A. E van Vogt. Pendulum (1978)

     A. E van Vogt. Pendulum (1978) According to the Wikipedia article on Vogt the stories in this collection are almost all originals. Never mind. I found once again that Vogt’s writing is appallingly flat, dull, and uninvolving. I''ve tried several times to read his classic works, and gave up after the first 10 or 20 pages.
     Only his ideas attract: he has the rare ability to imagine the almost unimaginable, and thus suggest what actual alien minds might be like. Reading his accounts of alien actions and thoughts disorients: for a few moments, we are thinking thoughts we wouldn’t have been able to conjure up on our own.
     His human characters however aren’t believable, in fact they hardly resemble human beings. They are observed from the outside; they have no inner life, even though Vogt tells us what they are thinking. The effect is odd. Darrell Schweitzer, quoted in the Wiki article, says Vogt’s characters are toy soldiers in a sandbox. And acute comment I think. The sandbox is more or less bizarre, and it’s that which makes Vogt’s fiction interesting. But oh, what a slog to read these stories! Other writers have learned from Vogt how to imagine the alien, and how to imagine alien worlds, but have done a much better job of writing.
     The collection ends with an article or report about the launch of Apollo XVII. I found it as off-putting as the fiction: facts, facts, facts, and not a hint of the actual experience. Eg, Of the writers who watched the Apollo liftoff, the majority had press passes and at launch time they were a mile or so away (to our right, south) with 3400 reporters from all over the world. Theirs was a separate set of grandstands. And so on. What’s point of the compass direction? Or the number reporters (which is only approximate anyhow)? Or the grandstands? Later on, it become clear that Vogt wants to know who rates what kind of invitation. That his reader wants to know what it was like to be there, doesn’t seem to occur to Vogt.
     It was as if a robot were reporting what it had seen and heard. Vogt records “interviews” with other attendees verbatim. His questions and comments are weird: it’s as if there no person there. He doesn’t seem able to elicit the kind of elaboration and personal detail that would give these interviewees presence. Or maybe he doesn’t recognise the comment that’s an opening to the kind of question whose answer would have that effect.
     He reports all kinds of facts (one man is described as in a suit, mature, about five foot nine), but not one sensation or feeling. For example, Sterling and I had gone to a line of catering wagons. Our principal hope as that we might be able to buy a drink. We each got a half pint of milk. After we had absorbed them...
     Reading this kind of stuff I realised that Vogt was missing something. Exactly what, it’s hard to say. Imagination. Sensory memory. Awareness of himself. Insight into himself and other people. Some or all of these. I’m wondering if he had Asperger’s syndrome.
     These stories vary in quality. Most I didn’t read through, but skipped ahead to the ending. This is a book where the journey is so much less interesting than the destination that a summary of each tale would have satisfied me as much. Maybe more. The one story that appealed was The Human Operators, in which humans were kept alive within robotic ship known as Starfighters. They performed the tasks the ship couldn't do on its own. The narrator has figured out that he may be able to take over the ship, and does so when the ship admits a female so that they can make a baby which will eventually displace the narrator. Both the humans and the robotic brains are stunted persons, and match the plot and the ambience very well. * to **

Bangladeshi garment factory victims compensaton fund

New York Times article on compensation fund for Bangladeshi garment factory victims and their families: Those who won't pay.  Read the whole article: apparently some "unauthorized contractors" were making garments in the Tazreen factory that collapsed.

Fred Hoyle & John Elliot. A is for Andromeda (1962)

