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Cover art by John Allemand
Cover design by Victoria Green
CONTENTS
Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: LOOSE ENDS, MISSED POINTS, AND TANGENTS by Stanley Schmidt
Novella: DOCTOR ALIEN by Rajnar Vajra
Science Fact: NEPTUNE, NEPTUNE, NEPTUNE ... BUT NOT NEPTUNE by Kevin Walsh
Novelette: ZHENG HE AND THE DRAGON by Dave Creek
Novelette: TO LEAP THE HIGHEST WALL by Richard Foss
Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: ENERGY CRISIS *REDUX:* A POLEMIC by Jeffery D. Kooistra
Short Story: ROCKS by John G. Hemry
Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME
Short Story: EXCELLENCE by Richard A. Lovett
Novelette: SMALL BUSINESS by Edward M. Lerner
Serial: WAKE by Robert J. Sawyer
Novella: THE RECOVERY MAN'S BARGAIN by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Reader's Department: GUEST REFERENCE LIBRARY by Ian Randal Strock
Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS
2008 INDEX
IT'S ANLAB TIME AGAIN
Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS by Anthony Lewis
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Vol. CXXIX No. 1 & 2, January-February 2009
Stanley Schmidt Editor
Trevor Quachri Managing Editor
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Published since 1930
First issue of Astounding January 1930 (c)
Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: LOOSE ENDS, MISSED POINTS, AND TANGENTS by Stanley Schmidt
A perennial source of fascination in my job is the wondrous array of things people read into my editorials that I never wrote there—and things they apparently don't read that I did write. If the same kind of problem happened with most readers, I'd have to conclude that I did a bad job of saying what I meant. But usually enough readers do get what I intended that I think I said it clearly enough, but not everyone read it carefully. It's not just me, either; every opinion writer I know has often experienced the same phenomenon.
And it's not always a bad thing. Sometimes, instead of simply misunderstanding or misrepresenting what was said, a reader will point out an aspect of the topic that might have been pursued further, or take something in the original essay as a jumping-off point to go in a whole new direction. Some of those are worthy of discussion in their own right, whether they have much to do with the original piece or not. So today I'd like to respond to an assortment of such loose ends, missed points, and tangents: topics raised in responses to an earlier editorial that warrant counter-responses, whether they're unfinished business, misunderstandings too important to let pass, or new topics somehow suggested by something I said.
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It's not always clear which category best describes a particular point. Consider, for example, the reader who applauded my saying in September 2008 ("'It's All About Me,’ Writ Large") that liberty means that people can do whatever they want as long as it doesn't infringe on others, but then went on to express concern that I'd “fallen for the latest excuse/attempt to destroy individual liberty.” Environmentalism, he opined, “is seen by many as the last best hope for the restoration of tyranny."
That may be (though I question the “many"), but what does it have to do with what I wrote? I reread the editorial in question before sitting down to write this, and confirmed my memory that I had said nothing that could be remotely construed as advocating any form of tyranny. It would be astounding if I had; anyone who's read much of my writing would know that I'm quick to raise the alarm whenever I see anything that looks like even a tentative step in that direction. And that, unlike many who talk a lot about freedom, I explicitly recognize that it has to mean freedom even for people whose tastes and proclivities differ from mine. So was this reader suggesting that I had somehow advocated tyranny for the sake of environmental goals, or merely taking my mention of them as an occasion to mention his belief that others do? Or was he even hinting that environmental protection measures should be avoided because they might infringe on property rights?
The answer never became really clear to me, but he was clearly at least concerned that attempts to protect the environment (and to protect ourselves from adverse changes in it) were likely to take socialistic forms. He went on at some length about the “tragedy of the commons,” which can be described in succinct if oversimplified terms as the tendency for resources held in common to suffer neglect and abuse because nobody owns them. Therefore nobody has the unequivocal responsibility to maintain and protect them and the right to reap their rewards. There is considerable truth in this, wherefore my reader maintained that individual property rights are better for the environment than communal control.
I never disputed this (I never even mentioned it)—but I recognize some qualifications that my correspondent did not address. The key words are that people should be able to do what they want as long as it doesn't infringe on others. The tricky part is determining what constitutes an infringement that others are justified in preventing or punishing. Unsightly as I might find my neighbor's plastic lawn flamingos, I don't think I have the right to tell him he can't have them. But there are cases in which others do have a right, even an obligation, to interfere with actions which, viewed superficially, take place entirely on private property.
