Dad Made It To TikTok

I'm not a TikTok guy.  The platform seems questionable, the content is (to say the least) not my speed), and I have enough rabbit holes to dive into already.

Last year, a friend pointed out a TikTok video that included my dad.  Dad died in 2019, well before TikTok was around.  And yet he made it there nonetheless.

He wasn't really a social media guy even when he was around.

Here is a still from the video.  Dad was directing one of his choirs.

The video was a compilation of images from the 1971 yearbook.  You can follow the link or just view it below.

New (to me) Music - Porcupine Tree

Take the following groups/performers, and toss them in a rhetorical blender.

• Pink Floyd
• Styx
• Journey
• Led Zepplin 
• Duncan Shiek
• Yes
• Chemical Brothers

What do you get?

Porcupine Tree  

I came across Porcupine Tree a while back due to their song Blackest Eyes from the In Absentia album.  I finally got around to listening to their complete discography.  So far, I've just been listening to their studio albums.

It is like walking in a musical wilderness where one moment you are looking at a bucolic pasture and the next you are watching a river crash down a mountainside in a raging set of mountain waterfalls.

One moment you are listening to an ethereal and melancholic tune with a singer lightly singing wistfully.  The next moment comes as the same song will transition into something with a thumping drum beat and guitar riffs that make you look around to see where all the metalheads came from.

The band has been around for over 20 years and it is probably the best band that you've never heard.

I heartily recommend listening to the albums Signify and In Absentia.

Steven Wilson formed Porcupine Tree and provide both instrumental and vocal leadership in their music.  He has been praised by musicians as varied as Alex Lifeson (Rush), Steve Howe (Yes), Robert Trujillo (Metallica), Jordan Rudess, Michael Portnoy (both of Dream Theater), and others.

Give them a listen.  Spotify - YouTube 

Review: King of the Bastards

King of the Bastards by Brian Keene
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a 2-star review which is a fair evaluation of my experience with this book.

Our protagonist (??!?) is a Conan knock-off who has all of the bravado and toughness but none of the nuance. He conquers and kills because that is what he does. Others are expected to submit to his will. That apparently includes raping women just because.

This book is an amalgamation of cosmic horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

Our protagonist is out adventuring when his group is attacked by various monsters from the ocean's depths as well as raiders arriving across the sea. He and one of his crew survive after running aground on some foreign land. They beat off the remainder of their attackers and are discovered by some of the locals.

The locals are afraid of some wizard that lives on the top of a mountain. In exchange for agreeing to help rid the locals of the wizard, the locals agree to travel with our protagonist as he sails for his home that has been taken over by raiders working for the deity that fomented in the original attacks.

There are two primary issues with this book.

1. Our protagonist is a cheap Conan knock-off.
2. The author is attempting a pastiche of the original RE Howard stories, but he is unable to consistently use language that is in keeping with that pastiche. He uses terms and phrases that are not appropriate for a Conan-type character.

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Review: Reign & Ruin

Reign & Ruin by J.D. Evans
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a 2-star review. My experience would be closer to 2.5 stars.

This book won the SPFBO this year. I have read every winner since becoming aware of the competition. Those books have been uniformly fantastic...until now. The grammar and spelling were fine. The pacing was fine.

But I spent the first 15-20% of the book wondering if I was going to toss it across the floor in disgust.

The book is centered on a princess/sultana who is slated to marry whomever the powerbrokers want her to marry. Her father's memory and grasp on reality have fractured to the point where he really doesn't know what is going on. She is working to protect him and to protect her country from an aggressive nation to the north. Naturally, she disapproves of this marital arrangement and is working to get out of it. (as a reader, I sympathized with the Sultana) The Sultan's dementia is a result of employing his specific type of magic.

There are six magic houses. Each has a different skill (i.e. air, fire, water, etc.) and each has a different color. I had no real idea of how that worked after reading 15% of the book. There were some indications on some of the houses, but no real establishment of how magic works.

Why? Because in the first 15% of the book none of these supposedly powerful mages does a lick of meaningful magic. We are told they are powerful (mostly by the Sultana who is the focus of the book) but there is no evidence of that power in their actions.

The author does not understand the principle of "show don't tell".

That is the primary flaw with this book. We are told there are powerful mages. We rarely see that power in evidence. We are told that there are some nefarious characters but rarely see them behaving in a nefarious manner. We are told there is a threat from the neighboring country to the north and they never show up in the book.

The Sultana ends up falling in love with a prince from the country to the west. The two nations used to be one nation hundreds of years ago but were split apart. The prince arrives on a diplomatic mission that is part of the Sultana's machinations to avoid a forced marriage.

The two fall in love. Why? She is pretty and he is handsome. They don't actually do much of anything to justify each other's love. We are told they are pretty and that's that.

Then there are the obligatory sex scenes that do nothing to advance the larger narratives of the various storylines.

The last few chapters were predictable. Very little of the consequences in the story are actually earned.

While I usually am enthusiastic about continuing a series that begins with a SPFBO winning book, I have no interest in continuing this series. If not for winning SPFBO, this book would have received the Dorothy Parker treatment after reading 15% of the book.

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Review: Fevered Star

Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have been an active Worldcon member for over a decade; nominating and voting for the Hugo Awards. And I've been a fan of science fiction/fantasy since I learned to read.

This book is why I am usually a Worldcon member. The first book in the series was nominated for the Best Novel award in 2021. I had the first entry in the series (Black Sun) in the first position on my ballot.

This year's book from Ms. Roanhorse, Fevered Star, continues her tour de force in the fantasy genre.

The series is based on the first nation's traditions of the pre-Columbian Americas. In this book, two opposing gods have had their essences imbued into their respective "priests". The people carrying those divine beings don't necessarily want to fight, but the gods most certainly do.

Coupled with that are seven competing clans who all want to control the city of Tova. Each uses the current conflict as a premise for maneuvering events to the advantage of their individual clans.

Rather than using the first book to coast further down the established narrative, Ms. Roanhorse uses this next installment to change the stakes and some of the players to tell an enthralling story.

This book is a singular example of why fantasy fiction exists. Just as JRR Tolkien introduced the world to a completely new epic tale, Ms. Roanhorse is introducing the world to her vision of fantastic characters and places.

Assuming that I am participating in Worldcon 2023, Fevered Star will be on my nominating list.

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Review: The Last Dance

The Last Dance by Martin L. Shoemaker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Captain Nicolau Aames commands a spaceship that travels the Armstrong cycle/circuit from Earth to Mars and back. It really is more of a space train that shuttles people and material to Mars and back.

The Captain is obsessed with details. Along the way, he trains people going to Mars and his own crew by forcing them to train for obscure scenarios. Essentially, he envisions a stream of cascading errors and demands that his crew be prepared to respond to any contingency.

Captain Aames finds himself in trouble as he refuses an order from command. The ensuing investigation eventually becomes centered on a death on Mars. If the Captain is correct, it is a murder. Command doesn't see where it could be a murder and just wants the investigation closed.

A second feature is the potential for the spaceship to become a self-contained polity that is free from the dictates of Earth. As an independent polity, the Captain of the ship would be free from many of the regulations imposed by Earth.

