David Kubicek

November 11, 2023

The Long Fall of King Kong

by David Kubicek

WARNING: If you are at all squeamish about blood and gore, you might not want to read further. If, however, you are a regular reader/writer of horror stories or a watcher of horror movies, it’s probably all right for you to continue.

My brother John and I have had many strange conversations over the years and gotten involved in many off-beat projects. Two that come to mind are when we played rock music backwards to look for satanic messages and when we took a fake UFO photo.

One time, many years ago, we got onto the subject of King Kong’s epic fall from the Empire State Building. How we got onto the subject, I don’t remember.

To recap the climactic scene, the giant ape–clutching Fay Wray–climbs to the top of the Empire State Building. He sets Fay down so he can swat more effectively at the military planes that are buzzing around his head, and he falls to his death.

John said that a mass the size of that ape falling that distance would hit the pavement so hard that it would burst like a rotten tomato and create a far-reaching splatter pattern. It would be similar to the blood splatter detectives examine when someone has been brutally and bloodily murdered.

Most of the gore would be around the body with splashes on the walls and ceiling growing smaller and less dense with their distance from the unfortunate corpse. John maintained that a similar splatter pattern would result when the sorrowful simian smashed into the pavement. In fact, John calculated the radius of the splatter pattern.

Although John was highly proficient in math, this equation would have been fairly simple as equations go. The only unknown was how much the ape weighed. I don’t remember if the figure was available in any of the King Kong literature or if John made an estimate for the sake of filling in the blanks. The other factors-like-how high the building was and the velocity at which the ape plummeted to the pavement–could be looked up or determined by other calculations.

According to John’s calculations, the splatter pattern was sizeable. He found that simian debris would be flung as far away as Albany, which was approximately 150 miles distant. These, of course, would be smaller bits, like in the splatter pattern of our murder victim. Albany might see some molecules of ape innards or blood mist settle down from the sky but not big pieces like chunks of intestines or pieces of liver.

This, of course, would be the best-case scenario if the land were flat with no obstructions. Unfortunately, with city skyscrapers surrounding the impact zone most of the splatter would be blocked by the buildings–there would be ape innards many stories up on those buildings, in fact.

But maybe a little blood mist would clear the tops of those buildings and make its way to Albany.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

October 31, 2023

Tips to Help You Write (Everything) Better

by Erica Francis

Writing is one of those professions or hobbies that can mean different things to different people. But regardless of the type of writing we do, there’s always room to improve.

Create The Right Environment

Every writer has a type of environment in which they work best. For some, this could be a busy coffee shop, while others might thrive in solitude. Most of us, however, tend to write from our homes. Make sure that your home puts you in the right position to keep your mind clear. A few things you can do to push negativity out of the air are to clean and keep your writing area as uncluttered as possible.

Identify Your Goals

You’ve likely heard of the SMART goal strategy before in terms of professional aspirations. Turn this to your writing as well, whether you write for a living or just for fun. Know what you want to get out of your time. This will help you strategize a plan on what to say, how to say it, and when it needs to be said.

Use Writing Tools

Surgeons need scalpels, construction workers need drills, teachers need books, and artists need canvases. The point is that for every endeavor, there are tools that make them easier and more enjoyable. Writers have a host of free and paid tools, including those that help you tweak your grammar, keep your projects organized, and let you jot down inspiration and information to save for later.

Quit Typing, And Start Dictating

If you find that you think faster than you type, consider ditching the keyboard in lieu of a headset. According to Philips SpeechLive, dictation is up to seven times faster than typing, meaning you can get more out of your head and into a document. This will make you more productive and, even better, less stressed since you don’t have to worry about forgetting something that never made it from your brain to your fingertips.

Understand Your Audience

No matter what kind of writing you do, you have an audience. Get to know them, and you’ll be able to write in a way that allows your message to come through loud and clear. Keep in mind that you can’t be all things to all people. If you’re a marketing copywriter, for example, your job is to be upbeat, positive, and persuasive. When you pen fanfiction, you must be creative, descriptive, and able to invoke emotions.

Take A Course

Still feeling stuck and working on a memoir? Take a course that helps you identify the beginning and end of your story as well as what your memoir needs and what it doesn’t. You’ll also have no trouble finding plenty of free and paid courses online that can help you build your grammar skills, learn how to manage time, or get organized.

Stop Overthinking

Overthinking isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world you can do… unless there’s too much in your head to put onto paper. US-based Cleveland Clinic explains that overthinking can leave you jumping from one thing to the next and envisioning all of the ways that you’re making the wrong decision. Go with your gut. The worst-case scenario is that you go back and edit when your mind is clear.

Every word you write matters. When you want to refine your skills and make yourself a better writer, start by clearing out your home/workspace, which will also help you clear your head. This, along with the other tips above, can help you be a better writer, no matter what you choose to write.

