recommended reading

There's some serious catching-up in order.

Therefore, I won't tell you about what I'm reading right now. I'm taking a break and just doing some stuff for business and pleasure. I'm busting through a couple of sci-fi anthologies (The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes I and IIB), which I hope will help me write better sci-fi, and also are a damn lot of fun. I might even tell you about some of the stories I've read, if you behave yourselves.

In addition to that, I'm slowly plowing through Dr. Robert Bakker's paradigm shifter The Dinosaur Heresies, in which the scruffy, courageous maverick first put forth his controversial theory that dinosaurs were not pea-brained, slow-moving, swamp-dwelling sluggards, but were dynamic, lively, active, agile, bird-like and intelligent. This bombshell challenged hundreds of years of universally accepted scientific thought on the terrible lizards. Bakker's discoveries, though initially criticized, withstood all tests and vitriol. Today, when we think "dinosaurs," we imagine the terrifyingly smart and agile Velociraptors from the film Jurassic Park. We have Bakker to thank for that (even though the paleontological consultant to Spielberg's film was Jack Horner, Bakker's bitter enemy, who believed that T-Rex was a scavenger [?!?!?!?]).

I haven't enlightened you about what I've already read, though, and that's why we're here. I have to review a couple of works I completed after finishing Moby-Dick a few months back.

I didn't waste any time sitting on my laurels after conquering Melville's leviathan. I was over at Miss H's place when I spotted Elie Wiesel's seminal work Night on her bookshelf. I asked to borrow it, and before the day was out, I had finished and returned it. It's a little book, but filled with the scope of human tragedy, suffering, cruelty and horror.

I could speak of how Elie and hundreds of other Romanian Jews were removed from their villages by brutal Hungarian policemen, cudgeled into lines, and marched away from their only home...

The last glimpse Elie had of his mother and sister as they were led into the gates of Auschwitz...

The loss of Elie's faith as he witnessed the hanging of a twelve-year-old boy...

How even the rabbis were reduced to blank, staring, godless husks by the horrors of starvation, torture, and brutality...

The long, cold, desperate flight from one camp to another as Allied armies drew near, and how the Jewish prisoners were forced to run through the snow and the darkness, and any who straggled or fell were shot...

...but that would probably spoil the book for you, so I won't.

Wiesel is on the second row up from the floor, seventh from left.

I'll just say this: more than any other work I've ever reviewed—fiction or nonfiction, printed or televised—Night brought home the horrors of the Holocaust most grimly and truthfully. It's a literal punch to the gut. For once it's no surprise that a particular work won the Nobel Peace Prize.

And now on to more cheerful territory...
Have you ever wondered if maybe the scientists were wrong, and the interior of the world wasn't just a mass of molten rock, but was hollow and cool and airy and possibly filled with prehistoric beasts?

Well, even if you haven't, Edgar Rice Burroughs sure did. And he wrote At the Earth's Core just to show the world what he thought.

There are definite fringe benefits to being friends with a scientist. Make a sponge of your mind and you'll soak up a lot of mental detritus. As an added perk, your scientist chum may even let you give his gizmo the first test ride.

Such is the case with David Innes, the wealthy heir to a mining empire who, attempting to make a good show of his father's business enterprise, invests in the invention of his scientist friend, Abner Perry. The invention is the "iron mole" a sort of segmented steel worm with a huge drill on the front, which Perry insists will increase efficiency one million percent. As the principle investor, Innes is given the privilege of riding shotgun in the device while Abner takes it on the maiden voyage.

Everything goes downhill from there, so to speak.

The giant iron mole burrows into the ground like a...like a...well, like giant iron mole. Alarmed, Professor Perry tries to turn the beast aside and regain the surface; but no such luck. Both men strain at the helm until they're blue in the face, but the mole cannot be turned; it's heading straight down at a tremendous rate. Perry and Innes give themselves up for lost, resigning themselves to falling into the Earth's molten mantle and perishing in the blaze.

...but they don't.

Five hundred miles down the mole suddenly bursts out of the ground again. A fresh, cool breeze streams through the cracks. The Professor has collapsed from heat and exhaustion, but Innes is able to crack open the hatch and look outside.

He sees trees. Hills. A beach. An ocean. And a horizon which curves up instead of down. He can see mountains and oceans in the distance, turned on their ends, as though he was seeing from above.

Gradually, the men figure it out. They're standing on the inside of a huge sphere.

They are inside the Earth.

The Earth, it turns out, is hollow. And what's more, it's inhabited.

Welcome to Pellucidar, the savage land at the Earth's core.

All the better to massage you with, my sweet!

Perry and Innes are soon drawn into a millennia-long conflict between the primitive humans who reside in Pellucidar and the vicious Mahars, telepathic reptilian monsters who keep humans as draft animals...and livestock. Along the way they encounter sabertooth cats, dinosaurs, sea monsters, and all manner of nasties, dwelling in a land of eternal sunlight.

At the Earth's Core was first published serially in 1914, and released in book form in 1922. Since then, it has attained a small cult following, but remains largely obscure, probably due to more well-known stories like Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Nonetheless, it's an astounding tale. The concept is intriguing, if totally bogus. (Hey, that's why they call it science fiction, right?) First off, there's no way there'd be eternal sunlightg at the center of the planet, weird electrical phenomena notwithstanding. Second, gravity's pull would be considerably less at the center of the Earth, but it would still pull you toward the center. You could not "walk about" on the inside curve of a chamber inside the globe unless the planet was spinning a lot faster, like a centrifuge. Third, the air would be so dense 500 miles down that it'd be tantamount to breathing water. Human lungs would collapse.

