THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/23/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 47, Whole Number 1494
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Summer Science Reading (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Commentary (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
A Cold Look at "The Cold Equations" (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
IRON MAN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (DESERT SOLITAIRE and national parks)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Summer Science Reading (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In time for a summer with more opportunity to read, time IO9 has
composed a list of twenty influential science books that may just
have more interesting ideas than the science fiction you are
reading. Some I have read, some I have not, and some I have not
but am aware of the ideas and probably should read. Well, perhaps
all I really should read. A lot of the ideas have been reflected
in MT VOID articles. Certainly the article is worth checking out.
It is at http://tinyurl.com/6pwdv5. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Commentary (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was just traveling and when I do that, my main news source is
CNN. However, I am starting to wonder if it is worth the effort.
CNN is actually a very poor source for news. And what is
bothering me now is that their commentators and hosts commenting
on each other's work. They make comments like "Great story,
Michelle." This is a way to take time that is supposed to be
content time and instead are turning it into an advertisement for
themselves. They could make the argument that this really is
sincere comment. But somehow they never get around to saying
"You know, Michelle, you could have sweated the details a little
more on that one" or "some of your language was just a bit
awkward." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: A Cold Look at "The Cold Equations" (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
One of the best-remembered and often-discussed science fiction
stories is "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin from the August,
1954 issue of ASTOUNDING STORIES. In itself it is a poignant
little short story that simply presents a lamentable and
unromantic fact. As Scotty would later say in STAR TREK: "Och,
ya canno' change the laws o' physics." And that fact has been
frustrating science fiction fans ever since 1954.
In the Godwin story a ship is sent into space on a mission of
mercy. It has to deliver some serum that is desperately needed
to save some lives. If the ship does not reach its destination
people will die. So a rocket jockey is sent to deliver the
serum. His rocket is stripped down to its essentials. Any more
weight and it will crash. But early in the flight the pilot
finds that something is wrong. His instruments tell him that
there is something un-accounted for on the spaceship. It turns
out to be an eighteen-year-old girl. She has stowed away on the
ship for a chance to see her brother. But she did not know that
the exacting laws of physics would not let this stripped-down
ship get to its destination with her mass on board. That mass
has to be removed. After earnest searching for some solution to
the problem that will let her live nothing can be found. She has
to go to her death. The physics did not allow for any way to
rescue her. She has to be released into the vacuum of space.
Apparently even the author wanted to put a happy ending on the
story. The hard-nosed editor John Campbell insisted that only a
realistic and fatalistic ending would do. The 1950 film
DESTINATION MOON has a similar situation, but there the writer
gave the first astronauts an out. What if there is no out?
The efforts to save our unfortunate teenage stowaway have gone on
for more than half a century. Almost immediately readers wrote
in to the magazine with suggestions how to save her. There were
all sorts of workarounds that were suggested. Maybe pieces of the
ship's structure could be removed to save the weight. That sort
of thing. Someone else suggested that the mathematics and the
physics was actually not correct and there would have been a way
to save her. Many of the suggestions have a ring of desperation.
People want to save that one life.
Deborah Wassell wrote a commenting story called "The Cool
Equations." Here a way is found to work around the laws of
physics. So did Donald Saker in "The Cold Solution." I heard a
radio production of the story where they changed the young woman
in question to an older one trying to reach her husband. This
was apparently used to lessen the poignancy. I suspect the idea
was that the marriage had been consummated so somehow it seemed
like she was not missing so much.
There was a Sci-Fi Channel adaptation of the story where after
all the poignancy it is discovered that the tightness of the
situation is somehow the plot of a big, greedy corporation, and
things are set up so the girl lives and the corporation is
punished for its greed instead. You can definitely see where the
filmmakers' prejudices lie. (I have not watched Sci-Fi Channel's
since then, but I am told second-hand that their movies have
gotten even worse. Is that really conceivable?)
