of the voyage.

The man in full battle dress took the chip. “Captain Corbin, Virgo Corporation no longer exists. The Federation has confiscated all properties. You will remain here for interrogation; your crew will be brought back here. The ship and all it’s contents as well as the solar system you’ve entered are now under Federation ownership.  

WC 070820

This weeks challenge is a project or hobby of mine inspired by a book.

The key words I'm using here is "project" and "inspired."

My first published book was a ten year labor of love. The inspiration came to me in a Sunday School class lesson. It was about the Apostle Peter visiting the Roman centurion Cornelius. The first gentile converted to Christianity, from the book of Acts.
I just read the first of Collen McCullough's book The First Man in Rome. I knew that this Cornelius of the Italian Cohort, was from the Cornelius clan. The Italian Cohort made it comprised of freemen from Rome and their leader from there too. He could possibly be related to Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a dictator during the civil wars. This Cornelius was on his way up the Cursus Honorum. The first gentile convert was the Roman equivalent of royalty.
You have no idea how detailed and inclusive all of McCullough's books on Rome are concerning the every day life and society, politics and economy of Rome. She made me want to write a book about Cornelius.
While researching the possibility I read F. F. Bruce's New Testament History. When discussing the early persecution of Christianity, he mentioned the first empire wide persecution was under Domitian. That he was childless and his aunt was charged with atheism tainted with Judaism. She was fined. Her two sons were Domitian's heirs. It would have been possible they were Christians and one of them could have been the first Christian emperor.
Out of the blue, or providence, I remembered a lecture in seminary in New Testament history. When discussing the Apostle Paul's incarceration in Rome, Christian tradition says that the authorities had to replace his guards because he kept saving them.
I created a Praetorian Guard who gets saved and is befriended by the son of Cornelius, also named Cornelius. He's also a Christian and when Optimus is saved they try to put a Christian on the Eagle throne of Rome.

It took me twelve years to finish the story. I knew the assassin who killed Domitian was a freedman named Stephanus. I made him the son of Optimus and how close it was that a Christian would mount the eagle throne.

TTT 070720

Today's Topic: The authors I've read the most.
It's quite a list.

Edgar Allan Poe
Isaac Asimov
Robert Heinlein
Harlan Ellison
James A. Michener
Harold Robbins
Mickey Spillane
Anne McCaffrey
Colleen McCullagh
Leigh Bardugo
Nora Roberts
Paula Paul
Irene Blea
Hank Bruce
Jonathan Miller
Tony Roberts
Barry Sadler
Joseph Badal
James Clavell
Tom Clancy
Berthold Gambrel
Tena Stetler
Poul Anderson

Just to name a few.

Three Medieval Battles

Now available on Amazon

WC 063020

Today's topic is the last place you traveled to and why.
Here's a spider at White Sands, NM.

We try to take a family trip every year. Three years ago it was a Christmas trip with my son to Tucson to visit his son (our grandson.) Two years ago was a trip to Oklahoma to visit my brother and family, then to Kansas to visit my wife's brother and family. 
Last year's trip was to Ruidoso, NM, White Sands National Park and the Very Large Array or VLA.
Wife and kids have lived in NM all their lives, and I've lived here most of my life and they had never been to Ruidoso. I went through it once while in college on the trip back from Silver City where we had a track meet. 

On the trip down we went through Carrizozo. Just before you get to the town there's a valley that is a frozen river of lava. It's called the Valley of Fire. It's quite a sight.

We've been to White Sands a number of times and it's a great place to visit. 

Here's a souvenir. It's raw gypsum in it's crystalline form. The rain and wind over time turn it into the white sand that comprises the dunes. 

It was our first time and I think only time to visit the VLA. Not much to speak of there. It's a large assortment of electronic dishes that acts as a space telescope with radio waves. There's a reason it's in the middle of nowhere. All three of the places are within a hundred mile radius.

We were planning on a trip to the Grand Canyon this year, but that's on hold for now.

TTT 062218

Today's topic is books that are linked to specific memories/moments to your life.

