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Well, I’m back at the computer keyboard after a week off from blogging.  I had something else that kept me away last Sunday (March 18) so I didn’t get a chance to write some of my usual bilious crap.  Here goes this week. This week I want to write an update on my querying for…

Blackout” is a book by the science fiction writer Connie Willis, and I just finished reading it and thought I’d write down a few comments.  First, it’s a relatively large book, 491 pages and probably well over 100,000 words.  But that didn’t stop me, I plowed right into it and began a great time of reading.  I…

I’m not much of a poet.  Back in the early years of the twenty-first century, I tried my hand at writing some poetry, and I even read a few of my poems at the Open Mic gathering at Winston-Salem Writers when I lived in North Carolina.  I did most of my poem writing when I lived in…

What’s more important to you–the Earth itself, or humankind?  Personally, I go with the Earth. When I listen to the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, I get the impression they are in favor of humanity being more important than the Earth on which we dwell.  The message I get is that it’s okay to scrape away…

As many of you know who read my blogs, I’m trying to get a science-fiction novel published by the traditional method, namely, by getting an agent who will sell it to a publisher and the rest will be history.  But I’ve run up against a small hurdle.  Or maybe it’s a big hurdle. Everyone tells me…

Back on March 13, 2011, I wrote a short blog about the inevitability of the formation of “life” on a planet, any planet, given the right circumstances.  You can define life however you want in this context, that’s not the point of my blog today.  What I want to explore today is the aftermath of…

Here’s a short update on my attempts to find a literary agent for my first novel, a science fiction work, The Anthanian Imperative–Blue.  I’ve sent out sixty-seven query letters to today, mostly as email queries or through the regular mail.  A few literary houses have their own web-based form to be filled out by an interested writer, and…

Have you ever heard of SMON?  I have. SMON stands for subacute myelo-optic neuropathy.  The disease doesn’t exist anymore, but it was prevalent during WWII in Japanese soldiers in the Pacific Theater of War.  Nobody knew what caused it until after the war when it was found to be caused by a diarrhea medicine given…

A few days ago I decided to make a list of my favorite movies, around a hundred in all.  This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment deal, I’d made a list several years ago, but I put it on some older type of media, like a 3 1/2 or 5 1/4 inch disk, or perhaps a Zip disk, and…

Over the years since it premiered in the mid-1960’s, Star Trek has been on TV almost continuously.  (I’m talking about the original series, not one of the spin-offs.)  I’ve seen it everywhere I’ve lived since that time and have always enjoyed it.  I watch it over and over.  It seems timeless, and except for the…

Much has been said and written over the past several years about the downgrading of the planet Pluto from its position as the ninth planet in our solar system to what is now called a “dwarf planet.”  In other words, it just didn’t quite make the grade as a planet.  Astronomers like planets that do predictable and sedate…

Well, it sure feels good to get back to blogging again after a week off for Christmas.  Now that the new year has arrived, it’s time to look back at the old year and summarize just what it was that made the year good or bad or indifferent.  In a personal sense, of course.  (The…