THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
02/07/14 -- Vol. 32, No. 32, Whole Number 1792
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
2014 CAMPBELLIAN ANTHOLOGY Free!
PRI Show about Science Fiction
The Fourth Man (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Mini-Reviews (BLUE CAPRICE, THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN,
THE PURGE, and MONSTER UNIVERSITY) (film comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Children of Protagonists (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE WIND RISES (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE TOWER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE OUTSIDER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
ON THE STEEL BREEZE by Alastair Reynolds (book review
by Dale L Skran, Jr.)
Mainstream Science Fiction (letter of comment by John Hertz)
Reasons to Be a Luddite (letter of comment
by Walter Meissner)
This Week's Reading (THE RAPTURE OF THE NERDS) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: 2014 CAMPBELLIAN ANTHOLOGY Free!
You can get a free e-copy of the 2014 CAMPBELLIAN ANTHOLOGY, which
contains works from all 111 writers eligible for the John
W. Campbell Award for New Writer--almost a million words of fiction
in several ebook formats. Details and download link at:
http://tinyurl.com/void-campbellian-2014
==================================================================
TOPIC: PRI Show about Science Fiction
This week's episode of the Public Radio International show "Studio
360" is the first of two parts about science fiction: "Flying Cars
and Tricorders: How Sci-Fi Invented the Present" (#1504, 24 January
2014), at:
http://tinyurl.com/void-pri-sci-fi
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Fourth Man (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
End title:
Harry Lime is dead. But Holly Martins will be back in THE FOURTH
MAN stalking the criminal Fuzzi Peech. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Mini-Reviews (film comments by Mark R. Leeper)
BLUE CAPRICE (2013)
BLUE CAPRICE opens with 911 calls after killings by the DC Beltway
sniper. We go to a flashback. Lee has a sort of father-son
relationship with John. It is the wrong sort. John is mentoring
Lee in his philosophy of hatred and betrayal. It is bad for Lee
since John probably should not be around people. John lives in a
stew of hatreds. He has grudges against anyone who was ever close
to him. To him the world is a collection of conspiracies, many of
which John thinks victimize him. John indoctrinates Lee and uses
military training manuals on sniping to teach Lee how to himself be
a sniper. John says that if you kill senselessly and randomly you
are invisible. Nobody thinks to associate you with the crime. So
to cleanse the world, John will have Lee go on a spree of random
killings. They buy a blue Chevy Caprice and John removes the back
seat so that the trunk can be used as a shooting stand.
Alexandre Moors directs a script by R.F.I. Porto that is more about
how John gets himself into the proper mindset to kill than it is
about later executing the actual killing spree. That is probably
the right choice if the viewer wants to understand the crime.
Moors uses a naturalistic style that at times makes the early part
of the film a little slow. We come away with a better feel for who
commits what we think of as senseless crimes and what is their
reality at the time of the crime. Rating: high +1 on the -4 to +4
scale or 6/10
THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN (2013)
This Belgian-Dutch co-production in Flemish language still has a
fair amount in English. It is the story of an amorous relationship
from its beginning to its end. Only the telling goes forward and
backward in time with flash-backs and flash-forwards. Didier and
Elise are married with a daughter who has cancer. The film tells
their story going back and forward in time. The couple was one
time were in a musical band that specialized in American bluegrass
songs sung in English. The episodes move all over their
relationship and between the segments they sing bluegrass songs.
Their history develops slowly and has moments of pain and of joy.
The story has very touching moments but also moments in which the
pace drags. Rating: high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10
THE PURGE (2013)
Regardless of the premise, most of this film is a cliched story of
a family in a fortified house protecting themselves from bunch of
goofy looking psychos attacking them with big weapons. But the
premise has its own goofiness. It is March 21, 2022 and society
has been in large part fixed. Unemployment is low, crime is low,
and there is prosperity aplenty. How was this done? The first day
of spring from 7PM to 7AM the next morning all law is suspended for
an event called "The Purge." You can go on a killing spree and all
government will do is to look on. How does this help solve crime?
