THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/19/12 -- Vol. 31, No. 16, Whole Number 1724
Mickey Mouse: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Minnie Mouse: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Wednesday's Children (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Leeper for the Defense: Tarantulas and Duck-and-Cover
Messages (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
FRANKENWEENIE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
ARGO (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE TEMPORAL VOID by Peter F. Hamilton (audiobook review
by Joe Karpierz)
SINGULARITY RISING by James D. Miller (book review
by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
Ozymandias and Science Fiction (letter of comment
by Sam Long)
This Week's Reading ("History of Rome" podcast, THE DECLINE
AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, THE KALAHARI TYPING
SCHOOL FOR MEN, "'Franz Kafka' by Jorge Luis Borges",
and MOBY DICK annotations) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Wednesday's Children (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
True statement: Most people my age were born on a Wednesday. Think
about it. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Leeper for the Defense: Tarantulas and Duck-and-Cover
Messages (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The singer Harry Belafonte was a great fighter against bigotry for
most of his career. Unfortunately he also contributed to some
bigotry against tarantula spiders. In his famous song "Day-O",
also called "The Banana Boat Song", he has the lyric:
A beautiful bunch o' ripe banana
(Daylight come and me wan' go home)
Hide the deadly black tarantula
(Daylight come and me wan' go home)
This song warned the world about the deadly danger of this scary
spider. And in fact a tarantula bite might actually be deadly ...
to a mouse. If I can trust my search on the web, no human has ever
been killed by a tarantula bite. It is painful, of course. It can
hurt as badly as a wasp sting for several days. Now, bunches of
bananas do occasionally hide the Brazilian Wandering Spider, also
known as the Banana Spider. This is even more ugly and more
dangerous than a tarantula spider and in theory its bite can kill a
human. But again there are no records of this spider actually
killing anyone. And the banana spider is sometimes incorrectly
called a "tarantula." However, calling it the "banana spider" would
have wrecked the meter of the song. He could have gotten away
with:
A beautiful bunch o' ripe banana
(Daylight come and me wan' go home)
Hide the deadly Wandrin' spider
(Daylight come and me wan' go home)
But then the record would have had to come with an explanation.
Even then people hearing the song on the juke box would have come
back and asked "the what spider????" People knew what a tarantula
was. In fact, "The Banana Boat Song" was released in 1956, the year
before Jack Arnold's film TARANTULA about a giant tarantula spider
had been released. So the public knew what a tarantula was in
1956, but they probably would not have thought in terms of it being
deadly until Belafonte told them. (Of course Jack Arnold had told
people that the fifty-foot variety could be deadly, but in general
there just were no tarantulas that big to suffer from the
misinformation. It is like whipping up prejudice against zombies.)
Belafonte libeled the timid and usually placid tarantula spider. I
would say that counts as an injustice.
I recently heard a podcast where people were laughing at the old
public service messages and school drills that told children that
when they saw a bright flash they should "duck and cover." How
could the government think people were so stupid as to put their
faith into so simple a strategy when under nuclear attack? This
was supposed to protect children from the nasty effects of a
nuclear explosion. Good luck!
Many people look back today and think how gullible people must have
been to think that ducking and pulling a jacket over your head
would protect you from a nuclear explosion. It is a pretty funny
idea, right? Well, maybe, but it also happens to be sound advice.
If you are far enough away from the blast a lot of the danger will
not be immediate so in a way you are lucky. If you are near enough
to the blast you will die in a fraction of a second and I suppose
in another way you will be lucky. But there is a certain distance
that falls between the two where being covered up really is a good
idea. There would be a lot of flying building materials and glass
shards.
Very quickly when Japan surrendered in World War II after having
been the victim of two nuclear attacks, Americans rushed to the two
stricken cities to find out who was killed and who survived. Of
the people who survived an attack, what was it that saved them?
The conclusion was the obvious that the more exposure you had to
the deadly results of the detonation, the worse off you were. You
want to minimize your exposed surface area and put what you can
between you and the now unfriendly outside world. In other words,
you want to duck and cover.
It may be less true today because there would be a much greater
radius of what I would delicately call "instant lethality."
