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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

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Dad vs Daughter

An evening pause: It seems there is a fourth story plot available to writers (see yesterday’s evening pause).

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

7 comments

  • Scott M.

    Youth and skill are no match for age and treachery.

  • Edward

    I don’t know which is worse, that old, treacherous me knew exactly what was going to happen as soon as she stated the rules or that I got a laugh out of it despite that knowledge. Or that I’m still laughing and can’t stop.

  • Lee Stevenson

    It’s just genuinely funny… My daughter (13) and son ( 15 ) , often think they can fool me, but after 50+ revolutions around the sun… We all know, there is very little that is new! ;-)

    I hope you are all having a nice weekend! Here in pinko commie Sweden, summer has arrived with a vengeance! 4 weeks ago it was snowing, now I’m sitting in my shorts in the back yard at 21.40 enjoying a cigarette and glass of wine before bedtime. I can imagine this will be a problem for the first Mars / moon colonists… I can survive the bloody awful dark Swedish winter, because I can look forward to a short, but very sweet summer… I can get thru the time when leaving your door open could cause you to die of hypothermia, because I know that the time will come in a few months when I will be leaving my door open for some fresh air… I guess I should just ask an ISS astronaut…. But I just wanted to share, the joy of sitting in my back yard, with shorts on, and watching the sun go down..!

    Have a nice weekend guys!

  • Tom Biggar

    When I showed it to a friend, she commented that dads have a purpose that no mom can fulfill.

  • Lee Stevenson wrote: ” . . . now I’m sitting in my shorts in the back yard at 21.40 enjoying a cigarette and glass of wine before bedtime. I can imagine this will be a problem for the first Mars / moon colonists . . .”

    The wine, maybe not so much; the cigarette, there might be a problem.

  • wayne

    Tom-
    Good stuff.

    Lee–
    Good weekend to you as well.
    Dude, prey tell– how much are cigarettes, in the socialist-utopia?
    Having a little heat wave in the Midwest here, and our electric utility just instituted (june 1st) their “peak-pricing program,” wherein I get to pay 1.5 times the ‘normal’ rate for electricity, between 2pm-7pm.

    I’ll toss this in here—

    Bob Trout CBS radio
    3:31 am EWT June 6, 1944
    https://youtu.be/gG66k_D7988
    2:29

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “It seems there is a fourth story plot available to writers (see yesterday’s evening pause).

    On reviewing “yesterday’s” (Thursday’s) Vonnegut video, it seems to me that the story plot in Dad vs. Daughter is either Vonnegut’s first plot, “man in hole” or his second plot, “boy gets girl” (although this is an unexpected way to “get” the girl). The difference is that, although Dad vs. Daughter starts at the beginning, it ends before it reaches Vonnegut’s “Electricity” part of the plot. Which of these stories is being told, of course, depends upon whose point of view of the story. If it is the daughter’s point of view, then she gets into the hole. If it is the dad’s point of view, he gets the girl.

    Keep in mind that this could also be Vonnegut’s third plot. It just ends thirty seconds into the story, and the girl never gets above the ill fortune level on the graph. It is part of the “day in the life” portion of the story, where we find how low the girl’s life has sunk and how she expects the rest of her life to be like (explaining the expressions on her face at the end of the video). After all, who needs an evil step mother or any step sisters when you have a dad like that? This story ended before the fairy godmother could arrive to rescue the girl.

    What we are really missing is the rest of the story. Does her fairy godmother save her? Does youth and enthusiasm get revenge over old age and treachery? Does Vonnegut present a fourth plot line for the computer to emulate? And what about Pauline’s peril?

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