THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/22/07 -- Vol. 25, No. 51, Whole Number 1446
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
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Topics:
Spam Filter Problem
Geometrically Considerate (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Update on SH20 (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Almost Human (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
SH20--The Seeds of Destruction (Part 3) (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Ponds on Mars (letter of comment by Steve Lelchuk)
Oil (letter of comment by John Oswalt)
FAHRENHEIT 451, Ponds on Mars, and SH20 (letter of comment
by John Purcell)
BRAVE NEW WORLD (letter of comment by Joseph T. Major)
This Week's Reading (EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY, THE TIN MEN,
THE TRUTH, Herodotus's HISTORIES, and QUICKSILVER)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Spam Filter Problem
It has come to our attention that some people with over-
enthusiastic spam filters might not have gotten the issue of two
weeks ago (06/08/07), which contained pointer to our Pacific
Northwest logs. (Other topics included comments on the Science
Fiction Book Club, on FRANKENSTEIN (1910), on LAND OF THE LOST,
and on the second half of the 20th century; film review of GYPSY
CARAVAN; letter of comment on the future, AWAY FROM HER, poetic
writing, and H. G. Wells; and comments on books [Hugo goofs].) If
you missed it, the issue can be found at
http://www.fanac.org/fanzines/MT_Void/MT_Void-2549.html.
The failure results from spam filmters thinking that our web host
is a spam generator. They do not like a word that starts with
"geo" and continues with "cities." We will avoid using that word
in the future as much as possible. [-ecl, mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Geometrically Considerate (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
. . . Oh, and by the way I am *not* out of shape. I just try to
maintain a very modest surface area for my volume. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Update on SH20 (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Relevant to last week's editorial, the Guardian reported this week
that China has already overtaken the United States in the volume
carbon dioxide emission: http://tinyurl.com/2meyy2 [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Almost Human (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Food for thought: People want robots to be either very believably
human or not very similar. There is a middle ground where they
look really human but not quite and it really creeps people out.
They would rather talk to an anthropoid Mickey Mouse or to a human
than something that looks nearly human and is not.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=853
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SH20--The Seeds of Destruction (Part 3) (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
I have been talking about SH20 (pronounced S-H-2-O), the second
half of the 20th century. Specifically I have been saying that
improvements in the fortunes of the average person during those
years may have been self-limiting and brought about many of the
problems of the 21st century.
Previously I was talking about how during SH20 the cost of
healthcare increased, but workers in corporations had security
because their companies were footing much of the bill. But that
worked for the American worker only so long as they were
employed. Workers from other countries could live more cheaply
and were paid less, but they were far away and did not compete in
the same job market. There were geographical barriers to prevent
corporations from using the less expensive labor from lower-
powered economies than our own. The telecommunications that
allowed the individual better and better access to information
first from families (with things like long distance calling) and
then from strangers (over the Internet) were rarely seen as a
threat to the workers' security, but they were. A little better
foreseen was that computer software could also be competition for
the worker. The computer, a much more indefatigable worker,
could eliminate many jobs. These days the American worker has
much more competition from the computer and from labor abroad.
There can be little job security for anybody whose output can be
moved from another country to ours over a wire. With more
international some competition prices are coming down, but that
includes the price of labor.
When I was in high school and college we had the devastating
Vietnam War. That made lives very bad for some people I knew.
We presumably even lost that war. (I say "presumably" because I
was to Vietnam in 2001 and found I could walk down the streets of
Hanoi and see shops with boxes that said Sony and Panasonic and
hundreds of international brands for sale. You see Internet
cafes that fill up with high school students as soon as school
lets out. Creating an ideal Communist state is not really what
the younger generation wants these days. Who actually won that
war is a moot point that could be a subject for another article.)
There is a reason that the enemy we fought in Vietnam was
particularly difficult to fight. That was the way the enemy was
structured. Really what we were fighting was fairly new. We were
fighting an enemy made of little groups of dedicated fighters.
