Solved: The Barsoomian spaceship mystery!

We uncover the cover confusion

It took nearly fifty years, but at last I have the answer to a niggling question that has been stuck in the back of my mind since grade school. The question arose when I acquired the Ballantine paperback editions of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels about Mars—or “Barsoom,” as Burroughs rendered it. The cover art was by Bob Abbett, whose work was generally evocative of the adventures contained in the books' pages. One cover, however, was just plain wrong. And it was wrong in a way that made no sense at all. I could not figure out how Abbett had messed up so significantly, and that puzzle stayed with me—unresolved until this year.

Abbett established in my mind the figure of John Carter of Mars, the greatest swordsman on two planets. Abbett's painting for the cover of the third Mars book, The Warlord of Mars, is iconic for me, illustrating the stalwart and brooding warrior, sword in hand. The leather strap across Carter's chest is studded with the metal device (similar to the horned chevron of the Cadillac logo) that I took to be the symbol of the Prince of Helium. Abbett's depiction became for me the quintessential John Carter. (Sorry, Taylor Kitsch; you're not quite in that league.)

On the cover of the first Mars book, A Princess of Mars, Carter is plying his sword in defense of the incomparable Dejah Thoris (who apparently trademarked “incomparable” as her personal adjective). On the cover of the second book, The Gods of Mars, there's John Carter floating in space next to a spaceship!

Huh?!

Something is terribly, terribly wrong. Burroughs had no spaceships in his Barsoom books. John Carter made the transition between Earth and Mars via a strange kind of teleportation, which Burroughs did not deign to explain. No spaceships. But Abbett painted a very recognizable rocketship, fins and all, for Mars book #2. Where the heck did that come from?

I now know it came from 1918. It came from a simple misreading of Frank Schoonover's cover art for the book's original publication. Abbett mistook Schoonover's Barsoomian flier for a spacecraft. Ballantine's cover artist took too casual a look at his predecessor's illustration.

Actually, I'm not surprised that Abbett wasn't too impressed by the original cover art. It's rather disappointing. Schoonover's art for The Gods of Mars is extremely faithful to an incident bridging the end of Chapter 6 and the beginning of Chapter 7. That's the main point in its favor. John Carter is clinging to the anchor chain of a flying war vessel manned by the First Born of Barsoom, a proud and handsome race of black Martians who fancy themselves the original intelligent life on the planet (with all other races being their debauched and devolved descendants).

I commenced to climb slowly up the anchor chain toward the deck above me.

One hand had just reached for the vessel's rail and found it when a fierce black face was thrust over the side and eyes filled with triumphant hate looked into mine.

For an instant the black pirate and I remained motionless, glaring into each other's eyes. Then a grim smile curled the handsome lips above me, as an ebony hand came slowly in sight from above the edge of the deck and the cold, hollow eye of a revolver sought the centre of my forehead.

Simultaneously my free hand shot out for the black throat, just within reach, and the ebony finger tightened on the trigger. The pirate's hissing, “Die, cursed thern,” was half choked in his windpipe by my clutching fingers.

The First Born mistakes Carter for one of Barsoom's therns—despised fair-skinned rivals of the First Born—because Carter is still wearing the blond wig he used in his escape from the clutches of the therns. Schoonover paints a rather chunky looking (and practically middle-aged) Carter clinging to the anchor chain, comical blond wig on his head, and a coal-black antagonist getting the drop on him. Abbett dispensed with the wig, painted instead his more robust version of John Carter, and replaced the flier with a rocket ship in orbit about Mars.

Poor John Carter, of course, must be holding his breath as he floats weightless next to the spaceship, high above Mars and its thin atmosphere. His red kilt seems hardly a proper substitute for a pressure suit. A hatch atop the ship is ajar, but no First Born has yet emerged to shove a gun in Carter's face.

Never mind. Abbett simply made a whopper of a mistake. The cover for The Gods of Mars is the one egregious error in the Ballantine edition of the Mars books. One could even say that Abbett redeemed himself when he rendered the cover of Mars book #7, A Fighting Man of Mars, which shows some properly air-bound flying vessels much more in keeping with Barsoomian fliers. That's more like it!

I can rest easy now, with one less nagging mystery gathering dust in my mental archives.

Defective dossier

Failing to get the straight poop

One of my favorite restaurants offers—pushes, even—a “frequent-flier” program that offers discounts to its regulars as well as e-mailed coupons and birthday greetings and promotional materials in your mail. I'd rather not, thank you, despite having received the sign-up forms about a dozen times over the last couple of years (usually whenever some new server has yet to learn that Professor Z is not a joiner). I do not want to stuff yet another card in my wallet, get more junk mail in my mail box, or more spam in my e-mail.

