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Raven’s Run 1

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Comment on this prolog can be found on today’s AWL post.

May 4, 2012, Luisanne, Switzerland

The first man to arrive on the terrace was clearly an American. He spoke quietly to the maître d’ while glancing at his watch. 

Behind him a voice said brightly, “Ian, you need not worry. I said 2100 and here I am. I think you are a moment early.”

Ian Gunn turned and put out his hand, and said, “That must be it.” They seemed to be old friends. It was calculated appearance but, in this case, also the truth. “It’s good to see you, Kurt.”

Ian Gunn knew his friend as Kurt, or Karl, or Klaus, followed by any of a number of surnames. Tonight he was using Kurt Heiss, which was his actual name, as far as Ian knew.

They were led to a table overlooking Lac Léman. As they ate, each enjoyed the other’s company; there was business to attend to, but this was a rare chance to be easy with one another, since their latest venture was now concluded.

Except that both men were extremely fit, and had the look of lions, they could have been taken for businessmen. In fact they were, but their business was blood and death. Or its avoidance.

Gunn asked, “Did the transfer of goods go as we had hoped?”

Kurt replied, “Yes. There were some tense moments, but eventually everything went to the right buyer.”

By this, Kurt told his American counterpart that five hundred AK-47s had not gone to the Taliban as both their governments had feared, but had gone instead to a different insurgent group in a different country. Ian nodded, passed a flash drive to his friend, and received another in return. They moved on to other conversation.

As the meal wound down, Kurt said, “Ian, you seem troubled. Is it business or personal, and can I help in either case.”

Gunn smiled and shook his head. “Not troubled, Kurt. Nostalgic. I ate here once before, in this same restaurant, looking out at the same view with a young woman in 1989.”

“A very good year.”

“For you, Kurt, yes.” Kurt Heiss had been a very young man then, and in November he had stood with sledge hammer in hand, shoulder to shoulder with other young Germans, pounding down the Berlin Wall. “For me, it was a bit more complicated.”

“The young woman . . .?”

“It’s a very long story.”

“Which you cannot tell . . .?”

“No,” Ian said, “nothing like that. I was not yet working at our craft. It’s just a long story.”

“A précis then. I no longer go looking for young women to take back to my room, since I married Anna. She has lie-detector eyes. It will be a long night, and I am not going back to Berlin until tomorrow.

“Besides,” he added, “even though you say nostalgia, your eyes are not smiling.”

Ian shrugged and surrendered to his friend’s concern. “All right, a story. 1989. The best thing about that year was that I was 28 years old . . .”

210. Close to the Ground

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During 1987 and 1988, we spent 130 days in Europe, traveling by train, backpacking, and living in a dome tent. The tent cost twenty-nine dollars at K-mart. It kept the rain out until it rained; then it kept some of the rain out. All the summer of 1987 the fiberglass tent poles kept eroding at the ends, and the tent got progressively lower to the ground. Finally we started patching it with branches harvested from bushes at the campgrounds. When we got home, we took the ragged remnants back and they gave us a replacement. That one got us through 1988.

It was a vacation, and a cultural and historic tour, but I also had the rough outline of a novel in my head, and I was looking for places to let it happen. I visited the American consulate in Marseilles because I intended to have my protagonist make connections there. At the American embassy in Paris I mentioned that I was planning to write a novel about an American in Europe on the run from gangsters. The information clerk sighed wearily and said, “We wish you wouldn’t.”

We left looking like Americans. We came back looking like very fit Americans. Walking every day and eating very little will do that to you.

During those two summers we went all the way to the northernmost point in the Orkneys and as far north as the Arctic Circle in Norway. Looking out from the train from Myrdal to Flam, I saw a grassy cliff and knew that it would become the scene of the climax of the novel. We went northeast to Finland, southeast to Budapest and Greece, south as far as Pompeii, west as far as Portugal, and ten thousand places in between. We did not go to Berlin, because that was still East Germany and Eurail didn’t go there. Germany was a fairly tense place, those summers.

We took the train everywhere. Without Eurail passes, none of this would have been possible. We also walked, probably more than a thousand miles, around towns, on Alpine trails, and daily to and from the campgrounds which were always far out on the edge of the cities we visited. Those campground trips took us through back alley parts of cities normal tourists never see – seldom scenic, but always interesting. We only ate in restaurants where the exchange rate made them cheap; in Switzerland, we at a lot of bread and apples.

