(1) IT HAD TO BE SNAKES. James Davis Nicoll gives the Young People Read Old SFF panel Vonda McIntyre’s “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand”.
The second last entry in Phase I of Young People Read Old SFF is Vonda N. McIntyre’s 1973 Nebula award-winning “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand”, later expanded into the Hugo winning novel, Dreamsnake. I am pretty confident the double win is a good sign, and that McIntyre is modern enough in her sensibilities to appeal to my Young People.
Mind you, I’ve been wrong on that last point before….
(2) GENRE BENDER. Jeff Somers praises Gregory Benford’s new book at B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog: “Gregory Benford’s The Berlin Project Gives Science and History a Thrilling Twist”.
The lines between book genres can get a blurry as authors push against boundaries, trying to do something new with a story. Sometimes the result is a novel that incorporates the best parts of several genres, creating a category all its own. Gregory Benford’s The Berlin Project is one of those books—equal parts alternate history, spy thriller, history lesson, and physics textbook, it’s one of the smartest, most entertaining sci-fi novels of the year.
(3) EXPANSE. Aaron Pound’s review of Caliban’s War is online at Dreaming About Other Worlds.
Full review: Caliban’s War continues the story started in Leviathan Wakes, with James Holden returning along with the rest of the crew of the Rocicante to deal with yet another interplanetary crisis. They are joined by new characters who replace the missing Detective Miller as view point characters – the tough Martian marine Bobbie, the naive Ganymedean botanist Prax, and the calculating and shrewd U.N. official Avasarala, all of whom must navigate the crisis caused by the raw tensions between the governments of Earth, Mars, and the Belt. Against the backdrop of this raging internecine human conflict, the mysterious alien protomolecule carries out its enigmatic programming on the surface of Venus, sitting in the back of everyone’s mind like a puzzle they cannot understand and an itch they cannot scratch.
(4) ZENO’S PARADOX. You can’t get to the Moon, because first you have to…. “So You Want to Launch a Rocket? The FAA is Here for You by Laura Montgomery”, a guest post at According To Hoyt.
Do you want to put people on your rocket? There are legal requirements for that, too. There are three types of people you might take to space or on a suborbital jaunt: space flight participants, crew, and government astronauts. The FAA isn’t allowed to regulate how you design or operate your rocket to protect the people on board until 2023, unless there has been a death, serious injury, or a close call. Because the crew are part of the flight safety system, the FAA determined it could have regulations in place to protect the crew. That those requirements might also protect space flight participants is purely a coincidence. However, just because the FAA can’t tell you what to do to protect the space flight participants doesn’t mean you are out of its clutches. You have to provide the crew and space flight participants, but not the government astronauts because they already know how dangerous this is, informed consent in writing. You have to tell them the safety record of your vehicle and others like it, that the government has not certified it as safe, and that they could be hurt or die.
(5) NEWS TO ME. Did you know that Terrapin Beer’s Blood Orange IPA is “the official beer of the zombie apocalypse?”
It is an official tie-in beer with The Walking Dead and has a cool blood red label with a turtle on it!
(6) NEWS TO SOMEONE ELSE. Daniel Dern sent me a non-spoiler review of Suicide Squad when I was in the hospital last August. I didn’t notice it again until today. Sorry Daniel!
(“Non-spoiler” as in, assumes you have seen some or all of the three trailers, particularly trailer #2, done to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”…)
I enjoyed it enough. Hey, it’s a comics-based movie.
I’ve skimmed some reviews listing the flaws in S/S. Probably mostly correct, but arguably BFD.
The good: it didn’t thematically overreach or overbrood, unlike (cough) BvS (which I liked enough, but accept that it had big problems). A lot of good lines (you’ll see many/most in the trailers), good action, etc. A little (but not too much) Batman.
The big challenges S/S faced IMHO:
– DEADPOOL has set/upped the ante and standard for humor/violent comic-based live-action movies. Particularly the BluRay version of Deadpool, which is what I saw. And before that, lots of Guardians of the Galaxy bits.
– S/S’ Trailer # 2. I would have been happy/er with a shorter, even 12-minute, video not bothering with plot, just lovely musical jump cuts and snappy lines.
– Is it just me, or did S/S seem to do the “who’s who” twice, and not really bring in the antagonist (“big bad(s)”) for an astonishingly long time?
– This is an A-level plan? I mean, Captain Boomerang? Having seen Ghostbusters a week earlier, I would have considered sending that team in instead, in this case.
On the other hand, at least it wasn’t Manhattan that got trashed this time.
I can see how if you aren’t a superhero comic fan you’d find this less satisfying. Granted, I’m still happy-enough when it simply looks reasonable, doesn’t insult continuity gratuitously, and doesn’t try to go all philoso-metaphysical on us.
