THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/23/03 -- Vol. 21, No. 47

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

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Topics:
    JerseyDevilCon 3 Convention Report Available
    Science with Your Eyes Closed (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
    This Week's Reading (THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE,
        FALLAM'S SECRET, BONES OF THE EARTH, and
        LOST IN A GOOD BOOK) (book comments by
        Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: JerseyDevilCon 3 Convention Report Available

My JerseyDevilCon 3 convention report is available at
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/jdc03.htm  [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Science with Your Eyes Closed (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

It seems to me that science has looked at what happened in the
universe billions of years ago in the Big Bang.  It has studied
phenomena at the edge of the universe.  It has looked into the
interior of the atom.  And these are things that us science fans
follow avidly.  We don't have much opportunity to do our own
experiments, but we are interested anyway.  Still there are
phenomena that most of us see every day that take place right here
and I don't think we know very much about.  These are phenomena
that have interesting unanswered questions and you really don't
have to go very far to observe them.  You need no equipment that
you don't already have.

Many nights I do experiments with this stuff and nobody seems to
have done much study on it before.  Frequently I spend my last
minutes in the day doing experiments that I have never talked
about much.

What am I talking about?  Well I turn off the lights, close my
eyes and then look.  What do I see?  Nothing?  Just blackness?
Well perhaps, but it does not stay just black for long.  I start
to see fascinating and intricate if not necessarily beautiful
patterns.  People in dark rooms or caves may see the same sort of
images without closing their eyes.  I have even seen a description
of sky-gazers reporting similar phenomena while looking at a dark
sky.  And another source might be sensory deprivation experiments.

I suppose the vision centers have to be doing something.  They
have no data to process so they start creating images from no
information at all, behaving as if they were still getting
something.  Perhaps what they show me is part imagination and part
neural.  They start creating visual anomalies.  The vision centers
are remaining active and rather than admitting they have no
information are passing data to the brain even if they have to
invent it.  (My first supervisor at Burroughs reported to his
management with much the same philosophy.)  I think what you
actually see during these experiments probably differs with each
person.  It also changes dynamically from split second to split
second.

Perhaps some reader can compare and describe for me what he or she
sees.  This is an extremely portable science.  All you need is
your eyelids and some time.  As someone who hates being bored, the
convenience of playing with these images is a big plus.  The one
problem is that while you are experimenting, other people who see
you will think you are dozing off even though your mind actually
may be more active than theirs may be.  And admittedly there is
some risk of falling asleep.

Next week I will talk about categories of images I get.  Perhaps
someone out there can catalog the types of images that he or she
gets.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

Last week our library book discussion group did Laura Ingalls
Wilder's THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE.  I never read this while
I was growing up, and I suppose it's difficult to judge it as a
children's book when I'm first reading it now, but it seemed as
though it was full of all the virtues of its time (1930s, when it
was written) but not of today.  Children were supposedly to always
obey their parents and not even *think* about disobeying (even
though one can clearly construct a scenario when releasing the dog
*would* have been the right thing to do), and never disturb their
parents when they are busy, and so on.  This does not even address
the rather negative portrayal of the Indians (even though this is
not absolutely universal), but I will note that there is a very
positive black character, the doctor, and this was probably fairly
unusual at that time.  On the other hand, children might find the
descriptions of how one builds a house or makes a chair
interesting, and I suppose that if a child today didn't find the
children in the book too "goody two-shoes", he (or more likely
she) might enjoy the book.

FALLAM'S SECRET by Denisa Giardina was described to sound like an
alternate history, but is really just a time-travel romance.  The
trick of making the main character a woman trained in Elizabethan
drama, including playing some of the male parts, is awfully
convenient when she has to disguise herself and pass as an
Elizabethan.  (Well, somewhat post-Elizabethan, but closer
enough.)  The theater business was of some interest, but the story
on the whole wasn't anything special.

Michael Swanwick's BONES OF THE EARTH was an enjoyable enough
read, but not really what I would call Hugo material.  In fact,
this year has been quite disappointing in its selection of Hugo
nominees, with at least three striking me as not worthy of being
labeled "one of the five best novels of the year."

Jasper Fforde's second "Thursday Next" novel, LOST IN A GOOD BOOK,
finally showed up at the library and while I enjoyed it quite a
bit (more than the Swanwick, certainly), it seemed a notch below
the first (THE EYRE AFFAIR).  Of course, it had to work against
the fact that the premise of and the ideas in THE EYRE AFFAIR were
fresh and new, while here he must take something we are already
familiar with and try to improve it.  The punning names seemed
more forced, and there was no marvelous set piece like the
"Richard III" performance in THE EYRE AFFAIR.  Still, if you liked
the first book, you'll certainly want to read this.  [-ecl]

===================================================================

                                          Mark Leeper
                                          mleeper@optonline.net


           On the whole, God prefers atheists.
                                          -- Mark Leeper




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