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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 3/25/94 -- Vol. 12, No. 39
MEETINGS UPCOMING:
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are in Middletown 1R-400C
Wednesdays at noon.
_D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C
03/30 THE MIND PARASITES by Colin Wilson
03/31 Hugo Nominations must be postmarked by this date
04/20 VALIS by Philip K. Dick
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 MT 2G-432 908-957-5087 holly!jetzt
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell HO 1C-523 908-834-1267 holly!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 HO 2C-318 908-949-4156 quartet!lfl
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzfs3!leeper
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 mtgpfs1!ecl
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. Our next discussion book is _T_h_e _M_i_n_d _P_a_r_a_s_i_t_e_s by Colin Wilson.
This book had its origins in a discussion that Wilson had with
August Derleth, which resulted in Wilson saying that he could write
a Lovecraftian novel that was as good as one Lovecraft could write.
The idea of a race of monsters that controls humanity through
mental powers was re-used by Wilson in his later, better-known
_P_h_i_l_o_s_o_p_h_e_r'_s _S_t_o_n_e. As Neil Barron says in _A_n_a_t_o_m_y _o_f _W_o_n_d_e_r,
"Both novels are replete with Wilson's erudition and enormous
knowledge of history and culture." Although Wilson maintained his
belief that Lovecraft was "a very bad writer," he thought
Lovecraft's vision and literary importance justified making him the
subject of the first essay in his 1976 study _T_h_e _S_t_r_e_n_g_t_h _t_o _D_r_e_a_m.
Even if you haven't read any Lovecraft, you can enjoy _T_h_e _M_i_n_d
_P_a_r_a_s_i_t_e_s, so come join us for the discussion.
THE MT VOID Page 2
===================================================================
2. There is an old question of whether life imitates art or art
imitates life. Actually I think it is clear that both are true to
some extent. Art is less and less interested in imitating life as
it become more and more abstract. That could be because we have
cameras for really realistic art these days and also because really
realistic painting is a slow and detailed process. Impressionism
is really the art of saving yourself a lot of effort sweating the
details and having people impressed by how well you can get away
with it.
But it seems true that also life imitates art. There is the old
question of whether we are becoming a violent society because that
is how we represent ourselves in film. People look at what they
see in the big and small screen and try to imitate it in real life.
This could be some nimnull seeing Beavis and Butthead play with
matches and do the same thing himself. Or it could be Adolf Hitler
seeing the destruction at the beginning of the film _T_h_i_n_g_s _T_o _C_o_m_e
and saying he needs to be able to create the same effect in real
life. That is a true story, at least if an issue of Ripley's
"Believe It or Not" is to be believed. (Hitler also really liked
the film _M_e_t_r_o_p_o_l_i_s according to Fritz Lang's biography and
according to Trivial Pursuit his favorite film was _K_i_n_g _K_o_n_g.
Apparently he was a real fan of fantasy films, an historical
insight you rarely see in the history books. That's just a slight
digression.)
So life does imitate art. But in an odd cessation of the laws of
causality, prehistoric life seems to also imitate contemporary art.
It used to be that paleontologists laughed at dinosaur movies
because the dinosaurs shown were just too big. Not only did they
out-scale any of the fossils that had been found, they were bigger
than any fossils that ever would be found. After all there are
theoretical limits to how big you can have a reptile before it
becomes structurally unsound. And the dinosaurs in films are just
too darn big. And they started telling us how big a reptile can
get.
Well naturally, just a short time later they discovered the remains
of flying reptiles that were impossibly large. They called them
Rodans after the monster in a Japanese sci-fi movie. What we think
of a gentle sauropods started turning uncooperative. Both
seismosaurus and supersaurus, subsequently discovered, go beyond
the theoretical size limits of reptiles. Now the people who used
to trumpet loudly about size limitations on dinosaurs are just
quietly waiting to see what else will be discovered. Mother Nature
does not like having limitations put on what she can do. They
haven't found any two-hundred-foot-tall Godzillas (four hundred
feet feet in the English-language version) and probably never will,
but nobody is really sure what the limits are anymore.
