Boomware

Gun stuff for writers — skip if you aren’t into such.

The hottest trends in handguns these days are polymer, striker-fired pistols, from itty-bitty to full-size, with red or green dot sights, with suppressors. 

The newest mini-dot sights have long battery lives, are more reliable, and ubiquitous enough so that police forces are allowing them for their officers, and the Marines now allow pistol-qualifications using them. Welcome to the future.

For those who don’t know what these are, they are small electronic devices that replace a gun’s rear sight — they can be mounted on pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns, and there are a few hunting cross- and target-bows out there with ‘em, too.

When the device is lit, and one holds up a gun to point at a target, a tiny, bright dot, usually red, sometimes green, appears to be floating in the air over the firearm. Properly dialed-in, when the dot is superimposed over a target, that’s where the bullet goes. Unlike a laser, which can be seen on a target, or on a foggy or dusty night, nobody sees the floating dot, save the shooter.

The advantages are that most shooters can pick up the dot easier than traditional notch-and-post iron sights, and thus shoot faster. For shooters who have problems with their dominant eyes, the dots can be more readily seen, because both eyes can be kept open and focused on the target rather than the sights, which is what usually happens if the target shoots back. The lizard brain focuses on the danger, that’s its job.

The disadvantages are that anything run on a battery can die at a bad time, the electronics can fritz, and at longer distances, traditional sights are usually more accurate. I have had a few of these, and currently one on a rifle. I like it, it works well, but I wouldn’t want one on a carry gun. In a situation where somebody tries to kill me up close and personal? I will use my hardware like a spetsdöd — point it like my finger. 

Old school isn’t always less useful than new school.

Suppressors, which cut down on the sound of the shot, are lately the rage because the feds dropped their fees, which were a couple hundred bucks, and made getting paper for them easier. Better known by their misnomer, “silencers,” while they do drop the decibel level some, people who expect to hear that quiet little thwip! from the movies or TV are going to be seriously disappointed. You still hear bang! no matter what the caliber, and you’ll still need hearing protection on anything louder than a .22 LR. You won’t be sneaking up on some ne’er-do-well ninja at night, using your .308 rifle to take them out silently. That shot is gonna be audible way down the block, and the other ninjas will hear it, hide, and sneak up on you, instead.

A bit quieter is an advantage if you are a spy or assassin. The disadvantage here is that a suppressor works by absorbing muzzle blast, and this cuts down on the velocity of the bullet, making it less effective. Also, they work best on closed-bolt or -block actions. Less so on semi-automatic pistols or rifles, and not really much at all on revolvers. The biggest reason these are selling so well? An imagined cool-factor, out at the end of your Tupperware™ nine or your ridiculously over-outfitted Rube Goldberg black rifle. (James Bond had a silencer on his original carry pistol, a Beretta .25 ACP, which would have effectively turned it into a two-pump Benjamin air-pistol suitable for knocking off slow mice, and he got it caught in his pants once when he drew it, and shot himself in the leg. Not so cool, eh, Mister Bond?)

The other trend is that revolvers are making a comeback, for those who follow the KISS-principle, and who aren’t worried they need fifteen rounds and three spare mags in case the Chinese Army comes around the corner. Older tech than semi-autos, the best of these still work just fine. Once upon a time, I qualified to use the local combat range by shooting an IPSC match using a five-shot, snub-nose M-60 Chief in .38 Special, and outshot more than a couple guys blasting away with match-grade raceguns. Hardware is seldom the limiting factor in close-range shooting.

Revolvers usually hold five or six cartridges, sometimes seven or eight, and there are some in smaller calibers that will hold ten. The advantages are that they are simple to operate, generally more reliable, and they don’t throw incriminating empties all over the lawn for the po-lice to find.

The disadvantages are that they hold less ammunition, and are harder to carry concealed because they are thicker due to the cylinders, and sometimes less accurate than pistols.

What your good guy or bad guy carries will depend on what it is needed for, and how good the operator is. 

 

Spindoc

 

Thirty-three years ago, I wrote a novel, Spindoc. Set in a future-Hawaii, Venture Silk is man who manipulates the news for a major corporation, does damage control, and shovels much metaphorical bullshit to benefit his employers.

When something awful happens, Silk calls the corporate AI — I used the term “biopath” instead — and is given the company’s spin-parameters to feed to the media.

