If androids dream of electric sheep, why are there no sheep in my dreams?

I discovered Philip K. Dick and his mind-blowing novels at just the right time. In November 1975 I was a non-trad student at the University of Florida. Non-trad because many in my 1969 high school graduating class had claimed their diplomas and were now looking for work in all the wrong places. Meanwhile, we laggards and slow-learners were on campus with a younger crowd and a passel of Vietnam veterans. And the Krishnas -- can't forget them and the Krishna lunch. 

I spent many of my waking hours at the library where I gobbled up novels I missed reading in high school and copies of Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New Yorker, and any other pub that featured great writers -- Hunter S. Thompson and Joe Eszterhas among them -- and Esquire carried Harry Crews' Grits column and its annual dubious achievement awards. I learned snark from the witty DA awards and writing through Crews in print and in person in his creative writing class. 

A profile of PK Dick arrived in the Nov. 6, 1975 Stone. Great graphics by G.K. Bellows showed the author, book in hand, with an alien invader coming through his window. The header: "The True Stories of Philip K. Dick: Burgling the most brilliant sci-fi mind on Earth -- it is Earth isn't it?" Paul Williams wrote the piece. Was this the same Paul Williams from TV and film? No, it was Paul Williams, founder of Crawdaddy, who RS called "the first rock critic" and who died in 2013. He also loved sci-fi.

So I had to look up the RS piece. I printed it out and the type was too small for these tired eyes. So I enlarged the e-piece and read the whole thing. I remembered most of it from '75. I found as many PK Dick books as I could, in libraries and second-hand bookstores, and wrapped "Ubik" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" into the folds of my brain that also held Shakespeare in Elizabethan English, Chaucer in Middle English, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's dreamscapes, all from my UF classes. All in books. 

Williams notes in his final paragraph that some PK Dick movies were being discussed. "Blade Runner" came out in 1982, just a few weeks after PK Dick died. It blew our minds. It wasn't Dick's novel but it was beautiful. There now is a Director's Cut and a Final Cut as well as sequels. And many movies based on other novels. 

What is PK Dick thinking out in the Bardo? You may have to go to Colorado to get an inkling of that. Dick's ashes were interred in a Fort Morgan, Colo., cemetery next to the grave of his twin sister who died at six weeks. She is the basis of the "phantom twin," a recurrent theme of his. Fort Morgan was in the middle of the Dust Bowl in 1928 so I assumed the worst about the sister's fate. Go to Fort Morgan on a winter's day in January. Stand outside in the winter gales and think of the many things that could doom an infant in 1928-29. 

Dick, who lived most of his life in California, including mystical Marin County, is buried on the prairie. Only 112 miles from my one-time home of Cheyenne, Wyo., the setting of Hawthorne Abendsen, the author of "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy," an alternate history of World War II (the Allies win!) in "The Man in the High Castle." Dick had the mountains and prairie in his bones which made the Rocky Mountains the best place for the opposition to the Japanese and German conquerors on the coasts.

Dig up that '75 Stone article and find out about the author's situation in a tumultuous year, 1971. There's a mystery at the story's center: why did someone burgle Philip K. Dick's house in San Rafael, blow up his 1,100-pound asbestos-and-steel safe, home to his precious manuscripts, and flood the floor with water and asbestos? All sorts of wild things were going on in 1970s California. Dick posits possibilities and Williams follows leads to no avail. 

The answer is out there somewhere.

Love in the Ruins is not just Another Roadside Attraction

I awoke thinking of Walker Percy's "Love in the Ruins or The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World." I finished the 1971 novel late last night. It has a satisfying ending which I won't divulge. It's set five years after the main action of the novel. It wraps things up but I was still left with this thought: This is a satirical sci-fi novel about loss and grief. 

It struck me in the same way as the movie "Arrival." I had to watch the film a second time to understand the ending as well as the beginning and middle. I felt a bit dim that I didn't get it the first time around. The second time I wanted to cry. 

They gave Dr. Louise Banks the same gift the Tralfamadorians gave Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse Five." She became unstuck in time, gift from the Space Octopoids who came to warn Earth and seek our help for a future calamity. Dr. Banks saw her future tragedy but lived it anyway, a brave thing. 

In "Love in the Ruins," set in some future time, the 45-year-old Dr. Thomas More has already experienced tragedy in the cancer death of his young daughter followed by his wife leaving him. Oh yeah -- he also faces the end of the world. He does his best to assuage his grief and fear with scientific inventions, sex, and gin fizzes. Nothing works. "To be or not to be?" What does he decide?

Percy was the son and grandson of suicides. After a bout with TB during the World War 2 years, he became a doctor and then a mental patient at the same hospital. Percy suffered from Depression and PTSD just as war veteran Binx Bolling does in Percy's 1961 novel "The Moviegoer." 

He is well-known as the writer who helped publish John Kennedy Toole's "The Confederacy of Dunces," another award-winning New Orleans-set novel about an unhinged character. Toole, of course, committed suicide allegedly despondent when nobody would publish his novel. Suicide, I'm told, is more than a passing sorrow. It figures heavily in literature, especially Southern lit.

I almost quit reading this novel. Several times. It's wordy and Percy does a lot of showing off with language. In places, his humor is more Keystone Kops than dark satire. I did laugh out loud in spots. Dr. More keeps getting into messes he causes himself. A Buster-Keaton-kind of hero. 

I first read this novel when I was 23. I am now 74. In 1973, I saw it as a romp, the prof's great example of the dark humor of the ages. We also read Tom Robbins' 1971 kaleidoscopic novel "Another Roadside Attraction." That too was a romp with deep undercurrents and portents. Robbins was born in North Carolina and grew up there and in Virginia. He referred to himself as a hillbilly and his editor called him "a real Southern Gentleman." Both his grandfathers were Southern Baptist preachers. Later on, he discovered Washington state where he wrote his books. 

I should reread Robbins' novel and see how I react 52 years on. It may mean something different to me in 2025. 

A good time to ponder "The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World"

I am rereading "Love in the Ruins or The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World" by Walker Percy. He will always be a favorite of mine for his mournful yet witty 1961 novel of depression "The Moviegoer," winner of the National Book Award and considered a classic. It's well known that Percy assisted John Kennedy Toole's mother get "A Confederacy of Dunces" published. Toole left the manuscript behind when he committed suicide. Percy had many suicides in his family: his  grandfather, father, and (probably) mother. As a teen, he and his two brothers were taken in by his uncle, a poet in Mississippi. The die was cast.

"Love in the Ruins" is set in a future Paradise, Louisiana. Percy, a trained physician and one-time mental patient, spent much of his life in New Orleans, the setting of many of his novels. 

