Passengers in my little Honda Fit have sometimes wondered what it would be like in a major accident. Well, now I know.
At 8 AM this morning, as I was heading out on errands, I was gently pulling to a stop behind another car at a traffic light, when suddenly I was slammed into from behind by a third car, containing a woman ferrying her son to school. This pushed my car heavily into the car in front. I heard both major bangs, and felt myself being heavily jostled back and forth. I didn't immediately notice that the air bag had deployed, but I did feel the front compartment of the car partially collapse. Fortunately not so much that I couldn't unbuckle and get out. The rear also collapsed.
Both my car and the one behind were total wastage, and got towed off to the knacker's. I phoned the police, who came and took a report.
Nobody seemed seriously injured. I gathered my stuff and walked the two miles home. Right then that seemed preferable to even getting into a car, let alone driving one. Over the day I began feeling sorer, especially around the neck and jaw, and eating is a little dicey. B. heated me soup with very small bits in it for dinner. After contacting B. and calling the insurance company, I made an appointment with my doctor to be checked out, though I'm going to wait a couple days to do it, both to see how I'm doing and to hope I'm feeling ready to get back in a car again. That's Thursday, which is also the beginning of a set of work (reviewing) assignments I have to drive to.
I may be subsisting on rental cars for a little while. I don't have the heart to buy another one. I had this car for less than eleven months.
Kalimac's corner: a journal by DB
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
secrets of Seattle
Two small improvements introduced in the last few years on life in Seattle have come to my attention, but few other people's. I took advantage of them on my just-concluded trip.
1. Commercial air flights to Paine Field. Paine Field has long served as the runways for the big Boeing plant in Everett, and I think it also handles general aviation. Just a couple years ago a small commercial terminal was opened, and now Alaska Air runs an active service there, including two flights daily from San Jose. (United also runs a few flights.) Hardly anyone knows about this; my flight in was only about 1/4 full. I only discovered it by accident while browsing booking sites for flights. But it's so convenient to the north side of Seattle, which is where I'm usually going: no further than SeaTac, less difficult a drive, and as a tiny airport it's far easier to handle. There's just 2 or 3 gates and one baggage claim.
When I got home, by the way, I was accosted at the gate by anxious passengers of the return flight to Everett. They wanted to know how bad the snow was. I'd awoken on Monday morning to find everything gone white. (Many of the morning flights had been canceled in terrified anticipation.) But the roads were quickly cleared by plows and/or the heat of traffic, and despite a few subsequent flurries and a brief hailstorm, everything was fine. Air temperature was at freezing all day, but even in a light jacket I found that no bother at all.
2. Rachel's Ginger Beer. My trips to Seattle always include a few regular foodie stops at Pike Place Market. The highlight is Pike Place Chowder, which has the best soups of the kind you've ever had. (My favorite is the seafood bisque, but they're all good.) The problem with Pike Place Chowder is the shop is tiny, and it's fantastically popular, so getting a seat is difficult, and when you do you're bumping elbows with everybody else.
That's where Rachel's Ginger Beer comes in. It's a newish tenant a couple doors down at the end of the same building, and serves an exotic variety of ginger beer flavors on tap. (I had spicy pineapple, how about that.) And it's roomy: lots of seating and no crowds. So take your cup of chowder, which is served adequately sealed, and a compostable spoon from the counter, walk to Rachel's and buy a glass of ginger beer as the drink for your meal, and dine in peace. I saw I wasn't the only person doing that.
1. Commercial air flights to Paine Field. Paine Field has long served as the runways for the big Boeing plant in Everett, and I think it also handles general aviation. Just a couple years ago a small commercial terminal was opened, and now Alaska Air runs an active service there, including two flights daily from San Jose. (United also runs a few flights.) Hardly anyone knows about this; my flight in was only about 1/4 full. I only discovered it by accident while browsing booking sites for flights. But it's so convenient to the north side of Seattle, which is where I'm usually going: no further than SeaTac, less difficult a drive, and as a tiny airport it's far easier to handle. There's just 2 or 3 gates and one baggage claim.
When I got home, by the way, I was accosted at the gate by anxious passengers of the return flight to Everett. They wanted to know how bad the snow was. I'd awoken on Monday morning to find everything gone white. (Many of the morning flights had been canceled in terrified anticipation.) But the roads were quickly cleared by plows and/or the heat of traffic, and despite a few subsequent flurries and a brief hailstorm, everything was fine. Air temperature was at freezing all day, but even in a light jacket I found that no bother at all.