For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

October 21, 2023

Learning How to Write Fiction

by David Kubicek

This is the way I learned how to write fiction.

At first glance it appears to be a simple formula. There are only four steps, but each of those steps requires lots of time and effort. Today, when everyone and his or her brother is writing blogs or books about how to write fiction, it is easy for the novice to become confused–especially since some of these blogs and books offer conflicting and even bad advice.

It’s unlikely that I’ll ever write a how-to-write book on writing because I wouldn’t be able to ramble on for 80,000 words. Following these four principles is how I learned, and I believe it is the best way for the serious aspiring writer to learn the craft.

Step 1: Read

You must be an avid reader.

A comment I sometimes hear from would-be writers is: “I don’t have time to read.” This comment is most often made by people who want to be published but don’t want to go to the trouble of learning how to write.

If you do not read, or if you don’t enjoy reading, you cannot be a writer. Period. Full Stop. Sure, you can write things down, but the chances that you’ll write something that people who read regularly will want to read are practically nonexistent.

From a practical standpoint, you need to read so that you’ll know what has been done before and how it has been done; this will help you to avoid writing something that has been done before in the same way it has been done before. What makes a story original is not the plot (there are a limited number of plots), but that unique something that the individual writer brings to the story.

Also, you need to read so that you can see how other authors developed their stories, and so that you can develop a sense of how to tell a story. This is crucial.

Reading must not be a chore. You must actually enjoy reading so much that you would read even if you didn’t want to be a writer. Readers not only set aside time in their day to read, but they often carry a book (or e-reading device) with them to fill those dead spots during the day.

Finally, if you read only in one genre, you can become a capable writer. But if you read in a number of genres–as well as a decent helping of nonfiction on a variety of topics–you can become a good writer or even a great writer.

Step 2: Learn the Craft of Writing

This was a lot easier when I started than it is today. The internet is rife with bad writing advice. There was no internet when I started, and not that many books. I read everything I could find at the library. I subscribed to Writer’s Digest and ordered some of their books. I enrolled in a writing workshop at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL).

Keep it simple; learn the basics, learn how to tell a story. Taking a writing class or workshop is an excellent way to jumpstart your craft. Universities, junior colleges, established writing workshops, and classes led by established writers are the best way to go. If you come across an ad for a class that promises to teach you how to write bestselling fiction, don’t give them any of your money. They are being either deliberately misleading, or they don’t know any better–and you don’t want to be associated with either of those situations.

The truth is that you can’t write a bestseller because writing doesn’t make a book a bestseller; marketing makes a book a bestseller. A book can be the next great American novel, but if no one knows about it, it will just sit on the bookstore shelf gathering dust.

On the other hand, a book that is terribly written may become a bestseller if it finds an audience (I know several examples of these, but we won’t go into that here). There is an audience for everything imaginable, even the most horrendously written piece of dreck.

Many of the current crop of internet-based writing teachers will go into great detail about things like archetypal characters and how you must make sure to hit all of the important plot points at exactly the right locations in your story. That’s good advice–if you want to be an English teacher. If you want to be a good writer, learn by reading good writers. Just tell the story and let the English teachers and their students worry about the rest.

Step 3: Write

Write a lot. Write things that you plan to try to get published and things that you write for practice and have no intention of publishing.

When I started out writing short stories, an exercise I practiced–and one I highly recommend to aspiring writers–was to copy, with pen and paper, my favorite stories so I could get a sense of how a good story should flow.

You must copy the story in longhand, not type it, because it’s easier to space off when typing and just see words. Writing in longhand forces you to think about the words, forces you to think about the story and how it is developing. My hand cramped up from copying my favorite short stories just so I could learn how stories were put together.

Also, I wrote reams of stuff that I never intended for publication, just for practice.

Step 4: Seek Feedback

Ask people to read your stories and give you honest criticism. What did they like? What didn’t they like? Why did they like it or why didn’t they like it (if they know; sometimes people don’t like something without really knowing why)?

You need to impress upon them that you want their honest opinion so that you can improve; make sure they understand that you don’t want them to tell you what they think you want to hear. I got lucky. I was just beginning my writing journey about the time I entered college (as an English major, of course), so I was surrounded by professors and other students who were more than willing to give me honest feedback.

Later, after I was married, my wife Cheryl became my first reader. Her critique often began with four words that managed to be both a compliment and a criticism: “You can do better.” Then she would explain where I had dropped the ball and how I might fix it.

That is my writing advice, short and sweet. If I were to write a book on how to write, I would have to come up with 79,000 more words to bulk it up a bit.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

October 4, 2023

The Last Bus: New Short Story Collection Published

by David Kubicek

I’ve just released a new collection of short stories–The Last Bus and Other Stories. These 26 stories span almost the length of my 50+-year writing career, from “The Park” in 1972 to “Spare Parts” and “An Evening Stroll” in 2021.

