Sunday, August 24, 2008

Chapter 2. The first day of class.

I’m not going to say that Badiah Sinclair wasn’t a big improvement over the Gang of Earth. I mean, at least he was one of us.

And all that propaganda that came up from Earth calling on us to overthrow Sinclair and restore their boys to power? Did they think we’re nuts? Sure, he turned out to be a tyrant, too, but he was our tyrant, you know?

Ray Kaliber said it was all about the power and who had it. We just figured nobody needed to have it in the first place.

I mean, power to do what? run our lives? decide how we’d take care of our land and property? We figured the best way to handle the people’s business was for each of us to mind our own business.

What’s that? Oh, yeah, I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Sirius 4 was one of the first settlements established after the ImagDrive became practical. You know all about ImagDrives, right?

Oh.

OK. Here’s how it works. I cribbed this from another book about the events of this era, so it’s pretty reliable:

“It goes back to the old days when scientists were trying to develop a way to go faster than the speed of light, seeing as otherwise most of the universe was years and even centuries away.

“They tried for years without success until the historic day when someone in R&D at what is now ImagCorp threw up his or her hands and said. ‘This is nuts. I can’t imagine how we’re going to achieve faster than light speed.’ And the proverbial light bulb went off. Imagination was the key!

“They reasoned out the first tenet of imaginary physics: The power of the imagination is unlimited. Therefore, an engine powered by the imagination theoretically could travel at unlimited speeds. The trick was developing a computer with an imagination to power the engine, but once that was accomplished, the galaxy opened up."

So anyway, Sirius 4 was one of the first settlements established after the ImagDrive became practical. One of the more totalitarian Earth governments — that was most of them by then, so for our purposes here, it doesn’t really matter which one — was in charge.

The main purpose of these Earth governments was to keep the people who ran things rolling in comfort. So they went around collecting what were called taxes in exchange for services people could get cheaper if they did it themselves, but they made it illegal for people to do it for themselves. Yeah, I know it’s kind of hard to explain the concept because we haven’t lived that way for years now.

How did taxes work and why did people put up with it? Believe me, the less said, the better — I’d hate to give somebody ideas. Let’s just say that the higher the tax, the more likely somebody will lift up and say, “You know what? It’s my money. I’m going to keep it.” Kind of like the cookie incident.

But the government did stuff that was a little unpleasant or inconvenient for the average citizen, like wage war and collect the garbage, so people put up with it — as long as the government didn’t get overly pushy about it. Of course, sooner or later all governments get a little too pushy.
So our story picks up that day when things got one-step-over-the-line too much for us.

* * * * *

Ray Kaliber was never a guy to force his way of thinking on anybody, but it was a long time before he could put it all into words. Then he started studying the lives of Mohandes Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and that study brought him back to Henry David Thoreau, and stuff just kind of melted into place from there. Who’d really have thunk that the guy who hauled all of that nonviolent thought together and crystallized it into action would spring out of a world as harsh as Sirius 4? But there you have it.

One of the first things that opened the door in Ray’s mind was reading Thoreau’s account of when he was arrested — that would be July 23, 1846, a couple-three centuries ago now. Old Henry David had not paid his $1 poll tax in six years or so, and the gendarmes finally were sent to lock him up.

Imagine Ray Kaliber’s brain exploding when he first read those words Thoreau wrote: “... as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up ...

“I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar ...

“As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

“Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest ...”

Right then and there, back on Earth in the middle of the 19th century, the wheels were set in motion for what was going to happen 8.6 light years away on independent Sirius. First the wheels had to start turning in Ray Kaliber’s head, and it’s a good thing he loved to read.

You probably don’t need me bugging you with my opinion s all the time. I’m going to slip into omniscient narrator mode, starting here, and just tell you the story of what happened. Some of these conversations later on, I witnessed myself, but most of them are reconstructed from what I’ve learned talking with everybody involved and with Ray himself.

Now, some of this stuff is going to sound a little unbelievable, but that’s the funny thing about real life. Sometimes what really happened is better and crazier than anything you might have wanted to make up.

And here’s the first example of that: The day the ruling government went one step over the line also happened to be the day Ray Kaliber met the love of his life.

* * * * *

The day the government went one step over the line, Raymond Eric Kaliber was outside. The sky over Sirius 4 was a lot more pale and orange than it is now, because the oxygen-nitrogen generators were still only two or three decades into their work — despite what you see in those old movies, you don’t terraform a planet in 90 seconds — but the atmosphere always was more or less condusive to breathing. It just made more sense in those early years to live indoors; that’s why the encampment was mostly enclosed in those days.