That’s just what he does for a living. There is a murder, spies, assassins, religious fanatics, to wind him up, like that. I thought Silk interesting enough to do a second book about him — he moved to another planet, got Cary-Granted into another adventure full of mayhem and malice. The books sold okay, but one-and-a-sequel were enough.

Silk was good at his job, but at his worst, he couldn’t hold a candle to the putrid and infernal light spielberging from the cracks and crevices in our current corporate media’s facade.

The term spindoc — from spin-doctor — came out of the Reagan years, and was still not that well-known outside political circles when I used it. 

Now and then, even a blind science fiction writer finds a predictive-trope.

Thing is, they got there way ahead of schedule … 

Who Wants to Live Forever?

I have, from time to time, played with the notion of immortality in my fiction. A novel or five here, a novelette and stories there. Not even counting vampires or zombies or gods, I have walked characters down that long road a few times. Hardly the only writer to do so — it’s a fascinating subject, the idea of living for centuries, maybe forever. 

Who wants to live forever? 

I can’t recall the last time I was bored. Would I become jaded after a few hundred years? Maybe. Maybe not.  

First time I wrote about it? My third short story, “An Eye for Detail,” in Asimov’s Magazine, Sept/Oct, 1978. How, I wondered, would somebody recognize an immortal? I thought my answer fairly clever — their efficiency of moment in something as commonplace as dining. 

The psychological aspects are more interesting to me than the cause of the condition — whether it be magic, elixirs, or technology — those are the suspension of disbelief a reader must need accept. That done, the thoughts of an immortal becomes the focus. How does one deal with watching their family, friends, strangers come and go? What memories remain, which fade, because five hundred or a thousand years of living day-to-day run out of room inside your head?

Consider the experience of laying your hand on the casket of your great-great-grandchild, who has died of old age; of living the days of carts drawn by oxen down muddy roads, to jet aircraft spanning the globe; of being older than anyone you meet, anywhere.

One my favorite explorations of the subject was a novelette for F&SF, The Master of Chang Gen published in September, 1999. Twenty years after my first such tale, the story follows Wu, a priest in an alternate-world China, who fights demons. Become an anachronism, and weary, Wu tracks Death down. 

I won’t fight you, Death says. You aren’t ready to go yet. 

You aren’t afraid to fight me?

No. Death fears nothing but eternity.

What brings this up? 

A friend died, young enough to be my son, and it reminded me yet again of my own mortality. And it also reminded me of what I believe is the central truth in the work I do: 

There are only two things worth writing about — love and death. 

All of us will know the latter; if we are lucky, we will experience the former.

Life is, alas, short. Live in the moment. Eat the perfect strawberry.

 

Bobbe Edmonds Requiem

My friend Bobbe Edmonds has died. 

Jesus, fuck, it caught me flat-footed. He was about the same age as my son, and for the twenty-odd years I knew him, I called him “Kid.”

He kept his illness from me, and from most of his other friends, but it was something he had known about for a while, and thus had time to adjust to it. The announcement came from another close friend, who posted something Bobbe wrote ten days ago. Here’s the first line:

“At the risk of sounding more pretentious than I ever have in my life (and THAT’S saying something) – when you read this, I’ll be dead.”

I was stunned. I had no clue he was that ill. Kidney failure, and his choice to forego the tubes and machines and go out on his own terms. I understand why he didn’t tell me. He said as much in his final post: Better to bleed to death from a paper cut than to ask for a Band-aid. 

I met him through martial arts connections — he studied silat in several places — and since it turned out he was a budding writer, I read his stuff and saw that he had potential, so I became a kind of mentor in that arena. I gave him advice, sometimes with a metaphorical whack upside the head, because he was good at it enough I didn’t need to pull my punches. He appreciated it, and said so. 

He was smart, funny, opinionated, stubborn, dedicated to his art, and I liked him. 

Once, we were keyboard warriors who stood against the forces of evil in the online Silat Wars. Sometimes, he shot himself in the foot, and said as much, but he fought the good fight. 

If I need information for a scene in a book regarding zombies, curry, or Godzilla, Bobbe was my go-to guy. My most recent novel’s acknowledgments name him such once again. 

He was raised rough, spent part of his youth in an awful institution. Over the years, he had his ups and downs, but he kept going and became a man worthy of respect. 

I will miss him. 

