THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/12/12 -- Vol. 31, No. 15, Whole Number 1723


Fred: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Ethel: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
        Senior Dilemma (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        TCM October Redux (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        My Flange (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        Ellen Datlow on Anthologies and Publishing (report
                by Evelyn C. Leeper)
        Names (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
        SIMON & THE OAKS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
        What Is Science Fiction? (letters of comment
                by Paul S. R. Chisholm and Tim Bateman)
        Dictionaries (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
        Quatermass (letter of comment by Gregory Benford)
        This Week's Reading (UNDER THE HARROW and TAU ZERO)
                (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: Senior Dilemma (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

There are all kinds of special perks for seniors.  Movie theater
tickets cost less.  You can have the special seats on buses.
Restaurants have special cheap menus only for seniors.  It sounds
great.  Don't you believe it.  Society is set up to try to ensnare
you into becoming a senior.  All this special considerations is
just bait for the trap.  It's like taking the King's Shilling or
enlisting in the Army.  Once you become a senior there is no going
back.  When you are a senior you are always a senior.  One little
meal one day from the Senior Menu and they got you.  You are a
senior for life.  Or so my researches have led me to believe.

There is only one way out of that category and the cure is worse
than the ailment.  [-mrl]

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

TOPIC: TCM October Redux (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I hadn't noticed this before but Turner Class Movies has a nice set
of film notes for each of many of their major Halloween offerings.
Click on the following, and you will see a listing down the right
side of the page.  Just click on the movie you are interested in:
http://tinyurl.com/void-tcm1210.  [-mrl]

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

TOPIC: My Flange (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

In the Shelley poem of the same name, Ozymandias told the world to
look upon his empire and despair at its grandeur.  Yet even that
huge kingdom had fallen to dust.  Time and sand had reclaimed his
great empire.  It is true that one frequently cannot predict what
is permanent in the world and what only appears currently to be
permanent.

Aristotle looked at the force with which heavy objects try to fall
to the earth and how slowly a leaf or a feather fell.  He concluded
that the heavier an object was the faster it would fall to earth.
That remained the consensus of scientific thought until Galileo
demonstrated it was not true.

Scientific consensus in the time of the Greeks was that the Earth
was the center of the universe.  Nicolaus Copernicus presented a
theory that instead it was the Sun was the center of the universe.
That proved to not be true either, but it was more nearly correct
than the ideas that came before it. Our best ideas become dated and
eventually no longer true.

Newton did some very impressive work describing the behavior of
objects in motion.  He was very nearly correct.  His work stands,
but later discoveries showed it was not just exactly right either.
It was an oversimplification that worked only at low speeds.
Scientific consensus from Newton's time held that light had to move
through a medium.  It required the Michelson-Morley experiment to
show that could not be true.  Einstein showed that his formulae
were only approximately correct and did not work when very high
speeds were involved.

Scientific consensus is usually the best model of the universe that
fits the contemporary known facts.  But no scientist can ever be
certain that he actually knows the truth and that his work is
ultimately correct.

So that is the way it is with most science.  Newton had found what
he thought were scientific facts that later had to be corrected.
It is part of the scientific method that no finding is ever known
to be permanent.

And then there is Euclid.  Euclid proved theorems of geometry that
will never need correcting.  Euclid's five postulates really do
imply all that Euclid said they did.  (Yes, I am sure someone will
say that Euclid's geometry has been discredited by the existence of
non-Euclidean geometries.  Not so.  Non-Euclidian geometries are
perfectly consistent with Euclidean geometry.  They build from
different axioms and draw different conclusions.  Non-Euclidean
geometry only shows that if you change the original premise you
change the resulting conclusions.  Different premises lead to
different conclusions.)

Mathematics is a science, but it is the only science (unless Logic
is a science) that has real proof and in which your conclusions can
actually be permanent.  While Ozymandias's empire has crumbled and
fallen, Euclid's constructions are as fresh and strong today as
they were on the first day that Euclid stated them.  And on the
date when the universe meets its ultimate fate Euclid's discoveries
will remain true.  Now that is real construction.

