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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 5/27/94 -- Vol. 12, No. 48
MEETINGS UPCOMING:
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are in Middletown 1R-400C
Wednesdays at noon.
_D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C
06/01 GREEN MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson (Hugo Nominee)
06/22 Hugo-nominated short stories
07/13 MOVING MARS by Greg Bear (Hugo Nominee)
08/03 GLORY SEASON by David Brin (Hugo Nominee)
08/24 VIRTUAL LIGHT by William Gibson (Hugo Nominee)
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 j.j.jetzt@att.com
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell HO 1C-523 908-834-1267 j.j.jetzt@att.com
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 m.r.leeper@att.com
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 908-949-7076 n.j.sauer@att.com
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen HO 2C-318 908-949-4156 l.f.larsen@att.com
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 m.r.leeper@att.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 e.c.leeper@att.com
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. Our next book discussion is of the Hugo-nominated _G_r_e_e_n _M_a_r_s by
Kim Stanley Robinson. A few months ago, Evelyn Leeper had this to
say about the book:
This is the second book of Robinson's "Mars" trilogy. The first
was last year's Hugo-nominated _R_e_d _M_a_r_s, and the series will be
finished with the upcoming _B_l_u_e _M_a_r_s. _G_r_e_e_n _M_a_r_s, it must be said,
suffers from the same flaws and difficulties as most middle-of-a-
trilogy novels. It does not start at the beginning, nor does it go
through to the end. You must know what happened in _R_e_d _M_a_r_s for
_G_r_e_e_n _M_a_r_s to make any sense or have any meaning. There is also
(to my tastes) far too much technical discussion of terraforming
THE MT VOID Page 2
and areology, though some may really like this part. It is only
in the second half of _G_r_e_e_n _M_a_r_s that Robinson returns in force to
the political and historical aspects of the series. All in all, I
have to reserve final judgement on _G_r_e_e_n _M_a_r_s until _B_l_u_e _M_a_r_s
concludes the series, and then see if _G_r_e_e_n _M_a_r_s serves its purpose
in the overall picture. That is the only way to view this book and
much as I want to see Kim Stanley Robinson finally get a Hugo, it
makes no sense to me to look at this as a possibility. But of
course, your mileage may vary. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. I was talking last week about a French company that is working
on touchy-feely suits to employ virtual reality to allow lovemaking
to be done at a distance over data communications lines. Now is
this a growth industry that AT&T could get into on the ground floor
or am I nuts? (Don't answer that. Whether I am nuts or not has
nothing to do with it.) Talk about giving the customers a product
they can relate to, this is it. I mean all you hear about these
days is safe-sex. Well, this really is really safe. You might get
an electric shock, but you darned sure are not going to get a
virus--unless maybe a computer virus.
Now think of the special expertise AT&T could bring to this market.
Think of the possibilities that get added if we just apply what we
know about conference calls. Then we can bring in answering
technology, particularly the capability to record messages. If you
are not home when your lover called you can record the message and
play it back when you want. As often as you want. You can even
keep a recording and play it back when you feel the urge. You can
record a library of your favorite calls and play them back whenever
you need some excitement. Then you can trade them with your
friends. Soon people will be selling them. You might even be able
to get great performances on CD ROM. Then you could put the data
into a computer, analyze it, and compose new scenarios and new
compositions. It gives a whole new meaning to the Turing Test. We
are talking here about what could become a new form of art. You
start by giving young people something they really want and would
be willing to pay for ... guilt-free, risk-free, one-night stands.
Lots of communities already have numbers you can phone in to be
part of a big conference call where you meet strangers. With the
use of this technology, those community numbers could replace
singles bars. (One imagines pickup lines like "Hey baby, wanna
plug me into your serial port?")
There is a cartoon showing two dogs sitting at a computer and the
older dog is telling the puppy "On the Internet nobody knows you're
a dog." That line has new meaning here. In fact with virtual
reality You can appear to be a stranger who is just your
correspondent's type. Your lover need never know what you look
THE MT VOID Page 3
like and can instead set some required parameters, and let the
system choose others at random. There are no dogs on the Internet.
You know, I do this to myself all the time. This started out as a
joke. I read a real article in _W_o_r_l_d _P_r_e_s_s _R_e_v_i_e_w and I thought I
could get milk some humor from describing it to you. It is sort of
a whimsical science fiction speculation. Right now it just doesn't
seem all that whimsical. I wonder if in fifteen years we won't see
this article--those of us who remember it--as more prophecy than
humor. It all sounds like it is a bit sleezy for AT&T, but I
wonder if it is. AIDS has lent an air of respectability to the
makers of condoms. The mores of society are changing. Sooner or
later somebody is going to make _a _l_o_t of money off of this idea.
But I bet you it won't be AT&T.
===================================================================
3. INTERFACE by Stephen Bury (Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-37230-0,
1994, 592pp, US$12.95) (a book review by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Stephen Bury is a pen name for the writing team of Neal Stephenson
(_S_n_o_w _C_r_a_s_h) and J. Frederick George. (Someone on the Net claimed
that George is Stephenson's father; I have no further evidence of
that.) And _I_n_t_e_r_f_a_c_e is a high-tech political thriller about a
politician who suffers a stroke and undergoes a radically new
treatment--with some startling side effects.
In many ways this was reminiscent of Stephen King's _D_e_a_d _Z_o_n_e--
there's a political campaign, complete with fascists, seedy
politicians, and schemes and plots galore. There are some everyday
sorts of characters who find themselves caught up in the sweep of
events. The plot device may be different (though both deal with
extraordinary mental powers), but a lot of what surrounds it is the
same. It's true that Bury uses his humor slightly differently from
King. King uses a slapstick approach, while Bury has a more
intellectual tack: "Brain cells didn't grow. But the connections
between them did. The network of linkages was constantly shifting
and reconnecting itself in a process that was usually described as
'learning.' Dr. Radhakrisnan did not really care for this
terminology because it contained a value judgment. It implied that
every time new synapses were formed inside a person's head it was
because they were memorizing Shakespeare or being taught how to
integrate transcendental functions. Of course, in reality most of
the internal rewiring that went on in people's brains took place in
response to watching game shows on television, being beaten up by
family members, figuring out the cheapest place to buy cigarettes,
and being conditioned not to mix plaids with stripes."
Unfortunately, the careful plotting slips up in a couple of spots.
On page 10 it is established that Clinton is no longer President,
THE MT VOID Page 4
yet on page 356 a televised debate is running the theme of
"Campaign '96." (Yes, there could have been an impeachment, but
the story seems to rule this out.) Later, someone seems to think a
Presidential term runs eight years. And would a whiz-bang
political campaign manager really hire someone from _S_t_a_r _T_r_e_k: _T_h_e
_N_e_x_t _G_e_n_e_r_a_t_i_o_n as someone he was trying to pass off as a news
anchorman?
If the science-fictional device is not entirely convincing, well,
I'm willing suspend my disbelief given that most of the rest of the
story is believable. The book moves along briskly (I read it in
five hours of plane flights) and keeps the reader's interest. But
it's more a political thriller than hard science fiction. Readers
who enjoyed _S_n_o_w _C_r_a_s_h may also miss the philosophical
underpinnings that were present in that earlier work. Of course,
this may be one reason why Stephenson's name does not appear on
this volume.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
m.r.leeper@att.com
"There is no 'i' in 'team'."
-- ON DEADLY GROUND
"There's none in 'Cyclops' either, now"
-- Odysseus