Just The Caffeine Talking

Random Encounters: On the Fantastickal Moon

We know what you'll find on the Moon if you get there via a Saturn rocket and Apollo Program Lunar Module lander. But what if  you sail to the Moon aboard an elven galleon or step there through an enchanted silver door?

ENCOUNTERS ON THE FANTASTICKAL MOON

(Roll 1d20 when roving about the Lunar surface, 1d10 when stationary.)

1. Roll Twice and Combine
2. Plot-Advancing Encounter: Someone or something connected with whatever mission brought you to the Moon in the first place.
3. Bat-Men: 2d6 slender, hairy humanoids who fly by means of a membrane stretching from feet to wrists. They are armed only with claws and small stones they drop with great accuracy. Bat-men are curious, mischievous, and greedy, but their fragile bones make them flee any armed foes.
4. Fog: Dense fog lasting 1d4 hours (during the day) or until dawn (at night). You can't see more than a dozen feet in any direction.
5. Giant Hounds: A pack of 2d6 white hounds as tall as a man. During the day they scavenge and are quite friendly; at night they hunt and pursue anything they encounter.
6. Giant Moth: A moth with a 20-foot wingspan, looking for a suitable incubator for her eggs. If she scores a hit with her ovipositor, next Lunar dawn a brood of giant caterpillars hatch within her victim.
7. Lunar Elves: 1d6 Small and silver-haired elves armed with bows and sabers; during the day they are noble and benevolent, but when darkness falls they become cunning and evil.
8. Lycanthrope: During the day he takes the form of a giant black wolf. At night he reverts to human form.
9. Mooncalfs: 1d6 ugly, translucent-skinned quadrupeds about the size of a horse. They are harmless, but if threatened they give off a hypnotic cry which puts other creatures to sleep.
10. Rival Explorers: 1d8 visitors from Earth whose goals conflict with yours. They'll do anything to keep you from getting back before they do.
11. Cheese Mine: an open-pit mine worked by 1d8 dwarves with sharpened spades. The dwarves are protective of their claim, but have plenty of cheese to spare and will eagerly trade for wine and crackers.
12. Dust Pool: You stumble into a deep pool of fine grayish dust, too light to swim in and too dense to breathe. What's worse is that there's a giant Dust Worm at the bottom of the pool, coming to eat you up.
13. Enormous Mushrooms: They only open during the Lunar day, and send out clouds of hallucinogenic spores.
14. Giant Caterpillar: The last stage of life before it transforms into a moth, this caterpillar is the size of a bus. It rears out of the hole where it has been eating cheese and growing for years, hungry for protein.
15. Pathway into the Dreamlands: If you think this place is weird, you haven't seen anything.
16. Ruin: Huge shattered crystal domes and towers, built by the ancestors of the underground Lunarians, inscribed with their ancient runes.
17. Seashore: The black waters of a Lunar sea stretch before you. You can continue travel along the shore, or improvise a boat and take to the strangely calm sea.
18. Temple of Hecate: A vast pillared hall where 1d100 witches come to worship their dread goddess. Non-worshippers are sacrificed if they can't get away in time.
19. Tunnel Entrance: An opening into the caves of the insectile and telepathic Lunarians, who are perpetually on the verge of starvation and envy Earth's abundance.
20. Tracks/Aftermath: Reroll to see what you just missed.

SITUATIONS ON THE FANTASTICKAL MOON

1. A desires B
2. A wants to capture B
3. A wants B dead
4. A wants to go somewhere
5. A wants to solve a mystery
6. A wants X

If you're interested in stories which don't take place on the Moon, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

A Vexillic Issue

Most State flags are awful. There, I've said it and I'm not sorry. Even my home State of Louisiana has an awful flag. There are fifty States in the United States, and two-thirds of them have awful flags.

What makes an awful State flag? Well, twenty-nine States have flags that are horribly boring. You can blame the otherwise amazing 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Some bright person decided that the flags of the States should be on display — and promptly discovered that most of the States didn't actually have flags to display. Weirdly, in a nation which is legally and officially a union of sovereign States, most of those States never bothered to adopt a flag until some busybody from Chicago came nosing around.

