THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/15/10 -- Vol. 29, No. 16, Whole Number 1619
Frick: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Frack: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
M. C. Escher *and* Pulp Illustration (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Roy Ward Baker, R.I.P. (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Discussion of Space Exploration and the Extinction of the
Human Race (comments by Tom Russell and Mark R. Leeper)
Optical Illusions (letters of comment by Stephen Milton,
voxwoman, Jo Paltin, Dave Anolick, Frank Leisti,
Charles Harris, and Peter Rubinstein)
This Week's Reading (THE DISPOSSESSED) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: M. C. Escher *and* Pulp Illustration (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
The New Britain [Connecticut] Museum of American Art currently has
two exhibits of interest to science fiction fans: "M. C. Escher:
Impossible Reality", which runs through November 14, 2010, and
selections from The Robert Lesser Collection of Pulp Art (end date
unspecified--it may be permanent). If you can't make it, the
latter can be viewed in part at http://tinyurl.com/yzhea4p,
although the on-line slide show has no text describing the works or
artists. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Roy Ward Baker, R.I.P. (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Roy Ward Baker died October 5. Baker was the little known director
of A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958), and excellent film on the sinking of
the Titanic. Later in his career he directed for Hammer including
THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970) and SCARS OF DRACULA (1970). He also
directed for Hammer what I personally consider the best science
fiction film ever made QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1968) (a.k.a FIVE
MILLION YEARS TO EARTH). Other films he directed include ASYLUM
(1972) and VAULT OF HORROR (1973) for Amicus. He also directed
episodes for several popular television programs like "The
Avengers" and "The Saint". [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Discussion of Space Exploration and the Extinction of the
Human Race (comments by Tom Russell and Mark R. Leeper)
This piece did not start out as a weekly editorial. I received
this comment from frequent contributor Tom Russell and then I
commented right back at him. But I think that the issues raised go
beyond what we would put obscurely in a letter-of-comment column.
I will make this exchange this week's editorial. This is what Tom
wrote:
Jesus Christ Avatar
In a recent issue of MT VOID Mark commented on the debate in the
science community over manned space flight vs. unmanned space
probes. Stephen Hawking wrote that mankind needs to be able to
move out beyond Earth in order to survive; others note the great
difficulty and expense of manned space flight.
Years ago I read an article about the terrible fate of the people
of Easter Island. The island was a lush paradise when they first
arrived, but as their population increased they consumed everything
on the island. In the end all the trees were gone, leaving them
nothing with which to build boats to escape the paradise they had
squandered.
Also in MT VOID, Mark commented on the movie SOYLENT GREEN. In
1973 we didn't know how easily we might kill the oceans. Scary:
Our grandchildren may live to see SOYLENT GREEN come true.
Why is it we care about the future of humankind?
If life started when a random bolt of lightning struck a random
puddle containing a random mix of chemicals dropped to Earth by one
or more randomly-passing comets, and life has no purpose, and
humans are the result of random mutations of that early life form,
and the universe doesn't care if we exist or not, then what reason
then can be given for trying to perpetuate us? We all are good-
for-nothing in the grandest possible sense. Why, then, do we care
about the future of humankind? Why spend resources on manned space
flight to prepare to escape from the Earth?
Why should we try to learn about the universe?
If the universe started as a random burp of total nothingness - not
even starting from an empty void - and is perhaps one of countless
other universes each with its own space and time and laws of
physics, without any cause-and-effect relationship with each other
or anything else, if there indeed is anything else, which we can't
possibly know, and without any design or any meaning to its
existence, then surely there is no "Mind of God" (as Stephen
Hawking once contemplated) or any ultimate truth or beauty to be
learned by figuring it (our universe) out. What reason then can be
given for exploring it at all? Why use our resources to send
probes out into the unknown? There is, literally and completely,
nothing to be learned.
It would be funny if the Theory of Everything turned out to be
Murphy's Law. That certainly seems to be what science is telling
us now. It's the random mutations of genes - things going wrong -
that is the engine of evolution. The universe that we live in has
doomed mankind, in fact, everything in it, to an ultimate and total
extinction - the grandest of all instances of Murphy's Law.
Perhaps the story of Noah gives us the answer to the manned-vs.-
unmanned debate: we need both. Noah built an ark to escape the
doomed Earth; he used doves (unmanned probes) to learn where to go
with the ark. We're going to need a bigger boat.
If, as science now tells us, our universe has doomed humankind,
then our only hope for ultimate survival is to create other
universes suitable for humankind, and to establish human life in
those Edens. This would require technology far beyond "manned" or
"unmanned" space flight. Further, we need to have some way of
knowing we have succeeded, that is, we need to know that the beings
we created, even if they happen to have blue skin, are truly a
continuation of humankind - created in our own image. We must be
able to send someone's soul to live within the body of one of those
beings, to truly become one of those beings, and to then come back
to let us know that our creation is good. Jesus Christ avatar, do
you think they're what we hope they are?
