Deadly R Us

I was talking to a friend recently who had gone to a science fiction convention I missed. He'd met one of my fans there, he said, and they got to talking. She told him that Steve Perry was one of the deadliest men alive.

I laughed when I heard this -- just as he did when he heard it. You, he told her, need to get out more ...

True, absolutely. Nothing deadly about me, never killed anybody. I'm not a fighter, and so far from bad ass as to be in another part of the encyclopedia altogether. Look up "Slow Old Man," there I am.

I am, I modestly assert, a fairly-dedicated, if not particularly adept, martial artist, which is not at all the same thing. I have put in forty-odd years of practice, some of it fairly deep, and know a few things.

I'm comfortable with my skills. I use the stuff in my fiction a lot, and -- again immodestly -- allow that my fight scenes can run with anybody's. How realistic they are is open to debate, but that's another discussion. Got my fans convinced ...

And if you believe as I do that part of being a good martial artist is the ability to avoid fights, either by not being there or dodging them when you see them coming, then I claim that for myself, too.

Nonetheless, I don't measure up against stone killers or modern samurai who step out of their doors each day willing to chuck it all and die at the drop of a hat. No way.

Doesn't keep me up at nights, fretting over that. Like Popeye, I yam what I yam.

The story reminds me of the recent arrests of the Russian moles in the U.S. They are calling the pretty one a femme fatale, which indicates the press doesn't have a clue what that term means.

Literally, "deadly woman," a femme fatale is a stock character in melodrama, a woman who men kill for, or get killed for, or in the loosest definition, one who has gotten or will get them into big trouble. The Russian talent scout/spy, Anna Chapman, is a pretty twenty-something, and as far as anybody can tell, hasn't done much of anything, including killing or causing same amongst the men who knew her. The press just likes the term.

Meanwhile, I'm not the deadliest droid you are looking for -- move along ...