One book is alone in my memory. It's not a great book, but it is funny in places. The memory is the context in which I heard it being read.
It was labor day 1961. My grandparents owned a cabin in Beulah, CO. It was a forty-five minute drive from Pueblo. We drove up on Friday night and planned on going to Lake Isabel on Saturday to fish and relax.
The cabin had two rooms. The front room was lined on the front wall and side wall with books. Most of them Reader's Digest Condensed books. There were also decades of National Geographic. At the back of the room was a sink and wood burning stove. The back room was the bedroom with a double bed. The back door led to an outhouse. The highway ran alongside the cabin and curved around in front of it. There was three acres of land and a small stream on the other side of the cabin.
Saturday morning Mom woke up and started to make a fire in the stove. She filled the cabin with smoke. Dad got up and wondered what she was doing and got the stove working properly. 
Mom told dad to look outside. There was seven inches of snow on the ground. We were not going fishing.
They hoped it was a flash storm and it would be melted off by noon. We brought plenty of food so we ate breakfast and Dad picked out a book that they would read aloud. My brother was eleven and I was nine. This was a time we both have never forgotten.
The book was Pioneer Go Home. It's about a family of hillbillies traveling on a new highway and they break down.
Somehow they got on the road before it was officially opened and when government officials come along insisted they leave. Pa is a stubborn man and doesn't like being pushed around and decides he's going to homestead the land where they've set up camp.
There were numerous funny parts in the book and I remember Mom having trouble reading a couple of places because she was laughing.
By noon the cabin ran out of wood for the stove and Dad went out to get more. He came back with some lumps of coal. In a couple of hours those were used up and we went home. Mom finished the book right about the time we pulled up to the house.
If it hadn't snowed and we went fishing, it would have been just one of many times we went to Lake Isabel. I would have never heard of the book.
Ten years later I was watching an Elvis movie on TV. Follow That Dream. Guess what, it was Pioneer Go Home, made into a movie. Somehow when Elvis goes into the bank and tries to get a loan, it wasn't as funny as in the book.

WC 062420

This week is the movie or book I go to for a pick me up.  

There are two movies I go to to destress. The first is The Fifth Element. Click here for a previous post describing why it is the greatest escape movie of all time.
Berthold Gambrel also posted a review of the movie.

The second movie is Friendly Persuasion. Click here  and here for two previous posts on how it's a movie I remember watching at a drive-in when I was eight years old and have enjoyed it all my life.
For an in-depth understanding of this marvelous movie, unfortunately only seen sporadically on AMC and Tuner Classic Movies. Click here. 

Thoughts from David Gerrold

This was posted today on my Facebook page. I decided what David Gerrold said was so important that I copied it and am posting it here. Very much a word to all bloggers and reviewers.


David Gerrold is the author of numerous books, movie screenplays and Teleplays. His most notable is Star Trek's The Trouble with Tribbles.

Back in the Cretaceous days of my misspent youth, I read the review columns in the magazines. In those days, reviewers included Theodore Sturgeon, James Blish, Thomas Easton, Damon Knight, and others who had proven their way around a short story, a novella, and even the occasional novel. So reading the review columns was not only an insight into whether or not a story worked, it was also an opportunity to discover insights about writing from actual writers.

Ahh, those were the days.

Fanzine reviewers were another realm entirely. Some were brilliant, some were methodical, and some were ... problematic. Let's leave it at that.

Today, we have the blogosphere, the commentariat, and the various special-interest sites that encourage comment threads ...

Oboy.

As I have said elsewhere, there are only three questions a reviewer needs to answer:

1) What was the author trying to do?

2) How well did he do it?

3) Was it worth doing in the first place?

That's it. Example: 1) In "Starship Troopers" Robert A. Heinlein demonstrates the obligation of the individual to the society in which he lives. If you benefit from that society, you have a corresponding responsibility to serve it. Heinlein uses an alien threat as the mechanism for a young man's journey through the military, but the meat of the story are the lessons he learns along the way. 2) Heinlein writes with military precision, moving the story forward at a machine-gun pace. He makes his points directly, without subtlety, but also without being obnoxious about them. It is one of his better-written tales. 3) Heinlein wrote this book as a reaction to what he saw as excessive liberal beliefs. This is his answer to the disarmament and peace movements. As unpopular as military fiction might be to those who dream of a world without war, Heinlein uses an alien war to make a point that is well-worth considering: What is the responsibility of the individual to the hive? What is the responsibility of the individual to the community? Worth reading.

Now, that's a review that touches all three points. And it provides enough information for the reader to decide whether or not they want to read the book.

A critic is different than a reviewer -- this is something some amateur reviewers miss, they think they are also critics.

The job of the critic is to analyze from a meta-position. Example:

Although some reviewers have pointed to "Starship Troopers" as a justification for Fascism, it isn't. It's an unsubtle glorification of the military. Because Heinlein writes so well, he makes war look fun--we do not see the shattered bodies of young men, we do not see the bloody amputations and the post-traumatic stress disorder, not in this book. Yes, there are deaths, but they are kept offstage. What is more disturbing, however, is that Heinlein has stacked the deck. (Again.) By putting his hero into a war against mindless alien insects, he justifies the extinction of that whole species. It's either them or us. There's no middle ground. It would be a lot harder to make the same point if the enemies were human beings — just like us.