Love in the Ruins" (Open Road Media 2011 version on Kindle) was introduced to me via a reading list for a contemporary literature class taught by Phil Drimmel at Daytona Beach Community College in 1973-74 At the time, I was returning to college after two years as a college dropout and survivor of the 1969 Selective Service Draft Lottery (#128). A 1969 high school grad, I had failures  behind me as a biology major and as a Navy midshipman. I traveled some and lived in an educated northern city where I thought I might be a nursing student like my girlfriend but decided to break with the girlfriend and return to Florida and pursue the lucrative career as a fiction writer. The joke was on me, of course, but along the way I read plenty of good books. 

Percy's dark humor was a good match for the time as I also was entranced with the books of Vonnegut, Heller, and Kesey. I read Rolling Stone mainly for its gonzo journalism and National Lampoon for its wicked humor. And, like Percy's character, I was also a bad Catholic, renouncing the title of Mr. Catholic conferred on me by the Knights of Columbus in Daytona Beach at our Catholic high school graduation awards ceremony. A 50-dollar U.S. Savings Bond came with it, a little something to help with my education or writing career or maybe even some bad choices.

"Love in the Ruins" 1973 was a different read that "Love in the Ruins" 2025. I didn't really get it when I was 22. I liked the satire of this imagined future and psychiatrist Dr. Tom More's journey. I was entranced by his Qualitative Quantitative Ontological Lapsometer which reads the state of a person's soul and later is fine-tuned to read a person's mental imbalances. I was a bit creeped out by More's middle-ager's sex drive, my prudish Mr. Catholic eclipsing my own yearning for community college women. 

So I didn't get it all then. But now, I decided to pay attention to "another person's voice." That's what Borges told his students when they asked why they should read the books of others. 

This Bad Catholic is still reading this 1971 novel about an imagined Bad Catholic. I've been thinking a lot about this subject especially since Pope Francis's death. Just what is a Bad Catholic these days? Is it someone who religiously obeys every tenet of Catholic doctrine? Or all those questioners like Tom More, all those I knew from the 10:30 Catholic Community in Denver. Dutiful questioners all. 

Percy needs my attention, especially now. I am a bad Catholic living near the end of the world. A pope with the heart of St. Francis has died. The Antichrist is in the White House. Books from my past speak to me.

The book's July 3 section recounts a day in The Pit, the slang for the hospital's weekly Q&A among physicians and students. Dr. More speaks of his lapsometer. Meanwhile, a rival has arrived and hands out copies of the doctor's new lapsometer which disturbs its creator. 

As Dr. More says: "This device is not a toy. It could produce the most serious psychic disturbances... If it were focused over certain frontal areas or region of the pineal body, which is the seat of selfhood, it could lead to severe Angelism, an abstraction of the self from itself, and what I call the Lucifer Syndrome: that is, envy of the incarnate condition and a resulting caricature of the bodily appetites."

All hell breaks loose in The Pit. Male and female students glom on to each other. A professor admires the beauty in a male student's face. Fistfights break out. 

Human appetites are unleashed with the predictable results. As one of the doctors tells More: "Your device has triggered a mass hysteria. Like the St. Vitus's Dance in the Middle Ages. These are strange times." 

Indeed. Maybe it takes a Bad Catholic to write about strange times.

I am at the 71% mark on Kindle. I will finish this book. 

Happy New Year: Fear and Loathing in 2025 America

A friend once asked me to name my favorite writers. It's a long, long list, but I gave him the top five: Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Flannery O'Connor, and Hunter S. Thompson. Fine writers all.

My friend who shall remain nameless made an astute observation: "But you don't write like any of those authors." 

A fair point. I don't write like any of them. But how could I? These writers had their own styles that are much admired and frequently copied. That's what beginning writers do: imitate their maestros. But you eventually move on to find your own voice if you stick with it. I've stuck with it and crafted my own style and it apparently has few fans in the publishing world but that's life in the fast lane. 

I haven't given up and I'm called to write for a number of reasons that make up my 74 years. My parents read to me and I gobbled up Yertle the Turtle and Winnie-the-Pooh. I read cereal boxes at the breakfast table and billboards as I peered out those big windows in post-war automobiles. I wrote stories for my third-grade teacher Jean Sylling and she put one up on the bulletin board. It was about aliens in a flying saucer landing in my Denver backyard. I was embarrassed but also thought it a bit grand, a story I wrote put up for all my classmates to see. 

My father the accountant had a big library and I read through many of them without really understanding what was going on. My mother usually had a baby in one arm and a book in the other. That's who introduced me to "Catch-22." She read and laughed and I was curious but was only 11 and not interested enough until I was in high school and close to draft age and Heller's novel haunted me and made me laugh. I turned on my chums to the book and its hilarity resonated with them but we rarely talked about the war part. 

Strange happenings were all around and I soaked them in but did not write about them. My parents and eight brothers and sisters were all distinctive entities and I inherited their nuances. My forebears visited my dreams. I attended Catholic School and irony and metaphors surrounded me but I was not aware of it until later, much later. I watched "Get Smart," "The Monkees," and the evening news and they all kind of blended together. Sex was a puzzle that we Catholic teens were left to figure out on our own and it's still a work-in-progress. 

My childhood and teenhood were all precursors to hard lessons to come. I really thought I had it made at 18 and the world was my oyster although I'd never eaten an Atlantic Ocean oyster as I surfed in that salty sea whenever I didn't have to take care of my siblings or go to school or go to work to afford that school. I dated the most beautiful creatures on Planet Earth but they might as well have been the imaginary aliens that landed in my yard in my third-grade story. 

Speaking of alien life forms: I am no closer to understanding the human condition than I was in the third grade. I refer to recent happenings in the U.S. of A. It is past time to revisit Thompson's Fear & Loathing chronicles and Yossarian's naked self and Billy Pilgrim's time jumps and the residents of Macondo and O'Connor's Misfit. I may not fully understand them but they live inside me every second of every day.

We were readers once, and young

Chris, Annie, and I took in “Dune 2” at the Capitol City Digital Cinemas LUXX Studio Theater. It’s new. Not quite as fancy as the ARQ Theater and a step up from one of the boring standard spaces. We sat in handicapped seating in the second row. There’s a first row but you have to recline and bend your neck to take it all in. The place wasn’t packed although there was a chatterbox who sat a few rows behind us. We took him out with one of those wicked Fremen bazookas. I enjoyed the movie, thankful that the story moved along quickly and I didn’t notice the passing of 180 minutes. Long movies used to have an intermission. That’s gone the way of Ben Hur’s chariot. I plan to write a nasty letter to someone about this.

In my youth (early 1970s), I was a Frank Herbert fan and read “Dune” and “Dune Messiah.” Many of my friends read the books. We were readers, absorbing Vonnegut, Heller, and Tolkien, even Heinlein. My roommate was a former outlaw biker from Milwaukee who had to leave his hometown for some reason he didn’t want to share. My landlord was a friend who lived next door in a matching concrete block house. He worked in construction. His roomie was my brother who also worked construction – there was a lot of it in Daytona Beach those days – and he eventually got fed up with banging nails and joined the USAF. I worked as an orderly in the county hospital by night and attended community college by day. We all were readers and enjoyed talking about books over beer and weed. On weekends, we were in and on the water.