And I sure don't want them encircling my table on my birthday and singing to me.

The regular prices on the menu are reasonable and I am fortunate enough not to have to cut every possible corner (or I'd stay home on Saturday mornings, scramble my own eggs, and read my newspapers at my dining room table instead of at my usual corner booth).

I admit, however, that I do already have a couple of these special “loyalty cards.” One is from Borders Books and the other is from Safeway. The Safeway card was a fluke. One day the checker asked me for my discount card and I replied that I didn't have one. Since he recognized me as a semi-regular, he was surprised. He reached into a drawer under the cash register, pulled out a card, swiped it through the card reader, and handed it to me. He didn't collect any data from me. No name, no birth date, no address, no phone number. Nothing.

I stuck the card in my wallet and it's resided there ever since, one of the least intrusive loyalty cards ever. The less I carry around, the happier I am, but the Safeway card takes little space and its discounts have added up without snooping into my life (unless Safeway has figured out another way to tap into my personal business).

But what if they did? What would the consequences be? One possibility provided me with a peculiar moment of amusement while reading The Clan Corporate, the third volume in “The Merchant Princes” series by Charles Stross, a writer whose work I always enjoy. An undercover agent from a parallel universe accidentally exposes his presence in our world through an act of carelessness:

He doesn't own an automobile or a pet dog or a television, or subscribe to any newspapers or magazines. He uses his credit card to shop for groceries at the local Safeway twice a week, and here he screwed up—he has a loyalty card for the discounts. It turns out that he never buys toilet paper or light bulbs. However he does buy new movie releases on DVD, which is kind of odd for someone who doesn't own a DVD player or a TV or a computer.

Busted! Because a Safeway loyalty card showed a pattern of purchases at odds with a normal existence. No toilet paper or light bulbs. Obviously a visitor from a parallel dimension.

To be fair, the person being described has other peculiarities that had drawn the attention of the spy agency that ends up snooping through his purchasing record at Safeway. Too bad for him that he didn't have a blind card like I have.

And good for me that I do.

I have, you see, never purchased toilet paper from Safeway. Never. A few light bulbs, yes. But no toilet paper.

I'm not sure why the inter-dimensional agent didn't need bathroom tissue—easier to pop over to the loo in his home universe?—but I can explain my own situation. I just hope our national spy agencies find it persuasive and don't subject me to hideous medical experiments on the theory that I have world-walking powers embedded in my brain tissue.

It's simple. I go to more than one supermarket.

Shocking, I know. But it's allowed, you see, even if you have a “loyalty” card. My business is divided between two local supermarkets. Safeway is within easy walking distance in my neighborhood. The other is on my commute route between home and school. All bulky purchases are made at the store on my commute route. I have my car and a handy trunk to store things in. Plenty of room for large 9-packs of toilet tissue purchased at long intervals.

Safeway, on the other hand, is where I pick up small random items as the need arises. I stroll by on foot, think of something I need, and pick it up. No big items. Hence no multi-pack bundles of rolls of toilet paper to juggle on the walk back home or for Safeway to record in its corporate database.

So you see, I'm actually not a world-walking secret agent from a parallel dimension who is here to collect data on you people. Honest!

And I'll bet you one hundred of your Earth dollars that you can't prove otherwise.

The cold truth about PZ Myers

Not exactly TMZ on PZ

While on tour in the Golden State, PZ Myers was resilient enough despite minor jet-lag to hoist a few brews after his talks. Smiting ignorance and prejudice can be dry work.

I tagged along to two of the post-presentation chat sessions. The chosen venue after the Sacramento City College talk was the Fox & Goose, which bills itself as a “public house” in the British style. (That's right: a “pub.”) It was a slow evening when we dropped in. PZ and a dozen other people gathered around some shoved-together tables and kicked back for some casual conversation. (No, we did not array ourselves in the manner of Da Vinci's “Last Supper.”)

During the course of that colloquy, PZ off-handedly made two shocking revelations. The first was his youthful rebellion against his father's carefully mapped-out plans for PZ's life. PZ, you see, was destined to be a ... refrigerator repairman.

