Reprise of "Jury Duty – A nun, a security guard, and a writer walk into a jury room"

I'm going to write a detailed book review that I'll try to submit to a magazine. In the meanwhile, here is a reprise of a previous post. The only thing that needs correcting is that the underground tunnel no longer has buses go through, only light rail. 

NZ if you're out there, if you find the web version of this, you'll see a contact form on the right. 

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So I was on jury duty for the past two days. Here’s a hint: bring plenty to read and/or a laptop. It mainly consists of sitting around, waiting to see if you’ll be called in to be part of a jury pool. But first, let’s look at the scenery. First a friendly picture, then a scary one.

The tunnel also handles light rail

which accounts for the tracks

A Metro bus went from near my home all the way into the Seattle underground bus tunnel, where there was a stop right below the courthouse. After climbing the stairs (or using the elevator) one emerged with the King County Courthouse less than half a block away. That was handy today, since it was raining.

Now look at the structure below. Does it look like a huge rectangular block is connecting two tall buildings? You’re right. It’s a skybridge, but with no windows. It goes from the courthouse on the right, beyond the building on the left, and ends at the County Jail one building beyond. This is like Con Air, but without the planes. Prisoners can be frogmarched back and forth without using squad cars. This saves time, since downtown traffic can be bad, but it also prevents the prisoners from escaping during laborious loading and unloading from vehicles. If something bad happens in the skybridge, massive steel doors can be slammed shut, trapping the prisoner inside.

Why so serious?

If this doesn’t make you imagine interesting scenes, maybe you shouldn’t try being a writer.

Here’s Seattle City Hall, about a block from the Courthouse. It really looks beautiful during sunny weather, and sometimes they have people selling fresh produce—an offshoot of the famous Pike’s Place Market. Alas, it’s December, so the only noteworthy thing was me taking pictures.

Just beyond it is the Columbia Tower. It’s the tallest building in the state of Washington. It has numerous little restaurants on the first floor, so if you do jury duty in Seattle, I highly recommend it for a fast lunch. I had a nice turkey pot pie at JJ’s Gourmet Burgers.

I call it the Dark Tower

Guess why

So on to jury duty itself. Something like a hundred and forty of us waited around to see if we would be called to a jury pool. The waiting can take hours at a time, so I got a start on a new novel on my laptop (I won’t reveal the title yet). Then forty of us get called in to a jury pool. The lawyers take turns asking us questions to see if we’re biased.

On the way in, the potential juror in front of me recognized someone who happened to be sitting on a bench outside the courtroom. They were so jovial about being in the Courthouse I thought, “Oh great, they’re fellow criminals.” But after he sat down to the right of me in the jury pool, it turned out he was a security guard. They can be asked in a lot to be witnesses to altercations, so his friend waiting outside the court was probably also in security. I felt better.

As the lawyers tried to weed out biased people, they asked questions that didn’t apply to me, such as whether any of us had ever been shot at, would we use a gun in self defense, whether we had bad experiences with police officers. You can probably guess at some of the arguments they were preparing for trial by these questions.

A woman behind me said in a soft voice that she could not imagine using a gun under any circumstances, even if someone was shooting at her. Based on short bios we had filled out on ourselves, the defense lawyer asked her if she was a nun. I wondered what he meant, then he went on to say that he had trouble recognizing her as a nun, since she wasn’t wearing a habit. This was somewhat ironic, since I had watched the stage musical version of The Sound of Music last week and had just ordered the soundtrack.

Based on the answers to the questions, each attorney is allowed to excuse a certain amount of jurors, each hoping to end up with a jury beneficial to his side of the case. Enough people before me were excused that I ended up in the top twelve. Then, even though I replied to none of these general questions, the prosecuting attorney decided to excuse me from jury duty. That puzzled me until I guessed that he wanted the security guard to be on the jury, thinking he would be more likely to convict the defendant. I didn’t see him afterwards in the jury waiting room, so I think he stayed on and became part of the jury for the trial. 

