Writers steal, that’s a fact. You can call it an homage, revisionism or Fried Wild Peacock, but the fact is the roots of almost every popular written work can be traced to some other writer’s creation or an event the writer experienced. What makes the work interesting is what happens to the source material once the writer pushes it through the filter of his or her imagination. That’s when you get parodies, like Bored of the Rings or revisions like Wicked or Wide Sargasso Sea. With Robert Heilein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, you get a recounting of what the American Revolution could have been like, if America had been in outer space. It goes like this: after creating a life-sustaining habitat on the moon, mankind initially developed the sphere as a planetary sized Alcatraz for its criminals and political malcontents. No guards or monitoring are needed since the prisoners cannot escape and Earthlings enjoy a serene existence with their agitators gone. Decades after transportation been halted, the descendents of the original settlers (Lunar colonists or “Loonies”) now supply Earth’s population with food. Of course a lot of technology is used to run the colony and one of…
Every kid who is lucky gets one or two teachers in their childhood who seem to understand them, teachers they respond to. All of my grade-school teachers were nice people and a few actually seems to care about me but my sixth grade teacher gave me the extra guidance I needed at that uncertain age. She had an intuitive understanding of all the “outsider” kids in her room and found activities that made us valued members of the class. During discussions, she treated us like we were reasonable adults and we responded in kind. And she brought a great book into our lives, reading it aloud after lunch. I will always be grateful for her introduction to Johnny Tremain. Johnny is the story of a developing nation but more than that, it’s the story of a developing man, Jonathan Lyte Tremain. In the beginning, Johnny is an apprentice in pre-revolutionary Boston, Massachusetts, a silversmith in training and one of those talented people you want to slap. Yes, he is gifted and smart, probably the mainstay of his employer’s business but he’s also sarcastic, arrogant and an intellectual bully. Some of this behavior comes from an over-inflated ego but part…