You can easily imagine his father's horror when PZ threw it all over in favor of going to college. Even worse, PZ became a hardcore academic, ending up as a tenured professor. While it seems that his family eventually became reconciled to PZ's academic bent, his father never quite understood why PZ tossed over a sure thing like major appliance repair for the uncertainties of university life. Instead of associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, PZ could have been Refrigerator Repairman—but it was not to be.

All habitués of Pharyngula know that PZ is a prodigious writer (except, perhaps, for the book he is always supposedly finishing up). It's not surprising to learn that he is also a prodigious reader. Of course, we know this because we see his reading as the grist for his blog's mill. However, there's more to it than that. PZ is a big fan of science fiction author Iain M. Banks. In fact, he's also a big fan of Iain Banks, this latter being the name that Banks uses for his non-sf novels.

I lean toward the Culture novels myself, my favorite Banks work being The Player of Games, one of the few books I have read multiple times. PZ expressed a fondness for the semi-notorious Wasp Factory and its sociopathic protagonist. My Simon & Schuster paperback copy of The Wasp Factory includes on its back cover such paeans as “One of the top 100 novels of the century” and such slams as “A literary equivalent of the nastiest brand of juvenile delinquent.” I rather admire the cheekiness of running negative comments among the usual positive blurbs.

(Shocking revelation of my own: My copy of The Wasp Factory is brand new. Despite an assiduous search through my bookcases, I find no trace of the white-covered edition I see so clearly in my mind. And paging through the new copy leaves me befuddled, since the story seems only vaguely familiar. Have I forgotten it or have I never read it? Both are hard to believe. The book is now on my “read soon” stack and I'll see whether Frank's nefarious adventures ring a bell.)

PZ and I were not the only Banks fans present. One of the other attendees offered his opinion that Banks wrote scenes that were impossible to turn into movies. (An attempt to turn The Player of Games into a film foundered several years ago.) PZ disagreed. He suggested that the scene with the Eaters in Consider Phlebas would make for a very nice horror movie.

He's probably right, but you wouldn't want to be munching popcorn during that episode (“we are the Eaters, the Eaters of ashes, the Eaters of filth”).

The venue for the post-talk gathering after PZ's Sierra College presentation was BJ's Restaurant & Brewery in Roseville. The contrast with the Fox & Goose was dramatic. BJ's was crowded with patrons and PZ was accompanied by a much larger entourage. Long tables were pushed together to make enough space for the dozens of people in the party.

I got to sit close enough to PZ where I was able to get his autograph (like the geeky fanboy that I am). He observed that we carried closely matched Moleskine pocket notebooks, including the same quadrille rule (no mere lined paper for us science types!). He also complimented me on having neater handwriting than his, but PZ also pointed out that he takes notes in multiple colors and has a Moleskine customized with the Seed Media Group logo. Point to PZ.

I was suitably abashed, of course.

Creationist Robert O'Brien eventually showed up and was wedged into a tight space next to a cadre of Sierra College students. He got to hear them explain to me how Sierra College differed from the neighboring American River College. The recently ousted right-wing ARC student government had campaigned with a strong anti-gay plank in its platform, pandering to the homophobia of its Slavic immigrant base. The candidates ran a fearmongering campaign that claimed that militant gay activists were trying to take over the student government.

“At Sierra College,” said one of the students, “that's exactly what we did!”

I congratulated them on realizing the worst fears of the local bloc of right-wing, anti-gay, creationist extremists.

The anti-gay O'Brien did look a little uncomfortable, although I have to give him credit for a good poker face.

PZ's phone rang later in the evening. He saw that it was the Trophy Wife^TM and dutifully said he had to take the call. After he chatted with her about his connections for his trip to the United Kingdom, PZ's companions all yelled out a greeting to his distant spouse.

We were heard in Minnesota.

An atavistic "Avatar"

Been there, done that

You may have heard of this legendary computer-animated film in which the protagonist finds himself in a drastically resized body and falls into the hands of those whom he was originally trying to destroy. Once among his erstwhile enemies, he is taught their ways by a winsome lass who wins his sympathy and inspires him to switch sides.

The movie is The Ant Bully and it came out in 2006.

Oh, did you think I was talking about Avatar? I guess I could be.

James Cameron's Avatar is currently raking in box office receipts and capturing the imagination of the movie-viewing public. Cameron got a few bucks from me earlier today. I have to admit that Avatar is very pretty and serves as an excellent example of the state of computer-generated graphics. In that sense, Avatar is a tour de force.

In every other sense, it fails.

