Finished With Anthem Now

Earlier this week, I finished reading Anthem by Ayn Rand. It isn't quite as exciting as Ender's Game. However, I have been reading a lot of exciting, fast-paced books lately, so it was kind of nice to pick up Anthem and slow the pace down a little bit.

Schrödinger's Parting Weapon? No. Just Three Short Stories

Hello dear readers! It's Friday again, so you know what that means: another bunch of stories. All of these stories you can find online, so just click on the titles if you're interested in reading them and you'll be redirected to that story.

Ender's Game: The Last Quarter

Wow, I sort of got distracted to day and nearly forgot all about this. And I promised to post this today, and here's to hoping that it gets up in time.

Reading Ender's Game

Well, I said I wanted to post at least twice a week, and if you noticed, I nearly missed the second post this week. But I didn't miss it. Here it is. It's a little late because I was hoping to finish the book before writing about it. However, I don't think anyone would mind if I talked about it before I finished it, and then gave an update when finished.

Now, since you probably read this post's title, you will know already that I'm reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Actually, I only started reading it a couple of days ago, and already I'm three quarters of the way through the book, with less than fifty pages to go.

Toasters, Plugs, and Equations

It's Friday again, and you should know what that means. It's time to mull over a couple of short stories. Here are three that I have read in the last few weeks. Two of them have been published recently, and the the other one is a classic.

The Brave Little Toaster by Cory Doctorow -- Technology Review Science Fiction
(The written version of this story is only available in MIT's TRSF. If you would like to purchase it, click the link to Technology Review Science Fiction. However, an audio version read by Doctorow can be found on one of his podcasts, and can be listened to by clicking on the story title.)
In this story, Doctorow imagines how smart house technology could work in the future someday. All of the gadgets, and nearly everything else people will purchase anymore, will have chips in them and will be able to communicate with each other. The story begins with the main character buying a soda. However, it starts malfunctioning, so he tries to get rid of it. But none of the technology in his house can dispose it. So we are left with a question: what is he supposed to do with it? He puts it in the fridge, but the fridge refuses to hold it. He tries to put it in the oven, but the oven thinks it's dangerous. I forgot to mention this, but the story reads a lot like a Dr. Seuss tale, which also makes it all the more fun to read. Anyways, he tries everything, but nothing seems to work. Then he remembers his grandfather's old toaster. It's stupid, but perhaps it is the brightest piece of machinery in his whole house. It does what he tells it to do. He puts the soda can in there, and it ends up overheating. The main character gets arrested in the end, yet he still accomplished his goal.

Character Is What You Are by Michael R. Fletcher -- Daily Science Fiction
Fletcher set his story in the near future, and intellectual property is now one of the most protected things around. The main character and all of his fellow coworkers wear memory plugs at work so that they cannot take any of the company's secrets home with them. So, while wearing the plug, they can recall everything, however, when they take it out, everything associated with the plug goes as well. The strange thing that happens in this story is that while not plugged, the main character meets a woman and starts dating her. I guess that isn't so strange, so let me tell you the strange part: his best friend has been having an affair with that woman while they were plugged. But once they leave the office, they don't remember it. So the main character discusses everything with his friend, and once they put on the plugs, the friend becomes irate and starts to hate him. It's actually a very good story and it got me thinking about more stuff like that.

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin -- Astounding Magazine
All of us face difficult decisions from time to time. And, put simply, that is exactly what Tom Godwin explored in this short story published nearly sixty years ago now. His main character, by duty of law, must kill a stowaway on his tiny ship, otherwise entry into the planet won't work. It is on his shoulders to do this. Kill the stowaway or kill everyone on the ship. The situation only gets muddier when he discovers who the illegal passenger is. It's a teenage girl on her way to see her brother, or so she thinks. I don't want to go further into detail on this story because it is well worth the read.

Doctors, Soldiers, and Cowboys. Oh My!

