cherry season in NI

On my walk yesterday, I found that the cherries growing at the side of Springfield road were at their perfect stage of ripeness.

Had a snack... 

Updates

 Just now updating my blog. 

Besides being away from it for too long, many of the links were obsolete. I've just got rid of a lot of them. I had a very long list of links to other blogs that I used to follow, a lot of them no longer existent. Rather sad. I spent many hours at sites such as Next Wave, etc. I'm surprised that archaeologists weren't using my site to study the history of the Internet!

Also I've added links to a couple of my more recent books.

I should issue a disclaimer: I don't have an obsession with rats. It isn't lost on me that two of my recent series include "rat" in the title. Only the most recent series features actual rats. Had I written Rat Queen first, I wouldn't have named the earlier series Rats in the Cellar. That one isn't about rats at all, but only as a metaphor.

Limerick Time

Reinventing the Wheel

  when willie reinvented the wheel

  we all laughed and called him a schlmiel

      then it so happened

      that he took out a patten

  now it's his licence fees that make us reel

French

  A lass named Polly McKenzie

  Took French, because it was trendy

     When asked to romance

      a gentleman from France

  she went into a parles vous frenzie 

  Parisian life he offered, she took it,

  but now, she's a pity to look at

      'cause dear Polly, poor wench

      all she'd learned of her French

  was 'silver plate' and 'mercy bucket'

The Perfect Program

The Perfect Program

  A world where it doesn't rain

  save there are umbrellas for all

  Where, only on the house of the evil doer,

  would a tree ever fall

  Where bad people look gruff and mean,

  but good men all stand tall

  ...in your dreams, maybe

  A life of harmony and love that begins with just one kiss

  Where all is well that ends well,

  and ever after we'll live in bliss

  When good things come to those who wait,

  with never even a miss

  ...only on TV

 No matter the problem,

 we're sure there's always a way

  Nothing but nothing is impossible to those who dare to say

  'Human brawn and whit, my friends,

  will surely save the day'

  ...hee hee hee

  A Chicken in every pot,

 a pot on every table

  Justice for all, and a job

  for everyone who's able

  I'll just wave my wand

  and make the economy stable

  ...vote for me

   What we do will save the world

  from poverty and despair

 We'll right all wrongs and adjust the scales

  so everything is fare

  We'll punish the bad, reward the good,

  and show the poor we care  

  ...wait and see

      ...just wait and see

  Well, we abolished humanity because it's bad

Some said, 'Oh my! Why, that's so sad!'

  But really, it's the only choice we had

  ...for a perfect world, you see

The Shechinah

This is a project that I've been working on for close to half my life. At least the very first chapter - or module - is based on a set of notes that I came up with about 1993, to teach to a small group of co-workers, the staff of a slum day care centre in an obscure corner of Bangkok. The inspiration for it came a few years earlier than that, during my time of founding a couple of churches in Southern Thailand (Prachuab province), as something that would both help new believers to be grounded in the faith, as well as go onward to be leaders, teaching others what they've been taught. 

As I was slowly working away at it, it grew, first, to a set of three or four study outlines that I used to teach a class at a Bible Training centre where I was at the time (CFTI). Later, after I had added more modules to it - still in the form of study outlines - I published it as Tishbyte Foundational Bible Study Series. 

More recently, I have rewritten it in long form, but adding discussion questions, and using a lighter outline format at the start, that doubles as a table of contents. Thus, the TOC doubles as an outline for reviewing, or simply using for teaching notes.

The blurb probably describes it best:

“How can I be a better Christian?”

By getting your focus off yourself, and falling in love with God’s plan to dwell among humanity. That, indeed, is what the whole Bible is all about: GOD DWELLING AMONG HUMANITY.

In this book we explore and observe how the whole of the Bible is saturated with that desire of God’s heart. That, by itself, should change your life and motivate you to become a part of what God is accomplishing in the world today.

My hope is, once you’ve done a thorough study, aided by this book, you will not only have the motivation, but also the tools to move forward and assist in establishing God’s Kingdom wherever you are, as the Breath of God energises you.

This is not about getting you to join any particular movement or church group. The idea is to to enable you further - where you are right now - by sharpening your understanding of what the Old and New Testaments are really about, and motivate you to fall in love with the Kingdom of Jesus, the Messiah, who is the Shechinah - the dwelling of God.

This study series in one volume can change your life, and give a new direction. If you’re already going in the right direction, it’ll give you all the more “oomph” you need.

Further to that, while I do feel that Seminary and Bible School education is valuable, I also honestly believe that if one were serious enough, stuck to it, and went through this - preferably as a part of a group - one would come away with the tools to lead, mentor, pastor, or engage in whatever aspect of the five-fold ministry God has called one to. That's not to say that it replaces any need for human input - it doesn't. We're called to build one another up and to be accountable to one another; but at least this should serve as a vital tool. 