Perhaps I was inoculated against truly enjoying Avatar by the premature hype and over-the-top expectations. I was irked when the characters of Bones were drooling with anticipation over seeing the movie. To me, product placement is an irritant and a distraction. Aggressive marketing predisposes me to dislike the product, whatever it may be. It does not whet my appetite.

Nevertheless, I wanted to see Avatar and give the movie an opportunity to entertain me. The visuals are very nice, with spectacularly imaginative flora and fauna for Pandora, the planet on which the action occurs. The gigantic blue natives, the Na'vi, are rather excessively humaniform, but that's okay. Rapacious Earthlings want to mine Pandora for its motherlode of “unobtanium,” which has antigravitational properties. A little trite, yes, and scientifically absurd, but I can suspend my disbelief that much. I sense, however, that I'm getting just a little overextended.

Our hero, a marine named Jake, gets lost in the Pandoran wilds and is rescued by a lovely native named Neytiri. She turns out to be the daughter of her tribe's chieftain. (Of course.) Her mother is the tribe's spiritual leader (naturally) and it is she who decides that Neytiri will be responsible for teaching our hero the ways of the Na'vi tribe. (Wouldn't you know it?) This will cause some trouble with the heir-designate to the leadership of the tribe, Tsu'Tey, a great warrior who is also Neytiri's betrothed. (Oh, please.)

I was instantly bored and restless. Nothing surprised me. Will our hero learn the ways of the tribe? Of course. (At least they spared us a montage.) Will he win grudging respect from the people? Damn right. Will Tsu'Tey continue to resent him and hope he dies? You bet! Does Jake make mistakes that put him in dire straits but still recover and win through? Every time!

I'll grant you that it would be unfortunate for the hero to be put out of commission too early in the movie, but it would be nice if something provided a modicum of suspense. When Jake and Neytiri barely escape an attack from a Leonopteryx, a flying monster the Na'vi refer to as the “Last Shadow” (because its shadow is the last thing you'll ever see), she tells him that her legendary grandfather was the last member of the Na'vi ever to tame one sufficiently to fly upon it. Instantly, you know without a particle of doubt that Jake will be flying one before the movie ends. And, of course, he'll displace Tsu'Tey as Neytiri's fiancé.

At least, I assume so. I walked out right after Neytiri's story about her ancestor and the Last Shadow. I was afraid of dislocating my jaw.

The rise of the Bene Gesserit

They're already here

The phone next to Dad's recliner rang. He picked it up. After saying hello he switched to Portuguese for a few sentences. It was probably family. He switched back to English:

“It's for you.”

That was a surprise. I had recently “gone away” to college. Who knew I was home?

“It's your cousin Maria,” added Dad.

Oh, like that was a big help.

“Which one?” I asked.

I wasn't kidding. If you're Portuguese, then all of your female relatives are named Maria (or Mary or Marie). There's no help for it. Maria may be their first name, middle name, or confirmation name, but it's always in there somewhere.

“Maria Anna,” he replied.

What the heck was she calling me for? I couldn't keep track of the family bloodlines like some of my relatives could, but I seemed to recall that we had grandfathers who were first cousins, so Maria Anna and I would be third cousins. Anyway, what did she want with me? I took the phone from my father.

My cousin and I chatted in English. Her Portuguese was more fluent than mine (she had lived in the Old Country for a while), but her English was fine. She came to the point quickly:

“There's a Grand March the night of the festa and I need an escort. Would you go with me?”

Think fiesta when you see festa and you'll be all right. You won't pronounce it right unless you've heard someone say it aloud (or unless you're Portuguese) because we say it as if it's spelled feshta. (Don't ask me why.) Portuguese communities like to have a festa or two each year (there's always one near the time of Pentecost). There'll be a big informal banquet and perhaps a parade. Sometimes a dance. The Grand March was a kind of processional that preceded a dance.

“I wasn't planning to go, Maria Anna. Can't you get someone else?”

The negotiations began. She was obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel if she was resorting to inviting blood kin (although, when you get right down to it, all Portuguese seem to be nth cousins, sometimes m times removed). There would be goodies at the festa, including massa sovada and filhozes. Yum! Then the deal clincher:

“You don't have to dance with me. Just escort me till the Grand March is done and then you're on your own.”

Anyway, it was a good deed for my loser of a cousin. I felt virtuous.

A few minutes later the phone rang again. Dad picked it up. A moment later he yelled for my kid brother:

“Tim, it's for you! It's your cousin Maria!”

My brother yelled back from the next room: “Which one?”

