THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/07/14 -- Vol. 32, No. 36, Whole Number 1796
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Mr. Hublot
Back Issues of STARLOG Magazine Now Available On-Line
Power (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
How to Sell the "Science in the Capital" Series (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Provincial Numbers (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
TRANSCENDENTAL by James Gunn (book review by Joe Karpierz)
Correction (a Little Late) (letter of comment
by Peter Rubinstein)
This Week's Reading (THE APES OF WRATH and LITTLE BIG MAN)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Mr. Hublot
The eleven-minute film "Mr. Hublot" is sort of futuristic and at
the same time steam-punky. The film won the Academy Award for the
Best Animated Short Film. It is on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT3C2kdMHOs
==================================================================
TOPIC: Back Issues of STARLOG Magazine Now Available On-Line
==================================================================
TOPIC: Power (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Stan Lee has been quoted as saying "with great power comes great
responsibility." That is probably a true statement, but it is a
bad way of thinking. It leaves too many people off the hook. I
would say with *any* power comes great responsibility.
By the way Stan Lee does not know where he got it, but it is an old
sentiment. Luke 12:48 says "From the one who has been entrusted
with much, much more will be asked." William Lamb claimed it was a
cliche "that the possession of great power necessarily implies
great responsibility."
And somehow I think that much is entrusted to and little is asked
of Congress. Well maybe it is asked, but it is not returned.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: How to Sell the "Science in the Capital" Series (comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
I think Kim Stanley Robinson and Bantam are missing a bet by not
re-issuing the "Science in the Capital" series (FORTY SIGNS OF
RAIN, FIFTY DEGREES BELOW, and SIXTY DAYS AND COUNTING) in shiny
black covers with silver-gray lettering and a picture of a face
mask on them. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Provincial Numbers (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I recently wrote a column about how ego-crushingly big the universe
is. Our lifetimes are really short when we talk about the length
of time it would take just to get to the very next star over. And
that is just the nearest star outside our solar system. If you go
to the size of universe it is "mind-bogglingly big," as they say in
A HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. Just to realize how big the
universe is crushes ones ego. Could there be anything so big it
makes the universe small by comparison? There sure is. Number is
bigger. And nobody comprehends number. Not really.
"What is he on about?" I hear you asking. The Human Race cannot
comprehend how big the concept of number is. A number line is
infinitely long in both directions and the human race can only
consider those tiny numbers that are packed really tight around
zero. Get a little distance away from zero and there are numbers
too large to have ever been thought of. Nobody has ever had the
time to just think about numbers that are this big. And yet these
numbers are small too.
Here, take the largest number you have ever thought of. No, take
the largest number the human species has ever thought of. I mean
it is something bigger than taking a billion to the power of the
number of particles in our universe. You probably think that is a
really big number. Right? Wrong. Put two to that power and you
will get a number so much bigger that make it look negligibly tiny
by comparison. Not just tiny, it will be miniscule. Take that
largest number that a human has ever conceived and put two to that
power. We have just conceived of a number so big that that biggest
number ever previously conceived is negligibly small by comparison.
Congratulations. You might want to tell Guinness. You have
created a new largest number for the human race. Hold it. Let me
take your number and put a factorial sign after it. Now I have a
much bigger number than yours. Ah, well. Fame is fleeting.
Forget that call to Guinness.
Compared to what numbers are really out there we have only
conceived of the smallest numbers. The ones that pack themselves
all crowded around zero.
Question: Well, how big is the average positive integer? Let's
take that largest number mankind has ever thought of until you just
did. Call it K. You think it was large? It is just of average
size for the integers in the interval from 0 to 2K. It is below
average for the numbers from 0 to 4k. There are a whole lot more
and bigger integers further out on the number line. In the
interval from 0 to 2^(2K) it is a really tiny number and much
smaller than average. If we say that the average integer has any
finite size we immediately can show that is absurd. The average
size of a positive integer is infinite. But we cannot conceive of
any numbers but those glommed up close to zero. No human has ever
used what is really a large number. Or even considered it.
We sort of know some integers. I know what two is. Two is the
number of ears I have. Perhaps we even understand some rational
numbers, some fractions. If I have a candy bar and I give half to
you I have half as much as I had before. I can sort of picture a
half.
But we don't even really know any irrational numbers. Not really.