     Fred Hoyle & John Elliot. A is for Andromeda (1962) Radiotelescopy was brand new in the 60s. People immediately assumed that signals from other civilisations would be received. Since then, cooler logic has shown that the odds of intercepting such signals are vanishingly small. This story feeds the continuing fascination with extra-terrestrial beings. Signals are received, and John Fleming, a brooding, intense, and obsessive computer scientist, figures out a way to decode them. They turn out to be instructions for building and programming a computer. That machine in turn provides instructions for synthesising proteins, and eventually a complete human being, Andromeda. But its method of acquiring the information causes the death of a human. The artificial human is apparently a copy of the dead woman. It becomes clear that the intelligence embodied in the computer does not intend the furtherance of human objectives. Eventually, John Fleming destroys the machine, and the code used to build it. Some time before that, the transmissions have ceased, so there is no possibility of replicating the machine.
     It seems fairly obvious that a society that invests in technology to transmit messages to the rest of the universe is as likely to use that message to reproduce itself in some form as to merely announce its presence. Hoyle’s idea, that instructions to build a computer could further the aim of reproduction is plausible, but it seemed far more plausible in the 1960s when the limitations of computers were not as well understood as they are now. In particular, the technology of the time (faithfully described by Hoyle) was simply not up to the task imagined for it. Nevertheless, as a riff on the bug-eyed monster invading Earth the book is interesting.
     Elliot (who has had a long and successful career dramatising fiction for TV, among other things) supplied the human interest and narrative skill, but like most hard SF, this book’s characters are barely believable. The twist, that in copying the dead woman, the machine also imbued its slave with human feelings and attitudes, is a good one, for it is those feelings that enable Andromeda to disobey her master and help Fleming destroy the machine. A number of subplots involving attempts by outsiders to gain control of the machine, are underdeveloped. Proper treatment of these and the tensions within the working group would have doubled the length of the book, which most readers of SF wouldn’t tolerate. ** (2008)

Damon Runyon. In Our Town (1946)

     Damon Runyon. In Our Town (1946) Runyon wrote a column of stories and anecdotes, as well as longer pieces published in the Saturday Evening Post and the like. This is a collection of his syndicated stories, each is a brief portrait of a citizen of “our Town”. They have the Runyon trademarks: laconic understatement, quotation of bystanders instead of the narrator's opinion, bemused acceptance of all aspects of human nature, and so on. Nicely done, mildly amusing entertainment, with occasional glimpses of the dark side: some people get away with murder, some are censured for what to me at least seem mild errors or even virtues. Fun. ** (2008)

Anonymous. Printing and Publishing at Oxford...: Catalogue of an Exhibition. (1978)

     Anonymous. Printing and Publishing at Oxford...: Catalogue of an Exhibition. (1978) Robert Shackleton, Bodley’s Librarian, in his introduction thanks Paul Morgan for preparing the exhibition. I think Morgan also wrote the catalogue. I rediscovered this book while culling, and started to read it. Fascinating. I discovered I could read most of the Latin titles, not surprising if one considers that they're about academic subjects. The exhibits illustrate that despite occasional doldrums and lapses, the Oxford University Press has been a supplier of scholarly books. Its great value for me has been its “complete works” collections of poems, edited with annotations, which I bought when I was at U of A and later, and all of which I have read at least in part.
     The summary history of the Press was what drew me in. It took a century or more for the University authorities to realise what they had and what they could do with it. It took some time for the Press to be taken into ownership, for example; the first printers were under contract to the University, even when they were given space in the Sheldonian Theatre to set up the presses. It’s also clear that printing was tightly controlled; the governments of the day understood as well as ours do that uncontrolled information could be destabilising. I was surprised at the cost of paper, and compositors didn’t come cheap either. Fonts (“founts”) were expensive, too, most of them made on the Continent in the first century or so. The University commissioned the making of special fonts for Hebrew, Arabic, Coptic, and so on, and for a long time Oxford was the only press capable of printing texts in these alphabets. Making fonts involved cutting punches in steel, using these to make dies, and then casting the letters in type metal. All by hand, no CAD/CAM. Yet despite its awkwardness and costs, printing was clearly a major advance in information technology, and is still not superseded. Electronics make the dissemination of information cheaper than ever, but only hard copy, print or handwriting on paper, will be certainly readable in the future. *** (2008)
     Disclosure: Paul Morgan was my uncle.