“Lord of the Rings” was probably the favorite. Fantasy and adventure, cool characters like the Ents, Orcs, and Gandalf. We really had no sense that Mordor was created from Tolkien’s war memories. We knew about the war origins of Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” because he writes about it in the introduction. War had been on our minds quite a lot those days. I had not yet read the great novels by Vietnam vets as they didn’t yet exist. I had no concept of what war could do to the psyche. Tolkien fought in the far-off Great War and Vonnegut (and my father) were in the now-ancient war against totalitarianism. Those battles may loom large as this election season approaches.

“Dune” was a favorite because of the turmoil of Paul Atreides and the giant sandworms of Arrakis. That was the part of “Dune 2” that thrilled me and I could watch again. The Fremen and Paul ride the sandworms! Amazing special effects. Our seats shook. This was also my favorite part of the novel, Paul and the Sandworms. Herbert did a great job creating them and Denis Villenueve and crew recreated them wonderfully. These characters and creatures invented by writers and recreated on the screen became a part of us, a part of me.

One other result of all of this reading. We were steeped in satiric humor and (I haven’t yet mentioned “Catch-22”) the ridiculousness of being human. Billy Pilgrim reacts (or he doesn’t) as he time travels through absurdity. Yossarian does everything he can to cheat death. He is flummoxed at every turn. Paddling in a small boat from a small island in the Med to neutral Sweden may seem crazy until Yossarian finds out his tentmate Orr has accomplished it. He ridicules Orr throughout, wants to bonk him on the head for his endless fiddling with the tent stove and his absurd stories. He won’t fly with Orr because he crashes all the time. Turns out, that was Orr’s way of practicing for his desertion. Yossarian runs away in the book and sets out on a tiny dinghy in the movie. I thought it was unfortunate that in the last episode of Hulu’s “Catch-22,” Yossarian flies off on yet-another mission in a B-25.

I really liked “Masters of the Air.” I did wonder in one episode what Yossarian might make of the Bloody Hundredth. On one mission to Munster, only one of the unit’s planes makes it back to base. Earlier, we see others on fire and many airmen in their chutes trying to escape. The novel’s Yossarian spends three years in combat on 55 missions. His commanding officers want to make pilots fly 80 missions which means Yossarian may never get home. He runs.

Flying 80 combat missions may seem outrageous. Rosie in “Masters” flies his 25 missions and is cleared to go home. He tells his C.O. he will stay on to lend his experience to the new, untested pilots. The C.O. then tells him that the men will have to fly more missions and keep flying. They will be targets, a lure to bring up the Luftwaffe to get shot down by our swift long-range fighter planes like the  P-51 Mustang. The C.O. says something like “we plan to sweep the Luftwaffe from the skies for the coming invasion.” Rosie flies 52 missions and survives.

They were brave and many died. It does remind me of Yossarian’s observation: “The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”

A look at the past and possible future in A Gentleman in Moscow and California

I’m reading two books concurrently. One is labeled historical fiction and is Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow.” The other is a sci-fi post-Apocalyptic novel “California” by Edan Lepucki. Meanwhile, here I am, living in the present tense.

Towles wrote a historical novel I am very fond of, “The Lincoln Highway.” The title grabbed my attention because I live a mile or maybe two from the route of the original Lincoln Highway. A history marker in downtown Cheyenne speaks at length about it, calling it “The First Transcontinental Highway.” A huge bust of Abraham Lincoln marks the high point on the Laramie Range where the highway crests and then shoots down Telephone Canyon, a long, looping downhill run that is an adventure during a blizzard (if the road’s open) and leads you to Laramie’s fine craft beers and indie restaurants if you make it.

An NPR reviewer in 2021 described the book this way:

The Lincoln Highway is a joyride. Amor Towles' new Great American Road Novel tails four boys — three 18-year-olds who met in a juvenile reformatory, plus a brainy 8-year-old — as they set out from Nebraska in June, 1954, in an old Studebaker in pursuit of a better future. If this book were set today, their constant detours and U-turns would send GPS into paroxysms of navigational recalculations. But hitch onto this delightful tour de force and you'll be pulled straight through to the end, helpless against the inventive exuberance of Towles' storytelling.

So, it’s 1954 in Nebraska and points south and east. Quite a ride. As an admirer of “road novels,” this is a great one. “West with Giraffes” by Lynda Rutledge is too although I’ve already written about it. Must mention here that Kerouac’s “On the Road” features a pivotal scene at Wild West Week in 1948 Cheyenne. What we have in miles and miles of asphalt and concrete are roads. Recently, I was pleased to see that Gen. Pershing, commander of all the armies who married a young woman from Cheyenne (a strategic move – she was the daughter of a U.S. senator), commissioned in 1921 a roadmap of the U.S. showing the Lincoln Highway as a priority number one route and the road from Cheyenne to Denver as priority number two. Take that, Colorado! Pershing hated your guts.

“A Gentleman in Moscow” is a very different story. It is a big novel and I just had to have a hardbound copy from B&N.com. It is 1922 in Moscow, U.S.S.R., and Count Alexander Rostov has been quarantined at Moscow’s famous Metropol Hotel. He’s not sick. But he has the ability to infect the populace with highfalutin attitudes, a crime in the new communist state, where everyone is equal but some, we suspect, are more equal than others. The count is a snob and what we might call a ladykiller. He’s accustomed to women swooning over him and the pickings are quite slim on the corridors of the commie hotel. Still, he finds a way. Government apparatchiks check up on him and his dwellings and they try to train hotel staff to not call the count Count or Your excellency. To no avail.

The Count is charming and it’s great fun to read about him and his situation even though you know it’s going to end terribly. Not as terribly as it did for the Romanovs but still terrible. The ending of Book 1 clued me in on a possible fate for the Count.

Lepucki first got my attention through a recent interview in the Los Angeles Times. While most of it is about her new novel of time travel and family, “Time’s Mouth,” “California” is about family and apocalypse. Very down to earth and that’s the way the author likes it:

“I want there to be sex in my books. I want there to be periods and childbirth and feeling bad. There’s a lot of vomiting,” she says, laughing. “I feel like in a lot of contemporary fiction, the characters are not in their bodies in the way that I think in life we are.”

I read that and agreed that there is not a lot of periods and childbirth and sickness in most books. If described at all, sickness often is described romantically, as in the ravings of a sick Cathy in Wuthering Heights or the pining of a tubercular John Keats ("Bright Star" a fine Jane Campion film about Keats and Fanny Brawne). There is shit in “California” and it stinks. But that’s not the main story. A pregnant woman and her husband try to navigate the confusing and dangerous future world where all things fall apart. I’m only 120 pages into my Kindle version checked out from Libby but the author has my attention.

Is it wise to read historical novel and post-apocalyptic fiction at the same time? God only knows, if there was a God and he/she/it actually knew anything.

