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Earl Peirce, Jr. (1917-1983)-Part Seven
Peirces in a LineIt's strange to think that the first English colonists arrived in America just four years after the death of Queen Elizabeth I and before Shakespeare wrote his late plays, including...
View ArticleThe Weird Tales Website Is Back!
The website for the new Weird Tales magazine has returned. I don't know when it went up, but it's there for all to see. There are several pages to look at. Readers of this blog might be interested in...
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Flying Saucers from Before the Great War
Six months ago, before the world fell apart, I wrote about the evolution of the flying saucer from nineteenth-century airship to twentieth-century flying disk. Now I write again.It seems to me that the...
View ArticleA Pause
On a Monday two weeks ago I started off into an autumn afternoon that glowed in the golden light of the sun. Before long, rough and ragged clouds rose ahead of me. They were iron-gray, deep and dark,...
View ArticleQuotes for Today from 1984-No. 1
"The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians....
View ArticleQuotes for Today from 1984-No. 2
News Item: "Could heated talk over the dinner table become a HATE CRIME? Lawyers call for offence to be extended to private dwellings--meaning conversations at home could spark police probes and prison...
View ArticleQuotes for Today from 1984 (and Before)-No. 3
Chapter 1.IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH Throughout recorded time [. . .] there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. [. . .] The aims of these three groups are...
View ArticleQuotes for Today from 1984 (and Before)-No. 4
"To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as...
View ArticleQuotes for Today from 1984-No. 5
"We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human...
View ArticleQuotes for Today from 1984 (and Before)-No. 6
From 1984:"You understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me why we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power?"[. . .]He [Winston] knew what O'Brien...
View ArticleQuotes for Today from 1984-No. 7
O'Brien speaks:"How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?" Winston thought. "By making him suffer," he said. "Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is...
View ArticleTo Entropy and Beyond!
Winston Smith has his tormenter in O'Brien. D-503, the protagonist in We, has his in I-330. She is a different kind of tormenter, though, for D-503 is in crazy love with her. We all know about the...
View ArticleHappy Thanksgiving!
I have been writing about some not very happy things, including 1984, one of the most depressing and dispiriting books I have ever read. That's not quite right for Thanksgiving week, so I'll put it on...
View ArticleWhat's Your Vector, D-503?
From We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924): This is merely a copy, word for word, of what was published this morning in the State newspaper: "In another hundred and twenty days the building of the...
View ArticleA Quote for Today from 1969
The chance for a violent revolution in America is always there. There's always that many stupid people. I think it would be a ridiculous waste of time--a typical loser's revolution. Makes me vomit to...
View ArticleStar References
First, the Star Trek reference:Several months ago I wrote about the Star Trek episode "Patterns of Force." I ended with a prediction that John Gill would not be president. Well, it looks like we'll...
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Utopia & Dystopia in Weird Tales-Part One
Man has always sought to embody in literature his visions of a better life.--Frederic R. White, the first line of his introduction toFamous Utopias of the Renaissance (1946) (1)Utopia came before...
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Utopia & Dystopia in Weird Tales-Part Two
Probably the most well-known and certainly the most influential utopian novel by an American is Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy, first published in 1888. It is a Utopia in Time, set in...
View ArticleA Birthday Wish
As you know, my dad died in August. Today would have been his eighty-third birthday. He liked to say that he was FBI--Full-Blooded Irish. His Hanley grandparents came to America from western Ireland in...
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Masks & Hoods on the Cover of Weird Tales
I am out of time in this terrible year of 2020. My series on Utopia and Dystopia in Weird Tales will have to wait until after the new year arrives. In the meantime, I offer this entry in another of my...
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