Wold Western Lore

07:29 am - The Evil in Pemberley House: A Review

The Evil in Pemberley House

 A darkly erotic thriller.

A Review

One of the more exciting books coming out this summer is The Evil in Pemberley House by Philip Jose Farmer and Win Scott Eckert.

In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit from the onset that I have long admired the works of both of the authors and that they were and are personally known to me. Although some people may consider this to be a prejudicial and biased review for these reasons, I think that I am fair minded enough to be impartial.

The Evil in Pemberley House is a collaborative novel by Philip Jose Farmer and Win Scott Eckert. Farmer had begun the novel in the early seventies, probably around the time he was finishing up his magnum opus Tarzan Alive but left it unfinished. Having found the manuscript and a detailed outline, Eckert asked to finish the novel, so that it could finally be published.

 Mr. Eckert is perhaps uniquely qualified to be Farmer’s collaborator on this novel since the background of the novel concerns Farmer’s Wold Newton Family, a subject near and dear to Eckert’s heart. Eckert has been webmaster and publisher of the premiere Wold Newton family website An Expansion of Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe for over a decade. Eckert was also the editor of Myths for the Modern Age, a collection of essays that expanded upon Farmer’s Wold Newton Family concept.

Although some reviews may call The Evil in Pemberley House a posthumous work, it is not. Although it will be published after Phil Farmer’s passing, the novel was finished, approved by Farmer and bought by a publisher prior to his death.

Most reviews will most likely examine The Evil in Pemberley House in context to its Wold Newton  Family, however I am taking another tact and looking at the novel in the context of Farmer’s erotic fiction.

Farmer is, perhaps unfairly, known as the man who introduced sex as an important plot element into science fiction in his novella “The Lovers”. His name became further equated with sex due to his popular forays into “pornography” and his unflinching look at sexuality in many of his mainstream science fiction novels. It should be mentioned that although, Farmer did write science fiction novels that do have a strong sexual content to them, these are main stream novels and are not considered by most to be pieces of erotica. Among these are Flesh which examines a post apocalyptic world given over to the worship of the Goddess, Lord Tyger which, as part of its overall theme, demonstrates how sexually uninhibited a Tarzan figure truly would be,  Fire and the Night about an interracial affair that conjoins sexuality and race in an interestingly psychological way, and Dare which pits the sexually inhibited humans against the sexually open horstels.

Farmer’s three major pieces of erotic fiction are A Feast Unknown, Image of the Beast and Love Song.

Phil wrote these three books for a publisher of erotica and did so for money. It was not uncommon however for known writers of differing genres to write pornography for money in the forties, fifties and sixties. However most of these written under pseudonyms but Phil Farmer used his own name. He also wrote for a publisher that specialized in experimental erotica.  Essex House was created to compete with Olympia Press which published classics of erotica such as the poetry of Sir John Wilmot and the works of de Sade. Essex was intended to create modern classics of erotica, serious novels with sexual themes.

So when A Feast Unknown, Image of the Beast and Love Song are labeled as pornography, it may seem that they were intended to be prurient or masturbatory fiction. Anyone who has actually read them will soon realize that this is not the case. In each one of these Phil Farmer the sexual theme and the graphic sexual depictions to illustrate a larger theme.

In A Feast Unknown sex and violence were inexorably intertwined and these primal urges are tied to the most primal urge of all, survival. The sexual scenes A Feast Unknown are almost always married with an act of violence.

 Image of the Beast sex and violence are connected but are not seen stemming from the same primal urge. They are two methods by which resurrection or regeneration can be achieved. The graphic sex scenes are horrific in their exposition. Not horribly written mind you but written to evoke strong reactions of disgust and horror.

When reading A Feast Unknown and Image of the Beast, it always struck me that the trickster Phil Farmer was laughing his ass off. People expecting to find “hot” passages found exactly the opposite. Some of the passages are enough to turn people off of sex for some time.

 Love Song is perhaps Farmer’s tamest sexual, and most erotic book of the three, however the sexuality in the novel services a purpose beyond titillation.  Although the sexual content in Love Song is more erotic than in the other two, there is still a strong undercurrent of violence connected to the eroticism. The violence however is a consequence of the underlying theme of haunted sexuality. All of three of the main characters are psychologically damaged and these neuroses manifest as either as severe sexual inhibitions or complexes. Canador House is supposed to be haunted by a leering, sexually charged ghost, but when the ghost is revealed, the denouement is even more horrifying than any specter could be. 

The Evil in Pemberley House as a novel of erotic fiction in the same vein as the three just mentioned, and like them it is erotic fiction with a purpose. Each of the three books in addition to having an underlying theme was also a pastiche/parody of a particular genre. A Feast Unknown was a pulp pastiche, Image of the Beast, a horror pastiche and Love Song a romance pastiche. 

The Evil in Pemberly House is a gothic romance pastiche carrying over with more explicitly the motif of ghostly haunting. It plays with all of the genre conventions with an heiress taking over a haunted castle, being menaced at every turn by sinister characters. Hidden pasts and relationships are uncovered.  As with the other pieces of erotic fiction, there is an underlying motif or theme connection to the sexuality that permeates the book. This sexual theme seems to be control. Sex is used in The Evil in Pemberley House by the characters to dominate one another, it is also used as a means to control the spirit of the house, that is to physically and psychologically own it.

Only by taking control of her own sexuality, by overcoming her sexual complex is Patricia able to control her own destiny.

As a sexually graphic pastiche of the gothic horror genre, the protagonist is like other gothic protagonist, sexually menaced at every turn. Often the in such novels protagonist is less a heroine and more a victim. While one can sympathize with a victim up to a certain point, there inevitably comes the time when this wears thin. You either become bored or you get angry with the character’s lack of character.

Yet The Evil in Pemberley House takes a different spin on this situation, the main character is the daughter of a famous crime fighter,  whose cousin was an extremely capable woman.. Like her famous father she has a tendency to get into sticky situations yet is capable enough to rescue her self. Patrcia Wildman may be the main character in a gothic horror novel she is a stronger, more vibrant character than most such portrayals

In regards to the sexually explicit material of the novel. The Evil in Pemberley House is akin to that in  Love Song, although it is not the main focus of the novel as it was in Love Song. Pemberley House’s graphic sexual content is subsumed almost entirely into the story. When the other three novels were published sexually explicit material in mainstream media was rare and so its portrayal was pretty cutting edge. However the modern audience had become inured to sexuality at least in its portrayal in print or visual presentation.  With pornography so common place looses much of its impact and so does not need to be the central focus, even in a darkly erotic thriller.

Besides sex has always been a double edged sword for Farmer. Portraying it brought him both acclaim and condemnation, and I think possibly precluded him from being looked at in the same regard as Asimov, Heinlein or Clarke. For my money, I think his ideas were just as broad and his execution was in many regards more skillful than the Big Three.

