THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/25/13 -- Vol. 32, No. 17, Whole Number 1777
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Correction
Headline Seen (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ
My Picks for Turner Classic Movies for November (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
EUROPA REPORT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
VOODOO SCIENCE by Robert Park (book review
by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
THE IDEA FACTORY: BELL LABS AND THE GREAT AGE OF AMERICAN
INNOVATION by Jon Gertner (book review
by Greg Frederick)
LIFE TRACKER (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
GRAVITY (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
Ross-Littlewood Infinity Paradox (letter of comment
by Peter Trei)
This Week's Reading (THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, CAIN, and
BORGES Y LA CIENCIA FICCION) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Correction
Dan Goodman notes of Evelyn's book comments in the 10/18/13 issue
of the MT VOID that the title is THE WORLD JONES MADE, not THE
WORLD THAT JONES MADE. [-dg]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Headline Seen (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I actually saw a headline that said "Van Gogh Works on Display in
DC." Frankly I am impressed they can get any work out of him at
all at this point. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
[Note the changed book for December.]
November 7: THE COOLER, Old Bridge Public Library, 6:30PM
November 14: THE ABYSS, Middletown Public Library, 5PM (note time
change for this meeting only!), SPHERE by Michael Crichton,
discussion after the film
November 21: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? by Philip
K. Dick, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM (note that this
is the *third* Thursday!)
December 5: Film (TBD), Old Bridge Public Library, 6:30PM
December 12: Film (TBD), Middletown Public Library, 5:30PM,
discussion after the film
December 19: THE EERIE SILENCE by Paul Davies, Old Bridge (NJ)
Public Library, 7PM (note that this is the *third* Thursday!)
January 23, 2014: THE RAPTURE OF THE NERDS by Cory Doctorow and
Charles Stross, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
February 27: THE MOON AND SIXPENCE by W. Somerset Maugham,
Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
Speculative Fiction Lectures:
October 5: Nick Kaufman, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 12N
Northern New Jersey events are listed at:
http://www.sfsnnj.com/news.html
==================================================================
TOPIC: My Picks for Turner Classic Movies for November (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
We have another month coming up on Turner Classic Movies. Time to
look at the list of upcoming films. Again the times given for the
films are Eastern Time Zone. I have no connection to Turner
Classic Movies. I'm just this guy, y'know.
A few years back I was in a book discussion group and one of the
members suggested we read Herman Melville's BILLY BUDD. The group
readily agreed because while nobody present had ever read the
story, it was made into the outstanding 1962 film BILLY BUDD. And
so we expected it had to be a good novel. It was a mistake, since
the novel is really fairly boring. But it was also a lesson in how
much can be done by a really good director--in this case Peter
Ustinov--to turn tedious material into gripping drama. In 1797 a
sailor is impressed into the British Navy fighting Napoleon. The
sailors almost all take to the slow-witted but charming Billy Budd
(Terence Stamp). One sailor is an exception. Robert Ryan plays
the sadistic Claggart, the ship's master-at-arms, who has a
terrible envy of Budd's winning ways and does everything he can to
make Budd's life on ship miserable. As he tells Budd in a candid
moment, "The sea is calm you said. Peaceful. Calm above, but
below a world of gliding monsters preying on their fellows.
Murderers, all of them. Only the strongest teeth survive. And
who's to tell me it's any different here on board, or yonder on dry
land?" Ryan was great playing villains and was rarely if ever
better than in BILLY BUDD. Director Peter Ustinov plays ship's
Captain Vere. Melvin Douglas plays the Dansker. That is a great
cast. [Monday, November 11, 6:00 PM]
Terence Stamp is also excellent in THE COLLECTOR (1965), a
psychological horror thriller based on John Fowles' novel of an
introvert who collects butterflies because he just likes to look at
them. Freddie Clegg (Stamp) is a fan of butterfly beauty and of
human female beauty. He particularly is taken with art student
Miranda Grey (Samantha Eggar). Deciding to win her by treating her
like he would a butterfly, he captures her and keeps her in a
cellar just because he likes having her around. He promises her he
will not molest here and will give her anything she wants but her
freedom. Then start the games between the captor and the captive.
This is a small personal story but very disturbing directed by, of
all people, William Wyler, famous for his big films like THE BEST
YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE BIG COUNTRY, and BEN HUR. [Sunday,
November 24, 4:00 AM]
THE FOUNTAINHEAD (1949) gets stranger the more one looks at it.
