Mad Science Café
Edited by Deborah J. Ross
www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
October 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-328-7
Copyright © 2013 Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
Table of Contents
Introduction, by Deborah J. Ross
The Jacobean Time Machine, by Chris Dolley
Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes, by Marie Brennan
A Princess of Wittgenstein, by Jennifer Stevenson
Mandelbrot Moldrot, by Lois Gresh
Dog Star, by Jeffrey A. Carver
Secundus, by Brenda W. Clough
Willie, by Madeleine E. Robins
One Night in O’Shaughnessy’s Bar, by David D. Levine
Revision, by Nancy Jane Moore
Night Without Darkness, by Shannon Page and Mark J. Ferrari
The Stink of Reality, Irene Radford
“Value For O”, Jennifer Stevenson
The Peculiar Case of Sir Willoughby Smythe, Judith Tarr
The Gods Men Don’t See, Amy Sterling Casil
About the Authors
Copyright & Credits
About Book View Café
Introduction
Deborah J. Ross
Mad Scientists . . . they make such delicious villains and eccentric heroes, not to mention convenient sidekicks and scapegoats. Maybe that’s why we love them and love to laugh at them even when their inventions terrify us. And mystify us. And save us.
The media tend to portray scientists as a breed apart, men and women who live more in their very considerable intellects than in the same realm as ordinary folks. The History Of The Mad Scientist suggests how this has come about. Perhaps the earliest version of the scientist was the wizard or alchemist, learned in esoteric lore. If it is true that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, as Arthur C. Clarke wrote, then it is also true for a small amount of information, even when liberally mixed with superstition and outright falsehood. Such knowledge was reserved to a privileged few and gained either by esoteric transmission or by innate supernatural talents. What an alchemist did—and how he or she perceived the world—was incomprehensible to lay people. One did not question the methods or motives of alchemists, who lived and worked on an elevated plane.
The Age of Enlightenment brought about a methodological revolution in thought and the birth of the scientific method. For the first time, the principles of logic and observation made science available to any person willing to apply them. Science was not one thing to one person and another thing to someone else, as magic had been. People could agree on what they measured, although they might dispute the interpretations. Even in this time, the scientist was a person set apart, although not by virtue of any extraordinary secret rituals or rare magical endowment. The difference now was one of education and opportunity, and it is no accident that the great scientific discoveries of the time, whether in physics, chemistry, or natural history, were made by aristocratic or well-to-do amateurs (such as Todger in Chris Dolley’s tale, “The Jacobean Time Machine.”) Only those with social position and wealth could obtain the necessary education and financing to pursue their scientific interests. But the movement toward making science understandable and accessible to more people was definitely on the rise.
At the same time as this explosion in scientific inquiry, philosophers, including Mary Shelley, warned of the consequences of unbridled application of scientific principles, of “playing god.” In her seminal work, Frankenstein, she created one of the best-known modern examples of the scientist outside the norm of society, only this time what sets him apart is not his esoteric alchemical erudition but his hubris. His knowledge and perhaps his ego cause him to step outside the usual morality and custom. The consequences of treading “where no man should go,” especially in daring to create life, include loss of control over one’s experiments and inventions. Whether he is deranged to begin with or whether his dabbling into the forbidden causes his madness, the result is a figure at once dangerous and tragic, such as the character in “Night Without Darkness” by Shannon Page and Mark J. Ferrari. Sometimes these poor souls are wild-eyed, disheveled, distraught by what they have discovered, but at other times, the results are quite different from what we expect, as Madeleine E. Robins shows us in “Willie.”
The writers at Book View Café are not immune to the possibilities of the “age of steam” and have put together not one but two anthologies (The Shadow Conspiracy and The Shadow Conspiracy II) of interwoven tales that take as their inspiration that fateful summer of 1816, when Lord Byron gathered together a group of kindred spirits, including the future Mary Shelley, at Lake Geneva, where they amused themselves by writing fantastical tales. Several of the stories in this present anthology (Brenda W. Clough’s “Secundus,” “A Princess of Wittgenstein” by Jennifer Stevenson, and “The Peculiar Case of Sir Willoughby Smythe” by Judith Tarr) arise from what might have happened if the result were a conspiracy to preserve human personalities in mechanized automata, a speculation that falls squarely within the territory of steampunk.
One of the appeals of steampunk is that this time—the Victorian era with its steam-driven machinery, and neighboring decades—was the last period when an ordinary person could readily understand and duplicate the prevailing technology. He could tinker with engines and come up with strange and wacky inventions: an engraved invitation for the writer’s imagination. Steampunk has been characterized as featuring anachronistic elements, but a careful reading of the real history reveals a plethora of inventions “before their time,” including computing devices (1642), airships (1670), and the like. In the end, however, what stands out is the shift from the arcane laboratory to the common man’s tool shed. (This is not so far-fetched a notion: in the 1960s, my first husband and his high school buddy constructed a 2 meV linear particle accelerator in a neighbor’s garage.)