While perhaps less explicit than the other three pieces of erotic fiction The Evil in Pemberley is a book for mature audience and does have a strong sexual content. Yet these scenes are never simply prurient and each one is intrinsic to the plot as a whole.

However clever the author of a review wants to be in discussing his favorite novelist, the reader undoubtedly is impatiently thinking. Get to the gist! Is it any good? Does it measure up to Farmer’s other works?

The answer to both questions is a resounding yes. Like many of Farmer’s works it can be read on many levels, a sexually charged gothic thriller, a psychological mystery, a sherlockian/pulp pastiche and yes, as a novel that fits into his Wold Newton Family mythos. Farmer’s skill was always to adeptly take many disparate elements, do some literary alchemy and decant gold from the mixture. The Evil in Pemberley House is no exception to this rule. It is a very good book and a compelling read. I think that it easily stands alongside such works as The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Greatheart Silver, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg as well as his erotic classic A Feast Unknown.

A good deal of credit for this must be given to collaborator Eckert. Even if a scholar of an author’s works, as Win Eckert is most assuredly is of Farmer’s work has so thoroughly steeped himself in his collaborator’s words that it seems as though they have hijacked and channeled his muse only a writer of talent can make the collaboration seamless. I have read a few works that were unfinished works, finished by other authors, of some note, and invariably there comes a point in your reading where you know where the original text left off and the new writer took up the pen. In the case of The Evil in Pemberley House unless it is pointed out to me, I cannot tell were Farmer left off and Eckert began. While it is a collaboration, it is truly a Farmer book.

01:10 am - Goodbye Phil

Today my hero died.  

He died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 91. Although it may seem as though he lived a long, full and productive life and that his death cannot have been unexpected; it was. Because like all heroes, he was not supposed to die but go on forever.

My hero was Philip Jose Farmer, trickster and iconoclast, scholar and humorist.

It may seem odd that my hero was an author, and I am certain that being labeled a hero would have both embarrassed and amused Phil.

Yet I regard him as my hero for the impact that his work had on my life.  Phil’s work made my head explode and in doing so exposed my brain. That is it exposed my brain to works of literature I would never have read had I not read his books running the gamut from Pride and Prejudice to The Nova Express. His playful use of language and character instilled in me the habit of reading his work carefully to try to catch all of the nuances. This habit carried over to works by other authors and allowed me to enjoy their works with a better appreciation than I would have otherwise.

I began reading Phil’s works in early adolescence. I believe that the first book I read by him was The Fabulous Riverboat, which was the second in his Riverworld series. Although I entered the book not really knowing what was going on and had to wait several years for its sequel, that book made me appreciate the dark humored genius of Mark Twain and led me to read Twain’s works besides Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The next Farmer book I read was Behind the Walls of Terra, which was the fourth of his World of Tiers novels. I immediately had to read A Private Cosmos which was the predecessor to Behind the Walls of Terra.

Shortly after this is when I stumbled upon Tarzan Alive at the public library. Prior to reading Phil Farmer I had read most of the Edgar Rice Burroughs books I could find. I had read what few Doc Savages I could find and had read Sherlock Holmes. When Farmer wrote this extensive biography of Tarzan he had also included Doc Savage and Sherlock Holmes as members of Tarzan’s family tree.  This whet my appetite for more Farmer. However I could not find any of his books in the local books stores.

This was in the seventies, back in the dark ages prior to the internet so my resources were very limited. I somehow found the address of a book store in Los Angeles that specialized in science fiction and laboriously pecked out a letter to them on an old Royal typewriter asking if they had any Farmer books.

From A Change of Hobbit I was able to obtain The Book of Philip Jose Farmer, Down in the Black Gang and The Other Log of Phileas Fogg.. While I loved the short fiction in the two anthologies, I must admit that my favorite was The Other Log of Phileas Fogg. Not merely because it expanded upon the themes of his Wold Newton Family but because it further expanded my horizons. It taught me another way of reading fiction, of seeing the story behind the story, the writing of the pampliset beneath the printed word.

The Other Log of Phileas Fogg puts forth a different version of Jules Vernes Around the World in Eighty Days. Farmer does not change Verne’s work but adds a new backstory onto it, that the race around the world was part of an ongoing war between two competing extraterrestrial factions stranded on Earth.

I have heard some people complain that the The Other Log of Phileas Fogg ruined Around the World in Eighty Days because they could no longer read the original without seeing the aliens lurking in the shadows. I have heard a similar complaint about A Feast Unknown, Phil’s pastiche about Doc Savage and Tarzan, although suitably disguised.

Frankly, I have never understood this complaint. I can read Around the World in Eighty Days and read it as Verne wrote it and I can also read and imagine the secret war transpiring in the background. Phil was an author who worked on many levels and the readers who can adjust their thinking to see beyond the mundane will get a fuller enjoyment of his works.

Phil’s works made me appreciate literature by broadening my literary horizons and by tricking my young mind into thinking analytically. His works also gave me a life long interest in history, science, anthropology and sociology.

One of the main reasons however that Phil Farmer was my hero was because he unknowingly helped me through a rough patch in my adolescence. In 1975 I was a high school sophomore who hated school. It was hell on Earth. My father had disappeared shortly before the school year had begun, ostensibly to find work in another city. We did not hear from him for years. My best friend had moved and transferred to a different school. I was a short, geeky kid alone and totally out of his element. Desperate to make friends I fell in with a “bad” crowd and cut  school for about a solid month. We  hung  out at one or another house, drinking their parents liquor or beer. One by one however each of my “friends” was eventually caught because they weren’t facile enough circumvent the mail or phone calls from the school.

Yet even a budding criminal mastermind such as I could not escape the clutches of the law forever. After I was busted I was given the choice of expulsion or re-admittance to the school with several extra punishment hours, basically these were study halls tacked on to the end of the day.

During the course of these eighth hours, I read what I thought was the greatest book ever written. I must have read it four or five times during the course of those punishment hours. The story was about a young man who travels the universe search for the answer to the eternal question, Why were we created? Why? Why? The books dark humor and its denouement of pointlessness somehow lifted my spirits. Although I did not know it at the time this book was written by Phil Farmer, like many other people I believed that Venus on the Half Shell had been written by Kurt Vonnegut but under the name of Kilgore Trout.  I had read Breakfast of Champions earlier and so knew about Kilgore Trout. Yet even as I read Venus on the Half Shell, I wondered why this book was so much better than Vonnegut’s other books. (Sorry Vonnegut fans but that’s how I feel.)

Years later when I learned that it had in fact been Phil Farmer that had written Venus on the Half Shell, I mentally kicked myself for not having seen it earlier. There was a couple of Farmer’s characters mentioned during the course of the tale, although I thought this was simply a case of one author making tribute to another. Yet there were also instances meticulously worked out alien biology, albeit to humorous effect. Examples of such discourse in alien physiogamy showed up in several of Farmer’s works such as The Lovers, the World of Tiers series and The Stone God Awakens.