This time it was Maria Amelia. She's Maria Anna's kid sister. She made exactly the same deal with my kid brother as her sister had with me. My brother and I were both roped into going to the Grand March, but we were allowed to cut loose the moment it concluded.

The Coven

Tradition is persistent in Portuguese communities in the U.S. It lingers today and it was even more robust in the 1970s. Portuguese women encase themselves in black when their husbands die. Mourning becomes their vocation for the rest of their lives. They travel in packs, too, like a murder of crows. There's nothing like a festa for sightings of the black-clad flock.

Portuguese velhinhas (little old ladies) or viúvas (widows) cluster in little groups in the corners of the hall, muttering together. Some of them compulsively click rosary beads, but all of them are watchful. They love festas because their principal hobby is matchmaking. Widowhood frees them up to spend time swapping information about family bloodlines: His father has a drinking problem; he's no catch. Her family's dairy is failing; no dowry there. She has a twin brother; no doubt she'll be infertile. That one is the town whore, but she might be good enough for him, since he's the fourth son in his family and has no prospects at all.

They gossip with their heads together, occasionally chuckling quietly. All the heads snap up when fresh flesh appears on the scene. I created a bit of a stir. Although I had grown up in the county, I had never been to a Grand March before. Who is that boy with Maria Anna?

As the couples strolled in, arm-in-arm, the anemic little band struck up the only tune they knew that they thought was a march: When the Saints Go Marching In. They played it several times while the procession snaked about the hall and eventually everyone was inside and had paraded in front of festive family members and friends. The parents of Anna and Amelia beamed at us. The heads of the little old ladies swung back and forth, checking out the teens and tweens. Eventually they pegged me.

Aha! See the boy with Maria Amelia?

Sure, sure. Timoteo. He's the grandson of Old Man Ferox.

Ha! He's marching with his cousin!

Yes, yes. So that's probably his big brother Zeno marching with Maria Anna!

The college boy? So that's what he looks like.

The bookworm has come to a Grand March!

Poor girls. With their cousins! Couldn't they find real dates?

No, no, it's all right. Third cousins. Old Man Ferox is first cousin to the girls' grandfather.

That's right! That's right! Still ... not the best.

The band gave up on When the Saints Go Marching In and the Grand March ground to an end. My brother Tim was gone like a shot, Maria Amelia spinning like a top in his wake. I took my leave of Maria Anna more politely and made a bee-line to her parents (where Maria Anna was sure not to follow); I knew I could chat innocuously for a few minutes and practice my Portuguese. They asked about college and I inquired solicitously after their health (which was bad, as I found out in detail; indeed, they lingered in robustly horrible health for decades thereafter and were always happy to tell you about it).

The Bene Gesserit were undoubtedly dismayed that the Ferox boys had gone stag so abruptly, bringing their speculations on degrees of incest to a premature conclusion. Fortunately, there were dozens of other boys and girls in the hall. The old ladies watched as people paired off for the dancing, nodding or shaking their heads in swift judgment of each couple.

After a decent interval, I found my brother at the concession stand, pouring Coke down his throat and hanging out with guys he knew from school or 4-H. Tim wanted to stay for a while and go back to the dance floor once our cousins were out of circulation. We negotiated a deal: He could amuse himself for ninety minutes and then we were out of there. It was approximately eighty minutes more than my original offer, but Tim was actually a rather sociable person and didn't regret being at the festa. I got some munchies from the concession stand and settled in for my vigil.

It was not the greatest ordeal of my life. Not too many people knew me, but a few came over to chat and ask me about college. Was Cal Poly a good school? Yeah, I think so, but I'm at Caltech. Do they have a good ag program? That's up at UC Davis; I'm a math major down in Pasadena.

Good times.

My pact with my kid brother soon unraveled. He returned to me and begged for an extension, which I reluctantly granted. Tim kept going back dance after dance to partner with the same girl. The ninety minutes eventually turned into three hours. Even then I was practically dragging my brother to the car so we could get the hell out of there.

Within two years my brother and that girl were married.

Don't mess with the Bene Gesserit.

The Lois Lane Protective Society

He's too super for you, girl

Now that Superman Returns has been in release for a while, I suppose that most interested parties are aware that this new movie is a surprisingly explicit rival to The Da Vinci Code. (Spoiler alert: If you haven't seen it yet, you might want to stop reading right now, because I'm going to mention the movie's surprise twist.) Both movies offer saviors with supernatural powers, fallen women, and divine offspring. While Da Vinci merely mangles the historical record and Christian tradition in pursuit of titillating diversion, Superman Returns trifles scandalously with the health and well-being—life, even—of its lead female character.