Recommended enough, particularly if you can get a bargain ticket price…
(7) TV LIFE AND DEATH. Cat Eldridge says Adweek’s “A Guide to 2017’s Broadcast TV Renewals and Cancellations” “on who stays and who gets the ax is fascinating as regards genre shows.”
The renewal is pretty much everyone save Sleepy Hollow, Grimm, Frequency, and possibly iZombie and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The Arrowverse of course was kept intact.
If you’ve not watched the second season of Legends, do so as its far entertaining than the first season was.
(8) O’HARA OBIT. Quinn O’Hara (1941-2017), a Scottish-born actress who starred in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, died May 5. The Hollywood Reporter elaborated:
In The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), from American International Pictures, O’Hara played Sinistra, the nearsighted daughter of greedy lawyer Reginald Ripper (Basil Rathbone); both were out to terrorize teens at a pool party held at a creepy mansion. She also sang “Don’t Try to Fight It” and danced around a suit of armor in the horror comedy.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- May 8, 1886 — Coca-Cola went on sale.
(10) THE SAME OLD FINAL FRONTIER. Tom Scott explains “Why Sci-Fi Alien Planets Look The Same: Hollywood’s Thirty-Mile Zone.”
There’s a reason that a lot of planets in American science fiction look the same: they’re all filmed in the same places. But why those particular locations? It’s about money, about union rules, and about the thirty-mile zone — or as it’s otherwise known, the TMZ.
(11) MEMORIAL NIGHT. See Poe performed in a Philadelphia graveyard, May 18-20.
As the sun sets over the cemetery’s historic tombs, The Mechanical Theater will bring some of Edgar Allan Poe’s most haunting tales to life in this original production, directed by Loretta Vasile and featuring Connor Behm, Neena Boyle, Nathan Dawley, Tamara Eldridge and Nathan Landis Funk.
Two young men hide out in the shadows of Laurel Hill Cemetery while hosting a secret on-line auction. The clock is ticking as they try to sell a priceless, stolen object known only as The Anathema. When the antique expert finally arrives to verify the object’s authenticity, he shares with them some of The Anathema’s dark history as well as rumors of its power. But as the night goes on, one of the thieves starts to suspect these stories are far more than legend. This anthology piece will include Edgar Allan Poe’s “Hop-frog,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Pit and The Pendulum.” Written and directed by Loretta Vasile. Starring Connor Behm, Neena Boyle, Nathan Dawley, Tamara Eldridge and Nathan Landis Funk.
(12) BIG ANSWERS. Coming June 5 on the UCSD campus: “Sir Roger Penrose: Fashion, Faith and Fantasy and the Big Questions in Modern Physics”.
Sir Roger Penrose
The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination presents an evening with Sir Roger Penrose, the celebrated English mathematician and physicist as well as author of numerous books, including The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics. The talk is titled “Fashion, Faith and Fantasy and the Big Questions in Modern Physics.” A book signing will follow.
Sir Roger Penrose, Emeritus Professor at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, winner of the Copley Medal and the Wolf Prize in Physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking, has made profound contributions encompassing geometry, black hole singularities, the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity, the structure of space-time, nature of consciousness and the origin of our Universe. His geometric creations, developed with his father Lionel, inspired the works of MC Escher, and the Penrose Steps have been featured in several movies. His tilings adorn many public buildings, including the Oxford Mathematics Institute and will soon decorate the San Francisco Transit Terminal. Their five fold symmetry, which was initially thought impossible or a mathematical curiosity, has now been found in nature. In 1989 Penrose wrote The Emperor’s New Mind which challenged the premise that consciousness is computation and proposed new physics to understand it.
(13) DEARTH WARMED OVER. Trailers are supposed to sell people on a movie. But here’s a pre-dissatisfied customer.
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/861686295101407233
On the other hand, a cast list on IMDB includes three Hispanics and a black actor born in England
(14) DIALING FOR NO DOLLARS. Vote on how Jim C. Hines should spend his time. Well, within certain limits, anyway.
Is it worth responding to Tron Guy's rant about SJWs & leftism & his unironic desire to Make Penguicon Great Again?" https://t.co/7tY9USM3Bk
— Jim C. Hines (@jimchines) May 8, 2017
(15) SPLASH. Most SF writers didn’t think about the waste heat of monster computers:” Google Moves In And Wants To Pump 1.5 Million Gallons Of Water Per Day”.
“We’ve invested a lot in making sure the groundwater quality that we treat and send to the customers is of high quality. We also want to protect the quantity side of that,” Duffie said.
In addition to building several reverse osmosis plants to treat the water, Duffie said the community has spent about $50 million since the mid-1990s to install pipelines and purchase surface water from the Charleston Water System to supplement the water being pumped from underground.
Google currently has the right to pump up to half a million gallons a day at no charge. Now the company is asking to triple that, to 1.5 million. That’s close to half of the groundwater that Mount Pleasant Waterworks pumps daily from the same underground aquifer to help supply drinking water to more than 80,000 residents of the area.
