Author Archive

Imperative Precautionary Haiku Reviews of the Stories in “Earthmen & Strangers”

I recently picked up a used copy of Earthmen and Strangers, a 1966 anthology of short stories edited by Robert Silverberg. As the cover attests, the book contains “humans and aliens on a collision course – star-studded science fiction.”

In 2010, I posted some haiku reviews of stories I’d recently read. I did some limericks as well. They were all very cheesy, but fun to write. Now I am reviving the gimmick with a new series of haiku reviews. In this post, there is an additional conceit – each bit is phrased as a vague sort of warning to some character or group in the story.

As before, it would be better to call these “synopses” or “selected impressions” instead of reviews. My intent is not to decree whether they have any literary merit, and certainly not to tell you what you should or should not read. In some cases, of course, I can’t help but comment on aspects that would seem out of place if these were written today. The haikus are just a fun record of what I’ve read. Hopefully they give you a taste of what I got from each tale.

Title and author links go to bibliographies at The Internet Speculative Fiction Database.


Dear Devil by Eric Frank Russel

Leave us your poets,
wise passers-by, for who else
might notice hope here.

A Martian artist lingers on ruined Earth, clumsily raising the remnants of humanity.

The Best Policy by Randall Garrett

Listen, my liars –
if cornered by creatures,
the truth will set you free.

Tactful answers to an alien polygraph avert invasion.

Alaree by Robert Silverberg

Wade among many,
emissary, but risk wanes
your identity.

Rugged individualists from earth make poor company for a little collectivist.

Life Cycle by Poul Anderson

Stand up for yourselves,
women of hot shade and shell;
your men are not gods.

Stranded spacemen help the ignorant natives dispel an abusive cult and seek gender equity. Don’t worry, it’s not a white savior scenario: one of the men is Basque and the other Mohawk!

The Gentle Vultures by Isaac Asimov

Don’t be so hasty,
postwar planet beachcombers,
to assume our doom.

Opportunistic invaders are frustrated by our failure to destroy ourselves.

Damon Knight Portrait

Stranger Station by Damon Knight

Question the motive
of the gift of elixir –
be tamed and changed by the ichor.

The new human occupant of a lonely trading post prepares for the periodic return of the other party.

I thought this was the most compelling story in the collection. Perhaps it is because the stranger is a truly alien presence: there are no little green men or translator hats here.2

The protagonist suffers from a desperate sense of anxiety and belated revelation as the alien approaches. His urgent effort to understand the purpose of the rendezvous – complicated by the calculated recalcitrance of his computer companion – convincingly depicts what it is like to confront the unknown.

Lower Than Angels by Algis Budrys

Patience, prospector,
lest your raw materials
make too much of you.

A small town sheriff is seduced by a victim’s widow.

Wait, wrong synopsis. This isn’t the NYT best seller list! Here we go:

A scout strives not to deceive the people he meets, but first impressions prove hard to shake.

Blind Lightning by Harlan Ellison

In case of capture,
give courage to your captor.
Release; death; rapture.

A disgraced scientist finds redemption by aiding his aggressor.

Out Of The Sun by Arthur C. Clarke

Behold, a last gasp
is glanced, like rippled glass,
as solar souls elapse.

Astronomers on Mercury see traces of something more than plain old radiation in the radar scans of a short-lived coronal mass ejection.


Some general criticisms:

  1. All of the earthmen are exactly that: men. (Not counting the girls abducted to help restart society in Dear Devil.) Women: the greatest alien of all to the men of 1950s science fiction?

  2. Many of these stories rely on an automatic communicator or translator device to facilitate dialogue between the titular earthmen and strangers. I think this makes the alien seem more like the merely foreign, with an attendant risk of portraying the aliens as little more than funny-colored people with weird cultures to figure out – or vice versa.

    But, more generously, I recognize that the universal translator is a rhetorical device that helps a story advance beyond the mechanics of first contact to a “dialectical” phase where the story’s main ideas can be discussed directly by the characters themselves.

Last but not least, here are physical descriptions of some of the authors, as editor Robert Silverberg saw fit to include in his introductions to their stories:

  • Eric Frank Russel is “a towering Englishman”
  • Randall Garrett is “a bearded, booming-voiced man”
  • Poul Anderson is “a lanky chap of Viking descent”
  • Isaac Asimov is “jovial and even boisterous in the flesh”
  • Damon Knight is “a slender, soft-spoken man with a deceptively mild smile”
  • Algis Budrys “has the general dimensions of an outstanding fullback”

Posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2012. Tags: , , , .

Vehicle Tweaks

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Last night I noticed my truck’s taillights weren’t working. (Brakes and turn signals were fine.) I replaced the fuse, but it immediately blew again. So this morning, in search of the evident short circuit, I took apart the taillights. The bulbs were fine. The circuit still shorted out with the light assemblies unplugged, ruling out corroded sockets.

