Len Vlahos's Blog, page 3

Turn It Off

[A tired looking meeting room with low ceilings and glaring fluorescent light. Sounds of people shifting in place as a man in late-middle age reluctantly stands up and clears his throat.]

[image error]

Image from WilWheaton.Net

“My name is Len Vlahos, and I’m a Wil Wheaton fan boy.” 

“Fan late-middle-aged-man.” chides someone from the circle of chairs.

[A young woman in a Start Trek Voyager T-shirt tentatively raises her hand.]

“This is Captain Janeway Anonymous. Wesley Crusher Anonymous is down the hall.”

Seriously though, I am a fan.

As much as I love Star Trek The Next Generation — “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1,”  the cliff hanger at the end of season 3, is some of the best TV ever produced — my Wil Wheaton fandom didn’t start with his portrayal of Ensign Crusher.

Nor was I among the early acolytes of wilwheaton.net. I read it now, but it was only a recent discovery.

It wasn’t even Wil’s absolutely hilarious (and very meta) recurring self-portrayal on The Big Bang Theory that won me over. (Though if I’m being honest, that didn’t hurt).

No, I came to Wil Wheaton fandom through his narration of audiobooks.

[image error]

Image from Wikipedia

It started with Ernie Cline’s Ready Player One. I love this novel. No, I mean I *really* *love* this novel. As someone who spent his high school years (early 1980s) playing Asteroids, Tempest, Galaga, and every other console in the Nathan’s video arcade on Central Avenue in Yonkers, Wade Watts and his story spoke to me. After reading RPO, I decided I needed to experience it again, so I listened to the audiobook, read by Wil Wheaton.

Wil did such a good job bringing the characters and story to life, I started to seek out other books he narrated. Each one of them — Armada (Ernie Cline), Information Doesn’t Want to be Free and Homeland (Cory Doctorow), Masters of Doom (David Kushner), Red Shirts (John Scalzi) — was better than the one that preceded it. Having an accomplished actor narrate an audiobook is so much better than having an author narrate an audiobook. (It’s why I haven’t narrated any of my own books. That, and no one has ever asked me.)

From there, it was a short and obvious step to Wil’s own collections of essays — Dancing Barefoot, Just a Geek, and Happiest Days of Our Lives. These stories are a wonderful recollection of Wil’s life as a step-dad, a geek, and as a certain (and oft-reviled) Star Fleet Ensign.

I became such a fan late-middle-aged-man that I even wrote Wil into Hard Wired. I had noticed that he was a character or otherwise referenced in many of the books he narrated, so I had a vain hope that if I wrote him into my story, my publisher could convince Wil (read that as pay him) to give voice to my work. I’m pretty sure (read that as very sure) my publisher never actually asked. It would have been a longshot, but damn it would’ve been cool. (See if you can find the reference. It’s actually a secret, Easter-Eggy homage to Ready Player One.)

Anyway, in a few of Wil’s essays, he refers to an episode of TNG called “The Game.” The plot revolves around Wesley and fellow ensign Robin (played by a young Ashley Judd) decoding a video game that’s creating  psychotropic responses in the rest of the crew. Each person who plays the game becomes hopelessly addicted and falls under the mind control of some random evil alien. Wesley and Robin to the rescue!

[image error]

Image from Tor.com

I was blown away at how prescient the script (written by Susan Sackett, Fred Bronson, and Brannon Brag) actually was. The “game” in the show is a perfect stand-in for social media. The brain-washed crew members spend hour after hour playing the game, unwittingly activating the pleasure centers of their brains, and sacrificing their individuality to become part of the hive mind. The game, like social media, is simultaneously compelling, terrifying, and grotesque.

If you’re like me, you probably look at screens all day for school or work. Your eyes probably hurt at the end of the day. If you don’t need glasses now, you will soon. (I wonder if the corporate tsars at Lens Crafters are behind social media. What a cool story that would be). Your hands are likely atrophying into gnarled claws. Your neck hurts and your spine is now misaligned. And yet, you’re probably in front of a screen — television, laptop, tablet, or phone — most evenings, too. Like, right now.