Well, perhaps the physics of the story was faulty. Godwin might
not have been sufficiently adept scientifically to execute his
premise. Maybe the ship would have been engineered with more of
a margin for error, but it is clear what Godwin's and Campbell's
premise was intended to be. There is a dilemma when the lesser
of two evils is to send a nearly innocent young woman to her
death. Whether Godwin's physics was right or not is really
beside the point. Any revisionism on the story is really an
attempt to dodge the idea of the story. Finding ways to save the
hapless teenager is really an evasion of the premise and a
quibble rather than a clever solution. The truth is that life is
hard and bad things happen. The writers of STAR TREK who refuse
to accept that no-win situations actually exist are in denial.
The whole idea behind the Kobayashi Maru subplot of STAR TREK II
is that Kirk can always find a way to win in any no-win
situation. He just needs some good (or bad) writers to get him
around no-win situations. It is an idea that cheapened the series
in exactly the way that John Campbell refused to let Tom Godwin
cheapen ASTOUNDING with a happy ending where it did not belong.
The response that the story has gotten may be more revealing than
was intended. I think there is a certain degree of crypto-sexism
in the reaction to the story. Before, during, and after 1954, men
have been dying in science fiction stories. I cannot think of any
man who has died in a story who has gotten anywhere near the same
sympathetic reaction the teen gets in this story. The fact that
the person in question is female and young (and presumably in a
1954 story an eighteen-year-old would be a virgin) is what makes
the story so poignant for readers. And I wonder how many readers
of the story pictured a less attractive eighteen-year-old. There
are not too many, I would guess. Few readers even care that the
situation was of her own making in a setting where she presumably
should have known better. How much reaction would there have been
if the stowaway had been a 44-year-old male? We like to pretend
that we have egalitarian values in our society, but this too is
denial. If a seven-year-old blond girl is kidnapped it is a
national news story. If it were a 37-year-old Hispanic male
nobody would care. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: IRON MAN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A weapons manufacturer decides that the making of
weapons is immoral, so turns himself into a weapon to combat bad
weapons users. If you can get past the irony (or hypocrisy) of
the central concept Jon Favreau's adaptation of the Marvel Comic
is reasonably entertaining and uses its digital effects
energetically. Robert Downey, Jr.--definitely not a Christopher
Reeve type--plays the arms tycoon who builds a suit to give him
super powers. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Spoiler warning: there are minor plot spoilers below. One
spoiler is saved for the end of the review.
The first big blockbuster of the 2008 summer is IRON MAN. At a
high level the story is fine as a Marvel Comic Book on the wide
screen. Most of the lower level details should have been given
more thought. Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) is sort
of a modern-day Howard Hughes, part playboy, part genius
engineer. He is a fabulously wealthy second-generation arms
manufacturer. Tony Stark has a sort of popular celebrity status
in much the way that arms manufacturers usually do not have in
our universe. In Afghanistan he is promoting his company's new
missile system--powerful enough nearly to nearly kill himself
when he launches it (so who will he get to launch it?).
Shortly after he is captured by enemy meanies who want him to
recreate his missile using as building parts the spare parts they
have assembled in a cave. It must be a really well-equipped cave
to rival what a major industrialist can do in the United States.
They will watch him via cameras because it is higher-tech than
putting one of their own people in the room with him. Then he
builds an armored power-suit instead of a missile. Luckily his
captors are not watching him closely enough to notice the
difference. With his suit he has superpowers and he emerges as
what will become Iron Man.
All superheroes need an Achilles Heel, even Achilles. Stark's
weakness is that as part of the capture he ended up with metal
shrapnel in his blood stream. If they reach his heart he will
die. He is being kept alive only by a strong electromagnet
embedded in a port in his chest, one with lights on it so he can
find his keys in the dark. He will die if he is without his
magnet for any longer than the six minutes or so the film shows
he can go without it. Meantime the shrapnel caught in this tug
of war is apparently scraping out his arteries. How he is
avoiding stroke is anybody's guess. With his power suit he is
able to get out of his Afghan scrape, but his plan to vacate the
arms business puts him into direct conflict with his father's old
partner Obadiah Stane. (Wouldn't Charles Dickens have loved that
name.) Stane is played by Jeff Bridges with a startling new
look, a shaved head with a moustache and beard making it obvious
he is sinister. Stark's main support comes from his counter-
feminist factotum, Gwyneth Paltrow in the role of Pepper Potts,
perhaps a step down even from her Polly Perkins in SKY CAPTAIN
AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW.