Perhaps most telling was the theme of immortality. There were two forms of immortality in Venus on the Half Shell: physical immortality and spiritual immortality and both were dependent on the other. Knowing that his search for the answer could take centuries, Simon Wagstaff agreed to drink an elixir that made him physically immortal. However as he discovered there was a catch, it also released his ancestral memories. Eventually Simon had to share his body with the consciousnesses of his ancestors. Simon Wagstaff was in a sense a microcosm of the Riverworld, where the immortal physical self is bound to an immortal spirit.

There is little doubt that Phil was influenced by the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The concept of immortality ran through the gamut of Burroughs work. The concept of immortality played a huge role in many of Phil’s work. It was so pervasive that I tended to think of Phil as immortal..

This morning reality clashed with my mental imagery. Philip Jose Farmer, my hero died. The all too mortal immortal passed from this life and onto the next.

Although I cannot help but feel a great sense of loss, knowing that there is a great vacuum on the Earth, a hole in the space time continuum where the mind and body of Phil Farmer once existed I can be comforted by knowing that he had indeed achieved immortality. His work. His work still exists and will exist for generations to come.

Good bye Phil, I will miss you.

Hopefully one day, we can meet once again on the banks of the River of Eternity.

02:19 pm - What if Part Four

Continuing from my previous posts on the subject of alternate history. The Third main category of alternate history is the cross-time travel alternate history. The term is a bit of a misnomer since most versions of the cross-time alternate history story do not involved anything to do with time or time travel. The term came into prevalence because of Murray Leinster's seminal crosstime travel story Sideways in Time and Andre's Norton's Crosstime series. In Sideways in time a unknown catastrophe strikes the Earth and various locations of the Earth have been replaced with analogs from alternate universes. A college instructor in mathematics tries to utilize the displacements to find a place where his abilities will enable him to rule. Andre Norton's The Crossroads of Time introduces the concept of the Time Wardens, a organization created to police different timelines. A more accurate term for this category of the genre would perhaps be paratime which was utilized by H. Beamer Piper in his various paratime stories and novels. They also deal with an organization that freely travels between parallel time lines, although their motive is an economic one. However inaccurate the term might be, crosstime is the one that seems to have stuck.

The crosstime category is probably the second largest category in terms of usage, the other being the straightforward alternate history. It can be subdivided into involuntary and voluntary crosstime travel, although some novels are a blend of both.  The mechanism for voluntary and in some cases the involuntary crosstime story involve some means of traveling through alternate timelines. This is accomplished either through natural or artificial means. Some stories posit naturally occurring rifts in time/space that allow being to travel through timelines or some inborn ability to do so. Other rely on purely artificial means.

Many of the involuntary crosstime travels begin with someone thrust, as in the words of Howard the Duck 'into a world he never made". Although some of these are purely by chance as in Two Hawks from Earth or Michael Moorcock's Oswald Bastable series, where the protaganist slipped through a naturally occuring space/time rift most of the involuntary crosstime travel tales have something to do with some form of artificial crosstime travel. Calvin Morrison, Edward Bear, Brion Bayard, Blake Walker and Mark Strang are all stranded in worlds that are different from their own by traveling through an device that crossed timelines. Calvin Morrison found himself in Pennsylvania in a far different ruled by Aryans in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen by H. Beamer Piper courtesy of the an oversight by the Paratime police. Edward Bear was accidentally transported to the North American Confederacy through an experimental device in The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith. Brion Bayard was kidnapped by members of a crosstime organization, in The Worlds of the Imperium by Keith Laumer. Blake Walker was also forced into an alternate timeline by a crosstime organization in the The Crossroads of Time by Andre Norton. In John Barnes' Patton's Spaceship While following a terrorist organization that killed his wife and mother, Mark Strang was stranded in the 1960s of a world dominated by the Nazis. In Sideslip Ron Archer was thrown into a world where World War II never occured through a a laboratory accident. In almost all of these situations the person is a fish out of water and must learn to live in his new home.

One odd subsect of the involuntary crosstime travel tale is the transfer to another world by death. In John Clagett's A World Unknown, Simon Ashe is transported to a world where Ancient Rome never died when he died in a plane crash. Eric Norden's The Ultimate Solution seems to be a straightforward alternate history about a Nazi dominated United States until it is revealed that one of the main characters had died and been transferred to this particular universe. In Michael Bishop's A Secret Ascension, upon his death science ficton writer Philip K. Dick peers into an alternate world where he was a successful main stream author which was also a world where Watergate never took place.  In Gordon Eklund's All Time Possible when Tommy Bloom dies travels from an alternate world where America became fascist to one where America becomes a soviet type state.

Although it is more common in fantasy fiction and somewhat in time travel fiction, the idea of a consciousness traveling into another world or dimension has been used a few times in alternate histories. In The Wheel of If by L. Sprague de Camp, Alistar Park's consciousness is rotated into several alternate doppelgangers until he is stuck in a world where the Vikings had settle America. This transfer was done by a mechanical means by men who wanted to get rid of Park's doppelganger without actually killing him.

A great deal of the crosstime alternate history stories have to do with voluntary travel, usually through an organization that either polices the timelines or profits from trading among them. We have mentioned the Piper's Paratime series, Nortons Crosstime series and Laumer's Imperium series. Other such police type organizations involve Sam Merwin's Watcher organization which are the crosstime organization in his House of Many Worlds  and Three Faces of Time. A subset of the policing crosstime organization is the organizations which war across timelines. This concept was probably introduced by Fritz Leiber in The Big Time and Changewar. This involved two time traveling factions that recruited soldiers from all eras and who changed history as part of their stragegies. This concept of warring across time and recruiting soliders from all eras was also part of Simon Hawke's Timewars series. The premise of this series was that in the future war had been changed to a sort of game where by soldiers achieved points by participating in historical battles. Time was believed to be impossible to change, however as the series progress the time line split and the two timelines fight against one another. Richard C. Meredith's Timeliner series portrayed the experiences of a solider recruited to fight across several timelines, believing that he was preventing a catastrophe that would have wiped out all of existence. Keith Laumer's Worlds of the Imperium was also often involved crosstime battles as the zero zero timeline often had to fight against invaders from other timelines. John Barne's Timeline Wars carried on in this vein.

Here are some stories, novels or series that use the ability to travel through alternate histories for profit. Larry Niven's All the Myriad Ways, which also shows how the very concept of alternates can have a serious psychological affect. Piper's Paratime series, Jack C. Chalker's G.O.D. series, Michael P. Kube-McDowell's Alternities, S. M. Stirling's Conquistador, Charles Stross Merchant Princes series and Harry Turtledove's Crosstime Traffic series.

