robert.admin – Page 7 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 4, 2025

Silo (Review)

he guy who unloaded the three “Silo Series” books on me also gave me a thin little thing, sixty pages long. In Silo, we get three little short stories. The first one is about a man who was considering going to Atlanta (right before the fall of everything) and decides not to take that lifeboat, but instead ops for his own path. In the second, a woman he’d had an affair with has holed up in Colorado with a bunch of anti-siloists, who hate the entire nanobot releasing group of the Atlanta silos and vows revenge, only to realize that […]

April 27, 2025

Dust (Review)

he third big book of the massive Silo series. So in this, we finally combine the present (Wool) and the past (Shift) with a novel that ties Juliette in Silo 17 and 18 with Donny in Silo 1. And while it all comes down to the final struggle, interesting changes happen to our world, interesting people live and die, and interesting discoveries are made. Of course, to end happily, survivors find their way into a Garden of Eden (and me, being cynical, I wonder how soon it is before greedy thugs and bullies form their own collectives, and weird-ass religions practice […]

April 25, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 4/23/2025

wasn’t really at the top of my game that night. I’d gotten two boosters (Covid and Measles) and I feeling out of sorts. Also, there’s something going on my life that keeps me up at night. So I was tired. And foggy. I couldn’t even seem to work the dispatcher program, miss-clicking and fumbling my way through it. I wasn’t at my best. And it showed. I kicked out my usual signature warrant start, with orders to 202, SB2, 921, 927 and 223. I should just print up copies of these to cut out to issue, pre-written. Always the same. […]

April 21, 2025

OpsLog – FEC – 4/19/2024

n the ride over to Palm Bay and the Farnham’s Florida East Coast, Kyle and I discussed ways we could help Ken make the railroad a little easier to prepare. We do drive over to Doc’s WAZU to help stage and clean. Maybe something like that would keep the FEC enjoyable for the Farnhams (and operational for us) in the coming years. I guess what we did give him was a wonderful session. Kyle and I seem to have the Midas Touch for sessions these days. We’ve had a string of good ones. The best thing was that we were trying to […]

April 20, 2025

Shift (Review)

kay, I’m letting you know that, growing up, I really liked the movie My side of the Mountain. But more on that later. Shift is the second book of the Silo Series, set in a world where some sort of ecological/man-made disaster has swept the planet. Now people live in underground silos, 150 (or so) stories deep. Their entire existence is one of continuous uprisings (one every generation) with (usually) the revolt failing or total crazy chaos (in which either everyone dies or the silo is destroyed remotely. Remotely? But that implies a controlling silo. Doesn’t it? It does. So this […]

April 17, 2025

OpsLog – WVN – 4/12/2025

‘ve read a lot of books about World War One aviation, and the one thing that really killed early aviators (especially those with rotary engines) was spins. If they stalled and tipped into one, chances were they’d spin all the way to the ground. And that would be that. The reason I mention this was that, while running the Ashbury hostler job (moving engines in a turntabled engine house), I put a huge steam engine into a spin. Pushed up against the fascia by a knot of people that had formed (because of elsewhere trains doing elsewhere jobs, all in […]

April 14, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 4/13/2025

y mini purred down tree-lined Lakemont, the recent session behind me. I drove quietly, no radio, no jumble of thoughts, but the wind rippling through the open windows. My mind was still as a pond, no plans or formulations. I wasn’t even thinking of a blog. Flatline. It was funny but the session didn’t disappoint me or thrill me. I didn’t consider the things I should have done (or words I shouldn’t have said). It comes down to one thing. That session was perfect. This comes on the heels of Kyle and me running over at the West Virginia Northern […]

April 13, 2025

Destroyermen 14: Pass of Fire (Review)

econd to last book in the series. And probably one of the more unfortunate titles I’d ever seen on a jacket. Was hanging out with friends, talking about books, and I mentioned I was reading Pass of Fire. Someone looked at my funny. “Pacifier?” “Huh?” Had to blink. “Oh.” Regardless, its another sea yarn set in the dino-world of alternative-literature, a planet like Earth except that dinosaurs still live and all sorts of different sorts of peoples from different sorts of times show up. Now, unlike our world, this one came with its own Panama Canal, and everyone wants it […]

April 6, 2025

ShowLog – Deland – 4/5/2025

t’s all about rules, I guess. Weekend of a stress-inducing show – stressful because I wasn’t allowed to lift more than five pounds with my right hand due to post-surgery rules. This made me pretty useless, so I got the useless job of being the “show boss” (i.e, supervisor). Without Steve there (he was on another of his many vacations) and no prior show boss in attendance, I was rather on my own. Oh, I’ve done just about ever show we’ve attended by not as the “official” show boss. My team got there at 7pm (well, most of it, anyway). […]

April 6, 2025

The War of the Wenuses (Review)

o one would have believed in the first years of the twentieth century that men and modistes* on this planet were being watched by intelligences greater than women’s and yet as ambitious as her own. With infinite complacency maids and matrons went to and fro over London, serene in the assurance of their empire over man. It is possible that the mysticetus** does the same. Not one of them gave a thought of it only to dismiss the idea of active rivalry upon it as impossible or improbable. * = a man who designs women’s clothing. ** = a sub-species […]