21. Your Summer Vacation Courtesy Of Galbraith And Hester!

Long-time Harry Turtledove readers might recognize the names in title, or maybe not. They're the “chronophysicists” in one of his late twenty-first century Earths that discovered how to travel to “alternates”, alternate Earths where history happened differently than in their/our world and natural resources are far more plentiful. So families are sent, usually every summer to coincide with the school year, after much training to one of these worlds to set themselves up as merchants, selling goods from their/our world for produce and natural resources that their/our world needs. So supposedly everyone benefits from this “Crosstime Traffic” natives of the main world (I will not use quotation marks any more), and the first of six novels set mostly in an alternate, Gunpowder Empire (ISBN 0765346095) goes fast and fun, in a world where the Roman Empire apparently never fell. And there IS only so much you can do when cannonballs are crashing through your roof!

When Sarah, Jeffrey, and I were out playing catch this morning before I had to bring them to Grandma's, we noticed another small plastic football like the one we were playing with still in one of our roof gutters! It was thrown up there a few years ago and we've never gotten it down … anyway, we had some fun even after Jeffrey ran into me by accident. AND he's sporting a shiner beneath his right eye from when another boy accidentally ran into him at a friend's birthday party yesterday – this was a few days after Jeffrey ran into me after we'd mowed the lawn (with our newly fixed push mower, hallelujah) and were kicking around a soccer ball and I ran and fell face-first on the lawn, knocking my glasses off! Jeffrey was afraid I was mad at him both times, and I had to let him know I wasn't, gently. Not quite the effort I imagine it would be to Stroke a Martian and 99 Other Things to Do Before You Die (from the editors of New Scientist, ISBN 0802777309), but it lasts longer.

By the way, the Martian in that title refers to a chunk of meteorite held at London's Museum of Natural History that may or may not contain fossils. I admit it, I'm a sucker for seeming impossibilities and debut novels, like William Campbell Powell's Expiration Day (ISBN 9780765338280), a mid-this century story where the birth rate's plummeted and one company has a monopoly on the technology to build children – correction, teknoids – resembling kids at varying stages of development. Every few years their programming doesn't change, just their bodies mature and they come back in an “older” shell. But by eighteen, they're essentially sent to the scrapheap. And when the main character and narrator Tania Deeley discovers she is one (first-person stories are also good draws for me) she and her parents and friends quite naturally want to continue Tania's existence. (Though I wondered in the time of the novel, shouldn't more energy be devoted to reversing the worldwide infertility?)

Then there's Journal by Me. Seriously, this is how it was marked when I bought it from Main Street Books' used books section a few months ago. And as I just finished it – typically one of the journals that I've kept continuously since July 1992 lasts me three months, but this one took a month and a half (April 23 – June 10) since I had so much to write and post – I can cite it as a book I have read, can't I? Starts out on the inside front cover with “David loves you, forever” and proceeds with my daily Bible readings and my scribblings for the day, copies of my blog entries (which since I've been excerpting from my novel “Victory” have taken up a lot of space), and programs from events I've attended as well as cards I've received or kept for one reason or another – I am a pack rat on that, ask Martha. Besides, occasionally we need to refer to something that happened and after a decent dig, I can find the where and when of it!

 

 

Enjoy your summer vacation!

 

 

 

David