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The latest is that Spielberg's _J_u_r_a_s_s_i_c _P_a_r_k exaggerated the size
of velociraptors for artistic effect. Raptors were nasty but they
were not as big as they appeared in the film ... it was thought.
And his advisors complained that Raptors were just not that big.
Apparently Mother Nature saw the film and said "I got to get me
some of those." Before the film even was released fossils twenty-
foot-long, 1500-pound Raptors were found in Utah. They called them
Spielberg's Raptors (or Utahraptors for the state where they were
discovered). It's not nice to underestimate Mother Nature.
===================================================================
3. JEDI SEARCH by Kevin J. Anderson (read by Anthony Heald)
(Bantam, ISBN 0-553-47199-6, audio cassette, 180 min, 1994,
US$16.99) (an audiocassette review by Mark R. Leeper):
I don't often have much opportunity to review cassette readings of
abridgements of novels, though I will frequently take the sting out
of work around the house by listening to novels on cassette via
Walkman. It certainly isn't my preferred way to read a novel, but
it is the just about the most entertaining way I know of doing
housework. I usually listen to novels like _T_h_e _F_i_r_m, but when a
review copy of _J_e_d_i _S_e_a_r_c_h showed up in the house, I figured, what
the heck.
_J_e_d_i _S_e_a_r_c_h is the first novel of Kevin Anderson's Jedi Academy
Trilogy. The series continues the adventures where the film series
left off, with a story of Luke Skywalker trying to rekindle the
order of Jedi Knights by finding and training new adepts in the
Force. What can you say about the plot? It is just about what you
would expect from a new "Star Wars" film. Anderson was clearly
trying to translate the experience of seeing a new "Star Wars"
installment into book--or in this case cassette--form. We have new
threats from the nasty Empire with bigger and more powerful
weapons. We have the dubious joy of visiting the spice mines of
Kessel, mentioned in the first film. Anderson has very consciously
tried to tie the events, locations, and even objects of the series'
films as if they were Anderson's series all along.
This cassette production is read by Anthony Heald, who will be
familiar to some as Hannibal Lecter's obnoxious psychiatrist and
keeper from the film _T_h_e _S_i_l_e_n_c_e _o_f _t_h_e _L_a_m_b_s. There are a few
artificial touches to make an attempt to use the medium to increase
the cinematic feel. Chewbacca doesn't speak any language that
sounds to us humans as articulate. He just sort of mornfully
bellows. They have gotten the sound of one bellow off the
soundtrack and they play it whenever Chewbacca is supposed to be
speaking. I believe that is the only sound effect taken from the
films, but it is used profusely. At times the production team
over-use it and it becomes obvious that they have only one bellow
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which they use for all moods and messages. The cassette also uses
the original John Williams score to add excitement to many of the
scenes. Though they are, of course, limited to music that is
already familiar--they hardly were going to hire Williams or anyone
else to add to the original three scores. That is sort of the
spirit of the whole production. It does as many simple and
inexpensive touches it can to recreate the feel of what has gone
before without adding too much that is original or new.
This cassette was nothing earth-shaking, but it considerably
improved the dreary task of shoveling my driveway. And I'll tell
you I had one heck of a lot of empathy for Han Solo's back-breaking
labors in the spice mines of Kessel. There is such a thing as
going too far to make the listener think he is part of the story.
===================================================================
4. Boskone 31 (con report by Evelyn C. Leeper) (part 2 of 3):
Sources of Fear in Horror
Friday, 11 PM
David G. Hartwell (mod), Constance Hirsch,
Lawrence Schimel, Darrell Schweitzer
The panelists started with some opening thoughts. Hirsch said that
we read horror for the thrill (caused by the fear, I suppose).