Nuclear weapons are a lot more powerful than they were at the end
of World War II. But there still should be a Goldilocks region
where the best immediate survival strategy would be to duck and
cover. Whether you could maintain the presence of mind to think of
the best strategy and the will to override you curiosity to see
what is happening is another matter.
I find that tarantula spiders and the United States Government are
not guilty. And that probably is not all that they have in common.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: FRANKENWEENIE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Tim Burton returns to his roots making a feature-length
version of one of the two short films that made him famous.
Filling the film with references to classic horror and sci-fi films
he tell the story of teenage Victor Frankenstein who brought his
dog back to life as a cute and likeable patchwork monstrosity. The
story is pleasant enough in a macabre sort of way, but it is much
more coherent in the parts updated from the original. The new
material takes a while to get going. And in some ways the use of
animation instead of the original live action takes away from the
fun of the film. Burton only occasionally improves on what was in
the 1984 version. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Thirty years ago a Tim Burton in his mid-twenties made two short
films for Disney Studios. The first was "Vincent", an animated
story of a boy who like Burton himself idolized Vincent Price and
his horror movies. The second of the films was "Frankenweenie", a
mostly live-action film of the boy who lost the dog he loved, but
was inspired by science class to bring the dog back to life. The
film was a winning send-up of horror films in general and of the
James Whale's Frankenstein films for Universal. Now Burton has
expanded his 27-minute short into an 87-minute all-animated film.
To do this he has essentially added a second concurrent story that
somehow is not quite as congenial.
The plot is simple. Teenager Victor Frankenstein loves his dog
Sparky more than anything else in the world. He is heart-broken
when the dog is hit by a car and dies. Then in science class sees
his teacher get a dead frog to kick its legs by shocking it with
electricity and Victor decides to use electricity to bring Sparky
back to life. In the new film several of Victor's classmates
decide they want to win the science fair and when the secret of
Victor's experiment leaks out they all get involved making monsters
of their own for the fair.
One has the feeling in the B story that Burton is trying to stretch
his work, even if only to a minimally feature-length film. When we
get some monsters toward the end they do not seem like they are
good ideas for monsters and they are not properly motivated in the
story. The A story is really not a lot changed from the original
film except for being animated. That does not always work in the
film's favor. When we see in each film Sparky transformed into a
prehistoric creature for a film Victor is making, it is much cuter
in the original with a live dog. As long a Sparky is already
animated adding the additional features is just not as endearing.
Another problem with the animated version is common to much of
Burton's animation. One can always recognize Tim Burton's and
production designer Rick Heinrich's style of animation. Normal
people have big, wide eyes with little black dot irises, small
pinched noses and mouths, and triangular tight faces. The most
expressive features are the eyebrows and maybe a small smile or
frown. That is all well and good, but somehow it short-circuits
the expression of emotion. The soul of drama is the actors'
emoting, and as cute as Burton's characters are, they have bland
faces that do not express emotion well. The science teacher and a
boy with a Peter Lorre voice diverge from the style. But the
science teacher has even less emotion in his face and the boy has a
constant wide grin, even when he is unhappy. The animation can
overcome this problem, but it is a definite handicap.
The film has a pleasant choral score by Tim Burton's regular
composer, Danny Elfman.
Undeniably Burton's first telling of the story has a great deal of
charm coming both from the clever film references and from the
presence of a live dog to help tell the story. The new version
adds an okay second plot and a trainload of horror film references.
It even adds a little political content advocating the importance
of science--real science, not the reanimating corpse kind. We lose
the charm of the live dog. (Any live dog. Bears would be nice
too. But a cat who communicates the way this one does should not
have made it past the first draft, Tim.) I rate FRANKENWEENIE a
low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1142977/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frankenweenie_2012/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: ARGO (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Set during the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, ARGO tells a
strange but true footnote to that history. Six United States
citizens whom the Iranian revolutionary government wants dead have
escaped from the United States embassy to the protection of the
house of the Canadian ambassador. Now the CIA is charged with
extracting them from Iran against very high odds. One operative
devises a cockeyed plan to remove them by passing them off as
filmmakers scouting locations for a science fiction movie. This is
the best film of the year so far. Ben Affleck directs and stars.
