Collector’s Item

guitar

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

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“You’re kidding. No. Absolutely not.” Daniel stared in disgust at the rainbow-striped acoustic guitar. It was hanging with others of the more common variety in a second-hand store catering exclusively to metanormal customers.

“I’m serious. In a couple of months, when GenZ discovers the music of legendary folk singer Kain DeMarko, it will be worth millions. He played it three times at the Fillmore West during the Summer of Love.”

“You are the silliest predictive AI I’ve ever engaged.” He’d just leased Sofia and uploaded her into his cranial implant last week.

“It’s on discount for one-fifty. C’mon, buy it.”

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Book Review of “Second Stage Lensman,” Book Five in the Lensman Series

Cover art for “Second Stage Lensman” by E.E. “Doc” Smith

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It has been almost a year-and-a-half since I reviewed E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Gray Lensman the fourth book in the “Lensman series” following Triplanetary, First Lensman, and Galactic Patrol.

Today, I’m reviewing Second Stage Lensman. While the Lensman series of books was first published in mass market paperback in the mid to late 1960s when I was in Junior High (and when every boy I knew was reading them), as a hardback book, it first came out in 1953. It had been published serially in “Astounding Science Fiction” from Nov 1941-to-Feb 1942.

Keep that in mind for the entire series since it is not only absolute classic science fiction and the emergence of the “space opera” but it really old.

That part is important, especially if you are used to more contemporary works “updated for modern audiences.” The 21st century progressive SciFi industry has little tolerance for it’s own past.

In this case, as with the others in the series, I can sort of see it, at least a bit.

For instance, slang. After all, from the 1940’s perspective, this is the future, but how would “future people” express themselves, especially when excited and agitated? How about:

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Macau

rickshaw

PHOTO PROMPT © Amanda Forestwood

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Demetrius saw that Charles and Diane had chosen two human-pulled rickshaws rather than self-driving e-shaws. They were meeting with Mr. Phoebe at his estate near Zhuxian Park. This should have been an easy kill, but where were the drivers?

The bounty hunter walked down the street pretending to be a western tourist. There they were. Not just drivers but bodyguards. They were vaping near the service entrance.

He released the brake on the first rickshaw and watched it roll downhill. One driver would be gone for awhile as Dem killed the other and then slipped inside for his real prey.

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Book Review: “Pines” (2012) by Blake Crouch

pines

© James Pyles

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I found out about the SciFi/Mystery novel Pines by Blake Crouch when I was looking up something totally unrelated. I had watched (again) the pilot episode to the 1966 Irwin Allen TV show The Time Tunnel and was wondering why the government would want to invent time travel.

Time travel, contrary to popular fiction, isn’t easily weaponized. If you want to change the past and say prevent anyone else besides the U.S. acquiring nuclear weapons, it would be incredibly complicated. Unforeseen variables could cause all kinds of unanticipated results, assuming you could change your own timeline at all.

It gets complex and it’s not the focus of this review. In one article I read, Blake Crouch said that changing time would most likely not be possible. If you tried to, as in the Back to the Future movies, prevent Marty’s Mom and Dad from meeting in 1955 so they couldn’t get married and ‘make” Marty, time would find another way for them to get together and sustain history.

I became curious about Crouch and looked up his books, finding the Wayward Pines novel series. My local library had a copy of “Pines,” so I checked it out.

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This Tape Will Self Destruct in Five Seconds

missouri

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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The tall man in the sports jacket looked awkward in the fabric shop as he approached the brunette clerk wearing glasses.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a fabric for my wife. It’s going to be our fifth wedding anniversary and she wants something in amethyst.”

“You mean sapphire.” She paused for a moment. “I have just the thing in back. Come with me.”

She escorted him to a storage area and excused herself. Alone, he then pulled an envelope and a small tape recorder from inside a drawer and turned it on.

The control voice began, “Good morning, Mr. Phelps.”

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Book Review of “Minecraft: The Island” (2017)

the island

© James Pyles

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Minecraft: The Island (2017) isn’t a book I’d choose to read. My wife actually read it to our grandson three times when he was much younger and more into the game. Now my eight-year-old granddaughter loves Minecraft.

Some background. When my grandson was about five or six, we started playing “the game.” It started out as teasing each other. He’d make up a character and say it was doing something to my character to which my character would respond. A very simple, adversarial, totally verbal, roleplaying game.