10:58 pm - What if Part Three

Continuing from my previous posts on the subject of alternate history. The second main category of alternate history is the time travel derived alternate history. These often vary widely on how much allohistorical content is actually present in the novel.

Both Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee, about a Union that had suffered a defeat in the American Civil War and John Brunner's Times Without Number which was set in a world where the Spanish Armada successfully invaded England had very little time travel element in them. It wasn't until the end of the novels that the time travel element was introduced with devastating results for the main characters. Some novels such as John Jakes Black in Time in which two competing factions; a black militant group and a white supremacist group  have taken control of a time travel device to make a better world, at least from their perspectives have a series of mini alternate histories in them as the time travelers continually change history. The time travel show Voyagers also featured mini alternate histories which the protagonists had to fix to fix the timeline. One of the common tropes of time travel alternate histories, especially in the min-alternate histories.is that alternate history is the result of meddling by a time traveler and that it needs to be fixed. As a result you have organizations such as Poul Anderson's The Time Patrol,  the television series  Voyagers and film versions such as Timecop.

Another common theme in time travel alternate history is changes brought about by the introducion of modern technology or idea. The first example I can think of is A Connecticut Yankee is King Arthur's Court in which modern technology was introduced into the Britain of the Middle Ages. Now arguablely this could also be seen as a alternate universe rather than a alternate history tale since the changes that Hank Morgan made do not seem to have affected the time line. L. Sprague De Camp also has a similar story in Lest Darkness Fall. Martin Padway, an archaeologist is struck by lightning while studying some Roman ruins and finds himself in 6th century Rome. He uses his knowledge to keep Rome from falling. Unlike A Connecticut Yankee, even though we do not see the long term consequences of his actions Lest Darkness Fall is more of an alternate history because Padway does change the lives and fates of historical characters.

Conrad Schwartz, a Polish Engineer of the late twentieth century falls asleep in an inn and wakes to find himself transported to 12th century Poland, a decade before the Mongol Invasion. Conrad uses all his technical skill and military training to create a modern army that will prevent the Mongols from devastating Europe. This is explored in Leo Frankowski's Conrad Stargard series.

Two of the most common changes that time traveler's want to make are to change the outcome of the Civil War or prevent WWII. Harry Harrison's A Rebel in Time is one such novel on this theme. Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South, which was in some ways a precursor to his mammoth Southern Victory series,  has the Confederate Army receiving modern weapons such as uzis and rocket lauchers from South African extermist. Two examples with widely varient results are Elleander Morning by Jerry Yulsman and Making History by Stephen Frey. In Elleander Morning a woman travels back to 1913 and assassinates Adolph Hitler while he is still a starving artist. The lack of Hitler led to no Second World War but the time traveler had left behind some anamlaous objects such as the Time Life History of the Second World War which causes complications in the other wise peaceful world. Making History wipes Hitler from existance by making Alois Hitler infertile. However another person who is a better strategest fills the niche and creates a world that is even more terrible than the one that time traveler desired.

Author Robert Adams who was most famous for his Horseclans series, also had another series The Castaways in Time. The title was a bit of a misnomer since the Castaways were sent back in time to medieval England however, it was the England of an alternate history. The castaways were a group of people who had taken refuse in a house when a flooded highway due to a flooded highway. As it turned out the Castaways and the change in history had come about from time meddling.

More modern authors have taken the idea of a group of people transported to the past with and run with it. S. M. Stirling, who is almost as prolific as Harry Turtledove as an alternate historian, wrote the Nantucket Trilogy which explored the consequences of  Nantucket Island of 1998 being transported back in time to 1250 BC. His Change World Series is a collary series that explores what happened to rest of the world once Nantucket disappeared.

Author Eric Flint also transported an entire city back in time,  The town of Grantville, West found itself transported back in time to 1632. Unlike Nantucket however, Grantville had also been displaced in space and founded itself in Germany in the midst of the Thirty years War. 1632 spawed several sequels which demonstrate that while the technology does have an impact it is the ideas that have the most impact on altering the timeline.

Author John Birmingham explored this idea of the impact of ideas and attitudes in his Axix of Time series. In this case it was not a city that was taken back in time but rather a 21st naval fleet which was transported back in time to the the Battle of Midway. Plopping down in the middle of the American fleet both sides took a horrible toll on one another before realizing that they were fighting the wrong enemy. Although the main part of the fleet landed in a group, some of the ships did get displaced in space as well, thus giving the Axis access to this higher technology. However the science and underlying technology of the 1940s was not sophisticated enough to simply begin cranking out the superior tech, it was not just a matter of the 21st centurians giving up their secrets, entire support technologies had to be learned and recreated. However the difference in idealogies and cultural attitudes between the 1940s and the 21st century were so different as to cause immediate social problems. The 21st centurians were at first confined to an area near California so their radical ideas could not contaminate society but eventually ideas, films and books leaked out.

One recent variation of the time travel element in alternate history that also segues into our next topic is the idea that time travel is impossible but travel between universes is not. Therefore some authors have used this concept to make time travel seem more plausible. Instead of actually traveling back to the past you are traveling to an alternate universe, which was nearly identical to their own but several years younger. This time travel via alternate worlds was used in Stephen Baxter's Time Ships and in the more mainstream author Michael Crichton's Timeline. This concept however was first utilized in Sam Merwin's Three faces of Time in which the crosstime travelers discover an alternate universe equivalent to Ancient Rome. In both cases these were to alternate that were almost replica's of our past. I will explore this further in my next blog.

11:58 pm - What If Part deux

In my previous blog I stated that there are three main categories alternate history. There are the straight forward alternate histories which tell a story derived from a historical point of divergence. The author may or may not tell the reader what the POD is

One of the best examples of the straight forward alternate history is Robert Sobol’s For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga. As you can guess by the title it's point of divergence takes place During the Revolutionary War. In Sobol's scenario the revolution failed. What makes Sobol's book so fascinating is that it was written as if it were an actual book of history from this alternate universe. It comes complete with footnotes, several appendixs and a fictional bibliography. Written in 1971 when Alternate history books were few and far between, Sobol's book did not garner much notice although it was nominated for a Pulitzer prize. Alternate history was regarded as a subset of the Science fiction genre and most science fiction fans would have not had much interest in the history laden content of For Want of a Nail. Sobol's book remains one of the classic books in the genre.

Contrasting with Sobol's massive tome is Mackinley Kantor's If the South Had Won the Civil War. Written a decade earlier than Sobol's book, Kantor piece was originally written for Look magazine. It too was written as if it were a historical text complete with footnotes. Although expanded from its magazine format at 127 pages the novel is a slim but interesting work, although some people believe that how he ended the novel was unrealistic.

