Monthly Archives: July 2008

Alan Garner – The Owl Service

I bought a couple of cartons of books from Forest J. Ackerman’s Garage Mahal garage sale. Forey was moving and getting rid of his books. I bought some lots where there was at least one book that I was interested in. The other books were an odd mixture of whatever was on hand. Since I’ve […]

Signed Murray Leinster

I sometimes think that I am channeling Murray Leinster’s ghost. Will Jenkins, A.K.A. Murray Leinster was one of the most prolific short story writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. He wrote what I consider to be the quintessential Science Fiction story: First Contact. This book, Sideways in Time, has what has to be […]

Nine Legendary SF Authors Speak

This, via SFSignal, is a video of 9 great SF writers. It dates from the late 1960s to the late 1970s and has some of my favorite writers explaining why SF is important. A nice quote from Asimov: To those of us who remember the golden age, we are now living in a Sciencefictional world, […]

Riddle

Raised in the mountains and wild ravines, I have become the herald of hymns that are sung. I have no articulate voice, but still my voice is melodious. I found this quite by accident. It is a riddle from the Planudean anthology of problems and riddles, Chapter 7, #65. I don’t have the answer. I […]

Keith Laumer – A Plague of Demons

Keith Laumer wrote intense often humorous Science Fiction in the 1960s and 70s. He was prolific and I remember him mostly as a good Short Story writer as he appeared frequently in the SF magazines of the 1960s. I can remember reading several of his Retief Stories in Astounding and Analog. A Plague of Demons […]

Health and Diet

I’ve been talking to John B. about vitamins, diet and health. This is usually a personal issue and I’ve learned over the years not to nag people about what they eat. It has reached the point where the food supply is toxic enough to think twice before eating. It goes without question that meals from […]

NASA is 50 today.

GOOGLE has a nice NASA banner today reminding us that NASA is 50. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans seem to be interested in funding NASA anymore. I guess astronauts don’t vote. That is too bad. America is in need of something to make it special again. Right now we are drowning in the economic muck […]

MP3 – MP4 – MP5

e. Jim has been discussing buying a new MP3/video player and I have been thinking about this, too. It is a tough choice and I will probably wait until prices come down. The choices are: 1) PDA – like a Dell Axim or a Palm. 2) iPod – the new ones do video. 3) iTunes […]