tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50399355823801014632024-03-13T03:36:26.401-07:00APB: All Points Between Science and LiteratureAPB-SAL is a blog about education, science, science education, fiction, science fiction, literature, literary stories, poetry, and anything else that strikes the blogger's fancy.
NOTE: This blog interrogates art. It rarely make moral proclamations. For that attend the church or politician of your choice. This blog concerns aesthetics, not propaganda. Consider this as interviews with books where the interviewer presents interviewees, so you get what you need to do your own thinking.Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comBlogger1790125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-47614768178917877172024-03-09T07:00:00.000-08:002024-03-09T07:00:00.328-08:00"Midas Plague" by Frederik Pohl<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/7/7e/MLO4331.jpg" src="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/7/7e/MLO4331.jpg" /></p></div><p><i>Originally appeared in H. L. Gold's </i>Galaxy<i>. Reprinted in
several major retrospectives, by such editors as Arthur O. Lewis, Jr., Ben Bova, Gregory Fitz Gerald, Brian
W. Aldiss, Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest,
Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh. Lester Del Rey
selected it as one of Pohl's best.</i></p><p><i> </i></p><p><u></u></p><blockquote><u><b>Summary:</b></u></blockquote><p></p><p> The "Midas" world is one where energy is so plentiful, that to be a good citizen means consuming more. The more one consumes, the higher one rises on the societal ladder. How does one consume ever more? If one cheats to get ahead, how does one hide their misdeeds? Surely, the evidence of their guilt<br /></p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><b><u>Commentary with Spoilers:</u></b></blockquote><p></p><p>First, we should point out the famous fairy tale of Midas, who had the golden touch. Everything he touched turned to gold, making him very rich... until he touched his daughter, suggesting that greed may make us regret how it affects other parts of our lives.</p><p>Pohl takes this fairy tale and completely repurposes it. Note what the titles are for anthologies and collections it was reprinted in (he named two of them): <i>American Utopias, Nightmare Age, The Case Against Tomorrow. </i>Now some seem to suggest he does not mean the world he proposes, but the subtitle of <i>Nightmare Age--"Tomorrows... we may be building today!"</i> suggests that his aim seems utterly realistic.<i> </i>I also like that someone thought this deserved a place among utopias, not dystopias.</p><p>There's some truth here, but of course it's exaggerated for effect. The coolest thing about this short work is that what starts as a dystopia ends as a kind of utopia. It looks like doom for our hero who at first tries to make it through honesty and is forced by unsavory characters who trick his wife into forcing the couple into having to consume more. So he has to cheat, using robots to help him achieve this end. As he's hailed as a hero of consumption, the noose of his getting caught is cinching around his neck... until it turns out that they knew all along what he'd been doing and were impressed, starting to employ his techniques for consumption. </p><p>Absurd but strangely delightful. It's difficult to explain the metamorphic shift in storytelling as we learn we weren't living in the morality of the dystopia but a true if bizarre utopia. Little wonder it was listed as one of the great short works in the history of SF.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-40712218090165186502024-03-07T06:00:00.000-08:002024-03-07T06:00:00.144-08:00"The Tunnel under the World" by Frederik Pohl<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" height="570" id="id-3877433668458499175" src="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31979/images/image_003.jpg" title="" width="400" /> <br /></p></div><div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" class="img1" height="534" id="id-7484218475613270377" src="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31979/images/cover.jpg" title="" width="400" /></p></div><p><i>Originally appeared in H. L. Gold's </i>Galaxy<i>. Reprinted in several major retrospectives, by such editors as Arnold Thompson, Brian W. Aldiss, Kingsley Amis, Susan Morris, Orson Scott Card, Tom Shippey, Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, Brian W. Aldiss. Lester Del Rey selected it as one of Pohl's best.</i></p><p><i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31979/pg31979-images.html">Read online here</a>.<br /></i></p><p> <i><br /></i></p><blockquote><u><b>Summary:</b></u> <br /></blockquote><p>On June 15th, Guy Burckhardt wakes from a dream about an explosion, to a world that's off. One example would be a loudspeaker outside advertising "Feckle Freezers! Feckle Freezers!" repeated over and over that comes off angry, if not insane. Guy goes about his day attempting to make it as normal as possible but the oddity of existence keeps rearing its head until Guy meets someone who will help him piece together what this world is all about.</p><p><br /></p><blockquote><b><u>Commentary (with Spoilers--don't read this if you haven't read the story):</u></b></blockquote><p>Guy is told that they've been asking questions about the world and it's always June 15th. Everyone remembers the June 14th explosion and keeps waking up here. He's taken to the underground tunnel where all is revealed in several frame by frame revelations. Not only are they all dead, but are tiny figures (robots) on a tabletop, part of an experiment in advertising.<br /></p><p>If one were to limit one's self to just one Fred Pohl story, this may be it. Super cool. Comparing it to "The Midas Plague," it is half the length, but the speculation does feel more concentrated and, therefore, more awe inducing. Still "The Midas Plague" is worth reading, but this one is tight.<br /></p><p>My only complaint is that there should feel like there's a gradual change to the changes in advertising, adapting to the subjects, so that it becomes impossible to be sure about any aspect of reality--at least that's how I'd write the movie version.</p><p>Pohl clearly has an aversion to advertising despite or because of having worked in it (see also "The Midas Plague" and <i>The Merchants of Venus</i>). He would have been born before the proliferation of ads and grown up with radio and catchy jingles and phrases that people paid for to get customers to remember their products when they entered the store. It must have been jarring to move from a world where it didn't exist to emerge into a world where it did. Whereas later generations may understand where he was coming from, but accepted the ads as the price one paid to get listen to their favorite radio programs or watch TV shows. Nonetheless, our distrust and/or dislike of ads is mixed with our understanding why they exist.<br /></p><p>But it's strange what advertising is foisted upon these people whose after-life is spent in a kind of advertising hell. There's coercive methods of ads, to what end? Perhaps they are testing out a kind of oppressive tyranny, seeing to what extremes they can press on people without making them snap.</p><p>The term "Feckle Freezer" is curious. They are frozen in time and place and thought. "Feckle" may be altered from "fickle" (erratic) or "fettle" (fitness) or "feck" (value/worth). It seems to be also have a corrupted term in Scotland suggesting one's mettle, to withstand adversity with resilience. Combing all of these definitions has a powerful effect. The sellers want to suggest one thing, but the buyers hear something else. Or maybe it's just meant as a nonsense word that is meant to suggest it has meaning. The cumulative effect is powerful.</p><p>There are a number of stories that begin questioning reality especially in the modern era, especially in the works of Philip K. Dick. Perhaps advertising, according to Pohl, is at least one root cause of our losing our grip on what reality is.</p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-37954786502922332982024-03-05T06:00:00.000-08:002024-03-05T06:00:00.254-08:00"Fermi and Frost" by Frederik Pohl<p></p><div class="q6mdaf" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/c/c5/IAS_1985_01_Potter.jpg" src="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/c/c5/IAS_1985_01_Potter.jpg" /></div><i>First appeared in Shawna McCarthy's </i>Asimov's<i>. It won the Hugo and was up for the Locus and SF Chronicle awards. Reprinted in several retrospectives, by Gardner Dozois, Arthur W. Saha, Donald A. Wollheim, Isaac Asimov, Sheila Williams, Martin H Greenberg, James Frenkel, Jack Dann, Mike Ashley.</i><p></p><p><i> </i></p><p><u></u></p><blockquote><u><b>Summary</b></u>:</blockquote><p></p><p>Nuclear war wipes out most of humanity and friends, including their supper. A small remnant escapes to Iceland.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><u><b></b></u></p><blockquote><u><b>Discussion (Spoilers)</b></u>:</blockquote><p></p><p>When this appeared, nuclear holocaust stories had been appearing since the bombing of Hiroshima (see <a href="https://apbsal.blogspot.com/2024/03/let-ants-try-by-frederik-pohl-as-by.html">Pohl's earlier "Let the Ants Try"</a> which provides an interesting contrast--optimistic about surviving nuclear bombing, but not so lucky about what might follow). Many worried about not just about the survival of themselves, but also human species. Some may have more optimistic than they ought to have been.<br /></p><p>While not a difficult story, it can be read too hastily. One might miss choices of tone and word choice. In a sense, there is no story. There is, but it is subverted, short changed. If someone insists there is a story, ask them to summarize it. <br /></p><p>There's a boy, but he's sentimentalized, orphaned, helpless, wet. We're told he's nine then reminded he's young. The opening line: "On Timothy Clary's ninth birthday he got no cake."</p><p>We have an omniscient narrator who drops into the minds of many. Then we switch to Harry Malibert, a scientist who runs a radio telescope in Arecibo. We think we've finally got our protagonist. But not exactly. We're given the nigh impossibility of survival. Probably it is set in Iceland for its geothermal activity so there is a remote chance of survival, a source heat and energy that is not reliant on the sun.</p><p>Then there's the issue of tone: "Get away! Climb the highest mountain! Drop yourself splat, spang, right in the middle of the widest desert! Run! Hide!" </p><p>All of those exclamation marks. Due to juxtaposition, it suggests that some leap off the mountain. But "splat?" </p><p>A few paragraphs later, it suggest that Timothy "might have wound up in the plane of refugees that reached Pittsburgh just it time to become plasma." Just in time? Plasma? There's a dark humor here at work. It discusses all of the likely outcomes where he'd die, but then writes:</p><blockquote><p>"he might have been given medicine, and oufnd somebody to protect him, and take him to a refuge, and live...</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>"But that is in fact what did happen!"</p></blockquote><p>At this point, we doubt that any kind of survival will happen, and that last line, a little glib, remarking on the improbable chance that something good would happen. That last line is repeated at the end, where we have even less faith. But he adds, "At least, one would like to think so." This final sentence rubs a little of the dark humor off. It feels more honest in its feigned hope even though it has provided ample evidence that it won't.</p><p>This wasn't the only nuclear-worry story to catch the Hugo's eye that year. David Brin's <i>The Postman</i> also took home a trophy. This was probably part of the zeitgeist, worrying over the arms race build-up. See the cover story in the image above.</p><p>At any rate, what makes this story successful is knowledge of the subgenre (post nuclear war stories), knowing the common tropes found in such stories. "Let the Ants Try" subverts the subgenre as well with the thwarting of hope for human survival, but part of the success of that is also knowledge of other stories. But this one takes a hard, realistic look at our optimism. It is the Uber-story, paradoxically superseding all others yet entirely depending on knowledge and existence of that subgenre.<br /></p><p><span><span class="w4txWc oJeWuf" id="c2" role="region"></span></span></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-34658867660604441902024-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:002024-03-03T08:00:00.129-08:00"Let the Ants Try" by Frederik Pohl [as by James MacCreigh]<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/b/b1/BYNDDFTM3C1952.jpg" src="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/b/b1/BYNDDFTM3C1952.jpg" /> <br /></p></div><p><i> First appeared in Paul L. Payne's </i>Planet Stories<i>, reprinted by Pohl himself, Robert Silverberg, and Algis Budrys. <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64631/pg64631-images.html">Read online</a>.