As everyone knows nowadays, Dr. Ray Kaliber was a 27-year-old associate professor of political science at the University of Sirius 4. It was the first day of the fall semester and he wanted to show the students how free and casual he liked to run things, so he’d taken the gang outside and planned to teach the class on the beach across the bay from an oxy-nitro generation station.

He had the class list and, as was his habit, he was calling on the students at random rather than follow the list in alphabetical order. So the fourth or fifth pick was from near the end.

“Buffalo Springsteen?”

“Here.” You could tell by his reaction that he was a little surprised to see that the voice belonged to a woman. She had long, semi-curly auburn hair; I’d probably describe her as average cute, but he saw her in a different light. He’d claim years later that Buffalo Springsteen was the most beautiful woman ever to give him the privilege of sharing intimate time — but as for these first few moments when she was still just a student in his class, he would later say he immediately was arrested by her eyes, which kind of flashed brown with golden tinges of some sort. And as you’ve already heard, he didn’t have a problem with the idea of being arrested.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, she was 23. This was a class for seniors. We’re not exactly talking cradle robbery here.)

“Do you go by Buffy?” the prof inquired, innocently enough, and he could see by that flash in her eyes that it was the wrong question.

“No. I prefer Buffalo,” she said in a tone clearly intended to settle the issue once and for all. There may have been a titter or two among the other students. She didn’t seem to care.

“That’s an interesting name for an attractive woman, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Kaliber said.

“Thank you,” she replied uncomfortably. “Some people think my parents had a sense of humor, but I’m proud of the name just as it is.”

“Oh, come on, Buffy, lighten up,” said a male student nearby — near enough that it wasn’t particularly hard for her to reach out, grab him by the front of the shirt, and draw him so close that the only thing in his field of vision was that auburn-framed, average-cute face twisted into an extremely vicious snarl.

“I really can’t emphasize this strongly enough,” she hissed. “Don’t — call — me — Buffy. I prefer Buffalo!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ray Kaliber strode over to the two students and pulled on their shoulders to separate them gently. “OK, Ms. Springsteen, you’ve made your point. Let’s have a little more decorum.”

“Jeez, what a psycho,” said the young man, which caused her to lurch in his direction again. Fortunately for him, the professor’s hand was lingering on Buffalo Springsteen’s shoulder just in case, so she was unable to complete the thought.

“I think you’re a little more thin-skinned than you need to be,” Dr. Kaliber said as he resumed his place in the center of the class. “But I will call you Buffalo, when I’m not calling you Ms. Springsteen.”

The rest of that opening roll call is lost to history, being relatively routine. The boy who made fun of Buffalo’s name turned out to be named Carson McGillicudy, so I guess he knew something about lightening up over his parents’ naming decisions.

“Now we had a little incident here a minute ago, and before I get into the syllabus, I’m going to use it as what we educator types like to call a teaching moment,” Kaliber told the class. It was a great day to have class outside; a small breeze tousled his blondish-brownish hair a bit and his easy smile made him an instant favorite among the female members of the class. “Now Buffalo here had a differenc e of opinion with young Mr. McGillicudy, and she chose not to use diplomacy in resolving those differences.”

Here it came. Although he wasn’t yet what you’d call a public figure, the students at the University of Sirius 4, especially the politics majors, were well aware of Dr. Kaliber’s devotion to the concept of nonviolent civil disobedience. So it was kind of cool to get a taste of his whacked-out philosophy on the first day. (Hey, in those days most people thought it was whacked out, so he wouldn’t mind my saying so.)

“I’m going to throw out the proposition that Buffalo Springsteen accomplished nothing by going after poor Carson here physically,” Kaliber said. “No, actually, I’m going to say that she produced exactly the opposite of what she hoped to accomplish. What do you think, McGillicudy?”

“I don’t know, Dr. Kaliber,” Carson replied ruefully. “I don’t think I’m ever going to call her Buffy again.” The class laughed at that, and so did the prof.

“Yes, but here’s the funny thing about that — did she change your mind about whether ‘Buffy’ is an appropriate nickname for someone named Buffalo?”

“No, of course not.”

“You got it,” Kaliber said. “She didn’t change your beliefs — in fact, I believe you used the word ‘psycho.’” Even Buffalo smiled at that. “My point is that violence might force people to change their behavior, but it can’t change their minds. The most brutal regimes in the history of humanity have all faded to dust eventually, because you can’t brutalize an idea out of existence.”

“Hang on a second,” McGillicudy persisted. “A lot of those regimes got overthrown violently. I mean, how else do you get rid of violent oppression if not by violence?”

