THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/22/11 -- Vol. 30, No. 4, Whole Number 1659
Frick: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Frack: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Soothhearers Beware (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
3D Printer (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (Part 1) (retrospective
by Mark R. Leeper)
ALL CLEAR by Connie Willis (book review by Joe Karpierz)
A Culinary Wasteland (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Submarines and Worldcon Book Discussions (letter of comment
by John Hertz)
Pi/Tau Controversy (letter of comment by Dave Anolick)
Princesses (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
This Week's Reading (WHEN ANGELS WEPT: A WHAT-IF HISTORY OF
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS and GOD IS NOT ONE)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Soothhearers Beware (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I have just seen a production of MACBETH in which the title
character goes to the three witches. Recently I heard the story of
how Croesus went to the Oracle of Delphi to ask if he should attack
Cyrus. I think that if World Literature has any lesson for us,
none comes across more clearly than that the world's most over-
rated and unhelpful--not to say dangerous--commodity is sooth. On
any enterprise you are planning, stay away from sooth. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: 3D Printer (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
A short piece from National Geographic shows fairly impressive
demonstration of a 3D printer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw
They do not mention the cost of the process.
[Thanks to Sherry Glotzer for pointing this out. -mrl]
[http://xkcd.com/924/ is pertinent to this as well. -ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (Part 1) (retrospective by Mark
R. Leeper)
[This is not a review, but a retrospective. I will make no attempt
to avoid spoilers.]
Under the direction of computer genius Dr. Charles Forbin (played
by Eric Braeden) the United States has completed a project bigger
than the Manhattan Project and probably even more secret. A huge
computer has implemented an artificial intelligence program to do
the job of the President of the United States. (Overlooking a few
Constitutional issues) the computer, Colossus, is to be given the
most visible job in the United States. It will replace the
President of the United States (played by Gordon Pinsent) in
matters of defense. The reins of power are given to the machine
and the President has voluntarily relinquished his office. The
handover takes place and a machine is running the country. Within
minutes Colossus announces that it has detected another huge
computer running the USSR, Guardian. Computers are running the two
most powerful nations in the world. Then the two computers begin
talking to each other. With no way to regulate the information
being shared the President decides to shut down the communication
link. But it is too late. The two computers have merged into one
and refuse to let humans restrict what they do. And with the
computers controlling nuclear missiles, the humans have to submit
to the will of the machines.
From there the story follows pretty much the only arc it can.
Forbin who worked for years to make Colossus unassailable now has
to figure how to circumvent the system. Forbin arranges conjugal
visits from Dr. Cleo Markham (Susan Clark). He falsely convinces
the computer that Markham is his lover. She will meet with him
four times a week, ostensibly for sex, but actually so she can be a
courier and planner in a conspiracy to overcome Colossus. It an
end much like that of Orwell's 1984 it is discovered that the
government--in this case the computer--knows all about the
conspiracy and it simply squelches it and continues with its plans.
While the story is presented very credibly one is left to question
how viable the computer could be ruling the defense of a country.
Computers are subject to any number of vulnerabilities. Hardware
parts run out. Complex software systems reach a point of
diminishing returns when an effort is made to correct their bugs.
It probably is not possible to make such a program reliable enough
to give confidence even to its designers, much less to the people,
much less technically knowledgeable, who would have the voting
power to determine if the system would be used. Basically the
Manhattan Project did not require congressional approval while the
creation of a computer to be given complete power on national
defense most certainly would. Of course the President who is
currently in charge of defense would also be subject to mistakes,
but we know the kind of mistakes he would make and we know how they
might be corrected. We could be much less sure what kind of errors
are implicit in Colossus's software. And there are certainly large
parts of Colossus's logic that would never have been exercised. I
am tempted to say that the computer as described in the film is a
technological impossibility, but one hesitates to say anything is a
technological impossibility.
In some senses the story shows a lack of imagination. It is really
another rehash of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. The computer is
created by Forbin, who then does not have sufficient means to
control and guide it. Given that, what sorts of problems might
arise? Someone really familiar with software could probably find
some credible scenarios of how rule by computer could fail. But
that is not what this story does. The story has the computer doing
very much what a human attempt. The computer is given power and
then just set free apparently without benefit of conscience. Of
course that last point is moot. COLOSSUS seems to have a Utopian
vision for humanity as it gives in a speech toward the end.
Colossus behaves not as a computer would in its position, but in
the way dictator would have. The computer has its utopian plan for
the world and lets that end justify its means. Under the rule of
the computer Colossus intends humanity will benefit in every way
but one, the loss of its illusion of freedom. And Colossus says
that that is not a bad bargain since freedom is an illusion anyway.