Ayn Rand took her own novel of an architect whose integrity will
not give in to public opinion and adapted it into a screenplay for
King Vidor to make into this film featuring Rand's sloppy idea of
sexuality. Everything about this film is three times bigger than
life. Genius architect Howard Roark (Gary Cooper) would rather
fail and dig rock in a quarry than compromise his vision for the
buildings he designs. Unrealistically all sorts of forces line up
against him to rob him of his credit and to get him to give in to
the mediocrity that pleases his employers and the public. Ayn Rand
seems to think that the public is more fascinated by architecture
than it is by sports. One problem that was faced by the art
designers is that they needed to have architectural sketches that
would be immediately recognized by the viewer as being works of
genius. If the art designers could do that they would be genius
architects themselves. Classic scenes have Gary Cooper stripped to
the waist and sweaty drilling rock with a huge phallic steam drill
while his Patricia Neal stares at him. Subtlety was not Ayn Rand's
strongest suit. Nor was it in Gary Cooper's speech at the end
giving the principles of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.
Patricia Neal would two years later make THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD
STILL, which on the whole, is a more believable story.
[Sunday, November 3, 12 noon]
My choice for the best film of the month would probably be Federico
Fellini's LA STRADA with Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina.
[Monday, November 18, 2 AM]
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: "30 Great SFF Films You Almost Certainly Haven't Seen"
Article Patch (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
We recently published a list of little-known films mentioned at the
"30 Great SFF Films You Almost Certainly Haven't Seen" panel at
LoneStarCon. I made comments on those I had seen, which turned out
to be most. This is a patch to be applied to that article. These
are films I have seen in the interim.
- HANSEL & GRETEL
Not to be confused with HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS (2013).
This is a real surprise. This is a South Korean film inspired by
the fairy tale, but which goes deliciously askew. A man finds a
strange young girl in a forest and comes to her home where
everybody is happy and everything is sugary sweet. Or so it seems
before the axe drops. What kind of bizarre mind can make this film
from a children's fairy tale?
- WRONG (2012)
Strange story set in a surreal absurdist world. Dolph's dog has
been kidnapped and Dolph is trying to find him. It may or may not
have something to do with a messianic cult leader. Like the first
third of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH one strange touch after another is
dropped on the viewer, but here the weird touches just keep coming.
From director Quentin Dupieux who also did RUBBER, a film about a
tire with evil powers.
- EUROPA REPORT
A pure science fiction film. This is the story of an international
crew on a mission to explore Europa, the moon of Jupiter. The
science is darn near flawless and the whole story is very credible.
Still the film builds some real tension. One of the best pure
science films I have seen. [Actually this film deserves a longer
review. And I am just the guy to do it. See below.]
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: EUROPA REPORT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This science fiction indie that does just about everything
right. This is an account of a privately funded space mission to
Jupiter's moon Europa. From the beginning we know that Europa One
never returned to Earth and the film after the fact tells the story
of what happened. The visuals are just about right and the dialog
is very believable. Sebastian Cordero directs a screenplay by
Philip Gelatt. The film makes a good companion piece to the recent
GRAVITY and some scenes are quite similar.
Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
We have just recently seen released GRAVITY, a surprisingly
compelling and fairly accurate picture of the dangers of space
flight. Science fiction films like that are few and usually far
apart. Not so far this time. EUROPA REPORT is about a space
mission far from the Earth but never very far from scientific and
speculative accuracy. And still the story is a compelling
thriller.
A private corporation, Europa Ventures, has sent six astronauts to
Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter originally discovered by
Galileo. The moon is (in the film and in real science) covered
with a water ocean under a frozen shell. It really is a leading
candidate for where extra terrestrial life might exist in the solar
system. Europa One's mission is to collect data about Europa from
the surface of ice. Unfortunately the spacecraft has several
unexpected problems starting with being caught in a solar storm
that fries communication with Earth. The crew can record their
progress, but cannot send reports to Earth so do not know if their
account will ever be found. The film is primarily their report
from in and around their spacecraft. The story punctuated with
their recordings and a flashback or two makes compelling viewing.
