Book Review: Snow Crash

One could subtitle Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash "Cyberpunk meets Robert Heinlein." Cyberpunk, for those of you who are not science fiction aficianados, was born out of a book called Neuromancer by William Gibson. Gibson's book was about hacker criminals living in a dirty, nasty, transnational future. Snow Crash is about hacker criminals living in a dirty, nasty, mega-libertarian future. The best visual representation of this world is Johnny Mnemonic, based on another Gibson story: the physical world has become grimy, the electronic world, as depicted in the clean, wild neon colors of a three-dimensional Internet.

So if this is cyberpunk, what makes it different from Gibson? For one thing, Stephenson's prose is a lot punchier, more prone to slang and profanity and sheer humor than Gibson, who tends to be more "literary" (i.e., he takes himself and his world seriously). I think it is this difference that makes Snow Crash more enjoyable than Neuromancer, which, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have picked up four times and been unable to finish. With humor comes a sense of hope, while "serious" literature seems to embrace a feeling of utter doom. Yeah, this future ain't perfect, Stephenson seems to be saying, but come along anyway and see what happens.

So where does Robert Heinlein come in? The future depicted in this book is, as I noted before, mega-libertarian. We're not given a full picture of what has happened, but the Los Angeles depicted here has experienced hyper-inflation, loss of national prestige, and total governmental collapse. As a result, everything has been privatized--even to the point of criminals being able to pay for the type of "accommodations" they receive when captured--except for a small "United States Government" enclave in the middle of Santa Monica. The Department of Defense has split into General Jim's Defense System and Admiral Bob's Global Security, while the CIA has merged with the Library of Congress to become the Central Intelligence Corporation (CIC). Individuals live in "burbclaves," armed, walled suburban communities guarded by private security forces. The court system--if you want it, laws have all but vanished--has become Judge Bob's Judicial System. And, as Stephenson summarizes it early in the book, "There's only four things we do better than anyone else

music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery"

Starring in this milieu is Hiro Protagonist (an excellent audible pun for English majors), a part-time hacker, samurai, CIC agent, and pizza delivery guy. He begins the story by working for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza--essentially working for a pizza delivery company that has been taken over by the mafia. His eventual partner is Y.T. a 15-year-old skateboard-riding "Kourier," who delivers parcels by attaching magnetic harpoons to cars and trucks and hangs on like a water skier to get across town. This world is complex, but surprisingly rich in slang, cultural changes, technologies, and toys.

The plot gets going when Hiro is offered "Snow Crash," a computer virus that (not surprisingly) crashes computers but also, surprisingly, damages the minds of the hackers using a crashed computer. Discovery of this drug leads the chronically unemployed Hiro on a chase through L.A. and the Internet (called "the Metaverse" here). The ingredients of this chase include Sumerian mythology, a floating island of refugees towed by a privatized aircraft carrier, and a large Aleutian who kills people with glass spears. There are a lot of fun little bits in Snow Crash, but there is also some serious thinking embedded here. Like it or not, you're likely to be both educated and entertained; and that, I think, is what science fiction does better than any other form of literature.

Book Review: A Thread of Grace

After several detours, I finally finished reading Mary Doria Russell's A Thread of Grace. A long stretch in the commercial airline system gave me the uninterrupted time to read it all the way through. Having liked her science fiction books, I thought I'd give this one a try as well. Russell's abilities to shape prose and draw characters are rare, which convinced me to try something different.

Thread is a story of European Jews hiding from the Nazis in northern Italy during World War II. Some of these individuals are Italian natives, some are refugees from Poland, France, Austria, and elsewhere. Among a cast of dozens, four or five stand out: Claudette, who starts out as a silly, whiny, and rather pretty young girl escaping France with her father; Lorenzo ('Renzo), an Italian veteran of the Abyssinian campaign, who drowns his sorrows over his actions there in alcohol; Dr. Schramm, a guilt-ridden Nazi doctor hiding from his crimes; and Osvaldo Tomitz, a priest helping settle and support Jewish refugees hiding in Italy.

Most of these characters do good things, often out of confused or even wrong motives, which seems to be the theme of the book. I found the aft matter of the book interesting because it provided some background into Russell's thinking when writing it. There were similar sections in The Sparrow and Children of God. At the time those books were being written, Russell was starting the moral education of her children and so was reflecting on her Roman Catholic background. Now, seven years later, she seems to have converted to Judaism. This overlapping of compassionate Christians and struggling Jews seems a good fit for where she is coming from, if I may be allowed to psychoanalyze for a moment.

As a work of literature, the book is mostly a fictionalized survivors' tale. In this way, the fortunes of the characters are determined by the circumstances of war--distant artillery, high-altitude bombers, etc. In fact, the war itself is almost completely off-stage, or at least faceless. Bombers fly out of the sky to attack, but we almost never "see" battlefields, tanks, or attacking formations; only the civilian aftermaths. There is some partisan activity, but again, that is not the emphasis of the book. What the reader experiences is the human cost of war, and how it shapes moral choices. The disadvantage of survivors' tales--affecting as they are--is that they lack the typical narrative structure. War causes unpredictable events and deaths, and not all decisions are driven strictly by personal will, but some decisions are imposed on the characters.

What I really enjoy about Russell's writing is her easily read prose. She informed me in an email that this effortless style took 60 drafts or so for The Sparrow. I presume similar work has gone into her other works. I also enjoy her ability to created flawed, likeable, and believable people. You don't just have stock types, but individuals with personal motivations that are easily identifiable. The unfortunate part of Thread, given its survivor-tale, is that you find yourself wondering who will live and who will die; in the end, survival is the only victory and the only suspense the book really offers. Therefore, if you are a reader who gets attached to characters, as I do, you are likely to be saddened or disappointed at some of the casualties.