Mysteries within mysteries with the question of self-determination in the balance.

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Review: The Liar of Red Valley

The Liar of Red Valley by Walter Goodwater
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Our protagonist's mother possesses the magical ability to cause reality to change based on what she writes in her book. Whatever she writes comes to pass.

Rather than using that power to run things, she mostly just exchanges her talent for money.

Mom eventually dies and our protagonist discovers that she also possesses this ability, it has been passed down from mother to daughter since the founding of the Valley.

There is some sort of powerful being (an alien? something supernatural?) that is attracted to the valley. He wants her for her power.

Fans of Stephen King will recognize many of the features of this book. But this is a reasonably unique story and setting. Worth a read for any fan of horror and fantasy.

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Review: The Last Campaign

The Last Campaign by Martin L. Shoemaker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another fantastic installment in this series. Where before our protagonist was a spaceship captain, he has lost that high position and now works with his wife running various businesses.

Murders occur and those in power seek someone capable of running a detailed investigation. It turns out to be his wife that is called to serve rather than him. This naturally causes a great of stress between them.

What follows is a collision of principles in front of a background of people struggling to build a new civilization on Mars that is not dependent or based on an overly bureaucratic Earth.

The tension between personal principles, love for another, and the desire to live free creates space to explore the human condition from many directions.

This was on my nomination list for the Hugo Awards in 2021.

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Review: Bystander 27

Bystander 27 by Rik Hoskin
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book is populated by cliches and cardboard characters. The protagonist is some sort of high-speed special forces guy with an apartment in New York City. There aren't any SF bases in NYC. It goes downhill from there.

The ghost of Dorothy Parker rose in a manner adroit and definitive.

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In Memoriam - A Headstone

Fans of the band Rush are aware that drummer Neal Peart lost both his daughter and his wife within a very short period of time.  It crushed him. 

His daughter's headstone is engraved with part of the following poem.  Having never read this before, it moved me.

---

Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Review: MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors

MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors by Richard Hooker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review.

I was a big fan of the TV show as a kid. At least, I really liked the early seasons. I didn't see the movie for many more years but liked it as well.

The book was a different experience. It attempts to be a "year in the life" sort of book with what are effectively a series of vignettes that follow our heroes over their tour in Korea during the Korean War*. There isn't really an overarching story being told across the various chapters.

Most of those stories end up in either the movie or the TV series. At least, all of the better stories end up in some sort of video format - and sometimes both!

The primary problem with the book is that the number of hijinks that our heroes experience over the course of a year seems to be far too great for only two US Army doctors to achieve over such a short period of time. The author indicates in the preface that Hawkeye and Trapper John are really amalgamations of a larger number of doctors.

But as a single narrative, it's hard to believe that two doctors drink that much, conduct extended surgery sessions that much, and make side trips to so many other places within a single year.

It would be interesting to encounter this book without having had prior exposure via the TV series or the movie.

People that enjoyed the early years of the series but not the later years should enjoy this book. People that didn't enjoy the early years but liked the later years probably will not enjoy this book.

*I know. "conflict" - "police action" - nonsense. Men and women died in huge numbers fighting against enemy armies. It was a war.

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Review: Terms of Enlistment

Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review. It's a weak 3 stars.

Read this some time ago, but had not reviewed it. The story wasn't terribly memorable. As I recall, it had some anti-Starship Trooper elements. Or at least it was trying to subvert the ST narrative in some way.

A couple of plot points stood out to me.

One was that so many people were basically being warehoused. They received a subsistence level of money from the government. Their access to good food was poor. And there was precious little explanation of how this came to be and how it was sustained.

Downstream from the inexplicable economics was the suggestion that people should just take what they wanted as well as the suggestion that those people had no options in which they could demonstrate their usefulness to humanity by pursuing meaningful work.

The second was that the author made the unforgivable mistake of conflating an "assault rifle/weapon" with a semi-automatic rifle. Being a veteran, he should know better.

The unexplained economics were a much larger problem.

There are better works of MilSF out there. Pursue them instead of this.

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Review: Isolate

Isolate by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. My experience is closer to 3.5 stars.

Isolate is the latest book from L.E. Modesitt Jr. It is the first in a series. I have been a fan of Mr. Modesitt for many years and was hoping that this book would be worthy of being on my Hugo Awards nomination list this year because that sort of recognition of his work is long overdue. Sadly, it fell a bit short of that high bar.

There are many plot elements to this book that mostly interlock. The characters are well developed. Despite the flaws and the predictable ending, I was fully engaged with the book from beginning to end.

The Isolate world appears to be steam-punk-ish. Automobiles are powered by water and kerosene. There might be electricity, but it isn't a significant feature. Gas lighting is evident. Long-distance communication is accomplished via light reflectors sending coded messages. Travel over long distances is done via rail. Technologically, the world is on par with roughly the 1910-1920 era.

The most significant speculative fiction element is the presence of a range of empaths; people capable of sensing/projecting emotions/thoughts. On that range are "isolates" who are anti-empaths with emotions/thoughts that cannot be sensed by empaths.

The author likes to explore issues of social science in his work. In this book, the political framework is a sort of parliamentary system with a monarch; sort of like the UK. There are three parties formally recognized in the nation's formal organization. There are electoral restrictions that are intended to prevent any one party from becoming too strong without preventing an outright majority.

The three parties are separately presented as representing labor, business, and inherited wealth. Inherited wealth tends to line up with business more as a matter of convenience than ideology. The regulatory framework tends to enable corruption with big businesses controlling construction contracts.

Another unique feature is that votes by members of parliament are secret. Members enter a voting booth and vote via a mechanism that hides their hands. They select a tile that indicates their party that is then dropped into the appropriate yes/no slot. This is intended to prevent voters from responding against votes cast by a single individual. This in turn causes a plot point where some citizens are campaigning for changes so that a politician's discreet voting record will be public. "People not parties!"

The story centers on a politician, Axel Obreduur, and his security team of one empath, Avraal Ysella, and one isolate, Steffan Dekkard. The two are teamed together as their relative "abilities" are complementary.

There are several plot lines that are woven together in the central story. Most of them have to do with the powers of the government and how laws are made/changed/etc. That sounds pretty dry, but it really isn't. Most of the political negotiations occur behind closed doors while the reader is engaged with other characters elsewhere. Some of the plotlines deal with personal/private relationships either as a result of government policies and in some cases despite government policies.

There is some action (Steffan kills a few people while defending Axel and Avraal). But this is largely a quieter story that unfolds gracefully.

The author introduces some interesting twists. The policies and interests of the three parties do not map perfectly onto modern American political parties. Axel supports some interests that might be considered "left" and others that would be considered "right" relative to American political interests. That skewing of interests relative to party labels opens up opportunities to consider/re-consider different perspectives.

There were some plot issues that detracted from the overall story.

- There are several instances of markets being distorted by government regulations/taxation. It never occurs to the characters that less government might result in greater individual success due to the increase in individual autonomy.