Schimel said that the most effective sources of horror are family
relationships and abusive relationships. Hartwell claimed that
horror "jumpstarts" the emotions. This was reminiscent of Tanith
Lee's claim at another convention that the purpose of horror is to
give us practice in being frightened. When I asked about this,
Hirsch noted that this was not true, because in reading horror you
could always stop if things got too scary. Schweitzer had a
different view: "There are certain stories that are too dumb to be
done straight." We're not afraid of where our teeth go, he said;
it's not about _h_o_n_e_s_t emotion. He also said, "Horror is a series
of recognizable tropes and images" rather than a certain plot. He
pointed out that if you take a horror story and set it in Atlantis,
suddenly it becomes fantasy.
Someone cited Kathleen Koja's observation that horror is written
for two audiences: teenage boys afraid of castration and women
afraid of men. Even knowing this, panelists thought it was hard to
write about fear on demand. Hartwell said that to get twenty-five
stories for an anthology of horror stories he was putting together,
he needed to ask two hundred fifty people.
There is also a difference between being disturbed by a novel and
being scared. Hartwell said his rule of thumb was, "If a horror
story is done with art, then it is as illuminating as any other
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art. If a horror story of done without art, then it is horror
performed on me and I do not like it." Horror should be honest,
not gimmicky. Hirsch feels that one purpose of horror is to let
the reader vicariously triumph. There is a "right way" to read
horror, according to Hartwell. You need to find the trope that
jumpstarts your emotions, he said, and then read for those effects
which are awesome (in the literal sense of creating fear and
wonder).
There was brief note of the difference between supernatural and
psychological horror. Five years ago the psychological horror was
gaining, but now that is not as true. Horror is now found all over
the bookstore: the mystery section, the fiction section, the
suspense section, etc. ("Dark Suspense" is the marketing term for
non-fantasy horror, if that helps.) For example, Susan Palwick's
_F_l_y_i_n_g _i_n _P_l_a_c_e was marketed as a mainstream women's novel.
Whether or not the supernatural is involved, Hartwell said, "horror
is convincing the reader that something absurd in the real world is
real for the time of the book." It's all about the "infusion of
the irrational into the rational."
Schweitzer noted that people's reactions to horror change as they
age/mature. When you're young (immature) you laugh at horror. Not
laughing, and being disturbed by it, is a sign of maturity.
Someone quoted H. P. Lovecraft as saying, "The real connoisseurs of
horror have to make do with parts of literary works," which
Hartwell called "moments of discovery."
There was brief mention made of why there was so little horror
poetry: it's hard to write it well. (Apropos of nothing here,
someone noted that Gilbert & Sullivan rhyme with three or more
syllables for comic effect. I think the drift was that rhyming
things gives them a touch of humor--rhyming with multiple syllables
multiplies the humor.)
Panelists recommended Roald Dahl, Shirley Jackson, John Collier,
Tanith Lee, Gene Wolfe, Barry N. Malzberg, H. P. Lovecraft, and
Clark Ashton Smith. (NESFA Press will be publishing Malzberg's
_P_a_s_s_a_g_e _o_f _t_h_e _L_i_g_h_t.) Schweitzer claimed that Jonathan Carroll's
_L_a_n_d _o_f _L_a_u_g_h_s is "the best horror novel of the last twenty-five
years," and described it as what would have resulted if "Philip
K. Dick and [someone else] conspired to write L. Frank Baum." _T_h_e
_S_c_a_r_f by Robert Bloch was also heavily recommended, and Schweitzer
said that _D_a_r_k _D_e_s_c_e_n_t edited by Hartwell was _t_h_e standard
anthology. Ramsey Campbell's _C_o_u_n_t _o_f _E_l_e_v_e_n was cited as a funny
serial killer novel (if you're looking for that sort of thing). On
the other hand, Hartwell said that Bradford Morrow and Patrick
McGrath's _N_e_w _G_o_t_h_i_c anthology was a "pile of shit."
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When asked for the most horrific thing they had read recently,
panelists listed M. R. James's work (Schweitzer), Billie Sue
Mosiman's "No Restrictions" in _P_u_l_p_h_o_u_s_e 516 (Hirsch), W. Somerset
Maugham's stories (Schimel), and a Frank Robinson manuscript and a
Gene Wolfe story (Hartwell). Also mentioned was Susan Wade's
"White Rook, Black Pawn," which will appear in an Ellen Datlow
anthology in 1996.