Leslie Ford. The Woman in Black (1947)

     Leslie Ford. The Woman in Black (1947) In postwar Washington, a woman dressed in black shows up at a reception for E. Stubblefield, would-be President, and later is found dead in her room. Grace Latham, widow-about-town with a reputation for sleuthing, triggers a variety of confessions, but mostly acts as the reader’s eyes and ears, seeing and hearing the progress of the investigation. Turns out Theodore Hallett, the husband of her best friend Dorothy, who was helping the would-be president make his mark in Washington, murdered the girl because he thought her presence would mess up the campaign. But it’s all for nothing, as Stubblefield doesn’t like Theodore.
It’s all rather mixed up, in the style of comic film noir. In fact, the set piece scenes are very movie like. Not a bad read, but not as well plotted as others of this genre. The dialogue sometimes seems to wander off topic, but it does serve to delineate character. There are many touches of social satire or criticism. ** (2008)

Time

Some thoughts prompted by an article in New Scientist

Apparently one of the unsolved problems in the Standard Model of physics is time. Time is not privileged: the arrow of time could run either way. The only obstacle to running time backwards appears to be probability, or the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It’s more or less improbable for a system to decrease its entropy; and local systems can decrease entropy only with the addition energy, which is scavenged from outside the system and therefore increases entropy elsewhere. The overall entropy of the Universe is increasing: and that’s why the arrow of time runs forward.

But time does not “emerge” from the fundamental laws of nature as now understood. Worse, there are paradoxes and inconsistencies.

In relativity, time is tangled with space, and worse, there are no fixed, absolute times for events: the times, and hence the sequence of events, depends on who is observing what. That puts paid to the arrow of time in a thoroughgoing way. It’s true that for any given observer entropy increases in the expected direction. But the observed sequence of events will be different for two observers moving relative to each other. That implies that one observer will place an event in the past, and another in the future. And that causes problems.

In quantum physics (if I get this right), the future is uncertain. Until there is an interaction, certain states of a particle are indeterminate. The technical term for this is superposition; and when the interaction that determines the state of the particle occurs, the wave function that describes it is said to collapse. But the wave function may also collapse randomly, with no apparent interaction. All there is a series of state changes, and it’s this series that determines the sequence of what we observe as events. This means that the future is fundamentally indeterminate. Worse, entanglement seems to delay events, such as acquiring spin. Couple this with relativity, and we get a paradox: the acquisition of spin will be determined from one point of view, and undetermined from another.

The usual notion of time is that the past is fixed because it’s already happened, and the future is undetermined because it hasn’t happened yet. Both relativity and quantum physics undermine this notion. In both, time is a derived property. We experience time as a sequence of events, that is, a series of changes. In fact, we measure the passing of time by observing a series of events, such as the oscillations of a pendulum, or the burning of candle, or the vibrations of a quartz crystal.

So what’s to be done to rescue the notion of time? Some physicists are working on tweaking the mathematics of the Standard model in various ways so that time is an absolute, independent property of the Universe. As an outsider with only a metaphorical grasp of the Standard Model, I notice two things: First, in relativity, the difference in sequence of events occurs only when those event are independent of each other. But when events are a causal sequence, such as the oscillations of a pendulum, it’s the intervals between events that varies for different observers, not the actual sequence. Second, in quantum physics, I notice a fixed sequence of events. Entangled particles may be in a superposed position until they interact with some other particle (such as the one placed in the path of one by the observer). Then their wave function collapses. But that wave function collapse always follows that interaction, it never precedes it. In other words, wave function collapse implies a temporal sequence, no matter how far apart. I also note that the random interactions that all particles undergo cause changes in state in fixed sequences. If an electron is in a given spin state, it may flip to the other. In fact, we know of spin states only because we have observed that sequence. So those observations that undermine the notion of time can occur only because we observe events in sequence, in time.

Time is fundamental in some way that the Standard Model can’t account for. Either the Standard Model is the best we’ll ever do, in which case the mystery of time will never be solved; or else the Standard Model will be superseded. We do live in interesting times, don’t we?

2013-11-22 WEK

Alan Ayckbourn. Bedroom Farce (1975)

     Alan Ayckbourn. Bedroom Farce (1975) Just what it says: three couples shown in their bedrooms, one getting ready for an anniversary, one using it as a cloakroom, and one as a sick room. A fourth couple, whose marriage is breaking up, descend on all three couples in turn, and mess things up. In the end, nothing is resolved. Along the way, there’s some farce, but this is the England of 1975, when the hangover from the swinging 60s was beginning to set in, and there was a generally sour and disillusioned mood. This mood infects the play, which keeps slipping into darker themes than farce can well support. Ayckbourn himself noted that it was a comedy “with farcical elements.”
According to his website, Ayckbourn has had a good career as playwright and director. Odd that I’ve never heard of him. This copy of the script was lent to us by Doreen, who played Suzanne (the wife in the weak marriage) in a Toronto amateur production. It reads like a playable script, but the language is merely adequate to its purposes. This means that the direction and acting would make or break a production. Ayckbourn directed most of his own plays, and many became hits, which suggests that his real forte was directing. ** (2008)

