Memnison Journal

…new fall show showing up on TV this fall. This is totally a guess, but my take is that sometime in the recent past, a group of around 50 scientists came to ‘our’ timeline from an alternate one that was more advanced than ours – similar enough to communicate well, but the difference / advancements [...]

Susan and Mere are doing a rummage sale today (Friday) at at our house: 577 Hitchcock, in Lisle, IL. (Roughly IL 53 and 55th/Maple Avenue.) I will either be inside hiding from the heat or outside in my wheelchair; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and selling more of the boxes of books I [...]

My daughter Meredith is a competitive roller skater, and her skating club is doing a big rummage sale Saturday and Sunday at the Lombard Roller Rink in Lombard from 9-3.  I will not be there; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and I had an operation earlier this week and in no shape to [...]

I’ve been asked to speak at a Wright State University forum; their Honors Institute is having a symposium on Chinese-American relations called “Connecting With China”,  and I’m to talk on “Exploring Issues in Cross-Cultural Adoptions” from 2-4 pm, February 17th. The event is free to the public, but you have to register in advance to [...]

Just a followup note here from me on a topic broached earlier in my LJ version of the journal about the Chinese explorer Zheng He.   I was gassing on about ‘we need fresher AH situations’ and Steve Silver brought up the idea of Zheng He’s expeditions finding Australia and colonizing it (as it would have [...]

The family has taken up a new and very nice practice; having family reading times – not scheduled as such, but so everyone has something good to read and is in the living room together reading.  It works pretty well, I think, and is an improvement over endless oh-I-can’t-watch-that debates about TV stuff. Tastes run [...]

I was watching an old TWILIGHT ZONE episode tonight about a boxer on his way down who charms a little boy, who enthusiastically uses his ‘big wish’ power that he goes on about during the earlier part of the show to change the result of the fight; instead of the boxer getting flattened and dropped [...]

The other day, the dad of a friend of Meredith’s brought up alternate history fiction, and obviously was interested in it; I was somewhat surprised because I had never really talked to the guy and had no real idea as to why he brought that and wargaming up with me! (Two subject dear to my [...]

From the Coming Anarchy site: projected maps of Europe in the future and the former Yugoslav areas, along with their tag on microstates.  Personally, I strongly doubt some of this; France has been doing a thorough stomp of its minority groups (linguistics-wise, especially) for the last 100+ years to Make Everyone Parisian, and the Bosniak [...]

My usual noble call in the case of ‘too many of the Same Thing in the alternate history genre’ is usually responded to with ‘yeah, well, this stuff you sneer at sells, so there.’ And you can’t argue sales.  People do the same old same old because they’re trained to and it’s familiar to them.   [...]

While I’m notorious in AH circles as someone who insists that a AH story be (1) A GOOD STORY and (2) have some historical basis, not to mention (3) be one simple Point Of Divergence, not a whole mess of them (I can deal with some cascade effects, but not simultaneous stuff) – I give [...]

I’m looking at a point in the history of the Kingdom of Qin during the Warring States period that would have most easily short-circuited the Qin efforts to conquer the other kingdoms and establish an empire.  Suggestions welcome. What I’m looking at is that the idea of China as a unified imperial state is nowhere [...]

A note on this for the historically challenged: 99% of you will have never heard of Theodore Bilbo, Senator from Mississippi and ardent Klansman, and author of such ditties as  “Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization“.   This item from SHWI, sent in to me by the writer, plays off that and this book on German [...]

Martin Gidron‘s THE SEVERED WING, 2003 Sidewise Long Form Award Winner.    Reviews here and here.