You know, I think I might be getting smarter. Well, realistically, that’s not possible - my neurology is pretty much locked-in at this stage in life, and in fact I’m loosing cells, but I’m better educated than I was, say, 15 years ago. I know more. If I’m not actually smarter, at least I’m thinking better - that’s got to count for something, right?

I have a weird little chill; I feel weird little footsteps on my grave; I have weird little pain in my back suggesting a piece of my long-moldering youth isn't returning: the 1980s just officially ended for me. I finished that Bradbury book I started in 1989.

Back in February I reviewed “Fleet of Worlds” by Larry Niven and Edward Lerner ( http://www.republibot.com/content/science-fiction-book-review-2-%E2%80%9... ) and I was fairly gushing in my review. I was pleasantly surprised - no, more than surprised: I was pleasantly flabbergasted - at how good a book it was. Though I’d known of the book, I was uncharacteristically unenthused about it, and when I finally deigned to read it, I was blown away, and I was very excited at the prospect of a sequel.

I would say that everyone who considers themselves a devotee of Science Fiction should read at least one book like this, were it not for the fact that everyone I know who likes SF already *has* read at least one book like this. I myself have read several, though not in a very long time. I used to love these kinds of 1950s books about how great the Space Age would be once it got going.

Good golly, Gertrude, what a great book! Seriously!

As Republispouse, my wife, is fond of pointing out, I’m always thinking. It’s the way I make my horribly obvious OCD and other mental woes work for me. It’s not enough that I don’t like a particular kind of cheese, or that golf doesn’t appeal to me, no, that’d be too simple. I have to know *exactly* why I don’t like cheese, and why for some reason this particular kind doesn’t appeal to me when, in fact, several other similarly-related kinds do. I need to know exactly what it is about golf that makes me think about suicide as a viable alternative to playing it.

“To Me, the great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff have come out, some people who normally wouldn’t make movies are going to be making them, and, you know, suddenly one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father’s camcorder. And, for once, the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed - forever - and it will really become an art form.” ---Francis Ford Coppola