As in my first collection, The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories, The Last Bus is divided into sections for Science Fiction and Fantasy, Horror, and Literary/Mainstream. Also, as in my first collection, I’ve included commentary before and after each story giving some background about the story. Some of these stories have been previously published, but for most this is their first publication.

It’s always difficult to design a cover for a short story collection, especially when the collection contains stories ranging through several genres. The first reaction is to illustrate one of the stories. If it can be the title story, so much the better. I tried this, but the covers didn’t work. Since some of these stories contain ghosts and phantoms, I decided to go with a phantom face in the trees as sort of a general statement.

A few of the stories in this collection are:

Games Machines Play—A computer holds a college student hostage until he complies with a peculiar request.

An Evening Stroll—While walking in the fog one evening, a college professor inadvertently turns back the clock on his own life.

Spare Parts—On the eve of his wedding, something odd falls out of Mike Thayer’s ear, and he learns a shocking truth about himself.

Safety First—Not only is William Fawth’s car programmed to help him develop safe driving skills, but it has an attitude that grates on his nerves.

The Last Bus—Local businessman Wilson Brakhage offers tours of the wreckage of the worst tornado disaster in Nebraska’s history.

Blood—Are the cattle mutilations the work of a cougar, or is there a darker, supernatural force at work here?

Obsession—A visit to the doctor makes 29-year-old Chuck convinced that he’s growing old. Judi needs to snap him out of it before it destroys their marriage.

Keeper of the Shrine—A college student who works the night shift in a photofinishing plant learns a life lesson from a dead spider.

The Last Bus and Other Stories (ISBN: 9798861015325) is available as an eBook ($2.99) and a trade paperback ($12.95) from most online booksellers.

To read a story from the collection click here.

For information about my other books, check out my Books page.

May 21, 2023

12 Must-Read Science Fiction Short Stories

by David Kubicek

This is by no means a definitive list of the best science fiction short stories ever written, mainly because I haven’t read every science fiction story ever written, and I’m sure there are many, many of them that would be on this list, but I haven’t read them yet, so they’re not on this list. Also, I’m defining “short story” as anything that can be read in one sitting if one desires, so some of these “short” stories are pushing 15,000 to 20,000 words.

I’ve selected these stories because I first read them years ago, and they stuck with me. In my mind, staying power makes a story classic. Some of them I’ve read several times over the years, others just a couple of times or only once, but they all left an impression on me. The stories are not in any particular order, except for “The Cold Equations” and “Flowers for Algernon”, which are my favorite all-time science fiction shorts, in that order.

There are a couple of omissions that I should acknowledge. One is that there are no Robert A. Heinlein stories on my list. Heinlein was a decent storyteller, but a terrible writer, and it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever see him on one of my lists.

The other omission, which I regret, is that there are no women writers on this list. But that can’t be helped; it was the nature of the genre at the time I was beginning my SF journey. In those days there were few women writers in the genre, and of the ones who were writing, none of their stories that I read stood out for me. There is a time travel story, written by Barbara Bartholomew and published in Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction in the mid- or late 1970s, which I’d love to put on this list; however, I can’t remember its title, and I’ve been unable to find it through an online search. It’s a pity because I really liked that story.

Also, the links are for convenience to help you locate the stories. They are not affiliate links–I don’t get paid if you click on them. In fact, you don’t have to buy the books to read the stories as long as there is a library near you. I regret that used bookstores and libraries may be the only source of some of these stories because they appear to be out of print; however, I could not in good conscience exclude them for that reason. Fortunately, a few of these stories were collected in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I, which is available in print and digital.

1. The Cold Equations, by Tom Godwin: This is a difficult story to describe without giving away too much information. It is about the interaction of a teenage stowaway and the pilot of an Emergency Cargo Ship delivering medicine to a group of researchers. The ship has enough fuel to take one person to its destination, but not two. The story revolves around the pilot’s efforts to save the stowaway’s life–she stowed away to see her brother, who is one of the researchers–rather than order her into the airlock and ejecting her into space as regulations require. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

2. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes: This novelette is about Charlie Gordon, a mentally retarded young man who becomes a genius after undergoing an experimental operation. The problem is that the improvement is only temporary. Keyes expanded this story into a novel, which goes into more detail, but the novelette is short and sweet. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

3. The Star, by Arthur C. Clarke: This is perhaps Clarke’s most famous story. It was pretty controversial when it was originally published in the mid-1950s. Many critics called it blasphemous. Rejected by all of the major SF magazines, “The Star” finally found a home at a new, low-paying magazine. But Clarke had the last laugh. “The Star” won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1955.

