THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/20/04 -- Vol. 23, No. 8
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
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Topics:
Trip Logs Available
Just a Thought . . . (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
PHASE IV in Australia (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Come the Revolution . . . (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN and THE CLASH OF
CIVILIZATIONS AND THE REMAKING OF WORLD ORDER)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Trip Logs Available
The logs for our driving trip from New Jersey to Arizona and back
are available at
and . Evelyn's
Westercon (ConKopelli) convention report will be announced
separately when it is finished.
===================================================================
TOPIC: Just a Thought . . . (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Wouldn't it be a great joke on the American public if it turned
out that the terrorists REALLY wanted to influence American
foreign policy and limit American influence abroad, and that they
didn't really CARE how many American flags we fly? [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: PHASE IV in Australia (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Those who have seen (the underrated) PHASE IV (1974) may find this
article of interest:
There are a lot of echoes of that film's plot in this news story.
A huge colony of ants is changing the ecology by cooperating
against common enemies. We may be next.
Incidentally, if you have never seen the 1974 science fiction
PHASE IV, I do recommend it. I don't think any other film ever
did such a good job of showing what it would be like if two really
alien cultures fought each other. For years I tried to convince
people that QUATERMASS AND THE PIT was this great science fiction
film worth seeking out. Now that film is easily available on DVD
so I think I have to switch over to recommending PHASE IV which
has become very hard to find. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Come the Revolution . . . (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I saw a mother carrying a cute little kid of about two years old
today. Lots of kids you see of that age do not know how to act
in public. This kid was at least being very nicely behaved and
was enjoying the admiration of other people passing by who
appreciated how nicely behaved the child was. Well-behaved is not
so much a virtue as a lack of a not unexpected fault. But an odd
thought hit me. This pleasant child would grow up to dress and
think in some way that would be shocking to a generation that
considers tattoos and orange Mohawk haircuts and tongue piercings
to be normal (or at least not tremendously abnormal). What the
heck would THAT be? I don't know. But it happens in every
generation. Every generation revolts against the previous
generation and tries to shock it. My generation reacted with long
hair and facial hair and talk of the Coming Revolution.
Yes, when I was in college there was a lot of talk about The
Revolution. These are kids who were two and three years old when
Senator Joseph McCarthy was seeing subversive Communist elements
all over government and spread the fear that the Commies were
going to try to bring their revolution to the US. It occurs to me
that all the talk of the coming revolution we had then may have
been consciously or unconsciously the same sort of reaction against
the previous generation, the thing that generation found the most
shocking. The parents were terrified of Communists so the next
generation rebels by advocating overthrowing the government.
But the kids of that time really had little idea of what a
revolution actually is. Many of us still don't know. Lets try a
little pop quiz and see if you can tell which of the following
historic events were revolutions.
-- The English Civil War
-- The American Revolution
-- The French Revolution
-- The American Civil War
-- The Russian Revolution
-- Iran removing the Shah from power
-- The 1996 American Presidential elections
-- The current Iraqi conflict
The answer may surprise you. They are all revolutions except the
American Revolution and the American Civil War. Now how do I make
that judgement? First a revolution does not have to be successful
or even complete, like a presidential impeachment. We certainly
all grew up believing there was an American Revolution, but it was
only a conflict innacurately called a "revolution." Some of us
were told that the American Civil War could be considered a "second
American Revolution." That is wrong on two counts. It wasn't a
revolution and even if it were it would not be the second one.
So what am I talking about? What is a revolution? It is an
attempt, successful or not, to remove a government, to reduce its
members to a status of no more than ordinary citizens, and
substitute a new government.
In the English Civil War King Charles and his court were removed
from power. That was a revolution. The American Revolution was
not an attempt to depose King George III. It was a war for
independence from a King George III whose rule over England was
not in question. It was a rebellion certainly, but not a
revolution.
Similarly the American Civil War was not an attempt to remove the
Federal Government (except possibly as a tactic during the war).
It also was a rebellion for independence, though one that was less
successful than the so-called American Revolution.
On the other hand the 1996 elections were definitely an attempt to
remove Bill Clinton from governing and replace him with a
Republican, albeit in a peaceful and constitutional way. The (not
so-called) Revolution of 1996 failed, of course, but that really
is the principle of democracy. Free elections are our own method
of non-violent revolution. Every four years we take a public
opinion poll of who the people want to rule them and then the
Electoral College acts on the results of that poll, possibly
removing a President from power, reducing him (or her) to the
status of private citizen. It is a moot point if this is a real
revolution or not. One might want to limit the term "revolution"
to something a little stronger than a peaceful election. But like
little earthquakes periodically will prevent a big earthquake,
theoretically little revolutions every four years make it
unnecessary to have a big revolution.
