THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/09/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 45, Whole Number 1492
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Getting Useful Information from Corrupted Sources (part 1)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
THE GHOST BRIGADES by John Scalzi (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
THE CURIOUS CHILD by Donni Floyd (book review
by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (GREAT BATTLES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD,
THE ILIAD, and various alternate history stories)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: 1492 (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
If every issue of the MT VOID that had ever been published was
sent back in time so that people in the year A.D. 1 read the first
issue, people from the year A.D. 2 read the second issue and so
forth, 1) they would have no idea what they were reading and for
many of these years probably nobody could read it any way, and 2)
Torquemada might have wondered why I mentioned him. The Moors and
Jews fleeing Spain could be enjoying (?) the editorial below on
statistics and the Internet. And they could have been reading
this issue aboard the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.
It makes you think. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Getting Useful Information from Corrupted Sources (part 1)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was in a discussion recently in which I quoted something I
learned from reading an article from Wikipedia. The reaction I
got from the other person was "Oh, well. If you are going to
trust Wikipedia..." Well, it is true that a lot of people have
become skeptical of the credibility of Internet sources of
information. Many of these people I think may have started with
inflated expectations of how useful information the Internet
would be and then when they heard of credibility problems the
pendulum swung in the other direction. Now they trust nothing
that has come from Wikipedia.
Similarly there is a crisis of credibility with the Internet
Movie Database and the value of its information and its ratings
of films. Two different film critics have made the same argument
at two different times. They have each said that the ratings of
films in the Internet Movie Database are useless. It struck me
as interesting that in different contexts both made the same
comment which I know to be false. The argument goes that you can
see that the latest action film will have an entry and a fair
number of people will have given it a rating of 10 out of 10.
That is the kind of rating that should go to CITIZEN KANE, not to
some silly action film that will be all but forgotten in a few
months. Even worse you get prank votes like some voters hiding
behind the anonymity of the Internet, will give a rating of 10
out of 10 to a bad film like THE CREEPING TERROR. The argument
given by the critics is that if people vote like that then the
ratings have been corrupted and are useless. I agree the ratings
are corrupted. I do disagree that they are useless. Frequently
you really can get good information even from corrupted data.
There is, in fact, a whole science of how to get useful
information from corrupted data. I know only a little of this
statistical science, but I do know how to apply some basic common
sense principles.
First realize that there may, in fact, be nothing wrong with a
high IMDB rating for a film which I will call DEATH CRUSHER IV.
The audience voting is (at least for now) mostly a younger
audience that can appreciate the virtues of DEATH CRUSHER IV, but
do not yet have the taste to appreciate a CITIZEN KANE. Any
rating reflects only those people who vote on the rating.
Similarly I am often frustrated at the films that get Academy
Awards. But the awards really just represent the films that the
people in the Academy want to recommend. Sometimes you just have
to say that that is what that population of voters thought. But
sometimes the data really is corrupted. Frequently it is easy to
uncorrupt the data. The IMDB lets you see the distribution of
votes for any film. Suppose the distribution for DEATH CRUSHER V
looks like this:
10 ********************
9 **
8 **
7 ***
6 ******
5 *********
4 ***
3 **
2 *
1 *****
It is clear from the distribution that the rating of the film is
about a five out of ten. The people who rated the film 10 and
those who rated it 1 were intentionally trying to corrupt the
rating. By just looking at the distribution one can get a fairly
good guess what an uncorrupted distribution would look like and
what the rating of the film should be.
Incidentally, more recently the IMDB people have gotten smart and
decided to give more weight to votes from people who vote on many
films. If some aspiring film director wants to give a high
rating to his own poor film, but this is the first film he has
ever rated, his vote will not count for much. That policy makes
the ratings summary more reliable. It takes a lot more effort to
corrupt the ratings.
Next week I some places where such crises of confidence have a
bigger impact. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE GHOST BRIGADES by John Scalzi (copyright 2006, TOR,
$7.99, 374pp, ISBN-13 978-0-765-35406-8, ISBN-10 0-765-35406-3)
(book review by Joe Karpierz)
This Scalzi guy tells a great story.
My wife and I were having a discussion in the car on the way back
from Easter Dinner last month about what we like about SF. One
of the things we agreed upon was that in order for a book to
succeed, the author must tell a great story. Or, more
accurately, he or she must be a great storyteller.