“Good question. That’s a big chunk of the syllabus, so we’ll get to that in a minute. For now, let me suggest that you recognize the names of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King faster than the names of Nathuram Godse or James Earl Ray. The men who fought for freedom without raising a hand in violence live on in our memories more than the men who killed them.”

“We remember Hitler and Stalin, too,” Buffalo Springsteen interjected.

“True.” Kaliber sighed. “I’m off on a tangent. My point is simply that you can force Carson not to call you by a nickname, but you can’t force him to change his mind. Changing minds is a more complicated process. That’s why so often you’ll find that a violent revolution only results in a new violent regime, sometimes more violent than the old one.”

As if on cue, about a hundred space ships buzzed over the beach just then, each of them emblazoned with the insignia of the government that was in charge of the encampment of Sirius 4.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Imaginary Revolution: Chapter 1

Shhh ... Coming Oct. 15, and you will also be able to hear chapters on Uncle Warren's Attic, thanks to Warren Bluhm the podcaster. Let me know if you happen to find this — and let others know. Viral marketing, doncha know.

The Imaginary Revolution

TENETS OF IMAGINARY PHYSICS
1. The power of the imagination is unlimited.
2. Matter still can’t be created or destroyed.
3. What’s done is done.

Chapter 1. The matter of the cookies.

Let’s get one thing straight from the start: Despite everything that’s been written about him — and most of it is true — Raymond Eric Kaliber was not a saint. He probably would be the first one to tell you that. But what he managed to show about the need for bosses probably qualified him for sainthood in half the religions in the galaxy, and the other half are the religions for people who are clueless to begin with, if you don’t mind my saying so.

Who am I to say so? I’m somebody whose opinion matters — but don’t take my word for it. See, that’s just the beauty of what Ray had to show us. I only met him once during his lifetime, although I saw and heard him speak as much as anyone who was alive then, and I’ve done a lot of reading and studying, so what I’m going to tell you about in this book is my educated opinion. Still, you’re not going to get the complete picture of Raymond Kaliber from one darn book, so go educate yourself about the man and draw your own conclusions.

“I think I’m onto something,” Kaliber would tell anyone willing to listen, “but never take one guy’s word for anything. Check it out yourself.” The good news for Sirius 4 is enough people checked it out to make a difference in the long run.

It’s common knowledge that Ray Kaliber and Badiah Sinclair were childhood buds, so it’s a little strange that the cookie incident isn’t more widely known, but heck, it gives me something to start my book with, so I’m not complaining.

Raymond Eric Kaliber was not one of the first babies born on Sirius 4, so his childhood was fairly unremarkable. Other than the reading he started doing when he was a teenager, there’s not much to say about his youth. He wasn’t abused by his parents, didn’t get into massive trouble although he did the usual stuff that kids do — the same mistakes you and I made with the opposite sex and a few products and activities that young people are supposedly too young to handle. What I’m trying to say is that Ray Kaliber was no more or less a saint than any of us. I suppose he and Badi spent a little more time playing with ImagGames than many kids — like many future leaders, they were a bit nerdy. Nothing wrong with that, I say; all that reading and game-playing and such probably made them more ready to do the kinds of things they would be doing later on.

They were close to inseparable for a few years there, starting when they both were around 8 or 9 years old, and I think the cookie incident must have happened when they both were about 12. I’m thinking that because it wasn’t enough to break their friendship, so they must have had enough good times built up that one nasty thing wasn’t going to make them not-buddies. Still, it changed things pretty much forever, and in the long run that’s a good thing. Think of how much different history would be if Ray Kaliber ended up on Badi Sinclair’s side.

Hey, I’m getting way ahead of myself, aren’t I?

They were both around 12. Ray Kaliber was on his way home from the store with a container of cookies. You know those huge chocolate chip cookies bakeries make, the ones that are so sweet and just a little crunchy and the chocolate chips kind of explode in your mouth? Yes, those cookies. Ray had bought a sixpack of them and was walking home along one of the main corridors.

In those days the encampment at Sirius 4 was already pretty darn sprawling. In fact, even though outsiders still referred to it as “the encampment at Sirius 4,” it really was a medium- to larged-sized city, and in fact there were already more than one of them. This was less than 20 years before Sirius 4 declared its independence, and the Powers That Be were already thinking of themselves as more of a small country than a colony, even though of course it was all indoors. No one was forcing the issue either way, so it didn’t matter that much at the time. But anyway, Ray was walking down one of the main thoroughfares when his little buddy Badiah Sinclair caught up with him.

“Hey, are those cookies?” Badi asked after the usual kid pleasantries were exchanged. You know, “Hey, I finally figured out how to get past the ogre who guards the dragon nest, you have to offer him a blah blah blah,” that sort of thing.

