Meme Monday: Miscellaneous Memes for November

I figured it was time for some more miscellaneous memes, given that I've got a bunch I've never used and they really need to see the light of day.

This dad joke was brought to you by Reddit
and Fletch.

Since I've finally been playing a Hunter
on the Anniversary servers, I truly get this one.
From Reddit (and Friends).

I still giggle a bit at this one.
From Pinterest (and Shinga).

From the Facebook My DnD group.

Been there. Oh, I've been there enough
that I can look at a donut and immediately
figure out if I can accommodate one with
my meal. From Pinterest.

From Pinterest.

Less Brooding and More Examining

My wife and I took advantage of being near to our closest Barnes and Nobles bookstore on Saturday that we decided to drop in for a little while. The last time I was at this Barnes and Nobles was several months ago, and after putting up my post at the end of last week, I thought it a good idea to follow up on whether or not I could find some of those authors I mentioned on the SF&F bookshelves.

At least this particular Barnes and Noble separates Science Fiction and Fantasy into two separate sections --they did this about 3-4 years ago I believe-- and as Bhagpuss observed Fantasy outstrips Science Fiction in shelf space. But you know what outstrips both combined? Manga. 

Here's a crude representation of the SF&F / Comics section at our B&N:

This is as of November 1, 2025.

It's an approximate design, as I was using Paint and it isn't exactly a precise tool. However, as you can see, Fantasy and Science Fiction took up about 5/6 of the interior section of three bookcases, with Fantasy getting 3/6 and SF getting 2/6, with the last 1/6 a depository for SFF-related oversized books as well as some RPGs. The RPGs shared space with other Western-style comics in the smaller shelf in the center, whereas Manga had the entire outer portion of the bookshelf to themselves. And to be honest, I might not be quite representing this accurately, as there might be even more manga shelves that I missed.

Anyway, all that's past is prologue, so let's get to the interesting part: the books.

For starters on the Fantasy side of things, no David Eddings. There was plenty of Terry Brooks, which I'd seen numerous times before, but Terry is still actively writing so that gives him a boost over the deceased Eddings. There was also no Katherine Kurtz, Katherine Kerr, or Janny Wurtz, which again tracks with what I'd seen before. There was also no Fritz Leiber, but guess where I did find a book of his? In the Science Fiction section:

As of November 1, 2025.

That was surprising, given that his arguably most well-known works are the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser collections. 

I'll use that as an excuse to flip over to the SF section, which when I was last at B&N was indeed very thin. However, in the intervening months, it seems that either the corporate leadership or the local ownership* decided to beef up the SF section quite a bit. There was always quite a few Isaac Asimov books around, although they apparently have yet another cover design, but given that Foundation was (relatively) recently loosely adapted into a television series, I guess that's no surprise.

Ray Bradbury, however, is having a bit of a moment.

As of November 1, 2025.

Because of the video adaptation, classroom requirements, and the political climate, Fahrenheit 451 is present in large numbers. However, it was rather nice to see The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes as well.

Arthur C. Clarke, while not being given even close to the amount of shelf space as Asimov or Bradbury, still has at least a few books present:

As of November 1, 2025.

If you were going to pick 3-4 books of Clarke's to be there, I'd expect Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama, and 2001, all of which are present. There's also 2010: Odyssey Two, which is an okay sequel, but I guess it's there because 2001 is there. 

And yeah, I suppose I ought to mention Bob Heinlein:

As of November 1, 2025.

At least the back of Starship Troopers mentions that it is a controversial novel, something which my old Berkley Books edition never did. Speaking of which, it's interesting that Heinlein's novels are being reprinted by Ace, as opposed to Berkley and Baen**, which were you'd find his novels back in the 80s. Given that Ace is now a subsidiary of Berkley, I guess that makes sense, but while investigating who owns what imprint for this post holy crap is the publishing industry consolidated these days. I can easily see why some people go and self-publish if the consolidation of the publishing industry is any clue.

So there you have it. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself incorrect with regards to the SF authors, and maybe that's an indicator that some other novels I read back in the day may have a chance in the sun as well.

*I'm betting on the local ownership, because while the corporate overlords have some say in the overall layout and the big displays around the store, the composition of individual areas will reflect local tastes and what sells.

