Filed under: ACLU, BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Constitution, Government, movies, Science Fiction, Society
I didn’t realize that this was one of the sequels. But it sure sounds like it.
D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.
Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.
Wait. They think that they’re serious.
“This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities,” Nickles told The Examiner. “I’m not worried about the constitutionality of it.”
Others are. Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police union and a former lawyer, called the checkpoint proposal “breathtaking.”
Shelley Broderick, president of the D.C.-area American Civil Liberties Union and the dean of the University of the District of Columbia’s law school, said the plan was “cockamamie.”
Gee, ya think? A site devoted to DC area news has more information, including this comment:
Can you say Police State? The Examiner has the scoop on a controversial new program announced today that would create so-called “Neighborhood Safety Zones” which would serve to partially seal off certain parts of the city. D.C. Police would set-up checkpoints in targeted areas, demand to see ID and refuse admittance to people who don’t live there, work there or have a “legitimate reason” to be there. Wow. Just, wow.
Papers, please.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Architecture, Art, Bad Astronomy, movies, Phil Plait, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Violence
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m a huge fan of the movies of Ridley Scott. Even genres of movies that I don’t usually care for, I will watch (and probably own) if he did them. One such is the original Alien (that link goes to Wiki rather than the IMDb because of a really annoying flash advertisement IMDb has running).
What’s that? Why wouldn’t I like Alien, it being Science Fiction? Because it is mostly a horror movie, just within a brilliantly-done Science Fiction context. I tend to stay away from horror movies. I’ve had plenty of experience with adrenaline dumps, thank you very much, and don’t particularly like having that button pushed. In fact, first time I saw Alien in the theatre, not knowing what to expect, I wound up standing in the aisle in a fighting stance, having leapt *over* my uncle from a sitting position. True story.
Anyway, I do love the movie, but have to now consciously disengage my ‘fight-or-flight’ reflex when I sit down to watch it. Which is kind of nice, because it allows me to enjoy more of the artistry of the film. And a lot of the artistry of the film was done by H.R. Giger, twisted illustrator and artist extraordinaire.
Now, via Phil Plait, this delightful photo set of the Giger Bar in Chateau St. Germain, Gruyeres, Switerland (also available on Giger’s website, under “Bars”, where the images are credited to Wolfgang Holz and Holly Ryan). As Phil says:
I’m not sure I could eat well in a place like that. And I certainly wouldn’t order the eggs!
Hmm . . . I may need to go back to Switzerland . . .
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, movies, Pandemic, Publishing, Richard Matheson, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Star Wars, University of Missouri, Writing stuff
This is a review written for the Columbia Tribune, as drafted. If and when they use it, I will link and/or copy the finished version here.
– Jim
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pulp writers – those hacks who churn out Science Fiction and Fantasy, Horror and Westerns – have rarely received much in the way of respect from the academic community.
So it is remarkable that among the William Peden Short Story Collection at the University of Missouri – Columbia there is just such an author. An author who was one of Dr. Peden’s students, and who grew to become a friend, corresponding with Dr. Peden for more than thirty years. That author is Richard Matheson.
Dr. Peden developed the Creative Writing Program at MU. He established the University of Missouri Press. He was the co-founder of the Missouri Review, which still bestows an annual fiction prize in his name. He was widely respected as a scholar of writing, and as an author in his own right. And he said this about a young Richard Matheson, writing a friend who was a publisher:
“A former student of mine [is] going to call you within the next few days and I think you might be interested in talking with the boy . . . The chap’s name is Richard Matheson and I really believe he has possibly an extraordinary future ahead of him.”
I would not have known this were it not for The Richard Matheson Companion (ISBN-13: 9781887368964, available from major booksellers). And it wouldn’t be in there except through the efforts of another Columbian, Paul Stuve, who is one of the editors of that book. It turns out that Stuve has one of the most complete collections of Matheson’s work in the world.
I contacted Stuve and asked him what got him interested in Richard Matheson.