Iraqi conflict is not a revolution because the coalition of
nations removed Saddam Hussein from power. Though there was some
support of the people that was something else. It was a foreign
power coming in and removing a leader. But there are certainly
forces trying to remove the current rulers and that makes it a
revolution.
So there was no big American Revolution at the beginning. That
was just a successful rebellion. But we probably have been having
small bloodless revolutions since and simply not calling them
that. So in a sense, the Revolution really did come to the 1960s
radicals, they may just not have noticed it. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I was really looking forward to Kim Stanley Robinson's FORTY SIGNS
OF RAIN (ISBN 0-553-80311-5). The description I read said (or
implied) that the island of Khembalung, which had become the
nation that was the new house of the Tibetan government in exile,
ended up under water due to global warming, and what was left of
the nation was the embassy in Washington. Well, it is *something*
like that, sort of. At ConKopelli, John Hertz said, "One of the
weaknesses of science fiction is that it is a very tempting
disguise for a sermon." And nowhere has this been more evident to
me recently than in FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN. Charlie Quibler is a
scientist concerned about global warming who cannot get the
politicians to listen, and also the care-giving parent in his
family. Another character, Frank Vanderwal, thinks of all human
actions and interactions in terms of evolutionary characteristics
that were beneficial to primitive man on the savannah, but in the
course of the novel learns the superiority of the Buddhist
approach to science. If I have missed any of Robinson's hot
buttons, I would be surprised, because that would mean he had
also. To top it off, the plot also comes up with some
serendipitous scientific discoveries which make the ending more
upbeat than it deserves to be. (But I do think that Robinson has
actually found one hard fact that does give me some hope in the
real world. I do not want to say more about the ending, because I
do not want to give it away.) There is a good book in here, but as
with many of his later books, Robinson has gotten too caught up in
saving the world to write a novel that doesn't preach. (Note: As
with William Ashbless last week, there is fiction presented as fact
here--there is not really an island of Khembalung, or a League of
Drowning Nations. Since these are given are pre-dating the
present, I guess that makes this an alternate history.)
I am sure there is a lot to dispute in Samuel P. Huntington's THE
CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE REMAKING OF WORLD ORDER (ISBN 0-
684-81164-2), but there is also a lot that seems to explain the
world today. Huntington's premise is that now that the Cold War
between "the West" and "Communism" is gone, the more basic
conflicts between civilizations have re-emerged. Huntington sees
the major civilizations of the world as Western, Latin American,
African, Islamic, Sinic (Chinese), Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist, and
Japanese, and the conflicts as occurring between those
civilizations, particularly at "fault lines" where they border, or
in "cleft countries" or "torn countries". Huntington cites
Carroll Quigley's seven stages of civilizayion (mixture,
gestation, expansion, age of conflict, universal empire, decay,
and invasion), and then attempts to demonstrate these with current
and past civilizations. He then characterizes "Western
civilization" as having the following characteristics: the
Classical legacy, Catholicism and Protestantism, European
languages, separation of spiritual and temporal authority, rule of
law, social pluralism, representative bodies, and individualism.
While one might debate some of these (in particular, the
separation of authority seems to have varied over time),
Huntington does show that these are ways to contrast Western
civilization with others. For example, Japanese civilization
traditionally devalues rather than values individualism, and
Islamic civilization is based on the notion than temporal and
spiritual authority are one.
Huntington supports his paradigm by observing how current
conflicts play out in places like Yugoslavia, the Central Asian
republics, the Ukraine, and so on. In Yugoslavia, Russia and
other Orthodox countries sided with the (Orthodox) Serbs, the
Islamic countries sides with the (Muslim) Bosnians, and the
Catholic/Protestant West sided with the (Catholic) Croats. But in
addition to these alignments, Huntington points out that the West
preaches "universalism", yet fails to demonstrate it: "Democracy
is promoted but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power;
nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq but not for Israel;
free trade is the elixir of economic growth but not for
agriculture; human rights are an issue with China but not with
Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively
repulsed but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians." This is a book
worth reading even if you do not agree with Huntington's premise.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I passionately hate the idea of being
with it, I think an artist has always
to be out of step with his time.
-- Orson Welles
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