The filmmakers explain carefully why there is enough footage to
piece together a story. The crew is international and polyglot
since as a privately mounted mission the sponsoring corporation
could pick from around the world. There is a Chinese commanding
the mission (Daniel Wu), a Russian space veteran (Michael Nyqvist),
a science officer converse in Russian and English (Karolina Wydra),
pilot Rosa Dasque (Anamaria Marinca), and an American junior
engineer with a sharp sense of humor (Sharlto Copley). The story
is told in flashback by an executive of Europa Ventures (Embeth
Davidtz).
By keeping the story very credible and drawing its characters well
the film generates genuine excitement. You do not come away with
questions like "why didn't the air all escape from Elysium." The
filmmakers were very careful and scrupulous with the science
issues. This is not a summer sort of action film but one with a
great deal of credibility. Screenwriter Philip Gelatt has a feel
for realistic dialog and director Sebastian Cordero gets the
delivery to sound about right. That is not easy and in many
similar films the characters are cute but hardly believable. Even
the look of zero gravity floating looks very believable, and that
is not an easy effect to make look right.
The best science fiction films have no chases, no guns blaring, no
zombies, no prosthetic makeup, and no suspension of the laws of
science. This is one of the best of recent years. No film has
ever shown so realistically what it would be like to explore a new
planet (or in this case a moon). That and everything else in the
film is at the very least plausible. And the science as presented
is engaging or even compelling. I rate EUROPA REPORT a high +2 on
the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2051879/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/europa_report/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: VOODOO SCIENCE by Robert Park (book review by Dale
L. Skran, Jr.)
"Some of these things are not like the others."
I was made aware of this book by a friend who found some aspects of
the book, notably the anti-space flight chapter, to be depressing.
VOODOO SCIENCE by physics professor Dr. Robert Park, published in
2000, starts out in the same vein as the classic debunking books by
Martin Gardner like SCIENCE: GOOD, BAD, AND BOGUS, but then goes
far afield. Most of the chapters are well-written exercises in
shooting the homeopathy and perpetual motion fish in the proverbial
barrel. There is a particularly apt tale about a young Park and
his beliefs about raccoon food-washing that shines brightly in his
memory. There are, sadly, three chapters which "are not like the
others."
I have only a minor quibble with "The Belief Gene," which contains,
among other things, the excellent raccoon food-washing story.
After bravely admitting that the science concerning climate
predictions and global warming was not clear-cut, Park concludes
that "There are times, however, when society cannot wait for
scientists to get it right." This is surely true, and Park
continues. "There no longer seems to be any reasonable doubt that
human activity is affecting Earth's climate. Governments must
initiate some precautionary measures, even though the precise
consequences are still unclear." These two sentences skip an
entire book worth of argument. We move from one clearly true
statement--most scientists believe that human actions are warming
the Earth--to another highly disputable and ultimately political
judgment--that we must take immediate action in this area.
Sadly, scientists like Park are susceptible to the temptation to
wrap themselves in the cloak of science to justify their political
views. The science of climate change is clear--the Earth is
warming, and humans are the main cause. But the clear science ends
here. As examined in Nate Silver's THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE,
climate predictions are improving but have often been incorrect on
the high side. In time, we can expect that these predictions will
become more accurate. However, the major controversy lies in what
to do about climate change. Some advocate carbon taxes and ground
solar/wind power, but this is not the only solution. It would be
straightforward to replace all coal plants with nuclear reactors
and all gasoline cars with electric cars, and continue on without
otherwise disrupting our society. That we have not already done
this is as much a political choice as an economic one. If you
don't like nuclear power, there is always space solar power as an
alternative. This approach receives little attention today because
the anti-centralized-power "environmental" groups are so strong.
This again, is politics, not science.
Park takes out the long knives more clearly in "Only Mushrooms Grow
in the Dark," which mainly focuses on the so-called "Star Wars"
program from the 1990s and the role of Edward Teller. This chapter
is fatally marred by that fact that it is a left-wing political
screed against Teller that masquerades as a criticism of his
proposals for X-ray anti-missile lasers. In Park's telling of the
tale, Teller and his associates are hacks and incompetents, and
Teller "was productive only when he was teamed up with great
physicists such as Hans Bethe and Freeman Dyson, who forced him to
confront reality." Hold this thought about Dyson, as I'll return
to it later.
Park's overall point in "Mushrooms," which is that secrecy can lead
to cover-ups of scientific failures, is surely a good one. Park
seems at least marginally aware that some degree of secrecy is
necessary in the real world, where, as my daughter likes to say,
"All is not peaches and cream." However, Park remains blissfully
ignorant of how political his views on Teller come across.