We know they exist, but we cannot really know them other than by
what they do. What is the square root of two really? Well I am
fairly sure there is a number out there that if I multiply it by
itself I will get two. That is root two. That is not knowing it
like I knew the number of ears I have. I have a sort of article of
faith that that positive number is out there somewhere that if we
multiply it by itself we get two. We can sort of picture the
relation between the length of a side of a square and a diagonal.
That is about as close as we can get to understanding the square
root of two.
Now there are so many rational numbers out there we say they are
infinite. But we can put all the rational numbers in a list. Or
at least we can create a rule for where numbers will go on the list
and can be assured every rational number can be on the list
someplace. It is an infinitely long list, but every rational
number is in there some place.
But there are so many irrational numbers out there that we cannot
put them in a list so that every one has a place in the list. We
need a higher order of infinity to say how many there are. But now
here's the thing. We have only countably infinite possible ways to
refer to an irrational number. The vast majority of numbers out
there we cannot possibly describe. There are some irrational
numbers out there we can completely describe with a finite string
of letters. Pi is sort of like that. I mean we know pi is
3.14159... We could say
pi = 3 + 1/10 + 4/100 + 1/1000 + ...
But the problem comes with the "..." We quickly run out of
numerators and do not know how to finish the expression. Indeed we
can never finish the expression that way.
Actually there is way to express pi uniquely with a finite number
of characters. Pi is:
4*(1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 + ...)
I don't need a whole lot of imagination to know what to do with the
"..."
So pi really is cooperative after a fashion. We really could list
all the numbers we can uniquely express with a finite number of
characters. And we just showed that pi would be on that list.
The vast majority of numbers have no names and no ways to be
expressed with a finite number of characters. We just deal with
the easiest 0% of numbers we can describe. We deal with the super-
super-super-miniscule set of numbers that pack in around zero and
are really, really, really easy to express. There are a lot of
great things about being an astronomer or a mathematician. But you
need a strong ego. If you step back and really look at our place
in all this it really kicks your ego in the slats. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: TRANSCENDENTAL by James Gunn (copyright 2013, Tor, ISBN 978-
0-7653-3501-2, e-book ISBN 978-1-4668-2081-4) (book review by Joe
Karpierz)
James Gunn is quite the standout in science fiction. He's a SFWA
Grand Master, a Hugo Award winner, and is a past president of SFWA,
among other things (this information from the "About the Author" at
the end of the book). And yet, I'd never read anything written by
Gunn up until now. I'd heard some good things about this book, and
a few things that piqued my curiosity. Since the Hugo nominating
period is open, I thought I'd pick up this 2013 book and give it a
try, with the idea of nominating it if I thought it was worthy of
it. We'll get back to that.
Riley, our protagonist, for want of a better term, is at a
spaceport waiting to take a space elevator up to a ship to travel
on a mission to find the Transcendental Machine, device that will
transform anyone who enters it. The ship is the Geoffrey, a vessel
that is in poor shape and that has a ragtag, sloppy crew. Riley
knows the captain from past adventures in the military. It seems
there was a war in the not too distant past that started when
humans first ventured into intergalactic space, thus upsetting the
balance of nature, as the existing Galactics don't like change, and
certainly not due to those upstart humans. This is a trope we've
seen numerous times in the past, and are likely to see again any
number of times in the future. In any event, Riley is just one of
a variety of species on the elevator heading for the ship. There
is only one other human--other than the ship's crew--involved in
this mission, the mysterious woman named Asha.
Riley, and apparently all the rest of the passengers, have a
"pedia", a computer-like device, implanted in them, which allows
them to communicate and, presumably (given the name) know things.
Riley's pedia is a bit nasty. It was implanted in him by a
mysterious agency which wants him to find out everything he can
about the Transcendental Machine, and while he's at it, kill The
Prophet, who may or may not be on board the Geoffrey and who is the
leader of a cult who is spreading the word about this machine. The
Galactics really don't want this machine around. It will upset the
balance of power and change things, and that just won't do.
The story, then, is about journeys. On the surface, it is about
the journey to find the Transcendental Machine in some distant part
of the galaxy. Below the surface, however, it is a story about the
journey to discover oneself amidst the chaos that is the galactic
culture. Like Hyperion (and of course the ultimate source before
that, The Canterbury Tales), each passenger tells its tale (because
it is not easy to determine whether some of these things are male
or female, and just what do you make of a coffin shaped alien
anyway?) and how it came to be here. In the end, it turns out that
each of them have an agenda that has been given to them to follow,
and it basically comes down to killing The Prophet and stopping the
pilgrimage, for that is what it truly is, from getting to the
machine.
