THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/08/10 -- Vol. 28, No. 28, Whole Number 1579
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
The Things (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Linguistic Problem (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Writing Memory (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
PONTYPOOL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
UP IN THE AIR (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (QUESTIONING THE MILLENNIUM)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
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TOPIC: The Things (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I really enjoyed the story "The Things" by Peter Watt in
"Clarkesworld" this month. I recommend it. But if after the first
minute you do not recognize the world you are in with the story
give up on it. It strongly assumes prior knowledge.
Text version:
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
MP3 version:
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/audio_01_10/
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TOPIC: Linguistic Problem (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Although the Aq'ta people have twelve different way to express it,
there is no way in English to express their idea that
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TOPIC: Writing Memory (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Two weeks ago I discussed progress that had been made in erasing
memory. Normally this would be a bad thing. Your memory really is
where your identity resides. There are some aspects in which you
are different from other people external to your memory. You are
probably a different height from other people you know. You may be
thin while other people are portly. But those differences are
really superficial. It is what is written on your memory that
really determines who you are. It is what makes you you.
One of the most important things within your memory is your
collection of bad experiences and what you learned from them. You
don't put your hand in the fire because you remember being told
that it was dangerous or you remember having learned first-hand
that fire hurts. In the previous article I talked about how some
of that fear can actually be erased by the drug propranolol. If a
fear learned is bad enough to debilitate you, some of that
association can be erased with the drug. But erasing bad memories
and bad associations is really a form of destruction. Destruction
is much more difficult than creation. It is easy to destroy a car.
It is much harder to create one that works. Similarly, one would
think it must be a lot more difficult, if not impossible, to
actually write new memories. That is the other, and probably
harder, side of creating memories. But over the last year, just as
experiments have shown there are inroads on erasing memories in
humans, it has become possible to create fearful memories and
reactions in flies that behave like lessons the fly has gained from
experience.
The mind and memory of flies has proven in recent years to be more
complex than had been previously thought. They have been shown to
have high-level behaviors of learning and memory. But they get by
with just twelve brain cells that are responsible for the
associative learning part of memory. It is here that flies store
the knowledge that when the swatter is coming down, they should
make like their name says and fly. But with techniques developed
by Gero Miesenbock from the University of Oxford (UK) it was
possible to activate these brain cells in ways to react negatively
to a certain odor.
A chemical called ATP would stimulate the neurons to create a fear
reaction. These had to be injected into the fly to give the same
reaction as a fearful experience. They were bound in a kind of
very tiny cage to keep them from activating the fly brain. The fly
was then subjected to an odor that had never been threatening. The
fly did not react. Then while in the presence of the odor they
used a laser to open the cage and release the ATP. The fly flew to
escape the odor. But later when the fly was subject to the odor
again, it treated the odor as a threat.
To be honest, I am not sure why the interpretation of what was
observed was not that the fly associated the odor with the
experience of a laser boring into its little fly head. But this is
all being interpreted as having put a fearful memory into the brain
of the fly. Essentially the fly had been given a phobia of a non-
threatening fragrance. The experimenters are chemically inducing
an irrational fear purely by chemical means. They have not shown
that propranolol will alleviate the fears as far as I know, but it
is interesting to speculate. It probably would not work on a fly,
of course.
Neither of these chemical means is really writing on or erasing
from the brain, but it is a start. And it is interesting that both
experiments should be done so close in time.
There is a deeper thought here. We have the beginnings of
processes to reform the brain without having to go through direct
personal experience. It is an old science fiction idea to
chemically educate the brain. Release just the right chemicals to
modify the neurons so that the brain suddenly has experienced a
course in Physics I. If we could chemically induce knowledge, is
it a good idea? Do we want an Economics 101 injection? Is it
important that the student actually go through the effort of
learning the subject? Does that effort force the student to have
critical self-discipline? Is it important that students learn how
to do old-fashioned research when there are new ways to get the
same information from the Internet? Or is it the same information?
I am not sure that anyone can decide these issues, but it looks
like they will have to be decided sooner or later.
For more reading on this experiment:
http://tinyurl.com/write-mem1
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091015123552.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8310365.stm
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TOPIC: PONTYPOOL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is a fresh new take on a somewhat tired sub-genre of
horror. At radio station CLSY in a small rural Ontario town the
shock jock with the morning radio program has to cover the strange
and deadly transformation of his town. This is a very low budget
horror film made for cable, but it has some nice and clever ideas.