2. Rachel's Ginger Beer. My trips to Seattle always include a few regular foodie stops at Pike Place Market. The highlight is Pike Place Chowder, which has the best soups of the kind you've ever had. (My favorite is the seafood bisque, but they're all good.) The problem with Pike Place Chowder is the shop is tiny, and it's fantastically popular, so getting a seat is difficult, and when you do you're bumping elbows with everybody else.
That's where Rachel's Ginger Beer comes in. It's a newish tenant a couple doors down at the end of the same building, and serves an exotic variety of ginger beer flavors on tap. (I had spicy pineapple, how about that.) And it's roomy: lots of seating and no crowds. So take your cup of chowder, which is served adequately sealed, and a compostable spoon from the counter, walk to Rachel's and buy a glass of ginger beer as the drink for your meal, and dine in peace. I saw I wasn't the only person doing that.
Sunday, January 12, 2020
memorial for Andi Shechter
I heard this was being planned: an e-mail was sent me, and then I saw it announced more widely. I decided I had to be there if I possibly could. And that's what I'm doing in Seattle.
The memorial was held in the meeting room of a distant and isolated branch of the Seattle public library. I guess it's what they could get. It was a small room, holding about 50 people, which is what showed up. I knew at least forty of them, though some I had not seen in decades.
There was gathering and talking, there was munching of food, there was browsing through some of Andi's books and other possessions which had been brought for those who wished to have something to honor her memory with (so now I'm reading a book on the history of the concept of nonviolence).
Many spoke also, of whom one I did not know was Andi's long-time massage therapist. She pointed to the basket of Andi's progressive political message buttons and said, "Andi's here, in that button basket."
But Andi was also many things. Tom W. said, "Trying to encompass all that Andi was is something only Andi could do." And Andy H. warned not to make assumptions from seeing Andi arguing with friends. If she argued with you, he said, that meant she found you worth arguing with. It's if she wouldn't argue with you that you were in trouble.
For my part, I repeated much of what I'd said in my original memorial post. I specifically singled out dancing with Andi, as Kate S. had just shared a memory of the same (different kind of dancing). My memories reached back: I was one of the few there (we counted hands) who knew her when she was married to her first husband: heck, he even introduced me to her. But that others entered Andi's life more recently shows a virtue on her part, that she continued to add friends throughout her life.
I was pleased to see so many of them there. The gathering was warm if the occasion was sad.
The memorial was held in the meeting room of a distant and isolated branch of the Seattle public library. I guess it's what they could get. It was a small room, holding about 50 people, which is what showed up. I knew at least forty of them, though some I had not seen in decades.
There was gathering and talking, there was munching of food, there was browsing through some of Andi's books and other possessions which had been brought for those who wished to have something to honor her memory with (so now I'm reading a book on the history of the concept of nonviolence).
Many spoke also, of whom one I did not know was Andi's long-time massage therapist. She pointed to the basket of Andi's progressive political message buttons and said, "Andi's here, in that button basket."
But Andi was also many things. Tom W. said, "Trying to encompass all that Andi was is something only Andi could do." And Andy H. warned not to make assumptions from seeing Andi arguing with friends. If she argued with you, he said, that meant she found you worth arguing with. It's if she wouldn't argue with you that you were in trouble.
For my part, I repeated much of what I'd said in my original memorial post. I specifically singled out dancing with Andi, as Kate S. had just shared a memory of the same (different kind of dancing). My memories reached back: I was one of the few there (we counted hands) who knew her when she was married to her first husband: heck, he even introduced me to her. But that others entered Andi's life more recently shows a virtue on her part, that she continued to add friends throughout her life.
I was pleased to see so many of them there. The gathering was warm if the occasion was sad.
Saturday, January 11, 2020
concert review: Seattle Symphony
(Anybody still reading this: Seattle? Whut?)
The young, small, and bouncy Maxim Emelyanychev conducted two warhorses and a premiere in the pleasant precincts of Benaroya Hall.
The premiere was the suite from an opera Figaro Gets a Divorce by Elena Langer. No, it's not pastiche of Mozart (or Rossini), but it has some of the same verve and color, as well as a clarity of utterance not often heard in new music. Interesting stuff.
Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony came out raucous, like the Italian street music Michael Nyman used to write. Could those outrageous blares from the trumpets and horns be intentional? Had to be, since they kept recurring whenever the passage came back. (Emelyanychev took the first movement repeat, which hardly anyone ever does.) And he kept jabbing to produce emphatic sforzandos in the padding march of the Andante, as well.
Beethoven's Emperor Concerto was somewhat more restrained orchestrally, as is appropriate for, even in the fast music, it's a gentle and elegant work. The oddities came from Jean-Efflam Bavouzet at the keyboard. His sound was strangely unresonant and boxy, and he kept seeming to trip over himself all over his runs. Some nice stuff, though, in the "music box" second theme, and the transition to the finale.
The young, small, and bouncy Maxim Emelyanychev conducted two warhorses and a premiere in the pleasant precincts of Benaroya Hall.
The premiere was the suite from an opera Figaro Gets a Divorce by Elena Langer. No, it's not pastiche of Mozart (or Rossini), but it has some of the same verve and color, as well as a clarity of utterance not often heard in new music. Interesting stuff.
Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony came out raucous, like the Italian street music Michael Nyman used to write. Could those outrageous blares from the trumpets and horns be intentional? Had to be, since they kept recurring whenever the passage came back. (Emelyanychev took the first movement repeat, which hardly anyone ever does.) And he kept jabbing to produce emphatic sforzandos in the padding march of the Andante, as well.
Beethoven's Emperor Concerto was somewhat more restrained orchestrally, as is appropriate for, even in the fast music, it's a gentle and elegant work. The oddities came from Jean-Efflam Bavouzet at the keyboard. His sound was strangely unresonant and boxy, and he kept seeming to trip over himself all over his runs. Some nice stuff, though, in the "music box" second theme, and the transition to the finale.
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
book review
On Division by Goldie Goldbloom (Farrar Straus Giroux)
So the regional Jewish community has one of those annual programs whereby they encourage everybody to read the same book so that they can talk about it. This novel is this year's book, and my library committee was asked specifically to read it so that we can brainstorm a program idea around it.
The brainstorming session is yet to come, but the reactions, to the book as a novel, from three of us who've read it is so negative that a fourth person decided not to bother reading it. This is, in fact, just the kind of novel that made me so detest mainstream literature when I was in school. A blurb compares it to Mrs. Bridge, which was one of the books I read in school which I found so horrible, and yes it's pretty much like that: author wants to depict a character who finds her life devoid of meaning, and does so by example, by penning a novel devoid of meaning.
"Division" is, I gathered and eventually confirmed from a map, a street in Williamsburg, Queens, the district of NYC where the Chasidim flock. It's hardly mentioned in the book. The central and (almost) only viewpoint character is Surie, a Chasidic grandmother. She's 57, she's been married for 40 years, she's had 10 children and uncounted grandchildren, but her youngest child is now 13, so she's perplexed to find herself pregnant again. With twins. She spends almost the whole book pregnant, and not telling her husband, and her husband not noticing (apparently she's fat, as well as always draped in heavy garments, but really?), and her midwife urging her to tell her husband, and her wondering why she doesn't: she finds him a good man, kind to her, and they've always been close. It just goes on and on and on like that. The book starts out depicting the community, but as it increasingly centers on Surie's personal situation it becomes increasingly solipsistic and feverish.
Eventually Surie decides to tell her husband at the incredibly inappropriate moment that he's sitting shiva for his mother, but he's not wearing his hearing aid so he doesn't hear a word she's saying. Then at the end the babies are born - stillborn, though by this point the viewpoint is so hallucinatory I can't ignore hints that she might have killed them because she can't undertake mothering infants at her age. Then her husband finds out she'd been pregnant, and he asks, "Why didn't you trust me?" And she says, "I can't understand myself."
Yeah, well, neither can I, and neither, I suspect, can the author. Problems descend on Surie throughout the book, some of her own making, but overall they give the impression there's a giant thumb pressing down on her. But it's not God's, as the Chasidim might believe. It's the author's.
The Chasidic community is depicted less as embracing, which is its intent, than as suffocating and isolating. This is weird from an author who's a Chasid herself. And it becomes less and less real or believable as it goes on. I was astonished that, in a community of observant Jews, the spectacle of an unexpectedly pregnant 57-year-old fails to generate even one reference to the matriarch Sarah until Surie goes into labor, and even then it's only passing. That increases the impression that the story is solipsistic and not about the Jewish community at all.
