All posts by Lars Walker

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In which I badmouth one of the most beloved TV shows in history

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I got into a discussion in comments on the Threedonia blog today. Their open thread featured a picture of the Andy Griffith Show cast.

I expressed my personal dislike for the show, based on my (wholly insecurity-based) allergy to all those 1960s shows set in rural or small town settings. I found them condescending in the extreme, and resented them (the rest of my family, for the record, liked the shows just fine).

Later I discussed the pilot for the show, which I remember clearly, as I saw it on its first broadcast. It was actually an episode of The Danny Thomas Show. Continue reading In which I badmouth one of the most beloved TV shows in history →

Fiction, Reviews

Expecting Someone Taller and Who’s Afraid of Beowulf? by Tom Holt

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A friend lent me his copies of Expecting Someone Taller and Who’s Afraid of Beowulf? I’m glad he did. I enjoyed reading them very much.

English writer Tom Holt has mastered (perhaps invented; I’m not sure) a form of contemporary, humorous fantasy in which mythical or historical characters mix with the modern world (kind of like some of my works, or Neil Gaiman’s, but funny). A critical blurb on the cover of EST says the book “recalls Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Twain’s Connecticut Yankee….” I’d say the writing is more reminiscent of Wodehouse’s, at least some of the time (which is high praise indeed).

Take this passage from EST:

[Alberich] was a businessman, and businessmen have to travel on aircraft. Since there seemed to be no prospect of progress in his quest for the Ring, he had thought it would be as well if he went back to Germany for a week to see what sort of a mess his partners were making of his mining consultancy. He had no interest in the work itself, but it provided his bread and butter; if it did not exactly keep the wolf from the door, it had enabled him to have a wolf-flap fitted so that the beast could come in and out without disturbing people.

Continue reading Expecting Someone Taller and Who’s Afraid of Beowulf? by Tom Holt →

Goofing

Settling accounts

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MEMORANDUM

TO: The Universal Calendar Company

FROM: Lars Walker

RE: November

Having recently exhausted the November page in my 2009 calendar, I feel compelled to make you aware of my extreme disappointment with the quality of your product in recent years.

I make no comment on the art you selected to illustrate the month, although “Naked Maples in Dubuque” might be considered, by certain sensitive souls, a less than transcendent theme. I understand that you can only work with the material actually available.

I note that the November 2009 page contains the requisite number of days, i.e., thirty (30). This is technically up to code.

However, I can tell you, on the basis of a lifetime of experience with months, that your customers have not received full value for their temporal dollar. I am aware that months are packed by weight, not volume, and that a certain amount of settling may have occurred during transport. However, my memory is clear in the matter of the length of Novembers back in the 1950s when I was a boy, and I am convinced that this past November does not come close to meeting that standard. Clearly someone (I make no personal accusations) has been adulterating the product. Continue reading Settling accounts →

Fiction, Reviews

The Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunder War, by Hal Colebatch

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The fact that I haven’t read the previous books in this series (created by Larry Niven) probably disqualifies me from making intelligent comments on Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunder War, but I picked it up because Hal Colebatch is an e-mail friend, and a wise and perceptive writer over at the American Spectator (also a lawyer and sometime government functionary in Australia).

Full disclosure: I did not get my copy for free as a reviewer. I sprung for it out of my own money.

The premise of the Man-Kzin Wars series, as I understand it, begins with the assumption that space-traveling cultures are generally peaceful cultures. Warfare is too much of a scientific and economic drain for warlike civilizations to get far in interstellar exploration and commerce.

However, there is an exception—the Kzin, a race of tiger-like (but larger and stronger) bipeds who sweep across the galaxy like Romans on the march, conquering and enslaving (often devouring) peaceful civilizations as they go. When they first approach a human colony, the paradisaical planet called Wunderland, it looks like more of the same. The humans there have put warfare so far behind them that the study of it is next to illegal, and curious scholars are at a loss to understand the functions of weapons, or what military ranks indicate. Continue reading The Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunder War, by Hal Colebatch →

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Eulogy on a turkey

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It was a good Thanksgiving break. In spite of my fears, I got the house (adequately) cleaned, and the turkey (more than adequately) roasted by the time the family showed up. As always we were crowded but cheerful, and everybody seemed to have a good time.

We gathered on Saturday, and by Sunday the cold I’d been flirting with ravished me entire, and I spent the day in bed with it. And a book, which I’ll be reviewing shortly.

The interview with the Christian Authors Show, which I mentioned in an earlier posting, has finally appeared on their schedule. It will be the featured interview on Dec. 9 and 10, and selectable after that. (Unfortunately, I can’t link to the section I’m in. You have to select “The Christian Authors Show” from the menu.)

In case nobody’s mentioned it to you, Christmas is coming. West Oversea is the perfect gift for every person on your list! Even if they don’t read books, the guilt your gift will engender will be salutary for their characters. And it’s the one gift you know they won’t exchange—because we don’t do returns.

In fact, you should buy two copies for everybody. It will make Christmas truly magical.

For me and my publisher, anyway.

There’s an ordering link on the sidebar.

Religion

Thanksgiving Eve, 2009

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I generally hate it when I’m asked to list things I’m thankful for. I don’t disapprove in principle, let me hasten to add. It’s just something that makes me uncomfortable. I’m keenly aware that I enjoy a life of health, prosperity and comfort that would have suggested heaven to my ancestors (see my translations of my great-great-grandfather’s letters), and that in spite of those benefits I’m a crabbed and bitter-minded man. My mind’s focus is generally on the things that are lacking in my life. To be fair to myself, some of those are pretty big things. But if I put aside the sins of envy and malcontent, I still have plenty of things to give thanks for. Such as:

A home to live in. That blessing is compounded this year by the fact that I was recently approved for refinancing, which ought to make my financial circumstances a little more comfortable in 2010 (which I say we should all agree, ahead of time, to pronounce “Twenty-Ten”).