Turned out, the short was under the dash. An unused wire in the radio head unit wiring harness was making contact with the metal of the dash framework. It was the only wire missing any insulation – just a nick – and, of course, it also happened to be a hot wire that was making contact with ground at that spot. Taped it up and the gremlin is dead.

(It’s weird that the radio is on the same circuit as the taillights – but I got the idea to check from a few clues the web turned up for similar symptoms, so apparently it’s not too unusual.)

Untitled Bottom Bracket fine-tuning

In higher-mileage vehicle news, yesterday I recentered the bottom bracket on my main bike. Basically, I moved it starboard a millimeter or so. This evened out the clearance between the cranks and the chainstays; previously, the drive-side crank was pretty close to the chainstay. (The cranks are the arms the pedals are attached to; the chainstays are the parts of the frame parallel to the ground that flank the rear wheel.) The asymmetry was due to my inattentiveness when reassembling things after a previous teardown.

I make problems so I can fix them! But, that’s how you learn to get all you can out of a system.

Like the Millennium Falcon.

Posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2012. Tags: , .

McCalibre: Multi-Column Stylesheet for the Calibre Ebook Viewer

I use Calibre primarily to organize ebook files and send them to my Kindle, but it also includes a serviceable ebook viewer for reading books on the computer. Like most ebook renderers, the viewer is based on a web browser. The user can even specify their own stylesheet to customize exactly how the text is displayed.

I created a stylesheet which displays the text in multiple columns, like McReadability. I dub it McCalibre. I posted the code and a more thorough description on the Calibre forums. As noted in the forum post, it only works with the viewer’s “flow” mode, not the “paged” mode. Here’s what it looks like:

Multi-column stylesheet for Calibre ebook viewer screenshot

I’ve also posted the code at GitHub, where I will upload any worthwhile revisions.

Posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2012. Tags: .

McReadability Repaired

McReadability is a bookmarklet which reflows the text of a web page into a multi-column format. I created it based on an earlier bookmarklet by the folks at Readability, which has since transformed into a more ambitious service. Along the way I updated McReadability to continue working without relying on Readability; in other words, the requisite stylesheets and scripts were all hosted here at anoved.net.

I forgot to transfer some of those files when I changed hosts, so the bookmarklet recently stopped working.

I restored the files this morning, so McReadability should be working again. Give it a try.

Incidentally, the bookmarklet is overdue for an update. Eventually I plan to remove more of the residual Readability features and present a simpler setup page.

Posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2012. Tags: .

Rekindled

Earlier this month I mentioned that my Kindle’s display had malfunctioned and that I’d decided to repair the device with a replacement screen.

Well, the new screen arrived today. I took apart my Kindle and replaced the screen. It works!

I relied on PowerbookMedic’s excellent Kindle 3 disassembly video to guide my efforts. One note for others undertaking similar repairs: it is not necessary to separate the speaker assembly from the “midboard” in order to replace the screen. Since they are adhered together, the speaker assembly will come out anyway when you remove the midboard.

It is necessary to disassemble most of the Kindle to access the screen. The screen is sandwiched between the front cover and the other components, which are accessed through the back cover. Once I exposed the back of the screen, I found confirmation that it was physically damaged: cracks in one corner, as seen above. From the front, the cracks appeared only as artifacts in the display.

It was neat to observe that e-ink panels truly do not require electricity to maintain an image. The new screen arrived with a default Kindle home page displayed, despite have spent a few weeks in a shipping box disconnected from any power source.

In the time that my Kindle has been out of commission, Amazon has released a rare software update for the Kindle 3. Added is support for a few new file formats and, evidently, a sharper version of the reading font. Without comparing it to text on an older device, I can’t claim to notice any specific difference, but I suppose it does look nice. Legibility, at any rate, is greatly improved – due to the non-broken new screen, of course.

Incidentally, the new screen came with a protective plastic film, which I’ve left in place for now. It gives the matte display a slightly glossy sheen, which is not necessarily preferable to e-ink’s normally paper-like appearance, but it does give the reader a bit of showroom appeal. Not bad for a retread!

Posted on Monday, September 24th, 2012. Tags: .

Fresh Off the Portraits-in-Profile Mill

The less meticulous I try to be, the better I like the results.

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Doesn’t mean these are particularly accurate likenesses or meaningful objets d’art.

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But I like them, because I think they give you a good chance to see the way I do.

Drawn with a sweet chunky graphite pencil stick thingy.

Posted on Friday, September 21st, 2012. Tags: , .

Clipless

20120921-174410.jpg

Thanks to the generosity of a friend, I have acquired a set of clipless shoes and pedals. After a few stationary experiments, I installed the pedals on my bike and went for a short ride. I was happy to find I was able to disengage and dismount without tipping over! I’ll have to practice a lot more before it becomes instinctive, though.