Right.

Now, having prefaced the rest of this rant with some examples, here's the point I set out to make.

Too many amateur reviewers think they are critis. Worse than that, too many amateur reviewers seem to be operating with a fundamental disrespect for the subject at hand. Or, let me say it another way — too many amateur reviewers are operating from a presumed superiority to the author, as if every book put before them must be judged — not evaluated as a reading experience, but judged within the context of the reviewer's own specific cultural agenda, biases, perceptions, beliefs, prejudices, and political philosophy.

Now, let me dial that back a notch. It is not unfair for a black reviewer to discuss how an author has dealt with racial issues. It is not unfair for a person who is LGBTQ+ to analyze how an author has dealt with LGBTQ+ issues. It is not unfair for female reviewers to examine the implied misogyny in a work, nor is it unfair for disabled reviewers to discuss the various tropes in stories about disability. If one has a vested interest in how one's cultura identity is portrayed in popular entertainments, it's fair to point this out. It's also fair to indicate that. (Example: "As a gay man, I found The Boys In The Band a well-produced but depressing exercise, when it first came out and again on subsequent rewatchings.")

But just as it is important for the reviewer to treat the work with respect (or don't review it at all), it is equally important for the critic to discuss the ambition of the work without using it as a platform for the critic's agenda or for an ad hominem attack on the author. The responsible critic separates the author from the work, because criticism, constructive or otherwise, is always about the work.

This is not to say that Lovecraft, Rowling, Card, and others should be immune to public examination — but that's a different conversation than the discussion of the work. Those are two separate discussions and should not be confabulated — unless, of course, one is specifically examining how an author's personal views show up in the work, but my experience with that particular brand of literary analysis suggests that can be a foolish endeavor, especially when one cherry-picks the works to prove a philosophical point.

I've been fortunate enough to know a great many authors whose works informed my childhood and shaped my adolescence, and who were role models for great genre writing — I have learned to admire most, I have also learned to recognize the enormous chasm that exists between every author and what finally shows up on the printed page.

For instance, as much as I loved Theodore Sturgeon's lyrical writing, as much as I admired him as a brilliant mentor, as much as I sat in awe when he delivered his great speeches, "Ask The Next Question" and "I Won't Have It," as much as he is well-regarded as a literary giant — my personal experience with the man, Ted, was tainted by several of his less-admirable behaviors. (I am not alone in that.)

I could say a similar thing about Harlan Ellison. As much as I admired and loved him like the big brother I always wanted — over time, I learned to see how his personal passion informed his writing. He was magnificent, ground-breaking, remarkable, and one of the people who set the standard of excellence. I also learned to see how his personal passion animated him as a man, sometimes in admirable ways, and sometimes in ways that were ... problematic. (I am not alone in that.)

The job of the reviewer, the job of the critic, especially those who are primarily readers and have much less experience pushing, dragging, contriving, staggering a story from page one to page last — that job is to be a fair reporter. Where I do take issue with any reviewer or critic, especially the amaterus, is their implied authority to sit in judgment not only of the work, but of the author as well.

I admit, I have some bias in this.

If a reviewer/critic wants to point out where a story doesn't work, where I might have stumbled, I can learn something from that.

But if that same blogger also points out what a flawed human being I am — i already know that, you don't have to tell me, but when that essay is published online, the intention is no longer about examining the work in question, it's about impeaching the credibility of the author. It becomes a personal attack with the intention of hurting the author's reputation. (I believe that if an author wants to hurt their reputation, they can do it themselves — and I can name three living authors who have done enormous damage to their reputations by making assertions that are ignorant, malicious, and polarizing. There are probably many others.)

The job of the reviewer/critic is to take their enthusiasm for the genre and treat their subjects with respect, if not affection.

But as I said above, I'm biased. Your mileage may vary.

WC 061720

Today is my life in pictures. Here goes:

This is the day Mom brought me home from the hospital in Cherry Point NC. My brother is there too.






This is my brother and me in front of the Record Music Company, owned by my maternal grandparents in Pueblo, CO around 1960. Discount stores killed it.

This is me running the mile in high school.

My crowning achievement. State Champion in the mile 1972. 

Picture of me running for Wayland Baptist College, winning the mile, at this point I was  behind an Australian runner at the Texhoma Conference championship. 1974

My family in 1990.