Teller's original sin is not his scientific failings, but his
testimony against Oppenheimer, and even more, Teller's refusal to
join many of his fellow physicists in becoming an anti-nuclear
activist. If Park were more honest with himself, he would admit
that his differences with Teller are mainly political, and not
scientific. It is even possible that Teller was fully aware of the
issues with nuclear-boosted x-ray lasers, but used the program to
put more pressure on the Soviets. This type of deception is
anathema to "open science" but remains a useful tactic in war.
VOODOO SCIENCE was written in 2000, before the 9/11 attacks, and it
is interesting to note that missile defense has become normalized
since then to the point that a left-wing democratic president
(Obama) supports it almost as strongly as republicans. In our new
era of rocket-armed rogue states, anti-missile defenses are no
longer "star wars" but the bread and butter of defense. Of course,
many of the big ideas of SDI have not come to pass, but this is
often the case in the course of technological evolution. The
recent successes of Israeli systems like "Iron Dome" have also
shown the usefulness of missile defense in combat conditions. Park
tends, like many anti-SDI writers, to focus on how SDI could not
have provided 100% protection against a massive Soviet attack, and
even if it did, this would be destabilizing and might lead to an
all-out war. Today we are more interested in reasonable protection
against the 10 missiles that North Korea might fire. This is both
more possible than Park anticipated and less destabilizing than
Park feared. Moreover, Park's arguments against SDI are mainly
political and military, not scientific, and are thus are out of
place in this book.
If "The Belief Gene" chapter was just a bit out of step with
science, and "Mushrooms" veered substantially into politics,
"Astronaut" descends entirely into the unthinking depths. Park
devotes an entire chapter--"The Virtual Astronaut"--to attacking
manned space flight, the International Space Station, and dreams of
space settlement. Gerard K. O'Neill and Zubrin are singled out as
particular menaces. To claim that the construction of the ISS is
"voodoo science" and put it in a book that fires rhetorical blasts
at homeopathy, cold fusion, and perpetual motion machines is the
worst kind of guilt by association. Gerard O'Neill was a serious
scientist, not a backyard tinkerer or a deluded self-promoter. His
ideas on space colonization have never been faulted on their
scientific merits. Park even admits this, and faults them on their
economic merits, which, is not Park's area of expertise, and in any
case, not "Voodoo Science."
Park opens "Dreams of a Station in Space" with a discussion of his
anti-space station testimony to Congress in April, 1997, and, after
a brief history of past rationales for building the station,
concludes "The space station stands ... as the single greatest
obstacle to the further exploration of space." In "Beyond the
Ionosphere" and "The Retreat to Low-Earth Orbit" Park reprises the
Van Allen attack on humans in space, i.e., humans are expensive and
fragile and robots are better, while adding little to it.
A more honest scientist would start by admitting that "space
science" collectively is vastly overfunded relative to any possible
value that it might produce, and that this over-funding is mainly
due to the fascination of the public with the romantic dream of
human flight in space. If the possibility of humans in space were
definitively removed, as Park advocates, I predict that over time
the amount of money spend on robots in space would drift downwards
until it was a minor fraction of the current spending levels, to
the benefit of Earthbound research projects, probably mostly in the
areas of health and longevity.
A more honest scientist would take note that the costs of robotic
probes has been increasing as the missions get more difficult. My
own integrity compels me to admit that in 1997 this trend may have
been less clear to Park than it ought to be today, but increasingly
the "next" big robotic space mission has become a multi-billion
dollar enterprise, verging toward a 5-10 billion dollar expedition.
The simple reason for this is that most of the "cheap" flybys and
orbiters have already been sent. The remaining targets are much
more distant, or the remaining missions are more complex--e.g.,
Mars Sample Return. It is becoming more apparent that the robotic
exploration of space may become self-limiting in the same fashion
as the construction of particle accelerators--the cost of
continuing vastly outweighs any possible scientific gain.
In this same spirit of honesty, I will admit that the advocates of
robotic exploration of space are basically correct, and further,
over time they will become more correct in the sense that as
artificial intelligence improves, our robots will increasingly have
human-level exploration abilities. Advocates of humans in space
will sometimes argue that one person on Mars can do more science in
a week than robots could do in months or years. That is certainly
true today, but it will become less so over time.