</i></p><p><u><b></b></u></p><blockquote><u><b>Summary<u><b></b></u>:</b></u></blockquote><p></p><p>After a nuclear war, the radiation creates ants with lungs. Two men, including Dr. Salva Gordy, see this as an opportunity to go back in time.</p><p><u></u></p><blockquote><u><b>Discussion with Spoilers</b></u>:</blockquote><p></p><p>This seems to be Pohl's mash-up between H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and his "The Empire of the Ants." Without lungs, there is a limitation to the size an insect might grow, hence the spontaneous of lungs in ants--however improbable. It may still be that mash-up, but apparently it began as several Midtown Manhattan discussions between himself and George R. Spoerer (not known to be a writer--the only info that I can seem to find is that he was 16 years Pohl's senior and had an apartment at one time in Brooklyn's Jackson Heights). Another source points out stories that precede this one as the inspiration, but Wells' supercedes them all and being the more famous and more reprinted, perhaps a more likely source. Wells, after all, is mentioned in the story.<br /></p><p>The idea is to take these ants back in time and release them and occupy the human beings throughout history in wars with the ants, thereby preventing nuclear war. </p><p>This seems a half-baked idea, especially how far back in time he goes. More likely, three scenarios would occur: 1) The ants eradicate the humans, 2) the ants are still battling humans, perhaps preventing educational/technological progress, 3) one species domesticates the other into companions or as a beast of burden, 4) the humans eradicate the ants.</p><p>Only in scenario 2 is it possible that the nuclear bombs are not created. Apparently, the ants can manipulate equipment and reverse engineer technology (although presumably using different appendages), so they seem just as likely to build a nuclear bomb at some point, making the whole project foolhardy. </p><p>I had assumed, at first, that the clip below was the goal, thanks to the title. So I was surprised that the protagonist cared what the ants did to the humans since humans had destroyed the world (whatever the ants did would have to be better), but rereading I paid better attention to how he simply wanted his family back. Note the first "Salva" which in Spanish means he/she/it saves (although that could have referred to the ants as well.)<br /></p><p>Therefore, apparently, the unnamed narrator titled this story--as well as having written it since who else was left to write it? But of course that means they went back to different timelines to witness events and assumed what other people were thinking.</p><p>Pohl himself was the first to reprint his own story (Silverberg followed 20-odd years later). I'll let the cover of that anthology speak for what he thought about his own story. He said it was the first story of his he thought worth preserving<br /></p><p>In the 1977 movie adaptation of Wells' "The Empire of the Ants," characters welcome their new ant taskmasters which <i>The Simpsons</i> famously allude to where they stirred up a number of memes, decades later:<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="342" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MKx3JlTnHbc" width="411" youtube-src-id="MKx3JlTnHbc"></iframe></div><span><br /></span><p></p><p><br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-9185323522689814942024-02-29T06:00:00.000-08:002024-02-29T06:00:00.139-08:00"Growing up in Edge City" by Frederik Pohl <div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /><img alt="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/0/0b/PCHMNNGKFQ1975.jpg" src="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/0/0b/PCHMNNGKFQ1975.jpg" /></p></div><p><i>Originally appeared in Roger Elwood and Robert Silverberg's </i>Epoch<i>. It was up for a Nebula. James Frankel considered it one of Pohl's best, collected it in </i>Platinum Pohl<i>.<br /></i></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><u><b>Summary:</b></u></p><p>In a highly regimented yet protective mechanical society, a young man routinely hides his location from his proctors and goes off exploring Edge City. There he meets Dropouts, people like his parents who somehow were unfit for society. <br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><u><b>Discussion:</b></u></p><p>Whoa, Nelly. This one is fire. Definitely, experimental in style--these solid chunks of text that give us insight into this isolated mind that one expects to be influenced in one direction--toward a sensitive feeling toward people who had been kind to him--but instead he lies about having met them and when he is older and in power, is driven to attack the people who had invited him to live with them and be loved. This is paradoxically moving and excruciating. The style is so uniquely tied to everything about the story. Brilliant. Not one of the greatest of the greats, but well worth the time.</p><p><br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-823916366316233102024-02-25T06:00:00.000-08:002024-02-25T08:31:05.975-08:00"Day Million" by Frederik Pohl<p><a href="https://apbsal.blogspot.com/2011/01/day-million-by-frederik-pohl.html"> For more a deeper look and for other ways of seeing this story, see this post</a>. It has been viewed ~1500 times.<br /></p><p><i style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/a/a1/IMPULSEOCT1966.jpg" src="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/a/a1/IMPULSEOCT1966.jpg" /></i><i>First appeared in Frank M. Robinson's </i>Rogue<i>. Reprinted in nearly a dozen major retrospectives, byAnn VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Leigh Ronald Grossman, Arthur B. Evans, Gardner Dozois, Martin H. Greenberg, David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Brian Attebery, Robert Silverberg, Josh Pachter, Martin H. Greenberg, James E. Gunn, Patricia S. Warrick, Joseph D. Olander, Brian W. Aldiss, Harry Harrison, Pamela Sargent, Robin Scott Wilson, Damon Knight, Dick Allen, Donald A. Wollheim, Terry Carr, Val Clear. Both Lester Del Rey and James Frenkel considered this one of Pohl's best.</i></p><p><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><u><b>Summary</b></u>:</p><p>In the near or far future, a boy and a girl fall in love. But they are not like any boy or girl that we today might know.</p><p> </p><blockquote><p><u><b>Discussion</b></u>:</p></blockquote><p><u><b>The Aesthetics:</b></u></p><p>Someone asked me what the most disappointing but most lauded story I've read. This one came to mind. The biggest problem is the lack of fictive dream as John Gardner called it. We never get to fall in love with our characters who are supposed to fall in love with each other. This was my complaint although one might focus on other issues. I don't care if I agree or disagree, but the aesthetics should be up to par. One could slip into and out of the fictive dream, which would probably be the best scenario in a situation like this, no matter how difficult the future might be to explain.</p><p>One major unanswered question: How and why is the narrator talking to us in this way? What is preventing our understanding? It addresses us (if we indeed are the adressees in the speaker's tale) as if we will object, but I doubt few SF readers actually ever do. If only the story were more pinned down in time and place, it might have suggested more of the fictive dream.<br /></p><p>This suggests that the story is aimed in a different direction. Much as I like stories that break the fictive dream, we are rarely immersed in it here. Pohl could have done so as he had the skill, but chose not to. Perhaps he didn't want to. Why not? Did he not want or was he incapable of delivering the strangeness? Was he writing at the edge of what he could comprehend? Or was he purposefully thwarting expectations?</p><p>Robert Silverberg praises this "style" in Worlds of Wonder, yet almost in the same breath suggests it shouldn't be done again.</p><p>In this era, a number of writers were trying to rewrite what fiction
means. This is probably why Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss included it
in the Nebula Award anthology, despite it apparently not making the cut.
It may have been considered part of the New Wave, which Aldiss
(especially) and Harrison sometimes championed. </p><p><u><b>The Thumbed Nose at Normies:</b></u></p><p>The British New Wave was more aesthetically driven while the American New Wave (exemplified by Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions) was more taboo driven. This story conveniently fits both parameters. Clearly there was cross-pollination between the two. It feels like a <i>Dangerous Visions</i> story, and perhaps it helped launch the idea in Ellison's brain.</p><p>This was first published in the men's magazine--intended as a rival to <i>Playboy</i>--as edited by Frank Robinson who was gay, which is a curious combination yet explains its publication.</p><p>As suggested above, the style itself is a thumbed nose at our conception of story should be but it also rejects our idea of normative sexuality. But it does so, so strangely. Yes, it is still trangendered individuals, but in a way that it is still normal. If it could be labeled as such. It wants to make the strange as normal as possible. It is but is not.<br /></p><p>However, the future changes genders based not on the individual but on what outsiders view the genetics should be. In a sense, it doesn't understand that it is presenting the same problem to the next generation. It isn't even nature developing one's gender, but human beings telling people what their gender is. Pohl's narrator suggests this is just like giving a scholarship to Julliard for people talented at making music, but this is done without consent before an individual could decide for themselves. <br /></p><p><u><b>The Science:</b></u><br /></p><p>This suggests one of the potential scientific problems with the text. On one hand, maybe in the future, we think we might be able to guess by an arrangement of genes who will desire might desire to be transgender, but it neglects our understanding that not only is phenotype determined by genetics developing, which influences the development of other genes but also by nurture. Also, it would be far simpler to add or remove the Y chromosome, so that one would not have to continually repress one's gene expression. Yet the Y and the X are maintained as is. But it still seems improbable that one could guess what phenotype one would want to express. Instead of freeing of gender, it might be a shackling of gender. This might create more problems than it prevents.<br /></p><p> When I first read it, I didn't challenge its suppositions, assuming "Day Million" meant [a] Day [a] Million [years from now]. I think (the text says about 10,000 years from now, so maybe I accepted that). Some far future, anyway. In <a href="https://apbsal.blogspot.com/2024/02/frederik-pohls-velocity-exercises-and.html">Pohl's essay "On Velocity Exercises" from the <i>Those Who Can</i> anthology (see discussion of that essay here)</a>, that this was supposed to be a million days from the beginning of the Christian era. That would mean, more or less, Novembber 23, 2737. That would have been ~770 years from when Pohl originally wrote this. </p><p>However, if one were to project from the publication date, then it would suggest Christmas Eve or Christmas in 4703. Either way, we are still a far cry from 10,000 years from now. Perhaps Pohl rounded and did a quick mental calculation using 100 days in a year instead of 365.25 (accounting for leap year). This suggests that maybe Pohl wrote this a little too hastily, perhaps without double-checking himself.</p><p>One character has a centrifuge for a heart. That doesn't make sense based on what we know about centrifuges which separate the parts of a solution/suspension such as that contained in a cell in order to study the parts of each. Why would a creature want to separate out the parts of their blood? It would probably be poor at holding oxygen post-separation. Or maybe the centrifuge is more metaphorical, suggesting that the blood is flung out to the parts of the body by some high-speed rotary device. However, one problem would be a huge blood pressure, which means a different constitution from what we have today, or they'd all be dead seconds after creation of the heart. The other problem would be the difficulty of oxygen distribution, which would be a lack of time for this to occur.</p><p>It also discussed osmosis as one method of oxygen distribution, which make sense unless we are talking about beings at least as small as frogs with large surface areas. </p><p><u><b>On the Whole:</b></u></p><p>As the above link suggests, there is much to appreciate. It is flawed. But it is probably best appreciated as a kind of speculative essay.<br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-47473469675186000082024-02-24T06:00:00.000-08:002024-02-25T11:40:51.195-08:00Frederik Pohl's Velocity Exercises and thoughts on style: "Grandy Devil," "Punch" and "Pythias" <div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" height="500" id="id-3434402018855578429" src="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30399/images/001.png" title="" width="351" /></p></div><p><i>"Grandy Devil" first appeared in H. L. Gold's </i>Galaxy<i>. Reprinted by Robin Scott Wilson. </i><br /><i><i>This was reprinted as one of Pohl's </i></i><i>best (~the top 15% of his stories up until this point, 1974? or perhaps from the 1940s through the 1960s).