THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/11/05 -- Vol. 24, No. 20, Whole Number 1308
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:
El Presidente (site pointer)
Blame Lucas (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Between "The West Wing" and Reality (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Museum of Jurassic Technology (museum and book review
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Intelligent Design and Power (letters of comment
by Jerry Williams)
KISS KISS BANG BANG (letter of comment by Joseph T. Major)
OLYMPOS by Dan Simmons (book review by Joe Karpierz)
BEE SEASON (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
SARAH SILVERMAN: JESUS IS MAGIC (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (THE OXFORD MURDERS, SINS FOR FATHER
KNOX, ZENO AND THE TORTOISE, IN THE ENCLOSURE, and
FINAL WAR AND OTHER FANTASIES) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: El Presidente (site pointer)
El Presidente of the MT VOID is featured in an article at
http://tinyurl.com/dhq6b. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Blame Lucas (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In Glasgow they have a rock group called Mos Funk. Is that a
pain or what? It is bad enough that you hear so much rap slang
in the United States. Now we are infecting other cultures. How
long before they have performances of "Richard III" with the
title role played by someone named Mos Dum or some such? And
like most negative trends in society I think we can blame this
one on George Lucas. He started it. How hard is it to pronounce
"Most Easily Spaceport" or better yet "Convenient Spaceport?"
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Between "The West Wing" and Reality (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
Tuesday, November 08, 2005: The NBC television program "The West
Wing" tried something a little different this last week. In
their timeline a national Presidential election is coming up that
will pit Democratic Congressman Matt Santos (played by Jimmy
Smits) against Republican Senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). The
writers have timed the events so that their Presidential debates
would occur about the same time that there were would real
election debates. At least in some states there would be, albeit
not for the possession of the real West Wing. New Jersey is one
of the states that is having an important election today.
The New Jersey gubernatorial election is pitting Democrat Jon
S. Corzine (played by Jon S. Corzine) against Republican Doug
Forrester (Doug Forrester). This means I was in a position to
hear a debate between Corzine and Forrester just the day before I
heard a debate between Santos and Vinick. Somehow I had the
uncomfortable feeling that the fictional debate was much more
satisfying than the real debate. Now why was the fictional
debate so much more stimulating? First of all, it was drama
rather than the real thing. The writers could go over and over
it to make sure the candidates said intelligent things
extemporaneously. One problem with the realism of "The West
Wing" is that everybody seems to be able to think up good lines
to say without even an instant of thought. Nobody is that
clever. But the debate had to be made compelling in spite of
being a fiction so that people would stay around for the credit
card ads. But there was more than that different between the
real and the fictional debates.
Just as the debate is starting Vinick stops for a moment,
collects his thoughts, and says he wants to throw out the rule
book. There would be no two minutes for rebuttal and one minute
for statements. They would just have a simple debate without
rules. The result seemed to be a better debate. It would be easy
to say that this would make any debate better. It makes
everything more spontaneous than debates with every statement
ruled by the clock. That sounds like a nice explanation for what
is going wrong with our current debates, that they are too
clock-bound. Perhaps more informal debating would be better. But
I don't think that it would help a whole lot. The rules of order
in a debate are there to protect against one over-bearing debater
over-powering the other. The two NBC debaters are nice, pleasant
people who would not think of taking advantage of the lack of
rules. That may well be true of the candidate we generally see
debating. Or it may not be so true. But the rules are there so
that we do not have to find out. The price we pay for order in
debates is the loss of spontaneity, but it still probably has
saved the value of some debates.
But there was another reason why this was a more interesting
debate than the real thing would have been. Because these were
fictional characters not really risking a lot on the outcome of
the debate, this could be a debate of ideas. That is what a
debate should be. The two candidates were taking stands on
issues. They had genuinely different approaches to problems and
they were not afraid to say what those approaches were. This was
where the NBC debate became fiction. The sad fact is that really
talking about ideas and issues is not a very smart thing for a
candidate to do. Corzine and Forrester did not do it in their
debate. As soon as a voter has a grip on who a candidate is and
what his plans are, the voter may decide it is not such a good
idea. There are too many voters with litmus tests on too many
weird issues. Also there are too many voters who vote on style
rather than substance and on the texture of a candidate rather
than on his ideas. The safest route to winning is to look like
the kind of handsome person with whom the voters can identify and
feel comfortable. And at the same time the candidates eachtry to
shake voters' confidence in the other candidate. That is where
dirty politics comes in.