This book is farkakt.
So the regional Jewish community has one of those annual programs whereby they encourage everybody to read the same book so that they can talk about it. This novel is this year's book, and my library committee was asked specifically to read it so that we can brainstorm a program idea around it.
The brainstorming session is yet to come, but the reactions, to the book as a novel, from three of us who've read it is so negative that a fourth person decided not to bother reading it. This is, in fact, just the kind of novel that made me so detest mainstream literature when I was in school. A blurb compares it to Mrs. Bridge, which was one of the books I read in school which I found so horrible, and yes it's pretty much like that: author wants to depict a character who finds her life devoid of meaning, and does so by example, by penning a novel devoid of meaning.
"Division" is, I gathered and eventually confirmed from a map, a street in Williamsburg, Queens, the district of NYC where the Chasidim flock. It's hardly mentioned in the book. The central and (almost) only viewpoint character is Surie, a Chasidic grandmother. She's 57, she's been married for 40 years, she's had 10 children and uncounted grandchildren, but her youngest child is now 13, so she's perplexed to find herself pregnant again. With twins. She spends almost the whole book pregnant, and not telling her husband, and her husband not noticing (apparently she's fat, as well as always draped in heavy garments, but really?), and her midwife urging her to tell her husband, and her wondering why she doesn't: she finds him a good man, kind to her, and they've always been close. It just goes on and on and on like that. The book starts out depicting the community, but as it increasingly centers on Surie's personal situation it becomes increasingly solipsistic and feverish.
Eventually Surie decides to tell her husband at the incredibly inappropriate moment that he's sitting shiva for his mother, but he's not wearing his hearing aid so he doesn't hear a word she's saying. Then at the end the babies are born - stillborn, though by this point the viewpoint is so hallucinatory I can't ignore hints that she might have killed them because she can't undertake mothering infants at her age. Then her husband finds out she'd been pregnant, and he asks, "Why didn't you trust me?" And she says, "I can't understand myself."
Yeah, well, neither can I, and neither, I suspect, can the author. Problems descend on Surie throughout the book, some of her own making, but overall they give the impression there's a giant thumb pressing down on her. But it's not God's, as the Chasidim might believe. It's the author's.
The Chasidic community is depicted less as embracing, which is its intent, than as suffocating and isolating. This is weird from an author who's a Chasid herself. And it becomes less and less real or believable as it goes on. I was astonished that, in a community of observant Jews, the spectacle of an unexpectedly pregnant 57-year-old fails to generate even one reference to the matriarch Sarah until Surie goes into labor, and even then it's only passing. That increases the impression that the story is solipsistic and not about the Jewish community at all.
This book is farkakt.
Saturday, January 4, 2020
the violins of hope are coming
A couple months ago I reported here on a press lunch I attended for the impending Violins of Hope residency. Now I've published a preview article all about it for the Daily Journal, which will tell you what it is that I'm talking about.
I compiled this article basically by boiling down the residency's extensive calendar, looking for the important items and those taking place in the immediate San Mateo area, where the DJ's readership is located. But there's nothing in the calendar to say specifically, for instance, that the Jan. 16 concert is the central event or that it's being repeated twice in other places. You have to read through all 50 or so listings and pick them out, so I did that.
Attempting to describe the meaningfulness of having the violins play would be a challenge for me. I consider ascribing significance to hearing a particular violin just because it went through the Holocaust to be something of a stunt. So I just picked out an appropriate quote from the press release and used that. I'm going to be reviewing some of these concerts and my only interest in the specific violins will be in how they sound.
On the other hand, I was gut-struck by one of the photographs in the museum exhibit, where the luthier who's collecting the violins opened one of them up for repair to discover that a previous 1930s German repair-jobber had scribbled Nazi graffiti on the inside of the violin, leaving his spoor where the Jewish owner wouldn't notice it was there. That's significant, and disturbing.
I compiled this article basically by boiling down the residency's extensive calendar, looking for the important items and those taking place in the immediate San Mateo area, where the DJ's readership is located. But there's nothing in the calendar to say specifically, for instance, that the Jan. 16 concert is the central event or that it's being repeated twice in other places. You have to read through all 50 or so listings and pick them out, so I did that.
