James L. Cambias's Blog, page 9

The Trip to Iceland, Day 3

We had another big breakfast and did a little more walking around the island of Heimaey on Tuesday morning, then boarded the noon ferry back to the Icelandic "mainland." Our car was none the worse for having sat in the parking lot for forty-eight hours ��� except for a light coating of black dust blown by the wind from the nearby black sand beach.

We drove back westward and stopped for lunch in the town of Selfoss ��� the childhood home of Bjork and the site of Bobby Fischer's grave ��� and then turned northward along the Olfusa River to Thingvellir National Park. It's a glorious natural location ��� a wide rift valley with snow-capped mountains looming off to the north, and the waters of Thingvallevatn lake in the center of it all. I'll let Sir William Jackson Hooker describe the lake:

"A brighter atmosphere now permitted us to catch a glimpse of the neighbouring scenery; and the first thing that drew our attention was the immense Lake of Thingevalle just before us, of which we had hitherto seen nothing, except the margin. It is reckoned fifteen miles long, and from five to twelve miles wide. Near the middle are two fine black insulated rocks, of considerable size and height; the largest called Sandey, the smaller one Nesey, upon which, thousands of the black-backed Gulls (Larus marinus L. Svart Bakr Isl.) annually rear their young. North and south of this lake, were some grand rugged mountains, but at a considerable distance from the place in which we were, and mostly covered with snow." 

We parked at the visitor center and walked down to the Thingvellir historic site. This was the old meeting-place of the Althing, Iceland's original parliament, which met there until just a decade or so before Sir William's visit in 1809. There's no longer a town at the site, just a replica of the old church ��� and a summer cottage for the Prime Minister of Iceland. That's it. One hopes the P.M. remembers to fill the trunk with groceries and beer before going on vacation, because the nearest package store is thirty miles away.

The landscape at Thingvellir is pure Iceland ��� a marshy braided river flowing into the lake, but also volcanic chasms filled with glacial snowmelt. Sir William noticed them on his visit:

"When we got here, we looked down into an immense plain, which was every where intersected by chasms in the earth as far as the eye could reach, crossing each other in various directions, though most of them were reat (sic) from east to west: three in particular seemed to extend, in uninterrupted lines, the whole width of the plain, and were terminated on one side by the lake Thingevalle."

All in all, an amazing spot.

I wondered why the Althing met in such a remote and hard-to-reach place, but after looking at maps and reading Sir William's account of trying to get around in Iceland before paved roads, I realized that Thingvellir is among the more accessible locations in Iceland. If you're coming from the lowlands to the south, you can just ride right up the rift valley or even take a boat up the river and across the lake. From the west, there's a pass through the mountains to Reykjavik. Travelers from the northwest of Iceland could go by boat to Reykjavik and follow the same route. I don't know how anyone from the east coast got anywhere; I assume they had to brave the seas and then go upriver.

After a couple of hours admiring the beauty of Thingvellir, we got back in our car and drove to Reykjavik. It's not far, really ��� just 47 kilometers, or about 30 miles, and as I said, there's a pass through the mountains. It is, however, one of the dreariest places I passed through in Iceland. Oh, sure, there's magnificent mountains on either side, but the valley itself is just an endless expanse of grass and rocks.

Sir William didn't think much of it, either:

"From this place, till we got to the banks of the Lake of Thingevalle, nothing interesting occurred. The country, through which we passed, consisted either of a dreary moor, over which large masses of rock were every where scattered, or of a disagreeable morass, into which our horses every now and then sunk up to their bellies."

But after half an hour of driving we crested one last hill and saw the bustling modern city of Reykjavik and its suburbs before us. There's almost no transition between wilderness and city ��� chiefly because there aren't any farms to speak of.