For the purpose of expressing where I am coming from, and where I got all this, I've also written a very long bio, which you can find on my website, titled, My Journey So Far. In the front page of my website, It's introduces as My Very Long Bio (warning: very long). Indeed, as of my last update, it's reached the length of a novella.

 Rats in the Cellar is now a quadriligy. The first in this series is a free download if you click on the link labeled "ePub edition" on my website. 

Book description:

Oscar just wants to get home to his own universe, where everything is the way he’s used to.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to go down those stairs in the cellar, but the cat led him down. Now, he’s in what seems like the same house, but things are subtly different. And there’s a copy of himself. He tries to go back the way he came, but it’s different again. His dad is a crook, and his mother says things he never heard her say before.

He meets yet another copy of himself who knows what’s going on, and becomes his best friend. He explains it to him: he’s lost in the multiverse. His only option is to live like a rat in the cellar, exploring all the worlds until he finds a copy of his family that most suits him. If his bedroom isn’t vacant, he could live like a twin to whoever is there - maybe. But his friend seems to know more than he’s saying.

He makes a start on his search, and then comes back to find that the world where his best friend lived, has been nuked. Other worlds have political unrest and riots. In some, his paedophile uncle has broken out of prison, and a few copies of him are now also roaming the multiverse. In all the worlds, the economy is bad, and the police only protect those who can afford to pay them.

Oscar’s own world wasn’t a paradise either, but at least it was home. He wants, very badly, to find his own world, and his own parents; but the cat has different ideas. There’s only one of the cat.

If you like time travel stories with a surreal twist, you’ll love this novella, which you can read in one evening. Download the first in the series now, and begin your journey.

global warming is

 just the end of the ice age

  so the penguins say

#haiku

haiku

Here's a sample I wrote impromptu for my English class students while teaching them haiku:

this crazy teacher

  wants me to write a haiku

  I've no idea how

another one

 As I said a while ago, I'm trying to get back to posting regularly on this blog. 

There is quite a lot that I could be adding to it just to catch it up to date, but too much at once wouldn't be a good thing. I will say that I have been regularly keeping up my main website, Robby's Books with a full list of my books, and recently, also my book formatting website, Robby's eBook Formatting. I'm hoping to start doing more book design for customers. 

I'll also take this opportunity to call your attention to my most recently published space trilogy, The Rat Queen. 

Very brief description:  

A feral child - a refugee from a doomed planet - now living with the rats on a space station run by hostile aliens. She’s the key to human survival

Longer description:

Aliens have a longer life span and therefore they know: Just because one generation of humans is settled and content, doesn't mean their spoiled brats won’t grow up, undo their progress and repeat the atrocities of previous generations. Since humanity became a space faring species, the pattern hasn’t changed, only the extent of the damage. Now, human survival is in the balance…Enter: the Rat Queen

As I said, it's a trilogy:

 I've been neglecting this blog for quite a while. 

Mid-year resolution: to do more with my blog and keep it active and interesting. 

If I don't have anything compelling to write, I may just add a drawing, or a haiku, or a limerick, or something like that.

I do have a few things I could say, but for now, 

Review of The Definition of Death

The Definition of Death by Eric Wolf

(click the title for the Amazon.com page. Click here for Amazon.co.uk) 

If you're looking for detective fiction where the hero expertly separates the clues from the red herrings while twirling his iron, and always gets his man, this isn't it. Too much real life. Why, Zack even has a fear of actually using his gun! But it's the "real life" that makes this book a winner. 

While the town of Aguas Calientes is fictional, the culture and the social landscape are very real - heavily influenced by Spanish, Mexican and Pueblo culture. It is home to many, has a lot to love about it, but it's dying due to the drug trade, greed and corruption. Eric Wolf writes as one who lives in that part of rural New Mexico, as well as having a background in nursing. 

When we're not following Zack through the sleazy parts of town doing police investigation, or in the double wide mobile home that he shares with his wife, Eric shows us the hospital where Zack's wife, Liz works as a nurse with some of the other characters like Joe, a male nurse, and a doctor of questionable character, Dr Surabian. Quite a lot of the plot unfolds in that hospital, and Eric's nursing experience lends its authenticity. 

Also in the hospital is the comatose Gilbert Garza, maybe suicide victim, maybe murder victim - or not - depending on what's the Definition of Death. Dr Surabian, for reasons of his own, has chosen to keep him going on a ventilator, though he's brain dead. 

Gilbert Garza, who lived next door to the doctor, was a drug dealer, an addict, and a general troublemaker. Any of a number of people could have had a motive to murder him - if he was indeed murdered - and not many are sorry to see him go. But he was found unconscious after an unsuccessful attempt to hang himself, and is in the ICU, brain dead, but being kept alive for whatever reason. Zack and the detective begin by searching his adobe hovel for links to the drug trade, but the case develops into much more. 