But I didn't come here to pick the science apart. I came to tell you how awesome the story was. And it was awesome. Burroughs sure knows how to write a gripping fight scene (and there's a boatload of fight scenes). The plot rapidly becomes more complex and convoluted as human traitors, mindless monsters, and a ravishing love interest make their appearance. There are desperate scrapes, close shaves, narrow escapes, rousing victories, moments of unbridled joy and plenty of stark, quivering terror. And at the end, there is a very human feeling.

Everything that makes good, rousing science fiction, in my opinion.

You might have a little trouble getting into it, as Burroughs does have what critics called a "stilted, florid style"...but it's nowhere near as bad as Jules Verne. You'll do fine.

And finally, as an interesting sidenote...

In At the Earth's Core, the Mahars (those evil reptilian beings) employ the thuggish gorilla-esque Sagoths to do their dirty work for them, rounding up slaves and enforcing the rules. At the Earth's Core had an enormous influence on another of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft. In Lovecraft's book At the Mountains of Madness, he introduced the shoggoths, huge, slimy, amorphous blobs, also the servants of a master race. These were inspired in name and function by the Sagoths of Burroughs's story. Shoggoths have proven as influential to other writers as the Sagoths were for Lovecraft: the beastly things have appeared in countless works of fiction, sci-fi and horror over the decades. One of these works, notably, was Robert Bloch's Notebook Found in a Deserted House, which is widely accepted to be one of the cardinal inspirations for the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project.

That concludes this edition of "Six Degrees of (Literary) Separation."

Is he bursting out of the hillside in a mindless rage? Or did he lose his toboggan?

Until next time...

cocktail review no. 58 - Piña Colada

I had second thoughts about reviewing this. The piña colada is a pretty common drink. Moreover there are as many recipes for it as there are grains of sand on a beach, and sifting through them to find best one seemed like a tall order.

But hey, I've gone out on a limb many times in my reviews (Swirling to the Beat of the Haggis Wings, anyone?). I figured that, every so often, my readers will appreciate me sticking with something simple and familiar.

...so long as I put a new spin on it, anyway.

I purchased my first bottle of coconut cream not long ago, anyway, and I have to find some use for it.

So here you go:

• 2 ounces light rum
• 5 ounces pineapple juice
• 1½ ounces coconut cream
• 1 cup crushed ice
• 1 maraschino cherry
• 1 pineapple slice

In a blender, combine the rum, pineapple juice, coconut cream and crushed ice. Blend well and pour into a collins glass. Garnish with the cherry and pineapple slice.

If you're really feeling festive, double the recipe and pour into a hurricane glass. Now it's a party.

I'm not going to tell you what it tastes like. You ought to know by now, if you're human. Besides, tropical drinks aren't really meant to be dissected; the flavors are supposed to meld into one big stress-relieving bundle of joy.

I'll simply state that this recipe, in my opinion, makes the best piña colada around.

Or you could try this one. Whatever.

It's a tropical drink. Mix it however you want. Go with the flow, man.

P.S. Piña colada is Spanish for "strained pineapple." Betcha didn't know that, Dr. Bamboo.

Who Goes There?

...is the title of a marvelous science fiction novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. It was first published in 1938 under Campbell's pseudonym, Don A. Stuart, in Astounding Stories. In 1973, it was voted, quite justly, into The Science Fiction Hall of Fame by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

For once I cast my lot with the majority. Who Goes There? is, without doubt, one of the finest science fiction stories ever written. All the elements are there. Campbell's story has a fantastic plot, a spine-chilling premise, is scientifically sound, and makes a very pertinent point about human nature.

You've probably never heard of it, though.

What you have heard about are the three movie adaptations they made out of it.

The Thing From Another World, in 1951, starring James Arness...

John Carpenter's 1982 remake of that, called simply The Thing...

And now this, supposedly a prequel.

[Ahem]

I'd like to share some thoughts with you about books, movies, and what gets lost in between.

Adaptation decay (blithely defined here) is what you wind up with after a particular work of fiction has progressed from print to movie to video game to novelization and wherever else along the way. Similar to photocopying a photocopy, the process is a piranha swarm of human input and rewrites and creative vision...which inevitably skeletonizes the source material, and results in something that bears little to no resemblance to the original work.

And that is exactly what's going on here, to my unending disgust. Campbell's immortal work is, once again, going to Hollywood's chopping block to be packaged and marketed to the masses.

This is nothing new. The same thing happened to Isaac Asimov's I, Robot; H.G. Well's War of the Worlds and The Time Machine; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Bram Stoker's Dracula; Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth; and, to an egregious degree, Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan. (George of the Jungle anyone?)

The reason I'm squawking now is because I can't stand to see yet another of my favorite sci-fi stories debased in this manner.

Who Goes There? is an excellent work, one that stands on its own. A bunch of American scientists holed up in an Antarctic research base stumble across an alien spacecraft buried in the snow. Their picks and mattocks are inadequate for the task, so they decide to blow the ship open with thermite. They don't realize that the alien craft is made mostly of magnesium; it goes up like flash paper. However, encased in the ice nearby is an alien life form. MacReady, the expedition' s meteorologist, surmises that the ship must've crash-landed in Antarctica millions of years ago, when the continent was just beginning to freeze. "The Thing" somehow survived the crash of its ship, stumbled out of the wreckage, and was immediately frozen solid.

