I have a question for any readers willing to answer.
Listen to the following
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Once again, I will take the opportunity of not writing a book review of some out-of-date science fiction book to meditate on greater issues, in this case, the relation of art and eternity. Or, if that sounds too highfaluting, the question is why some entertainment is quickly forgotten and some slowly and some never.
In this case, the book not being reviewed is GALACTIC PATROL by E.E. Doc Smith. I hope in days to come to nonreview the other three books that form the core story of the Lensman series, since I am reading them for the first time to my boys, and rereading them for the nth time for myself. It is as close to an immortal classic as a bit of juvenile pulp space opera can ever come.
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This is the original draft of Chapter One of THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA, which was cut for reasons of space and pacing. Usually, when I have to cut a scene, I do it with the merciless lack of regret that accompanies a battlefield surgeon doing triage, committing an amputation without morphine to save the patient. In this one case, there was one short paragraph which I thought delightful but which could not be salvaged for any other scene: it is when Thucydides Montrose is reciting a poem by Peersworthy he was forced to memorize as a child, glorifying Menelaus Montrose, who is naturally aghast.
In any case, for any purists who like to look at extras on the DVD’s and see what the director wanted to keep in but the muses forced him to cut, here is this tidbit:
Descendants and Emulations
AD 2501
1. Uneasy Lies the Head
All he wanted to do was stay dead.
“Leave me the hell alone,” were the first words out of the mouth of Menelaus I. Montrose when the lid of his coffin hissed open, and shrouds of mist unfurled in contact with the outer air.
“Greetings, High Ancestor, Highest and Highly-Evolved!” said a gaudily tattooed figure. It looked like a woman in a skintight wetsuit of glittering pictures, but then he realized, when he saw her nipples blinking, that she was nude.
She was covered from head to toe with a labyrinth of tattoos and body paints, some of it glowing as if with neon light, and there was a semicircular headdress of yard-wide ostrich feathers, looking like a cross between a warbonnet and a feather duster, spread out from a beehive of hair. He hoped this was just a revivification hallucination.
He rubbed his hand across his eyes, and blinked. On the inside of the coffin lid, conveniently near his eyes had it been closed, was the calendar. November, AD 2501. He looked at the date with dismay.
The women who was not his wife was talking, “The World you rule welcomes and adores you! Are you ready to receive the petitions and supplications of those who watch and guard you as you slumber?”
“Shuddup. I don’t want to be brought back to life. Waste of my time.”
His words were preceded and followed with a gush of nanotech medical fluid, dibbling into a beard spread across his chest like a damp bib. So they came out in more like a gargle than the commanding bellow the world’s first posthuman should possess.
“Abject apologies, High Ancestor. But in the eyes of the Law, persons in suspended animation are alive, and retain the privileges and immunities of life, as well as the duties.”
“Thought I had those damn laws fixed. You lot fix ‘em back whilst Greatgrandpa Meany was a-slumbering, eh?” He was not the great-grandfather of any here, of course, having been married only one day, and fathering no offspring. These were descendents of his long lost brothers and cousins.
The tattooed lady was still speaking. “I bear the greetings and praise of a grateful world, O Liberator, Defender of the Slumbering Dead, Shield against the Ghosts of Iron, Bridegroom of the Stars, and Firstfruits of the Humanity beyond Humanity!”
“Did you just call me a fruit?”
“While you slumbered serenely in suspended animation, you have been elected by the Advocate Authority to the following positions…”
“Skip the list. I resign.”
“Sire and Archon, I respectfully regret to inform you that certain of the Advocates of the Darwinian Translation have decreed that you may not foreswear the various duties that your status as a transhuman being, the Next Step of Evolution, imposes upon you. They have clearly decreed.”
“Fine. Leave the names and addresses of those guys who decreed all that, I’ll go find them and decree them a few broken bones, and then I can get back to being dead, like I wanted. Read the remainder of this entry »
Between finishing my overdue manuscript for my publisher, work, out of town visitors, family life, and various computer breakdowns, I have not been able to write a regular column on a regular basis. That may change in the near future, so my fan should not worry himself.
In the meanwhile, I read an article in Forbes that so delighted me, I thought I would reprint it here, in part. It contains three things to delight my cold and logical heart: first, a denunciation of Woodrow Wilson; second, applause to Mark Levin, who points out that the framers of the US Constitution wisely put in TWO mechanisms for amendment, one of which does not require the consent or participation of the federal government, only of the states; third, recommending horsewhipping for the public dissemination of Keynesian Economics, which made the blithering nonsense of borrowing your way out of debt via currency debasement sound like wise advice from experts instead of the foam-grimaced raving ‘in the long run we are all dead’ Cloudcuckooland lunacy that it is.
You can read the whole thing here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/09/08/100-years-after-woodrow-wilson-mark-levin-pens-a-brilliant-response/
A letter from Catholic Vote I just got. I pass it along without comment. It speaks for itself.
Dear Friend of CV,
Even Nancy Pelosi voted for it.
Over the weekend, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 400-1 to provide our troops continued access to religious services — including Catholic priests — during the shutdown.