People get their hatred and anger and paranoia out of their system
one night a year. Of course this sort of thing could cause more
killing. As for employment, I suppose if you kill off a
significant part of you labor force it might help eliminate
unemployment, but it would also lower demand. Nobody seems to have
given much serious thought to the social impact of the purge. This
film has gotten some very positive recommendations, but it really
is just a crass action film. Rating: low 1 on the -4 to +4 scale
or 5/10
MONSTER UNIVERSITY (2013)
A young Mike and Sully meet at college where they flunk out at
being scary. They decide joining a scare competition can reinstate
them. This is a waste of time prequel to MONSTERS, INC. The part
is Martin and Sully as they first meet each other in college. This
film probably did not start as a monster film. It was a bad
college film and the plot was altered to the characters from
MONSTERS INC. If it had not been green-lit it would probably have
next shown up as NEMO GOES TO COLLEGE. The plot was boring and
digital animation is not enough to make it interesting. It is hard
to believe the Pixar that made the TOY STORY trilogy would apply
their animation expertise to this script. There is not an
interesting character or even a sincere laugh in the entire film.
Rating: low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or 4/10
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Children of Protagonists (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Does it seem in literature as though authors take an almost
solipsistic view of the protagonist of the story? In so many
mythic stories--Jason and Medea, Abraham and Isaac, Job--the
children of the protagonist are mere tokens or symbols rather than
individuals in their own right. Medea kills and feeds hers and
Jason's children to Jason--what did they do to deserve this?
(Shakespeare takes this and re-uses it in TITUS ANDRONICUS.) God
tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac--even though he rescinds this,
doesn't this put a damper on the father-son relationship between
the two. God tests Job by killing his children. Later he grants
him more children, but the ones who were killed--didn't they have
some right to be treated based on their deeds, not as tokens in a
game between God and the Adversary? [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE WIND RISES (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Japanese cult animation director Hayao Miyazaki makes his
final film before retiring a fictionalized biography of the
aircraft designer who gave Japan the Zero fighter plane. The story
is okay, but not really compelling. What is more engaging is the
view of life in Japan between the World Wars and Miyazaki's take on
international politics. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Hayao Miyazaki has made many animated fantasies in Japan, some
classics like SPIRITED AWAY, and most seem to deal with flying in
one way or another. His interest was sparked when his father ran
an airplane rudder factory. Flying machines are a lifelong
fascination for him. He now plans to retire and his exit film,
animated as usual, is the fictionalized story of Jiro Horikoshi,
the man who designed the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane that was
used effectively by the Japanese in World War II. This is a brave
choice considering the importance of the American market and the
film openly admiring the plane that killed many Americans.
Jiro is very much a Miyazaki sort of character. From the time he
was a young child he has dreamed of climbing to the roof of his
house and flying away. Soon he also is dreaming of meeting
Giovanni Caproni, a famous Italian aircraft designer. Needing
glasses, Jiro cannot be a pilot and chooses instead to become a
designer himself. Jiro's fantasies are a big part of the story
with unannounced segues from the real world into Jiro's world of
fantasy. As he gets older he goes to work for an airplane
manufacturer--I do not remember it being identified as Mitsubishi.
They he works of a supervisor who is visualized as only coming up
to waist-level on the young designer. At first the little
supervisor gives Jiro a hard time, but eventually they become close
friends. Jiro also meets a girl a little younger than himself who
becomes his love interest.
The film steers away from Jiro's attitude about the Americans whom
Japan will be at war with. More it emphasized is his relationship
with Germans and the rest of Europe. He does seem to dislike the
Germans who are supplying second-rate technology to his country and
keeping the best for themselves. He is portrayed as really being
more in conflict with them than with Americans who really are not
portrayed in this film. In any case, this is the first time in my
memory that a Miyazaki film involves itself with real world
politics.
Visually the film is very nice, showing beautiful studies of
natural settings and when away from nature showing amazing detail
in his views of towns and of the aircraft factory. My wife pointed
out how much detail there was on the slide rule that Jiro uses from
time to time and how nicely Miyazaki animates airplane propellers
accelerating. Going from having each blade visible to having it be
a disk where you no longer see each blade is difficult to
transition.