Well, it doesn't stay frozen for long. The team chips the creature out of its ice grave and transports it back to their base. It thaws and awakes. The humans discover the alien in the dog kennel, and the huskies viciously attacking it. As they watch, the alien begins to change, assuming the form of a sled dog it had recently devoured. The men quickly kill it. With increasing paranoia, Blair (the biologist) theorizes that the Thing is able to absorb and imitate any organic creature by reshaping its own cellular structure. The Thing can either devour its victims or infect them like a virus. More than that, the monster can somehow telepathically absorb the target's memories and personality as well, rendering its mimicry absolutely airtight. Realizing the implications of this—that not only dogs, but humans themselves can be infected, and that any member of the team may already be an imitation—Blair has a nervous breakdown and is confined to a maintenance shack.

MacReady and the rest of the team have a gay old time trying to figure out who's who...

I won't spoil the ending, but you'll love it.

How Campbell could've written something so perfect, so suspenseful, so thrilling, so disturbing, and so sinister (particularly in 1938, when the scariest guys around were Nosferatu, Frankenstein and the Phantom of the Opera) is beyond me. But he did. And his story remains one of the most pivotal, influential and downright horrifying of the genre.

Freddy Krueger doesn't scare me. Jason Voorhees can't faze me. Face-hugging, chest-bursting aliens aren't that bad. Werewolves, vampires and witches just leave me underwhelmed. The Thing is the only creature that's ever truly scared me.

So how did Hollywood portray my ultimate monster?

They turned him into a plant.

Seriously. The plot of the 1951 movie was that an intelligent form of plant life crashed in the Arctic (not the Antarctic) and started sucking the blood out of the researchers stationed there, like some kind of fungoid mosquito. They finally killed it with an electrical discharge.

Puh-leeze.

The 1982 remake was perhaps the most faithful adaptation, but there were still some glaring discrepancies between book and film. In The Thing, a Norwegian research team found the creature first, and got massacred in the most gruesome way possible. The first our heroic American team hears of it is when a couple of half-mad Norwegians burst into their camp in a helicopter, throwing grenades and shooting assault rifles at an innocent(-looking) sled dog.

Things rapidly go downhill from there. MacReady is a helicopter pilot instead of a meteorologist, but he still plays a major role. The Thing is...quite gruesome. Perhaps even more gruesome than he is in Campbell's original story. In fact, the movie was universally panned for its gruesomeness. But I still liked it enough to get it on DVD.

And now the new film is coming out. Like I said, it's supposedly a prequel. It portrays the battle the Norwegian team has with the original creature, before the Americans find it. Although, for some reason, the Norwegian team has some Americans along with 'em. I guess the movie producers just don't believe that an American audience could root for a bunch of Norwegians in an Antarctic research base fighting an alien monster without Mary Elizabeth Winstead riding along as eye-candy.

This is adaptation decay. There wasn't a single Norwegian in Campbell's novella. Hollywood put a Norwegian camp into the story in 1982. Now, in 2011, they're doing a movie whose setting was lifted from another movie. It's a film based entirely on a preceding film. None of Campbell's original characters (except for the monster itself) made it into this 2011 release. It's a film based on a film based on a novella. A photocopy of a photocopy.

A complete piece of crap, in other words.

The movie industry is notorious for this blasphemy. The producers are past masters. They take a perfectly good story, and instead of adapting it faithfully for the silver screen, they choose to adapt it remuneratively. They mutilate, bowdlerize, varnish, cheapen, and over-simplify (all in the name of "mass-market appeal") until we're left with a shoddy,  unintellectual, action-packed, sensationalist, overblown, mutated excuse for a film, devoid of plot, theme, symbolism, statement, or any redeeming feature whatsoever.

I don't know why Hollywood does this. That green stuff called money is probably the reason. Part of me likes to believe so, anyway. But in the blackest shades of night, in my most horrifying nightmares, the eldritch abomination called the Truth rears its ugly head. The producers and screenwriters in Los Angeles probably think Americans like this tripe. It's likely they believe that most Americans couldn't digest the deep thoughts and intellectual horror of John W. Campbell's Who Goes There?, so they dumbed it all down and repackaged it as a cheap horror film (three times!). Tinseltown has become so accustomed to truncating, abridging, censoring, simplifying and regurgitating the best works of fiction that it's become ingrained on the industry's consciousness that Americans like these dull, trite, recycled hack jobs.

Why do studio executives believe this nonsense? I'm not sure. The truth of the matter should be self-evident: that moviegoers prefer a well-shot, well-acted, thoughtfully scripted, original film with practical special effects instead of a CG-filled gore-fest. But then again, human beings have a long history of believing strange things. They believe that aliens seeded the Earth with life. That dinosaurs coexisted side-by-side with human beings. That Dave Mathews can sing.

In short, I believe that the 2011 adaptation of The Thing is yet another hackneyed, money-grubbing, unfaithful and unnecessary waste of digital film; that it should never have been made, or even conceived; and that all discerning and tasteful movie-goers should boycott it with a vengeance.

That's if there are any discerning and tasteful movie-goers left, anyway.

I solemnly swear that if ever I became a successful sci-fi novelist, I will jealously guard the rights to my works. As long as I live, I will never allow Hollywood to get its vile, shameless, mass-marketing hands on them. Because I know what will happen.

The stories, my stories, characters I created lovingly, plot lines I slaved over, villains I kicked around, concepts I nurtured from birth...they will come out of the Gilded Mulcher looking like this:

Nuh-uh. Not happening. No way.

