Fiction, Reading

‘Renegade Swords III’

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This is not a review, but a promotion. I have a story in the recently released anthology, Renegade Swords III. I was approached by the compiler, who paid me a small fee for rights to the story. It was originally published long, long ago in Weird Tales (I was delighted to get into Weird Tales, once upon a time the home of Robert E. Howard’s Conan).

The story is called “Magic’s Price.” It’s about a wizard, berserkers, and a bereaved husband. I know nothing about the other stories, or the authors. But my story alone makes the book worth having. It goes without saying.

Had a melancholy reading experience today. I picked up a bargain e-book, and it started out really well. The prose was excellent, and I liked the characters. I was interested in them. The story drew me in.

Then I came up against the Agenda (or, as you may prefer to put it, my bigotry). The central problem of the story involved a homosexual being blackmailed, back in the early 1950s.

I always cringe when they bring in “gay” themes. Aside from my beliefs on sexual morality, male homosexuality gives me the willies. I think that’s true for all “straight” (what we used to call normal) men, if they haven’t been brainwashed. But I could put up with it as a realistic plot element.

However, that wasn’t enough for the author. He had to make it an issue. Had to preach repeatedly on the importance of normalizing homosexuality, of bringing it into the mainstream.

So, sadly, I put the book aside unfinished.

But it was good enough that I think I ought to at least mention it here: Murder by the Book, by Eric Brown. As I mentioned, the writing was very good. You might enjoy it, if you’re more enlightened than I am.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Sierra Six,’ by Mark Greaney

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Mark Greaney’s Gray Man series, about Courtland Gentry, renegade former CIA assassin, continues with Sierra Six, which combines a contemporary story with flashbacks to his first assignment, twelve years ago, as part of a CIA kill team. The two threads intertwine, more and more tightly as the story goes on, coming finally to a crashing double point.

We start with the flashback, where young Court’s talents as a fighting man are recognized, and the CIA decides to add him to an action team. He’ll be the “Six,” the point man, replacing a string of other sixes who’ve been killed on recent missions. Court is not a team player by nature – it’s hard for him to coordinate with others. Even harder for him to trust others. In training, he keeps messing up. In early missions, he makes costly mistakes. But his sheer talent persuades his superiors to keep him on the team – though his team members don’t like him one bit.

In the present, working as a freelance, he gets hired for an operation in Algiers. In the course of the action he glimpses the face of a man he thought was dead – a terrorist he came up against on that old, first mission. Court has a personal score to settle with that man. And, incidentally, that man is going to murder millions of people if he isn’t stopped.

Sierra Six was a tight, taut thriller that never let up. The action was pretty cinematic – a little implausible, but compelling. I don’t have the tolerance for such stories that I used to have, but I can’t deny it was well done. And I do keep reading the books.

Recommended, for those who like this kind of story. Cautions for what you’d expect.

Music

Sunday Singing: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

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“A Might Fortress Is Our God” performed by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge

We needed a battle hymn this weekend, and there isn’t a better one than this by Dr. Martin Luther, a little known professor at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, in the 1500s.

1 A mighty fortress is our God,
a bulwark never failing;
our helper he, amid the flood
of mortal ills prevailing:
for still our ancient foe
doth seek to work us woe;
his craft and power are great,
and, armed with cruel hate,
on earth is not his equal.

2 Did we in our strength confide,
our striving would be losing;
were not the right man on our side,
the man of God’s own choosing:
dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabbaoth, his Name,
from age to age the same,
and he must win the battle.

Continue reading Sunday Singing: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God →
Authors, Blogs, Socials, Music, Non-fiction

Ukraine Has Something to Fight for, and Other Links

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Poet George Herbert reminds us,
“That all things were more ours by being His;
    What Adam had, and forfeited for all,
    Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.”

Everything I naturally think as mine is Christ’s–my time, my skills, my ambitions, even my sin.

It’s been hard to pull my eyes away from the news since Thursday. I have sought more information than prayer, but my prayers are completed with just a few words. Lord, have mercy on both Ukrainians and Russians, and break of the arms of evil men. Call them to account for their deeds.

God save Ukraine: Before the invasion, many Ukrainians knew what to expect. “Ukraine has been prepared through this crucible of constant pressure that it’s much stronger than people think.”

“Putin’s aggression must not go unchallenged: The invasion of Ukraine should be met with persistence, patience, and confidence”

At 3:03 a.m. Saturday morning, the valiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recorded himself in Kyiv again, saying they would not lay down their arms. This Twitter threads has that video translated as well as the news that Melitopol had fallen. That report is being countered as I write this.

Here are other links you may appreciate.

Cal Thomas on a departed friend from the other side of the aisle.

H. L. Mencken: “People seem increasingly uncomfortable with our essentially contradictory nature.”

Black History Month: Here’s a book I’ve been wanting take up for a few years, because the author is a wise disciplemaker who knows his subject. Free at Last? The Gospel in the African-American Experience by Dr. Carl Ellis has been rereleased as a classic in cross-ethnic, gospel-centered reading.