And all for what? Another meme? Another group of haters who just gotta hate? Another chance to hear someone echo someone else’s opinion, that was stolen from something their “friend” had seen on Reddit?

More than once I’ve come home from work to find my WSO (wonderful significant other), her parents (who have been staying with us), and both my kids, all in the same room, all staring at screens, all with just a hint of drool in the corners of their mouths.

That’s the world we’re living in. COVID and Zoom (gack!) has only made it worse. It’s only a matter of time before some sentient AI figures this out and we’re all toast.

But it’s not too late.

Fight the temptation of the screen. Go outside and play catch with your kids. Go inside and drag your lame screen-obsessed-parents outside with you. Read an ink on paper book. Or do like Wesley did; find Ashley Judd and kiss her. (This website is not suggesting anyone actually find Ashley Judd and actually kiss her.)  Just turn off your screen and save yourself while you still can.

Oh, and check out wilwheaton.net. It’s really good.

The post Turn It Off appeared first on Len Vlahos.

The Championship Game

I have never been good at sports.

By the time I’m nine years old, I have already flamed out of Little League Baseball (my batting average over two seasons is .000) so I try my hand at organized basketball. As was the case in baseball, I’m the weak link on the team. No matter how hard I try, I can’t sink a basket.

Then, one afternoon, several games into the season, miracle of miracles, I get the ball on a break away and drive hard for a layup. “Go Lenny!” everyone is screaming. My progress is unimpeded, and I am going to make it. I am going to make it!

And I do make it… the lay-up is a thing of beauty, the ball hitting the backboard and falling through the net in what has to be slow motion.

Only, the net is on the wrong side of the court. I have put the ball in my own team’s basket. The people in the stands weren’t screaming “Go Lenny,” they were screaming “No Lenny!” I leave amid hoots of derision and laughter and never go back.

There are many more examples in my life, most often involving my almost clinical inability to hit a golf ball, and the results are always the same. I’m not good at sports.

I have to wonder, do I gravitate toward music, writing, and film because I am bad at sports, or am I bad at sports because my natural abilities are geared to music, writing and film? Either way, it’s a shame, because I love sports.

I lose myself in the drama of the competition, and I marvel and the skill and athleticism of the competitors. I have been to a World Series game, an NBA playoff game, four Kentucky Derbys, and more regular season baseball and hockey games than I can count.

Enter my younger son, Luke.

By the time he’s seven, he’s fallen in love with ice hockey. Wanting to share Luke’s passion the way I shared Taekwondo with his older brother (and yes, in spite of my lack of athletic prowess, Charlie and I did earn black belts), I enroll in an adult Learn to Play Hockey class. This despite not really knowing how to skate. So, predictably, I suck. Like, really suck.

I can only transition from going forward to going backward in one direction, I’m slower than molasses on a tin roof in January, and I skate with my head down. I try, I really do, but my brain and my body simply don’t like one another. “Hips,” my brain will yell, “rotate, now!” When my brain receives the “I’m sorry, we’re not here right now, please leave a message” message from my hips, it’s too late, and I fall on my ass, and sometimes on someone else’s ass, too.

But I really want to play hockey. It’s no longer only about wanting to spend time with Luke, it’s about wanting to experience the joy I see in every man, woman, or child I have ever watched play the game.

Figuring I’ll improve — I can’t get any worse — I throw caution to the wind and strike up a conversation with other players in the locker room after the Learn to Play class one night. We decide to start a team and join our rink’s beer league at the lowest possible level of competition. Since I’m the one to fill out the paperwork and organize the printing of the jerseys (they’re called sweaters in hockey), I’m made team captain. We call ourselves Blucifer’s Devils, and honestly, we’re a really fun group. (For those of you not from Denver, Bluficer is the terrifying  horse sculpture with glowing red eyes welcoming visitors to Colorado at Denver International Airport.)

In our first season, summer 2019, the B’Devils win exactly zero games and lose eleven. (In a nice bit of symmetry, we lose the last game that season by a score of 11-0.) We pick up right where we leave off in our fall/winter season by losing our first ten games. We are so bad (“How bad are you, Len?), every person at the rink, even the skaters on the other teams, wants to help us. We’re adopted as a hard luck case.

