Well, America..... It seems that you have elected to live through a live Civics Experiment for the next 4-10 years..... The VERY best of luck with that. You're going to NEED it..... [shakes head]

Remember, remember!

The fifth of November,

The Gunpowder treason and plot;

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot!

Guy Fawkes and his companions

Did the scheme contrive,

To blow the King and Parliament

All up alive.

Threescore barrels, laid below,

To prove old England's overthrow.

But, by God's providence, him they catch,

With a dark lantern, lighting a match!

A stick and a stake

For King James's sake!

If you won't give me one,

I'll take two,

The better for me,

And the worse for you.

A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,

A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,

A pint of beer to wash it down,

And a jolly good fire to burn him.

Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!

Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!

Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

Just Finished Reading: The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess (FP: 1962) [206pp] 

In a world of untold billions, the one-child policy was clear. No matter the circumstance, even if the child later died as he had, only one child could be born. She would spend the rest of her life childless. Not that her husband seemed put out by that. He had shown little interest in her since the birth and would show her even less now. It was no surprise that she found her brothers-in-law obvious attraction all the more compelling. But things in the outside world were changing. The daily ration had been reduced again and most people were often hungry. Rumours abounded of crop failures across the world followed by food riots and crackdowns. As famine spread across the globe Beatrice-Joanna did the only logical thing. She travelled north, away from collapsing London, to stay with her sister on her farm. With the hope of food and shelter and with a new, illegal, life growing inside her the future looks grim indeed. She has no idea how bad things are going to get... 

This was, to be honest, a weird one! 60’s SF is, more often than not, more than a little strange but this slim volume had the added ‘spice’ of being written by the author of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (which I tried to read some years ago but ended up DNFing it). Based in the usual projected – and now we know incorrect – heavily overpopulated world it showed the authorities, at least in Britain, struggling with the basic fact of too many mouths to feed. Not only is farming land at a premium but most sustenance is chemical slop produced in factories. There’s a one-child policy (not completely enforced for some reason), an official encouragement of homosexuality and a blind-eye turned to infanticide. None of this, as you might expect, had much effect on population growth. Interestingly the use of oral contraceptives had started in the US 2 years before publication and in the UK just prior to publication in December 1961, so I’m a bit curious as to why they failed to be mentioned – never mind used – to control population growth in the book. Even if personal use was restricted or just ignored by the general population it’d be quite easy to add it to food or water to radically reduce fertility. Likewise, they could just stop vaccinating people and let successive epidemics ‘thin the herd’. The fact that such methods were not used whilst crude propaganda was used certainly detracted from any feeling of realism. 

Some of the things that always ‘gets’ me in any kind of collapse scenario – which I think are nonsense over and above being narratively useful for the author – is how quickly any complex society falls, how quickly people turn to cannibalism (please!) and how quickly the general population declines. These are, I believe, simple narrative devices to reduce the plots complexity and decrease the total number of characters – both potential and actual – to reasonable proportions, plus they speed to transition from the original conditions to the new narrative. I think, and have long thought, this to be deeply unrealistic though. I think I need to read up on such things to see if my ‘reasonable assumptions’ actually hold water. 

Overall, this was a strange read on several levels. It was fairly well written, the main characters all had growth arcs which, in context, made a degree of sense but I think the story itself didn’t really ‘do’ it for me. Some of the underlying themes seemed silly at best and, at least to me, some were simply nonsensical. Readable but a little too weird.  

Happy Birthday: Burton Stephen Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American actor. Initially known for playing tough guys with a tender heart, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series. He was a four-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actor (winning once), and he also won two BAFTA Awards and one Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor. The American Film Institute ranks Lancaster as #19 of the greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

Lancaster performed as a circus acrobat in the 1930s. At the age of 32, and after serving in World War II, he landed a role in a Broadway play and drew the attention of a Hollywood agent. His breakthrough role was in the film noir The Killers in 1946 alongside Ava Gardner. A critical success, it launched both of their careers. Not long after in 1948, Lancaster starred alongside Barbara Stanwyck in the commercially and critically acclaimed film Sorry, Wrong Number where he portrayed the husband to her bedridden, invalid character. In 1953, Lancaster played the illicit lover of Deborah Kerr in the military drama From Here to Eternity. A box office smash, it won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and landed a Best Actor nomination for Lancaster.

Later in the 1950s, he starred in The Rainmaker (1956), with Katharine Hepburn, earning a Best Actor Golden Globe nomination, and in 1957 he starred in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) with frequent co-star Kirk Douglas. During the 1950s, his production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, was highly successful, with Lancaster acting in films such as: Trapeze (1956), a box office smash in which he used his acrobatic skills and for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor; Sweet Smell of Success (1957), a dark drama today considered a classic; Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), a WWII submarine drama with Clark Gable; and Separate Tables (1958), a hotel-set drama which received seven Oscar nominations.