With the help of our onboard GPS we navigated through Reykjavik to the old city center. And I do mean the center: our hotel was the historic Hotel Borg, on Austurvollur square, next to the cathedral church and the current Althing building. Like most things in Iceland, they are quite modest. The cathedral is a nice little clapboard church, and the Althing looks like a pre-World War I American high school built of lava blocks.

The Borg Hotel itself is very comfortable, with a cool Art Deco aesthetic. I suspect that it went through a period of unfortunate "modernization" in the Sixties and Seventies, and the current owners are restoring the interiors to their original glory. The hotel was founded by Johannes Josefsson, who the hotel Web site describes as a "strong-man and adventurer." He wrestled in the Olympics and toured with the Barnum & Bailey circus, but in 1927 he retired back to Iceland and built the country's swankiest hotel.

We had dinner at a seafood place around the corner, as the Borg's own restaurant was being renovated while we were there (I understand it's due to re-open soon). And with that, it was off to bed.

Next time: Dill!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 2

We slept for about twelve hours on our first night in Iceland, then went downstairs for an excellent buffet breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Lots of different breads, a kind of baked scrambled egg dish, skyr (Icelandic yogurt ��� you're going to see that a lot), cold cuts, and so forth. And a very exotic Icelandic dish, which Sir William was at pains to describe to his readers:

"However, even this was not all; for a large dish of Waffels, as they are here called, that is to say, a sort of pancake, made of weat-flour, flat, and roasted in a mould, which forms a number of squares on the top, succeeded the mutton. They were not more than half an inch thick, and about the size of an octavo book."

Well-fortified with breakfast, we put on our stoutest boots and walked a block to the old lava flow from 1973 which buried half the town of Heimaey under ten meters of rock. That lava was heading for the harbor, and would have choked it off and destroyed Heimaey's fishing industry. With no sheltered harbor, the island would be effectively inaccessible. Icelandic emergency crews sprayed cold seawater onto the advancing front of the lava flow to cool it and create a dam to divert the flow away from the harbor. There's even a monument to the heroic diesel pumps which saved the town.

The lava flow also displays the site of the old geothermal heating system, which tapped the heat energy of the cooling rock to heat Heimaey. It ran for 20 years until the dropping lava temperature made it impractical. Still, 20 years of effectively free energy isn't bad, especially for a town which gets all its water ��� and all its fresh water! ��� from the mainland.

At the southern end of the lava flow we began to climb up the cone of the Eldfell volcano, the source of all that melted rock. Until 1973 Eldfell was a sheep pasture, but in January of that year ash and rock began erupting from the ground. By summer the eruption had created a 200-meter mountain, and added two and a half square kilometers of land to the island.

The mountain is a half-cone. The crater is open on the north side (where the lava came out). This means that when one climbs it, one is climbing along the narrow ridge between the crater and the outer slope of the volcano. Fortunately it's currently inactive, so the bottom of the crater is just a flat expanse of dirt and rocks. But the actual material of the cone isn't solid lava. It's more like gravel. A huge pile of gravel.

So we chugged up the slope, with steep slopes to either side covered with jagged volcanic rocks younger than either of us. Slipping and falling wouldn't be fun. To add to the tension, it's windy on the island of Heimaey, doubly so up on top of an exposed mountain.

We did stop halfway up to take a picture across the channel to the main island of Iceland, with mountains and glaciers looming in the distance. The picture shows one of the other Vestmannaeyr islands, which has no permanent inhabitants but does feature a hunting lodge. Exactly what you're supposed to hunt there isn't clear. Seagulls? Kidnapped sailors?

After laboring up the narrow ridge we made it to the top, and braced ourselves against the aircraft warning light to survey the view. It was amazing. I'm sorry I don't have a picture from up there, but I wasn't about to fish my phone out of my pocket and risk having it blown out of my grip.

We descended, which was physically easier but harder to navigate, and walked back to our hotel through the town, stopping at a supermarket to pick up some well-deserved drinks and a snack. The snack was Hraun, an Icelandic candy bar which has become one of my all-time favorites. It's sort of like a Kit-Kat, only bigger, with a much thicker layer of chocolate over the cookie. The name means lava rock, and it kind of looks like it. Highly recommended.