(16) WHITE NOISE. On the other hand, sff authors are wellaware of the high noise levels from widespread communication: “Facebook – the secret election weapon”.
A quarter of the world’s population now use Facebook, including 32 million people in the UK. Many use Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends and are unaware that it has become an important political player.
For example, the videos that appear in people’s news feeds can be promoted by political parties and campaigners.
The far-right group, Britain First, has told Panorama how it paid Facebook to repeatedly promote its videos. It now has more than 1.6 million Facebook followers.
(17) AUDIO KILLED THE MUSIC HALL STAR. Edison probably never realized he was killing off the mid-level performer: “Superstar economics: How the gramophone changed everything”
In Elizabeth Billington’s day, many half-decent singers made a living performing in music halls.
After all, Billington herself could sing in only one hall at a time.
But when you can listen to the best performers in the world at home, why pay to hear a merely competent act in person?
Thomas Edison’s phonograph led the way towards a winner-take-all dynamic in the performing industry.
The top performers went from earning like Mrs Billington to earning like Elton John.
But the only-slightly-less good went from making a comfortable living to struggling to pay their bills: small gaps in quality became vast gaps in income.
(18) BANAL HORROR. In other news: the BBC slags Alien: Covenant but still gives it 3 stars: “Film Review: Is Alien: Covenant as good as the original?”
Given that he is now 79, and so he doesn’t have many directing years left, you have to ask whether it’s really the most stimulating use of [Ridley] Scott’s time and talents to churn out yet another inferior copy of a horror masterpiece that debuted nearly four decades ago. He certainly doesn’t seem to be interested in recapturing the scruffy naturalism, the restraint, or the slow-burning tension which turned the first film into an unforgettable classic.
Much of Alien: Covenant is simply a humdrum retread of Alien. Once again, there is a spaceship with a cryogenically frozen crew – a colony ship this time. Once again the crew members are woken from their hypersleep, once again they pick up a mysterious radio transmission, once again they land on an Earth-like world, and once again they discover some severely rotten eggs.
(19) FOLLOW THE MONEY. Pascal Lee, Director of the Mars Institute, talks to Money magazine about the expense of going to Mars: “Here’s How Much It Would Cost to Travel to Mars”
At this point, what would it cost to send someone to Mars?
Pascal Lee: The Apollo lunar landing program cost $24 billion in 1960s dollars over 10 years. That means NASA set aside 4 percent of U.S. GDP to do Apollo. To put things in perspective, we also spent $24 billion per year at the Defense Department during the Vietnam War. So basically, going to the moon with funding spread over 10 years cost the same to run the Department of Defense for one year in wartime.
Now, 50 years, later, today’s NASA budget is $19 billion a year; that’s only 0.3 percent of GDP, so that’s less than 10 times less than what it was in the 1960s.
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense gets $400 billion a year. So the number I find believable, and this is somewhat a matter of opinion, a ballpark figure, doing a human mission to Mars “the government way” could not cost less than $400 billion. And that was going to the moon. This is going to Mars, so you multiply that by a factor of 2 or 3 in terms of complexity, you’re talking about $1 trillion, spread over the course of the next 25 years.
(20) TOP TEN FELLOW WRITERS HELPED BY HEINLEIN, AND WHY: Compiled by Paul Di Filippo. None of these facts have been checked by File 770’s crack research staff.
10) A. E. van Vogt, needed money to open a poutine franchise.
9) Barry Malzberg, stuck at Saratoga racetrack with no funds to get home.
8) Gordon Dickson, wanted to invest in a distillery.
7) Keith Laumer, wanted to erect barbed wire fence around home.
6) Damon Knight, wanted to enroll in Famous Artists School.
5) Anne McCaffrey, ran out of Mane ‘n’ Tail horse shampoo during Irish shortage.
4) Joanna Russ, needed advice on best style of men’s skivvies.
3) Isaac Asimov, shared the secret file of John W. Campbell’s hot-button issues.
2) Arthur C. Clarke, tutored him in American big band music.
1) L. Ron Hubbard, helped perform ritual to open Seventh Seal of Revelation.
(21) SJW CREDENTIAL ENTRYIST INVASION. The Portland Press Herald is aghast: “Cats at the Westminster dog show?”
Dogs from petite papillons to muscular Rottweilers showed off their four-footed agility Saturday at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, tackling obstacles from hurdles to tunnels. And next door, so did some decidedly rare breeds for the Westminster world:
Cats.
For the first time, felines sidled up to the nation’s premier dog show, as part of an informational companion event showcasing various breeds of both species. It included a cat agility demonstration contest, while more than 300 of the nation’s top agility dogs vied in a more formal competition.