Resistance is futile. Read The Three-Body Problem trilogy before it enters the Netflix universe

Have you ever heard the term “Dark Forest” in reference to one of the universe’s big mysteries?

I had not until I read Richard Powers’ wonderful novel about an astrophysicist’s dilemma that crosses space and time in “Bewilderment.” Then I came across a novel on Kindle called “The Dark Forest” by Chinese sci-fi writer Cixin Liu, Liu Cixin in Chinese as the last name is listed first.

This concept posits that the universe is the Dark Forest. Intelligent lifeforms are making their way through the forest and are afraid. There are other lifeforms out there but what are they like? Are they powerful but helpful giant octopus-like creatures in “Arrival.” Or are they savage multi-limbed killers as in “Independence Day,” the creeps who just want humans to “die.”

As lifeforms make their way through the Dark Forest, they don’t know what they’re going to find. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to shoot first and ask questions later rather than being ambushed themselves? Forget “Star Trek” and its non-interference directive. Those strange-looking bastards on the other side of the trees are dangerous and can’t be trusted. Our very existence is threatened. Fire!

This helps explain why Earth, after sending our radio and TV signals and Voyager space probes for the last 100 years, has been met with silence. Maybe others have picked up the signals, have investigated us further, and decided that we are killers, which we are, invaders that have wiped out entire civilizations all over the globe.

In Liu’s novel, second part of “The Three-Body Problem” trilogy, scientists have made first contact with extraterrestrials. Residents of Trisolaris answer the call. Trisolarans are telepaths so everyone on their planet knows what others are thinking. When told that Earthlings speak from their mouths and tend to hide their inner feelings, the aliens assume that we are keepers of dark secrets and are dangerous. They plan to eliminate us as soon as they can get their space fleet to our solar system in some 400 years. Humans begin to plan for the encounter. Wallfacers are selected to come up with ways to staunch the upcoming alien invasion. Some Earthlings secretly ally with the aliens as they believe the aliens just might be more sensible than their earthly neighbors. They also suspect that resistance is futile, as the Borg like to say.

I read it with a dose of dark humor as it is true that humankind is dangerous and can’t be trusted. If I was a Trisolaran, I would get to earth ASAP, before we perfect interstellar travel and keen new weapons and pursue them in the Dark Forest.

Interesting to see that Netflix is turning Liu’s trilogy into a series due out in 2023. The Netflix web site says the series will debut next year. Director is “True Blood’s” Alexander Woo with “Games of Thrones” writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. In 2020, Netflix farmed out the English-language rights for the books which was only available in the original Chinese. So, if you choose, you can read the trilogy or get it on Kindle and start with the second book as I did. It can be a hard slog at times and wonderful in its moments.

I have read only two other trilogies in the sci-fi/fantasy category: “Lord of the Rings” and “Foundation.” Also, John Dos Passos’s “U.S.A.” trilogy. Dos Passos incorporates different points of view and newspaper snippets as he recounts his view of the U.S. in the post-World War I era. A neat blend of fiction and fact, a series ahead of its time. Eduardo Galeano and “Memory of Fire,” 500 years of Latin American history. Again, a wonderful mix of fact and fiction. Magical-realism is involved.

Do you have other trilogies to suggest?

If I may make a modest suggestion: start with book one when tackling a series. I’m pretty sure I missed out by starting in the middle. 

Fiction welcomes us into strange new worlds

Lisa See's latest novel, The Island of Sea Women, could have been set on a distant world. On a little known volcanic island , women have been harvesting their food from the sea for generations. They are called haenyeo. They go into the ocean year-round but only when the shaman says so. These women practice rituals for the sea goddess. They float out to likely spots, breathe deeply, and dive to the sea bed for edible sea creatures. They eat some of the catch but keep most for family and to sell at the market. Many have been lost to wicked currents or injury. They persevere through genocide and famine and family feuds.

Otherworldy, right? Reminds me of the Fremen of  Arrakis harvesting spice and fighting off sand worms. 

But the island of sea women is a volcanic island named Jeju south of the Korean mainland. The women are real and have been diving for generations. See bases her excellent novel on these women.

“Every woman who enters the sea carries a coffin on her back. In this world, the undersea world, we tow the burdens of a hard life."

The story opens with the main character, Young-sook. We experience the culture through her life, from a child during Japan's World War II Korean occupation to 2008 as to old lady who still dives.  Her life is a series of challenges within her haenyeo clan, her family, other islanders, and invaders from Japan (World War II) and the U.S. (Korean War). See's story time travels, jumping from a present-day setting with Young-sook as a clan elder all the way back to her turbulent youth. Jeju now is a tourist hot spot with the usual assortment of clueless visitors. One of them is the granddaughter of her childhood friend Mi-Ja. Now the fully Americanized granddaughter butts into Young-sook's life and wants the real story about the conflict that shattered a friendship and sent Mi-ja off to America. The island people are survivors. Young-sook may be the most stubborn member of her clan. She resents the young woman but ends up opening up her life to her. And to us. 

Think about your image of 21st century Koreans. BTS, BlackPink and K-Pop. The bustling modern city of Seoul. The new Korean cinema, films such as Train to Busan and the Squid Game series, and comedies like Kim's Convenience about a Canadian-Korean family's convenience store. The Korean-made Korean War film Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War, may be an even more in-your-face war film than Saving Private Ryan. There is also the hermit authoritarian kingdom of North Korea which, to many Koreans, seems like another world. And is. Witness some wonderful novels about the North. My favorite thus far is The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson. It's illuminating how Americans are seen through the eyes of others. Those who know their history would not be surprised. 

The imaginary world helps us see the world in all its glory and horror. 

The universe of the heart is a strange and lonely place in "Bewilderment"

In Richard Powers' novel "Bewilderment," Theo Byrne’s nine-year-old son Robin may have ADHD or Asberger’s or is somewhere on the autism “spectrum.” He is suspended when he clocks a kid at school. He always says the wrong thing. Therapists try to convince Theo to put Robin on medication such as Ritalin or Concerta. Theo, an astrobiologist searching for the universe’s exoplanets, refuses to do so. He’s a single parent, his environmentalist wife Alyssa killed in a car wreck when she swerved to avoid a possum.

Father spends many hours hiking and camping with his son. Together, they travel to imaginary planets that Theo only knows through the signatures of critical elements picked up from thousands of light years away. Those are wonderful chapters, journeying to quirky planets that come right out of the scientific imagination. Their names include Stasis, Isola, and Tedia which, not surprisingly, reflect their namesakes of isolation, loneliness, and tedium. One planet doesn’t spin on its axis due to the pull of competing suns. The planet’s few living things can only exist in a narrow band of twilight because they would die from heat on one side or freeze to death on the other.

Theo the astrophysicist discusses various terms regarding the existence of life on other planets. The Fermi Paradox asks the question once asked by Enrico Fermi: Where are the aliens? Drake Equation measures the probability of exoplanets that support life long enough for intelligent beings to emerge. In the novel, Theo proposes other possibilities. No sentient lifeforms anywhere. Civilizations so far away that we would never meet them. Some posit the idea that there is intelligent life in the universe but those beings want nothing to do with us. So they are silent.