(aluminum) skin deep

I've given you a modicum of insight into the character of the pilots whom I habitually hang with, and the people you're likely to meet at an airport.

But thus far I've said nothing about the character of the airplanes.

And trust me, airplanes have a lot of character.

Every car on the road has its idiosyncracies. A unique temperament, a spark of hauteur or rebellion or jocularity, a private set of pet peeves. Dare we suggest...a personality?

Airplanes are like that, too. Only their personalities are more noticeable, existing as they do in three dimensions, rather than a motorcar's mere two.

Some airplanes hate to climb.
Some can't grab the air fast enough.
Some planes refuse to come down.
Some drop like rocks.
Some planes wobble a bit on turbulent days.
Some of them wobble a lot.
Some birds cough and sputter at low throttle and mixture settings.
Some of them run smooth as butter on any power setting.

Maybe the radio won't come on unless you flip the switch just right. Maybe you have to drop the nose a little bit to raise the gear. Maybe you have to pump the priming handle just one more time, or pull the mixture just a little farther out, or keep the key on IGNITION and your hand on the throttle and sit there sweating for ten seconds while the prop rotates aimlessly and the electrical system buzzes and every naughty word your mother ever scolded you for saying streaks through your head before the engine finally starts.

Every plane is different.

The fun part is figuring out those differences.

My company retains two Mooneys (E-models, circa 1966-67) for chase operations out here in the Mojave Desert. Sit back and I'll tell you a little bit about them. 

N214SH: We call her "Sierra Hotel" for short. She was our flagship airplane, a mostly standard Mooney M20E. She's got an autopilot (doesn't work), manually-operated landing gear (Johnson bar, very reliable) and we've had a few extra gauges put in to watch our engine temperature. Like most Mooneys, she's maneuverable, fuel-efficient, fast, and tough. Mooney airframes are built to withstand 3.8 Gs, which comes in handy when the thermals are kicking up over the desert. Unfortunately, in regards to the type of flying we do, the Mooney airframe has some drawbacks. The wings are so wide and stiff that they catch every little molecule of air that blows under them, so the effects of thermals and turbulence are magnified twofold. 

Having said that Sierra Hotel is "mostly standard," I should explain what that means. In hot weather, she don't climb too well. In cold weather, she climbs like a homesick angel. She'll cruise at about 120 miles per hour, and can do up to 180 if we're descending into Apple Valley from 10,000 feet. She does her job quite well, if not exactly flashily. 

N3480X: Our second airplane, direct from Colorado. Nicknamed "X-Ray," it had recently had its engine replaced when we took possession. X-Ray is...a little different from Sierra Hotel. She has speed-mods. The windshield is swept back for a more aerodynamic profile, the propeller is scimitar-shaped, and the controls are just...well, tighter. X-Ray is a precision instrument, built to move. She cruises at slightly higher velocities than Sierra Hotel, and is somewhat more agile in the air. I got my first taste of this when Mr. Mooney threw X-Ray into a two-G three-sixty the first day we took her out on a mission. Once I'd retrieved my stomach and peeled my eyeballs off the back of my throat, I had to admit that X-Ray was something more of a "hot rod" than Sierra Hotel.

And now for the pet peeves.

Hot rod though she may be, X-Ray's comm panel is set up inconveniently. You can listen to the first radio (Comm 1) and the second radio (Comm 2) at the same time. You can also talk on Comm 2 and monitor Comm 1 in the background. But for some reason, when you transmit on Comm 1, Comm 2 cuts out. So we have to leave the knob on Comm 2 while we're in the air, constantly, and switch to Comm 1 whenever we want to talk on it (and hope that the people on Comm 2 don't say anything important while that's going on). It's a bit of a pain, to be honest. Sierra Hotel has no such problems. Comm 1 and Comm 2 can be monitored and transmitted on indiscriminately.

Sierra Hotel's ventilation system is terrible, though. X-Ray's used to be the same way, but in desperation we've pried the ventilation hatch open with strong steel wire and now we have the whole slipstream blowing through the vents on us. Given X-Ray's better climb profile, the Green Machine is the preferred vehicle for chase operations, even if seasoned pilots like Dawg and JM-2 are more comfortable in Sierra Hotel.

Did I say "Green Machine"?

Haha, I haven't told you about paint jobs yet, have I?

Airplanes come in...a variety of colors. Obviously you can't go completely crazy with the skin on your old bird. There are FAA regulations regarding color and placement of registration numbers and so forth. But there is some wiggle room. And often, pilots choose to wiggle in the wrong direction.

Mr. Mooney's personal Mooney (not one of our company planes) used to belong to a dentist. I find this nothing short of hilarious, seeing as how Mr. Mooney's personal Mooney is stark white with a turquoise stripe running down the side. It looks like a giant tube of toothpaste sitting on the tarmac. Apparently this dentist let his wife pick the color scheme, which is always a sound course of action in my book.

One of the pilots who flies out of Apple Valley (an acquaintance of JM-2's; I'll call him "Mack") flies a Cessna 172 with large red and yellow patches overlying a white undercoat. Mack nicknamed his plane "Carls Junior," acknowledging the paint job's blatant similarity to ketchup and mustard.

I've seen airplanes the color of boiled asparagus. Neutral colors and pastels mixed without remorse. Shamelessly cheerful shades of royal blue, lime green, banana yellow, and cherry red, often in some gag-inducing combo.

N3480X is no exception. You can almost immediately tell that the plane was a product of the late 1960s, for its color scheme is a sort of light tan, underscored by slate grey and forest green stripes down the sides and on the wings.