Rating: +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
The year is 1979 and the Iranian Revolution has just climaxed in
the storming of the United States embassy by furious rioters. Six
of the staff escape to the house of the Canadian ambassador which
secretly offers them sanctuary. Now it is the responsibility of
the Central Intelligence Agency to somehow get them out of the
country past heavily guarded borders and airports. The leadership
at the CIA is suggesting a really bad idea to remove the staff
members. Operative Tony Mendez (played by a non-Hispanic-looking
Ben Affleck) thinks all the ideas for extraction are bad ideas.
Mendez chooses what he thinks is "the best bad idea." It is a
doozy. He wants to pass the Americans off as filmmakers scouting
locations in Iran to film a science fiction movie to be called
ARGO. A script has to be found and artwork created that will be
good enough to convince the Iranian officials that there really is
a legitimate film being produced. Mendez recruits for help John
Chambers (John Goodman), the man who really did create the makeup
for the original "Planet of the Apes" films. Also he gets real
producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) to act as the fake producer of
the film.
Mendez intends to go to Iran, posing as a filmmaker, and meet with
the six fugitives. Then after a day or so of intensive coaching
and pretended scouting, the seven Americans will board a plane and
fly out of Iran. At least that is the plan. This story is all
based in truth. In the closing credits once can see how very
similar the actors look to the real people. Only the non-Hispanic-
looking Affleck looks significantly different.
I consider a good story or a good actor one that takes the viewer
through a gamut of emotions without making them seem forced.
Affleck directing himself in this film manages to do both. The
script is balanced with spectacle in the first act and an extended
suspense sequence in the last act, a real nail-biter. And by
"extended" I mean not just a longer chase like you might have in a
James Bond film. The dangers faced by the seven escapees are many
and varied and probably not at all exaggerated. And any one of
them would prove fatal for the seven fugitives at the hands of the
Iranians.
It is hard to make a history film that is both believable and
exciting. ARGO is one of those rare films that feed the appetites
of both the Friday night action film crowd and the art house
audience. And it is just as hard to believe that the actor who in
2003 made PAYCHECK and the laughable DAREDEVIL directed a film with
the sophistication of ARGO only nine years later. ARGO proves that
not only does he really know how to direct himself, he can be good
directing a whole film cast. My clue that he was a different Ben
Affleck should have been his craftsmanship directing the under-
rated crime film GONE BABY GONE (2007).
Director Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio try to give a
balanced view of the issues of the film. Rather than just show the
rage of the Iranian people against the United States and Europe,
they include a brief informative explanation of just why there was
so much hatred. And their account does not look very favorably on
the United States. In a screening of the film at the Toronto
International Film Festival, it was pointed out that though the
film dramatized cooperation between the US and Canadian officials,
it really did not fully credit the Canadians for the risks they
took for the Americans, a shortcoming partially corrected in the
general theatrical release.
The film repeatedly contrasts the world of the Iranian Revolution
and the La-La world of the West and especially Hollywood. One goes
from the gritty and dangerous world of the rioting Iranians to the
fatuous world of Hollywood filmmaking. Here Affleck may go a
little overboard. Chambers would not be working on a picture as
silly and inane as the Minotaur film we see being made. Such bad
films are (luckily) a real rarity. To claim Chambers would work on
such a film does not speak well for the accuracy of the rest of the
account. But still the contrasts of life in the two countries are
striking. In the margins we see nice vignettes of globalization
creeping into Iran like a woman wearing the traditional Chador
biting a drumstick Kentucky Fried Chicken drumstick.
Incidentally, the script that was actually used was not really
called ARGO. It was to be a purported screen version of Roger
Zelazny's LORD OF LIGHT. See the link below for the ARGO
connection to LORD OF LIGHT below.
This is a film that runs the gamut from grim to absurd. It has
serious political commentary and over-the-top satire. I rate ARGO a
+3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 9/10. Jeff Nathanson wrote and
directed a similar film, THE LAST SHOT (2004), also based on a true
incident, in which an FBI agent went under cover as a film director
and became overly involved with the ersatz film he was supposedly
making.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1024648/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/argo_2012/
The LORD OF LIGHT connection to ARGO:
http://tinyurl.com/void-lordoflight
[-mrl]
Evelyn adds:
This is a long article in "Slate" detailing the differences between
the history and the movie at http://tinyurl.com/void-argo-slate.
