THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/15/11 -- Vol. 30, No. 3, Whole Number 1658


Frick: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Frack: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
        A Rose by Any Other Name Would be Scottish (comments
                by Mark R. Leeper)
        Five-Year-Old Discovers Relativity (comments
                by Mark R. Leeper)
        ALPHAS (television review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
        DEEP FUTURE by Curt Stager (book review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
        Disney Princesses (letters of comment by Rick Kleffel,
                Andre Kuzniarek, and Taras Wolansky)
        Museum of Mathematics and Pi/Tau Controversy (letter of
                comment by Dave Anolick)
        Hugo-Nominated Novellas and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (letter of
                comment by Taras Wolansky)
        This Week's Reading (Hugo-nominated novelettes and short
                stories) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: A Rose by Any Other Name Would be Scottish (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)

I have been dieting of late and have not gone to a McDonalds
Restaurant in a long time.  I saw a billboard that talked about
something called Angus Third Pounder.  Somehow that sounds like a
great name, if not for a sandwich, for a Robert E. Howard hero.  Of
course they give it a Scottish name though it has nothing to do
with Scotland.  That seems to be following in John W. Campbell's
tradition.  Whenever he wanted to give a contributor a penname it
was Scottish.  Heinlein became Anson McDonald, for example.  [-mrl]

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

TOPIC: Five-Year-Old Discovers Relativity (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)

This is a true story.  Back when I was about five years old I was
fascinated with giants.  Well, I guess what I was fascinated by was
science fiction and horror, and giants just seemed to fit into that
category.  I had seen a cartoon of Jack and the Beanstalk and was
amazed at the ideas in the story.  Ideas?  Yes.  I think what they
had when Jack climbed the beanstalk was a whole natural world above
the clouds.  The giant lived just like people on the ground did.
Well, it was not like I lived, but it was the sort of life Jack
would have been used to, European village life.  I decided that to
giants we are just tiny vermin.  They think they are normal people.
If you were a giant and lived in (what we thought of as) Giantland
you could not tell it was a land of giants.  It just had a lot of
people who were something like fifty of our feet tall.  They
thought their world was perfectly normal, and if we were giants we
would have found it normal.

Now what would that mean if it were true?  And I remember
specifically thinking this.  Everything in Giantland looks just
like home (that is Jack's home).  The furniture is big; the houses
are big, the roads are wide.  As I saw it there would be only one
way you could tell you were a giant.  Suppose the giant is fifty
feet tall and Jack is only about 5'6", you know, tall but of not
unusual size.  (I know that 5'6" is pretty tall because that is how
tall I am.)  Now here is the problem.  If I pick up a rock to my
eye level, about five feet, and drop it, it will take a certain
amount of time to fall.  If the giant drops a rock from his eye
level, say 45 feet, it will take a lot longer to fall, since it is
falling a greater distance.  The big guy would immediately know he
must be very big.  But he does not know he is a giant.  Therefore
he must move and think in slow motion compared to us.  Basically
time would compensate for distance so differences were
indistinguishable.  That is what I was thinking even if I was not
yet old enough to say it.

So what does that mean?  If time does not run slower for giants,
they would know they are giants.  The big guy must not know the
rock is taking a long time to fall, and he must think more slowly
than a human does.  Everything in his world must go slowly.  So
clocks must run slowly so that you could not tell you were a giant
by looking at the clocks.

That was about all the thought I could give it with my little five-
year-old brain.  Now I can bring a little mathematics to the
question.  An object falling from a rest position falls at a rate
of sixteen feet per second per second.  Let T be the time it is
falling.  When I drop the rock it falls five feet.  So the time it
takes to fall is T where 16*T^2 = 5.  So T^2 = 5/16 and T
sqrt(5)/4.  That is about 0.559 seconds or about 5/9 second.  Now
when Mr. Tall drops his rock it takes three times as long to fall.
I know that because you are just putting in a factor of 9 and three
is the square root of 9.  Okay, let me write it out.  The time it
will take for the Mr. Tall's rock to fall, assuming that the
gravity has the same force in Giantland, is the following.  16T^2
45, so T^2 is 45/16 or 3/4*sqrt(5).  That is about 1.677 seconds
and it is three times as big as 0.559.