Attempting to describe the meaningfulness of having the violins play would be a challenge for me. I consider ascribing significance to hearing a particular violin just because it went through the Holocaust to be something of a stunt. So I just picked out an appropriate quote from the press release and used that. I'm going to be reviewing some of these concerts and my only interest in the specific violins will be in how they sound.
On the other hand, I was gut-struck by one of the photographs in the museum exhibit, where the luthier who's collecting the violins opened one of them up for repair to discover that a previous 1930s German repair-jobber had scribbled Nazi graffiti on the inside of the violin, leaving his spoor where the Jewish owner wouldn't notice it was there. That's significant, and disturbing.
Friday, January 3, 2020
a toast to the professor
Because it's Tolkien's birthday, obviously. What isn't obvious is that I'm going to deal with some leftover New Year's stuff, rapidly going stale in the fridge. (And that metaphor actually reminds me that there's something I intended to throw out from there but forgot.)
At the New Year's Eve party, I found at least two other people besides myself who were there without spouses who were home sick. (B. is rapidly improving now, thanks.) For the food table, I made a dish which proved to be of a unique kind among the offerings, a fruit salad. I had to label it to make sure folks got the current-events pun:
It's still such a novelty to return to the era in which more works entered the public domain every Jan. 1, an event that once passed completely without remark, that people are making lists. This year the works are those of 1924. Here's some of the good work entering the public domain, and, for something different, here's a list of the crap.
The last item on the list of crap, a movie titled Sandra, rang a bell. I checked and sure enough, it makes an appearance in the children's fantasy Half Magic by Edward Eager, as the movie the book's four children go to see in the chapter where Martha, the youngest, uses the magic charm to become half-invisible. The movie doesn't get a good review here either:
At the New Year's Eve party, I found at least two other people besides myself who were there without spouses who were home sick. (B. is rapidly improving now, thanks.) For the food table, I made a dish which proved to be of a unique kind among the offerings, a fruit salad. I had to label it to make sure folks got the current-events pun:
What kind of salad am I?Yes, that's a real thing and I found a recipe online. Other ingredients, mozzarella cheese, lemon juice, a little honey.
I'm Peach-Mint
It's still such a novelty to return to the era in which more works entered the public domain every Jan. 1, an event that once passed completely without remark, that people are making lists. This year the works are those of 1924. Here's some of the good work entering the public domain, and, for something different, here's a list of the crap.
The last item on the list of crap, a movie titled Sandra, rang a bell. I checked and sure enough, it makes an appearance in the children's fantasy Half Magic by Edward Eager, as the movie the book's four children go to see in the chapter where Martha, the youngest, uses the magic charm to become half-invisible. The movie doesn't get a good review here either:
When they came into the theater Barbara LaMarr in Sandra had already reached its middle, and the children couldn't figure out exactly what was happening. But then neither could the rest of the audience. ... The four children did not grasp any of it, but Barbara LaMarr had lots of hair and great big eyes, and when strong men wanted to kiss her and she pushed them away and made suffering faces at the audience with her eyebrows, Jane and Katharine thought it was thrilling, and probably quite like the way life was, when you were grown-up. ... Martha hated it.I put this in the article's comments section and got some tickled responses from other old-time Eager fans.
Thursday, January 2, 2020
the other big names
I just posted my centenary piece on Isaac Asimov, and it occurred to me that I've now written, on occasion of death or centenary, on all four of the famous "big name" SF authors of that generation. So here's links to the rest:
Arthur C. Clarke.
Ray Bradbury.
My piece on Robert A. Heinlein is no longer online, so here it is:
Lots of people trying to do lucky things today, since it's 7/7/07. But I've read The Mimeo Man, so I remember that today is the centennial of Robert A. Heinlein's birth.
There's some kind of centennial conference on Heinlein going on in Kansas City, his home town, right now. I first heard of this some months ago when I saw an announcement that Dafydd ab Hugh would be there, which fact pretty much sums up why I'm not.
As a longtime science fiction reader, I ought to like Heinlein's work, but I don't. I find him a terminally hectoring author. He shares with Orson Scott Card, and just about nobody else, the unusual ability to make me disagree with almost anything he says, even if I previously agreed with it.
Still, he is of unmatched importance in the history of the field, and unlike some in his class (who reads Doc Smith now? I recently conversed with an established fan who'd never even heard of Smith) he's still easily in print, readable, and often read. So go ahead and celebrate, Heinlein fans. Me, I'll prefer to wait for L. Sprague de Camp's centennial on November 27th.
