Unfortunately, because the pseudoephedrine in the decongestant used in the tabled can be used for making illegal drugs, federal law has set limits on how much a person can purchase.  However, purchasing a packet of 15 tablets every 15 days was never a problem at my local Costco in American Fork, Utah.

But when I was in California last week, I went to a Costco there, and the person behind the counter claimed I could not purchase any because that would put me over the limit of what they could sell to me.  The record showed I had bought 15 pills on July 28 and another 15 on August 12. Since it was August 27, he said I would have to wait until August 28, because it was illegal for them to sell me more than two packets per month.

I told him that I didn’t think that’s what the law said, and that I’d never had any problem purchasing a packet every fifteen days.

He said he could get me a printout of the applicable law.

I told him I’d like to see it.

So I waited. And waited. And waited. (And did a little internet research on my phone.) Finally, I asked him if he’d managed to get the printout.

He said he was waiting for it to be sent over from another store, and offered to mail it to me if I would give him my address.

I told him I didn’t live in the area, and that I’d looked up the law online and the limit was based on the amount purchased within 30 days, not within a month.

He passed me off to his manager, who used the monthly method to determine it would be illegal to sell me the medication before the 28th.

I explained that measuring by monthly dates was not the same as measuring 30 days, since July had 31 days. I even offered to show him using a calendar.

He said that, since it was obvious to him I was not a drug dealer (apparently drug dealers don’t dress all in black with an “I am not a serial killer” tee-shirt or don’t have goatees or something), he thought it would be okay to sell me a pack one day early.

I decided to take yes for an answer, rather than to try to further explain that his interpretation was wrong and therefore it was not one day early.

That was not the only customer service problem I ran into on my trip. On the way back, I went through a McDonald’s drive-through in California. At my local McDonald’s in Saratoga Springs, Utah, I get a large water with my order rather than getting a soft drink. The large water is free.

At this particular McDonald’s, though, when I ordered a large water, the employee said, “You can only get a small water for free.”

I don’t really have a problem with that. Since there’s a cost involved for the cup and straw (and a minute cost for the actual water and ice), plus the labor to provide it to me, getting water for free is actually cutting into their profits on the transaction. At a Burger King a few months ago, they charged me 25 cents for a large water, and I didn’t complain.

“So, how much is a large water?” I asked.

“We have to charge you the same as a soft drink, so [some amount between $1-2 that I don’t remember exactly].”

“Then I’ll take a small water. No, make that two small waters.”

And so I got two small waters for free, almost certainly costing the store more in materials than providing me one large water. And if the charge for the large water had been reasonable, I would have paid it.  So what idiot at that McDonald’s decided that a large water should cost the same as a large soft drink?

I got the chance to hang out with friends I’ve made over the past six years since I went to my first WOTF awards ceremony as a published finalist: past winners, judges, and contest personnel.  One of my Utah writing friends, Brad Torgersen, was a winner, so it was especially fun to see him there. And it was great to meet all the new writers.

At the awards ceremony, they showed this video of interviews with past Writers of the Future winners. I’ve got a few lines here and there.

Ah, but the plot gets refreshingly intriguing when the oldest and largest alien claims to be a god, the original life form, the creator of [all?] other life forms.  Then it gets refreshingly ominous when the self proclaimed god squares off with the Mormon, his alien convert, and their competing god.  At the end, we get a good blending of plot, character development, and theme.

And Rena Hawkins’s review praises the story. A key quote:

Eric James Stone manages to combine religion and science in an entertaining, well-plotted tale that doesn’t come off as overly preachy.

[Disclaimer: I provide the website hosting for Tangent Online and serve as the webmaster, but as far as I know this has no influence on the reviewers.]

I thought it was a very good movie with a cool premise, and I’d like to see it again.  But in terms of thought-provoking, smart science fiction, I don’t think it was as good as Gattaca or Serenity.

But there may be something wrong with me, because I have never thought a Christopher-Nolan-directed film was as good as the average evaluation of my friends.  This is probably my favorite of Nolan’s films, as I have an actual desire to see it again.  Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were pretty good superhero films, in my estimation, but of all the Batman movies I enjoyed Tim Burton’s Batman more. And in terms of comic book hero movies, I think X2: X-Men United is the best, and I’d rank X-Men, Spider-Man, and Spider-Man 2 ahead of Batman.

Meanwhile, although I thought Nolan’s The Prestige was very good, the main characters were so unlikeable that, having seen the movie and appreciated the twists, I didn’t really feel any desire to see it again.  I have not seen any of his other films.

If you haven’t seen Inception, I definitely think it is worth seeing, so go. And if you walk out of the theater saying, “Eric James Stone, you’re a fool for not thinking that was the Best Science Fiction Movie Ever…” Well, then you can thank me for helping you lower your expectations by not shooting me full of holes.

