Book Review of “The Case for Cancel Culture” by Ernest Owens

cancel culture cover

© James Pyles

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I don’t normally review books such as Ernest Owens’ The Case for Cancel Culture: How this Democratic Tool Works to Liberate Us All on this blog, but having inadvertently encountered one of the author’s tweets on twitter, I was intrigued.

blackface

Screen capture from twitter

Note that general replies are disabled on that tweet, and this from an author who wants to “liberate us all.”

At first, I thought this was a gag. I mean, these are gifs, for crying out loud. But in reviewing his twitter stream, I saw he was absolutely serious. Looking up his official bio gave me a clue as to why:

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Secret Sequel to “Shoot the Devil” Coming Soon


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You may recall that I have a short story in the anthology Shoot the Devil called “Wolf in the Wind”, which by the way, seems to be doing pretty well. It’s got 91% four and five star ratings on Amazon.

There is a sequel coming out soon which I can’t really talk about yet, but it’s the same basic theme set against a completely different background. My story was a lot of fun to write.

However where a number of other stories in the first book were more strictly in the realm of spirituality and the supernatural, mine also included elements of steampunk, if you imagine that, and set in the 1880s in Idaho City, Idaho (which is a real place that exists today).

I’m writing this because ahead of the sequel’s publication, the publisher and we ten authors, are asking for more reviews of the first book.

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Frank and the Plot of the Hypnotizing Slime, Chapter 8

chapter 8

© James Pyles

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In the evil headquarters, Kayden was pacing back and forth near the entrance while Hazel was looking through Leah’s telescope.

“I still can’t see anything. Oh wait.” Hazel focused the lens. “I think I can see them at the edge of town. Why aren’t they going in.”

She waited a few more minutes. “I can’t see Leah anymore but what is that?”

Kayden heard the worry in Hazel’s voice and walked over to her. “What is it?”

“A human girl with a net. She’s got Frank and the others.”

“All of them?”

“I still can’t see Leah.”

“That’s because Leah isn’t there.”

Both Seth and Hazel turned to the entrance and saw Leah crawling in and she really looked mad.

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Strings

amanda

PHOTO PROMPT © Amanda Forestwood

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14-year-old Stace McPherson was drawn to the musician’s unusual stringed instrument. The backyard wedding reception was over. He was supposed to be helping clean but he wanted to touch it. The musician, no one called him anything else, had played the most amazing tunes, like from another world. He looked around. Just the last few guests. The musician was saying good-bye to the bride and groom. He had to do it. Stace let his fingers glide across the strings. As he did, something creative entered him. Ten years later with his own guitar, he accepted the best new artist Grammy.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 17 “The Friendly Skies”

friendly1

A scene from the Quantum Leap episode “The Friendly Skies”

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Finally got the bandwith to watch Quantum Leap S1.E17 The Friendly Skies where once again Ben leaps into a woman with absolutely no reaction to being in a female body.

I happened to mention on twitter the other day that just in season one, Ben has leapt into more women than Sam (Scott Bakula) did during the entire five season run of the original series, and Sam was never a fan of leaping into women. It occurred to me that a man leaping into a woman is at least drag (because actor Raymond Lee has to dress…at least sometimes…in specifically female clothing. At most, it almost makes him trans…almost.

Anyway, I was politely shot down as far as the idea goes. Statistically, if Ben’s leaps are truly random, he should leap into women about half of the time. But we don’t think the leaps are random.

IMDb synopsis:

When Ben leaps aboard a 1970’s passenger jet as a flight attendant, he must outwit its hijackers before it mysteriously crashes into the Atlantic. Worse? He has to do it all without Ziggy’s help.

Ben leaps into a flight attendant named Lois on August 5, 1971. The aircraft has over the top service. The men are sexist pigs and the attendants are trained for “service with a smile.”

Here’s a trivia piece from IMDb about why the service was styled as it was in this episode.

