Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/16/20 -- Vol. 39, No. 16, Whole Number 2141
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, *mleeper@optonline.net *
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, *eleeper@optonline.net *
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Topics:
Corn Maze Dangers (pointer from Guy Ferraiolo)
Lobsters (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
SEVEN OF INFINITIES by Aliette de Bodard (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
NOSFERATU (letter of comment by Scott Dorsey and Gary McGath)
Plastic-Eating Bugs (letters of comment by Keith F. Lynch,
Scott Dorsey, Paul Dormer, Dorothy J. Heydt,
Joy Beeson, and Kevin R)
Cruel and Unusual (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)
Deep Time and Radioactivity (letters of comment
by Keith F. Lynch, Gary McGath, and Scott Dorsey)
Translation (letter of comment by Sam Long)
Erie Canal (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)
This Week's Reading (LAST AND FIRST MEN) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Corn Maze Dangers (pointer from Guy Ferraiolo)
Guy Ferraiolo provides the following:
*https://www.theonion.com/festive-corn-maze-misread-by-aliens-as
https://www.theonion.com/festive-corn-maze-misread-by-aliens-as*-
declaration-of-i-1845197888:
"Festive Corn Maze Misread By Aliens As Declaration Of
Intergalactic War
Having spotted from a distance of many light years the elaborate
series of twists and turns cut into a field of grain on Earth, an
alien civilization reportedly found a message Thursday in a festive
corn maze that, in the symbols of its own language, constituted a
declaration of intergalactic war. ..."
[Just to re-iterate, it's "The Onion", folks. -ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Lobsters (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Mark Leeper's Journal, August 5, 1988
I saw a rather sad story at my local fishery this evening. Now
most people don't expect to find a sad story at a fishery and, to
tell you the truth, most fisheries don't have a lot of sad stories
lying around. Seafood restaurants do. They often have a tank with
a bunch of introspective lobsters, heavy rubber bands around their
claws, thinking to themselves, "What the heck have I gotten myself
into this time? And how am I going to get back home?" Some try to
make the best of the situation. Last time I went to a Red Lobster
I saw one amorously inclined lobster climbing on the back of
another. Kind of a last fling, whether he realized it or not. It
kind of cast a pall on the whole evening. As I remember, I ended
up ordering a salad.
Anyway, the local fisheries operate on a lower budget so do not
have fancy tanks for their lobsters. When you see the fish, most
of their struggles are already over. I generally can look the ice
case without seeing anything particularly bothersome. Well, this
time it wasn't actually the fish itself that was so sad. It was a
sign announcing that today's catch of the day was "Brazilian
lobster tail." Now for it to be the catch of the day it must have
come from around here. I don't know how far you can get a fish in
one day, but if a fishery has it and it was caught today it must be
from pretty nearby. If they really are Brazilian lobsters, they
must have been caught a long way from home. And if they caught
enough to make it the catch of the day, it was a lot more than one
stray. It must have been a whole family on a vacation cut short by
disaster. Maybe even more than a family. Maybe a whole clan who
are not going to see the waters of home again. They died far from
home where nobody knew their names. Be warned, little lobsters,
get your tails out of this area. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SEVEN OF INFINITIES by Aliette de Bodard (copyright 2020,
Subterranean Press, $40, Hardcover, 176pp, ISBN-10: 1596069767,
ISBN-13: 978-1596069763) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
Aliette de Bodard is one of the more decorated writers of genre
fiction today. She has won multiple Nebula and British Science
Fiction Association Awards (among others) and has been a finalist
for others, including the Hugo Award. The list is quite large. She
is expert in both science fiction ("The Universe of Xuya") and
fantasy ("The Dominion of the Fallen"). Needless to say, when de
Bodard drops a new story--novel or otherwise--into the world,
readers are in for a treat.
Her latest novella SEVEN OF INFINITIES, is no exception.