In our own era, “rocket science” has become synonymous with a field of study unfathomable to ordinary people. The scientist/inventor has once again become distant. At the same time, a generation of young people has grown up with computers, fluent in programming, hacking, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. We add yet another species to the Mad Scientist array, not only the noble amateur naturalist and the absent-minded, obsessed professor but the geek genius, such as features prominently in David D. Levine’s “One Night in O’Shaughnessy’s Bar” and “Revision” by Nancy Jane Moore (and one might argue that the character in Jennifer Stevenson’s “‘Value of O’” does not qualify as a geek, he certainly has a scientific approach to the subject.) On the other hand, when biology, Lovecraftian sensibilities, and computers coalesce, the results can be quite extraordinary, as “Mandelbrot Moldrot” by Lois Gresh, demonstrates.
Let us not ignore the future possibilities for Mad Scientists. They will doubtless continue to haunt the halls of academia (“The Stink of Reality” by Irene Radford), and pursue their researches with single-minded devotion (Amy Sterling Casil’s “The Gods Men Don’t See”), carefully documenting their results (“Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes,” by Marie Brennan.) As humankind travels to the stars, a universe of new possibilities unfolds. For the first time, the Mad Scientist need not be limited to human ancestry (“Dog Star,” by Jeffrey A. Carver).
To sum up, the Mad Scientist has had a long and illustrious history, sometimes a terrifying figure, other times an object of pity or awe or hilarity. One thing remains constant, however: they are never humdrum!
The Jacobean Time Machine
Chris Dolley
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p; Old Todger’s experiments on the nature of time shocked and captivated the Jacobean world. Today we marvel about experiments using synchronised atomic clocks that show a difference of a few hundred nanoseconds when one remains on the ground while the other is flown around the world in a supersonic jet. Yet in the 1650s Old Todger could produce time differentials of several hours.
And his insight into the true nature of time—and its component parts—was both inspired and revolutionary.
His first experiment, conducted at his rooms in Oxford in the summer of 1650, involved three identical candle clocks. All were placed on a large table and lit at the same time. Two were then covered by specially prepared bell jars and the joins between the table and the jars were sealed with wax. Todger then introduced oxygen (at the time known as spiritus nitroaereus) into one jar and carbon dioxide (spiritus sylvestre) into the other. Time was seen to speed up inside the oxygenated jar whilst it slowed in the other.
The results were spectacular. The time differential between the three clocks was measured in hours. The oxygenated candle burned down to nothing before the slow-burning carbonated candle had reached its first hour mark!
Like many early scientists, Todger was not averse to testing his theories on people. He may not have been able to find a bell jar large enough to contain a person, but, with the use of a mask, he was able to observe the effects of spiritus nitroaereus and spiritus sylvestre on humans. Todger observed that the gentleman breathing the oxygenated mixture appeared much excited and more animated than usual, whilst his companion appeared very sluggish. Extremely sluggish. To Todger, this was further proof of his theory that time was being speeded up and slowed down by breathing the gas.
Not everyone agreed. The relatives of the man breathing spiritus sylvestre accused Todger of murdering him. Todger maintained that the man was far from dead, but ‘living very slowly.’
Todger published his findings in the paper, New Observations and Experiments upon the Nature of Time.
He was lauded by fellow members of the ‘invisible college’—the forerunner of the Royal Society. Robert Boyle successfully repeated Todger’s experiment to a packed audience at Gresham College in October, 1650.
But that success proved to be short lived. In 1651, Athanasius Kircher, the German Jesuit scholar and inventor of the cuckoo clock—a clock entirely powered by small cuckoos—attempted a variation on Todger’s experiment using three cuckoo clocks. Although the initial experiment appeared to corroborate Todger’s theory, Kircher was devastated when he couldn’t speed up the ‘living very slowly’ cuckoos by placing them in an oxygenated bell jar. Something was very wrong with Todger’s theory.
Kircher went on to repeat Todger’s experiment using three identical water clocks and found no appreciable difference between them.
Todger was much troubled by this news, but from his black despair came his greatest notion. What if Time was not a single entity? Perhaps time, like the elements, was composed of Fire, Water, Earth and Air? Todger’s gases were Air elements. The water clocks were unaffected by them because they were ruled by Water-Time.
This led to Todger’s most productive period. He built his own water clocks and tested them extensively, trying to isolate the Water-Time element.
After a year, he found it.
Temperature was the key. Todger found that if he placed one water clock in a cold room and another in front of a fire, that time for the cold clock slowed down. And the greater the temperature difference, the greater the temporal difference. When Todger packed ice around one clock and placed the other in a bain-marie, bringing the water almost to boiling point, he found that time for the heated clock passed seven times faster than for the cold clock!
Todger was soon struck by another notion. He had shown that heat was the key to Water-Time, but wasn’t heat a form of Fire? Had he discovered that Fire was the temporal controller of Water?
