Ray's X-Blog

Just set that dial, load, drop and -- boom or BOOOM! I was joking around with someone about a bad 1960s sci-fi novel called “The Day They H-Bombed  Los Angeles” by Robert Moore Williams.  Who was bombing LA?  While our government, of course, trying to contain a plague caused by a rogue protein molecule turning humans into howling zombies.  But our hero and his friends live to tell the tale after the City of Angels is H-Bombed three – count 'em – three times. I joked the government must have been using low-yield H-Bombs. And while I was Googling to see what was out there for low-yield A-Bombs I came across a reference to variable yield or dial-a-yield nukes.  Some nukes can be adjusted before they're loaded on bombers.  There was the Mod-10 B61 bomb that had four dial settings: 0.3, 5, 10 or 80 kilotons. So what would happen if the technician setting the dial was upset, the-wife-had-a-headache-last-night scenario?  The dial is supposed to ...

Pile it on! Sometimes I skip to the end of a book or movie to see if it's going to be worth my time to eXperience the whole thing. But some people say, “How can you enjoy a fictional work if you know the ending?”  Simple.  I've always been interested in writing fiction – never been published – and along the way I've learned how a work is constructed.  I can enjoy fiction on another level, seeing how well it was put together. The film A Quiet Place had a great premise: blind aliens have invaded our planet and they can only detect human victims through sound.  Make a noise and you're dead. I did notice that these carnivorous critters with their blindness can run around all over, at one point panically racing away in a beeline, without slamming into trees or and other objects.   They even don't even slip on something like Little Johnny's damn skateboard left in the driveway or one of Curt Collins' banana peels.  But let's leave that aside. ...