Jazz Organist: This is not the way I’m used to thinking of organ music. LeDonne remembers jazz organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, who passed away last September. “Is this Mike LeDonne? This is Lonnie Smith and I’m playing at the Village Vanguard with Lou Donaldson and he tells me you have a nice B-3.”

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

Reviews

‘Riders of the Whistling Pines’

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It was a relatively quiet day. Warmer than yesterday and clear outside. I had to do some shoveling again. Not much.

Hey, it’s almost March. In March, you can start hoping for spring. You’ll be bitterly disappointed, but you can hope. At least the sunlight comes in larger packages now, which is nice in a time of inflation.

As I’ve mentioned, I like to have the TV on while I’m doing translation. Especially old B-westerns. I very much enjoy B-westerns. They’re cheaply done and obviously so, but they fill the silence demand little of the viewer. They were a comfort in my childhood, and they still make me feel good. Especially when they’ve aged badly.

Whenever I watch a Gene Autrey movie, I wonder, “How did this guy get to be a movie star?” He was not tall, not particularly handsome, and a little tubby. The answer, of course, is his singing. He started as a singer, and moved into the movies. Little boys loved him. Because, what do little boys know?

Today I watched Riders of the Whistling Pines, which I found notable for several reasons. It’s actually a more serious movie than Gene’s usual line – no comic sidekick, and some rather tragic themes. Gene plays a guy trying to establish a forest camp in an area where there’s an infestation of tree-killing moths. The local logger is rooting for the moths, because if the trees die, he can legally harvest them all. Gene is involved with trying to get the forest sprayed with – wait for it – DDT. The nasty logging baron spreads false rumors about the dangers of DDT to wildlife and human life, and deliberately causes some poisoning.

Yessiree, we’ve got a pro-DDT movie here. It was 1949, long before Rachel Carson. Trust the science!

Actually, I personally think DDT needs to come back, under controls, so I’m cool with it. Your mileage, as I persist in saying, may vary.

A second surprise was that I recognized one of the evil henchmen – by his voice. It was Clayton Moore, who in a few years would become immortal as the Lone Ranger. (I know a guy who knew him, when he lived in these parts.) In this film, he doesn’t even get a cool cowboy hat.

And finally, on a couple occasions one of the characters, a struggling alcoholic, fishes out a photo of his wife, who died while he was away in the war. She’s pretty. She’s a blonde.

She’s Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn was an unknown contract player for Columbia at the time, and this was a Columbia production, so they just picked her picture off a pile as an example of a girl a guy might pine for.

For all I know, it was her big break.

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As if you hadn’t figured it out already…

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Illustration of the Battle of Hafrsfjord by Erik Werenskiold, from Heimskringla.

Big day today, in the saga of Lars Walker. I got one item I’d been unsure of confirmed, so I feel I’m in a position to announce that I’m definitely planning to attend the celebration of the 1150th anniversary of the Battle of Hafrsfjord on Karmøy Island and in Stavanger, in June of this summer.

I haven’t reached the point of no return yet. Haven’t booked the tickets – I’m still not entirely sure when I should leave and return. And I could still suffer some financial disaster that forces me to cancel the whole thing. But all things being relatively equal, at least I feel able to go public.

The festival takes place in Erling Skjalgsson’s neighborhood, but the battle under consideration was well before his time. King Harald Halvdansson, known as “Fairhair” (or “Finehair”), is said to have fought a great sea battle there in the year 872 (perhaps). He is said to have defeated a coalition of petty kings on the waters of the fjord, cementing his control over at least part of what would become the Kingdom of Norway. This has always been considered the founding of the nation. Even historians who believe Harald actually existed (and not all of them do) disagree on how much territory he actually controlled. My personal suspicion is that it was more than the historians think, because, let’s face it, historians enjoy tearing down legends. (Cue a dozen cable channel documentaries.) Until some genius comes along and finds evidence for the legend. (Cue a dozen more cable documentaries.)

Frankly, the idea of taking this trip scares me a little. I’m no longer a young, or a thin, man – and let me tell you, there’s no way you travel in Norway without doing a lot of walking.

But if I don’t do it now, I probably never will. And I’ll never get a better chance to see a fleet of Viking ships in real life. If I overdo it and have a fatal heart attack surrounded by Viking ships, it would be kind of cool, don’t you think?

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Saga Farmann

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The translation work keeps coming in. I groan under the load, but I am a man of iron, capable of enduring great hardships.

Speaking of hard ships, the short video above is of a Viking ship replica called Saga Farmann (Saga Merchant Traveler; link in Norwegian). It was launched in Tunsberg, Norway (a place that features in my Novel in Progress) in 2018, and is particularly interesting because it’s a copy of a knarr (specifically the Klåstad Ship). If you’ve been reading my novels, you know that a knarr is a Viking merchant ship. In the Viking Age these broad, deep ships were doubtless far more common than the fighting dragons (though knarrs were used in war too). But today the great interest is in the dragons, so you don’t often see a nice knarr.