Toward the middle of the film the pace slackens but the time is not
wasted. We see Japan ravaged by the Great Tokyo Earthquake albeit
presented so we are not sure we are not just seeing another of
Jiro's fantasies. We also see a country attacked by tuberculosis.
Is this a film that people will want to remember Miyazaki by? In
my opinion he will be better remembered for SPIRITED AWAY and MY
NEIGHBOR TOTORO, but this film is well above his average. His
ambivalence to war with the United States my strike some as off-
putting, but that is Japan, not Miyazaki.
I rate THE WIND RISES a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2013293/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_wind_rises/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE TOWER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In Seoul, South Korea, a new 108-story luxury skyscraper
is hit by a helicopter on Christmas Eve setting the building on
fire and turning it into a deathtrap. This film was obviously an
attempt to out-do Irwin Allen's THE TOWERING INFERNO. The
characters are a little flat in both films, but the spectacular
visuals do a lot that Allen could not. Don't look for character
development or deep meaning, but THE TOWER is a real roller-coaster
ride. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Hong Kong and Korean filmmakers have a strategy of taking on
popular Western genres, making them their own, and then pumping up
the action sequences, often at the expense of credibility.
Filmmakers like John Woo are best known for doing this with
gangster films in which the shootouts are huge firefights. THE
TOWER represents the same strategy for another genre. It is a
South Korean knock off of Irwin Allen's THE TOWERING INFERNO. I
don't know much about super-high-rise architecture, but I am
willing to accept most of what I am seeing as being realistic. And
if the objective was to out-do THE TOWERING INFERNO, I have to say,
"Mission accomplished." This film is one heck of a scary ride.
It is Christmas Eve in Tower Sky, a new 108-floor apartment
building that is a self-contained community. We are told that
certain mistakes were made with the water delivery system in order
to accommodate more shops in the upper stories, and of course we
all know what is coming. In the middle of the Christmas
celebration a helicopter outside the building gets caught in an up
updraft and loses control, its blades impressively slicing through
shattering glass windows and starting fires at several places in
the building. Most of the fire escape routes become deathtraps.
Immediately the viewer starts asking who of the people we have met
in the early, peaceful parts of the film are now going to die. Who
will escape and what will be left of them? These are the same
question all disaster films ask.
Based on a screenplay by Sang-don Kim, the major attraction of a
film like this is the action scenes. The action scenes do have
the visual splendor of explosions and billowing fire all over the
building. And it is clear that director and co-writer Ji-hoon Kim
knows that these effects are the real stars of the film. We do not
get a chance to learn enough about the main characters to care
about them as people. They are given fairly flat
characterizations. Most of what character they have does not
really transcend the language barrier. And with unfamiliar actors,
we cannot really appreciate the film the way a South Korean
probably would. What the American viewer gets out of THE TOWER
instead are those features that do not need any translation. An
elevator opening and exploding out like a blast furnace, with
flames engulfing panicky people who waited to board it, that sort
of thing needs no translation.
In some ways Kim's use of violence is reserved. We may see from a
medium distance a crowd of people engulfed in flame. But we never
see one person with burning flesh. Kim wants to out-do THE
TOWERING INFERNO, but that is not how he wants to do it. Large-
scale mayhem is spectacular while close-ups might bother the
viewer. Occasionally we are not sure exactly what we are looking
at, but we go on to the next image quickly. Kim uses CGI on
occasion, but not really obviously. Some scenes of the tower
against the sky have a slightly ersatz, computerized feel. A
skyway sequence is probably the crown jewel of the film.
One is left with a few questions. One child is a major character,
but she seems unrealistically to be the only child in the building.
Also the smoke of the fire must be visible all over Seoul and the burning
building is spectacular, but there are no crowds in the
street watching the destruction. This is a film that takes a
little meeting half way, but THE TOWER does have a lot for the eye.