Sign announcing my book signing in Cottonwood mall Easter weekend in 2007. My baby Optimus: Praetorian Guard there for all to see.

My family today with three grandchildren. It really grew.

My Biggest Seller

Way back in 2011 when I discovered the joys of e-publishing on Smashwords and Amazon I wrote a short story about the Quiver Full movement. Those in the moral mafia who spurn birth control and try to have as many children as possible.
I posted it on Amazon and they require that the story be at least .99. 
Miriam is a young woman who's been home schooled and earned a degree online. Her brother needs her to get a job to help his household financially. He's not found her a husband and their family is growing adding to the quivers of the believers of children for God.
Helmut finds a woman with genius level mathematical skills at a job fair. His publishing company is trying to expand and he needs new blood to help it grown. With her skills he thinks he found a gold mine, but her Puritanical upbringing might not be suitable for the work environment. He knows it's going to be a race between whether he will corrupt her, or she will convert him. 
I include in it some R rated sexual material and it was listed as erotica since it isn't suited for school age.
For some strange reason Amazon priced the book at 0. or free. There were 500 downloads the first day, 722 the second day, 68 the third day and around 40 the fourth day. Only three copies paid. 
Over 1200 copies and I pocketed less than two bucks. I got one review, the reader was upset there wasn't any erotica in it. The sales stopped.
It is the most heavily downloaded of all my e-books. Wish that even at .35 per download went into my pocket. It reached the top 50 for erotic literature on Amazon. It's adult not porno. 
If you want to know the the "Think Tank" is you'll have to read the story.
This was before Kindle Direct Publishing and unlimited. It was also the golden age of more readers and fewer writers, not the case today.
I've edited it and revised it and re-released it. Bright shiny new cover, even.

WC 061020

Today's challenge is favorite poems, short stories or novellas.

Poems:
The Iliad, by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer 
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Elliot.
Minever Cheevy by Edward Arlington Robinson
When Lilacs Last at my Doorstep Bloomed by Walt Whitman
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Old Possums Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Elliot
Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelly
Inferno by Dante Alighieri (skip the other two)
Paradise Lost by John Milton 
Anything and everything of E. E. Cummins.
Six Blind Men of Hindustan by John Godfrey Saxe

I've never seen a purple Cow
and I hope I never do, but
I'll tell you one thing
I'd rather see one, 
than be one. 
---Gellet Burgess

Short Stories:
A Reprieved Reformation by O Henry
Gift of the Magi by O Henry
I Robot, all in the anthology by Isaac Asimov
Whimper of Whipped Dogs by Harlan Ellison
Along the Scenic Route by Harlan Ellison
A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison
Shatterday by Harlan Ellison
I could go ad infinitum on Ellison.

New e-books

Cryspr:the new Frankenstein

Isaac Asimov referred to one aspect of science fiction and the Frankenstein syndrome. That every new advance is met with horror and how by playing God all hell will break loose.
The new Frankenstein I've found it called Cryspr.

I downloaded two books the same day. One by the blockbuster author Dean Koontz and the other by someone I've never heard of before, Geffrey Cooper. I did not know they both used the same monster.
Both books were murder mysteries. Both books referred to something called Cryspr. I've set up a link here that explains what Cryspr is.

The Dean Koontz book Devoted, is about a laboratory that is trying to develop the ultimate human being. There's a leak of the genetic material and the Billionaire owner has the plant rigged to explode and burn all evidence along with the 93 people working there. Lee, the head of the project escapes. He's infected with the rogue genetic material, but he has an escape plan to leave the country and live off a hundred million dollars in Costa Rica. While he's fleeing his body starts mutating.
Enter stage left is a golden retriever named Kit, who is part of the doggy wire. He can communicate with other special dogs like him. He's even able to talk to his owner with a laser  pointer and alphabet on the wall. His owner dies and he is hearing someone on the wire and decides to find this new voice as it's different.
Enter stage right is an 11 year old autistic child who's never spoken, but reads at college level since he was 4. His mother is a widow, but lives in a well protected, fortified house. She worried about the people who murdered her husband.
Add one other person, Ben, to the mix with an ex-seal that teams up with Kit on the road to find Woody, the autistic boy and his mother, Megan. Got it so far?
Lee decides if he's going to live in Costa Rica he wants the one woman who was stolen from him by his friend, Megan.
Add in the billionaire who sends a hit squad to capture Megan and Woody.  From there is gets complicated.

