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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 02/26/93 -- Vol. 11, No. 35
MEETINGS UPCOMING:
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are in Holmdel 4N-509
Wednesdays at noon.
_D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C
03/10 WEST OF EDEN by Harry Harrison (Primitive Humans Vs.
Alternatively-Evolved Bio-Tech-Advanced Reptiles)
03/31 STEEL BEACH by John Varley (Near-Future Uptopias--
Or Are They?)
03/31 Deadline for Hugo Nominations
04/21 ARISTOI by Walter Jon Williams
(If This--AI, Virtual Reality, Nanotech--Goes On)
05/12 THOMAS THE RHYMER by Ellen Kushner (Fantasy in a Modern Vein)
06/02 WORLD AT THE END OF TIME by Frederik Pohl
(Modern Stapledonian Fiction)
06/23 CONSIDER PHLEBAS by Iain Banks
(Space Opera with a Knife Twist)
07/14 SIGHT OF PROTEUS by Charles Sheffield (Human Metamorphosis)
Outside events:
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the second
Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call 201-933-2724 for
details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society meets on the third
Saturday of every month in Belleville; call 201-432-5965 for details.
HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 908-834-1563 hocpb!jetzt
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell HO 1C-523 908-834-1267 hocpb!jrrt
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzfs3!leeper
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 908-949-7076 homxc!11366ns
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 908-576-3346 quartet!lfl
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzfs3!leeper
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 mtgzy!ecl
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. Occasionally you realize you are a little closer to the future
than you thought. No, I don't mean there is more gray in my beard
than I realized. That goes without saying. No, there is an
article in the January 23 _S_c_i_e_n_c_e _N_e_w_s that hit me as something of
a surprise. Some of you probably already know about the Turing
THE MT VOID Page 2
Test. It is a measure of artificial intelligence. Having a
machine that can talk like a human is really the goal here. It is
set up in a complex way, but a group of judges sit at terminals
talking to a series of conversationalists at the other end. Some
of the conversationalists are human; some are computer programs.
The question is whether the judges can tell which are which. A
computer program passes the test if a significant number of the
judges think the program is really a human.
I have known about the Turing Test for years and thought we were
still a long way from actually achieving the Turing Test goal.
Joseph Weintraub of Thinking Software in Woodside, New York, is a
lot closer than I had realized. He has a wise-cracking program
that chats about the differences between men and women. Of eight
expert judges, two thought the program was a human; six knew--or
suspected--it was a piece of software. Two out of eight is not
such a great average until you start to think that for 25% of these
experts the Turing test is being fulfilled!
2. Through some software bug, last week's issue was mistakenly
labeled Volume 11, Number 31, instead of Volume 11, Number 32. [-
ecl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
...mtgzfs3!leeper
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the
opinion that has survived.
-- Oscar Wilde
THE GUNS OF THE SOUTH by Harry Turtledove
Ballantine, ISBN 0-345-37675-7, 1992, $19.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper
If the point of studying history is to learn from it, then
surely one should learn something from alternate histories as well.
And certainly I found a lot in _T_h_e _G_u_n_s _o_f _t_h_e _S_o_u_t_h that is
relevant to current concerns--in fact, far more so than one usually
finds in alternate histories.
But first, the story. Judith Tarr was supposed to be on this
panel, but couldn't make it. Harry Turtledove has credited Judith
Tarr with the inspiration for this book (previously known as _T_h_e
_L_o_n_g _D_r_u_m _R_o_l_l). It seems that he was talking to Judith about one
of her books and she bemoaned the fact that the cover on it was "as
anachronistic as Robert E. Lee holding an Uzi." Well, Turtledove
thought about this and decided that Uzis were not the right weapon,
but what about if Lee had an AK-47? What if Lee had a _l_o_t of AK-
47s? And who would give Lee a lot of AK-47s? Time traveling
Afrikaaners, of course. So Turtledove postulates a group of
Afrikaaners from 2014 who have traveled back in time 150 years with
thousands of AK-47s to help the Confederacy win the Civil War and
set up a white supremacist government. In addition to the AK-47s,
they have two additional "weapons": information about the Union's
battle plans, and the spectre of the horrible outcome if the Union
wins. The former, however, diminishes in value with time as this
timeline moves further and further away from the timeline the
Afrikaaners know. And the latter has its own pitfalls, as some soon
discover.