4. It’s a Good Life, by Jerome Bixby: This story is about a young boy who holds a town hostage because he has the ability to do things with his mind–control the weather, make a rat eat itself, and do things to people who do or think things that he doesn’t like. It was chillingly adapted for the Twilight Zone in the early 1960’s. The novelette is just as chilling but offers a little more depth than the adaptation. Loss of depth is a common problem when stories are adapted to film. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

5. What’s it Like Out There?, by Edmond Hamilton: Hamilton is a vastly underrated writer, partly because he wrote lots of space opera novels during the pulp era to make enough money to keep the lights on, but he has written many imaginative and thought-provoking stories like this one. He wrote “What’s it Like Out There” in the early 1930s but couldn’t sell it because the editors thought it was too bleak. Twenty years later the revised story, although still bleak, finally made it into print. It contrasts the public’s romanticized idea about space travel with the harsh realty experienced by a crewman recently returned from Mars.

6. The Pedestrian, by Ray Bradbury: This short little gem is about the consequences of taking a walk in the evening in a future world where everyone stays home and watches TV, and going out at night is considered aberrant behavior. This story is included in Bradbury’s collection The Golden Apples of the Sun.

7. There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury: This story about a “smart house” that has continued serving its occupants long after the occupants, and the rest of the world, have perished in an atomic war can be found in Bradbury’s Mars story collection/novel The Martian Chronicles.

8. The Little Black Bag, by C.M. Kornbluth: This story concerns a 25th-Century medical bag that is accidentally sent back in time to the mid-20th Century. By the 25th-Century, morons make up the majority of the population, and the few remaining smart people are their keepers. So the medical instruments must be simple so the moron doctors can use them–you just set the dials to diagnose and treat an illness. When the bag is accidently sent back in time, it falls into the hands of disgraced Dr. Full, who has been a wino for the past 20 years, ever since he lost his license to practice. Dr. Full wants to use the bag to do good, but his partner has dollar signs in her eyes. This story was also dramatized by Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, substantially rewritten, but both the prose and the film versions are worth checking out. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

9. Microscopic God, by Theodore Sturgeon: A story about an eccentric inventor and recluse named Kidder–the owner and sole inhabitant on an island off the Atlantic coast–who creates a race of microscopic people who mirror human beings but have shorter lives and evolve faster than humans. This rapid evolution gives them the ability to invent technology much more quickly than full sized humans–this ability comes in handy when an evil banker attempts to use one of Kidder’s inventions (or, rather, the microscopic people’s invention) to conquer the world. I loved this story when I first read it in high school, and it has held up well over the years. You can find it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.

10. Allamagoosa, by Eric Frank Russell: This humorous story knocked me out of my chair the first time I read it. Apparently, it appealed to a lot of science fiction fans, who gave it a Hugo Award in 1955. It seems to be quite scarce now, but you may be able to find a copy of it in one of the early Hugo Award Winners books at the library or a used bookstore. It is also in the sadly out-of-print collection The Best of Eric Frank Russell. The story centers around what turns out to be a typo and the hilarity that ensues when the spaceship Captain, preparing his ship for an inspection by an Admiral, tries to cover up the fact that he has no idea what an Offog is. But the thing that really makes this story great is that it centers around the nuts and bolts and the bureaucracy of operating a spaceship, which one doesn’t often see in SF stories.

11. Dear Devil, by Eric Frank Russel: This novelette is about how a Martian poet named Fander, stranded on Earth long after an atomic war did unfortunate things to the planet, helps the Terran civilization start to rebuild itself. It can be found in the sadly out-of-print collections The Best of Eric Frank Russel and Creatures From Beyond, edited by Terry Carr. Put this on your list when searching for used books online or at your local used bookstore.

12. The Bicentennial Man, by Isaac Asimov: This story, about a robot’s quest to be legally declared a human being was made into a film starring Robin Williams. You can find it in The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories–unfortunately out of print—in a library or used bookstore or possibly in another collection of Asimov stories.

For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

December 22, 2022January 2, 2023

Remembering John Kubicek (May 2, 1961-December 19, 2022)

by David Kubicek

John Kubicek at his desk — **John in his late teens at his desk. This was a candid shot, and he had just realized I was taking his picture, which could account for the slightly irritated look on his face.**

My brother, John, passed away on December 19, 2022, after a nine-month battle with cancer.

Those of you who are regular visitors to this blog know that he has figured prominently in several posts. And no doubt he will figure prominently in posts yet to be written.

John was many things.

He was a reader. He loved reading on a wide variety of topics, both fiction and nonfiction. When he read fiction, he would read a single author’s body of work from beginning to end. When he told me that he was reading Ernest Hemingway, I cautioned him that reading so much Hemingway all at once might cause permanent brain damage. But he took the risk.

