How we live today
I’m old enough to remember when the first heart transplant caused a flurry of debate on the ethics of harvesting organs, even from people certifiably brain dead (not including most politicians, television newscasters and reality show celebrities), as perhaps a violation of natural, if not God’s law. Of course, they used to say the same thing about blood transfusions, though even in the 21st century certain religious beliefs view this as impermissable, though in the decided minority and, in one recent case, prayer in lieu of medical intervention has been ruled criminal negligence, thank god. These days, scheduling a heart transplant or most any other organ swipe out with a biological or mechanical replacement is almost like taking your car to Jiffy Lube for an oil change. (Needless to say, I exaggerate, as an oil change is much less costly and doesn’t involve third party payers.) Times change. When I was a kid, notions of “post-humans” with biological enhancements and AI feeds were the stuff of science fiction. Today, they are the subject of articles such as You: The Updated Owner’s Manual in the Sunday New York Times Book Review.
Speaking of The New York Times, the magazine recently profiled Jack Vance, whose name I’ve seen but never read, something I now intend to fix post-haste.
Okay, I’ll admit that in a past indiscretion I went to an adult store (this was in the days before the Internet, when it was the only place you could get such things) and bought an anatomically correct blow up doll. But, it wasn’t for me. Honestly. It was a joke gift for a bachelor party. Nonetheless, I want to take this opportunity to apologize to my congregation, my constituents and my family for behavior that was actually perfectly innocent, though I realize it could be construed by some as some kind of perverted behavior by those who haven’t as yet been caught in their own perverted behavior.
Courtesy of The New York Times comes this report of 
It’s nothing new to hear that yet another print publication has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Still, for those of us who retain affection for inked dead trees, it’s always a cheerless day to learn of yet another comet strike.
One good thing about the recession is I have more time to catch up on my reading. And I don’t have to worry about spending money on books during tough times as I already own a ridiculous number of volumes that I never had the time to get around to. One of almost recent vintage is Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow. It’s a clever premise: a parallel effort to the Manhattan Project is to develop a race of super lizards to level Japanese cities and end World War II. The irony here is that the whole Godzilla mythos of badly made, badly acted 1950s Japanese movies was a metaphorical projection of the atomc bombings. The plot, such as it is , concerns an American horror monster actor who is recruited to provide a realistic demonstration of the lizard’s destructiveness to force the Japanese surrender without having to deploy the monsters (what many critics of the U.S. atomic bombings argue might have sufficed instead of targeting cities). Morrow is one of my favorite authors, though this is a minor work; even at novella length, the premise is stretched a bit thin, and maybe would have worked better at a shorter length in pruning some plotting that doesn’t really advance the theme. Still, worth checking out.
The spring issue of Conjunctions, the literary magazine of Bard College, is called “Between and Betwixt: Impossible Realism,” described as “postfantasy fictions that begin with the premise that the unfamiliar or liminal really constitutes a solid ground on which to walk.” This is a follow-up to its “New Wave Fabulist” issue back in 2003, which I reviewed for