The most interesting part, though, is after the Confederacy
wins the war. (Okay, this is a slight spoiler, but with thousands
of AK-47s, it's hard to believe they might lose.) Though the war
was fought in large part to maintain slavery, which in term was
based on the belief in the inferiority of the black race, Lee finds
himself faced with two very uncomfortable facts. First, though the
common wisdom in the Confederacy (and in the Union, for that matter)
was that blacks wouldn't--couldn't--fight well as soldiers, the
evidence of his own experience against black troops has taught Lee
otherwise. And having begun thinking that maybe all the other
"facts" about blacks that he's been taught are equally false, he is
then brought face to face with the realization that history--his
great-grandchildren and the great-grandchildren of those around him-
--would condemn slavery, and the men who upheld it, as evil. How he
and others resolve this conflict is the focus of the last part of
_T_h_e _G_u_n_s _o_f _t_h_e _S_o_u_t_h and to a great extent of the book as a whole.
Guns of the South February 17, 1993 Page 2
And here is where I see the relevance. What do you do when
evidence disproves a widely held belief about a group of people--in
particular, about the fighting skills of a group of people? What do
you do when you suspect (for can we ever _k_n_o_w?) that history will
condemn your age as bigoted for its treatment of a group of people?
In case you haven't figured it out by now, I'm taling about the
whole argument about allowing gay and lesbian soldiers in the
military. Unless Turtledove is psychic (or had visitors from the
future), he couldn't have foreseen just how relevant _T_h_e _G_u_n_s _o_f _t_h_e
_S_o_u_t_h would be. Yet that is what most impresses me about it. The
historical aspects are, I am sure, impeccably researched, but it is
the moral questions that gives this book meaning and body. It is
more than just a laying-out of alternate Civil War battles. It has
characters who have feelings and convictions, and who face dilemmas,
and who change and are changed by the events around them. Don't
think of this as just another "What if the South won the Civil
War?" novel; it's much, much more.
TRIUMPH by Ben Bova
Tor, ISBN 0-312-85359-9, 1993, $18.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper
In an alternate history story, something happens that didn't
happen in our world (or, conversely, something _d_o_e_s_n'_t happen that
_d_i_d happen in our world). But while this is a necessary condition,
it is not a sufficient one. An alternate history in which Fred
Wilson (or even John Kennedy) takes his coffee with two sugars
instead of one on May 17, 1962, is not going to be very interesting
unless something noticeably different happens because of this. A
corollary of this is that you have to _s_e_e some result--an alternate
history in which the usher knocks John Wilkes Booth's hand aside at
the last moment needs to have something after that besides Lincoln
saying, "Thank you, son. Now we can get on with rebuilding the
country," or even, "How dare he! I'll show those Rebels--I'll order
every town in Virginia burned to the ground!"
This is all by way of background to my main objection to
_T_r_i_u_m_p_h by Ben Bova. It sets up an interesting situation--what if
Stalin had died on April 12, 1945, instead of Roosevelt, and in the
subsequent confusion the Americans pushed on to take Berlin instead
of leaving it to the Soviets? The problem is, that's it. That's
the whole book. It starts on April 1, 1945, with the activation of
"Operation Broadsword," and ends on April 30, 1945. One assumes the
politics of post-war Europe will be different but it is left as an
exercise for the reader as to how. (One is further misled by the
jacket blurbs comparing it to Len Deighton's _S_S_-_G_B and Robert
Harris's _F_a_t_h_e_r_l_a_n_d. First of all, in both of those Germany _w_i_n_s,
and second, they take place after the change-point, the former by
one year and the latter by twenty.) We do get to hear Churchill talk
about how Europe would have been had the Soviets taken Berlin. Of
course, he gets it wrong, which may be Bova's way of saying that no
one can predict the future even though we have to make decisions as
if we could.