John Kubicek's science experiment — John with the second apparatus he built in high school. The first blew up when he plugged it in. It may be difficult to see them from this photo, but there are pits in the wall caused by flying pieces of glass.

He was a science whiz. In high school he won a national science competition for building an apparatus to create the building blocks of life (and, like any self-respecting mad scientist, he blew up his first apparatus, for which he was rewarded with 144 stitches). The prize was a two-week trip to London with other high school students who had won in other categories. The UNL chemistry department gave him lab space before he even took his first class.

He was a college dropout. For John, that wasn’t a bad thing. He was a chemistry major, but he left college after two years, he told me, because with a science major he had to focus in on one topic, but his interests spanned many topics. It was his curiosity about everything that led him to leave college. In other words, he left college to get a general education. He told me at the time that his ideal job would be to be paid to read.

But he settled for the next best thing–working in a bookstore. Jim McKee, co-owner of Lee Booksellers, hired him to manage the bookstore’s Omaha location. But that didn’t last long. John tired of the daily commute and the responsibilities of being a manager. McKee’s wife and co-owner of Lee Booksellers, Linda Hillegass (daughter of Cliffs Notes founder Cliff Hillegass) worked for the Lincoln City Libraries. She landed John a job at the main library downtown, where he spent the rest of his life cataloguing books and other materials the library acquired. This also kept him on top of the latest books being published, which complemented his need to read.

John got into computers very early. He bought a top-of-the line IBM computer with a whopping five-megabyte hard drive. He even let me use it to ghost write a book for Midgard Press, the subsidy division of Media Publishing. He wrote at least one short computer program (and maybe more; I don’t know) to help the Lincoln City Libraries with their cataloging work. When he was still at UNL, he was so proud of his ability to navigate cyberspace that he (jokingly) asked if there were any classes I’d like to take–he would put my name on the roster. Once, he was with me when I stopped in to see a friend. My friend wasn’t ready yet, so we hung out with his wife in the living room. John knew the wife from riding the bus with her, but he didn’t know her that well. He started to tell her about how he had offered to sign me up for UNL classes “off the books.” I interrupted him before he got too far along in his confession and said: “John, did you know that Marilyn is an attorney in the Attorney General’s office?”

John Kubicek teaching the monkeys — **John used to stop at the Lincoln Zoo frequently where he wrote in his notebook to entertain the Capuchin monkeys. When he told me about these informal writing lessons, I just had to get some photos.**

John had an offbeat sense of humor. He was a devout fan of Monty Python, which could account for this personality trait (or it could be some slight brain damage from reading too much Hemingway all at once). For instance, after a meal at a restaurant, he would leave a wallet-size photo of a Capuchin monkey along with his tip. On the back of the photo, he would write: “Hi! I’m Isaac.” At my wedding reception, John, along with other guests–some in the wedding party and some not–participated in the age-old ritual of kidnapping the bride. Basically, they went through stores making a ruckus. Customers and salespeople would stare at this motley crew, some in tuxedos and others not, led by a bride going loudly through the store. John, in his tuxedo, would bring up the rear. He made calming motions with his hands and said to the onlookers: “Don’t worry. They’re not dangerous. I’m their doctor, and we’re on an outing.” As he got older, and his hair was thinning, John would tell people: “I still have all of my hair. I keep most of it in a box on my dresser.”

Although John had gotten a driver’s license when he was 16, he owned, I think, only one car early in his life. After that, he borrowed our dad’s car when he had to travel long distances (usually out of town). Locally, he chose to ride the bus or to walk where he needed to go. He walked a lot. When my son, Sean, was born, he walked from his apartment to St. Elizabeth Hospital (a good distance away), stopping at a shop on the way to pick up sandwiches. Baby Sean couldn’t eat any, but Cheryl and I enjoyed them.

When John was in his mid-teens, he got a shortwave radio, which could pick up more distant stations than conventional radio (think of it as primitive internet without the video). It could also pick up CB transmissions from truckers. Our New Year’s Eve celebration consisted of listening to these CBers talk back and forth. As the evening wore on, their banter got funnier, perhaps encouraged by a little alcohol consumption. As midnight approached John would tune in the station for the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. It sounded like a drum beating at the rate of one beat per second. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, it would add one second, which was heard as two beats in rapid succession. That–along with sipping Cokes and eating a few chips–was our New Year’s Eve ritual. Yeah, we were party animals.

Speaking of parties, John told me of an all-nighter he and some of his friends had pulled. What did they do at this all-nighter? Did they drink? Smoke a little weed? Maybe drive around town mooning unsuspecting bystanders? Nope. None of those. They spent the whole night discussing mathematics.