I myself made a mathematical discovery.  In high school I asked
myself a high school math sort of question.  It took about two
years for me to answer it by discovering a certain peculiar
function.  Later, in college, one of the graduate school professors
(without telling me) gave his students the task of researching my
problem.  Who had worked on it before me and who was the first to
discover what I had discovered?  It turned out a famous
mathematician had invented the same *techniques* for defining a
function.  He never looked at my particular bizarre function.  My
discovery will always be true, and it will be *my* discovery.  The
proofs are not difficult and are correct to a high degree of
probability.  My discovery is secure and permanent like Euclid's
and a step better than Aristotle's and Newton's.  It will never
need correcting and will never be proven wrong.  That is a small
part of what makes mathematics a very special science.

It is really a very small thing I suppose, but I think I have added
to humanity's knowledge of mathematics.  I am the first to admit
that it is something small and perhaps not really important.  But
it is sort of like being the man who designed the flange that held
the valve on one of the tanks of liquid oxygen of Apollo 11.  It is
not a big contribution, but he was part of the Apollo 11
accomplishment.  Unlike Isaac Newton's excusably faulty work that
had to be fine-tuned, my discovery will be factual and be mine
forever.  I was the discoverer of a truth that will be true to the
end of the universe.  I can live with that even if it is a modest
accomplishment.

In mathematics a high school student can still make a discovery
that in some senses trumps Isaac Newton.  Newton's work was
incorrect and mine will be true to the end of the world. That is
not the only thing that I love about mathematics, but it is one
amazing aspect.  [-mrl]

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

TOPIC: Ellen Datlow on Anthologies and Publishing (report by Evelyn
C. Leeper)

This is a brief report on Ellen Datlow's talk to the Garden State
Speculative Fiction Writers at the Old Bridge Public Library last
Saturday.

Well, actually, it was more a question-and-answer session than a
talk.  Many of the questions were about the "mechanics" of
publishing anthologies: open vs. closed, reprint vs. original, etc.
A lot were specific to writers; I'll cover just the general
interest ones.

There was quite a bit of discussion of YA publishing.  It began
with someone asking what Datlow did if the stories submitted for an
anthology were too similar.  She gave the example of a recent
anthology she was working on.  When she started line editing it,
she realized that almost all of them were written from a first-
person point-of-view.  When she called one of the authors who had
yet to send his story in and asked what his point-of-view character
was, he said, "Getting a lot of first-person stories?"  It turns
out that the topic (post-apocalypse) was one a lot of authors were
writing for the YA market, and in that market, first-person stories
are the rule, not the exception.

As primarily a horror editor, this was new to Datlow, particularly
since when she was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, there was no
YA market.  Instead, there were children's books and adult's books.
Now the publishers are actually subdividing the YA market into
"Middle Grade" (eight to twelve years old), "Tweens" (twelve to
sixteen years old), and "Young Adult" (sixteen to nineteen years
old).  In all cases the story needs a young protagonist, of the age
of the target readership.

As for content, some swearing is allowed, sometimes, but no "F"
words.  There can also be some violence and some sex, depending on
the content.  Datlow pointed out that many of the complaints people
make about YA books are that they have rape, incest, and drugs.
And the response is that the books have these things, because many
of the readers are dealing with these problems.  She noted that she
saw the film ON THE BEACH as a pre-teen, and it scared her to
death.

There was also a discussion of the horror genre.  The
Garden State Speculative Fiction Writers used to be called the
Garden State Horror Writers, but many members wanted something less
limiting.  As it is, horror blends in with dark fantasy in one
direction and with thrillers in the other.  Datlow said it has been
primarily a marketing category and she was not sorry to see it go,
especially since the marketing resulted in covers that were
completely useless.  (I can remember the entire horror section in
bookstores being filled with books with embossed black covers with
and a splash of red and/or silver, often with a cutout,

Datlow said that she does not usually do open market for
anthologies unless some one else is willing to read the slush pile.
(While it is true that there may be a gem in the slush pile--
Nicholas DiChario's Hugo-nominated "Winterberry" was sent to Mike
Resnick for ALTERNATE KENNEDYS, which was not even an open-market
anthology--they are rare.

Datlow claimed it is less risky to take a flawed story for a
magazine than for an anthology, because there is much more room.
(But others claim that it is more risky, because if someone picks
up one issue and finds a story they don't like, they won't
subscribe, and if they are subscribers, they may not renew.)