SEVEN OF INFINITIES is a story in the "The Universe of Xuya", which
I like quite a bit but of which I have not read nearly enough. The
stories in that universe are inspired by Vietnamese culture, and
sentient spaceships play a prominent role in the narrative. In
this latest story, Van is a member of a poetry society and a tutor.
She also has a memory implant that, instead of being one of her
ancestors, is a construct made up of several different people--
which Van created herself when she was younger--and which is, and I
can't find a better word for it, scandalous. Sunless Woods (short
for The Wild Orchid in Sunless Woods) is one of the sentient
mindships that has come to the Scattered Pearls Belt to retire, but
has taken an interest in Van. Sunless Woods comes to tell Van that
the poetry society is thinking of expelling her because of her
pedestrian background. While this exchange is occurring, a visitor
has come to see Van's student Uyen, and no sooner does that visitor
arrive and head into Uyen's room than she dies. This death causes
both Van and Sunless Woods to become involved, as Van is concerned
about Uyen as well as the reaction of Uyen's parents to Van being
kicked out of the poetry society, and Sunless Woods has, well, an
interest in the whole thing because of the secret that she holds
and has hidden from Van.
And thus, a multilayered story is kicked off that looks like a
simple detective tale, but is really much more than that. Well, it
certainly *is* that, at the surface. But it is also a relationship
story, a friendship story. Van and Sunless Woods both have
devastating secrets that they are keeping from each other, secrets
that once they are revealed could either hinder or help their
relationship. Sunless Woods is clearly attracted to Van, as the
love scenes indicate (is it really so hard to imagine sex between a
sentient spaceship and a human being?), but I claim that her secret
is just as devastating as the one that Van holds. And while the
main story appears to be between Van and Sunless Woods, there is a
side story going on between Van and some old close friends of hers
that adds to what is going on here as well.
SEVEN OF INFINITIES starts out slow, but eventually becomes a story
that proceeds at a breakneck pace, a story that brings the reader
back to the detective story while at the same time not letting that
reader forget about all the side issues that make the narrative
both complete and satisfying. SEVEN OF INFINITIES is highly
recommended, and is a terrific addition to "The Universe of Xuya"
stories. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: NOSFERATU (letters of comment by Scott Dorsey and Gary
McGath)
In response to Mark's comments on NOSFERATU in the 10/09/20 issue
of the MT VOID, Scott Dorsey writes:
With a silent film, the movie itself is only half of the
presentation. The musical score has a whole lot to do with how the
movie comes across, for one thing. Additionally, when these films
were first presented they were usually projected at varying speeds
depending on the projectionist. By the time NOSFERATU was made,
constant speed changes during the presentation no longer existed,
but there is still a great argument today over how the film should
be run.
If you run the film at 24 fps (modern sound speed) it is clearly
much too fast. If you run it at 16 fps, the action speeds look
realistic, but the pacing is all wrong. The film is much better-
paced at 20 fps in spite of the slight speedup of motion.
I have never seen NOSFERATU with the original orchestral score,
although that score was unearthed around 2015 and there is now an
available recording of it. The vast majority of performances of
the film have been done with improvised scores, and as is the
nature of improvisations some of them have been excellent and
amazing and some have not. The difference in effect is staggering.
I have run NOSFERATU at Arisia a couple of times and it went over
well with the children, I think. A couple of things don't work
anymore, for example the overcranked scene of the coach rushing
down to the village. Overcranking today has become a signal to the
audience of humor (thanks mostly to Mack Sennett) and its use as
any other effect has to be done very subtly or comedy is invoked.
At Arisia we always ran the film too fast, because we didn't have
the correct belt and pulleys to run at 20 fps. I think we ran at
22 fps which is noticeably a touch fast but not offensive.
Note also that the original prints were tinted; some scenes were
subtly green, others subtly red. Since none of the original prints
that remained after the legally-mandated destruction of the film
are tinted, and we don't have timing sheets for the film, nobody
really knows what the tinting was like. So that is another bit of
the original presentation that is lost today.