The script by a large team of contributors raises and then
ignores some moral issues. One is the question of whether one
can bring an end to weapons by creating newer and more powerful
weapons. Even in the film this strategy is less than totally
effective, though we are expected to agree with Stark's beliefs.
Stark does not kill for any motive but self-defense. But he
hands a villain over to Afghan peasants who will likely not share
his scruples. This is apparently his version of the United
States policy of rendition.
Jon Favreau is an actor of the Ben Affleck and Vince Vaughn
generation. Without the good looks of a Vaughn or am Affleck he
is now behind the camera directing, and probably making better
contributions there. Previously he directed MADE, ELF, and
ZATHURA. In this film he directs but also has the tiny role as
Tony Stark's chauffeur Hogan. Downey is pleasant to watch for
his tongue in cheek characterization. He behaves like someone
trying desperately to seem unflappable while he really is not,
like he is watching events out of the corners of his eyes.
Terrence Howard is around as Stark's friend and liaison to the
military, but he does not have much opportunity to act. Notable
is Shaun Toub of THE KITE RUNNER and TV's "Lost" as a fellow
captive who becomes Stark's friend. Also in a tiny role is Stan
Lee, the creator of Iron Man, who traditionally shows up
someplace to get his face on the screen in many films based on
Marvel Comics. Samuel L. Jackson plays another familiar Stan Lee
character in a scene that is saved as a special reward for those
who are loyal enough to sit through the credits.
This is a sort of a turn-your-mind-off comic book on the screen.
It is clearly popular, but not one of the best few superhero
films. I would rate it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/
Spoiler warning.
Toward the end our Iron Man fights someone in a power-suit nearly
twice as high as his is. It is supposedly his design, but just
made bigger. But Stark's suit fits around him like a glove. His
legs fit into the legs of the suit and his head fits into the
helmet. Make a suit twice as large as its operator is and it
would have to operate a very different way. The operator's legs
could not reach to the legs of the suit so the legs would have to
be fully robotic rather than just power-assists. Stark can kick
his real left leg forward, but in the double suit that leg would
be only at the level of the suit's belly. The double-sized suit
really could not be based on Stark's suit. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
We recently visited Arches National Park in Utah. Edward Abbey
is the author of many novels and non-fiction books set in and
about the West. At one of the book sales a couple of months
before the trip, I picked up his book DESERT SOLITAIRE: A SEASON
IN THE WILDERNESS (ISBN-13 978-0-671-69588-0, ISBN-10
0-671-69588-6), a collection of essays about his time as a Park
ranger in Arches National Park. If this is true, I think the Park
ought to have gone after him for dereliction of duty, since he
seems to have spent a lot of time helping a near-by rancher herd
cattle, rafting down the Colorado, and doing a lot of other things
having nothing to do with the National Park Service. But let's
give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that although he
calls it *a* season, the book actually covers a couple of years or
more.
Anyway, the most pertinent chapter would be "Polemic: Industrial
Tourism and the National Parks". In this chapter, Abbey
complains that the National Parks are effectively being destroyed
in the attempt to make them more "accessible". Now, Abbey worked
in Arches in the 1950s, and wrote the book in 1967, so by
"accessible" he does not means wheelchair ramps and such, but
paved roads and plumbing.
Abbey's suggestion was to close the Parks to all motor vehicle
traffic (except for shuttle buses and other vehicles owned and
operated by the National Park Service). All visitors would have
to leave their cars outside the entrance. They would be issued a
bicycle (or horse) for use inside the park. Their tents,
bedrolls, etc., would be transported by shuttle bus to the
campgrounds. (He even accepts that those "too elderly or too
sickly to mount a bicycle" might be allowed to ride the shuttle
buses.)
Something like this has been done in the bigger Parks (e.g.,
Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon). Cars are allowed in the Park, but
they are barred from the most scenic parts, and people wanting to
see those parts must walk, bicycle--or ride shuttle buses. This
is not quite what Abbey suggested--he did not want shuttle buses
running constantly up and down the roads every seven minutes.
But it is vastly better than bumper-to-bumper cars and RVs.
Abbey then suggested no new roads be built in National Parks.