*Given Baen's current publishing focus in Military SF, it's no surprise that Heinlein's old 40s-60 short stories ended up being published by them in the 80s/90s. As I'd mentioned before, Heinlein's works --particularly his older short stories, have aged really badly, and I suppose you could see his imprint on Baen's authorial focus, particularly some of the right wing aspects of Baen's output.

Where's the Voice, Copilot?

At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon*, I'm not a fan of "assistance" by AI when writing.

There's a big difference in providing flags for grammatical errors and AI frequently "helping" by suggesting words and/or complete sentences to assist me when writing. Oh, I can see where it'd be a useful tool to have around if you're trying to write an email for work and you're stuck on how to present it properly, but most of the time I can muddle through without much of an issue. After all, there's a certain value to experience at work. (I think.)

But when you're writing a blog post or fiction, where you want a specific voice, having Copilot or another pseudo AI pop up word or sentence structure suggestions isn't very helpful at all.

The AI portion begins around the 3:33 mark,

which I'm linking to right here.

Believe it or not, this post wasn't caused by Emma's gripe about AI on The Late Show a few days ago, but this article on The Register about roughly half of the people laid off due to AI are predicted to be rehired at a lower payscale. That didn't exactly surprise me, given the shoddy quality of work I've seen out of people who think using AI to do their job and not bothering to check the results has risen quite sharply over the last year. Remember the line "trust but verify" that I mentioned in the post on Wednesday? Yeah, kind of like that.

But her complaint as an author pretty much hits home for me. If you don't know what you're doing and you're trying to write something (such as a support document) for your job, then fine. Let Open AI have a crack at it. But if you're trying to write fiction and you just rely upon Copilot or another Open AI to do your work, people WILL notice. You (yes, you) have a specific authorial voice, and even if you're writhing as Anonymous, people will know it's you who wrote the piece because of that voice. But if you let AI create the word salad, you'll discover that your authorial voice vanishes. And people won't like it.

So my advice is to do the hard work of learning your voice and keep writing to learn how to use it. Your voice is your own; don't abdicate your uniqueness to some Generative AI.

Oh, and after writing this but before I published it, this little ditty dropped from Jared Henderson:

Hucksters and swindlers using AI to try to make a quick buck by flooding Amazon with "ebooks" close enough to the original human-written work to fool customers? Who'd a thunk it? Maybe if some swindlers start using AI to create ebooks "exposing" some of these leading AI CEOs, something will get done. There are enough tech CEOs with fragile egos that maybe they'll get something done about this slop. Or, unfortunately, they'll probably just create their own slop to counter the original.

*The late Andy Rooney comes to mind. I can only imagine what his commentary about the rise of Generative AI would be like. I think that Wilhelm would have met his match, never mind me.

A Day to Brood About Stuff

It's been an interesting couple of weeks since I last checked in with my Operation Spread the Love on the WoW Anniversary servers.

By that, I mean very busy, and not playing very much either. 

Card's getting to the point where she'll have
some of her pre-raid gear on her, such as the Frostweave
gear (the purple tunic) that provide a pretty good bonus
to Frost spells. Although the screencap was taken today
this was the status as of Thursday, October 30th.

First there was the weekend trip up to visit my oldest and her partner, which included a stop at a coffee shop built in the building that once housed a pumping station for the Milwaukee River...

It was a chilly morning or we'd have sat outside.

And here you go, proof that there is a coffee
shop inside. (I had green tea as I'd already had coffee.)
At the Collectivo Coffee Lakefront in Milwaukee.

And an additional visit to the Milwaukee Public Museum...

Including a rebuilt saloon/taproom. Not sure
if the topless statues were added for effect or not,
but I did make a few snarky comments to my wife.

And you can't visit a museum gift shop
without seeing rocks for sale.

And a small restaurant next to an old train depot. Which of course brought out the train fanatic in me...

It's not a depot any longer, although the train
tracks are nearby.

Next to the depot was a statue of Czech
immigrants coming to this part of Milwaukee.
The irony of seeing this in our current political
climate wasn't lost on me.

On Tuesday, I spent some time over at my mom's house because her hot water heater has begun leaking, which is a good sign that the 20 year old heater has finally rusted through and needs replacement. I've had to argue with her about the immediate need to call a plumber to get this replaced ASAP, because you don't want a catastrophic failure and have 40 gallons of water on your floor.

Then, yesterday I attended the funeral of one of my brother's in-laws.* It rather understandably got me thinking quite a bit about mortality afterward.