In fact, the dead-but-not-dead man in the ICU is the lynchpin to a lot of the bad things happening to that town. There's a lot to love about rural New Mexico, as well as a lot to despair of. Eric Wolf skilfully brings it to the surface.

The Darkling Wind - The Surreal Climax

 The Darkling Wind by S. P. Somtow

It's the last in the series of sequels, but don't fret - still some prequels to go, some yet to be completed. It is quite a climax. The Throne of Madness makes its presence felt in all it's - well - madness, adding a surreal quality, what with a winged boy and other manifestations randomly appearing in various scenes. If you've been keeping up with the series, putti made their appearance in The Throne of Madness, which is also where Kelver comes into union with that side of cosmic reality - the side the other Inquestors choose to ignore - the side that will bring the fall of the Inquest. 

But this is not Kelver's story, as much as it is Jenjen and Zalo's, whom we met in the third installment, Utopia Hunters. Zalo, the playwright, plays a minor role in that one, but here, he takes one of the leading roles, as he leads a planet in resisting the will of the Inquest. The two remain on the front line as more evil is done in the name of good, in the final game of Makrugh to end all Makrugh. 

Besides the Throne of Madness, two other forces to be reckoned with are the mind of the Delphinoid (the brain that drives the ships through the Overcosm) and Shtoma, the sentient sun, who has been maintaining the one Utopia that is the bane of the Inquest. As in every good story, there are also the ultimate "good guys" and ultimate villains - but watch carefully as some of them trade places. 

So, it comes to a climax. I suppose it wouldn't be a spoiler to say the Inquest falls - after all, Davaryush and Varuneh have been saying it since Book One. But is there life after the Inquest? Millenia later scholars doubt there ever was an Inquest.

So… a great climax to a great series. 

Review of Another Avitar

 

Another Avitar by S P Somtow

Not only do Superman, Wonder Woman and Bat Man have secret identities, but so, apparently, do the entire Hindu Pantheon. Krit's identity was unknown even to himself. As far as he knew, he was only an orphan boy living in an orphanage in middle of Klong Toey, Bangkok's largest slum community. Then, fellow deity Ganesh in the guise of his English teacher enlightens him. 

On one hand, he's awakened to some new powers; on the other, he's just a kid, and an orphan one at that, with a propensity for mischief. He fumbles around, enables his fellow orphan to win money in the lottery, and other antics, until the English teacher cum banana-scarfing elephant god begins to teach him a few things, starting him on the path of what promises to be a series of novellas spanning his new career - set in seamy Bangkok, sprinkled with humour and irony. 

Bangkok is a fascinating place, as I can attest as one who has lived there much of my life. I've even worked for a short spell at the children's institution in Klong Toey that sort of inspired the setting. 

I expect great things from this series. 

Review of Somtow's The Utopia Hunters

Utopia Hunters

 

It's a collection of stories, each casting its light of meaning on to a bigger story; that inhabited by a young female artist named Jenjen. Through the stories, each told by the Rememberer, Tash, she slowly comes to understand the particular point in history in which she finds herself; namely, the beginning of the fall of the millenia old empire of the Inquest.

Those who have been reading the Inquestor series already know some of the characters of the stories: the Inquestor Ton Elleran, Sajit, Veruneh, Siriss, Aryk; some appearing both in their stories and in the overall story - Ton Elleran in particular. 

From the collection of stories, we can now piece together Elleran's life history. They help Jenjen discover what made Hokh Ton Elleran into the sad, tragic old man she meets as an eight year old in the opening chapter. 

Some of the stories confuse her further, revealing the cruel side of the High Compassion, casting Ton Elleran as no better than the rest: but they also show the view he has from the inside, and his conviction that the Inquest must fall.

Jenjen realises her part in it, as an artist, and she fulfills her role.

In the same way, this book fulfills a unique role in the Inquestor series, following the logical progression of the bigger story, but at the same time, creating a diversion by sprinkling in the smaller stories, some of which have been published in various Scifi journals during the heyday of classical science fiction.

A good read...

A step into Uncharted Scifi

S P Somtow's Light on the Sound 

After reading or watching so much space fiction, when it seems like all the possible scenarios have probably been used at some time or another, and space warriors remind you of the US Marines, and the future of the galaxy is English speaking white, from S P Somtow's Inquestor Universe comes a breath of fresh air. 