Seventeen or so years ago — probably for his fortieth — some of Bobbe’s friends hired an actor to deliver a singing birthday greeting — an actor dressed as The Reaper. There are people I know who would be appalled at me posting a screen capture of that scene, but Bobbe would not be among them. He’d laugh his ass off.

Wherever you are, Kid, you meant something to people while you were here, and number me high among them.

We’ll not see your like again.

My Silat Journey (so far ...)

I started Pentjak Silat in November, 1995, after seeing a demonstration at a science fiction convention early of a Sunday morning. Normally, that time featured a tai chi class led by Steve Barnes; however, Barnes had begun to study silat, so he brought his teacher to show that, instead. I’ll always owe Barnes for that.

I watched, fascinated, as a guy in a T-shirt and a sarong tossed his students hither and yon, and when he asked if anybody in the audience wanted to join in, boy, howdy, did I.

Understand, at that point I had a black belt in one system, a brown belt in another, and almost thirty years of training and practice in half a dozen martial arts. I was forty-eight years old. 

When the teacher, Maha Guru Stevan Plinck, told me to punch him, I asked, which hand?

He said, Doesn’t matter. 

That impressed me. Really? Never heard that before.

I punched, he did something I couldn’t catch, I nearly fell down, and I realized in that moment that this guy could beat me while he was drinking a cup of coffee — and not spill any while doing it. I was astounded – I thought I had game.

This was the art I had been looking for — one I had written fiction about — not knowing it existed. 

It felt like coming home. 

Later, I heard the saying, You don’t choose silat, silat chooses you. I believe that. Nearly every student in my classes came there from other arts.

Maha Guru was teaching classes in his garage, but those were invitation-only. He was offering public classes at the Straight Blast Gym in Portland, and I signed up there the next day.

After a few months, I was invited to the garage. Continued learning the entry-level art, Bukti Negara, and after a bit, moved into Sera. Long story, I’ll skip that. I trained in the art hands-on for twenty-six-years, and a couple more during the worst of Covid via Zoom. Still practicing it in my back yard.

Pukulan Pentjak Silat Sera Plinck is Javanese in origin, and the core movements are learned via short forms called djurus, along with associated footwork platforms, langkahs. There are eighteen of these, and they take a while to master. (Some branches of the art teach these all quickly, then go back and work on them. Our branch learns one, works on it, then moves to the next one.)

Maha Guru’s notebook offered a theoretical schedule for learning the djurus:

1st year: 1 & 2

2nd year: 3 & 4

3rd year: 5 & 6

4th year: 7, 8, & 9

5th year: 10, 11, & 12

6th year: 13, 14, & 15

7th year: 16, 17, & 18

This was based on taking one or two classes a week. Learning them in the old country would go faster, a couple years, where training every day was the norm.

Such was my dexterity and ability that it took me only twelve years to get them all ... 

Work-in-Progress: Enforcers

 She wandered into the living room and turned on the television; the news was on. An anchor in a blue suit was talking.

 “—latest reports of two ICE agents who were shot as they kicked in the door of a home in Minneapolis this morning identify the homeowner as Gus Woodrow, a seventy-nine-year-old citizen born locally. 

"Woodrow called 911, reporting that two armed men were at his door and threatening to shoot through it if he didn’t open it. “KARE News 11 has obtained a cellphone video of the incident. Be warned, the video is violent and may be disturbing to some viewers.”The video, shot from behind and at an angle of about thirty degrees, showed two men in military-style clothing holding pistols in front of a house’s door.

Paula watched, fascinated.

“Open the fucking door or we will shoot you through it!” One of the men screamed.

“You have a warrant?” That was muffled, from inside the house.

“We don’t need a fucking warrant, asshole!” The second agent yelled.

Whereupon the first speaker booted the door open.

Whoever was taking the video yelled, “Fuck! Stop! Stop!”

There came two blasts from the inside the house. 

The two men fell.

The videoer’s phone shook, and pointed at the sky, then panned back and down to  refocus on the two fallen men.

“Ah, fuck-fuck-fuck you shot me!”

“Goddamit you motherfucker!”

“Ow, ow, ow—son-of-a-bitch, I’m gonna kill you!”

“You reach for them guns you dropped, you won’t. I have reloaded.”

Mr. Woodrow appeared in the doorway, holding a double-barreled shotgun.

The video faded and the news anchor reappeared.