Granted, this is the opinion of just two people, but our feeling
is that there is way too much stuff out there that passes for
good SF but just isn't a good story. (I was actually going to
write an article about this, but eventually decided to include it
in here. Whether that approach is successful or not remains to
be seen.). We like good storytellers, which is why we like stuff
by Scalzi and Sawyer. Who cares if what happens in a novel is
plausible, or if it takes an incredible convergence of
circumstances to make a plot point work? Was I entertained, was
it fun, did I get a big sense of WOW? If yes, the author
succeeded. Was I bored, was anything really happening, was the
novel "literary" without telling a good story? If yes, then it
didn't succeed.
As an aside (so maybe this should have been an article after
all), my daughter has some aspirations of being a writer. She's
a member of the writer's club at school, she's participated in
National Novel Writing Month, and she's submitted some pieces for
a local literary competition. For two consecutive years, she's
won a Critic's Choice Award in that competition. She was
commenting on how she couldn't believe this year's entry actually
won anything, because it had no plot--I guess it described an
event. She said it was terrible.
That's how I feel about a lot of SF these days. But not John
Scalzi's (yes, there's a book review in here somewhere).
THE GHOST BRIGADES is the second novel set in the universe of OLD
MAN'S WAR, Scalzi's Hugo nominated novel of a couple of years
ago. The Ghost Brigades is another term for the Special Forces,
a special group of troops created from the DNA of the dead which
is sent on some of the Colonial Defense Forces toughest missions.
The Ghost Brigades were introduced in OLD MAN'S WAR, but now take
front and center stage in the novel of the same name.
The background is this. It's been discovered that three of the
races out there in the galaxy that don't particularly like us
humans have formed an alliance to beat the snot out of the
Colonial Defense Forces and Earth. The problem with that is
twofold: 1) at least one of those races *never* allies with
anyone else for any reason, and 2) the three of them are being
aided by a human being, one Charles Boutin, who for some reason
wants to see the CDF destroyed.
The CDF wants to know why, so they create one Jared Dirac, who is
made from the DNA of Boutin and who has Boutin's memories and
consciousness overlaid into his. The hope is that they will
learn what sent Boutin down the path of treason and what his
plans are to destroy the CDF. The problem is that the memories
don't seem to settle in. As a result, Dirac is assigned to the
Ghost Brigades. We follow him as he learns about himself, his
mates, and what it's like to be "human". We also find out what
it's like not to have choices, as everyone in the Ghost Brigades
is "born" for one reason only: to protect humanity. They know
nothing else, no other way to live, and they really don't make
their own decisions.
Then all hell starts to break loose as Boutin's memories start to
come back to Dirac. And as they do come flooding back, we find
out why Boutin went off the deep end, what he plans, and what
Dirac does to handle the situation. We *also* find out about the
Conclave, a consortium of alien races (call it the United Nations
of the galaxy) which is trying to work out a peaceful method for
members of the Conclave to colonize the galaxy. Those races who
aren't members won't be allowed to colonize--and guess which race
won't participate?
This is a pretty darned good story. It's entertaining, fast
paced, and doesn't waste any words. It's tightly written--I was
*never* bored reading it. Scalzi resolves things nicely, and yet
sets things up for the next book in the series, and one of the
year's Hugo nominees, THE LAST COLONY.
Next up is HALTING STATES, by Charles Stross. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE CURIOUS CHILD by Donni Floyd (Outskirts Press, ISBN
978-1-5980-0046-7, 2008, $11.95) (book review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE CURIOUS CHILD is the first children's book written by Donni
Floyd, formerly a pop music star and a model. (Perhaps it is an
appropriate choice for my first children's book to review. The
author and I are both first-timers.) The book is apparently for
children in the age range of five to nine. The brevity is
appropriate to that age group. There are nine pages of text,
about right for a short bedtime read.
Floyd's intended purpose is that children should unafraid to ask
questions. From the illustrations the story seems to take place
on a South Pacific island that is inhabited by both people and
dragons. A boy who asks many questions of many people is sent to
see a wise old dragon who might have a spell to cure him of the
habit. The people who send him do not know that the dragon has
become old and dangerous. The dragon gives the boy three
questions but will eat the boy if none of the questions stumps
him. The first two questions the dragon answers flippantly and
falsely, but the boy seems not to notice. The boy's third
question is how many numbers are there in all. The dragon tries
counting all numbers and is tied up with the problem ever after.
The book may send mixed signals about the value of curiosity.
The unnamed boy finds that asking the right question at the right
moment gets him out of a dangerous situation with a dragon, but
he was in that mortal danger because he had asked too many
questions previously. The fact that the boy nearly died as a
result of bothering too many people with questions might not be
quite the right idea to send to children.