[-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE TEMPORAL VOID by Peter F. Hamilton (copyright 2008 Peter
F. Hamilton, 2009 Tantor; 25 hours 15 minutes; narrated by John
Lee) (audiobook review by Joe Karpierz)
Peter F. Hamilton picks up right where he left off at the end of
THE DREAMING VOID in the follow-up novel and second book in the
trilogy, THE TEMPORAL VOID. The Void is undergoing expansion due
to the Second Dreamer's rejection of the Skylord. Justine, one of
the holdover characters from the original Commonwealth Saga, has
decided to enter the Void in an effort to negotiate with the
Skylord to try and stop the Void's expansion. Meanwhile, the
Dreamers are continuing their pilgrimage to enter the Void. Paula
Myo discovers an even greater threat to life in the Commonwealth.
Araminta, a descendant of Melanie from the Commonwealth Saga, has
everyone looking for her because she has discovered that she is the
Second Dreamer.
And that's really just part of the story. Most of THE TEMPORAL
VOID takes place within the Void itself, as we continue to follow
the story of Edeard as told through the dreams of Inigo, the First
Dreamer. As an aside, we finally do spend some time with Inigo in
this novel, although what role he as to play in the resolution to
all of this remains to be seen. Anyway, Edeard, that little
country bumpkin, has taken Makkathran by storm. He aims to rid
Makkathran of the gangs, thus making it a better and safer place to
live, a place devoid of the criminal element. With each successive
dream, Edeard gains more popularity, more power within the city, a
bigger following, and more and larger headaches as the novel
progresses. People love Edeard because of the ideal he represents;
yet, he is feared by some because he is extremely powerful with
regard to the mental and telekinetic skills that people who live in
the Void have. He attracts more powerful enemies and more
difficult roadblocks along his path of cleaning up Makkathran.
Edeard also can communicate with the city itself, which allows him
to ask it to do things for him. It is this ability that gives
Edearda decisive advantage in his battle against the criminal
element of Makkathran. Edeard, in my mind, is a messiah figure,
destined for a major fall that is already alluded to in the novel.
The big reveal in the novel, however, is the nature of the Void and
the cause of its expansion. Edeard plays a key role in that too,
*really* putting him in the messiah position, although no one
actually knows it--at least not yet. We do know that there is one
dream that Inigo did not share with the people of the Commonwealth;
that dream presumably contains the biggest reveal of all, and we'll
see that in the final volume of the trilogy, THE EVOLUTIONARY VOID.
There's a lot going on here, and that certainly isn't unusual given
that this is a Peter F. Hamilton novel. It's big, full of big
ideas, grand in scope, complex, and compelling. As I've said in
other reviews of Hamilton's works, it's Space Opera of the
traditional kind. And yet, the characters are well drawn and
developed. Hamilton gives the reader reason to like his character,
to get involved with his characters, and care about what happens to
his characters.
A majority of the book is spent in Makkathran in the Void following
Edeard. While I enjoyed that aspect of it, I'm terribly interested
in what's going on back in the Commonwealth, in "normal" space.
Presumably the final book will take us back there, and eventually
link both locations in a grand climax to the story.
Again, John Lee does an absolutely terrific job reading this book.
I can't envision anyone else reading Hamilton's books. He has the
right voice and cadence for this work.
All in all, yet again another terrific novel from Peter
F. Hamilton. I highly recommend it. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: SINGULARITY RISING by James D. Miller (book review by Dale
L. Skran, Jr.)
Most books about the Singularity are written by SF writers (who
attempt to tell an exciting story) or computer scientists (who
focus on how it might or might not occur). SINGULARITY RISING is
written by James D. Miller, an associate professor of economics at
Smith College. As can be seen from a brief look at his resume,
which can be found at
http://sophia.smith.edu/~jdmiller/resume.pdf, Dr. Miller, Esq.
(he has a Stanford law degree as well as an economics Ph.D. from
the University of Chicago), seems quite an accomplished fellow, if
a bit more publicity hungry than most academics.