“Yeah,” Ray said, prying open the plastic. “You want one?”

“Absolutely.” And then, after a few bites, “We need to share these with the guys.”

“Can’t, sorry, I told my sister I’d bring her a couple, and the others are for Mom and Dad.”

“Screw that, the guys need them more,” Badi said calmly enough.

“No, they don’t,” Ray replied firmly. “I bought these for my family.”

“Your family can have cookies anytime, the guys can’t,” Badi said. That much was true; their friends were less fortunate — although their parents had made the journey to Sirius 4, which wasn’t cheap in those days, so “less fortunate” is a relative term. “It would be a treat for them.”

“They’ll be a treat for my family, too,” young Raymond said. “And anyway, they’re my cookies. I bought them with my money. I decide who gets ‘em.”

Now, that was an odd thing to set Badiah Sinclair off into a rage, but that’s exactly what happened. “Just give them to me,” he said, giving his friend a good shove. When Ray didn’t hand over the cookies, instead looking at Badi with a mixture of hurt and surprise, young Mr. Sinclair made a fist and slugged his friend. Then he slugged him again, and again. The box of cookies landed on the floor, but Badi Sinclair kept slugging, quietly and efficiently.

Ray Kaliber didn’t slug back. He’d say later it just didn’t occur to him to meet violence with violence, even then. He did put his hands up to deflect the blows from the slightly taller boy.

“What are you doing, Badi?” he said in between flinches.

“Teaching you a lesson about being selfish,” Badi replied between blows.

When it ended, Raymond Kaliber was sitting awkwardly against the wall, breathing hard and coughing a little bit, tears streaming down his cheeks, and Badiah Sinclair, also breathing hard but standing, was reaching over to pick up the plastic box of cookies.

“I’m sorry, Ray,” he said with sincerity in his voice. “You should have just shared the cookies.”

“I was gonna,” Ray snapped back. “It wasn’t your decision who I shared with."

“Well, now it is,” Badi said, holding the box firmly in his hand as he walked away to bring a treat to their less fortunate little buddies.

Raymond Sinclair watched his friend’s back.

“You’re still wrong,” he called down the corridor.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Badi had a point. Right or wrong, he had the cookies now and was going to use them for “the greater good.” Ray hadn’t resisted, and that made Badiah feel sort of bad. The way their friends’ eyes glowed when they saw the cookies made the crummy feeling go away, though.

See what I mean? Everything about how Raymond Kaliber and Badiah Sinclair lived their grownup lives is pretty much encapsulated in that one incident. Life philosophies summed up in a fight between a couple of 12-year-old boys over a half-dozen cookies. You’d almost think I made it up, it’s so perfect, except Ray would tell that story himself from time to time. That’s why I’m surprised it’s not general knowledge, but like I said, that way it gave me a good place to start the book. Otherwise I’d be starting the story 15-20 years later and without a decent metaphor.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

The I-Bomb arrives on the market

The Imaginary Bomb, a novel by B.W. Richardson, edited and published by Warren Bluhm, is now available at Lulu.com. You've heard Bluhm's breathless reading, and now you can hold my breathless prose in your very hands.

Buy the book for $11.98 or, if you have to have it now, download it for a mere $7.50. Go ahead. You know you want to.

(Posted Jan. 26, 2008)

Update, 3-17-08:
I've marked down the cost of downloading The Imaginary Bomb to the same price as a hit single: a mere 99 cents. What the heck, you're contributing the paper and ink, after all.

If you'd like the fine folks at Lulu to do all the work, it's a tad more but less stress on your printer. Of course, with the download, you can read it on your screen, too — the electricity's on you. (-8

Monday, March 17, 2008

Richardson & Bluhm update: March

Sorry I've been a bit of a stranger in these parts; I've been working on the book project planned for April 15 release with Warren Bluhm's name on it, and the project has been altered a bit over the past few days.

Originally a collection of short stories named Wildflower Man, I told you last month it would feature two stories he wrote in the mid-1990s about a superhero named Myke Phoenix. Well, the ongoing archaeological dig in his attic revealed three more fully-realized stories, and the tone of these tales is so different from the other short stories that we've spun the book into two projects.

Thusly, we plan to release a 120-page tome called The Adventures of Myke Phoenix, which will feature four "full-length" adventures and a related mini-story, along with a shorter, and therefore more inexpensive, collection called Wildflower Man. Depending on a number of factors, they'll either come out around the same time or within a few weeks of each other.

Listen for more details in the long-awaited Uncle Warren's Attic #48, which ought to be finding its way into a podcatcher near you sometime later this week. And the Richardson/Bluhm projects scheduled for later in the year are still on course.