So is A Thread of Grace worth reading? Yes, because it is something more than a survivor's tale. Most likely, the individuals upon whom she based her narrative did not enjoy any sense of "closure" or redemption, and Russell does not always provide such, even to her characters. I don't want to spoil the end, but you really need to read the whole book to appreciate what she is doing and what sorts of lessons she is able to draw from what is, in the final analysis, the irrationality of modern war.

Book Review of Genesis

The book-reading frenzy continues. This evening I finished a Poul Anderson book written in 2000 called Genesis. Anderson's works of the far future, most of them written in the 1990s provide the primary basis for my mistrust of The Singularity is Near. While Ray Kurzweil waxes eloquent about the potential glories of super-advanced computers and hyper-intelligence made larger by uploaded human minds, Anderson takes (or rather, took; he died in 2001) the human side of things. He sees machines becoming so powerful and all-encompassing that humans become little more than domesticated animals in their midst.

Consider: if we had created actually good machines to protect human life, improve the environment, guard our citizens, watch the skies, etc., what would be the purpose to our lives? What need would there be for bravery? For hard decision-making? For genius? After all, if the machines think so much more quickly than we do, they will undoubtedly surpass any achievement we might conceive. They can travel the cosmos more safely and less expensively than we could.

Genesis conceives of such a world, starting from a couple hundred years in our future to a billion years from now. In short vignettes he shows human society losing its vitality and self-determination as the machines take over more and more control. Indeed, the machines even stop a human-devised plan to stop a coming ice age 10,000 years off because the machine intelligence believes that such a plan would reduce the resources available to prevent a larger cosmic disaster 100,000 years hence.

This is a lot of heavy thinking to digest, so to make the big ideas a little more human, Anderson provides us with two lead characters. The first is Christian Brannock, a typical rough-and-ready Anderson male, liberty-loving and competent in the manly arts (hunting, fighting, composing ballads). Brannock spends only the early part of the book as "himself." The rest of the time he becomes an electronic, uploaded version of himself that is placed in a variety of machine bodies.

His later companion is Laurinda Ashcroft, the woman who helped the machine intelligence ("Gaia") convince humanity to accept Gaia's 100,000-year plan over the human-centered 10,000-year plan. She too is revived when Brannock's upload is dispatched by the galaxy-wide "universal mind" to learn why Gaia has started hiding things from "her" fellow intelligences.

Even with these two characters in play and Anderson's mythic prose to help bring these technologies down to Earth, Genesis is not as easy to read as Anderson's other, human-centered adventures, like the Time Patrol stories or Starfarers. Perhaps that is on purpose. With so much machine intelligence doing Deus-knows-what above our heads, what place do human beings have in such a universe? The best and brightest are uploaded into the collective consciousness to better the machines, and there is little evidence of the machines showing interest in becoming more human (a la Data). There seems little room in such a future for action-oriented men and women of adventure, such as Anderson tends to prefer.

I had a little easier time understanding Genesis only because I'd read The Singularity is Near recently, but the book is not for everyone. I'm also left to wonder where Anderson picked up his ideas and research, given that his book came out before Kurzweil's. Wherever they came from, I salute him. This was a challenging story to tell, and Anderson does manage to pull it off.

Just Another Beautiful Day in Alabama

Somewhat like Scarlett O'Hara, Southern trees seem to have no sense of shame or decency. Around Thanksgiving, they dress up in the gaudiest colors imaginable before disrobing completely. When people romanticize autumn, this is usually why. Now if they could only do something about the cold...

What CAN You Really Blog About, Anyway?

It's been a rough month. Work has been up and down (mostly down in October, up this month, thank Deus). I've had several challenges with both of the committees I'm on within NSS. And yet, as a polite and private individual, I'm self-restrained from airing my dirty laundry about either of these circumstances.

After all, if you have personality conflicts or professional challenges, is it appropriate to vent your spleen into cyberspace? Given some of the articles I've seen, the only way to do this is anonymously or using a pseudonym. A friend recommended Wordpress, though it looks like I need a few more toys and some quality reading time to get it all done right. A pseudonym sounds about right. Otherwise, I'll just keep my inner thoughts--good, bad, or ugly--in my journal, where they probably belong. I've tried to keep this blog on a more-or-less high tone: intellectual or cultural matters, political or philosophical opinions, and the occasional food, drink, or book review. Nevertheless, there are other things I could say about what I do (with appropriate vagueness). I can't control, however, if people find my next blog at random and recognize the writing style or the players, however carefully masked. Hm. I guess this is why I don't write tell-all books. I (usually) want people to think the same or better of me after they read something I write.

It's not even as if I'm planning to write smut, dish gossip, or whatever. There are technical, cultural, and management issues that bear examining. However, the First Amendment is on shaky ground on the Internet. A boss reads your opinion of him or her, or find you're sharing "trade secrets" or internal issues, and fires you. It happens. Does this mean that I'm subject to censorship? Hardly. The government is not going to come after me (okay, they might in my case because I work for them), but on the whole there are no government laws about what I say in the blogosphere. There are, instead, personal and political consequences.

Which leads me to ask another question. There are many other folks on the 'net that are much less cautious than I am. Do they not consider the implications of their opinions or actions? I read an article recently about drunk/licentious women on YouTube getting spotted by their current or future employers. There are others with serious smut or silliness on their MySpace or Facebook pages--personal information, "too much information," or pictures that really aren't appropriate for an R-rated audience. I heard recently that Generation Y has no expectation of personal privacy. I'm beginning to believe it.