Light on the Sound is the first in the series, though it's the third one I've read and reviewed. It begins with a piece of prose describing a feature of a habitable planet like nothing ever imagined by the aforesaid works of space fiction, a gigantic covered crater with a dense atmosphere, in which swim - or fly - the delphinoids. These are a giant fish-like (or bird-like) creature with giant exo-brains (is that a word?) that give them a consciousness of the overcosm - that network of logical lines that links every part of the galaxy, enabling faster than light travel. Only the delphinoids know how to navigate the overcosm, but they don't. They just fly about their massive "sunless sound" singing about it, emitting both light and sound that would drive ordinary humans mad for their sheer beauty. 

A delphinoid, connected to the right technology, is useful for enabling a space ship to navigate the overcosm. The only ones that are able to catch them are a race of deaf and blind humans, who have been doing this for many millennia , as part of their culture. The sunless sound is their whole universe. 

After the opening prose, the world opens up further through the eyes of 14 year old Kelver, a common peasant boy, whose life begins to take a totally unpredicted turn. That has to do with his meeting the second main character in the story, a girl from the other side of the "sky wall", the great dark area where the delphinoids live. 

Her people have been innocently hunting the noble creatures which they can neither see nor hear for millennia, thinking they are guiding them home. However, Darktouch has a "birth defect"; she can both see and hear. She hears the song of the delphinoid on her first hunt, and realises something is very wrong. 

So, there's that proverbial question, "How do you describe colour to one blind from birth?" Somtow skilfully describes her sensations through her point of view in a world where there are no words for sight and hearing, and she thinks something is wrong with her. Even for the seeing, it's a dark world, so the difference isn't as profound as it would be outside. But there's enough to start her on her journey. 

The third main character (actually the second in order of appearance), is the Inquestor, Ton Davaryush, who has just been appointed King of the planet. Through him, we discover the ins and outs of the Inquestral universe, the Dispersal of Man, the god like status of the Inquestors, and their guiding philosophy of High Compassion. However, Ton Davaryush has also known something is badly wrong, ever since his encounter with a sentient star. 

Then, there's Lady Varuneh, an equally interesting character. All their paths cross, and they set out together, determined to right all the wrongs. Their path twists and turns, they discover things… 

But the reader also discovers life beyond warp-speed and planetary colonisation. Even in listing the concepts involved in this story, I've only scratched the surface. This is certainly a worthwhile read, and a first step into a new world of hitherto uncharted science fiction.

Being Two: a review of P Somtow's Homeworld or rhe Heart

If you've read any of the others of Somtow's Inquestor series, you'll remember Sajit as the wisened musician, a character as only a virtuoso as Somtow Sucharitkul could invent, who  under the patronage of the Inquestor Ton Elloran, has creat a music lover's paradise. In those earlier stories, we learn only enough about him to wish we could learn more. And now, here's our chance to do just that. We meet Sajit as a ten-year-old. 

However, my advice here is, don't rush headlong into this one unless you've read at least one of the earlier books in the series. Any of the first two or three will do. They're ok as stand-alone narratives. Things are sufficiently explained in those that you need to know before beginning Homeworld of the Heart - things like, what is an Inquestor? Why their obsession with utopias? Their cosmic game of makrugh, child soldiers with their deadly laser eyes, that vast habitable shell surrounding the black hole in centre of the galaxy, where whole stars are pulled through the gaps at the poles of the sphere; and other things. That's not a criticism. To go through the whole explanation yet again would be tedious. Time to get on with the story, but do your homework first if necessary. It will be well worth it. 

Somtow's multicultural upbringing has left him with a profound ability to understand yet other cultures, and he uses that to full advantage in the inquestor series. I particularly appreciate that aspect, as I'm a bit that way myself. It is good to see science fiction that doesn't assume that the future of the galaxy is Anglo white. 

Because of the name, I tend to picture Sajit as Indian. The cover (painted by Somtow's protégé Micky), however, pictures him more Thai looking. The name could be either - or Khmer. 

The culture, in this case, is both primitive and highly advanced. People travel about via displacement plates (for teleporting), and use other equally advanced devices on a daily basis; and yet they share a taboo with some of the most primitive tribes of earth: twins are considered an abomination. When they're born, one of them must be killed at birth. 

Sajit has something worse than a twin, a "dopple". It was cloned for him by someone very high up, who has an interest in Sajit's future, so that it could be sent in his place when it was time to be drafted as a child-soldier. But Sajit awakens his dopple prematurely, without anyone else knowing, and they bond. He names his dopple Tijas. 

The story of not-one-but-two Sajits takes many an intriguing turn. There are expectations of Sajit's future that run contrary to his own longings; there's a planitary crises that's the result of the great game of cosmic chess - complicated by a bureaucratic error (and of course, the gods don't make mistakes); there are relationships complicated by time dilation; and more. All the while, Somtow keeps us glued, all the while imparting to the reader the aspirations and longing of the two boys for each other. Love does what love requires, even if it's fighting each other to save the other's life.

He weaves it all to a climax, but their story isn't over. There's more to come in another sequel.