</i></p><p><b>Summary</b>: A young man learns who the strange people who visit the house which has been in family's hands for generations.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>"Punch" first appeared in </i>Playboy<i>. Reprinted by Avram Davidson, Groff Conklin, the editors of </i>Playboy<i>, Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, Joseph D. Olander, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg. This was reprinted as one of Pohl's best (~the top 15% of his stories up until this point, 1974? or perhaps from the 1940s through the 1960s). <a href="https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781451637892/9781451637892___4.htm">Read online</a>.</i></p><p><b>Summary</b>: A kind group of aliens offer humanity many gifts, including warships to venture into space.</p><p> </p><p><i>"Pythias" first appeared in H. L. Gold's </i>Galaxy<i>. Reprinted by Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh, Jenny-Lynn Waugh. <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30399/pg30399-images.html">Read online</a>.</i></p><p><b>Summary</b>: A young visits an old friend in the hospital, who had just protected the Senate from a hand grenade meant to blow up the proceedings.</p><p style="text-align: center;">#</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><u><b>Velocity Exercises</b></u></p><p>What are they?</p><p>In his essay on style in the anthology, <i>Those Who Can</i>, these are three stories Pohl pointed to as having fit the definition. Pohl used a number of terms and definitions that make it difficult to pinpoint.</p><p><b>"Three-word stories"</b>: Pohl wrote, "not that every one of them is exactly three words; it may be a little more or less." Rather, I think he refers to the turn the story makes which may depend on three-word revelations that cast the story in a new light. In "Punch" it's "Neither do we," and in "Punch" it's "But I can."</p><p><b>"Twist-ending" or "one-punch" stories</b>: two other names Pohl lent to this idea, which Pohl telegraphs by calling one "Punch." These, he says, were popular in magazines like <i>Liberty</i> and <i>Collier</i>'s. He's a bit dismissive, but the anthologies these appeared in had multiple printings, which is rare for anthologies. The magazines were popular in Pohl's youth, but they folded, but I suspect that had more to do with the changing economy than the stories themselves given the popularity of anthologies that appeared decades after the magazines folded. Moreover, Collier's published Hemingway, Faulkner, and Heinlein whose work could not easily be summed up by this.<br /></p><p><b>Velocity exercises</b>: What is the velocity in the exercise? A story that can be written quickly? A story that can be read quickly? He doesn't say. He does call it a haiku--a kind of compressed story told in 2000 words or less, which may be a narrative form more akin to, say, the sonnet and its iambic pentameter and final turn, especially.</p><p>Pohl adds that the important thing to these stories, despite the emphasis on the "turn" or "twist," is not to diminish the story that proceeds the change. He does invest in the main story, but it's unclear where these represent a departure from other stories of this kind.<br /></p><p>Now Pohl's essay is supposed to be about style. I suspect that the two short short stories ("Day Million" and "Grandy Devil") were selected for Pohl by Robin Scott Wilson so as to give Pohl a path to illumine what style in a story might be. Rather, Pohl took the essay in the direction of form, which is somewhat informative but not fully. The gist of what Pohl had to say about this was</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">"In the act of solving these problem [character, plot, scene, setting, theme] style is created. If it is appropriate, it is good; if it is inappropriate it; and that is the Whole of the Law."</p><p>The last is an allusion to Aleister Crowley, suggesting that the writer seek out his own true path. A bit mushy and not entirely useful for a writer seeking advice. This suggests that he may not know himself except on a subconscious level. He does suggest that parodists copy other writers' styles and when it does so inappropriately to the story in question, "the results are comic."<br /></p><p>James Gunn in addressing his own style in his most famous story [the Nebula-nominated "The Listeners"] says essentially that style should be seen but not heard--a very different conclusion. Yet, Gunn goes into more depth, suggesting that style in part comes out of revision, seeking better words to express one's meaning. Most surprisingly, Gunn invites disagreement: "don't let me get by with that! disagree!" which echoes the old, long lost ways of academia that invited people to disagree, to let people own their own opinions and to have discussions, rather to be told what to think.</p><p>What's interesting about several of these stories ["The Listeners" and "Grandy Devil"] and the above quote alluding to Crowley, too, is that they borrow from other writers, invoking a kind of style that comments on and illumines the work of each. </p><p>In "Grandy Devil" Pohl has a series of "begats" that calls on the Bible where historical lineages are of critical importance as it is here as well.</p><p>Gunn's "The Listeners" quotes famous works to put them in a context of communicating with aliens, which both illumines and alters the theme in that they comment on Gunn's own spare, clear style.</p><p> </p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><u><b>Commentary on individual stories:</b></u></p><p><b><u>"Grandy Devil"</u></b>: In some ways this is the most fun, but the least provocative. Unless you consider the mystery of one's lineage important. There's also the idea that we don't always understand the history of conflicts that we walk into as young people.</p><p><br /></p><p><u><b>"Punch"</b></u>: This is the most famed and recognized of the three, but perhaps the least interesting. Beware of those bearing gifts. "I fear the Greeks even when bearing gifts."--Virgil's Aeneid. But still fun and provocative, nonetheless.</p><p><br /></p><p><u><b>"Pythias"</b></u>: The most brilliant of the three, this tells the story of a man who kills a friend in order to obtain the secret of telekinesis and hold it for himself. It presents itself as doing the greater good thing, but we see that it's just selfishness and greed--a parable applicable to every political faction ever. <br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-31212362184136885152023-05-25T07:48:00.000-07:002023-05-25T07:48:18.846-07:00Greg Bear on Politics in Writing<blockquote><p>"To handle the issue [terrorist action in "The Wind from a Burning
Woman"] honestly, I had to make the “Burning Woman” fight for a cause
that I, myself, would cherish. One editor, reading the story for an
anthology on space colonies, rejected it because it didn’t overtly
support the cause. It would have been dishonest to force the story into
such a mold; however pleasant or unpleasant the result, my stories must
work themselves out within their own framework, not according to some
market principle or philosophical bias. It may be remarkable that, with
such views, I’ve come as far as I have in publishing." <br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">--Greg Bear from the "Preface" to <i>The Wind from a Burning Woman</i>. </p></blockquote><p>I invited Greg Bear to write for an anthology that proposed a fascinating new ethos. And he said, "Stay away from ethos." My point was an <i>SF-nal</i> one: So many interesting ways of seeing the world. Let's go for a swim. He could have played the game yet opposed the ethos, too. </p><p>His perspective, I think, could be summed up by the above. Each story has it's own way of thinking. Even as I felt he'd misunderstood, I admired as his staunch position about the writer being outside any set of predisposed rules.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-88784621727572167022023-05-19T04:00:00.347-07:002023-05-19T07:20:08.159-07:00Harlan Ellison vs. Gene Roddenberry in the "City on the Edge of Forever" Arena: Which Was Star Trek Script Better? the Original or the Televised?<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/c/c9/THCTNTHDGF1995.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="400" src="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/c/c9/THCTNTHDGF1995.jpg" width="289" /> <br /></p></div><p>I'm a big Star Trek buff but also a Harlan Ellison fanatic where, as a lad, I'd read everything I could get my hands on--a mesmerizing voice that still energizes me to this day. </p><p>This strange collection of essays and variant on a teleplay have been loitering in the to-be-read pile for awhile--a kind of novelty item, I figured. But it's more interesting than one might suppose.</p><p>The first third is Harlan Ellison setting up this epic battle between the titans. Harlan Ellison's original version won the Writers Guild of America Award. Meanwhile, the televised version won a Hugo. It is consistently rated the best Star Trek episodes. I don't mean to suggest that Roddenberry's contribution matches Ellison's, but he at least oversaw the rewrite.<br /></p><p>Does the play need a third of the book to explain itself? It is pure Ellison--always a plus. But it is too long.* If you love Ellison, you'll read it, anyway. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_on_the_Edge_of_Forever">Wikipedia may cover the gist</a>, so I won't summarize.<br /></p><p>Ellison takes his gloves off and goes after Roddenberry, but in Ellison's favor, he quotes his critics when possible. The last several pages are the responses of writers and actors who either worked in Star Trek or actually had an actual impact on the script. They yield substantive angles on the debate and, of course, weigh in on Ellison's side.</p><p>Shared plot setup without spoilers:</p><p>The Enterprise is heading to investigate a time anomaly. The crew beam down to a planet to find a "city" there. A time irregularity occurs. Spock and Kirk investigate to restore the timeline.</p><p>My perspective on this battle may differ from most. In part, I trust the spirit of what everyone mentioned in the book says, bearing in mind that Roddenberry wrote lyrics to the <i>Star Trek</i> theme song [never used], which allowed him to get a split the composer's royalties (the clip with Tenacious D is a bit crude but funny):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1Ojj9iGc6IE" width="320" youtube-src-id="1Ojj9iGc6IE"></iframe></div><br /><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><u><b>Discussion with Spoilers Galore:</b></u></p><p>So let's start with the aired script's opening: The usual bumpy spaceship bit. They pair this with a sick patient on the bridge. There's some sort of unnamed risk with using "cordrazine," but McCoy is the doctor. He knows what he is doing, yet he accidentally overdoses himself.</p><p>Let's leave aside the space "turbulence"--a bit corny and a bit too often used, but okay, maybe. Let's leave aside the madness. Also overused, but okay. </p><p>The turbulence ends as soon as McCoy injects himself. Also, McCoy's madness ends when it's no longer needed either. Can it be so dangerous if you can just wait it out? Lock him in his quarters until the effects wear off. They were going to go back in time and catch him before him before he injects himself (maybe it happens and they just don't show that). We should probably leave aside the time paradox of stopping McCoy before injecting himself (then who stops him if he doesn't do it?).</p><p>Now the opening does seem like a logic mess when you pause to consider it, but maybe because the improbabilities are just the set-up, we buy them. We'll grant those.</p><p>One advantage to Ellison's version are the space pirates, which as is implied, some of the crew might have been made up of the same people. Not too many. It would be improbable that so many births would have been the same. But it would be a fascinating philosophical quandary that one could evolve a wholly different ethos if time had taken another path. This may have been an absurdity for Roddenberry: Either the perfect future lies ahead or it doesn't.</p><p>However, someone should decide how a pirate timeline fits in to this story. Perhaps that theme might be about how people decide what someone else's fate should be. Who gets to decide? Why?