Jack

by on January 17, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

I grew up before The War came upon us all. Well, there are many who would say I still haven’t grown up, but you know what I mean. I spent twelve years in the public school system, where we could study whatever we wanted, as long as we did the basics. We had AI tutors for every conceivable subject from ancient history to multidimensional math. But the real job of those twelve years was teaching us how to learn. Teaching us how to spend time with other people. How to get along with the children our own age who would become the adults we would spend the rest of our lives with. The human school monitors were pretty much there to make certain we attended to our studies, hug us when we banged a knee as we were young, or stop fights when we were older. The primary job of the schools I went to was to make all of us into functional adults. There are many who question whether or not they succeeded in my case.

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Goodbye President Lincoln

by on January 16, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

We celebrated the birthdays of President Lincoln and President Washington when I was young. Each had their own day, and I remember the celebrations of what they did. One created our country. One saved the Union and freed the slaves. It was a time to study and remember the tyranny our nation was born in, and the courage it took to stand against the most powerful nation on Earth. And it was a time to remember the war that took more American lives than any other, that pitted brother against brother, and resulted in the end of Slavery in America. We would read Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation in those days. Then Reverend Martin Luther King was granted a Federal Holiday, and the Lincoln Birthday celebrations just went away. Washington’s Birthday became President’s Day, and the idea of celebrating the President who freed the slaves disappeared under the appeal of showing the actual footage of Martin Luther King having a dream of equality. He was a great man, and he deserves recognition, but I will always associate the celebration of his birthday as the year we stopped celebrating Lincoln’s Birthday. And that is a great shame. Goodbye President Lincoln.

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Jurassic Park: The Lost World

by on January 15, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I recently read Jurassic Park for the first time, after watching the three Jurassic Park movies, and of course the recent Jurassic World. After finishing it, and loving it very much, I decided it was time to read the sequel, The Lost World. And now having read it, I can see where much of the inspiration for the movie sequels came from.

The book starts similarly to both of the sequels, with some differences. Ten years have passed, Ingen is dead, and Doctor Malcolm has a steady job. He also has a steady limp thanks to the piece the T-Rex took out of him. Doctor Grant is remaining silent about the Park incident while continuing his scientific work, and his former student Ellie is married with a little boy. Or is it two? I can’t remember off the top of my head. Doctor Malcolm has a couple of really good students in one of his classes who assist him, a tall skinny girl, and a young black kid. They are both geniuses in their own rights, and are very important to the survival of everybody thanks to those genius minds of theirs throughout the story. In the movie, they are amalgamated into one black girl who failed at gymnastics.

Like both sequel movies, the action soon goes to Ingen Site B, where the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were created, and now roam without anybody knowing about it. An expedition to find and study the island is started, and Malcolm gets dragged into it. I won’t spoil anymore, beyond saying that many scenes from the movies do come from the books. Many scenes were created out of whole cloth, and most of the story was invented for the movies, but you can see where the ideas for many of the things that happened in the sequels, even Jurassic World, came from. The Lost World novel has a lot of cool things going on in it, and was ruthlessly mined for the Jurassic sequels.

The best way to describe it is that the Jurassic Park novels are one story. The Jurassic Park movies are another story. They share some scenes, and some ideas, but they are completely different in story and universe. If you have watched every movie, you have not seen the story put forth in the Jurassic Park novels. Jurassic Park movie and novel are close, but not the same. The Lost World novel and movie are not close at all, and nowhere near the same, despite sharing some scenes and some characters. And as much as I loved Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, the novels are far superior.

I thoroughly enjoyed Jurassic Park: The Lost World, the novel. I give it two T-Rex-sized thumbs up. Watch the T-Rex wiggle his little hands in approval. He agrees with me, and hopes you all come by for a visit. That may just be because he’s hungry though, so approach him with all due caution. And maybe a rocket launcher just in case. 😉

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San Lucas – Hankou

by on January 14, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

The largest volcano on San Lucas began to wake up not long after we arrived. It was in the center of the Hankou continent, surrounded by vast lowlands filled with intelligent cats. Humanity felt its first, tentative, throat clearings on the other side of the planet. It continued to grumble for the next several decades, periodically filling the skies with ash before grumbling back down to inactivity. Humanity stayed away from that continent for the most part, only planting small mining colonies on its coastlines. It was rich in many heavy metals the volcano threw into the air, but the planetary government regulated travel to the land they called Inferno with great care. It is ironic that the name the local cats had for the volcano also meant Hell. Their major religions were greatly concerned about the unrelenting fiery death that came from that mountain. They were understandably, and rightly as it turned out, concerned about the volcano’s plans for their future.

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Jack

by on January 13, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

I grew up in the Boundary Waters between the United States and Canada west of the Great Lakes. There’s water everywhere up there, and I think I learned to swim before I could walk. My life revolved around water. Swimming. Fishing. Partying. I could walk out of my door, down the hill, and straight into the water. I knew the feel of minnows nibbling on my toes. I knew exactly how much tension to put on rod and reel, what the line could handle, and how long a fish could fight. I ice fished in winter, and yes, I made a fair bit of money showing my little part of paradise to all the city slickers who wanted to see it for a weekend or maybe a weeklong vacation. Yes, I was one of those guys who flirted with the pretty daughters of rich bankers and business owners while showing the family a romanticized version of my life. The most beautiful and safe parts of it. I loved that life. I never wanted it to end.

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