After a rest we went back over to the western shore of the island, a little farther south than the day before, in hope of puffins. No puffins. Wonderful views of the uninhabited islands offshore, stretching off to the newest part of Iceland, the island of Surtsey, born in 1967.

In late afternoon we went back through the modern town of Heimaey, and got a glimpse of ordinary life in Iceland. Saw a new development of houses going up ��� each with its own hot tub, because hot water to soak in comes just behind oxygen as a necessity of life in that country. Japan, another volcanic island, also has its hot spring baths. Curiously, Italy ��� which has plenty of hot springs and practically invented baths ��� seems to have lost that tradition. Maybe the climate makes staying cool more important to Italians.

We stopped for "kebabs" in town, as most of the restaurants were still closed for the Easter holiday. Kebabs in Europe are what Americans call Gyros. I think that's because America got Greek immigrants who started restaurants, while in Europe the food was introduced by Turkish guest workers.

Though tired, we resisted the urge to go to bed early because it was predicted to be a clear night and we wanted the chance to see the Northern Lights. So we stayed up until twilight ended (it only got full dark at 10:30 p.m.), and hunted around Heimaey for a spot that didn't feature high-intensity street lighting. Eventually we found a little park, and stood around looking at the sky for about an hour. Alas, the weather on the Sun was too good, because there wasn't any activity to see. So at last to bed.

One final observations on Heimaey: for an island that's two miles wide by three miles long, there are a heck of a lot of cars there. Two reasons I can think of. First, there's a lot of steep slopes on that island. Walking around takes effort, and if one had to carry anything it would get very tiresome very fast. The second reason is that you can take your car on the ferry to the "mainland" and drive to Reykjavik or wherever. I was amused to see that Icelanders don't take off the snow tires until April's over.

There's even kind of a car culture. We saw a couple of dudes driving their boss vintage street rods around Heimaey, and at least once at night I heard what sounded very much like an impromptu drag race.

Next time: The Thing!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 1 (second part)

The ferry ride to Heimaey took about 20 minutes and was the quietest boat ride I've ever taken. We later discovered that the good ship Herjolfur is electric-powered, with a big recharging plug on the dock at Heimaey. It makes sense for a short-haul ship in a country with plentiful geothermal power and no local hydrocarbon fuel. (I'm willing to bet the ship has a diesel auxiliary power plant for longer voyages or emergencies.)

The approach to Heimaey is amazing: steep volcanic cliffs rising straight out of the sea, with a narrow entrance to the harbor. Sea birds nest in the cliffs and whirl around over the water. The whole island group is utterly fantastic-looking, like something off of an album cover or a fantasy novel.

Once ashore we dragged our bags to the Hotel Vestmannaeyjar and then went in search of lunch. Unfortunately, Sunday the 17th was Easter Sunday, and the Icelanders are pretty serious about their Easter observances. Only one place was open, a tourist-oriented bar & grill by the waterfront. The menu was mostly pub food ��� burgers and the like ��� with a few ostentatiously "exotic" items: whale steak, puffin, or reindeer burgers. The kind of thing you photograph with your cell phone and post to social media. "Check it out! I'm eating WHALE!"

I'll admit it: I had the reindeer burger. I can't really say what reindeer tastes like because the burger was loaded up with stuff like cheese and cranberry jam to offset the flavor. What I could taste was kind of halfway between lamb and beef.

And no, I have no qualms about eating Prancer. Reindeer aren't native to Iceland (nothing without feathers is, really). I'll let Sir William take it:

"These animals were first introduced into this country (according to Von Troil) in the year 1770, from Norway, by order of Governor Thodal. Ten out of thirteen died on the passage. The three remaining ones have done extremely well, and bred so fast, that at this time Count Tramp reckons that there are about five thousand head in the island. They are, however, quite useless to the natives, for no attempts have been made to domesticate them, nor can the inhabitants afford to buy powder and ball to enable them to kill then for provision."