It didn’t exactly mean there were cats in the 140-year-old dog show, but it came close enough to prompt some “what?!” and waggish alarm about a breakdown in the animal social order
(22) POOH ON THE RANGE. Atlas Obscura explains the popularity of “Five Hundred Acre Wood” outside London.
Every year, more than a million people travel to Ashdown Forest to find the North Pole. Ashdown Forest is 40 miles south of , but they’re not crazy. In the forest they’ll find the Five Hundred Acre Wood, and somewhere in the Five Hundred Acre Wood is the place where Christopher Robin discovered the North Pole.
Five Hundred Acre Wood is the place that inspired the Hundred Acre Wood, the magical place in which a fictionalized version of A. A. Milne’s son, Christopher Robin, had adventures with Winnie the Pooh and friends.
In 1925, Milne bought a Cotchford Farm on the edge of Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, and he brought his family there on weekends and for extended stays in the spring and summer. The next year, he published the first collection of stories about a bear that would become one of the most beloved characters in children’s literature, Winnie the Pooh, based on his son, his son’s toys, and the family’s explorations of the woods by their home.
The book’s illustrator, E. H. Shepard, was brought to Ashdown Forest to capture its essence and geography, and a plaque at Gill’s Lap (which became Galleon’s Leap in the Pooh stories) commemorates his collaboration with Milne and its importance to the forest. A pamphlet of “Pooh Walks” is available to visitors who want to visit places like Gill’s Lap, or Wrens Warren Valley (Eeyore’s Sad and Gloomy Place), the lone pine (where the Heffalump Trap was set), a disused quarry (Roo’s Sandy Pit), or, yes, the North Pole.
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Daniel Dern for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kurt Busiek.]
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I found hidden gun incredible rude. Hence they cannot be polite. Checkmate! 😉
In the USA, the rudest general population I’ve found is NYC, Chicago, Washington, DC and large cities in California. Large cities in the South, Midwest (excepting Chicago) and West tend to have people who are far more polite. I’ve had to travel a lot for work and have traveled extensively for fun internationally.
Licensed gun owners (concealed carry or hunting permits) tend to be very polite nice people. Go to a firing range. Take a handgun class. Go to a hunting preserve. Meet some gun owners. As a group they are some of the most law abiding and generally nice folks you will ever meet.
My usual reaction to that bit of crap from Heinlein is to wonder about his education; maybe his teachers thought that Romeo and Juliet wasn’t sufficiently “moral”? Its opening scene is a direct rebuttal to RAH’s claim — which also suggests he didn’t know a lot about his own state’s history. (This may also have been the fault of his education; IME, state-history courses tend to be weak on embarassing facts.)
One interesting fact that opposes the Heinlein “armed society” quote is in the American West. Cowboys did run around armed on the range. However, when they were in civilized towns, they were generally not allowed to carry guns around in public (concealed or not).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/did-the-wild-west-have-mo_b_956035.html
If the American West had a problem with an “armed society,” maybe current Americans ought to think twice about ours.
A character in “Beyond this Horizon” says that an armed society is a polite society, but it’s not clear to me that that’s the author’s opinion. Certainly, there are characters in the book that have grown to be adults in that society and yet are described as rude and yet still alive. Furthermore, none of the scientists who work on Pluto carry weapons at all, but there is no sign that they are impolite. Finally, it’s clear that the humans in “Beyond this Horizon” are more physically and mentally capable that 20th century folks (the 20th century fellow who is woken from the Long Sleep was a college athlete at a time when very few Americans went to college, but by the standards of Felix’s society, he was physically and mentally barely competent) – so the success of their armed society is likely not intended to tell us much about how a similar society would work for standard humans of this century.
“Pixel is Short, but the Scrolls are Long”
@Hampus Eckerman
I found myself thinking this morning that much of what we used to call “good manners” was really rules for lying to other people. The theory seems to have been that if we told people what we really thought, it would be impossible for us to live together. That civilized society depended on a shared delusion of mutual respect.
Then I look at my Facebook feed (especially today), and I find myself wishing to have some of that delusion back again.
@Andrew. Not. While the File 770ers come not.
A quirk of an awful lot of reactionaries today is that they scorn Hollywood bitterly, but are 100% convinced of the accuracy of history as expressed in Hollywood movies. They want to return to the good old days of the movies. Pity they aren’t satisfied with a trip to Universal Studios or Disneyland.
Yes. On the whole, I’d rather have my heart blessed than the alternative.
Dr Abernathy: That there are nice gun owner at a range is good to hear. It doesnt add to either side of the argument about societies though.
Are the Midwesterners polite because of their guns or despite their guns or do these things dont have anything to with each other? This is hard to tell…
This reminded me, indirectly, of the reasons for the 19th century temperance movement. It speaks to how universal the effects of drunkenness and alcoholism were that they managed to get Prohibition passed, however much it was scoffed at and evaded.
Peer: That there are nice gun owner at a range is good to hear. It doesnt add to either side of the argument about societies though.
