Bheer Can Tower to the Moon

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Someone posted the image above on a sports-themed message board and I thought those poor mundanes were missing a lot because they’d never heard of the Bheer Can Tower to the Moon.

Dave Rike was among the Bay Area fans who created that Tower of fable in the mid-1950s (Terry Carr and Bob Stewart contributed as well). Rike retraced its history in an article for Mimosa 15 (talking about himself in third person):

While Dave Rike might have been the first to refer to the Tower in print that doesn’t mean that the idea was entirely original with him. It might have been at one party or another that one of the gang would idle away his time while listening to endless fannish talk of the others by attempting to stack up some empty bheer cans. (If they’re drunk by a fannish sort then they become bheer instead of beer cans.) All cans at that time were made of steel instead of extruded aluminum and might have stacked easier. “Hey, Bob, what’re trying to do there?” “Oh, I dunno, jes’ thinking that if I had enough cans I could build a tower that’d reach up to the moon.” “Oh yeah, well you buy the bheer and I’ll drink it for ya.” Something like that. Dave doesn’t remember any attempt to set up a Tower but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

The Tower cast a figurative shadow over fandom in decades to come. I’m sure that’s why the late Randy Bathurst sculpted a beanie-wearing bheer can cranking a mimeo for the original FAAn Awards. And rich brown, Dr. Gafia, said in his faannish lexicon:

Occasionally, even today, partying fans at conventions will construct such a Tower out of bheercans in Terry Carr’s memory. At Magicon [1992] this was attempted on a night when the moon was not visible but Art Widner was heard to intone, “If we build it, it will come.”

My own unforgettable experience with the Tower tradition happened while I was co-chairing the 1978 Westercon. We used the hotel’s Presidential Suite as our evening hospitality suite, serving Heineken in bottles (Poul Anderson was GoH) and other beverages in cans. Both side bedrooms were left open for the party, including mine, but one night I was so exhausted I crashed on my bed while the party carried on without me. I awoke in the middle of the night to discover that everyone had gone, leaving the doors wide open. Before going, fans had stacked all the empties in a pyramid on a coffee table, almost reaching the ceiling – the traditional bheer can tower. And lastly, I discovered my wristwatch had been stolen from my arm while I slept.

Not J.R.R. Bond

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Tinker, Tailor, Tolkien, Spy? Hardly. But that’s what headlines are inviting readers to believe.

“JRR Tolkien trained as British spy” declares Telegraph.co.uk.

“Tolkien’s Spy Past Inspires Hunt For Hobbit, Rings Spooks” says the Wired headline.

Britain’s intelligence-agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is displaying documents from J.R.R. Tolkien’s three days spent training at the Government Code and Cypher School in a new exhibit at its restricted, employees-only museum. The Telegraph reports:

According to previously unseen records, Tolkien trained with the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS).

He spent three days at their London HQ in March 1939 – six months before the outbreak of the Second World War and just 18 months after the publication of his first book, The Hobbit.

When the war started, GCCS deciphered Enigma traffic and broke other German ciphers and codes. That’s the work Tolkien auditioned for — not to carry out espionage in the field.

Nor was this a deep secret. In 2006, Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond’s The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide listed the information in the March 27, 1939 entry of the Chronology, which reads: “Tolkien begins a four-day training course in cryptography at the Foreign Office.”

Whether Humphrey Carpenter, author of Tolkien: A Biography, knew about this is less clear. All he says about the beginning of the war is that Tolkien volunteered as an air raid warden: “There were, however, no German air attacks on Oxford; nor was Tolkien required, was were a number of dons, to undertake work for the War Office or other government departments.”

If Tolkien wasn’t required, we know he was asked. The GCCS offered Tolkien £500-a-year offer to become a full-time recruit. He turned them down.

Journalists wonder why he went through the process, indicating to instructors he was “keen” for the work, then rejected the offer. Nobody knows. Not even GCHQ’s historian.

Intending no reflection on Tolkien’s patriotism (after all, he served in combat in WWI), I wonder: Was it the pay? Was £500 good money in 1939? Maybe one of you Tolkien scholars knows what he was making then. Was Tolkien asked to take a pay cut? Or did he turn down a raise?

Historic data on the compensation of Oxford dons isn’t easy to find even with the help of Google, though I did learn that the famous Professor Frederick Lindemann earned £900 in 1919 while holding the chair of experimental philosophy and running the Clarendon Laboratories. However, professors of science are generally paid better than those in the humanities, so knowing Lindemann’s compensation rate 20 years earlier may not be much help in estimating what a professor of Anglo Saxon languages made in 1939.

Or could it be possible Tolkien just went through the process to see if they had any cool ideas he could filch for his created languages?

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]

Justice: Google Search Settlement Unacceptable

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The Department of Justice has advised the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York not to accept the proposed class action settlement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. The agency’s September 18 press release explains:  

In its filing, the Department proposed that the parties consider a number of changes to the agreement that may help address the United States’ concerns, including imposing limitations on the most open-ended provisions for future licensing, eliminating potential conflicts among class members, providing additional protections for unknown rights holders, addressing the concerns of foreign authors and publishers, eliminating the joint-pricing mechanisms among publishers and authors, and, whatever the settlement’s ultimate scope, providing some mechanism by which Google’s competitors can gain comparable access.