Evidently the Icelanders have armed up since 1809, as I saw it on the menu a few other places.

Even though we'd been up for about 24 hours by that point, it was still afternoon (and afternoons go on a long time at that latitude in April), so we put on our walking shoes and went out in search of birds. The desk clerk at our hotel said he had spotted a puffin only the day before, so we headed for the cliffs at the west end of the island, about a mile away.

The landscape of Heimaey was phenomenal, with volcanic cliffs and old craters right next to the town. The town itself was . . . functional. Older buildings have corrugated iron roofs and siding (not a bad idea when occasionally flaming ash is in the forecast). Newer buildings are that boxy Scandinavian style which makes me think all their architects were big LEGO fans as children.

Eventually we reached the western cliffs, passing some replica medieval Icelandic houses along the way. We saw a gorgeous view across the water of more fantastic offshore rocks. Plenty of gulls, plenty of oystercatchers, plenty of terns, even a couple of pigeons and a wood duck, but not a puffin to be seen. Still, the scenery was great, and we spent an hour out there before plodding back to our hotel and collapsing into bed. Thirty-three hours awake is long enough.

Next time: The Volcano!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 1 (first part)

A few years ago the Crack Team and I went to Europe aboard Iceland Air, because they had good cheap fares and fly out of Logan Airport in Boston. Like all modern long-haul airliners, the plane had little video screens at each seat, and those little screens played promotional videos about how swell it would be to visit Iceland. They worked: we added Iceland to our big list of places to visit.

After the disruptions of the Coronavirus epidemic, we were in the mood to take a trip this year, masks and tests be damned. Iceland seemed like a good destination to re-accustom ourselves to international travel. It's a relatively short flight (only 5 hours), not too expensive, and it looked about right for a one-week vacation.

During our planning, I came across what became my Bible for this trip. Journal of a Tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809, by the eminent botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker. Over the course of my life I've learned a valuable way to seem intelligent: if you want a good introduction to any subject, find a book by a 19th Century Briton. There will be one, if not several, because 19th Century Britons went everywhere, did everything, and wrote about it obsessively. Sir William was the third member of our party, and since I could save his book on my phone, he didn't need a plane ticket or meals.

So off we went. On Saturday afternoon, April 16, we drove out to scenic Framingham, Massachusetts, to catch the Logan Express bus to the airport (and thereby achieved a seven-fold reduction in the cost of parking). Checked in and boarded the plane, and then flew through the extra-short night to Keflavik airport at the western tip of Iceland. Got processed, picked up our rental car, and drove out into a new country.

When the British and Americans needed to put an air base in Iceland during World War II, they picked the tip of the long Reykjanes Peninsula, which sticks out of Iceland's southwestern corner. It was mostly flat, mostly uninhabited, and near the sea lanes they wanted to patrol.

It's also a very volcanically active region. The name means "smoking peninsula" because of all the steaming vents and fumaroles. That activity comes from the fact that this peninsula is actually part of the Mid-Atlantic Rift, where Europe and North America are pulling apart.

All of which means that when you leave the modern international airport which succeeded that old wartime base at Keflavik, you drive through an unearthly landscape of old lava flows, not-so-old lava flows, and recent lava flows. Here and there, seemingly at random, are little clumps of buildings like Moonbases, and in the distance the snow-covered mountains of Iceland's interior loom through the clouds of volcanic mist. It's all the result of geology and geopolitics, but the effect is a wonderful introduction to the country: you're definitely in a new and different place.