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Frank and the Plot of the Hypnotizing Slime, Chapter 7

chapter 7

© James Pyles

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The next morning, the hypnotizing slime was ready and Frank ordered it loaded into the slime cannon. He had made more of it than the previous day and concentrated the formula so it wouldn’t come off easily and would have more control over anyone it hit. He also made sure it would turn into a mist to float into every hidden space in the town so no one would be able to escape its influence.

“Fire!” Frank gave the command and the rest of his spiders obeyed, although he could tell Leah complied reluctantly.

Slime flew high into the air forming a large, pink cloud. Then it fell as rain, and when it hit, it became a mist.

“I can’t see what’s happening, Frank.” Leah was looking through her spider telescope. “All I see is a big pink cloud surrounding the town. You shouldn’t have changed the formula to make it mistier. Yesterday, we could see it hit everyone. Today, I can’t tell.”

“Kayden, hand me the microphone,” Frank said.

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Hell’s Harlequin

joker

PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox

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“There must be some kind of way out of here, said the joker to the thief.”

Jester pretended to play a game on her cell’s frayed bedsheets with a worn deck of cards. The old Dylan tune running through her head seemed too cliché, even for her. She didn’t know how to play solitaire, but it mollified the guards while she planned her escape.

The thief was out there, the one who sent her to Hell. But Persephone hadn’t helped Jester escape Hades’ clutches just to be jailed for shoplifting food she again needed to eat. She would find him.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 16 “Ben, Interrupted”

ql-16

QUANTUM LEAP — “Ben Interrupted” Episode 116 — Pictured: Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song — (Photo by: Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

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Every single time the Quantum Leap people say “this is the episode that’s the best” and so forth, why, oh why do I find that they aren’t quite right?

The Quantum Leap season 1, episode 16 show Ben, Interrupted aired on Monday, March 20th.

Of course, the title is no mystery, it recalls Girl, Interrupted (1999)

Based on writer Susanna Kaysen’s account of her 18-month stay at a mental hospital in the late 1960s.

It also recalls the original series episode Shock Theater. Ben leaps into private detective Liam O’Connell who deliberately has himself committed into a 1954 mental hospital to free a woman named Judith who was committed by her husband for “hysteria,” possibly because she kept miscarrying when they tried to have children (I’d love to have seen that cretin come to justice).

The obvious source I certainly hope everyone who wrote this episode read was Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next. I probably read the book before any of them were ever born.

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Doorways Fluttering in the Breeze

blankets

© Sarah Whiley

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They reminded him of his childhood when Mom used to hang the wet laundry on the backyard clothes line to dry. Except these were supposed to be art at a small, outdoor fair at a local park.

In his peculiar line of work, Demetrius Lauer traveled all over the world and visited communities from the largest megacities to the smallest rural hamlets. Today, it was Winchester Park in the small but growing commuter city of Kuna, Idaho. Fortunately, bringing his M1911 Colt semi-automatic wasn’t a problem in this part of the U.S. He was probably going to need it, but he had to find his prey first.

Dem was an unusual type of bounty hunter. Yes, he tracked down some of the most dangerous men and women on the planet, but many were just as dangerous on other planets, or in this case alternate realities.

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Book Review of “The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass”

aeronaut

© James Pyles for photo

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I was at the public library weeks ago looking for another book when I came across Jim Butcher’s novel The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass. It was published in 2016 as the first of a series, but according to Butcher’s website, the second in this collection will probably be published this year.

I’d never heard of Butcher before, but he’s been Hugo nominated more than once and has written the well-known (to everyone but me) Dresden Files novel series. I’ve been criticized by “real science fiction fans” that I’m not a “true fan” because I don’t have an encyclopedia-like  knowledge of all things SciFi. Oh well.

At 630 pages, it took me a while to read, especially since I can’t always find large blocks of time for reading. So after renewing it once, I finally finished it off this morning. I’m really glad I came across it. I was attracted to the cover mainly and checked it out on a whim.

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