Exactly. I grew up in a rural area, around a bunch of pro-gun people who own and use guns, and they are the sort of people who think that beating the hell out of other people for real or imagined slights, and making a conspicuous show of their weaponry with a lot of big talk, are “impressive”. These are people who are very nice to those they perceive to be like themselves and abusive and horrible to people they consider to be “The Other” (not surprisingly, many of them also consider Donald Trump to be a model of exemplary behavior).
So claims that pro-gun people are “the most polite and nice people you’ll ever meet” don’t hold much water with me.
@Andrew: it’s never certain what parts of a Heinlein novel are his opinion — but I’d bet on this one, if only because he shows the society working. IMO, BTH is didactic beyond the overt infodumps, even if it’s not as bad as reports of For Us, the Living.
@Abernethy: I’ve run into a sufficiency of rude gun owners on ranges in the Northeast; I suspect you’re confusing causes.
@OGH: It speaks to how universal the effects of drunkenness and alcoholism were that they managed to get Prohibition passed, however much it was scoffed at and evaded. There was a strong element of classism in the passage of Prohibition: \those/ people couldn’t be trusted with alcohol but \we/ can control ourselves (or not bother, and buy our way around the laws). Then even more than now, politicians sometimes spoke favorably of the common people but voted with the money (at least until something as catastrophic as the Great Depression makes that untenable). And money repaid the favor; there was the tycoon who said “A Congressman is a hog! You have to take stick and hit him in the snout!” (Granted that this specific quote is from the generation before Prohibition — but how much do you think changed in that time?)
@Chip Hitchcock: There’s a very interesting book by Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, which looks at Prohibition as a populist cause. I found it convincing, but I haven’t read the arguments against. (Disclosure: I was the parliamentarian of my schools WCTU chapter.)
So what were the roots of American temperance? The UK version was a combination of religion with the then-new liberal paternalism.
The pervasive social Darwinism of the late 19th century doubtless attached anywhere it could, but that’s a minor point — Prohibition was an attempt to change the status quo, not defend it.
At the time heavy drinking was a dominant form of entertainment. That multiplied the opportunities for potential alcoholics to become addicts. The consequences in families and public violence were well known. Women in those situations did not have power or protection. The temperance movement thought if the booze was taken away, some serious social problems would go with it. When you consider all the people and interests who preferred to keep alcohol legal, I think it speaks to the level of desperation — and that other avenues of justice had yet to be opened — that they managed to get Prohibition enacted.
Chip Hitchcock: There was a strong element of classism in the passage of Prohibition: \those/ people couldn’t be trusted with alcohol but \we/ can control ourselves (or not bother, and buy our way around the laws).
Also not a little prejudice: many of “those people” were Catholic, many were from Ireland and Italy, and alcohol was part of their culture.
The wellfare state of Sweden grew handbin hand with the temperance movement. It was a large part of the workers movement. Not surprising, I once read the account of a priest of the inportance of being a moderate drinker. Being moderate included something like 6-8 schnapps… before lunch.
We had our own law. You got a book telling you how much alcohol you were allowed to buy per month, around 6 pints of spirits a month. Wine was not limited in the same way, but if you bought too much, you were at risk of loosing your book. Beer was weirdly enough considered as medicine and you needed recipe from a doctor to buy from a pharmacy. Sweden had that system for 30 years or so.
Interestingly enough, it worked. When the book was removed, the drinking habits had changed and there was no more drinking reported than it had been when the book was still mandatory.
Anecdotal data about heavy alcohol consumption in days of old can usually be explained by the fact that non-alcoholic alternatives were either unavailable or even less safe than alcohol. If drinking water gives you diarrhea or cholera, alcohol is the safer option. Plus, beer, wine, cider and other alcoholic beverages were usually less potent than their modern counterparts.
Germany never had a temperance movement, because moderate alcohol consumption (not 6 to 8 schnapps) is part of our culture and any attempts to ban that would probably have led to rioting in the streets. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have problematic drinking patterns on occasion. There is the tendency to use certain fairs, festivals, etc… as excuses for heavy drinking and approx. 5 to 10 years ago there was some concern about teenage binge drinking imported from abroad via movies, TV, etc…
BTW, Swedes (and Finns) abroad were infamous for getting plastered.
My experience of traveling the US has found that people in SF, LA, and Chicago were polite and even helpful. But the Midwest/rural areas and the South, they simply weren’t. They DGAF. They were rude even when I was in the process of giving them money. Boston was flat-out rude, but apparently they always have been throughout history, regardless of whether they were armed or not. The Massholes thou shalt always have with ye.
@JJ has exactly described the rural type; nice to insiders and people like them, but if you’re not SWM nominally-Christian, nope. To combine two ideas here, getting drunk and fighting is regarded as great entertainment. And regarding armed rural politeness, I give you the Hatfields and McCoys.