And to a commenter who wrote that Heinlein "taught me ways to think for myself," I responded:
I read Heinlein as saying, not "think for yourself," but "think like me." Or, more precisely, "Think for yourself. If you do, you'll think like me. If you don't think like me, you're not really thinking for yourself, because all truly independent thinkers think like me." YMMV, but this is what I mean by hectoring.
Arthur C. Clarke.
Ray Bradbury.
My piece on Robert A. Heinlein is no longer online, so here it is:
Lots of people trying to do lucky things today, since it's 7/7/07. But I've read The Mimeo Man, so I remember that today is the centennial of Robert A. Heinlein's birth.
There's some kind of centennial conference on Heinlein going on in Kansas City, his home town, right now. I first heard of this some months ago when I saw an announcement that Dafydd ab Hugh would be there, which fact pretty much sums up why I'm not.
As a longtime science fiction reader, I ought to like Heinlein's work, but I don't. I find him a terminally hectoring author. He shares with Orson Scott Card, and just about nobody else, the unusual ability to make me disagree with almost anything he says, even if I previously agreed with it.
Still, he is of unmatched importance in the history of the field, and unlike some in his class (who reads Doc Smith now? I recently conversed with an established fan who'd never even heard of Smith) he's still easily in print, readable, and often read. So go ahead and celebrate, Heinlein fans. Me, I'll prefer to wait for L. Sprague de Camp's centennial on November 27th.
And to a commenter who wrote that Heinlein "taught me ways to think for myself," I responded:
I read Heinlein as saying, not "think for yourself," but "think like me." Or, more precisely, "Think for yourself. If you do, you'll think like me. If you don't think like me, you're not really thinking for yourself, because all truly independent thinkers think like me." YMMV, but this is what I mean by hectoring.
mazel tov, it's Asimov
Today is the centenary of the birth of Isaac Asimov. (Actually, his exact birthdate is unknown, due to lack of records and calendric confusion in post-revolutionary Russia, where he was born [prior to coming to the US at the age of 3], but he celebrated January 2, 1920, so be it.)
I celebrate Asimov because he was my gateway drug into science fiction. I liked a lot of his fiction and still do, but I was introduced to him via non-fiction.
My first Asimov book was Words on the Map, a collection of brief etymologies of place names. I liked words and I liked maps, so it was an obvious choice. This book was published when I was 5 years old, but I would already have been capable of reading it then, and I suspect it was not much later that it was given me as a present. Certainly I got myself pegged as an Asimov reader, for it was within 3 or 4 years that I was being given collections of his science essays, from which I learned a great deal.
I didn't know they were from a science-fiction magazine, and indeed didn't know much about Asimov other than the books until Opus 100 was published. This sally through his first 99 books and why and how he came to write them came out when I was 12, and by this time I was identified enough as an Asimov reader that a copy instantly appeared in my hands as a gift.
So it had something to say about his SF, and included a few full short stories, including "The Last Question" and "The Feeling of Power," both of which instantly struck me and which I've never forgotten. But I did not go on and explore more of his SF, until one day about four years later when I noticed paperbacks of the Foundation trilogy sitting on the free loan shelf in my school library. Oh, yes, I remember hearing about these, so I might as well try them.
I swallowed them whole in a couple of days, and that's what made me a serious Asimov fiction reader.
I liked the way his writing, at its best, combined a coolness and clarity of presentation with an underlying passionate intensity of commitment to the material that was nevertheless always kept under control. I liked equally his combination of confidence in scientific fact with human-scale values. Unlike many other writers, he never let his passion for science and logical thinking carry him off into cold, inhuman realms.
When I found my way into SF fandom a couple more years later, I came in familiar with some works by four authors: Asimov and Clarke, both of whom I liked, and Heinlein and Bradbury, whom I didn't. That pointed me in the direction that my reading took. Of course, some of Asimov's later works were disappointing, but his fiction of the 1950s and his nonfiction of the 1960s are still the highlights of his achievements as a writer.
I had more to say about other aspects of Asimov's opinions and personality here.
I celebrate Asimov because he was my gateway drug into science fiction. I liked a lot of his fiction and still do, but I was introduced to him via non-fiction.