I rate it +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10. THE TOWER is available
for instant streaming from Netflix.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2554270/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_tower_2013/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE OUTSIDER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Warning: Minor spoilers.
CAPSULE: A British mercenary goes AWOL when he is told his daughter
has been found dead of a drug overdose in Los Angeles. He goes to
LA to find out what is happening and finds the dead girl is
definitely not his daughter. He sets out to find where his
daughter is and who the dead girl is. Brian A. Miller writes and
directs an action film that makes for a fun evening, but does not
stand out in a crowd. Perhaps it borrows more from the action film
genre than it returns. Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
Lex Walker (played by Craig Fairbrass) is a military contractor in
Afghanistan who tries to follow orders, but he is his own man. He
has a long record of military successes and just as long a record
of incidents of insubordination. [Both of which seem almost de
rigor among action heroes.] Called into his commanding officer's
office he is informed that his daughter, living in Los Angeles, has
been found dead, presumably of a drug overdose.
Walker has been out of touch with his daughter for many months and
has no idea what she might be involved with. He requests leave to
go and find out what has happened and his request is promptly
denied. Well, his daughter is Walkers's only family and he is not
going to let a direct order not to go stand in his way. [No,
honest, I know this all sounds familiar but it is a 2014 film, and
it is mostly newly shot.] First stop in LA is the coroner's office
to identify the body for the police. Well, that stops him right
there. He has never seen this dead woman on the coroner's table.
That means his daughter may possibly still be alive. Where is she?
And if this is not his daughter, who is it?
Investigating the incident is Police Detective Klein (Jason
Patric). He and Walker have repeated run-ins and he does not know
if he can trust Walker. Walker is trying to unravel the facts with
his own subtle "bull in a China shop" style. His investigations
bring him to his daughter's employer, a major corporation headed by
a shady cyber-entrepreneur Schuster played by James Caan. Caan
always makes a good villain. Here though the script does not let
him play a very bright one however. Schuster seems to subscribe to
the Darth Vader school of management. When a henchman makes a big
mistake his punishment is to Schuster shoot him to death in cold
blood in Schuster's own office. A corporate head might fire a
disappointing employee, but he would not likely take the risk of
personally murdering him in his own office. A number of people are
killed in the course of the story and I am not sure the moral
weight of that is properly handled in a script that is more anxious
to have thrills than to have a dramatically satisfying plot.
Craig Fairbrass was not an actor I could remember ever seeing. His
IMDB page lists what looks like a string of action films. He seems
to be a Steven Seagal type but with a British accent that
occasionally gave me trouble. I suppose it would be out of
character for him to enunciate a little more clearly. Where
Fairbrass has an advantage over other hero actors is that he is not
particularly attractive. What M said of Bond in CASINO ROYALE is
even truer of Fairbrass. He is a blunt instrument. He seems
capable of real rage-filled violence in a way that a Daniel Craig
is not. The casting of the film is decent, but as is frequently
the case when the same person writes and directs, one talent is
stronger than the other. Brian A. Miller was more ready to direct
an action film than he was ready to write one. I would give THE
OUTSIDER a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2198241/combined
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: ON THE STEEL BREEZE by Alastair Reynolds (book review by
Dale L Skran, Jr.)
ON THE STEEL BREEZE picks up some time after the conclusion of BLUE
EARTH REMEMBERED, but returns us to Reynold's "African" future
universe, which chronicles the life and times of the Akinyas, a
family that by sheer will and audacity become the pivots around
with the human future revolves. This is a 482-page book, but once
things get going, it's hard to put down. Like most of Reynolds's
books, there are a number of mysteries the characters seek to
solve.
In BREEZE, Chiku Akinya, the daughter of Sunday and Jitendra Akinya
from BLUE EARTH (who appear here as well), undertakes a daring
plan. She has herself rebuilt as three clones with identical
pasts, and a quantum implant that allows them to periodically
exchange memories. One takes on the name Chiku Green, and joins
the caravan of holoships voyaging to Crucible, a distant world
identified as the first target for human interstellar colonization.
