One of the landmark events of my youth happened in the early morning of May 18th, 1980, during my senior year of high school. On that day, Mount Saint Helens suffered one of the largest recorded landslides in modern history – resulting in a cataclysmic volcanic blast which unleashed a pyroclastic cloud in a lateral detonation that scoured the landscape for up to twenty kilometers from the mountain. It was the first volcanic eruption on the U.S. mainland in two generations (the last being Mount Lassen in 1912) and one [ Continue reading... ]
Just For Fun: My Top Ten Heroes
May 9, 2014 By Leave a Comment
For long-term readers of mine, this list may be as notable for who isn't on it as for who is. The decisionmaking process on this was… difficult, to say the least. In the end, I had to go with my immediate gut reactions and leave out many, many heroes who certainly rank high in my personal pantheon. Do not take the absence of a character to mean I don't appreciate them as a great hero and example; there are many such who simply don't quite reach this top ten… or who might reach it on a different day. #10: [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
May 7, 2014 By Leave a Comment
For once I'm reviewing something before it's out of the theaters, rather than a decade later. Not bad. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. The Spoiler-Free review: Awesome. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one too. On To The Spoilers ! ! ! Captain America: The Winter Soldier is, for those hiding out from too much Internet publicity, the sequel to Captain America and The Avengers. Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, is sent on what seems a simple, if dangerous, rescue [ Continue reading... ]
Music and Writing
April 28, 2014 By Leave a Comment
One of the key elements of the way in which I write is that I must have music playing. Quiet – as in dead silence – intrudes on my consciousness. I write best when I have sound that helps evoke emotions in me, so that I can try to evoke emotion in my words. This has naturally evolved into a habit of constructing a "soundtrack" for my books as I go along. In many cases the soundtrack becomes quite detailed, with a dozen or even two dozen tracks each representing a character, piece of the setting, or event. This helps me keep [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Iron Giant
April 25, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Brad Bird is probably best known as the genius behind The Incredibles. However, he was also one of those responsible for another brilliant piece of animation, one rather unfairly obscure: The Iron Giant. Something crashes to Earth during the Cold War, leaving a trail of destruction through the Maine woods; when this giant mechanical figure rises and tries to find its way out, it encounters an electrical substation and electrocutes itself. Hogarth Hughes, a young boy who lives on an isolated farmstead with his [ Continue reading... ]
The Mechanics of (My) Writing
April 23, 2014 By Leave a Comment
I often get asked various questions about how I write, what my approach to writing is, how long it takes,and so on. This piece tries to cover all of these questions. The simplest way to describe how I write is the wiseass version: I sit down, open my computer, bring up the file, and write until I run out of story or time. Naturally, it's not quite so simple as that. If I know what I'm writing – that is, I have the plotline clear in my head and I know the characters and so on – it can be about that simple. For the [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: One Piece – The Second Piece!
April 18, 2014 By Leave a Comment
A while back, I reviewed the shonen anime One Piece. That review covered what I had seen to that point, but One Piece is a titanic piece of animation, a series still ongoing after more than 630 episodes. I'm now going to talk about what I've seen of One Piece since – up through around episode 380. When we last left our group of intrepid pirates (who are about as piratical in their normal behavior as Will Turner and Jack Sparrow in his gentler moments), Monkey D. Luffy had just managed to defeat God Enel/Eneru, a Devil [ Continue reading... ]
Musings on “Internet Piracy”
April 14, 2014 By Leave a Comment
I have something of an unusual perspective on intellectual property infringement of the type that's called "piracy". First, I put that word in quotes because I dislike it. It is an inadequate and inaccurate description of the problem which both romanticizes and exaggerates it. The word "piracy" in modern ears usually (especially in the sheltered civilized areas where real pirates, who still exist in some of the seas of the world, don't prowl) evokes a dashing, romantic imagery of swashbuckling action and cheerful [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: The Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien
April 11, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne, In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. There may be no other modern work which has so completely defined and then overshadowed a genre as The Lord of the Rings. Written by John Ronald [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Bastard!!
April 9, 2014 By Leave a Comment
"Several hundred years after the fall of human civilization, 'twas a lawless period, a time without order; only blood, flesh, bone, and iron. It was also a time of sorcery. Having been terrorized by demonic creatures their entire lives, human beings were miserably inadequate, and forced to subsist in a barren, hostile environment." (Yes, that's a quote directly from the opening of the anime. Painful, isn't it?) Bastard!! (no link; looks to be out of print) is a somewhat twisted D&Dish fantasy [ Continue reading... ]
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