It also brought up the very real question about what happens to our games and our characters when we die. I have a few boardgames that are difficult to find these days, such as Avalon Hill's old Civilization (and Advanced Civilization) game, and I've taken care of the game to make sure it doesn't fall apart. But what happens to it when I die? Will it end up in a landfill somewhere, like what happened to my grandfather's stamp collection?**

Or in terms of video games, who gains access to them when I'm gone? More than likely they'll vanish as well, given that someone else would have to take ownership of my Steam account (and other accounts, such as my Battle.net account). 

Orcish Army Knife may be gone, but Rades' old
toons are still present in Puggers Anonymous as
of October 31, 2025.

As you can see above, I logged into OG Balthan just to check to make sure Rades' old toons are present. I guess they'll remain until Microsoft purges accounts from Battle.net for inactivity, but I'm certainly not removing them.

Another reason for thinking about mortality and what happens to things after you die is all of those books that came out decades ago but are no longer published. The most obvious example I can think of David Eddings' Belgariad, which I never see anymore, but there's also other authors who published books in the 70s, 80s, and 90s that are now hard to find. I'm thinking of works by Barbara Hambly, Janny Wurts, Katherine Kerr, and Katherine Kurtz. Even older classics such as Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books are long out of print. I suppose you could go the ebook route, but you don't actually own those books and ebook publishers have shown an inclination to simply yank books away from you whenever they feel like it. 

Oh well. Just another thing to brood on, I guess.

*He died of a brain tumor at the relatively young age of 44.

**My mom and her siblings thought it would be worth something, but after consulting with a couple of experts on the collection the result was that the collection wasn't worth much of anything. It was merely my grandfather's obsession, and that was all it was really worth.

Accelerants in Life

I wasn't sure what I was going to write for today --all I knew is that I wanted to write something to get out of the funk I've found myself in writing fiction-- when this video dropped from Bookborn:

Now, to be fair, I've found Bookborn's videos engaging, and I don't agree with all of her takes on things, but I found that her videos do make me think, which is a good thing. This one is about fandoms, and how fandoms have gotten more strident and whatnot in the past several years with the rise of the algorithm controlling what is on your feed in social media.

As an example, she mentioned that she's a Taylor Swift fan, and with the new album release she went ahead and listened to it by herself first before she got online. When she got there, she discovered that all hell had broken out about the album. This is but one example she had about how toxic fandoms had become these days.

To my mind, my first comment would have been

Since I've referenced it once, you bet I'm gonna
bring it out from time to time.

It's not as if the Internet created Gatekeepers and assholes and purists in fandoms. Like any item of technology, it is an accelerant. I'm not going to say that we were all one big happy family in Ye Olde Days of SF&F (and music and whatever) fandom, because everybody had opinions and frequently there were assholes you had to deal with. Typically, however, the reach of said assholes wasn't very far, typically the local area you lived in. It was only with the advent of the Internet and various forms of social media did people become louder and more obnoxious over a much more distant area. 

Just remember, kids, that whenever you're seeing someone espousing something on the internet that's just one person's opinion. Go and form your own. And remember, when someone says "EVERYONE BELIEVES THIS", don't believe them. Just don't. That could be the social media algorithm's fault that you're not seeing the other opinions. Examine sources, and trust but verify.

Meme Monday: Halloween Memes for 2025

Another Halloween arrives this Friday, and rather than wait for the "after party memes", I figured I'd present them today.

Okay, okay, I figured I'd get this one out of
the way first. From Chameleon Memes.

More than kinda if you ask me.
From Pinterest.

If you're a mom, you'll probably get this.
Otherwise, it might take a few to figure out
just WHAT the openings are representing.
From NewMomWhoDis and Instagram.

There was the time when I went in to
work in the 90s on Halloween dressed as
the slasher from Scream... From Pinterest.

Take an old classic print, add a little crazy, and...
From Reddit.

Yes, I laughed. From Jim Benton
via GayNYCDad.

Wherever I Go, There's a Bookstore

I think it says something about me and my family that my wife and I visited out oldest up in Milwaukee this past weekend* and we spent part of our time in the bookstore that is below her and her partner's apartment.

Oh, we did go to a museum --The Milwaukee Public Museum, and yes, it's totally worth the trip-- and we also attended a concert by one of the local community orchestras that my oldest's partner plays bassoon in, but we can't have a trip anywhere without visiting a bookstore. 