And of course every version of NOSFERATU today is kind of contrasty
and dirty, owing to being so many generations down from the
original. The original negative was burned and so what you're
seeing today is much less sharp with much poorer mid-tone greys
than the original would have been, although recent digital
processing has improved that quite a bit.
I think a modern audience does very well with silent films if they
are well-presented, but they very seldom are. Often owing to the
condition of the original elements, they can't be. [-sd]
Gary McGath responds:
The Kino restorations are good, but they can be expensive to show.
Kino can charge license fees because their restorations are
copyrightable.
On one occasion Boskone showed a Kino version of a silent movie (I
think it was THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, but I'm not sure) with my
live accompaniment. The fee amounted to more than $4 per person
viewing, and we all agreed that was too expensive to do again. [-
gmg]
Evelyn adds:
I can remember when Noreascon Two presented THE PHANTOM OF THE
OPERA with live organ accompaniment by John Kiley (who played the
organ at Fenway Park). A problem with the live organ not mentioned
is that it is neither easy nor cheap to move a decent-sized organ
into the convention space. Boskone 29 showed AELITA, and Boskone
30 showed NOSFERATU, both with live accompaniment by the Shirim
Klezmer Orchestra. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Plastic-Eating Bugs (letters of comment by Keith F. Lynch,
Scott Dorsey, Paul Dormer, Dorothy J. Heydt, Joy Beeson, and Kevin
R)
In response to Tom Russell's comments on plastic-eating bugs in the
10/09/20 issue of the MT VOID, Keith F. Lynch writes:
[Re MUTANT 59: THE PLASTIC EATERS by Kit Pedlar] And of the far
better novel, DIRECTIVE 51 by John Barnes, and its two sequels.
Radical Greens release nanotech that destroys all plastics and
everything electrical. They also resort to nuclear weapons, which
don't sound especially green to me, but it turns out something very
different is
going on.
It's a timely novel, since it involves a Presidential succession
crisis.
I'm skeptical of plastic eaters, or their close relatives, gasoline
eaters. Neither most plastics nor gasoline contain nitrogen, which
is essential to life. [-kfl]
Scott Dorsey responds:
Note that by the end of THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, the organism had
mutated into one that broke down plastics and no longer affected
humans.
Note also that you can sing "Mutant 59, Mutant... 59" to the tune
of Rocket 88.
Man does not live on plastics alone. [-sd]
Regarding "Rocket 88", Paul Dormer asks:
Why would you want to? [-pd]
And Scott replies:
Because it is stuck in your head and won't go away no matter how
hard you try. [-sd]
Returning to the main topic, Dorothy J. Heydt adds:
And, I believe you're trying to tell us, nor do bacteria. [-djh]
Joy Beeson suggests:
When you design your plastic-eating bug, you splice in a gene from
a nitrogen-fixing bacterium. [-jb]
But Kevin R warns:
Keep that away from plastic-choked waterways, or you'll get a nasty
bloom of algae like "red tide." [-kr]
Paul Dormer also adds:
It was also the plot of the first episode of the seventies TV
series "Doomwatch", co-written by ... Kit Pedler. [-pd]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Cruel and Unusual (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)
In response to Mark's comments on cruel and unusual punishment in
the 10/09/20 issue of the MT VOID, Keith F. Lynch writes:
The context [of Mark's article] is unclear. Is this from 1982, or
from the present? The only alleged peace dividend I ever heard of
was at the end of the Cold War, about a decade after 1982. And it
was supposedly going to be in the trillions of dollars, not about
three dollars. Of course it ended up not happening.
[Arggh! This should have been "1992", not 1982". Not sure which
of us typo'ed it. -ecl]
[I will take the blame and pass it to my Parkinson's. -mrl]
There was no television, cable or otherwise, at the rural prison
farm I was held at in the 1970s. Unfortunately, many prisoners
never learned to read. Some are wiling to learn, but most are
either unwilling or unable.
I wish I had time for reading there, but it was a plantation
system, and we were kept busy non-stop. Also, I had little access
to books.
