My old friend Jay Lake discusses a dream in a recent blog post and refers to a series of real-life incidents, specifically:
“...a baby puke yellow Ford LTD wagon was in my life for a while back in the 1990s — that’s the car I flooded with raw sewage while driving it, if you’ve ever heard me tell that story; also the car I took over the river in Mexico on a canoe ferry. Also the car I was driving the night I nearly wound up in a shallow grave but for the luck of fools and the forbearance of some very puzzled, heavily armed men.”
Some of those events he’s referred to before, especially the crossing of the river on a ferry made from two canoes with wooden planks laid between them. For anyone inclined to doubt Jay, even by degree, I’d just like to step-up and say: forget it. Jay’s life specializes in weird, and I was there for all of the events he mentions above. What’s more, he left-out a number of other events relating to that same vehicle, like running aground in the beach-of-mosquitoes (all the other mosquitoes I have encountered in my entire life do not begin to equal the number that were attacking me at any given moment on that beach); the awkward joy with which we later sat in the thick smoke of burning cow dung and drank beers with the people who freed us; the 100% concrete (beds included), completely empty motel-of-the-damned that we stumbled upon in the middle of the night hoping for a place to sleep; the long, dead-slow descent of a rain drenched, fog bound, boulder strewn, cliff-side mountain road in the middle of the night, with one of us using a hand-held, million candle-power Q-beam light to make the edge of the road just barely visible for about six feet in front of us (the holder of the Q-beam was probably sitting out on the hood of the car to do that, but I can’t remember for sure). And there were other such events, I’m confident; some merely temporarily forgotten, others mercifully hidden away by subtle mental defense mechanisms.
One fascinating thing about the river crossing on the canoes: Early in the crossing the people responsible for the ferry decided that our fully-loaded station wagon was positioned too far forward for what we may laughingly call “safety.” So they told us to put it into reverse and back-up a little. Interesting physics experiment, that. As the fully-loaded station wagon had a far greater mass than the canoes and all the people who were riding that makeshift ferry with us, when the station wagon reversed it didn't move an inch, instead it flung the ferry forward. Fortunately, whoever was driving (it wasn’t me, but may have been Jay) didn’t panic, and stopped in time to prevent us from flinging the ferry out from under us. With a less competent driver, we’d have a story to tell of being caught in the middle of rural Mexico with our car and all of our possession at the bottom of a river ... and that’s a story I’m very glad I can’t tell.
Egads, I wish I had been into photography back then.
And that was followed by Jay’s trip to Ulan Bator … but that expedition I declined. Others will have to tell those stories.
Old friend Jay Lake offers a “Monday Moment of Zen” photo this week, and, for a change, I think I can get in on the action.... Consider this your “Tuesday Moment of Zen.” © 2007, 2009 by Chris W. Johnson.
Last time I checked, the list of people who had it in for me included Nazis, Commies, the Kansas City Mob, the United States Army, the Augusta Police and the Butler County Sheriff's Department. Not to mention Mr. Bellamy's gang, Doc Milliken and Lois. I was sure I'd left someone off the list, but I figured they'd let me know in due time.
—Rocket Science by Jay Lake.
I seldom read non-fiction, on the grounds that the Universe has a ≅14 billion year head start on me, and that leaves me with a lot to learn and not a lot of time to do it. But I've always had a soft spot for science fiction, and, months back, when an old friend, Jay Lake, sent me a link to a press release announcing that he'd just signed a contract for his second and third novels, my immediate reaction was "when did you have a first novel?" Let your friends move out of town, and little details like that start getting lost, apparently. He filled in the blanks for me, and I ordered a copy of Rocket Science immediately. I must admit, however, that I don't always enjoy Jay's writing. The skill and intelligence he brings to his craft are always evident, but the style and subject don't always appeal to me. Just a personal thing.
Jay and I met in 1986, working jobs that eventually payed about a buck over minimum wage. We were both in on the ground floor of the desktop publishing revolution, not that that meant a lot at the time. I was developing Mac software in my spare time and periodically interviewing for jobs in the Microcomputer Support Group in UT Austin's Computation Center. Jay was writing sporadically, and I can't remember what else. One thing about the kind of guy Jay was: with both of us basically living paycheck to paycheck, he was the sort of fellow who'd find our boss working herself up to firing me over one or another of my pointed critiques about the way our operation was run, and he'd tell her that I had a point, and if I was fired, he'd quit. Probably saved my job a couple of times that way. And I always had to hear about it from somebody else. You've got to respect a guy like that. And he was amazingly smart, had already lived a very odd life which gave him a fascinating perspective on things, and was a thoroughly nice guy. It's easy to end-up friends with a fellow like that.
So, an old friend like that gets his first novel published, and I think you pretty much have to go buy a copy and read it. And I'm glad I did. It was a hoot - the quickest read I've had in a long time. It's sci-fi set in post-World War II Kansas and centers around a mild-mannered fellow who quite unexpectedly crosses paths with a super-secret aircraft stolen from the Nazis right under the noses of Army Intelligence. Mayhem ensues. It's fun. Recommended.
Other recent-ish page-turners: The Soviet Space Race with Apollo, A World Lit Only By Fire, and Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice.
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