And then, it happens. We win one game, then a second and a third. We start to hit a groove. Confidence builds. Everyone’s level of play starts to improve.

Everyone except for me, that is.

“Shoulder, neck, and head,” screams Brain, “look up!”

“Shut up brain,” they respond in unison, “we need to look at the puck or we’ll fall over.”

And then I skate into another player, or a wall, or the net and fall over anyway.

“Dumb ass,” my brain adds, throwing salt on the wound.

I feel like an albatross around the necks of my teammates.

The fall/winter season falls prey to COVID and it’s time for the Summer 2020 season. We play well enough, finishing with a record of 4-5-1. In our final game of the season, we stop the top ranked team in our division from going undefeated, beating them 7-3. This team, the Salty Dawgs (also mostly made up of hockey parents) has been a thorn in our side since we entered the league, and it’s good to get finally get that win.

And here’s the thing. The last few weeks I feel I’ve started to turn a corner as a skater and a hockey player. I’m still one of the weakest links on the team, but I’m no longer a complete liability. (Yeah, that’s a low bar, but you have to start somewhere.) My skating is more crisp, my head is up more often, and I’m starting to have an intuitive feel for the game.

“Right foot, can you, um, er perhaps manage a hard stop on your inside edge,” Brain asks with trepidation?

“On it.” Right Foot answers, and lo and behold, I stop. WITHOUT falling over!

Last night was the championship game for our division agains those same Salty Dawgs. I had legit assist in our first playoff game (my second assist of the season), and another one last night in the championship game.

We were losing 4-2 with three minutes to go when I received a pass from one teammate, and put it on the stick of another. The whole sequence had the goalie moving in the wrong direction, and my teammate buried the puck in the back of the net. We went on to score two more goals in the next two minutes won the game.

We. Freaking. Won!!

I may still be a crap athlete, but now I’m a champion crap athlete. That’s right, I’m a champion! At sports!

As a thank you for doing the work of a captain, my Blucifer’s Devils’ teammates give me the honor of hoisting the cup first.

To quote the Zac Brown Band, “Life is good today. Life is good today.”

Thank you and congrats to my teammates. I love you all.

(Postscript — I started playing golf again in my 40s, and ten years later am still shooting 120 for 18 holes. I’m taking lessons now. If by next spring I’m not shooting closer to 100, my brain is going to instruct my body to throw my clubs in a lake. If that happens, curling here I come.)

The post The Championship Game appeared first on Len Vlahos.

The Worry Journal

So my shrink — actually, she’s a behavioral psychologist, which means that, rather than help me work through difficult issues, she tries to change my behavior to minimize stress. Anyway, my behavioral psychologist suggested I keep a worry journal.

At the end of each day, I’m supposed to take ten minutes and write some notes on what’s causing me stress and anxiety. The idea is to leave my worries on the page so that I might relax for the evening and get some sleep. Since the shrink (behavioral psychologist) gave me this assignment three weeks ago, I’ve done it exactly once. It’s partly a matter of not having enough time, and partly a matter of not having enough motivation.

I did set a recurring alter on my Google calendar, reminding me to  write in my worry journal. My phone buzzes at 5:20 each weekday, letting me know there are only ten minutes left until I have the pleasure of reliving my worst fears and anxieties. Yay!

As noted, I’ve only done this once. It didn’t help. I was self conscious, and the exercise left me thinking more, not less, about my worries. And now, in addition to everything else, I worry about not writing in my worry journal. Isn’t that exactly the opposite of the point? Thanks goodness my GP gave me meds to help with anxiety and sleep. Those, at least, seem to be working.

Yay science.

The post The Worry Journal appeared first on Len Vlahos.

Thankful for Things Big and Small

2020 has been a sucker punch to the nuts. I know, I know… not just for me. For the entire world.

Here’s my litany of 2020 challenges:

I co-own and run indie bookstores. Having been closed for nearly four months, and watching debt mount, every day feels like it will be the last day. It’s like living in a state of perpetual dread. It’s like Sisyphus.
I unwittingly — and very unintentionally — stepped into the middle of a REDACTED TO PROTEC THE INNOCENT.
I published Hard Wired into a pandemic. Not only are people buying fewer books than they would in better economic times, I’ve been so overwhelmed by the day job (see #1 above), I haven’t had time to properly promote HW. (Until today, I hadn’t updated this site for six weeks.)  I’m sure my publisher is thrilled with that. Though really, they haven’t been able to do much for or with the book either.
And yes, masks, quarantines, social distancing, blah blah blah.