Jim Stanford. Economics for Everyone (2008)

     Jim Stanford. Economics for Everyone (2008) Subtitled “A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism”, the book delivers what the cover promises. Stanford demystifies economics, states his bias (leftish) up front, and demolishes “classical economics” as he goes. Would that Harper and his crew would read this book, and consider what damage their fantasies have done and will do.
     Stanford starts with the simple and obvious observation that the economy is merely the way we organise the production and distribution of goods and services. Capitalism is a no more natural or inevitable system than any other. After reading this book, it’s clearer than ever that Milton Friedman was not only a nutter, but a dangerous one. He's one of many economists who've made people think that economics is about money, and has justified those who believe that making money is the purpose of business. Check 1 Timothy 6:10. *** (2008)

Two by Rex Stout: Might as Well be Dead (1960) & The Final Deduction (1961)

     Rex Stout. Might as Well be Dead (1960) Guy has falling out with Dad over supposed theft from company funds, takes off, changes name, is framed for murder just when Dad discovers that someone else stole the cash. Wolfe is brought in to find the guy, and of course manages to clear the murder charge, too, despite the jury’s verdict. All ends happily, etc and so forth. A typically well-paced and well-plotted Nero Wolfe entertainment, with Archie Goodwin in good form as usual. Stout’s formula works well, even when the result is merely average, as this one is. ** (2008)
     Rex Stout. The Final Deduction (1961) Woman and younger (much) husband fake kidnapping so as to convert income into tax-free cash, but the secretary-confederate gets cold feet, and besides was the young husband’s alternative squeeze, hence wife murders her. Wife kills husband, too. Dysfunctional family complicates matters, but Wolfe works with minimal info to get at the truth and earn $100K (somewhere around $600K in today’s money; Wolfe was not cheap). Smoothly done, better than average. **½ (2008)

Agatha Christie. The Mirror Crack’d (1962)

Note: I've read this book several times, and also written about it more than once. This review is from 2008.    

Agatha Christie. The Mirror Crack’d (1962) One of Christie’s best, with a believable plot (in which, as so often, a past hurt is the key to the present crime), somewhat fuller characters than usual, and Miss Marple in fine form. Christie also allows herself more than the usual quota of social observation and gentle satire.
     Film star Marina Gregg has bought Gossington Close, and offers it as a venue for a fete in support of St John’s Ambulance in Market Basing. Unfortunately, a woman dies of an overdose of an anti-depressant. While a girl, this woman had left her sick bed to meet Marina and get her autograph, inadvertently infecting the star with German measles, which in turn caused her child to be born with severe brain damage. That’s the motive for the first murder, the subsequent two are Marina’s attempts to eliminate witnesses.
     Miss Marple, despite her home-care worker’s attempts to shield her from overmuch excitement, manages to find out what she needs to know, and solves the puzzle. Marina however dies, perhaps a suicide, perhaps not; her current (5th) husband loves her very much. This ending amounts to cop out, one that Christie often uses, and the only serious flaw in an otherwise nearly perfect Christie. *** (2008)

O. Henry. Heart of the West (1993)

     O. Henry. Heart of the West (1993) A collection of O. Henry’s Western stories, put together by Readers Digest, with adequate illustrations, and a nicely done afterword by an English prof who loves O. Henry. The stories have the ring of truth, despite their being written to the formula that O. Henry perfected, the long slow curve and fast break. This style of plotting short stories influenced popular literature in the English speaking world for several generations. Pulp fiction especially imitated O. Henry, but few writers handled it as well as he did. Underlying the sentimentalism and the sometimes overly cute use of high-flown and misunderstood words by the semi-literate characters of his tales, O. Henry’s vision is essentially clear-eyed and even ruthless. The good don’t always win, the happy ending as often as not depends on luck, and rivals don’t always play fair. Like all humourists, O. Henry relies on stereotype and caricature, but these never deteriorate into venom or prejudice. A good read. *** (2008)