All reviews copyright 1984-2020 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THE DA VINCI CODE by Dan Brown:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/07/2005]
I finally managed to borrow a copy of Dan Brown's THE DA VINCI
CODE (ISBN 0-385-50420-9). Given that the wait list at the
library is ridiculous, I expected something better. It is full of
the Fibonacci numbers, the Mona Lisa, and Leonardo da Vinci, it is
not a difficult book to read, and it at least somewhat works as a
thriller, but I cannot see what the fuss is over it as some sort
of great revelation. Or rather, if it were a great revelation, I
could understand the fuss, but it is a work of fiction. The
puzzles seem alternately too obvious or so arcane that no one
could ever figure them out. For example, the knight's burial was
obvious. For other puzzles, it's as if you had a sequence
1,2,3,5, and were asked for the next number. It could be 8 (if
it's a subset of the Fibonacci sequence), or it could be 7 (if it
is numbers not divisible by any other number), or it could be 6
(if it is numbers whose representations can be written as a single
curve without crossing a point previously drawn), or it could be
something else entirely. Also, despite what most readers seem to
think, the premise is not new (HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL by Michael
Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln is probably the best
known book about the subject). And as many have noted, what Brown
presents as fact is not. (For example, amazon.com reviewer Penn
Jacobs points out that the interpretation of the Council of Nicea
and the history of the early Church is just plain wrong. And
artist Shelley Esaak discusses da Vinci's "Last Supper" at
"The Last Question
by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/05/2008]
Bud Webster's column in the latest "Helix"
(http://www.helixsf.com/pastmasters.htm) is about Frederic
Brown, and as part of it he compares "Answer" by Frederic
Brown with "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov. Webster
points out (rightly, I think) that Brown covers the same
material in 250 words that Asimov takes 2500 to do. And he
also notes that what most people remember as the last line of
"Answer" is actually three sentences from the end. But I
think he is wrong that people think that Asimov wrote the
Brown story, partly because the last line of the Asimov story
is even more memorable than the "last line" of the Brown.
(Both stories have been anthologized many times; see
http://www.isfdb.com for a list.)
"And the Gods Laughed"
by Fredric Brown:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"And the Gods Laughed", Fredric Brown: [SEMI-SPOILER] There may
have been a time when the ending of this was not obvious, but this
is not that time. Still, voters at the time probably would have
thought this very clever.
"Arena"
by Fredric Brown:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"Arena", Fredric Brown: There have been other stories about war-by-
champions, but this is, I believe, the first. (The best known is
probably the "Arena" episode on the original "Star Trek", which
credits Brown as the original story.) It does seem a bit drawn out
at times, but still deserves credit as the origin of a theme.
"Etaoin Shrdlu"
by Fredric Brown:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/25/2018]
"Etaoin Shrdlu", by Fredric Brown (Unknown Worlds, February 1942):
This is a typical Fredric Brown story, with a bit of humor and a
punchline ending. It has been said that n one really writes
stories like Frederic Brown, and that is probably true. There are
other "possessed linotype" stories around ("Printer's Devil" from
the original "Twilight Zone" series comes to mind), but this has
its own approach, and one which is very topical today.
THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT
by Frederic Brown:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/10/2012]
THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT by Fredric Brown (ISBN 0-87923-597-7) is
Fredric Brown's first (and perhaps best-known) mystery novel.
Published in 1947, it reads like a Heinlein juvenile of a decade
later, but with the sexual content of later Heinleins (complete
with hints of incest no less!). Not that there is anything
explicit, of course--this was a mainstream novel in 1948. But it
is clear that at that time writers had more leeway in the mystery
genre than in the science fiction genre.
The first person protagonist is an eighteen-year-old boy whose
father has been murdered. He teams up with his carny uncle to try
to catch the murderer (is there any more classic pairing in
juvenile fiction than the orphaned boy and the mentor uncle?).
Along the way, he finds out more about his father than he ever
suspected, and in general fulfills all the tropes of the classic
juvenile novel. It had a certain hard-boiled element from the
uncle's interactions with people, but it is not likely to satisfy
someone looking for Sam Spade or even Philip Marlowe. But science
fiction fans might well find this non-science-fiction work by a
classic science fiction author of interest.
(One interesting coincidence is that one of the gangsters in THE
FABULOUS CLIPJOINT is named Dutch Reagan. It seems unlikely that
Brown would have bothered to name a character after someone who was
then a minor movie star, or that he would even know that "Dutch"
had been Ronald Reagan's nickname, but to the modern reader it
cannot help but evoke the 40th President.)