Destroy one group and you have just taken out one group, you have
not significantly damaged the network. It is the same reason that
the Internet would be so hard to destroy--if you take out part the
rest just routes around it. It is the same reason that crabgrass
and cancer are so hard to get rid of. (These are all called
"semi-autonomous networks.") With the Vietnam War the fighting
was limited to one country. The public saw an untenable war, but
it was still a war that was "over there." In the 21st century we
face global terrorism that is structured the same way, a semi-
autonomous network, and it may not be just "over there." We are
fighting an enemy that includes cells that are over here. Recent
attempted attacks on New York and New Jersey demonstrate that some
of the conflict may be within our borders. I think that fact
should not be trivialized. And the terrorist forces are
structured like a network where taking out pieces will not
significantly impact the network. I don't think that many of us
have realized that fact and considered its implications, and it is
probably going to have a powerful negative impact on all our
futures. Fighting an insurgent network on our own soil could be
much more nightmarish than many of us realize.
I think we are seeing the quality of life degrading little by
little. And the big slide may be ahead. Previously we lived in
times when there were a lot of doomsday predictions. I remember
being told that there would be no elephants left in the year 2000
due to poaching. We were told that the plankton were dying and
that would destroy the food chain. I myself was convinced that
the Y2K bug was going to have very dangerous consequences. Many
of these predictions were exaggerations well intentioned but
intentional nonetheless by people anxious to get action on their
particular cause. Some were just selfish lies from people making
money. Some may have been valid concerns but are taking longer
than expected. But the predictions bred and fueled a counter-
movement of skeptics. Some people were reassured that the status
quo was pretty firmly in place. But many of these scenarios are
based on well-founded fears. It takes only one of two of the
predictions to be realized and our stable society may prove to be
not so stable and not so pleasant. I cannot help believing there
is a good chance of that.
It may well be true that every generation as it ages its people
feel they have reached a period of unprecedented threat or just
that they have lived through the best of times. Perhaps faced
with the then new threats of nuclear warfare your grandparents
felt that the 60s and 70s were a particularly threatening time.
Their parents saw the rise of Nazism in Europe was bringing the
possible end to civilization. I know I am now in my fifties and
I see us headed for what I think may be unpleasant times. They
seem to be much less agreeable than the times I lived the
majority of my life. With all that was wrong with the second half
of the 20th century, it may well prove to have been the best of
times. Whether that is true or not we all shall see. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Ponds on Mars (letter of comment by Steve Lelchuk)
In response to Mark's article on ponds on Mars in the 06/15/07
issue of the MT VOID, Steve Lelchuk writes, "Those who check the
link will see that the authors have now retracted their
conclusion, since others have pointed out that the area in
question was a slope which could not therefore have puddling
water. One question *I* had when I looked at the picture was:
Why is the "water" (or ice?) *blue*? On earth, when we look at a
lake, it generally looks blue because our earthly skies are blue
and are reflected in the water. Is that not so? Therefore, water
puddled on Mars ought to look orange, or reddish, or whatever
color the Martian sky is. Whatever it is, it isn't *blue*!" [-sl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Oil (letter of comment by John Oswalt)
In response to Mark's article on SH20 in the 06/15/07 issue of the
MT VOID, John Oswalt writes, "There is only one thing worse than
the world running out of oil, and that is the world not running
out of oil. (Apologies to Oscar Wilde)" [-jo]
===================================================================
TOPIC: FAHRENHEIT 451, Ponds on Mars, and SH20 (letter of comment
by John Purcell)
In response to various articles in the 06/15/07 issue of the MT
VOID, John Purcell wrote:
A couple of things piqued my interest in your latest effort, Mark
and Evelyn. The first one is the continuing saga of Ray
Bradbury's contention that FAHRENHEIT 451 was not about
government censorship, but was "a story about how television
destroys interest in reading literature." Okay, I can see that.
Without reading Patrick Nielsen Hayden's "rebuttal" to this
statement, it seems to me that censorship would have the same
effect. There are many ways to interpret this novel, as happens
with any piece of literature; one way that I interpret Fahrenheit
451 is that it is very much about the human spirit and that the
human need for story-telling will continue. At the same time, it
is very much about censorship, government control of nearly all
aspects of our society, and the decline in not only reading, but
the American educational system as well.