All of this returns to Theo’s struggle to understand his son and deal with the death of his wife. A colleague opens a research project that might have answer. It involves a kind of neurofeedback, the AI linking of a person with electronic energy created by others. Neurodivergent Robin becomes part of the study, linking up with some feedback loops his mother made when alive. He gradually gets a better grasp on his behavior and exceeds the researchers’ goals. But disappointment awaits -- and a surprise ending. Think “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. “Charly,” the movie based on the book, really got to me when I saw it in 1968.

Powers is a powerful writer and “Bewilderment” resonated with me for several reasons. This tale got real early on. My wife and I put our son with ADHD on Ritalin when he was five in 1990. I resisted. I couldn’t imagine my little dynamo on drugs. But he needed help. His working parents needed help. Directors of preschools and kindergarten teachers pushed us to go the medication route. Three decades later, I can still feel the pain. I had to stop reading Powers’ novel at some points because the author does such a great job of describing the pain of the bewildered parent.

“Bewilderment” also asks this question: Are we as alone in the universe as we are on Earth? The book says yes but also provides the reader with transcendent moments.

Still, loneliness may be as endemic to the universe as hydrogen and helium. We may never see intelligent lifeforms. If they exist, they are far away and the distances too great. We are early in the exploration stage. I will be stardust by the time humans leave our solar system for another.

Powers creates a world where the reader feels the weight of the universe and the weight of people’s attempts to know ourselves and our loved ones. I finished the book, sat back in my recliner, said “we are all alone,” and then grabbed a beer. I have family and friends, a wife and two grown children. They will miss me when I am gone. But the earth will keep spinning, a sunrise will be followed by a sunset. One generation will be replaced by another and another and another.

Today I am going to pretend that I am not alone. I will reach out to those important to me. What else can I do?

Humans -- can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em!

In the film "The Day the Earth Stood Still," versions one and two, an intergalactic diplomat comes to earth, tells humans they are a clear and present danger to the universe and must be destroyed. That gets put on hold once the space envoy experiences the kindness of its people. But it's only a temporary hold. As Michael Rennie (Klaatu) tells humankind at the end of the 1951 film: "Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer". Then he and his big-ass robot Gort fly off in their saucer. A similar warning is repeated by Keanu Reeves in the 2008 remake.

But in English author Matt Haig's 2013 novel, "The Humans," earthlings get still another chance. Hotshot Cambridge physicist Andrew Martin unlocks the secret of prime numbers, a discovery that will kick humanity's future into overdrive. The Vonnadorians find out about it and send an hitman from a galaxy far, far away to kill the scientist. Earthlings can't be trusted with big secrets, only small ones, such as nuclear fission and the formula for Kentucky Fried Chicken. If the prime number mystery gets solved and humankind experiences the Great Leap Forward, the universe is doomed. The Vonnadorians are an advanced peaceful race and kill only when necessary, much like Gort does when threatened by the U.S. Army. The alien replaces the scientist in his body. Also, he must eliminate anyone who knew anything about the discovery. That includes Martin's colleagues, beautiful wife, and troubled son.

At first, Martin thinks of the humans as hideous with grotesque features and habits. The more time he spends with them, the more he finds to appreciate: their dog Newton, Emily Dickinson's poetry, songs by David Bowie and the Beach Boys, love, and wine. Through his eyes, the reader gets a chance to see the world anew. It's funny at first -- must humans wear clothes? -- but grows more serious as Martin the Alien abandons his quest and goes over to the other side. There's a hefty Godfather-style price to pay and I won't spoil it by spooling it out in detail.

It's a wonderful novel. I was ready for something humorous and hopeful after reading a series of serious books. Make no mistake -- this is as serious as it gets. Who are we and why do we do what we do? 

Klaatu barada nikto! 

Klaatu issues these orders to Gort. As a kid, I thought it meant "If anything happens to me, kill the human scum." It really meant "if anything happens to me, come and retrieve me and I will decide what to do next." Gort does his duty and Klaatu is freed to issue his warming to Earth. Then they fly off.

Martin the Alien receives telepathic orders from Vonnadoria. He does eliminate the scientist's collaborator. It's just a simple matter of putting his hand on him to make his heart stop. In his left hand are "the gifts," those powers that allow him to travel and communicate vast distances, speak with animals, and accomplish his mission. He briefly contemplates killing the annoying teen son, Gulliver, but saves his life instead. He befriends the dog and takes a liking to Mrs. Martin. Then all hell breaks loose.

Haig caused this reader to look anew at my humanity. Strange creatures we are. Loveable and awful. But it's all we got. For now.

Denver Comic Con -- an unexpected place to find some good advice on literary fiction

Chris and I accompanied our Millennial daughter Annie to Denver Comic Con on Saturday.

"Accompanied" might be a bit of a stretch, since she ditched her Boomer parents as soon as it was feasible. This wasn't too hard as she already had her entrance ID so just got into the line surging toward the Colorado Convention Center. Chris had to find a shady spot to test her blood glucose levels while I searched for the "will call" window. I was on a mission to trade in my paper tickets for entrance badges. I walked around the entire Con Center which looks a bit like a starship at rest, one with a gigantic blue bear staring inside. It could be an alien bear, an anime bear, a bear that is also a shapeshifter, a perfect disguise for an "Aliens"-style alien, or one from "The Predator" series, or those rapacious aliens in "Independence Day" or "War of the Worlds."

The heat may have been getting to me. I kept yearning to be in the AC with a cool Brewt, the official beer of Comic Con from Breckenridge Brewery. But first, I had to crack the code that would let me inside. I located various long lines, none of which were the correct ones. I finally found the "will call" line when I saw others of the dispossessed using their paper tickets as fans. The line moved fast as it was mostly in the shade of one of the DCC's giant wings. Twenty minutes later, I had our badges and eventually located Chris and we finally were admitted to the inner sanctum.

I was unofficially the oldest person in the building. Even veteran actor Kate Mulgrew, whom we heard speak in the BellCo Theatre, is younger than me by a few years, if my arithmetic is correct. Captain Janeway has transformed herself into the dastardly prison den mother in "Orange is the New Black." Her Russian accent is pretty good, which may hold her in good stead with our new Overlord, Vlad Putin. Mulgrew is the oldest of eight in an Irish-Catholic family (I am the oldest of nine). That wasn't the only thing we had in common. She said that reading is the basis for success. She is working on her second book while ensconced in her house in Galway reading through the Irish masters: Joyce, Trevor, O'Brien. This summer, she is even tackling Proust, which earns her major brownie points in the literary world.

