Hiroshima and Nagasaki—Firsthand Accounts

I recommend these two books:

Why I Survived the A-Bomb by Akira Kohchi.

Mr. Kohchi was sixteen years old when the bomb dropped. Although he was outside Hiroshima when it happened, he walked towards the mushroom cloud in a dutiful attempt to find his father. This firsthand account has disturbing details.

Nagasaki 1945 by Tatsuichiro Akizuki.

Dr. Akizuki worked at a small hospital at the edge of Nagasaki. Since he did not go to the center of the blast, his account is more detached. During his tireless efforts to treat patients, he realized they showed symptoms consistent with exposure to radioactivity.

These are deeply serious accounts that will leave a lasting impression. 

Tearing Down Totem Lake Mall

Most of Totem Lake Mall in Kirkland is getting torn down. I remember before the mall was built, walking in the field where the upper mall now exists with my friend Brian. (Totem Lake was never a real lake, but more of a duck pond.)

Well, now it is getting torn down. You can see how these storefronts were emptied out in preparation.

The truth, is Totem Lake Mall has not been a happening place for years. It was not even a place I would go to write, since the fluorescent lights overhead had an incredible buzzing sound. So now it is getting torn down.

We’re told something newer and better will take its place. I hope so. 

Marissa Meyer at the bookstore

Marissa Meyer, author of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles that started with Cinder, announced at her blogsite that she would be signing books at Third Place Books. Considering her in-depth knowledge of fairy stories, I definitely decided to go.

After she and three other young adult authors did a Q&A session, people rushed to line up for autographs. I ended up towards the end of the line, but it was worth it. They were autographing coloring books featuring themselves and other authors on the book tour. Coloring books!

You can read the autograph, which is what's important

  

(You’ll see how lifelike when you scroll down.) Marissa was glad to see me. Want to know why? Google my name and the word Cress and you’ll see. It’s important to have something intelligent to say, not just, “I really like your books.”

So after the picture, since she does a wealth of research on folklore, I asked her opinion on which country had the original Cinderella story. (It was not originally a European tale.) She said that the earliest written account was in China, but she thought the earliest account of all would have been an oral tradition in Egypt.

I asked, “You mean with the fur slipper?” and she said yes.

(There is an ongoing controversy as to whether the first European writer of the story actually meant to write verre, which means glass, or vair, which means a fur used for clothing.)

That was an enjoyable conversation. If you hear that Marissa Meyer is doing a signing in your area, you really should go see her. 

Stand and Deliver: Julius Caesar and Others

Covenant Christian Middle School is run by a friend of mine. They tend to do a spring program that features recitals and a play.

Here is the school reciting large amounts of scripture by memory.

This went on for a number of minutes without a break. I certainly was not educated that way.

Of course, it’s not all rote memorization. Here are some students backstage, waiting to perform.

I’m not sure their teacher would appreciate that picture as much.

Here they are onstage. They take turns reciting important moments of history and acting out brief scenes.

The main play is an abridged version of Julius Caesar. This featured twenty-four speaking roles, and a lot of action onstage. Below is Julius Caesar.

These handmade costumes show the effort that went into the production.

Below, Brutus (on the right) plots assassination.

This is just part of the stage. The players interact over the entire stage.

After the assassination of Caesar, Mark Antony delivers the speech that supposedly buries Caesar, but actually buries Brutus.

The quasi-busts behind her (one draped with a sash) looked quite solid. They were made from foam core painted gray, then splattered with black and ivory paint. 

As usual, a fantastic evening presented by the students of CCMS. 

Harriet Tubman Edges out Jackson

Success! In a previous blog post, I wanted Andrew Jackson replaced on the $20 bill. At the time, I suggested Frederick Douglass or Chief Joseph.

Instead, the U.S. Treasury made a keen choice in selecting Harriet Tubman. Born into slavery, she went back into slave areas thirteen times to lead other slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad—a series of routes leading to churches, barns, outdoor hiding places, and eventually to freedom. She was nicknamed “Moses of her people.”

public domain 

Don’t know why she was nicknamed “Moses”? Read the Book of Exodus in the Bible.

If you want to discuss the politics of it, please do so off this blog. Here is one site.  

Meanwhile, enjoy this art by Charles T. Webber. 

The Underground Railroad

public domain

My Nominees for the Hugo Awards

For a description of the annual Hugo Awards, look at their official site. My nominees for certain categories are as follows:

Best Novel: Virtues of War by Bennett R. Coles.

I reviewed Virtues of War at this previous post.

Best Novella: “The Coward’s Option” by Adam-Troy Castro in Analog magazine.

I usually don’t review shorter works, but I did here.