But you know what? It could be worse. I can always be worse. A lot worse.

My kids are healthy and happy.  I love my wife. I love my neighbors and my neighborhood. I still get to walk the dog every morning.

That last one may sound like a small thing, but it’s not. My day starts with 20 minutes of fresh air (when there aren’t wildfires filling the sky with haze and smoke — FUCK YOU 2020!), a happy three-year-old-but-I’m-still-a-puppy-and-will-chase-every-bird-I-see companion, and a chance to clear my head.

The daily walk is an important reminder of all that I do have, and of how incredibly lucky I really am.

So yeah, 2020 sucks, but I am thankful for all the good things in my life, big and small.

The post Thankful for Things Big and Small appeared first on Len Vlahos.

Hard Wired Pre-Order

Pre-order Hard Wired through a participating indie bookstore between now and April 28, and receive the following:
* $1 will be donated on your behalf to the ACLU. (Specifically, ACLU Colorado.) The ACLU plays a big role in the book, and I’m a big believer in civil liberties — especially freedom of speech and freedom of the press — so I wanted to use this opportunity to give something back.
* You will receive an exclusive, free download for a AWAKE, a song written and recorded by the Bookshop Band, and inspired by Hard Wired. You’ll also receive a link to the exclusive video. (The song and video won’t be available to the general public until June 1, 2020.)
* You’ll receive a signed bookplate with an original design by local Denver artist and writer, Elise Gotta. You’ll get one of these four, limited designs.
* Aaaaaannnnnddddd….. You’ll be supporting indie bookstores!!!!
The full list of stores is here. Don’t see your favorite store? Check back for additions to the list in the coming weeks.

 

Anderson’s Bookshop (Naperville, IL)

Blue Willow Bookstore (Houston, TX)

Book Passage (Corte Madera, CA)

Bookmarks Bookstore (Winston-Salem, NC)

Books & Books (Coral Gables, FL)

Books Inc (San Francisco, CA)

Bookshop Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA)

Boulder Bookstore (Boulder, Colorado)

Fountain Bookstore (Richmond, VA)

Gibson’s Bookstore (Concord, NH)

Harvard Bookstore (Cambridge, MA)

Hicklebee’s (San Jose, CA)

The King’s English (Salt Lake City, UT)

Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)

Maria’s Bookshop (Durango, CO)

Politics & Prose (Washington, DC)

Powell’s Bookstore (Portland, OR)

RJ Julia Booksellers (Madison, CT)

Square Books (Oxford, MS)

Tattered Cover Book Store (Denver, CO)

Vroman’s Bookstore (Pasadena, CA)

The post Hard Wired Pre-Order appeared first on Len Vlahos.

AI Unbeatable at Go

I ran across this article from the Daily Mail. I think Quinn, the protagonist in Hard Wired, would get a kick out of it.

The only human to outsmart Google’s AlphaGo in a game of Go decides to retire and says artificial intelligence ‘cannot be defeated’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7731851/The-human-outsmart-Googles-AlphaGo-says-artificial-intelligence-defeated.html

There’s no shortage of questions surrounding artificial intelligence, but one thing is indisputable: AI is really good at Go. So good, in fact, that it’s sent Lee So-dol, a former world champion and 9-dan Go master, into retirement after he realized artificial intelligence programs have become effectively unbeatable.

“With the debut of AI in Go games, I’ve realized that I’m not at the top even if I become the number one through frantic efforts,” he said after announcing his retirement. “Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated.”

So-dol is the only human to have ever beaten AlphaGo, the dominant AI program developed by Google’s DeepMind.

At the time, So-dol’s lone victory was a hopeful achievement, but in retrospect he believes it was due to a bug in AlphaGo and not his own skill.

“Frankly, I had sensed kind of a defeat even before the start of the matches against AlphaGo,” he told South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. “People from Google’s DeepMind Technologies looked very confident from the beginning.”