We drove east, through the gap in the mountains and down a scary escarpment into the broad low southern valley of Iceland. That region's a huge swampy alluvial fan of volcanic dirt washed down from the mountains of the interior by half a dozen meandering rivers. The ground is turf, cut by scores of little streams and ponds. Here and there one can see a few actual fields waiting to be planted. There are more towns (though still not many), and a great many horse farms. I had dark suspicions about whether those horses might show up on the menu later in our visit, but no, apparently Icelanders like their sturdy little horses a lot, and so do tourists, since every farm advertised riding tours of the area.

Sir William on horses in Iceland: "The horses of the Icelanders are small, but strong, and though, for want of a proper supply of food, generally in a miserable condition during the winters, when they for the most part are kept among the mountains to procure their subsistence as they can; yet, in the summer, when grass is plentiful, they are well furnished with flesh, and, if not worked too hard, will even grow fat. Every Icelander keeps his riding horse, and many of the peasants have, also, from fifty to sixty, or even a hundred, others for burden. These of course are useless in the winter, but, as soon as the fisheries commence, or the season for trade summons their masters to Reikevig and other ports, they are all called into employ . . . No wheel carriages of any kind can be made use of in the island: every thing is therefore transported upon horses, which renders a number of these animals of the greatest importance to those Icelanders who live at a distance from the coast."

Nowadays transport is by car, and I have to say the Icelanders I saw seem almost as car-loving as Americans, even though every drop of fuel has to be imported. There are two reasons: Iceland looks like a small country on the map, but it has vast empty expanses. It feels very big. And second, there are no trains. A landscape consisting basically of mountains, lava flows, glaciers, and swamps would be nightmarish for building a rail line, and nobody has attempted it. Building highways was probably difficult enough, and a lot of the roads in the interior of the island are unpaved and only passable in summer. The difficult terrain also means Iceland has a very busy domestic airline market, with flights from Reykjavik and Keflavik all over the island.

After driving for a couple of hours and a nap at a roadside parking lot, we stopped to visit the LAVA Centre in Hvollsvollur. This wasn't part of the plan; we mostly just wanted to find a restroom and some drinks, and it was open.

I'm very glad we stopped. The LAVA Centre is one of the best little educational museums I've seen. It's all about the geology of Iceland, and includes a viewing platform from which one can see the peak of Mount Hekla, twenty miles away. There's also a video about Iceland's volcanoes, and exhibits on different types of eruptions, different types of lava and igneous rock, and the giant magma plume underneath the island which drives all of this. We had a delightful chat with one of the geologists at the museum and went away impressed. Highly recommended if you're in that part of Iceland.

A good thing, too, because our traveling companion was little help. "I forbear to speak of the mineralogy of the island, because my ignorance of that important branch of natural history would prevent my being able to offer any remarks farther than I could collect from other authors. Few countries, perhaps, present so interesting a field for the geologist."

We couldn't stay at the LAVA Centre as long as we might have wished, as we had to push on from Hvollsvollur in order to make the noon ferry sailing from Landeyjahofn to Heimay. Landeyjahofn is literally nothing but an artificial harbor, parking lot, and a terminal for the ferry. There are no houses or businesses, except a small airport nearby. The only reason it's there is the ferry to Heimay.

I'll cover the voyage to Heimay and our stay in the Vestmannaeyjar next time.

Increasing Success, Increasing Danger

Note: edited to reflect new information.

The war in Ukraine drags on, and the courage and skill of the Ukrainian defenders continues to astonish the world. As I write, they've just announced a missile strike on the Russian Navy's flagship in the Black Sea, the cruiser Moskva. The Russians are reduced to trying to save face by claiming the ship was damaged through their own incompetence instead of enemy action. All good news.

Which is making me very nervous. The Russian leadership keep doubling down. Their negotiations all seem to be in bad faith, trying to buy time for their wrecked armies to rebuild. But as they lose more and more hardware, and their manpower pool becomes newly-inducted conscripts, I fear the temptation is growing in Moscow to use Russia's most powerful weapon, her nuclear arsenal.