Tan, grey, and green. Who let that plane out of the hangar?

Sierra Hotel's color scheme is far more dignified. Its upper half and wings are white. The lower portions are light grey, and the two primary colors are separated by a thin maroon stripe running down the side. Maroon is also the chief color on the tail, giving the airplane a sort of roguish air. As an added bonus, the paint scheme closely matches our company colors.

Every plane has its quirks, from the way it looks to the way it flies. As with human beings, I've learned not to trust my eyes, and look past the surface. A plane spattered in incongruous hues and beaten with an ugly stick still might be the best-flying machine at the airport. Likewise, the immaculate white stallion parked by the ramp might be the most clumsy, awkward, tricky beast you've ever flown.

Beauty is only (aluminum) skin deep.

Well, except for this. This is just "plane" awesome...

games I play with my editor

There's a friendly exchange going down between your humble author and Gordon Van Gelder, editor-in-chief of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine.

(If you haven't heard of FS&F, by the way, shame on you. They first published Stephen King's Dark Tower stories, Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller. Understand why I'm trying to get published there?)

Here's how the exchange goes. I send Van Gelder my stories. He rejects them. I write something better and send it to him. And so on, and so on.

It all started in August 2010. I sent in a 3,000-word humor piece called "Wrong Life-Form, Genius." That came back with a personal note from Mr. Van Gelder, saying that the ending was "too obvious." Best of luck with it, though.

I let ten months go by while I wallowed in self-pity and remonstration. Then I got back on my robotic horse and banged out "Aptitude," a 23,000-word novella (decidedly more serious). That, too, came back rejected. But it also included a personal note: it couldn't hold interest.  Thanks anyway.

I should pause for a moment and point out that it is extremely unusual to get any kind of personal note whatsoever from editors. They're busy people. They have to make sure their publication is on the right track, that all is running smoothly, that every page lives up to industry standards, that the magazine is attractive to readers, and so on. And on top of that, they have to deal with hundreds of submissions, each of which they must read and decide whether to accept or reject. At best, you can expect a rejection slip: a cold, impersonal piece of paper informing you that you are not the writer you thought you were.

Gordon Van Gelder goes above and beyond the call of duty. He manually types out a little note and sends it back to me.

I know Van Gelder isn't writing to me, personally. He must get hundreds of dry, banal,  uninspired submissions like mine every month. But I can't shake the feeling that the two of us have established some kind of rapport. I feel like he's keeping tabs on me, somehow. In his lofty office somewhere in Hoboken, he's monitoring the pace and quality of my submissions and ticking off figures in a mental ledger. He sends me a critique. He knows I'll read it and write another story with it firmly in mind. It's almost like he's daring me to do better. He looks over my stuff, dashes off a rejection slip, and then waits for me to put something more suitable in his inbox.

That's the way I'm looking at it, anyhow. And I can't thank Mr. Van Gelder enough, really. Not only is he telling me that I need to do better, but he's doing so in detail. He could just stamp REJECTED on the cover page and send the story back. But instead, he's choosing to add notes and tell me what's wrong with my work. It's as if he's interested not in what I've done, but what he hopes I'll eventually do. I can't help but feel encouraged.

This is making me a better writer, no doubt about it. Up until this point I've been cursed with  a complete lack of feedback. Well...credible, informed feedback, anyway. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find somebody in this town who's not only into science fiction, but can tell good sci-fi from bad sci-fi (AND actually wants to read what I write)? It's next to impossible. I could go to the local writer's clinics, but something tells me it'll be just a bunch of glassy-eyed, tousle-haired, sun-baked Robert Frost-wannabes. Teenage kids who think they have something profound to say, or flaky middle-aged hippies who burn incense and believe they can commune with animals. No, that won't do at all. I need somebody who knows the genre, who's established themselves in the field, and will tell me, directly, succinctly and honestly, what's wrong with my work. And in Mr. Van Gelder, I have found that person.

So here's what I've got. "Wrong Life-Form, Genius" was bland, obvious, puerile. "Aptitude" was a bit less so, but was devoid of originality and failed to resonate with the reader. So I'm addressing these problems in my future writings. I've got some great ideas already. I won't say what those ideas are or what their titles might be, for fear of copyright infringement. Just know that I'm taking a seasoned editor's advice to heart, receiving rejections with grace, and attempting to improve in my subsequent scrivenings. 

Thank you, Mr. Van Gelder.

cocktail review no. 57 - .357 Magnum

I'm not even sure I should be doing a review of this drink. (A) It's the type of drink I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, ordinarily, and (B) I might possibly be arrested, tried, and convicted of assault with a deadly weapon just for telling you about it.

• 1 ounce Bacardi 151 
• 1 ounce vodka
• 2 ounces amaretto
• 2½ ounces lemon-lime soda

Pour the rum into a highball glass almost filled with ice cubes. Add the vodka and amaretto. Fill with lemon-lime soda. 

In all seriousness, I'd recommend that you have only ONE of these babies. And for heaven's sake, don't have anything else that night. Or the next day. Or the next month. Despite the frou-frou ingredients, I can readily understand why this highball got the name it did. It's like being shot in the head. If you can still spell the word "alcohol" after finishing this monster, you need to register as a mutant.

As far as flavor's concerned, I wasn't expecting too much. But I was pleasantly surprised. The harshness of the vodka is subsumed by the other major players. Even the rum doesn't blast your taste buds too harshly. The amaretto slides in over the top of the rum's sweetness and combines with the lemon-lime overtone to create a mellow, nutty, dulcet sensation on the tongue. The libation is very easy on the draw.