- All of the policies that Axel supports are considered to be desirable. All of the policies that he opposes are considered undesirable. Conversely, the business party is presented in all their mustache-twirling glory. In a book with moral grey areas, that sort of binary characterization seems out of place.

- The conclusion(s) of the book is/are predictable after reading roughly a third of the book.

- In an attempt to explore social conditions, there are a few features that are nonsense. The first of those features is the fact that the police are armed with revolvers and the rebels/terrorists/youpickaname have semi-automatic pistols with a larger magazine capacity than the standard revolver. If pistols are available, then why wouldn't the police have them? Another would be Axel's penchant for campaigning outside of a "sportball" arena on game day, but never actually engaging with the event. He campaigns while the crowd is filtering in and then leaves when the game starts.

This book is worth reading, once. I doubt I will continue reading the series.

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A Quilt for Olivia

Our son Josh married his beloved bride, Kayla, last fall.  As circumstances would have it, bun number 2 was already in the oven!  

I haven't had much time to quilt over the last year.  I lost my quilting space during some home renovations.  I've got a new/better space now, but for a while, there just wasn't anyplace to work.

We've had some other changes in our lives that have also cut into my quilting time over the last few months.  But this is a grandbaby!  One must make time for such an occasion.

I have a nice little stash of Dr. Seuss fabrics.  I just haven't had the opportunity to use them.

Until now.  Click to embiggen any photos of interest.

The pattern is a modified log cabin design.  I call it "Log Cabin Deconstructed".

Instead of doing a more traditional layout (see Quilt #1 for a good representation of a more traditional layout), I modified the pattern with a larger 4" x 4" centerpiece and a semi-random distribution of fabrics.  The larger centerpiece was a bit of a crutch/time-saver as the first three pieces of a log cabin quilt are small.  Combining them into a single block helped move the project along.

I used a process that is related to the one used in the stained glass quilt that I made my mom to distribute the fabrics.  In this case, I sorted the fabrics so that no two adjacent pieces would use the same fabric.  I also shuffled the blocks as they were being added to the pile so that none of the finished blocks would have exactly the same arrangement of fabrics.

I'm pretty pleased with the result.  Once I had the quilt finished, the hard part was done and our grandbaby could arrive on schedule.

We are ecstatic with the arrival of Miss Olivia Gene Todd on April 6, 2022.

Review: Titan

Titan by Robert Kroese
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review which is a fair representation of my experience with this book.

There are a lot of moving pieces to this book. Our protagonist, Kade Kapur, dreams of starting an aerospace company to help humanity make the jump from Earth to the stars. He is in turn driven, charming, and a techno-geek hesitantly feeling his way through the world.

Unlike past generations of world-changing titans of industry, Kade comes of age at a time when the last free (or at least semi-free) nation is slowly tightening the regulatory and taxation vise that stifles innovation. He is a modern John Galt adapting as quickly as possible; slithering through the closing gap of government interference like Indiana Jones escaping an ancient, trapped tomb.

The story includes native elements about electronic currencies, blockchain systems, privacy concerns, and space mining technologies. The primary characters are engaging and fully realized. Some of the secondary characters are mildly two-dimensional.

The primary reason why this didn't get 5-stars is the economics treatises that get info-dumped in the middle of the story. Most of these come in the form of monologues from an 18-year old prodigy. At some point, the dense economic info-dumps coming from an unlikely source turn into a case where the sub-text supersedes the text. The ideology displaces the story.

The preaching upstages the entertainment.

This was largely an enjoyable read. I look forward to reading the next installment at some point.

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Systemic Biases

I was reading a profile of former California Governor Jerry Brown.  He is living a more private life on his farm.  He also serves as the head of the board that maintains the "clock" that measures the threat of nuclear war.

Within that story it was noted that the "clock" stands at 100 seconds to midnight...nuclear war...and that it had not been changed with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin having increased the alert level of Russia's nuclear forces.  President Biden elected not to make a corresponding adjustment to the alert level of America's nuclear forces.

Based on what I see, I think President Biden's choice was correct but that isn't what prompts me to set fingers to keyboard.

It is my opinion that this would not have been the situation had the nations been reversed.  Had the US President increased the alert level of our nuclear forces, then the "clock" would have certainly been moved towards "midnight".

Such is the bias of international non-governmental organizations and the media that report on their activities.  Their reactions are predictable and inequitable.  A shift in American policymaking is greeted with significant responses.  A shift in the whims of the world's dictators barely ruffles the feathers of those international organizations.

8/6/2025 - modest grammar correction

Review: The Girl in the Gun Club: My Time as One of the Few Good Men

The Girl in the Gun Club: My Time as One of the Few Good Men by Tracy Salzgeber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Everyone has a slightly different experience serving in the Marine Corps. This book tells the story of SSgt Sulzgeber's ~13 years on active duty.

As with every other Marine, she's still a Marine - just a No-LOAD (No Longer On Active Duty), like me!

I went into this book expecting to read the worst. My brother Marines have a bad and well-deserved reputation for treating our sister Marines pretty poorly. I figured this book might lean into that negative reputation.

It didn't. There were some instances where SSgt Sulzgeber experienced negative consequences due exclusively to her gender. Far more frequently, her gender caused a little extra negative consequence on top of other, larger consequences that are the sort of routine stories Marines tell one another all the time.

That doesn't make those "extra" consequences right, it makes her story real.

I'd recommend this book to any Marine (active, reserve, No-LOAD) as well as to any person that is looking to join the Corps. It is an unflinching look at both the good and the bad when it comes to Marine Corps leadership and their care and feeding of the average jarhead. I'd recommend it for non-Marines as well, just be prepared. Marines can be pretty salty.

There are tales of success. Tales of failure. (SSgt Sulzgeber doesn't pretend that she is the second coming of Dan Daly or Smedley Butler). Tales of frustration at the hands of bureaucracy. Tales of success despite the best efforts of "leaders" to create failure. Tales of stress. Tales of the random goofiness that comes with being in the military (in general) and the Corps (specifically).

The book is well written and unflinching. I could not put it down.

Outstanding job, Marine!

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Review: Son of the Black Sword

Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Our protagonist is Ashok Vadal. Presumably born of the highest/first caste in society. Dispassionate and masterful enforcer of The Law. Possessor/wielder of a magic blade that lends him the collected experience of those that have wielded the blade in past centuries.

A perfect example of all that is right in his world.

Until he finds out that his life is a lie. His world is tipped upside down.

[hit the links back to Goodreads to read the spoiler section]

Son of the Black Sword is an interesting meditation on several contemporary issues. Is "the law" always right? Is it always just? Do people have a right to exist?

The first 10-15% of the book reads like a standard fantasy tale. Then the world turns upside down and you won't be able to put it down until you reach the end.

This book should have been a contender for the 2016 Hugo Best Novel award. Had I read it in 2015, I'm sure it would have been on my nominating ballot. I had one finalist below "no award" that year. This would have been a fine addition to the group of finalists.

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An Old Sea Tale - Putting Ivan Back In His Place

I ran across this via Usenet a while back.  It seems like a piece of Navy history that shouldn't be lost to the vagaries of time and the Internet.

