1850 – Little Ice Age ends.

1852 – Great Auk becomes extinct.

1856 – Neanderthal Man first identified.

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

1864 – Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne published.

1865 – Gregor Mendel lays the foundation for modern genetics.

1866 – Alfred Nobel stabilizes nitroglycerine, creating dynamite.

1868 – Cro-Magnon Man first identified.

1870 – Atlas Bear becomes extinct.

1872 – Yellowstone National Park, the first national park, is created.

1876 – Falkland Islands Wolf becomes extinct.

1883 August 26 – Krakatoa explodes and is heard 3,000 miles away.

1883 – The quagga, a subspecies of plains zebra, goes extinct.

1889 – Asprin is patented.

1892 – Fingerprinting is officially adopted for the first time.

1893 – New Zealand first country to enact women’s suffrage.

1898 – War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells published.

1908 – The Tunguska Event devastates thousands of square kilometers in Siberia.

1909- Eurasian Wild Horse becomes extinct.

1912 – Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs first published.

1914 – Passenger Pigeon becomes extinct.

1916 April – Ernest Shackleton attempts his ocean crossing from Antarctica to South Georgia Island.

1918 – Carolina Parakeet becomes extinct.

1921 – Edward Mellanby discovers vitamin D and shows that its absence causes rickets.

1922 - Insulin discovered; Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb.

1923 – First vaccine for diphtheria.

1926 -  First vaccine for pertussis (whooping cough); Houdini dies after being punched; Gertrude Ederle swims the English Chanel.

1927 -  First vaccine for tuberculosis; First vaccine for tetanus.

1928 – The Call of Cthulu by H. P. Lovecraft published.

1928 – Penicillin discovered; Bubble gum invented; Sliced bread invented.

1928 December – Jack Williamson first published at age 20, The Metal Man in the magazine Amazing Stories.

1929 – Gibbs developed an artificial heart while working at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

1930 – Stalin begins collectivizing agriculture in USSR;  Tasmanian Tiger becomes extinct.

1930 - Gladiator by Philip Wylie published.

1931 – Gibbon and Churchill, first use of phenobarbitone for anesthesia.

1932 – Brave New World by Aldus Huxley published.

1932 – The Phoenix on the Sword (first Conan story) by R. E. Howard published.

1933 – Loch Ness monster first spotted.

1934 – Cheeseburger created; The Indefatigable Galapagos Mouse becomes extinct; The Dust Bowl begins.

1934 – Triplanetary by E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith published.

1935 – AA founded; First vaccine for yellow fever.

1937 – Bernard Fantus starts the first blood bank at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Refrigerated blood lasted ten days; First vaccine for typhus.

1938 – Orson Welles‘ radio broadcast War of the Worlds.

1938 – Coelacanth, extinct fish, discovered alive and breathing.

Triplanetary starts off in early human history. As the reader, you are made aware of the two far-more-powerful alien races in the universe focusing on the humans. One keeps disrupting human development through time, setting back cultural and science growth. The other alien species is more benign, but is biding it’s time, working behind the scenes. The first six chapters of the book follow the parrying of these two higher powers with human historical points for back drop.

Triplanetary by E. E. Smith

Then the reader is shot into the future, into a WWIII. Radar is still a big thing (please note this book was published in 1948). It was kind of cool to see what technologies were expected to stay the same and what was expected to change. Then pop forward again and humans have left the planet and colonized other planets in the solar system. And this is where we get to the meat of the space opera.

Our golden-haired hero is Conway Spud Costigan. His love interest is Cleo (did we ever learn her last name?), and the side kick and commanding officer is Bradley. These three end up going on a crazy adventure instigated by the unexpected bump into an unknown alien race (the fishes, which is the 3rd alien species the reader is introduced to). In typical style, the hero and his crew are captured, he must rescue, and re-rescue, his love Cleo, and save the galaxy after committing some alien species genocide.