On the other hand there are some unexpected positive touches in
the book. The boy does not defeat the dragon by force or
destructiveness. He bests the dragon by using intelligence. His
question for the dragon is a simply stated but complex
mathematical question and may serve to ignite some rudimentary
mathematical interest in the book's audience.
I was left with two questions--and I feel impelled to ask them.
On such a small island why had the people not heard that their
dragon had turned deadly? And why was the dragon more willing
to be more serious about the third question than he had been with
the first two.
Grethel Peralta's illustrations add a definite charm to the
story, though they are not entirely consistent as to how the
dragon is pictured.
This lesson in asking questions may satisfy and inspire the
child, but only if he does not ask too many questions.
[Incidentally the boy's third question was originally answered by
the famous mathematician Georg Cantor who said it was one kind of
infinity he called "aleph-one." If we are, like the dragon is
apparently, interested only in the whole counting numbers the
correct answer is another smaller kind of infinity called "aleph-
zero."] [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The Teaching Company course GREAT BATTLES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD by
Prof. Garrett S. Fagan is a much better course than "Books That
Made History; Books That Can Change Your Life" (reviewed in the
08/10/07 issue of the MT VOID). Maybe it is because the subject
of the former lends itself to more objective lectures than the
latter. GREAT BATTLES is a more difficult course to follow, and
Fagan has a much drier and more academic delivery than Frears
does. But I also feel I learned more from it. In any case, I am
much more satisfied with this course.
There is a slight science fiction connection here, as Fagan talks
about counterfactuals (what if Alexander had been killed before
he started his conquests?), and even lists the alternate
history/counterfactual anthology WHAT IF? edited by Robert Cowley
(ISBN-13 978-0-425-17642-9, ISBN-10 0-425-17642-8) in his
supplemental reading list. (Conveniently, friends just gave me
this for my birthday.) And speaking of reading lists, one
problem with this course is that many of the books on the
"essential reading lists" given at the end of each lesson summary
are available only at college libraries, or in expensive
editions, if you want to buy them. (A sampling indicated that if
you were lucky, you might find an ex-library edition of some of
the books for under $50.) But if you were in a position to get
books from a college library, you probably wouldn't be taking
this course. At least some are more widely available (e.g.,
Herodotus and Plutarch).
So as part of listening to this, I've been reading what
recommended books I could find. The first was Homer's "Iliad",
in specific, the sections about battle. Now, Fagan talked about
how the descriptions were an amalgam of the warfare of the time
of the Trojan War and the warfare of Homer's time. For example,
the social structure and some of the battle techniques are more
from Homer's time, but a lot of the Bronze Age armor that Homer
described was no longer in use by the time of Homer (who was in
the Iron Age). In fact, some of the armor Homer described,
although real historically, pre-dated even the time of the Trojan
War.
One thing to be noted about Homer is how graphic his descriptions
are. For example, "[The] son of Phyleus ... struck him with the
sharp spear behind the head at the tendon, and straight on
through the teeth and under the tongue cut the bronze blade, and
he dropped in the dust gripping in his teeth the cold bronze."
[5.72-75, Richmond Lattimore translation] Or, "Hippolochos sprang
away, but Atreides killed him dismounted, cutting away his arms
with a sword- stroke, free of the shoulder, and sent him spinning
like a log down the battle." [11.145-147]
But Homer also personalizes the battle. He names the killers,
but also the killed, in amazing numbers. (One has to marvel at
the memories of those who recited this.) But more than naming
everyone, he also describes the costs of war: "Diomedes .. went
after the two sons of Phainops, Zanthos and Thoon, full grown
both, but Phainops was stricken in sorrowful old age nor could
breed another son to leave among his possessions. There he
killed these two and took away the dear life from them both,
leaving to their father lamentation and sorrowful affliction,
since he was not to welcome them home from the fighting alive
still; and remoter kinsmen shared his possessions." [5.151-158]
And Homer even acknowledges that the battles of his world cannot
be like those of the Trojan War. He does not talk about how the
gods no longer take a personal hand, but rather that men are
different: "A man could not easily hold it, not even if he were
very strong, in both hands, of men such as men are now, but he
heaving it high threw it...." [12.381-393]
For the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians (701 B.C.E.), the
readings were II Kings 18-19, II Chronicles 32, and Isaiah 36-37.