Being poor, or something like poor, can be an advantage to a writer. It’s hard to imagine Steinbeck writing Cannery Row or The Grapes of Wrath while living in a penthouse. Poverty, or something like, can seem exotic to those who have a little money.

Of course, most people want to read about the rich. After all, the James Bond novels wouldn’t work if he wore ragged clothes and drove a ten year old car.

I find life close to the ground interesting, and all those experiences allowed me to build a story in which my protagonist, Ian Gunn, has reason to live like I did, at least for a part of the book, and draw on those experiences for the rest of it. It is called Raven’s Run and it begins in Serial tomorrow.

At one point, he and his girlfriend meet a street musician, and Ian thinks:

On the ladder of affluence, we were near the bottom. Eric was one critical step lower. We knew that we could not eat in a restaurant; Eric did not know where his next meal was coming from.

Ian Gunn is about thirty, as we were, and on the verge of moving into better circumstances, but not quite there yet. He finds himself traveling on the cheap, like a teenager, but his age makes him a misfit in that crowd. I could tell you more, but check out Serial tomorrow and read it for yourself. 

Contents of the First Year of Serial

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On August 31, 2015 – one year ago today – I began this website in two parts, A Writing Life and Serial. Confusingly, the name of the overall site and one of the two blogs was the same. I wouldn’t make that mistake again, but there were many things I didn’t know about running a website when I started.

This half of the site, Serial, is technically a separate blog, but it isn’t treated like a blog. It was a way to let me publish short stories, articles, novels, and novel excerpts in serial form. I always intended to remove the results, as each was completed, to a separate section called Backfile. Blogs place entries last to first; that works for a serial, but for a completed piece it would mean reading from end to beginning.  In Backfile you can read from beginning to end.

Here is a summary of the first year of Serial.

Blondel of Arden     Blondel is a peaceful, small statured bard of small magics, but he is also more than he seems. Blondel of Arden and Prince of Exile are my only non-Menhir fantasies. Look for it in Backfile.

Koan     Short and snarky. Look for it in Backfile.

Into the Storm     A day’s recreation with strong undertones. Look for it in Backfile.

To Go Not Gently     Ram David Singh, formerly of Ozarka, NorAm, now of India, the last, great scientific country on a post-apocalyptic Earth, is trying for immortality. Lots of luck. Novella, originally published in Galaxy, a modified excerpt from the novel A Fond Farewell to Dying. Look for it in Backfile.

The Best of Lies     Selenchuk came to slay a dragon and stayed to live a quiet life. Now another would-be dragon slayer is about to mess that up. Set in the World of the Menhir. Look for it in Backfile.

How To Build a Culture     Non-fiction.  The is the text of a talk given at Westercon 34, held in Sacramento, CA  in 1981. Look for it in Backfile.

Symphony Christmas     This is as excerpt from the novel Symphony in a Minor Key.  I still intend to publish the novel, so this will eventually be removed from Serial and not placed in Backfile.

Over the Christmas season I printed five favorite poems, written by others. They will eventually be removed from Serial and not placed in Backfile.

The Prince of Exile     Nothing is what it seems, in service of the Prince. Prince of Exile and Blondel of Arden are my only non-Menhir fantasies. Not yet moved to Backfile.

Voices in the Walls     This is as excerpt from an uncompleted novel, heavily annotated for the benefit of new or would-be writers. It will eventually be removed from Serial and placed in Backfile.

Jandrax     The entirety of my 1978 first novel, annotated for the benefit of would-be writers. It will eventually be removed from Serial and placed in Backfile.

Starting tomorrow, Raven’s Run, another unpublished novel.

209. Travel

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When I was a child, my family took only one vacation. We drove a hundred miles south to see the reconstructed fort at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. We left at seven in the morning, right after milking, and got back by five in the afternoon.

That’s how it is on a dairy farm. I left Oklahoma for Michigan when I went to college, but that wasn’t a vacation. That was an escape. By the time I got married, I was ready to do some traveling.

Travel was cheap in the U.S. in the seventies. Gas was seventeen cents a gallon and the old car usually ran. We slept in a pup tent and cooked on a camp stove. We crisscrossed the western two-thirds of America and visited nearly every National Park. Eventually however, as I continued doing more writing than selling, the car got old and times got lean. Then I started teaching and a few years later, with a mostly healed up bank account, we toured the Atlantic states. That trip gave me the start on a new novel (see 55. Voices in the Wall and Serial for February and March of 2016).

