The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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My library sent me an unexpected notice. They put two audiobooks on hold for me, without my even asking. One I've never heard of and the other is a pre-release, expected April 27, of Martha Wells' Fugitive Telemetry, Murderbot Diaries Series Book 6. What a pleasant surprise.
Proactive holds? That's different & interesting.
I've been checking on the shop every couple of days & found the temp down to 45 degrees. The heater wasn't working. It's a 5000 watt, 220 volt, oil-filled heater attached to the shop ceiling that's about 12 years old. It's been reliable & maintenance free. The only issue I have with it is the thermostat which is more of a timer. In the spring & fall, I have to adjust it too often to keep the temperature even & that means standing on a stool.
Last year, I found a thermostat I could mount on the wall, so I wired it up. It wasn't much better for keeping an even temperature, but at least I didn't have to climb on a stool each time I wanted to adjust it. All good until the heater quit.
I opened it up, but couldn't see a problem, so I decided to pull the new thermostat & put it back on the old one. One wire came out of the crimp connector & I touched another, a factory wire, that showed it was loose. It had burned off at its connector & a bit of playing revealed a couple of inches of insulation burned off, too. I'm guessing that my loose connection caused it to burn up. Anyone have another idea?
That's scary as hell. It didn't even singe the paint around the wire, but it's in a closed compartment that requires a screw/nut driver to access. I've left it open for now & have been checking the wires for heat several times a day. So far, all is good.
Hidden electrical faults are Bad Joux-joux, for sure. In memory I can still see the house below ours in Rimrock, AZ in full blaze: almost too hot to face it, 1,000 ft away! Dryer-caused fire, while they were at work. Likely lint, I suppose, and I've been scrupulous about cleaning out dryer lint ever since! We never run dryer or dishwasher while we are out.They never rebuilt -- just cleared off the mess and put the lot up for sale. Still vacant as of a couple years ago (lots are cheap there). Fire would have been around 2008?
Jim wrote: "I've been checking on the shop every couple of days & found the temp down to 45 degrees. The heater wasn't working. It's a 5000 watt, 220 volt, oil-filled heater attached to the shop ceiling that..."
Have you thought about trying a digital thermostat? They are really easy to install.
I haven't looked for another thermostat. After this, I don't think I will.
The water company came & marked where the water mains are located. It's really in the way for the fence along KY12, so I've had to make some changes there. Instead of one 16' gate further into the field, I'll have them put in two 12' gates a little closer to the road. Hopefully that will be enough room for wide equipment to get in & out. The turn is made more difficult by a road sign restricting the far side. I'm going to see if I can get them to move that.The water main along Mount Zion is well positioned for the 2 fence lines that will cross it, so there is some good news. I didn't think I'd be able to get one line done due to Lily's surgery, but I'm gambling that the next check from the government will come in. That will just pay for it. Her surgery was $800 & it was benign. She managed to tear out her stitches, but it's almost healed now anyway.
Jim wrote: "Her surgery was $800 & it was benign. She managed to tear out her stitches, but it's almost healed now anyway"Well that's good news. Mostly. Tell her the group sends "Get Well Soon" wishes. Jim needs help with the chores!
A new couple moved in next door with their 2 kids a few weeks ago. Their dog, Oreo, is a 6 month old intact male that was given to them by a relative in an apartment. Wasn't working out in the kennel at their place & Ceirra doesn't have time to walk him enough, so they gave him to us last night. He's supposed to be an Australian Shepard, but he looks & acts more like a Brittany Spaniel, so who knows? Seems like a nice little dog. We hate his name - 4 letters & 3 syllables - so we're going to shorten it to Reo. Animal names should only be 1 or 2 syllables, just like little kids, but I repeat myself.Pip, our JRT/beagle mix, thinks he's tolerable & occasionally fun to play with. Lily ignores him unless he gets close to her & then she grumbles, but that's typical. The cat, Raven, is not happy & has been living on top of our kitchen cabinets since Reo arrived. They'll figure it out eventually. I'm more concerned with him getting comfortable with the dog door.