"The Star Mouse"
by Frederic Brown:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/18/2018]
"The Star Mouse", by Fredric Brown (Planet Stories, Spring 1942): I
guess back in 1942 the scientist's accent was supposed to be funny,
but now it just seems annoying. The phonetic representation means
it is harder to read; then again, maybe Brown wanted to have the
reader pay more attention, though the fact that the rest of the
story is ordinary English means that it only slightly accomplishes
that. Without the "funny" accent, the story is really just its
"surprise" ending.
HOW I KILLED PLUTO AND WHY IT HAD IT COMING
by Mike Brown:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/06/2011]
HOW I KILLED PLUTO AND WHY IT HAD IT COMING by Mike Brown (ISBN
978-0-385-53108-5) is by the discoverer of Quaoar, Sedna, Haumea
and Hi'iaka, Makemake, and Xena and Gabrielle (Eris and Dysnomia).
Brown spends a lot of time discussing exactly what a planet is,
i.e., the definition of planet. But he never gives the definition
in a single bullet-list, and what he says does not seem to match
what I thought was finally decided by the International
Astronomical Union. First, he says that the IAU said that a planet
has to be round, or roundish, anyway. That is, its shape has to be
affected by its own gravity. Second, it has to orbit the sun. And
as a third point, he says that the IAU said that a satellite of a
planet is not a planet if the center of mass of the satellite-planet
system is within the planet, but is a planet in its own
right if the center of mass is outside the planet. But in fact
this third point got dropped (due to technical difficulties), and
replaced by one saying it has "cleared its neighborhood" of smaller
objects around its orbit. This would eliminate all the asteroids,
and most of the trans-Plutonian objects, but it seems to me that
Sedna still meets these requirements. However, since Brown never
gives the exact wording of this requirement (or even mentions it!),
it is hard to know.
In addition, according to Wikipedia, Alan Stern objects that "it is
impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf
planets and planets," and that since neither Earth, Mars, Jupiter,
nor Neptune have entirely cleared their regions of debris, none
could properly be considered planets under the IAU definition.
Mark Sykes, points out that "since the definition does not
categorize a planet by composition or formation, but, effectively,
by its location, a Mars-sized or larger object beyond the orbit of
Pluto would be considered a dwarf planet, since it would not have
time to clear its orbit."
Actually, it isn't clear what degree of "roundness"--"hydrostatic
equilibrium"--is required either.)
(The problems with the "center of mass" requirement are
interesting. The rationale is that if the center of mass is
outside the larger then the smaller is not really orbiting the
larger, but they are both orbiting a "neutral" point. However, by
this reasoning, Jupiter is not orbiting the sun, but the center of
mass for those two objects is outside the sun. And since the moon
is moving away from us, at some point, the center of mass of the
Earth-Moon system will be outside the Earth. Does that magically
turn the moon into a planet?)
Brown seems to think it is important not to expand the
definition/idea of "planet" to include Kuiper Belt objects,
asteroids, etc. On the one hand, he says, "Definitions like this
are unimportant, [many astronomers] say. I, However, will tell you
the opposite." On the other, he says, "[Let] me tell you why you
should never think about the IAU definition of the word 'planet'.
In the entire field of astronomy, there is no word other than
'planet' that has a precise, lawyerly definition, in which certain
criteria are specifically enumerated. ... [In] astronomy, as in
most sciences, scientists work by concepts rather than
definitions."
To me this latter attitude is just plain wrong. Scientists work by
definitions. If you ask a zoologist what a mammal is, he can cite
a definition: three bones in the inner ear. If you ask a biologist
what a fruit is, he can cite a definition: part of a flowering
plant that derives from specific tissues of the flower, mainly one
or more ovaries. These definitions may get modified or changed
with time as new discoveries are made, but they do exist.
And the common usage of these terms may not match the scientific
definitions. In the case of mammals, in casual usage, a mammal is
basically an animal that has hair and bears live young. The fact
that this does not include pangolins or echidnae doesn't bother
most people, though people do often add duck-billed platypuses as
an afterthought. The fact that a tomato is biologically a fruit
does not mean that people will call it one, or vice versa.
Mushrooms are considered plants by the general public, but not by
biologists.
Oh, and Brown also tells the story of how the Spanish tried to
claim the discovery of most of Brown's objects by hacking into the
telescope databases to see where he had been viewing, and then rush
their claims to the press while Brown followed standard
astronomical procedure.
"Answer
by Frederic Brown:
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