Janeway is still the only female captain in the long-running "Star Trek" series. She hears rumors that one of the top-ranking officers in the latest series (set to debut this fall) is female. But she is not the captain. Mulgrew is a big Hillary fan which automatically makes her a big non-fan of whatever alien life form now occupies the White House. That's as close as she got to politicking which, she said, speakers were warned to steer clear of. As if....

People watching was the best use of my time. So many cosplayers from so many different books and TV shows and movies. One person was dressed as the Lego captain. He must have been hot in there. Princess Leia continues to be popular, as are various Trek characters. Annie is a big "Doctor Who" fan and there were plenty of doctors and even a few Daleks. One of my faves was a hoodie-wearing Donnie Darko and the Big Scary Rabbit that haunts his life in the movie. We ran into some theatre friends from Cheyenne all costumed up, including two female Ghostbusters.

We lunched on soggy overpriced sandwiches. We went to one of the NASA panels that addressed "The Science of Star Trek." The speakers quizzed us on the feasibility of Trek items, including communicators, transporters and artificial intelligence. Communicators were an obvious yes but a big no on the molecule-rearranging transporter ever seeing the light of day. This dooms my dream of someday avoiding the drive from Cheyenne to Denver. I would trade the possibility of misplaced molecules with driving I-25 any day.

My day ended with an authors' track panel entitled "Start Short, Get Good." The five published panelists spoke of writing short stories as a way to break into the sci-fi lit world. Catherynne M. Valente, author of "The Orphan's Tales," said this: "It's always been a hustle to get short fiction published." And this: "It's a struggle to get people to read short stories who also are not aspiring writers." As a test, she had audience members raise their hands who read short stories -- the majority of us complied. Then she asks for a show of hands of aspiring writers -- many raised hands. That got a laugh.

This continues a theme that I have heard for decades at everything from national AWP conferences to Wyoming Writers, Inc., conferences to book festivals. The question is: Are you buying and reading the work of the authors you like? That patronage is crucial to the survival of small presses and literary magazines.

Michael Poore ("Up Jumps the Devil") spoke up for the survival of these small markets. He said that he publishes some of his "character-driven stuff" in the literary markets.

"Genre fiction has lots of rules," Poore said. "In a literary story, you can get away with more. People tell me that they read my stories but don't like stories that don't end."

That sounds like a great description if literary fiction -- stories that don't end. I remember my insurance salesman uncle saying that he liked my first book of stories but was surprised that they had no end. Slice of life. Minimalism. Whatever term you use, it's shorthand for literary fiction which doesn't always coexist with genre fiction. Poore, on the other hand, seems to live in both worlds. He has published stories in some of the best litmags (Agni, Glimmer Train, Fiction) and sci-fi mags such as Asimov's. His story "The Street of the House of the Sun," was selected for The Year's Best Nonrequired Reading 2012, edited by Dave Eggers.

So, by the end of the day, I at last has found my tribe. These panelists face the same challenges I do, which warmed the cockles of my heart and made me very, very thirsty.

I went in search of Brewt.

What would Kurt Vonnegut say about the April 22 March for Science?

If he were still alive, Kurt Vonnegut might have attended the science march near him this weekend. New York City will probably have a big one. He would probably attend more to protest numbskull Trump than to applaud science.

Some of Vonnegut's big books, especially Cat's Cradle, carry warnings about runaway scientific research. In Galapagos, Vonnegut posits a future where humankind has evolved into sea-lion-like creatures with flippers and beaks and smaller brains in heads streamlined for swimming. One of that book's recurring themes is that contemporary human brains are too big and possess all sorts of ways to screw things up. In Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Vonnegut has fun with time travel and memory. He also has the fire-bombing of Dresden, brought to us by masterminds in science and war-making. They go hand in hand. So it goes.

Vonnegut studied biochemistry as an undergrad and has a master's degree in anthropology. He worked as a PR guy for General Electric while he wrote his novels and raised his family. He and his fictional alter-ago, Kilgore Trout, are noted sci-fi writers. But Vonnegut stands out for his scientific background and his social commentary. Baby Boomers discovered his novels just as we headed off to college or Vietnam or the assembly line or wherever. It spoke to the absurdity of war, as did Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Ken  Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest completes the big three books of the 1960s that changed my life and many others. Just think about their backgrounds for a minute. Heller was a World War II veteran and NYC ad man in the Mad Men era. Kesey was a rural Oregon boy who made his way to Stanford and sixties legend as part of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He wrapped up his life on a farm in Oregon, back where he started. Vonnegut came from an educated Indianapolis family but the war changed everything, as it did for many of our fathers. My father was able to attend college on the G.I. Bill, begin a career as an accountant, marry a nurse and fathered nine children, of which I am the oldest.

Dedicated sci-fi readers know the thrill and the danger of science. We know that science leads to Hiroshima and to the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator or ICD. I wear one of those in my chest. It was invented by Morton Mower, a Denver resident, now a millionaire art collector. Part of his world-renowned collection of Impressionists (Degas, Renoir, Monet, etc.) is now on display at the Fulginiti Pavilion for Bioethics and Humanities at the Anschutz Medical Center, 13080 E. 19th Ave. in Aurora. A med center with a gallery that exhibits artwork collected by a scientist/inventor? You can attend for free as you get an ICD check-up at the cardiac telemetry unit. A nifty blend of science and art, invention and patronage.

Saturday's Science March is not an effort to promote science above religion or instead of religion. It is a move to celebrate scientific innovation against those who would hide inconvenient facts and cut funding for research. Consider the Know Nothings of the 19th century U.S. They professed to "know nothing" other than that written in their bibles. They valued The Word over words and imagination and science. Today's conservative Republicans are descendants of the Know Nothings.  They are threatened by humankind;'s march into the future. And it is scary. Technology brings drastic changes. The arts expose our children to other voices and other cultures. People who don't look like us force us to consider our deeply held beliefs about race and gender.

It's really fear that drives conservatives. Fear of galloping change. Science and the arts and education represent the most threatening fields. That's why Congressional conservatives' budget cuts target them. If only we could stop the clock, everything would be all right with the world!

But you can't stop change. So we write and we march and we challenge the people who want to deny climate change and evolution and higher ed.

On Saturday, April 22, we meet at 10:30 a.m. in the service station parking lot at Little America in Cheyenne. We then caravan over to Laramie, where we will join others at noon for the Wyoming March for Science from the UW Classroom Building at 9th and Ivinson to downtown. An Earth Day Rally follows, with music by Laramie's Wynona. If you are interested in making an appropriately clever sign, one that honors wit and science, gather at the UU Church in Cheyenne from 6-10 p.m. on Friday, April 21. I missed the Wyoming Art Party's sign-making session last night in Laramie. You may remember WAP's performance art at the Women's March in Cheyenne in January. Their uterine-based signage ("Wild Wombs of the West") was a big hit for many, although some follow-up letters in the local paper called them crude and insulting to women. It's always a good thing when a protest incites letters to the editor.

See you on Science Day on Saturday. It's also Earth Day. Naturally.

