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Analog SFF, June 2009
by Dell Magazine Authors
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Science Fiction
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Dell Magazines
www.analogsf.com
Copyright ©2009 by Dell Magazines
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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Cover art by Michael Carroll for “Futuropolis"
Cover design by Victoria Green
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CONTENTS
Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: SIGNS OF RESPECT by Stanley Schmidt
Reader's Department: BIOLOG: CRAIG DELANCEY by Richard A. Lovettt
Novelette: BUT IS DOES MOVE by Harry Turtledove
Science Fact: FUTUROPOLIS: HOW NASA PLANS TO CREATE A PERMANENT PRESENCE ON THE MOON by Michael Carroll
Novelette: CHAIN by Stephen L. Burns
Short Story: SOLACE by James Van Pelt
Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: ODDS AND ENDS #4 by Jeffery D. Kooistra
Short Story: THE COLD STAR SKY by Craig DeLancy
Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME
Short Story: ATTACK OF THE GRUB-EATERS by Richard A. Lovett
Novelette: MONUMENT OF UNAGEING INTELLECT by Howard V. Hendrix
Novelette: THE AFFAIR OF THE PHLEGMISH MASTER by Donald Moffitt
Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY by Don Sakers
Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS
Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS by Anthony Lewis
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Vol. CXXIX No. 6, June 2009
Stanley Schmidt Editor
Trevor Quachri Managing Editor
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Published since 1930
First issue of Astounding January 1930 (c)
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Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: SIGNS OF RESPECT
by Stanley Schmidt
In an earlier editorial ("The Great Rush Forward,” November 2008) I commented on the phenomenon of “phantom tyrants.” These are impersonal forces that presumably originate with identifiable actions by individual people but then take on a life of their own and continue to dictate people's behavior whether or not any individual would independently choose them. We commonly know them by such names as “custom” or “fashion,” depending on how long they've been around and how strictly people are expected to follow them. “Fashions” are relatively recent, considered likely to change, and relatively optional. Many people consider it “cool” to follow them, but few will feel you should be punished if you don't. Customs are more solidly entrenched and often taken more seriously. If you don't follow them, you're quite likely to be reprimanded or punished if you're a child, and shunned as a boor if you're an adult.
As an example, I mentioned the expectation that male members of our society will remove hats when entering a building. Some of my teachers (and even teachers who weren't mine but whom I inevitably passed on the way to the school bus) were quite insistent on this; they offered no reason for it, and to me it seemed completely arbitrary, pointless, and sexist. In later years I was told that it was a sign of respect, though those who told me that were singularly vague about where that respect (or disrespect shown by noncompliance) was directed. I eventually figured out that it was something that everybody did (or expected others to do) simply because they had a vague belief that everybody else expected it.
This still seems to me a remarkably strange phenomenon in a society that prides itself on democracy—government by people voting for their leaders and the rules they will follow. In an election, it's clear how that principle works: a question is posed, each citizen (or legislator) voices his or her opinion about it, and the choice with the most votes wins. In the “hat question,” nobody ever asked anyone of my acquaintance what rule (if any) they thought should be followed, and I suspect that very few had ever thought about it and come up with a reason why it made any difference. That's why I coined the term “phantom tyrant": we were all slavishly following the dictates not of an individual dictator, not of a majority of voters who had expressed their opinions, but of an alleged consensus of people, none of whom might actually hold the “consensus” view if asked.
When I mentioned these musings here, several readers helpfully volunteered answers to “the hat question,” ranging from some long-ago queen demanding that those of lower rank bare their heads in her presence to show deference, to medieval knights raising their visors to show that they were “off duty” and not about to instigate mortal combat. Any one (or perhaps more) of these might actually be at least a partial explanation of how the custom began, but none of them answers the question I posed, which was, “Why does an individual man or boy now remove his hat inside?” That question is only Part 1 of two, and its answer is, “Because the phantom tyrant tells him to, and he feels compelled to obey.” Part 2, the one my correspondents tried to answer, is, “Why does the phantom tyrant tell him to?” Surely no one now ever thinks, “I'm going to take my hat off because some long-ago, faraway queen demanded it or because some long-ago, faraway knight lifted his visor.” There's simply no logical connection between those two events unless something else bridges the gap between them. That something is the creation of the phantom tyrant (and the belief that it must be obeyed).