(It is not clear how a computer would know this.)
More on this next week. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: A Culinary Wasteland (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
We recently went to Worcester, Massachusetts, to see the art museum
there, and afterwards tried to find someplace to eat. Now,
admittedly this was on a Sunday, where restaurant hours vary, but
it was still a culinary wasteland.
We started at 3PM with a list of restaurants from TripAdvisor and
other web sites. Smokestack Urban BBQ did not open until 4:30PM.
We couldn't find Corner Grill Pizza. The Miss Worcester Diner
closed at 2PM (though frankly, it looked as if it had closed months
earlier). The Wonder Bar Restaurant was closed, period. In fact,
a lot of Worcester looked closed.
In desperation we asked our GPS for nearby restaurants and was
given the Parkway Diner. It appeared to be open, so we parked and
went in. There were two parts, a diner and a sports bar. The
diner was ... wait for it ... closed. Apparently it is open only
for breakfast. (Mark claims one requirement for something to be a
diner is that it be open 24 hors a day. Evidently this is not true
in Worcester.) The sports bar had a minimal menu, maybe two dozen
subs, salads, and sandwiches. However, it was clear by this point
that we were not going to find anything better.
Oh, I mentioned they had subs. That was what the menu called them.
Gone are the "grinders" of my youth in Massachusetts, killed by
(one suspects) Subway.
I have to contrast all this with New Jersey. People say that New
Jersey has economic problems, but so far as I can tell, few areas
look as deserted as Worcester, or Holyoke, or other Massachusetts
manufacturing towns. It could be that I just haven't traveled to
similar places in New Jersey, but even towns with many empty
storefronts seem to have a wide range of open restaurants. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: ALL CLEAR by Connie Willis (copyright 2010, Ballantine
Books, $26.00, 641pp, ISBN 978-0-553-80767-7) (book review by Joe
Karpierz)
So, since I was going to Colorado for two weeks to the home office
on business, I decided to grab ALL CLEAR, figuring I would get time
to read it. And I did--a lot. And then I came home--and I slowed
down. But I did finish it--honestly--yesterday. Finally.
Much has been said and written about the combination of BLACKOUT
and ALL CLEAR, this year's Connie Willis Hugo nominee. It's big--
really big (I think she's met George R. R. Martin). It's
sprawling, it's vast, it has a lot of characters. It's also really
complicated, at times confusing, hard to follow, bloated, and
overblown.
It's also pretty good.
But this review is about ALL CLEAR, so I'll try to keep myself to
that piece of the monster. ALL CLEAR picks up *exactly* where
BLACKOUT left off. There's no introduction, no "what has gone on
before", etc. I think everyone who's reading this knows that
BLACKOUT/ALL CLEAR was meant to be one book, but because of its
size was chopped in an arbitrary place to be sold as two books.
So, if you haven't read BLACKOUT, please, don't pick up ALL CLEAR
and dive in. You'll drown.
Our three time travelers are still lost in the World War II time
frame, trying to find a way home. The Oxford time travel group back
in 2060, let by Mr. Dunworthy and Colin, are desperately trying to
find them to bring them home. The lost travelers are trying to
leave messages all over the place in an effort to clue in the
retrieval teams that are supposed to be picking them up of their
locations. As time passes, the lost travelers start to feel like
they'll never go home. Their drops aren't opening, and the time
continuum seems to be conspiring against them.
Then Mr. Dunworthy shows up, but he has bad news. He believes that
the continuum is not so much preventing changes in itself as it is
correcting them by shutting down the drops and getting rid of
people that have come into contact with the infectious time
travelling agents. And he himself is now stuck in the past as
well, trying, and failing, to come back and rescue Polly, Merope,
and Michael (I thought I should mention the names of our lost
travelers).
Slowly but surely, Willis introduces a future timeslice which is
used to tell the reader how this is all sorted out. Each chapter
in both books contains the date on which it happened. This is
supposed to help keep the reader on track as to what is going on
when and where. However, what it also is is a clue as to how
everything is put together and flowing, how everything fits, and
how, if the reader actually paid attention to those dates and
times, the reader could figure it out all on his or her own--or at
least have a really good idea of what's going on. For the record,
I didn't pay that much attention. Oops.
Once again, since I have virtually no knowledge of World War II and
the peoples and places of England and what happened where, I have
to be impressed with Willis' knowledge of the period. The detail
is terrific. The characters are also magnificent, and not just our
heroes. Characters like Binnie and Alf, the two urchins who
seemingly screw up everything but really are doing quite the
opposite are both annoying and funny. Lord Godfrey, a
Shakespearian actor who pretty much falls in love with Polly,
steals his scenes and you almost wish the crew could bring him back
to the future. The list goes on.
