Yes, that’s actually what they call the small screening room (in a simulated bomb shelter) at the Atomic Testing Museum in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. (Just blocks from the Strip on one side and the Clark County Library on the other. The library has a vast ongoing book sale that makes it one of the best used bookstores in Las Vegas.)

The museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, is dedicated to the history of testing nuclear devices, from the days of the Manhattan Project up to the present. I thought the science was explained pretty well (Alan, the physicist, says it was adequate for lay people). I certainly will never forget the excerpt of Disney’s Our Friend the Atom film. The excerpt skipped old Walt himself, but included a German scientist, hundreds of mousetraps armed with ping-pong balls, Atomic Energy as a Tom of Finland-style genie whom we can finally control, and a non-turning globe firmly focused on the Western hemisphere. Radioactivity was portrayed as a jitterbugging atom-headed creature in tie and tails, animated in every sense, leaping from one element to another. And there are rows of Geiger counters, inactive bomb cases, and vast drillheads to delight the techies.

The museum provides plenty of social context — the Einstein letter, some newsreels, and a lot of snippets from television. The earlier ones I found utterly fascinating, because by God that was the world I was born into. There is a 1940s/1950s era office complete with–”Look, Alan, a *real* telephone!” And a non-electric typewriter, and various other objects that have faded into prehistory. The display of pop-culture atomic allusions was mostly amusing, but the cover of the old Life or Look magazine on the children of the atomic scientists was utterly chilling. Headline trumpeting that these kids have been through a score of nuclear tests. Mushroom cloud rising in the background; in the foreground, a dozen kids prone in their unnaturally clean play clothes. It didn’t look like a test. It looked like a tidy massacre.

Nuclear testing is more than blowing up Bikini Atoll or the kind of underground nuclear testing that seems so routine today. They tested the relative effectiveness of aerial versus surface detonation. They tested the effects of radioactivity on various house materials. The museum even features a facsimile bomb shelter that was used in testing shelters, complete with its blond, blue-eyed mannequins: brave Dad on his feet looking about him in curiosity, seated Mom in a dark-blue wrap dress with her face turned toward Junior in his overalls. They didn’t show that in fifteen years or so Junior would be a long-haired antiwar protester, Dad would be an alcoholic, and Mom would be coming out as a lesbian textile artist (after her time in the psychiatric hospital).

In addition to the testing itself, the museum gave a nod to the test sites: geology, history, and meaning to the indigenous peoples who found the arid land a sacred place of plenty. Looking at the tools they shaped, I had to ponder that they used the land with more love and more productivity than we did, and left it living for the next generation. Well, until we started exploding thermonuclear devices over, under, and on it. On the other hand, the Nevada Test Site is still used as a training ground for first responders from all over the US to learn to deal with radiation emergencies and hazardous waste.

We checked out the museum shop, looking for Ellen Klages’ superb books on the kids at Los Alamos: The Green Glass Sea and White Sands, Red Menace. No dice. So I stopped at the cash register to mention them. Although the cashier seemed indifferent, the bookstore manager overheard and came out to get details. She’d been looking for books that would help kids understand it all. With the help of the iPhone, Alan was even able to provide the ISBN numbers.

Then out again into the 109-degree heat and heavy traffic of Flamingo Road. On the next block we saw two women — one in a bikini — trying to cross against the light. Nobody stopped for them. Nobody even paused to look.

To the writers of fantastic fiction who broadened my childhood world.

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, whose The Little Lame Prince gave me a traveling cloak and a world to see.

Rod Serling, whose brilliant Twilight Zone scripts were published as anthologies, and who promised me a chance at least of justice.

C. S. Lewis, who, on my seventh birthday, took me out of the silent planet and to Perelandra. I was 14 before I got the third book in the trilogy, which was just as well.

Edgar Allen Poe, who showed me I wasn’t the only one with a demon in my view.

Bram Stoker, whose Dracula is still a masterpiece of form as well as terror, and whose “The Judge’s House” is still terrifying.

The great Victorian and Edwardian supernatural writers: E. Nesbit, M.R. James, Henry James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Onions, F. Marion Crawford, Violet Hunt, E. F. Benson, Cynthia Asquith, Saki, William Hope Hodgson, Margaret Irwin, and so many more.

The editors–particularly Alfred Hitchcock, Seon Manley, and Gogo Lewis–who brought those stories from the dusty vaults of long-forgotten magazines into modern print.

Barbara Michaels, whose Ammie, Come Home said, “Father hurt” in a voice I needed to hear. It is one of the best modern ghost stories.