The basic mistake of Park and Van Allen is the assumption that the
primary justification of activity in space must be the advance of
science. This is rather like suggesting that the major value of
exploring the Americas for Columbus was science. Or that the main
value of humans expanding out of Africa to Asia and Europe was
science. Or that the main value in fish evolving to live on the
land was the advance of science. None of these things was mainly
justified by the advance of science. In the same fashion, we need
to admit that the advance of science is no more than a side-effect
of the human movement into space, not the overarching goal.
In "The Martian Chronicles" Park takes aim at Bob Zubrin and Gerard
O'Neill and their plans for space settlement. We are told that
"The idea attracted a cultlike following of dedicated supporters
called the L5 Society. They tirelessly roamed the halls of
Congress lobbying for federal funding to make O'Neill colonies a
reality." As a former President of an L5 Society Chapter I can
assure you that the organization was wholly rational and un-
cultlike in its outlook, and far from tireless in lobbying for its
cause! In any case, Park is sure of his position when he says "No
one talks seriously about space colonies any longer. It was not
that a space colony couldn't be built--it would violate no laws of
physics--but the future must also conform to the laws of
economics." Alas, here Park falls off his own wagon. As a
physicist, he is entitled to make authoritative statements about
physics. As an economist, not so much! In any case, the title of
the book is VOODOO SCIENCE, not VOODOO ECONOMICS.
The considerably misinformed Park now tells us that "the L5 Society
has faded into oblivion. But Robert Zubrin has taken up the cause
of establishing extraterrestrial colonies." This brief summary
misleads in many ways. The L5 Society merged with the National
Space Institute to form the National Space Society (NSS) which has
continued to advocate space settlement. NSS has expanded on the
work of L5, and among other things hosts an annual international
space settlement design competition for high school students.
Zubrin is only one current advocate of space settlements. Those
who found the NSS too staid split off to form more radical groups
like the Space Frontier Foundation that Park was apparently unaware
of. There is also a Lunar Society that advocates for lunar
settlement. When other groups like Students for the Exploration
and Development of Space (SEDS) are added in, the "spawn of L5"
vastly exceed the size and activity level of the original group.
And now that a vibrant commercial space industry exists, many of
those once active in the L5 Society and NSS have moved on to
building and flying real rockets. For example, Aleta Jackson,
former L5 Executive Secretary, now works at XCOR building
suborbital tourist rockets. George Whitesides, former NSS
Executive Director, is now CEO of Virgin Galactic, another space
tourism company.
Park's mockery of space settlement is tinged with subtle digs at
O'Neill's religious and philosophical beliefs. One suspects Park
is trying to say O'Neill is *gasp* a Catholic or perhaps just a
libertarian who thinks the government should not impose population
control. The horror! Park can disagree with O'Neill on these
matters if he likes, but he should not pretend that science
endorses his viewpoint.
Park's knowledge of space settlement proponents is very selective.
Although he calls Freeman Dyson "a great physicist" he seems
unaware that Dyson is also a major voice calling for space
settlement. Dyson, in addition to having written about space
settlement is on the Board of Governors of the NSS (www.nss.org),
the organization that carries forward the L5 torch. A couple of
years back I personally presented Dyson an NSS award for his
contributions to space settlement at the annual NSS meeting! It is
also interesting to note that Stephen Hawking, someone I suspect
Park would be forced to agree is "a great physicist" is also an
advocate of space settlement. Both Hawking and Dyson have provided
pro-space settlement essays to the recent 2013 book STARSHIP
CENTURY edited by the Benford brothers. It is easy to dismiss
Zubrin as a self-promoter, and to ignore O'Neill now that he is
dead, but harder to dismiss the views of two of our very best
scientists, both far more accomplished than Park. As it turns out,
however, Park does dismiss Hawking's advocacy of space settlement
in a June 16, 2006 post on his "What's New" blog, concluding "Maybe
we should focus on taking care of the home we have."
Park spends a good bit of ink mocking O'Neill's vision of space
solar power as a justification for building space colonies, but is
apparently unaware of all that work that has been done on SSP since
1970. Current plans for SSP call for robotic self-assembly of
uniform parts in space based on a vastly evolved and more effective
design with no central points of failure. Park focuses a good bit
on the various shortcomings of the Space Shuttle, while ignoring
the fact that most space advocates would agree with his criticisms.
It is only with the recent retirement of the Shuttle that we are
starting to see private industry unleashed to build lower cost
methods of access to space, something that in 2013 has made
enormous progress relative to 2000.