I note that there was not much discussion about the purported
subject of the panel, the sources of fear in horror, other than the
comment about family and abusive relationships.
Saturday Morning
Last year we could not go out for breakfast because our car battery
was dead. This year we did go out, and I concluded that the hotel
was better than Friendly's.
Immoral Fiction?
Saturday, 10 AM
Thomas A. Easton (mod), Michael F. Flynn, Patrick Nielsen Hayden,
Melissa Scott, Jane Yolen
The panelists began by saying that they would be talking primarily
about adult fiction, since children's fiction required a somewhat
different approach.
Yolen opened by saying that the author has to be honest about his
or her fiction (shades of what Will Shetterly said in the "Comic
Books and Alternate History" panel and what David Hartwell said in
the "Sources of Fear in Horror" panel). Nielsen Hayden added that
fiction is a sort of experiment (where the author postulates a
situation and then plays it out). The reader, however, may read
things into novels that are not there.
Flynn summarized what most panelists (and probably most of the
audience) believed: that when someone talks about "immoral fiction"
he or she means "that which I do not believe" or "that which I
disagree with." Examples of fiction which are often called immoral
under this definition were given as Robert A. Heinlein's _S_t_a_r_s_h_i_p
_T_r_o_o_p_e_r_s, William Golding's _L_o_r_d _o_f _t_h_e _F_l_i_e_s, and all the works of
John Norman.
Easton thought it was important to distinguish between morality and
ethics, his distinction being that the former is grounded in
religion and the latter is not. The other panelists, however, felt
that this was merely a word game and wanted to consider the two as
just different terms for the same concept.
Someone said that "moral fiction" is sometimes defined as fiction
that concerns itself with the issues of right and wrong. But then
THE MT VOID Page 7
if English were a logical language, "immoral fiction" would be
fiction that does not concern itself with the issue of right and
wrong. However, English is not a logical language. The latter
sort of fiction might be termed "amoral fiction," but clearly
"immoral fiction" means fiction that concerns itself with the issue
of right and wrong, but comes up with the "wrong" answers. Scott
later gave as an example of this novels written by African women
which consider female "circumcision" a good thing.
Nielsen Hayden said that one thing to remember in all this is that
science fiction is a didactic form; Yolen responded by saying that
all fiction is inherently didactic. Nielsen Hayden agreed that
might be true, but still felt that science fiction was more
didactic than realistic fiction. Easton pointed out that because
science fiction relied on hypothetical scenarios ("what if?"), it
was easier for it to break tabus than for realistic fiction to do
so. But was doing so immoral? Consider the film _T_h_e _P_r_o_g_r_a_m,
which had a scene of students lying down on the center line of a
road. After someone who had seen the film did this--and was
killed--Touchstone removed that scene from all prints. Was the
film (in legal terms) an "attractive nuisance"? (The classic
"attractive nuisance" is a backyard swimming pool. The owners are
supposed to _k_n_o_w that neighborhood kids will be attracted to it and
put a locked fence around it.) By the way, the audience seemed to
feel the action in the film was less an "attractive nuisance" and
more a case of "evolution in action." My example of this would be
the Bible: is Christianity (or God) responsible for the misuse and
misinterpretation of the Bible? If Christians claim not, then it
hardly seems fair for them then to attack other authors for the
misuse of _t_h_e_i_r works.
Nielsen Hayden observed that this--and much of the criticism of
fiction as immoral--seemed to assume that authors have some power
to change society. "If we really did had the power to change
society by our writing, we'd use it in a much more focused way," he
said.
Yolen said that what she thought of as immoral fiction was fiction
that was slickly sentimental and manipulative, such as Robert James
Waller's _B_r_i_d_g_e_s _o_f _M_a_d_i_s_o_n _C_o_u_n_t_y, David Eastman's _V_e_l_v_e_t_e_e_n
_R_a_b_b_i_t, and Shel Silverstein's _G_i_v_i_n_g _T_r_e_e. As Yolen said, "It's
easy to make a reader cry, but harder to make a reader think."
