Analog SFF, March 2006
Page 25
Of course, he's right. The Slugs left behind a number of mysterious objects, one of which has been brought to Earth to serve in due time as the trigger for a renewed crisis. And that's when Jason must go back to war. Right from Chapter One, the reader feels rather bleak about this, for Buettner introduces Jason with his back against the wall and out of ammo, with the Slugs about to descend. But this is SF in the classic mode. After suitable melodramatics and bafflegab (would you believe The Return of Cavorite?), the chestnuts do get hauled out of the fire.
* * *
Hal Clement died on October 29, 2003. Not long after, the members of Hal's Pals, the writer's group he had long mentored, began to discuss doing a memorial volume. The result is Hal's Worlds, edited by Shane Tourtellotte. Contributors include such well-known writers as Paul Levinson, Walter Hunt (who contributed an original short story), Jack Williamson, Allen Steele, Michael Swanwick, Stan Schmidt, David Gerrold, Ben Bova, Jeff Carver, Joe Haldeman, Michael Burstein, and Julie Czerneda. The contents include reminiscences, reprinted stories that owe something to Hal's inspiration, a previously unreprinted story by Hal, a Darrell Schweitzer interview with Hal, and a few words from Hal's widow, Mary Stubbs.
Everyone donated their work. Neither the editor nor the contributors get a dime. All proceeds go to two charities chosen by Mary Stubbs, the Joslin Diabetes Clinic and Milton Academy, where Hal taught science for many years.
The people who made science fiction what it is today are almost all gone now. But they are not and should not be forgotten. Biographies help, but books like this one, created out of and embodying a huge amount of love and respect, fill a very different niche. You don't have to buy the book to honor Hal's memory, but go ahead. Do it anyway!
* * * *
Tachyon Publications celebrates Brian Aldiss's eightieth birthday with a new collection of stories, Cultural Breaks. The stories go all the way back to 1968 ("Total Environment") but are mostly recent. The title suggests sudden attacks of cognitive dissonance, and indeed the lead story, “Tarzan of the Alps,” is a perfect illustration of just that. A traveling cinema shows an old movie in the back country, and illiteracy leaps to a remarkable misunderstanding.
Aldiss's career is well worth celebrating. Buy the book, and blow out a candle.
* * * *
The fifth edition of Neil Barron's invaluable reference work, Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction, is now available. If you have used it in the past to look up thumbnail sketches of famous novels or to find out what is available in the way of other reference works, criticism, history, author studies, teaching materials, etc., I need say no more than that the book has been brought up to date, covering not only another decade's worth of the field's best but also vastly expanding the coverage of online material (the fourth edition appeared in 1995, when the World Wide Web was very young). If you have not used it before, those sketches of novels fill nearly 400 pages of the book, they focus on what the contributors consider the best (many writers are therefore absent), and they add up to a remarkable overview of the field as well as a 1300-book reading list for anyone ambitious enough to dream of reading all SF of importance.
However, the index is inadequate, for it fails to cover the first 90 pages of the book, which consists of essays on the history of the field. Anyone interested in that material, or wishing to see where entry (e.g.) II-1305 (Zebrowski's Macrolife) fits into the history will be frustrated.
Highly recommended—warts and all—to anyone interested in the history and scholarship of the field. An essential acquisition for libraries of all kinds.
* * * *
Since Doug Beason is a familiar name to you, you may be interested in The E-Bomb: How America's New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change the Way Future Wars Will Be Fought. The theme is lasers, microwaves, and force fields (or pain-causing energy beams), Beason is an expert in the field, and he explains the details at a level that should be comprehensible to any educated adult.
If his forecasts are right ... Just keep watching the news.
* * * *
Reading an essay in the latest Communications of the ACM, I find the line, “Computer science is one of the most exciting scientific endeavors in recent history,” and I think, “Of course!” Computer science was almost wholly a creation of the twentieth century, the product of a corps of extraordinarily high-caliber thinkers (Shannon, Weiner, Turing, Godel, and more), and it has arguably done more to change our daily lives than any other area of twentieth-century science and technology. (The assembly line and the internal combustion engine may have done more, but these extend back into the nineteenth century.)
The same day's mail brought an advance copy of novelist and physicist Alan Lightman's The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th Century Science. Lightman's approach is to discourse intelligently and eloquently on 22 such seminal topics as hormones, DNA, the quantum, special relativity, antibiotics, quarks, and synapses and attaches the original papers that announced each discovery (sometimes abridged). The result is an impressive volume, essential to any educated person's library.
But where are Godel, Turing, Shannon, Weiner? Lightman restricts his coverage to physics, chemistry, biology, and astronomy. Mathematics, information theory, and computer science are quite absent. So, for that matter, is anthropology, which in the 1920s saw the discovery of our australopithecine roots. Paleontology could have had a chapter, with the discovery that a comet or asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs dating only to the 1980s.
Of course, Lightman's book is already fat, and to be fair, he does claim to cover only some of the great discoveries. If the book sells well, perhaps he will do a second volume to cover a few more.
