Hi Carolyn,
I'm back after a brief involuntary exile to the land that wifi forgot. I guess I'm halfway to becoming inextricably tethered to the digital realm ( a la The Matrix !?), since I did feel pointedly out of touch, in one sense. If I hadn't been able to hoof it over to a city park a few blocks away where there's public wifi, to peck out the odd terse message, I might even have gone into some sort of connectivity withdrawal or gotten the digital delirium tremens or something.
We did learn from this experience that the big cable companies are just as insidious, implacable and cavalier here in Mexico as they are where you and I live. The ISP here is "Cablemas" and it might as well be Time-Warner or Bell or Rogers because the m.o. is the same. Communication is a bit more interesting because of the language thing, though. "Cablemas", when spoken by the locals is so abrupt that it sounds like a turkey gobble rather than an actual name.
Fortunately there were lots of things to take up the slack. Some of which I'll get to in this entry and the next blog or two.
First and foremost, being semi-incommunicado did make it even easier to catch up on reading that got overlooked or knocked aside in the everyday state of affairs. The five part Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy got polished off plus more of David Halberstam's thoroughly engrossing non-fiction - this time looking at the classic rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Socks in the forties and fifties and an in-transit look at the emerging realities of the post-cold-war era in international relations.Plus a number of documentary items squirrelled away on my tablet could be, and were, consumed. I even went back and revisited a couple of personal movie absolute favorites - Airplane and Airplane II - ah, the joys of puerility!
Paramount among these finished up items are the last three novels in Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series. I had downloaded these only a few months after Harrison died and just a couple of months before initially getting involved in this editing and blog scenario at Wormhole Electric some two plus years ago. I may even have remarked at the time that it might be awhile before I get to them. Boy, was I not kidding - two years an eleven months worth of " awhile " is what it adds up to.
" If Harry Harrison had only created "Slippery" Jim DiGriz, the roguish hero of the Stainless Steel Rat books, " reviewer Charlie Jane Anders noted on the 109 website at his passing, " he would deserve a high place in science fiction history. But he also wrote dozens of other novels, including the hilarious Bill the Galactic Hero saga, the proto-Steampunk classic A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!, and the novel that became the movie Soylent Green, Make Room! Make Room!."
Considering where they fit into the Stainless Steel Rat chronology ( i.e right at the beginning ) it was somewhat of a surprise to see them appear after seven previous novels had been published ( and translated into no less than 23 languages ), and the character was well and indelibly established.
Harrison addresses this right off in the intro:
" .... you will be introduced to James di-Griz, sometimes called Slippery Jim, as a young man, perhaps even a callow youth, because I realized, as the number of these books grew, that I was intrigued as to where this brash and very successful character had come from. How had he grown up among peaceful, law-abiding citizens and become, what many might call, a crook?
As the author, I thought that I knew. But I wanted these thoughts amplified on paper, then expanded into a novel. After all, if I care, certainly the readers would be concerned as well. They were! They greeted the first prequel with happy cries. "
" I wanted to flesh out my character," Harrison continues, " to know him a bit
better. Therefore A Stainless Steel Rat is Born ( a title that won a prize from the London Times Literary Supplement readers as the most incredible book title of the year.) And what jolly fun it was to explore my hero's youth. The only problem was that I could not get all the new material into one book.Well ...not quite. He still has not gained his complete rattish personality, was
" So here you are:," Mr. Harrison concludes, " three novels neatly bound inside a single cover so that, if the weather is bad, this volume will enable you not to leave the house for a week or more. Depending, of course, on how fast you read.
In my case, he was just about right.
I've read about binge watching wherein one gets a complete season of a series and just watches consecutive episodes in the manner that the name implies. Well, I was binge reading and the time just flew past, it seems. I did leave the house regularly of course, but each time I locked the front door and left I was sure hoping that things beyond would unfold promptly so that I could get back and return to Slippery Jim's world.
I'm thinking that Harry Harrison could be one of those people who Rush sing about in Tom Sawyer.
No, his mind is not for rent
To any God or government.
Always hopeful yet discontent
He knows changes aren't permanent
He knows changes aren't permanent
Alas, I have not yet finished any more limericks. For some reason writing limericks seems more like a cold weather, in front of the fire, shtick. I have the feeling that even though we have almost two weeks left here it will still be frigid and numbing when we land in Canada again. Hmmmm what rhymes with Canadian, and frozen.
Whew! I do believe I have spent a big chunk of my space here on Mr. Harrison, so I won't go into my other most enjoyable reading experience thus far. Besides I'm about a chapter or two away from the end still. It's a biography that I've been waiting to tie into and I can certainly say the wait was justified. More on that later.
On the local front... this weeks bugs of the week are plain beetles in fancy shoes.
The black one might just be a bit of teutonic posing or wishful thinking, as those are BMW wheels underpinning that humble bug.
Speaking of Beatles - with an "a". On our way back from the beach at Progreso we passed a brand new huge entertainment complex on the outskirts of Merida. One of its attractions in early March, before we leave, is Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band. Cheapest tickets, if there are any left ,are close to 200 dollars (U.S.) Taxi plus all of the etceteras could make it into a Donald Trump-ish outing. Besides, I'm afraid seeing a mid-seventies aged Beatle might make me feel strange. hmmmmm. I'm torn on this one.
We seem to have left the unseasonably cool Yucatan weather behind finally. One evening when the cold snap was at its peak ( mid to high teens in the evenings ) we actually saw a waiter for one of the outdoor patios sporting a toque and puffy insulated jacket.
Daytime now hits the mid-thirties (Celsius ) and is sticky. The nights are cooler but stick to the sheets humid as well. That air-conditioning that lay dormant for the first few weeks has been put into action at night lately. No complaints here however, since a quick check of where we live for the rest of the year immediately readjusts our outlooks.
So, that be the name of that tune, for the moment. Catch ya later.
Daytime now hits the mid-thirties (Celsius ) and is sticky. The nights are cooler but stick to the sheets humid as well. That air-conditioning that lay dormant for the first few weeks has been put into action at night lately. No complaints here however, since a quick check of where we live for the rest of the year immediately readjusts our outlooks.
So, that be the name of that tune, for the moment. Catch ya later.
Don
All images itemized herein sourced from Google Images
Fig. 2 - guide.alibaba.com
Fig. 3 - kulpararsenal.blogspot.com
Fig. 4 - www.goodreads.com
Fig. 5 - www.isfdb.org
Fig. 6 - express.uk.com
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