And if you prefer a kick, simply subtract a little soda; if you want more sweetness and smoothness, add more. But be warned, if you disguise the booze with Sprite or 7-Up, you will become very drunk, very quickly. The deceptively friendly flavor will lull you into a false sense of security. This drink has all the subtle menace of a gun stuck in a mugger's hip pocket. You can't see the bullets, but they're in there, and they're ready to be fired.

All in all, it's a drink whose ingredients seem ill-matched and eclectic, but which turn out to be a pleasant surprise when combined. Just mind that you don't overdo it. The ammunition's expensive.

the porcelain gods

It's Thursday, a long week is nearly done, too many long weeks preceded it, and I'm feeling quite brisk for having consumed three beers, a piña colada and a bottle of hard cider last night. So I'm in the mood for a lighthearted, cheery, goofy sort of post today. And if it involves John Barleycorn, so much the better.

Step up, step up, it's time for Theology of Alcohol 101.

There are two cultural benchmarks you can always count on finding amongst any group of humans, from the most technologically advanced city to the most primitive tribe. Small or large, urban or pastoral, superstitious or pragmatic, violent or peaceful, black or white: whoever they are, they'll have invented two things, right from the get-go.

...religion and booze.

They're universal. It's impossible to have any kind of organized society without them. Any culture, no matter where it stands on the spectrum of cultural achievement, will unfailingly possess a way of explaining the world they live in, and a way of coping with said explanation.

...religion and booze, respectively.

Moreover, each of these separate cultural institutions supports the other with near-perfect synergy. Booze provides a welcome escape from the constant worry involved in toeing the line between vengeful gods and bloodthirsty demons, and the maddening dichotomy of good and evil. Religion is fueled by the battle against temptation, overindulgence and immodesty. The preachers preach, the lushes drink, and everyone stays happy. God claps His hands and Satan sharpens his knives.

But far from justifying each other's existence, religion and booze have gone as far as to cross the demarcation line and merge as one. Booze has become so integral to some cultures that it has elevated itself to divine status. Many of the world's peoples possess, or once possessed, a "drink of the gods" or "divine liquor" available only priests or chieftains, and which was used only during the most holy of liturgical practices. Thereby the drinking of liquors became not only sanctified, but sacred.

Some cultures took this even farther and worshiped a god or goddess devoted solely to the creation, promulgation and enjoyment of liquor.

W.C. Fields, eat your heart out.

I've listed a few of these deities here in this post. For your consideration...

DIONYSUS & SILENUS (Greece)

Probably the most well-known pair in the Boozer Pantheon. Dionysus was widely acknowledged in Ancient Greece as the god of the grape harvest, wine, wine-making, and (some accounts have it) "ritual madness and ecstasy." (Indeed, a number of old carvings have him and his followers engaging in drunken orgies.)

If wine and craziness seem like trivial things for a god to watch over, think again. Wine was so important to the Ancient Greeks that Dionysus is often listed as one of the Twelve Gods of Mount Olympus, who were basically in charge of the entire universe.

The Greeks liked their booze.

Dionysus was the most well-traveled god after Hermes. After growing up amongst the rain-nymphs of Mount Nysa, Dionysus discovered the science of wine-making, but Hera struck him with madness and forced him to wander the world. Dionysus knocked around for a bit until he bumped into Rhea (Zeus's mother), who cured him. Then Dionysus went gallivanting all over Asia teaching people how to make wine. He brought these teachings with him upon his triumphant return to Greece. Most people embraced them and worshiped Dionysus as a god. Some princes opposed him, however, and the "madness and ecstasy" that wine brought upon humanity. Today we call it such madness "drunkenness," ecstasy "drunk sex," and people like the princes "temperance societies."

His sidekick, tutor, mentor and drinking buddy was a fellow named Silenus. There are conflicting stories about his appearance. Some sources describe him as a demigod with the ears and tail (and in some cases, legs) of a horse; some say he was a full-blown satyr. Some say he was just a man, or perhaps a minor deity, a foster father to Dionysus who tutored him in the ways of wine. All the reports agree on one thing, however: Silenus was a roaring, red-faced, falling-down, grass-eating drunk. He was always blitzed. In fact, he needed hooch like most people need food, water, or air: none of his godly powers would work when he wasn't off his gourd. Only when intoxicated, it was said, did Silenus possess the powers of prophecy and divination. Routinely, he would get so schnockered that he couldn't even walk. He had to be carried by his satyr subalterns, or thrown onto the back of a donkey. C.S. Lewis's representation of Silenus in The Chronicles of Narnia has him doing just that, sitting on the back of a donkey in Pan's cavalcade, ceaselessly calling for "Refreshments! Time for refreshments!"

Now if he don't qualify to be the god of drunks, I don't know who would. There's a god I could get behind, folks. At least he had fun and didn't worry about all that existential crap.

MAYAHUEL (Mexico)

She's the most versatile goddess you never heard of. Mayahuel was the goddess of maguey among several Mesoamerican cultures in Central Mexico during the Postclassic pre-Columbian era.

What's maguey, you ask?

It's a plant. Agave, as luck would have it. Agave americana, also known as American aloe. Today it's cultivated worldwide as an ornament for window or table, but it's more than just a pretty plant. Today it's used to make agave syrup, a sugar substitute with a low glycemic index (which I've used many times in my cocktails, to great effect).

