I’ve been traveling recently, and when I travel I catch up on reading. This has included some fiction, both classic and contemporary. It’s gotten me to thinking — when books, whether they be classic like The Hunchback of Notre Dame or contemporary like the Harry Potter series, are adapted for movies (or I suppose when
This is an original short story that first appeared on the Bewildering Stories website, issue #585, in August, 2014 (http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue585/combat_fatigue.html) Combat Fatigue by Bob Welbaum “First, let me verify your information. You are Staff Sergeant Stuart B. Jamison, United States Army. You are 24 years old, single, and have completed two tours in
I hope you’re not as tired as politics as I am. Our system is so long and drawn out, I’m already wishing the election was over. But this is the system the Founding Fathers gave us, so we’d all better pay attention, because we’re going to need the best possible leadership in the years ahead.
During a recent trip to Japan, I got to visit a colony of snow monkeys which live in a national park in the Nagano area. Their species name is actually the Japanese macaque, and their range is through much of Japan. I was expecting white fur, but they actually have light brown fur; the name comes
My running strategy can best be described as Hope over Experience, and in Tokyo on February 28, Hope lost again. (It’s never won; I guess I have a very shallow learning curve.) Tokyo is one of six major marathons, the others being Chicago, New York, Boston, Berlin and London. In September, 2015, I’d gone with Marathon
This short story was published in Issue #643 of Bewildering Stories. http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue643/ Distant Replay by Bob Welbaum Jerome had felt fear before, but this was different. Much different. The man on his right disappeared from his peripheral vision with a scream. There was a deafening explosion to his left. Then another. Then they
Last week I ran into a friend at the gym. He went to college in Arizona on a football scholarship and has lots of interesting stories. For future reference, he just happens to be African-American, and on this day he had a cautionary tale of how prejudice works both ways. There was a group of
What if you decided to rate all the fast-food restaurants in your city. How would that affect your diet? I recently listened to an interesting podcast about a woman in Louisville, KY who loved cheeseburgers. She decided to rate all the eating establishments in her area that serves cheeseburgers. But she’d also heard all the
I went to school in a small, almost rural township. There were 49 in my graduating class, and we went all 12+ years in the same building. And there were no minorities; we were amazingly homogeneous, all very white lower-to-middle class. Being a small school, teacher turnover was high. Each year would bring many new
Our democracy has come a long way since the early days of the republic. As a history nerd, I’ve always been curious about the voting requirements in other eras. I’ve always suspected there have been times when voting has been considered more of a privilege than a right. I’ve just found a historical note to