<br /></p><p>Ellison's opening brings up the interesting part. Roddenberry was apparently telling people that Ellison made Scotty a drug dealer, which isn't true. Ellison made up a crew member who dealt drugs--the ostensible baddie of the tale. This is an intriguing perspective. The Star Trek crew are flawed. <br /></p><p>Roddenberry rejected the idea as apparently no one on the ship was bad. Now that's fascinating. It would help to know your idealistic future before sending writers off to write stories for you. It would be more realistic to have a crew member go rogue (although I'm not sure if they'd discussed the monetary system yet, which might make a black market system pointless). </p><p>But the fascinating bit is how it pits the realistic against the utopian. The utopian aspect is part of the show's charm and unique draw. After all, this is politically correct before politically correct was a thing. It showed the universe as it should be--cooperation between races and alien species toward a common goal. </p><p>But it is unexplored how they got here--not to mention improbable. Even if you start with everyone on the same page, one of the crew is bound to get bitter about any story's outcome and start poisoning the atmosphere of the work environment.</p><p>Now Roddenberry is from another generation. He was trained to go along with society, served in armed forces, and later in the police department, so his perspective had to be one of obedient cooperation. Their Federation does work under military conditions. Still, it seems probable that this would go awry. Even the military has need of the law and courts. So not everyone is perfect.</p><p>But that is part of Star Trek. So I get why Roddenberry used Scotty's name--to show how [to him] immediately ludicrous it was to consider having any upstanding member of the crew misbehave since they all were upstanding. You can probably locate episodes where crew stepped out of line, but at least we can see why Roddenberry used temporary madness instead.</p><p>One wonders if part of the secret sauce that made this episode the most popular show is this tension between realism and idealism. Maybe Ellison sensed this on some level and was putting it to the test.</p><p>My problem with the use of the new crew member is that the addiction or the character's personality isn't well utilized. Does he deserve his fate? Would the members of the Enterprise have allowed this? Shouldn't they have called for an end to this?</p><p>It may that a Guardian of Time sees the violation of time as a crime punishable by eternal death, but we'd need to understand that ahead of time. And how could the guy have known that his act of kindness was a greater cruelty? Maybe that's part of Ellison's intended theme. It does open a can of worms, but it would be interesting to dive into them.</p><p>One of the things I liked about the televised script better is the earlier appearance of Edith, granting more time to develop more of a relationship (did they maximize this?). The closer the connection between the Captain and Edith, the more we'll feel the pain.</p><p>Also, instead of being told what their goal is, to find a cryptic focal point in time, Spock works up an apparatus with early 20th century materials to find the focal point. The problem is what is Spock's apparatus? Is it a TV? Why is it seeing newspaper articles? Why is it seeing articles from the future? Does Spock already know how to see in the future? Why not do that in all episodes then with fancier equipment and solve problems before they occur?</p><p>The Guardian of Time might as well have just told them what the focal point is for that era.</p><p>There's one last problem for both scripts. Why kill Edith? Why couldn't they have taken her into the future with them? There has to be a better explanation for this. Why must she die instead of being transported into the future with them, especially if Kirk is in love with her. This has to be at least debated.<br /></p><p>It'd be cool to see an updated version of this, combining the best of both scripts:</p><p>1) Harlan's opening, but with a story use of addiction or the use of somebody so irresponsible with his ethics: disposing of and manipulating people so easily, so cruelly. It needs to play a more vital role in the unraveling of the tale.</p><p>2) Since our baddie is a vital aspect of this version, his story/character should be developed a bit more. Does he deserve his fate? Should he be rescued? If no, why not? If so, what do you do with him afterwards?</p><p>3) Why does Edith have to die? This needs to be clearer. It would make more sense to get upset over the televised episode of Star Trek than Tom Godwin's "Cold Equations" because there's no reason for her death. Ellison's script seems to have taken Godwin's scenario to heart and has two men die for this one female, suggesting the cruelty of fate. They serve as foils or counterpoints to Edith's demise. At least her death had value. Maybe one can only go backwards into time. That would explain why Edith had to die.</p><p>4) Develop James and Edith's relationship so we believe the relationship is a bit more than a momentary attraction. His pain should be more palpably felt. </p><p>5) Space pirates or not? How do they fit in with the new theme? <br /></p><p>All of these changes would suggest a two episode or movie development. If it's a movie, one might think more deeply about the theme.<br /></p><p>*<i>Note</i>:</p><p>A scan of Ellison's other new editions suggests this is a common issue--introductions growing too unwieldy in their length, like a lawn left to grow knee-high weeds. His essays can be fun, energetic, but maybe future editions should leave off the introduction to the introductions or, for the completists and for the curious, thrust it into a back appendix. For now, new readers should skip them.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-72048357172162411542023-05-16T16:00:00.000-07:002023-05-16T16:00:00.146-07:00Greg Bear on Why He Writes, and Why He Writes Science Fiction<p></p><blockquote><p>I have friends who believe the world will come to an end in twenty or thirty years.... Serve everybody right, they seem to say. </p><p>What they are actually saying is that within the next few decades—certainly within the next sixty or seventy years—they will come to an end.... The future does not really exist, certainly not the far and unknowable future. Why talk about it? </p><p>They are still my friends, but they are... wrong.... The future will come, and it will be different, unimaginably so. Then why do I bother to try imagining it...?</p><p>I’m willing to bet, in our deepest hearts, that we all hope one of our more optimistic imagined futures, or some aspect of a literary time to come, will closely parallel reality. Then we will be admired for our perspicacity.... <br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Perhaps. But it will be accident, not prophecy. <br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Like my pessimistic friends, I'm not going to live forever....<br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p>But when I write, I not only live to see one future, I experience dozens... <br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p><i>When I write, I’m immortal.</i></p></blockquote><p><i></i><br />--Greg Bear from The "Preface" to <i>The Wind from a Burning Woman</i></p><p><i>Notes:</i></p><p><i>A perfect quote for his passing. I also like his willingness to forge friendships with those he disagrees with. </i><br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-22373897151664066232023-05-14T16:00:00.006-07:002023-05-14T16:00:00.147-07:00"Webster" by Greg Bear<p><img alt="Just Over the Horizon' Review - GeekDad" aria-hidden="false" class="r48jcc pT0Scc iPVvYb" height="354" src="https://149455152.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/gregbearfeatured.jpg" style="height: 392px; margin: 0px; max-width: 1000px; width: 784px;" width="708" /><i> </i></p><p><i>This first appeared in David Gerrold's </i>Alternities<i>.</i></p><p>A lonely, middle-aged woman, whose reproductive years are coming to a close, uses a dictionary, using the words the make a man of her desire, her design. But it doesn't go as planned.<br /></p><blockquote><p><b><u>Discussion (with Spoilers):</u></b></p></blockquote><p>I wanted to read his stories in a roughly chronological order, but I don't presently have his earliest, which he apparently considered too immature (written when he was fifteen).<br /></p><p>This is his earliest story Bear collected for Complete Short Fiction of Greg Bear series (clearly a misnomer), which appears in volume one, <i>Just Over the Horizon</i>.<br /></p><p>He rewrote the fantasy for this new volume. He economized in some places, expanded in others, reshuffled the order a bit on occasion. Some choices seemed sage, but some less essential. A very few of his early stylistic and sound choices I wanted back in the text. Towards the end, the rewrite improved the text.</p><p>The imagination and wonder are relatively rich for his sophomore publication outing. It flips the genders on the old Pygmalion tale, albeit following George Bernard Shaw's version, more than Ovid's. </p><p>What makes it work is how he makes us care. We want her to succeed, which makes the tragedy sting.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-28200507834976153832023-05-12T04:00:00.060-07:002023-05-12T04:00:00.158-07:00Deepfakes or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and [Insert Your Verb] the Ai in Art<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="501" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7nD3zrMN47E" width="603" youtube-src-id="7nD3zrMN47E"></iframe></div><p></p><p>I'm interested in chatter about AI than the product itself. The primary problem is that there's no mind behind it. The mind behind the work is part of why I read, why I watch, why I take in any kind of media. I want to know how others think. The mind behind the writing is what makes a work powerful.<br /><br />Experimental writing is vibrant if people put thought into it. If not, it's a tome/tomb of half-legible graffiti. Dear writer, please don't waste people's time pondering something you didn't time to ponder yourself. AI? Uh, no thanks.<br /><br />One person did almost get me to buy into their thinking, and I was instantly riveted because, wow, this is actually a new thought, unblindered by cult politics, but it usually breaks down within a few paragraphs.<br /><br />An example of non-AI that knocked me out immediately: A kid was supposedly falling off the cliff, but there was an obvious place to put your foot. <i>Put your foot there! Good god, man, put your foot there and climb out!</i><br /><br />Imagine a string of such incidents, idiocies--minor or major. Does AI discriminate, choose what might work well in this instance? Or will be as likely to select the problematic as the brilliant? The accidental juxtapositions might create fascinating, but will the parts connect? If what you do can be replaced by AI, then you will be replaced.<br /><br />Here's the paradox. I don't oppose repurposing words. Good art could be produced by planting a mind behind the AI. However, the people who would want to use AI are not the people who can make good art. They want short cuts. Rather, to make good art out of AI, you'd have to oppose it. You'd have to be willing to put in the same amount of time to sculpt words as if you spent the time writing them yourself. It is only by critical thinking that the work of AI can have any value. <br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I discussed <a href="https://apbsal.blogspot.com/2023/02/john-hughes-vs-scraping-chatgpt.html">John Hughes's work here</a>,which has relevance here. He, however, did his own selecting, so seems a better choice than leaving it to something else, but so long as a mind orders the material it might, in theory, be worthy of the term "art."<br /></p><p>It's hard enough to order one's own words, let alone someone else's. I don't oppose art made through AI, but it will be hard to make it yours.</p><p></p><p>This is interesting, but way too long. Yet they come up with some interesting uses of AI in media, but it remains in a grey area (the interesting stuff was name-dropping famous older actors whose looks may be rewound to earlier version):</p><p><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jnNQEiPs5r0" width="320" youtube-src-id="jnNQEiPs5r0"></iframe></div><br /><p></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-57979540994640988622023-05-10T18:26:00.002-07:002023-05-10T18:26:32.058-07:00Ursula K. Le Guin on Novels and Good Novels<blockquote><p> "In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find—if it’s a good novel—that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face."</p></blockquote><p>--Ursula K. Le Guin, "Introduction to <i>The Left Hand of Darkness</i>" <br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-22991904685341413132023-04-27T05:00:00.040-07:002023-04-28T03:36:38.773-07:00American Psycho [Analysis]: Worth the Hype? the Controversy? <p>The age of this movie approaches a quarter of century--its silver anniversary. It is probably in the top 10-20% of films--worth rewatching. But it was hard for me to buy into it. <br /></p><p>I remember spotting the book by Bret Easton Ellis in the bins and my being attracted to the title yet put off. I have a recollection of some claiming it was overrated, a must-read by others. My experience of the film must have been similar, hearing opposing opinions, and running into the show in the late beginning and sensing jarring double tones. </p><p>It is not a movie you can pick up anywhere. You must start at the beginning with the opening credits:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="307" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xKase0wsvno" width="596" youtube-src-id="xKase0wsvno"></iframe></div><br /><p>Feel the contrast of tones. Yet feel how they meet, collide, slide past one another, compliment and negate. It's all well done.