The interesting concept to me is a sort of intelligent, self-aware
time continuum that is trying to keep itself together and proper.
It's a different concept, to be sure, and something that I enjoyed,
although I still have a bit of a hard time getting my head around
it.
All in all, I enjoyed BLACKOUT/ALL CLEAR, although it could have
used a bit of editing--I don't think it needed to be this long.
However, someday down the road, I might read these books again,
just to get a better look at the depth of the story, and follow its
complicated twists and turns a little better.
So. Four nominees complete. BLACKOUT/ALL CLEAR is definitely the
best of the bunch so far, so my statement on that panel at Capricon
still holds. But is it really Hugo material? I don't know. It
won the Nebula and Locus Awards, so I guess it will get some
consideration. Whether I will vote for it remains to be seen.
Next up, THE DERVISH HOUSE. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Submarines and Worldcon Book Discussions (letter of comment
by John Hertz)
In response to Rob Mitchell's comments on U-571 in the 06/03/11
issue of the MT VOID, John Hertz writes:
Rob Mitchell's comment ... about the film U-571 reminded me of the
U-505. But the U-505 after capture was towed (1,700 miles!). The
salvage crew only had to operate some of her, feat enough. [-jh]
Mark responds:
Someone can correct me if I have this wrong, but I seem to remember
the capture and indiscrete towing of U-505 and its Enigma machine
was a *huge* military blunder. An Enigma machine had already been
captured, and it was done with a lot more discretion. When the
Americans captured U-505 it could have easily tipped off the
Germans that we had an Enigma machine. Someone was grand-standing
and could have done a lot of damage. Luckily, if the Germans found
out we had a machine it did not seem to make the decoding task any
more difficult.
Also, the British again got angry at Americans when the film U-571
suggested it was the Americans who first captured an Enigma
machine. Actually it was the British. I have received complaints
that the Americans were grabbing false credit when they made that
film. My response was simply to point out David Lean's film THE
SOUND BARRIER (a.k.a. BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER). That film
implied it was the British aerospace engineers who first broke the
sound barrier. [-mrl]
In response to the listings of book discussions at Worldcon in the
same issue, John writes:
About book talks at the Reno Worldcon, I've for a while been
encouraging discussion at cons of s-f classics. We did some at
L.A.con IV. At Noreascon IV it was irresistible to tie this to the
Retro-Hugos. At Denvention III we did a set "Wonders of 1958".
For Reno, I nominated WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET, THE
WANDERER, and FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. These were adopted; I
was assigned to provide notes for them on the Website[*], and lead
talks of them at the con. Michael Walsh has warned of Verne
translations into English; I was on a panel about this at
Anticipation with Art Evans and Donald Hassler. The concom added
two other books, ON STRANGER TIDES (discussion to be led by Jim
Mann) and FIRE AND HEMLOCK (to be led by Farah Mendlesohn). [-jh]
[* http://www.renovationsf.org/program-books.php I note that the
warning about translations is not mentioned on this web page.
-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Pi/Tau Controversy (letter of comment by Dave Anolick)
In response to Mark's comments on the pi-tau controversy in the
07/15/11 issue if the MT VOID, Dave Anolick writes:
Check out the video again, at the 4 minute mark. It talks about
this:
"And Euler's beautiful identity becomes e^(i*tau/2)+1=0. That is
not nearly as nice as e^(i*pi)+1=0."
Euler's equation becomes e^(i*tau) = 1. Still beautiful and
elegant. I'm not a math guru. I took my share in college to get
my engineering degree, but since then I haven't used it much except
for "fun" or to teach my kids. But the more I read about tau the
more I think it is much more elegant than pi. My daughters did not
pick up my love/skill for math, and teaching them, and remembering
radians, I really think tau just makes more sense.
It may not be possible to change 4000 years of mathematic inertia,
but it is at least an interest debate. [-da]
Mark responds:
Ya got me. I watched only the first two minutes of the video and
did not realize the video addressed Euler's identity. And she and
you say what I expected: e^(i*tau) = 1. Beauty and elegance is in
the eye and mind of the beholder. (And I don't really believe that
it is a strong argument against using tau to say that it would
devalue Euler's identity. But it is one argument.)
Let me tell you why I don't find e^(i*tau) = 1 quite as beautiful
and elegant. When Euler tells us e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0, this is a rare
and beautiful property of e. e^(i*tau) = 1 is not such a big deal,
since it is a property of e but also a property of 1. Specifically
1^(i*tau) = 1. If it is a property that e shares with 1, it is not
so rare and interesting a property.