As a last note, in the waiting room for potential jurors, I saw what I thought was a whiteboard for people to write on. It turned out to be some sort of art. If you see some rectangles on the lower left and some blotches of color in the upper right, you’re correct.

I still don’t see why I can’t write on it

There was another piece of art that was simply a photo of a door slightly ajar. Really, that was all there was to it. I wanted to take a picture of it, but since it’s near the entrance to the ladies’ room, I thought would get accused of being a pervert trying to take pictures of women inside. In that case I would have stayed longer in the King County Courthouse, but not as a juror. 

Analog Review

 The March/April 2025 issue of Analog had a number of mystery stories.

The novella “Murder on the Eris Express” by Beth Goder was a somewhat gruesome murder mystery with incredible comic relief by a couple of bots. The captain turns off his ship’s AI, then is found dead a few hours later. The AI, named Mo, is upset at the death and its own lack of memory. The grooves around the captain’s neck will be the key to solving the murder. Meanwhile, Cleaning Bot 444 is disgusted at all the blood and other human debris in the captain’s quarters. He vacuums it all up and disposes of it.

“Mr. Palomar goes to Space” is a funny short story by Hayden Trenholm. Mr. Palomar likes to fill out surveys. Then he is whisked off to Cape Canaveral. He is disappointed to find out he was chosen to go to space as an experiment, because he is very average. At one point he is taped to the wall of a space station to make sure he does not interfere with the professionals.

Kate MacLeod’s novelette “Heat Death” is a vividly written mystery. Although the murder victim is from Mars, this is not really science fiction. He could simply have been from a distant place on Earth. 

The most immersive novella is “The Return of Tom Dillon” by Harry Lang. A colony on Mars has entire cities under pressurized domes. The body of a woman is found frozen and buried from the waist down outside the domes. Detective Hector Kovack has his own stressors, since his brother murdered their mother, and Kovack had to kill him in a shootout. He drinks too much. But he is a dogged investigator, asking questions others don’t, and discarding false leads. He ends up acting more like a private investigator, disregarding rules in his search for the truth.

It's easy to blame a small terrorist group that has been operating on Mars, but Kovack points out the MO doesn’t match the terrorists. Despite the terrorists, Mars has had a low murder rate. A funny moment in this grim story is when a detective from Earth named McGill asks if this could be a copycat killing. The Mars detectives haven’t heard that term before. After the Earth detective explains, Kovack thinks, “What kind of asylum did McGill come from?”

So overall, if you like mysteries, either buy this on a newsstand or find it in a library.

Princess Mononoke

I recently saw Princess Mononoke in a theater. It was a treat to see it on a big screen. I will not  try to summarize the plot, which concerns nature gods in Japan. But for those who have seen it, consider these themes:

The gods are cruel. I know the movie tried hard to make a distinction between a god in its natural state and a god who has turned into a demon. But such a being can arbitrarily decide to wipe out an entire village. When one goes beyond bowdlerized versions of myths and legends for boys and girls, it becomes clear the ancients and the Japanese until relatively recently characterized the gods as cruel.

Mononoke is an allegory. As human civilization advances, especially with the smelting of iron, the gods become weaker and withdraw. This fast-paced drama in its own way shows that as civilization advances, belief in the old gods fades and eventually dies out.

At the same time, the gods are real. Even though this story is an allegory, at the same time it portrays the gods as real. If one offends or even attacks the gods, they react with terrifying fury. Though some movies in the West do the same sort of parallel messaging, Mononoke is non-Western storytelling.

We have seen these characters before. I will go out on a limb and say Prince Ashitaka is the real main character. While on a quest, villagers who did not know him before sense he is a natural leader and are willing to follow his orders. Contrary to some previews, Lady Eboshi of Irontown is not an evil character. She is quite civil and represents scientific and technological advancement. Princess Mononoke is led by her emotions. She helps in healing Prince Ashitaka and is constantly hostile towards Lady Eboshi.