(c)Copyright 2006 by Tom Easton
* * * *
We welcome your letters, which should be sent to Analog, 475 Park Avenue South, Floor 11, New York, NY 10016, or e-mail to analog@dellmagazines.com. Space and time make it impossible to print or answer all letters, but please include your mailing address even if you use e-mail. If you don't want your address printed, put it only in the heading of your letter; if you do want it printed, please put your address under your signature. We reserve the right to shorten and copy-edit letters. The email address is for editorial correspondence only—please direct all subscription inquiries to: 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Brass Tacks
Letters from Our Readers
Dear Dr. Schmidt,
It is very late in the evening, and I just finished a long day. I read your editorial in the November 2005 issue to relax a bit—but for the first time ever, I am moved to write a response. This fact is significant as I have been an avid and faithful reader of my beloved Analog for almost forty years.
I could not agree more with your stance, sir—and I have put my money where my mouth is for all of my professional career. I am a nurse, and for many years practiced in the specialty of obstetrics/gynecology. Part and parcel of caring for women is realizing that sometimes they are pregnant and they do not want to be. All moralizing and posturing aside, this fact remains. I have always believed that a woman should be able to choose whether or not she is pregnant. She should choose in advance—but only because it's less mess and bother that way. And not all sex is consensual.
When I was a student nurse, I had to do a clinical rotation and attend lectures about caring for psychiatric patients. One of the accepted treatments for depression at the time was electroshock therapy. I had seen what its aftereffects had done to my mother, and I could not tolerate even watching the convulsions that the shocks caused on film—let alone in real life. But it was an accepted treatment modality at that time. I chose not to become a psychiatric nurse. I have done a variety of kinds of nursing in the course of 30 years—but never “psych nurse.”
My introduction to the process of elective termination of pregnancies was in a busy OB/GYN office as a relief staff nurse. The doctors made it very clea
r that abortions were performed at this office, and if a nurse had any objections to this she should not accept a position with them. They were good doctors and they did not lack for staff. And the abortion patients got good, safe care just like everyone else.
At the end of my clinical career, I worked at a local hospital in a high-risk obstetrical setting. Pregnancy terminations were done at this center only after they had been reviewed by an ethics committee, and only for serious maternal and/or fetal issues inconsistent with life. No elective abortions were performed at all in this setting. Many of the nurses were devout “believers” and would not participate in the terminations. By this, I do not mean that these “Christian” nurses would not take an assignment of this type—they would not answer the woman's call light to help her to the bathroom or bring her a drink of water or something for pain. They felt (and said loudly, at the nurses’ station) that they could not “condone” the abortion because of their beliefs. It was like the suffering woman in the bed was not even human to them any more. I cared for a lot of these women, and I can tell you that a soul in that situation is a very needy patient. And she is not having a good time.
Thank you for the chance to speak my piece—even if it never makes print. I am reassured to know that someone out there understands the basic precepts we all should have learned in seventh grade civics class.
Lucie S. Krueger, RN
Phoenix, AZ
* * * *
Dear Stan,
Accepting a pharmacist's “right” to keep his/her job after refusing to fill a prescription that counters his/her own religious faith could have interesting consequences beyond those that your November editorial detailed.
If I train as a pharmacist, find employment in that field, and subsequently convert to Christian Science (or some other faith that frowns on materia medica), I could refuse to fill any prescriptions whatsoever—yet (on the “right to refuse” theory) I would have a “right” to continue to draw my paycheck simply for standing behind the counter and saying “No.”
Religious beliefs of one Hindu sect, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), reportedly include flat-Earth astronomy with our solar system's other planets (presumably also flat) designed, ruled, and inhabited by the various Hindu deities. Beliefs and teaching of the society also include (again, reportedly—I draw my info from ex-members) a history in which, for several million years, India ruled the Earth, and a biology in which men's brains have twice the weight and volume of women's brains.
If someone makes men and women's safety helmets, and the women's (or men's) helmets fail to protect their wearers because of miscalculated skull weights and volumes, presumably the helmet-maker (if he or she has an ISKCON membership card) can escape legal consequences by pointing out that “According to my religion I have calculated correctly. Therefore, the helmet must have fit.”
Kate Gladstone
* * * *
Dear Stan,
I just read your “Diffuse Tyranny” editorial in the November 2005 issue. I know you to be an intelligent, reasonable person, but I think you really missed the salient issue here.
You view with alarm the actions of some pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for medications that offend their moral sensibilities. But you conflate this with that pharmacist “overruling” the physician who wrote the prescription. Does this pharmacist then work for said physician, so that such “overruling” is a violation of job policy? No, the pharmacist is a free agent just as much as the doctor or the patient. You say that the pharmacist is “employed to fill whatever legally written prescriptions are presented.” This is manifestly incorrect. The pharmacist is employed to follow the policies of his employer, and if self-employed to make judgments as he sees fit. If a customer doesn't like those judgments, he should take his business elsewhere. Don't tell me that isn't realistic sometimes. If enough customers agree on this point, there will be some other pharmacist to meet their needs. Or they can go to the internet. Whatever. But it's not justification for forcing someone to violate his or her moral tenets.