“An ambulance took the wounded men to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Apparently both men were shot in the legs with what an anonymous source says was rock salt.

“Local police arrived, took the shooter into custody.

"We have reports, as yet unverified by authorities, that, after questioning Mr. Woodrow, the Minneapolis District Attorney has declined to prosecute."

Paula laughed. My. That was going to open a whole new can of worms.

How I Got the Job as a Private Eye

Los Angeles, 1969

When my buddy, who had gone to work for a private detective agency, went on and on about how much fun it was, and how, if I got a job there, we could open our own shop down the line?

It didn’t take much to convince me. I was working at a metals-jobber, selling extrusion and bar and plate over the phone, or filling in for fork-lift drivers or dispatchers who missed work. Not  exciting. Not like being a Los Angeles private investigator! Just like Marlowe and Jim Rockford!

So I went into the agency and applied for the job.

The guy in charge of the agency turned me down.

I was married, with a baby, and the work was tricky. He didn’t think I should quit a good job and then maybe they’d have to fire me a week or two on because I didn’t have the knack for it.

Wait! If my buddy could do it, I could do it!

Sorry.

That was that, right?

Maybe not. 

I decided that I would show them I did have the knack to do it. I would, on my day off, go to the head of the agency’s house and set up a surveillance on him, follow him around, and then write a report and send it to him. 

That would show him, by gawd!

There were some problems. I knew the supervisor’s name, but there was no listing for him in the phone book. My buddy working there didn’t know — apparently over the years, the boss had been the target of people he’d investigated, so his phone and address were kept need-to-know.

Well, I decided, it was probably in his secretary’s Roledex, hey? I’d just go to the agency one night after hours, pick the lock, find the address, and I was in business, right? I had lock-picks, hey?

So I did. Got in -- no alarm fortunately -- found the information, in-and-out, presto!

Went to the guy’s house, and having followed my buddy’s advice to call the local police and tell them I was an op doing a surveillance, working for the agency, so as not to get rousted, parked down the block in my VW early on a Saturday morning.

Guy came out, fetched the paper. His kids played ball in the front yard. An hour or so, guy pulled his car out of the garage and took off. 

I lost him before he got out the neighborhood. 

He returned, watered his lawn, went back inside, and I left that afternoon.

Went home, wrote a report, using the operative-language my buddy gave me -- words like "subject" and "appeared to be" and his description and license plate and all --  and mailed it in.

A week went by. No response. What was going on? Could they not see I had the knack?

So, I went back to the office of a late evening, entered the premises as I had before, and went through the supervisor’s desk. Found my letter, with a note from the supervisor to the head of the camera-operatives. What do you think of this guy? 

The answer on the note was, Sounds great!

So, I wrote on the note, Sounds great to me, too! and left. 

Few days later, I got a letter from the supervisor: He pointed out some things:

First, his wife was the secretary to the local police chief, and when I called in to report I was setting up a surveillance, her boss called her into his office. Did you know one of your husband’s ops is running a surveillance in your neighborhood?

Huh. No.

So she called her husband, and thus he knew I was gonna be there before I *got* there.

How was I to know his wife worked for the local police? What kind of coincidence was that? Who would believe it?!

He thought my description was inaccurate as to his height and weight, and that he looked like Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Furthermore, I lost him three blocks from his house, and my skills were not impressive. However, my unmitigated gall, calling the local police and pretending I was one of his ops? To watch him? Well, I got credit for balls, and attitude, and that was more important than skill — I could learn skills.

Then he asked, How did you find me? I take pains to keep that on the downlow.

Well, I said, I picked the lock on the office door and got your address from your secretary’s Rolodex.

There was a long pause. Decades, Eons.

My heart sank.

Listen, we don’t do stuff like that, that’s TV and movie crap, we are legal and above board. You want to work here, you forget that kind of crap right now, understand?

Yessir.

He allowed that I should come in and start training in a couple weeks.

And then, when I hung up the phone? I realized that I had written something I thought funny on the note he had exchanged with another operative, and that he would know, if he read it, that I had broken into the office a second time, and I’d be screwed.

So, the only thing I could think of? Why, I needed to break into the office a third time and get that note!

Which I did. By then, I could open the door faster than if I had a key.

Did not mention this last part to my new boss, started working there a couple weeks later, and for the rest of the time I was in L.A. had a job that was waay more interesting than working the phones at the metals warehouse ...