</p><p>The opening title and the knife create one expectation, then serve up another. But both exist together with the elegant yet playful music, set against plates decorated as much for design as for taste. The laundry list of foods is probably outside most people's checkbook, let alone taste buds. </p><p>We come upon the men gathered at a table with crude joking contrasted with serious business discussion, adding a dash of confusion over who and where Paul Allen is.</p><p>Now Paul Allen was a real person, one of the wealthy who helped Bill Gates forge the early PC revolution. So there's that play going on here as well since the Paul Allen discussed here is fictitious and has nothing to do with the early PC revolution. But this play, this contrast, this misdirection, this confusion--all play into the story. <br /></p><p><i>Stop here if you haven't seen the film and you plan to do so. Spoilers lie ahead--thematic along with suggestive ones.</i><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">#<br /></p><div>The book was apparently accused of being "overly violent and misogynistic." [Wiki] I can't form an opinion of this, without having read the book yet. As for violence, well, it's been outdone (before and even more so after). </div><div> </div><div>As for misogyny, the movie is written and directed by women. It piques my curiosity about the work of these two ladies due to the risks they took here. </div><div> </div><div>I did read the novel opening and it has a quite different feel from either it's detractors or even the director and the screenwriter's rendition here. But I will have to revisit this at a later date.<br /></div><div><br />The theme is interesting, rather blatant -- for those who are seeking such things. At no point did I view it as an attack on women. Maybe? There is misogyny, but it's part of a greater blindness to people. Such a viewing would have to leave out the rest of the film. It's strange to mistake design for flaw.<br /></div><div> </div><div>A better theme? Capitalism kills? Or, at least, it makes you want to. It is cleverly played not just in the dialogue and scenes, but also in the music lyrics themselves. I thought the theme was going to hang itself (the same kind of problem that people have there being real vampires), but it pulls its head out of the noose in the nick of time. So that the theme ends up being a bit more ambiguous towards its theme. It explains some luck, but the 90 degree turn is a bit too fast. It might be worth planting clues and making it a bit more realistic. However, because of that turn, a whole new question has to brought to the table. Is the movie about what it seems to be?<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Note, too, how the film plays with what the actual genre of the story is. It starts in one place, suggests the primary one suggested in the title, shifts naturally into the detective, and then becomes...<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Check it out if you haven't already. Watch it again. Rich, nuanced (despite initially appearing anything but), it repays multiple viewings.<br /></div>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-63726143454178672662023-04-25T05:37:00.000-07:002023-04-25T05:37:27.136-07:00The British TV Mystery -- Successes, Drawbacks<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"> <img alt="Sherlock Holmes Portrait Paget.jpg" class="mw-mmv-final-image jpg mw-mmv-dialog-is-open" crossorigin="anonymous" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Sherlock_Holmes_Portrait_Paget.jpg" /></p></div><p>The British are known not just for their rich literary history but also for their mysteries: Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Hercules Poirot. It's their most common export to American television.<br /></p><p>My parents used to stay up to watch British mysteries--a highlight of their Sunday evenings--preferring their intellectual engagement over the American variety although they watched American variety as well. Dad, despite or because of having been in the FBI, never lost his penchant for police investigations.<br /></p><p>Mom, however, has become a powerful story-telling barometer. If the story is good enough, she'll stay awake. If not, she sleeps. It's not that she does this intentionally, but a good story will keep her up. Show her a literary adaptation, and she'll remain rapt.<br /></p><p>Now why should she still love British mysteries if half lull her to sleep? One thing they're selling is their culture. What is ordinary life in England like? They often will show a pub, a committee meeting, a family home, a school house, a police department. Whatever. How aware they are of this? Keenly? Or not so much? Americans at least recognize it as one sponsor is a cruise line that briefly advertises at the beginning and end of a show. So the mystery is a vicarious travelogue.</p><p>Clearly, this alone, however, won't hold one's attention <br /></p><p>There's almost always a status quo scene, which American shows may skip. But it plays a vital part of setting up the story. Now if done right, the status quo scene(s) can hold one's attention. An episode of Midsomar Murders Spanish dance scene at a local dance hall that held fairly strong tension as people displayed their attitudes. This led into the first murder. </p><p>These status-quo scenes can be rich and powerful opportunities not just for culture, but also character, which can make the mystery memorable. But sometimes the British mysteries trudge a bit too slowly--I'd qualify this "for American taste" but how is that we remain rapt for the British literary adaptation? </p><p>Beside tension and characters, another powerful draw is the unraveling through-thread that provides a pull throughout the story. It is the scaffolding that allows us to cobble together the story from the investigation. Take the compelling game of the power of attorney in "Sauce for the Goose." While the murder itself may be absurdly improbable, the unraveling of this game of power is riveting.<br /></p><p>I'll come back to this topic again later.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-1155503642695941412023-04-07T00:00:00.026-07:002023-04-07T08:34:55.769-07:00The Art of Telling --> [Case Histories: Olaf Stapledon, Molly Bloom, Jack Williamson, H. P. Lovecraft]<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon | LibraryThing" class="n3VNCb pT0Scc KAlRDb" data-noaft="1" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/P/1857988078.01._SS250_SS250_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg" style="height: 250px; margin: 0px; width: 250px;" /> <br /></p></div><p>Sometimes the explanation, the As-you-know-Bob is the jewel most worthy of study <br /></p><p>Of course, we have the famed "Show, Don't Tell" phrase--a useful tool for writers to remember.</p><p>And then people say, "No, we need both!" and proceed to show when showing is useful (in the moment) and telling is useful (summarizing).</p><p>But sometimes the telling is the only only thing. Take Olaf Stapledon. Here's a guy whose ideas remain fresh a full century after he shed them like a dog's fur coat in the spring. What he writes in one sentence, others would whittle out a whole novel about.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The problem with Stapledon is that he's a chore to wade through--if you want narrative. One cannot read it as fiction but as a highly concentrated dose of speculation. Here's an interesting example, if not his most remarkable [from <i>The Starmaker</i>]:</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">The universe in which fate had set me was no spangled chamber, but a perceived vortex of star-streams. No! It was more. Peering between the stars into the outer darkness, I saw also, as mere flecks and points of light, other such vortices, such galaxies, sparsely scattered in the void, depth beyond depth, so far afield that even the eye of imagination could find no limits to the cosmical, the all-embracing galaxy of galaxies. The universe now appeared to me as a void wherein floated rare flakes of snow, each flake a universe.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The final sentence is the icing that the cake has been building up to, layer by layer, sentence by sentence. What does it mean? Since a universe is a universe, it's probably metaphorical, not unlike the phrase "worlds within worlds": a droplet of pond water containing an abundance of microbiological variety. Here, though, what looks like a star is an entire galaxy, full of star systems.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Clearly, though, whatever's said in telling has to be interesting. Interesting to whom? There's some subjectivity, of course, especially for those seeking confirmation bias. But to those who seek it, novel syntheses. Accumulating ideas and building something intriguing about them.</p><p style="text-align: center;">#<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">The opening to <i>Molly's Game</i> is a mini-essay within a larger narrative essay. Does it belong to the larger essay? </p><p style="text-align: left;">Sort of--one could argue against it--but it's characterizing and setting the stage, not to mention delivering the best part of the movie. The character voice-overs analyzing the situation is actually some of the best stuff in the movie--as well as the final delicious morsel, which circles back to the opening if only to touch base. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Note the similarity between the <i>Molly's Game </i>opening monologue and the above quote from Olaf Stapledon:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="340" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d0-saRH8p34" width="409" youtube-src-id="d0-saRH8p34"></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;">#</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><b><u>Addendum</u></b>:</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">I forgot to add two other key examples of telling, that lift what might be ordinary tales to another level. One is Jack Williamson's <i>Darker Than You Think</i>, an admirable cross-contamination of the horror novel and the SF novel. There's a chapter about 3/4s of the way in, that makes the novel remarkable, out of the ordinary, unforgettable. And it's all done in telling. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Likewise, the best part of <a href="https://apbsal.blogspot.com/2015/05/at-mountains-of-madness-by-h-p-lovecraft.html">H. P. Lovecraft's <i>At the Mountain of Madness</i></a> is another explanation also located about 3/4s of the way in (rough guessitmate). In the above link, I mostly discuss style for some reason, probably meaning to discuss Olaf Stapledon comparison but forgetting to do so. So this is my belated rectification. <a href="https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx">Here's a link to the actual story.</a><br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-57229477981933455142023-03-29T02:30:00.051-07:002023-03-30T02:59:30.085-07:00Robert E. Howard's Conan and Charles Saunders' Imaro<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span> <br /></span></p></div><p><img alt="Frazetta Girls - Frank Frazetta's fantastic Conan covers! Which #Conan cover is your favorite? | Facebook" aria-label="" class="n3VNCb pT0Scc" data-noaft="1" height="329" role="" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJeHp6RdLGTYsZvUrXIWmfyU9Xb63Zo3gFyw&usqp=CAU" style="height: 622px; margin: 0px; width: 756.806px;" width="400" /><span> <br /></span></p><p><span>It's hard to say what age I first read Robert E. Howard's Conan books. Other kids read them, but it looked over the top. When I did give it try, it was swamped in ornate, awkward language. I looked down my nose at Howard's work. How could any serious reader imbibe this garish garbage?</span><br /><br /><span>I happened to read another Howard story where the prose was lean and spare. And I was stunned. The guy could control his language. </span><span>What at first appeared as an inability to write was actually an intentional, atmospheric construct. </span><span>So I revisited Conan and came to appreciate its appeal.</span><br /><br /><span>I often try things multiple times. Sometimes we miss things the first time around.</span></p><p><span>Howard died at thirty, in 1936, before any of his stories were collected into books. The first collections, twenty years later, would have probably been similar to other popular magazine collections that publishers were publishing at the time, looking to capture the post WWII interest in books. </span></p><p><span>But what about the ordering? As he aged and he might have felt differently toward his characters; he might he have created a more consistent series of novels about this barbarian. The work itself had already suggested a progression of character. Might he not want to clean them up for public?