The Mesoamericans, the Aztecs among them, cultivated maguey for its fibers (which were useful in embroidering cloth) and to (what else?) make booze.

By cutting the stems of the maguey plant and fermenting the liquid that oozed out (called agua miel, or "honey water"), the Mesoamericans created a drink called pulque, a thick, milky beverage vital to the heritage and history of Mexico. Though today it's been outclassed by beer, pulque is still consumed by all sorts of people. Back in pre-Columbian times, however, pulque was so sacred that it could only be drunk by special, privileged folk, and was only used in ceremonial rituals.

So where does Mayahuel fit into this?

Well, she's the goddess of the maguey plant. Pulque is thought to be her blood. Just in case you thought Mayahuel might be a hot Latina whom you'd love to get drunk with, hold your horses. As the personification of the plant and all that it represents (nourishment, drunkenness, and fertility) Mayahuel therefore had dozens of breasts with which to suckle her children, the Centzon Totochtin (400 Rabbits). 

That's right, I said rabbits. Four hundred of 'em. You know how rabbits breed. And Mayahuel is a fertility goddess. Rabbits must represent mischief in Mesoamerican culture, too, because the Centzon Tonochtin were thought to be the bringers of drunkenness. Some people see pink elephants when they get smashed; if you were an Aztec weaving your way home from the bloodletting and you saw a rabbit in the street, you'd know who was responsible. And who to thank for your hangover in the morning.

ÆGIR (Scandinavia)

His name means "sea" in the Old Norse language. He was a sea giant, the god of the ocean in Norse mythology, and king of the sea beasts (including the ferocious Kraken).

He also hosted the best parties. Seriously.

Like most sea-gods, he was feared by all, particularly sailors. Norsemen believed that Ægir occasionally rose up from the depths to take ships, sailors and their cargo down to replenish his halls on the bottom of the ocean. Sacrifices were made to appease him before voyages (and when I say "sacrifices" I mean that prisoners-of-war were tied up and thrown overboard).

He's also the god most associated with booze in the Norse pantheon, because one of the other things he was known for was throwing the craziest parties this side of Valhalla. The man was an immaculate host and was always cooking up lavish galas for his fellow Æsir. On top of this, he was a home-brewer. The old engravings show Ægir and his nine daughters brewing ale in a pot the size of an Abrams tank. (Well, I take that back: they show his daughters making the beer, buck naked, while Ægir just sits around in a toga and looks contemplative. The old pervert.)

Ægir's origins are unclear, as is his demise, but it can be presumed that he and his wife Ran (the rain goddess) died in the apocalyptic war known as Ragnarök. At least we can be sure that he had a few drinks in him when he kicked.

OSIRIS (Egypt)

Osiris has a...complicated history. He's the Egyptian god of the underworld, and how he got the job is an epic in itself.

It seems Osiris had a jealous brother named Set who murdered him, stuffed him into a chest, and threw him into the River Nile. The chest drifted downriver for some days, washed ashore and (somehow) got lodged in a tree trunk. Isis, Osiris's wife (and the goddess of the sky) found the chest and retrieved the body. Accounts vary, but some say that Isis used a secret spell to bring Osiris back to life so he could impregnate her. (The Egyptians were okay with necrophilia as long as it produced results, I guess.) Then Osiris died again. Set, the persistent cuss, located Osiris's body and chopped it up into pieces. He scattered these nasty bits all around Egypt. Iris, bless her, wouldn't stand for it. She and her sister Nephthys found the pieces and stuck 'em back together. The gods were so impressed by the women's devotion that they resurrected Osiris. But they could only resurrect his spirit, which could not remain in the land of the living, so they sent Osiris down to be god of the underworld. 

Isis later gave birth to Horus, the falcon-headed god of the sky, warfare, and divine protection. (Seems like the only negative side-effect of necrophilia is that your offspring might have animal parts.)

The Egyptians invented zombies before the Haitians institutionalized them. In the ancient carvings, Osiris is invariably depicted as a green-skinned, partially mummified man with a pharaoh's beard and the symbolic crook and flail in his hands. Osiris, Isis and Horus became great and noble gods, loved by Egyptians. Set was eventually demonized, going from the god of deserts, storms and foreigners to the god of evil and chaos. He was given the head of some strange animal with a curved snout, angular ears, a forked tail, and a big mouth. Years later Robert E. Howard would cast Set as the driving force behind many evil sorcerers and dastardly plots in his Conan mythos, making him an inhuman monster of a god, associated with snakes, worshiped with sick, gory rituals by depraved and bestial humans in temples with unspeakable names.

Osiris became a (merciful) judge of the dead, and was also responsible for all that went on underneath the Earth, including ground water, the flooding of the Nile, and growing crops. Among those crops was barley, which was used to make beer.

Beer was fundamental to Egyptian society, even more so than it was for the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures. It was used as currency. The workers who built the pyramids at Giza were paid two jugs of beer a day. Critics have considered this to be a most base tactic: get your slaves hooked on a controlled substance (which simultaneously nourishes them and puts them to sleep at night) and you can control their actions, prevent uprisings, etc. From what I heard, the pyramids were built voluntarily, people. The Egyptians deified their rulers, so anybody who built a pyramid felt honored to be involved in the construction of a god's final resting-place.