By 1987 we had saved enough money to tour Europe. Perhaps tour is not the right word. In those days you could get cheap air fares if you paid months in advance. Eurail passes cost quite a bit, but they took care of all your travel costs once you were in Europe. That left just food and lodging.

We were following the advice of Rick Steves but planned to outdo him on cheapness. We bought a tent and a pair of rucksacks. A set of clothing on our backs and another pair of jeans and shirt in the backpack, and we were ready to go.

We were 30 years old that year and planning to travel like teenagers – minus the hitchhiking. We had very little money, but we had lots of time. Seventy days, in fact. Being a school teacher is a real pain sometimes, but it gives you summers off.

As we waited for our flight out of San Francisco that spring, the gate attendant announced that they were overbooked, and offered a pass for future flights to anyone who would volunteer to wait for a later departure. We volunteered, and then watched our flight leave without us. It was logical; the pass was worth almost as much as we had paid months earlier, and it would only mean a short delay. Still, after waiting a lifetime to see Europe, it hurt to see our plane go on without us.

It felt good when it returned twenty minutes later. They had had engine trouble, but the problem was quickly resolved. Meanwhile, we found out that the flight had not actually been overbooked. It was a computer error. We took off about forty minutes later, on the same plane, with passes in our pockets to cover a future plane flight. All the way to Europe in 1987, we planned for our second trip in 1988. more tomorrow

Re-introduction to Serial

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This is the post from August 29, 2015, which was the
last working day of August that year, and the first post
in Serial. I’ve basically done what I said I would do.

Starting September first, this space will be home to serial fiction. It will be posted five days a week. (About half way through the year, that became four times a week, matching A Writing Life.)

Serial fiction has a long history. Going back at least to Dickens, it has been used to serve the needs of the publisher. How long each serial installment was, how many installments there were, and how long a time fell between each installment was calculated to fill issues of periodicals and bring readers back. For science fiction novelists, serialization has always been a way build an audience before a book is published, and earn a few extra dollars at the same time.

So what’s in it for you?

Free reads, for one thing.

When I first began to consider website serial publication of the works which will be presented here, I had a particular kind of reader in mind. I envisioned a train or bus commuter, or a bored backseater in a car pool, surrounded by distractions. (Not a driver. If you’re driving right now, turn off your damned smart phone!) I thought that kind of a reader would appreciate a short presentation, half a satisfying read and half a tease for tomorrow’s installment.

When I began to sort each story into episodes, it became apparent that each has a natural rhythm which has to be honored. Some stories have larger blocks of text between natural breaks, and this rhythm varies within each story as well. One size episode does not fit all, but there will still be five (later, four) episodes each week, of somewhat varying length.

Each story will carry a “5 of 12” style notation indicating which episode out of how many, so you can keep track of where you are. (This eventually became tedious, so I shifted to a simpler numbering system.) As in a blog, you can back up to previous posts to pick up any episodes you might have missed.

Shortly after each story concludes, it will be permanently archived on the Backfile page. If you prefer to read a story all at once, just wait. That is, if you can avert your eyes from the daily presentation.

I dare you to try.

Tomorrow, I will list the contents of the first year of Serial.

208. The Cost of Research

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I grew up on science fiction, but that wasn’t all I read. I read about the westward movement, pioneer days, cowboys, and Indians (as opposed to cowboys and Indians). When I discovered adult books, I read a lot of Costain. He was about all we had in the closet sized abandoned library in our elementary school.

I found a set of cheaply bound classics in a stationary store in a nearby town. They were two-ups, with Moby Dick and Two Years Before the Mast in one volume. I loved them both, along with Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, and a half dozen others. I eventually learned that my Moby Dick was an abridged version. When I tried to tackle the original as an adult, I figured out why they abridged it. Damn, that book is long; maybe I’ll finish it next year, when I’m not so busy.

Everything I read, outside of The Scarlet Letter, was an adventure of some sort. Navel gazing literature never crossed my path until I was an adult. I still like my fiction to be doing something, even while the protagonist reflects on life and its meaning. After all, we mix up action and reflection in real life.

That was the way I approached my writing from the beginning. Plenty of action; plenty of things to consider along the way and, hopefully to consider again after closing the book for the last time.

By the time I was ready to write, I could have written in any of a number of genres. I chose science fiction and fantasy for two reasons. First, they are my favorites. I had been reading both for decades and I knew their possibilities and the readers’ expectations. They weren’t all I wanted to write, but they were a place to start.