This is a particularly Canadian horror film. It could have been
set in the US, but there are political reasons that it works so
much better in Canada. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Spoiler warning: I will try to reveal few of the twists, but the
whole premise of the film is a twist.
It was not very long ago that the United States and Britain
monopolized the horror film in the world market. There was a
sprinkling of films from France, Spain, and Italy, but they were
not the better films available. Certainly the United States's
neighbors Canada and Mexico were making films that were at best
second-rate. Of course Canada had David Cronenberg and Mexico
somewhat later had Guillermo del Toro. But this year Mexico's
SLEEP DEALER and Canada's PONTYPOOL rank as high as any United
States science fiction films I have seen. (I wait anxiously for
MOON to become available.)
PONTYPOOL plays with an idea new to the science fiction field. It
is telling more than I should to say that this is a film that will
inaccurately be called a "zombie" movie. There are no undead
zombies, however this film has parallels to zombie films.
Something is loose in Pontypool, Ontario, and the concept of it is
an interesting philosophical idea.
It is a cold Valentine's Day morning in the rural Canadian town of
Pontypool. We are inside a radio station where the voice
broadcasting is that of bad-boy host Grant Mazzy (nicely played by
Stephen McHattie). Mazzy has gotten himself thrown out of larger
markets because of his penchant for rubbing people the wrong way.
His producer, Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) has her hands full
controlling the shock jock beneath the cowboy hat and beard.
Technician Lauren-Ann Drummond (Georgina Reilly), recently returned
from serving in Afghanistan, tries to stay out of Mazzy's and
Briar's wrangling with each other. Mazzy thinks that getting his
listeners angry is the best way to boost his ratings. And Sydney
has to pull the leash on him ever few moments.
The stories this morning include a missing cat and Mazzy wants to
talk about the strange woman who inexplicably attacked his car on
the way in to work. These stories may or may not be connected to
what the unseen Ken Loney (Rick Roberts) is observing from his
vantage point in the Sunshine Chopper. He reports a mob of people
has inexplicably "exploded" into the streets and is attacking a
doctor's office. This is the sort of thing that just does not
happen in a placid countryside town like Pontypool. Soon the radio
station will be right in the middle of the action.
The pacing of the film starts slowly. Little things start going
wrong. It is becoming clear that something strange and deadly has
happened in town. But it is a while before there is any real kind
of action. We hear what is happening in town, but never see it
first-hand or ever leave the radio station building. (That gives
the film a claustrophobic feel and at the same time must have
really held the budget down.) The film could almost be a radio
play. In fact, it was done as a radio drama played on BBC World
Theatre, where I heard it. Toward the end the film version becomes
considerably more visual, but both versions are surprisingly good.
Setting this film away from the action, at least initially, and
having the news come in from offstage gives this film some of the
feel of the Orson Welles "Invasion from Mars/War of the Worlds"
broadcast. It forces the viewer/listener to create the images of
what is happening. The film is worth a watch. It is currently
playing on the Independent Film Channel and at film festivals, but
will go to DVD January 26, 2010. I rate PONTYPOOL a +2 on the -4
to +4 scale or 7/10. One problem I had: Grant Mazzy reads on a
sort of horrific obituary to people who had been victims of this
outbreak, but there is no way he could have had the information he
is reading. The end of the film also seems to be incomprehensible
and bizarre for the sake of bizarre.
Pontypool. Pontypool. Pont... Pont...
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1226681/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pontypool/
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TOPIC: UP IN THE AIR (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: George Clooney who has had a fairly successful 2009
killing chickens and staring goats to death rounds out the year as
another suave character who flies around the country passing the
bad news to people fired by their bosses. Jason Reitman co-writes
and directs with a style as smooth and assured as Clooney's.
Eventually the film is about good choices and bad about
independence and commitment. Costars Vera Farmiga and Anna
Kendrick hold their own playing opposite Clooney. Rating: low +3
(-4 to +4) or 8/10
Oddly enough, the film that UP IN THE AIR reminds me of is THE
MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. In MAGNIFICENT SEVEN you have seven gunfighters
who go from town to town solving serious problems for other people.