</span></p><p><span>Conan went through several paperback editions a decade later. L. Sprague de Camp tried to put the series in order and wrote material that put Conan together in an order that made sense to him. The editions stirred up enough interest to fight the legal battles that would eventually become the most popular Conan film: the 1982 <i>Conan the Barbarian</i>, putting Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Hollywood map. There were several subsequent attempts--live action and animated--but they seemed unable to recapture the public's interest.</span></p><p><span>The 2000s tried to attempted to create a more Howard-centric chronology. This modest revival of interest in Conan may have led to Imaro's revival:</span></p><p><span><br /></span></p><p><img alt="Imaro: Saunders, Charles: 9781597800365: Amazon.com: Books" aria-label="" class="n3VNCb pT0Scc KAlRDb" data-noaft="1" role="" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T1/images/I/71UoT2FLS9L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" style="height: 622px; margin: 0px; width: 414.252px;" /><span># </span><br /><br /><span> </span></p><p><span>Charles Saunders' <i>Imaro </i>is a book I'd been meaning to get to. In the 70s, Saunders had been inspired </span><span>by Conan </span><span>to write several of his own stories, leading to a few appearances in the fantasy annuals and a 1981 mosaic collection and two sequels, but </span><span>the second novel took him three years to write, and by then his audience was dwindling and he was unable to finish the series. T</span><span>he publishers weren't interested in a fourth novel.<br /><br />I'd expected Conan in Africa, but the prose was more controlled. Some might complain that it doesn't rise to Conan's inventiveness, but it has something over Howard's invention: the feel of a novel. The stories build on what's gone before, and Imaro grows from what he's gone through. The past impacts the present. Saunders infused some maturity on the tales. I'd have loved to do a comparison of the early tales and the two subsequent novel versions. </span><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><span>Twenty years after Imaro's first book publication, a fan out of Australia encouraged him to resurrect the character and finish the series. So he did. </span><span>At first, when the fan contacted him, he didn't have much interest as he'd moved away from this type of work, but he got back into it and found a publisher. </span></p><p><span>He excised one story from the series because of it's possible connection to political events in Rwanda that mirrored what he'd written first. Much as one admires his desire to have his fiction not cause damage, it also makes me want to read the original to see what he wanted removed. He revised and added </span>new material. It might be worthwhile to compare the two editions.<br /><br /><span>Anyway, if you like Conan or are curious about a Conan-type character who experiences growth, this is an interesting book.</span></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-43682345609509247152023-03-20T01:30:00.001-07:002023-03-20T01:30:00.158-07:00Pulp Fiction, Nearly Thirty Years Later<div class="Ar Au Ao" id=":sf" style="display: block;"><div aria-controls=":vr" aria-label="Message Body" aria-multiline="true" aria-owns=":vr" class="Am Al editable LW-avf tS-tW tS-tY" contenteditable="true" id=":sb" role="textbox" spellcheck="false" style="direction: ltr; min-height: 934px;" tabindex="1"><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="A pulp-magazine themed poster shows with a woman in a bedroom lying on her stomach in a bed holding a cigarette. Her left hands lays over a novel that reads "Pulp Fiction" on it. An ash tray, pack of cigarettes, and a pistol is laid down near her. The top tagline reads "WINNER - BEST PICTURE - 1994 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL". A sticker below the title reads "10₵"." class="thumbborder" data-file-height="327" data-file-width="220" height="327" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3b/Pulp_Fiction_%281994%29_poster.jpg" width="220" /></div><div><i>Pulp Fiction</i> [PF] came out almost 30 years ago. If the audience or critics ranked their favorites of the 90s, I bet it would come out on top. It's hard to argue with <i>Titanic</i> or <i>Silence of the Lambs</i>--popular films in their time that people continue to talk about--but PF should still rank the highest. </div><div> </div><div>This might surprise some, for reasons I'll discuss below, but I still think it'd be at or near #1. My favorites of the 90s weren't nearly as big. <i>Time Out</i> and <i>Rotten Tomatoes</i> rank it #1. Probably others. (A bunch of other movies I should rewatch.)<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I don't recall my first viewing or if there were multiple viewings, but my latest viewing differed from the first. My first viewing loved everything. There was a coolness about it. The title, the characters and their blithe approach to murder, the way the film repurposed old things and made them feel new and refreshing, the memorable dialogue, the funky plot. Memory told me this was one of the greats.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I rewatched it to see what made it tick, and was surprised. The plot, while beautifully intricate, is rather thin. It's almost like the movie was composed of Tarantino's favorite outtakes (i.e. "Kill your darlings") from every script he'd ever written. Memorable lines, albeit asides. They don't actually advance a plot. Rather, these are show pieces. Dialogue that actors would love to speak. If I suggest Tarrantino is show-boating, this isn't bad-mouthing. It works.</div><div><br /></div><div>Crazier still is how he brings in five decades of film and music together in one work. I suspect this aspect would be lost on younger generations. They'd probably only see the plot unless they did some deep-diving into movie and music history.</div><div><br /></div><div>The cussing, when I'd first watched it, felt normal after I'd worked on a ship that had deployed a similar barrage. Since PF, everybody and their dog has drowned the media in cussing so that it's lost its original power. Some find a barrage hilarious, but to me, it's like saying, "Nissan that Nissan guy!" Okay, so what? But Tarrantino makes the swear words hilarious, spins straw into gold-plated art.</div><div><br /></div><div>The title, while cool, detracts. Crime Stories might be more accurate but less compelling. Only Bruce Willis's story feels pulpy. </div><div> </div><div>One description called it a gang story. Follow the characters. This isn't a gang story--even if it's a pervasive element--at least it's a far cry from being a typical gang story. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The movie uses these definitions, for pulp/fiction:<br /><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">1. soft, moist, shapeless mass or matter. <br /></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">2. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is this a self-critique? Or maybe a modus operandi? "rough, unfinished" and "lurid" and "shapeless"? Apart from "lurid," which is accurate, only in a nonliteral sense does the title sort of work. Shapeless, sort of--you could ask a number of scenes why they were included--but some of it is beautifully sculpted, and it has finish (some of it, pyrotechnically so) if a little rough in places. Certainly it is not your usual blockbuster. Maybe this is what they had to do to justify the film to the producers (or critics) who might have complained.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Off topic: the movie made 25 times its original investment, the low operating cost is somewhat surprising considering the names that worked on the film.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Minor spoilers: <br /><br />I misremembered the plot. I thought it was more of a Shakespearean tragedy where nearly everyone died in the end. Instead it ends with the character who has the most compelling story: Samuel L. Jackson's. The narrative switches around and really, few of them land. Just Jackson followed by Willis but his story, while it takes us on some wild loops, isn't as surprising. Jackson's transformation is wildly surprising and feels so authentic. He reframes his whole existence in a line (rewritten from the original, btw)--plus, his newfound change is immediately put to the test. Frankly, I don't recall that at all. Travolta's character story only works in light of Jackson's as a sort of foil.</div><div><br /></div><div>Could a writer replicate this work as a novel? I don't think so although, no doubt, many have tried.</div></div></div>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-80081922954416336792023-03-01T02:30:00.005-08:002023-03-01T02:30:51.062-08:00"The difference between a short story and a novel" by Philip K. Dick<p></p><blockquote><p> "The difference between a short story and a novel comes to this...."</p><p style="text-align: left;">"It is in sf stories that sf action occurs; it is in sf novels the worlds occur.... Crisis is the key to story-writing,a sort of brinkmanship in which the author mires his characters in happening so sticky as to seem impossible of solution. And then he gets them out... usually.... But in a novel the actions are so deeply rooted in the personality of the main character that to extricate him the author would have to go back and rewrite his character. This need not happen in a story, especially a short one.... [T]his makes clear why some writers can write stories but not novels, or novels but not stories.... [A]nything can happen in a story; the author merely tailors his character to the event.... As a writer builds up a novel-length piece it slowly begins to imprison him, to take away his freedom; his own characters are taking over and doing what they want to do--not what he would like them to do. This is one one hand the strength of the novel and on the other its weakness."</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p>--Philip K. Dick, <i>The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick</i> [originally 1968, so probably from the 1969 collection, <i>The Preserving Machine</i>.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-79999324163635012722023-02-24T15:00:00.043-08:002023-02-24T16:51:11.574-08:00"Beyond Lies the Wub" by Philip K. Dick<div class="separator"><div class="q6mdaf" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/b/bf/PLANETJUL1952.jpg" height="400" src="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/b/bf/PLANETJUL1952.jpg" width="280" /></div></div><p><i>First appeared in Jack O'Sullivan's </i>Planet Stories, <i>reprinted by Robert Silverberg, Malcolm Edwards, Martin H. Greenberg, Damon Knight, Joseph D. Olander, Peter Davison, Susan Price, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, D. E. Wittkower, John Gregory Betancourt, Ann VanderMeer, Jeff VanderMeer, Peter Ross.</i><br /></p> <p></p><p>A human crew collect their things readying to exit the planet. One has purchased a 400 lb. wub, a creature which looks like a pig, presumably larger than a man at that mass. The natives respect the creature, but the humans--at least some of them--see it as a source of food. Even finding out the wub can read minds does not seem to deter the ship captain's appetite.<br /></p><p><b><u></u></b></p><blockquote><p><b><u>Analysis (with Spoilers)</u></b> <br /></p></blockquote><p>The first reprinting of this story nearly two decades later was in Dick's own collection, <i>The Preserving Machine</i>. Perhaps an apt title. No one seems to have thought it demanded a second look when it first arrived. </p><p>Robert Silverberg was the first editor to reprint it, twenty years later for his <i>Alpha </i>anthology, aimed at showcasing what SF he considered "literary"--a term which seems to mean different things to different people. Since Dick's story isn't necessarily highly evocative prose or rich characterizations, he must mean stories that provoke thought, which this certainly does do.</p><p>Dick's comment on <a href="https://apbsal.blogspot.com/2023/02/roog-by-philip-k-dick.html">"Roog"</a> would probably apply here: "each creature view[s] the world differently from all other creatures." I will add more of his comment after I find my copy of Dick's collection.<br /></p><p>What happens at the end of the penultimate section is vaguely worded and a little unclear. One possibility lies in the the wub's allusions to two major works of literature: the Bible (Jesus driving out demons that have possessed a herd of pigs) and the Odyssey (Circe transforming sailors into pigs)--the parentheticals are presumably the parts of the story Dick's is alluding to.</p><p>This possibility suggests that when the captain looks into the wub's eyes, he becomes the wub and vice versa. Or maybe, as the Vandermeers suggest, eating the wub makes one the "wub." This seems a strong possibility due to the allusions.