Space advocates need to take note of Park and Van Allen's
arguments, and focus directly on the only sustainable justification
for humans being in space--space settlement. This is a very long
term project that has virtually zero scientific justification.
That does not make it any the less a vital project, nor any less
essential to human survival. Toward this end, the ISS, far from
being an "obstacle" to space exploration, is in fact the first real
space settlement. Paradoxically, a serious focus on space
settlement will lead, in my view, to a greater emphasis on using
robots to pave the way for human settlement. The vision of "human
hardhats in space" needs to be replaced with a new vision of
robotically constructed settlements being occupied by humans.
Ironically, the human settlement of the solar system will pay vast
scientific dividends, far greater than any self-limiting program of
robotic exploration. The simple fact is that the incremental cost
of doing science once there is a settlement anywhere in space
(Mars, moon, asteroids) is much less than the cost of lofting
custom-made robots from Earth. Park should be thanking the space
settlement advocates, but I'm not holding my breath! [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE IDEA FACTORY: BELL LABS AND THE GREAT AGE OF AMERICAN
INNOVATION by Jon Gertner (book review by Greg Frederick)
The following is a review of the technology history book titled THE
IDEA FACTORY: BELL LABS AND THE GREAT AGE OF AMERICAN INNOVATION by
Jon Gertner. The historical period covered in the book about Bell
Labs is from the early 1900's until the initial breakup of the AT&T
Bell Telephone Company in the 1980's. It's hard to imagine how the
modern telecommunications world of today could exist if not for
Bell Labs. The technologies of vacuum tubes, the transistor, the
laser, the maser, satellite telecommunications, information theory,
solar cells, fiber optics for data transmission, the cell phone,
UNIX code for computers, and many other associated inventions were
created at this idea factory. Not only did the lab invent many
essential things it also developed new ways to invent things. Bell
Labs was one division of the very large AT&T Bell Telephone
monopoly which consisted of Western Electric, AT&T, and its local
phone companies. The large amount of revenue created by the phone
company allowed them to have the funds and the time needed for long
term research and development which was needed to create the
transistor, for example. They not only invented new technological
devices but also the new materials for these devices and all of the
technology to manufacture them as very reliable items. The first
transistors were made from Germanium but this material is very rare
and does not perform well at higher temperatures, so silicon was
used next since it would function even at higher temperatures and
is abundant but it was easily tainted. Transistors are
semiconductors which require the base material (in this case
silicon) to be very pure but the silicon had to be infused with a
very small amount of another element like aluminum for example to
become semiconductors. If the very pure silicon were tainted
before the total process was completed it became useless.
Eventually, it was determined to expose the silicon to an aluminum
gas in a furnace which would diffuse into the silicon. This
process created a very precise manipulation of the needed aluminum
impurity. It took years for all of this to occur, many companies
today concentrating on a fast turn around and quick profits would
not do this work.
Bell Labs employed many talented scientists, mathematicians,
technicians, and engineers like Bill Shockley, Mervin Kelly, Bill
Baker, John Pierce and Claude Shannon. Claude Shannon was
considered to be so exceptional that he was usually left on his own
to work on whatever interested him. In the late 1940's he wrote
one of the most important papers concerning the transfer of
information and data. His information theory written before the
internet and the wide spread use of digital computers is the basis
of today's internet and most of telecommunications. He stated that
all communication could be considered to be information and that
that information could be stored and transferred digitally as bits.
At the time he wrote that paper all information was sent as analog
waves. What he proposed was revolutionary.
Bell Labs also built the world's first telecommunications satellite
called Telstar it was launched into orbit in 1962. It used solar
cells invented by Bell Labs for power and it had 15,000 parts
including semiconductors invented at Bell Labs. Another great
innovation was the cell phone. The modern realization of the cell
phone and how to implement it came about in the 1970's at the lab.
A system of hexagonal shaped areas each with its own antenna was
created and as the driver moved thru one hexagonal area to another
his phone conversation would be connected by the next antenna. It
took an immense effort to get this rather complex system to
actually function correctly. It's hard to imagine that happening
with venture capitalist funded tech companies of today. When you
look it's not difficult to find technology associated with Bell
Labs at work all around us. This is a very complete and
entertaining book that illustrates where some of today's technology
came from. [-gf]
==================================================================
TOPIC: LIFE TRACKER (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
In response to Mark's review of LIFE TRACKER in the 10/18/13 issue
of the MT VOID, Fred Lerner writes:
Didn't Heinlein write that same story back in 1939? The story I
[am] thinking of is "Life-Line". According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-Line:
"Life-Line" is a short story by American author Robert A. Heinlein.