The great unanswered question in Superman Returns is how Lois Lane managed to survive her intimate encounter with the Man of Steel without incurring extreme physical trauma. This question is thrown into sharp relief when the incident of the Steinway piano reveals the paternity of Lois's out-of-wedlock child. Although I was momentarily stunned by the shocking spectacle of the reduction of a concert grand into a splintered wreckage (some movie violence really is beyond the pale), I soon realized that circumstances now demanded a serious explanation. None was forthcoming.

While biologists might tend to fret over the extreme unlikelihood—impossibility, even—of convergent evolution on a distance planet producing a species interfertile with homo sapiens, scientists in other disciplines long ago identified problems that are even more fundamental. Larry Niven is one significant early researcher into the issues of Superman's potential to produce Earth-based progeny. In 1971 he published the treatise Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, which appears to be the first scholarly examination of the pertinent issues. Niven minced no words.

Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles “a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack.” One loses control over one's muscles.

Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?... Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout....

Lastly, he'd blow off the top of her head.

---

As Niven points out in an understated footnote, “One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy's puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?”

These difficulties appear to offer insuperable problems in any attempt by Superman to engage in traditional sexual intercourse with a human being. Niven then examines whether artificial insemination might offer a more feasible alternative if Superman wishes to have offspring:

One sperm arrives before the others. It penetrates the egg, forms a lump on its surface. The cell wall now thickens to prevent other sperm from entering....

And ten million kryptonian sperm arrive slightly late.

Were they human sperm, they would be out of luck. But these tiny blind things are more powerful than a locomotive. A thickened cell wall won't stop them. They will all enter the egg, obliterating it entirely in an orgy of microscopic gang rape. So much for artificial insemination.

---

There are other problems, as well, such as the question of what happens if Superman's sperm cells share his physical invulnerability. Might they survive indefinitely, using their kryptonian powers to fly about the Earth, seeking fertile eggs wherever they can be found? Since this has apparently not occurred, there must be some as yet unknown inhibitory mechanism that preserves the women of the world from unexplained kryptonian pregnancies. That, at least, is very fortunate. Niven cites the dread possibility that fetuses fathered by Superman might begin to experiment in vivo with the heat vision inherited from their sire. And vivo would undoubtedly be short-lived the moment that superbabies began to kick within the womb.

For everyone's sake, it would be better if Superman never attempts to breed. The message of Superman Returns, however, is that there is a way that it can be successfully done. Since reality is entirely logically consistent, we residents of Superman's universe wait hopefully for the revelation that will explain the advent of our savior's son.

Alastair cracks a joke

In space, no one can hear you giggle

I am working my way through Alastair Reynolds' Redemption Space series of science fiction novels. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I like Alastair's hard-science bent and his ability to build it into his plots, instead of using it as mere gee-whiz embellishment. In that same post, I sadly reported on the egregiously abused science in a young-adult sf novel that I had read in grammar school, namely, comets of flaming gas and sound waves propagating through vacuum. It's like spacecraft roaring across the screen in cinematic space operas, complete with ear-shattering explosions in full Dolby Digital sound. Fun, perhaps, but bogus.

Near the end of Redemption Ark, I found Reynolds slipping a sly barb into his prose. Let's join Antoinette Bax on the bridge of Storm Bird as her spacecraft approaches a battle scene where dozens of smaller craft are swarming about a huge interstellar vehicle:

Pinpricks of light within the swarm signified smaller armaments detonating, and very occasionally Antoinette saw the hard red or green line of a laser precursor beam, caught in outgassing air or propellant from one or other of the ships. Absently, cursing her mind's ability to focus on the most trivial of things at the wrong time, she realised that this was a detail that they always got wrong in the space opera holo-dramas, where laser beams were invisible, the sinister element of invisibility adding to the drama. But a real close-range space battle was a far messier affair, with gas clouds and chaff shards erupting all over the place, ready to reflect and disperse any beam weapon.

---

What do you think? Could it happen this way? We always have among us the hypercorrect, the type who insist on saying “between you and I” because it sounds formal, never realizing how wrong it is. Perhaps one day they'll be making sf movies in just the way Ms. Bax anticipates. But stuffy enough to forgo dazzling light effects just because they once heard that vacuum doesn't scatter photons? Probably not.