<br /></p><p>However, the other possibility is that the wub controls the captain as it did earlier, freezing the captain. So that the captain shoots himself. The wub assumes the role of captain and serves the former captain as dinner. This seems a good possibility because of the wub's early mind-control, the wub's discussion of sacrificing other members of the crew to eat, the vaguely worded "meat," and the reactions of the crew not wanting to eat the meat, due to cannibalism. Presumably if eating the meat made them "wub," at least a few others would have dug into the wub meat for supper becoming wub. But would they treat the pig as captain? Or is it controlling them to make them think of his as captain? The thing is that if the wub transfers from one creature to another, the alien probably wouldn't be a wub, but some other creature, originally, and there'd be no reason to "respect" the wub, necessarily.<br /></p><p>The title seems to suggest that the wub is or will exist in the future or their future--physically or otherwise. Whatever's going on, the captain or the wub seems perfectly affable and chatty about the situation. In rereading, one wonders about what the native "respect" for the wub entails.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-49722160210003618832023-02-21T19:00:00.020-08:002023-02-21T19:00:00.150-08:00The Ship and its Cargo -- a different answer to the thought puzzle about identity<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" class="wp-image-19412 lazyloaded" data-src="https://ancient-literature.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/odysseus-ship.jpg" data-srcset="https://ancient-literature.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/odysseus-ship.jpg 276w, https://ancient-literature.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/odysseus-ship-200x133.jpg 200w" height="289" src="https://ancient-literature.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/odysseus-ship.jpg" width="436" /></p></div><p>Someone proposed this thought puzzle (it is not <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus">Theseus' ship [Wiki]</a> as will be explained after this puzzle): </p><p>Odysseus sailed from Troy, and it took ten, long years. On the way, due to attacks of animals, sirens, insects, waves, storms, shipwrecks etc. the ship fell apart, piece by piece. As parts failed, they replaced them, one by one. When they arrived home, the ship had every piece replaced. Was the ship that left Troy the same as the one that arrived? </p><p>[Assume this story of the ship is the more accurate one for the thought puzzle.]</p><p>It took me a day to think of a good answer for this, and it differs from other answers I've seen in the above Theseus puzzle.</p><p>The answer is yes and no. <br /></p><p>First, each piece of wood is an individual with strengths and failings as it falls apart, the other parts of the ship have adjusted to this part's strengths and weaknesses, so that the ship's whole integrity is dependent on each part. So when a part fails and is replaced with a new part with strengths and weaknesses, the whole ship had adjusted to the old part and will treat the new part as if it were the old part. The new part has its own identity, but is also being called upon to play a new part. The ship adjusts to the new part's strengths and weaknesses. </p><p>This is not unlike a traffic slow down where the accident may be long gone, but the slow down remains. An echo of the old ship always remains. Yet, yes, there are new parts here, flowing through. </p><p>A ship is not a ship without its contents, and in this case the crew create the ship's meaning, it's shipness. How the contents react to the ship--their habits of walking in the same places--creates unique wear, whether the parts are new or old.</p><p>If you transfer the contents to a new ship, built by the same people to same specifications, is that the same ship? No. Again, each block of wood employed is different. Also, to borrow from the cognitive-science explanation, the crew would not recognize it as the same.</p><p>This applies to humans, who are said to have replaced enough cells in seven years to be a completely new person. Are we still ourselves?</p><p>The ship metaphor translates well. Each cell replaced is an individual, yet is shaped by his neighbors. The other cells will be accustomed to certain ways of responding. So yes, sort of a new person?</p><p>But it will keep the same cargo, the same contents everywhere it goes--memories, desires, hopes. But these do shift. Is Odysseus the same Odysseus who left Troy? In a sense, yes. His dog recognizes him. He still wants to be with his wife. In a sense, no, his wife does not immediately recognize him. How could he have lived through all he's lived through be the same? But yet some of the same bilge and bilge rats linger.</p><p style="text-align: center;"># <br /></p><p>Interesting thought experiment: If someone murders someone, are they still a murderer seven years later? I suspect most will have only one answer for that.<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">#</p><p>Despite a similar scenario--replacing parts until the new has all new parts--the Theseus ship is different. Quite different [Wiki]:</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians commemorated this legend by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship? </p><p>Here the answer is simply: No and Maybe, depending.</p><p>The difference here is the use. Odysseus was the one and only captain/owner. Theseus, meanwhile, has passed on, leaving the ship to descendants whose memory may or may not hold the original crew. A whole different metaphor is at play. The ship is now used for a wholly different purpose: commemoration. After the original passengers have all died and cannot pass on memories of this time, no crew remains to assign it the original meaning. </p><p>It seems likely the scenario arose after a repair and someone, tired of the memorial, wants to know why they bothered remembering this ancient history and raised this thought problem in order to get out of having to repeat this stupid boat trip year every year.</p><p>This seems a very human reaction. In the Hebrew Bible--Exodus--the slaves who escape Egypt are supposed to commemorate this escape with a song, but soon they complain about how much better they had as slaves. Memory is short. Also, a very human reaction.</p><p>But someone somewhere has recorded the events, and if they did a good enough job, the ship can come close to having its original shipness.</p><p style="text-align: center;">#</p><p>Hobbes apparently proposed that if someone saved all the discarded parts, would that be the ship? </p><p>Interesting thought experiment, but no. The parts are all rotted and broken although it would be a kind of cool memorial. <br /></p><p><br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-73373471488869468382023-02-18T06:00:00.211-08:002023-02-18T06:18:01.370-08:00"Frozen Journey" or "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" by Philip K. Dick<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="توییتر \ @RobinSandza در توییتر: «Very rare #illustration ..." class="n3VNCb KAlRDb" data-noaft="1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D--2XOBWwAQyQr3.jpg" style="height: 390px; margin: 0px; width: 564.054px;" /><i> <br /></i></p></div><p><i>First appeared in</i> Playboy. <i> </i></p><p><i>Reprinted in various major retrospectives by Terry Carr, Brian Attebery, Ursula K. Le Guin, Chris Hables Gray, Alice K. Turner, Jonathan Lethem. </i></p><p><i>This won a Playboy award and was up for a Locus.</i></p><p>#</p><p>A man is cryogenically suspended for the duration of a journey across space. His chamber malfunctions so that he awakens ten years from his destination. He cannot be fully awakened or have his chamber repaired, so the ship computer dials up his memories for the man so he can dream pleasantly. But none of it goes as planned. </p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b><u>Discussion (with spoilers):</u></b></p><p>The man keeps turning the memories into something darker, and as the ship's computer adjusts, trying to compensate, making the dreams lighter. The new, fake if dark memories bleed into every adjustment the computer makes. He can see through the illusions the computer makes.<br /></p><p>When he arrives, his ex-wife summoned from another planet to help him adjust, he cannot accept the true reality.</p><p>Brilliant concept--at least not one I remember seeing before (although right after writing this, a newer TV show had a similar scenario, but not as thoughtfully executed. It doesn't feel like a classic but at least as profound as the great classics, so maybe it is classic? </p><p>The story suggests that the past is preparation for whatever reality or future distorts how we view the present reality. Probably true--to an extent as we do test reality.</p><p>Terry Carr summarizes the above, more or less, and closes with "Could any computer, no matter how extensive its abilities, keep him sane?"</p><p>Is it about sanity? Maybe, kinda. But part of this summary is refuted by the story because the computer is not all powerful. In fact, it is relatively "dumb," limited in what it can do. It does see a problem, but not how to correct it. This, for me, is a critical part of the story, mentioned a few times. The computer doesn't intend to channel the person's reality--but simply to make him happier, which it fails to do.</p><p>This point in the story many not be wholly true as people (as opposed to the ship's computer) <i>do</i> actively try to channel people toward how they should view reality, but the basic concept is solid and thought-provoking. Perhaps it was somewhat less the case in the 70s and 80s that one might ignore the influence.</p><p>It's interesting that Dick's original title was rewritten by Playboy--probably more evocative or enticing to a reader. What's surprising is that Playboy's title is reprinted, not Dick's, despite Dick publishing his preferred title, even titled such as part of a collection. The Playboy title does suggest the man is stuck in his journey, frozen in time. </p><p>"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" suggests more of the protagonist's state of mind, inviting the reader in to entertain the state, the feeling of making progress, of wanting to reach the destination but never arriving. It is more empathetic (his belief that he should be arriving soon even though he already has) and, hence, more tragic toward the character's failure to accept his reality. The "Frozen" unintentionally looks down on the character.</p><p>Ursula LeGuin's <i>The Norton Book of Science Fiction </i>has a nice tribute to Dick in the introduction, that he was finally getting his due. However, beyond adding the usual <i>Dick-plays-with-reality</i>, it offers no insight into this particular story, and it doesn't really add much insight into any particular story except in broad strokes. </p><p>A famous, knowledgeable writer once said that the anthology chose the stories for a certain brand of politics. It may not have been, but let's entertain the notion. This will take a while since it's not high priority, but I'll touch on it.</p><p>The anthology arranges stories by year, presumably to show either progression in sensibility, changes in topical concerns, quality, etc. But presumably those were the best stories from that year. Only Carr selected this story as one the best of the year. It's numbered eight on Locus (with no other award nominations), so maybe the listing by year (in terms of quality) is misleading. However, an editor may think stories were overlooked in a given year, so that may be a factor. It could be the issues facing the public during that year. Was 1980 a year of being frozen in place, compared to any other year? But if so, why doesn't the anthology discuss issues facing the field during that time?</p><p>Finally, this could be the story most representative of the writer from 1960-1990, but then the listing as stories by year would be misleading. Moreover, a lot of important writers were excluded from this collection, which would be a major flaw for an anthology with this particular title, which sounds like it has a wide-enough-angled lens to capture the full scope. The anthology was never revised, so maybe the flaws are well known as being too limited in scope to bear its current title, lacking a number of key players who helped shape the field during this era.</p><p>The anthology does use the Playboy title over Dick's. If it were a political selection, it was the positive portrayal of the ex-wife. She was empathetically drawn. Hopefully, it is not for the wise woman/foolish man (or worse men-bad/women-good) portrayals, which would be sexist if this is a consistent pattern--limiting both genders to certain roles that can be played. Hard to say from this distance. Perhaps the editors felt they needed to counteract other portrayals, but still it's problematic if it's <i>men-good/women-bad</i>. Humanity has lots genes, lots of differences to limit the species to a handful of portrayals. </p><p>Feminism becomes important to the field, especially during this era, so one would expect it to be addressed, but it is certainly not the only issue, and the anthology would require a different label to be more honest to the public about the anthology's aim. But that's only the case if it were true that LeGuin's anthology is political--a hypothetical claim being entertained at present. And we'll come back to it later, fingers crossed.