Filed under: Amazon, Faith healing, Feedback, Government, Kindle, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Wales | Tags: Amazon, coronavirus, Covid 19, Darnell Sidwell, faith healing, hope, Kindle, News, pandemic, police, politics, racism, reviews, St. Cybi's Well, survival, Wales, writing
I’m just going to post this entire review:
Filed under: Amazon, Bipolar, Book Conservation, Connections, Failure, Feedback, Flu, General Musings, Government, Health, Kindle, Pandemic, Politics, Science Fiction, Society, Weather, Writing stuff | Tags: arthritis, bipolar, book conservation, bookbinding, Covid 19, flu, government, health, influenza, Legacy Bookbindery, pandemic, politics, St. Cybi's Well, writing
I’ve been in a bit of a funk the last few weeks. Which, on the one hand, is surprising, since I’m about at the top of my natural long (18 months), mildly bipolar cycle. On the other hand …
… we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, one which has been incompetently managed at the federal level to the point where we’re likely to see hundreds of thousands of additional unnecessary deaths here before the end of the year. (Don’t bother to post a political comment disagreeing — I’ll just delete it.)
… St Cybi’s Well has failed spectacularly to find an audience as of yet, with fewer than 500 total downloads/sales. Given how long I struggled with the book, and the very positive responses to it by people who have read it, that’s very frustrating.
… I’m having increasing problems with arthritis in my hands, which greatly limits how much book conservation work I can do. Given that I love doing this work, that’s been another source of frustration.
So it’s not terribly surprising that I would have this reaction. Lots of people are struggling with the stress of this current time. I know I am extremely fortunate in most ways, so I’m not asking for sympathy or anything.
But it pays to understand what is happening to me, and why. Only by doing so can I decide on the best way to proceed. And my morning walk helped.
I now walk 3 miles a day, about 5 days a week. Two or three days a week I take a break to allow my joints to recover a bit, or to accommodate appointments, inclement weather, et cetera. This morning I was supposed to have a solid couple hour window between thunderstorms to get my walk in, but I took along an umbrella just in case.
And it was a good thing I did. About 2 miles into my walk the skies were too heavy and unburdened themselves. I decided it was something of a metaphor, and that I should do the same. Hence this blog post.
No brilliant insights from this to share. I know how to deal with the frustrations, and am well equipped to do so. More precautions, in spite of the isolation. More writing, in spite of the failure. More work, in spite of the ache. More reaching out and doing what I can for others, in spite of the funk.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Emergency, Feedback, Flu, General Musings, Health, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff | Tags: coronavirus, Covid 19, epidemic, fire-flu, flu, News, planning, reviews, science, Science Fiction, society, Spanish flu, St. Cybi's Well, Wikipedia
I’m not an epidemiologist. I’m not a medical professional of any sort.
And yet, I spent a lot of time studying the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, because I used that as the model for what the Fire-flu would be like in St Cybi’s Well. And it largely paid off, as I’ve noted previously, since so many people have seen the eerie similarities in how the Covid-19 pandemic has unfolded to what I depict in the novel.
That’s because a lot of these things happen consistently in all pandemics, as you can see time and again if you look at the history.
And, having studied that history, even though I’m not an epidemiologist, I feel honor-bound to say: be worried about where things are headed here in the US. Currently, the C19 virus is largely uncontrolled in most states, and I’m afraid that it is going to get MUCH worse in the coming months. Place the blame for that where you will, the fact of the matter is that each individual needs to take whatever precautions you can to limit your chances of catching this disease. Follow the advice of the real epidemiologists out there. Don’t listen to the politicians. Or the conspiracy theorists. Or your buddy from high school who barely passed biology class.
St Cybi’s Well actually contains a lot of solid practical advice for how to prepare for a pandemic, if you step back and think about it. I added all that stuff because I wanted the book to ‘feel’ real, and to show what an intelligent, well-educated person might do when faced with the prospect of a pandemic. That it now might add some insight into what you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones going forward is just serendipity.
If you think so too, maybe share the book with your friends and family. It’ll be available for free download this coming Saturday, as it is on the first of each month.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Emergency, General Musings, Government, Heinlein, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, Violence | Tags: America, civil liberties, Constitution, dystopia, government, Heinlein, law, NPR, police, Portland, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, society, Stranger in a Strange Land
This one’s fiction ( Specifically, from Chapter XIV of Stranger in a Strange Land ):
The man said, “What is your interest in Gilbert Berquist?”
Jubal answered with pained patience, “I wish to speak to him. See here, my good man, are you a public employee?”
The man barely hesitated. “Yes. You must-”
“I ‘must’ nothing! I am a citizen in good standing and my taxes go to pay your wages. All morning I have been trying to make a simple phone call-and I have been passed from one butterfly-brained bovine to another, and every one of them feeding out of the public trough. I am sick of it and I do not intend to put up with it any longer. And now you. Give me your name, your job title, and your pay number. Then I’ll speak to Mr. Berquist.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Come, come! I don’t have to answer your questions; I am a private citizen. But you are not. . . and the question I asked you any citizen may demand of any public servant. O’Kelly versus State of California 1972. I demand that you identify yourself-name, job, number.”