Jerry Nordskog and the folks at Nordskog Publishing, who took a risk on getting me back in print again (you do know I have a book out, don’t you? You can buy it here. Or here. The perfect Christmas gift for everyone on your list!).

The people at the schools of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, who continue to permit me to play Eccentric Librarian in their beautiful facility.

A good church to attend, not too far from where I live.

My family, for having the patience to put up with me as we gather a couple times a year—this Saturday being one of them.

Phil, for giving me the keys to the blog, and not complaining too much about the dents and scrapes I put on the fenders.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” (G. K. Chesterton)

Blogs, Socials

Meditation on art, by a philistine

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Our friend S. D. Smith, over at his blog, meditates profoundly (I think) on the question of limits in art. I agree with him entirely.

In fact, if I had to define art, I think my definition would be something like this— “Art is an endeavor in which an artisan uses some physical medium with sufficient skill that the medium seems to disappear, and something greater than the medium is communicated.” Art is a synergy between artist, material and audience.

That’s what so many modern artists don’t seem to understand. They’ve accepted a subjective definition of art, one that says that art is all about the artist’s subjective feelings and his expression of them—in any form whatever. There are no absolute values. Hang a urinal on a wall? What right do you (philistine that you are) to say it’s not art? Compose a concerto that consists of a period of total silence? It expresses my feelings in ways that you peasants will never comprehend, so it’s art. Lapdancing? If you don’t understand it, don’t judge it.

The true artist struggles with his medium, entering into it intimately, so that he can make it do things nobody ever thought it could. A painting that looks like a photograph—or like a dream. A sculpture that looks like a living being—only the way living beings ought to be, not the way they are in our experience A song that reaches into the listener’s soul and brings up his deepest aspirations and sorrows, so that he weeps just as if he’d just lost—or gained–the love of his life.

Lewis and Tolkien called it “subcreation.” They could call it that because they believed in a Creator. Today’s artists, by and large, don’t believe in a Creator; they believe in accidents. So all they can do is try to re-create accidents.

They do believe in one absolute, universally applicable, value, though—that the public is obligated to pay for their art.

Fiction, Reviews

The Guns of Two-Space, by Dave Grossman and Bob Hudson

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The Guns of Two-Space (available here, either as an e-book or a print-on-demand) is the sequel to The Two-Space War, by Dave Grossman and Leo Frankowski, which I recently reviewed). Alas, Lt. Col. Grossman lost his friend in science fiction publishing when Jim Baen of Baen Books died, and this volume (written with a different co-author and privately published), although excellent in many ways, does suffer for want of a professional editor.

The Two-Space War told how Lt. Thomas Melville assumed command of his ship’s crew on the death of his captain, and captured an enemy ship which he named the Fang. Through inspired leadership and flexibility in adopting new weapons and strategies, he managed to thwart (or at least delay) an attempt by the evil Guldur Empire to conquer planets friendly to earth and humans. Acclaimed as a hero and a savior by alien governments, Melville was less appreciated by the appeasement-minded Westerness (human) government, and at the end of the book was dispatched to patrol and deliver mail between the most distant colony planets. Continue reading The Guns of Two-Space, by Dave Grossman and Bob Hudson →

Blogs, Socials, Reviews

The Year of the Warrior reviewed

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Christian Science Fiction writer Brandon Barr has posted a glowing, nay, fulsome review of The Year of the Warrior at his blog here.

Thanks to Brandon. As Mark Twain once said (I think, in some form roughly similar to what I type here), “I can live three months on a good compliment.”

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Olsen letter #3

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[Tonight, the next Ole Olsen letter, one of the shorter ones. Letter 1 is here; 2a here; and 2b here. I know nothing about the life of the author’s father, my great-great-great grandfather (whose name was also Ole Olsen), except that he once sailed on a merchant voyage to China.]

Kvalevaag, the 12th December, 1892

Mr. Jan Hendrik Olsen,

Dear Son, with your wife and child,

After receiving recently your very welcome letter, with the accompanying contents which were a joy for us here at home, that all is well worth praising and thanking the Lord for, who holds His hand over us in every way, both for soul and body, and also provides us each day with all that we poor humans need for daily life. Ja, it is grace upon grace from our Lord that He is so good toward us poor sinful creeping things, who do nothing but what is against Him. Ja, Lord help us all to appreciate Him, that He is a good Father toward us, but I see that things have worked out poorly for me. I want to grumble against Him, that I always get too much suffering from Him. Oh, wretched man that I am, when and where will it be otherwise with me? The Lord knows. God help us all.

Also, as before, I can note for you children that the Lord, in His eternal grace and mercy, has borne us in His patient arms up to this day, granting us to remain in the day of grace thus far. Ja, that is a great thing the Lord has done for us, to bear with us a while longer here, we who are so disobedient toward Him as we are, ja, Lord help us.

Ja, so I , Father and Mother, tell you that we have managed to be up [and about] every day this year too. God be thanked for it. But it should perhaps also be said that we aren’t always equally energetic, especially Mother, but what can we do? We must go on here as long as we can keep moving, for I have no one to trade off with at my side; ja, that is how things have turned out for me. Ja, God knows that it is often hard for us to think of, that we in our old age should have it so hard and weary as we have it. Ja, ja, that is our lot, but God who sees and knows all, He has a way out for us too, when He thinks it good. Ja, His will is best. Continue reading Olsen letter #3 →