I'm hoping the fencing crew will get here today. Their materials were delivered last week, but we've had a few rainy days which slowed down their other jobs. Last night featured quite a light show with a lot of thunder & about an inch of rain, so it's pretty sloppy out.
We're getting better fencing put up on 2 sides of the paddock & really need that right now. Cloud, an 18 year old rescue, doesn't need all the spring grass & his feet are getting a bit warm so he's in a stall most of the time until it is done. If he founders again, we'll probably have to put him down. His health is pretty touchy due to getting EPM
https://www.irongateequine.com/educat...
He came from Texas after some flooding a few years back & it was quite an expensive struggle to cure it. Unfortunately, it leaves quite a few health scars such as a tendency to founder.
I'm doing better, but still not up to par. Not sure I'll ever get back to what I consider normal, but at least I can get the mail & do some small chores again. I'm almost back to 150 lbs, only 20 lbs underweight & still struggling to eat more, kind of the reverse of Cloud.
Busy week. Rio (name change) is doing great. He's fit right in & the cat has gotten used to him. Energetic little monster.The fencing crew finally got here & took 4 days instead of 3, but they finished up tonight. Great crew who really did a good job, especially with the gates. I'll need to get a dump truck load (22 tons) of gravel in, but only one. Might have some left to put into stock which is always nice. The current pile is down to just a few tons which is lower than I like.
It sounds like you have a fun bunch of animal companions, Jim.
I've got two Aussies, one of them a purebred black tri male mini, who we took from an abusive home, the other a Border Collie mix, red tri, who was a rescue from the street. The mini is a great dog, super intelligent, friendly & playful, medium energy level. The mix, however, is quite insane. She's nervous and obsessive, she would do nothing but eat and play frisbee if she had her choice, and she is fairly high energy. She's like a young child; she'll run and run and run, then just collapse in a heap. She is friendly, not aggressive at all, but aloof. Needs lots of TLC. We are pretty much empty nesters, so they are good for us and make us get out and walk and play.
Hope you get it all back Jim. Being ill suck and that is from first hand knowledge.
Yesterday was gorgeous & I finally felt up to a short ride on Cloud.
Gorgeous horse. I cannot say much about the rider, but the horse.....8^)
Ed wrote: "Glory be! The Soviet TV version of Lord of the Rings has been uploaded to YouTube!."I hadn't heard of this, but I stumbled across another article about it here:
https://www.cnet.com/news/watch-the-l...
I watched a few minutes, but the subtitles are in Russian & overall, I think it should have stayed lost. They didn't even use dark bay horses for the ring wraiths. Sheesh.
Papaphilly wrote: "Gorgeous horse. I cannot say much about the rider, but the horse.....8^)"Cloud would be pleased, but I think he's ugly as sin & he has the personality of a walnut. He also has no idea where he's stepping nor does he care. That makes him dangerous with the young dogs & I have to be careful on rough ground.
The ears in front belong to Pumpkin, my wife's pony. He has a lot of personality & takes great care of her.
I got the gravel in yesterday for the double gates. Terrible driver, a surprise since they're usually excellent. I gave him instructions & he told me what he was going to do, but he wound up not doing anything right. On the third try, I just had him dump about 2/3 of the load by the gates & the rest on my stock pile. The man was hopeless. I had to bring 6 buckets back off the pile to get the grading right, so the job took longer than it should have, but we got it done. Here's a picture of it. The dirt in front is a swale so water coming down most of the hill won't wash out the gravel. I dug that while waiting for the driver. The gates are 2-12' gates, the posts are 8' apart, & the fence is 4' high to give you an idea of scale.
The load was 23 tons & cost $480, that's $130 more than it was 3 years ago. Behind the new, larger pile, you can see my old stock pile. We use it up quickly at times. Lily & Pip butts are visible, too.