The game of Go originated in China more than 2,500 years ago. Confucius wrote about the game, and it is considered one of the four essential arts required of any true Chinese scholar. Played by more than 40 million people worldwide, the rules of the game are simple.

Players take turns to place black or white stones on a board, trying to capture the opponent’s stones or surround empty space to make points of territory.

The game is played primarily through intuition and feel and because of its beauty, subtlety and intellectual depth, it has captured the human imagination for centuries.

But as simple as the rules are, Go is a game of profound complexity. There are 1057 possible positions – that’s more than the number of atoms in the universe, and more than a googol (10 to the power of 100) times larger than chess.

This complexity is what makes Go hard for computers to play and therefore an irresistible challenge to artificial intelligence researchers, who use games as a testing ground to invent smart, flexible algorithms that can tackle problems, sometimes in ways similar to humans.

Since then, a number of Go-playing AI have been developed and become only more dominant, including the Chinese AI called Fine Art, and a South Korean Go AI called HanDol. These programs have become so dominant even masters like So-dol are given a two-piece advantage at the start of each game to keep from getting blown out.

So-dol will commemorate his retirement with one final match in December, against HanDol.

“Even with a two-stone advantage, I feel like I will lose the first game to HanDol,” he said.

“These days, I don’t follow Go news.I wanted to play comfortably against HanDol as I have already retired, though I will do my best.”

The post AI Unbeatable at Go appeared first on Len Vlahos.

Explaining AI

My next book, Hard Wired, is about a 15-year-old boy who discovers he’s not a boy at all, but instead is a sentient, artificial intelligence (AI). But what is AI? I found this fun article attempting to explain it using a calculator and/or Alexa. Sadly, I didn’t find it in time for Thanksgiving, but I’ll share it here nonetheless:

Need a New Topic for Thanksgiving Dinner? How to Explain Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Anyone…and Make it Fun!

The post Explaining AI appeared first on Len Vlahos.

Hard Wired Reviews

Coming soon!

The post Hard Wired Reviews appeared first on Len Vlahos.

Life In A Fishbowl Reviews

I think it’s a great, different read that you should definitely pick up. 

KalesKorner

Oh man, that was an emotional rollercoaster… OMar the Bookworm

I had previously told myself that I wouldn’t judge a book by its cover because of the amount of disappointments that decisions like that had brought me. However, Life in a Fishbowl lived up to its gorgeous cover and has become one of my favorite Young Adult novels that I have read for a very long time…

Little Book Blog

…this novel is a rollercoaster ride through human nature. Mixing pathos and humor, it is both enjoyable and inspirational to read. 

The Children’s Book Review

Vlahos’s gift for writing blackly comic heartrenders was made clear in his debut The Scar Boys, and his latest promises to do it again.. 

B&N Teen Blog

This book is odd. A good kind of odd, but odd nonetheless. 

Sense and Sensibility and Stories

This is an ambitious book. It pushes boundaries with its characters and plot. 

Quite the Novel Idea

LIFE IN A FISHBOWL is a great read for people searching for a new spin on the issue of terminal illnesses and the power they have on families. 

TeenReads.com

Life in a Fishbowl is one roller coaster that will leave you a blubbering bundle of emotions. 

A Thousand Words, A Million Books

We’re just going to rave about Life in a Fishbowl by Len Vlahos because for a book to leave a mindset, a mindset that many of the characters share in very different ways, means it’s impacting. 

Akron and Annie

The post Life In A Fishbowl Reviews appeared first on Len Vlahos.

Scar Girl Reviews

Like its predecessor, this novel will leave readers aching for an encore. 

Kirkus, Starred Review

It’s dark, it’s raw. It will grab you and refuse to let you look away until the last line of the last page. Vlahos leaves us with hope, though, after the long, dark night. As much as I liked Scar Boys, I think I liked this book better.

The Story Sanctuary 

Vlahos does another stellar job of crafting a band story that is so much more than that…

The Global Teacher Librarian Network

…fans of The Scar Boys will not be disappointed with this sequel.

BiblioBrit

The post Scar Girl Reviews appeared first on Len Vlahos.