While I can’t quite say that I enjoyed this book – male chauvinism, all the main human characters are white, aliens are to be reviled and made subservient or killed – I am glad I took the time to check it out. I can see how this story and the subsequent books in the series opened the door on this sub-genre.  If you are interested in science fiction literature history, I recommend checking out some E. E. Smith.

This audiobook was read by Reed Malcolm for Books in Motion. I liked how it sounded like a one-man show. Every once in a while I could hear a sheet of paper turning or being put to the side. It kind of added to the 1948 feel.

Side Jobs

Stories from The Dresden Files

by Jim Butcher

ROC Books, 2010

There are eleven stories to review in this excellent anthology – all but three or so of the shorter Dresden pieces written to date – and there’s a good bit to say up front about the collection itself. So I’m going to take this in two parts; anthology comments and the first three stories now, and the rest next time. Unless it takes three parts. Butcher’s stories are that good.

As regular readers of the Dresden Files Series know, Jim Butcher lets some time elapse in Wizard-Detective Harry Dresden’s world between one novel and the next. Gives you the sense that Harry’s always out there somewhere, making his way in the really-mean streets of Butcher’s urban fantasy Chicago, and not bothering to tell you about it unless it’s something notable even for him. Something like a more-or-less friendly zombie T Rex running loose in the streets. And all that time, between the books, Harry is living a human life as well as a magical one. Maturing. Growing in magical knowledge, power and skill. Meeting adversity. Collecting scars.

With these stories Butcher gives you a few vivid glimpses into Harry’s life between the books. You get to see him grow.

The first story in the collection – and they are given in the order of the Dresden Files chronology – is a treasure for any reader who is also a writer: the first Dresden piece Butcher wrote and, in  his words, “an anxious beginner’s first effort” at marketable fiction.

Restoration of Faith takes place some time before Storm Front, during Harry’s apprenticeship at detective Nicholas Christian’s agency, Ragged Angel Investigations. Nick (who also appears briefly in Ghost Story) specializes in finding lost children.

On this occasion the lost – actually runaway – child is Faith, the smart, feisty, ten-year-old daughter of rich but unloving parents. After hiring Nick’s services to find her, they decide they’d rather not be known as the parents of a runaway. So they report her to the police as a kidnap victim, giving Harry’s and Nick’s descriptions as the perpetrators.

Two things impressed me about this story: the remarkably detailed backstory that Butcher had developed at that early stage and the level of writing skill he’d achieved in “only the third or fourth” story he’d ever written. Granted, he wrote it as a class assignment at the University of Oklahoma’s Professional Writing program, so he was not untrained. Even so, his ease with the language and keen insight into his characters’ inner lives were surprisingly good for a student writer.

As to backstory, a great many of the props, behaviors, and characters of the Dresden Files are already in place. Harry has his black canvas duster and a prototype of his power ring. He has a workable tracking spell and other dependable magical skills, complete with evidences of the system’s drawbacks and limitations. His intelligence, courage, sense of humor, and soft, self-sacrificing heart are already recognizable as the Harry of the later books. He encounters a powerful and nasty inhuman opponent out of fairytale who has violated the Unseelie Accords, and defeats it with the help, at first meeting, of a short, blonde, female ‘uniform cop’ named Murphy.

I call that a satisfying beginning.

Vignette, a brief piece written for a sampler handout at a convention, takes place between Death Masks and Blood Rites. For its length, and its quick midnight creation just before deadline, it gives some good, amusing insights into Harry’s life at that point in his still-developing career: the kinds of every-day distractions that could interrupt his studies, his relationship with Bob the Skull, and his cluelessness about certain aspects of the mundane world.

Something Borrowed takes place between Dead Beat and Proven Guilty. It came about when Butcher was invited to write a piece for Pat Elrod’s anthology My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding. He took it as an opportunity to explore the changing lives of the Alphas, the pack of young werewolves who were, at that point in the series, completing their college years and embarking into adulthood.