Despite the stereotypes, I even found helpful people in Glasgow! I couldn’t always understand ’em, 🙂 but they were nice. Nicer than Londoners. Rural Scots don’t talk much, but they’re generous under that grumpy exterior. Vancouverites were chill, for obvious reasons. 😉
Politeness in the 50’s was basically “Women and PoC don’t get to speak out, they just have to smile and nod.” But it wasn’t due to individual guns; there were far fewer. It was strictly intimidation backed up with the threat of state guns.
There is a YOOGE difference between politeness and fear. Nobody mouths off in an armed society because they’re terrified of dying.
@Cora: Finns drink a lot at home, too. I imagine that when Scandinavians get to countries that don’t have such high alcohol prices, they go nuts. And the rich in Saudi Arabia drink like fish too, even with the sharia rules. Overseas, Saudis are famous for complete excess in everything that’s forbidden there and good fun in the rest of the world. Of course, they don’t know anything about moderation. I drank less in the UK and Canada because of the price differential. Except for local whisky everywhere we went in Scotland, because duh.
Cons which invite British guests invariably do not give them open credit at the bar, after a few which did literally went broke because of it. They still end up with drunk guests, because when Englishmen see how cheap alcohol is in America…
@Chip it’s never certain what parts of a Heinlein novel are his opinion — but I’d bet on this one, if only because he shows the society working. IMO, BTH is didactic beyond the overt infodumps, even if it’s not as bad as reports of For Us, the Living.
Heinlein certainly believed the economics in BTH (basically Social Credit) – the narrator describes it as working, and the only person who even questions it is a fool. But the gun thing is a bit different; Heinlein shows the mainstream (heavily armed) society as working pretty well, but also goes out of his way to mention that a completely unarmed society also exists, and is quite successful (and in fact is composed entirely of scientists who are doing serious work, while the mainstream society has many people who use their guns as mere fashion accessories (in an early scene, Felix and his friend compare nail-polish just after discussing their guns)), which I take to indicate a bit of ambivalence about the issue.
(in an early scene, Felix and his friend compare nail-polish just after discussing their guns)
LOL! It reminds me of one of the planetary societies in Psychohistorical Crisis, where all the people – certainly all the men – are armed from early childhood. It’s a polite society, too, because, among other reasons, they’re trained from early childhood to not use those weapons.
@Andrew: I take the nail polish scene to be a little culture jamming on Heinlein’s part. One man is admiring his friend’s nails right after competitive shooting inside an apartment, followed by a discussion of their weapons’ relative effectiveness. Mauve nail polish, I believe, on the nail of the trigger finger.
(It’d be a great establishing sequence, wouldn’t it? A close-up of the finger on the trigger; the gun fires; we dolly back to see the man blow smoke off the barrel of his gun. Maybe give him a little eye shadow, too. Today, that’s not so unusual, but then, that’s a pretty good “not in Kansas any more” moment.)
I do think it’s unfair to describe J. Darlington Smith as a fool. He’s just a man out of his time. Clifford Monroe-Alpha–now he’s a fool, genius or not.
And I’d be willing to try Social Credit. Just without the eugenics.
@Everyone: Where do you find all these rude people? I meet a few everywhere I go, but most people, both city and country, are pretty nice. It might help that I’ve lived in various cities and spent lots of time in small towns and rural areas. (My dad sold farm equipment and hunted competitively, and I went with him a lot.)
I do see jackasses, but it’s very often a city person in the country or a country person in the city. (My late best friend was a city boy. I took him to the country. Once.) I do know a few gun-owning jackasses, and a few jackasses who seem to think you get cooties from being near guns. Most folks are nice most everywhere.
In both those instances–city/rural and gun owning/not–it seems to me it’s largely cultural mismatch and not inherent rudeness.
That, and that both pairs of people-types are aware of how the Other feels about them.
John A Arkansawyer: Where do you find all these rude people? I meet a few everywhere I go, but most people, both city and country, are pretty nice.
I don’t expect that I will see the worst side of most people in just casual, temporary contact. And most of the places I go, I don’t.
I think it depends on whether one is around people long-term, and sees them react when things don’t go their way, or when they’re confronted with someone who doesn’t fit their worldview.
It’s funny how the nice, congenial, pleasant guy on the barstool next to you can suddenly turn into a punch-throwing or abuse-spouting asshole when he feels that his manhood has been slighted by another guy’s posturing, by a woman turning him down, or by a black person walking in the door.
@JJ: Exactly.
@JAA: You and I are working with different equipment, and thus get different treatment.
My husband was treated absolutely politely at a rural shop, while at the same time and the same place, I was not only treated rudely by a man I was giving money to, I was subjected to behavior that’d get you thrown out of any con with a code of conduct. TWICE. In half an hour. One old creep, one young one.