This sort of straight forward pseudo-scholarship format appealed to the historian in me. Back when I was in college and was studying education I created lesson plans derived from using alternate history as a teaching tool. My fellow social science students critiqued my plans as unrealistic and without real world value. At this time, alternate history was still considered a subset of science fiction and so was "out there". A few years later hower some serious historians began using what if as a tool to examine how the historical process worked-- how crucial was the one man theory, were events inevitable, etc. To explore these avenues of reasoning they asked the same questions that previous alternate historians had, however since they were historians and not fuzzy headed science fiction writers they labeled their thought exercises as counter-factual history. Although the counter-factual historians proclaim that their work is much different than the alternate history stuff the basic difference is that counter factual historians don't attempt any science fictional explanations for their what if scenarios and their works are pure (pseudo) scholarship.

One of the first counter-factual books was Irving Stone's They Also Ran. Stone is most famous for his series of biographical novels such as The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo and Passion of the Mind about Sigmund Freud. They Also Ran is a book of short biographies about defeated Presidential candidates. At the each of mini-biography, Stone speculates on what type of President the candidate would have made.

In addition to pseudo-scholarly examinations of the straight forward alternate history, there are many novels that use that format. The novels use the alternate history as background or a a plot device to explore the lives of fictional characters. One of the most famous straight forward novels of alternate history is Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. This novel which takes place in a world where the Axis conquered America explores the lives of several people, including an author who wrote an alternate history novel about the Allies having won the war. This version however is also drastically different than our world.

1966's Pavane by Keith Roberts also explored an alternate history in a rather disconnected way through the lives of various characters. Unlike The Man in the High Castle their isn't a narrative thread that ties the book together. Rather it is a series of vignettes, slice of life stories about people living in an England in which the Spanish Armada had invaded England.

One of the first realized alternate history novels was The Gate of Worlds by Robert Silverberg. This is set the near future of a Islam dominated Europe written from the viewpoint of a young English trader. In the Middle Ages the invasions by the Ottomans went unchecked. The main character travels to a Mexico still dominated by the Aztecs.

Another straight forward alternate history classic, which does have a science fiction twist to it, is Harry Harrison's Tunnel Through the Deeps. In this Captain Gus Washington is the lead engineer of a project to dig a tunnel beneath the ocean floor that would connect England and America. Gus Washington is the descendant of the defeated and disgraced George Washington and is attempting to redeem the family name.

Before Martin Cruz Smith won fame and fortune as the author of the Arkady Renko series... Gorky Part and its sequels, he wrote a short, entertaining if implausible alternate history named The Indians Won. This was a novel exploring how the Indians could have beaten the US Cavalry in the 1870's and the modern day consequences of these actions.

Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita also wrote a rather lengthy alternate history novel entitled Ada or Ardor: A family chronicle which chronicles the story of one family living in a Czarist dominated America.

Recently alternate history has become more mainstream and is often considered to be its own genre rather than a subset of science fiction. However this is the more mainstream, straight forward alternate history which does not depend on science fictional elements such as time travel or interdimensional travel to tell their tales. One of the most, well probably the most popular author working in this vein is Harry Turtledove whose works have proven fairly popular.

Turtledove works in all three of the alternate history categories. His first couple of works were in the straight forward categories. As professor of Byzantine history his first stories reflected this interest. He wrote a series of short stories about Basil Agyros, a spy for the Byzantine empire. In this particular history however Byzantine did not fall because Islam never came about. Mohammed converted to Christianity instead.  His second series dealt with a what if dealing with evolution. He wondered what would have happened if homo sapiens had not entered into the New World until the age of exploration. When explorers did land on the new world they found it inhabited by australopithecines and megafauna.  His most massive work, the Southern Victory series which explores in great detail a history unfolding from the south winning the civil war. The series progresses from a second war between the Confederacy and the Union over Mexico and Cuba to the first world war and ending with the Second World War. In this series Turtledove reimagines the Confederacy as an analog for the Germany. He has written a couple of other noteworthy straight forward alternate histories. One is the Infamy series which consists of two novels which deal with the consequences of Japan invading Hawaii after Pearl Harbor. Rule Britannia takes place in an England dominated by Spain in the wake of a successful Spanish invasion. Unlike Pavane however, England is ready to throw off the yoke of Spanish rule. One of Turtledove's more recent novels was The Man with the Iron Heart which posits that instead of accepting defeat after WWII Germany instead launched a terrorist campaign against the occupation forces. This effort was led by Reinhard Heydrich, who in this timeline escaped assassination. While making a plausible story, Turtledove also manages to draw parallels between a defeated Germany and the current occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the War of Terror.

Two other classic novels that were written in a fairly straight forward fashion are Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee and John Brunner's Times Without Number. Moore's novel is set in the Union after its defeat from the Confederacy. Brunner's novel is set in a world dominated by Spain. However in the end both end up having elements of time travel in them so they should be placed in the next category which is time travel derive alternate history. I will deal with these on my next post.

12:11 pm - What If? Part One

A friend of mine is writing an introduction to Philip Jose Farmer’s Two Hawks from Earth, Farmer’s classic alternate history tale. My friend was somewhat familiar with the genre but hasn’t read it extensively. While I do not consider myself an expert I have read many books in the genre so he asked me to share some of my knowledge..

For those of you who are not familiar with the genre, it is a genre of speculative fiction deriving from the question what if? Common examples are; what if the South had won the Civil War? or What if the Nazis had won?

Having posed the question the author task is to answer the question in a entertaining and plausible fashion. Whether or not the writer succeeds is often subjective.

Alternate history is often confused with alternate universes or parallel universe, all of which are considered subsets of the science fiction genre. While an alternate history make indeed take place in an alternate universe it does not necessarily do so. What makes an alternate history an alternate history is that some event has to have taken place that altered the course of historical development.

For example Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake series, which is set in modern St. Louis. This takes place in a universe where magic works and vampires and werewolves are legal citizens and Cahokia Mounds are actually Fairy hills. Even though there are differences between our world and this one, this series should be considered an alternate universe rather than an alternate history.

On the other hand, Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series could be considered an alternate history even though it also takes place in a universe where magic works. The Lord Darcy series does indeed have a historical point of difference that centering on Richard I Plantagenet. Instead of dying without heirs in a stupid punitive expedition Richard I lived to perpetuate and expand the Anjou empire. Some AH purists might reject the notion that the Lord Darcy series is a true AH because it does have magic etc. but I tend to include it.

Richard Garfinkle's Celestial Matters can also be disputed as to whether it is alternate history. Although it takes place in a universe where Athens rose to prominence and took over half of the world, in this universe Ptolemaic astronomy and Aristotelian physics are true. In other words the fundamental physical laws are far different than say just the addition of magic or supernatural creatures that it should be considered a parallel universe story rather than an alternate history.

Another type of story that is not generally considered alternate history are stories written in the past but set a future which has already become the past. Prime examples of these are 1984 or The Red Napoleon although I do put them in my AH bookcase.