It's not like I'm innocent of stupid commentary or behavior on the Internet, and Deus knows I've done my best to backtrack when necessary. I remember being young and stupid. It scares me to think what sorts of damage I could have done to myself if I'd had Internet access at a younger age.

Anyhow, this is a cautionary note, to myself and others: be sensible out there. You never know who's reading.

Just Because You're Not Paranoid...




I'm on a roll this month. Just finished rereading Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It's your basic alien-invasion story, done by a couple of pros. There are things to like and things to dislike about the book, which is better than Lucifer's Hammer, I might add. On the negative side, the book is a tad long (581 pages). And, like Hammer, it suffers from too many side characters. On the plus side, it does offer some really nifty aliens, if you can get past the fact that they look like baby elephants. They come complete with their own high-tech toys (solar power satellites, Bussard ramjets, Thor, etc.) and unique psychology. The book also features "guest appearances" by Niven, Pournelle, Robert Heinlein, and other thinly veiled real-world characters.

Footfall was written in 1985 and is set around 10 years later. It opens with the first Voyager images being broadcast from Saturn, and leads the reader to believe that the peculiar roiling seen in the rings was the result of a starship drive passing nearby. From there, we move forward to a future where the Cold War is still on, solar power satellites are just being experimented with, and the Soviets have a 12-person space station in orbit, but not the Americans.

A female Army officer, Jenny Crichton, is on hand at an observatory when the alien ship is discovered. She quickly informs her superiors of the event, and from there becomes central to the story. A pro-space senator, Wes Dawson, convinces the president to let him be part of a joint U.S.-Soviet greeting delegation aboard the Soviet space station. He and some of the crew get captured when the nastiness hits the fan. A dependable biker dude who is friends with congressman, bikers, and survivalists, Harry Reddington, becomes a central character as well, along with a Fifthp (say that a few times fast) that he captures during the invasion.

There is also, of course, more than a little lecturing from Dr. Pournelle, which I don't mind so much, as I come from his side of the aisle. However, it can probably be as wearing to a liberal reader as Kim Stanley Robinson's endless barbs against conservatives are to me.

The biggest challenge with Footfall is the sheer length of it. I believe the same story could have been told with about 100 to 200 fewer pages (and characters) and gotten the point across. Niven and Pournelle's best collaboration, for me, is still The Mote in God's Eye, which I could probably reread as well, since I'm in that mood.

I've put down Mary Doria Russell's A Thread of Grace and read two or three SF books in the meantime. It's not that I haven't enjoyed Russell's writing (The Sparrow and Children of God are fabulous), but Thread is not science fiction, and I'm just more interested in that subject matter. It's like a devoted romance novel fan being asked to read a mystery novel or Hemingway--the new material could be quite good, but the reader really prefers the romance. Having burned through a few SF purchases, though, I can probably go back to this one. Russell's style is absolutely elegant, the product of "over 60 drafts" according to an email conversation I had with her, and I envy her sheer facility with the language. And, unlike Niven and Pournelle, there are few unremarkable characters in Russell's work. Every person in her work is there for a damn good reason, and she manages to make even minor players memorable somehow. Given my tastes, I hope she makes additional into science fiction. Gosh knows the field could use her talent.

Old Arguments Aren't Necessarily the Best

"The age of someone can be determined by the amount of pain they feel by encountering a new idea." --Eileen Collins, Astronaut

I became struck by this comment once again as I read The High Ground by Ben Bova, a director of the National Space Society, and a long-time science fiction writer and space advocate. The book was written in 1981 and, despite its being written at the beginning of the Shuttle era, it depressed me that it uses many of the same arguments for space settlement and industry that the National Space Society uses today. It's all there: the need for Solar Power Satellites to overcome the energy crisis; the need for low-cost access to orbit; the potential of asteroids to provide materials for our economy; the need to get the environmentalists involved in supporting space-based activities.

Has American society become so "old" (established) that the "new" idea of expanding into space is now considered anathema? Or are the arguments of the NSS (neé L-5 Society and National Space Institute) so stale that they make no impact? And, again, what does it say about NSS that our arguments for establishing a spacefaring civilization haven't changed in 26 years?

Bova did give me a different spin on my review of The Singularity is Near. He points out that we were (are) faced with Luddites and "Prometheans," technological optimists who take their name from Prometheus, the mythical bringer of fire to mankind. However, while Bova makes a good case for continuing with technology--that technologies are all solutions to problems and that because of that basis, their benefits usually outweigh their hazards--he still overlooks the simple fact of human evil. But then I must consider: just because a group of Muslim terrorists flew a few 767s and 757s into buildings, does that mean that I think the airplane was a bad idea and should be scrapped? Obviously not, or I would not be so eager to collect frequent flyer miles. Still, I find optimists'/Prometheans' unblinkered view of technological progress unnecessarily cheery. Every technology has its tradeoffs, and those tradeoffs are not always made known to the public until (usually) it's too late. And, as we fall into irrationalism and an increasingly politicized culture, the potential misuse of technology becomes greater.

What's even more maddening about Bova's arguments for space industry is the fact that they occur in a Cold War context. That leads me to one of two theories:

1. The arguments have not changed in 26 years because they have not adapted to changed circumstances.
2. The arguments have not changed in 26 years because they are still valid but are not accepted by the public.