"Comfy books" are okay, she continued, but they should not be
considered on the same level as more thought-provoking works.
Easton tried to rephrase this as, "It's the excess that makes them
immoral," but with that definition I think you have the problem
that you cannot say that a book is _i_n_h_e_r_e_n_t_l_y immoral--and I
suspect that there are books that people would say are inherently
immoral.
THE MT VOID Page 8
Flynn noted, "We seem to be saying that moral books question rather
than affirm," and in science fiction it is difficult to affirm
because science fiction is a questioning ("what if?" again) genre.
And what disturbs people is not asking the questions, it's the
answers that are arrived at.
Nielsen Hayden did say that wrong-headed writers have a purpose:
they are useful to argue with. They also give one the experience
of being "seduced by garbage" and teach one to read critically. Of
course, this process takes place only after you realize that what
you had believed is in fact garbage, and this may take time, but as
you grow up you often change your mind about books you read earlier
in life. The examples he gave of this were Robert A. Heinlein and
Ayn Rand.
Talking about children's books, someone in the audience said that
she often has parents ask for a recommendation, but then they add,
"I don't want my child disturbed." (Of course, this may just mean
"please don't pick a book that will give my three-year-old
nightmares.")
The panelists also mentioned John Gardner's _O_n _M_o_r_a_l _F_i_c_t_i_o_n.
Neglected SF and Fantasy Films
Saturday, 12 noon
Daniel Kimmel (mod), W. Michael Henigan, Mark R. Leeper
(I had wanted to see the "Catholicism and Science Fiction" panel
(held somewhat ironically in the King Henry room), but loyalty
demanded I attend this one. Henigan and Kimmel were both wearing
SF-Lovers Digest T-shirts, but I was wearing ours instead of Mark
wearing it. Moderators should let people know what the dress code
is. :-) )
What can one say about a panel on neglected films where panelists
volunteer such "neglected" films as _F_o_r_b_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_n_e_t?
Well, ARRGGHH! is about the only comment that comes to mind.
It started off well enough, with panelists noting that many factors
lead to films being neglected: being in black and white, having no
special effects, getting bad reviews, and so on. Then Kimmel
listed some films that he thought were unfairly neglected:
_C_o_n_e_h_e_a_d_s, _H_e_a_r_t_b_e_e_p_s, _I_n_n_e_r _S_p_a_c_e, and _Q_u_i_n_t_e_t. All, you will
note, are relatively recent (the oldest, _Q_u_i_n_t_e_t, is from 1979).
Leeper's films, on the other hand, were older: _T_h_e _M_i_n_d _B_e_n_d_e_r_s,
_U_n_e_a_r_t_h_l_y _S_t_r_a_n_g_e_r, _D_a_r_k _I_n_t_r_u_d_e_r, and _Q_u_e_s_t _f_o_r _L_o_v_e. Henigan
listed _L_o_g_a_n'_s _R_u_n, _S_o_y_l_e_n_t _G_r_e_e_n, and _F_a_h_r_e_n_h_e_i_t _4_5_1.