But the Senate has so far refused to act.
The vote happened after the General Counsel for the Archdiocese of the Military Services warned Friday that “if the government shutdown continues…there will be no Catholic priest[s] to celebrate Mass” at some military installations.
Because of a priest shortage among the active-duty military, the government has contracted with some priests to minister to Catholics in the military.
But under orders from President Obama, these contracted priests would be PROHIBITED from saying Mass, even if they volunteered, because of the shutdown.
To be clear, contracted Catholic priests are being treated the same as all “non-essential” government workers. Because they are contractors, they are not permitted to “go to work” until new funding is approved.
Yet, we already know the government shutdown is being selectively enforced for maximum political advantage.
President Obama has ordered fencing off open-air museums, blocked roads near Mt. Rushmore, and has locked veterans out of military cemeteries — while military golf courses are left open. Last week Obama shut down the Amber Alert website, but allowed Michelle Obama’s fitness website for kids to continue operating.
[Under pressure, the Obama administration turned the Amber Alert website back on this morning.]Over the weekend, CV sounded the alarm on the threat to Catholic members of our military. A blog post on our website was read by 100,000 people within 8 hours. As of today it has logged over a quarter million viewers.
Within 24 hours, the House of Representatives announced they would hold a vote. And on Saturday, 184 Democrats joined 214 Republicans to approve legislation allowing the contract priests to say Mass on military bases.
The Senate was also in session on Saturday but adjourned without holding a vote. That means that any contract priests who showed up to say Mass yesterday were likely prevented from entering the base.
Today the Senate will open up at 2 pm ET.
Can you take five minutes and call your two Senators? Tell them the government shutdown should NOT be used to stop priests from saying Mass on military bases!
This link has the phone numbers of all 100 Senators. Find the two from your state:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?Don’t email. Call. Let those phones ring off the hook all day.
Religious services and the Mass should not be used as pawns in a political game.
Restore the Mass on our all military bases. Now!
An article from Fox News, which all Leftists hate, I assume because it speaks the truth, which all Leftists hate. I reprint the whole piece here without further comment:
The U.S. military has furloughed as many as 50 Catholic chaplains due to the partial suspension of government services, banning them from celebrating weekend Mass. At least one chaplain was told that if he engaged in any ministry activity, he would be subjected to disciplinary action.
“In very practical terms it means Sunday Mass won’t be offered,” Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services told me. “If someone has a baptism scheduled, it won’t be celebrated.”
The Archdiocese for the Military Services tells me the military installations impacted are served by non-active-duty priests who were hired as government contractors. As a result of a shortage of active duty Catholic chaplains, the government hires contract priests.
Broglio said some military bases have forbidden the contract priests from volunteering to celebrate Mass without pay.
“They were told they cannot function because those are contracted services and since there’s no funding they can’t do it – even if they volunteer,” he said.
John Schlageter, general counsel for the archdiocese, said any furloughed priests volunteering their services could face big trouble.
“During the shutdown, it is illegal for them to minister on base and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so,” he said in a written statement.
The invaluable Mrs G Sharp has composed her latest, a theme song for Rhadamanthus the Sophotect of the Silver-Grey:
https://soundcloud.com/ginadonahue/rhadamanthus-tuxedo-wip
“This is the sound of a flying penguin that is also the AI of a manor in the oh-god-whatst century.
He leaves contrails.”
Keith Laumer is one of the unfairly forgotten luminaries of the Silver Age of Science Fiction. THE OTHER SIDE OF TIME is a solid, well-written and fairly straightforward work of sideways-in-time style adventure.
The Silver Age is the generation of science fiction after the John W Campbell Jr stable of authors gave way to a new breed of authors: Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Roger Zelazny, James Gunn, Alfred Bester, Philip K Dick, Gordon R. Dickson and Frank Herbert ranged beyond the boundary of magazine sales, and won fame in paperback and even hardback markets.
The science fiction audience in the Silver Age had over two decades of familiarity with the odd assumptions of this unique form, and so could be safely assumed to be familiar with the tropes of science fiction. A very rough consensus of future history had emerged, which assumed spaceflight and interplanetary colonization were ahead of us, and the years to some were peopled with young interstellar federations and old galactic empires powered by atomics and crossed by hyperdrive, infested with spies or special agents armed with ESP.
An earlier generation of readers would have asked for some clear explanation of these marvels to aid their suspension of disbelief; the postwar generation who had seen the V2 rockets over London needed not to hear them again. This gave the writers of that age the ability within a shorter space to cut some nuts-and-bolts and add more other matter: and Keith Laumer added fast, lean, mean and masculine action like a science fiction version of Dashielle Hammet or Raymond Chandler.
Laumer is best remembered for his wry James Bondian satires of Retief, Diplomat Extraordinaire, who continually undoes the boneheaded folly or petty evil of his superiors in the diplomatic service, ever eager for preemptive surrender, and to aid and abet the enemies of Terra. But I myself prefer his more serious work, which range from somewhat lighthearted action story to the somewhat grim action story.
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