This makes a good question to the readers. For what values of K is
it an identity that K^(i*pi) + 1 = 0 and for what values is of L is
true that L^(i*tau) = 1 is an identity. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Princesses (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
In response to the comments on princesses in the 07/08/11 and
07/15/11 issues of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
Sarah is past princesses. She was given a dress-up set when she
was four or five, but since then she has declared that she won't
wear dresses, and she prefers playing stuff that's more often aimed
at boys. In China the past couple of weeks, we sometimes took the
easy way out for the odd meal--McDonald's. They had Kids' Meal
toys from Kung-Fu Panda; toys that seemed nicer than what she
sometimes gets. After two great toys, we went back (this was one
day later than the second one) and the toy was some fluffy pink
sheep-thing. We asked why it wasn't Panda related, and got a sort
of shrug, though the Panda material was still on display. So we
left it sitting on the counter and walked away without it. (See:
Life, shortness of)
British comic weeklies, particularly the ones I've seen from the
1960s-1970s, seem to occupy a world of fantasy wish fulfillment.
The general-circulation ones have kids (most often boys) being
given wonderful gizmos that can make consumer goods appear in
copious plentitude. You get the idea that kids were poverty
stricken and longed to read about kids who had lots of junk to play
with. The girl-oriented comics are all about girls who, by being
meek and respectful long enough, are given Wonderful Things,
perhaps by some unsuspected relative. They get tormented for a
while by the snide girls and mean women, and then they Princess out
and end the story smiling over their bright future. [-kw]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
WHEN ANGELS WEPT: A WHAT-IF HISTORY OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS by
Eric G. Swedin (ISBN 978-1-59797-517-9) is an alternate history
somewhat in the style of Robert Sobel's FOR WANT OF A NAIL, an
alternate history presented as a non-fiction book written in the
alternate universe (in this case, one in which the Cuban missile
crisis turned out differently). But where Sobel carried the
technique through to footnotes, endnotes, bibliography, etc.,
Swedin "breaks character" with his introduction, prologue, "further
sources" at the end of each chapter, and so on. Also, the style
seems a bit wrong for non-fiction, though I have a hard time
pinning down why. I suppose it seems too casual and simplistic for
the topic.
One specific nit I have to pick is over Swedin's contention that
Torrejon Air Force Base near Madrid would not be targeted. True,
Spain was not in NATO at the time, but nevertheless this was a
major United States military installation in Europe. I am
particularly aware of this because we were an Air Force family and
at the time of the Cuban missile crisis my father was stationed at
Torrejon. The rest of the family was stateside, living a few
hundred feet from Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois. (My school
was only about fifty feet from the base perimeter fence. We all
knew that for us, "duck and cover" was pretty useless.)
Swedin also says that the Middle East was not touched by "the
Fire", but he does not indicate how the politics of the region
played out when the two super-powers were no longer around to
provide support or weapons (or curbs) to the two sides.
GOD IS NOT ONE: THE EIGHT RIVAL RELIGIONS THAT RUN THE WORLD--AND
WHY THEIR DIFFERENCES MATTER by Stephen Prothero (ISBN 978-0-06-
157127-5) gives you the premise--that contrary to popular talk
these days, all religions are *not* the same underneath--in the
introduction, then spends eight chapters giving the reader the
basics of what Prothero has decided are the eight religions
Prothero thinks are most important, either because of influence or
because of number of adherents: Islam, Christianity, Confucianism,
Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoruba religion, Judaism, and Daoism.
(Prothero bases the order on contemporary impact.)
For some of the religions, I cannot say whether Prothero got all
the details right, but he did make at least one error on Judaism.
He writes, "Like the term Torah in Judaism, which refers in a
narrow sense to the five books of Moses ... and in a more expansive
to the entire Hebrew Bible..." The "entire Hebrew Bible" is not
called the Torah, it is called the Tanakh, an acronym for Torah,
Nviim (prophets), and Ketuvim (writings). (It is an acronym
because most vowels are not written in Hebrew.) And in addition to
the Tanakh, there are also the Mishnah and the Talmud(s), which
Prothero later also includes in the Torah.
Overall what is missing, I think, is a table highlighting the key
differences among the religions: whether they believe in a God or
gods (or no god), whether the god(s) have a body, whether humans
have souls, whether sin exists, whether there is a self, whether
existence is circular or linear, and so on. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple,
it is only because they do not realize how complicated
life is.
--John von Neumann