Regardless of which proposition is right, it seems obvious that the arguments need to change, either because they are no longer relevant or they don't resonate with the public. Yes, one might argue that we're in a cold war with China and that their space shots toward the Moon are a challenge to our superiority. I've accepted these ideas because they've been new to me. Now I'm not so sure about their provenance. How much pain would NSS undergo if their fundamental arguments were questioned? If the choices are holding to old ideas or success, will older members hold to the old ideas because they worked once upon a time? And, truth be told, the arguments they used 26 years ago obviously did not work, or we wouldn't have the space program and space economy that we do now...it would be better and more in line with NSS principles.

Frustrating. I suppose I'll have to come up with some new arguments, if only to amuse myself.

Finally, Some News That's Worth Publishing!

Winona Ryder joins the cast of the next Star Trek movie:

http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=283451&GT1=7701&silentchk=1&&

However, I also noticed this error (bear with me, non-Trekkers):

Paramount Pictures and director JJ Abrams have set Ryder
to play the Vulcan mother of a young Spock

I don't consider myself an expert on the show, I'm only a semi-geek--a true believer has watched every single episode at least once, which I have not--but I have seen all the movies. It's either an error on the reporter's part or the writers of the new movie, but Spock's mother in Star Trek IV was human, and portrayed by Jane Wyatt. Unless they have plural marriage on Vulcan?

/b

Ill Breeding, Macbeth, and Political Thinking

The title does not imply that I will link the topics above; those are just the thoughts roaming through my mind this Friday evening.

First, I'll discuss ill breeding just to get this off my chest and think about more pleasant things.

This evening I decided to attend a local production of Shakespeare's Macbeth. I usually get one dose of live Bard a year, this was it. During intermission, I started chatting up the people around me--an engineer from NASA to my left, a couple of young ladies in the row ahead of me who were field biologists. I was doing my earnest best to be friendly and genial--this was, after all, a cultural and social event.

They were discussing some friend of theirs who was not happy about someone guessing his age wrong. I shared with them the line I'd heard from Eileen Collins about one's age could be told by the pain one experiences by encountering a new idea. One of the two--the one with the unhappy expression (either because I'd entered the conversation or because that was just her mood)--said she didn't get it, and that she'd need exposure to a new idea to see her reaction. I said, "Okay, what about using power transmitted from space as an alternative to consuming energy down here?"

Now given that I'd already guessed the lass's politics, I thought my question was as polite and leaning-her-way as I could get. Her waspish answer deserves to be quoted in full: "Well, I don't see how, when they can't find the weapons of mass destruction and NASA can't build a Hubble without the lens being out of focus. Quite frankly I don't see how it's even remotely feasible."

WTF?

The first part of her answer was a non-sequitir, save for the fact that she at least mentioned NASA. The second sentence qualifies as an answer, but proved my point about age and reacting to new ideas. Since I didn't like her tone, I asked, grinding my smile in place, "So how much pain did that make you feel?"

"Oh, none, really."

At which point I turned back to talking to the NASA engineer, who, upon learning I was a writer, immediately wanted me to collaborate with him in developing his historical fiction book about the history of rocketry. It sounded awful ("Oh, I should talk about the why instead of just about the hardware? Yeah, that's a good idea, I hadn't thought of that!"). However, he was at least friendly and polite.

Now okay, I might have joined the two ladies' conversation uninvited. However, I had said nothing untoward, hostile, or overtly political. The most direct way to deal with that situation would probably have been, "Excuse me, but we were having a private conversation," and I would've apologized and retreated. But no, this stranger decided to engage and then bring out the hostility. Whence comes such hostility and ill breeding? My record holds secure: in a room full of potential people to talk to, I find the one who's evil. I have magic powers.

***

Now to the play itself: Not much to my surprise, the acting was better in Washington, DC, but these folks gave it their all and had a lot of creative ideas going on.

The acting suffered occasionally from line flubbing, which is the bane of any performance. One kid had a pronounced lisp that made his thick Shakespearean lines even more difficult to understand. Those were the two biggest impediments to enjoyment.

I commend the troupe, however, on the following choices:

• The witches ("strange sisters") remained on stage the entire time, occasionally adding wicked cackles between scenes or nearly intervening in the action by reaching toward certain characters. Their makeup was outstanding.
• The standing set was a castle-like structure with a ramp of "bricks" that served as steps for black-garbed demons(?) who made occasional appearances with the witches and otherwise banged drums or other percussion instruments, which served as the only "music" that I can recall.
• The costumes varied greatly from person to person, most likely to help each one stand out. Macbeth's kingly tunic was perhaps the shiniest and most impressive--something like what Anakin Skywalker wore in Episode III.
• The casting of Lady Macbeth was inspired. The young lady (younger than me = young) was a close face match for Martha Stewart, and she seemed to play that up, often sashaying across the stage as if she was showing off her furniture.
• The guy playing Macduff was the best at delivering his lines: he had them down cold, his diction was excellent, and he was the most believeable actor. Two thumbs up!

***

Before the play, I was scribbling in my journal about the evils of American politics. I'd started a bipartisan rant, talking about the unfortunate split between religion and science in our country, and how both suffer from the lack of the other. However, I found myself ranting more than necessary about the Left than the Right (surprise, surprise), and I really wanted to get to the end result, which is the dysfunction that has kicked up in our political culture. The notes that follow are a variant of a discussion I'd had with one of my coworkers this week.