The picture below is taken from my shop & shows most of the fencing on the south (shop) & east sides of the same field. The left gate post is about in line with the double gates on the other side of the field. On the left & right, you can see plum trees in bloom.
Taken from just inside the north field at the shop gate, the picture below shows the south fencing & about 200' in the distance (west) along a neighbor's field. Pip is just in the picture, too. He's a big help.
Here's Cloud in the paddock which got new fencing on 2 sides. It's stock wire with an oak board on top. The paddock is just south of our house.
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I hadn't heard of this, but I stumbled across another article about it ..."
I agree it isn't very entertaining to watch, especially if you don't speak Russian. Maybe someday someone will make a video with just some "highlights" and a commentary track, like RiffTrax. Then it could be fun.
I guess the god of money decided I needed to spend more even after the inflated cost of the gravel. The TV died today. My wife & I thought it was just a few years old, but the receipt was dated 7 years ago. Where does the time go?!!!I wanted just a dumb TV about 50", but they're hard to find. Wound up having to buy a 4K smart TV to get the inputs & outputs we require. It was half what we paid 7 years ago, though. Should be here Monday. Nothing was available locally.
Electronics seem to be in short supply. I usually buy HP Elite Probook or Lenovo Thinkpad laptops for work. The former don't seem to be available on HP's site. All the ones I looked at were out of stock. Lenovo was better, but they're either on hand & can ship immediately or are 5-8 weeks out. Any time a supplier gives me a time that far out, I figure it's a crap shoot when or if I'll see it, though.
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At the beginning of the lock-down a year ago, only about one week in, my TV died. There was no way I was going to survive lock-down without a TV, so I had to go buy one at that time. My playstation also died at the same time. I've decided to live without one.
I'm wanting to get a new digital piano. The one I want is impossible to get right now except on back-order. Some global supply chain mess, I guess. (This problem precedes the ship stuck in the canal.)
SF Bay is full of container ships waiting to be serviced. I saw, but didn't read, an article about that. Don't know what's going on there.
We each have a computer & only 2 TVs in the house: 48" living room & 32" guest room. I have a networked computer with a small keyboard with a touchpad on it hooked to the big one, so no need of a smart TV. I find the controls clunky & slow on the TV. I can barely operate our new Dish box. Besides, we have a fairly slow, wireless Internet connection & that's a huge step up just in the past 1.5 years, so we're not used to streaming. My wife is worse than I am when it comes to that.Our first big flat screen was a smart TV from Vizio & I was unimpressed. Thankfully we got an extended & better warranty on it since it broke 2 or 3 times the first few years. It also used to do firmware updates when it felt like it, such as while we were watching it. Then it was out of commission for 15-20 minutes. I cut its wired Internet connection & the damn thing started using the wireless. No way to turn that off on the TV, so I had to put a password on the connection. I guess I'll have to do that again. I don't need a password on the connection now since people can use it only if they're directly in front of the house on the road or parked in our lane.
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(My father was a TV repairman. These days, you don't repair them, you just throw them away. Progress?)
My father had a tube tester. I remember him fixing our TV & other things using it. It couldn't handle the big tubes on his amplifier, though. I don't miss fiddling with tuning the TV all the time & the remote control is nice, especially the mute button. My father used to install a cord with a rocker switch for my grandfather so he could mute the TV speaker during commercials. It ran from the TV speaker under the rug to his spot on the love seat in their TV room. The DVR is even nicer since we just FF past them. That's some progress.I'm not sold on all the channels, though. We have the minimum channels we can get for Dish & we don't want 90% of them, but we want a few others that we can't get without paying for 250 or something awful. Not a big deal for me since my wife takes care of that. I rarely watch the thing. I like "The Rookie", but that's about it. There's a few others I watch because she likes them, so we do during dinner, but I can't stand most. How she can still manage to watch NCIS, Grey's Anatomy, or all the Chicago things is beyond me.