The great classic SF writers–Theodore Sturgeon foremost among them–who showed up in the early anthologies I found. (Groff Conklin’s anthologies were great.) And Harlan Ellison, whose Again, Dangerous Visions introduced me to Ursula K. Le Guin and my all-time great love, Joanna Russ. Le Guin and Russ are the Empress and High Priestess of SF/F, the two great pillars of New Wave SF.

All the people who carelessly left books where I could find them.

Once again, I have gone deep into the desert for my annual writing retreat. I’ll spend the next 16 days in a couple of rooms, writing, reading, listening to music, meditating. I’ll cook myself simple meals in the galley kitchen. With a few necessary exceptions (obtaining food supplies and the like), I’ll go out only in the cool predawn hours. Away from the distractions of my home, I’ll be able to clarify my thinking and choose a productive direction for the year ahead.

Why yes, I’m in Las Vegas. And no, I am not alone. I’m sharing the hotel room with Alan, who is here to play poker, and I am sure that we will not limit our activities to poker (him) and writing (me).

But the rest is true, too. My forays into Sin City are generally a lot closer in spirit to the Desert Fathers than, say, late-stage Elvis. Assuming any Desert Father had a comfortable bed, something to read, and an iPod.

We started after midnight, in the early hours of Monday morning. The roads were nearly empty. Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark on the CD player, followed by the first couple discs of Citizen Steely Dan. Then Chris Squire in an album I hadn’t heard before, and we talked about progressive rock.

We stopped for a meal at 3AM — scrambled eggs and tea served in a ceramic pot that miraculously did not drip. I loathe those cheapjack aluminum teapots with the ill-fitting flat lids. The ones that spill half the tea on the table.

At a Denny’s off I-5 near Coalinga: A small black-and-white truckstop cat is patrolling the strips of grass and shrubs, hunting the mice that feed on dropped munchies.

Despite the caffeine in the tea, I fell back to sleep as soon as I got in the car.

Heading east from Bakersfield toward Tehachapi. (Pronounced Teh-HATCH-a-pee.) Torn-paper hills and a sky paling toward sunrise. Quarter moon at zenith.

Me: I know Bakersfield is universally regarded as ugly, but these hills [oak-dotted, east of the town] are gorgeous.

The hawks were hunting in the pre-dawn stillness. I put on Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and mentioned to Alan that the title song had once been seriously nominated as the official anthem of New Jersey youth.

Alan You mean by the state?

Me: Yeah. I guess they couldn’t figure out what the lyrics meant.

Ridge after ridge of wind turbines. Alan says: Don Quixote, eat your heart out.

As we reached the high desert, the dawn bloomed brilliantly pink and clear. Mojave and Marvin Gaye’s Number One Hits. Oh yes.

California towns that sound like Discworld troll gods: Monolith, Boron. Boron would be god of duty and etiquette. Or paperwork.

We passed the turnoff for Twenty-Mule Team Road in Boron, CA. Then we stopped for gas, and I took over the driving. The roads were relatively level here, mostly straight, still almost deserted. The only risk (other than falling asleep at the wheel from sheer boredom) was that there was so little close-in scenery — so few landmarks to measure one’s progress — that even 80 mph felt slow. I eased back on the throttle whenever I noticed we were at 90.

Even at that speed, I kept an eye on geology. The Mojave, the high desert, is not much like the iconic deserts: the sand dunes and palms of the Sahara, or the wind-scoured rocky Garden of the Gods, familiar from a thousand Road Runner cartoons.

The granite hills were weathered into fantastic shapes: knifelike serrated ridges, curves, pillars, volutes, needles, as fanciful as chocolate meringue. (The occasional volcanic cinder cone blended right in.) The ridges rise randomly from drifts of weathered dry ravel, like icebergs in the sea. Fat round cushions of sagebrush are scattered over the level valley floor, and the spiky Joshua trees, which look like clustered bottle brushes.

Then I asked Alan to put on an Oliver Messiaen CD he’d brought. I like Messiaen a lot, but I hadn’t heard his Quartet for the End of Time, written and first performed in a Nazi POW camp. The quartet instruments–piano, cello, violin, clarinet–were what the imprisoned musicians happened to play and the camp had available. Spare, complex, demanding, with moments of unexpected beauty. Rather like the high desert, in fact.

Last year we drove through Yosemite on the way down, and I made a spontaneous sunrise excursion that landed me in Calico Canyon. This time we’ll be here for the new moon, and I want very much to go out into the desert to look at the stars in true darkness.

I brought a stack of books and the entire Internet with me, and I’ve been stuffing my laptop with CDs. I also want and need to get a good bit of work done. I am also planning to stop by the Clark County Library book sale, where I bought a box and a half of books last year for an indecently low price. It’s the best used bookstore in town.