• The ideological extremists of both political parties now govern, not the middle. Moderates, who are now called "Independents," used to be the majority. Now they face the unpleasant alternatives of holding their nose to vote for a candidate from their own party who is too ideological or an ideological candidate from the other party--the "lesser of two evils" complaint.
• Political maneuvering is now being criminalized, to the point where it is becoming imperative for political parties or elected officials to hold onto power at all costs--the alternative is to be prosecuted for perfectly legal political maneuvering once out of office.
• In addition to politics being criminalized, crimes have become politicized. Drug-related and "hate" crimes are punished more severely than comparable offenses without the aforementioned stigma. Drug crimes can be addressed by other laws: property damage, murder, manslaughter, or theft--all of which are already on the books. Likewise a person killed for "hate" is no more heinously dead than someone who is murdered out of a crime of momentary passion--and we already have laws on the books to address conspiracy or first degree (premeditated) murder. Motive goes to a person's thinking, which cannot (or should not) be legislated. That is the road to George Orwell's thoughtcrime.
• In a polarized environment like this, compromise becomes politically risky, mistrusted, and damn near impossible. The goal of legislating now is victory, destroying the opposition, not drafting sane, just laws that serve the majority of the American people fairly.
• Loyalty to party, faction, or self-identified interest group has become more important than loyalty to the community (city, state, nation).
• Power is increasingly concentrated in the national capital, and within that structure, increasingly within the executive and judicial branches. The Congress has become a recurring exercise in gerrymandering to ensure perpetual party privilege and control over various districts, as well as partisan gridlock. One of the reasons the judiciary has become so powerful, I would argue, is that Senators and Congressmen want to retain their safe seats, which means avoiding making hard choices or taking principled stands on issues, forcing the great problems of the day to be settled by nine appointed judges who are put into lifetime positions by (again) a polarized political environment.
• So the winner-take-all stakes have become even greater: to control the executive is to control the agenda; to control the congress is to control the appointment of Supreme Court judges; and to control the Court is to have political control of the law.
• The stakes are high, as is the power-grabbing potential for high officials: taxation and spending have soared to frightening and absurd levels, while foreign borrowing, a falling dollar, and inflation are putting our entire future at risk. A sweep by one party or another results in a series of political scorched-earth policies and laws that seem politically savvy at the time, but turn into unintended consequences and "tyranny" when those same laws are wielded by the other party against their originators.
• Given the politicized environment of the capital, conspiracy theories abound. If one party is in control of a particular branch of government, the opposition believes a conspiracy or cynical "alternative theory" above any official government pronouncement.
• Public investments in basic infrastructure (highways, housing, power systems) as well as higher technology (basic research, advanced R&D, space exploration) have declined steadily, while expenditures on direct transfer payments, government benefits, and defense and internal security continue to grow.
• Anarcho-tyranny is rife among law enforcement agencies. This is a term invented by Jerry Pournelle. It is a situation in which major crimes and criminals go unpunished because the authorities are unable or often afraid to act, while the police continue to enforce laws when and where it is safe to do so: Murder rages in one part of the city while minor traffic offenders and scofflaws in middle class sections are sent to jail. Cherry picking by police.
• Out of fear of group-based politics, both parties fear to close the porous border with Mexico for fear of offending a soon-to-be-massive population/voting bloc, the Hispanics.
• "Security" is defined by how many new federal employees can be added to the civil service--with all those uniformed people at the airport, we must be safer, right? Hardly.

Okay, so these aren't the happiest thoughts in the world. And what's worse, I don't have a lot of solutions for fixing this multiheaded mess that is our political culture. But then what might be even worse than that would be if ONE MAN (or even ONE WOMAN) stands forth and says, "I know how to solve all our problems! Give me the power for one year, and I'll fix everything!" And some people, tired of all the bad things listed above, might even consider taking the Leader up on his/her offer. God help us all.

Some Thoughts from a Former Astronaut

One of the benefits of working at NASA is occasional visits from our astronauts. These are truly amazing people. I admit to being bored by and distrustful of the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs, but the resumes of these people are just amazing. Today's visitor was Eileen Collins, who has a whole list of firsts to her credit: first female Shuttle pilot, first female Shuttle commander, first to command a Shuttle mission after the Columbia disaster. She's a serious hero (okay, heroine--pick your word).

Collins has since left the astronaut corps to spend time at home with her kids. That meant she talked to us as a civilian and without the traditional blue astronaut jump suit. I found the combination refreshing because she wasn't there (mostly) as part of her job, but as herself.

The theme and purpose of her visit was safety, and she had some good lessons there. However, what interested me most were her comments about the space program in general. Here are some of the quotations I took down:

• "People who know what they're doing still make mistakes."
• "The biggest fear of an astronaut is making a mistake."
• "There is risk in spaceflight, and we all know that."
• "Maybe my way isn't always the best way."
• "My best training for being a Shuttle commander is being a mother." (Groan)
• "Put [a] mistake behind you and, with confidence, go on." (Right on!)
• "[The space program is] an investment in the future of our country."
• "Psychological support is important...we had astronauts up there who lost friends on 9/11."
• "Some day, [an asteroid strike] will happen again."
• "The age of someone can be determined by the amount of pain they feel by encountering a new idea."

Anyhow, I have yet to see an inarticulate astronaut. They might send these folks to speech class or "charm school," for all I know, but all of them--even Lisa Nowak, when she visited before her crack-up--have a confident stage presence. Nevertheless, they deserve our respect. Eileen Collins has mine.

Review of Destiny's Road and Other Thoughts

Here's the thing that's starting to bother me. I hear rumblings...nothing serious, just wistful thinking on the part of people right and left who are starting to hate representative democracy and wish--oh, just so slightly--that we could have a dictatorship for a short while to keep those people down. You know what I'm talking about:

You think the American system has failed. You think it's become "too partisan" (meaning the other side's barbs are starting to get to you). You want the hostility and arguments to stop. You just want someone who will lay it on the line and settle things.