Whoa, Nellie! I think I just described the Bush Administration!
;=)
Another thing you noted was the discovery of ponds on Mars. I
have been following the recent NASA reports of their various
discoveries, such as the existence of caves, and that
serendipitous accident where one of the land rovers scraped the
surface and revealed soil discoloration that could only result
from oxidation, yet another linkage to the possibility of water
being on Mars in the past. Things are getting interesting up on
the red planet. Maybe we should send a team up there to
investigate. I wonder how quickly NASA could get Val Kilmer
ready to go...
The second half of the 20th century--SH2O, as you call it--may
indeed be the most contradictory era of modern history. So much
wealth, so much poverty; so much industrialization, so much mess;
great steps forward in medicine, so many new deadly diseases and
viruses; so many people...
Well, the compare and contrast could go on for quite a while. It
is almost as if SH2O best exemplifies the opening line to A TALE
OF TWO CITIES: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times." Perhaps most Americans are finally waking up to the fact
that the Baby Boomer generation should be held accountable for
the economic/environmental condition that the USA and the world
are in today. We can probably point to American complacency and
arrogance as the biggest culprits toward causing much unrest in
the world. However, ancient cultural divisions around the world
are just as nasty now as they were two, three, or four thousand
years ago. The world today is indeed a scary place, and what the
near future holds is anybody's guess. It is certainly a powder
keg of possibilities.
In fact, just last night (15 June 2007) I was watching CNN
Headline News when Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, co-authors of
the "Left Behind" book series, were being interviewed, providing
their interesting take on current events as seen from a literal
interpretation of prophetic scripture. It was a fascinating
discussion. But the key word here is "interpretation"; ignoring
the sales figures of these books--which is pushing the 100
million mark--LaHaye has been studying biblical prophecy for over
fifty years, and he presents a very rational argument for how
many passages in the Old Testament, such as Ezekiel 18, can be
interpreted as signs of the End Times. As LaHaye and Jenkins
pointed out, many of the prophecies in the Old Testament were met
during the second half of the 20th century, which is one of the
indicators that the End Times are about to begin.
Please don't think that I'm another Christian doomsayer claiming
the end of the world is near. Far from it. I am merely pointing
out that their "predictions" are one way to look at events of
SH2O. In their own way, it does make sense if you have that kind
of a mindset in reading scripture and piecing it together with
current historical events. However, it needs to be mentioned
that in times of great stress and uncertainty more people turn to
religion to ease their worried minds. There is plenty of
historical evidence to support that statement. Witness the rash
of doomsayers and rapid growth in church attendance as the year
2000 approached. The same thing happened at the tail end of both
the 18th and 19th centuries, too. But the bottom line still
remains: never before in human history has so much been at stake
with so much uncertainty hanging in the air. No wonder people
want some kind of certainty to believe in in times like these.
All in all, I will be interested to read your final installment
in this series. A very thought-provoking batch of essays.
That should do it for now. In the meantime, get back to digging
out that shelter, Mark. Remember those old school drills we had
when we were kids if there was a nuclear attack? As if they
would really have helped. If it ever really happens, maybe all
we can do is bend over, stick our heads between our legs, and
kiss our collective ass goodbye.
What a wonderful image to end this LoC on. [-jp]
Mark responds:
I try not to get too partisan here, but I will express my
opinion. I disagree about what the Bush Administration trying to
gain control of all aspects of our society. I think you are
misreading them. While I am no lover of the Bush Administration
by any means (and never have been), I don't think this is an
accurate way to characterize them. They are not trying to
control the society. They are reacting to some very real threats
and doing so in some frequenlty misguided ways. I think their
loyalties are first to their little clique, then to the Republican
Party, then to country as a whole.
I do not see them trying to restrict the right to read
HUCKLEBERRY FINN. They are actually trying to help defend that
right. I think they are doing it incompetently and in frequently
not properly considered actions.
It is a mistake and counterproductive to think of them as
malicious. That only divides the country. And as to their
incompetence, I don't think the infusion of Democrats into
Congress has made much difference. They seem to be afraid to take
action to change the course of our policy. They have a good deal
more power than they had and it does not seem to be making much of
a difference. Of course that may not be their fault. By not
thinking out the Iraq invasion as clearly and as carefully as was
the Bush people's responsibility to do they have put the country
in an impossible and dangerous position.
