Category Archives: Uncategorized

No NaNoWriMo

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Logo for the National Novel Writing Month

Once again, in November, I will not be participating in National Novel Writing Month, more popularly known as NaNoWriMo.

First of all, I can barely stay awake, even though it’s not even six in the evening (as I write this). That means, I can’t think clearly. I’ve been trying for several days to finish a short story, but every evening when I get home from my slave job, I’m exhausted. My hours changed, so I have to get up at 5 in the morning. That used to be pretty normal for me, but as I get older, I have discovered that getting and then staying asleep at night is becoming more difficult.

Also, writing a novel in a month is either a challenge at best or torture and tyranny at worst. I did manage to write a 10,000 novelette in a week for a similar online challenge. It wasn’t chosen for publication, so now what do I do with it (actually, I have plans, but I still need time and a clear head to enable them)?

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Truth, Justice, and Superman on Radio

Screenshot of the cover of the graphic novel “Superman Smashes the Klan” found at Polygon.com

I know I’ve been booted out as a follower of Mike Glyer’s fanzine File 770, but he can’t block my internet access, so occasionally I pop over to see what’s up. Most of the time it’s “not much,” but I did happen upon Pixel Scroll 10/23/19 The Little Green Man Was Very Sad, One Pixel Was All He Had.

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Cover art for a World War 2 era “Superman” comic book

Item 11 is titled SUPE’S AN IMMIGRANT, TOO. It links to an article where a 1946 version of Superman fights Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and befriends a Chinese immigrant family. I was all prepared for yet another reinvention of Superman who behaves like a 2019 progressive over 70 years in the past. That is to say, out of character and historically anachronistic.

And yet the Polygon article The Superman story that set the Ku Klux Klan back years is now a comic was a pleasant surprise.

A few days ago, I wrote Truth, Justice, and the American Way to illustrate how classic superheroes such as Superman and Captain America represented, not necessarily the United States as it is or historically has been, but as we want to be as a country and a people, a united people.

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Truth, Justice, and the American Way

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From the “Adventures of Superman” television show

“Truth, justice, and the American way.” The introduction (video) to the 1950s television show “The Adventures of Superman” starring the late George Reeves still sends chills up my spine. I first watched this series as a kid, and while it hasn’t always aged well, given its limited budget and it’s target of six-year-old boys, I still cherish some of its episodes.

But the whole “American way” thing seems to have fallen out of favor, at least in the entertainment industry.

Well, maybe not entirely. This scene (video) from the 2012 film “The Avengers” pretty much says the same thing. The clip is a little short, but the whole thing goes:

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Removed as a Follower of File 770?

Mike Glyer (right) sitting with Marty Cantor – April 2008.

The other night it occurred to me that I hadn’t received an email notification of any posts on File 770 for over a week. That seemed rather odd to me since Mike Glyer writes on his “fanzine” rather frequently. Frankly, he’s pretty “chatty.” I thought the emails were going to a different tab in Gmail, but no. Then I checked my spam folder just in case, but again, no emails from File 770.

So I looked, and as of this writing, the latest File 770 post is from today. In fact, not a day has gone by when Mike Glyer hasn’t posted something on his fanzine.

I checked my WordPress Reader to see if they showed up there. Nope. Not present. So where have my notification emails been going?

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Author Update October 9, 2019

From the comic strip “Peanuts” by the late Charles Schulz

Last night I received an email saying that my twelfth short story has been accepted for publication in an anthology. Since I didn’t receive explicit permission to disclose details, I can’t tell you anything about it…yet.

Well, it was an adapted version of a story I wrote for a writing challenge. As I recall, it was a musical writing challenge. It was also a theme that I expanded into (most of) an online novel, so long time readers have probably come across at least part of it.

In time for Halloween, it’s horror but it’s also a love story (sort of).

This is on top of rejection after rejection after rejection. Really, I receive far more rejections than I do acceptances.