They deal in lead and worry little about their victims. The people
of the village all look up to the gunfighters, particularly the
children do. But the peasants are the real winners because they
have roots and family. The gunfighters are just drifters. Roots,
we see, are of more importance than the glamorous image. In the
end that is what the film is about as much as the gun fighting. UP
IN THE AIR pulls the same little bait and switch on the viewer. It
looks like it is about professional corporate down-sizers. It is
really as much about people in glamorous jobs who trade personal
connections and any semblance of a normal life for a glitzy
profession.
The profession is "corporate downsizer". What is that? They say
that everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Business managers all over the country want to pay less in salaries
by letting people go. That has been true for decades and it got
much worse with the economic downturn. But management does not
want to face their employees to fire them. Employees sometimes
become violent, sometimes break down and cry, and sometimes make
threats. And giving people bad news is simply a downer. Some
employers have outsourced the undesirable task of firing employees
to experts. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), one such corporate axe-
man makes a terrific living because he performs a service that
business managers all over the country want. He is a professional
firer. He breaks the bad news to employees he has not seen before
and never will see again. Then he returns to his very fancy hotel
room and sleeps like a baby. He has a nominal home to go back to,
but prefers to be constantly on the road or flying up in the air.
In one year he has racked up 350,000 airline miles. With his charm
he has found and attracted Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga of NOTHING BUT
THE TRUTH here in a star-making role). She is an attractive
corporate traveler with whom he has uncomplicated wild sex whenever
he can arrange it. It is a good life. There is just one problem.
His expensive job may be eliminated. Natalie Keener (Anna
Kendrick) just out of school has joined the same company. She
intends to make firing even more impersonal by doing it over an
Internet wire, thus saving huge travel and hotel expenses. This
film is about this unlikely trio and their different philosophies
of putting down roots. Ryan is so sure that his prestigious life
style is perfect that he gives courses on how not to be tied down.
Natalie is not so sure. Alex for her own reasons is very careful
to stay out of the discussion.
Jason Reitman directs from a screenplay he co-wrote. Previously he
directed THANK YOU FOR SMOKING about a lead lawyer for the tobacco
industry who similarly had sacrificed his personal life for a
highly remunerative job. Here he compares the firing style of the
younger Natalie to the old pro Ryan. Natalie has more natural
compassion for people she knows than Ryan does, but is more
ruthless with total strangers. Ryan takes pride in softening the
blows he brings to total strangers, even making the firing look
momentarily like a positive step. He takes pride in his
professionalism. But he has little more compassion for his family
than he has for complete strangers.
One stylistic touch that is becoming a bit of a cliché is the
montage of reaction shots. We have montages of five or six
reactions of people being fired from the point of view of Ryan. We
get two or three of these montages. Each employee fired takes the
news in a slightly different way. Most are played by unknowns, but
one is a short scene with the great J. K. Simmons, who played the
father in Reitman's directly previous film JUNO.
It is odd that a film on such a painful subject in this economy can
still entertain. Perhaps the economy even helps it. I rate UP IN
THE AIR a low +3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1193138/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/up_in_the_air_2009/
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TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
QUESTIONING THE MILLENNIUM: A RATIONALIST'S GUIDE TO A PRECISELY
ARBITRARY COUNTDOWN by Stephen Jay Gould (ISBN-13 978-0-099-76581-
3) is an old book (1997) in which Gould looks at "the millennium."
He starts with how the whole idea of a millennium came about, how
it changed from a thousand-year-period *of* Jesus's reign on earth
to a thousand-year-period *until* Jesus's reign on earth, the
evolution of our calendar and how it was connected to the
millennium, and so on.
One passage in the introduction is of particular interest to
science fiction (and alternate history) fans. Gould discusses how
a thousand years as a round number is due to our base 10 number
system and notes that many advanced civilizations used other bases.
He then writes:
"And maybe, on a plausible alternative earth, the horse would not
have become extinct in North America. The Mayans might then have
domesticated a beast of burden, invented the wheel, and maybe even
those two great and dubious innovations of ultimate domination--
efficient oceanic navigation and gunpowder. Europe was a backwater
during the great Mayan age in the midst of the first millennium of
our Christian era. Continue the reverie, and Mesoamerica moves
east to conquer the Old World, makes a concordat with Imperial
China--and vigesimal mathematics rules human civilization for the
forseeable everafter. The millennium--the blessed thousand year
reign of a local god known as Jesus Christ--then becomes a curious
myth of a primitive and conquered culture, something that kids
learn in their third grade unit on global diversity." [-ecl]
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Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
It is easier to square a circle than to get
round a mathematician.
-- A. De Morgan, 1840