The classic example is two families living on their own plots of land on the banks of a river. If the Upstream family nets all the fish coming past its property, collects fresh drinking water at the upstream corner, and dumps its sewage at the downstream corner, it might seem to someone who considers property rights to trump all else that those actions are completely within that family's rights. But their consequences extend far beyond those boundaries, directly depriving the Downstream family of clean water and food. Most of us, I think, would agree that the Downstream family is completely within its rights in insisting on some changes—by force, if necessary.
But then, that won't be necessary if the upstream folks understand the problem and have enough basic human decency to behave in such a way as to avoid causing trouble for those downstream.
If the river is big enough, and the families along it few enough and small enough, the problem won't often arise. But it's been a long time since we've been in th
at situation. The more people you have, and the more impact each of them can have through their technologies, the harder it is to say flatly, “People can do whatever they like on their own property,” because the more likely it is that what they do there will have significant effects elsewhere. When vast numbers of people consume vast quantities of resources and spew forth vast quantities of effluents, the effects become everybody's business.
So, while I agree with my correspondent that people will tend to take better care of their own property than they will of “public” property, I must also reluctantly grant that it isn't that simple. The Upstream family may sincerely believe that it's taking the best possible care of its property by behaving as I described, but that belief is only justified if they consider nothing but the effects of their actions right there. That may become a lot harder when they notice the Downstream neighbors coming up the road with tempers up and pitchforks in hand to demand some consideration—or when others move in still farther upstream and start monopolizing their fish and polluting their water. At that point, like it or not, some form of legislation, or at least cooperative effort, is likely to become necessary for everybody's survival.
And without survival, high-sounding political ideals become unaffordable and meaningless luxuries.
We don't want to reach that point, of course; and most of us, I think and hope, would like to preserve as much individual freedom and property rights as possible. The denser and more powerful the population is, the harder that becomes—which is one of many reasons why I find rampant population growth scary. But we do still have choices.
In “All About Me,” I said nothing about whether the changes we will have to make in recognition of the fact that we are part of a larger system should be made by individuals or by public institutions—socialistic, capitalistic, or anythingistic—setting and enforcing policy. My point was not that the changes we need to make should be made in any particular way, but merely that they have to be made somehow—and that is inescapable.
Personally, I would much prefer to see them made by the majority of people, on their own initiative, acting in ways that maximize their own benefit while minimizing their impact on others. The Upstream family could rationally decide, for example, to catch only the fish they need and dispose of their wastes in some better way than dumping them back into the river downstream. It can work if, and only if, enough people understand enough about how both natural and human systems work to do things that make sense.
And that means they have to be willing to learn. If Mr. Upstream honestly believes it's okay to catch all the fish he can and to dump his trash on his downstream neighbors, things will soon fall apart. People don't have to be forced to behave responsibly if they choose to do so on their own, but that's only likely to happen if they understand why it would benefit them.
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Which leads me to my second package of odds and ends from reader responses to that same editorial. Observing that a published list of “best books of the year” included nothing about science, concentrating entirely on human beings and their foibles and activities, I suggested that this reflected a widely prevalent and dangerously unbalanced view of the world: the view that human beings are the only subject of any real importance. In support of this suggestion, I mentioned William Faulkner's oft-quoted claim that “the human heart in conflict with itself” is “the only thing worth writing about.” I also mentioned my personal experience with English teachers who dismissed science as “too cut and dried,” and remarked that such a view only proved to me that they had never actually done any science.
One reader took extensive exception to my arguments—so extensive that it took three consecutive posts of the maximum allowed length to set them forth on the Analog website's “Readers’ Forum.” He objected, for example, to that use of “proved,” and I'll grant him that it was perhaps a shade too strong a word. “Strongly suggested” might have been better, though I emphasize “strongly.” I suspect this reader would object to that, too, because he also accused me of wrongly claiming to know why the teachers in question were so dismissive of science, and of claiming to know better than they did what was going on in their minds. A deliciously ironic accusation, that, since not only do I make no such claim, but it's the very one that I have often objected to literature teachers making in regard to the authors of works they “interpret."
