rlfj: Blog

Several odds and ends to think about. Two new characters are introduced, one of whom can seemingly speak every language known to mankind. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. It sounds impossible but there are a few people like that. I knew one twenty years ago. I was running a mobile home and modular housing sales operation in upstate New York, on the northern flank of the Catskills. Between a quarter and a third of our sales were retirement and vacation homes for folks from New York City and Long Island. Depending on the poll, between a quarter and a third of City residents are non-native English speakers.

At the time, I had a saleswoman with an amazing ability to speak languages. Her father had been a career diplomat in the State Department who spent his life hopping from country to country and dragging his family along with him. Within days of landing in a new country, she was speaking the language. She was utterly fluent in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and God knows what else. She even spoke one of the Turkish languages from one of the 'Stans. After meeting a new customer in the lobby, she could tell within seconds the native language of the customer and flip seamlessly into the new language, and the customers loved her! Very good salesperson and very high commission rates, she was one of my best salespeople. Interestingly, she had a sister who lived with her and they were rebuilding an ancient farmhouse. I met the sister several times, and she had no language abilities other than English. Still, that was better than me. My wife says I don't even speak English, only Southern.

I got quite a bit of feedback on smallpox. Some readers noted that several major nations still have small amounts of smallpox vaccine in storage, 'just in case.' Another reader went old school, earning bonus points for suggesting emergency inoculations with cowpox, an 18th Century technique to vaccinate against smallpox. A couple of readers replied with very detailed explanations of why it was even more complicated than I imagined. The point is that smallpox is extremely dangerous. If even a single carrier managed to get loose in Western Europe, the results would be catastrophic. Making body bags would become a growth industry. Like I said in the last blog entry, if you liked Covid, you'll love smallpox!

I've been a science fiction fan since I was a young boy and remember reading H.G. Wells' The Time Machine before I ever saw any of the movies. The one thing that is never shown in any of these stories, though, is disease. Nobody gets sick and they all travel back to their regular time with no ill effects.

That is just wrong. It is entirely possible to carry a new disease from one place to another with horrendous consequences, and a new time is no different than a new place. When Europeans landed in the Americas, they brought with them diseases like smallpox, influenza, and measles, previously unknown in the New World. Native Americans suffered 80-90% losses from disease. They got us back, though, by giving Europeans syphilis.

Disease transmission via time travel would be no different. While I didn't discuss it beyond generalisms, if smallpox was brought to Cudlow B by the Vikings, the results would be devastating. We no longer vaccinate for smallpox because we managed to wipe it out, except for some samples in labs around the world. We no longer have herd immunity. If it were to escape the island, it would cause a plague to rival the Black Death of the Middle Ages. If you liked Covid-19, you're going to love smallpox! Covid-19 has a mortality rate somewhere around 2%; smallpox is much more contagious and has a mortality rate of 30%. While we do have the ability to eventually redevelop the smallpox vaccines, the odds are that by the time we could start vaccinating again, well over a billion people could die.

What could be done if smallpox was found in the Vikings on Cudlow B? A strict quarantine would just be the start. The nicest thing that could be done would be a year-long quarantine, after which the survivors would be allowed to leave after testing. Another good choice would involve several small nuclear weapons, or if that was considered excessive, multiple applications of nerve gas and napalm. It would be much simpler to kill off everything on the island than let smallpox loose on the world.

One of the most difficult and challenging parts of this story was combining three different languages, Old Norse, English, and American. For Old Norse I was able to find some online translators and dictionaries, and occasionally faked it with some Icelandic. Sorry if you actually read Old Norse and find my mistakes. I don't plan to rewrite it. As for English versus American, both George Bernard Shaw and Henry Higgins had much to say about the differences in the languages. I had some Englishmen edit that, and they pointed out some errors and I changed them. More on my great editors in the future. I can't write without them!

As for those who find the different languages distracting, just as many have found it interesting and informative. Too late to change now.

Many thanks to those who have already purchased the entire story. As I have mentioned before, I never actually see the money. It goes straight from PayPal to a checking account - and only my wife has the checkbook! Occasionally, she gets on my case about playing on the computer when I could be doing chores for her, and I just let her know what is happening to that bank account. Her usual response to that is 'Good boy!' and she stops bugging me.

For those curious, my standard publishing schedule is Tuesday and Friday. No begging. Sorry. If you find any typos/errors, please let me know. Any mistakes will be fixed, and a final corrected version will be uploaded to bookapy and elsewhere. As before, if you have purchased a copy through bookapy, you will be able to download a corrected version later.

Thanks.

This is a story I had on the back burner for a couple of years. I wrote the first few chapters about two years ago and then set it aside. After finishing The Contractor, I decided to give it another chance.

When Miami Vice began back in the '80s, the 'elevator pitch' given to investors was 'MTV Cops!' The elevator pitch for this story is 'Time Traveling Vikings!' It came about from the History Channel series Vikings. I'm a sucker for period pieces, especially ones involving mayhem and mishap. The series was about the story of Ragnar Lothbrok and his family and was horrendously inaccurate. (He led the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 and the Siege of Paris in 845 - 53 years later? His brother, Rollo, becomes the first Duke of Normandy, but that particular Rollo wasn't born until 870. Etc, etc, etc!)

Still, as I said, I'm a sucker for historical pieces and I put this one on my Record list on the DVR. So, I had to wonder, what would happen if some of Ragnar's buddies showed up via a time warp or something? Here's my version. I hope you like it!

I just wanted to say thank you to all my supporters and those who voted for my stories in the last Clitorides Awards. Both The Grim Reaper: Reaper Security Consulting and I (Wet) Dream of Jeannie won several Awards or Honorable Mentions. Very much appreciated. Many thanks.

I am nearing the end of my current project and expect to begin publishing it by the end of May. I have a long list of editors to thank, and they will be prominently mentioned at that time. I can't do this without them. This is a totally different story, both historical and with a science fiction basis. It should be interesting!