The book, which contains my story “American Banshee,” will be released September 28, but can be preordered from these stores:

1. “In Memory” – Religion plays no role in the plot.
2. “The Man Who Moved the Moon” — Religion plays no role in the plot. (There’s a minor mention of religion, but solely as a worldbuilding explanation as to why some people are not uploaded.)
3. “Resonance” – The villains in the story are Gaia Jihad, a cross between Islamic terrorists and environmental extremists. (Strange bedfellows can result in strange offspring.)  But they could have been secular environmental terrorists without really changing the plot, so I’ll say this is a minor role.
4. “Upgrade” – Religious opposition to “upgrading” humans with bionics is mentioned as influencing the political situation that is essential to the plot, so I’ll list this as minor.
5. “Tabloid Reporter to the Stars” – The religious beliefs of the crew, and the resulting interpretations of the aliens’ belief that a human had visited them in the past, form a major part of the plot.
6. “Premature Emergence” – Religion plays no role in the plot.
7. “The Ashes of His Fathers” – The story centers on a man from a distant religious colony planet bringing the ashes of his ancestors back to Earth so they can be resurrected.  Major role for religion.
8. “The Robot Sorcerer” – Religion plays no role in the plot.
9. “The Final Element” – Religion plays no role in the plot.
10. “Attitude Adjustment” – Religion plays no role in the plot.
11. “Rejiggering the Thingamajig” – The main character is a Buddhist Tyrannosaurus, and her religion plays a role in the climax of the story. Major role.
12. “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” – The main character is a Mormon branch president trying to protect the religious freedom of his alien congregants. Major role.

So, of twelve stories, religion plays no role in the plot in half of them. Religion plays a major role in a third, and a minor role in a sixth.

Specifically looking at the stories published in Analog, the “hard science fiction” market, religion plays a major role in three out of seven, and a minor role in two more.  So my stories in Analog actually involve religion in the plot more often than my stories published elsewhere.

Now, let’s  see about my fantasy stories. Interestingly enough, only one out of nine has religion as part of the plot: “Salt of Judas” – the salt spilled by Judas Iscariot at the Last Supper plays a major role in the plot.

It seems that, while my perception is that religion tends to play a larger role in the fantasy plots than science fiction plots, in my own published writing the opposite is true.

When it comes to my (still unpublished, but finished) novels, religion plays a major role in the plot of the fantasy novel.  In the science fiction novel, on the other hand, while my religious philosophy greatly shaped the climax, religion is barely mentioned.

What does this all mean?  I’m not sure.

I do find the lack of religion in my short fantasy stories to be an interesting anomaly.  And the one story that does involve religion uses Christianity.  If you look at the religions in my science fiction short stories, they are all either actual religions or projected evolutions of actual religions.

Does that mean I have qualms about making  up a religion? No, because I have an elaborate made-up religion in my fantasy novel.

One possibility is that in a short story, I don’t feel there’s enough space to properly worldbuild a religion.  So in science fiction, I can use existing religions and maybe put a tweak on them, but I use the reader’s familiarity with the religions to fill in a lot of the background.  I could do the same with “Salt of Judas” in historical fantasy.

Another possibility is that I tend to inject religion into my science fiction plots as a way to compensate for my perception that science fiction downplays religion.

Whatever the explanation, I don’t think I’ll try to deliberately change the religion ratio.  But this analysis may change what my subconscious does.

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Here’s the basic premise: A young man in an elevator can remember nothing except his own name, Thomas. When the elevator finally stops, he comes out in an area populated only by a bunch of boys of various ages. They live in a safe haven in the middle of a deadly maze. Each of them, like Thomas, arrived a month apart through the elevator, remembering nothing but their own names.

But something’s different about Thomas’s arrival. The next day, the elevator brings someone new: a young woman that Thomas feels like he should remember – and a note saying she will be the last one, ever.

The Maze Runner is fast-paced and full of mysteries and action. It’s aimed at a middle grade audience, but I found it very enjoyable.

It’s also the first of a trilogy, and my one quibble with the book is something that may be resolved satisfactorily in the next two (which I look forward to reading):

***** MINOR SPOILER WARNING *****

I don’t see how the trial posed by the maze, and the way it was solved, would really be useful to the adults, no matter what their purposes are.  Since Thomas used knowledge from before his amnesia to figure out the solution to the maze, it was a form of cheating – and the adults intentionally allowed it.  So what was the point of the maze test at all?  Unlike Ender’s Game, where the adults messed with the games to make it harder for Ender in order to train him for what they wanted, here they seemed to make it easier. And that took away some of the excitement.

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Well, it’s become pretty obvious in the last couple of years that our planet is the hottest it’s been in the last century.  You can see the spike at the end of the graph there, exceeding the high temperatures in the early-to-mid 1940s. For a while there in the 2000s, even though temperatures were rising, they still weren’t out of line with the 1980s and 1990s. So people like me were a little complacent: sure, it was a little warm, but it had been just as warm in the past, and we didn’t see the need for any immediate action.

Zooming in on just 2000-2010, you can see that how we got to this point – the hottest temperature on record – was a sudden jump more than doubling the temperature anomaly from 2008 to 2009, from something warm but still within the normal range to unprecedentedly hot.

I hate to say it, but the global warming protestors who say we need to take immediate action as a result of this jump are right.  The climate has–

Oh, wait. Boy, is my face red! These aren’t temperature graphs at all.  They’re the U.S. Federal Government’s budget deficit in constant 2005 dollars per capita.

Now, some of my liberal friends have questioned why the Tea Party people weren’t out protesting the deficits in the Bush years (sometimes implying it’s because the President is black and the Tea Partiers are racist).  Well, there’s your answer.  The Bush deficits weren’t out of line with the deficits of the past 30 years.  The deficits we’re running now are the largest in the history of our country (in constant dollars per capita, not just unadjusted dollars), larger than the deficits we ran while fighting World War II.

(Now, it’s true that the current deficits are smaller as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product than the deficits run during World Wars I & II, but they are still a larger percentage than the deficits run during the Civil War and more than twice the percentage of from any other times, including the Great Depression prior to the start of World War II.)

(Charts made on http://www.usgovernmentspending.com.)