The author/storyteller is a retired US Navy Captain.  The time is 1968 during the Cold War.  The place is the Mediterranian where Soviet trawlers were trying to intercept our electronic transmissions while simultaneously committing acts of low-level harassment.

One US aircraft carrier, the Forrestal, was on-station in the Med when the following occurred.  (With one or two edits by yours truly for formatting purposes only.)

---

A true one experienced by Frenchy Corbeille USN(Ret)

It was Sunday afternoon, early in the month of August, 1968 when USS Forrestal (CVA-59) was making her way through the Western Mediterranean during the first days of a 7-month cruise.

I was Officer of the Deck (OOD) on the 1200 - 1600 bridge watch, there were no ship's evolutions ongoing, and things looked like a "ho-hum" Sunday afternoon at sea. We were hosting the prospective Commanding Officer of USS Independence and our CO had gone with him to the Captain's In-Port Cabin. Prior to departing the bridge the CO and I had conversed briefly and one of the subjects breeched was that we had been in the Mediterranean for more than a week now and we had not yet seen one of those pesky Russian trawlers. Our Navy had come to hope not to see one because they had a way of getting in the way whenever we had things to do, such as flight operations, or underway replenishment. This lack of encounter was about to change.

At about 1500 I called the CO to advise him that we had picked up an unidentified surface contact on radar, range 22,000 yards (11 nautical miles). It appeared to be on our reciprocal course at a speed of 8 knots and in the absence of any changes, the closest point of approach (CPA) would be 6,000 yards on our port beam. "Very Well" and the customary "Thanks, Frenchy" constituted the CO's response.

I had no more than hung up the phone when the contact changed course. I could identify 2 sticks over the horizon, looking through the 7X50 OOD standard equipment Bausch & Lomb's, but could make out nothing of the vessel. However, the two sticks bore a strong resemblance to the pictures we had on the bridge of known trawlers that had frequented these waters. I called the captain back to advise him that the unidentified contact had indeed made a 90-degree course change, was still doing 8 knots, and his present course/speed would take him across our bow at 6,000 yards (3 miles). We were doing 20 knots, on some kind of a "sustained speed exercise" for the engineers, and preferred to alter neither course nor speed unless absolutely necessary. I advised the captain of my suspicions concerning the vessel's identity and advised him that I had ordered the Intelligence sighting team to the bridge. It being a Sunday stand down with little to occupy the idle time, we soon had the entire Intelligence staff scattered about on the bridge and the signal bridge, with a few photo types thrown in.

The contact was still hull-down over the horizon but the visible masts more and more took on the resemblance of our Russian trawler pictures. I also advised the captain that, in accordance with the International Rules of the Road, Forrestal was the privileged vessel; the vessel crossing our bow was coming from our port side and was therefore the "Burdened" vessel. In accordance with the Rules, the privileged vessel is REQUIRED to maintain course and speed. The Burdened vessel is responsible for maneuvering as necessary to avoid collision. The Captain said "Very Well, Call me back if he does anything funny, and let me know what the intelligence folks come up with."

Only moments later I was back on the phone, advising the Captain that we had positive ID on a Russian ELINT (Electronics Intelligence) trawler, and he had indeed done something "funny" - He had reached our intended track at a range of 6,000 yards, and had then executed another 90-degree turn to port; he was now on the same course as Forrestal, dead ahead, at speed 8 knots. So we had a 12-kt speed advantage, and 3 miles to contact. That meant that in 15 minutes one or the other of us must turn or he, the Russian trawler, would get run over. I advised the captain that in accordance with the International Rules, he was burdened when he came in from our port bow. Now that we are on a course to overtake him, he would like us to believe that Forrestal, as the overtaking vessel, is the newly ordained BURDENED vessel. I reminded the captain of another clause in the rules that says once a vessel is burdened, it may not maneuver to shift the burden to the other vessel. He stays burdened until danger of collision is past.

The captain agreed with my assessment and asked what I recommended we do. I recommended we hold course and speed until "EXTREMIS" - that sketchy point at which somebody has to do something or there's going to be a crunch, then order up "All Back Emergency Full", "Right Full Rudder", and we would miss him. I had identified that point as 400 yards astern but threw in 100 yards for cushion. The captain once more came back with his cheerful "Very Well" and added "if he's still there at 1,000 yards, give me a call back." "AYE AYE, Sir!" 

Now we've eaten up about 1/3 of our cushion and the squawk box came to life. "Bridge, Flag Bridge" "When does Forrestal intend to maneuver to avoid that Privileged vessel ahead?" There was no race by other members of the bridge team to answer that one, so I got it myself. "Flag Bridge, Bridge - This is the Officer of the Deck speaking. That vessel ahead is not privileged - he approached from our port side, therefore is the burdened vessel, and he can no longer maneuver to shift his burden to Forrestal." "Flag Bridge Aye"! I could envision some hot shot flag watch officer digging the Admiral's shoe out of his ass, and smiled inwardly. I didn't hear the Admiral's voice, but I knew he was watching from his favorite perch.

Somewhere about then I had the signal gang close up "Uniform" on both halyards - "U" is the international signal that says "you are standing into danger". Then our navigator got into it. First he told me I was going to have to turn the ship and he was working on our new course. Since he was a commander and I was a lieutenant, I explained as tactfully as I could that we were not going to turn, leastways not to a pre-planned course. We were the privileged vessel, and as such, were REQUIRED to hold course and speed. Next thing I heard from him was "Mr. Corbeille, I'm ordering you to turn this ship." With no attempt at tact, I advised him "Commander, you cannot order me to turn this ship. If you believe the ship to be sufficiently endangered, you, as Navigator, can summarily relieve me as OOD. Then you can turn left, turn right, or come dead in the water. But you cannot order me to turn. Do you want to relieve me?" Rather truculently, he then asked if the Captain knows about all this. I told him yes indeed, and at contact range of 1,000 yards, I was to notify the Captain again. "You better call him again - right now!" "No Sir, we still have a few hundred yards to go."

At this stage, I don't recall the exact time, the bridge relief crew was coming on deck, but no one was ready to be relieved. I spied my relief OOD waiting in the wings and he wanted nothing more than to stay out of the way. Admittedly, I got a bit nervous, and I called the captain back when the trawler was 1,100 yards ahead. His only response was "I'm on my way up". 

He arrived momentarily with the PCO of Independence following in his wake. He hopped up in his chair, says "Boy, he is pretty close, isn't he." Then he asked "and when do you plan to make your big move?" I told him that if it closes to 500 yards, we can order up All Back Emergency Full, Right Full Rudder, and we will miss him. He asked: Is that what the book says? I told him "No Sir, The book says 400 yards, but I was leaving in a little cushion. He said "We need only to maneuver in extremis to MINIMIZE DAMAGE". That is a slight departure from international rules, but was our standing order, arrived at specifically to contend with harassment vessels.

