I knew Sasha was special from the moment I saw her. She was not only an absolutely beautiful feline, but she somehow radiated a calmness and wisdom to me in general that I have rarely seen in cats.
Sasha passed away last night after a long and happy life at nineteen years old. She was my ex-wife Beth’s companion, so I didn’t see her as much once we separated in 2016, but I feel the loss strongly nevertheless.
Sasha in December of 2008.
I wanted to share a few photos of her in this post and some of my favorite memories.
I’ve been meaning to read a lot more popular science books outside of my field lately, in order to broaden my knowledge and just get back in the habit of reading that I fell out of during the Dark Times of 2020-2021. Fortunately, in recent months a number of my classic scicomm blogging friends (that I’ve now known for over a decade) have written books, and this has been a great opportunity and motivation to get reading again! The first one that I’ve finished is Pests (2022), by Bethany Brookshire.
My copy of Pests, with one of my own personal pests for comparison.
Human beings are thoroughly familiar with animal pests, from the pizza rats of New York City to the raccoons of Chicago going through our garbage cans to the coyotes of, well, almost everywhere now, threatening family pets and small children. But are we really that familiar with those animals that we call “pests,” and do we really understand what a pest is?
Pests is an insightful and engrossing look at what it means to be a pest, and how that term is more a reflection of our own human biases and needs than of the animal’s nature. It looks at the stories and history of a wide variety of animals, from ubiquitous animals like rats, mice and pigeons to exotic animals like snakes and elephants and even those animals that we have taken into our home, like cats. It leaves off all the creepy crawly invertebrates like spiders and cockroaches, which would probably merit a book all on their own. (And I don’t miss them here!)
This is the last reblog of a classic invisibility story! I think I’ve got a couple more that I haven’t blogged before to follow. Want to keep up my “blog post a day” streak for as long as possible!
Let’s tackle another invisibility story! This one is a little different, in that it is a story about an imaginary invisible friend!
“The Handyman,” by Lester Barclay, appeared in the October 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures. It is short and sweet, so this will be a very short blog post! Spoilers follow… you can read the story on archive.org in advance if you like.
This next invisibility story is a somewhat different creature than many of the previous ones we’ve discussed. Most of the tales I’ve considered have been science fiction, and dealt with the how and why of invisibility; “The Vanishing American,” by Charles Beaumont, is more of a parable. It appeared in the August 1955 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
I will discuss some spoilers below, so go track down the story first if you’re worried about them!
You can find amazing and wonderful things when you browse old science journals. And when I say “old,” I don’t mean that you even have to go back very far. While I was tracking down an article in the journal Applied Optics from 1980, I came across a paper by R. E. Grojean, J. A. Sousa, and M. C. Henry1, “Utilization of solar radiation by polar animals: an optical model for pelts.”
Yes, it’s a paper that looks at whether the fur of polar bears works as a solar heat converter!
The future of solar energy? Photograph by Alan Wilson, via Wikipedia.
You would think that this would be a relatively simple question to answer. We’re not talking quantum physics, we’re talking polar bear fur, but the exact optical purpose of polar bear fur, if any, has been surprisingly controversial — and as far as I can tell has not been solved! Let’s take a look at the history, the science and the mystery.
I may be cursed to blog about invisibility in fiction for the rest of my life. While preparing a post about McGivern’s “The Visible Invisible Man,” I suddenly realized that there is another story about invisibility in the very same issue of Amazing Stories!
As you can see from the short description, “Priestess of the Moon,” by Ray Cummings, features a woman fighting against an invisible being before disappearing herself. It is in fact another invisibility story, and quite frankly a very silly one. Let’s take a look… spoilers again, though I don’t think anyone will be particularly upset in the case of this story.
Somehow, @bhaal_spawn and I just keep doing these… and have been for years now! Without further ado, let’s begin. This first one was inspired by the takeover of Twitter by a certain person who has only made this cover more prophetic as time passes…
All of you might be tired of hearing about my book at this point, but here’s another bit of fun news related to it: I joined Alie Ward on her great podcast Ologies to talk about “Invisible Photology,” aka invisibility!
I had to take a screenshot of the episode page to memorialize it here:
Alie is a really fantastic and fun interviewer and we had a really fun conversation about invisibility and all sorts of strange connections, including “transparent frogs, stealth bombers, and gorilla mischief.” If you’re not familiar with Ologies, it is a great podcast that features a different “-ology” each episode!
Please check it out, and let me know what you think!
Here’s another invisibility story — again, my book on the history and physics of invisibility will be out next year!
The last we saw of William P. McGivern was his story “The Chameleon Man,” published in January of 1942. But it turns out that this wasn’t McGivern’s first invisibility story! That honor (presumably — he might still have an early one) goes to “The Visible Invisible Man,” published in the December 1940 issue of Amazing Stories.
Like McGivern’s later story, “The Visible Invisible Man” is also a comedy. I found it much more effective than the later one, though. You can read it here before reading my post if you want.
Our next science fiction story related to invisibility is “The Vanishers,” by Arthur J. Burks! It appeared in the May, 1950 issue of Super-Science Stories; the cover is shown below.
I’ve actually had this story in my collection for quite some time, but hadn’t written about it, because at first glance it didn’t seem to be an invisibility story! You’d think with a title like “The Vanishers” it might be, but… after reading the story, I’m still not sure who or what “The Vanishers” refers to! But it nevertheless includes an invisible object as a key part of the story, so let’s take a look! I will of course include a bunch of spoilers, so track down the story first to read if you don’t wanna get spoiled.
The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas.
Skulls in the Stars 