Published in 1939, it was Heinlein's first published short story.
The protagonist, Professor Pinero, builds a machine that will
predict how long a person will live. It does this by sending a
signal along the world line of a person and detecting the echo from
the far end. Professor Pinero's invention has a powerful impact on
the life insurance industry, as well as on his own life. ...
[end Wikipedia quote]
[-fl]
Mark responds:
Well, Heinlein put his main emphasis on the mechanism and proving
to skeptics that it worked. That is nearly glossed over in LIFE
TRACKER. The film deals more with the effects on society and what
the knowledge does to personal relations. To be honest the film
seems like the more intelligent treatment of the theme. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: GRAVITY (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
In response to Mark's review of GRAVITY, Steve Milton writes the
following. [Reminder: You can go to to decrypt the
messages below]:
Quibble on the encrypted comment on GRAVITY:
Qe. Fgbar qryvorengryl ghearq bss gur bkltra, cerfhznoyl erfhygvat
va bayl avgebtra orvat srq vagb gur punzore. Fur gura ghearq vg
onpx ba nsgre gur unyyhpvangvba. Gurer vf fbzr qbhog jurgure vg vf
ernyvfgvp gung fur pbhyq erpbire rabhtu gb qb fb, ohg gur bkltra
fhccyl vgfrys jnf abg qrcyrgrq.
[-sm]
Mark responds:
Be fur pbhyq fgvyy or unyyhpvangvat sebz gur cbvag fur ghearq bss
gur bkltra. V jbhyq jnag gb frr gur svyz ntnva, ohg vg whfg frrzf
guvatf jbex bhg zhpu gbb rnfvyl sbe ure sebz gur gvzr fur vf
bkltra-qrcevirq ba.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Ross-Littlewood Infinity Paradox (letter of comment by Peter
Trei)
In response to Mark's comments on the Ross-Littlewood Infinity
Paradox in the 10/18/13 issue of the MT VOID, Peter Trei writes:
I think you've mis-stated the Paradox; it only runs one hour, not
two. [-pt]
Mark replies:
On this one I plead "not guilty." How long the operation lasts
depends on who is stating the paradox. What is important is that
you have an infinite number of time intervals with a finite sum,
much like in Zeno's Paradox. When I saw the paradox stated it ran
like I said. The first hour (10 AM to 11 AM) really just set up
the experiment, but it was unlike the others as nothing was
removed. Wikipedia has the entire operation take place in just one
minute. It is still the same paradox. In fact you can also state
the paradox eliminating my first step and saying that the first
step is putting ball zero in the bag or you can say that there
already is a ball in the bag and you start with my second step. I
have the operation take place over two hours. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I re-read THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT by Edgar Rice Burroughs (ISBN
no ISBN, but available through Project Gutenberg) before listening
to a podcast discussion of it (on SFF Audio), and while I am not
going to give it a full review, I do have a few comments.
First, like just about everyone else, the internal narrator uses
"Frankenstein" to mean the Creation. He also thinks Piltdown Man
was real (as I suspect Burroughs did, since it was not debunked
until 1953).
Burroughs has a strange notion of how evolution works (worked). I
do not mean just the notion of creatures evolving individually as
they travel upstream. I am referring to the whole Caprona
"continent." If Caprona split off long enough ago to preserve the
dinosaurs (i.e., more than 65 million years ago) then there would
not also be deer, antelope, panthers, lions, wolves, wooly
rhinoceroses, and gorillas and other anthropoid apes. The latter
evolved to fill an ecological niche left vacant by the extinction
of the dinosaurs, but even if they had evolved without the death of
the dinosaurs, they would not have evolved exactly the same as in
the other land mass(es). Clearly the "humans" on Caprona did not,
so why should other mammals? For that matter, do the other mammals
have the same strange reproductive method as the "humans," or are
the "humans" somehow unique in this, and if so, how did *that*
happen?