This is kind of a delicate point here because International Rules of the Road says the "privileged vessel must maneuver when in extremis to avoid collision". U.S.S.R. (Soviet Union) was not signatory to the International Rules of the Road, therefore her vessels were not bound by them. It must be pointed out that Russian ships, merchantmen and men-of-war alike, followed the international rules of the road anyway, and knew them well enough to "play chicken" with U.S. ships, mostly to our embarrassment. That was a game that our Navy had long since tired of, hence the new guidance to maneuver only in extremis to minimize damage. Naturally, it behooved one to be absolutely certain that he was absolutely right, if he were going to take a Navy man-of-war down to the wire in a potential collision situation. I'm sure there are readers who have more background concerning our maneuvering instructions, but we believed we understood them perfectly. I still believe that we did.

Having thus indicated his intentions, the Captain then asked "So how close can we take her?" I told him 400 yards would provide a grazing situation, and then ordered the engine room to stand by for Emergency Backing Bells. We were still closing and had reached the 500-yard mark when the trawler put in left full rudder. His rudder was not the size of a barn door - It had to have looked like the side of the barn itself! That guy turned 90 degrees left in a heartbeat!

We never flinched, never wavered, and the trawler passed close aboard to port - so close, in fact, that the hull was not visible alongside our flight deck. All that was visible from the vantage point of our bridge were the two masts as they went rapidly down our port beam. Then we launched a helo for some photo work and a big sigh of relief went up from the bridge. The navigator started lobbying for us to file a harassment report, but since we had altered neither course nor speed to accommodate the trawler, it was hard to make a case for harassment. I wanted to make out a harassment report on the navigator but the CO calmed me down on that score.

The Prospective Commanding Officer (PCO) of Independence, bless his soul, took in the whole affair after arriving on the bridge with our Captain, and never interjected one word. When it was all over, he moved directly in front of me and said, loud enough for almost everybody on the bridge to hear, "No one could have done better." Our CO joined right in and said "Frenchy, You handled that perfectly". At that point I realized I wasn't going to be a lieutenant forever, my advice to the Captain had been sound, and I knew our Captain appreciated it. My breathing gradually returned to normal. For his part, Captain Hill, for that, as I recall, was his name, went on to become CO USS Independence. He assumed command while anchored in some Sicilian Bay, and when Independence stood out to sea "under new management", there was a Russian ELINT trawler, just outside territorial waters, making slight way on Independence's intended track.

A friend serving on that fine vessel told me that the new CO's order to CIC was "Combat, give me a collision course on that trawler at 30 knots!" I heard the same refrain from several other people and I believe it to be what happened. For our part, we spent the remainder of our cruise unhampered in any way by any Russian flagged ship. We continued to see an occasional trawler, but when we came into the wind to launch and recover aircraft, they vanished as if by magic. The word seemed to have leaked out that this carrier has an attitude problem - he'll run right over you! And the Chief Engineer was happy because he got his uninterrupted 4-hour sustained speed run at 20 knots.

Life was not the same for me after that. Our captain made me "Command Duty Officer Underway". I was already the General Quarters OOD and Sea and Anchor Detail OOD, so I wasn't sure what this new designation would lead to.

I soon learned that I was to be on the bridge whenever Forrestal was in formation with other major combatants, (destroyers didn't count, but cruisers did), and that I was to provide training to all prospective Command Duty Officers.

Anytime there was underway replenishment, there was a "formation", so I got to spend a lot of valuable time on the bridge, learning all I could absorb.

Our great captain, nameless up to now, was Robert Bemus Baldwin, born in Bismarck, North Dakota.

He was promoted to RADM upon leaving Forrestal, and the last time I spoke with him he was Vice-Admiral Baldwin, COMNAVAIRPAC. I believe he lives in or near San Diego, and remains the most admired man of my 30-plus year Navy career.

CAPT R. CLAUDE CORBEILLE USN (RET)

Castle Rock, WA

Interesting News 2/13/2022

Democrats in New York are trying to gerrymander the GOP out of the NY contingent in the US House of Representatives.  I'm sure this sort of gerrymandering is fine with our leftist friends.  It certainly isn't being reported by their allies in the news.

OK.  This isn't new.  But it is still relevant to the current political conflicts raging throughout the west.  University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds wrote an essay on the current class war.  It isn't poor workers vs. rich capitalists.  It is working-class vs. ruling class.  The ruling class, the people we employ to run the government, expect our  unquestioning compliance to their petty dictates.  The working class expects their unquestioning compliance with our rules as indicated in the Constitution.

It looks like Enis Kantor Freedom is about to get bounced from the NBA.  He was recently part of a trade deal that left him with the Houston Rockets.  They fired him.  Mr. Freedom has been a powerful voice against authoritarian governments such as the one in his home nation of Turkey as well as the Chinese Communist Party with their pogram against the Uighurs.  He appears to have a few good NBA-level playing years in him.  It would be a pity if the CCP was able to influence the hiring decisions made by the American NBA.  At least one assumes that the N in NBA stands for "National" and that the nation in question is the USA.

Michele Tafoya is leaving her position with NBC Sports.  She has been a feature on the football sideline for decades.  I was surprised to learn that she is leaving sports broadcasting for political projects.  Turns out that she is a libertarian-leaning Conservative; which is how your humble interlocutor describes himself from time to time.  We wish her good fortune in the coming years.

 Saw this elsewhere.  Covers the issue well enough.

The intolerance on the part of those supporting vax and mask mandates is astounding.  Wrecking careers.  Destroying businesses.  All in pursuit of one end -  You Will Comply.

A retiring Marine Corps Lieutenant General, Gregory Newbold, has some thoughts to share about Critical Military Theory; a doctrine that has fallen out of favor with our civilian and military leadership.

People have been having a time tearing into Canadian PM Justin Trudeau over his invocation of emergency powers.  I found video of a Conservative Party MP pointing out the change in Mr. Trudeau's position about trusting the people to be interesting as there are a couple of people in the background who appear to be some flavor of POC.  They stand and applaud enthusiastically when MP Melissa Lantsman is done asking her question of Mr. Trudeau.  One may be a Sikh.  I'm not sure.  Ever the classy leader, Mr. Trudeau immediately "re-frames" the situation as the Conservative Party is standing with those that wave the swastika.  One small issue.  Apparently MP Lantsman is Jewish.  Hard to see her siding with Nazis on anything.  Perhaps Mr. Trudeau's rampant insulting of his countrymen and women is a diversion from his government's oppressive policies?  That seems to be the bulk of the political playbook from the left these days.

Interesting News 2/6/2022

Some of these items may be a bit older, but I think they are worthy of some consideration.

A young American is labeled as a white supremacist (and most of the other foul names that get blithely tossed about these days) for daring to support conservative individuals and organizations on her college campus.  They try to make her bend the knee to their collective.  She refuses.  She wins.  Also, Olivia Gallegos happens to be Hispanic.

Former head of the ACLU, Ira Glass, is quite critical of the ACLU's abandonment of their historic mission of supporting civil liberties for every American.  Mr. Glass understood that when the ACLU stops defending speech based on the content of that speech, then the government gets to decide who gets to speak.

A local CPS agency decided that a single mother shouldn't be able to have her 14-year old daughter watch the rest of her kids.  The 14-year old seems reasonably competent.  The mother as well, yet she ended up in handcuffs in front of her kids.  Our government clearly does not want to remain limited in size and scope.