Chiku Red flies her own, stripped down ship deep into space to
discover the final fate of Eunice Akinya, her grandmother, last
seen blasting for the stars in her own experimental ship. Finally,
Chikju Yellow stays on Earth as a backup, with the expectation that
she will lead a quiet life.
Of course, being Akinyas, nothing quite goes as it seems it will.
In tale told over decades (there is no faster than light travel
here), we learn what happened to Eunice and Chiku Red. Chiku Green
embarks on a daring series of adventures that eventually bring the
holoships to a state of total war, and Chiku Green to a
confrontation with the absolutely alien. Chiku Yellow's quiet life
is destroyed by a memory update sent by Chiku Green, and she is
embroiled in a twilight struggle for the fate of humanity with a
vast and relentless artilect that has infected "the Mechanism"
which runs this future world.
Reynolds is a master of the slow build up leading to apocalyptic
action, and STEEL BREEZE is no exception. A grand struggle between
humans and artificial intelligences concludes with a deadly battle
using relativistic kinetic weapons on an interstellar scale in
which negotiation is just as important as weaponry. The Akinyas
are trapped in their vaulting ambition, forced to gamble for higher
and higher stakes as the story proceeds. Their lives are long, but
full of loss, since they find it hard to hang on to family and
friends as time itself burns the bridge out from under their feet.
One thing I initially did not like about the plot is that the
holoships are launched toward Crucible with no ability to slow them
down. They are relying on human inventiveness to create drive
improvements along the way, something that initially seems foolish.
As time went on, I came to see this story device as the analogue
to, for example, our continuation of industrial civilization in the
face of increasing carbon dioxide buildup. We know we ought to
stop, but we really don't know how. However, we are confident
we'll figure it out--in time.
I read STEEL BREEZE in the British Gollancz edition. The pacing is
better than in BLUE EARTH, which suffered from a long slow
interlude with elephants near the middle of the book. I highly
recommend STEEL BREEZE, and think that as 2013 book it should be
given strong consideration for the Hugo. I'll be nominating both
it and PROXIMA by Stephen Baxter. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Mainstream Science Fiction (letter of comment by John Hertz)
In response to Evelyn's comments on mainstream authors writing
science fiction in the 11/15/13 issue of the MT VOID, John Hertz
writes:
At Westercon XV, I was on a "Classics of S-F" panel about THE GLASS
BEAD GAME (sometimes published in England as MAGISTER LUDI). Art
Widner in the audience talked me into a thousand-word article for
YHOS #59, where I observed how masterly it was.
We had another discussion of it at LoneStarCon III. The con
website quoted me [as saying,] "The first and for fifty years the
only Nobel Prize s-f novel, recently (July 2013) among '100
Greatest Novels Ever' in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY." THE DRINK TANK
#352 reprinted my YHOS article. My con report for FILE 770 #163
gave substantial space to this top-notch book we notice so little.
I guess that hasn't changed. [-jh]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Reasons to Be a Luddite (letter of comment by Walter
Meissner)
In response to Evelyn's comments on reasons to be a Luddite in the
01/31/14 issue of the MT VOID, Walter Meissner writes:
How about software packages bought because this year's (improved)
version was on sale, but all the versions ended up in a box and
only one or two were ever installed, never mind actually used.
And every few years the company comes out with a version that is
incompatible with the previous (i.e., forced upgrade).
Case in Point: Quicken (for checking accounts)
P.S. Sometimes I wish I could "mine" back all those useless
expenditures. [-wm]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE RAPTURE OF THE NERDS by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross (ISBN
978-0-765-32911-0) is full of in-jokes and references, including
(but not limited to):
- a reference to "the giant borg on the doorstep"
- someone standing "beneath a sky the color of a hi-def video
monitor sucking signal from a dead channel (saturated electric
blue, in other words)"
- the fact that none of "hyperspace bypasses, Vogon poetry, the
heat death of the universe" pertain to the end of the world in the
story
- "Diet Slurm"
- a virtual reality club that is "bigger on the inside than the
outside"
- the observation that everything in the simulation is over the
top, "like a nuclear aircraft carrier tricked out as a private
yacht"
- "a pepper-pot-shaped automaton covered in knobbly hemispheres,
probes jutting aggressively from beneath the black silk cap
adorning its cortical turret"
- a gorilla that is "the beloved commercial mascot of a long-
extinct brand of breakfast cereal"
(The references are to "Star Trek", NEUROMANCER, THE HITCHHIKER'S
GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, FUTURAMA, SNOW CRASH, "Dr. Who", and Nature's
Path(?). I particularly like the NEUROMANCER, since it points out
how readers under the age of thirty may end up completely
misinterpreting the classic opening of William Gibson's novel.)