Oh, you might not think you want a dictator. But how many of you applauded when Anakin Skywalker suggested that one person stand up and get the two sides of a big issue to just fix a problem? Have you wanted the arguments on TV to stop? Do you want the police to instill law and order and "the crazies" to have their guns taken away? Do you applaud when a persecuted social group that you're not part of gets their taxes raised? Have you silently wished that someone would just take charge in Iraq and get "those people"--pick your faction--to either get along or shut up? Do you think it is reasonable or expected or inevitable that federal agents can enter a private home and search it because the owner is suspected of something, without anyone specifying what, as long as it keeps your neighborhood safe? Do you enjoy the idea of those people (again, pick your faction or social group) being denied access to the media to prevent their horrid ideas from being spread? This is not the violent demand for a Fürher; it is the slow slide toward subservience.

These are not the thoughts of a free people, ladies and gentlemen. They are the thoughts of people longing to be ruled. That is not what America is about. America is about people having control of their government, not vice versa. Yet we're coming to expect it. We expect grandmothers to be patted down at the airport on thier way to innocent vacation trips. We expect half-trained strangers to paw through our underwear looking for Deus-knows-what. We expect that the U.S. President will send soldiers or Marines anywhere there is trouble or perceived evil in the world; but we don't want to know about gory details like casualities. We expect to meekly obey a civil or governmental figure, no matter how unreasonable their demands, simply because they have the power or the badge behind them.

Is this really what we want?

***
Is it me, or is the culture becoming completely infantile? Two commercials in a row brought home the fact:

--Commercial #1 for Volvo (and odds are you've seen or heard it): An SUV is advertised while a Mr. Rogers-type voice sings, "The wheels of the car go 'round and 'round..."
--Commercial #2 for the city of Orlando (my beloved former home): A mother and daughter enter a roller coaster. After a quick flash-forward through the 'coaster (Big Thunder Mountain), both people come out of the ride as children. The child maintains her age, the parent turns into a child.

It's not like I have an objection to a grown-up being as joyful as child. I have a problem with grown-ups becoming as juvenile as a child.

***

It's a pleasure to watch Hollywood suffer from a writer's strike. More proof--though the producers and studio heads in H'wood would never admit it--that nothing in their world would get done without ideas from serious writers. What a frickin' concept. I read recently that writers get something like .3% of residuals on DVDs. It was their story, without which the art designers, actors, directors, producers, gaffers, and the like would have nothing to produce, and they're being shafted. Let 'em strike. With any luck, the networks and the studios will be forced to show quality reruns or rerelease favorite classics that the audiences actually like. Maybe the marketing people can spend some time crunching the numbers and finding out what people will actually watch, rather than what the bosses and producers think will sell. What a concept.

***

This weekend I read Destiny's Road by Larry Niven. I am a huge fan of Ringworld and The Integral Trees, as well as Niven's Known Space stories and his collaborations with Jerry Pournelle, but I must confess that it took me a bit to get into this book. In fact, this was the second time I'd picked up the book. The first time I just plain gave up after the first page. However, I was fresh off reading Lucifer's Hammer, so I figured what the heck, I'd give it another try.

Here's the problem, I think: Niven is excellent at portraying better, futuristic societies; however, I find his primitive societies (such as the one found in The Integral Trees) a little less believable. He is much more comfortable describing a better future than a poorer one. Even in societies that have gone to seed, like the one on the planet Destiny, there is still "settler magic" around to offer the hope of a better future. The grime and dirt of a really "fallen" civilization is better portrayed in Lucifer's Hammer.

That being said, Niven offers up some of his usual enjoyable literary tactics: a character geared toward travel and tourism (ensuring that the story will keep moving in location, and thus in plot); alien landscapes and creatures; social and environmental puzzles for his "tourist" character to solve; and some hope of progress and redemption. Niven is an optimist, which is probably why he has difficulty envisioning a truly primitive culture. That's not where he's at home.

We have, in this case, a wandering character named Jemmy Bloocher (I confess, I kept imagining "Frau Blücher" from Young Frankenstein every time I came across his last name). Jemmy lives with his family on a reasonably secure family farm on the human-settled world of Destiny, with some rather odd cultural rules and a few leftover technologies from a more advanced civilization. The most important aspects to life on Destiny are the need for every person to consume "speckles" (a spice of sorts) in their daily diet to prevent becoming stupid, and The Road, a smooth rock trail that was created by the fusion-powered spacecraft Cavorite by flying low over the ground until it solidified glass-smooth. The Road is traveled by caravans of traders that Jemmy alternately joins and avoids over the course of years. Early on in the story, we realize that Jemmy has set himself upon a quest: to learn what happened to the Cavorite. The story takes us along on that journey.

One of the different things we see in this story is what might happen if a Nivenesque "tourist" is forced to stay in one place for a long time. I leave that lesson for the reader, but I found it a definite departure from most of his usual traveling bards.

I liked Destiny's Road, but I'm not sure if I'd read it again, as I continue to reread Ringworld. Some reasons I'd give would ruin the story, but in some ways, despite the usual traveling motif, I found Destiny's Road strangely confining. Perhaps it's because I have really enjoyed Niven's more futuristic worlds. Another problem I had was with the main character changing names/identities frequently throughout the story. There are also, I must confess, some coincidences that are just too convenient, even for a storyteller as skilled as Niven. In any case, this is definitely different from other books he has written, and I admire his courage, for as a writer I somehow felt that this was a step into uncomfortable territory for the author. However, if no risks are taken, we are left with weak repetition and little that is new, so for that he is to be commended.

