Mark W Tiedemann

Author: Mark Tiedemann

Sex, Gor, and The Good Stuff

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

The subject of John Norman’s Gor  came up recently in a letter from a long-lost cousin.  He wrote me about SF and different tastes and he mentioned this peculiar series and I thought, Damn, I haven’t thought about that since 1997.

I can name the year and even the week fairly precisely because I was in San Antonio Texas for the worldcon that year and ended up sharing an autographing session with John Norman.  I’d arrived at the table first, saw the name tags, and thought It couldn’t be…

But it was.

For those who may not know of Gor, this was a series of novels published through the Seventies which I can only describe as a combination of Conan and The Arabian Nights as if written by Edgar Rice Burroughs in collaboration with the Marquis de Sade. …

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James Morrow’s Dasein

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I like James Morrow’s work. (I like Jim, too, quite apart from his work.) His new novel, The Philosopher’s Apprentice, is exemplary. I think everyone should go out right now—right now—and buy a copy. If I may be so bold, this is what science fiction is all about.

Well, maybe not all science fiction, and even that which is about this does other things…

No, let me not equivocate. This is the pure stuff.

In my view, the thing that makes science fiction potent, beyond merely a neat ride to some cool places with some kick-ass characters, is that it is philosophy in action.…

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Done

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I finished The Spanish Bride yesterday.  Two marathon sessions, Saturday and Sunday, got me through the last four chapters.  The last two ended up needing major reconstruction.  About a week or two ago I realized I needed one more plot thread, which required me to bounce back and forth throughout the body of the novel to insert the necessary connective tissue.

But it’s done.  Donna will go through it once more for nits to pick, but that should only take a week or two, then the last pass to straighten out typoes and such, and off it goes to my agent.…

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Back

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

We came back from New Mexico last Thursday.  The plane was slightly late getting off the ground, but we were only fifteen minutes’ behind upon landing.  It was one of the more pleasant plane trips I’ve had—as uneventful as one could hope for.  My sprained ankle is almost healed, but it wasn’t when we flew out, and the cramped space between seat rows meant I had to keep my feet rigid for almost two hours, which played havoc with my ankle.  On the return flight I managed to get a seat in the emergency exit row, which is more spacious, so I could stretch my legs. …

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The Fall of Elliot Spitzer

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I have no sympathy. I can’t help it, but powerful people who behave this way strike me as the essence of…

Spitzer wired the call girl service the money. Granted, he set up a relatively elaborate blind to hide the transaction (it was his own money, not the state’s), primarily from his wife, but the fact is he established the monitoring protocols in the banking system in New York to catch exactly this kind of covert transfer. In other words, he made sure the system could catch him.

The first question that came to my mind was: why didn’t he use cash?…

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Evolution & Morality III

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

[Last of the trio. After this, I promise, something brand new. Enjoy.]

Here is the link to the district court ruling in the Dover, PA trial about so-called Intelligent Design. It is worth reading in full. Basically, the judge threw out the claim by the defendants, that evolution is “merely a theory” and that Intelligent Design is somehow legitimate science.

This, of course, settles nothing in the long run. The true believers who pulled this stunt to begin with will not be persuaded, nor will they long shut up. That’s fine, that’s their prerogative, and it’s as should be in this country.…

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Evolution & Morality II

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

[The second part, still a repost.  Next week I’ll repost part three, and then on to something new.]

I’ve been prompted to do a follow-up on this by the events in Dover, PA and Kansas.  Not news anymore, but to recap, the trial in Dover over the school board’s insertion of Intelligent Design into public school science curriculum is over.  The judge won’t hand down his decision till January, probably, but in the immediate aftermath, the citizens of Dover ousted the entire school board and replaced them with less insidiously doctrinaire people.

I say insidious, because this can no longer be seen as well-intentioned people blundering into controversy unawares. …

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Evolution and Morality I

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

[This is another repost.  Some of the material in this is a bit dated, but the arguments are not.  In fact, with an approaching election, I think a lot of this needs be considered.  This battle will not go away.  There are three parts to it.  I’ll repost the others in due course.]

I stumbled this past Sunday morning on a preacher on television.  The reason I stopped to listen was that on the screen he was scrolling through a litany of famous scientists, their fields and contributions, and noting that each was a Great Christian.  Then the preacher–I don’t know who he was, sorry–ended his litany by making the claim that science and religion are inextricably linked, that they must have each other to work, that there is no dispute between them–

–and that evolution is wrong.…

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Single Issue Anyone?

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

With the possible spoiler of Mike Huckabee, it’s clear that John McCain is set to be the candidate the Democrats need to beat in November.  The irony of the ongoing battle between Hilary and Obama is that, policy-wise, they just aren’t that different.  There were some real differences between the Republicans, but those differences are not what McCain seems to be gearing up to run on.  He is all about Iraq.

McCain has to convince hardline conservatives that he’s their guy.  Why?  Because he has occasionally backed some responsible legislation, like McCain-Feingold.  He refused to sugarcoat our waning industrial possibilities while campaigning in Michigan. …

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Reality Check

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Even in something I don’t give much of a damn about, it’s nice to see the underdog come out on top.  With regard to my previous post, well, so the Perfect Team turned out not to be so perfect, and the Giants won the Super Bowl.  That’s nice.  The major point of the post still stands, and I won’t change it to match current reality.

So congratulations to the boys from New York.

Now, since it’s still February—winter—why don’t we all, even the now exhausted Sports Fans, read a book…?…

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