Admittedly, the panelists did start moving backward in time a bit,
naming _C_r_e_a_t_i_o_n _o_f _t_h_e _H_u_m_a_n_o_i_d_s, _D_r_a_g_o_n_s_l_a_y_e_r, _D_u_n_e (this is a
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neglected film? Badly thought of maybe, but hardly neglected), _I
_M_a_r_r_i_e_d _a _M_o_n_s_t_e_r _f_r_o_m _O_u_t_e_r _S_p_a_c_e, _L_i_f_e_f_o_r_c_e, _P_h_a_s_e _I_V, _S_p_a_c_e_d
_I_n_v_a_d_e_r_s, _S_t_r_a_n_g_e _I_n_v_a_d_e_r_s, _T_h_e _T_w_o_n_k_y, and _V_i_d_e_o_d_r_o_m_e. Other
films mentioned included _Y_e_u_x _s_a_n_s _V_i_s_a_g_e, _C_a_r_n_i_v_a_l _o_f _S_o_u_l_s,
_D_e_l_i_c_a_t_e_s_s_e_n, _T_h_e _E_n_d _o_f _A_u_g_u_s_t _i_n _t_h_e _H_o_t_e_l _O_z_o_n_e, _T_h_e _D_y_b_b_u_k,
_F_a_n_t_a_s_t_i_c _P_l_a_n_e_t, _T_h_e _L_a_t_h_e _o_f _H_e_a_v_e_n, _T_h_e _M_a_n _W_h_o _L_a_u_g_h_s, _R_e_t_u_r_n
_t_o _O_z, _S_e_c_o_n_d_s, _S_o_m_e_t_h_i_n_g _W_i_c_k_e_d _T_h_i_s _W_a_y _C_o_m_e_s, and something
called _B_e_r_n_a_r_d _a_n_d _G_e_n_i_e (sp?) from the Arts & Entertainment
Network.
Kimmel also mentioned _A_l_t_e_r_e_d _S_t_a_t_e_s, noting that it opened the
same weekend as _S_c_a_n_n_e_r_s and was eclipsed by that film.
Leeper provided a handout of his list of "neglected films," with
commentary; it has already run in the MT VOID.
Turbulence and Psychohistory
Saturday, 1 PM
Evelyn C. Leeper (mod), Michael F. Flynn, Robert Glaub,
Mark Keller, Andrew Nisbet, Mark Olson
(Thanks to Mark Leeper for taking copious notes at this panel.)
The panelists began by introducing themselves (before I arrived,
because I managed to get lost finding the room--my own personal
turbulence, I guess). Flynn said that he had written a novel about
psychohistory, _I_n _t_h_e _C_o_u_n_t_r_y _o_f _t_h_e _B_l_i_n_d. Robert Glaub works for
the Department of Defense and is an amateur historian. Mark Keller
is a well-known alternate history buff. Mark Olson started with
alternate history and went on to become interested in real history.
And I got to do something that I have complained for years about
others doing--promote a published work of mine, in this case an
article in the first issue of _A_l_t_e_r_n_a_t_e _W_o_r_l_d_s. So I guess I
should complain about myself. Take it as read.
I began by couching the panel's topic in terms of chaos theory. If
chaos theory is correct, and very small changes in initial
conditions can effect enormous changes in results, then how is the
prediction of the future affected, or the prediction of what might
have happened if something had gone differently?
Nesbit said that the function of history is to present the past,
not to predict the future, and that psychohistory has little to do
with history. Olson said that sounded like what astronomers used
to say, that we can never find out the makeup of the stars, so it
was pointless to speculate. Should our view of history be based on
whether we have the means to determine it? The Bernoullis applied
probability theory to history; should we? Flynn said that most
people trained in history are not trained in mathematics and
statistics, so trying to apply those to history is something few
experts can do. (And then a few minutes later proceeded to do so
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in great detail.) Keller felt that prediction was not
unreasonable, and that we could use the lessons of history.
Everyone knows of Santayana's statement that "those who do not
learn from history are condemned to repeat it" (though I cannot
find a source for this citation), but Keller quoted Kliuchevsky as
saying, "History doesn't teach us anything, but it punishes those
who don't learn the lessons." (Of course, Hegel said, "What
experience and history teach is this--that people and governments
never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles
deduced from it" [introduction, _P_h_i_l_o_s_o_p_h_y _o_f _H_i_s_t_o_r_y].)
Flynn cited the science of cliometrics (after Clio, the Muse of
History), which claims that there are laws in the way society
works. Until cliometrics was discovered (or invented, depending on
your point of view), human society was considered an invention of
the gods. We still question, however, whether human society is
somehow "hard-wired" into our brains or not.