Deterrence? Ukraine isn't part of NATO, and the leaders of all the major powers have been taking great pains to make it clear that they won't fight Russia. There won't be any armed response to a nuclear strike. The current economic sanctions are about as bad as they can get. Russia's already a moral pariah. What would the Kremlin have to lose by dropping a "tactical" warhead on Mariupol, or Odessa, or Kyiv itself? If anyone has a good answer to that question I really want to hear it.

 

Endgames

We're all following the progress of the war in Ukraine, bouncing around between hope, fear, and utter bafflement. I'd like to take a step back and think about what the results of this conflict are likely to be. I see five paths, and only one of them is not terrible.

Russian Victory: supposing the Russians solve their logistical and command problems, unleash the full strength of their air force, call in more troops, and grind down the Ukrainians by sheer weight of force. Possibly even nuclear force. What then? Russia remains a pariah state, isolated from the global economy and global society. Ukraine will be a bloody open wound for a generation, drawing in a steady flow of Russian troops and sending home body bags, while Putin's security services revert to the worst Soviet methods on a large scale. Paranoid but protected by its nuclear arsenal, Russia would export terror and subversion to its neighbors. We get a new Cold War, as tense and vicious as the old one.

Ukraine Buys Peace: this, to me, is the most likely outcome but it's not a good one. We have a negotiated settlement which gives Russia control of a big chunk of eastern Ukraine, and possibly puts limits on Ukraine's defenses in the future. Ukraine survives but pays a heavy cost, and Vladimir Putin can claim victory and continue in power. What result? Most of the economic sanctions on Russia remain in place, though there will be more room for countries like China to find loopholes to exploit. Again, we get a reborn Cold War, and Russia continues its campaigns of corruption and subversion in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Ukraine and Putin Hold: the Ukrainians throw back the Russian invasion and Putin decides to cut his losses and accept some fig-leaf settlement. Putin proves better at murdering potential rivals than at planning foreign invasions, and remains in power despite the obvious military defeat. Again, this leads to a revived Cold War, Russia as a pariah, and more low-level meddling. The good news is that Ukraine becomes the bastion of Europe, integrated into the European Union and NATO. The bad news is that we go back to 1980s levels of military expenditure and diplomatic infighting.

Putin Falls: the Russian Duma (we hope) or some ambitious general (we fear) take direct steps to remove Putin from power and call the troops home. Everything gets blamed on the late Vlad, Russia's new leadership promise to behave, and the sanctions get relaxed in stages. Essentially a repeat of the Yeltsin years. This is probably the best possible outcome, so my sincerest best wishes to any Russian leaders reading this. Go for it, dude!

Russia Falls: whoever decides to remove Putin sets off a cascade of coups and power grabs by generals, regional governors, and organized crime bosses. This is basically the situation we all felt lucky to avoid in 1991 ��� a nuclear-armed superpower descending into chaos. The best result of this scenario is a nasty counter-insurgency campaign by international forces to keep order and secure the missile silos, a perpetually unstable Russian government, lots of small-time strongmen, and China quietly annexes everything east of the Urals. The worst result is terrorists and rogue states getting and using Russian nuclear weapons.

If anyone can come up with another optimistic scenario, I'd love to hear it.

 

Discover an Archipelago of Lost Worlds

I'm pleased to report that the long-awaited anthology Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms is now available. It's edited by John Joseph Adams and features a pretty impressive lineup of contributors, including Theodora Goss, Cadwell Turnbull, and Becky Chambers. The seventeen stories in the book are all about visits to hidden or imaginary lands ��� a micro-genre which was once a mainstay of fantastic adventure fiction but which gradually faded away under the influence of decolonization and satellite mapping. My own contribution is called "Out of the Dark," and is another work in the ongoing Billion Worlds series. I'm pretty eager to get my hands on a copy myself. 

In other Billion Worlds news, I just handed in my draft of the next Billion Worlds novel, a prequel to The Godel Operation with the working title The Scarab Mission. More news as that progresses toward publication. Until then . . . 