Miller spends only a modest amount of time defending the idea of
the Singularity, and then allocates most of his time applying
economic reasoning tools like the "Prisoner's Dilemma" to the
Singularity. The first section of the book is titled "Rise of the
Robots" and discusses the basics of the Singularity (see Vinge's
original article here if you haven't read it:
http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html) followed by a
dissertation on "friendly" AIs and how military/economic
competitiveness might lead to a so-called "AI explosion." The "AI
Explosion" postulates that a computer becomes first humanly
intelligent, and then rapidly bootstraps itself to hyper-
intelligence. Such a hyper-AI might be "friendly" to humans, or if
"unfriendly" it might embark on projects like the conversion of the
entire mass of Earth into its core compute stack.
Miller makes the excellent point that we don't need to create
hyper-intelligent AIs to create a Singularity. All we need to do
is create large number of AIs (or actual people) as intelligent and
as creative as Jon von Neumann. If anything, Miller does not do
justice to the vast range and depth of Von Neumann's abilities.
There can be little doubt that if each corporation could deploy
1000 Von Neumann equivalents in their R&D and planning departments
that in short order the world would be turned upside down. Since
the prospect of creating a Von Neumann level brain via drugs,
genetic engineering, or emulation seems reasonable, given that we
are duplicating a brain that actually existed, not inventing
anything. This becomes the core argument that, absent nuclear war,
we ARE going to have a Singularity of intelligence, and probably
only a short time in the future, say 40 years. You may be
skeptical on this, so I adduce one piece of evidence to send a
shiver down your spine--the 10/12/2012 [today!] Wall Street Journal
has a large article about how Google is sweeping the statehouses of
the country, getting laws passed to allow the usage of driverless
cars.
The second part of the book, titled "We Become Smarter, Even
Without AI," is a fascinating tour of cutting-edge technology
related to raising IQ. The author's hands-on experimentation with
most of the leading candidates and a revealing discussion of his
extensive usage of Adderall enlivens the chapter on "Cognitive-
Enhancing Drugs." If you have the slightest interest in these
topics, this section of the book is worth the price tag all by
itself. Miller makes the section an entertaining read by providing
numerous fascinating thought experiments, and some longer scenarios
that are basically short SF stories. This is explosive stuff, with
a lot of food for thought.
The third part of the book, titled "Economic Implications" is the
best and most practical discussion of what the Singularity might
really feel like I've seen yet. Of particular interest is Miller's
deconstruction of Singularity scenarios into four main
possibilities:
- Intelligence Explosion, which I have described above.
- Kurzwellian Merger, in which we, via cyborgian extensions, become
the post-human hyper-intelligences, rather like the "Mechs" in
Bruce Sterling's SCHISMATRIX universe. This has the advantage that
there is substantial continuity of motivation as we transition into
the Singularity. We may still destroy the world fighting each
other--but let's not kid ourselves--we can *already* destroy the
world fighting each other!
- Ricardian Comparative Advantage, in which hyper-AIs find it
useful economically to trade with humans even though for any given
task the AIs are much more productive than humans. This leads to a
commonality of interests between AIs and humans. This scenario is
based on well-established economic theory, and explains why there
is trade between, for example, Europe and Africa.
- Emulations, in which the Singularity mainly comes about via the
creation of a human-level AI emulation, that is then copied
millions of times to perform various tasks, without the creation of
any hyper-intelligences.
In the last three scenarios, property rights are preserved, at
least as much as they have been in the 20th century, anyway, and
there is some prospect that humans will not simply be erased by
indifferent hyper-AIs. Other scenarios may be possible, but these
four are a useful framework to discuss the Singularity and how it
might affect our lives. There seems to be quite a conflict in
Singularity circles between the advocates of the Intelligence
Explosion and the advocates of Emulations. Miller gives both sides
a fair hearing, but on further thought, I think the Intelligence
Explosion scenario is not very likely. It is similar in many ways
to the idea of taking our nuclear weapons, putting them under
computer control, and burying the computer under a mountain. Many
SF books and films have dealt with this tale, but it is a
fundamentally stupid idea, and no group in the real world has come
close to implementing it. In the same fashion, even those most
desperate to gain an edge are not likely to give a hyper-AI enough
freedom to grow without limits and absorb the Earth.