“The first time I knew I was a Matheson fan was in high school, but the fact is I was a fan long before that. Through his Twilight Zone episodes mostly, and then Duel, and even the dreadful Omega Man (which was adapted, very badly, from Matheson’s modern-day vampire novel “I Am Legengd). But the first time I connected a name with the work was while watching The Legend of Hell House on TV with my dad one night. I promptly set about trying to find the book, and in the process I discovered who he was. I’ve been collecting him ever since.”
And how did he get involved in the Matheson Companion?
“When Matthew Bradley (whom I knew from another project) was asked to assist Stanley Wiater with the Companion, I volunteered to help with the detailed bibliographies and filmographies that were going to need to be compiled. I have a nearly complete collection of all the first published appearances of Matheson’s writings (and the limited editions, and the, well, it goes on and on…), and it seemed like it would be a fun task. As the project wore on, I became more and more involved (the lists themselves are nearly 200 pages long), and during the process I was made an associate editor, and finally a full editor.
What was the most rewarding part of the project, for you?
“For me, the real coup of the project was when I wandered over to the MU library
one day to see if I could turn up anything that Matheson wrote while he was a
student here in the late 1940s. I was expecting perhaps a letter or brief item
in the student newspaper, but I wound up discovering a file folder of nearly 30
years of correspondence between Matheson and William Peden, his advanced writing
professor at Mizzou.”
Some of those letters are reproduced in The Richard Matheson Companion, the most comprehensive collection of information about this versatile author, which also contains reflections and tributes by those who knew and worked with him, along with a previously unpublished novella by Matheson. It is a phenomenal resource. As co-editors Stanley Wiater and Matthew R. Bradley write in the Introduction to the book:
“Matheson is one of the most acclaimed and influential fantasists of our time. He and his work have won the Hugo, Edgar Allen Poe, Golden Spur and Christopher Awards, plus multiple World Fantasy (“Howard”), Bram Stoker, and Writers Guild of America Awards, including Lifetime Achievement awards from the World Horror and World Fantasy Conventions.
Yet, quite amazingly we think, there has never been a legitimate biography of the man, or a writer’s companion to his work. It is the latter that we have striven to create – the last word on the millions of words produced by Richard Matheson in a career that has already gone beyond the helf-century mark, with no signs of ending anytime soon.”
The recognition of Matheson’s contribution to the literature and popular culture of the second half of the 20th century will only grow with time. He was an inspiration to the likes of Stephen King, Chris Carter, and George A. Romero. It may yet be a while before he becomes of ‘scholarly interest’, but it was already clear to Dr. William Peden over fifty years ago that Matheson was a writer who was worthy of consideration and respect.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bad Astronomy, Man Conquers Space, movies, Paleo-Future, Phil Plait, Science Fiction, Space, YouTube
Via the Bad Astronomer:
Towards the end of World War II the staff of SS officer Hans Kammler made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity.
From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right.
And, in 2018, it is. Welcome to Iron Sky:
This actually looks really kinda cool. Somewhat like Man Conquers Space. The site has a nice retro sort of feel, with a fair amount of content and a blog. Poke around. Have fun. Tell them to hurry up and finish the damned movie – I want to see it.
Jim Downey.
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Hobbits, movies, Promotion, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Nah, other than a mild cold, things are going OK. But since it is the first of the month, thought I would post a quick note about how stats look hereabouts.
April saw just under 500 downloads of the .pdf of Communion. This continues to happen in clumps, for whatever reason. Comparing it to over 1,100 in March, you might think that things have slowed down – but that’s just the clustering effect, I think – there was a substantial cluster right at the end of March. Had it been a few days later, the stats for both March and April would have been almost the same. We’re now at about 9,000 total downloads.
About 50 people downloaded the MP3 of the novel last month, bringing that total to just under 100.
I still have a hard time getting a handle on how people find out about the book, or this blog. In March I signed up for some additional stats/information about the Communion of Dreams website, which gives me all kinds of data, but it still seems that the majority of people who find out about the book do so by word of mouth. Not a bad thing, just a bit odd. Particularly in that I get very little feedback or commentary from people – yet they seem to be passing on a recommendation to others to download the book. Goodness knows that I haven’t done anything remotely approaching a real effort at promotion, so something is happening of its own accord.