Eliminating Poverty Through Tax Incentives--A Thought Experiment



I was asked by a fellow space advocate about solutions to eliminate poverty in the world. He sees this as a primary means for reducing the threat of terrorism. I have no argument with the goal; however, I happen to believe that if we waved a magic wand and made all the poor in the world economically equal to a middle-class American today, people would still find reasons to fight. Be that as it may, I thought I'd offer my solution below.


Compassion for the poor, in my mind, is to give the poor some temporary relief until they can get themselves on their feet, support themselves, and get off the dole. However, America's "temporary" expedients of the mid 1960s are still in place, poverty still exists, and [the programs] show no signs of going away any time short of an asteroid strike.


Here's the capitalist solution to this (take it as you will): Reduce taxes AND the government dole. Provide tax incentives and penalties for companies that provide (or do not provide) programs that provide social relief, job training, and housing assistance. In short, provide more incentives for private, not government action. In the U.S. such measures will, in fact, become necessary for the following reasons:

• The current budget cannot be sustained forever.
• We are about to face a serious wave of retirements due to the aging of the Baby Boom generation; there will not be the bureaucratic staff on hand to administer our ever-growing programs.
• Businesses in the U.S. are going to need every productive citizen they can get in the coming 20 years. The favorite statistic bandied about these days is that China now has more honor students than we have students; and as much as some American parents would like to think otherwise, not all of our little darlings are going to become honor students.
• If businesses are paying for relief and retraining, you can damn well believe that they will have a strong financial incentive to produce results because that sort of training is expensive. And the results are easily measured: when the individuals on relief are able to support themselves, the aid is cut off. Businesses can turn off the spigot a lot more readily than governments.
• A major new social program would be incredibly unpopular and hard to sell, especially to the younger generations. While the Baby Boomers and their parents might have responded to calls for social justice and the like, Generation X and Gen Y are more likely to respond to financial incentives or penalties--ye olde carrot and stick.

I'm sure you rolled your eyes at least once and probably think I'm being a naive Yank for thinking that capitalism can do that much good. However, I'm telling you that yes, it can.


For instance, I worked for the Walt Disney World Resort for 12 years, and they had SEVERAL high-quality job training programs, including most especially English language training for our mostly-immigrant housekeeping staff. And while there might have been a PR motive, there was also a self-interested motive as well: Disney a) needs the labor and b) wants to maintain its reputation as a provider of quality services. And they can't do that without paying for the training. So yes, it can be done.


Secondly, environmentally safe products have caught on through a combination of government and market pressures. People feel better buying from companies that they know are doing some good--much better than when government comes in promising to do good. The standard joke line here is: "We're from the government and we're here to help you." This might not be as lofty or poetic as calls for social justice or compassion, but if it produces results, who the hell cares?

Review of The Singularity is Near

The review is now posted: http://www.nss.org/resources/books/non_fiction/NF_038_singularityisnear.html. I just submitted one for Lucifer's Hammer. That ought to give me some breathing space to read non-SF or non-space stuff for awhile. Gosh knows I need the break.

We'll just see what sort of reaction (if any) the Singularity review gets. I'll probably be zapped as a technological pessimist. I repeat my stance on technology here, though: just because we can do a thing, that does not mean that we must do that thing. In truth, I'm not a technological pessimist--I'm actually more of an optimist, as I'm quite willing to go, "That's cool!" when someone explains a new technology to me; however, I am a pessimist about human behavior. Scientific knowledge by itself is essentially neutral; how human beings use that knowledge is a matter of ethics and personal behavior. For an object lesson on this issue, I highly recommend Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut or The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.

I won't stand in the way of a nuclear plant being built or prevent a forest from being cut. I will tap eminent scientists and engineers on the shoulder and ask them if they've considered the implications of their actions. For gosh sakes, someone has to. Technology minus ethics gives us Nazi Germany.

/b

Speaking Unpleasant Truths

When I first joined the space advocacy movement, I was simultaneously thrilled and dismayed. Thrilled because the ideas being offered were as mind-blowing as anything in science fiction--and they wanted to make them happen now, in the real world. Space elevators! Orbital slings! Low-cost Mars missions! Space tourism! Dismayed because everyone at the podiums seemed to be dry white males. Not all of them were dry: some were both brilliant and entertaining. Some managed to make world-changing technologies sound like a really bad trigonometry lecture. Others were condescending toward one or another group (some deserving, others not). Others could not manage enthusiasm.

I am not going to name names here. I am just going to make some observations on the culture of space advocacy, of which I have been a part. Twenty years ago, I understand, it was worse: people showed up at congressional offices in Star Trek uniforms, etc. Some of that hasn't gone away: we have had people show up to lobby Congress in t-shirts and gym shoes.

The problem is the space advocacy movement has been populated prirmarily by geeks--and, again, I include myself in that category--or, if that label offends, I will use a PC term like "the socially challenged" (SC). I am trying to offer a little self-reflection here to suggest ways we, the SCs, might improve our fortunes.

Think about it: space exploration as a passion, an avocation, or a lifestyle is not in the mainstream. There is some overlap between science fiction fandom and space advocacy fandom. We tend to have high IQs (always a social stigma), glasses or poor vision, poor physical coordination/athletic skills, occasional weight problems, grating voices, poor social skills, monomanias, and/or out-of-the-mainstream hair styles. The "Beautiful People" (BPs) who ignored or tormented us in high school eventually benefit from our technological prowess--think Bill Gates--but that doesn't mean the always like us. If you want to know where the former BPs from your high school went, visit human resources, sales, marketing, or maybe finance. These are good, solid, normal-people jobs done very well by people of fair-to-middlin' intelligence. But if you want someone to design, build, or maintain a computer network, you call the ones with the rumpled clothing, wild hair, and poor presentation skills.

