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April 30, 2020

Knowing oneself (DOG EAR)

‘ve always been honest enough with myself to not try to anticipate how I would respond in an emergency. What would I do if someone held a gun on me? What would I do if I was faced with a chance at total corruption for total gain? Could I sell my soul? Easy to “pre-brag” about yourself but me, I’m not so sure. How would I deal with a mid-air emergency if I had a plane? Always wondered. Two hours post-solo in my little red ultralight, I found out. I was climbing steep and hard off Lake Apoka (it was […]
April 26, 2020

Infernal Devices (Review)

ook three of the Mortal Engines series, a great twist to an interesting furture-screwed world where cities roam about on their wheels and tracks, devouring each other, and the planet has become a strange place indeed. So Anna Fang, aviatrix from the first book, has now been remade into a stalker – a mechanically animated corpse (a shame too, since I liked her). She (or it) has been leading the Green Storm, a strange spinoff from the original Anti-Traction movement she was involved in, now more of an eco-militaristic  force. And she and the mobile cities are fighting it out […]
April 23, 2020

Bumper Stickers (DOG EAR)

’ll admit that Facebook really brings out the worst in me. Mostly because of you twits. With all that’s going on in the world, all the blame, counter-blame, the alternative history; it’s like I’m Don Quixote and every idiot out there is a windmill. I’m easily baited by faulty logic, simplistic equivalencies and straw man projection. I feel the need to answer. And then I feel the need to check for the reply, so I can answer, reply, answer, and the monkey’s got his fist in the anthill hole again. I had to drive an hour out of town to […]
April 19, 2020

Velocity Weapon (Review)

ot this in withdraw after ripping through Book 8 of The Expanse. Was in the mood for a new space series and this looked promising. So it starts pretty hardcore. Biran is graduating into the Keepers, a monkish organization who control the galaxy-spanning gate system and who have chips with gate design specifications installed in their heads. At the same time, his sister Sanda is leading her gunship squadron against the warlike Icarions, the inner-planet fascists who are rebelling against the Keepers with a total system conflict. But her ship is grievously destroyed, her pod deploys and is ejected into […]
April 16, 2020

Plague Doldrums (DOG EAR)

’m really getting the concept of life in a plague and political turmoil. In many of the historical novels I read, plagues happen. Generally the town becomes quiet save for the rumble of the carts carrying away the dead. At the edge of town, spades eat at the soil, expanding the plague pits. Occasionally doors are marked with an X or whatever to mark a contagious house. And I haven’t lived under a rise of fascism, through I read all about it in Winds of War. Now we have crazed political responses (we just cut funding to the World Health […]
April 12, 2020

Never, Never, Times Three Never (Review)

he where this story comes from – The End – is a collection of the best the late and much missed Jurassic Press had to offer. I loved their books, have a number of originals (with book number stamps) and had submitted to their contests (nearly made it). The End was their swan song, their going-out-of-business, best-of collection. This short story is from their collection (and more on the strange realization in a bit). This story takes place in a dystopian England, a place where supposedly nukes have detonated, civilization has fallen apart, and London is a walled city where, […]
April 9, 2020

Fyre Thoughts (DOG EAR)

unkering down for the third week of quarantine and making scans of Hulu for just about anything watchable. Found something called Fyre Fraud which looked curious. It’s a documentary about a total failed (and pretty fraudulent) concert that dumped thousands of Millennials on some desert island in the Bahamas. Good flick. Yes, I’m old enough that I didn’t know anything about this – totally off my radar. But what was really interesting was how the Fyre organizers (and their legion of support staff, social organizers, investment opportunists and social gadflies) did this. I’ve had my brush with fame and self-promotion. […]
April 5, 2020

The Dog Who Could Fly (Review)

kay, this one is a true story – Robert Bozdech, a Czech air gunner, is now flying with the French in 1939. The cold war is rapidly heating and while on a low-level reconnaissance run , German machine gunners shoot him and his pilot down in no man’s land between France and Germany. In a ruined farmhouse, they find a German Sheppard puppy. Robert almost leaves it behind (after he feeds the shivering, half-starved furball a bit of chocolate), but its pathetic howls bring him back. Tucking the dog into his jacket, they manage to make it back to French […]
April 2, 2020

The creativity dump (DOG EAR)

his is strange. I’ve just seen whole days slide by that I cannot account for. When I started retirement six months back, every day was a golden chance to work on stuff, get things done. I was writing, coding, bike riding, going to two clubs, everything. And now suddenly there is a stay-at-home order and I’m stuck. I’m noticing (and just speaking for myself here) that my creativity is in the crapper. I just feel bored with everything. I can’t confirm the origin of these feelings, of course, but there is always the element of worry. We live pretty tight […]
March 29, 2020

The Sky Lords (Review)

nother one out of my molding book files, dating back to 1988, so good luck finding it. The Sky Lords deals with a world a couple of hundred years following the ‘Gene Wars’. Much of the world is covered in fungus growth or crazy designer monsters that have gotten out of control. Humanity is pretty much down to two classes – the people rooting out a living in walled cities and the Sky Lords, the privileged riding about in their high tech airships – the later praying on the former. And our story starts just as a matriarchal Minervan town […]