Vonnegut won't be there. He's on Tralfamadore, most likely. But he will be there in spirit, both as an encouragement -- and as a warning.

When AFib comes to town

The Cheyenne Regional Medical Center Telemetry Lab staffer called me Friday. She wanted to know how I was doing. I said "fine" but knew that this wasn't a courtesy call. The Telemetry Lab monitors my Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) remotely. I have a home transmitter at the side of my bed. It picks up my heart signals and transmits them to the lab, which then takes a look to see if I am in sinus rhythm, which is what we want, or in atrial fibrillation (AFib), which we don't want.

The lab said I was in AFib on Thursday morning. "Did you feel anything?"

"Yes," I said. "I was light-headed all morning."

"Anything else?"

I had to think about it. "I just felt weird all morning. Had a hard time at physical therapy, was tired and out of sorts all afternoon."

The Telemetry Lab person (sorry I don't remember her name -- blame it on the irregular heartbeats and lack of oxygen to the brain) told me that I needed to be aware of these symptoms as a long-duration AFib is dangerous. "Next time you're feeling that way, please send me a manual reading from your monitor."

"OK," I said, feeling a bit scared. I tend to ignore my heart difficulties most of the time. I exercise, take my meds, maintain a good attitude, am kind to animals, etc.

She made me an appointment with my cardiologist. She is able to access my MyChart files at CRMC which shows a calendar of my appointments. She puts me down for a March 15 appointment with Dr. Nienaber. As long as I'm dealing with a CRMC physician or group, my records are online and we can carry on these types of conversations. It's a bit spooky, all this electronic data-keeping and accessibility. My fiction-writer self thinks of all the ways that this system can be abused. Let's say a U.S. politician has an ICD with a bedside monitor and someone, say, an ISIS terrorist, wants to murder that politician. He hijacks the signal and causes the ICD to shut down. Even scarier, he causes that ICD to activate its defibrillator. Bam! -- a big shock to the heart to get it back into rhythm even when it doesn't need it. And another shock and another and pretty soon, the heart gives up. Remote-control assassination. Because I am postulating this as sci-fi means that the possibility already exists and the U.S. or the Russians or even ISIS may be preparing an attack.

For me, though, right now, the threat is more from AFib than it is from some shadowy hacker. AFib can cause strokes, blood clots, heart failure. My heart attack of three years ago created the cardiac scar tissue that sometimes misfires as AFib. My pacemaker activates to get me back into rhythm. If catastrophic heart failure threatens, the defibrillator will kick in with a debilitating jolt. This has never happened to me, and I hope it never does.  I could be driving down I-80 at the time. Or I could be napping. Anything is possible.

A big thank you to the CRMC Telemetry Lab. A big shout-out to the researchers and engineers and technicians who put these gizmos together. I freakin' love science.

To watch AFib in action, go to the American Heart Association web site. You can compare an AFib animation to one of a normal heartbeat. My heartbeat was normal for 62 years. Cholesterol and inflammation and stupidity led to my heart attack, which almost killed me. I was pulled back from oblivion by EMTs, cardiologists, surgeons, and nurses. I'm 65 now, retired, someone who knows how blessed he is every day. Or almost every day.

Sunday morning round-up: Martians, Democrats and a dying man's love for Abba

I am blogging this morning from the picnic table on our back porch. Eerily still and warm for the Ides of November. Cat snoozing on the chair next to me. He was up and about for an hour this morning and it apparently wore him out. Today is the last fall lawn-mowing. I also will winterize my garden. I'm a bit tardy with that but so much else has been going on. The weather forecast calls for snow Monday through Wednesday, so this is the day to get out and rummage around in the yard. Depending on who you believe, we will get from a couple inches of snow to a foot. We shall see....

Watched the Democratic Party debate from Des Moines, Iowa, last night. Gathered with my Dem friends. We ate and drank heartily. Who won the debate? The Democrats, as the three candidates came off as thoughtful adults in contrast to the swarms of whiny Republicans who take the stage in their debates. Bernie Sanders is a strong presence, his politics more aligned with mine than those of Hilary. However, Hilary is the one who can bring the big guns to bear against the Republicans. She's more corporate than the Democratic Socialist Sanders. But the Repubs will be fighting tooth-and-nail for this election, and there is so much at stake. Hilary Clinton is the one.

I'm reading "The Martian" by Andy Weir. It's a fast-paced, tech-laden novel about a stranded astronaut on Mars. Maybe you've seen the movie, but I haven't -- not until I finish the book. The author is a software engineer and "lifelong science nerd," according to his bio. This also is his first book. I hear that he self-published the book before it gained fame as a best-seller and a Matt Damon flick. Many of us writers experience fits of jealousy about such fortunate events experienced by others. I'm one of them. Green with envy. Also blue with admiration (is there such a thing?). I am about thirty pages from "The Martian" finish line and I'm hooked.

I published a short piece several weeks ago. Silver Birch Press in L.A. features an ongoing series of themed submissions. I submitted a 200-word short to one called "When I Hear that Song." The challenge was to write a prose piece or a poem about a specific song inspiring a specific memory. Many songs, many memories. But one jumped out at me. My father, dying from prostate cancer, got a yen for the music of Abba. He never was a pop or rock music afficianado. Somehow, the songs of a Swedish pop group spoke to him. So, over the course of a few days I honed a 200-piece called "S-O-S," based on the Abba tune of the same name. Read it here: https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/s-o-s-story-by-michael-shay-when-i-hear-that-song-series/. Silver Birch featured it along with a snazzy photo of Abba and my bio, which didn't get the same attention to brevity as did "S-O-S."

Conspiracists gather in Casper Oct. 27 to hear author of "Behind the Green Mask: U.N. Agenda 21"

As I reported on these pages earlier, Tea Party Slim and his pals are in a
lather about Agenda 21, the United Nations' alleged plot to take over our neighborhoods and force us to live in solar-powered Hobbit homes. The following announcement comes from K2 News in Casper. Why is it always Casper? Must have something to do with the loony legacies of hometown Repub faves Dick and Lynne Cheney:

Cheri Steinmetz, former board member for the High Plains Initiative in
Goshen County says during her time on that board she observed
practices that left her uncomfortable and turned her into a strong
advocate for local control of land use decisions.
 
This weekend, the Parkway Plaza in Casper is the venue for an event
featuring the author of the book “Behind the Green Mask; U.N Agenda
21.″ Author Rosa Koire will talk about how smart growth and
sustainability have become blackened terms for those concerned with
property rights.
 
“Wyoming does need to hear what Rosa Koire has to say, because without
being aware of these things, they’re slipping in underneath the radar
and we don’t recognize them, because the words sound so benign and
innocuous.”
 
The event happens at 6:30 pm, Saturday, October 27th at the Parkway
Plaza. It’s free, but Steinmetz says reservations are recommended.
 