The solution adopted by most States at the time was to just adopt the flag of the State militia. Those all have a depressing sameness: the State seal on a field of blue (for infantry) or white (for cavalry). A couple of States went wild and chose different background colors (New Jersey, Washington, Delaware), but that didn't really help. Nevada tried to get clever by putting the seal up at the canton (the upper-right corner) but didn't fool anyone.

The big problem with the seal-on-blue/white design is that State seals are terrible graphic elements. They're all horribly busy and fiddly, impossible to make out from a distance. So most State flags reduce to "a multicolored blob on a blue or white field." Five States tried to get around that problem by literally writing the name of the State on the flag. That's not a flag, that's a sign. You paint that on sheet steel and put it up at the border so people know what jurisdiction they're in.

Ranking slightly above the militia flags are a cohort of uninspiring designs, all of them obviously created by committees. This batch includes Iowa, North Carolina, and Missouri with their tricolors marred by fiddly bits; California with another road sign pretending to be a flag; and West Virginia and Wyoming, which just slapped a contrasting border on the basic seal-and-field model. Colorado's is good, though I take away points for putting the State's initial on it. A tricolor of blue, white, and gold would have been better.

Two States have what one might call "near-miss" flags. They are close to being good designs, but the creators couldn't keep from adding just one more thing, thereby shoving them off into mediocrity. Arkansas has a decent, distinctive flag marred by printing the name across the middle. Florida takes a nice strong design (Alabama's, in fact) and sticks another damned seal on it.

Georgia's flag is one of the great "up yours" gestures of recent political history. After some residents, and a great many more non-residents, objected to the use of Confederate battle flag elements in the Georgia State flag, the legislature ditched the old design . . . and adopted a flag which is almost exactly the old national flag of the C.S.A. instead. Southern history buffs were satisfied, as were people who object to Confederate flags but wouldn't know the actual Stars and Bars if it bit them on the nose. All that said, sticking the State seal in the middle of the circle of stars on the Georgia flag makes it too busy, so points off for that. Mississippi also has a strong, if controversial design, but the Confederate battle flag in the canton now looks a little on-the-nose compared to Georgia's subtle trolling.

So which State flags do I like best? Here's my Top Ten:

Number Ten! ARIZONA has a good design, a little busy but certainly distinctive and colorful; it would look good painted on the side of a van.

Number Nine! TENNESSEE is a nice simple design, marred only slightly by the odd vertical blue stripe at the fly.

Number Eight! SOUTH CAROLINA breaks away from the seal-on-field pattern with a simple palmetto tree and moon. It obviously means something to somebody, and it's a complete departure from just rearranging elements of the U.S. flag.

Number Seven! OHIO can boast the only non-rectangular flag, a very jaunty-looking pennant. Even sneaking in the State's initial in the form of a circle doesn't spoil it (and makes a neat visual allusion to the Great Seal's all-seeing Eye).

Number Six! HAWAII's flag is a bit busy, but it has the honor of being an actual former national flag with some real history behind it, so that trumps mere graphics.

Number Five! MARYLAND has the greatest psychedelic eye-thrasher of a State flag ever created, with bonus historical points for being the actual coat of arms of the Calvert family, who founded the colony. If you're going to be busy, no half measures!

Number Four! TEXAS has a great flag, with tons of genuine historical importance riding on it. The design is strong and simple — it's such a good design that Chile used almost exactly the same thing. I think one reason Texans are always quick to consider secession is that they know they've got a killer flag to use as an independent nation.

Number Three! ALABAMA's flag could also be a nation's banner with no alteration. It's such a straightforward design I'm actually surprised no other polity grabbed it long before Alabama was even settled.

Number Two! NEW MEXICO shows how it's done: simple, completely distinctive, and very relevant to the people and history of the State.

But the best State flag of all belongs to . . .

1. ALASKA! It's wonderfully simple, but it throws a nice visual reference to the other boring seal-on-field flags with its blue background, and references the national flag (stars on blue), all with distinctive local relevance. There's even a visual multilingual pun: the stars are the constellation Ursa Major: the Bear. Which in Greek is Arktos, from which the word Arctic is derived. And Alaska, of course, lies on the Arctic Circle. Plus it has bears. The fact that this awesome flag was created by a thirteen-year-old orphan just makes it even cooler.

