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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 06/03/94 -- Vol. 12, No. 49
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
07/16 GLORY SEASON by David Brin (Hugo Nominee)
08/03 MOVING MARS by Greg Bear (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 r.l.mitchell@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. I was at a science fiction convention recently and saw somebody
who had bought packages of trading cards. It brought back memories
of my youth to see him eagerly going through a huge stack of these
cards to see what he had gotten. I sat down near him and asked
about that they were. What I got was an education. Yes, they were
packaged and purchased like trading cards, but they were actually
cards that are used to play a game called "Magic: the Gathering."
I was trying to figure out what that title could mean--it didn't
seem to syntax somehow, when he went on to explain the game. You
are in a magic war and you attack your enemy through the use of
these game cards. Each card changes rules like in COSMIC
ENCOUNTER--another game that for a while was popular at science
THE MT VOID Page 2
fiction conventions. The cards each have inscriptions like "All
players and flying creatures suffer X damage" or "Target creature
regenerates" or "Target spell is countered four times cost of
target spell" or "All damage from any one source is added to your
life instead of subtracted." Well, it is an interesting concept
that you don't pull the cards from some stack on the game board but
buy them. That adds some mystery since you don't know what cards
are out there.
So far it sounded like an interesting idea. Nothing too shocking.
At least not yet. I asked, once you have used a card what happens
to it? It stays played and can't be reused. I suppose it could be
played again in the next game, but I am not sure this game is
designed to be played more than once. One thing still puzzled me
however. Then I asked THE QUESTION. "What," I asked, "is to stop
whoever invests the most money in these cards from having a real
advantage over his opponent?" "Well, nothing. That's usually how
it works, in fact." At first that bothered me a little until I
gave it a little bit of thought. Then it bothered me a lot. I had
seen this sort of thing before someplace else.
This guy Richard Garfield, the inventor of the game, in effect
created several artificial wars so he could sell these cards, which
are really weapons, to both sides of the conflict. So how is this
guy any different from an arms manufacturer? Well clearly he is
different in some fundamental ways, though none that will win him
any Nobel Peace Prizes. First, he really does have the ability to
invent his own little wars. And there are more than enough fans of
gaming who will cooperate with him and fight the wars. An arms
merchant doesn't have it quite that easy. Then when a war starts,
Garfield is assured that only he can sell the weapons to each side.
If anyone else tries, he can scream copyright infringement. Now a
real arms manufacturer actually has to develop and produce arms.
Garfield just has to think of his weapons and print the ideas up on
pasteboard. By just thinking of the weapon he can make it exist.
The only thing positive I can say for him is that his weapons don't
actually kill, they only "play kill" in a game.
But Garfield has set up a game in which whoever has the biggest
bucks can buy himself a big advantage. That is true of most
militaries. And deep down, is that any different from other walks
of life? Isn't that the American Way? The basketball player who
can afford the best shoes has a jump on the player who can't. The
college football team who purchases the best recruit has the
advantage the one that doesn't. And it's not just sports. When I
was in high school the SATs measured aptitude and that was all.
You had as much as you had and no more. Then there was no royal
road to aptitude. But there were people willing to pay to look
smarter to the colleges and somebody wanted that money. I was told
in Long Island high schools in a certain affluent neighborhood I
know about, every student took out-of-school courses in how to ace
THE MT VOID Page 3
the SATs. It is considered a real disadvantage to have to take the
tests cold like the poor folks do. These places have statistics to
prove they can improve scores. And I believe it, because any test
takes some figuring out and adapting to. If you think about it,
that is built into the scores and is actually part of the measure
of aptitude--but it is the part that someone can give you the
answer sheet about ... if you can pay. Once again it is the guy
with the big bucks who can buy the appearance of aptitude and
intelligence. And it is him who will probably get the high-paying
jobs, over someone who is less affluent but more deserving. I
think that explains a lot about what is happening in this country.
Nobody seems all that upset about SAT-cramming courses. It is just
supply and demand. Well, I guess you get the society that you are
willing to settle for.
===================================================================
2. THE HIDDEN LIFE OF DOGS by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (Houghton-
Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-66968-8, 1993, 148pp, US$18.95) (a book review
by Mark R. Leeper):
I find that overall my book reviews tend to be a little more
negative than my film reviews. I think that part of the reason for
this is that reading a book requires both more time and more effort
than seeing a film and I think I may assume that a book should pay
off in dividends that are proportionately high. Now one of the
remarkable things is that some of the books that pay the highest
dividends are some of the shortest books. Alan Lightman's
_E_i_n_s_t_e_i_n'_s _D_r_e_a_m_s was too short to be a novel, it was more a
novella, but it was richer in ideas than any other science fiction
book I had read in years. Curiously most science fiction shops did
not even carry it, considering it not their thing. Perhaps it
wasn't their thing but it certainly should have been. That was the
best fiction book I have read for years. The best non-fiction book
is probably about the same length. In less than sparse 150 pages,
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's _H_i_d_d_e_n _L_i_f_e _o_f _D_o_g_s. In that short
space are joy, tragedy, science, philosophy, and a generally good
story.
Thomas is an anthropologist who is best known for _T_h_e _H_a_r_m_l_e_s_s
_P_e_o_p_l_e, a study of the !Kung people. I never actually read the
book but who can forget a name like !Kung? Her studies of dogs
began when she started to wonder where a dog in her care went when
he escaped to illegal freedom. Also she wanted to understand his
need for escape. She decided to follow Mischa and observe what she
could from her anthropological insight. I had a dog when I was
growing up and learned enough about canine behavior to put to rest
in my mind the foolish myth that dogs think they are human. Thomas
does not even start that basically. In talking about her dogs she
sees them as creatures with comprehensible intellects, but still
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alien. She is very candid about the mysteries of canine behavior
she was able to fathom and those that she could not. She has
observed, by her reconning 100,000 hours of dogs lives and
condensed her experiences into this short book.
As and example of her writing, in her introduction she says "Do
dogs think we're God? Probably not. But just as we think of God's
ways as mysterious, dogs find our ways capricious and mysterious,
often with excellent reason. Every day the humane societies
execute thousands of dogs who tried all their lives to do their
very best for their owners. These dogs are killed not because they
are bad but because they are inconvenient. So as we need God more
than He needs us, dogs need us more than we need them, and they
know it." As I have watched dogs I have seen them try to puzzle
out our behavior and that seems to be a very accurate observation.
Thomas makes no societal values when studying dogs. Instead she
treats canine society as if were an unknown human culture. While
it is clear that she likes and respects dogs, she reports
dispassionately both positive and negative aspects of canine
society--some as negative as infanticide. But as she would with
humans, when she describes the negative aspects, she tries to
understand the reasons. She also describes early in the book her
observations of dogs picking up human characteristics and
mannerisms. As she describes the lives of the dogs of her
acquaintance her narrative takes on some of the characteristics of
an epic novel spanning three generations, though of course not as
many years as if they were human generations. When she says what a
dog is feeling, she usually will tell you her evidence, but it does
not lessen the impact.
It is difficult to describe this book without making it sound too
much like _W_a_t_e_r_s_h_i_p _D_o_w_n or even _L_a_d_y _a_n_d _t_h_e _T_r_a_m_p. You have to
read it to understand how keenly observed the book is. But it is
definitely recommended and will forever come to mind when you have
interactions with dogs in the future.
===================================================================
3. The schedule for book discussions has been slightly re-arranged,
since David Brin's _G_l_o_r_y _S_e_a_s_o_n has just been released in
paperback. [-ecl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
m.r.leeper@att.com