Knarrs generally had rather small crews. Though they carried oars, those were only for emergencies. Knarrs sailed most places they went. What did they do when the wind was calm, or contrary? They waited. You arrived when you arrived.

If my hopes are fulfilled, I might get the chance to see this ship this summer. Plus a bunch of others. If I’m a good boy and say my prayers and eat my vegetables.

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Winter’s tale

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Winter in Minnesota. Artist’s conception.

It started snowing last night, and it’s still snowing now. It’s supposed to keep snowing till sometime overnight. I’m not even going to shovel the steps tonight. Tomorrow will do. No point doing it twice.

This is the time of year when cabin fever sets in. Winter’s fun right up until Christmas. After Christmas it becomes a thing to endure, except for the hearty Nordic types who love to tug on their multiple layers and strap on their skis and make for the blustery, aerobic slopes. They exude a moral and physical superiority that annoys me, frankly. The fact that they are in fact morally and physically superior to me is beside the point.

But by mid-February, even the Chilblain Brigade starts dreaming of beaches and barbecues. No, thank you, we won’t have another helping. We’ve enjoyed as much of this as we can stand. Wake us when the robins show up.

Yesterday I had a day without translation work, but I’d been told more was coming, so I figured relaxing a bit was okay, as I’ll be at it pretty hard in the days to come. At this point, it feels as if people are clamoring for me to take their money. I like this. It makes me feel morally and physically superior.

But I didn’t loaf all day. I went back to working on the new novel, and I made a fateful determination – my work habits have grown shoddy.

I’ve often mentioned that I like to write with the TV on. And I do. It works fine when I’m on a first draft, because first drafts are mostly sitting and thinking anyway. A TV distracts my mind just enough to keep it sparking. Or so I tell myself.

But when I’m doing revisions, as I have been for some time now, I need to concentrate more. Instead, I’ve been doing it over TV, and I think that’s why I’ve been moving so slowly.

So last night I put on music (Bach, mainly), and yes, it works better.

Maybe there’ll be progress now.

If I have any time free from translating.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Wanderer, by Michael Ridpath

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From time to time I run across a mystery related to the Vikings or the sagas. Usually I am disappointed. The research tends to be cursory, and I find many historical nits to pick.

Michael Ridpath’s The Wanderer was different. I have a few criticisms, but they don’t fall on the research side.

The book is part of a series about an Icelandic-American detective named Magnus (one of the things you need to get used to – accurately – is the general use of first names where we’d use last names. This is due to Icelandic patronymic naming conventions. Our hero’s full name is Magnus Jonson, but the Jonson part is rarely used. Magnus was born in Iceland but raised in the US, where he was a policeman in Boston for some years. But now he’s home in Iceland and is a police detective there. He doesn’t really feel at home in either place.

There’s a young female historian named Eyglo, who made an international name for herself with a documentary about Viking women. Now she’s working with a British crew on a documentary about Gudrid the Far-Traveled, Erik the Red’s daughter-in-law who made it both to America and to Rome during her lifetime. They’re particularly excited about a couple new discoveries they’ll be highlighting. One is a letter from Columbus himself, recently discovered in the Vatican library, that details a trip to Iceland where he acquired sailing directions for a land to the west. The other is a string of wampum – shells used by Native Americans for money – found in an archaeological dig at Gudrid’s farm in Iceland. The shells have been sourced to Nantucket, which indicates that Nantucket must have been the site of a Viking settlement.

Then a young Italian woman, also an archaeologist, is murdered near Gudrid’s farm. Murder is rare in Iceland, and Magnus is assigned to this important case. He will learn that archaeologists don’t just dig things up – sometimes they bury them.

First of all, The Wanderer was well-written. The dialogue was good; the story moved right along. My main quibble was a flavor of political correctness, which is not surprising in our time. It wasn’t preachy, just present in the background. Some of the characters’ actions, it seemed to me, were only plausible on the basis of pop gender dogma.

I wouldn’t call this book Scandinavian Noir. It lacked that suicidal, Kierkegaardian tang. Which is all to the good, in my opinion.

All in all, I found The Wanderer surprisingly good, and I recommend it.

Music

Origin of anthem “Hail to the Chief”

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U.S. Presidential favorite “Hail to the Chief” has its origin in Sir Walter Scott’s popular narrative poem, The Lady of the Lake. Here’s an image of the page with words put to song by James Sanderson for a 1812 stage adaptation of the book.

Posted to YourClassical.com, “Given its sheer availability and rousing pomp, it was only a matter of time before U.S. presidents became the ‘chief’ in the title. ‘Hail to the Chief’ was first associated with a chief executive on Feb. 22, 1815, … to honor George Washington.”