My first Asimov book was Words on the Map, a collection of brief etymologies of place names. I liked words and I liked maps, so it was an obvious choice. This book was published when I was 5 years old, but I would already have been capable of reading it then, and I suspect it was not much later that it was given me as a present. Certainly I got myself pegged as an Asimov reader, for it was within 3 or 4 years that I was being given collections of his science essays, from which I learned a great deal.
I didn't know they were from a science-fiction magazine, and indeed didn't know much about Asimov other than the books until Opus 100 was published. This sally through his first 99 books and why and how he came to write them came out when I was 12, and by this time I was identified enough as an Asimov reader that a copy instantly appeared in my hands as a gift.
So it had something to say about his SF, and included a few full short stories, including "The Last Question" and "The Feeling of Power," both of which instantly struck me and which I've never forgotten. But I did not go on and explore more of his SF, until one day about four years later when I noticed paperbacks of the Foundation trilogy sitting on the free loan shelf in my school library. Oh, yes, I remember hearing about these, so I might as well try them.
I swallowed them whole in a couple of days, and that's what made me a serious Asimov fiction reader.
I liked the way his writing, at its best, combined a coolness and clarity of presentation with an underlying passionate intensity of commitment to the material that was nevertheless always kept under control. I liked equally his combination of confidence in scientific fact with human-scale values. Unlike many other writers, he never let his passion for science and logical thinking carry him off into cold, inhuman realms.
When I found my way into SF fandom a couple more years later, I came in familiar with some works by four authors: Asimov and Clarke, both of whom I liked, and Heinlein and Bradbury, whom I didn't. That pointed me in the direction that my reading took. Of course, some of Asimov's later works were disappointing, but his fiction of the 1950s and his nonfiction of the 1960s are still the highlights of his achievements as a writer.
I had more to say about other aspects of Asimov's opinions and personality here.
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
2020 vision
So here we are in a year that's long been a favorite destination of science-fiction writers seeking a near-future setting, probably because its name sounds like the results of an eye test. In fact there was once an anthology titled 2020 Vision consisting of stories with that premise. If I'd been thinking, I could have gone looking for a copy so that I could spend this auspicious day evaluating the future-forecasting ability of the stories. Since I didn't, what I could do was use that fabulous tool of the future, the internet, to conveniently look up the anthology and then the individual stories to see which ones I had reprinted somewhere else. And I have four of the eight stories, a pretty good reprint rate. Like most SF stories, they're unknowingly more focused on the time they were written, which in this case was the early 1970s, than the future.
"Cloak of Anarchy" by Larry Niven explains its future setting in one paragraph of expository lump, because this is a Larry Niven story. "The freeways served America for almost fifty years. Then modern transportation systems cleaned the air and made traffic jams archaic and left the nation with an embarrassing problem. What to do with ten thousand miles of unsightly abandoned freeways?" So they turn them into anarchist parks. What? Actually, one phrase of this prediction is true, "cleaned the air." Bad as pollution may seem to us today, urban air is far cleaner than it was in the 1970s. LA, whence Niven hails, was a particular nightmare: I got sick every time I went there in those days. So I understand that part of his dream. The rest, though, is pure libertarian fancy. Traffic jams archaic? Oh, if only Niven could see ... wait a minute, he can.
"Silent in Gehenna" by Harlan Ellison I found hard to follow, but I did find an interview in which the author explains it. It's about a revolutionary who blows up college campuses - a very early 70s thing - who finds himself in a regimented future where the people he's trying to liberate don't care. By the greatest of efforts this might be seen as parallel to working-class people who've been persuaded to vote for the Republicans who are busy fleecing them and destroying their economy, but I don't think it really fits. It's really the nightmare of the mid-60s revolutionaries who were trying to persuade the students they were cogs in the machine and were afraid nobody would listen, and that's probably the era Ellison was stuck in.
"Future Perfect" by A.E. van Vogt reads as if it's trying to lecture the reader, but what exactly the point was is not clear. It's another regimented future, but this one designed for utopian purposes: everybody gets exactly the same amount of money, and a computer chooses your ideal mate. (Van Vogt's idea of this last is a horrifying combination of naive and offensive: "What old-style thinking would have called beauty was not a factor in computer mating. Height was. Weight was. Age was. ... All over the world fatties married fatties, thinnies thinnies, and intermediates other middlings.") And the story concerns, no surprise, a revolutionary who's trying to destroy the system. But aside from persuading all his followers to give him a lot of money, by checks (!), I couldn't quite figure out his goals.