NINKASI (Sumeria)

The fact that Ninkasi is the only key player in Sumerian mythology to have her name given to a brewery (in Eugene, Oregon) should tell you something right off the bat. Defined by Wikipedia as "the Sumerian matron goddess of the intoxicating beverage" (i.e., beer; they didn't exactly have any Chablis back then), Ninkasi was depicted as a die-hard home brewer and a rather important personage. She was one of the eight deities born to Enki, the god of crafts. Each of those eight deities represented a part of the human body; Ninkasi, unsurprisingly, represented the mouth.

She, and the beverage she brewed daily, were great friends to the little guy. Ninkasi and her sudsy creation sated the hearts and soothed the souls of humankind. You could always count on her to sling you a brew and help you forget about your hard day. And in Ancient Sumeria, there were plenty of hard days; the task of inventing writing, agriculture, religion, and art and thereby kick-starting civilization as we know it weighed heavy upon the average Sumerian's shoulders.

MBABA MWANA WARESA (Southern Africa)

Somehow it seems like most gods in pantheistic religions must always do double-duty. Mbaba Mwana Waresa (hereafter referred to as Mbaba) was the Zulu goddess of fertility. "Fertility" in the old days meant a lot of things: not just sex and childbearing, but also farming, weather, crops, harvests, and whatnot. Mbaba governed rainbows, rain, agriculture, and...beer. Without her, rain did not fall, crops did not grow, beer did not get brewed, and (coincidentally) kids did not get born. She was very important in Zulu culture, and probably had some mighty good festivals thrown in her honor during both planting and harvesting seasons.

The link the Zulus made between crops, beer, and childbirth is intriguing, to say the least. Do you suppose that the tribesmen of South Africa discovered the concept of beer goggles thousands of years before Europeans did...?

RADEGAST (Czechoslovakia)

Early writings name him as a god worshipped by the Lutician culture, but his influence grew until he came to be considered the Slavic god of hospitality.

And what's an essential part of any kind of hospitality?

Booze.

Indispensably, booze.

You offer your guests a drink when they come in the door. You serve wine with dinner. You have a beer around the barbecue with the guys. You get crazy tropical cocktails with corny names when you're at the beach. You even offer your enemies a martini (shaken, not stirred). In business terms, "hospitality" means restaurants, hotels and bars, all of which serve liquor. Unless you're a health nut, a teetotaler or a Mormon, someone's going to offer your an alcoholic beverage by way of welcome or thanks.

That's where Radegast comes in. His name can be liberally translated to mean "Dear Guest." He became emblematic of the rural European idea of hospitality: you usher your visitors in out of the cold, plonk 'em down by the fire, start cooking dinner, and (in the meantime), shove a beer in their direction.

"Radegast" is now a brand of Czech-made beer, in fact.

For being the god of hospitality and having the coolest effing name on this list, Radegast scores way up there on the booze-god spectrum.

RAUGUPATIS & RAGUTIENE (Lithuania)

Not quite as universal as Radegast but still Slavic in origin are this husband-and-wife pair from Eastern Europe. They weren't major gods in the pantheon, but they were still divine. Raugupatis (sometimes simply Ragutis) and Ragutiene are, simply put, the god and goddess of beer. Ragutis, bless his heart, is sometimes named as the god of beer, vodka, and mead, all in one. If that doesn't make him a straight-up, hands-down booze god, I don't know what does.

I don't really know how important R & R really were, however. The Lithuanians, it seems, had gods and goddess for everything back in their pagan days. Austheja was the goddess of bees; Sznejbrato was the god of birds and hunting; Polengabia was the goddess of fireplaces; Usparinia watched over land borders; and so on, and so on. The Lithuanians are the only culture I know who retained both a god of war and a god of thunder (both of whom were still only minor deities, mind you). They even had one goddess, Budintoja, who was responsible for waking up sleeping people. The Lithuanians must've taken a flipping age and a half to say grace before dinner.

Raugupatis and Ragutiene get sort of lost in the shuffle. Nonetheless I'll bet many a bearded Lithuanian raised a mug to them as he took his first draught after a hard day of doing whatever the hell Lithuanians do.

INARI (Japan)

This person has the same nebulous connection to hooch that Osiris does. Inari was a Shinto kami ("kami" being Japanese for "god/deity/spirit"). Somewhat androgynous, he/she/it has been represented as male/female/hermaphroditic, depending on who you talk to. He/she/it may even be a combination of four or five kami who were in charge of similar stuff. Inari was in charge of fertility, rice, agriculture, foxes, industry, and worldly success.

What is it with booze gods having really strange animals in their entourage? First Mayahuel and her four hundred rabbits, and now Inari and foxes.

Now, hold on a moment. Let me explain something here. Foxes (kitsune in Japanese) are special beings in Shinto. They are intelligent creatures, clever, able to assume human form, renowned for their trickery and cunning, which manifests itself in everything from harmless pranks to downright evil. Most often, though, they are portrayed as faithful guardians, friends, lovers, and wives. Having one on your side can bring you good luck, which explains their inclusion on a list like the one above. Industry and a good kitsune can bring you worldly success.

And rice, as you'll remember, is the main ingredient in brewing saké. So, indirectly, Inari became a poster boy for the Shinto take on alcohol and its trammels. If you overindulge on the rice wine, some of Inari's foxy servants might come to you and play some jokes on you.

Inari is very popular in Japan and his/her/its shrines can be found all over the place. Offerings of rice and saké are left on the altars to appease the kitsune who might be waiting to jump unsuspecting pilgrims.

And now, I shall leave you with a joke. One of Martin Luther's friends stopped him in the street and asked him if he wanted to go have a few beers. Luther said "No thanks, I'm on the Diet of Worms."

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