Since Ricardian Comparative Advantage requires hyper-AIs running
loose, this is also an unlikely scenario, although it does suggest
how different regions with widely varying average IQs might still
interact economically without impoverishing the lower IQ side.
The two most probable scenarios appear to be the Kurzwellian Merger
and emulations. The main fear with emulations is that the
emulations will put flesh humans out of work en masse. Whether
this will actually happen depends on how much hardware and power it
takes to run a human-level emulation for a year. As long as the
number is more than $100K in current dollars, emulations will not
cause mass unemployment. However, as it drops they might, at least
for purely symbolic jobs. Miller does not consider that added cost
of robot bodies, which has a huge influence on the economic impact
of emulations. As long as human-level robots cost $100K, including
the hardware to run the emulation, there will not be mass
unemployment. You might spend $300K for a robot nuclear engineer
to work in a radioactive area, but you would never spend $300K for
a robot hair dresser when you can hire a human for $30K. Of
course, purely symbolic jobs like newspaper reporter, etc. will
probably be mostly replaced by cheap emulations.
There are clearly a lot of questions here that need to be answered,
but most of them will become highly salient long before the
Singularity per se. We are already deep into the growth of
unemployment due to more powerful technology. We can expect this
unemployment to only grow over the next 40 years as we near the
Singularity, absent some major change in policy. My favorite
solution to unemployment has been the concept of an "inefficient
sector"--a tax subsidized part of the economy that is required to
not use the best technology but to be an employer of last resort.
I've always like recycling for this role, but home building or
energy would do as well. To completely soak up all the workers
that are going to be laid off in the coming decades, we probably
need at least three inefficient sectors anyway. Taxes must be
modified so that all companies using the latest technology and
laying off workers subsidize the inefficient sector. I think a VAT
combined with a zero corporate tax would do the trick here in the
USA.
Miller does not spend enough time separating the actual zero-
marginal cost of anything that can potentially be done completely
on a computer with the speculative zero-marginal cost of items
fabricated on speculative nano-assemblers. If I had to bet (and I
pretty much have to), the Singularity will come a long time before
real working Drexlerian nano-assemblers that will make fabricated
goods with zero marginal cost become available. In fact, it may
never be possible to fabricate goods with zero marginal cost. I am
not suggesting that the full application of computers, robots, and
AI to manufacturing, including 3D printing, will not vastly
increase our productivity. However, a "vast increase" is not the
same as zero marginal cost! Thus, I anticipate a fairly long
transition in which the Singularity of Intelligence puts most if
not all human knowledge workers onto the unemployment line, but
leaves wide swaths of blue-collar jobs relatively untouched. I
further predict that with the rise of AI-assisted robotic
production, creativity will become more valued than IQ in
employees.
Sadly, we may already know what the inefficient sector for the
last-resort continued employment of symbolic workers will be--
government!
SINGULARITY RISING is an important book that some will find
disturbing, but everyone will find interesting. Highly
recommended, especially to SF fans. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Ozymandias and Science Fiction (letter of comment by Sam
Long)
In response to Mark's comments on Ozymandias in the 10/12/12 issue
of the MT VOID, Sam Long writes:
Ozyfandias
After Shelley, originally ca 1975
by SL
I met a traveler: 'twas an antique fan,
Who said: "Two vast and drumless mimeos
Stand in the slanshack. Near them, on a stand,
Half torn, a tattered fanzine lies, whose brown
And wrinkled page's words of cold disdain
Tell that the faned well that passion knew
Which yet survives, stamped on the lifeless page,
The hand that cranked, and the paper fed.
And on the colophon these words appear:
'My Name is Ozyfandias, Faan of Faans.
Look on My Work, Ye Neos, and Despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal shack, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away!"
On the other hand, this item may reduce the sense of futility of
Ozyfandias:
Abou ben Glicksohn
After Browning; originally ca. 1975
by SL
Abou ben Glicksohn (may his zine appear!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of bheer,
And saw, upon the cab'net for his files,
Making it rich and like a prozine's slushpiles,
A bheercan standing on a mimeo*.