Regarding predicting the future, Ben Yalow (in the audience) said
that a while back someone was predicting how the Supreme Court
would rule on various issues. Keller noted that was only
predicting what nine people would decide and was not that
difficult, given their past decision history. The Germans, for
example, had a big file on Patton in an attempt to predict his
actions. Nesbit said that what worried him was that examples of
psychohistory were fallacious and started to explain why, and then
it became clear that I had failed in a primary task of a moderator:
I had not had us define our terms. Most of us were using Asimov's
definition of psychohistory, involving predicting the course of the
future based on the idea that, while the behavior of individuals
cannot be predicted, the behavior of large groups of individuals
can. (Asimov got this idea by analogy from the action of gas
molecules.) But Nesbit was interpreting psychohistory as being
about applying psychology and psychoanalysis to individuals to
predict their actions. Having cleared up this confusion, and
established that we would be using the Asmovian concept, we
proceeded.
And where we proceeded was to cycles. Flynn first mentioned the
concept, and after responding to an audience member who thought C.
Northcote Parkinson was the greatest thinker of the West and that
Parkinson had said that there was a rhythm of history in which
China has a three-hundred-year cycle, Flynn produced dozens of
viewgraphs showing the various cycles of history that he (and
others) had discovered.
Flynn began by discussing correlations. For example, there is a
95% correlation between the percentage of women working and the
percentage of imported automobiles versus the domestic market. The
conclusion one might come to, therefore, is that to reduce foreign
trade one should get women back into the kitchen. But _a_n_y two
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increasing trends will correlate (and discounting the "Rosie the
Riveter" bump in 1944, the working-women trend has been an
increasing one all this century).
The first cycle Flynn showed on a viewgraph was the cycle of the
number of slave revolts and race riots, starting with a slave
revolt in 1837. This is stable with occasional spikes, the spikes
occurring at regular intervals about two generations apart. ("Be
out of town in 2010," was his advice.)
Flynn noted that, oddly enough, random processes produce
predictable patterns. Trends and cycles that Flynn discussed were
the number of wars per decade (random), the number of homicides
versus gun control, and the number of children per family versus
family income (as people get richer, they have fewer children, but
there was a drop in 1919 and a post-World War II baby boom, as well
as another baby boom in the 1980s). And often we do not realize
that we have been in an atypical period. If we look at
unemployment over a long period of time, we discover that median
unemployment of 5% is normal. It's just that we were in a boom
time from World War II and the Cold War and did not realize that it
was not going to last. Sometimes a change in the process can
change a trend. For example, business failures dropped after the
Great Depression, but that was because not because the economics
had gotten so much better, but that laws made it harder to go out
of business.
On a depressing note, Flynn showed the graph for the money the
United States collects, as a percentage of the GNP. In the 1940s,
it starts going up, not in an exponential curve, but a super-
exponential one!
As the panelists noted, this cyclic nature of history does not
really help the predictor. One can predict approximately how many
coups there will be in the world in a decade, for example, but this
does not help predict that there will be a coup in Urago on May 17
of next year. (Which of course means that Hari Seldon's right-on-
the-date predictions were pure fiction.) You can say that some
areas of the country are prone to thunderstorms, but you cannot say
when there will be one. Nesbit said that some people may think
that all of human behavior can be predicted with a straight edge
and semi-log paper, but it's more complex than that. Even the
motion of the planets is a chaotic system, and while it can be
predicted in the short term, the longer the period, the less
accurate the predictions become.
And even cycles can be perturbed (as has already been noted).
Nesbit cited a power plant whose proponents said that it would meet
the growing energy needs of the area. But after it was built, the
demand for energy either went down, or did not go up as fast as
predicted. However, the reason for this was that the cost of
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building the plant had been so high as to raise the cost of
electricity, and that made people cut back on their usage! Another
example was the number of suicides by gas in Britain. At some
point it was made more difficult to commit suicide by gas (I forget
how) and so that trend changed. (But possibly other types of
suicides went up.) Flynn said that science is deciding what
produces trend lines and whether it can it be depended on.