Eventually, it became more sophisticated, kind of like Dungeon and Dragons, but with only two players and no dice, just our imaginations. The games were largely centered on his interests at the time, which included Minecraft. It also included whatever he was watching or reading. I’d add my virtual two cents worth and plug in anything from my imagination and childhood.

His sister wanted to play with us, but there’s a six-year age gap between the two of them and she was too young.

Our games ended up fueling about two-and-a-half years of stories on my blog (you can still look them up) as well as my first two published short stories. It was loads of fun.

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Book Review of “Anonymous Rex” by Eric Garcia (2000)

dino

© James Pyles

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I only heard about the novel Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia (2000) because the anniversary of the TV movie’s release happened recently (actually, the movie was based on the prequel Casual Rex). The film’s plot seemed like a thinly-veiled attempt to cast the hidden dinosaur society (I’ll get to that in a minute) as the LGBTQ community if it were still closeted. Since I had just finished a rather huge and pondering tome, I thought a little light reading might be in order.

Fortunately, Garcia’s book was in my local public library system and I was soon in the business of reading. Also fortunately, the plot was quite a bit different than the film’s.

This will take a bit to set up. In this world (the book was published in 2000), some twelve or so dinosaur species have survived the extinction event 65 million years ago. Over the long haul, they’ve evolved just enough so that, with the proper complicated costuming, they can pass successfully as human beings. The decision to peacefully co-exist with us was made a few million years ago rather than the dinos destroying a nascent human race when they had the chance.

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Guardian

camping

PHOTO PROMPT © AJ Wilson

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Some idiot family from the suburbs thinks owning an SUV gives them license to off-road to a wilderness area and then trash it. I bet they think taking the little kiddies down to the lake is some sort of adventure. Those trails haven’t been used in years and with good reason.

I walk over to the blue foldout chair, have a seat, and wait. Fortunately, he doesn’t come out until dark. With any luck I can get these people out of here before he wakes up. As the guardian, I’m the only thing between this family and an immortal killer.

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Review of “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022)

mav

© James Pyles

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So I finally got a chance to watch Top Gun: Maverick (2022) on Blu-Ray last night. Excellent film. It’s not the sort of movie I would normally review for a science fiction / fantasy blog, but it’s just so much fun.

I haven’t seen the original Top Gun (1986) since it was in VHS in the late 1980s (yeah, I know) and I remember almost nothing about it. I was worried that would cause me to have problems understanding the current film, but that wasn’t an issue.

After all, the movie had to appeal to young audiences who had probably never seen the original. There were enough cues to point back to the first film and make plain how those events were attached to what’s happening in the “present.”

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is apparently living in a dilapidated aircraft hanger endlessly repairing a vintage P-51 Mustang. He’s also test piloting an experimental aircraft as a contractor for the Navy, a plane that’s supposed to be capable of flying Mach 10 (roughly 7672 mph/12348 kph).

He’s only supposed to test the craft at Mach 9 on that day but the project is about to be scrubbed by Admiral Cain (Ed Harris) who wants to divert funding to an unmanned experimental aircraft.

Maverick, out to save the project, launches and achieves Mach 10 over the Admiral’s orders, but then exceeds that speed and destroys the aircraft. Apparently, he’s able to bail out without dying (this movie frequently violates the laws of physics), and before Cain can ground Maverick, new orders come in for Mav to return to the Top Gun naval aviation school we saw in the first movie.

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Book Review of “The Way of Kings” (2010)

way

© James Pyles

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A few months back, my teenage grandson loaned me his copy of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings (2010). My grandson is a huge fan and wanted to share his enjoyment with me. I really like that.

The first thing I noticed is the book is long, really long. I tend to read novels in the 300-500 page range (or so), but Sanderson’s tome weighs in at 1252 pages. Yikes!

I didn’t read any of the reviews or summaries so I could come at it fresh.

It’s a hard book to get into. For the first several hundred pages, the action switches between a number of players who seemingly have nothing to do with each other beyond living in the same universe. What the heck?

I mean after the mysterious prologue, we see the assassin Szeth-son-of-Vallano executing a king and then he disappears until somewhere in the middle of the book (he does play a pivotal role in the climax).

At one point, Kaladin is a soldier, but when next we see him, he’s a slave.

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