The Parkway Plaza Hotel and Convention Center, is located at 123 West
E Street in Casper (From I-25 take EXIT 188A)
 
Reserve your seats by contacting: Michelle Starkey: chellat919@aol.com
or Judy Jones: (307) 251-5527 or email fueltransport@mail.wyobeam.com

Better reserve a spot now. Tea Party Slim and his fellow travelers in Cheyenne

are planning a caravan to Casper on Saturday. 

LCCC's Literary Connection connects this writer with something old and something new

A few thoughts after spending two days at the Literary Connection at LCCC...

Overheard at my table: "She's a big reader but didn't come because she hadn't heard of any of the writers."

Never heard of Tim O'Brien? Can't be much of a reader then. He's probably the best known of all the Vietnam War veteran writers and winner of the National Book Award for "Going After Cacciato." On Oct. 27-28, he'll receive the 2012 Texas Writer Award at the Texas Book Festival in Austin, which is where this Minnesota native now lives. This bookfest may be the biggest in the USA -- it's Texas, right?

It's possible that this mysterious person never heard of Cat Valente and John Calderazzo. I can accept that. John is a full-time professor at Colorado State University and has published two books about volcanoes and one about freelance writing. He's been widely published in environmental and outdoor mags -- if you don't read those, you may never have heard of him. He's a terrific teacher, and has won teaching awards from CSU. He also was my mentor when I was in grad school there. Check out John's web site, 100 Views of Climate Change.

Cat is a young writer of sci-fi fantasy novels and most of her readership is the age of my children. She's a multimedia -- or maybe multi-platform -- author. What does that mean? She publishes books in print form, and has been wildly successful at that. However, she also is at home on the Internet. Her web site and blog are updated all the time (even when on the road) and she's a diehard Twitterer and Facebooker. At Saturday's talk, she said that her first three books came out when she was a military spouse living in Japan so the Internet was her pipeline to her U.S. readership.

Cat also has gone on tour with a musician/songwriter friend to promote her work. They hit the road for four months, reading and performing in every little coffee house and gin joint that would have them, making at least one stop in Wyoming. They slept on the car or on couches. "I was younger then," says the thirty-something author. Weren't we all?

I bring this up because I learned as much from those authors I know (O'Brien and Calderazzo) as I did from the author whom I didn't know, Cat Valente. I am old enough to be Cat's father or possibly, her grandfather, but by keeping my eyes and ears open while she spoke, I learned volumes. True, during her Saturday presentation in which she read a blog post on advice to writers partially in blog-speak, she had to translate some of it for us older folks. Here's one line I particularly liked: "You may as well dork-out to the things that thrill you down to your toes." Translation: "Forget all the advice about following the market and writing what sells. Write your passion!" Here's another one: "Do not operate narrative machinery while being an asshole." Translation: "Don't use your fiction to spew your racist or sexist garbage."

Cat is a wizard at marketing and promotion. She credits her upbringing by an advertising clan. Her father's dreams of being a filmmaker were never realized. But he taught some key skills that she used to produce her own book trailers. She would have continued to do those book trailers but her publisher does them now because they can do animation.

She also wants to spend more time writing and less time on promotion. But she knows that today's writers can't just depend on the skills of their publishers and publicists. All of us writers know this, although most of us haven't taken it to Cat's level.

I bought books from the store that Barnes & Noble set up on-site. I am now reading "Breathless" by Cat Valente, which has as its setting Soviet Russia, specifically the World War II Battle of Leningrad. I bought three books by O'Brien -- two reissued in trade paperback by Mariner and one by Broadway Books. I couldn't find my old copy of "Going After Cacciato" so bought a new one.  As Tim was signing them, he mentioned that "In the Lake of the Woods" is his favorite. That's the one I haven't yet read. I did start it at the library but only got a few pages into it before the Literary Connection. I bought an anthology co-edited by John ("The Landscape of Home") and one of Lit Connection emcee Robert Caisley's plays, "Front."

B&N said that it didn't sell as many print books as it would have liked. But the answer for that may lie in the fact that it also was promoting its soon-to-be-released HD versions of the Nook Reader. I was tempted to reserve one of the 9-inch versions but did not. Not sure if I'm ready for Nook. Are you?

Literary Death Match: Ayn Rand vs. J.R.R. Tolkien

Saw this on Facebook (via writer pal Pamela Painter) and had to share. I read both novels at about the same time, in my early 20s (I matured late). I read "The Fountainhead" too. Ayn Rand provided some good reads and, for a short while, food for thought. But I read the "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy twice, and the stories stayed with me, feeding my standing-in-line-on-opening-night obsession with the LOTR movies by Peter Jackson. I like orcs, and they scared me too.

See it now -- Wyoming Video Contest

Big Horn Samurai Sinema's home-grown filmmaking talent on display in Wyoming Video Contest. Scary, too. Music by Ten Sleep's Jalan "Trailer Park Fire" Crossland.

First Coloradans steal Buffalo Bill's body. Now they turn him into a superhero!

From Denver's Westword: On Sunday, February 26, the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave will open a new special exhibit titled Buffalo Bill Superhero. The character of Buffalo Bill (born William F. Cody) was on the cover of almost 2,000 dime novels, making him America's first comic book hero and paving the way for Batman and Superman. Covers provided by Steve Friesen.  

Wyoming Legislature stocks up for Doomsday. First purchase: aircraft carrier

Wyoming can't afford to fully fund its Health Department or rebuild its roads.

But House Republicans want to spend thousands of dollars to study the purchase of an army, strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier in case of "a complete economic and political collapse."

Here's the strange news in this Casper Star-Tribune article by Jeremy Pelzer (and thanks to Meg at Cognitive Dissonance for alerting me to this pressing issue):

State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States. 

House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government. The task force would look at the feasibility of Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. 

And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier. 

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. David Miller, R-Riverton, has said he doesn’t anticipate any major crises hitting America anytime soon. But with the national debt exceeding $15 trillion and protest movements growing around the country, Miller said Wyoming — which has a comparatively good economy and sound state finances — needs to make sure it’s protected should any unexpected emergency hit the U.S. 

Several House members spoke in favor of the legislation, saying there was no harm in preparing for the worst. 

“I don’t think there’s anyone in this room today what would come up here and say that this country is in good shape, that the world is stable and in good shape — because that is clearly not the case,” state Rep. Lorraine Quarberg, R-Thermopolis, said. “To put your head in the sand and think that nothing bad’s going to happen, and that we have no obligation to the citizens of the state of Wyoming to at least have the discussion, is not healthy.” 

--clip-- 

The bill must pass two more House votes before it would head to the Senate for consideration. The original bill appropriated $32,000 for the task force, though the Joint Appropriations Committee slashed that number in half earlier this week.

I'm all in favor of being prepared. I'd even be in favor of purchasing an aircraft carrier for emergencies if we had adequate port facilities in this landlocked state. But we don't. And won't, unless global warming due to excess burning of Wyoming coal accelerates and the Left Coast encroaches on Star Valley.

Wyoming Republicans seem to excel at crackpot bills. But this one is a doozy.