The other reason was money. Re$earch co$ts dollar$ – and time, which is a form of money. I could create whole worlds out of my imagination, but if I wanted to write about the area west of Philadelphia in 1789, or West Virginia in 1865, or the Mississippi River in 1845 – to name the settings of three novels on my to-write list – it would have taken years of library research and trips to those places. I couldn’t afford that, so half of the things I was ready to write were out of reach.

I was a pleasure to write what I could afford to write, but still frustrating not to be able to crawl out of that box.

Eventually I started teaching, made a few bucks, and had the chance to travel. That opened things up. I‘ll tell you a bit about that over the next two posts, then acquaint you with one of the novels that came out of those travels. more tomorrow

197. Alternatives to History

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I am not always a fan of science fiction based on alternative timelines. They can be superb, but they are often pedestrian, and too often deeply dumb.

I’ll give you two examples – best and worst. Pavane by Keith Roberts is a powerfully written novel set in a fully realized alternate world. It’s premise, spelled out in a prolog, is that Queen Elizabeth was assassinated, leading to a conquest of England by Catholic Spain. That shows a lot more imagination than the typical, “What if Lee Harvey Oswald had been hit by a bus on the way to Dallas?” setup, but the story didn’t need the premise. If the prolog had been left out and the story had been marketed as fantasy, it would have been just as good.

My candidate for worst alternative timeline story is Mirror, Mirror from the original Star Trek. While it is fun to see an alternative Spock, the notion that the entire course of human history had gone down a different and dystopian path, yet still the Enterprise was the Enterprise and all its main characters were still there doing the same jobs is too silly to even laugh at.

Actually, scientific accuracy is rarely invoked. Most alternate timeline stories are just an excuse to explore a situation contrary to fact, and there is nothing wrong with that. It has obviously excused Mirror, Mirror to its many fans. There is a sub-genre of historical novels called alternate history which doesn’t claim to be science fiction at all.

All this is a tortuous route to Heinlein and the novel fragment I posted yesterday. Heinlein’s short stories from the thirties and forties build up a future history that I would have loved to be a part of, or at least to write stories in. Time, however, eventually caught up to them. In our world, Leslie LeCroix was not the first man on the moon. As Heinlein continued to mine his old works, he eventually cast what had been his future history as an alternate timeline. He added more timelines, and eventually let them all blend together into a view of multiple universes. This was great fun for me as a reader, but it held nothing for me as a writer. I was interested in writing about a robust exploration of the solar system in the near future, informed by astronomical information Heinlein did not have.

I asked myself how the world Heinlein wrote about was different from the world we live in. The answer was simple; his culture developed nuclear powered spaceships, and ours didn’t. That begged the question, “Why not?”. We developed nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, so why not nuclear spacecraft?

Not denying the technical difficulties involved, the answer seemed to be fear. Somewhere on the road to the cold war, nuclear power became the enemy. Nukes took out Hiroshima; nukes gave us Godzilla. Nukes gave us fear, and fear does not deal with reason; it has a logic of its own.

What if that fear had not developed, or had developed differently. It would be easy to envision a timeline in which they developed nuclear space propulsion technology, so we had to follow suit, and to hell with the consequences.

So when and where could we tweak reality, and how should it be done? Should we simply present the chosen future as fait accompli, or should we create a character from the present who would go back in history and cause the change?

Heinlein came to the rescue again. In one of his late novels, in a throwaway line, he mentioned an attempt to change history by sending an agent back, not to kill a horrid dictator, but to give a condom to his father, an acne-faced teenager, on the night the dictator had been accidentally conceived. Beautiful!

I decided to save Franklin Roosevelt’s life, or at least prolong it for an additional several years, to make things come out differently in a different timeline. opening chapters Wednesday and Thursday

196. Timelines

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Here are a couple of pages out of a novel that never could make up its mind where it was going. There is another opening as well, which actually may become the story. At present I have two main characters vying for lead. This fellow Davos is probably not going to get the part. I’ll show you the other version on Wednesday and Thursday.

But first . . .   As I write this, it is July 26, one day into the Democratic convention. Many things are happening, primarily email leaks, which came out of left field and may or may not cause major changes in the outcome of the election. Everything is in flux, but one storyline will emerge. You know much more about it there-then as you read this than I know here-now as I am writing it. Reality isn’t science fiction – quite.

But what if . . ..

There are a thousand events this week whose occurrence, or non-occurrence, or even timing would allow a science fiction writer to generate a thousand different timelines, from utopian to dystopian and every shade between. This is true every day of every year, (see 173. BREXIT is Science Fiction) but at times like this, when the future seems poised on a knife’s edge, we realize how many ways our lives could come out. It goes a long way toward explaining the popularity of alternative history novels, something we will talk about tomorrow.