So giants would not know they are giants if their time sense runs
at 1/3 the rate ours does.  What seems like a minute to us would
seem only like 20 seconds to a giant.  Giants are frequently
portrayed as slow-witted, but perhaps they only take three times as
long as we do to think.  And that is because there is a time
dilation.

Imagine my surprise to discover that the reasoning I used when I
was five years old really is not all that different from some of
the reasoning that went into Einstein's theory.  I am impressed
that Einstein and I both thought of it.  [-mrl]

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

TOPIC: ALPHAS (television review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)

The SyFy channel is at it again, and the summer season has started
with a bang.  For those who are interested, there are new episodes
of EUREKA and WAREHOUSE 13 coming atcha on Monday nights, and HAVEN
on Friday nights.  However, the real treat is a new show--ALPHAS.
For this one I had set my expectations low--really low.  With
THE CAPE, HEROES, and NO ORDINARY FAMILY all canceled or off the
air (I'm not sure if HEROES is completely canceled), the movies are
filled with superheroes and the TV screens were empty--until now.

The best superheroes are often those with limited nor no powers--
Batman, Captain American, Hawkeye, Daredevil, Bullseye, or
Rorschach.  The best Avengers issues are often said to be when
"Earth's mightiest heroes" consisted of Captain American (super
endurance), Hawkeye (just a good aim and trick arrows), Quicksilver
(runs fast, like a cheetah), and the Scarlet Witch (alters
probability).  Their relative weakness compared to other Marvel and
DC heroes put the focus firmly on the team and the characters, not
on implausible powers.

In ALPHAS Dr. Lee Rosen (played by David Strathairn) brings
together a team of just over the edge of reality superhumans.
Guided by his drug infused 60s guru style leadership, they serve an
unknown government agency in solving really difficult problems.
The most conventional of the Alphas is Bill Harken (played by Malik
Yoba), a black former FBI agent who is a "hyperadrenal"--when
angry, he gains strength and pain tolerance, just like real people
do, only more so.  To give you an idea of what ordinary folks can
do under real pressure, on one of my travels I encountered a
visitor center telling the tale of a volcanic eruption. A camping
couple were trapped between a river of lava and an actual river
filled with trees and logs moving at high speed. The woman had a
broken leg.  They escaped *across the river* on the logs *with a
broken leg*--something that would be virtually impossible for a
well trained Olympic athlete, even forgetting the broken leg.  This
is the kind of thing a normal human can do when pressed.  Harken is
just one step, really a little step, over the line.

Also fairly conventional is Cameron Hicks (played by Warren
Christie), a former soldier who has hyperkinesis--basically
superhuman coordination, balance, and accuracy.  In practice his
powers are similar to those of the Marvel villain Bullseye,
although less trained and more variable in effect.  Again, a power
that is right over the edge of the possible.  Hicks is joined by
Nina Theroux (played by Laura Mennell), who has the power of hyper-
suggestion.  This appears to be a few more steps over the edge, as
it has no clear mechanism, although pheromones might produce the
effects seen.

The autistic Gary Bell (played by Ryan Cartwright) is a transducer
who can see the entire E&M spectrum, allowing him, to for example,
watch TV without a TV, or listen to cell phone calls without a cell
phone.  Seems like a handy power, and at least vaguely plausible.
The last member of the team is Rachael Pirzad (played by Azita
Ghanizada), a synesthete who can focus her entire mind on a single
sense to gather much more information than would be otherwise
possible, although placing her in danger as she is losing the other
senses for a period of time.  As displayed in the pilot, her hyper-
senses probably exceed those of the Marvel character Daredevil,
although she lacks his physical prowess.

In their first outing, they investigate an impossible murder--a
government witness shot in the head in the middle of a locked
interrogation room--and face a dangerous foe, who himself has a
power.  I'm avoiding spoilers here, but the story works as a kind
of superhero procedural, with a lot of focus on how the bad guys
are tracked using their powers.  As individuals, the Alphas are
weak and troubled, but as team--under Rosen's guidance, they can
accomplish the impossible.