Datlow said that there is some plan to use Kickstarter for her next
anthology.  It is a non-theme anthology and non-theme anthologies
don't generally do well.  Also, Kickstarter is too much work in
general, but she figured she would give it a try, for a non-theme
horror anthology.  To keep the costs down, she is paying six
cents/word (which is low).  [-ecl]

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

TOPIC: Names (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

I am listening to a podcast series, "The History of Rome", and I am
having problems keeping track of the emperors.  This is
understandable during the Third Century Crisis, when some emperors
lasted only six weeks and at times there might be several men
claiming simultaneously to be emperor.  But I am thinking of a
different problem.

I have no problem distinguishing between Andrew Jackson and Andrew
Johnson, or between James Madison and James Monroe, or even between
John Adams and John Quincy Adams.  In English history, I don't
confuse Richard II and Richard III, or Henry II and Henry VIII,
though I will admit that keeping all the Edwards and Georges
straight is a bit iffy.

But I just cannot sort out Septimus Severus, Severus Alexander, and
Severus II.  Maximinus Thrax, Maximianus Herculius, Maxentius,
Maximinus Daia, and Maximinus II are a total hash.  (And every time
I hear the name "Maximinus" I expect there to be a "Minimaxus" to
go with it.  Sorry--math joke.)  And I am sure that Constantine the
Great chose his sons' names (Constantine, Constantius, and
Constans) just so we would have to keep track of Constantius I
Chlorus, Constantius I through II, Constantine I through XI (or
possibly XIII--I haven't figured that part out yet), and Constans I
and II.

(I can manage the emperors from Augustus through Commodus with
little problem, and certain others stand out--for example,
Diocletian.  But when one looks at the names of the Eastern
emperors, one must conclude that they seemed to want to choose some
of the most complicated names, with given names, numbers, and
appellations or family names (or both).)  [-ecl]

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

TOPIC: SIMON & THE OAKS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: Two boys grow up in Sweden before and after WWII comes to
Europe.  Isak is Jewish and Simon discovers that he is adopted and
half Jewish.  Director Lisa Ohlin tells us about how that affects
the boys, but it also is very much about the relation of Simon to
the woman he as been brought up thinking was his mother.  SIMON &
THE OAKS is based on the novel, a bestseller in Europe, by Swedish
author Marianne Fredriksson.  Though the story does not seem to go
into new or even unexpected territory it is engrossing and
ultimately affecting.  Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

I particularly like films like SOLDIER OF ORANGE, HOPE AND GLORY,
or WINTER IN WARTIME or the TV series WISH ME LUCK that develop
characters and then show the affect that World War II had on them
individually and upon their relationships.  Both the horror of the
war and the prejudices fostered by the Holocaust change people in
these dramas.

Growing up in neutral Sweden, specifically in Gothenburg, during
the years just before and after World War II, Simon (played by
Jonatan S. Wachter and later by Bill Skarsgard) is protected from
the violence happening in much of Europe.  But the imaginative but
odd boy is lonely.  His best friend is an oak tree and he likes to
find pictures in clouds, behavior out of place in a family of farm
stock.  Simon's mother (Helen Sjoholm) is sympathetic, but his
father (Stefan Godicke) wants his son to toughen up.  Simon gets to
go to a forward-looking school in spite of his father's misgivings.
There Simon meets Isak (Karl Martin Eriksson and later Karl
Linnertorp) a Jewish boy from the same school.  The other boys
bully Isak for being Jewish, but Simon and Isak become fast friends
and bring together the two families.  Isak is the son of a
prosperous bookseller Ruben (Jan Josef Liefers) who takes a liking
to Simon.  Ruben sees potential in the boy and is interested in
helping the boy live up to his intellectual potential and want to
help Simon without alienating the boy's father.  Ruben had brought
his family to Sweden to flee the Nazis and their sympathizers, only
to face prejudice in Sweden.  And Simon finds out not only is he
adopted, but also that he himself is half Jewish.