We are regularly informed by the media that climate change is the proximate cause of a great many natural disasters.  It turns out that while climate change might be a partial factor, our land-use policies are a much more significant factor.

Others have been having a lot of fun criticizing the Biden Administration's proposal to foster racial equity with a bill that includes funding for free crack pipes.  This isn't a harm mitigation proposal such as done with needle exchange programs.  This is facilitating harm by giving out the equipment needed to allow the harmful behavior.  The supposed "fact check" sites responded by saying the story is "mostly false" because the bill included spending for things beyond crack pipes.  While that is true, the point...the irrefutable fact...is that the government was planning on handing out crack pipes!  Notice how that sort of "nuance" and "context" from "fact-checking" sites is never present when they are criticizing Republican initiatives?

The Luddites of the environmental movement like to claim that plastic waste accumulating in the oceans is largely the fault of the United States.  Nope.  China, India, and the Philippines are the three most significant sources.

The CDC recently promoted a graphic suggesting that masks were effective against Covid.  When one reads the actual report behind the graphic...you know - the science...you learn that the data does not justify the information in the graphic.  I won't hold my breath waiting for the media to confront the CDC for their disinformation campaign.  I'm sure that none of the CDC's social media accounts will be held to account for that disinformation as well.

I recently came across this image of the moon passing between the earth and the sun that was recorded by a satellite located on the far side of the moon.

Pretty neat, huh?

Researchers have come up with a plastic sheet that is stronger than steel.  Up until recently, we were only able to make plastics in long linear chains.  The chains coil up around each other to form solids.  But effectively, we are talking about linear strings of various plastic formulations.  These researchers found a way to get the plastic molecules to form in a two-dimensional sheet rather than in the traditional linear string.  They still have to find a way to get it out of the lab and into a factory, but that is just a matter of time.

Sums It Up - Meme-o-riffic Version

 

Found elsewhere, but this pretty much covers where we are these days.  Leftists are getting the vapors over white nationalists trying to glom onto the trucker convoys as if the presence of the white nationalists defines the larger protests over Covid restrictions.  Compared with the George Floyd protests, the violence and vandalism associated with the trucker convoys have been (thus far) quite minimal.

That doesn't excuse violence and vandalism.  Those individuals should be arrested and prosecuted accordingly.

Based on what has been meted out to most of the rioters in the George Floyd and the Antifa riots, those in the trucker convoys probably should get about a minute and seventeen seconds in jail.

Pending Musing on a Pending Nomination

As many know, President Biden has promised to nominate a black woman to the US Supreme Court.  He made that promise to obtain the support of a prominent Democrat.

If you look at the data, women make up about 37.5% of federal judges.  Judges who happen to be black are roughly 5.4% of all judges.  That means that President Biden is limiting his range of choices to roughly 2% of the total pool of federal judges.  How likely is it that his nominee will be among the best of the very best experienced, legal minds in the country if he limits his pool of nominees based on race and gender?

I suppose he might select someone outside of the judiciary to be on the Supreme Court.  That happens infrequently.  I also supposed that it might be a bit much to hope that he would nominate Condoleezza Rice if he looked outside of the pool of current federal judges.  No need to hold my breath on that one.

I noticed something a bit odd in the demographic data for federal judges.  The proportion of judges who are either black, Asian, or Hispanic actually increased during former President Trump's term in office.  According to some, Mr. Trump is the biggest racist to reach the Presidency for a very long time.  But his administration's nomination of judges led to greater racial diversity.  The percentage of women on the bench also went up.  

The racist and misogynist President improved diversity on the federal bench.  Perhaps the mainstream media narrative isn't quite as valid as some might otherwise suggest.

From a few early reports, it looks like U.S. Appeals Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is in the lead for the nomination.  I had never heard of her before.  From this profile, she seems to have the basic temperament and intellect for the job.  Former US House Speaker Paul Ryan thinks well of her ability as a judge.  Judge Brown Jackson's husband is the twin to Paul Ryan's brother-in-law.

The judge clerked for retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.  I'd be happier if she had clerked for former Justice Scalia, but we can't have everything.  Her educational background (Harvard) would be part of a disappointing trend.  Her professional background as a defense attorney would represent a historically unique and welcome (in my opinion) addition to the bench.

Hopefully, if she is nominated, her confirmation hearings go smoothly and no odd-ball legal theories will be revealed.  It would be nice to see a competent judge make it to the Supreme Court with a minimum amount of fuss.

Justice Sotomayor is a rank disappointment.

Update - with these things, there will always be something more.

It turns out that Joe Biden used the Senate's filibuster rules to block the first black woman to be nominated to the US Supreme Court.  Her name is Janice Rogers Brown.  She was nominated by then President George W. Bush.  Biden was part of a group of Democrats that filibustered her nomination to a US circuit court position.  Columnist Robert Novak said the event was “the first full-scale effort in American history to prevent a president from picking the federal judges he wants.”

That effort was successful, but Judge Rogers Brown was re-nominated and confirmed a couple years later in 2005.  She was considered for a US Supreme Court appointment a couple years later.  Biden again offered to filibuster her nomination.  She would have been the first Supreme Court nominee to the filibustered in the history of the nation.

It seems to me that the Democrats allege that the filibuster is racist precisely because of their past experiences in using the filibuster for racist purposes.  They can't imagine it being used for anything more principled.  They are projecting.  They almost always are.

8/6/2025 - pronoun trouble! corrected

Interesting News 1/24/2022

Being ghoulish now being the norm, I will rush to point out that we were assured by our "betters" that mass shootings don't occur in Europe because they have restrictive gun laws over there.  Our "betters" aren't really better. 

Do you know what killed mass transit?  It is the incontrovertible fact that personal vehicles provide a better experience for car/truck owners while mass transit fails to provide a convenient, safe, and reliable form of transportation.  "Fetch" isn't going to happen.  Neither is a return to trains in lieu of automobiles and airplanes.

It seems that some prominent government scientists doubted that the Wuhan/Covid-19 virus evolved naturally.  And they were told to keep their questions to themselves.  Which, being paid by the government, they promptly did.  Given the scale of differences between the naturally occurring bat virus and Covid-10, the odds are quite good that human intervention was involved.  Given that agents of the US government, including Saint Fauci's organization, were soliciting government funds to perform gain of function research on this type of virus, in China, ... well the odds just get better and better.

Interesting News 1/17/2022

Context is important.  If you have been hearing about 2021 being tied for the sixth warmest year on record, then you might think that this is part of an ongoing upwards trend in temperatures.  If you go back far enough, then some sort of argument could be made for that assertion.  If you just look at the last ten years, then it's hard to see a continuing upward trend.  Climate alarmists habitually claim that temperatures are in a terminal upward trend.  They are habitually wrong.  They are also unlikely to reassess the science behind their assertions.

A little late on this one.  Early in the pandemic, a scientist developed a reasonably accurate Covid test.  The US federal government stood in the way of the company looking to deploy this test.  They provided no clear direction on the company could correct any perceived deficiencies in their application.  The performance record of federal decision-making is underwhelming.  I'm being polite.