You could turn on any five minutes of the Santos-Vinick debate
and get a firm grip on who the candidates were and how they
differed. Meanwhile Corzine and Forrester were arguing over who
had voted to raise taxes and how many times they had voted to
raise taxes. And because one candidate had voted to lower
taxes--but not as much has others were trying to--that one single
vote was counted by one of the candidates as a vote to raise taxes
and by the other as a vote to lower them. The same vote was
supposedly a vote to raise and to lower taxes.
My feeling after the fictional debate is that it was television
and that it was naïve. In the real world candidates are not so
forthcoming with plans and policies that the listeners can get a
grip on. Candidates are too afraid that allowing the viewer to
get a grip on them will allow people to pull them down. When a
voter understands a candidate he or she may lose respect for him.
Instead the speakers go for a fuzzy and warm style and try to
avoid substance. They will make vague statements like, "It's
time for a change."
So who is at fault for this? The candidates are partly to blame.
But what they are taking is the safe route. If they don't have to
talk issues they won't.
The West Wing Debate is too much a television fantasy. Really
what we need is perhaps not fewer rules but more. Each candidate
should have to present a checklist of ten items. They should
list five policies they will follow and five plans they will
implement their first year in office. None of the of the ten
items should be more five sentences in length. And each item
should have a check box. Each should be specific enough that an
average person can verify that that list item has been fulfilled
and the box can be checked.
That won't give us just better debates, it will give us better
government. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Museum of Jurassic Technology (museum and book review by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
Any science fiction fan attending the Worldcon in Los Angeles
(well, Anaheim) next year who wants to experience a museum with a
real sense of wonder should go to David Wilson's Museum of
Jurassic Technology, 9341 Venice Boulevard, Culver City,
310-836-6131 (with a web site at http://www.mjt.org/--check for
their hours, as they are somewhat limited). Mark called this a
"tawdry and specious museum," but there is more to it than that.
When one enters, one sees a motley assortment: a mole skeleton; a
fruit stone carving; an exhibit on Geoffrey Sonnabend and his
"Obliscence Theory of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter";
another exhibit on Eugene Dubois and picanthropus erectus; and a
presentation on Bernard Maston, Donald R. Griffith, and the
"deprong mori of the Tripsicum Plateau"; and the micromosaics of
Henry Dalton. One discovers that (according to Athanaseus
Kircher) the reason the Tower of Babel was destroyed was because
it would have been so big that it would have made the earth tip
over and move from the center of the universe. Actor and magician
Ricky Jay contributed the materials for "Rotten Luck: Failing Dice
from the Collection of Ricky Jay," a study of how dice decay.
So what is this place? I described it originally as part art
museum, part science museum, part participatory dramatics.
Lawrence Weschler wrote an entire book, MR. WILSON'S CABINET OF
WONDER (ISBN 0-679-43998-6), trying to explain it. Weschler sees
it more as an extension or continuation of the "Wunderkammern" of
"Cabinets of Wonder" that became popular in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Weschler actually tried to track down the
various sources cited in the Museum, and to research the types of
things there. So he discovered, for example, that while he
cannot see the details on the fruit stone carving on display at
the Museum (because there is no magnification), there really was
such an art form, and there are numerous examples in the
Ashmolean and other "real" museums. And so it goes. Each
exhibit first seems completely real. Then, as one examines it,
it starts to dawn on the viewer that it can't possibly be real.
And then you read in Weschler's book that it is real, or that at
least a large part of it is real.
Unlike CLARA'S GRAND TOUR (reviewed in the 11/04/05 issue of the
MT VOID), this book has a lot of illustrations scattered
throughout. Weschler even refers to the endpapers at one point.
(I'm not sure if these are included in the paperback edition.)
Unfortunately, it has no index.
Marcia Tucker (of New York's New Museum) says of David Wilson,
"He never ever breaks irony. . . . When you're in there with
him, everything initially just seems self-evidently what it is.
There's this fine line, though, between knowing you're
experiencing something and sensing that something is wrong.
There's this slight slippage, which is the essence of the place."
Weschler connects this whole phenomenon to a variety of literary
and artistic imaginings, including Donald Evans's stamps and
Jorge Luis Borges's "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", and cites the
same Borges line that I quoted in my comments on that story: "The
metaphysicians of Tlon are not looking for truth, not even an
approximation of it; they are after a kind of amazement." They
would have loved David Wilson and his Museum of Jurassic
Technology. [-ecl]
[My comments on "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" may be found in the
09/09/05 issue of the MT VOID. -ecl]
[For more information on the museum go to NPR's web site
http://tinyurl.com/8e7a2. There is also a good description of
the museum at http://www.roadtripamerica.com/places/mjt.htm.