But even having done all that - having become as gods - we would
still not know why we exist. Perhaps we are only here because all
the universe is a stage and all men and women are merely players.
Or perhaps we're avatars, with our entrances and exits? Let's hope
our movie isn't as terrible as Avatar. It couldn't be; we're in
11D.
- Tom Russell
This is my response:
I have read your essay and I can see we see things very
differently. Let me examine some of the questions you raise and
give my own answers.
IS LIFE WITHOUT PURPOSE?
You talk about whether what is life is without purpose and without
meaning. Generally people who talk about a purpose to life
independent of the individual are couching it in theological terms.
We give our own lives purpose ourselves. Whether there is purpose
beyond that really is a function of your theological conclusions.
I suppose--being an agnostic on whether there is a God--I have to
be equally agnostic about whether there is purpose to life beyond
what we give it ourselves. However, just making the world work as
well as I can manage to make it work is about all the purpose I can
handle myself. That is a purpose that is big enough and noble
enough for me. As for meaning, I am more than a step behind you.
I not only do not know the meaning of life, I don't know what it
would mean for something to be "a meaning of life." That phrase
means little to me. All I know is that Monty Python gave us a bait
and switch and never told us the meaning of life.
IS IT BECOMING TOO EXPENSIVE TO EXPLORE SPACE?
The Easter Island analogy for space travel is a definite concern.
It may already be too expensive to explore much of our solar
system, particularly with our economy as weak and fragile as it is
these days. Energy is getting more expensive with time, certainly.
On the other hand, our NASA budget is really a very tiny part of
our national budget. Someone recently described it as being as
small as a rounding error in the Federal budget. On the other hand
it is a highly visible expense and that makes it an easy target for
cuts. There is also the possibility that in the future space
exploration could get cheaper. For example, if the space elevator
is built or some other as yet undreamed of approach is implemented
it could actually get cheaper in the future to send people into
space.
WHY SHOULD WE PERPETUATE THE HUMAN RACE? WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND?
The alternative is extinction. There are two aspects of human
extinction that need to be considered. One is that the human race
would have to die, and the second is that the human race would have
to be dead. Let me discuss the second first.
The human race being dead is bad for a number of reasons. Humans
have a natural urge and instinct to extend their line and have
influence into the future. We do not want to feel that after we
went through all the pain and expense of living nothing is left
behind. And many people feel the best thing to leave behind is
living vessels of their DNA in the form of descendents. I think I
may feel the urge to extend my line less than most people have, but
draw what conclusions you will from the fact that Evelyn and I have
no children. Our DNA combinations end with us. (Shoot, and it was
really good DNA we had too--really primo stuff.) But as to whether
continuing our existence is important consider the human race has
created works of art that will almost certainly go unappreciated
after there are no longer humans. Without humans around to
appreciate it, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is just paint.
On the other hand alien races just might appreciate some of our
contributions. We are a race that proved the Poincare Conjecture
(and immodestly I add we are the race who discovered the Leeper P-
Function http://leepers.us/p_function.pdf). Mathematical results
we have discovered very possibly would have relevance to other
races beyond planet Earth. One of the great attractions to
mathematics for me is its (probably) literal universality. The
appreciation of the Sistine Chapel is very human-specific while the
establishment of truth of the Poincare Conjecture is not at all
human-specific. The comprehension of the truth of the Poincare
Conjecture may be limited to humans for now, but it would be just
as true on alien planets. Mathematical truth has more potential to
be transferrable to alien races than does art.
However being dead is just one of several disadvantages to dying.
A most significant disadvantage to dying is the pain of death. And
the pains of dying for the human race are not pretty much analogous
to the pains of dying for the individual. There are questions of
how long the race would know in advance that it is dying, how
physically painful the dying process would be. Death could come to
the human race in an instant without any advance warning. A
supernova could send a cosmic blast of gamma radiation traveling at
the speed of light that would kill everyone in an instant. All
life on the planet could be dead too fast for it even to register
as pain. As bad as that sounds, it is a really merciful way to go.
See http://tinyurl.com/gamma-burst.
A much slower and more painful death would come from losing the
phytoplankton in the seas. Lose the phytoplankton and we probably
would starve the oceans and then starve ourselves.
See http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/29-4.
If the food runs out there would very likely be slow starvation,
but we would very likely speed things up with food wars. I prefer
the gamma burst and no blindfold, thank you.
IF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE IS RANDOM, THEN IS STUDYING THE UNIVERSE
POINTLESS?