In 2020, the Wisconsin Elections Commission issued guidance to local elections clerks that permitted the use of a wide range of ballot drop boxes.  One problem.  The laws governing Wisconsin elections only permit two methods for submitting absentee ballots; via mail and in-person.  Did this influence the outcome of the election in Wisconsin?  It's hard to say.  However, last-minute attempts to change the rules for conducting elections do undermine confidence in the elections process.

One issue that makes it hard to accept "the science" is when "scientists" alter the historical temperature record.  Seemingly, such alterations make early years colder and/or later years warmer.  Scare quotes applied as appropriate.  Real science involves revising computer models to fit the data rather than fitting the data to the computer models.

Here is an interesting tidbit for those following the news out of Canada.  Last year, a researcher announced that they have found a mass grave near the site of a former Kamloops Indian Residential School.  The residential school system is a well-known source of harm to the First Nations people of Canada.  In the wake of the announcement, 68 Canadian churches were subjected to arson.  Here is the tidbit, not one single human body has actually been identified to date.  The investigation should continue as they might find bodies, but they also might find tree roots that look quite similar to human bodies in LIDAR returns.  And there was an apple orchard nearby.

They know they are being racist.  You know they are being racist.  Yet I predict that no one of any consequence will call them out on their racism.

#china #Olympics
Black athletes are greeted in China by a crowd using the "N" word

Enjoy your Martin Luther King day... pic.twitter.com/v8B91eJ5Ki

— Charles R. Smith🔹 (@softwarnet) January 17, 2022

We now have a video of elections officials that suggests that the elections laws of Pennsylvania were broken in the 2020 election.  Were those violations of the law sufficient to change the outcome?  Who knows.  No one is interested in answering that question.

I'm pretty much on the record of supporting protections for women's ability to compete in athletics on a fair basis.  Permitting biological men to compete against women, even after taking testosterone blockers, would compromise women's athletics.  Even Caitlyn Jenner agrees.

I am more than a bit tired of Democrat complaints about the legitimacy of elections.  They have spent most of the last 20 years alleging that the elections that they lose are illegitimate.  Pretty much, they expect to play a "heads we win, tails you lose" game without any complaints.  Nope.

Interesting News - 1/10/2021

Hookay...so I haven't done one of these in a while.  Here we go.

Apparently, California is going to levy the highest tax in the nation on solar power generated by homeowners and other small entities.  This is just another example of why climate change isn't as much of an issue as some suggest.  Solar power in California, unlike in other states, is cheap and reasonably reliable.  And the state government is making it more expensive to install and operate your own system to "save the planet".

Leftists have a continuing case of the vapors over the 1/6/2021 riot at the Capitol building in Washington D.C.  Yet they very little about the many other instances where federal facilities were assaulted by rioters.  Oh...that's right...those were Chekas doing the assaulting.  Leftists never criticize anyone to their left.

While we are talking about rampaging American Chekas, let us recall the disparate treatment being given to rioters by prosecutors.  American Chekas are rarely punished, any punishments are light, and they are tried in a prompt manner as befits their rights as American citizens.  Most of the right-wing 1/6 rioters, also American citizens, are still sitting in jail awaiting trial one year after their event and those that pled guilty were given quite stiff sentences.  Equality before the law matters if one is intent on preserving our great Republic.  Leftist prosecutors apparently aren't interested in that objective.

James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has another bombshell.  It turns out that the proposal to fund gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was first submitted to DARPA.  DARPA is the research wing of America's military agencies.  DARPA noped right out of that proposal and pointed out the many flaws.  Those flaws have been eerily appropriate since January of 2020.  The project proposal was then submitted to the NAIAD.  It was approved.  Our esteemed Dr. Fauci is/was the head of the NAIAD at the time.

Courtesy of our outstanding private pharmaceutical companies, we have a couple of new anti-virals that are effective in limiting the impact of Covid.  True to form, the federal government is micromanaging doctors by placing questionable restrictions on when these effective treatments may be prescribed.  It's like Covid isn't a threat or something.

The hits keep on coming.  Even the EU isn't serious about CO2 emissions.  They appear poised to exempt CO2 emissions from private planes and yachts.  I'll take the issue far more seriously when the rich and powerful are being inconvenienced more than the common person.

Review: A Bright Shore

A Bright Shore by S.M. Anderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review.

I'm only reviewing the first book as the rest of the series (total 4 books as of this moment) but the rest are just fantastic. They continue the story that begins here.

Scientists have discovered the existence of alternate Earths via something akin to string theory. They can only access adjacent "Earths" on the string. But from each successive "Earth" they think they can access ever further iterations of Earth.

The one they can access immediately is like our Earth except humanity never evolved on the new Earth. Some of the animals are a little different. Geographically there are some modest differences as well.

Coincidentally, the governments of our Earth are driving civilization into the ground. Rather than acknowledging reality, they pursue an ever-spiraling round of regulation and taxes to create opportunities to give away "free" stuff.

The authorial motivation to retell Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" renders the narrative paper-thin - excuse the pun. This is one of two weaknesses of the book. You can read the lines of "Atlas Shrugged" through the pages of "A Bright Shore".

People that value liberty gather like-minded people to their cause. They intend a mass exodus to the new Earth that will leave those that support ever-expanding government behind. Naturally, a few ne'er-do-wells make it through. More on that later.

The settlers expand out across North America. They eventually come in contact with an armed force from the next "Earth" along the string. These humans are not quite as technologically advanced, but they are ruthless in battle. Their means of traveling to this new Earth is more based on understanding where the versions of Earth almost touch so they can (more or less) just walk from one to the other.

They want this New Earth as much as our band of intrepid settlers. War ensues. Elements of the warrior band eventually learn a bit about what makes our settler tick; philosophically speaking. They flip to our side based on our promise of freedom. It seems that the political structure of the warrior band is inherently violent and authoritarian.

At the end of the book, our settlers and their new allies win the day.

Back at the new seat of government, one of those ne'er-do-wells has acquired control of the government and is using it to re-insert some of the collectivist ideas that ruined the Old Earth. The settlers, now an expanded group of military veterans, remove the government's access to the more valuable resources that allow it to control people and issue a threat to the ne'er-do-well that they do not enjoy the "consent of the governed" to introduce a large level of government control.

Yet, apparently, the ne'er-do-well did have "consent of the governed". They acquired it via deceptive politics and other acts of demagoguery, but they did get people to support them.

The idea that the endorsement of the military is needed to confirm the "consent of the governed" is the first step down a perilous road.

That step down that road and the tissue-thin cover over the ideas expressed in "Atlas Shrugged" are the only weak points in this book. Neither is an issue in the later books.

The other books will all get 5-stars from me without any additional review. Go read the entire series. It is well worth your money and your time.

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Review: Forgotten Ruin

Forgotten Ruin by Jason Anspach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. It is not a strong 4-star review. This book is definitely better than 3-stars, but not by a lot.

The premise of this book is that some sort of nano-virus has been released into the world. The virus causes technology to break down and humans to experience unexplained mutations. The news reports of the spreading virus are sparse, cryptic, and a bit scary.