Best Short Story: “The Narrative of More” by Tom Greene and “The Museum of Modern Warfare” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

I thought the best short story I read last year was “The Narrative of More.” It is the fascinating account of what seems to be an anthropologist studying a degenerate human colony on a planet. They live by foraging and cannot build a civilization, not because they lack intelligence, but because they are all habitual thieves and liars.

Since the Hugo Awards allow us more than one nominee in a category, I also included “The Museum of Modern Warfare,” where a veteran has to encounter old memories.

Best Professional Artist: Julie Dillon.

  

As I indicated in a previous post, Julie Dillon did a slideshow of her work at Norwescon.  

Norwescon 2016 Part II

So now here are some more pictures from Norwescon, that big science fiction convention in Seattle I attended. Here’s the Dalek that Torrey Stenmark saved me from.

That plant is in the background; it’s not a headdress. That’s also a lesson for writing: do not let the background overwhelm what you’re trying to get across in a scene.

One of the sessions was on how Roman legions fought. As you can see, it was hands-on with authentic shields.

The fellow on the left was the instructor—very knowledgeable. Below is the pagan army.

They’re pretty much just there to get slaughtered.

Here are some Medieval villagers.

NPC means non-player character. In other words, a character in a game that is not controlled by a player—a character that is controlled by a computer or employees of the game company. So they are drolly suggesting that this is a video game, and the woman on the right is not an avatar of a real person.

Medieval themes were very common.

The armor was not normally made of metal, but some of the weapons were.

Here are Perseus and Medusa. These costumes were fantastic.

They were asked to do a fighting pose, though we know they were allies. And if you’re really boned up on your mythology, you’ll know whose head is on Athena’s shield.

Superheroes were popular.

The less traditional comic book figures can have guns.

And here are Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn.

And who is the little figure that Poison Ivy is holding? 

[Permission granted to use any photo on this post, so long as it is labeled “Photo by Mark Murata”]

Norwescon 2016 Part I

I went to Norweson again this year. It’s the biggest science fiction/fantasy convention in the Northwest with a large emphasis on writing. I saw a couple of familiar faces. The artist Julie Dillon was there.

She showed us slides of her fantasy art. I nominated her for best artist in the upcoming Hugo Awards.

I was getting ready to take a picture of a Dalek when Torrey Stenmark walked by.

This reinforced my previous theory that if you stay in one place long enough, the whole world passes by. She reprised her floor costume of Ms. Marvel from last year.

A new face was Adam Rakunas. He is the author of Windswept, a nominee for the Philip K. Dick Award.

Although his paperback novel didn’t win, I rather enjoyed his live reading of an excerpt. I thought I detected an element of Max Headroom in his style, and when I asked him about it afterwards, he said that might have been swirling around in part of his brain. 

[Permission granted to use any photo on this post, so long as it is labeled “Photo by Mark Murata”]

Sniper and Swordsman Join Virtual Forces

Sword Art Online 5 & 6: Phantom Bullet pose a conundrum: Someone is using his avatar to kill other players online. But that’s impossible. If your avatar gets shot, why would you die in the real world?

Kirito, a young man with a mysterious past, is recruited to enter the game and find out what’s happening. He possesses incredible sword skills, to the point that he can use a photon sword to slice bullets headed his way. He encounters a sinister figure who was part of a group he battled in his past—a group that succeeded in killing people in real life. But the old virtual reality headsets have been replaced with new ones that cannot accidentally/on purpose electrocute players. So can this sinister figure really be killing people again?

Sword Art Online 5 

Sinon wields a sniper gun with great skill and confidence. She has the build of an ordinary girl, but she uses most of her points for strength and agility, so she can carry around the immense gun as if it weighed no more than a backpack. If she can just win the Bullet of Bullets championship, she may attain the confidence she needs to overcome a real-life trauma.

She encounters Kirito, whom she mistakes for a girl, since he got stuck in a delicate avatar with long hair. After a rather bitter confrontation over that, she decides to join forces with him, even though she is putting her life on the line. Can they stop the sinister figure before he kills again?

 Sword Art Online 6

Sword Art Online 5 & 6: Phantom Bullet are light novels, which means they are mostly text with a few illustrations. They are written with a future virtual reality so realistic, the writing does not get bogged down with technical details. The players walk, talk, run, and fight with no extraneous explanation of how the tech works.

I mainly read these two works to get familiar with how virtual reality is written nowadays. But I found these light novels to be interesting and satisfying. Towards the end things were a little repetitive, but don’t stop reading—there’s a good twist.

For those of you familiar with Sword Art Online, this occurs after the Aincrad story, but it’s not the Progressive series. (Are we clear?) And now the manga version is coming out in America, which naturally would be more than two volumes. And I first became interested through the anime, but I will not even begin to explain the numbering system for those.