But there are plenty of ideas as well. For example, at one point a
simulation of a character realizes/decides that she is feeling
"less rage than /should/ be experiencing"--an oddly analytic
perspective on what is considered a very instinctive feeling.
I would like to think there is deep meaning in his being "Instance
639,219", but I cannot find any.
When Jones is asked, "Ms. Jones, do you have a statement for this
proceeding?" she responds: "I spent decades of realtime imprisoned
in a meatsuit, which betrayed me at every turn. It hurt. It
needed sleep. It was slow. It forgot things. It remembered
things that didn't happen. And worst of all, it tricked me into
thinking that I was nothing without it, that any attempt to escape
it would be death. Brains are awful, cheating things. They have
gamed the system so that they get all the blood and all the oxygen
and all the best calories, and they've convinced us that they're
absolutely essential to the enterprise of being an authentic human.
But /of course/ they'd say that, wouldn't they? After all, once we
take up and realize how fantastically /s**t/ they are, they'll be
out of a job! Getting rid of my brain was the most important thing
that ever happened to me. It was only once I was running on a more
efficient substrate, once I could fork and vary myself and find the
instances that made the best choices, once I could remember as much
or as little as I cared to, look and feel however I wanted . . .
only /then/ was I able to see and feel and /know/ what I'd been
missing all those years."
"How can you know that you didn't spring up fully formed, all of
these convictions stamped upon you?" could reference either the
individual or the entire human race, especially when followed by
"even if your little origin myth is true." In the novel, it seems
primarily aimed at the individual, but the broader interpretation
is known in the real world as "Last Tuesdayism." When creationists
claim that when the world was created 6000 years ago, all the
evidence that it is much older (fossils, etc.) was created along
with it, the response is, "But that same argument can used to say
that the world was created last Tuesday, along with all our
memories and everything else."
"Helpfiles are traditionally outnumbered by no-help files, which
superficially resemble a helpfile in form but not in content
because they don't actually tell you anything you don't already
know, or they answer every question except the one you're asking,
or you open them and a giant animated paper clip leaps out and
cheerfully asks where you want to go today." Well, they hit the
nail on the head here.
"Every time I take action, it ripples out to all the people who
area affected by it, and all the people they affect." If this
sounds familiar, it is just re-phrasing the message of IT'S A
WONDERFUL LIFE.
"The Authority" is an advanced species that "patrols the galaxy to
ensure that any species that attempt transcendence are fit to join
it. If it finds a species wanting, /pfft!/ It takes care of them
before they get to be a problem." Klaatu barada nikto, anyone?
At one point, a character says, "I experience subjective continuity
with that Huw, so I think I'm real. But if you're going to require
physical continuity, no I'm not: I'm an upload. And even if I
hadn't uploaded, if you want true physical continuity, /no/ human
being can meet that requirement--never mind our cells, the atoms in
our bodies turn over within months to years." This is clearly an
on-going question in the philosophy of consciousness and identity.
But even subjective continuity is not enough, since unconsciousness
(or even sleeping) breaks that continuity. How do we know we are
the same person who wakes up in the morning who went to sleep last
night? *Are* we the same person who wakes up in the morning who
went to sleep last night?
And there is also the artistic explanation of why hard science
fiction is more interesting than (say) galactic empires: "Free jazz
has its place, but it's interesting only in contrast to the rigid
structure in which it is embedded." [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us.
Cats look down on us.
Pigs treat us as equals.
--Sir Winston Churchill