Danny Dunn, pseudoscientist

Danny, I hardly knew ye

They say you can't go home again. Well, I can. And do. Several times a year. I have the rare privilege of possessing long-lived parents who still live in the home they built when they got married over fifty years ago. That's stability for you.

Time has taken its toll, of course, so a trip to Mom & Dad's isn't really a return to childhood. It is, however, akin to a scavenger hunt in which the items to be scavenged are all bits and pieces of my youth. While scrounging up the old science fiction magazine containing that negative review of Michael Crichton, I ran across a number of other old publications. Stashed in my parents' basement are bookcases and chests of drawers stuffed with books I read decades ago. I was particularly delighted to turn up an intact copy of Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint, a young-adult science fiction novel that I remember having enjoyed in grammar school.

What a disappointment to read it again! I'm not naïve enough to have expected to recapture the old thrills I experienced the first time through, but I really did think it would stir some happy memories. Instead I learned how uncritically I must have read it when I was but a lad. I sure didn't demand much of kid lit in my preteen years. There is not even a glimmer in my memory banks of dimly remembered outrage at the dreadful science in Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint. I'm not quibbling about the notion of anti-gravity paint. If we let H. G. Wells invent Cavorite for the use of his First Men in the Moon, we can give authors Williams and Abrashkin a pass for their similar device in their young-adult novel. No, the problems in Danny Dunn go far beyond that. Here is an egregious passage:

[Dr. Grimes] snapped on the TV camera. One of the screens lit up.

Both Danny and Joe yelped involuntarily. A blazing ball of gas almost filled the screen.

“A comet!” the Professor exclaimed.

“And we are near its path,” Dr. Grimes added.

“Wh-wh-what'll happen if it hits us?” asked Joe.

“That depends,” said the Professor. “A comet's head is mainly chunks of meteoric material which give off flaming gas. Its tail is composed of gas and dust particles as well. If the head should pass within a hundred miles of us, we might be boiled alive. If the tail along comes near—well, I don't know—”

Danny said, “Shouldn't we close the shutters?”

“By all means. The light might blind us.”

Danny touched the control, and the steel shutters closed tight over the port. Even so, the light from the TV screen was dazzling.

“Close your eyes!” the Professor commanded.

They did so. Even through the closed lids the glare penetrated, although the comet was thousands of miles away. Faintly they could hear a hissing, crackling sound like a distant forest fire.

---

I should have chuckled at the nonsense of a flaming comet and the notion that sound can travel through a vacuum. In those days, the Mercury and Gemini space programs were under way. Many kids like me, who had heard President Kennedy call for a landing on the moon, were stuffed to our eyebrows with astronautical lore. I must have been pretty forgiving if I don't remember tossing Danny Dunn across the room. (In a later and more cynical age, the movie Capricorn One portrayed a hoaxed Mars mission that unravels when someone finally notices the absence of a time-lag in communications with astronauts who are supposedly millions of miles away. In reality, hordes of teenagers would have caught the mistake immediately, sparing everyone the ordeal of watching O. J. Simpson being chased across the desert by black helicopters.)

It turns out to be extremely convenient that sound waves can propagate through vacuum in the Danny Dunn universe. The Professor fixes a stuck electrical relay on the anti-gravity spacecraft by playing a makeshift bull fiddle over the speaker on the outside of the vehicle. (I'm not kidding!) Once the relay is working again, the space travelers are able to return to earth for the requisite happy ending. Imagine that.

Hard versus soft

I like my science fiction the way I like my ice cream: hard. Leave that soft-serve stuff for the romance novels. My disappointment upon rediscovering Danny Dunn reminds me of happier experiences with Heinlein's young adult novels, especially Starman Jones, Have Spacesuit—Will Travel, and Red Planet. While I've read and enjoyed Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, no one should mistake them for actual science fiction. For me, a science fiction novel needs to convey a sense of reality—speculative reality, of course, but still a potential reality.

The author who does that for me today is Alastair Reynolds. While his novels are amazingly inventive, everything in them has an extremely high degree of verisimilitude. Very few people possess the special combination of talent and training that permit the creation of such wonderful novels as Revelation Space and its sequels. Reynolds is an erstwhile employee of the European Space Agency and holds a doctorate in astronomy. Fortunately, his talents as a writer permit him to use his profound knowledge of spacetime physics without baffling the reader with verbiage better suited to a treatise.

Here is an example of completely hardcore physics put in the service of a thrilling fight to the death. The psychotic Nagorny has ambushed Volyova and is marching her to the elevator shaft that runs the length of their kilometers-long spacecraft:

Volyova had tried resisting, but Nagorny's strength was that of the psychotic and his hold on her might as well have been steel. Still, she assumed a chance for escape would present itself as Nagorny took her to wherever he had in mind, once the elevator arrived.