Mind you, not all engineers or scientists are doofuses; I'm just trying to provide an explanation for why the SCs gravitate toward space-based activities. Consider your options if you're a bright lad or lass who won't be attracting a lot of dates or party invitations. What are your options? Beyond the company of your peers and like-minded individuals, you are often left to your own devices. Your schoolwork bores you because you're generally anywhere from a chapter to a couple years ahead of your class. So you read. And you don't read about mundane things like romance or truck repair--you're seeking to have your mind challenged and expanded by the unknown. So you pick up science fiction. You want to figure out how the universe works, and there's this whole section of the book store with unusual technologies, strange, new worlds, new life, and new civilizations. Et cetera.

Book reading of this sort has its downside. There might be a lot in them about how to interact with Horta or Puppeteers; not so much about how to get along with one's fellow humans in your current place and time. And when you try to share these new concepts with your peers, you're given mighty strange looks or, just as likely, a punch in the arm and a noogie for your troubles. So you turn inward even more, and it becomes a self-sustaining cycle. And this matters, because those same good-looking people who were popular but not necessarily as intellectual X years ago eventually become politicians and run the country (or advise the people who run the country). We need to learn to think like and/or communicate with the BPs, or we're doomed to the sidelines forever.

When we grow up--or at least get older--we again find a group of like-minded peers. They're generally smart, often awkward know-it-alls on this or that subject, and the arguments in the convention hallways range from the ISP of particular launch vehicles to the origins of a rocket design to the likelihood of a "gray vs. green" divide in the distant future. It's a great time, and usually much more intelligent than the water cooler talk you'd get in the average office ("How 'bout those Tide?"). But then you watch one of your space-loving peers interact with a mundane, and it all becomes clear again: you are on a different social planet from other people your age. How does this become clear? When you hear someone try to explain to a complete stranger how aerodynamics influences cloud formation when all the person next to them asked was whether it had stopped raining. Or you see someone argue with the front desk clerk for half an hour, scientific calculator in hand, because the clerk divided the bill incorrectly. Or you hear a friend chatting up a very pretty girl by explaining to her the principles of warp drive at a party not related to space or science fiction. Or you hear a guy pick on someone because they cannot write or speak in a gramatically acceptable manner (gee, who could THAT be?).

We're not normal, folks, and if we want to sell a spacefaring future, we either need to act like normal people or at least be able to use words that normal people will use. I wrote an article a year ago expressing my understated pleasure that marketing professionals were now getting into the space business. This is code for "normal people are starting to see how they can make money at this."

I have heard complaints about this change. Space advocacy conference have gotten slicker, more business-oriented and, most importantly, more expensive. When I hear a complaint that they're less inclusive, it seems to me that that's also code for, "There aren't as many geeks around." And perhaps that is so. SF or space conventions can be rather low-rent. Or perhaps the mundanes, the people with the normal jobs, are starting to outnumber us. It's not quite as "cozy" anymore. We don't recognize all the faces.

There is good news, however, as my article noted. The appearance of marketing types and other entrepreneurs is a sign that space exploration (or at least space tourism) is gaining mainstream acceptance. Of course the flip side of this situation is that we SCs have always taken a certain pride in our exclusivity. Who are all these Johnny-come-latelies trying to infiltrate our ranks? They can build a marketing plan, but they don't know the rocket equation? Who the hell are these people? Perhaps it's a sign that space is becoming democratized. And aristocrats do not always approve of the commoners invading on their privileges.

If you want to get away from the mundanes, you go to science fiction conferences, and even that is no guarantee anymore. On a weekend I was sent off to the Mars Society Convention (attendance 200 at most), another coworker went to DragonCon, where tens of thousands of people showed up. Science fiction, too, has gone mainstream--much more so than space advocacy.

So now we come to our greatest conundrum: science fiction, space fantasy, space opera, and flat-out fantasy are bigger than ever...and yet we still have a neglected space program and only the beginnings of a space economy. I've had several conversations about this, and the answer seems to be that more and more people have accept SF only as escapist entertainment. People who enjoy the grand adventures of Battlestar Galactica or Stargate: Atlantis have simultaneously, infuriatingly little interest in the actual adventures going on over our heads. That is the next great challenge for space advocates: getting more people who share our cultural interests to also share our real-world interests.

I was just reviewing this essay, and I realized how hard I've been on geeks, SCs, call 'em what you will. And I asked myself "Why? You have been among and one of them. Why are you being so critical?" First, because I care, and I actually want the space advocacy movement to make more progress than it has. And second, because, like Pinocchio who strove to be a real boy, this particular geek has always striven to just be accepted as normal--to even lead (egad) a normal life, with a normal job and family. When you grow up going through both the gifted and the LD program, there's precious little room for just being a person. You're either a freak because you're smarter than a lot of your peers, or you're defective because you can't walk (much less play sports) without tripping over your own feet. And yet, at the end of the day, my desire for the wife, family, job, house, and two-car garage gets overridden by an even deeper desire to dump everything except my book collection and become the librarian on Luna City or in an orbital habitat.

So I'm a space geek. So what? I still realize that I need a lot more normal people to support my vision of the future before I'm going to live the way I want. I guess we all have more work to do.