This follows fairly directly from the first suggestion--if cars
are not coming, why build roads? And rangers should be spending
more time outside, guiding people on hikes, helping them with
camping (in tents, since no vehicles are allowed in the Parks),
and so on. All this--ranger service, bicycles, horses--should be
free to the public. Abbey claims that by not building new roads
or spending money to maintain the old ones--let them revert to
unpaved roads again if necessary, but lack of traffic will
probably lower the maintenance cost a lot--the Parks would have
more than enough money to finance his proposals.
The major obstacle that he sees to this is that "Industrial
Tourism"--motels, restaurants, tour companies, road-building
contractors, etc.--are going to fight this tooth and nail. Well,
maybe, although as I said, Abbey's suggestions have been
implemented somewhat.
The real problem (as I see it) is that there is a feedback loop.
Abbey bemoans the changes in Arches that the paved road brought.
Tourists have to camp in the campgrounds rather than wherever
they want, and must bring charcoal or their own wood for fires--
there is not enough dead wood around for the numbers of campers
that now arrive. But these changes were made because of the
numbers of tourists. Are there lots of tourists because the paved
road was put in, or was the paved road put in because there were
so many tourists that an unpaved road could not support that many
people? In the 1950s, it took a long time and a lot of effort to
get even as close as the entrance of Arches. Now one can fly to
Salt Lake City or Denver, rent a car (or even 4-wheel-drive
vehicle) and be there in a day or two. (Admittedly, this may
change with global warming and/or the increase in gas prices.) So
if thousands of people show up at the entrance, the question is,
what can the Park do? One option is to limit the number of people
who can enter the Park on a given day. This, understandably, they
are reluctant to do. The other is to figure out how to support
this many people. The easiest way has been to build better roads,
create campgrounds, open a Visitors Center to provide an
orientation, and so on. Oh, and the campgrounds need plumbing,
because the sort of backcountry camping where one digs a latrine
fails spectacularly long before one reaches the numbers of
tourists the Parks are currently getting. However, at some point
even those changes doesn't work, and the Parks have switched to
shuttle buses in the more congested areas.
A reasonable approach for the future is to consider before
building a road whether this road is going to be a real solution
or something that will be equally congested in ten years. If the
latter, put in a dirt road for non-motorized traffic (and
possibly Park buses) rather than a much more expensive paved
road.
On the other hand, Abbey does make a logical error in his
argument. He describes the people who visit the bottom of the
Grand Canyon and other remote places in the mountains, or raft
down rivers, as being "not consist[ing] solely of people young
and athletic but also of old folks, fat folks, pale-faced office
clerks who don't know a rucksack from a haversack, and even
children." Yes, and Theodore Roosevelt was a weakling before he
headed west. The point is that just because *some* old folks can
climb Mt. Whitney, and some fat folks can raft down the Colorado,
and some children can horse-back through the Smokies, does not
mean that most, or even many, can. The existence of a few
professional basketball players under six feet tall does not mean
that the profession is as open to shorter people as it is to tall
ones.
The irony is that he has an entire chapter about "The Dead Man at
Grandview Point". In it, he describes the search for him:
"Learning from the relative--a nephew--that the missing man is
about sixty years old, an amateur photographer who liked to walk,
and had never been in the Southwest before, we assume first of
all that the object of the search is dead...." So much for
Abbey's argument that anyone can explore the wilds of America on
their own.
Abbey makes other logical errors. He says, for example, "To
refute the solipsist or metaphysical idealist all that you have
to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head; if he ducks
he's a liar." This sounds reasonable, but in fact this does not
refute the solipsist at all, because if the solipsist is right,
he is merely a figment of *your* imagination, and there is no one
to refute. All you have proved is that if solipsism is correct,
you can create an imaginary person that does not believe in it.
And similarly for metaphysical idealists, because though they
believe that the external world exists, they also believe that it
is still filtered through their own senses and mind.
Well, that last part had little to do with Arches (unless you are
a solipsist, in which case, you have imagined the entire Park).
The book itself had an interesting journey, having been bought
originally in the bookshop at Capital Reef National Park,
traveled to New Jersey, traveled *back* to Utah, and then back to
New Jersey. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however,
if they get into a position of power,
corrupt power.
-- George Bernard Shaw