Like I promised not only yesterday, but also last week, here is the long awaited first post on a couple of short stories. Some you may have heard of already, while others may be new to you. I hope you can check out the ones you haven't heard of yet, and if you feel like being nostalgic, go ahead and drift back to the past with some of the older stories.

Today there will be three stories: Kurt Vonnegut's 2 B R 0 2 B, A Militant Peace by David Klecha and Tobias Buckell, and Cowboys of Carnostus by Timothy Miller. Vonnegut's story, of course, is the classic while the other two are more modern, being published in the last couple of months. If you click on the titles in the headings down below, you will be redirected to pages where you can find these stories to read for yourself.

Brave New... Frankenstein?

My New Year's Resolution was to publish two posts a week, and I plan on keeping that resolution. So here's this week's first. Not quite the short story post I promised last week. I should have that one up tomorrow, so be sure to come back and keep an eye out for it.

This week I am proud to say that I have finished reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, both of which I had been reading off and on over the last year. There's always something to distract you, and the stuff that you had in mind to do somehow gets stuck on the back-burner, sitting, forgotten for long periods of time.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "So what? You read Frankenstein and Brave New World. Who hasn't?" Well, I think the answer is a lot of people. Some might have to read it in high school, but I never had to. Unfortunately it was never on our curriculum. However, now that I have more time to myself, I have decided to jump into the classics and see what it is that I've been missing all that time. So let's stop yapping about it and jump in already

Spending a Year Delving into Short Stories

Back around Christmas, I stated that one of my New Year's resolutions was to leave at least two posts each week. I need one of them to be constant, something that is just normal and I can easily remember to post each week, and the other can be random and fun.

For the constant post, I have decided to leave some snippets and ideas roused up by some of the short stories I've been reading recently and will continue to read. There's a lot of them out there, which means there is a lot of catching up to do. I've been trying to read a good balance between newer stories (some of them the latest, most of them within the last year) and older works (from the old pulps). Some of them are really entertaining, others mess with your mind, and many are perfect petri dishes for sparks of inspiration. All we need to do is get out our microscopes and examine them a little bit.

And examine them is exactly what I have been trying to do lately, more or less, however, I am coming to believe that finding a public space to discuss some of these ideas may be more beneficial, not only for me but for you, the reader. Let's see if we can bounce some of the ideas back and forth amongst ourselves instead of in our own minds. It's good to reflect on your thoughts, but you don't want to dwell in your own head too long. That's when people start to go crazy. Well, sometimes anyways.

Just be sure to come back next week and check out what stories I've been reading. I'll try to have one recent story, one story from the past, and perhaps one wild card which can be either. Also, in case you may want to read the stories yourself, I'll leave links to wherever I found them.

Now, go and enjoy the beginning of the weekend.

Happy New Year

Greetings everybody. Hope you all had a fun night. We're in the new year. Can you believe it's already 2012? I feel like it went by all two quickly. Maybe it did for the rest of you as well. Anyways, I've got some hefty goals for the next 366 days. Yeah, that's right, it's a leap year. So we have one more day to cram in all of our resolutions. Or one more day to make it a little trickier to meet some of thode other ones. Anyways, here's the best wishes for all of you to make it.

Happy Holidays

The end of 2011 is soon here, but that only means 2012 is right around the corner. Soon many people will be making a bunch of New Year's resolutions, so I want to throw mine out there with the bunch. Far too often, this blog has been neglected by me. It's time to fix that. Here it is then, my New Year's resolution: a minimum of two posts each week. That had ought to give us just over one hundred posts in the next year. I'll try as hard as I might to keep that up.

Also, it's Christmas today, so here's to a happy holidays for all of you out there. I hope you are having a great time with friends and family. With these darker winter days, being with loved ones keep the light on the inside going, so get out and socialize.

What are you still doing here? Call up some old friends and let them know you're still around. Go visit your family while you're at it.

So go, get out of here, but be sure to check back here in the new year.