In the early 1960s, Lancaster starred in a string of critically successful films, each in very disparate roles. Playing a charismatic biblical con-man in Elmer Gantry in 1960 won him the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actor. He played a Nazi war criminal in 1961 in the all-star, war-crime-trial film, Judgment at Nuremberg. Playing a bird expert prisoner in Birdman of Alcatraz in 1962, he earned the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor and his third Oscar nomination. In 1963, Lancaster traveled to Italy to star as an Italian prince in Visconti's epic period drama The Leopard. In 1964, he played a US Air Force General who, opposed by a Colonel played by Douglas, tries to overthrow the President in Seven Days in May. Then, in 1966, he played an explosives expert in the western The Professionals. Although the reception of his 1968 film The Swimmer was initially lackluster upon release, in the years after it has grown in stature critically and attained a cult following.

In 1970, Lancaster starred in the box-office hit, air-disaster drama Airport. In 1974 he again starred in a Visconti film, Conversation Piece. He experienced a career resurgence in 1980 with the crime-romance Atlantic City, winning the BAFTA for Best Actor and landing his fourth Oscar nomination. Starting in the late 1970s, he also appeared in television mini-series, including the award-winning Separate but Equal with Sidney Poitier. He continued acting into his late 70s, until a stroke in 1990 forced him to retire; four years later he died from a heart attack. His final film role was in the Oscar-nominated Field of Dreams.

Yeah! We MADE it to November.... This Month here @ SaLT is dedicated to REBELS everywhere in honour of Guy Fawkes who is still celebrated (for his act or failure depending on your PoV) almost 420 years later! Not bad....   

Just Finished Reading: The Plague Year – America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright (FP: 2021) [336pp] 

It was going to ‘go away’ like ‘a miracle’, but it didn’t. Indeed, per capita the US was in to top 3 worse hit countries in the world by Covid-19 – despite (arguably) being the most advanced and with some of the best medical minds on the planet. So, what went wrong? A lot actually. 

As seems to be the usual case, authoritarian China first covered up the outbreak, played down the consequences, denied that it could be transmitted between people, delayed the publication of the gene sequence and refused any help from the WHO or CDC. Only weeks after up to 5 million people had already left the province did the Chinese authorities finally act. When they did, they were highly effective but multiple cats were already out of the bag and travelling across the world on international flights. 

Despite clear warnings, the US was slow to react. When travel from China was finally restricted it was already too late. The virus was already in the US (and indeed the rest of the world) and spreading – largely undetected. Mistakes were made. The CDC ‘tests’ were giving questionable results and that took weeks to resolve. Even when they were working as advertised there were far too few of them to do much good in the general population. The results came back in days – or sometimes weeks – making the whole process essentially pointless. Better, quicker, tests were needed. Some of these were available in Europe but only US manufactured tests were authorised. The emergency stockpiles of PPE and other medical equipment – including ventilators – had been run-down due to chronic underfunding over years. When investigated the cupboard was almost bare and what was there was either out of date or snapped up immediately. Rather than acting as a centralised authority – as it was supposed to – the Federal government essentially told the States that they were on their own and would need to source their own equipment. When they did so it was sometimes simply snagged by Washington and disappeared. Future purchases happened in secret.  

But you know the story... We all lived through it or at least the ones who lived did. America was certainly not alone in showing the world a master class of how NOT to handle a pandemic but it certainly gave it a very good run for its money. The Covid plague hit the US much harder than it should have done and kept hitting it much longer than it should have done. A few notable countries, the ones that actually had their shit together (I’m definitely NOT counting the UK here) like South Korea and New Zealand acted swiftly and decisively – without the need for dictatorial powers – and contained it, thereby suffering few deaths and little economic disruption. The US death toll was staggering, unnecessary and far from evenly distributed. A very good indicator of your chances of survival were not just age – but race and poverty. Essential workers especially, and health care workers in particular, died significantly more often than many others. 

Told with passion, and quite a bit of anger, this is the tale of an unprepared country (that should have been far more prepared than it was) coping very badly with a disease its own scientists had been warning about for over a decade – at least. Not all of the fault lay at the door of the Trump administration in the Whitehouse – there was certainly enough blame to go around elsewhere – but Washington did precious little to help where it could and did much to hinder the responses of others more competent than themselves. Although there was probably little new here that we either didn’t know from news reports and later investigations this was still an interesting read which covered a lot of the bases. Definitely a recommended read if you want a big-picture as well as street level look at a year (or two) few of us will forget. One more pandemic book to come – for a while.  

Happy Halloween! Have some spooky FUN tonight....