One more type of story that is not considered to be an AH is one where a historical difference does not make a significant historical change. For example it is discovered that the atomic bomb was invented during Queen Victoria's  time as in Queen Victoria's Bomb, or that Nazis had landed on the moon but these events were unknown and had no real affect on historical development. These are secret histories rather than alternate histories.

Off the top of my head there are three main categories. of Alternate History. There are straight alternate histories, time travel derived alternate history and crosstime fiction. I will go into more details about these three categories in my next blog.

09:57 pm - The Stakes

The Stakes

Well, it did not take long for me to miss a day of blogging did it?

Wednesday night I went out for a semi-annual poker game. I’ve been playing poker with the same core people for about thirty years. We play for about the same stakes as we did thirty years ago. In fact our pots generally are smaller than they were thirty years ago, despite most of us making much more money that we did thirty years ago. However back then, although we did not make as much we do now, also did not have the responsibilities that come with middle age; families, mortgages, insurance etc.

When we were younger our games also started late and went on until the wee hours of the morning, sometimes to dawn and beyond.  However we generally start much earlier and end the game in a few hours so we creaky old men can go home and get to bed.

In the three decades that our game has existed players have come and gone. Many of them I suspect became irritated at our style of play which is one third game, one third banter and one third arguing about the game. Others have simply not been invited back for one reason or another. For example one fellow did not realize that the true object of our poker game was not to win a lot of money, so he set about to break the bank by a combination of sandbagging and aggressive bluffing. This drove out the small fish and made those with more money and stronger competitive drives stay in to win the big pots.

After the gent walked away with our hard earned cash we instituted caps on how much some could lose in a hand. In a way we pre-dated Missouri’s recently overturned casino spending limit. For the serious poker players out there who label us as amateurs, cheapskates and chicken, I cheerfully admit to all three, at least when it comes to poker. It isn’t the world series of poker after, all, it is just for fun… unless I lose.

During the infrequent times that I do play poker, while I am playing, in the back of my mind I often think about my one of my favorite books, in which poker crucial plot element. The lack of concentration may explain my poker prowess. The book is Last Call by Tim Powers.  Like most of Tim Powers books, he has created a perfectly realized world of magic realism in which poker becomes not merely a game wherein cash, property and lives are the stakes but a magic ritual that can shape the world. Powers equates the death of Bugsy Siegel with the sacrifice of the divine king and Las Vegas is the magical city surrounded by the Wasteland from Arthurian mythos. Las Vegas, as the capital of chance swims in a sea of probability that can cure or kill, given the right turn of the cards or throw of a dice.

If you haven’t read Last Call I highly recommend doing so before you play poker again. You may realize that what you are playing for goes far beyond any paltry sum of money.

09:46 pm - Always fear, when Smith is near!

Always fear, when Smith is near!

In a previous blog I noted that I have been watching a lot of Lost in Space. Looking at Lost in Space from the view point of an adult I was surprised by two elements that disturbed me about the series that I completely overlooked as a child.

I am not talking about the cheesy production values, the often godawful writing or the total lack of scientific verisimilitude but rather about the characterization of Dr. Zachary Smith and how the Robinson family interacts with him. My impression of Dr. Smith from childhood memory was that he started out as a bad guy but later became something of joke as his laziness and cowardice were exaggerated for comic effect.

However upon seeing the show as an adult it brought home to me just how vile was Dr. Zachary Smith.

The backstory of the series is that by 1997 Earth’s overpopulation had reached critical levels. Various nations planned to send ships to Alpha Centauri, the nearest solar system that was believed to support inhabitable planets.  The Jupiter 2 comprised the test vessl of the Americans. It was crewed by Dr. John Robinson, his family and astrogator Don West. The crew was placed in suspended animation while the ship made a decades long journey to Alpha Centauri. While the Robinson family slept the ship’s main functions were supposed to be overseen by a robot.

Why sending this one vessel was thought to be a solution to overpopulation was never explained. Presumably once the Jupiter made its way to Alpha Centauri and set up a colony they would have sent word for more ships to come. However this would have taken about a half a century so and during this time population would have grown at a geometric rate and precious resources would have dwindled. Would there been enough resources to build a fleet of ships to save even a fraction of the earth’s population?

The show was made in the sixties during the height of the cold war so instead of the Jupiter project being a global initiative; it was a strictly American one. In the first episode there was a distinct impression that there was a great haste to get the Robinson family into space in order to beat an unfriendly nation. There were a couple of differences between the unaired pilot and the aired first episode that reflect the cultural stamp of the early Sixties. When the Robinson family was introduced, Mrs. Robinson was introduced as Dr. Maureen Robinson a biochemist. Will Robinson was introduced as a child prodigy in math and science, the oldest daughter Judy Robinson gave up a career in music and dance to be with her family. Penny Robinson has an interest in classical music and animals. After the first episode it was never again mentioned that Maureen Robinson was Dr. Robinson. She was portrayed as a typical homemaker, although in outer space. The female characters in the show were portrayed as stereotypical females who haven’t much interest in science and needed male protection and guidance.

Dr. Zachary Smith was one of the technical experts that worked for the launch. He was apparently a medical doctor who also specialized in robotic. Prior to the launch he went on the ship ostensibly to do a last minute medical check on the Robinson family. However he was working for an unfriendly power and reprogrammed the robot to sabotage the mission after it left the solar system.

While carrying out his mission of sabotage Dr. Smith became trapped on the Jupiter spacecraft and panicked. He started messing about with the control panels and sent the Jupiter off course in a hyperdrive that send the Jupiter careening out of the galaxy. (One has to wonder if they had hyperdrive capabilities why didn’t just hyperdrive directly to Alpha Centauri instead of going at a slow speed and using suspended animation.) Realizing he had really screwed up Dr. Smith woke up the Robinson family. Due to Dr. Smith’s efforts they were lost in space. Dr. Smith refused to take responsibilities for his actions and demanded that the Robinsons use all their efforts to return him to Earth before continuing on their mission.

As a child it did not really register that by working for a foreign government Dr. Smith was a traitor to his country. Furthermore he had, without any compunction, programmed the robot to sabotage the Jupiter mission. This would have killed all five of the Robinson family including the two children and the ship’s navigator Don West.

As the series progressed the more overt, malevolent aspect of Dr. Smith’s personality was downplayed while his other attributes his constant laziness, his arrogance, his cowardice, his lust for power and riches and his hypochondria were played for humor. Yet his darker aspects never entirely disappeared even as he became more buffoonish. He stole necessary equipment and traded it for food, ate more than his share of food, used drinking water to take a shower, hoarded food, etc. At the drop of a hat he would have abandoned the Robinsons or allowed them to perish if he thought it would benefit him, to save his own life he was even willing to trade the life of Will or Penny Robinson.

