The Shepherd, a Xmas Tradition

This appears to be the full text of the book, so set aside a little bit of time.

A shorter version:

Happy Christmas, everyone. Spare a thought for those who are on the job tonight: Police, firefighters, EMS, hospital workers, military, all to keep the rest of us safe in our beds.

And a special thought for those who, like John Kavanagh, went on patrol and never returned.

(Every year, I read both The Shepherd and The Spirit of Steamboat.)

A Christmas Eve Tale

I read this story every Christmas Eve. That, and The Spirit of Steamboat.

I've set the time for the takeoff time of the Vampire.[1]

If you are flying tonight, I hope that the scope monkeys were watching out for you.

I wish you and yours a Happy Christmas. Please do your part to say safe and around for your friends and family.
__________________________

[1] Warbird nerds are aware that the DeHavilland Vampire was long obsolete as a fighter by 1957. It had been replaced by its swept-wing sibling, the Venom and by 1957, the Hawker Hunter.

For No Reason

James Thurber's story "The Little Girl and the Wolf"

One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come along and she was carrying a basket of food. "Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother?" asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood.

When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.

(Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.)

May the Fourth

Hoth Airspeeder crash investigation.

Farewell, Ambassador Delenn

Babylon 5 and Lost actress Mira Furlan has died at the age of 65, her family and management have confirmed.

Furlan played Minbari Ambassador Delenn in the 1990s sci-fi TV drama, Babylon 5, and Danielle Rousseau in the noughties mystery drama, Lost.

Her family told the BBC the Croatian actress died on Wednesday due to complications with West Nile Virus.

Many of the graphics in Babylon 5 don't stand up very well, CGI was pretty much in its infancy. But the stories were powerful. Babylon 5 changed televised science fiction from self-contained episodes (or two-part episodes) to arcs that spread over more than one season and which had complex and engaging characters. Delenn was one of the most powerful of the characters in the show and Furlan played the role to the hilt.

It's almost too bad it was fiction, for sitting down to dinner with G'Kar over a plate of breen would have been delightful.

A Short Batman Story

From Badtux.

Metal Like Blood in the Dark

A SF story by T. Kingfisher.

I found it well worth the time to read.

Happy Christmas (A Christmas Tale)

The Shepherd, by Frederick Forsyth.

I read the story every year. It's my own little tradition.

A Christmas Tale

The Shepherd, by Frederick Forsyth

The Shepherd

A Christmas tale:

Happy Christmas, one and all.

(A more recent adaptation.)

The Spirit of Steamboat is another good Christmas airplane yarn.

zOMG, the "Space Orcs" Are Coming!

That could be the view of another intelligent species regarding humans.

Imagine a world where there is intelligence, but it's plant-based. The plants are like neurons and form up into brains that take up very large areas. Their thought processes could take minutes, hours or days, which is ordinarily not an issue for them, as the brains have an almost infinite lifespan. Drought or wildfires may damage them, but they'd recover. If the world has winters, the brains might go more-or-less dormant in cold weather.

Now an animal-based spacefaring species lands on that world. Can the plant-brains perceive them? Given the mismatch between neural processes, how would they communicate? What would the plant-brains do when they realize that the intruders are not only plucking them, they're (shudder) eating them?

(H/T)

Frontlines (Space Kablooie) News

Book #6, Points of Impact, is now available for pre-order.

Just for Fun

The Sunjammer by Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

It was published in Boy's Life in 1964. That magazine was in the school library's periodical collection. I normally read it. I can't tell you anything about any other article or story that was in any of the issues back then, but I remember reading The Sunjammer.

Go Away Kid, You're Bothering Me

Digitally downloaded:

The paper copy should be delivered today, but as it's less than a buck extra to also get the Kindle copy, I buy both. (I advanced-purchased the book nine months ago.)

My copy of Lines of Departure has disappeared, so some day, I'll have to replace it. It's on my Kindle, so I'm trying to resist that urge.

Sherlock

I watched the conclusion of season four of "Sherlock". By that, I mean the British version that was aired there on BBC One is airing in the U.S. on PBS.

To say that I was disappointed in it would be an understatement. I don't know what the writers are doing, but "what the fuck are they thinking" would be one way to put it.

Their biggest mistake is veering far, far away from the template set by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, himself. The series in The Strand was a very long series of stories, they didn't rely on each other for enjoyment. You didn't have to have read "A Study in Scarlet" or "An Affair in Bohemia" to enjoy "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton". The episode aired last night, "The Final Problem", has as much to do with the original concept as does a ponderous supertanker with an airliner-- which is to say, nothing at all.

The American version, "Elementary", which is in its fifth season, is far closer to the theme of the original. Yes, there is an underlying story going on in most seasons. But the episode each week centers on a different crime to solve. It is, simply, at this point, a better show.

I'm not going to discuss the story. Watch it for yourself.

"Sherlock" has been airing three episodes every two years. At this point, I'll be halfway surprised if it returns at all.

Muwhahaha, Got Mine; Book Edition

Launch day!

I'll have to carve out a few hours where I can read it at a less-than-my-usual breakneck pace.

YA Fiction

I'll admit that I haven't read a lot of it in the last few decades. I've read the "Hunger Games" books and the first of the "Divergent" books.

Seems to me that both had the same underlying premise: A plucky teenager becomes the guiding lamp for fixing a dystopian reality. I can see why that might be appealing to teenagers; their lives must seem to them to be completely under the control of grownups. Through the books, they can have the fantasy of fighting the system and making a huge difference.

The reality of life is, of course, not that. When comes to war, the role of the young can be summed up in two words: Cannon fodder. They are the ones fight and bleed and kill and die for the cause, all at the command of older officers. Whether it is the polius in the trenches or the SPAD pilots above it, it's the young who, in large measure, pay the butcher's bill for the fight.

Modern warfare has made this even more true. When senior officers die, it tends to be from aircraft crashes or heart attacks. The day of generals riding to view a battle in person ended over a century ago.

Sure, there are exceptions. Joan of Arc was the most famous. But she is pretty much the exception that proves the rule: In war, young adults are cannon fodder.

Free Ice Cream From Marko

The Cake Whores of Mars.

Double your money back if you don't like it!

Sherlock

If you watched the third show of third season of "Sherlock" on PBS, you might have noticed something.

The episode was based on the original story "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton". Milverton was a blackmailer and that is how he made his living.

In the episode, Milverton was a foreign-born newspaper and media mogul who used the information he had to apply pressure to influential people in order to promote his business interests. Which is to say, he was a high-class blackmailer.

But given the similarities, at least on the surface, between the modern version of Milverton and a certain foreign-born newspaper and media magnate, one might expect that the conservative's war against PBS is going to be ramped up a tad.

Kill the Toasters!

Blood & Chrome - the full thing is tonight on the SciFi channel.



Basically, Bill Adama in the First Cylon War.

If they can do this as a series without the religious nuttery that eventually enveloped Battlestar Galactica, then I'll watch it. The last decade's version of BSG explored a lot of very powerful themes. Final Five Cylon nonsense notwithstanding, I knew not a few mid-grade officers and chiefs who could have been models, at least in part, for Saul Tigh.