This one’s nightmare (NPR interview with the mayor of Portland):
“But the difference between local and federal law enforcement is that we have clear policies, clear directives. We have a complaint process. We have an independent accountability and review system.
With the federal government, they won’t even identify who they are. We don’t know why they’re here. We don’t know the circumstances under which they’re making arrests. We don’t know what their policies are or what accountability mechanisms there are, to the point where even the U.S. attorney here in the state of Oregon is calling for an investigation, wondering, where was the probable cause to pull these people off the streets into unmarked cars?”
Of course, Heinlein’s book is set in an alternate “future”, so I suppose there’s still time for us to get there …
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Emergency, Flu, Government, NPR, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: America, Covid 19, distancing effect, dystopia, fire-flu, government, Josh Malerman, NPR, pandemic, racism, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, theocracy, Verfremdungseffekt, writing
Why on Earth would you want to read a novel about a pandemic during a pandemic? Or why would you want to dive into a world where America is a dystopia of racial hatred and theocratic overreach when America is, well, trying to sort out racial hatred and theocratic overreach? There’d have to be something wrong with you to join in such a dance, wouldn’t there?
This was touched on in an interview on NPR I listened to this morning on my daily walk. In it, author Josh Malerman said that reading about a pandemic during a pandemic was somehow comforting; it was a way of saying “we know how to deal with this”.
In writing St Cybi’s Well I used an old literary technique to create some psychic space between the reader and my criticism of our American society, by not placing the story in America, but by having characters in the story reflect on and discuss what a dystopia American had become. This way the reader joins me in a dance, following my lead, but themselves moving through the story I’ve set out. The dystopia is there, but together we have defined it, perhaps tamed it enough that we can see it for what it is.
Of course, our reality is not the reality of St Cybi’s Well. Though it is still very early in the Covid-19 pandemic, I don’t think that it will be quite as devastating as the Fire-flu is in my book. And though we are perhaps at a turning point in the political history of our country, we’re not yet in a constitutional theocracy.
Take the lesson — or the warning — for what it is. That’s why you join the dance.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Carl Zimmer, Connections, General Musings, Google, NPR, Pandemic, Science Fiction, Society, Star Trek, YouTube | Tags: Ben Zimmer, Carl Zimmer, Covid 19, Facebook, Google, NPR, pandemic, post-apocalyptic, Science Fiction, South Park, Star Trek
Some variation of the phrase “in the before time(s)” has been a staple of post-apocalypse Science Fiction for so long that it’s a well-deserved cliche, mocked even by South Park. Usually invoked by some grungy child reciting a barely-understood mythos, or an aged ‘elder’ thinking back to their youth, it served as a mechanism to explain what happened to civilization.
Of course, in our post-modern, self-aware world “in the before time” came to be widely used in a joking manner, to refer to some not-so-serious turning point in recent history. Before YouTube. Before Google. Before the internet. Before Fonzie jumped the shark. Whatever. It was funny, see?
Except in the last couple of weeks, I’ve started hearing it used to refer to the pre-Covid pandemic times. And not in a humorous way. People are using it completely seriously. Here are just two examples, the first from NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday program on 6/12:
New York Eater’s Chief Critic Isn’t Ready To Eat Out. Here’s Why
* * *
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Are you worried about the future of the restaurant industry? I mean, do you think it will look anything like what it resembled before the pandemic?
SUTTON: I don’t think anyone knows what the restaurant industry is going to look like in the coming months, never mind the coming year or so. We can only agree – is dining out in the future won’t look anything like it did in the before times. We’re going to continue to see a lot more takeout, and we’re going to continue to see, I think, a lot of people continue to eat at home rather than treating restaurants like extensions of their dining rooms. It’s not going to be a nightly fare anymore. And that’s going to cost a lot of jobs, and that’s going to close a lot of restaurants. And that’s just a terrible thing for everyone.
And the second from a FaceBook post a friend shared, about whether schools would/could open in the fall:
A high school teacher in this state has a maximum class size of 32-35 students, which gives the teacher around 200 students across 4-6 classes in beforetimes schooling. To mitigate coronavirus would then require 3 kindergarten teacher now to do the job of one kindergarten teacher a year ago. High school would require 24 high teachers to do one beforetimes high school teacher’s work and that is if we overlook the very awkward point that having half the class meet half the time might limit the children’s risk but only extends the hours of exposure to the virus that is faced by the teacher.
In doing a bit of quick research for this post, I also find that lexicographer Ben Zimmer (brother of excellent science writer Carl Zimmer) has noticed this change as well:
‘The Before Time’: A Sci-Fi Idea That Has Made Its Way to Real Life
(I haven’t actually read that, since I don’t have a Wall Street Journal subscription. But it’s obvious that he’s noted the same shift in usage.)