When I was a kid watching the show, I always thought Don West was a bit of a jerk for being on Dr. Smith’s case all of the time. Now I see that Don West was the only one on the Jupiter 2 with a lick of sense. In one episode, the Jupiter 2 had gone off course, due to Dr. Smith deliberate course change. They encountered a Space Siren who lured Doctor Smith out of the ship. They were faced with a difficult decision, saving Doctor Smith meant that they would miss a critical course change that would take them back to Earth otherwise they would once again be lost in space. When Robinson decided that they had to save Dr. Smith, despite his misgivings Don West volunteered to do the spacewalk to get Dr. Smith back into the Jupiter 2.  Bad move.

I watched first and second seasons of Lost in Space, I found myself getting increasingly disgusted by Dr. Smith’s behavior. Beyond simply being a narcissistic, lazy coward his series of negligent behavior, thefts and treachery endangered the lives of West and the Robinson’s time and time again. All in all he was a vile, despicable and utterly worthless human being. Dr. Smith was almost all of the worst traits of humanity embodied in one singular form.

However much the Dr. Smith character irritated my adult sensibilities, what really pissed me off was the Robinsons’ behavior towards him, especially that of Dr. John Robinson and Maureen Robinson. Will and Penny I forgive for being immature and so being impressionable. They could be swayed by Dr. Smith’s charm, although it was an unctuous charm, a smarmy Eddie Haskall type charm. That is, the charm was a sham, a façade that anyone with a glimmer of sense could have penetrated.

Although the Doctors Robinson remained unaware that Smith had planned to scuttle the Jupiter 2 and kill its entire crew, they soon became aware of his other less than desirable qualities. They became aware of his penchant for treachery, his criminal negligence, his thefts, his cowardice and his laziness. Yet they constantly tried to reform him, to make him a functioning member of their tiny colony. They gave him crucial responsibilities and allowed him access to critical equipment over and over again even when it was apparent that Dr. Smith had no intention of living up to his assigned responsibilities much less reform.

In one glaring example, the Robinsons gave Dr. Smith the responsibility of caring for their hydroponic garden. After a week Dr. Robinson checked up on how he was doing to discover that the hydroponic garden had died. Upon seeing this as an adult my first response was-- well what did you expect? Smith had demonstrated time and time again that he could not be entrusted to do even simple tasks. Knowing this Robinson should have never assigned such a vital task to be entirely in Dr. Smith’s care. As the series progressed I became less and less sympathetic towards the Robinsons and their plight since about 75% of their travails were directly or indirectly attributable to the actions of Dr. Smith.

As the leader of the expedition however John Robinson bears the ultimate responsibility for all of these problems. With the life of his family (since Don West was romantically involved with Judy we can include him under this banner) living on such a marginal existence that John Robinson I think that it is criminally negligent on the part of Dr. Robinson that he not only continued to allow Dr. Smith to remain as a member of the expedition but also continued to give him tasks upon which the lives of his family depended and access to vital equipment which Smith stole or destroyed.

I watched Lost in Space against with the recent Presidential campaign in the background and realized that John Robinson was the sort of liberal that conservatives always mock. Now mind you Robinson isn’t one of disingenuous ones such as those who make lip service to going green but gallivant all over the globe on personal jets but rather the impractical idealist who sacrifices all for his principles. John Robinson places the lives of his entire family, and if we are to believe the premise of the television, the welfare of the Planet Earth (who are depending on a successful Jupiter 2 mission) at risk because he cannot endanger the life on one human being, because he pursues a quixotic quest to redeem the irredeemable.

Perhaps if, despite his treachery Dr. Smith were someone who had some great contribution to make to the universe, Robinson’s continual willingness to risk the lives of his crew and the welfare of Earth by keeping Dr. Smith around might be understandable. However, unlike the treacherous Senator from Connecticut, there is no sign that Dr. Smith has anything useful to contribute. Even if he did, it is quite likely that he would not be willing to put forth any effort to make this contribution. Robinson’s insistence on hauling Dr. Smith around with them thereby placing his family in constant jeopardy owes more to Robinson’s belief that human life is sacred, even some as worthless as Dr. Zachary Smith. Robinson is seemingly willing to adhere to this principle even at the cost of his own family’s life, and in a larger context, at the expense of the Earth.  Perhaps this makes the intention was to make him seem like a man of great principle but it seems to exemplify the sort of impractical idealism that scientists were stereotyped as having.

As a child I glossed over the down right evil traits of Dr. Smith by being distracted by the more comedic elements of his character. As an adult the comedic aspects seemed less humorous, knowing the malevolent spirit lurking beneath the surface of “poor” Dr. Zachary Smith. As a child I never appreciated that talent that Jonathan Harris had in portraying Dr. Smith. Yes, he was often over the top and hammy but every now and then you could see the glittering malice of Dr. Smith’s true character in his eyes or the quirk of his smile.

Throughout the series, Dr. Smith constantly demanded to be returned to Earth and Dr. Robinson steadfastly refused to even consider doing so until they first reached Alpha Centauri. Personally I would not have taken Dr. Smith to Earth, I would have shoved him out of the airlock after the first time he tried to trade away one of my family members to some alien bastard or tried to hijack the ship.

10:25 pm - Six Months in Limbo

Six months in Limbo.

Limbo is according to Catholic theology a place between Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. Purgatory is sort of the prison of the afterlife for folks who are not quite good enough to be allowed into Heaven and not bad
enough to be damned. So souls are sent to be purged of evil and are
punished/tormented for a few centuries or millennia before moving on up to the Heaviside layer.

Limbo however was a place designed for people who did not quite fit into niches. There is a Limbo of the Patriarch and a Limbo of the
Infants. The Limbo of the Patriarchs is for folks who were good enough to get into Heaven or Purgatory but lived before the time of Christ, hence never heard the Good Word and so could not be Saved. However since they did not deserve damnation they were shunted off to Limbo. The Limbo of the Infants is the place where unbaptised babies go. These infants are tainted with Original Sin, which is washed away by Baptism and so cannot enter the gates of Heaven but also do not deserve damnation. They await the Last Trump when all souls are either eternally saved or eternally damned.

When I was a child attending Parochial school I always thought that the two Limbos were the same place, so I had visions of acres and acres of squalling infants laying atop fluffy white clouds being taken care of
by the likes of Moses, Aristotle, Socrates and Buddha. In this regard Limbo was not that much different from Hell.

I feel like I am a Limbo myself, the Limbo of the Unemployed. Six months ago I was laid off from my job of 14 years. I was part of a major layoff and most of the people I worked with also lost their jobs as our entire division was eliminated with a few pen strokes.

Until a couple of years ago it was rare that I took my vacations in week increments using taking one or two days off at a time. Unlike
some of my co-workers I was not looking forward to being off for any length of time because I know that I operate best in a structured environment. Too much free time puts me off kilter and really interrupts my sleep patterns.

