Monthly Archives: January 2015

Review – When a Story Is Not a Story – Daniel F. Galouye’s The Infinite Man

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175px-DanielFGalouye-InfiniteManTheThere’s nothing more disheartening for a writer than to read something published by a major house and think, “I can write better than this!” That’s especially true for a writer whose collection of rejection notices exceeds his collection of pay checks for work sold. (Isn’t that most of us, though?)

Oh, yeah, there is something more disheartening… having that work be authored by someone that one of your literary idols thought was a real talent.

I picked up a couple of books by Dan Galouye because he’s mentioned, in Robert A Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, as a writer whose work the Grandmaster really admired.

RAH must have read something by Galouye other than The Infinite Man.

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Review – Imitation of (a Very Sad) Life – The Imitation Game

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THE IMITATION GAMEThis is the saddest film I’ve watched in a long time. Maybe ever. And, right up front, SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS. Yeah, that’s kinda strange to say, given that the movie chronicles real-life events that happened 70 years ago and more, but, if you want to be “surprised” by events you didn’t know about, stop reading now.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing, arguably the inventor of the first electronic computer, and leader of the effort to break the Nazis’ top secret “Enigma” code during World War Two. Turing was a misfit from the word go. He was the smartest kid in his class, suffered, suggests the film, from OCD, and was gay at a time when homosexuality was an offense punishable by jail time or forced “chemical castration.”

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2014 – My Literary Year in Review

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I wrote not one but two essays for the blog this week. Didn’t like either of them when they were done. That’s the kind of mood I’m in. Perhaps I’ll rework them and share them later. Perhaps I’ll file them away as pieces of journal therapy. At any rate, lacking substantive content, I thought it might be useful to review what I produced, and what I took in, literature wise, during this past year.

In addition to 59 blog posts, I shared the short stories “Call Me Sam” on Phil Giunta’s blog, and “Don’t Go in the Barn, Johnny” in the Firebringer anthology Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity. I did also write one radio play (first draft only), five short stories (one sold, yet to be published, two rejected, one pending, one slated for my podcast), a novella (thrice-rejected), a premise for a (non-SF) novel, a premise for a comic series, and a good deal of copy for work-related websites. Kind of a disappointing showing, all things considered. Let’s hope 2015 is better. I’ve already sold two essays sight-unseen to two books from a pretty prestigious publisher, so that’s good.

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Email is the Root of All Evil

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Well, not really. I mean, I don’t believe that. But I hear it all the time:

“Email is the root of all evil.”

“Email is an inefficient method of communication.”

“I hate email! Just call me! Just come see me! It’s easier.”

Email has garnered a great deal of resentment in the workplace these last couple of decades. Someone said to me recently, “Well, when email started, we all thought it was just going to be a way to exchange quick messages. We didn’t expect it to become our principal means of communication.”

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