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Film Review of “The Abyss: Special Edition” (1989)

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© James Pyles – DVD cover for the 1989 film “The Abyss”

I hadn’t intended to watch a film on Sunday evening, but saw a DVD of the 1989 film The Abyss and said, “why not?”

Actually, this is the special edition, so it’s expanded quite a bit from what folks saw in the original theatrical production.

The movie opens aboard the USS Montana, an Ohio-class U.S. Navy sub. The sub encounters some strange light apparition near the Cayman Trough and, caught in its wake, is dragged across a rock formation, fatally damaging the sub.

With Soviet ships closing in to salvage the nuclear submarine, the Navy commandeers a private, underwater drilling platform operating near the Trough that’s led by Foreman Bud Brigman (Ed Harris) and crewed by a bunch of roughneck oil drillers.

Brigman’s estranged wife Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who designed the drilling rig, accompanies a group of Navy SEALs commanded by Lieutenant Hiram Coffey (Michael Biehn) down to the rig just before a hurricane hits, in an attempt to reach the Montana and search for survivors.

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PAW Patrol or Why I Wouldn’t Let My Granddaughter Read Medium.com Even if She were Old Enough to Read

Promotional image for the children’s televisions how “PAW Patrol”

You’ve got to be kidding me. Someone, who on twitter is called @JanissaryJones but who is known on Medium.com as Walt D, AKA Walt T. Downing, decided to go full retard (no, I’m not making fun of people with developmental disabilities, it’s a movie thing, click the link) on my four-year-old granddaughter’s favorite cartoon and character set, PAW Patrol.

Screenshot from twitter

It’s a show set in the fictional Adventure Bay featuring a young boy named Ryder who organizes a specialized team of dogs, each with a special talent, to perform various rescue operations, from saving an imperiled kitten to rescuing a child from a disastrous snow boarding mishap.

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The Nature of Social Media in a Nutshell

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Meme found on Facebook

I was checking on Facebook this evening and, alas, was inspired to end the work week with a bit of snark. This really is the nature of social media, and especially (but not exclusively) twitter. It’s also the nature of blogging and fandom.

Over the past year and a month or two, my investigation into “science fiction fandom” (as opposed to science fiction) seems to indicate something pretty similar to what you see above. The same as when you comment on twitter, and for that matter, blog in general, Facebook, Instagram, whatever.

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Never Forget, Never Let Your Children Forget

This is usually a message I give when talking about Holocaust Remembrance Day, which in 2020, will be observed on April 21st.

Yesterday at work, one of the fellows I’m training with called it one of the saddest days on our calendar. I’m talking about September 11, 2001. Just like the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination (even though I was a child back then), I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing on that fateful September morning.

However, my grandson is 10 and my granddaughter is 4, and for them, this is history, something that happened before they were born.

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The Sins of John W. Campbell Revisited

Author Jeannette Ng – image found at the Angry Robot website

Just for giggles, I revisited the comments at File 770‘s article Storm Over Campbell Award. As you may recall from my own wee missive Jeannette Ng’s Campbell Award Acceptance Speech and Here We Go Again, Ms Ng, a fantasy writer based in the UK, was recently given the John W. Campbell award for best new writer, which she accepted, and then went on to point out Campbell’s terrific flaws, which included being a fascist.

There are now over 200 comments on Mike Glyer’s commentary on Ng and Campbell, and of course, they all damn Campbell, some even comparing him (more or less) to Mussolini. Further, one person said that anyone with even the tiniest hint of actually liking anything Campbell ever did is considered a fascist sympathizer. Really. I had heard of Campbell, but before this, I never had any idea about his political beliefs.

However, even according to Wikipedia, while he may or may not have been a fascist, he certainly was a racist.

His opinions go far beyond the occasional “joke in bad taste,” and many well known authors, including Michael Moorcock and Isaac Asimov, lambasted Campbell for his even then unpopular and heinous ideas.

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