One would think that the most dramatic years of this relationship
would be during the war years.  Director Lisa Ohlin tells the story
in segments separated and flanking the war, which eliminates the
need to show the actors playing the characters as boys transforming
into the different actors who play them as men.  Ohlin gives us a
view of the forces on the two youths and then tells what happens to
them as adults.  The war and the Holocaust hang over the story but
stay at arm's distance from the two.  We see more the affect on
Simon of his adoption and his actual parents.  Simon, who had
always been close to his stepmother, all the while thinking she was
his biological mother, searches for what his new attitude should be
to the woman who gave him loving care while all the while tacitly
leaving him deceived.

Dan Laustsen's photography captures those all too rare days of
really pleasant weather in Swedish summertime seasoning them with a
touch of fantasy in showing us the lonely boy who has befriended
trees and sees camels in the clouds.  Liefers is particularly
strong as Ruben.  Unexpectedly he becomes a more central character
than Isak.  If anything, Isak seems to drop out of the story after
a point.  The story is more compelling in the prewar years.  Later
as the characters to keep track of proliferate it is a little
troublesome to keep them all straight.  Somehow the plot loses its
some of its forward momentum.  The story has done well in Europe,
both as a novel and a film.  The film comes to the US on October
12. I rate SIMON & THE OAKS A low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.

Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375669/

What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/simon_and_the_oaks_2012/

[-mrl]

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

TOPIC: What Is Science Fiction? And One Impossible Thing (letter of
comment by Paul S. R. Chisholm)

In response to Mark's comments on "what is science fiction?" in the
10/05/12 issue of the MT VOID, long-time subscriber Paul Chisholm
writes:

I've been meaning to ask the two of you (Mark and Evelyn) something
about that.

I very vaguely remember a definition of science fiction, probably
by Isaac Asimov, something like this: Science fiction is a category
of stories where the author is allowed one impossible thing, and
everything else in the story must follow logically either from the
universe as we know it or from that one impossible thing.  I'm sure
this was covered in the panel.

There are obvious flaws in this definition.  Some SF has zero
impossible things: extrapolating from our current world into the
future one, or depending on a possible alternate history.  Some
very hard SF combines multiple impossible things, such as fast than
light travel plus time travel.  Maybe Harry Potter is SF if "one
impossible thing" is "magic works" (and that "magic" explains
werewolves and a bunch of other stuff, and we accept the secret
history as possible); clearly Mark's definition avoids this.
Problem is, despite the obvious queries to my favorite search
engine.  I can't find that definition.  I can find a lot of
discussions that reference it, but not the definition itself.

How about you?

Unsatisfying as this definition is, it has its uses.  Too many
genre movies skip the "everything else makes sense" part.  If an
audience is crazy or dumb enough to accept aliens or robots or
whatever, some filmmakers seem to feel, they're crazy or dumb
enough to accept anything.  This leads to the summer blockbusters
where the price of admission includes checking your brain at the
door.  The "one impossible thing" is a good place to stand if you
want leverage for avoiding such nonsense.

As for myself, sometimes I define SF as a marketing category.
Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein were marketed as SF writers, and
shelved accordingly.  Vonnegut was marketed as a mainstream writer,
by his very deliberate choice, and would have remained so even with
rocket ships and ray guns.

Hope this helps.  [-psrc]

Evelyn responds:

In *my* favorite search engine (at least for things sfnal),
rec.arts.sf.fandom, Butch Malahide pointed me to
http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/wellss_law:

"Term used in this encyclopedia for the principle, formulated by H
G Wells, that an sf or fantasy story should contain only a single
extraordinary assumption.  James Blish paraphrases it in More
Issues at Hand: Critical Studies in Contemporary Science Fiction
(coll 1970) as by William Atheling Jr, speaking of Wells's "hard
rule . .   that only a single fantastic assumption was admissible
per story, and must thereafter be developed with the strictest
logic of which the writer is capable." Wells's best-known statement
of the "law" appears in his introduction to The Scientific Romances
of H.G.  Wells (omni 1933; cut vt Seven Famous Novels 1934)"
[-sfe]

It then goes on to quote Wells:

". . . Anyone can invent human beings inside out or worlds like
dumb-bells or a gravitation that repels.  The thing that makes such
imaginations interesting is their translation into commonplace
terms and a rigid exclusion of other marvels from the story.  Then
it becomes human.  "How would you feel and what might not happen to
you," is the typical question, if for instance pigs could fly and
one came rocketing over a hedge at you.  How would you feel and
what might not happen to you if suddenly you were changed into an
ass and couldn't tell anyone about it?  Or if you became invisible?
But no one would think twice about the answer if hedges and houses
also began to fly, or if people changed into lions, tigers, cats
and dogs left and right, or if everyone would vanish anyhow.
Nothing remains interesting, where anything may happen.