Prisons are not country clubs or resorts. They have to be kept
even more unpleasant than living on the street in the winter and
eating out of garbage cans, otherwise cold and hungry people would
commit crimes to get sent to prison.
[Mark writes, "Parole hearings can change from asking stupid
questions such as "Have you rehabilitated yourself?"--and what
criminal ever says 'No' to that one?"]
I said "no" to that one. But then I wasn't a criminal, I was
wrongfully convicted. And I got parole. (Parole has since been
abolished in most states including mine, and in the federal
system.)
That was 43 years ago (5 years ago as of 1982), and my record is
otherwise perfectly clean before and since. It was closer to the
time of John Dillinger than to the present. [-kfl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Deep Time and Radioactivity (letters of comment by Keith
F. Lynch, Gary McGath, and Scott Dorsey)
In response to Evelyn's comments on deep time and radioactivity in
the 10/09/20 issue of the MT VOID, Keith F. Lynch writes:
I've heard the claim that even the hottest radioactive waste will
be less radioactive than the original uranium ore within about 600
years. If so, what's the point? Nobody is proposing long-term
warning signs on uranium mines. Or on lead or mercury mines. Lead
and mercury aren't radioactive, but they remain toxic *forever*.
[-kfl]
Gary McGath asks:
Mercury mines? I thought they were called Hg wells. [-gmg]
[This received several "like"s.]
Mike Van Pelt responds to Keith:
The claim as I recall is that if you reprocess, the actual wastes
(fission products) contain less total radioactivity than the
original ores in a few hundred years, though in a more concentrated
form.
Waste the plutonium and other transuranics that you should be
putting into new fuel rods, and this isn't the case. [-mvp]
Scott Dorsey replies:
No need to wait for that. As soon as you take it out of the
reactor, it is less radioactive than when it went in. That's why
it gets taken out, because it's no longer radioactive enough.
[-sd]
But Keith says:
That's definitely wrong. A reactor isn't strongly radioactive
before it's first turned on. Once it's turned on, it becomes a
very strong source of radiation, and once it's been running for a
while, it remains so for decades, perhaps centuries, after it's
turned off. But not for thousands of years, much less tens of
thousands.
Potential energy isn't the same as radioactivity any more than it's
the same as heat. Coal in a furnace isn't at a high temperature
until the furnace is lit. The resulting ashes remain at a high
temperature until they've had time to cool off. [-kfl]
Evelyn adds:
According to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, on
*https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact*-
sheets/radwaste.html:
"High-level radioactive waste primarily is uranium fuel that has
been used in a nuclear power reactor and is 'spent,' or no longer
efficient in producing electricity. Spent fuel is thermally hot as
well as highly radioactive and requires remote handling and
shielding. Nuclear reactor fuel contains ceramic pellets of
uranium-235 inside of metal rods. Before these fuel rods are used,
they are only slightly radioactive and may be handled without
special shielding.
"During the fission process, two things happen to the uranium in
the fuel. First, uranium atoms split, creating energy that is used
to produce electricity. The fission creates radioactive isotopes
of lighter elements such as cesium-137 and strontium-90. These
isotopes, called 'fission products,' account for most of the heat
and penetrating radiation in high-level waste. Second, some
uranium atoms capture neutrons produced during fission. These
atoms form heavier elements such as plutonium. These heavier-than-
uranium, or 'transuranic,' elements do not produce nearly the
amount of heat or penetrating radiation that fission products do,
but they take much longer to decay. Transuranic wastes, sometimes
called TRU, account for most of the radioactive hazard remaining in
high-level waste after 1,000 years.
"Radioactive isotopes eventually decay, or disintegrate, to
harmless materials. Some isotopes decay in hours or even minutes,
but others decay very slowly. Strontium-90 and cesium-137 have
half-lives of about 30 years (half the radioactivity will decay in
30 years). Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years.