-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Intelligent Design and Power (letters of comment by Jerry
Williams)
Jerry Williams responds to Paul Chisholm's letter in the 11/04/05
issue of the MT VOID responding to Jerry's letter in the 10/28/05
issue responding to Mark's article in the 10/21/05 issue on
intelligent design:
"I hope you noticed the tongue firmly planted in my cheek when I
wrote that. I think most of us are under no illusion about who (or
should I say Who) would be interpreted as the intelligent
designer. Such would be the case even with such a light-hearted
treatment. Of course I don't expect anyone to go through with the
FSM reference, but it would be ironic if that was what enabled ID
to exist in the classroom, since FSM was meant to prevent it.
(Nor do I think anybody would suffer from the humor.)
Granted, I did leave the slightest kernel of an actual
thought in that comment. I hope it didn't germinate into
something completely unintended. I was thinking (or at
least nearly thinking) more along the lines of allowing
people to make their own choices and not being threatened
by other opinions."
To Paul's comment regarding re-writing Genesis, Jerry says, "This
has nothing to do with any Judeo-Christian bible. If it did, it
clearly wouldn't be taught in public schools given the current
stance by the courts on separation of church and state."
And on Paul's "third alternative" (teachers saying that students
don't have to believe evolution, but they have to understand it),
Jerry writes:
"I think that's really a separate topic. The issue at hand
was whether or not it's okay to mention the possibility of
Intelligent Design in schools.
Since intelligent people such as you intuitively relate the
discussion with religious texts, there are clearly reasons to
question whether it violates the separation of church and state.
As long as everybody draws his own conclusions and relates it to
his own respective holy text (be it religious, sci-fi, or humor),
in my opinion the law has been satisfied. However, I respect that
others may not share this opinion, possibly including the courts.
But hopefully in the end this will be the basis for the decision
on ID, not some "bad science" argument.
P.S. I got the same talk from my biology teacher a few years
later. Have they stopped giving it, then?"
Jerry also responds to Mark's comments on people in Florida
without power in the 10/28/05 issue by writing, "I just re-read
CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR, the sequel to CHARLIE AND
THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (it's short--it took me about an hour).
When I was reading the bits about the buffoon-like President and
the Nana-turned-VP that brought him up for that job since he had
no otherwise-useful skills, I don't know why, but it reminded me
of somebody we all know." [-gsw]
===================================================================
TOPIC: KISS KISS BANG BANG (letter of comment by Joseph T. Major)
Regarding the film title KISS KISS BANG BANG, Joseph T. Major
writes, "'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'": This nickname became so popular
early on in the movies that the theme song to THUNDERBALL (1965)
was going to be 'Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang', sung by Dionne Warwick,
but for various reasons the production people thought that a more
appropriate theme song for THUNDERBALL would be a song titled
'Thunderball' . . . ." [-jtm]
Marks replies, "That's true. If you watch the extras for the
THUNDERBALL DVD you can hear a piece of 'Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'
and see it under the credits. Somehow it does not work as well as
the song they ended with. Of course we might feel differently if
the other song was the one we were used to." [-mrl]
And Evelyn adds, "There is also a book, KISS KISS BANG! BANG!: THE
UNOFFICIAL JAMES BOND 007 FILM COMPANION, by Alan Barnes and
Marcus Hearn., as well as a collection of Pauline Kael's film
reviews from the late 1960s titled KISS KISS BANG BANG." [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: OLYMPOS by Dan Simmons (copyright 2005, EOS, ISBN
0-380-97894-6, $25.95, 690pp) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
I really don't know where to begin with regards to reviewing
OLYMPOS. Let's start with "it's the conclusion of the story that
started in ILIUM, published in 2003". Okay, that's fine.
But that's kind of where the whole thing falls apart, because
while it continues (but I contend, does not finish) the story
begun in ILIUM, Simmons takes this thing in an entirely different
direction from that book. And, as with ILIUM, this book has its
flaws--but this time, I'm not sure how I feel about OLYMPOS and
the overall story.