When planning an invasion it is important for the commanders to
think out all the possible effects and to be ready for them.
FDR's people I am sure struggled long and hard about the
consequences of the D-Day Invasion and considered all the
contingencies. They thought out what might have happened. Just
as they were with FEMA the Bush administration were more excited
about power of appointing the vital people,their position but not
in doing their homework beforehand.
As for the ponds on Mars, I have to retract that statement. If
you go to the same web site you will see that that announcement
has been retracted in the interim interval between my writing and
the publishing. Pity.
Nor do I believe agree that American complacency and arrogance is
are, as you say, the biggest culprits toward causing much unrest
in the world. I guess I feel out our place inpolicy toward the
world is characterized by ignorance, self-interest, and idealism.
But then probably all countries' place inpolicy toward the world
is characterized by the same three factors. We may even be above
average in idealism.
As for LaHaye and Jenkins, I do not take them very seriously.
Pick any century of the last twenty and I think a willful person
could interpret the Biblical prophecies seem to apply to that
time. But I do think we could be headed for a very unstable
period.
Thank you for the response and the kind words. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: BRAVE NEW WORLD (letter of comment by Joseph T. Major)
In response to Evelyn's comments on BRAVE NEW WORLD in the
06/15/07 issue of the MT VOID, Joseph Major writes, "To help fill
in on BRAVE NEW WORLD, Mustapha Mond is named after two famous
people: Ataturk (whose first name is more usually rendered
"Mustafa") and Sir Alfred Mond (co-founder of Brunner Mond, a
company later part of Imperial Chemical Industries, with John
Brunner's grandfather, Sir John Brunner). I do think that the
section where John Savage becomes a media personality is a
terrifying prediction of what was to come." [-jtm]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Our book group chose selections from EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY edited
by John Carey (ISBN-10 0-380-72968-7, ISBN-13 978-0-380-72968-5)
for this month's discussion. After much debate we decided on
pages 1 through 174, along with the introduction. (This brought
us up to the founding of Jamestown in 1607, which seemed a good
cut-off point. We try to keep the page count per month under 300
pages.) The introduction was added at the last minute, when I
realized that it provided a fair amount for discussion, as Carey
talks about the history and philosophy of reportage. For
example, he cites Ben Jonson's 1626 play "The Staple of News" as
using "the self-evident absurdity of news-gathering as an
activity. History has not supported Jonson's judgement." He
also discusses the science fiction novel THE TIN MEN by Michael
Frayn (ISBN-10 0-006-54102-X, ISBN-13 978-0-006-54102-8).
Now, the one thing that can be said about having a ridiculously
large science fiction collection is that when I read a reference
to a book such as THE TIN MEN, one can go and pluck it off the
shelf. (Or in my case, out of the box.) This is a social satire
reminiscent of those of Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. At
the William Morris Institute of Automation Research, people are
busy trying to find ways to automate everything. Rowe, for
example, is working on coming up with programming that will
produce the descriptions and results of sporting events without
the actual inconvenience of playing the games or running the
races. What Carey is talking about, though, is Goldwasser's job:
automating the production of news. One sample would be a file he
picks up which is labeled "Child Told Dress Unsuitable by
Teacher" and reads: "V. Satis. Basic plot entirely invariable.
Variables confined to three. (1) Clothing objected to (high
heels/petticoat/frilly knickers). (2) Whether child also smokes
and/or uses lipstick. (3) Whether child alleged by parents to be
humiliated by having offending clothing inspected before whole
school. Frequency of publication: once every nine days."
There is also a great sequence which is basically a flow-
chart/state diagram of an article. One starts with
"Traditionally," and then chooses an event: weddings, deaths,
births, and so on. "Weddings" leads to "are occasions for
rejoicing"; deaths leads to "are occasions for mourning." "The
wedding of X and Y" is followed by a choice between "is no
exception" or "is a case in point." And so on. (Now you know
where all those cliches come from!)