I expect that I will continue to use platform pedals on a day-to-day basis, as the practical advantages of being able to ride with any footwear far outweigh the potential performance benefits of being clipped in to the bike, at least for my routine errand-oriented riding. I can imagine using these pedals if I ever get into racing, though, or for future bike tours where I expect to be in the saddle all day.

And yeah, it’s confusing that shoes which clip in to matching spring-loaded pedals are referred to as “clipless.” The name distinguishes the design from pedals with straps or toe cages that surround the foot.

Posted on Friday, September 21st, 2012. Tags: .

Ship’s Log, Hosting Status

Having endured many minor mishaps and miscommunications over the years, this morning our ship was threatened by an “account suspended” warning that seemed set to scuttle the site. Fortunately, it proved to be a false alarm triggered by a server problem unrelated to my account.

Smart spacers know that there’s no such thing as gremlins, only substandard preventative maintenance practices. A worn and weathered vessel is one thing, but no one loves a glitchy ship.

So, I backed up my database to a cryo buoy, hailed a passing hosting carrier, and bailed out the airlock. After a few quick config trips to the engineering deck, anoved.net is now berthed at Laughing Squid.

Powered by Laughing Squid

Posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2012. Tags: .

Interleaved Reading

Typically I only read one novel at a time. At present, however, I am reading Ben Bova’s Titan as well as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. These novels are sufficiently distinct that I don’t think I’ll have any trouble keeping the stories straight – although both are certainly set in alien environments. Fortuitously, both books have short chapters, making it feasible to alternate between them whenever I sit down to read.

My hope was that these books would complement each other as part of a balanced fictional diet. Titan has big ideas and a technically intriguing setting, but, admittedly, its characters perform like cardboard character actors (a risk of its subjective yet superficial third-person perspective, I suppose). An exception is Titan Alpha, the rover whose misbehavior is the most interesting enigma I’ve encountered in the story. Titan Alpha is a viewpoint character.

I like it when a character cracks a joke and it still seems fresh despite the knickers and two hundred year old diction.

Pride and Prejudice portrays people with much more nuance, although they are all perhaps a bit too snooty to earn much sympathy from me. (I realize that this impression may well be intentional, given the title.) What I like most about Pride and Prejudice is the language – the sentences themselves exhibit a variety of structure that is a pleasure to unravel, yet never too baroque to understand. I like it when a character cracks a joke and it still seems fresh despite the knickers and two hundred year old diction. Whether it is Austen’s own style or simply English of the era that I enjoy, I cannot say.

I’m only about a quarter of the way through each book, so the impressions above shouldn’t be construed as final reviews. Mainly, my intent is to compare what I’ve noticed in the process of alternating between books.

So, do you ever select books based on what you perceive to be their complementary properties? Are you a gourmet, seasoning your reads with sweet and sour, or is your mind a furnace into which you must shovel as many ideas and experiences and as possible?

Posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2012. Tags: .

Rekindling my Kindle

Last week I was dismayed to discover that my Kindle had developed a malfunction. A strip along the top of the screen no longer displays anything but noise. No software reset procedures dispel the artifact, so I believe the screen itself is damaged. Otherwise, the Kindle still works fine. Unfortunately the device is out of warranty.

Kindle display artifacts

This problem has provided occasion to be tempted by the newly announced Kindle Paperwhite or by a competing reader such as the Nook Simple Touch. I’ve test-driven the Nook; it’s nice.

Self-Repair Manifesto: ifixit.com/Manifesto

But! Fixing broken things is nice, too. Gadget-repair emporium iFixIt makes a good environmental argument for resisting disposable material culture. Their self-repair manifesto enumerates other compelling reasons for undertaking to fix things, and is sort of inspiring to boot. Being prepared to repair our domestic robots may help ward off the inevitable robot uprising as well.

So, instead of replacing my Kindle, I’ve ordered a replacement screen. The e-ink panel is probably the most expensive component of an ereader, so this approach isn’t a whole lot cheaper than a new ereader, but at least this way I won’t be throwing out an otherwise serviceable device. I’ll post an update once the screen arrives (it’s shipping from Hong Kong) and I’ve attempted the repair.

In the meantime, I’ll continue reading – on paper.


  • Clarkesworld Magazine publishes good stuff for the discerning science fiction and fantasy fan. You can read the stories and articles online for free, but if you’re a fan of the genre, considering subscribing to the ebook edition. Places like this are where SF is happening.
  • The “Computers and Satellites” ebook is a collation of T. S. Kelso’s Satellite Times column, which was an instrumental reference in the making of Ground Track Generator.

Posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2012. Tags: .