Lost Days By Michael Jan Friedman - Aimed At Younger Audiences, But A Great Read For Any Age

Lost Days by Michael Jan Friedman (2015)

A few months ago, Mike Friedman announced a second Kickstarter project to raise funds to publish a new story that he explained was to be aimed at younger readers. Well, as a professional educator and science fiction fan, I immediately got on board with this. Mike explained that he is concerned that students (just to be clear, the author is also a junior high history teacher) aren’t reading enough and struggle learning history. Well, Mike thought that he would write a history lesson into an entertaining story and hopefully make learning history more palatable. After reading Lost Days, I must say that I think he has succeeded spectacularly.

The story centers around young Anthony Borelli, a pretty good student who, with the encouragement of one of his teachers, has become very interested in history, particularly that of the Italian Renaissance. He is not a large kid and is often bullied, but manages to weather the storm well. One day, after a series of small calamities, Anthony is exhausted and falls asleep on his bed. When he awakens, he finds himself in very unfamiliar surroundings. As a matter of fact, he has somehow time traveled from 2015 back to the year 1582!

For those of you that are not aware, one of the major events of that year was when the Julian calendar was adjusted by ten days to bring about the calendar that we use today, the Gregorian calendar. For many years, the calendar had the date for the Easter holiday drifting around when in the days of the early church, it was originally tied to the first day of spring. Owing to the research of Italian scientist, Aloysius Lilius (as well as others later on), Pope Gregory XIII adopted what became our modern calendar with twelve months in the year instead of ten, and made sure that Easter fell at the same time every year, in accordance with the early church. So, since there were ten days taken out of the calendar, Mike saw the opportunity for an imaginary paradox in which he would tells the story of what might have happened during those ten lost days.

Anthony has been thrust into carrying out a most daunting mission, and that is to be sure that the change in the calendar does indeed take place, because if it doesn’t, it may very well have grave consequences that reach far into the future, or perhaps the destruction of the entire human race.

Along with the story that Mike has woven, he has included a very vivid picture of what life must have been like for the common people of a small town in Italy. While conditions there might not have been ideal by our modern standards, things were much as they are today with people having to maintain their standard of living through perseverance and hard work. When disaster strikes, people pull together to help one another, kids run and play games, and community leaders work to keep everyone pulling in the same direction. The characters that Mike has created are people we might recognize as our neighbors and friends. Make no mistake though, while times are rough in the late 16th century, they only get tougher as one turns the pages. It is pretty plain that the author has done his own homework on this one as he uses words to complete what it must have been like to live in the past.

While this book is categorized as being for younger readers, say from sixth graders on up, I found that I was enjoying it and appreciating it for what it is; a great story. I think people of any age could pick this up and be entertained, or even absorbed, as I myself was. I was hooked from the start and seriously regretted having to set this book aside to take care of my own responsibilities.

If you are a teacher with students who are reluctant to read a book, or likewise a parent who struggles with children that believe reading to be boring, then I would suggest that this might be a good book to introduce those young people to, because this is one story that has characters that kids can relate to in situations that are not only interesting, but a little harrowing at times, and who knows, perhaps they will learn something along the way.

Well, there it is…

Q’aplah!

No Room For Failure: More NASA History...

Failure Is Not An Option: Mission Control From Mercury To Apollo 13 And Beyond by Gene Kranz – 2009

Who received most of the accolades when a successful, or for that matter, an unsuccessful space mission was completed?  Well the answer to that question is obvious; of course it is the astronauts who risked their lives to explore the unknown.  But behind those heroes were thousands of people who often times were among the unsung heroes that helped to launch, fly, and land those spacecraft.  Chief among those were the flight controllers which is the subject of Gene Kranz’s Book Failure Is Not An Option.

Kranz’s book is all about the corps of flight controllers that manned Mission Control for every minute of every day that there was an American spacecraft aloft.  He traces the history of flight control from the very beginnings of the space program through the entire Apollo program.

The early years of space exploration were marked by a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union vying for dominance with the Soviet Union scoring decided victories, leaving the United States playing a game of catch-up.  While the Soviets were sending satellites and people into orbit around the planet, the United States’ rockets were having a difficult time just getting off of the launch pad.  When the U.S. Finally did begin successfully launch payloads, President John F. Kennedy declared to the world that before the end of the 1960’s, the U.S. would successfully send an American to the moon, and return them safely (according to Kranz, the plans prior to Kennedy’s speech were to actually land Americans on the moon in the mid 1970’s).

Kranz traces the history of manned space flight from the perspective of his role as a NASA flight controller.  During his thirty year tenure, he was a firsthand witness to all of the events including projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.  He goes into some detail on all of the flights, and goes into even greater detail on the flights for which he was the chief controller including the first landing on the Moon of Apollo 11, and the near tragedy that was Apollo 13.  He gives an accurate picture of the missions including the problems that were encountered and solved and discusses the reasons for and the solutions to the problems that allowed Americans to take pride in our achievements in space exploration.

Kranz’s narration is sometimes difficult to read because he get quite technical at times, but this book is a must read for those of us who enjoy knowing what went on behind the scenes at NASA.  However, if you are looking for scandal, you will not find it in this book, it is not an expose, but rather a factual account of the history of manned spaceflight from the flight controller’s point of view.

Not only does Kranz revisit the past in Failure, he also speaks to the future of American space exploration by expressing his disappointment (which is felt  by many of us today as American astronauts hitch rides into space aboard Russian rockets) in the present state of affairs: “Entering the twenty-first century, we have an unimaginable array of technology and a generation of young Americans schooled in these technologies.  With our powerful economy, we can do anything we set our mind to do.  Yet we stand with our feet firmly planted on the ground when we could be exploring the universe.”

I think that Failure is a worthwhile read for students of space flight history and those who want to know what goes on behind the scenes at NASA.

In other news…

There is an ongoing debate in the science fiction genre that would seem to search for the answer to a question that has occupied my mind of late; what is science fiction and what is not.  I had the opportunity to once again be a guest on the Scifi Diner Podcast and explore this question with Scott, and Miles (podcast hosts), Raul Ybarra (sci-fi fan, blogger, and mad-scientist), and Keith DeCandido (sci-fi author).  Our conclusion?  Well you are going to have to listen to the show.  I am told that it will be released sometime this coming week and I will add the link to it when it comes available.  We visited for almost two hours on this and could actually have talked longer.

I received a very nice gift from Nick Eftimiades in the mail.  He sent me an autographed copy of Edward of Planet Earth, a work of fiction in the style of Douglas Adams.  Click HERE to read my review and recommendation for Edward.  I should also like to point out that Eftimiades is not only an author, but he is also active in many other areas including Chinese espionage, and the defense of our planet from threats from space.  I, for one, have gained more interest in possible threats due to the recent meteor incidents in Russia and on the east coast of the United States.  Recently, Nick has posted something that may sound like science fiction, but it is truly a threat and needs to be addressed.  Click on the link to read his United States Commission on Planetary Defense.

Blog posts from me have become quite infrequent of late because real life has a tendency to get in the way of leisure pursuits.  Hopefully, as the school year comes to a close, I will be able to write more frequently, but until then…

There it is.

Q’aplaH!