I do not see why you think that if like has no a priori "meaning"
than there is no reason to study and understand the universe. We
are here in the middle of this infinite machine and I can think of
very little that is a better purpose to life than to understand the
machine. You seem to be saying that you have a favorite myth for
how it all came together and you want what is observed to conform
to that myth. You seem to feel that if it did not have your idea
of "meaning" then it is pointless to study. I would say it is
fascinating to study no matter what its origins were. And the more
we can deduce about its nature and its origins the more beautiful
it becomes.
The universe does not need a meaning to be beautiful in itself and
noble to try to understand. It is a marvelous and beautiful
mechanism in itself regardless of how it came together. Part of
the beauty is its mystery. I strongly suspect that the universe's
true origins are more wondrous than any creation myth.
ONE LAST POINT
You suggest science is telling us that the universe has doomed
mankind. Mankind may be dooming mankind, but the universe as a
whole is not.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Optical Illusions (letters of comment by Stephen Milton,
voxwoman, Jo Paltin, Dave Anolick, Frank Leisti, Charles Harris,
and Peter Rubinstein)
In response to Mark's question about the optical illusion in the
10/08/10 issue of the MT VOID, we got comments from Stephen Milton,
Wendy Sheridan(?) (voxwoman), Jo Paltin, Dave Anolick, Frank Leisti,
and Charles Harris. Peter Rubinstein sent the explanation of the
originator (Jeremy Hinton), which can be found at
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/col_lilacChaser/index.html.
Charlie Harris says:
Actually, this is just a clever restaging of one of the classic
visual illusions: the negative color afterimage. If you stare at a
colored area for a while, then look at a neutral area (white or
gray), you'll see the complementary color (and the complementary
lightness--dark for light or vice versa). Explanations have invoked
bleaching of color-sensitive photopigments in the eye, inhibition
in the visual system, and adjustable gain or setpoint in neural
opponent processes.
Negative afterimages are usually demonstrated with a simple
stationary image. A Google Images search for "afterimage" turns up
a zillion demos. You voluntarily move your eyes from the colored
to the neutral area.
In the illusion that you cite, the gray area replaces the colored
one for you, one disk at a time (also giving the illusion of
motion). Each time a pink disk blinks off, the green afterimage
becomes visible on the gray background. The green is too pale to
outweigh the pink, but if you simply shift your gaze, you'll see
the green afterimages of the whole flock of pink disks.
My erstwhile Bell Labs colleague George Sperling did a quantitative
study of a single-disk version. He was able to produce an even
more striking illusion, by alternating colored and neutral at
certain rates:
"[A] hand holding a (green) dollar bill appears as a pale green
hand holding a pink bill.... If the presentation is recycled
several times a second, a 'continuous,' color-reversed, flickering
image is seen."
Sperling, G. (1960). Negative afterimage without prior positive
image. Science, 131, 1613-1614.
[-ch]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The science fiction book discussion group book for September was
THE DISPOSSESSED by Ursula K. LeGuin (ISBN 978-0-061-05488-4). (A
side note: This group is now meeting bi-monthly, alternating with
the science book discussion group, since the two groups are
basically all the same people.) The basic story of THE
DISPOSSESSED is probably familiar to most science fiction readers:
Two hundred years before the time of the novel, a group of
anarchists left Urras for its moon (really a twin planet) Anarres
to found an anarchist society. Both sides agreed to isolation, and
only now is contact re-established. Shevek is a mathematician on
Anarres where, although everyone praises the principles of total
personal liberty espoused in their society, the actual society is
far more constrained, not by laws, but by tradition and custom.
Unable to publish his radical theories about time, Shevek decides
to go to the capitalist society on Urras. (There is also a Marxist
society on Urras, as well as various "Third World" countries.
Urras is very much a copy of 1970s Earth.) Surprise, surprise,
this is no Paradise either.
Anyway, what struck me was how similar Anarres seemed to North
Korea as described in Barbara Demick's NOTHING TO ENVY. Life is
always fairly Spartan on Anarres due to minimal natural resources,
but a famine strains it even more. There is a "cult of the hero",
though it is a heroine (Odo) and she is already dead. Everyone
spouts slogans, the more so when conditions are hard. And so on.
And underlying it all is the fact that the reality not only fails
to live up to the theory, but that the people living in it don't
realize this. (ANIMAL FARM is a more familiar literary example.)
The problem with THE DISSPOSSESSED, alas, is that LeGuin is not
willing to let the reader draw their own conclusions about this,
but instead has the characters lecturing each other about all this.
(The introduction of a Terran ambassador--someone unfamiliar with
either Anarres or Urras--at the end provides even more opportunity
for this.) [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
That I could clamber to the frozen moon
And draw the ladder after me.
-- Author Unknown