I am middle-aged, white, and was wearing a baggy t-shirt and jeans. My husband is the same. Yet we had very different experiences.
My experience is that most people in most places are decent, civil people. Indeed, in most places, most people are genuinely nice. On business trips to both France and Germany, I met exactly one rude person each, and in both cases it was an airport worker–one can assume relatively high background stress levels.
Traveling in the US, in most places, people want to be helpful to strangers to their area. If you walk up to a person who looks like they belong there–taking reasonable care to not violate observable social distance norms, which do vary across the country–and ask your question, and you’ll get a useful answer or directions to where a useful answer can be found. Often they’ll go considerably out of their way to be helpful.
The one region I have found this doesn’t work is the region that brags on its hospitality, the American South. The old Confederacy. There, attempting to ask directional or informational questions of strangers produced unlovely results. Getting useful results, instead of getting looked at as if I were a dangerous deviant, required going into the nearest available small store, making a purchase, and asking the question while paying for the item.
Not a version of “hospitality” or courtesy that would be recognized anywhere I care to live. Bless their hearts.
And of course, the “look around for someone who looks local, approach to your best estimate of polite and non-threatening distance, and ask your question starting with, “I’m sorry to bother you but…”” method I learned growing up in the famously “rude” Boston area, and used successfully not only in NYC, also famously “rude,” but in far more alien territory, like the Midwest, and California, and, God save us, even stereotypically rude Paris.
I’ve also routinely responded to such requests for information and assistance, occasionally with results I shall deem amusing rather than wasting more energy on it. This included the young man who, when visiting the Boston area from whatever more civilized clime he hailed from, deployed this method to gain needed information from me as I was walking my laundry from the laundromat to my car–and at the end of a cheerful conversation in which I provided the information, cheerfully told me that I must not be from the bare because I was polite unlike Bostonians.
I restrained myself, and patiently explained that I was in fact a local, and that he had insulted me and my native region after I spent a fair amount of time helping him out. Bless his heart.
Although, in fairness, he didn’t use the term “Masshole.”
@Cora: BTW, Swedes (and Finns) abroad were infamous for getting plastered. Not Danes? The dumb antics of the Copenhagen-in-1983 Worldcon bid at the 1979 Worldcon (Brighton UK) were explained to me as being an effect of cheap alcohol (although I couldn’t tell you whether that was a pure-Danish bid or a fusion with (southwestern?) Swedes). That was relatively cheap; British fans complained bitterly () about the price and quality of the hotel’s tap beer (Webster’s), but I heard that the closing ceremony announced that 19,000 pints had been drunk (at a ~3-day 3100-body convention).
I am no more surprised that gun-owners at a gun range would be polite to each other, than that Christians are generally polite to each other when they attend church.
The Midwesterners are polite to me until I open my mouth and they hear my accent. Then either I’m rudely ignored or or I’m coldly treated. I do miss the “bless your hearth” of my Virginia and NorthCarolina days.
Danes drink about as much as swedes, but the culture around alcohol is way different.
@John A Arkansawyer I do think it’s unfair to describe J. Darlington Smith as a fool. He’s just a man out of his time. Clifford Monroe-Alpha–now he’s a fool, genius or not.
And I’d be willing to try Social Credit. Just without the eugenics.
You’re right – I should have said that Smith is shown to be a fool about economics when he argues against the Social Credit idea (he’s shown talking about his optimism about the future of the stock market in 1926); other than that, he seems a decent adaptable sort (he manages to make a living for himself with a football league, after all). Agree about Cliff – he’s a genius with math, but at politics or love, he’s hopeless.
Regarding the eugenics, it’s at least interesting to see a society which subsidizes people who decline to take part in genetic improvement.
@Chip Hitchcock said:
IMO, BTH is didactic beyond the overt infodumps, even if it’s not as bad as reports of For Us, the Living.
Agreed that BTH is didactic, but it’s a lot better than “For Us, the Living” (which I’ve read). Heinlein had learned a lot about writing in the intervening years.
All this discussion of the guns in BTH makes me wonder if the dueling in Barnes’ “A Million Open Doors” was a response to BTH.
@Andrew: I’m saving For Us, The Living for a rainy day. Even the little story in the Heinlein Centennial program, which is almost certainly his earliest fiction writing, has that voice. I’ve gotten tired of so many of the ideas, but that voice. That’s comfort food for me.
And yeah, come to think of it, Smith was a fool about the stock market, but (like eugenics), a lot of otherwise sensible people had their brains drain on that one.
It’s always a good idea to think about Barnes in terms of response to Heinlein. It’s not always the right idea, but it’s a good place to start.
@Andrew: I’m not sure what kind of response that would be. Bear in mind that Barnes’s dueling was ~reliably unfatal (characters could be resurrected if the taser-epees overran) and was an affectation of idle youth (sort of like Vance’s “yalow” but for several years rather than just one and with less cooperation). Add on that it happens in a deliberately splintered culture (and one that we learn in a later book is even more extreme than we thought), it seems like Barnes was dismissing the idea despite being (AFAICT) commonly in agreement with RAH.
