Sporadic Ramblings and Nerdery

OR ‘PEAKED’

BUT PIQUED

‘PIQUED MY INTEREST’

YOU ARE NOT ‘PHASED’. YOU ARE ‘FAZED.’

IF IT HAS BEEN A VERY LONG DAY, YOU ARE ‘WEARY’. IF SOMEONE IS ACTING IN A WAY THAT MAKES YOU SUSPICIOUS, YOU ARE ‘WARY’.

ALL IN ‘DUE’ TIME, NOT ‘DO’ TIME

‘PER SE’ NOT ‘PER SAY’

You get a West Indian Ocean Coelacanth

It's Wednesday. You know what that means. #CAINAISSANCE2026 update for all DC Comics featuring a Cass appearance! Cass appears in two comics this week:

Absolute Catwoman #2

it used to be pretty common for there to be cats on boats. they'd take care of any rodents who would chew on ropes or wires and spread diseases. sailors were also superstitious and believed that having a cat aboard would bring good luck! this belief passed on to their wives, who kept cats - especially black ones who were believed to be extra lucky - at home in order to keep their husbands safe when at sea.

another popular superstition? that if a cat came aboard it was a sign of luck, but if it only boarded halfway and then left, it was a sign of bad luck.

most ship's cats are only found in modern times on private vessels, but they have roots going back to early history. one such example is the Vikings, who took cats with them on expeditions.

Thank you for your time.

I've read about it! Adding it to the watchlist.

Knowing what's going on actually entices me more to see it. I never expected something like this!

The microscopic unicellular parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis is behind the cases, causing a disease called cyclosporiasis. Although the infection is generally not life-threatening, it usually causes “watery diarrhea with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These intestinal eruptions usually last about a week, but can go on for two or more weeks, the CDC says, with dehydration being one of the most significant concerns.

The parasite is shed in feces and spreads by getting on produce and into water. Thoroughly washing and cleaning produce before eating, along with diligent hand hygiene, are key prevention methods.

So I just finished reading The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson. It was a book, or more precisely in this case e-book, I sought out because I had learned that a movie I’d loved as a child, Rankin/Bass’s The Flight of Dragons was based in large part on it.

Now reading it the first thing that struck me was that our protagonist, Jim, was less likeable than his movie counterpart Peter. I’m not sure that’s entirely true by the end of the book, and both have similarities. Both are ultimately nerds, even if Jim has more jockish traits (volleyball ace). Jim has a PhD in History and is a medievalist, written in the late seventies it was before the height of fandom we have now, so this was pretty nerdy, and if you’re familiar with fantasy stories where the protagonist is from Earth and transported there (such as de Camp and Pratt’s Complete Enchanter series which as a whole makes a much better read than The Goblin Tower) is the go to choice. They won’t always be History, but they’re academia (for another example see the Gor books, though I had trouble making it through the first three and wouldn’t suggest them). Peter in the film is actually more of a nerd wish fulfillment character and power fantasy; a would be game designer and a scientific polymath who wins the day by being a nerd.

This isn’t the movie, however. Jim has a lot more depth to him than Peter, and each character’s arcs go in different ways. Jim struck me as angry at the beginning, but that anger fades fairly quickly once he’s put into the real danger he was wishing for. When all is said and done, though, Jim is an audience avatar. As a character he’s rather generic, although at points almost a take that to the geek who playing games like Dungeons and Dragons thinks to themselves “I would love to really be in such a world, it’d be awesome, I’d be the hero”, of course since he’s the protagonist (i.e. the hero) this only goes so far.

Jim is not the strength of the book by any means. He’s almost certainly it’s greatest weakness. I mentioned before that I was reading this on e-book, and call me an elitist or some such if you want, but I typically find the process less enjoyable*. There’s something about the tactile feeling of a book, and that scent which books from the sixties, seventies, and fifties or earlier have (a result in part of cheap paper and cheap ink) just stirs something inside me due ultimately to having grown up with it as my closest friend that wasn’t covered in fur or filled with pictures of dragons and space-boats. Despite that The Dragon and the George pulled me in and hooked me.

So why was that? Well the concept as a whole made me want to read it. Audience avatar is sent from our world to fantasy England and ends up with his mind in the body of a dragon. I mean I wanted that to happen to me so often when I was young, in no small part due to The Flight of Dragons, so that got me started. But while it’s what set it apart from your standard high fantasy fair, and made it more than just “hero has to save his lady love” it’s not what made the book good. For that I’d have to blame the supporting cast.