CAIN by Jose Saramago (translated by Margaret Jull Costa, ISBN 978-
0-547-41989-3) is Saramago's last novel and follows in a tradition
of speculative fiction both in and out of the "science fiction"
marketing category. One could argue, I suppose, that John Milton
was one of its earliest practitioners, the tradition being that of
re-telling Biblical stories from a different perspective. Within
science fiction, the leading modern author of these works is James
Morrow, with his "Bible Stories for Adults", but other examples
abound.
In CAIN, Saramago follows the eponymous character as he travels
through space and time, somehow being present at all the important
Pentateuchal events. And he sees nothing admirable in God's
behavior at any of them, and indeed, expresses what many modern
theologians feel in his questions of why a god would order a man to
sacrifice his own son, why destroying all the innocent children in
Sodom was justified, how God giving Job ten new children makes up
for the ten He killed (especially to those ten, and for a wager, no
less), why God thought destroying all humans except for Noah and
his family was going to produce a better human race than had
developed before, and so on.
It is all summed up in Cain's dialogue with the angels outside
Job's house:
"If I've understood you rightly, god and satan made a wager, but
this man job isn't to know that he is the object of the gamblers"
agreement between god and the devil, Exactly, exclaimed the angels
as one, That doesn't seem very fair of the lord, said cain, if it's
true that I've heard, that job, for all his wealth, is also a good
and upright man, and very religious too, he has committed no crime,
and yet, for no reason, he is about to be punished with the loss of
all his money and possessions, now it may be, as many people say,
that the lord is just, but I don't think so, it reminds me of what
happened to abraham, whom god, in order to put him to the test,
commanded to kill his son isaac, so it seems to me that if the lord
doesn't trust the people who believe in him, I really don't see why
those people should believe in the lord, the ways of the lord are
inscrutable, not even we angels can fathom the workings of his
mind, Oh, I've had enough of all this nonsense about the lord's
ways being inscrutable, answered cain, god should be as clear and
transparent as a pane of glass and not go wasting his energies on
creating an atmosphere of constant terror and fear, god, in short,
does not love us."
[punctuation and capitalization sic]
I finally read BORGES Y LA CIENCIA FICCION by Carlos Abraham (ISBN
978-84-96013-85-8); first it took a few years to find at a
reasonable price, and then it took several months to read (I think
I started it before I broke my hip the first day of spring!). Part
of the time was because it was in Spanish, but part was that
whenever Abraham would draw parallels between a Borges story and an
earlier science fiction story, I found I had to go dig them both
out and read them.
I wrote a review/commentary/summary of the book, but since it came
to almost 20,000 words, I'll do a much briefer commentary here; the
full review is at http://leepers.us/evelyn/reviews/abraham.htm.
Briefly put, Abraham's contention is that Borges appropriated
various science fiction stories he read and stripped them of their
science fictional elements to create derivative works that would be
"high literature" rather than "genre fiction." Some pairings he
particularly looks at are:
- "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" with C. S. Lewis's OUT OF THE SILENT
PLANET
- "The Library of Babel" with Kurd Lasswitz's "The Universal
Library"
- "The Gospel According to St. Mark" with "The Streets of Ashkelon"
by Harry Harrison
- "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" with Olaf
Stapledon's STAR-MAKER
- "The Immortal" with several stories by H. P. Lovecraft
- "The House of Asterion" and "The Zahir" with "The Outsider" by H.
P. Lovecraft
- "Deutsches Requiem" with "The Temple" by H. P. Lovecraft
- "There are more things..." with "The Dunwich Horror" by H. P.
Lovecraft
- "Doctor Brodie's Report" with GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by Jonathan
Swift and AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS
- "The Aleph" and "The Zahir" with "The Crystal Egg" by H. G. Wells
- "A Weary Man's Utopia" with THE TIME MACHINE and "The Open
Conspiracy" by H. G. Wells
(Apparently he thinks Borges read a lot of Lovecraft.)
Of course, his premise is predicated on the notion that science
fiction (or other genre literature) is less worthy than "high
literature" ("literatura alta") and if you do not buy into that
argument, then the exercise of converting science fiction to non-
science fiction does not seem worthwhile in and of itself. Abraham
also presumes that Borges perceived the ideas (and indeed, a lot of
the language, at least for the Lovecraft derivatives) of the
stories as part of the common heritage, available for other authors
(such as himself) to use. This may well be true--there are essays
in which Borges says something very close to this--but I suspect a
court of law might see things differently. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The dog has seldom been successful in pulling
man up to its level of sagacity, but man has
frequently dragged a dog down to his.
--James Thurber