John was generous. Cheryl and I had spent most of our money on our wedding and reception, so our honeymoon was to consist of one night at the Cornhusker Hotel in downtown Lincoln. At the beginning of the reception, John gave me an envelope. I tossed it in the basket with the other cards to be opened with the presents when we returned from our honeymoon. John fished it out of the basket and insisted that I open it immediately. It was a card informing us that he had extended our honeymoon at the Cornhusker by five days and five nights.

John collaborated with me on two short stories and one novel. The two short stories were written and will be in my new collection to be published in 2023. Unfortunately, the novel never got past the planning stage. He was also my scientific consultant for my novel In Human Form. He told me the process he would use for scientifically studying a humanoid robot–in Part III of the novel–and gave me the names and functions of instruments and equipment that the scientists would use to study my android.

There are lots of other memories, some of which I wrote about in previous blog posts. There was the time he helped me fake a UFO photo, the time we created a minor controversy during a game of Celebrity Taboo, the time he helped me with the polynomial part of a mathematics review guide I was writing for Cliffs Notes, the time we played rock music backwards to look for Satanic messages, and the time John and I and his friend, Maureen–who remained his friend for life–went to see Halley’s Comet on its once-every-76-year return in early 1987.

John was preceded in death by his parents, Charles and Lois Kubicek, nephew Kevin Coffey and sister-in-law Cheryl Kubicek. He leaves behind his lifetime companion Maureen Hutfless, a brother (me), sister Maxine (and brother-in-law Ray) Coffey, nephews Sean Kubicek and Chris (and niece-in-law Amy) Coffey, and grandnieces Violet and Willow Coffey. And many, many friends and colleagues.

We all will miss him.

October 1, 2022

New Promotional Tool For Authors

by David Kubicek

There is a new free promotional tool for authors called Shepherd. This is how it works:

You recommend five books similar in theme to your book.
You write a short, personalized recommendation for each book.
Above your recommendation is printed a short bio and photo of the author (the photo is optional).
Also above your recommendations is a short description of the book you are promoting.
You supply the author photo and cover photo of your book; Shepherd will pull the cover photos of the books you recommend off Amazon.
Shepherd will link to your book on Amazon and Bookshop.

Here is the email I got from Ben at Shepherd when my page for In Human Form went live on September 26:

Last month we had 152,000+ visitors! A new record!
We launched a new recommendation system in August that will help even more readers find your list!
We will add genre and age pages toward the end of 2022. The new pages will allow readers to browse genres like historical fiction or children’s books. We will also add filters so readers can search for things like:
- Show me all books about World War 2 that are historical fiction.
- Show me all the science-fiction books about cyborgs published in the last two years.
- Show me all the children’s books about robots for kids age 8.

Check out my page: The Best Science Fiction About Outsiders and check out Shepherd to see if it is for you.

Learn more about David Kubicek’s books.

September 24, 2022

Subliminal Messages in Rock Music

by David Kubicek

(Dedicated to my brother John)

Back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, a religious group claimed that subliminal messages in rock music were converting unsuspecting kids to satanism. All you had to do, they said, was play the songs backwards to reveal the satanic commands.

My brother John and I were skeptical, but we thought it would be great fun to play some popular songs backwards just to see if anything turned up. Call it a scientific experiment, if you will.

Back in those technology-challenged days, playing a song backwards was a chore. Our process consisted of recording the songs on a cassette tape, opening up the cassette, flipping the tape over, and reassembling the cassette. The result was that when we played the tape, we would hear the songs backwards.

We checked out three singers/bands. It took us an entire Saturday from early morning to late into the evening because after we’d prepared the songs to be played backwards, we had to listen to them closely to ferret out any potentially satanic messages.

We started with Kenny Rogers, who was really more country than rock, and came up empty. Then we tried Billy Joel, who was a little more of a rocker, but still we got nothing.

John said, “Kenny Rogers and Billy Joel just don’t look like they’d be in league with the Devil.” He pulled out another album, showed me a picture of the band and said, “If anyone is putting satanic messages in their music, it’s these guys.”

The band was Queen, and we struck paydirt. I’m not saying that this is proof positive that Queen embedded satanic phrases in their music, but some of the words sounded ominous to us.

We found several satanic-sounding phrases, but since so many years have passed, I’ve forgotten most of them. Two of them, however, were so memorable that they remained with me through the years.

In “Bohemian Rhapsody” we found the chant, repeated several times: “One now one, one now one…” Perhaps that could mean, “we are one with the devil?” In another song we found: “I….want your heart.” A romantic might think of that as a lovesick guy pining for his true love’s heart. But, given our fascination with the macabre, we went another way and interpreted it as a guy expressing his desire to cut out someone’s still-beating heart and offer it as a sacrifice to the Evil One.