</p><p>Still, the story's a lovely little gem, whatever reason people selected it.<span> Maybe some will read it as a tale about sanity, or about gender-power</span> dynamics, tripping some triggers. That's okay. For me, it's a potent tale with a broader application for all humanity--not a select few--about a human being whose propensity to find flaws in his own life led him to a place that made it difficult to deal with his present circumstances. Surely, that is a theme that people of whatever gender can empathize with.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-79220008684758058472023-02-15T05:00:00.030-08:002023-02-15T05:00:00.164-08:00"Roog" by Philip K. Dick<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/2/26/FSFFeb1953.jpg" height="400" src="https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/2/26/FSFFeb1953.jpg" width="293" /> <br /></p></div><p><i>First appeared in </i>F&SF<i>. Reprinted by Anthony Boucher, J. Francis McComas, Robert Silverberg, John M. Landsberg, Jonathan Ostrowsky-Lantz, Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Martin H. Greenberg, Robert Weinberg.</i></p><p>This was Philip K. Dick's first accepted story, but not his first published. It tells of a dog who can see aliens as garbage men.</p><p><u><b></b></u></p><blockquote><p><u><b>Discussion (with minor spoilers):</b></u></p><p></p></blockquote><p>While not a classic, this is utterly charming. Part of it is the perfect name for the alien which sounds a bit like how a dog might sound, barking.<br /></p><p>What's fascinating is a debate with the famed editor Judith Merrill over the story (<a href="https://philipdick.com/mirror/websites/pkdweb/short_stories/Roog.htm">a debate which you cam read about over here</a>). She thought that the description of the aliens did not match the garbage-men she'd seen. This is the kind of debate that sidetracks a lot of literal-minded fans and editors and critics. Myself included. </p><p>Even Dick is mostly persuaded by Merrill's argument that he have lost sight of his own story. He calls it a fantasy through the dog's point of view. It could be. A realistic tale of a dog who thinks garbage men are aliens. But there are other possibilities--more interesting ones.<br /></p><p>That's the key: Whose POV is it? It's probably not the dog's. Maybe, but probably not. Was the dog there to witness all events? Maybe? Certainly not the humans--at least not these humans since they don't seem to know what's going on (perhaps humans in a post-human-Earth era?). Maybe the aliens, but they don't seem to be there to witness everything as well. <br /><br />Perhaps it is simply an omniscient narrator. The aliens, if real, admit what they're doing. They're making the dogs or Guardians seem like deluded creatures. Maybe they are. </p><p>Or maybe the aliens are deluded into thinking the dog see them. Maybe the dogs don't see the aliens as aliens at all.</p><p>But again maybe the dogs do. Maybe they are masked and dogs can see through the disguise.</p><p>What the aliens are up to, isn't clear. Are they just after trash? Why is it an "offering urn" and why do they eat it? Do they consider themselves gods? Or do they offer it to other gods, carrying it in a blanket? Whatever is going on, it sounds sinister. And once they clear out the dogs, they will be able to execute that plan.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-56135803709412013992023-02-12T05:42:00.004-08:002023-02-12T06:07:58.627-08:00The Unsung Genius of Douglas Adams<div class="separator"><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><img alt="The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Wikipedia" class="n3VNCb KAlRDb" data-noaft="1" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/RestaurantAtTheEndOfTheUniverse.jpg" style="height: 350px; margin: 0px; width: 213.936px;" /><span> <br /></span></p></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote><span>"[H]e had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion." -- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe </span></blockquote><br /><span>Rereading Douglas Adams for the first time since I was a kid when I was mostly amused if not exactly wowed, I see his work from a different angle. It must have been that Adams did not have a talent for certain writerly crafts, so that I preferred comedic narratives by Robert Sheckley. But Adams was brilliant at other, uncommon narrative delights. </span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span>This is a case in point. He stitches together different anecdotes, some brief, some elaborate, woven as characters move from point A to point B.</span><span> I don't want to spoil it for those who hate spoilers, so skip the next paragraph if you don't want this tiny moment ruined. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span>An elaborate metaphor is slowly built up and executed, metaphorically and literally, having to do with a device that contains the entire universe in a tiny thing--say, a fairy cake--so that when one experiences it, one is annihilated. However, one character manages to survive where everyone else died. He exits, worldview confirmed, eating the cake. </span></p><p><span>Take the following metaphor he sets up as being the place where this unhappy device was placed:<br /></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span> </span>“Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet—people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It’s a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result—collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds—you’ve seen one of them—who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that none should walk on it again, Unhappy lot. Come, I must take you to the Vortex.”</p><p>We think, "Ah, ha! That's why this device was created on this planet!"</p><p>But Adams pulls the rug out from under us as it was built elsewhere and placed on the planet because it was empty. That doesn't mean the anecdotes aren't connected, but he craftily shifts these anecdotes around. It's a game of three-card monte, where the cards or anecdotes are constantly shuffled around to keep you on your toes.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5039935582380101463.post-89917569957926527032023-02-09T05:33:00.003-08:002023-02-09T05:40:41.438-08:00John Hughes vs. Scraping, ChatGPT, Plagiarism, Homage, Allusion, Pastiche, Collage<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/commentisfree/2023/jan/30/my-mentor-john-hughes-taught-me-how-to-write-then-he-plagiarised-my-work"> Last year, writer John Hughes was accused of plagiarism. Joseph Earp, his mentee, recently wrote about his kind nature in this article for the Guardian--a rather sensational or click-bait headline: "My mentor John Hughes taught me how to write. Then he plagiarised my work." </a></p><p>Earlier last year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/16/john-hughes-i-am-not-a-plagiarist-and-heres-why">Hughes wrote a defense of his work</a>, which seems like a cursory overview, but then critics of his defense were weaker still, which makes his defense look stronger than his critics. It's actually a pretty good justification for what he was doing although a broader and deeper paper may be necessary. <br /></p><p>The book blurb on Hughes's <i>Someone Else</i> does show this is his <i>modus operandi</i>:</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">"Like The Idea of Home, Someone Else uses the essay as a form of autobiography. Here, however, the essays are fictions. Or are they? Hughes tells the stories of the figures who live in his mind by making them tell his stories – and in doing so engages in an art of literary ventriloquism."</p><p>So Hughes has told people all along what he was doing. Why the surprise?</p><p>I wrote a series of poems completely borrowing Shakespeare's or the King James Bible's words about the moon in order to write a series of love poems. They were all their words, but reordered so that the final result was that their words no longer discussed what they had intended to discuss. Is that plagiarism? </p><p>No. It is art. What is found poetry? What is erasure poetry? What is collage? </p><p>The measure is whether the borrowing is well done. Let's take Leonard da Vinci's Last Supper as an example.</p><p><img alt="The Last Supper: The Greatest Masterpiece of the Renaissance" class="n3VNCb KAlRDb" data-noaft="1" src="https://www.singulart.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/tour_img-312981-148.jpg" style="height: 314.887px; margin: 0px; width: 634px;" /></p><p> I'd need to rewatch Robert Altman's MASH to see how this fits in, but it does seem to contribute both to the story and as commentary of the art/event (a man is going to commit suicide (or so he thinks) and his friends are sending him off with this "last" supper):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TRHN5vxnZrI" width="320" youtube-src-id="TRHN5vxnZrI"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Most stagings of the Last Supper, though, have been brainless or not art. It sort of fits the image of, say, <i>Battlestar Galactica</i>, but it doesn't slide into the series very well--a bit stagey (but still some cleverness so some thought went into it):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5jXXUrrr3LE" width="320" youtube-src-id="5jXXUrrr3LE"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>You could say that <i>MASH</i>'s use of da Vinci is also stagey. True, but they try to make it fit smoothly into the narrative. Perhaps it's worth complaining about, but it is comic, which makes it more difficult to critique. <br /></p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/15/parts-of-john-hughess-novel-the-dogs-copied-from-the-great-gatsby-and-anna-karenina">Here we have samples of John Hughes borrowings at the Guardian</a>.</p><p>Disappointingly, they have no analysis. It's more of a dramatic <i>dum-dum-dum </i>than an actual discussion. <i>Proof of plagiarism!</i> </p><p>Someone needs to actually read the books in question. To know whether the borrowings are significant, one must ask</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>How does Hughes use it? </li><li>How does Tolstoy use his text? </li><li>How do they compliment or debate?</li><li>How does the borrowing add meaning and/or reflect back? </li></ol><p>However, Hughes borrows liberally. You can't see much of a purpose--at least not from these clips without more of the book. At present, this is a failure to read. </p><p>It does look like rather drab borrowings, though. It may be Hughes was simply learning sentence patterns from them--a rather banal borrowing, unfortunately. It's puzzling why he borrowed so much and why the passages don't seem particularly indicative. </p><p>An homage should be brief but enough to suggest where and what is being borrowed. For instance, "I'll be back" is a famous saying, but it requires more set-up than just those words. We'd need more. Also an homage should try to capture some particular tell-tale, briefly, that indicates what he is borrowing. It is curious.</p><p>Finally, the borrowing should be unobtrusive. That it took so long to discover Hughes's borrowings suggests his work is unobtrusive (but also not distinctive). The Altman clip is less obtrusive than the Battlestar Galactica. Should it be invisible? Should it be somewhat obtrusive so at least some people pick up on the nod? That's probably a question of taste. </p><p>However, I don't think homage is the highest form of art since not everyone has a photographic memory. It's what many call the "Easter egg"--the piece of art that's hidden that some may uncover. There should be no guilt associated with not recognizing homages. <br /></p><p>Earp, in the article above, seems to think this won't hamper Hughes's career, but I suspect it may. Time will tell. But condemnation, without a deeper investigation, suggests brainless book burnings--to the shame of those who complained... unless they actually did the requisite legwork and found Hughes's borrowings not especially necessary to his art.<br /></p><p>#</p><p>There's been a lot of hand-wringing over AI visual art and AI-generated stories. They "scrape" or "plagiarize" [to borrow the Guardian's accusations] writers and artists to create their "new" works. People--writers, even--find it convincing. All the people who think Hughes plagiarized without digging deeper should be banning such AI works, but though I've heard complaints, I haven't heard of any movements to block the AIs from doing their [illegal?] work.<br /></p><p>My guess, for now, is that, without an intelligence guiding the art, human art is safe. If it should develop a method of creating intelligent art, then we can despair.</p><p>#<br /><br />None of the above is to suggest where I come down on Hughes as a writer, but it does suggest a method for evaluating Hughes's work.<br /></p>Trent Waltershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com0