Category Archives: science fiction

Feelin’ Groovy

bench

© Roger Bultot

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Used to be called the 59th Street Bridge but that was long ago. Now they call it the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, whoever he was. At least one thing didn’t change. Like in the old days, someone painted a heart on this bench. It’s nice to see.

I’ve been walking up and down the Eternity Road a long time, but not seventy years’ worth. Sure I’m almost seventy myself, but how long…since I was forty-five or so? All my friends are dead, but if I go back, I’ll be so old to them. Being a time traveler is a pain.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 11 “Leap. Die. Repeat.”

Scene from the Quantum Leap episode “Leap. Die. Repeat.”

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When Ben leaps into one of five people in an elevator at a 1962 nuclear reactor, he must figure which one triggers a bomb that kills them all. Each time the bomb goes off, he leaps into another one of them and the scene resets on a fine loop. If the loop runs out, Ben dies for good.—NBC

That’s the summary of Leap. Die Repeat

It’s fun to see Robert Picardo again (this time in the role of Dr. Edwin Woolsey). Sometimes the show draws an ace.

There are five people in an elevator going down to the control level for what is supposed to be a nuclear reactor that is part of a sustainable energy project. In the order that Ben leaps into them:

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My Short Story “Fall of the Tower” Now Available in “One-Way Ticket”

one-way-ticketIf you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

I’m happy to announce that the Starry Eyed Press science fiction anthology One-Way Ticket is now available in both Kindle and Paperback form at Amazon.

It contains my SciFi short story “Fall of the Tower.” Here’s a brief summary of the anthology:

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 10 “Paging Dr. Song”

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QUANTUM LEAP — “Paging Dr. Song” Episode 110 — Pictured: (l-r) Tiffany Smith as Dr. Sandra, Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song — (Photo by: Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

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I realized today that I’d forgotten to watch the latest episode of Quantum Leap Paging Dr Song. Why?

Maybe because the show is becoming less important to me. I don’t know.

Ben leaps into a first year resident Alexandra Thompkinson in Seattle 1994 on the cusp of a train accident that’s going to flood the hospital with wounded patients. Ben is also a black woman but the only reason we know this is we see her photo on the hospital badge and Ben makes some off hand comment about bras.

When Scott Bakula played Sam Beckett and he “leapt” into a woman, it was a big, big deal. But Ben’s clothing, this being the second time he’s leapt into a woman, looks perfectly suited to a man. You’d think at least once he’d leap into a woman on her period, or who had really large breasts he was not used to living with, or some guy would slap his/her ass.

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Last Exit to Babylon

© Fleur Lind

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Taylor knew she was in a different universe when she was driving on the wrong side of the road.

“It finally worked.” She was grinning and her heart was hopeful. Maybe she’d finally found the way back home.

But crossing the infinity line was only the beginning. She had to find and take the right exit, which meant using the wrong ones to change all history. Getting the Greek civilization off the ground in 1600 BCE, watching the birth of Buddha in 486 BCE, publishing Einstein’s theory of special relativity in 1905.

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New Beginnings

solar flare

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3.
Picuted here is a lighten blended version of the 304 and 171 angstrom wavelengths. Cropped
Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO
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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Tor.com ran a small article called What’s the First Line of the First Book You’re Reading in 2023?. It reminded me of all of the lessons about creative writing that emphasize how the first sentence or the first paragraph is a story is so important in hooking the reader.

Fine.

I like first lines so I decided to have a look at a few of my own.

Here’s the first sentence from my most recently published short story:

Sheriff Bobby Bill Thornton ran the fingers of both hands through his abundance of silvery locks across his head, unmindful of the blood covering them.

Here’s the first sentence from a short story that’s been accepted for publication but hasn’t yet been published.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 9, “Fellow Travelers”

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Scene from the Quantum Leap episode “Fellow Travelers”

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So, Quantum Leap is back with the January 2nd episode Fellow Travelers. I was wondering how “controversial” the return episode would be but as it turns out, not that much (although some). I guess that part is yet to come.

Ben leaps into Jack Armstrong (you’re kidding, right?) a bodyguard for famous pop singer Carly Farmer (Deborah Ann Woll) or is that Carly Simon (one of the hats she wears reminded me of her)? Carly’s going to be killed, supposedly by her drug addict sister Jamie (Karissa Lee Staples) and Ben has to stop it.

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Book Review of “Progress Report” by Roman Lando

progress report

Cover art for the novel “Progress Report”

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Author Roman Lando contacted me not too long ago and asked if I’d be willing to review his science fiction novel Progress Report. I said I was willing and he sent me a file compatible with my old Kindle Fire.

I was in the middle of another book at the time, but finally got a chance to dig into “Progress” starting a few days ago. In print form, it would be only 239 pages, so not a long read.

In broad strokes, the first and last third of the book is an action, adventure, techno-thriller involving an unlikely hero (patterned very much after the author) who is working with an alien and a covert agent to stop other aliens from starting World War III.

Unfortunately, in the middle third, there was a very long, expositional data dump along with a great deal of pseudo-science and psuedo-philosophy that took most of my interest away. Everything is told from the journal entries of the protagonist “Art” and Art is extremely “wordy.”

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2022: A Very Brief Summary

2022

© James Pyles

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As you can see, compared to 2021 and before, my productivity this past year has waned considerably, at least of you count actual, published short stories and novelettes. Of course, I had two of those novelettes published in the same year by the same publisher for the 224-verse. Most of the other short stories, except for the one I have featured in “Shoot the Devil” were published the previous Spring.

So what have I been doing?

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Book Review of “The Ringworld Engineers” by Larry Niven

engineers

Cover art for “The Ringworld Engineers”

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I decided to read The Ringworld Engineers (1979) mainly because I’d recently re-read my copy of Ringworld (1970) not long ago for the “jillionth” time. Well, maybe not that frequently, since I didn’t recall too much about the novel (I bought my paperback copy in 1976 and still have it. See the photo below).

It occurred to me after finishing Ringworld that I couldn’t recall reading any of the sequels. When I looked Engineers up, I didn’t recognize the plot. So I put in an order from my local public library and in due course, it became available for pick up.

Sure enough, the book was a stranger to me.

In Ringworld, Louis Wu is recruited by a Pierson’s Puppeteer named Nessus along with a twenty-year-old girl named Teela Brown and a Kzin ambassador to Earth called Speaker-to-Animals. They were to explore a then undisclosed space object in exchange for a ship that can travel far faster than anything humans or Kzin had.

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