If you're interested in stories which don't actually involve flags, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

Random Encounters: The Golden Age of Deimos

In the 22nd Century, Deimos is the Solar System's hub of trade and finance. Linked to Mars by an orbital elevator, and occupying an enviable position requiring very little energy expenditure to reach both Earth orbit and the outer planets, Deimos is fantastically rich. Its wealth draws in talented people from across the Solar System — and opportunists hoping to siphon off a little of that wealth for themselves. The tightly-knit Deimos Community tolerates outsiders as long as they remember they are temporary guests, and ignores any behavior which doesn't threaten the safety or profits of the Community's members.

  ENCOUNTERS INSIDE DEIMOS

(Roll 1d20 when moving around inside Deimos, 1d10 when stationary.)

1. Roll Twice and Combine.
2. Plot-Advancing Encounter: Something related to whatever caused you to visit Deimos.
3. Gene-Collector: The Deimos Community is always working to improve its genome, and you've gained a reputation as a person of unusual qualities. The gene-collector would like a sample of your genetic material in exchange for a small fee. She won't give up easily.
4. Meteor Strike! Something big just hit Deimos — alarms are going off, all the pressure doors are sealed shut, and emergency crews are rushing to stop leaks and repair damage. Wherever you are, you're stuck there for a while.
5. Micromegas: An android body controlled by the artificial superintelligence which runs all of Deimos's systems. It can answer any questions, but will probably learn as much as it tells.
6. Military Contractors: Better known as mercenaries, these are the people who run the robots that fight Deimos's commercial wars across the Solar System. They are smart and tech-savvy, but without power armor are no tougher than anyone else.
7. Recruiter: Deimos always needs operatives, agents, and military contractors to go off across the Solar System to do the dirty jobs the Community requires. Are you in?
8. Security Drone: No bigger than a hummingbird, it's keeping an eye on you.
9. Space Squid: Genetically-modified squids patrol Deimos's zero-gravity environment, grabbing trash, hunting vermin, and cleaning every surface. But this one seems to be following you around.
10. Swindler: A temporary resident with a sure-fire business venture that just needs a little liquid capital to launch. The only thing being launched is the swindler, on the next Cycler ship to Earth.
11. Art Project: A surreal nightmare come to life, this edgy artwork could easily be mistaken for a deathtrap, an attack, or a supernatural occurrence.
12. Deimos Community Members: They act like they own the place, because they do. All are physically-perfect geniuses, shareholders in the wealthiest enterprise in human history. If they want something from you, they'll get it.
13. Flood! A twenty-meter globule of water got loose from one of the reservoirs, and now it's wobbling slowly through the corridors and open spaces of Deimos. It fills narrow passages, and in large open areas it's a floating sphere. People or objects may be swept along inside.
14. Holdouts: Some temporary residents try to stay beyond their allowed visit. Living in hiding, surviving on the underground economy, they are ripe for exploitation and quickly become ruthless survivors. You're either prey, or a rival.
15. Hopeful Applicant: A smart, talented, or physically-perfect individual who has crossed millions of miles of space to get here, and hopes to get accepted as a permanent member of the Deimos Community. He'll do anything to be accepted.
16. Martians: Deimos has their world on a string, and they aren't happy about it. These Martian guest-workers are feeling exploited and angry, and could easily be recruited for anything which will piss off the Deimos Community.
17. No Visitors: The area you're trying to enter is off-limits to anyone who isn't a member of the Deimos Community. If you go in anyway, polite but implacable robots will remove you.
18. Strangers' Club: A saloon catering to off-worlders and outsiders — though there's always a few Community members "slumming." Anything goes here, and usually does.
19. Vacant Sector: A series of tunnels and spherical caverns ready for the Community's next expansion. Lighting is dim and scattered, the air is stale — and there are no security monitors watching.
20. Tracks/Aftermath: Reroll to see what you just missed.