On a side note, John introduced me that day to the Queen song ’39, which I love because it is a science fiction song based on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. That’s something you usually don’t hear in connection with a rock band. ’39 tells the story of a band of volunteers who sail in a (space) ship across the milky seas (the Milky Way Galaxy) looking for a new world because the Earth is “old and gray.” They return after one year has passed for them, but 100 years have passed on Earth. On top of all that, it is a tragic love story. It’s pretty cool; give it a listen.

For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

June 4, 2022February 23, 2023

Ten Must-Read Science Fiction Novels

by David Kubicek

It seems like everyone and his brother are doing “best” lists of novels, so I decided to get in on the act. Here is my list of ten must-read science fiction novels. I haven’t read every science fiction novel that has ever been written, but of the ones I have read, these are my favorites. Perhaps someday I’ll do my list of the next ten and later the ten after that until I, this blog, or time itself come to an end, whichever comes first.

All of these books are currently in print, and I have linked to Amazon out of convenience; however, I don’t get paid when you click through, so whether you find these books at another bookseller, a used bookstore, or a library, I don’t care. Just find them and read them.

Here are my picks for the top 10 in the approximate order I would rank them:

1) Rite of Passage (1968), by Alexei Panshin

Although there may be some wiggle room as to the order of these novels, Rite of Passage is definitely first. First published in 1968, Rite of Passage, is a coming-of-age story, but it is not a young adult novel. More than a century after Earth has been destroyed, humanity is scattered through the galaxy. Many people live on asteroid-sized ships, and many others are descended from colonists who were seeded on planets. Most ship people look down on the colonists and vice versa. Because space is limited on the ships, every person who turns 14 must be dropped on one of the planets in a ritual called Trial. If they can survive for a month, they are picked up and return to the ships as adults. The story follows Mia Havero from the age of 12 to 14 as she, along with others in her group, prepares for and then experiences Trial. This novel won the Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula award and nearly won the Hugo award (it lost by a few votes to John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar). This was also Alexei Panshin’s first novel, expanded from a novelette called “Down to the Worlds of Men” which was published in a science fiction magazine in 1963 and later adapted (and expanded) to become part three of the novel. It is first on my list because of the depth of its characterizations and its message–what my science fiction teacher in college called the “deeper, inner, secret meaning”. The first time I read the novel, it hooked me in the first page and a half; that had never happened with another novel before, and it hasn’t happened since.

2) The Martian Chronicles (1950), by Ray Bradbury

This is the story of Earth’s colonization of Mars, how the Earth people destroyed the existing Martian civilization, and how the Earth settlements quickly fell into decay after they were abandoned. It is an allegory for atrocities we have committed on one another on Earth. The Martian Chronicles is a collection of Bradbury’s Mars stories arranged in a way, and with specially written bridge passages, to give the collection its larger, more cohesive theme.

3) Fahrenheit 451 (1953), by Ray Bradbury

This book is often simplistically called a story about the horrors of burning books, destroying knowledge, etc. But it is more than that. Bradbury abhorred book burning so he used it as a structure to tell a story about the desensitization of society.

4) Kindred (1976), by Octavia E. Butler

A young black woman of the 1970s finds herself transported to a slave-owning Maryland farm in the early Nineteenth Century. She is “called” by her distant white ancestor whenever he is in trouble, starting when he is five years old. Although she is gone from the present for only a short time, her stays in the past stretch into months.

5) The Time Machine (1895), by H.G. Wells

I’m a fan of time travel stories, especially time travel stories to the distant future. H.G. Wells’ story about a future where humanity has devolved into two distinct species–the vicious Morlocks who feed off the gentle Eloi–is at the top of the list.

6) The Handmaid’s Tale(1985), by Margaret Atwood

Most dystopian stories are set in the distant future after the society has been screwed up. The Handmaid’s Tale captures the screwing. It is a near-future story that shows the society transition from a democratic to a totalitarian state seemingly overnight, and we see how June’s life and identity are stripped away by the new order. In the new order she is no longer June. She is Offred because she belongs to Fred, one of the new society’s head honchos. This story is very significant now because our society is going through the same changes, although not quite as quickly and decisively.

7) 1984 (1949), by George Orwell

People didn’t listen to Ray Bradbury. They didn’t listen to Rod Serling. They didn’t listen to Margaret Atwood. And they didn’t listen to George Orwell. 1984 is Orwell’s portrait of a fascist society (based on Stalin’s Russia) that disturbingly bears some resemblance to where our own society is headed. Winston, Orwell’s main character, works for the Ministry of Truth, which makes sure history is consistent by going back into all of the news stories and videos and making sure they support what the current version of the truth is. For instance, Winston knows he’s in for a long weekend when Big Brother declares that the society is not waging war against one enemy (which they had been at war with for years) but is actually at war with a different enemy and has been for years. Winston and his coworkers will have to work overtime to make sure previously printed or aired news coverage doesn’t contradict this “truth”. Does anyone remember alternative facts?