For the writer of fantastic stories to help the reader to play the
game properly, he must help him in every possible unobtrusive way
to domesticate the impossible hypothesis.  He must trick him into
an unwary concession to some plausible assumption and get on with
his story while the illusion holds.  And that is where there was a
certain slight novelty in my stories when first they appeared.
Hitherto, except in exploration fantasies, the fantastic element
was brought in by magic.  Frankenstein even, used some jiggery-
pokery magic to animate his artificial monster.  There was trouble
about the thing's soul.  But by the end of last century it had
become difficult to squeeze even a momentary belief out of magic
any longer.  It occurred to me that instead of the usual interview
with the devil or a magician, an ingenious use of scientific patter
might with advantage be substituted.  That was no great discovery.
I simply brought the fetish stuff up to date, and made it as near
actual theory as possible.

As soon as the magic trick has been done the whole business of the
fantasy writer is to keep everything else human and real. Touches
of prosaic detail are imperative and a rigorous adherence to the
hypothesis. Any extra fantasy outside the cardinal assumption
immediately gives a touch of irresponsible silliness to the
invention."  [-hgw]

I suspect that if Asimov stated the "one impossible thing" rule, he
was paraphrasing from Wells.  [-ecl]

Mark adds:

I don't remember Asimov's definition being mentioned.  I am not too
sure that I like counting the implausibilities.  Asimov would say
that a story that assumes that the Earth is a giant space-traveling
animal is science fiction, but one that assumes a starship has an
interstellar drive and a cloaking device is not because that is two
(or really three) assumptions.  You have to take into account the
degree of implausibility.  And you have to distinguish on the
spectrum from "for now not yet possible" to "ain't never gonna
happen ever, no way!"  Of course there is not working plausibility
test to decide if a story is plausible for all.  I think each
person has to decide on the overall plausibility of a story to
decide if it is or is not science fiction.  Of course that makes it
hard to be certain a story is for all people science fiction.

I can find a different definition of SF by Asimov, but not yours.
He said, "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of
literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes
in science and technology."  Notice that the "one impossible thing"
limit may merely be an observation that may be true but was not
intended to be an actual definition.  That may be why you are
having a hard time finding documentation that it is Asimov's
definition.

But figuring out who wrote the definition of SF you are using is a
digression.  We can discuss the definition without knowing where it
came from.  I am not keen on the definition, though it is more
useful than mine since there would be more agreement on whether a
particular story is SF or not.  All you have to do is find the
particular impossible thing.  [-mrl]

Tim Bateman also quoted Mark's comments favorably in
rec.arts.sf.fandom, prefacing them with:

I always enjoy this "how many angels can dance on the head of a
pin?" discussion. In this instance, Mark does an excellent job with
the following: ..."  [-tb]

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

TOPIC: Dictionaries (letters of comment by Kip Williams, Tim
Bateman, and Keith F. Lynch)

In response to Evelyn's comment about finding an error in a
dictionary, Kip Williams writes:

Back in the glory days of Popeye, somebody makes fun of him for
saying "I yam..." He ends up going to the dictionary, where he
finds that "yam" is defined as a sweet potato.  Popeye chuckles at
the absurdity of this, "I swee'potato what I swee'potato an' thass
all I swee'potato!" and concludes "I bet I yam the only guy wich
foun' a mistake in the dictionary."

Okay, now he's not alone any more.  [-kw]

Tim Bateman writes:

This made me smile, as it reminded me of Christopher Tietjens in
Ford Madox ford's PARADE'S END; his hobby is correcting errors in
the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA.  [-tb]

And Keith F. Lynch asks about the "one error":

It's out of date?  The print is too small?  :-)  [-kfl]

Evelyn replies:

No, those are defects, not errors.  And the magnifying glass helps.
(At one time I didn't need it.)  [-ecl]

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

TOPIC: Quatermass (letter of comment by Gregory Benford)

In response to Mark's comments on Turner Classic Movies in the
10/05/12 issue of the MT VOID, Gregory Benford writes:

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT was indeed good, but I liked the second
Quatermass just as much--and can't find it anywhere.  Does any copy
of it remain?  [-gb]

Mark responds:

Are you asking about the television play:

http://store.sinistercinema.com/prostores/servlet/Detail?no058

or the film that Hammer made from it?:

http://tinyurl.com/void-enemy

I like QUATERMASS 2 a great deal, but QUATERMASS AND THE PIT had
for me a fresher idea.  QUATERMASS 2 was a good paranoia piece, but
the idea of taking over human minds had appeared in INVADERS
FROM MARS, two years earlier.  What makes QUATERMASS AND THE PIT
stand out is that Kneale, in my opinion, beat out Arthur C. Clarke
and 2001.  Both used a premise that pre-humans had been altered to
have greater intelligence.  Clarke takes the idea and basically
says uplift will happen again.  Kneale looks at how are we
different today because of the uplift.  And he gets out of it
psychic and telekinetic phenomena, race prejudice, and the
similarity of myths across cultures.  I just think he did more with
the idea of uplift.  I have not found an earlier example of uplift
in science fiction unless you count ISLAND OF DR MOREAU.  [-mrl]

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

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

UNDER THE HARROW by Mark Dunn (ISBN 978-1-59692-369-0) by Mark Dunn
is hard to describe without *some* spoilers.  However, much of what
may seem like spoilers is guessable fairly early on, and is
revealed in the first third of the book.  The spoilers may be more
of the works I discuss that it seems to have borrowed from (been
inspired by).

We begin in the valley of Dingley Dell.  For most people these
days, this will conjure up a "Monty Python" sketch, but the
original reference is to Charles Dickens's THE PICKWICK PAPERS, and
that is where the name has come from.  In fact, this isolated
valley seems to have comes straight out of Dickens, but the 2003
timestamps at the beginning of each chapter would appear to make
that impossible.  We eventually learn that this valley has built
its society, founded entirely by orphan children abandoned there in
the 19th century, around the few books left to them: the Bible, the
Encyclopedia Britannica, an atlas, a dictionary, and the works of
Charles Dickens.  But how (and why) it has remained isolated all
this time takes a bit more explanation.

The action of UNDER THE HARROW takes place in 2003, but was
published in 2010, and I found myself thinking of many earlier
works that this seems to be similar to.  There is M. Night
Shyamalan's THE VILLAGE (2004), where the set-up is similar--but
the explanation is different.  There is GALAXY QUEST (1999), where
a society uses fictional works as their guideline, but in UNDER THE
HARROW they know that Dickens's works are fiction.  And the final
parallel is to the G.E. TRUE episode "The Last Day", in which what
appears to be a normal American town [*SPOILER*] turns out to be an
entire town constructed and populated in the Soviet Union to train
their spies on how to infiltrate the United States. [*END SPOILER*]

Dunn attempts to explain how all the problems inherent in the
premise are solved.  Why, for example, do so few people try to
leave Dingley Dell?  How do they manage to be self-sustaining?  And
so on.  The book is a combination of puzzle and thriller, written
in large part in Dickensian English, and will appeal primarily to
those who are comfortable with that style.

As a side note, Dunn does not write normal books.  His ELLA MINNOW
PEA was progressive lipogrammatic writing (i.e., writing that
avoids one or more letters).  And his "IBID: A LIFE / a novel in
footnotes" is just what it says--the introductory material explains
how the actual book was accidentally destroyed, and only the
footnotes are left.  In 2004 this was entirely imaginary; in 2009
Justin Gawronski discovered that he owned just such a book when
Amazon deleted his Kindle copy of 1984, leaving him with only the
footnotes he had made on it.

I really liked TAU ZERO by Poul Anderson (ISBN 978-1-56865-278-8)
back in 1971, because at the time it really seemed to convey a
sense of wonder about deep space (and deep time).  Now, alas, the
characterizations seem dated and the science outdated.  (There also
seems to be more hand-waving than I remember about exactly how they
are going to find a suitable planet without decelerating if they
are traveling through entire galaxies in the blink of an eye (by
their frame of reference).  [-ecl]

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

                                           Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net


           There is no such source of error as the pursuit
           of absolute truth.
                                           --Samuel Butler