Returning to the predictive powers of historians, Keller claimed
that many people say the future was predicted in Revelation,
Nostradamus, and Cayce. I noted that the "predictions" all seemed
to have been noticed only after the fact, and that no one could
figure out what was meant before something happened. I also said
that while it is easy to explain why things happened in the past
and make it at least plausible, when people turn these theories to
the future, they do not seem to work. For example, Paul Kennedy
explained at great length why countries rose and fell in _T_h_e _R_i_s_e
_a_n_d _F_a_l_l _o_f _t_h_e _G_r_e_a_t _P_o_w_e_r_s, but then blew it all by claiming (in
the late 1980s) that Germany would never re-unite, and explaining
why. (Nesbit responded that Kennedy's explanations of history were
not entirely convincing, and claimed that Kennedy had said that the
rise of Bohemia was due to brass mines there.)
Olson asked, "If you had a time machine, could you make a change?"
Well, of course you could (I pointed out you could kill the
Beatles, which would certainly be _a change), so Olson clarified
that he was looking for whether one could change history
_e_f_f_e_c_t_i_v_e_l_y. Ben Yalow (in the audience) thought that just
occasionally you could catch the cusp and do so. Olson replied
that he did not believe in cusps, because any small change changes
who gets born. (In other words, he supports the "Great Man" theory
rather than the "Tide of History" theory.) Olson claimed that the
change in who is born would be the same as replacing people by
fraternal twins, though why he chooses fraternal twins instead of
ordinary siblings is not clear to me. Yalow said that meant that
Olson was claiming you could change history, to which Olson replied
that yes, he could _c_h_a_n_g_e history, but he could not predict (or
control) the direction the new history would take. Glaub also
backed the "Great Man" theory. Keller said the trick was in
knowing what the critical changes are. Flynn said that no matter
what random events are changed, certain results will occur (i.e.,
he backs the "Tide of History" theory). He used the analogy of a
fern leaf, where there are alternate branchings, but they all tend
to go in the same direction. Nesbit did not think he could
manipulate history effectively, but thought it would be interesting
to experiment and see what would happen if things were changed. (I
had the same feeling this last election. I would be curious to
know what would have happened if Perot had been elected, but not
curious enough to commit myself to that future!) By repeating the
experiment over and over, one might detect patterns. Olson
somewhat humorously asked Nesbit how he would get informed consent
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from his experimental subjects. Flynn said that the problem with
all this is that all you can do is fiddle with epiphenomena--
individual events--while factors of the population as a whole are
hard to change. How can you change the literacy rate, for example?
You could sink Columbus, but someone else would have made that
trip--the Americas are just too close to Europe to avoid being
"discovered."
In regards to all this, Olson recommended a new book called _T_i_m_e
_M_a_c_h_i_n_e_s: _T_i_m_e _T_r_a_v_e_l _i_n _P_h_y_s_i_c_s, _M_e_t_a_p_h_y_s_i_c_s, & _S_c_i_e_n_c_e _F_i_c_t_i_o_n by
Paul J. Nahin. And the book that Flynn used for many of his
viewgraphs, and has quoted on many other alternate history panels,
is _C_y_c_l_e_s, _t_h_e _S_c_i_e_n_c_e _o_f _P_r_e_d_i_c_t_i_o_n by Edward R. Dewey and Edwin
F. Dakin, which in 1947 predicted the economic cycles that we seem
to be living through: a big recession in the early 1980s, another
smaller one in the early 1990s, an upturn in January 1993, and a
big upturn in 2006. (This is supposedly still in print from the
Foundation for the Study of Cycles, 1964, 255pp, $15.) (Regarding
the economic cycles, Olson said, "Even if I believed history was
mechanical, I would be skeptical." The charts were too accurate;
you would not expect that sort of accuracy, he said. And books
keep predicting that there is a recession coming: there has been
one predicted for just about every year in the last couple of
decades, and the year 2000 is particularly popular for all these
sort of predictions. Of course, my feeling is that predicting all
sorts of things for the year 2000 may be a self-fulfilling
prophecy. If people expect some sort of disaster, their actions
may cause one.)
(to be continued)
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com
Manners are especially the need of the plain.
The pretty can get away with anything.
-- Evelyn Waugh
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