Jim Gilbert's Blog

The Fox & the Forest (1950)

A desperate couple, William and Susan, use a new time travel service to escape backwards to 1938 (of all years), evading their own participation in the machineries of a horrible far-future war. They attempt to disappear among the carnival crowds in Mexico but are doggedly pursued by agents of the travel service, determined to bring them home and fold them back into the service of war: "The inhabitants of the Future resent you two hiding on a tropical isle, as it were, while they drop off the cli...

The Country of the Kind (1955)

Science Fiction Hall of Fame entry by Damon Knight is an alternate take on Lovecraft's perennial "Outsider," in this case a genetically altered exile viciously roving a future world. Short narrative follows the wicked exploits of our unnamed, lawless, self-described king of the world, free to do as he pleases, ruining property and terrorizing citizens (whom he dubs non-imaginative "dulls") who merely wait helplessly until he passes like a summer storm. He can work great mischief but can do no ph...

Moral Biology (2020)

Neal Asher in Analog, May/June 2020. Interstellar exploration team led by Perrault, Gleeson, and Arbeck seeks to converse with a unique alien life form; they are boots on the ground for Mobius Clean, their ultimate mission coordinator: the imbedded AI of their orbiting starship. Arbeck is a Golem android, in charge of military protection for the two scientists: Perrault is the human interpreter, wearing a biotech "shroud" to enhance his communicative powers, enabling him to process clues from ph...

Sea of Rust (2017)

There's an old post-apocalyptic tune by The Police, "When the World is Running Down You Make the Best of What's Still Around," about which Sting has said: Such vanity to imagine oneself as the sole survivor of a holocaust with all of one's favorite things still intact. In C. Robert Cargill's excellent Sea of Rust, the vanity is solved by altogether dispensing with pesky human survivors (fondly recalled as nothing more than a sentient virus) and narrating via one of the remaining Favorite...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

An abundance of science fiction fiddles with Alternate Universes, but only The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does the hard work of physically exemplifying the concept. Originally forged as a BBC radio show, the characters and situations created by Douglas Adams transferred readily to a plethora of media forms: prose (five books, one short story), live stage productions, graphic novels, a television miniseries, record albums, a text-based computer game, finally a CGI laden film. And with ea...

To Kill a Flying Rumor

Once upon a time, back when dinosaurs read newspapers and so forth, I wrote a short piece for the Mobile Register's Sunday Book Page about why I thought Harper Lee was in fact responsible for To Kill a Mockingbird, despite regional gossip to the contrary that the book is at least partly the work of Truman Capote. As a hot-button topic of cultural conversation in Alabama, this nugget of literary intrigue ranks up there in popularity with perpetual Iron Bowl remembrances/prognostications/trash...

The Page Less Traveled

During my previous life as a turn-of-the-century seller of used and rare books, I witnessed internet technology transform the business, as search engines and auction sites and networks of shared bookseller databases made acquiring elusive treasures as easy as reaching for a keyboard. Our physical store (not to mention our labyrinth annex) was perpetually double-stacked with hauls taken in from formal estate auctions, from trolling through Goodwill stores and garage sales, from cobweb-glazed c...

The Endless River (2014)

Pink Floyd's final studio offering is a resurrection of ideas abandoned in 1994, when The Division Bell was edited down to a single album from earlier plans for a double: lyrical songs on one disc, instrumentals on the other. Traditional songs won out and the ambient scraps went to the archive, a casualty of band apathy, yet soon to spawn Internet rumors such as the April Fool's joke of 1997: a surprise release entitled Liquid. Which, dated jibe against Roger Waters aside, still wouldn't...

"The purpose of the Universe is the flowering of consciou...

"The purpose of the Universe is the flowering of consciousness."
     --Eckhart Tolle

Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe (2002)

Christmas 1998, Sonny Brewer invited a retired actor friend of his, Sam Busby, to do a holiday reading at Over the Transom. We borrowed the photography studio space next door, cobbled together what chairs we had, and set out some cookies. Sam rolled out selections from Truman Capote, Shakespeare, the Bible, a solemn, gorgeous recitation of Silent Night. The gathered few were reluctant to leave. "We should do more of this," Sonny declared as we swept up afterwards. "This should be what the boo...