Forever also uses Cryspr, but in this case it's a Billionaire wanting immortality. He's murdering college students and having their bodies drained so he can have blood transfusions.
Ben's girlfriend is an FBI agent assigned to the murders. He's working in a lab working on getting certain antibodies spliced into cancer cells that renders them benign. The woman next to him in the lab is working on dog genes comparing grown genes from long lived dogs to shorter lived dogs.
 A Billionaire sets both of the scientists up in his lab thinking that by combining the method of changing genes from cancer research and putting the genes for longevity together will make him immortal. That's the premise, but as far as I'm going here.

Now to my point. Since Charles Darwin published The Origen of Species. Evolution has been the basis of biology and most of science. It's been the boogey man for fundamentalists.
I've wrestled with evolution and belief in God all my life.
I accept God as Creator, and that he used evolution to make life here on this planet.
My synthesis of faith and science has developed over the decades down to Faith askes the question WHO. Science  the question HOW.
With my limited science knowledge I learned that 90% of all evolution is micro-evolution. This is the difference between a single specie. All the varieties of dogs, they're still dogs. Same with cats and even people.
Macro-evolution is change from one specie to becoming another. Mutation is the catch phrase as to how this happens. I've accepted that human beings developed from lesser specie through mutations over great periods of time. 
I was never one to swallow the crap the God created the universe in 4004BC. Adding up all the number of years of the patriarch mentioned in the bible from Adam to Noah and dating when God created everything is so sisplistic, childish and down right stupid as there is causal relationship to those years and creation.

My understanding of how humans evolved from lesser specie came from Isaac Asimov's book Beginnins.
He explained it through the development of the human fetus. That in the various stages of development is the evolution of humanity. The fetus goes through all those stages even having a tail at one point.
What has been lacking in my understanding was how mutations happened that caused macro-evolution. The book Forever has my light bulb moment. Brad Parker is trying to do just that, mutate cancer cells to change them from virulent to benign. He's found different anti-bodies that when present over time can cause this and after identifying a few of the antibodies works to combine them to speed up the process.
Now this has explained to me how gene manipulation has its benefits and how a specie can evolve into a different specie. The mechanism, if true after all this is a novel, has answered my question of how God did it.
Now were back to man trying to becoming God and does that better our lives or create monsters.

WC06032020

Todays challenge is: Things I wish I were better at.

1. The first sport I ever played as a team was baseball. Little League. I played first base and was a good fielder. I was the walk specialist as a batter. I could hit a dozen foul balls until I was finally walked. Hitting I was not very good at, but I usually got on base. Stats were crap.
2. No matter how hard I tried, I could never dunk a basketball. I couldn't even touch the rim.
3. I get by in the pool, but I've never been much of a swimmer. I won't try a lake. I have to be able to touch bottom.
4. I have a brown thumb. My father could plant something and it would grow and our yard was always lush and green with flowers and a garden of vegetables. Whatever I plant it survives, but doesn't thrive. My son has taken over the front yard. He sits out there and smokes. I told him he could water the flower bed, a little patch of grass and the rose bushes. He has the scrawny, puny, things, lucky to have five roses a summer covered with them.
5. I wish I was better at typing. The godsend for me was the computer and word processor. In college all my papers in English and history came back bloody. Fortunately I married a great typist. My final education classes before student teaching whenever I handed in my papers (back when all typing was corrected by little correcting sheets), the professor the first thing the professor said was, "Who's your typist?"
A good typist back then (1970's) could make a fortune typing up masters and doctoral theses. My brother paid a thousand dollars for his doctoral thesis. It was not optional.
6. I wish I was better at proof reading. The biggest complaint I have when someone reads my e-books is typos and misspelled words. When I retired and started writing I was churning out a lot of pages a day. My wife was the assistant editor of a newspaper (why she's a good typist and editor), but the last thing she wanted to do after getting home was edit my work. In the last ten years the spell check and grammar check on Word has gotten much better, and I can edit better, though for the life of me I don't know why it underlines contracted words like don't. Wife is now retired and I'm getting her to edit my books and with the beauty of e-books I can republish and clean up the mess that drives friends like Berthold Gambrel nuts.

Hot off the press. A newly edited and revised Optimus: Praetorian Guard and the sequel Stephanus.
Available at Amazon as e-book and now paperback.

Also the newly edited, revised and updated: Fan Plan Trilogy. Three complete novels in one a compilation.






The same goes for my others books now in an edited and revised version and in paperback.

Fan Plan Trilogy now in Paperback

Fan Plan Trilogy is now edited, revised and updated, with new cover and now in paperback at Amazon. Free with unlimited, $2.99 for e-book, that's three full novels at a buck a piece. For paperback it's $9.99.