So the more interesting questions for present purposes are: how do such things come to be, why do people feel compelled to follow them, and to what extent do they actually show respect? An arbitrary action like doffing a hat, raising a stiff arm, or addressing someone by title rather than name shows genuine respect if and only if everybody involved agrees that it does—and even then, only if it's voluntary.
A “sign of respect” that people are forced to make shows nothing at all about real respect. Real respect can be easily and clearly shown without such artifices, by such simple means as considerate treatment, attentive listening, careful consideration of what another person says, voluntarily doing things for them, and expressing sincere appreciation for things they do. A compulsory “sign of respect” may in fact express nothing more than a desire to avoid ostracism or punishment. It may show respect, but it can just as easily mask anything from indifference to outright contempt, while ostensibly showing the opposite.
Which makes it completely useless as an indicator of real respect.
So do such things have any positive value or serve any useful purpose? Actually, they can. Oddly enough, o
ne of the clearest examples can be found in an area where the rules are much more rigorously defined and the consequences of failure to play the game are much more severe than being considered ill-mannered. In military organizations, ironclad rules spell out quite specifically who must show (or feign) respect to whom, and in precisely what manner. I was once struck by the presumably unintentional irony in a military training manual that devoted several paragraphs to the particulars of saluting. Among other things, it said that a noncom's saluting an officer, or an officer's returning the salute, was just like greeting a friend. How, I wondered, could the author so glibly gloss over the obvious (and huge) differences? As civilians, we decide (mutually) who our friends are, and whether and how to greet them. As soldiers or sailors, we are told by our “superiors” who must salute whom, and how, and we forget it or exercise our own opinions at our own peril. If we don't salute somebody we should, or salute somebody we shouldn't, that's a punishable offense, and it will be punished.
To somebody who's not into that sort of thing, such ritualized behavior is likely to seem silly, if not offensive—especially in a peaceful situation. But eventually, grudgingly, I came to see that it does serve a purpose. Peaceful situations are not what armies, navies, police forces, and fire departments are for. They come into their own under conditions of life-or-death emergency, when many people have to act in a concerted way and few of them have the luxury of mulling their options or seeing how their personal actions fit into the big picture. Under those conditions, like it or not, somebody has to coordinate things, figure out what other individuals need to do, issue orders, and expect those orders to be carried out. That will only happen if those under the leader's command respect him or her—or act as if they did.
All the rituals, the forced shows of respect, are ways of making sure people at least act as if they respect those whom they must follow, even if they don't. That's important because not everyone has the knack of commanding genuine respect—so everyone is provided with tools for at least creating a serviceable substitute. And those tools are exercised even under tranquil conditions, when they're not really necessary, so they'll be sharpened and ready when they're really needed.
There is an implicit danger, of course. A means anybody can use to force the appearance of respect, even if they can't earn the real thing, may reduce the incentive to try to earn the real thing. So safeguards are needed to protect against that. And I hope most of us would agree that ordinary civilian life should not too closely resemble military discipline. But even there, most cultures probably need at least some rituals to enforce a semblance of respect and courtesy, because even there not everybody can earn or practice the real thing—though it's still worthwhile to try.
Some cultures could probably use fewer than they have, and others could use more. And as a science fiction writer and editor I'm tempted to wonder: Could a civilization develop in a species without the tendency to create and obey these shadowy forces that dictate the semblance of respect for others, whether or not the real thing is there? If so, what form might such a civilization take? n
Copyright © 2009 Stanley Schmidt
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Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Astounding), Vol. CXXIX, No. 6, June 2009. ISSN 1059-2113, USPS 488-910, GST#123054108. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One-year subscription $55.90 in the United States and possessions, in all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within eight weeks of receipt of order. When reporting change of address allow 6 to 8 weeks and give new address as well as the old address as it appears on the last label. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. (c) 2009 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. Protection secured under the Universal Copyright Convention. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. All stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name or character. Any similarity is coincidental. All submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope, the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.
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Reader's Department: BIOLOG: CRAIG DELANCEY
by Richard A. Lovettt
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Many writers struggle with career choices, bouncing from one field to another. Not Craig DeLancey. “Since I was 15 I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life,” he says. “I wanted to be a philosopher and science fiction novelist.”