"A Thing of Beauty" by Norman Spinrad is a thin satire in which American civilization has collapsed. The United Nations has disbanded, revolutionaries blew the head off the Statue of Liberty, and so on. Now all our cultural treasures are for sale to rich Japanese businessmen who want to transport them to Japan to impress their in-laws. (This was probably inspired by the rich American businessman who bought the obsolete London Bridge in 1967 and transported it to Arizona.) The one in this story decides that the American cultural treasure he wants to buy is the Brooklyn Bridge. Get it, get it? The story concludes when he pays for the bridge with an actual gold brick. Get it, get it?
Are there any stories about looming climate catastrophes, about civilization not collapsing or becoming hyper-controlled but reverting to the populist fascism of the 1920s and 30s, or the revolutionary effects of computerization, especially the disruption of society imposed, by means of technological innovation, by the mob mentality on itself? Actually, in other stories Larry Niven did write a form of this, though his technology wasn't Facebook and Twitter but teleportation. But nothing like that in any of these stories. I give Niven a bronze star in perspicacity, and the other three authors each get a small clay statuette of a backwards-headed person.
"Cloak of Anarchy" by Larry Niven explains its future setting in one paragraph of expository lump, because this is a Larry Niven story. "The freeways served America for almost fifty years. Then modern transportation systems cleaned the air and made traffic jams archaic and left the nation with an embarrassing problem. What to do with ten thousand miles of unsightly abandoned freeways?" So they turn them into anarchist parks. What? Actually, one phrase of this prediction is true, "cleaned the air." Bad as pollution may seem to us today, urban air is far cleaner than it was in the 1970s. LA, whence Niven hails, was a particular nightmare: I got sick every time I went there in those days. So I understand that part of his dream. The rest, though, is pure libertarian fancy. Traffic jams archaic? Oh, if only Niven could see ... wait a minute, he can.
"Silent in Gehenna" by Harlan Ellison I found hard to follow, but I did find an interview in which the author explains it. It's about a revolutionary who blows up college campuses - a very early 70s thing - who finds himself in a regimented future where the people he's trying to liberate don't care. By the greatest of efforts this might be seen as parallel to working-class people who've been persuaded to vote for the Republicans who are busy fleecing them and destroying their economy, but I don't think it really fits. It's really the nightmare of the mid-60s revolutionaries who were trying to persuade the students they were cogs in the machine and were afraid nobody would listen, and that's probably the era Ellison was stuck in.
"Future Perfect" by A.E. van Vogt reads as if it's trying to lecture the reader, but what exactly the point was is not clear. It's another regimented future, but this one designed for utopian purposes: everybody gets exactly the same amount of money, and a computer chooses your ideal mate. (Van Vogt's idea of this last is a horrifying combination of naive and offensive: "What old-style thinking would have called beauty was not a factor in computer mating. Height was. Weight was. Age was. ... All over the world fatties married fatties, thinnies thinnies, and intermediates other middlings.") And the story concerns, no surprise, a revolutionary who's trying to destroy the system. But aside from persuading all his followers to give him a lot of money, by checks (!), I couldn't quite figure out his goals.
"A Thing of Beauty" by Norman Spinrad is a thin satire in which American civilization has collapsed. The United Nations has disbanded, revolutionaries blew the head off the Statue of Liberty, and so on. Now all our cultural treasures are for sale to rich Japanese businessmen who want to transport them to Japan to impress their in-laws. (This was probably inspired by the rich American businessman who bought the obsolete London Bridge in 1967 and transported it to Arizona.) The one in this story decides that the American cultural treasure he wants to buy is the Brooklyn Bridge. Get it, get it? The story concludes when he pays for the bridge with an actual gold brick. Get it, get it?
Are there any stories about looming climate catastrophes, about civilization not collapsing or becoming hyper-controlled but reverting to the populist fascism of the 1920s and 30s, or the revolutionary effects of computerization, especially the disruption of society imposed, by means of technological innovation, by the mob mentality on itself? Actually, in other stories Larry Niven did write a form of this, though his technology wasn't Facebook and Twitter but teleportation. But nothing like that in any of these stories. I give Niven a bronze star in perspicacity, and the other three authors each get a small clay statuette of a backwards-headed person.
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