ILIUM was complex, a story on three fronts. We had the Trojan
War, chronicled by Thomas Hockenberry; we had the sometimes
intriguing, sometimes infuriating moravecs spouting off about
Shakespeare and Proust; and we had the old-style humans (which we
find out aren't so old-style after all) on Earth. We still have
all that, but everything else changes--as you might expect.
(You know, I've been weasel-wording this review so far because I
still don't know how to proceed. Please bear with me.)
The voynix, previously the servants of the old-style humans on
earth, are poised to attack the remaining humans and destroy
civilization. The action there centers on Ardis, a stronghold of
humanity and the center of human action during ILIUM. The old-
style humans no longer live to 100 and then go live forever with
the post humans up in the rings--that capability was destroyed
back in ILIUM. As it turns out, those post humans are actually
the gods from the Trojan War, and are the ones mucking about with
quantum level physics and energy and all that. We have Setebos,
the many handed horror who feeds on horror and with Sycorax sires
Caliban. Prospero seems to be coming to the aid of our heroes,
most notably Harman, husband of Ada. The idea is to stop Setebos
from aiding in the destruction of humanity. Meanwhile, the gods
are continuing their war, and we make a visit to the hell of
Tartarus, where Zeus banished Kronos and other gods before him.
Tartarus is obviously a hellhole planet somewhere, but you get
idea. Most of this stuff comes to a head in the final and
definitely most interesting section of the novel.
The entire ILIUM/OLYMPOS story is a tightly woven tapestry,
chronicling a far future where mankind has forgotten how to be
human, and how a few entities are struggling to return that
memory to the human race. In the end, it is a violent, sometimes
gruesome story. Simmons is all over the map--we've already
talked about Shakespeare and Proust, but Simmons brings Keats in
as well. Setebos and Caliban are something out of a Lovecraft
novel, with all the frightening imagery that brings. It is a
violent novel, with a staggeringly high body count and graphic
descriptions of the deaths of many players. Simmons even takes a
shot at religious fundamentalists, what with the submarine "The
Sword of Allah" ready to deliver the death blow to the planet and
all of mankind. But it is also a novel of hope and of the
future.
But then again, there are too many questions left unanswered: why
are the voynix afraid of Setebos and his "babies"?; who is "the
Quiet", the all powerful God who is coming to earth?; just really
who are Setebos, Caliban, and Prospero, and how do they all fit
in?
The conclusion of the story was completely unsatisfying,
unfortunately. It is clear that Simmons has left himself a
gaping hole where he can come back and continue the story, much
like he did when he picked up the HYPERION story in the ENDYMION
novels. The problem here is that the bar is raised very high by
the original HYPERION novels, and Simmons misses the mark, in my
opinion. However, the ILIUM/OLYMPOS duology is a tremendously
well-written and well-crafted piece of work, and it is clear that
Simmons is one of the finest pure writers of our time. Too bad
he fell a little short.
Next up, as promised last time, I begin reviewing the six
original Frank Herbert "Dune" novels in preparation for Brian
Herbert's and Kevin J. Anderson's completion of the "Dune" saga.
DUNE is up first. Stay tuned. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: BEE SEASON (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In spite of being about a family's dysfunction and its
members' inability to connect with each other on an emotional
level, this is still a film studded with ideas. It is a film
about psychological problems, about religious mysticism, and
about intellect in various forms. Scott McGehee's and David
Siegel's adaptation of the novel by Myla Goldberg has a sort of
austere beauty of ideas that will limit its appeal. Rating: +3
(-4 to +4) or 9/10
The Naumanns are a cultivated family of very high intellect.
Saul (Richard Gere) is a professor of religion with a specialty
in Jewish Mysticism. Miriam Naumann (Juliette Binoche) is a
research chemist. Aaron (Max Minghella) is an accomplished
musician plays duets with his father on the violin and the cello.
As yet eleven-year-old young Eliza (Flora Cross) has not
distinguished herself. But suddenly she seems to demonstrate a
phenomenal ability to spell words. Even words that she has never
seen seem to create images in her mind that tell her how to spell
them. Saul is loving in an intellectual way but not warm. Until
now he very much neglected his daughter, but suddenly she becomes
a fascination with him. When he sees his daughter's almost
supernatural ability to spell he sees it as a fulfillment of
prophecy in the mystic Jewish Kabbalah. Rather than cheering his
daughter on like a sports parent, he decides to coach her in the
mysteries of Jewish kabbalism so that she can see what he sees as
the mystical importance of words and letters and the meaning of
her talent. He feels it plays an integral role in the mystical
task of repairing the universe. Without asking anyone's
permission he starts putting her through a strenuous intellectual
regimen. In the meantime, Eliza goes from one spelling
competition victory to the next.