I am planning to continue my record of never having wagered a cent in Las Vegas. I don’t play poker anyway, Casinos have too much cigarette smoke and too many random perfumes for my allergic, asthmatic self, although I like the decorations — Chihuly flower ceilings, giant aquaria, white tiger cats sporting in waterfalls, fountains pretending to be volcanoes, and duplicates of classical statues that I’ll never get to Europe to see.

So. The adventure begins.

Russia has accused Poland of provoking the outbreak of the Second World War by refusing to accede to the “very modest” demands of Nazi Germany…. The lengthy diatribe, which is unlikely to be welcomed in Warsaw, also lashed out at Britain and France for giving the Poles “delusions of grandeur” by promising to intercede if the Nazis invaded.

Let’s talk a little bit about Poland in World War II.

Poland is in a bad spot, geographically — a place ripe for invasion. The land was devastated by World War I. When the state was reconstituted afterwards, it had a mere 21 years to rebuild before the next world war.

France and England swore to intercede if Hitler should invade. They didn’t. When the Panzers rumbled in on September 1, 1939, Poland resisted as well as it could. Sixteen days later, the Soviets invaded from the east.

The country had no chance. They had less than a million soldiers, 600 tanks, 400 aircraft.

On one side, the Nazis roared in with 1.85 million soldiers, 2800 tanks, 2000 aircraft. On the other, the Soviets invaded with 1.5 million soldiers, 6000 tanks, 1800 aircraft.

Germany annexed some areas and started shipping out the Polish citizens (both Jewish and gentile) to make room for the Master Race. In the German-held territories, Jews began to be rounded up and resettled in ghettos.Of course you know already what the Nazis did to the Jews of Poland, as to the ones of France, Germany, Holland, Czechoslovakia.

What you may not know is that the Nazis wanted to destroy the Poles as well. It began before the war: in August 1939, 2000 Polish expatriate intellectuals were arrested and murdered in Nazi-held regions. During September and October 1939, Operation Tannenberg targeted Polish intellectuals: priests, former officers, activists. In a mere two months, Einsatzkommandos rounded up 20,000 people and slaughtered them in as many as 760 mass executions. The Germans conscripted many other Polish citizens to work as slave laborers. The Germans carefully calculated the expenses of food and clothing and how long the prisoners could be expected to survive on such rations. Not long.

On the Eastern front, the Soviets were busy, too. Many Polish citizens were deported to work in the Soviet Union. And the Soviets agreed with the Nazis that the Polish intelligentsia were dangerous. About 22 thousand Polish intellectuals, policemen, and officers were murdered by the Soviets. This genocide has taken the name of the forest where many were buried. Have you heard of the Katyn Massacre?

By the end of the war, 6 million Polish citizens were dead. Half were Jews. Half were Gentiles. (Yes, a much larger percentage of the country’s Jews died — virtually all of them. It was much worse to be a Polish Jew than to be merely Polish. However, it was no picnic to be a Catholic Pole, either. Poland suffered by far the greatest percentage of fatalities of any country in the conflict.) In 1939 there were less than 30 million Poles. More than one out of 5 died by 1945. The equivalent death rate in the US would take out 60 million people. In addition to the loss of citizens, the Polish economic base was utterly destroyed.

My mother-in-law graduated from high school in 1939. By 1945 she was the only survivor of her class.

Why weren’t we taught these things in school? My guess is that nobody wanted to bother with teaching about Eastern Europe while it was still behind the Iron Curtain. Moreover, Poland never was liberated; it went from Nazi rule to Soviet rule. Some of the people who survived the Nazi regime were sent to the gulags afterwards. My husband’s great-aunt and great-uncle were among them. He spent two years in Siberia; she spent five and came home limping from having broken a leg. Speaking out about what had happened, what was happening, would be punished, and everyone knew it.

I have seen Nazi propaganda films about their intentions with regard to Poland. I have read the translated memos and speeches of Hans Frank. I spent two years researching Poland from 1920 to 1945. I know damned well what happened there.

And Poland didn’t cause it. Not because Poland lost the war. But because they were minding their own business when two vast states invaded. The current Russian argument is the exact equivalent of a bully telling his victim, “You made me hit you.” Or a rapist: “I wouldn’t have raped you if you’d cooperated to give me sex.”

Under planned legislation, backed by Mr Medvedev, any Russian or foreigner who claims that the Soviet Union occupied Poland or the Baltic States could face up to five years in prison.

This is a familiar chorus.

Nobody but the Nazis made the Nazis invade. Nobody but the Soviets was responsible for the Soviet invasion. Hitler and Stalin, Himmler and Beria. Blame them. Don’t blame the Poles.