Just an interesting observation about how our language changes, and another example of how science fiction has had an effect on the ‘real’ world.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Astronomy, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Travel, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Alyn Wallace Photography, Amazon, Carreg Cennen Castle, Comet NEOWISE, space, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Wales, writing
I Love this image:
That’s from a Facebook post by Alyn Wallace Photography. It’s an image of Comet NEOWISE over Carreg Cennen Castle in Wales.
Carreg Cennen has long been one of my favorite castles, and plays a role in “Chapter 10 — Y Garn Goch” of St Cybi’s Well. The view of the castle seen above is from the south.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Emergency, Feedback, Flu, Google, Humor, Kindle, Pandemic, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, Travel, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, Communion of Dreams, coronavirus, Covid 19, Craig Rhosyfelin, epidemic, Google, pandemic, predictions, reviews, St. Cybi's Well, technology, travel, writing
One of the early reviews of St Cybi’s Well added this note under “TRIVIA”:
And several people have commented both on Amazon and on Facebook that the book could function as something of a travelog.
That’s very much by design. The chapter header URLs & info I used in the book are straight from real sites online, though I intentionally used versions which date back to ~ 2012 (the date in the novel) whenever possible. And likewise, each location specified in the book is real. As well as every bit of Welsh history or myth I used.
I did this to lend the book verisimilitude. I really want readers to wonder just how possible the story is, to feel that ‘thinness’ I describe between one reality and another in the book. I want them to visit the sites mentioned, to feel what I have felt there.
I didn’t start writing the book with this in mind. I figured that I would simply use my own experience in traveling in Wales to ground the book in reality, and use what little I knew of Welsh history & mythology to help add color. But as I wrote, I found myself digging deeper and deeper, spending more time visiting sites virtually, until they became very well known to me.
After a while, I started to lose track of whether I had actually visited some of the sites in person, or had only visited them online. This led to the very surreal experience during a trip we took in 2017 where in going to Craig Rhosyfelin I was absolutely certain that we had visited the site previously … but also absolutely certain that we never had (the latter which was confirmed by my wife). I had spent so much time exploring the site virtually, working through the descriptions and history of it, writing the interaction of characters there, that it really did feel like I had my own personal memories of the place. Bizarre.
The same is true of several other locations in the book, to the point where my wife and I now joke about it. “Did we actually go there, or … ?” has become a standard in our travels.
And of course now, with the limitations imposed by our own real pandemic, such virtual travel is all we have at present. So if you need a vacation, maybe spend a little time in my novel. The links included on the website will help.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Humor | Tags: baseball, Fourth of July, humor, jim downey, July 4th, sports
There’s an apocryphal story told in my family which has amused my friends for years, but which I haven’t bothered to ever write up. Today seems like a good day to correct that, since it happened on a July 4th almost 60 years ago …
It seems that my family was gathered at the home of my maternal grandmother for a 4th of July party, sometime in the early ’60s (I don’t actually remember this particular event, since I think I was just five or six years old, though I trust that it’s true). Now, the 4th of July was a big weekend for such celebrations back then, and we’d regularly get together for barbecue, beer, and fireworks. Watch some baseball. Play games. And have a birthday party for me. See, I was born on the Fourth.
Anyway, we’d been playing baseball out in the yard, some of my cousins and me. Or, more likely, since I was one of the younger kids in the extended family, I was probably watching my cousins play. And the time came for dinner, so everyone hustled inside, to sit around on various chairs in the big living room and watch some pro sports on a little black & white TV while balancing paper plates of seared meat, baked beans, and salad dressing on their laps.
Now, I’ve never really enjoyed watching sports. Just not my thing. And evidently this was the case when I was really young, too. Because I had finished my dinner, and bored with everyone else just sitting around, had wandered back outside.
Where I found one of the baseball bats we’d been playing with earlier. I picked it up, swung it around, then plopped it on my shoulder and went back inside. Because an idea had struck me.
As I said, I don’t actually remember this, because I was so young. But I imagine that I had been watching some slapstick TV earlier — probably the 3 Stooges or something — and I thought that it would be fun to emulate that.
So I walked over to where my dad was sitting, eating his dinner, watching the game. My dad was a tough, burly, Irish cop who was beloved by many but evidently someone not to be messed with. And I stopped and stood there next to his chair, just looking at him. Finally, he noticed me, looked away from the television, leaned forward and asked “Whatcha gonna do with the bat, Jamie?”
I smiled a little smile, and smacked him upside the head with it.
I have NO idea why I thought this was a good idea. Probably, like I said, because of something I saw the 3 Stooges do, or in a cartoon, or something. But evidently I thought it would be funny.
I knocked my dad cold. Boom, right out. Unconscious. Probably a concussion, though we didn’t worry about such things as much back then.
Before he could wake up, the story is that my mom hustled me off to hide me with friends or other family members for a few days, so my dad wouldn’t kill me when he came to.
Well, it blew over and became something of a standing joke in the family, and later among my friends.
But everybody knew not to ask me damned fool questions like that.
Jim Downey
(For other “Jim Downey” stories, I refer you to my old archive site.)
Communion Of Dreams 