John 1:14

By Jorge Luis Borges

This page will be no less a riddle
than those of My holy books
or those others repeated
by ignorant mouths
believing them the handiwork of a man
not the Spirit's dark mirrors.
I who am the Was, the Is, and the Is To Come
again condescend to the written word,
which is time in succession and no more than an emblem.
Who plays with a child plays with something
near and mysterious;
wanting once to play with My children,
I stood among them with awe and tenderness.
I was born of a womb
by an act of magic.
I lived under a spell, imprisoned in a body,
in the humbleness of a soul.
I knew memory,
that coin that's never twice the same.
I knew hope and fear,
those twin faces of the uncertain future.
I knew wakefulness, sleep, dreams,
ignorance, the flesh,
reason's roundabout labyrinths,
the friendship of men,
the blind devotion of dogs.
I was loved, understood, praised, and hung from a cross.
I drank My cup to the dregs.
My eyes saw what they had never seen -
night and its many stars.
I knew things smooth and gritty, uneven and rough,
the taste of honey and apple,
water in the throat of thirst,
the weight of metal in the hand,
the human voice, the sound of footsteps on the grass,
the smell of rain in Galilee,
the cry of birds on high.
I knew bitterness as well.
I have entrusted the writing of these words to a common man;
they will never be what I want to say
but only their shadow.
These signs are dropped from My eternity.
Let someone else write the poem, not he who is now its scribe.
Tomorrow I shall be a great tree in Asia,
or a tiger among tigers
preaching My law to the tiger's woods.
Sometimes homesick, I think back
on the smell of that carpenter's shop.

...

Creep

Any married man who has an affair with a woman who is not his wife loses a tremendous chunk of credibility whenever he comments on the culture or on those who believe there is something wrong with said culture and have strong opinions on how to correct it. Loss of credibility is even greater when the married man is also a father.

Now, this creep can still say all he wants. In no way should his freedom of speech be impeded in any way; this is still America. But it would not bother me in the least – no, in fact, I think it should become common practice – that whenever mentioning this creep’s name there should be a comma with the phrase adulterer or serial adulterer or failure as a husband, failure as a father, or even failure as a man following. Or it could be used as an adjective, as in “adulterous comedian,” for example. Or, “so-and-so, comedian, and failure as a man.” That would be entirely okay, as long as the creep continued to thrust himself into the limelight, unapologetic, unremitting in his assault on those who value, say, the sanctity of marriage and the family.

Forgive and forget, yes, but forget only if the creep desires forgiveness and performs those actions that show it.

And I can’t believe I wasted so many hours over the past twenty-five years, particularly as a younger man, watching and listening to this creep.

A Hole In Space

(No, it’s not A**hole in Space)

What an enjoyable read! There’s just about everything for the discriminating SF palate: aliens, rockets, laser cannons, teleportation pods, genetic engineering, Mars, more aliens, neutron stars, faster-than-light travel, and even more aliens: mysterious, threatening nasties who hold the power to destroy our sun and lack the morality to prevent them from so doing.

Eight of the short stories (well, there’s one novella thrown in) are hard-SF. My favorite is “There is a Tide,” starring our old friend Louis Wu from Niven’s best-known work, Ringworld, locking horns with an untrusting critter over a strange treasure which neither realize has the capacity to destroy them both. I also enjoyed “The Hole Man,” about a microscopic black hole discovered on Mars and the titular scientist obsessed with it, and especially the novella, “The Fourth Profession,” just about perfect from every aspect a short story needs: characters, conflict, and, of course, cosmic war depending on a bartender. Someday it will be filmed as a cross between Bogartian-film noir and Lucasian alien cantina-ism.

The remaining two pieces give the collection an interesting hue. The first, “$16,940.00” is a gritty, telephone conversation shake-down that’s begging to be filmed in some way shape form by Quentin Tarantino. And the most interesting piece, in an odd sort of way, is “Bigger Than Worlds,” in which Niven spends a dozen or so pages describing the vehicles for mankind’s outward expansion into, and mastery of, the universe. Ideas included and expounded upon are multi-generation starships, flying cities, macroscopic rings (as featured in Ringworld) and spaghetti tubes so large they surround stars and star systems, Dyson spheres (a sphere built around a star at a distance of 1 AU to harness completely the energy of said star), and, ultimately, megaspheres (Dyson spheres enclosing whole galaxies). Though I have actually pondered the future of the species of man and its journey out of the cradle, this little essay really opened up my eyes.

A great read. Just what I needed and what I was looking for. I did a geekish thing and “graded” each story; the collection averages a strong B+. What weighed it down, I think, were a trio of stories which focus primarily on a teleportation device and how it affects the far-flung future of, well, our present now. They didn’t seem plausible, didn’t excite me, and one I flat-out didn’t grasp where Niven was going, despite reading the final page a couple of times. But the other seven stories where well worth the time and money spent.