Walking in shadow and the Middle Way

Perhaps you thought, from the title, that this post would be about the election of Donald Trump to the presidency?

Gitabushi wrote up his thoughts yesterday, with which I think I “bigly” agree. It’s no secret that I’m not a Trump fan. I will freely admit that I didn’t vote for him, though had I lived not in a blue swamp I may have been more torn. Still, I am grateful that Hillary was not elected. I don’t think the Left will learn any valuable lessons from this election; they will continue to divide and race-bait and finger wag. But one of the reasons for President Trump is the swinging of the pendulum.

Call people racists and sexists and deplorables, then nominate the most corrupt, dishonest candidate in our history and once again call us bigots when we don’t support her. You’d damn well better have enough zombies voting (D) to make up for all the people you’re losing. And that didn’t happen.

So far it looks like Trump will have won with less total votes than Romney got in losing his 2012 race. Voter turnout was tepid, for both candidates were horrible. But Hillary was more horrible.

For my part, I didn’t expect Trump to win. I was wrong. I don’t think Trump is a good man or an honest one. I expect that he’ll govern as a moderate Democrat and that many of his formerly conservative fans, now on the train, will support him regardless. I hope I’m wrong about all that. If Trump turns out to be Reagan II, I’ll gladly admit once again to being in error. But anyway, for now we should all give him a chance. He won, and it’s petty and childish to condemn him before he’s actually done anything as president yet. That’s how I feel.

Moving on, I’ve finished up with Dickson’s Mission to Universe. Without giving away too much of the story, I can say that it wasn’t an earth-shattering classic, but it was an enjoyable cut of scientifiction. The book deals with the idea that the universe is a mysterious and dangerous place. Once man ventures off of his doorstep, he risks making himself known to powerful, malicious alien forces. There’s also the theme of charting the “middle path.” Humanity will face the challenge of colonizing the stars and potentially needing to wrest habitable planets from their current tenants. They must be careful not to devolve into mindless, barbaric conquerors. So too must they avoid stagnation and passivity.  Thus warns Mission to Universe.

 

I’m also now going on to the third Amber book, Sign of the Unicorn. The Guns of Avalon was a quick read. Many people have commented that it seems like it should be read together with Nine Princes, the first installment. I don’t necessarily disagree, but it too seemed to end rather abruptly to me. Maybe that’s just the nature of these more pulp-inspired older SFF series. Either way, it had some nice twists, particularly at the end. We continue to meet more of Corwin’s brothers, which is fun. We learn of Chaos and of the ominous black road, which by virtue of its presence in Amber appears to have pervaded all of Shadow. We also get a few more reasons to believe that #ShadowLivesMatter.

Crazy days may be ahead, but we’ve still got our classic SFF.

-Bushi