But Nagorny had no intention of waiting for the elevator. With her gun, he forced the door, revealing the echoing depths of the shaft. With nothing in the way of ceremony—not even a goodbye—Nagorny pushed Volyova into the hole.

It was a dreadful mistake.

The shaft threaded the ship from top to bottom; she had kilometres to fall before she hit the bottom....

She was going to die.

Then—with a detachment which later shocked her—part of her mind had reexamined the problem. She had seen herself, not falling through the ship, but stationary: floating in absolute rest with respect to the stars. What moved, instead, was the ship: rushing upwards around her. She was not accelerating at all now—and the only thing that made the ship accelerate was its thrust.

Which she could control from her bracelet....

She could stop her fall—her apparent fall—by ramping the ship's thrust into reverse for however long it took to achieve the desired effect. Nominal thrust was one gee, which was why Nagorny had found it so easy to mistake the ship for something like a very tall building. She had fallen for perhaps ten seconds while her mind processed things. What was it to be, then? Ten seconds of reverse thrust at one gee? No—too conservative. She might not have enough shaft to fall through. Better to ramp up to ten gees for a second—she knew the engines were capable of that. The maneouvre would not harm the other crew, safely cocooned in reefersleep. It would not harm her, either—she would just see the rushing walls of the shaft slow down rather violently.

Nagorny, though, was not so well protected.

---

Volyova ends up having to scrape Nagorny's remains from the ceiling of one of the ship's chambers.

That physics is deadly stuff, if you know how to use it.

Teela Brown does not exist

Looking at "luck"

I am not prepared to enter into the concept of luck, as it is vulgarly called: philosophically it is indefensible; in daily experience we see it to exist.

Recently I took my graduate faculty advisor and his wife to dinner. This is not a bad thing to do once the dissertation is filed and the degree awarded . His wife arrived at the restaurant alone, explaining that her husband was trying to find a parking place. In a few minutes, his quest rewarded with success, the professor showed up and we took our seats. The first small-talk topic concerned one of my advisor's friends, who apparently has an uncanny knack for tracking down open parking spaces where less talented people would fail.

What is it about people who are "lucky"? I hold that the fundamental idea is meaningless. There is no such thing. To be sure, there are times when circumstances work out randomly in one's favor. Even if there is no such thing as luck per se, there will nevertheless be some who will have a greater number of happy outcomes than some others. It may be that a form of luck accrues to those who are better prepared to take advantage of situations as they arise, but I regard this as the mere appearance of luck. It is actually the consequence of superior faculties, either innate or acquired. I took my opening quote from The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian, a passage in chapter six wherein Dr. Maturin explains his optimism concerning an impending venture by observing that Commodore Aubrey has amply earned his nickname of "Lucky Jack." However, Aubrey's purported luck is at least as much the result of his superior skills as it is the product of happenstance.

As for the professor's friend with the preternatural talent for finding parking spaces, could this be a talent? To a degree, I think it might be. Some folks could be more attuned to the ebb and flow of traffic, have a sharper eye for the vacant or newly opening space. Talent could certainly play a role. Another important factor might be our tendency to filter data. After all, simple random chance will fortuitously elevate some individuals above their competitors in ventures that are based on probability rather than skill. Once a person gets a reputation for being lucky in some endeavor, future good outcomes will be remembered as confirming instances of his lucky nature and bad outcomes will be disregarded as exceptions to the rule. Once the filter is in place, the individual's reputation will be robust and quite difficult to dislodge.

What about Teela Brown? She is one of Larry Niven's less successful creations in his many tales of Ringworld. Teela is born on a future overpopulated Earth where the right to bear children is subject to a lottery with very long odds. She is the product of several consecutive generations of winners in the birth lottery, so she is bred for good luck. When I read Niven's Ringworld novels, the introduction of Teela caused me to roll my eyes. We are all—each and every one of us—winners of the world's longest running birth lottery ever. If the recurrent mad sperm races have not bred shockingly good fortune into the human race, adding the artificial level of a formal birth lottery is not suddenly going to breed a race of the super lucky.

Larry Niven, by the way, was not especially lucky when he dreamed up Teela Brown. She was a difficult character to handle, especially when the author wanted to build suspense. By definition, things were going to work out for Teela. I guess she never lacked for a parking space.