Generally I have insomnia and only get about three uninterrupted hours of sleep and then another two or three hours of catnaps. It is usually during the catnaps when I do my dreaming. I fall into deep REM states that give me vivid, if short dreams. The high REM state often makes me awaken with a headache. Lately however my insomnia has gotten worse.

After about a month of my unwanted vacation the dreams started. I dream about going to work. I dream about interacting with the various people I worked with over the last fourteen years. These dreams occur almost nightly and I wake up with a profound sense of loss, knowing that part of my life is irretrievably gone. These dreams add fuel to my night anxieties when I lay in bed trying to sleep but my mind races with anxious thoughts about not finding employment, about my state of finance, about my aged and ailing mother’s health, about my health now that I lack healthcare, about all the many things that most people worry about.

I never thought it would be true but I miss my job. Despite all the often unfulfilling years I put in at the daily grind, I miss being there. For a job is not just a job it becomes an intrinsic part of your life. It is what defines you, makes you feel like a useful citizen. What do you do? This is one of the first questions you are usually asked upon meeting someone.  When you say that you are unemployed, their eyes narrow and they look at you askance. You feel like a leper, like a bum even though you still pay your bills and your taxes just like anyone else.

The last time I was unemployed was in 1992 during the recession of Bush I who said “the economy is in a freefall”. Now that his son is leaving office we once again have equivalent unemployment numbers, a free fall economy and two ongoing wars to boot. Bush II has surpassed his father in terms of leaving the country in a shambles.

I had thought that the time away from work, short as I hoped it would be, would allow me to work on my writing. My plan was to work on my employment searches for four to five hours a day and work on my writing four to five hours a day. However as it turned out I haven’t had much of a chance to do much besides work around the house, work on the job search and take care of my mother. I haven’t been able to adhere to any schedule, which leaves me unfocused and feeling at odds. This lack of focus and disassociation is exacerbated by my lack of sleep, general anxiety and depression.

There are many projects I would like to do, writing projects, reading projects, projects around the house but I cannot find the time. Wait, that is not true. I have the time but not the drive. I feel lost and aimless.

My friend Mike Croteau has a blog in which he discusses the books he reads. He has a book in his bathroom, another in his bedroom, another that he reads in his living room and audio books he listens to in his car. I used to be like that. I used to have a book I read in the bathroom,one I read while I ate breakfast, one I read during my daily commute, one I read during lunch and another I read at night. Since I have been laid off I have read three books in their entirety. I have started dozens of other but I cannot focus on what I read. Part of the problem is my vision; I need new glasses but cannot afford them right now but most of the problem is due to my lack of concentration

I have a website upon which I have many finished pieces, some novel length or even longer. Yet since it was announced that we were being laid off I haven’t finished but one piece and have barely worked on anything at all. My lack of drive is depressing and adds to my general malaise.

01:09 pm - Catching up

As I feared when I began this blog I would become lax in updating it.

So what has been happening in my life since August?

From my last post you will have seen I had to get a new roof on the house. We had one section where the singles and tar paper had been blown off by our Super Storm in July. leaving only the bare wooden boards. I had the insurance company out and had to wait for them to send a check. A  month later I began taking bids for the roof. Fortunately we had been have a period of rather dry weather so there was not a great deal of leaking through the bare section of our roof.

After getting the all the bids I decided on a company. They told me barring inclement weather they could have it down in ten days to two weeks..

A few days later we entered the Monsoon season. We had weeks of hard driving rain which leaked through the roof and into the house. Finally the week before Thanksgiving the roofers arrived. When they went to work they discovered that whoever had out the roof on before had done a terrible job and most of the wood had to be replaced, adding two grand to the total price. This ate up my insurance settlement and I had to get a supplement to get the gutters put on.

In other fun news...

My department at work was taken over by another division and so I had to bid for my job. I also was put under a new supervisor. As a consequence of the divisional change we had to move locations and we had to be retrained to do our data entry on a different system.

My brother works for the same company and he was slated to lose his job in January. He was offered a position in Ohio and was going to take it. At the last minute however they offered him something in St. Louis at another location. In an odd bit of synchronicity, my department's new location was in the same room as his department's old location.

My mother was in the hospital twice. In September she had to get a stent put into her kidney. In November fell and badly bruised her back. She was immobile for several weeks.

My sister was diagnosed with MS in January.

These are among the many reasons why I have not been posting with any regularity. I either havent had time or haven't felt like it.

However the purpose of my blog is not to share my misery with the world so enough is enough.

I havent had much time to write anything and when I did have time, really did not feel like it. I wrote two El Head tales for Halloween but I did not get the posted until well after the fact.

http://www.elhead.org/shubacabra.htm

This one could be pitched  El Head meets Lovecraft


http://www.elhead.org/demonio.htm

This ones pitch is El Mead meets Mexican Wrestlers.

My good friend Win Eckert, also posted some of my stories at his website

Depths in which the world's greatest thief must steal open a safe in a sunken submarine.

The Judex Codex An Indy Jones type adventure

Wheels within Wheels A wheelchair bound detective searches for the killer of a man who had also been confined to a wheelchair.

I also wrote four small articles that will hopefully be appearing in the last four issues of Farmerphile. Issue seven is currently available and does have my piece in it. It is a great honor to be in the company of such writers as Philip Jose Farmer and the other contributors to Farmerphile

I have been wasting my time watching television or trying to read. I have been so distracted of late however that I find it difficult to finish one book before tiring of it and moving onto something else, even some of my old favorites such as Robert F. Jones' Bloodsport, John Myers' Silverlock, "Kilgore Trout"'s Venus on the Halfshell, Vincent McHugh's Caleb Catlum's America or Burrough's Carson series.

Since August one my my many time wasters was reading comics. I found Marvel's Civil War mega crossovers to be like so many crossovers, full of sound and fury etc.

Although I think DC's 52 may turn out to be the same, I must admit to enjoying it much more than Marvel's Civil War storyline.

As far as my wold newton writing and research is concerned I have been working on my James Bond series of articles. So for research purposes, I read all of the Ian Fleming novels and the film novelizations. I also watched all of the films.

I am also working my way through the Colonel North novels of F. W. Van Wyck Mason. North is a member of the Army's G2 division and also works for the intelligence division on occasion. Van Wyck Mason is best known as historical novelist but he started writing for the pulps. The Colonel North series reflects Van Wyck's pulp origins. Seeds of Murder is a classic murder mystery in New York but also involves gypsies, the Philippine Islands and some mysterious seeds. Hopefully I will be able to get enough information to write a min biography of Colonel North.

Last month I also registered to go to the Archon in St. Louis where I hope to meet up with some of my "wold newton" friends from Comicon 2006 and some others I will be meeting for the first time.

Well that's all the time I have for now. Talk to you again, hopefully soon.