For now let’s look at the opening chapter of a novel-that-never-was about a timeline-that-never-was, and see what trouble Davos has gotten himself into.

Chapter 1

The headlines were about the Soviet victory at Königsberg, three days earlier.

Jim Fletcher, who now went by the name Davos, felt a chill. Not panic, not yet, but definitely the beginning of fear. He checked the date on the newspaper, April 12, 1945. That was right, but the headline was wrong. He checked his wristwatch – an intricate mechanism of cams and gears and springs that would have been welcomed in any historical museum in his home time. April 12th was the first of three ticks that would verify his target timeline. It was no small item; not something any newspaper would have missed.

Davos folded the newspaper and sipped coffee, staring out the window of the diner and waiting for his breakfast. No need to panic. No need to hurry. Time was something he had an unlimited supply of. Cultivate patience. 

Sure.

He ate, paid, and left. Two blocks toward downtown, there was a news stand that would have the New York Times.

These headlines revealed sketchy news about the battle near Okinawa. It should have read, “President Roosevelt dies in Warm Springs.”

Davos expressed an obscene opinion and headed back to the hotel. Tim Murray was behind the desk reading Life magazine. He was a friendly guy. Davos had only known him since he first checked in four days ago, but Murray looked up and asked, “Did you forget something?” Davos just waved.

Inside, with locked door, security chain, and a few considerably more potent devices out of place in this time to back them up, he said, “Kerbach,” and his mechanical companion woke up. Davos said, “Translate!”

It did and they faded. “THQ. Take us back, Kerbach, we’re in the wrong timeline.”

“No, shit. You sure?”

“Got to be the wrong line. This is the day Roosevelt died, and two newspapers did not report it. What are you waiting for?”

Kerbach did not reply and the knot in Davos’s stomach tightened.

“Kerbach!”

“Trying.”

They waited in a sphere of luminescent fog. As they were between timelines, only his own impatience gave the duration color and meaning. It smelled of sweat and was beginning to taste like panic.

“What’s happening?”

“I can’t make contact. I’ve run my diagnostics eight times. Nothing. Whatever is wrong, isn’t in me. Maybe at THQ?”

“Maybe. We’ll try again later. Right now, I want you to review what you did when you translated us to Armageddon Four. How did we end up in the wrong timeline?”

There was a long pause, then Kerbach said, “I find no errors.”

“Take us back.”

“Are you sure?”

“We can’t just stay here in this fog for the rest of eternity.”

The fog receded and Davos was standing at the foot of an unmade bed, in a cheap hotel, talking to a battered leather suitcase that was much more than it seemed to be. The wristwatch said eight minutes after ten and the clock on the dresser said the same. He had neither gained nor lost time in the translation. In other words, he had never left. For good or ill, he was tied to this place and time.

         *          *          *

Two days later, FDR was in the news again. He would not confirm or deny rumors of large scale fire-bombing of Tokyo. He should have been two days dead and lying in state. Vice-president Harry Truman was still an unknown. Presumably he still didn’t know that America had atomic bombs – bombs he would order dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in forty-one of the sixty-seven timelines in sheaf alpha.

There was no known timeline in which FDR did not die on April 12, 1945.

195. Boys at Work: Rick Brant

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By at Wk atwIf you didn’t read Tuesday’s post, you might want to do so before you proceed. This week is on the subject apprenticeship literature.

Grosset and Dunlap was the most important publishing house of the twentieth century, in my opinion, because they provided literature for all the kids who didn’t have access to a library and didn’t have much money to spend. For a dollar or so, depending on the decade, you could buy books from any of a dozen or more series. This was before paperbacks made books affordable. If it weren’t for Grosset and Dunlap, I would not be a reader or writer today.

Grosset and Dunlap was almost synonymous with the Stratemeyer syndicate, which provided them with most of their titles. There were exceptions such as the Ken Holt series and the Rick Brant books. Ken Holt never appealed to me, but the Rick Brant books were the jewels of my childhood.

All of the G & D books carried pseudonyms as author. In books from Stratemeyer, this disguised the fact that they were works for hire, written to outlines which were usually provided by Stratemeyer himself. The Ken Holt books however (pseudonym Bruce Campbell) were all written by Sam and Beryl Epstein. The first three Rick Brant books (pseudonym John Blaine) were written by Peter Harkins and Harold Goodwin. The following twenty-one books were by Goodwin alone. (see also 60. Thank You, Harold Goodwin)

In other words, they had real authors, not poorly paid hacks, and it showed.