Now Chronicles itself is more an expansion of Kings, but the
description in Isaiah is in large part word for word the same as
that in Kings. This indicates that the writing of one was almost
certainly based on the other, and not independent.
In "Infectious Alternatives: The Plague that Saved Jerusalem, 701
B.C." (in the Cowley), William H. McNeill speculates on what
might have happened if the Assyrians had taken Jerusalem. But a
much better version is Poul Anderson's "In the House of Sorrows"
(in Gregory Benford's anthology WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: ALTERNATE
EMPIRES, ISBN-13 978-0-743-48729-0, ISBN-10 0-743-48729-X).
Anderson sets his story in something probably approximating the
present, but in a very different world, where the Assyrians took
Jerusalem, and the world's politics, religion, science, and
everything else are very different. This is one of my favorite
alternate histories, because Anderson did not pick any of the
over-used points of divergence from recent history, but instead
chose a very important ancient cultural turning point.
When Fagan moves to early Greek battles, the readings include
Herodotus's HISTORIES (Books 6-9). In Book 7, Herodotus claims
the size of the Persian army Xerxes brought from Asia to
Thermopylae was 1,700,000 infantry, 100,000 cavalry (including
camels and chariots), and 157,610 naval personnel. Xerxes
collected 324,000 more troops as he traveled through Europe.
With support staff, the total Herodotus gives for Xerxes's army
is 5,283,320. Fagan points out that this is clearly a vast over-
estimate--the size of the army Germany used for the WWII invasion
of Russia was less than half that. (Xerxes supposedly measured
his army by having the 10,000 "Immortals" stand as tightly
together as possible. He then drew a line around them,
dispersed them, and built a fence on the line. Then he had the
troops march into this "corral" in groups of 10,000. For
1,700,000 men, this would have been done 170 times. Assuming
that it took even just 15 minutes for each collection, this is
over forty hours for the size given of the infantry alone. There
is no indication that the measurement might have been done in
parallel rather than sequential.)
Herodotus also recounts how a bridge across the Hellespont was
destroyed by a storm, and Xerxes "gave orders that the Hellepont
should receive three hundred lashes and have a pair of feters
thrown into it." Herodotus also claims that he had heard that
people were also send to brand the Hellespont with hot irons(!).
Fagan described these actions of Xerxes as the "locus classicus
of despotic hubris in antiquity"--a lovely phrase.
P. Green's THE GRECO-PERSIAN WARS tries to explain Herodotus's
numbers for the various armies and fleets. First, Green suggests
that Herodotus confused chiliads and myriads, resulting in a ten-
fold increase in troop counts. Green also says that if the
number given for the size of the Persian fleet includes all boats
used in the bridges across the Hellespont, it is not
unreasonable.
The alternate histories really kick in with the battles of
Marathon (490 B.C.E.) and Salamis (480 B.C.E.): Lois Tilton's
"Pericles the Tyrant" (ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION, Oct/Nov 2005],
Harry Turtledove's "Counting Potsherds" (Gregory Benford's WHAT
MIGHT HAVE BEEN: ALTERNATIVE EMPIRES), and Victor Davis Hanson's
"No Glory that was Greece: The Persians Win at Salamis, 480 B.C."
(Cowley). Also, of course Herodotus's HISTORIES (Book 8-9),
Plutarch's "Themistocles" and "Aristides", and "The Persians" by
Aeschylus.
Turtledove's "Counting Potsherds" is a classic. It takes place
in Hellas, with a Persian representative in Hellas trying to
discover the name of the king who was defeated by Khsrish four
hundred years earlier. His confusion at what he discovers is
Turtledove's point, so I will not give it away. Tilton's
"Pericles the Tyrant" won the Sidewise Award for Short Form in
2005, so I suppose it's a classic also.
Now I must admit that somewhere around this point, I started to
fall behind in my background reading. In addition, I got to a
point where most of the works were unavailable to me (except
Plutarch, which I had already read). I did read Josiah Ober's
"Conquest Denied: The Premature Death of Alexander the Great" and
Lewis H. Lapham's "Furor Teutonicus: The Teutoburg Forest,
A.D. 9" in Cowley. The latter point of divergence was also the
starting point for Kirk Mitchell's "Procurator" trilogy, Robert
Silverberg's UP THE LINE, and David Drake and Janet Morris's ARC
RIDERS: THE FOURTH ROME.
Okay, this is probably more information than you wanted about
ancient battles. But no one was forcing you to read it all.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things
about himself and then says them about other people.
-- Peter McArthur