A series can go wrong in a lot of ways, and ALPHAS certainly may do
so as well, but it is off to a really good start.  Not Oscar
material, but based on only one episode, it has a shot at being
something really good.  In spite of the 10 PM hour, the pilot has
no sex and only modest violence by crime show standards.  Worth
checking out--and much more promising than TNT's FALLING SKIES.
[-dls]

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

TOPIC: DEEP FUTURE by Curt Stager (book review by Dale L. Skran,
Jr.)

DEEP FUTURE--THE NEXT 100,000 YEARS OF LIFE ON EARTH has joined my
recommended list of books on global warming, bringing it to a grand
total of 2!   Stager is a Duke PhD who teaches at Paul Smith's
College while studying paleoclimatology.  He brings the long [and I
mean LOOOOOONG] perspective to the climate change debate.

Don't be put off by the jacket blurb endorsement from Bill
McKibben, who is high on my "Enemies of the Future" list for his
neo-Luddite manifesto ENOUGH.  Stager is no polemicist beating the
drums for eco-socialism.  In a valiant attempt to avoid a long
review of a book well worth reading I will net out what I think are
the main points:

1. Humans are causing global warming.
2. The seas will rise and the weather will change. It will be a big
    thing.
3. It is going to happen no matter what we do.
4. Even if we stop emitting carbon dioxide now the effects will be
    long term.
5. This has all happened before--*many times*--for various reasons.
6. We can look back and review more or less exactly what will
    happen in a "standard projection" and a "worst case" since each
    has happened at least once, and often multiple times.
7. The human race will survive, although mass extinctions of many
    species are inevitable.  However, these extinctions are par for
    the course on Earth over a long period of time.  There have been
    many freeze/thaw cycles, and polar bears re-evolve when the next
    freeze cycle arrives even if they don't survive the thaw.
8. Global warming is a big thing, but not completely a bad thing.
    It will, for example, prevent at least the next Ice Age, and
    possibly the next several Ice Ages.  And I feel the cold of the
    Ice Ages personally, as my home state of New Jersey gets mostly
    covered with an ice sheet when they occur.   An Ice Age, like a
    nuclear war, tends to ruin your entire day (and year, and
    century, etc).
9. Global warming occurs quickly on a geological timescale, but
    even the fastest effects will be slow during a human lifetime.
    The chances of rapid change have been exaggerated, and at least
    some of the 100-year storms and floods we are seeing were in the
    pipeline regardless.

Most importantly, Stager provides a sense of deep time that is
often lacking in our discussion of issues that should be welcomed
by the SF fan.  In some important sense, Earth is an alien world
that we are only marginally adapted to and that we don't fully
understand.  And it changes--a lot--over time.    Stager does have
some practical suggestions--he suggests we stop burning coal now so
that we can burn it later to prevent future ice ages.   When was
the last time you heard something like this from an
environmentalist?  In any case, I join Stager in welcoming you to
the Anthroprocene--the age during which the climate is determined
mainly by human action.  This is the future we'll all live in--so
we better get adjusted to the idea.  [-dls]

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

TOPIC: Disney Princesses (letters of comment by Rick Kleffel, Andre
Kuzniarek, and Taras Wolansky)

In response to Mark's comments on Disney princesses in the 07/08/11
issue of the MT VOID, Rick Kleffel writes:

I enjoyed your piece on the Disney princess phenomenon, and it made
me think of a very good book on just that topic, CINDERELLA ATE MY
DAUGHTER: DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF THE NEW GIRLIE-GIRL
CULTURE.  When it arrived in the mail for review, it was so pink I
had to hide it.  But it is very insightful and entertaining; it
asks and answers many of the questions you ask and answer in your
piece.  Here's a link to my review of the book:

http://tinyurl.com/void-cinderella

Here's an audio interview with the author.

http://tinyurl.com/void-cinderella-interview

I think you'll find it worth your valuable reading (and listening)
time.  [-rk]

Mark responds:

The book looks like it covers similar material, but there is a
distinction.  Though Orenstein seems to be saying more that girls
should not be forced into the Princess mold or any other mold, I
was saying more that the Princess mold is a bad thing.  I think
little girls should have free choice, but I am saying some
Princesses are bad role models.  A princess gets special treatment
as a right of entitlement by birth.  I would say it would be better
for little girls to believe that the things they want have to be
earned.  [-mrl]

Andre Kuzniarek writes:

I really realize your pseudo-rant about Disney princess was tongue-
in-cheek, but since I just happened to have watched SNOW WHITE,
which set the mold, I can respond with some clarification on your
point(s).