Gere gives us a portrait of a man so enthusiastic about knowledge
that he is unable to restrain his intellectual side. He lives is
a world of ideas. Slowly we see that each of the family members
lives in a different world from him. They see him but he does
not see them. While Eliza lives in a world of words, Aaron has a
fascination with the nature of religion and of seeing different
religions. Binoche plays the Miriam as a woman under increasing
and mysterious pressure. Minghella and Cross turn in impressive
performances playing intelligent people of their respective ages.
People of high intellect are not generally that easy to play.
The one place where the film seems to be out of tune is in
showing how Eliza thinks about words. A similar problem had to
be overcome in showing how John Nash looked at mathematical
relationships in A BEAUTIFUL MIND. Little is so hard to portray
on screen as thought. How Eliza's visualization of words seems
to push the story into the realm of the fantastic. I would be
curious to know if the images we see are based on any actual case
histories, as is autistic mathematical talent, or if it is purely
fictional.
Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel previously shared the
director's seat on the thriller THE DEEP END. This is an
intelligent film even if it may not be one that will have wide
appeal. I rate it a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 9/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SARAH SILVERMAN: JESUS IS MAGIC (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is essentially a live show of the title stand-up
comedian known for her off-color humor. Silverman is bright,
appealing, funny, and can tell dirty jokes with style. But she
does not have enough style to make it without the dirty jokes.
Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
How does one review a film that is a performance by a stand-up
comic? If I don't want to spoil the film, I don't want to give
away jokes. If I don't give away jokes, I cannot convey the feel
of the film. Sarah Silverman is spontaneous and funny, but has a
tendency to push the humor just far enough to get her into
trouble.
Silverman has been a writer for Saturday Night Live where
reportedly she ran afoul of censors who thought she went too far.
She also wrote for a cult comedy series "Mr. Show." Since then
she has had many appearances in film and television. Her topics
are sex, religion, the Holocaust, sex, her family, the elderly,
9/11, and sex. Not all of the jokes really work. I may be too
old to appreciate her visiting a home for the elderly and singing
"You're Gonna Die Soon." That probably did not really happen,
but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. At least half of
her appeal is that she has a good face and body. And she appeals
to people who enjoy having someone with a nice face and body talk
dirty to them.
Silverman is bright, funny, and can tell dirty jokes with style.
She certainly has more style and less shock than Margaret Cho
does. On the other hand Rita Rudner is considerably funnier and
does it all without ever dirtying herself. This film passes
seventy-two minutes with a few good laughs, a few failed jokes,
and then it is used up. I rate it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or
6/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Guillermo Martinez is a mathematician, but his book THE OXFORD
MURDERS is not a math book but a mystery, albeit one dealing with
mathematicians and mathematical clues. Unfortunately, he gets a
couple of details wrong. At one point, for example, one
character is planning a conference and says, "Andrew Wiles thinks
he can prove Fermat's last conjecture." (page 109) This occurs
several weeks before the conference where Wiles did in fact prove
it. But at that point Wiles had told only one or two other
people that he was working on Fermat's conjecture--even the
conference planners had no idea what his topic was. It was in
only the last couple of weeks before the conference when word
began to leak out. Another character talks about "propositions
that can be neither proved or refuted starting from axioms.
. . ." (page 49), and asks, "Why do mathematicians not encounter
. . . any of these indeterminable propositions?" But they do--
the classic case is whether an order of infinity exists between
that of the rational numbers and that of the reals. The mystery
is a variation on something that has been done before, though
with a twist. (The twist is somewhat obvious, I think.) The
Pythagorean implications of all this are laid on in large
explanatory lumps, and while they are integral to the story (no
pun intended) I'm not sure they will appear to the general
mystery-reading audience.
(And as another example of synchronicity, we were watching a
movie about the historic Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh. We
had an interruption, and I picked up this book, only to discover
when I read the next two pages that the main characters suddenly
started talking about Burke and Hare!)
On another topic, Father Ronald Arbuthnott Knox wrote some
mysteries, but his enduring fame is due to his "Ten Commandments"
for mysteries, which are, summarized:
1. The criminal must be mentioned, but his thoughts not given
2. No supernatural
3. Not more than one secret room or passage
4. No previously undiscovered poisons
5. No "Chinaman" (a common ploy when Knox wrote)
6. No accidental solution
7. Not the detective himself
8. No clues unrevealed to the reader
9. The "Watson" should not conceal his thoughts
10. No twins or doubles
[The full list may be found at many places, including
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv186.html.]