I saw a Purple Martin on the houses this morning. Except for a couple of scouts last month, that's the first. I have to put up a couple of hummingbird feeders today. They usually don't come for another week or so, but I like to be ready for them early.
I like looking at the technology & habits of people in old shows. In Columbo S01:E02 - Ransom for a Dead Man (1971) a lawyer's telephone uses punch cards to call someone at a specific time & then plays a reel to reel tape recording. Made me realize that robocalls aren't new, it's just that the technology got better & cheaper.
I saw our first hummingbird of the year yesterday on the front feeder. I've had two up for a couple of weeks now. No worries about cleaning them weekly since I didn't put much in them & the Downy Woodpeckers have been draining them.
Jim wrote: "I saw a Purple Martin on the houses this morning. Except for a couple of scouts last month, that's the first. I have to put up a couple of hummingbird feeders today. They usually don't come for ano..."I have butterfly bushes to attract the butterflies and hummingbirds.
It was 70 degrees out yesterday afternoon. This morning it's close to freezing & we got 2" of snow overnight. My hummingbird feeders are covered in snow.
We have snow here too in Toronto.
We've had rain, warm. Rain in April is good. Things are beginning to grow.
65F today here in San Antonio. A “cold front” after 85F yesterday. We’ll be hitting 90 every day once we hit late May, en route to a blistering summer as usual. July-September here is as miserable as December-February in Chicago (where I lived for 20 years before this). Vegetable garden is up and running but the February freeze (where the whole state lost power) killed a lot of stuff and delayed everything a few weeks.
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I don't want to be a curmudgeon, but people's driving has gotten so bad I'm starting to think robot-driven cars should be mandatory. That's all I got today. As you were.
If you're into Ambrose Bierce or weird fiction, you might be interested in the new Centipede Press collection of his work. http://www.centipedepress.com/masters...
It's $50, so not cheap, but their books are excellent - really well made, great artwork, & highly collectible, if you're into that sort of thing. This one, like several others I have of theirs on other authors, is a door stop at over 700 pages. None of mine are particularly collectible any more since both my son-in-law & I have read them. I have several including a collection of Lovecraft's work & I've been very pleased. I ordered a copy of this one. Order it soon if you want one. They usually sell out fast & don't reissue them.
Hi All! I could use some help.... I am partway through the Amber series by Roger Zelazny and it turns out I don't have have Trumps of Doom (I have a double of another one, but that's another story...)Local library does not have it. state library does not have it. I don't read ebooks. None of the second hand online sellers I normally use seem to have it. Can I ask for recommendations for online books sellers from any Aussie GoodReaders who may lurk here?
ANZ one's preferred, I hear there can be problems with OS orders at the minute but it is burning me that I can't complete this series.. it hurts....
Deborah wrote: "Hi All! I could use some help....it turns out I don't have have Trumps of Doom (I have a double of another on..."I don't know anything about Aussie booksellers, but the 1985 Arbor House HB edition is only $4 delivered here in the US. It's ben a decade since I last sent a book to Australia, but it was crazy expensive back then - like $20 for a paperback. It was only $5 to send the same book to South Africa or Japan. (I used to belong to BookMooch.) If you think things have changed & it would be worth it, I could buy it & send it to you. Just PM me.
The Prologue isn't in most editions. I think only the one published for the SF&F Club has it. It's only 1.5 pages, but adds a lot of important information & I highly recommend reading it first. It's criminal they left it out. As far as I know, it's only published in 2 other places, The Road to Amber (part of the Collected Works) & Manna from Heaven (about impossible to find & very expensive.) The first has all the Amber short stories & the latter has most.
The first 5 books of Amber are by far the best. I thought the others were fun, but definitely not the same quality. I also enjoyed the prequels by John Gregory Betancourt, but it ends on a cliff hanger. The 5th book was never written & won't be which sucks.