Here's the proof. I sat down on a bench
in the store, looked to my right, and there
it was. I'd been thinking about buying this
classic, and I took this serendipity as a sign.

Some of my fondest vacation memories as a kid involved bookstores. Such as the time when we went down to Jekyll Island, Georgia (my parents rented a house for the week). I wasn't interested in hanging around the beach**, so I read the books I brought. We managed to find a small bookstore in a strip mall nearby when we made an excursion to check out the area, and I found these books:

Yes, I was on an Isaac Asimov kick at the time.
Then again, he wrote a metric ton of books of all types,
so it was kind of hard to avoid his works back in the day.

Asimov on Physics was right up my alley because that's what I eventually majored in at university, but I'd argue that Asimov on Science Fiction fueled my interest in writing far more than any other book at that time.

To be clear, both books were compilations of articles that Isaac had written for various magazines, from his own Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine to Galaxy Science Fiction to Astounding Science Fiction/Analog Science Fiction.***

I devoured that book (from Isaac's perspective) on the history and writing of Science Fiction, and it inspired me to try my hand at writing. 'Try' being the operative word here, because if you thought some of the stuff I put here on the blog is pretty bad, my first attempts at writing articles and fiction in high school were abjectly terrible. I still don't know how I got good grades in English back then, because I occasionally come across an old piece I wrote for class and shudder.

Still, I can also see Asimov's influence on my writer's voice when I occasionally return to this and other essay compilations of his. Unlike Stephen King, whose book On Writing I used as a springboard to learn how to edit better, Asimov provided me positive reinforcement that yes, I could write and I really ought to try my hand at it. The book also taught me that short story magazines were still alive and well (okay, at least 'alive'**** these days) and were worthwhile to read. If it weren't for that, I'd never have gotten to enjoy some really good stories. 

***

There is something oddly comforting about visiting a bookstore, especially for the first time. Sure, with the big stores (such as Barnes and Noble) there's likely to be a bunch of people there who are not readers but are with someone who is*****, but the independent bookstores tend to be packed with readers who genuinely love books. If you ask them and given them a blank slate, they are happy to provide a pile of books to read.

That actually happened to me over a decade ago, when I went to our local bookstore and when someone there asked if I needed any assistance, I admitted that I'd fallen off the wagon as far as reading SF&F goes, and I asked what books I ought to try out. The employee was almost giddy in that he instantly provided me with six books to read and pointed out about another half dozen or more to pick up after I was finished with those. Not all of his recommendations stuck with me --the John Ringo book I only got about 30 pages in before I decided he was far too overtly political for my tastes-- but I did find subgenres I'd have never tried were it not for his encouragement. 

Maybe I need to get out of my comfort zone again and try some specialist independent bookstores, such as Mystery or Romance bookstores. 

*Yes, the Meme Monday was written and scheduled beforehand.

**It stunk of dead fish. And before you say "Hey, what about that endless teen boy pastime of checking out girls?" yes, I can say that I did check out girls. I just made a point of doing that when my parents weren't around, and if I'd have walked over to the beach they would have been there. All. The. Time.

***Galaxy may --may-- have had a relaunch in 2024, but I haven't seen it at a bookstore yet. IASFM is now currently known as Asimov's Science Fiction as you'll see on the website, and Astounding became Analog and is now formally known as Analog Science Fiction Science Fact. Analog and Asimov's are published by Must Read Magazines, the same imprint that also publishes Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Where's The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, you may ask? Well, they began having printing issues, and I've only seen an issue or two since 2023. I did see this thread on Reddit indicating that a fan purchased the magazine with the attempt to save it, but I have no idea if that'll come to fruition. F&SF had a long history in print, and it was one of the last Fantasy fiction magazines out there. If I won the lottery, this would have been one of the things I would try to save from oblivion.

****Aaaand the deeper I've delved into this, the Must Read Magazines imprint also includes F&SF magazine, and the so-called fan (plus the intentionally vague 'group of investors') have been putting out contracts with 'morals clauses' and some pretty onerous ceding of rights in them. This does not bode well for the future of all five magazines, because I've this feeling that there's a private investment firm trying to squeeze every last dollar behind the magazines' intellectual property for their personal benefit. I'll keep an eye on Writer Beware articles for this going forward.

*****Or are buying a book for someone who is a reader.