Of course, while you're waiting for all this, you can always purchase or download your own copy of my Imaginary Bomb, which is certainly the publishing sensation of 2008.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Richardson & Bluhm update

Listening to: Kingdom Comes, Sara Groves

As I told you last month, the plan is to release four books during 2008. The easy one, The Imaginary Bomb, is already available at Lulu.com, and why the bejeebers haven't you ordered your copy yet? You know you've wanted it ever since you finished listening to Uncle Warren's podcast of my inaugural interstellar romp. And thanks to those who've already purchased it to sweep The I-Bomb up to #34,223 at the Lulu marketplace!

The hard one has been the fourth one. Despite a promising start, all I had until a few days ago was a cast of characters — actually a small list of archetypes — and a general feeling that I wanted to write about freedom, revolution, nonviolence and the Zero Aggression Principle. This, my "Great Freedom Novel," is on the plan for release Oct. 15.

Then I realized something important about the early returns on The I-Bomb: Some of the people who really, really like it are bright young men (I know they're bright because they like the book) in that 8-15 age group. I started thinking about Robert Heinlein's so-called "juvenile" fiction — not that I compare myself to Heinlein, but it doesn't hurt to think about his audiences — and wondered what I would want to say to that "young adult reader" audience. Suddenly, as I wrote to a couple of these guys' moms, my brain exploded.

I didn't intend to return to the time of imaginary physics, but here I am. This is not going to be another story about Bob Whelan, Pete Wong and Baxter Hetznecker, but the novel is set in their universe, and it involves Sirius 4's declaration of independence, which plays a key role in The I-Bomb. The working title: The Imaginary Revolution. (A quick search turns up another book with the same name, but I'm guessing they would not be confused with each other. Still, I expect the writing process will suggest an alternative to me.)

A couple of quick notes about the other projects.

+++ Warren Bluhm's collection of short stories is still more or less on track. Working title: Wildflower Man, a collection of short stories. Maybe that'll be the final name, maybe not. Most of these are scribblings he created in the early to mid 1990s, with the major exception of a new short story he just started working on.

Another interesting highlight: Once upon a time he wanted to update and revive the concept of the dime novel, inventing kind of a hybrid between the old pulps and comic books — few or no pictures, but shorter stories. The farthest he got with this concept was a superhero named Myke Phoenix — he actually had two years' worth of stories plotted and several issues in various stages of completion. The book will include the two most fully realized Myke Phoenix stories: "Our Best Hope: The Origin of Myke Phoenix" and "The Strange Ultimatum of Quincy Quackenbos." Target release date: April 15. Gulp!

+++ Our dual-bylined book Refuse to Be Afraid is more or less on track for its target release date of July 15. The main news on this front is UW continues to threaten to record a new collection of his songs for public release, some of which you may have heard on his "Uncle Warren's Attic" podcast. One song you have not heard would be the title song of his collection, which for obvious reasons would also be released July 15: "Refuse to Be Afraid."

The plan today is to sit down and map out a way to get all of the above accomplished by the indicated target dates. One important thing I've learned about goals is that when you make the deadlines public, it generates a real incentive. So as I write this, I have no idea how we're going to get it all done, but I'm telling you now to further my goal to have at least five items on the Richardson & Bluhm homepage eight months from now. Thanks for listening!

Thursday, February 7, 2008

The joy of writing

This will seem a bit odd, but then I hope you've come to expect that from me: I forgot how much fun it was to write the adventures of Bob Whelan, Pete Wong and their mysterious new friend Baxter Hetznecker, until old buddy Wally Conger wrote a nice review of The Imaginary Bomb:
What’s this science fiction novel — at just 24,000 words, it may be more of a novella — all about? Well, it’s a comedic romp posing as an intergalactic political thriller. It’s an apocalyptic space opera told with a grin and a wink. Which isn’t to say that The Imaginary Bomb doesn’t have its share of edge-of-your-seat moments.
All during the last couple of years, since I pulled this old manuscript out of the basement and polished it up for the podcast and book versions, and as I tinkered with the aborted sequel, The Imaginary Lover, it was work. Satisfying work, I must admit, but work. Maybe that's why the sequel barely got beyond some minor tweaking. It took Wally to remind me it was also fun.

I just may slip into my old skin as the relatively omniscient narrator and see if I can find my way back to that "Are we having fun yet?" attitude. Thanks for the reminder, Wally!

P.S. Thanks to everyone for making The I-Bomb #38,157 at the Lulu Marketplace! We have nowhere to go but up ...

Cross-posted to Montag