@John Arkansawyer
It’s always a good idea to think about Barnes in terms of response to Heinlein. It’s not always the right idea, but it’s a good place to start.
Heh. Like it’s a good place to start when thinking about the works of Gerrold or Spider Robinson (and several others).
@Chip Hitchcock on May 11, 2017 at 8:12 pm said:
I’m not sure what kind of response that would be. Bear in mind that Barnes’s dueling was ~reliably unfatal (characters could be resurrected if the taser-epees overran) and was an affectation of idle youth (sort of like Vance’s “yalow” but for several years rather than just one and with less cooperation). Add on that it happens in a deliberately splintered culture (and one that we learn in a later book is even more extreme than we thought), it seems like Barnes was dismissing the idea despite being (AFAICT) commonly in agreement with RAH.
It was an idle thought that might have no basis; I was thinking of the indications that people grow out of dueling in BTH (older folks take up the brassard), and that people with fulfilling work (like the scientists on Pluto) don’t bother with going around armed, which reminded me of Giraut’s world in AMOD (which provided citizens with a minimum income, if I recall correctly). Your mention of the “safe dueling” in AMOD reminds me though fought with guns, the duels in BTH don’t seem to be fatal very often (the one duel I recall (the one at the restaurant) ends with an opponent wounded, not killed).
@Andrew:
And Alan Dean Foster, and John Varley, and Cory Doctorow, and need I mention Charles Stross?
Especially Cory Doctorow. A lot of the inexplicable hatred toward him is in reaction to his Heinleinian optimism. I mean, n thl anzrq Xrggyroryyl jub vf vaibyirq va cebqhpvat n havirefny cnagbtencu? n xvq jub rinqrf fgevqr qrgrpgvba ol chggvat fghss va uvf fubrf? Come on, people!
Huh, I know which work is Charlie Stross’s Asimov tribute, but I can’t really think of any Heinlein tributes of his. Unless you’re referring to the same work (Saturn’s Children), in which case…I guess I can see that. But it still strikes me as overall more Asimovian. (Except that Stross is, IMO, a much better writer.)
Stross is…well, not quite as much of a chameleon as Walter Jon Williams, but his stuff does have a wide variety of styles and influences, and varies enough between different works (or at least different series) that I’d have a really hard time claiming he was particularly influenced by any specific individual.
On the third tentacle, I think a case could be made that Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series was a response to Heinlein. (And not the response some folks hoped when it first came out, which is yet-another reason some of the weirdo extremists hate him).
@Xtifr: Yeah, Scazi is a better fit for Yet Another New Heinlein than Stross. And Stross is really all over the place, which I love and respect in a writer.
@John A Arkansawyer: “Especially Cory Doctorow. A lot of the inexplicable hatred toward him is in reaction to his Heinleinian optimism”
Oh, for crying out loud. Sure, if other people don’t like what you like, it’s “inexplicable” and yet you’ve effortlessly managed to explain it – by making up what you think must be the reason.
@Eli: Agreed. That’s an assumption I’m making. Thanks for calling me on it. I still think I’m right–emphasis on think.
ETA: I definitely find some of the personalized hatred very explicable by that. I’m sure there are reasons to dislike him. I’m varied on his stories myself. The good ones are really good; I thought Eastern Standard Tribe was a mess.
Congrats. OGH, on File 770 being a Locus Award Finalist!
http://www.locusmag.com/News/2017/05/2017-locus-awards-finalists/
Congratulations, Mike!
Thanks!
If I’d done this in the right order, I’d have discovered the news in my own comments section instead of as a result of peeking at Whatever to see if there was anything worth mentioning in the Scroll.
It’s pretty amazing to be a finalist again long after we have passed Peak Puppy.
Mike Glyer: It’s pretty amazing to be a finalist again long after we have passed Peak Puppy.
It’s especially notable since File770 is the only Finalist in the Magazine category which does not publish SFF fiction (or at least when it does, it’s not labeled as such 😉 ).
Behold the amazing power of intelligent book discussions.
@Andrew: interesting ideas, even though the parallels are weak (e.g., jovents hang up their epees relatively young compared to BTH characters, and productive work isn’t necessarily a decider either — the ~genetic surgeon is carrying, as is the administrator. (wrt Pluto, I wonder whether RAH figured out there were environments dangerous enough to enforce “courtesy” without weapons.) It would be interesting to ask Barnes whether he was thinking of this, although he may have retconned since writing AMOD.
@ Chip Hitchcock (wrt Pluto, I wonder whether RAH figured out there were environments dangerous enough to enforce “courtesy” without weapons.)
This is a major theme of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Congratulations Mike!
Congrats, Mike!