Exceeding fanac made his mind work slow,
And to the presence in his room he said,
"What doest thou?" The vision raised its head,
And with a look that bloodshot was but keen,
Answered, "I write those down who pub great zines."
"And am I one?" said Glicksohn. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the bheercan. Glicksohn spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one who pubs his fellow fen."
The bheercan wrote and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light
And showed the names whom love of Ghu had blest,
And lo! Bill Bowers'** name led all the rest!
[(*) A reference to the "Faan" awards of the early & mid 1970s.]
[(**) Other faned names may be placed here, such as, e.g., "Dick
Lynch's" or "Dave Langford's", [or even "Mark Leeper's"], as long
as they scan. Likewise, the names of Bowers and Glicksohn can be
Interchanged, thus: "Abou Bill Bowers", "and lo! Mike Glicksohn's
name led all the rest", etc.]
Alas, both Glicksohn and Bowers have gone to the Great Slanshack in
the Sky. [-sl]
In response to Mark's comments on science fiction, Sam writes:
How "true" the science in science fiction may be does not
necessarily affect the quality of the story. Both Fermat's Last
Theorem and the Four-Color Problem have been solved, but that
doesn't make the stories about them, based on their supposed
insolubility, in Clifton Fadiman's anthologies FANTASIA MATHEMATICA
and THE MATHEMATICAL MAGPIE any less entertaining and good as
stories. Numerous other examples can be adduced ... but not by me
here. But it certainly helps if the story's science is thought to
be reasonably "true" when the story was written. One of Heinlein's
stories from the late 1940s has spaceship pilots navigating their
craft through hyperspace using printed navigational tables ... the
way navigation was done then, in the era before modern computers
and electronics. (When the tables are destroyed, the hero, a young
spaceman with total recall who has memorized them is able to pilot
the spaceship home.) It was, and is, a good story. Heinlein moved
with the times: his later stories included very advanced, even
sentient, computers.
This effect is true in other genres too: Sherlock Holmes remains
popular even though he didn't have modern forensic technology
available to him. [-sl]
Evelyn notes:
The Heinlein story is STARMAN JONES. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Historical Fiction (letter of comment by Lee Beaumont)
Lee Beaumont writes:
I thought you might enjoy this historical fiction piece I wrote.
See: http://theycallmelee.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-hearing.html.
If MTVOID publishes historical fiction in addition to science
fiction, I would be very pleased to have you link to this. [-lrb]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
As I have mentioned elsewhere I have been listening to the
excellent "History of Rome" podcast (which can be found at
http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com), and it has inspired me to
read Edward Gibbon's THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (ISBN
978-0-140-43764-5 for an abridged version, 978-0-307-70076-6 for an
unabridged). (It is actually a partial re-read, since I had read
the first volume a while ago, and I also read an abridgement of the
whole work at one point.) Almost immediately, I read the
following: "The vanquished nations, blended into one great people,
resigned the hope, nay even the wish, of resuming their
independence, and scarcely considered their own existence as
distinct from the existence of Rome." I am sure this would have
come as a big surprise to Boudica.
Gibbon was a product of his times, and as such, much of what he
says seems wildly prejudiced or even bigoted to us. For example,
speaking of women he says, "Female courage, however it may be
raised by fanaticism, or confirmed by habit, can be only a faint
and imperfect imitation of the manly valour that distinguishes the
age or country in which it may be found." Well, again, Boudica
might disagree.
Or when he disparages the inferiority of the German "barbarians",
he writes, "[The Germans] were persuaded that, by some ridiculous
arts of divination, they could discover the will of the superior
beings, and that human sacrifices were the most precious and
acceptable offerings to their altars. ... The same ignorance
which renders barbarians incapable of conceiving or embracing the
useful restraints of laws exposes them named and unarmed to the
blind terrors of superstition." Then a few pages later, he writes
of the Romans, "... such was the public consternation, when the
barbarians were hourly expected at the gates of Rome, that, by a
decree of the Senate, the Sybylline books were consulted. Even the
emperor himself, from a motive either of religion or of policy,
recommended the salutary measure, chided the tardiness of the
senate, and offered to supply whatever expense, whatever animals,
whatever captives of any nation, the gods should require.
