Gaylord Dold's Blog

Synopsis: The Swarming Stage by Gaylord Dold

The blown mission was on Quinn. The body count was on Quinn too—one Syrian cloneslogger Quinn had killed, a stateless slogger smoked inside the Mulholland mudshield perimeter, and twelve commercial germline clones incinerated by cleanup crews. More important in a political sense was the death of WinstonD, a programmed natural trainee discovered lying half-in and half-out of a holobubble with his throat slashed ear to ear, rose-red blood wobbling a...

I am pleased to announce that “The Swarming Stage” is once again available in E-book format from all the regular sources! I am very proud of this dystopian science fiction vision of the near future. The vision is mine and mine alone. I think all you science fiction and crime fans will enjoy the ride.

Notes on The Swarming Stage

When I was a kid growing up in a tiny ranching and citrus community in southern California, I loved science fiction movies. I didn’t read sci-fi, but I went to all th...

Books Discussed:

The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil by Andrew Delblanco (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1995)

The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen (Basic Books Perseus Group, New York 2012)

After the mass shooting (according to some estimates the 555th mass shooting of America’s year 2017) at a Baptist Church in Texas, Governor Abbott, when asked what should his citizens be doing now, answered, “Look to the Lord.” The...

Provocations: Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland; Suicide Blond by Darcy Steinke. This combined commentary and book review was first published in “The Wichita Eagle” on Sunday, January 17, 1993 on the editorial page. It was announced by the somewhat downbeat minor headline: “It is this generation of kids that forms a young and medium adult wasteland of academic failure, political apathy, hate crime, shallow commercialism and shopping malls.” It is up to the re...

Provocations: Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland; Suicide Blond by Darcy Steinke. This combined commentary and book review was first published in “The Wichita Eagle” on Sunday, January 17, 1993 on the editorial page. It was announced by the somewhat downbeat minor headline: “It is this generation of kids that forms a young and medium adult wasteland of academic failure, political apathy, hate crime, shallow commercialism and shopping malls.” It is up to the re...

Second Look Books: The Paperboy by Pete Dexter (Random House, $23)

Pete Dexter is the justly praised author of “Paris Trout”, a novel that won for its author the coveted National Book Award, and that was made into a TV movie starring the creepy Dennis Hopper as Paris Trout himself. In “The Paperboy”, Dexter tackles the twinned themes of brotherhood and obsession in a not wholly successful fashion.

If “Paris Trout” dwelt at length on the dissociative personality of its main character, a man w...

Perspectives: A Perspective on Creativity and the Human Brain: “The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art From Vienna 1900 to the Present” by Eric Kandel

Eric Kandel is a cognitive psychologist, neurobiologist and Novel Laureate with a special interest in art, creativity and human brain function.   His book, “The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain” is a daring, insightful and detailed account of how modern brain scientists...

Second Look Books: The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by Sven Birkerts (Faber and Faber, $22.95). This book review was first published in February 1995. It includes a discussion of “Out of Control” by Kevin Kelly.

Sven Birkerts is one of those rarest of rare birds, an essayist and critic with something to say. He is the author of three books of criticism, most recently “American Energies: Essays on Fiction,” and he has won the coveted National Book Critics Circle...

Second Look Books: Independence Day by Richard Ford (Alfred A. Knopf, $24)

This book review was first published on Sunday, July 30, 1995.

Richard Ford is no longer a “young American writer.” He is, alas, in late maturity, that time in his professional life wherein technical mastery and a defined voice no longer carry the day. If promise is youth’s bounty, then failure is maturity’s danger. In this regard, it is tempting to think of Norman Mailer and Richard Wright, men of talent and promise...

Second Look Books: Sparring With Hemingway by Bud Schulberg (Ivan R. Dee, $25). This book review was first published in October, 1995.

“There are those who see boxing as a blood spectacle, deeply and fundamentally wrong, a sport that encourages one man to beat and harm another for money.”

Budd Schulberg is almost certainly an American original. His “old man”, B.P. Schulberg, helped create the movies around the turn of the century, along with other immigrants like Adolph Zukor and Louis B. Ma...