These are archetypal characters that can be found in Medieval morality plays. We have them in Star Trek: The Original Series as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Blossoms

 

Did a 360

An alert light showed on my dashboard earlier this week. (It turned out to be no big deal.) Then I had a bad dream that I was measuring the air in my tires, and a front tire was ten pounds lower than a rear tire.

I think I know the cause of that dream. So here is a reprise of my post from a previous year.

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It was rainy today, and I slowed down to what I thought was a safe speed to go from I-405 south to the ramp for NE 8th, to get to Bellevue Square. There is some familiar metal plate in the ramp that is for access to the storm drains or something. I did a slight jink to the right to avoid it.

My car went into a spin to the right. I couldn’t believe it. I turned the steering wheel into the spin, but it went out of control. I admit I kept my foot on the brake instead of pumping it, but the car has anti-lock brakes. Anyway, as the car did a full 180 and I saw other cars on the ramp avoiding me, stepping on the gas pedal might have been inadvisable.

After another 90 degrees, I might have tried the gas a little, I don’t remember. But I felt the back of the car scrape the concrete barrier on the right of the ramp. That’s probably what slowed the spin. I managed to stop the spin at about 360 degrees, but because of the curve of the ramp, the car was still angled a little into traffic. I immediately put the flashers on, restarted the engine (it had probably stopped in the 180 position, so it didn’t matter if I had tried the gas), and moved it a little farther so other drivers would have time to see me as they came onto the ramp.

My immediate thoughts were on how much it would cost to get a rental car as my car was being fixed. 

I got out into the rain to see what I expected to be the mangled rear bumper. I was astonished to not see any damage. Closer inspection showed a scrape about the size of the palm of my hand, revealing tiny specks of paint had come off, showing the primer underneath. Further inspection showed no other damage.

It drives straight, and nothing odd happens when I take my hands off the steering wheel to brake on level pavement. My view is the scrape against the barrier was providential, since otherwise I could have gone beyond 360 and had the right front end of the car hit, and that would have been bad.

At the Bellevue Square parking lot, I found the right front tire had ten pounds lower pressure than the others. This confirmed my suspicion it has a slow leak, losing ten pounds in somewhat over a month.

Oddly enough, this incident didn’t really bother me the rest of the day. What bothered me was going to the Panda Express at Bellevue Square, having to find a place to sit in the lower part of the mall, realizing I hadn’t gotten a fork, then packing my lunch up to go back up the elevator to get one.

Doxacon

I went to Doxacon, a Christian science fiction and fantasy convention. It was on Saturday, Feb. 8th, in Woodinville, a suburb of Seattle. Its name comes from the fact it was founded by an Eastern Orthodox priest.

Scenery outside

The attendance was somewhat over fifty, compared to a normal six thousand for Norwescon or thousands more for Worldcon.

One of the volunteers running things was Megan.

The day started with a worship service, the Daily Morning Prayer service of the Anglican/Episcopal Church.

Then, while people were getting coffee or tea or finding their seats, a tall woman with long dark hair simply stood at her table. She wore a black sheath with a couple of gold chains at her waist. She didn’t seem to be looking for anyone, so that was puzzling.

She turned out to be SK Ehra, an author and the first speaker. So she had been standing like that to get a feel for the audience. She gave a lengthy, detailed lecture on science fiction, fantasy, and horror. She granted that these can be forms of escapism. But they are a way of going beyond the material universe to grasp truths that we know exist. She used illustrations from a number of books to show such fiction can ask us hard questions about ourselves.

She gave a defense of horror I had never heard before. When horror is done right, it reflects different mental states. If I remember correctly, a person haunted by a ghost may be having guilt for past sins. (Or it could be bad memories. I apologize if I got that wrong.)

Afterwards, I went up to her and said that was the best lecture I had ever heard on the subject, and I had been to many Norwescons and Worldcons. Her lecture was so good because she emphasized the fallen nature of the world.

The Writers Panel was composed of Reece Friesen, Tasha Kennedy, Suzanne Hayek, Aaron Ryan, Rosamund Hodge, and Kevin King. Sorry, I didn’t think to get a group picture. You might look up their books and see what you think.