This blog is now at 18,000 total views, averaging upwards of 70 views a day. The somewhat odd thing is that there is a consistent bit of traffic to look at one post: Welcome to the Hobbit House from almost a year ago. That gets 20 – 25 people a day. I think that the secret to getting a lot of traffic would be to write about Hobbits. At least until the new movie is done and out. So, if you see me mentioning Hobbits just randomly in posts, you’ll know that I am just blog-whoring, trolling for hits.
But hey, Hobbits are cool. Right? Just saying the word is somehow comforting: Hobbits.
Uh, sorry.
Anyway, that’s just a brief look over the current stats. Something more meaty later, or tomorrow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, Flu, Heinlein, movies, Pandemic, Religion, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff
A discussion over on UTI about a post I made there took a bit of an odd turn, engendering some interesting discussion about polygamy. This morning I made a comment that I thought I would share here, since it does relate directly to some of the things I do in Communion of Dreams. You’ll see what I mean.
Heinlein’s use . . . of non-standard family structures got me thinking about many of these issues when I was very young, and helped me form my opinions intellectually before getting into emotional commitments.
I tend to think that the serial monogamy that we see as a default in Western countries reflects the differences between societal conventions and evolutionary inclinations, with a big helping of “we live a whole lot longer now than early humans did” thrown in for good measure. It is rare to see a marriage last more than ten or fifteen years these days, and I think that makes a lot of sense – when most humans lived until 30 or so, it would make sense that pair-bonding would be a good strategy to raising and protecting children into early adulthood. That would mean a “marriage” of about the length I mention above.
But we live a lot longer now, and people grow and change throughout their lives. So it is unsurprising to me that divorce is common (something like half of all marriages end in divorce) as a way of dealing with these changes. Some people find a way to grow in tandem with their partner, and some find ways of allowing a certain freedom of definition for each partner within the structure of an ostensibly conventional marriage (some, of course, do both). Different cultures have found different strategies to accommodate these stresses – some allow for polygamy of the ‘conventional’ sort (think the Mormon or Islamic variety), some make divorce easy, some de-emphasize marriage itself, some ‘look the other way’ when one or the other partner in a marriage cheats or has a formal concubine system.
A fairly recent development in all of this has come to be known as polyamory – defining relationships as being more open and less “possessive”. There are some fairly well-known practices and practitioners, such as Penn Jillette. This attitude pretty well covers most of Heinlein’s alternative marriage structures and can work for some people, though it would understandably require a different sort of approach and mindset than what is commonly considered about marriage/love/relationships. In an homage to Heinlein I had originally used alternative family structures as the “norm” in my SF novel set about 50 years from now (a survival-strategy response to environmental conditions), but early readers of the book got too hung up on that so I changed it. Perhaps if/when I am an established author I can get away with it, as RAH did.
Children? I dunno – don’t have any, by choice. Not an issue for me, in several senses of the term.
[Mild spoilers ahead.]
To me, the novel actually does work better the way I had the family relationships defined before, with a group marriage built around a small number of adults who have just a couple of fertile people at the core. This would allow for those precious few who are able to have children (remember, the fire-flu plague had not just killed vast numbers – it also left most people who survived it sterile) to do so with minimal stress, the rest of the family caring for them and the children born into the family. Think how it would be otherwise: the few fertile couples trying to have and raise children in a society desperate for kids, maybe even willing to steal them or force child-baring couple to give their children to others.
But this change was just too hard for some people to wrap their heads around comfortably – they wanted to turn it into something about sex rather than about children. Maybe they felt threatened by the idea, since the time-frame of the novel was so close to our own. I dunno – my head doesn’t work that way. So I made the change, and tried to work in enough explanation for the type of ‘family’ that exists in the book, while removing the polyamory element. So far no one has commented on the current version as being a problem for them, and that is likely how it will stay.
Jim Downey
(Again, if you didn’t recognize the quote used in the title, shame on you. It’s from this.)
And, actually, sometimes even people who say so are selling something.
Eh?