Jim wrote: "Deborah wrote: "Hi All! I could use some help....it turns out I don't have have Trumps of Doom (I have a double of another on..."I don't know anything about Aussie booksellers, but ..."
Hi Jim - I just tried googling for Arbour House and once I managed to get past the retirement homes to the publishing company it was a bit odd.... There are promises about making all my publishing dreams come true, but there do not seem to be any books for sale... I feel like I am missing something here?
I did not even know there WAS a prologue, never seen it in any of the paperbacks I have owned.
I am going to troll through the second hand bookshops here, after work tomorrow, if that does not work I may take you up on your offer as the cheapest price I have seen here in Au is in the $40 range.
I really don't understand how those prices are made up. I can easily find a second hand for €6 (PB) and €16 (HC).
But the next shop on Google takes me to $82 and $108.
Oh, and $4 for the ebook.
I would be very motivated to make an exception and just for this once read the ebook :-)
Deborah wrote: "Jim wrote: "...I did not even know there WAS a prologue, never seen it in any of the paperbacks I have owned...."I know. I'm a Zelazny fan (I started the Zelazny group here.) & I wasn't aware of it for years, at least a decade after I'd read 'Trumps'. Why it was left out makes no sense to me, but publishers really suck sometimes. This is one case in point. The prologue makes so much more sense out of several things that only slowly become apparent otherwise.
I don't know anything about Arbor House except their HB edition seems to be quite common & cheap. Zelazny books have a very spotty republication history & I don't think it has been helped by the author or his family. He left his estate in kind of a mess, as I understand it. He knew he was dying of cancer, but he was separated from his wife & living with Jane Lindskold with whom he coauthored several good books. He died without a will & his wife inherited publishing rights. She did nothing with them. Eventually Trent, Roger's oldest, stepped up & has taken a hand. I think he held out for top dollar, but now is getting books republished slowly.
Roger was definitely into making money & none too careful about the legacy of his books. He doesn't seem to have ever bothered to check the accuracy of prints much less reprints. To Spin is Miracle Cat was his only collection of poetry published & is supposed to be a real mess. He expanded his serial "Call Me Conrad" into This Immortal which left out a really important paragraph early on which was critical for understanding the role of Radpol, one of the major political organizations.
He intended 'Nine Princes' to be a standalone & didn't bother to keep notes, so when he wrote the second some years later, he screwed up Eric's mother. The series was popular & spawned some games. His second pentalogy seemed very much like a money-maker written without the care of the first to me. It just doesn't have the same heart. The short stories are supposed to tie up loose ends & I never found them all that important, but I'm used to loose ends in his work. They were only fully collected (with the exception of a fan-fiction piece he coauthored) in Manna from Heaven & that book had an extremely limited run. It was only issued in HB & sells for over $100 now. I see they've finally released a Kindle version for $6.50, though.
If you really want to know they whole story, without it being filtered through my bad memory, or like his poetry, I recommend NESFA's Collected Works. It's a 6 volume set with a 7th book that is a bibliography. Christopher S. Kovacs is one of the editors & he used to monitor the Zelazny group here on GR. He might still & he's a good source of information.
Jim wrote: "Deborah wrote: "Jim wrote: "...I did not even know there WAS a prologue, never seen it in any of the paperbacks I have owned...."I know. I'm a Zelazny fan (I started the Zelazny group here.) & I ..."
That is a pretty in depth review of Zelazny and it clears up something I have always wondered about; he is always described as American Poet and author" but I never before figured out what poems he wrote. Certainly I have never seen them.
In other news I found a second hand copy of Trumps of Doom HUZZAH
No prologue unfortunately, but at least my reading progress will not stall.
One of the best things about the NESFA books is they have quick explanations most of the allusions he made in each short story & poem. Most of us need some help there since he was very widely read & some are rather obscure, especially in his poetry.