Notwithstanding this liberal offer, it does not appear that any
human victims expiated with their blood the sins of the Roman
people." The final "excuse"--that there were no human sacrifices
in this case--does not change the fact that everyone seemed to be
willing to go along with them if the divination called for them.
But the Romans are noble and the barbarians are superstitious and
ignorant.
And one final example of what I think is a representative sample of
Gibbon's writing style in a single sentence:
"If it were possible to rely on the partial testimony of an
injudicious writer, we might ascribe the abdication of Diocletian
to the menaces of Galerius, and relate the particulars of a
*private* conversation between the two princes, in which the former
discovered as much pusillanimity as the latter displayed
ingratitude and arrogance."
Were this assigned for high school (or even college) reading today,
there would have to be footnotes defining "injudicious", "ascribe",
"abdication", "particulars", and "pusillanimity", not to mention
giving additional time to parse the meaning of this rather complex
sentence (by no means Gibbon's most, however). I doubt anyone is
diagramming sentences any more, but samples from Gibbon would be
excellent final exam questions!
Now we turn to an entirely different style of writing. In the
first sentence of THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN by Alexander
McCall Smith (ISBN 978-0-375-42217-1), Mma Ramotswe is "looking up
at the high sky of Botswana, so empty that the blue is almost
white." This reminded me of another curiosity about colors.
Apparently a linguist had heard that blue was the last primary
color to be distinguished in any language, so he decided to try an
experiment when his daughter was born. He and his wife agreed to
teach her all the colors except blue. After she had learned red,
yellow, white, and so on, he waited for a clear day, then asked her
what color the sky was. She looked at it for a few seconds and
then said that it was white. (After this, she then learned blue
very quickly, by the way.)
"'Franz Kafka' by Jorge Luis Borges" by Alvin Greenberg is a fairly
obscure story, reprinted in BEST SF: 1970 edited by Harry Harrison
and Brian W. Aldiss (no ISBN), but originally published in "New
American Review" (August 1970), not exactly a well-known source of
science fiction. Without going into an analysis of the whole
story, I want to comment on one sentence in it: "In the modern
literature class I teach--used to teach!--my students persist in
saying that Gregor Samsa has turned into a grasshopper though Kafka
very plainly wjbels him a dung beetle." As far as I can tell, the
basic premise of the sentence is false. The first instance of
naming what Gregor Samsa has become is "Ungeziefer", a word
translated as "vermin". "Dung beetle" is "Mistkafer", which is
used only by the cleaning woman in a sort of semi-affectionate
direct address to Samsa--"Come here, you old dung beetle!"--which
no more makes him a dung beetle than calling your wife "Honey"
makes her an insect product.
But you may think I made a typo in that sentence. What did I mean
by "wjbels"? You might as well ask what Greenberg meant, because
that's what he wrote (unless Harrison and Aldiss are terrible
proofreaders). My personal opinion is that Greenberg is having us
on, and threw this in to confuse us, or perhaps to show that one
can have something at the same time mysterious and yet completely
comprehensible. We may have never seen the word before (indeed, it
is not a word at all) but we know exactly what it means.
This is exactly the sort of deception that Borges engaged in, of
course. Fake encyclopedia entries, fictitious heresies, imaginary
countries--all are techniques in Borges's fiction, so it is only
fitting they are the tools of his admirers.
Kate Pott asked why I was annotating MOBY DICK when there were so
many annotations out there already. Well, when I started, I was
just re-reading it, but I decided I wanted to look up references
and words that were not clear. What were hypos? Which Cato did
Melville mean? Where are Corlears Hook, Coenties Slip, and
Whitehall? Who are the Van Renssalaers, the Randolphs, and the
Hardicanutes? What are spiles?
Of course, I had underestimated the scope of Melville's vocabulary,
references, and allusions. Ishmael says, "A whale-ship was my Yale
College and my Harvard." To some extent it is also Melville
speaking of his own education, but I find it hard to believe that
your average whaleship could have educated Melville as much as he
clearly was, and much of his education--or at least learning--
probably occurred on land.
But I figure when I am done I will have a better understanding of
MOBY DICK, and a great reference when I go back to re-read it in
the future. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Justice while she winks at crimes,
Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
--Samuel Butler