Snow White starts out essentially minding her own business, but
indeed dreaming of a nice dude (and singing about it).  But key
point: she's scrubbing floors at the same time--since apparently
she's a low ranking princess (as proclaimed by the Queen).  Just
before Snow White escapes assassination in the forest, she was
gathering flowers, and after her escape, she ends up in the dwarf
house and does all the dishes, laundry, and cleans the floors (with
help from her forest animal friends).  She also cooks for them, and
they agree this is a useful arrangement and allow her to stay.  It
isn't until the last few minutes of the movie that she gets
poisoned, sleeps, and gets encased in a glass coffin.  The passage
of time is elided with the dude showing up right away to wake her
up.  At that point she goes off with him, perhaps to do his
cooking, cleaning, and laundry instead.

I can't speak to the rest of the princess fables, but in this one I
can't see little girls being excited about being the "princess".
[-ak]

Mark responds:

I am not sure the little girls are going back to the story and
saying this really was something bad to be.  I don't think my niece
has even gone back and seen the earlier Disney cartoons.  But I
think Snow White is now considered one of the princesses in the
pantheon.  Probably it is that she has a right to be treated as a
princess and the Queen is denying her that right.  [-mrl]

And Taras Wolansky writes:

Reading Mark's critique of Disney Princesses, I began to wonder
what Evelyn thinks.  Did she also imagine herself a Princess, when
she was a little girl?

Only some of Jane Austen's novels are "Cinderella for adults".  In
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, the handsome "prince" abandons one
"princess"; the other is freed to marry the man she loves only
because he loses his inheritance.  In MANSFIELD PARK the heroine
refuses her wealthy suitor in spite of severe social pressure and
chooses a much poorer man.  In EMMA, the "prince" is using the
princess as a beard, while he's secretly engaged to somebody else;
she marries her next-door neighbor instead.

Julia Roberts' character in PRETTY WOMAN is indeed a very bad role
model--especially for fourteen-year-old girls with two-digit IQs.
Being a streetwalker is the road to wealth and true love: Ann
Coulter was hardly even engaging in hyperbole when she called the
movie diabolical (or words to that effect).  [-tw]

Evelyn replies:

I don't recall ever imagining myself a princess when I was a child.
I have pictures of me in a cowgirl get-up, and I went through the
usual "I want to be a nurse" stage, but never a princess.  [-ecl]

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

TOPIC: Museum of Mathematics and Pi/Tau Controversy (letter of
comment by Dave Anolick)

In response to Mark's comments on the Museum of Mathematics in the
07/08/11 issue of the MT VOID, Dave Anolick writes:

Your commentary on the museum of math made me realize I'm not sure
if I have seen anything in the MT Void about the Pi/Tau issue.
Have you seen this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ?

[To those unaware, it has been suggested that in some ways pi is
hard to deal with since the circumference of a circle is 2*pi*r.
It has been suggested that a new number tau=2*pi be used.  -mrl]

There seems to be an interesting "war" brewing in the Math world on
this issue.  By the way, Vi Hart didn't start this, but her video
is great.