"High-level wastes are hazardous because they produce fatal
radiation doses during short periods of direct exposure. For
example, 10 years after removal from a reactor, the surface dose
rate for a typical spent fuel assembly exceeds 10,000 rem/hour--far
greater than the fatal whole-body dose for humans of about 500 rem
received all at once. If isotopes from these high-level wastes get
into groundwater or rivers, they may enter food chains. The dose
produced through this indirect exposure would be much smaller than
a direct-exposure dose, but a much larger population could be
exposed." [-nrc]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Translation (letter of comment by Sam Long)
In response to various comments on translation in the 10/09/20
issue of the MT VOID, Sam Long writes:
I was just reading last week's MT VOID again. I thought I had sent
you a LoC (or should I call it an EMoC?) about it, specifically
commenting on the British tourist and the fields of corn (as we
call the crop in the US; in Britain, it's maize or sweet corn)--but
apparently I didn't ... so here you are. I was reminded of a silly
limerick which goes like this:
A canner exceedingly canny
One evening remarked to his granny,
"A canner can can
Anything he can can,
But a canner can't can a can, can he?"
What we call a "can" on the shelf of a grocery store in the United
States is usually called a "tin" in Britain; but I don't think that
changing the limerick to "A tinner exceedingly tinny etc" makes
much sense. Meanwhile, it's harvest time here in central Illinois;
the farmers are out with their reapers and harvesters at all hours
(harvesting wheat and soybeans and other crops as well as corn).
[-sl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Erie Canal (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)
In response to Gregory Frederick's review of THE MEN WHO UNITED THE
STATES in the 10/09/20/20 issue of the MT VOID, Keith F. Lynch
writes:
[Gregory Frederick writes,] "The Erie Canal is one of the most
famous and most successful canals; it sent goods from the Midwest
down to New York city and made New York a wealthy port city."
[-gf]
It didn't just do that; it linked the Atlantic to the Great Lakes,
both above and below Niagara Falls, and their tributaries, which
included most of the populated parts of Canada. Two decades later,
a short additional canal in Chicago also connected the Mississippi,
Ohio, and Missouri rivers and *their* tributaries. That's why New
York and Chicago became such important cities.
So the Erie Canal is in the same category as the Panama and Suez
canals. [-kfl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
It's not just the suck fairy.
Or maybe it's a new aspect of the suck fairy.
The suck fairy, for those who don't know, is that magical being
that visits books you loved when you first read them years ago and
sucks all the magic out of them so that when you re-read them now,
you cannot understand what you saw in them. (I believe the term
was invented by Jo Walton.)
What I am talking about, though, is not the total desiccation of a
book, but rather the realization that books you loved (and maybe
still love) have flaws.
For example, Sherlock Holmes is much loved by millions. But when
you read the stories, you find Steve Dixie (a stereotypical Black
man), scattered references to "the Jews" as moneylenders, and
various villainous foreigners. The same shows up in Agatha
Christie. And now in re-reading LAST AND FIRST MEN I find it in
Olaf Stapledon.
Everyone pretty much agrees that the first part of LAST AND FIRST
MEN is unreadable, because it is near-future prediction from the
1930s, and a pretty poor job it is. But even after that one finds
Black and Jewish stereotypes that probably seemed quite in line
with English attitudes of the time. Now, of course, reading it
makes one cringe.
(The story goes that Christie was talking to a German in the 1930s
and was totally astonished when he said that the Jews in Germany
were different from those in England--they were a danger and
needed to be exterminated. From that point on, supposedly,
Christie never wrote anything anti-Semitic again.)
And a separate note on LAST AND FIRST MEN: Stapledon writes about
future generations of men using wind power, tidal power, and
geothermal power when oil runs out, but not solar power. This
seemed like a strange oversight until I realized that solar power
requires much more technology than these other types of power, and
in a resource-poor world would be difficult if not impossible to
use. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
*mleeper@optonline.net *
My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested
fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age,
I don't want something around my neck that's worth more
than my head.
--Rita Rudner