There were a number of other sessions, some similar to a regular con, some very different. I’m glad I went and experienced something different.

BOOK REVIEW: The Lies of Vampires and Slayers

Jade is a vampire slayer, though she denies it. She comes from a family of vampire slayers, with the inherited ability to sense vampires or blood nearby. But slayers are the hired assassins of the supernatural world, and Jade is through with it. She wants to make a positive difference, so she has left them behind to join the Magical Response Task Force. Teaming up with wizards, were-beings, and vampires, they form an elite force that patrols the streets of Magiford to take on any supernatural rowdies who disturb the peace.

But Jade is not really accepted by her teammates They assume nothing good about her attempts to talk. When she approaches two teammates, who are exchanging friendly insults, “My movement killed Brody and Tetiana’s verbal sparring. Their smiles disappeared when they glanced at me.” (p. 6) What makes it worse is Jade has a phobia of socializing. Her attempts are pathetic, whether with her teammates or ordinary humans in her apartment complex, ending in silence or a few words that don’t sound friendly. When a neighbor holding a baby and a diaper bag tries to talk to her, she just mumbles. Then when the neighbor struggles her way into an elevator, Jade is belatedly able to talk. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I should have—and she’s gone.” (p.74) Going back to the Task Force, Jade has to be careful when she bleeds, because her blood can be deadly to vampires.

Jade turns out to be quite effective. She has enough dexterity that she can climb a chain link fence with a dagger in either hand, then perch on the edge of an open dumpster. She also seems to sprint farther than a normal human can. And when six insects the size of cars invade from the fae realm, six members of the Task Force fight them. Jade doesn’t want to use her handgun, since humans are around, so she stabs two of them to death by herself.

The running gag/slow burn throughout the story is her relationship with an immensely old, extremely powerful vampire named Considine. Jade encounters him and wonders what he is doing in Magiford. He happens to move in next to Jade and calls himself Connor. Since Jade always wears a mask while on patrol and never reveals her name, and since Considine always has his hood scrunched together when outside so only his red eyes can be seen, they don’t recognize each other. Since Jade finds it easy to talk to vampires, they spend time together, each lying about their backgrounds. And so Jade finds someone she can get close to.

K.M. Shea’s The Lies of Vampires and Slayers kept my interest throughout. But it was not because of the quality of the storytelling. It had all to do with Jade’s personality. Her phobia of socializing is realistically described, and her fumbling attempts to do small talk are achingly realistic. This continues throughout the story, and it never gets old.

A couple of supporting characters also never get old. Tetiana is a female vampire from Ukraine. Since vampires live so long, they often do not keep up with the latest technology. When they are supposed to call in to headquarters, she always shouts into her handheld radio, because headquarters are so far away. Grove is a fairy who constantly carries potions. He offers them whenever a teammate gets hurt. Since some are poisonous concoctions he hurls at monsters, his teammates often turn him down.

So the characters are interesting, but the storytelling is not the best. Often, Shea puts in too much detail. She goes to great lengths to describe the clothing of even minor characters, including the color of each item, which just slows down the storytelling. When running with her radio, Jade notes, “I had to slow a little bit so I’d be understandable as I unhooked my radio and pressed the button so I could talk.” (p. 142) These details do not make the scenes more vivid; they just lard them down.

Also—and don’t roll your eyes at this—she often does not separate participial phrases with commas. When Grove hurls one of his potions, “It shattered on impact showering him with golden liquid.” (p. 267) We need a comma between “impact” and “showering.” This occurs constantly throughout the book, and it jerks a reader out of the story.

On a more meta level, The Lies of Vampires and Slayers is part of a shared universe. This is great for her fans, and is a reason to buy more of her books. But it does not always work smoothly. Jade’s Magical Response Task Force is part of the Curia Cloisters. Shea never defines in this particular book what that is.

But overall, Jade has an engaging personality, and the action scenes are interesting. A great plus is that the novel has no sex scenes and no swearing or foul language. I wish more urban fantasy novels were like that.