THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
02/21/03 -- Vol. 21, No. 34
Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
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Topics:
Administrivia
The Obstinacy of Nature (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Library Remembrance (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
And did you notice...? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Administrivia
Due to Boskone and the East Coast snowstorm, we're running a bit
late, so there will be no film reviews this week.
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Obstinacy of Nature (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Look, I like Nature. You like Nature. We all like Nature. But,
so what is it with Nature? Everywhere you look you see signs
saying we have to preserve and pamper nature. Nature is supposed
to be our friend. Let me tell you if your farm was washed away by
a flood you wouldn't think nature was so nice. Nature is just
plain mean and often sadistic, but in addition it is obstinate.
You keep hearing stories like the Tundra Aardvark, which we would
like to keep around, is inevitably going to go extinct. The
population is now below a thousand Tundra Aardvarks and that is
certain death for a species. You know what they say, there is
just not enough genetic diversity to keep a population alive or
it will die out. Your grandchildren may never see a Tundra
Aardvark. And the next story you read is that California is going
to have 1.3 zillion dollars damage from the Nairobi Fruit Midge
because one or two Nairobi Fruit Midges hitched a ride into
California on a plum. What is the story on their genetic
diversity? Why don't Nairobi Fruit Midges need 1000 to survive?
In the world of nature (also known as "outside") apparently one
is too much and a thousand isn't enough. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Library Remembrance (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
My high school librarian used to refer to me as the man who
ruined her life. That is one of many memories that came back to
me reading Robert Silverberg's editorial in the March, 2003
issue of "Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine." Silverberg is
reminiscing about what libraries have meant to him in the past.
He writes about his memories of the New York Public Library and
the Columbia University Library. He also discusses fictional
libraries, the greatest of which is the one that appears in
Jorge Luis Borges's story "The Library of Babel." As far as I
can tell, geometrically, Borges bases the structure on a bee's
honeycomb. We have an infinite, non-repeating library (!) made
of hexagonal rooms stretch in all directions, including up and
down. (I think that if Rod Serling had written the story he
would have put a bibliophile in the library and then have the
lights go out or somehow contrive to make his character unable
to take advantage of an inexhaustible selection of books.)
Silverberg also talks about the mystic library in "The Shadow
Out of Time," by H. P. Lovecraft. Somehow there is something
about a huge mystical library that makes it quietly exciting in
the way that dragons and unicorns are not.
The truth is that, like Silverberg, I am a library fetishist
myself, so I know what he is talking about. I myself live in a
library, or rather a house that I have made into a library. I
have something like 17,000 books in my house that are cataloged
and Evelyn tells me the total figure with non-cataloged items is
probably more like 21,000. Yet when I read a poll from out
local public library I estimated that I go to the public library
about 100 times a year. That is somewhat making up for lost
time. When I lived in a town in Michigan and the public library
for that town was open just ten hours a week: weekdays from 3 PM
to 5 PM. I think the assumption in the 1970s was that books
were fine for kids until they were old enough to drive. Then
they should be out driving Detroit cars or snowmobiles.
With all this access I have to books and the amount I have, you
would think that I would be well read in science fiction. The
sad fact is that I am not. I read a broad range of books, but
rare is the field I can say I have read that much in. If I look
at the most recent books in my input queue I see a book on the
British horror film, one on creative thinking, an Ed McBain
mystery, a collection of Napoleanic sea battle stories, a novel
about Wyatt Earp, a philosophic look at calculus, a survey of
philosophy, and a travel book about Oklahoma--and they are all
waiting while I read a book on the intelligence of ravens. And
those are the books in the den. The biggest part of my queue is
in the bedroom. It is the problem with the modern male. I have
no feeling of responsibility to commit to a relationship with a
genre like science fiction.
I guess that brings me to my story. When I got to Longmeadow
High School the first thing that I wanted to check out was the
library. I actually went to the library several times in the
first week or two. One day, coming to English class, we were
told that today we would see the library and learn how to use
it. (Oh, boy. Like this I really need.) We all marched over
to the school library. Miss Baird, the librarian, a very nice
and very intelligent woman who walked with a crutch--I am sorry
now that I did not get to know here better--started telling us
about what the library had to offer. She told us a little about
the library and its procedures.
Then she wanted to try a guessing game to keep us interested.
"There is a book here called A HOG ON ICE. What do you think
that book might be about?" My hand shot up and it was the only
hand that went up. I said, "it's a book about popular
expressions people use." "What's your name?" "Mark Leeper."
"You know, Mark. I have been asking that question to freshmen
for twenty years, and you are the first one who has ever gotten
it right." One of the other boys whispered to me "How did you
know that?" Well, I had seen the book on the shelf of the
library and had opened it, read a little bit, and put it back.
I told him and he said in a loud voice, "That's not fair. He's
seen the book." She said, "I thought he might have. You know,
Mark, you have me stymied. I have seen you come into the
library several times. Usually when someone does that I can
tell what he is interested in just by where he goes to look for
books. But you never go to the same place twice. You have been
all over this library and you seem to just pick where you are
going to go at random." I agreed that that probably was true.