The response is to use some technology located at the US military Area 51 to send teams into the future to restart civilization after the nano-virus has passed. Each team includes various flavors of US special forces along with a 3D replicator that has been hardened against the nano-virus. Our specific team of heroes has a couple of civilians along for the ride. One is to run the 3D replicator. One is a vaguely defined scientist. One is a politician/administrator who is just as demonstrably useful as one might expect.

It turns out that the time travel technology isn't very precise and the teams "land" anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand years in the future.

Our heroes are about 10,000 years downstream from their departure point. They discover a world that has transformed into some flavor of Tolkien-esque/Dungeons and Dragons reality that includes orcs, trolls, dragons, elves, and magic.

Conceptually, this is an interesting book. The characters and action certainly held my attention all the way to the end.

But....

The setting is largely derivative of Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons with a smattering of Stephen King tossed in for good measure. The setting doesn't seek to carve any new genre paths and instead overlays the narrative onto the existing understanding of the fantasy genre.

The narrative includes a fair amount of gun porn - rhetorically stroking the barrel, so to speak. Most of this is done early on and the later sections of the book are better once the fondling of various gun calibers has been concluded. As this is MilSF, one expects a bit of focus on guns, but perhaps a little less would leave more room for the story and characters.

The narrative includes a bit of Ranger porn - stroking the Ranger ego with Rangers doing Ranger stuff while Rangering. Eventually, the Ranger porn gets out of the way and we develop a relationship with the individual Rangers which improves the story in the later sections.

The narrative doesn't really reach for much in terms of plot or character development. I am a fan of Nick Cole's earlier solo works where he did reach for something extra. This new series seems to be coming from the Anspach/Cole MilSF Amalagamated Factory, Inc. - entertaining fiction cranked out for you!

It is a fine book that is reasonably entertaining. Worth the money you will spend. But it isn't really much more than utilitarian entertainment. I might return to the series, later on, to see how things shake out.

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Review: 11,000 Years

11,000 Years by Mark Roth-Whitworth
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a 2-star review. It would have been a 1-star review but for the dearth of spelling and grammar errors.

This book was sold to me by the author under the premise that it contained all of the elements that made golden-age speculative fiction great. It does not include those elements.

Instead, the book leaves the reader with the feeling that a fan gets when going to see their favorite author/singer/actor live and gets stuck looking at a cardboard cutout displaying the author/singer/actor's likeness.

The early sections of the book are indeed populated by cardboard characters. They are flying on the Spaceship Cardboard. Their leader is Captain Cardboard. One of the crew is Frenchie Cardboard (no relation to the captain). Frenchie is French. She is the only character that speaks in an accent to let you know that she is French. Just in case you missed it, she wears a beret later in the book.

The Captain is a stoic and heroic figure who everyone admires even after he purposefully avoids dealing with events that will drive his ship close to a black hole in a maneuver that throws his ship a titular 11,000 years in the future. All he had to do was point the ship in a different direction a couple of days early and the rest of the story need not happen.

There are religious people on the ship. A few. The only overtly Christian character ends up sodomizing his gay roommate to death and then killing himself.

Ah, the nuance. That's probably the only word this author cannot spell.

We learn that even though the ship is in the middle of a crisis, the crew has a union that must be consulted before the captain can do anything. All great explorations involved union labor or something.

After the ship is heading off to discover what has happened to humanity in the intervening millennia, we switch to one of the main human multi-system civilizations. Essentially, all of humanity's major religions have been homogenized and combined to create a massive theocracy that oppresses everyone in service to no particular diety whatsoever.

At this point, the book cribs notes from the vastly superior work of Robert A. Heinlein. In particular, the book picks up some plot points from Revolt in 2100; where a young man of faith seeks to save a young woman of faith and then ends up finding out that their religion is a sham. Except, in this case, they keep believing in the religion and work to make it better.

The author seems to think that the sole purpose of religion is to engage in hypocrisy.

We return to the SS Cardboard which manages to fight off an attack from the pseudo-religious civilization. They run for the shelter provided by a second civilization.

With those two civilizations in conflict, a diplomatic meeting is arranged. The crew from the SS Cardboard is brought in to help observe and moderate.

A crew that is missing 11,000 years worth of knowledge, understanding, and context about the development of current human civilizations is deemed to be appropriate moderators for a diplomatic meeting.

Dorothy Parker's ghost had been impatiently tapping her foot for some time. This book was heaved across the room with great relish.

Run away from this book and go find something good to read. Like a grocery store coupon circular.

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The author came in contact with me regarding this review.  And after a bit of retrospection, I think that an update is in order.

The 2-star rating is going to stay.  That is how good this book is.

But, I do think it is worthwhile to boil down my criticisms.

1.  Cardboard characters.

The author spent a lot of time making sure that the characters are diverse.  He described their color, gender, and nation of origin in great detail.  But he didn't do anything to differentiate their characters.  Except for the French lady.  She had an accent.  And a beret.

2.  The captain is well respected even though his leadership directly results in the ship traveling perilously close to the event horizon and tossing it 11,000 years in the future.  The crew still looks up to him after that massive screwup.

3.  This is an exploratory ship and not a cruise ship.  It travels into hazardous regions where quick decisions have to be made.  Yet the captain must get permission from the union before setting a course.  Never in the course of human history has such a thing happened.  

Private sector unions are great organizations under most circumstances.  A ship on an expedition to a remote location isn't one of those circumstances.  Save the virtue signaling for another time.

4.  The middle section of the book was actually pretty interesting.  The two main characters were going places, doing things, and revealing the fictional world in an entertaining way.  Unfortunately, the entire arrangement seemed heavily cribbed from Heinlein's "Revolt in 2100".

At least in "Revolt in 2100", the characters realized that their theocratic state was bad/evil/destructive and then left it.  In this book, our heroes identify the problem and...stay the course.  It just doesn't make any sense.

5.  The theocracy is presented as an amalgamation of all of humanity's religions.  The author seems not to understand that beyond the belief in a "higher power", religions simply are not the same.  You cannot unplug Buddhism and insert Hoahaoism despite the latter being an offshoot of the former.  Small differences become very important to believers.  Belief in one conception of "God" is not the same as all other belief systems.  Just ask the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics.

6.  Later on, the crew that was tossed forward in time by 11,000 years gets asked to serve as arbitrators for a diplomatic meeting.  People who have missed out on 11,000 years of human history and evolution are then expected to navigate and negotiate the differences between two conflicting empires.  That would be worse than asking Gilgamesh to facilitate negotiations between North Korea and Japan in 2023.

Quite frankly, the author does not appear to know how people relate to one another.  He knows how he imagines that people relate to one another.  But he's got no clue about how the real world works.  And it shows.

Review: The Postman

The Postman by David Brin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a 5-star review.

The primary problem with reading this book after seeing the movie is that the movie has altered your perception of how the story should unfold. It took a little while to undo that influence.

The Postman is an outstanding rumination on the application of personal morals; particularly absent a larger framework that encourages us to be better citizens. The book also provides some interesting opportunities to think about how technology can be used, how it can be abused, and how it influences our lives.

Well worth the read.

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