[WoD] Reward Yourself

Well, it looks like there are only about an hour or so left of November for those of us here in the United States, and that means that many of us will be finishing off with NaNoWriMo. For those of you who have finished, or are still rushing towards the finish lines, make sure to reward yourselves for the job you have just completed. It wasn't an easy one. You just wrote up and over 50,000 words in a month. Congratulations! Now go and do something crazy to celebrate. All of you deserve it! Have fun.

As for me, I didn't quite hit my goal, but I had many things pop up. However, I will try it out again next year, and maybe even try it out in the summer for Camp NaNoWriMo. I want to do it, though I just need the time and the energy to be just right. This month was not that for me this year. Heck, I'm still adjusting to being home. At least I was able to get by with publishing a blog post each day. That's something else I've been trying to do for a while as well. But now that November is over, I think I may go back to taking it easy and only posting a couple times a week instead of everyday. This is exhausting, and I'm barely writing anything compared to what must be streaming out of the fingertips from those of you who were able to complete it. Alright, well, I'm out for the night. See all of you in the near future!

[WoD] Turn Up the Music

We're almost done. And all we need to do now is just push a little bit further. Today's tip isn't going to be a big one at all, but it may help to encourage you to write a little harder here at the end. What is this tiny tip? Turn up the music. That's right. What's your favorite kind of music? Well, what ever it is, just raise the volume today and tomorrow. It's time to celebrate. We've gone nearly a month fighting all of these distractions, so you deserve this one. Go ahead and enjoy yourself. We're almost done.

[WoD] Stop Stressing

What's one of the leading factors of stress out there? I'm going to go ahead and say it's stress. You know the type of stress I'm talking about, like when you have a big project that's not quite finished off and the deadline is right around the corner. Well, that's just normal stress. But it does build up and up and up. That's what we need to be careful with.

With just a couple more days left of November and NaNoWriMo, I want you guys to just take it easy. If you don't get all your 50,000 words in, that's no big deal. You won't be a failure. Think of it this way if you don't finish your novel: you will be that much more closer to having had written a novel than if you wouldn't have participated in the first place.

Go ahead and pat yourself on the back. Good job. Now keep writing. We haven't hit the deadline yet, so there's a good chance you can still finish it on time. Just relax and take a few breaths before you get back to work.

[WoD] Clear Your Mind

There are now only a few days left of writing if you're still in for the month. And if you are beginning to stress out, I have some advice for you. Clear 15 to 20 minutes from your busy schedule and try meditating, or at least try to clear your mind. This older article from NewScientist says that meditation can help the mind perform better.

And not only that, but this article, released from MIT earlier this year, says that meditating can help people tune out distractions and focus on the task at hand. Here's a little snippet from the article:

There are several different types of brain waves that help regulate the flow of information between brain cells, similar to the way that radio stations broadcast at specific frequencies. Alpha waves, the focus of this study, flow through cells in the brain’s cortex, where sensory information is processed. The alpha waves help suppress irrelevant or distracting sensory information.

They tested this on a group of people over an eight week period. And those who stuck with meditation showed more evidence of having alpha waves.

Now, I don't want to tell you how you should start doing this or anything, but if you feel like getting into meditating, you could check out this "How to Get Started with Meditation" guide from Discovery Health.

However, if you want a little bit more for reading, Lifehacker also offers this guide on meditation for the rest of us.

Just give meditation a try. I hope you enjoy it and feel more refreshed coming out of meditating than going in!

[WoD] Exercise for Your Story

Thanksgiving was just a couple of days ago now, so that means that there will definitely be a few of you who are still feasting on leftovers. But, are you exercising any of those extra calories away? It doesn't have to be anything too extensive. It could even be a little walk or jog each day. But exercising doesn't only help in burning away unwanted calories. It also helps in releasing endorphins. Endorphins act a lot like morphine, but they are released within the body, naturally. They make us feel great. And this could be exactly what you need to finish off your story. So, go off and get working away some of the turkey weight. And may it leave you feeling good and greatly satisfied with yourself.