The full text of the Department of Justice’s press release appears after the jump.

In the view of Publishers Weekly:

The blunt assessment means the the settlement is almost certainly headed back to the drawing board. In a silver lining, the DoJ recognized the potential value of a deal to facilitate book digitization, but said the current deal as written was not satisfactory.

The Open Book Alliance welcomed this development:

The Open Book Alliance is pleased with the action taken today by the Department of Justice, which we believe will help to protect the public interest and preserve competition and innovation. Despite Google’s vigorous efforts to convince them otherwise, the Department of Justice recognizes that there are significant problems with terms of the proposed settlement, which is consistent with the concerns voiced with the Court by hundreds and hundreds of other parties….

 [Thanks to Francis Hamit for the story.]

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The Horror

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John Jasper of Publishers Weekly’s “Genreville” blog teed off on the British Fantasy Society when he learned that their new collection of 16 interviews with horror writers didn’t include a single one with a woman.

I’ve only heard of four of the 16 people interviewed for In Conversation: A Writer’s Perspective. Volume One: Horror. In comparison, Maura McHugh at Splinster.com, listed 13 women writers she feels should have been considered for this collection — and I’ve only heard of three. These statistics prove? That I should never hold myself out as any kind of expert on the horror field, I guess. Just the same, I can’t imagine how BFS can justify the book’s all-male lineup.  
 
Coincidentally, the BFS’ FantasyCon 2009 is running this weekend. One of their three guests of honor is a woman. There are two other women among the many authors doing book signings. Maybe the BFS’ left hand and right hand will get together and learn what the other is doing?

Playing Monopoly on the Internet

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Amazon has decided to play internet monopoly in earnest, say the editors of LibraryThing Blog. A new condition for Amazon Associates to receive data (including cover art) about books for sale is that the primary web page listing each book must link to Amazon alone. They prohibit links to other booksellers. Non-Amazon links may appear only on secondary pages you go to from the primary page.

The rules have also been changed to prohibit the use of Amazon’s product advertising content in connection with sites or applications intended for use with a mobile phone or handheld device.

LibraryThing’s editors don’t think Amazon’s decision is good for anyone:

[The] the decision is probably not even good for Amazon. Together with a new request-monitoring system, banning iPhone applications that use Amazon data, and much of their work on the Kindle, Amazon is retreating from its historic commitment to simplicity, flexibility and openness. They won through openness. Their data is all over the web, and with it millions of links to Amazon. They won’t benefit from a retreat here.

Here are the specific terms from the Amazon Associates agreement:

(d) You will link each use of Product Advertising Content to, and only to, the related Product detail page of the Amazon Site, and you will not link any Product Advertising Content to, or in conjunction with any Product Advertising Content direct traffic to, any page of a site other than the Amazon Site (however, parts of your application that are not closely associated with Product Advertising Content may contain links to sites other than the Amazon Site).

(e) You will not, without our express prior written approval requested via this link , use any Product Advertising Content on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device.

[Thanks to Francis Hamit for the story.]

SF/Fantasy Talents Are Finalists
for Children’s Literature Award

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Shaun Tan and Diana Wynne Jones have made the shortlist for the Astrid Lindgren Children’s Literature Award. It is the world’s largest prize for children’s and young adult literature, amounting to SEK 5 million (over 700,000 US dollars). It is given annually to promote interest in children’s and young adult literature, and in children’s rights, around the globe. A jury selects the winner. The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is administered by the Swedish Arts Council.

 [Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Happy Birthday, Art!

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Faneditor and past Worldcon guest of honor Art Widner is 92 years old today. Best wishes to you!

Art was born on September 17, 1917 – just the same as June Foray, the voice of Rocky the Squirrel, also celebrating her 92nd birthday.

Others who share this birthdate include the Emperor Trajan, lexicographer Samuel Johnson, physicist Leon Foucault, and actress Greta Garbo.

Art’s birth probably didn’t make headlines because 1917 was a busy year. World War I, you know. Also, Montana’s Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, took her seat. That was just four days before Congress voted to enter World War I. Rankin voted no, and when returned to Congress years later she famously cast the lone vote against entering World War II.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Electric Velocipede Now a Semiprozine

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John Klima, on the heels of winning the 2009 Best Fanzine Hugo, has declared Electric Velocipede to be a semiprozine.

The Hugo rules, which require publications meeting certain criteria to compete in the Best Semiprozine category, also allow an editor to voluntarily classify his or her fanzine as a semiprozine, rendering it ineligible for Best Fanzine. 

Google of Books Going on Sale

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Google Inc. announced September 17 that it will be offering for sale paper copies of 2 million books no longer protected by copyright, published by high-speed, print-on-demand Espresso Book Machines at campus bookstores, libraries and small retailers.

A cartoonist once called this “Letting the cat out of the cellophane bag.” It’s the beginning of what critics of the Google settlement have been expecting to happen. And:

Millions more titles could be added to On Demand’s virtual inventory if Google gets federal court approval of a class-action settlement that would grant it the right to sell copyrighted books no longer being published. Google estimates it already has made digital copies of about 6 million out-of-print books.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]