Rather than claiming to know what's going on in the minds of those teachers I criticize (and please note carefully that I do not equate them to all English teachers), I base my claim on my own experience as one who has done scientific research. It's true that science has a far better developed methodology than the humanities for determining the validity and meaning of data and theoretical models. It's also true that scientists try to reduce those models to the simplest possible form. But achieving that is far from simple or “cut and dried.” Have you ever tried to design an experiment to isolate the particular relationship you were trying to test from the magnificent intricacies of the real world? Have you tried to make that experiment actually work in that real world? If you've ever known the profound thrill of finally seeing it work, or seeing two seemingly unrelated bits of information finally crystallize into an elegant model, you'll know that the process is anything but “cut and dried.” I frankly don't see how anybody who's been through that experience could ever hold such a view. And I know from other data that the particular teachers about whom I made my observation had not had such experience, and in fact had at best a distant acquaintance with science.
My forum critic goes so far as to suggest that writing about science is “trivial and easy” compared to writing about people because people are more complicated and less precisely understood. I can't argue with the last part of that sentence, but I can't take the first part seriously. If it's so trivial and easy, why do so many “humanities” people dread science courses, take as few as they can get away with, and often find them excruciatingly difficult? And why do so many more people consider themselves qualified to write about people if it's so much harder?
But then, this same critic often lumps science and science fiction together, as if they were more or less equivalent, or at least parts of a set. Sometimes he even talks about what I allegedly said in my essay about science fiction and people's attitudes toward it. Please note carefully: while there is certainly a close and unique relationship between science and science fiction, no one should ever make the mistake of thinking they're the same thing. And for the record, “It's All About Me” did not mention science fiction even once—only science.
But that, I repeat, is very important—for everybody, whether they want to admit it or not. How important? My forum correspondent rebukes me for claiming that science is more important and worth writing about than the human heart etc., but in fact I didn't say that. A good case could be made for it, if you were an outsider looking at the universe as a whole; on that scale, we are indeed small potatoes. But none of us is in that position. We're all living in a world where our “foreground” is full of other human beings, so it is indeed important for us to make our best efforts to understand how humans work and how we can best share the world with them—even though that's a formidable task.
But our world is also full of matter in many forms, and forces and energy relationships, and genetic and ecological interactions, and emerging and converging technologies that are constantly reshaping the way we live with our fellows and our world—and over which we can exert some control. So it's no less important for us to make our best efforts to understand those, too.
What I actually said was not that science is more important (from our special point of view) than human activities and relationships, but that it is certainly not less important—and especially not by such a huge factor as that “best books” list and popular attitudes would suggest.
Which brings us back to my starting point. We will have to make some changes if we are to continue living in and enjoying this world, but we have to know somethin
g about how it works if we're to know how to make viable changes. Like the first correspondent I mentioned, I would strongly prefer that adjustments be made as much as possible by individuals retaining autonomy and making their own decisions about what to do on their own turf.
But it can only work if they understand the world well enough to make those decisions responsibly—which means they need to learn all they can about a much wider range of subjects than most do. Many of us have a basic choice to make: we can learn more about the rest of the world and how we fit into it; or we can remain proudly ignorant and keep letting politicians, corporate executives, rumor-mongers, and advertisers make our decisions for us.
And how much confidence does that inspire?
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I thank both the correspondents I cited, as well as all the others who took the time to write, for their thought-provoking comments. They have made valuable contributions, and I appreciate that.
But in general, as we proceed with the inevitable arguments about the increasingly difficult decisions we're all going to face, our chances of eventually converging on good solutions will probably be enhanced if we can all focus on saying exactly what we mean, and hearing exactly what others say.
Copyright © 2008 Stanley Schmidt
[Back to Table of Contents]
Novella: DOCTOR ALIEN by Rajnar Vajra
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Illustration by John Alllemand
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Fixing an abnormality is hard enough when you know what's normal—and a whole lot harder when you don't!
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Funny thing about emotions. While they can be blended ten thousand ways, the basic ingredients are so very limited. Example? Fear. In my case, I'm terrified of performing a fairly ordinary human activity: public speaking. And here I was, about to step into a situation outside all human experience, yet I felt exactly the kind of sick fluttering in my stomach I get every time I'm pressured into addressing my fellow psychiatrists at an APA convention.
Analog SFF, January-February 2009 Page 1