I wonder if the new Museum of Mathematics will consider the Pi/Tau
issue.  [-da]

Mark responds:

I have seen the video and in fact I think in high school I made the
same suggestion.  In fact, I don't think that using either gives a
real advantage.  Yes the circumference of a circle is 2*pi*r, but
it is also pi*d.  It is a little simpler to say that the
circumference of a circle is tau*r, but it is also tau*d/2, which
is uglier than 2*pi*r.  The area of a circle, generally more
important than the circumference, is (tau)*(r^2)/2 which is much
worse than pi*r^2.  And Euler's beautiful identity becomes
e^(i*tau/2)+1=0.  That is not nearly as nice as e^(i*pi)+1=0.
[-mrl]

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

TOPIC: Hugo-Nominated Novellas and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (letter of
comment by Taras Wolansky)

In response to Evelyn's comments on the Hugo-nominated novellas in
the 07/08/11 issue of the MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes:

I think Evelyn misunderstood Rachel Swirsky's Hugo-nominated
novella, "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's
Window".  The story is, indeed, told from the viewpoint of a stiff-
necked, flint-hearted woman sorcerer, simultaneously appalling and
admirable, from a ferociously matriarchal culture, who is quite
willing to see the human race wiped out by a plague rather than
give what she considers women's magic to men.  (She doesn't exactly
grow much as a person in the course of the story--but then for most
of the story she is, after all, dead.)  However, there's no hint
that Swirsky is trying to present this utterly ruthless and
inflexible character as a role model of any kind.

The story is something of a tour de force, for all that it lacks a
strong ending, and will probably occupy the first slot on my
ballot.  In some ways, it reminded me of the classic story by Jack
Vance, "The New Prime" (which Robert Silverberg called "a miracle
of compression").

Speaking of lacking a strong ending, Ted Chiang's "The Lifecycle of
Software Objects" will be farther down my ballot.  The story he has
to tell is not without interest but seemed almost interminable.
And, as I said, it more or less winds up rather than concludes.

Alastair Reynolds' "Troika" (perhaps we should vote for it to
encourage shorter titles) is a satisfying entry in the sub-genre of
stories about astronauts--cosmonauts in this case--who encounter
the Alien in outer space and come back *strange*.  The story's
picture of a world in which Russia has a monopoly of space
exploration is one that has lately become very plausible indeed.
There's a hopeful hint at the end that the authorities are not as
stupid and hidebound as the protagonist thinks they are.  [-tw]

And in response to Mark's review of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS in the same
issue, Taras writes:

I found MIDNIGHT IN PARIS a sorry piece of work, made of cliches at
all levels.  The protagonist has the standard shallow,
materialistic fiancée, who comes with the standard shallow and
boorish parents; all obviously unworthy of the artistic and
sensitive hero.

A big problem is that Owen Wilson, so convincing as an air-head
male model in ZOOLANDER, is hopelessly miscast as the artistic and
sensitive hero.  The film would have made more sense if he had gone
back to his fiancée in the end, recognizing that he is just as
shallow as she is.

Instead, Woody Allen opts for the cheap device of her having an
affair, permitting Wilson to dump her without denting the moral
superiority Allen has granted him.

The scenes set in the past are also cobbled together out of
cliches: Hemingway says Hemingwayesque things; Zelda Fitzgerald
acts deranged while her husband, F. Scott, chases after her;
Josephine Baker dances African-style; and so on.

[SPOILERS AHEAD] Allen presents this past as a real place where one
might choose to stay.  Yet his protagonist's adventures in the past
smack more of wish-fulfillment.  He is immediately invited into the
inner circle of his literary and artistic heroes, and his novel
manuscript is read and critiqued by Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude
Stein.  [END SPOILERS]  [-tw]

Mark replies:

[SPOILERS AHEAD] I think you missed the point of MIDNIGHT IN
PARIS.  (Note: I could not talk about this in my review to avoid
spoilers.)  What you would expect is that when you meet the real
people they do not quite live up to their reputations.  People we
have read or read about turn out to be even more of what we think
of them as being rather than less.  Hemmingway writes in a certain
style that we think was just an affectation of his writing.  When
we actually meet him we find that he really does think and talk
that way he has to restrain that style in his writing.  Everyone is
more of what we thought of them as being, not less.  It is a funny
joke and it also opens a possible interpretation that this is all
happening in Owen Wilson's head.   He is interacting not with the
real people but with his own mind's essence of these people.  Most
of the reviewers, myself included, seem to think that Woody Allen's
speaking style seemed to fit Wilson very well.  And that would not
be easy for most actors to do, even more so for a goyishe kopf like
Wilson.  :-)  [END SPOILERS]  [-mrl]

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

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

Last week I commented on the Hugo-nominated novellas; this week I
will cover the novelettes and short stories.

