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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 01/17/92 -- Vol. 10, No. 29
MEETINGS UPCOMING:
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are on Wednesdays at noon.
LZ meetings are in LZ 2R-158.
_D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C
01/29 LZ: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess (Dystopias)
02/19 LZ: V IS FOR VENDETTTA by Alan Moore and David Lloyd (Dystopic
Graphic Novels)
03/11 LZ: THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS by Stanislaw Lem (Who defines
reality?)
04/01 LZ: ACCOUNTANTS OF GOR by John Norman (Economic systems)
04/22 LZ: WONDERFUL LIFE by Stephen Jay Gould (Science non-fiction as a
source of ideas)
05/13 LZ: ONLY BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER by James Morrow (Books we heard are
very good)
_D_A_T_E _E_X_T_E_R_N_A_L _M_E_E_T_I_N_G_S/_C_O_N_V_E_N_T_I_O_N_S/_E_T_C.
01/18 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: TBA
(phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday)
02/08 SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: Ginjer
Buchanan (Ace Books editor) (phone 201-933-2724 for
details) (Saturday)
HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 908-834-1563 hocpb!jetzt
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell LZ 1B-306 908-576-6106 mtuxo!jrrt
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzy!leeper
HO Librarian: Rebecca Schoenfeld HO 2K-430 908-949-6122 homxb!btfsd
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 908-576-3346 mtfme!lfl
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzy!leeper
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 mtgzy!ecl
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. I guess science fiction is expected to have some bearing on the
real world. My thinking tends to go in the other direction.
Something real happens to me and I generalize it to a concept
applicable to science fiction. A recent few days dog-sitting my
brother's schnauzer Seamus has gotten me thinking about inter-
species communication (ISC). It is not a subject many people give
thought to outside of science fiction.
THE MT VOID Page 2
I grew up with a dachshund Sam. We had all sorts of elitist jokes
about how dumb a dog Sam was. More and more now I am impressed
with Sam's intellect in ISC. Seamus is a bright dog too, I guess,
but his ISC is abominable. He has his own rules about how he must
be served dinner or he won't eat. It used to be the food had to
sit out overnight and then be dumped on his newspaper before he
would eat. Why? We never found out because of his poor ISC.
Admittedly, getting Sam to eat was _n_e_v_e_r a problem, so there was
never any need to communicate the reason for strange eating customs
and rituals. Sam's mind was very much like the humans he lived
with; Seamus has a mind that could have been hatched on Planet
Zork. But when it comes down to issues of each trying to
communicate, Sam had a real edge over Seamus. When Seamus wants
something, he comes up to you and starts whining. Item 1--that
Seamus wants something--has come across very well. Item 2--what it
is that Seamus wants--zero points. No communication whatsoever.
Seamus just thinks, "You have opposable thumbs, you walk upright,
your throat is bent to give you language. With all that going for
you, you should know why I'm whining."
Sam reasoned that he had to communicate both items. He would whine
a little--not as much as Seamus--but he would also give some
thought on how to communicate what it was he wanted. He often used
a surprising degree of abstraction. 2 AM. Sam wants to go
outside. He goes upstairs to my room and scratches on the wall
under the window. He was afraid of heights. He knew he did not
want to go through that wall. But what he wanted was in that
general direction. As soon as I gets up he runs to my bedroom
door. If I put on a pair of pants, sitting on the bed, he goes
back and scratches under the window. When I stand up, it was back
to the door. This is a dog who has some idea how to communicate
his desires.
At 4:45 in the afternoon he had some pretty unambiguous ways of
expressing himself. It was getting near the time he was used to
eating dinner. Over he went to the cupboard door and he would
swing it back and forth with his nose. "Isn't it time to open this
cupboard?" "No, Sam, you get fed at five." A little more swinging
and he decided to be more explicit. Lots of cans of different
things were kept in that cupboard. He knew which were dog food.
He would pull out a can of dog food and knock it onto its side. He
_n_e_v_e_r in his life pulled out the wrong kind of can by mistake.
Maybe the can had a scent he recognized, but I doubt that. Cans
are pretty well sealed. That's how they work. I think he had to
be able to recognize the labels. He knocked over the can and
rolled it to my feet. At the time I thought this was a cute trick.
Today I recognize it as a solution to a problem in ISC. He was
also pretty good at picking out, understanding, and remembering
human words. These days I wonder if you could somehow put a new
human brain into the body of a dachshund, could you tell the
difference? For that matter, which would be smarter?
THE MT VOID Page 3
2. Jerry Ryan points out that I probably meant July 3, *1863*, not
1963, for the time travel contest. I did.
In answer to my questions "Can one really make a copy of a
distinctive-looking pearl as easily as of a crystalline gem?" and
"[Why] do the people in these stories have these copies made
anyway?" Mike Lukacs says, "YES; Given access to the original (to
make an impression) or a complete and detailed set of photographs,
a nearly indetectable copy of a baroque pearl could be made much
more easily than one of a cut transparent stone. The owners of
fabulous pieces of jewelry (in the $million$ plus category) will
often have a good replica made to wear. Since person X is known to
own the Fleigleman diamond, and is not expected to hand it around
at parties for testing and inspection, the copy is just as good to
wear as the original, and much less expensive and risky. (For
major bucks type jewelry, insurance companies charge steep fees for
every day or hour that the item is outside of the bank vault where
it is normally stored.)"
Now I suppose my question is, "Can one buy a copy of the Fleigleman
diamond without having the real one? Is there a market in ersatz
Stars of India? Is this on Canal Street right next to the
purveyors of Rolex imitators?" (Yes, I know one buys the diamond
for investment. But it would seem that there must be some people
who want to invest and not wear it around, and others who would
like to wear it without actually investing.) [-ecl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
...mtgzy!leeper
The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--
deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--
persistent, persuasive, and realistic. Too often we
hold fast to the cliches of our forbears.
-- John F. Kennedy
BICYCLING THROUGH TIME AND SPACE by Mike Sirota
Ace, 1991, ISBN 0-441-05735-7, $3.99.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
Jack Miller gets an offer from an alien--a bicycle that will
let him ride "The Ultimate Bike Path." He can visit different
worlds, as well as the past and the future, and then he can return
to his own when he gets tired. This could have been interesting,
but it wasn't.
Why not? Well, for starters, the structure didn't use the
premise well. It's not that Sirota didn't have Jack visit enough
worlds; Jack visits too many, and they're not very interesting.
Jack can visit millions of worlds; we see him visit seven. The
first episode is a slap-stick humorous fantasy (where the humor
consist of Jack having to ride in a dung cart). The second is a
four-page quickie in which Jack meets Adolf Hitler as a boy. The
third is a typical kill-the-evil-sorcerer tale. The fourth is
another quickie--a world of cliches. Then comes a theme park world,
a Native American spirit world, rock-and-roll heaven, and a junk
food world. Mercifully, we are spared his adventures in the world
of the sex kittens.
It's a hodge-podge, more in the tradition of _T_h_e _S_t_a_r_l_o_s_t than
of Douglas Adams (which the cover claims--an early warning sign
these days). There are enough loose ends to threaten a sequel even
without the closing line: "I'll be back." But I somehow don't think
more volumes will be forthcoming. Maybe _B_i_c_y_c_l_i_n_g _T_h_r_o_u_g_h _T_i_m_e _a_n_d
_S_p_a_c_e would appeal to science fiction fans who are also bicyclists,
but I doubt even they would enjoy it.