Relevant aside: Years ago I was attending a teachers’ conference, against my will. If you’ve never been at one, you don’t know what boredom means. I had settled into my normal conference stance of a calm face covering intense irritation at the endless stream of BS. The only bright spot was the keynote speaker, Steve Wozniak. When he came to the podium, he mentioned Rick Brant as a childhood influence.

I whooped. You could have heard me in the street. Then my face turned red. You see, I had never before heard anyone else mention my childhood favorite. This was before I had access to the internet; now I know that there are enough fans of the series to run a fair number of Rick Brant themed websites.

Rick Brant had the perfect life. His father was a noted scientist who lived and worked at home. Rick, his family, and his best friend Scotty all lived on Spindrift Island, which was the headquarters of a group of scientists and engineers. Zircon, Weiss, Briotti and others formed a cadre of the best uncle figures any boy ever had.

He was a junior member of the team. A member -not a mascot. He never outshone the scientists, but he pulled his own weight, mostly building electronic gadgets that the scientists had invented. This was during the electronic middle ages (first tubes, then transistors, then solid state), when a reader could go down to Radio Shack and buy the wherewithal to try his own hand at the trade.

Rick Brant was eighteen years old for 43 years, always working with his avuncular scientists and always learning. That’s good work if you can get it. During that time he went on dozens of expeditions throughout the world. He helped the Spindrift scientists launch a rocket to the moon, find a lost civilization, excavate a sunken temple – the list goes on for twenty-four books.

I so wanted to be Rick Brant.

A week is enough for now, but there are other authors that deserve attention, particularly Howard Pease. Someday soon, we’ll return to this subject.

194. Boys at Work: Lee Correy

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By at Wk atwIf you didn’t read Monday’s post, you might want to do so before you proceed. This week is on the subject apprenticeship literature.

Lee Correy had a considerable effect on my life. L. C. was a pen name of G. Harry Stine, an author with a long bibliography, but I don’t think of it like that. I have read some of G. Harry’s work without enthusiasm, and I haven’t read Lee Correy’s two seminal novels since high school. I still think of Lee Correy as a real person, separate from G. Harry Stine. It’s an artifact of my nostalgia.

I am referring to Rocket Man and Starship Through Space, both of which were in my high school library. They would be in my personal library right now, but they are rare, and copies are now out of my price range.

Of the two, Starship Through Space is clearer in my memory, probably because of its lame ending. Two young men travel back from Mars where they are attending a space academy, to find that they have been chosen to participate in the building of the first interstellar ship. They participate fully in the building of the Vittoria, are on the crew which flies her to Pluto and back, are deeply involved in the upgrade and rebuilding that follows, and continue on the Alpha Centauri. That is where it all fell apart for me, as the natives of New Terra resemble Native Americans and turn out to be displaced humans, part of the scattering that followed the Tower of Babel.

The two young protagonists participate fully in the work of building and flying the starship, but they are not running the show. They don’t invent a stardrive or save the universe. They are junior members of the crew, in training, and under the command of competent adults whom they respect.

This is the key to apprenticeship literature. The young protagonists are intelligent, well trained, diligent, hard working, and extremely competent. They aren’t the boss, but they will be someday. They have ambition and confidence, but typically don’t have a lot of arrogance.

The novel Rocket Man meant more to me, but is harder to portray. I don’t remember much, just the overwhelming feeling of lust and envy at what the protagonist was getting to do. The novel has all but disappeared, even from the internet. Goodreads list it without reviews or ratings. The only thing I found to jog my memory was a 1955 Kirkus review.

             Update, November 2019: As of today, there is a review on Amazon and the Kirkus review has disappeared.

Here is what I do remember. A young man wants to be a rocket man; to this end he enrolls in the international engineering school in New Mexico. The school is a co-op; students attend classes six months, then work on rockets for six months as apprentice engineers, earning money to cover tuition. I don’t remember too much of the story but I will never forget how badly I wanted to be on that campus.

Four years later I was at Michigan State, on a scholarship but short of cash. One option for my sophomore year was to move into Hedrick House, a student owned co-op. I lived that year in a closet sized room, attended meetings to decide house business, and cooked dinner for the fifty guys who shared the place with me. Every night I went to bed with a smile on my face knowing that I was on my way, and paying my own way. And every night I remembered Rocket Man. Thanks, Mr. Stine, known to me as Lee Correy.