Another flaw arises from Bova's apparent need to tie all this
into space exploration. Bova makes Yuri Gagarin's older brother
Grigori Stalin's private secretary. But Evegeny Riabchikov's
_R_u_s_s_i_a_n_s _i_n _S_p_a_c_e gives a detailed description of Gagarin's family
and he had no older brother Grigori, nor did his parents die in the
collectivization as Bova describes. Yes, in an alternate history
there are fictionalizations, but to make such a major character a
fictional relative of a real person when that isn't the main thrust
of the novel seems a violation of Occam's Razor if nothing else.
(You can postulate a fictional relative if that is your "what
if?" but not just as a side note.)
In short, it's an interesting premise but Bova doesn't take it
anywhere. For inveterate alternate history fans only.
Nebula Nominations (1993)
Novels
Barnes, John: _A _M_i_l_l_i_o_n _O_p_e_n _D_o_o_r_s (Tor, October 1992)
Fowler, Karen Joy: _S_a_r_a_h _C_a_n_a_r_y (Henry Holt, October 1992)
McHugh, Maureen F.: _C_h_i_n_a _M_o_u_n_t_a_i_n _Z_h_a_n_g (Tor, March 1992)
Vinge, Vernor: _A _F_i_r_e _U_p_o_n _t_h_e _D_e_e_p (Tor, April 1992)
Willis, Connie: _D_o_o_m_s_d_a_y _B_o_o_k (Bantam, June, 1992)
Yolen, Jane: _B_r_i_a_r _R_o_s_e (Tor, September 1992)
Novellas
Bull, Emma: "Silver or Gold" (_A_f_t_e_r _t_h_e _K_i_n_g, Tor,
January 1992)
Denton, Bradley: "The Territory" (_F_a_n_t_a_s_y & _S_c_i_e_n_c_e
_F_i_c_t_i_o_n, July 1992)
McHugh, Maureen: "Protection" (_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s _S_F, April 1992)
Morrow, James: "City of Truth" (St. Martin's Press, May 1992)
Oltion, Jerry & Goodloe, Lee: "Contact" (_A_n_a_l_o_g,
November 1991)
Shepard, Lucius: "Barnacle Bill the Spacer" (_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s,
July 1992)
Swanwick, Michael: "Griffin's Egg" (St. Martin's Press,
January 1992/_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s, May 1992).
Novelette
Benford, Gregory: "Matter's End" (_F_u_l_l _S_p_e_c_t_r_u_m _3, Bantam,
April 1991)
Dyer, S.N.: "The July Ward" (_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s _S_F, July 1991)
Gilman, Carolyn: "The Honeycrafters" (_F_a_n_t_a_s_y & _S_c_i_e_n_c_e
_F_i_c_t_i_o_n, October/November, 1991)
Sargent, Pamela: "Danny Goes to Mars" (_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s _S_F,
October 1992)
Shwartz, Susan: "Suppose They Gave a Peace" (_A_l_t_e_r_n_a_t_e
_P_r_e_s_i_d_e_n_t_s, Tor, February 1992)
Williams, Walter Jon: "Prayers on the Wind" (_W_h_e_n _t_h_e _M_u_s_i_c'_s
_O_v_e_r, Bantam, May 1991).
Short Stories
Bishop, Michael: "Life Regarded as a Jigsaw Puzzle of Highly
Lustrous Cats" (_O_m_n_i, September 1991)
DiFilippo, Paul: "Lennon Spex" (_A_m_a_z_i_n_g, July 92)
Kress, Nancy: "The Mountain to Mohammed" (_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s,
April 1992)
Robinson, Kim Stanley: "Vinland the Dream" (_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s,
November 1991/_R_e_m_a_k_i_n_g _H_i_s_t_o_r_y, Tor, December 1991)
Soukup, Martha: "The Arbitrary Placement of Walls"
(_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s _S_F, April 1992)
Willis, Connie: "Even the Queen" (_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s _S_F, April 1992).