All this is combined with a plot about the Queen's visit, which
starts out as a brief stop and escalates through the efforts of
dozens of committees, overlapping and duplicating each other's
work. This was probably true to some extent when Frayn wrote THE
TIN MEN (1965), but has grown and expanded enormously since then.
(Frayn is probably best known these days as the author of the play
COPENHAGEN.)
And completely coincidentally I picked up THE TRUTH by Terry
Pretchett (ISBN-10 0-380-81819-1, ISBN-13 978-0-380-81819-8), a
book about the invention of the newspaper and the whole reporting
industry in Ankh-Morpork. One suspects that Pratchett's opinions
on the press is summed up by one character's statement: "People
like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get
uncomfortably when you tell them *new* things. New things . . .
well, new things aren't what they expect. They like to know
that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They
don't want to know that a man bites a dog, because the world is
not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people *think*
they want is news, but what they really crave is *olds*."
But Pratchett also has a more philosophical turn occasionally, as
when he muses on movable type :"The ban on movable type wasn't
*exactly* a law. . . . [The] wizards and priests didn't like it
because words were important. An engraved page was an engraved
page, complete and unique. But if you took the leaden letters
that had previously been used to set the words of a god, and then
used them to set a cookery book, what did that do to the holy
wisdom?"
THE HISTORIES by Herodotus (translated by Aubrey de Selincourt,
introduction by A. R. Burn) (ISBN-10 0-140-44908-6, ISBN-13
978-0-140-44908-2) is not, strictly speaking, reportage. Most of
it is not first-person writing, and even when it is, at times
Herodotus is either making it up or is extremely gullible. He
does not claim to have seen the gold-digging ants, for example,
but does present it as fact. He claims to have seen an
inscription on the side of the Great Pyramid recording the amount
spent on radishes, onions, and leeks for the workers. But he
adds that "the interpreter who read me the inscription said the
sum was 1600 talents of silver." So obviously he did not know
from first-hand knowledge what the inscription said, and was
almost definitely lied to by the interpreter (who may not have
had any idea what the inscription said either).
Burn points out that Herodotus is willing to report beliefs even
when he does not believe them himself. For example, "The third
theory [of what causes the Nile to rise each year) is much the
most plausible, but at the same time furthest from the truth;
according to this, the water of the Nile comes from melting snow,
but as it flows from Libya through Ethiopia into Egypt, that is,
from a very hot into a cooler climate, how could it possibly
originate in snow? Obviously, this view is as worthless as the
other two." And talking of Phoenicians who circumnavigated
Africa, Herodotus writes, "These men made a statement which I do
not myself believe, though others may, to the effect that as they
sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of [Africa],
they had the sun on their right--to the northward of them."
Well, Herodotus may not have believed these statements, but they
are both, in fact, true.
[Note: the ISBN numbers given are for a newer edition, with the
introduction by someone other than Burn.]
And this last note is not a review, but a warning: I had bought
the hardcover of Neal Stephenson's QUICKSILVER ("Volume 1 of The
Baroque Cycle") (ISBN-10 0-060-59308-3, ISBN-13 978-0-060-59308-7
for the equivalent trade paperback) a while ago, but it was very
big and hard to hold. So when at a library book sale I saw a
copy of QUICKSILVER ("The Baroque Cycle #1") in mass-market
paperback (ISBN-13 978-0-06-083316-9, ISBN-10 0-06-083316-5) that
was much more compact, I picked it up. Well, the reason that it
is much more compact is that it is only *a third* of the
hardcover! The trilogy (in hardcover and trade paperback) is
being released as eight separate books in mass market paperback.
One bizarre side effect of this is that it will cost considerably
more to buy the entire story in mass market ($63.92) than in
trade paperback ($47.80). I paid only fifty cents for this
abomination, and I suppose I can use it as an easy-to-carry way
to start the series, but this sort of marketing is downright
sleazy. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I am increasingly distressed by how threadbare
the fabric of society is becoming. Science
is more politicized. Politics is more
factionalized. Factions are becoming more
militant. Militants are becoming a lot more
crazy. And crazies have their hand on more
science.
-- Mark R. Leeper