Let me give you a homologous scenario that I suspect you would answer in exactly the opposite way. Suppose a sporting goods store owner is deeply morally opposed to firearms. I as a customer would like to buy a rifle from said store. Should the owner be forced to sell me the rifle even though he finds it morally repugnant? My answer is no, he shouldn't. I think you will agree with me here. But this is exactly the same scenario you give with the pharmacist; the product sold is the only difference.
When you say that in some areas Christian “Fundamentalists” are forming an increasingly aggressive majority to do what they want rather than what the law says, I'd like to have some specifics. Your pharmacist argument doesn't show that at all. When it comes to the refusal to teach evolution in the public schools (assuming that the district is requiring such teaching) you have a point and said teacher should be disciplined and fired if he continues to refuse.
You say that the honorable thing for a pharmacist to do who doesn't want to fill prescriptions he finds morally repugnant is to quit pharmacy? We must have different definitions of honor my friend. It is in no way dishonorable to abide by your deeply held moral convictions; it would be dishonorable to do otherwise. And yes, others have as much right to their possibly conflicting beliefs as you do. That doesn't mean that you should subrogate your beliefs to theirs whenever they conflict.
Finally, you speak of our own “grassroots Taliban.” From my point of view, we've been developing this for some time in the world of “political correctness,” attempting to force any conflicting viewpoints out of public discourse. It really has taken on the trappings of a secular religion. What you are viewing with alarm may just be a backlash to the very phenomenon you're hoping to forestall, but which has been happening beneath your notice for some time.
Doug Loss
* * * *
Suppose the pharmacist's objection is not to selling birth control pills, but to selling insulin or antibiotics. Do you think we must allow him or her the freedom to refuse to fill those prescriptions, too?
The analogy is at least as valid as your gun analogy, which seems to me hardly comparable. Hardly anybody needs guns to live (in our current culture), but many need drugs. Pharmacies are the only access people have to them, and doctors, not pharmacists, are supposed to decide which ones people should have.
If someone cannot in good conscience do parts of a job, then yes, he should find a different one. A sporting goods store owner can certainly decide not to carry guns, but if he does carry them, then selling them is part of the job and a customer should be able to buy any of a store's inventory from whoever is on duty to sell it. Very few of us have the luxury of taking a job and then just doing the parts of it we like. I see no reason to single pharmacists out as an exception.
* * * *
Dear Dr. Schmidt,
In the November editorial “Diffuse Tyranny,” you talk about the subject of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for things like birth control because of their personal moral philosophy.
This is simply debunked since on any job application that I have filled out there is a question with yes and no boxes. It states something like this: “Is there any reason that you would not be able to perform the duties that would be assigned to you in this job? If yes, explain.” If a pharmacist answers “no” to that question and then fails to fill out prescriptions for legal substances, they should be fired or disciplined. If a pharmacist answers “yes,” a pharmacy may still hire them after an explanation, but the pharmacy should keep pharmacists on staff that will fill those prescriptions.
Businesses are in business to make money. Pharmacists have the choice of career field. If they choose to be a pharmacist without the dedication to the patient to fill their needs, it is negligent and can be harmful to their patients. Some medications require women to be on birth control for simple maladies like acne.
The pharmacist that chooses not to fi
ll birth control medicine prescriptions not only endangers the life of women, but also should take responsibility for any pregnancies that are incurred by people that should not be pregnant and take care of the malformed children that result from medications that affect childbirth. The pharmacist should have to sit with any woman that experiences a miscarriage because the medicine they are taking increases the chances of miscarriages and tell them exactly why they are having a miscarriage and how it is for the moral good.
Alexander Flynn
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Upcoming Events
Anthony Lewis
13-15 January 2006
ARISIA (New England Speculative Media conference) at Boston Park Plaza Hotel, Boston, MA. Guest of Honor: Allen Steele; Artist Guest of Honor: John Howe; Fan Guest of Honor: Barb Schofield. Registration: $40 at the door ($20 Friday, $35 Saturday, $20 Sunday). Info: www.arisia.org; info@arisia.org; Arisia, Building 600, PMB 322, 1 Kendall, Cambridge, MA 02139.
* * * *
20-22 January 2006
COSINE (Colorado-area SF conference) at Colorado Springs, Colorado. Guests of Honor: Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. Info: www.stardel.com/cosine/index. html; COSine, Box 50618, Colorado Springs, CO 80949-0618. [Note: may be held 13-15 January—check the website]
* * * *
27-29 January 2006
VERICON VI (Harvard multi-media conference) at Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA. Guest of Honor: George R. R. Martin. Info: www.vericon.org; conchair@ vericon.org; Vericon VI, c/o 4 University Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
* * * *
17-19 February 2006