Category: Fantasy

Rocket, man

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Off we go, into the wild blue yonder. … Photo courtesy NASA/Bill Ingalls

It was nice to take a break from the Dingaling Bros-Barnum & Beelzebozo Circus yesterday to watch NASA pitching a high hard one at the moon.

When my sis and I were sprouts we often got to catch NASA’s act. The old man was a big fan of the space program (three of the seven Mercury astronauts were Air Force flyboys like him). So I remember the Mercury and Gemini programs from our time at Randolph AFB at San Antone. And of course Apollo, which took off after we’d transferred to Bibleburg, with the first crewed flight in 1968.

The old man collected autographed pix of the astronauts, and I built models of the craft they flew, even got into model rocketry for a time. Also, and too, “Star Trek,” because of course “Star Trek.”

Apollo 11, the first time a human set foot on the moon, was the crowning achievement. Nothing NASA did afterward thrilled me in the same way, possibly because I was too busy being a space cowboy with Major Tom.

Too much science fiction, I suppose. No lunar colony, no base on Mars, no interstellar travel … did my old B-burg bro’ Robert A. Heinlein live in vain? Here it is 2026 and we’re still stuck down here with the eejits, murdering each other and crowing about doing a hot lap around the moon, samey same as in 1968, when we got the famous photo “Earthrise,” from Apollo 8’s William Anders.

Ah, well. I still like to watch. And dream.

They call it the ‘red’ planet, right?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Read it and weep.

Stuck for a Valentine’s Day gift?

How about snatching up these DOGEbags dry-humping the Statue of Liberty, stuffing them into a Starship, and deporting them to Mars?

No, not the Mars Elon covets. The Mars H.G. Wells envisioned.

See how these bright boys and girls like “intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic” drawing plans against them.

I know I’d love it.

Rebooted

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

If spring hasn’t quite sprung, well, it’s thinking about it.

It was a pretty pleasant morning yesterday in the Duke City, so I bit the bullet and ventured out for a short walk around the flattest parts of our neighborhood, which made it a very short walk indeed.

I did a bit with both crutches, and a bit with one, and a bit with none; chatted up a few neighbors who wished to plumb the depths of my stupidity; and finally headed back to the rancheroo for a spot of lunch.

Then I pulled off the Darth Gimp boot and its Vasque Clarion companion, leaned back in my chair, and put both dogs up on a footstool to rest awhile.

Just out of reach. Like a cat.

Not until I settled in and got comfortable did the smoke alarm go off.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Etc.

So I put on the Darth Gimp boot and its Vasque Clarion companion, levered myself out of the chair, crutched into the entryway … and it stopped.

“Turkish, are you fucking with me? I asked. The question seemed relevant, if a tad mystical.

For starters, as all cat people know, your cat will never assign you some vital task until you are settled in and comfortable.

Second, the night Turkish died, as Herself and I were settling into bed, and I rested my right hand on the spot where our big, big boy would usually lounge for a bit, the bathroom light suddenly turned itself on, and then off.

Now there was this. And it wasn’t lost on me that I had instructed that my old comrade’s remains be cremated.

I crutched into the kitchen for a fresh battery, because why the hell not, and the smoke detector started up again. So I returned with the battery and a small stepladder, and — praying there wasn’t a giant, pissed-off, blue-eyed spectral cat in a cloud of smoke up there somewhere  — made the swap without incident.

Turkish always liked the high spots.

 

12 Days of ’Toonsmas: Day 9

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Susan Calvin was off when these two rolled off the line at U.S. Robots.
From the September 2019 issue of BRAIN.

E-bikes present both opportunity and challenge for the IBD.

One more bike to sell to the base — the old white guy who already has 15 two-wheelers in the garage but may be slowing down a bit due to age or infirmity, and wants a little assist.

One more bike to lure new customers, who may have found old-fashioned cycling too difficult, or who have decided to replace a car with something greener.

One more bike to service, because the future requires more maintenance than the past.

Our heroes at BRAIN’s bike shop acquired an e-assistant to work on e-bikes, which raises another issue, one familiar to anyone who ever read Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.”

Artificial intelligence will not come to us from U.S. Robots, complete with a full installation of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and overseen by Susan Calvin, Greg Powell and Mike Donovan. It will come from Allied Mastercomputer via Ellison Wonderland, it will have ideas all its own, and it will not be our friend.

“They’re a cleaner better breed than we are,” Calvin said in an interview with The Interplanetary Press. Maybe so. in Asimov’s novels, anyway. But in real life our e-assistants will be made by us, in our image. Frightening.

You’ll want to keep them locked up at night, and not for fear of thieves.