It’s a werewolf story almost – but not completely – without fur, exploring the impacts of both the mundane and magical worlds on the human lives of Alphas leaders Billy and Georgia on their wedding day. It is not, however, without magical challenges. Those come in the form of a powerful Winter Sidhe bent on avenging the Alphas’ involvement in the battle of the fairies described in Summer Knight.

Butcher’s character skills make for especially good reading in several insightful scenes:  Billy’s response when a hung-over, post-bachelor-party Harry, at his snarky best, confronts Georgia’s snooty stepmother; Harry’s slow realization that Billy is no longer a kid; the first encounter between Murphy and Bob the Skull; and the maturing team-of-two trust between Harry and Murphy.

All in all it is a well developed, satisfyingly suspenseful story of search and rescue, deadly magical tricks and traps, a foray into Chicago’s treacherous undertown complete with Harry’s special brand of pyrotechnics, and the multifaceted power of a kiss. A good read.

That’s it for now. See you next time for more of Harry’s Side Jobs.

This month”s stomp&pout-fest (for me) resulting from Brave New World led me straight to this week’s Friday Chat topic. Humor is my coping mechanism, and heavy books with sooper seeerious topics that don’t have any humorous relief get me down.

I like humor in my books, that’s just that. I like to laugh. Humor comes in all kinds of guises, you know, I don’t need to tell you this. It ranges from self-deprecatory (me, laughing at myself) to the humiliating bullying and ridiculing of others; from subtle puns to outlandish slapstick. Humor can have no other purpose than its own existence, or can lighten the mood of a difficult topic.

Being successfully funny is hard. Don’t tell me you’ve never stood there laughing at your own joke. And writing it is harder, as there is nothing conveyed via body language or voice. It can go on too long, fall flat, make too obscure a reference, etc.

Who, in science fiction and fantasy, makes you laugh?AND WHY? What kind of humor do they employ in their writing, do you think?

To make you guys earn your keep, I’ll go ahead and list the big names. Of course, I’ve most certainly short-changed these authors with my brief descriptions, so please expand on these if you like!

Terry Pratchett– puns, slapstick, satire

Jim Butcher– self-deprecatory (Harry laughs at himself a lot), puns, unexpected twists, lightening of a dark or heavy scene in the story, one-line zingers

Douglas Adams– humor that spirals into the ridiculous, jokes at the expense of Humanity as a whole

Christopher Moore– straight-up slapstick, satire, twists

I could just see how in that time of limited technology and news programs, that people truly believed that something was going down. Maybe not Martians, per se, but surely a world calamity was just around the corner?

With that appreciation on my mind, I decided to read H. G. Wells‘ World of the Worlds, written 1898. I chose the audio version from NetLibrary, performed by Christopher Hurt. This tale started off very mellow. Every day British dude doing his morning routine, fetching a morning paper, some rumor or tall tale about some space pod. So of course folks have to pack a picnic basket and go out and see for themselves and have a little holiday. Eventually, unfortunately, the Martians inside the space pod wake up and use this incredibly effective heat ray to barbeque everyone who came out for fun in the sun and sight-seeing. Thus starts the calamity.

Through one man’s narration, we learn of his choice to send his wife off with her cousin to some safe, cozy country side, while he goes trekking into danger. Personally, I think this guy was a more dedicated sight-seer than his wife. Personal opinion here: I think that relationships that are lopsided like that (1 person has all the common sense and the other person has all the fool-hardiness) are pretty difficult to maintain over a number of years. Here is me wishing them luck.

We get to follow this guy through descriptions of the scenery, other humans’ reactions to the situation, the military actions he stumbles upon, and the destruction by the ever increasing number of Martian space craft zapping the cities to rubble. There are several well thought-out dialogues about how humanity may or may not continue under Martian rule. I especially enjoyed the speculations on the Martians themselves, based on what little the humans had seen of them.

