Wis[s]e Words

William Tenn (1910 – 2010)

Published on February 8, 20102 Comments

At age eightynine it was to be expected, but hearing about the death of William Tenn aka Philip Klass was still not a nice way of starting the day. Especially coming so soon after the news of Kage Baker’s death a week ago. I can’t say I knew either of them, but they were both writers whose books I read and enjoyed and would’ve liked to read more of. Kage Baker especially, because whereas Klass had long since retired, she was still busy writing, becoming better with each novel she wrote. You’d wish her a long and happy career but sadly the cancer intervened.

But if I’m honest, William Tenn’s death hit me more. He wasn’t the first science fiction writer I read, but he was one of the first authors I noticed whose stories were noticably better written than average. Whereas most sf stories I read back then had little appeal beyond the neat idea(s) they contained, Tenn’s stories went beyond that. Stories like “The Liberation of Earth” or “The Brooklyn Project” only look like typical sf stories, with the central idea easily told in a few sentences, but the language use and the sharp, satirical insights are unique to Tenn. As Theodore Sturgeon put it, slightly over the top:

It would be too wide a generalization to say that every SF satire, every SF comedy and every attempt at witty and biting criticism found in the field is a poor and usually cheap imitation of what this man has been doing since the 1940s. His incredibly involved and complex mind can at times produce constructive comment so pointed and astute that the fortunate recipient is permanently improved by it. Admittedly, the price may be to create two whole categories for our species: humanity and William Tenn. For each of which you must create your ethos and your laws. I’ve done that. And to me it’s worth it.

(From Wikipedia.)

Interstellar Archaeology

Published on February 5, 20101 Comment

An interesting post up at Centauri Dreams about the possibilities of interstellar archaeology:

Suppose a civilization somewhere in the cosmos is approaching Kardashev type III status. In other words, it is already capable of using all the power resources of its star (4*1026 W for a star like the Sun) and is on the way to exploiting the power of its galaxy (4*1037 W). Imagine it expanding out of its galactic niche, turning stars in its stellar neighborhood into a series of Dyson spheres. If we were to observe such activity in a distant galaxy, we would presumably detect a growing void in visible light from the area of the galaxy where this activity was happening, and an upturn in the infrared. Call it a ‘Fermi bubble.’

That’s the term used by Richard Carrigan (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) in his latest work on what he calls ‘interstellar archaeology,’ the search for cosmic-scale artifacts like Dyson spheres or Kardashev civilizations. A Fermi bubble would grow as the civilization creating it diffused through space. Carrigan notes that, as Carl Sagan and others observed, the time to colonize an individual system is small compared to the travel time between stars. An expanding front of colonization might then move forward at a rate roughly comparable to the space travel velocity. A civilization could engulf its galaxy on a time scale comparable to the rotation period of the galaxy, and perhaps a good bit shorter.

We may not have gotten our jetpacks or domed cities on moon and in the oceans, but the mere fact that ideas like this are not just interesting speculations but actually testable proposals should convince anybody we’re living in the future. The only disavantage is that the more we are able to observe from Earth or Solar System based space telescopes, the less likely it will be that the old science fiction future of three men scouting rockets exploring the Galaxy will come to pass…

Shit day

Published on February 3, 20101 Comment

Yesterday was not good. Big things KI can deal with, like S. back in the hospital with a raging infection and a lot of pain and the prospect of staying there the whole of February, perhaps longer. You focus on the practical and don’t try to think about it too much in the small hours of the night, though that was a bit difficult last Thursday when they rang about the emergency operation. It’s the little things that fuck me up, like finding out I lost a work entry card on the train, coming back home to find a fuse on an external drive had shorted the electrics and other minor aggrievations like that. Things that can drive me into a cold rage at the best of times, but especially now.

So fuck it.

Books read January

Published on February 2, 2010

My brain was still mostly mush for much of the month, due to the infection of my operation scar. I’d hoped for a nice recovery with lots of book reading, but even daytime television was a bit of a stretch… Few books read in other words, and even fewer was it not for rereading a slew of Pratchetts.

Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Guards, Guards! and Men at Arms — Terry Pratchett.
I started rereading Jingo for its antiwar message, which at the time seemed over the top but which events have proved right, then wanted to read more of the City Guards subseries. A comfort read.

Mesopotamia: the Invention of the City — Gwendolyn Leick
A very interesting history of some of the oldest cities in the world, ten chapters depicting ten cities, in chronological order from Eridu to Babylon. The oldest were as far away in time from the Roman Empire at its height as it is from us.

The Trojans and their Neighbours — Trevor Bryce
A slim book looking like it should be used in some dull IT course, rather than as a history book. Never judge a book by its cover though, this is a great account of the ancient city we’ve named Troy, what we know of its true history, its association with Homer’s stories and the evidence for this link. It also examines the city’s history beyond the Trojan War.

Transition — Iain Banks
A proper science fiction novel under Bank’s lit-fic pseudonym.

History of the First World War — B. H. Liddel Hart
Originally written in 1929 and extended in 1934, this is the seventies reissue of this classic work of military history. Liddel Hart has his axes to grind and his history is written to showcase the lessons he wants the reader to learn from the war. Interesting but difficult to read and certainly not to be used as the history of WWI.

Terry Pratchett calls for legal assisted suicide

Published on February 1, 2010

Though I’ve got every desire to live forever and make it to the ships, I do think the right to die, to decide for myself when and where I want to end my life is as fundamental a human right as you can have. If you do not have this control over your own life, what control do you have? But as we all know, often from personal experience with loved ones at the end of their life, the gap between desire and ability can be large. That’s why having some form of legal assisted suicide available is so important. There have always been cases in which some terminally ill patient has been “helped along” by a caring nurse, doctor or family member, but in the UK these helping hands always run the risk of being prosecuted for murder. Convictions have been rare, but it no doubt prevented some people from doing the right thing, leading to the unnecessary suffering of their loved ones.

For Terry Pratchett the issue went from abstract to personal when he was diagnosed with Alzheimers a few years back. He has said before he would like to decide for himself when to make an end to it and has now called for legalisation of assisted suicide through the establishment of medical tribunals:

In his lecture, Shaking Hands With Death, the author will volunteer to be a test case before a euthanasia tribunal himself.

The tribunal panels would include a legal expert in family matters and a doctor with experience of serious long-term illness.

“If granny walks up to the tribunal and bangs her walking stick on the table and says ‘Look, I’ve really had enough, I hate this bloody disease, and I’d like to die thank you very much young man’, I don’t see why anyone should stand in her way.”

I’m a bit skeptical about the idea of tribunals myself; the system we have in the Netherlands seems more flexible and less bureaucratic for everybody involved. Instead of making the sufferers establish a case for euthanasia beforehand, it provides a protocol for doctors afterwards to protect themselves from prosecution for murder:

The law allows medical review board to suspend prosecution of doctors who performed euthanasia when each of the following conditions is fulfilled:

the patient’s suffering is unbearable with no prospect of improvement

the patient’s request for euthanasia must be voluntary and persist over time (the request cannot be granted when under the influence of others, psychological illness or drugs)

the patient must be fully aware of his/her condition, prospects and options

there must be consultation with at least one other independent doctor who needs to confirm the conditions mentioned above

the death must be carried out in a medically appropriate fashion by the doctor or patient, in which case the doctor must be present

the patient is at least 12 years old (patients between 12 and 16 years of age require the consent of their parents)

This law includes provisions for “a written declaration of will of the patient regarding euthanasia”, in which a patient can declare when they’re still sound of body and mind if and when they would like to end their lives. In this way there’s the option of euthanasia for everybody while still protecting helpless people from murder disguised as euthanasia. With tribunals, the power to decide whether or not somebody can end their lives lies too much on the doctors’ side, in my opinion.