8) Flowers for Algernon (1966), by Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon was a novelette first published in a science fiction magazine in 1958 and anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I. Keyes later expanded it into a novel, which was made into a film, which won Cliff Robertson a best actor academy award. It follows Charlie Gordon, a young man with an I.Q. of 70 at the beginning of the story, who, after undergoing an experimental operation, becomes a genius.

9) The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003), by Audrey Niffenegger

This is a short respite from some of the terrible things that happen in other novels on this list. It is a love story between Clare Abshire and Henry DeTamble who has a genetic disorder that causes him to take sudden, uncontrolled journeys in time. One serious drawback is that he can’t take anything with him, so his first order of business on arriving in a new time period is to find clothes.

10) Parable of the Sower (1993), by Octavia E. Butler

This may not technically a post-apocalyptic novel, but things are pretty bad. Set 31 years in the author’s future (the story starts in 2024), Butler did a pretty good job of predicting where current trends in American society would lead, but the timeline is a little short–in 50 to 75 years, if we don’t get our act together, I can see our society reaching this state of decadence. There is something about Butler’s stories that makes for easy reading. I don’t know if it’s her style, the way she told a story, or her characters–it’s probably all three. I would say that it’s a pleasure to read her stories, but “pleasure” seems to be the wrong word here because she wrote (at least in the two books on this list) about some seriously awful things that people do to people.

For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

January 20, 2022January 17, 2023

Science Fiction and Predicting the Future

By David Kubicek

Most science fiction writers will tell you that they don’t try to predict the future; the futures they create are there to serve their characters and their stories.

Many SF writers, however, do get some things right about the future. Ray Bradbury, for example, describes interactive TV in his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451–it’s a clunky, primitive version of today’s interactive TV, but interactive TV it is, nonetheless.

SF writers miss other things completely. For instance, SF writers have always predicted the dominance of computers in their future worlds, but I don’t know of any who predicted the digital revolution–in the original Star Trek series, for instance, inhabitants of that distant future must still insert cartridges to read a book or synthesize food.

I’ve had brushes with predicting things that came true or are coming true as I write this. In an unpublished 1985 novel, I predicted the internet for public use. I didn’t have to take such a big leap for that. The internet had been used by the military for years; I just envisioned the next logical step (and to be perfectly honest, I may have read an article about what was coming). It was a clunky version of the internet compared to what we have today, but it was still the internet.

In that same unpublished novel, 20 years before Kindle, I predicted e-readers and e-books. In one way it was a clunky version of e-reading technology. The e-reader didn’t have a hard drive for storing books; books were on discs the size of hearing aid batteries that you inserted into the reader. You didn’t have to push a button or sensor to turn the page, however. With my e-readers, the words scrolled up the screen as you read; they automatically adjusted to your reading speed, and if you paused or looked away, the scrolling would stop and wait for your attention to return to the page. Another cool thing about my e-readers was that they collapsed into a cylinder about the size of a pen that you could carry in your pocket.

About that time, I wrote a novelette called A Friend of the Family, which was first published in Space and Time magazine in 1987. This story was set in a dystopian future world where practicing medicine was illegal. Health care providers were Healers who relied on such rituals as chanting, bleeding their patients, and binding their patients’ chest tightly with strips of cloth to squeeze out demons.

In 2012 I published the story as a stand-alone book in both digital and paperback (it is currently available in my collections Prospect Street, The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories, and as a paperback). The week of its release, A Friend of the Family broke into the top 30 of two Amazon best seller lists, peaking at #26 on the Science Fiction List and #21 on the Literary Fiction List. The premise of medicine having been replaced by magic was a device I used to explore relationships between my characters, but my vision is well on the way to coming true.

A perfect example is the nonsense being spread by antivaxxers who are sowing distrust about the COVID-19 vaccines. They are calling for the criminal investigation, of Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of our foremost authorities on infectious diseases, simply because he gave sound health care advice about COVID. They are championing all sorts of oddball remedies, such as Ivermectin (a horse de-wormer), drinking dirt from a landfill, and drinking urine.

One fellow who espouses urine therapy has said that people who take the COVID vaccine are foolish. Well, with all due respect to that fellow, we vaccinated folks aren’t the ones who are drinking our own piss.

But COVID is not the only target of anti-medical nonsense. One practitioner has claimed that alien DNA and having dream sex with witches and demons causes all sorts of maladies.

These are not just isolated incidents; these movements have a lot more followers than they should have in a civilized society with easy access to education. The world depicted in A Friend of the Family seems to be coming true a lot more quickly than I’d expected.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.