The academic goal came first. Other than a brief interlude in the computer industry during the dotcom boom, DeLancey went from a Ph.D. in philosophy and cognitive science to a position as a professor at the State University of New York at Oswego. And with a dozen stories now in print and a novel in circulation, he's also well on the way to the latter goal, not to mention becoming an award-winning playwright on the side, with two plays in performance and two more in staged readings in 2008 alone.
Selling to Analog was always part of the dream. “Most people who know me think of my science fiction as sociological,” he says. “Publishing in Analog makes me feel that I can claim hard-science-fiction credibility.”
Academically, he says, “I'm what philosophers call a philosopher of mind.” Translation: he studies emotion, artificial intelligence, and consciousness, though he's also done a smattering of behavioral economics and evolutionary game theory.
Writing and philosophy are a good mix, he says. “Philosophy's a very good source of ideas,” he says. For example, his second Analog story “Amor Vincit Omnia” (April 2008) involved people who'd been genetically engineered to care more strongly than usual about the future.
“I'd been doing research on the relationship between emotion and rationality,” he says. “There are people with emotional deficits. They can tell you ‘Here's what you should do,’ and then they won't do it themselves. That led me to wonder [if] perhaps this is a matter of degree. Maybe to somebody else, we would be like that. You're always grappling with huge questions in philosophy. It's very inspiring to turn them around into, ‘What if?'”
Of course, a good story is more than simply a question. “I hope, first of all, to entertain,” he says. “[But] science fiction has its own special purview, the sense of wonder. I think a great science fiction story, in addition to being entertaining, would instill a sense of wonder because that's [also] a good thing: it inspires us and motivates us.”
There's a third element, though, to the best stories, he says, an element that separates them from academia.
“Science fiction and other kinds of literature get to stuff you can't say in theory: the irreducible complexities of what it's like to confront this in your own particular life. You need the whole story to do it, to say what would it be like to live through this.”
Not that he thinks the things our descendents will need to live through are bleak. “I think the future is still really bright,” he says. “We're all disappointed we don't have our jet packs, but I think there are still a lot of reasons to be optimistic and feel awe for what's in front of us.”
Copyright © 2009 Richard A. Lovett
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Novelette: BUT IS DOES MOVE
by Harry Turtledove
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Illustrated by William Warren
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Hardware technologies are not the only innovations that could have had profound effects if introduced before their time....
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Spring in Rome. Mild, mostly sunny days. Pretty women's smiles, as bright as the Su
n. Plants putting forth new leaves—a green almost painfully beautiful. A torrent of birdsong. Music in the air along with the birdsong. Monuments of mellowed marble, some close to 2,000 years old.
What heart could know such marvels without rejoicing?
Galileo Galilei's heart had no trouble at all.
With all that heart, Galileo wished he were back in Florence, where he belonged. Was the Sun less brilliant there? Were the pretty women's smiles? Did the birds not sing there? Had they no musicians, no monuments? Of course not!
Had they no Holy Inquisition in Florence? They did—they did indeed. But Pope Urban VIII was not convinced it had done all it should concerning Galileo. And so the astronomer had been summoned to Rome for interrogation, like any common criminal.
Muttering to himself, Galileo shook his head. Summoned like a criminal? Yes. Like a common criminal? No. The Inquisition didn't bother with common criminals. He wished with all his heart that it hadn't bothered with him.
When the summons came, he pleaded age. Was he not sixty-eight? Travel truly wasn't easy for him any more. He'd pleaded ill health. He was not a well man; who approaching his threescore and ten was what he had been earlier in life? Three learned Florentine physicians attested to his infirmities. There was plague in Florence. He would have had to spend time in quarantine before being suffered to enter the Papal States.
Did the Inquisition care about any of that? Galileo did some more muttering. As well expect Michelangelo's David to weep as the Inquisition to care!
And bending Galileo to its will—showing that it had both the power and the right to bend him to its will—was part of his punishment. Worse would have befallen him had he refused the summons. He'd really thought he could get away with the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. He'd published it to much acclaim the summer before. But the Inquisition's summons to Rome was acclaim he would gladly have done without.
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