. . . get Lost!

Victory Conditions

One of the most baffling things about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, to Westerners, is that it seems impossible to succeed. If the Russian army gets badly mauled and driven out, Putin gets forced from power and probably shot in the back of the head. If the Russians somehow manage to occupy the entire vast expanse of Ukraine, then they spend the next decade or more dealing with an insurgency that would make 1980s Afghanistan look like Disney World. And either way the economic sanctions have completely wrecked the Russian economy. 

But . . . that's looking at things from our perspective. From a Western, democratic, free-market, classical liberal perspective. Vladimir Putin is none of those things. He grew up, thrived, and prospered in the Communist Soviet Union. When he took power he tried to combine old Soviet elements with even older traditional Russian nationalist strains. He is not, and has never been a "Westernizer." 

Which means that, from his point of view, Russia as a pariah state, a hermit empire, disconnected from the global economy and isolated from world society . . . is a good thing. Far from being a deterrent to his aggression in Ukraine, it's a fringe benefit.

This is a man who grew up immersed in Soviet teachings about "capitalist decadence" as well as the older Russian suspicion of merchants and outsiders. Like another European political figure, he probably sees himself battling against "international money and finance conspirators." If he can grab Ukraine, eliminate anyone who opposes him, and sweep away three decades of "Western capitalist corruption," leaving Russia poorer, meaner ��� but purified and authentically Russian once more, he will call it a victory.

We'll see if other Russians agree with him. 

Orwell on Putin

Well, not Putin, actually. Another political leader noted for aggression in Eastern Europe. Orwell reviewed a book written by that leader and speculated on the reasons for his political success:

"[That guy], because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don���t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades."

I'm posting this quote because it seems to me that once again Western leaders (and everyone else) are making their characteristic mistake of assuming every other leader (and every other population) want what they want. Right now you see endless Tweets, headlines, and pundits calling Putin "mad."

Nope. He's no more mad than [That guy] was. He just doesn't share our motivations. For all our professed love of diversity and tolerance we are abysmally bad at actually understanding people who don't share our Enlightenment-era Anglosphere way of thinking. We've seen this in the Middle East, we've seen it in Asia, we've seen it in Latin America, we've seen it in Africa.

Sanctions and speeches and hashtags and Facebook banners aren't going to stop this. We need to help Ukraine with tangible, physical aid ��� or admit to ourselves that this is just a lot of feel-good posturing to compensate for our impotence.

Oh, and keep an eye on the Taiwan Strait . . .

Boskone is GO!

After the sad cancellation of this year's Arisia convention, I'm very pleased and excited to announce that Boskone 59 is going ahead as planned this coming weekend, at the Westin hotel in Boston's seaport district! See the Web page here for membership information.

I'll be there in person, and here's my schedule:

Friday, February 18

6:00 p.m.: Very Far Future SF ��� a panel discussion about writing science fiction set thousands of years in the future, if not even more remote.

Saturday, February 19

10:00 a.m.: Reading ��� I'll be reading my short story "Out of the Dark" from the forthcoming anthology Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms.

11:00 a.m.: When Comics Characters Get Old ���panel about the problems with "comics time" vs. real time, and how to deal with the sheer weight of past history some iconic characters have to carry.

2:00 p.m.: Kaffeeklatsch ��� fellow program participant Grant Carrington and I will hang out and drink coffee with anyone who signs up. You set the topics!

4:00 p.m.: The Mind of the Alien ��� a real powerhouse of a panel discussing what alien intelligence might be like and how we can (or can't) relate to them.

Sunday, February 20

11:00 a.m.: Autographing ��� I'll be signing anything anyone can drag into the hotel (not contracts).

12:00 noon: Dungeons & Dragons ��� A classic Basic D&D dungeon with traps, wandering monsters, and puzzles.

See you all at the Westin this weekend!