SITUATIONS INSIDE DEIMOS

(Roll 1d6 to see what the situation is, then roll on the table above to find out who the parties involved are.)

1. A desires B
2. A wants to capture B
3. A wants B dead
4. A wants to go somewhere
5. A wants to solve a mystery
6. A wants X

If you like stories which aren't set inside Deimos, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

Thurber's List

I've recently been reading a collection of essays and reviews by James Thurber, Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself (which has got to be one of the most unwieldy titles of the past half-century). One interesting snippet is a reading list Thurber compiled in 1949 for his daughter. It's specifically for entertainment and inspiration: "This is not, needless to say, my selection of the Great Books; it is merely intended as a stimulation to a young lady . . ."

Here's the list (drumroll):

Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis

Daisy Miller, by Henry James

Gentle Julia, by Booth Tarkington

Linda Condon, Java Head, and Wild Oranges, by Joseph Hergesheimer

The Wanderer, by Alain-Fournier

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

Invitation to the Waltz, by Rosamond Lehmann

This Simian World and God and My Father, by Clarence Day

The House in Paris, by Elizabeth Bowen

A Lost Lady and My Mortal Enemy, by Willa Cather

A Handful of Dust and Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh

Heaven's My Destination and The Cabala, by Thornton Wilder

February Hill and The Wind at My Back, by Victoria Lincoln

Blue Voyage, by Conrad Aiken

The Bitter Tea of General Yen, by G.Z. Stone

Lady Into Fox, by David Garnett

How to Write Short Stories, by Ring Lardner

The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West

Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathaniel West

Now some shocking confessions. I've never heard of two thirds of these books, and even a third of the authors were unfamiliar to me. I've only actually read three of the books on the list — anyone who has passed through an American high school or college has probably read both The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises, and I also read Decline and Fall by Waugh.

To save my reputation, I would like to point out that I have read books by half the authors. I've read Henry James, Clarence Day, Willa Cather, Thornton Wilder, Ring Lardner, and the two Wests — just not Thurber's selections. I know Booth Tarkington wrote The Magnificent Ambersons, and Alexander Woolcott was a huge fan of Gentle Julia, but I've never even seen a copy of anything by Tarkington.

I looked up the seven authors whose names I didn't recognize. Most of them were Thurber's contemporaries. Joseph Hergesheimer was well-known in the 1920s, but apparently his reputation declined steeply after World War II. Alain-Fournier was a French author who died in World War I, and The Wanderer (Le Grand Meaulnes) was his only novel. Rosemary Lehmann was a British writer on the fringe of the Bloomsbury Group during the 1930s. Elizabeth Bowen was an Anglo-Irish writer, also part of the interwar British literary scene.

Victoria Lincoln was harder to track down; she was a little younger than the others, but had a hit with February Hill in the 1930s. G.Z. Stone was Grace Zaring Stone, who also wrote as Ethel Vance. David Garnett was another Bloomsburyite, and Lady Into Fox was a popular allegorical fantasy of the 1930s, and was even made into a ballet.

It does make one wonder: which contemporary authors will be obscure footnotes eighty years from now? Last year's New York Times bestseller list has 27 authors on it, about the same number as Thurber's list: John Grisham, Michael Connelly, Danielle Steel, W. Bruce Cameron, James Patterson, Lisa Gardner, J.D. Robb, Jonathan Kellerman, William P. Young, Greg Iles, J.R. Ward, David Baldacci, John Sandford, Paula Hawkins, Nora Roberts, Daniel Silva, Debbie Macomber, Sandra Brown, Sue Grafton, Louise Penny, Ken Follet, Nelson DeMille, Stephen King, Dan Brown, Lee Child, Janet Evanovich, and E.L. James.

Of that entire list, only Paula Hawkins stands a chance of being remembered past her own lifetime, and even that's a long shot. Writers are dancing monkeys, and when a monkey stops dancing people forget about it quickly.

(Wild horses couldn't make me opine about which contemporary science fiction and fantasy authors will still be read in 2098. You'll just have to wait and see.)

 

For a mix of stories which will undoubtedly stand the test of time, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!