A friend sent me a link to this blog post, in reaction to my recent funk. From the post:
I called up Rae and complained. She snorted and said, “Join the club”. She was not unsympathetic, but merely voicing the truth: to be an artist means you are going to suffer. Why? Because to create takes time, and we want it now. Pulling those ideas down out of the ether or out of the universe or wherever the hell they come from is so damn time-consuming. And we want– no we expect the idea now.
Amen. That may be part of my current funk – the expectation that now that my care-giving role is over, I should be able to recover and just start being the brilliant and creative person I know I really am.
Ah, well. Good insight.
Oh, and good art. Take it from someone who owned and operated an art gallery for 8 years: this is good art, and the prices are quite reasonable.
Jim Downey
(Hat tip to ML. And if you didn’t recognize the quote used in the title, shame on you. It’s from this.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Guns, Humor, movies, RKBA, Science, tech, Weather
Ever see what happens to modern electronics when you shoot them with large caliber handguns?
Wait . . . I’m getting ahead of myself.
* * * * * * *
As noted previously, I’ve been busy the last few days getting things ready to start the next round of ballistics testing. Round one was about three weeks ago, and in addition to getting a lot of good data about three of the 13 calibers we’re doing the research on, we also learned a great deal about the testing platform and procedures. Because of that amount of learning, when the three of us got together this week before setting everything up on Wednesday, we decided that we would go ahead and push this weekend to do all the remaining testing.
As a friend said in an email Wednesday night: “Whoa.”
Yeah, because that is 10 more calibers (eight barrels, since the .38 special and .357 magnum bullets use one barrel, and so does the .44 special and .44 magnum). And over 5,000 rounds of ammo.
We’re fortunate in that all three of us (me, Jim K and Steve) are all in situations where we can set aside our work demands for a time and devote our attention to doing this. And in looking at the remaining barrel/ammo combinations, it was clear that there would be some efficiency in doing things all at once – a number of the somewhat more unusual calibers have only two or three types of ammo, meaning that we’d be spending more time swapping out the barrels and chopping them than actually shooting and recording data. So there would be a benefit in getting all those calibers done, then move on to the several calibers where we had a lot of different ammo to test while the other barrels were chopped and prepped (de-burring and modest recrowning to get good consistent results).
And that’s what we did yesterday – dove in head first, in spite of very uncooperative weather (lots of rain and temps in the 40s). Our set-up keeps us out of the wet (we’re using a fair-sized cabin tent for our work area, with the chronographs outside under a protective tarp) but the damp chill still takes a lot of energy out of you. The changes we made to the shooting platform – the addition of an inexpensive target laser – meant that you essentially didn’t need to take the time to aim the thing (once we had it zeroed in), all you had to do was control it with the more powerful calibers.
And before we stopped early in the day, we had gotten to the same point with these remaining 10 calibers as we got on the first day of the previous round of testing with just three calibers.
Now, why did we stop early, if things were going so well?
Wasn’t due to the weather. Not unless you consider a .45 caliber bullet as rain.
What happened was this: one of us (who shall for now remain nameless, until I can spend more time to write up the saga appropriately) was in the middle of shooting the second most powerful of the calibers we’re testing, and didn’t manage to control the gun completely when he fired the round. And it went right through both chronographs. Perfectly.
We use two chronographs, lined up one in front of the other, to be sure we’re getting good data. He hit the first one right dead center, a little high from the middle. Like a perfect shot in a movie, hitting the bad guy right between the eyes. The large bullet punched through the display, destroyed the electronics, and shattered the back of the chrono – then entered the front sensor of the second chrono, exiting out the bottom rear sensor as well.
It was spectacular. A perfect shot. I have pix I’ll be posting later.
But it meant we were done for the day. No chronographs, no way to measure the velocity of the bullets.
But such things are available here, and we’ll pick up a couple more units this morning. And we’ll be getting the kind which have a remote readout – meaning that it’s just the sensors in the line of fire, the electronics on our shooting bench. Meaning that we can place some protective armor plates in front of the sensors to prevent this from happening again.
Meaning that we’ll just have to find a new and improved way of screwing up. 🙂
More when I get the chance.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 