Best Novelette

"The Jaguar House, in Shadow" by Aliette de Bodard (in ASIMOV'S
07/10) is another in her series in which the Azteca are not
conquered by the Spanish.  This is a very self-contained story,
with little connection to the world outside the Azteca, and as such
does not use the alternate history aspect as strongly as some of
her others.  The result is a story than seems to lack much science
fictional content.

"Plus or Minus" by James Patrick Kelly (in ASIMOV'S 12/10) is yet
another entry in the "let's-respond-to-Tom-Godwin's-'Cold-
Equations'" sweepstakes.  (Has anyone compiled a list of these?)
Kelly has a bit more characterization, but it serves more to
obscure the story than develop it.

"Eight Miles", Sean McMullen (in ANALOG 09/10) is a steampunk-meets-
Edgar-Rice-Burroughs story.  It's okay, but nothing special, and
not what I would consider Hugo material,

"The Emperor of Mars" by Allen M. Steele (in ASIMOV'S 06/10) is full
of nostalgia for classic science fiction about Mars, but nostalgia
does not a story make.

I am sure that someone, somewhere has described "That Leviathan,
Whom Thou Hast Made" by Eric James Stone (in ANALOG 09/10) as
"Mormon whales in space"--it's just too tempting to pass up.  But
to some extent it is too simplistic, because the underlying issues
are a bit more universal than that description might lead one to
believe.  What is a god?  Who determines, not what the correct
belief set is, but what is the protocol to determine what
interactions between belief groups is allowed?  Basically, this is
a story that questions "Star Trek"'s "Prime Directive": who
determines whether one culture is allowed to affect (or interfere)
with another?  And under it all is the question of what evidence of
"God's plan" is valid when what we get are piles of conflicting
events.  Stone does not ask us to take a particular stand on
Mormonism (or any other religion); he presents a variety of views
and then says, "You decide."

My voting order is: "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made", no
award, "Eight Miles", "Plus or Minus", "The Jaguar House, in
Shadow", "The Emperor of Mars"

Best Short Story

For Best Short Story, there were only four nominees because of a
rule requiring all nominees to be listed on at least 5% of the
nominating ballots.  This is the first time this has been applied
to one of the fiction categories, though it has been used before
(e.g., Best Original Artwork in 1994 and 1995).

"Ponies" by Kij Johnson (tor.com 11/17/10) is short, but
disturbing.  Yes, it seems to have an agenda, which I usually find
off-putting, but in this case the agenda is not obvious.  I can
come up with at least three possible parallels to the story--and,
no, I won't tell you want they are, because I think the story works
better if you come up with your own interpretations.  To those who
say this story is neither science fiction, nor any sort of
"realistic" fantasy, I would respond as other have that it is
really a horror story, and could not be written without the
speculative element.  That speculative element may be very thin,
but it is necessary.  (And in case you are wondering, at 1255
words, this is *not* the shortest piece ever nominated for a Hugo--
that honor goes to "Evil Robot Monkey" by Mary Robinette at 972
words in 2009.)

"For Want of a Nail" by Mary Robinette Kowal (in ASIMOV'S 12/10)
seems almost more like an ANALOG-type story, with its focus on the
technology aspects of the puzzle-like problem.  It was okay, but
nothing special.

"Amaryllis" by Carrie Vaughn (in LIGHTSPEED 06/10) was another okay
story, but I could not find anything that raised it above the usual
depiction of a resource-limited future.

"The Things" by Peter Watts (in CLARKESWORLD 01/10) is one of the
few nominated stories I had read before the nominations were
announced.  It does require a bit of background knowledge on the
part of the reader, and it is also a familiar story form.
Unfortunately, I cannot say much more about it without saying too
much.

My voting order is: "The Things", "Ponies", no award, "For Want of
a Nail", "Amaryllis"

[-ecl]

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

                                           Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net


          Experience is the hardest kind of teacher.  It gives
          you the test first, and the lesson afterward.
                                           - Vernon Law