This led him to re-evaluate his theory on Air-Time. What if the candle clock was a Fire element? This would make Air the temporal controller of Fire. Were all the four elements controlled thus? Each element controlling and, in turn, being controlled by another?
Todger began his search for Earth and Air clocks. The hourglass was the obvious choice for an Earth clock, but Air? Would that be a sundial?
He began experimenting on hourglasses. If his theory held true, then the temporal controller for an Earth clock would be either Earth or Water—with the latter being the most likely, or else Earth would be controlling Earth, and Todger couldn’t believe that God would allow such an inelegant solution to exist. The temporal controller of Earth had to be Water and Air’s controller had to be Earth.
But what were they?
Todger soon discovered a way of slowing down Earth-Time—the addition of water to the sand in the hourglass made it wet and slowed the flow. Sometimes it even made time stop altogether! But he couldn’t make time speed up. He wondered if perhaps an hourglass filled with dry sand was measuring ‘fast time,’ and that slightly moist sand was ‘normal time.’ But when he added even more water, the sand and water mixture began to flow faster and time accelerated.
It was about this time that Todger’s health began to fail. He was working all hours, missing meals, and rarely left his rooms. He was obsessed with finding a solution to the four faces of time. He knew he was close, but he was beginning to doubt his ability to make that final breakthrough.
In desperation he decided to curtail his Earth-Time experiments and commence a study of Air-Time. But was there anything that could speed up or slow down the passage of the sun through the sky? If his theory held, the answer would be an Earth element.
Months passed with little progress being made. And then he hit upon the idea of using a prism to bend the light of the sun. Glass was that elusive Earth element he’d been searching for! Using a combination of prisms, lenses and mirrors, he found he could both speed up and slow down the passage of time on a sun dial. Not only that, he could also make time go backwards!
Todger was quick to publish his findings. Some say too quick, for the reaction to his publication was far from universally favourable. He was accused of trying to pass off common trickery as science. Time, they said, was not being slowed or reversed. His manipulation of sunlight was no different to someone moving a strong candle around a sundial in a darkened room and claiming they were affecting time.
Todger refused to accept this criticism, and decided that the best way to convince his doubters was to conduct a human experiment. This experiment would be the very culmination of a distinguished career and demonstrate, for the first time, the use of time multipliers. Man—being composed of Fire, Water, Earth and Air elements—would be susceptible to all four temporal controllers. And if all four were combined together at the same time then their effect would be multiplied.
The first experiment, designed to demonstrate slow time, had to be abandoned for lack of volunteers. People, remembering Todger’s first human experiment, did not relish the idea of ending their days as ‘the man living even more slowly.’
Like a true pioneer, Todger decided to experiment on himself. And, ever desirous of the spectacular, decided he’d demonstrate fast time…and put on a real show.
The mix of extreme heat, a lens, a lack of water and an overabundance of oxygen was certainly spectacular. Robert Boyle, who observed the experiment, told the coroner that Todger’s remaining years had passed before the assembled onlookers in a ball of flame, and even the attempts of his friends to slow time down by throwing water on the speedily expiring Todger, were insufficient to haul back the years. Boyle estimated that Todger’s age at death would have rivalled Methuselah.
Fittingly, the coroner ruled the cause of Todger’s death to be ‘living too fast.’
Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed against Lycanthropes
Marie Brennan
Abstract
This study seeks to establish a hierarchy of efficacy for various antipathetic ma
terials and delivery mechanisms thereof as used in the extermination of lycanthropes. Pre-existing data on this issue consists solely of folkloric narratives and unsubstantiated anecdotes on Internet communities, neither of which are based upon suitable experimental trials. It is hoped that this study will be only the beginning of a proper body of scientific literature, which might be expanded to include hyena men, were-jaguars, and other therianthropes.
Definition
For the purpose of this study, a lycanthrope is a human being who physically transforms into a lupine or hybrid lupine-hominid shape, acquiring greater strength, speed, and reduced vulnerability to ordinary weapons. Available evidence indicates that this alteration is linked to the lunar cycle, though a full explication of the mechanism of transformation and its contagious nature awaits further study.
Violent aggression is not a necessary part of the definition, but seems to be either an ancillary effect of lycanthropy, or a co-morbid condition with it. Anecdotal reports of friendly lycanthropes are at present unsubstantiated.
Methodology
Numerous difficulties present themselves in any attempt to scientifically test the folklore regarding materials antipathetic to lycanthropes. Foremost among these is the lack of acceptance within the scientific community as to the existence of lycanthropy, beyond the psychiatric condition; this severely limits funding, peer review, and institutional support.
Because of this lack, it proved impossible to test antipathetics under laboratory conditions. The capture and maintenance of one caged specimen, much less several, was judged to be both dangerous and prohibitively expensive. The study therefore proceeded instead via field trials. Through the online community[1], the investigator contacted individuals who had expressed the intention of hunting lycanthropes in the immediate future. These subjects were each provided with a different antipathetic or delivery mechanism thereof, and each expressed his or her willingness to allow the investigator to document the hunt.
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