So, which is more important, the journey or what is at the end of
it? Clearly, I think, Gunn is telling us that the journey is what
is important, because we get a devil of a surprise at the end. And
that, above all things, is what disappointed me about this book.
To be sure, this book is old school, written by one of the Grand
Masters of the field who knows all about old school. It's very
starkly written--there is no flowery prose, no complex character
development (even with each character telling its story), no
complicated plotline to untangle at the end. And, something that
is even more different from books today, not everything is
explained. There are many things left unsaid, many things left
unexplained. I'm really okay with that--after all, I love 2001: A
Space Odyssey, which is one of the great stories of all time
without having to explain everything. I know folks are not used to
not having everything laid out for them. But that's not what this
story is about. And that's fine. But the ending shook me up
pretty badly in that I felt it was something of a cheat. I wanted
more than that. It seemed we were heading for something
monumental, but we didn't get it. And I was disappointed.
My initial reaction was that this was an awful book, based on the
ending alone. That is, of course, blatantly unfair. However, to
get back to that bit about a Hugo nomination. I don't know. I'm
going to have to think about it for a while. My current feeling is
that even if it gets nominated it won't have much of a chance of
winning. Your mileage may vary. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Correction (a Little Late) (letter of comment by Peter
Rubinstein)
In response to Mark's TCM picks for March in the 02/28/14 issue of
the MT VOID, Peter Rubinstein writes:
Actually, around here, "the Mercenary" is being shown at 12:30 AM
on Friday March 7, rather than 10:30 PM. Possibly a typo? [-pr]
Evelyn responds:
Looks like it might have been. It's always worthwhile to re-check
the times, as TCM often reschedules things. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE APES OF WRATH edited by Richard Klaw (ISBN 978-1-61696-085-8)
is an anthology of fiction and non-fiction about apes. Unlike a
lot of theme anthologies, this is not a collection of new stories
specifically written for it (which leads to variable quality), or
just fiction. Rather, it includes stories from as early as the
19th century (Gustave Flaubert and Edgar Allan Poe), through early
20th century (Franz Kafka, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Clark Ashton
Smith), up until the present (with the Scott Cupp story being the
only written specifically for the anthology). Along the way are
some well-known and not-so-well-known stories, including a couple
of Nebula-award-nominated stories. Also included as essays about
apes in literature and apes in the cinema, with a special essay on
actors who acted in gorilla suits.
One rarely sees this sort of anthology any more. Whether themed or
unthemed, most anthologies these days seem to consist of all-new
stories, or of stories from just the previous year. There are a
few that cover a long period of time, but they tend to be of the
"Significant Sense of Wonder Stories", or something similarly
vague. I do not know why one does not see more like this--maybe
because by this point most topics have too many stories to pick
from. I mean, it would be hard to put out an anthology of time
travel stories, because ironically there are too many to choose
from, and hence too many that are worthy. But with a narrower
focus, Klaw has come up with a reasonable assortment.
Something I read made me decide to read LITTLE BIG MAN by Thomas
Berger (ISBN 978-0-385-29829-2). I have seen the movie, of course,
but had never read the book. It is clearly Berger's best-known
work, since the back blurb of the 1989 "Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
Edition" listing Berger's works lists only works much less well-
known than this. Such is the effect of Hollywood.
The description of life in the West during the second half of the
19th century are well-researched and reasonably accurate. However,
Berger does "shrink" the West, or at least rely on a lot of
coincidences, to have the protagonist not only repeatedly run into
people from his past, but also meet just about everyone well-known
in the West: Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, and George Armstrong
Custer, among others. (I am reminded of alternate history novels,
where we keep running into characters who are the analogues of
famous people from our world. But in the alternate history novels,
it is clearly the author's choice to include these people, while in
LITTLE BIG MAN, the conceit is that the protagonist is actually
meeting all these people.)
Undoubtedly some will say that Berger is too politically correct in
praising the Indians and criticizing the white people, but in fact
both sides come in for a lot of criticism and only some faint
praise. Berger seems to take a somewhat relativistic view, that
each side is doing right based on their perceptions of the
universe. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The girl was beheaded, chopped into pieces and
placed in a trunk but was not interfered with.
--Newspaper Report