But as many of you know, the Martian Rule never comes to pass. Their strange terraforming red weed never takes and eventually they themselves are brought low and decimated. I won’t say how, just in case you truly don’t know. Overall, the sheer mellowness – lack of gore and descriptions of violence – surprised me. I mean, the Earth is being invaded. Humans are being wiped out. It was quite a nice change of pace from the modern horror stories.

What trouble are you going to get into tonight?

This next chapter is titled “Departure Before Dawn, or Three Hours’ Sleep! How Do I Get Myself Into These Things?”

Skeen’s Leap, Jo Clayton (out of print, from DAW)

grotty
grot⋅ty /’grɑti/
adjective 1
very unpleasant or offensive • a grotty little play
1 comparative: grottier, grottiest
ORIGIN: Clipping of grotesque. Possibly from Scottish Gaelic grod (rotten, putrid).

So, you poetry lovers are probably rolling your eyes at me. And that is OK. Because I guarantee that I have rolled my eyes at your favorite poetry at one point or another. With poetry, I often feel that the essence, and sometimes the elegance of language, is lost in the effort to meet the meter, syllabic count, and the rules of rhyme. If those are the things by which a poem is judged, I think most folks that can count to 10, recognize a syllabic break, and can rhyme a word through the alphabet, can make poetry.

Is it pretty? Is it moving? Does it stick in your head for years? No. But it is poetry. And I just don’t care for the bulk of it, social brute that I am.

And yet….Lady Darkcargo challenges me in this way to force me to grow. Or at least become more widely accepting of teacakes and poetry readings. Recently, I finished Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton, a children’s book about a magical book and an adventure through Oxford. In this book, Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti is mentioned a few times. A Victorian poem about goblins? Huh? Well, this I have to hear.

So I tracked down a free reading of it online over at Verkaro.org and took 27 minutes and 13 seconds out of my life to expand my poetry-dearthed inner self. Unfortunately, I liked it – which means I will have to seek out more such poetry and revise my stance on the genre as a whole. Sigh. Feel free to giggle. I know I had to chuckle at myself.

The original fairy tales had death and darkness and were meant to be lessons and warnings to children. Goblin Market falls into the same quality entertainment. There’s goblins, two sisters nearing adulthood, lots of irresistible fruits, and some layered advice about being chaste. Or female solidarity. Or perhaps feminine allure. Maybe. Which is great. A good piece of literature should have more than one interpretation.

-from Skeen’s Leap by Jo Clayton

bibelot (plural bibelots)
A bauble, knickknack or trinket

(thanks, Wiktionary.org!)

It be all fool-talk, lock, stock and barrel; that’s what it be, an’ nowt else. These bans an’ wafts an’ boh-ghosts an’ barguests an’ boggles an’ all anent them is only fit to set bairns an’ dizzy women a-belderin’. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an’ all grims an’ signs an’ warnin’s, be all invented by parsons an’ illsome beuk-bodies an’ railway touters to skeer an’ scunner hafflin’s an’ to get folks to do somethin’ that they don’t other incline to. It makes me fretful to think o’ them. Why, it’s them that, not content with printin’ lies on paper an’ preachin’ them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin’ them on the tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will; all them steans, holdin’ up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant – simply tumblin’ down with the weight o’ the lies wrote on them, ‘Here lies the body’ or ‘Sacred to the memory’ wrote on all of them, an’ yet in nigh half of them there bean’t no bodies at all; an’ the memories of them bean’t cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothin’ but lies of one kind or another! My gog, but it’ll be a square scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come trumblin’ up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an’ tryin’ to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was; some of them trimmlin’ and ditherin’, with their hands that dozzened an’ slippy from lyin’ in the sea that they can’t even keep their grup o’ them.

Dracula, Bram Stoker

I am really enjoying this 2011 YOBC selection. It is far more subtle than any of the movies with so much more culture and manners of the time. I am finding it a very satisfying read.