It’s not till about a fifth or a fourth of the way through the book that you start meeting them, but when Jim meets Sir Brian I ended up with a rolling laughter I haven’t enjoyed in some time. Gordon R. Dickson is a skilled writer, and while I am incapable of recalling (even when resorting to Wikipedia’s bibliography of him) what else of his I’ve read I remember associating the name with something good, and he shows why with the Companions Jim gathers throughout the book and their interactions.

Sir Brian may very well be my favorite character, but the entire supporting cast from Aragh to Smrgol (I think his name is last alphabetically) are great (Angie is not listed because she spends most of her time as distressed maiden/plot device). When bad things happened to some of them, and when death flags were raised I felt my heart ache, and my eyes burn. And coupled with potentially shoddy memories of the film it actually managed to leave me guessing at who would die, a thing that Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire has for the most part failed to do**.

Don’t want to give too many details since things could be spoiled, but I don’t know how much I have to give. If you like heroic high fantasy, and are willing to put up with a bland protagonist and a plot that revolves around the old girlfriend is abducted and her man must step up to be her knight in… well in this case dragon scales it’s definitely worth the read. Not the best book I’ve ever read, not the best high fantasy, but a good one. It shows us an England with magic, with dragons, with talking wolves, sandmirks, ogres, and great Evil which is opposed by white magic, courage, and good people whether they be dragon, wolf, or george.

Some things to highlight:

The book has one wizard. He’s good. A good wizard. In fantasy. Not just a morally undefined, or protagonist wizard, but a full blown good wizard. I kept expecting an evil one to show up as a counterpoint, nope apparently wizards are typically good in this setting.

The Sandmirks. Unlike The Goblin Tower I wasn’t reading this primarily looking for D&D inspiration, but these things gave it. If you read it, and you’re into RPGs, pay close attention to when they show up and the bits with Sir Brian and Jim afterwards. If that’s not role-playing making a saving throw versus mind-affecting magic whether the game calls it a Will save, a Mental Defense roll, a saving throw versus spell, or what have you I don’t know what is. It was a great scene and really pulled me away from the internet and into the book.

The scene where Jim, in his dragon body, is first offered wine has made me determined to work in some line about “As happy as a dragon in a wine cellar” into a D&D campaign as a common phrase at some point.

Overall I’d give the book a B+. It’s a fairly quick read, and a fairly good one. The first bit is kind of slow and rough, but I finished the book in two sittings while I had internet on the thing I was reading it on which is saying something. As D&D inspiration I’d not suggest much except the Sandmirk scene, but that’s shouldn’t be the primary reason you’re reading literature, and well written fantasy is always a good grounding if you’re a DM. The book was good enough however to make me want to read the sequel even if it came 14 years later and post 80s.

I guess since I compared it to the movie so often I should you know compare it overall to the movie. If I had to pick which was better I’d ultimately say the film with qualifications. The Flight of Dragons is a children’s film. As a children’s film it is great, and it’s a wonderful story for a small child. It’s a dragon story with a heroic dragon, with an old mentor dragon, good and bad wizards fighting, and a hero who wins by being smart and knowing science. It’s a great children’s film and has stuck with me longer than this book ever would have. That said, I probably enjoy the book now more than I’d enjoy a re-watch of the film. But that’s because I’m not a small child anymore and the book is more my mental speed. The book is a fuller, richer story, but while many of the characters and plot elements of the film were drawn from the book, they’re really not the same story. If, like me, you have childhood nostalgia and fondness for the movie give the book a read, it’s a different but familiar story, close enough that you might carry over a fondness for some of the characters but distant enough it ultimately isn’t ruining your image of them. Or at least that’s how I found it.

*This isn’t actually the bigger thing that makes the e-book thing noteworthy. The bigger one is if it’s an e-book that means I have the internet at my finger tips and I will inevitably be drawn to fool around on there. The book kept me enthralled despite this.

Then they changed it out for another reader, and he just could not hold a candle to Paul Boehmer. (He also does half the reading for Soon I Will Be Invincible!) and is quite strong there.

A very young Jim Danforth (b.1940), of Project Unlimited, at work on the stop-motion animation of the sea monster for the film Jack the Giant Killer (1962).