Now, many authors have written very good and very successful
stories which violated some of these rules. Agatha Christie
broke at least two of them, and Doyle violated at least three in
his Sherlock Holmes stories. But only Josef Skvorecky took it
upon himself to break all ten, in SINS FOR FATHER KNOX (translated
from Czech by Kaca Polackova Henley, ISBN 0-393-02512-8). Alas,
in part what he proves is that while a great author can "get away"
with breaking these rules, the mere breaking of them by a lesser
author doesn't guarantee a good story. Some of Skvorecky's
stories are good, but many are weak *because* they violate one of
the rules. Having a hitherto-unmentioned person be the culprit
in a "puzzle"-type mystery just doesn't work. (If the story is
more a slice-of-life of the detective, and it turns out that
someone not even mentioned turn out to be the criminal, then that
would probably work.) The stories are an interesting exercise to
Knox's implicit challenge, but work more to support Knox's thesis
than to refute it.
ZENO AND THE TORTOISE: HOW TO THINK LIKE A PHILOSOPHER by
Nicholas Fearn (ISBN 0-8021-3917-5) consists of brief chapters,
each covering a philosopher and his theories (though for some
reason Wittengenstein gets two.) The scope is from Thales to
Derrida, and covers philosophers often skipped over in
introductory books, such as Thales, Francis Bacon, Thomas Reid,
Fearn gives a brief biography of the philosopher and a brief
summary of the philosophy, with occasional side comments. (Of
Nietzsche's "anti-Semitism", he explained that Nietzsche was not
anti-Semitic and that Wagner's anti-Semitism was why Nietzsche
broke with him. After Nietzsche's death his sister re-edited
some of his notes and forged others to support her husband's
anti-Semitic views. Fearn says that Nietzsche would have
despised the Nazis and their policies.) The one drawback to the
book is that it covers only two dozen philosophers, so it misses
a lot of the continuity of philosophy. I suppose for someone
with no background in philosophy, this might be a good start, but
they would still need a more thorough overview to understand how
each philosopher builds on what came before.
As part of my long-term project to catch up on Barry
N. Malzberg's writing, I bought several of his novels from the 1970s
at the Worldcon last year, and just read IN THE ENCLOSURE by
Barry N. Malzberg (so old that it does not have an ISBN). Quir,
the first-person narrator, is an alien who has come to Earth as
part of a team of 248, all of whom have instructions to tell the
Earthmen everything they wanted to know. And more than that he
can't remember. But (not too surprisingly) the Earthmen are
suspicious, put them all in the "enclosure", and grill them twice
a day about all their scientific and technological knowledge.
Even though Quir tells them everything, they tell him they know
he is withholding information, pressure him, and even torture
him. A lot of the structure of the enclosure reminds me of
Guantanamo (though the aliens being held there did not come in
starships with a vast store of technical knowledge). For
example, Quir is told that when they have told the Earthmen
everything they know, he and his friends will be released. Yet
the reader (and the narrator) suspect that this is not true.
There is also a touch of Lake Woebegon here. The aliens have a
strict hierarchy, and Quir says, "I was . . . one hundred and
fifty-eighth. This does not mean that there were one hundred and
fifty-seven aboard more worthy or intelligent than I, but on the
other hand there were ninety who were definitely less so." (page
14) Later he explains, "I was barely below the midpoint of the
hierarchy; the midpoint was one hundred and twenty-four and I
fell only thirty-four places below that, barely a statistical
variation." (page 35) Actually, of course, he is within only a
few slots of being in the bottom third. But he labors under the
common delusion--held by probably 80% of people--that he is in
the top half. It's not just status--it's income, it's
intelligence, it's morality, it's anything positive.
FINAL WAR AND OTHER FANTASIES by K. M. O'Donnell (again, no ISBN)
is another Malzberg collection. (O'Donnell was one of Malzberg's
pseudonyms.) About half the stories were included in MALZBERG AT
LARGE, and the rest seem to have been collected nowhere else.
(Even the Malzberg bibliography on the Locus site doesn't list
them, since it goes back only to 1969. The Contento index does
include them.) Of course, as half of Ace Double 23775, it is not
that easy to find these days. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
There is nothing more demoralizing than
a small but adequate income.
-- Edmund Wilson