I still am impressed that she noticed. After that she referred
to me as the man who ruined her life. And it is true even today
that when I go to a bookstore or library I don't know, I just
look at shelves I have chosen at random.
Oh, another story about the same librarian. These were the days
that I read about classic science fiction and horror films in
"Famous Monsters of Filmland" and "Spacemen" magazines. I knew
that the editor, Forrest J. Ackerman, claimed that a German
silent film METROPOLIS, directed by Fritz Lang, was the best
science fiction film ever made. But in those days it was very
hard to be able to see obscure films, so my mouth watered to see
this film. In the meantime, Ace Books published the novel
METROPOLIS by Thea Von Harbou (who I later found out was Lang's
wife). We were supposed to do a book report and bring in the
book we were going read to get it approved by our English
teacher. They rarely approved science fiction or fantasy, but I
figured it was worth a try.
Miss Wanager looked at the book and said that she did not think
that Ace Books published very good books. I would have to find
another book from a better publisher. After school I dropped
into the library, it may have even been to look for another book
report book, I don't remember. Anyway, the librarian whose life
I had ruined saw METROPOLIS in my hand and she told me that she
was impressed to see me reading something by Thea Von Harbou.
Today I guess I really do not have a lot of respect for the
novel. It really is not all that well written, though probably
as well as some books that Miss Wanager would have accepted.
Nor do I greatly respect Thea Von Harbou who chose Nazi Germany
over fleeing with her husband. But if our librarian knew of Von
Harbou, she must have been somebody of merit. It didn't change
a thing, but at least it reaffirmed that there were people out
there who respected science fiction. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I'm re-reading Robert A. Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
for our library's science fiction book discussion group. At the
time (for me, 1969 or so), it seemed great. Now, I must admit, it
seems awful. All of the things about Heinlein's writing that
grate on one's nerves are there, as well as his (apparent)
ignorance of genetics and planetology. For example, on page 177
(of the 1961 Avon edition), Jubal Harshaw (a fairly obvious
autobiographical character) says, "Most do-gooding reminds me of
treating hemophilia--the only real cure for hemophilia is to let
hemophiliacs bleed to death...before they breed more hemophiliacs."
But hemophilia is a recessive trait, so unless you kill off the
hemophiliacs siblings (and first cousins, etc.) as well, you
haven't decreased the quantity of the trait in the gene pool.
(You have kept it from increasing, I suppose.) And on page 89, he
describes the solar system as having four planets of any
noticeable size, but then goes on the describe Earth and Mars as
if they are two of these four. Maybe that's just bad writing, but
I note that the "original uncut version" recently published says
it's *three* of the planets, not four, which is even more wrong.
(This is on page 118 of the Ace edition; the previous item is page
231 of the new edition.) As far as the longer version, I think
I'd rather see a shorter version, with Harshaw eliminated
entirely. (Mark observes, correctly I think, that when Heinlein
wrote this, he no doubt intended that Harshaw be the focus, not
Smith. However, his readers had other ideas.) Since I'm only
half done, I may have further comments next week. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: And did you notice...? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
William Gibson's ideas are discussed several places this week.
The following citations are among them. MIT Technical Review at
looks at communities connected not by
location or friendship but by cyberspace. It compares these
communities in real life to those in science fiction. At Wired
Magazine's site , no less a writer than
Rudy Rucker looks at William Gibson's new novel PATTERN
RECOGNITION, Gibson's first novel set in the present and looking
at computer culture.
A friend of mine lamented the days of the Cold War when there
was competition to see which economic system could put people
into space. When the Cold War ended so did the Space Race.
Perhaps the space race is back on with our competitors being
Japan and China. See . Now the
question is, are we going to compete with them. China thinks it
can put a man on the moon by 2010. I am not sure we could.
For years after the Challenger accident, I felt it was foolish
for our country to suddenly decide to hold up the space program
while we tried to tremendously lower the risk. I thought that
there was a point of diminishing returns on trying to make
things safer and among the returns that were diminished was the
new knowledge about space. I felt that the shuttle should be
made reasonably safe and then prospective astronauts should know
the risks and themselves decide if they wanted to go. I sort of
thought I was a voice in the wilderness on this one, but
apparently other people felt the same frustration. The most
common editorial opinion I am seeing after the Columbia accident
is saying just was I was saying after the Challenger. Among
them Homer Hickam gives his insight on what it is like working
at NASA and his tribute to the Columbia at
. If you are not sure who Hickam is,
Hickam's autobiography was ROCKET BOYS made into the much
recommended film OCTOBER SKY.
The Toronto Star talks about an idea that I first saw expressed
in science fiction but which seems to be more an more of a real-
world possibility, the space elevator--here they call it a
"ladder." A summary of the idea and its history is at
.
James Randi, who went from being a stage magician to using his
talents to debunk spiritualists, fortune-tellers, pseudo-
scientists, and other charletons has compiled a fairly amusing
guide to his subject that can be used like an encyclopedia.
Want a quick, short biography of John Dee or an explanation of
phrenology written by someone who is not going to try to
convince you it is real? This skeptics' guide may be of some
value. Find it at . [-mrl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
America is a large friendly dog in a small room.
Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.
-- Arnold Toynbee
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