Jim wrote: "One of the best things about the NESFA books is they have quick explanations most of the allusions he made in each short story & poem. Most of us need some help there since he was very widely read ..."That comes through a lot in his Amber series too: You can see how well read and widely read he is. Having Corwin start off on Earth means that he can constantly reference literature ect without seeming out of context and I think that contributes a lot to Corwin as leading man for the first Amber books.
Every time I read any of his work, I always pick up something new. For a while I was re-reading A Night in the Lonesome October about once a year, always got more out of it.
Deborah wrote: "Hi All! I could use some help.... I am partway through the Amber series by Roger Zelazny and it turns out I don't have have Trumps of Doom (I have a double of another on..."Start with Amazon on any title you want. You would be surprised what turns up.
My youngest grandson, Ryan, has set a new family record for the youngest with a broken bone at 2 years old. His father waited until he was 5 to break his leg & his aunt was 3 or 4 when she broke her arm for the first time. Like them, he got his playing with a sibling. He was bouncing on a trampoline with his brother & managed some sort of compression break in a lower leg bone by the knee. Now the kids realize that it's tough to figure out when a kid cracks a bone, so we're finally off the hook for the times we made them wait a day before taking them to the doctor. Now they agree that, all things considered, we actually did pretty well. Sheesh! It only took them a few decades to come to the realization. Parenting is tough & it's rewarding when your kids finally figure that out with their own experiences.
We had some hot weather (84 degrees) on Wed, so tried to turn on the AC only to find the outside unit wouldn't come on. Turns out it was poor manufacturing. Two pipes crossing each other rubbed together creating a hole in one that let all the freon out. There was no reason they should have been so close as there is plenty of room.I texted the installer, the husband of a gal at work, with the news of what went wrong. His response was, "I'm not the manufacturer." That pissed me off. I called the company he bought the unit from & got a much better, if unsatisfying response. They said they had used Goodman units until shortly after mine was installed & then they started having too many quality issues. They no longer use them, but have fixed over a dozen with the same problem I have.
I called Goodman, the manufacturer, since I have a 10 year parts warranty. I wasn't surprised to find that they didn't consider it their problem & freon, the most expensive part of the fix, isn't a part so they will do nothing. I posted a few reviews online & found quite a few others who had the same problem. One even had pictures identical to mine. Of course, all the bad reviews were posted a year or two after I'd bought my unit. It's a shame that a once good company suddenly went bad. It seems as if they got rid of the QA department.
My kids had their new heat pump installed by a young guy with a new HVAC business that lives nearby so I got him to stop by to fix the unit. That didn't go as well as it could. He hit a deer with his truck the week before last, so it's still in the shop. Last week, he bought a new truck, but still doesn't have it fully stocked, so I supplied the tubing he needed to fix the leak & the ladder so he could get inside the unit to work on it. He didn't think the compressor oil I have would work in his vacuum pump though, so he couldn't finish the job yesterday & is supposed to be back this morning. Of course, we needed the heat last night since it got down almost to freezing, so we had to set up a few space heaters.
Ah! The joys of homeownership! What's not to love about the privilege of spending a few frustrating hours & paying $300 for something that never should have happened? It certainly could have been worse, though. It's actually a good time of year to have a problem with the heat pump since it's fairly temperate out. Sure, we had a hot evening & a chilly morning, but that's it. No worries about heat stroke or freezing pipes.
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
A History of the English Speaking Peoples, 4 Vols (other topics)Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (other topics)
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (other topics)
Bleak House (other topics)
A Night in the Lonesome October (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Winston Churchill (other topics)Roger Zelazny (other topics)
Felix Salten (other topics)
Sam Kean (other topics)
Chuck Tingle (other topics)
More...
Today the library's facebook page posted a photo of that book with two cute cats. Now I expect everyone will put it on hold and I'll never be able to get it. Grrrrrr. Cats!