See How It All Fits Together

In my essay, "The Scientific Method," I described (and bragged a bit about) some work I once did on the photochemistry of toluene, which has the unusual property of, under some very special conditions limiting the amount of ozone that is generated in a smog system. It's a weird effect, and I was bragging because I'd predicted it, then designed an experiment to show that its weirdness was real.

In a more recent essay, "PAN", I noted that there were some features of the chemistry of that compound that I'd gotten right because of a detailed analysis, a I-knew-what-I-was-doing sort of thing, which is more bragging, of course, but I noted that, science being what it is, I was only a little bit ahead of the curve. The rate constants that I'd had to adjust to make my simulations work were routinely measured as being what I'd needed only a little while after I did my work, and the ordinary workings of science would have produced models that did the right thing, even if no one was paying attention.

In "The Linear Hypothesis," I remarked that sometimes (in fact, pretty often) scientific models are used for purposes of policy and decision making, and a model is often chosen to make that task easier, because, well, that's the purpose at hand. Sometimes this is done for good reasons, like selecting a conservative model in order to observe "The Precautionary Principle," where we are dealing with asymmetric error; if an error in one direction is vastly more costly than an error in the other direction, then simple caution suggests using the more conservative model, even if there is some weight of evidence on the other side.

Anyway, I've just been talking to an old colleague, who tells me that one major smog kinetics model has been "fixed" so that it no longer shows that weird toluene behavior that we actually proved to exist. The experiment that proves it is now considered "old" (as if chemistry somehow goes bad with age), or "sloppy," or the result of experimental error. Not that anyone is bothering to replicate it, you understand.

I expect that it has to do with it just being too confusing to have models tell you that sometimes adding one pollutant can produce less of another pollutant. Or something like that. The rationalizations sound pretty sad, however.

We've been hearing a lot lately about the ways and methods that various players in the Bush Administration have been tampering with scientific reports, muzzling scientists, and twisting the system to their own ends. This is, of course, despicable. What I am saying here is that I've seen a lot of this sort of thing throughout my entire scientific career, coming from every policy quarter. Yes, the Bush Adminstration does it, and has been totally shameless about it. But they had plenty of precedent from the Tobacco Industry, the Oil Industry, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and, I will add, Environmental organizations and regulators. When people have an ax to grind, they will first grind it on the facts of the matter, or at least the theories and models that are used to codify the facts.

The "Probability Engine" that the time meddlers found in Destiny Times Three by Fritz Leiber was originally a simulation engine, developed by advanced beings to calculate the probable results of various actions, and to avoid the worst actions and their consequences. The horror of the story is that the device came into the possession of humans, who, with the best intentions (but insufferable arrogance) used it to create those dystopian worlds, rather than simply model them.

I do so hope that this is not, ultimately, a metaphor for science in the hands of human beings.

Destiny Time Three

I recently reread Destiny Times Three, by Fritz Leiber. Given that Leiber is my favorite science fiction and fantasy writer, and DT3 is possibly my favorite of all his longer works, it may not require explanation as to my purpose in the endeavor. However, given that I don't even mention DT3 in my long essay on Leiber, "Sleeping in Fritz Leiber's Bed," I may have some 'splaining to do. Moreover, there was at least one ancillary purpose that bears exploring.

In his autobiographical writings, Lieber says that his original conception of Destiny Times Three was grandiose. He intended a work of around 100,000 words at a time when "complete novel in this issue" meant a novella of maybe 30-40,000 words, and 60,000 words was the standard length for a book.

But DT3 was a victim of the WWII paper shortages, and, by editorial demand, Leiber cut it down to the more standard "short novel" length, so that it could fit into two consecutive issues of Astounding, losing, by his own account, all of the female characters and a great deal of the richness of the worlds he'd created. I had something similar happen to me with the magazine version of "SunSmoke," but I got to make up for it somewhat when I expanded it to book length. Leiber's full version of Destiny Times Three is lost forever.

Dammit.

The general story of DT3 is that there are parallel worlds, but not due to the natural workings of physics, etc. Instead, sometime in the late 19th Century, an alien device was found by a fellow who fancied himself a scientist. He enlisted the assistance of seven other individuals, because it took eight minds to operate the thing, and they used it to slowly create a "utopia," by splitting the world at crucial decision points, observing which world was most to their liking, then "destroying" the "experimental control" worlds. Very scientific.

In fact, they had not destroyed each of these worlds, but merely placed them beyond their own ability to access them, "swept them under the rug" as it were.

The protagonists on Earth 1, the utopian world, are Thorn and Clawly, who rather closely resemble Fahfred and Gray Mouser, or, more accurately, Lieber and his friend Harry Fischer, at least in their imagined incarnations. It's also not a great leap to consider the duo as Thor and Loki (or Loke, as Leiber spells it), given the former's name and the latter's specific comparison to Loke as the tale unfolds. Also, Norse imagery is an ongoing motif throughout the story.

On Earth 1, the power of "subtronics" has been harnessed, subtronics being a Campbellian trope for a sort of "unified field theory" that can also be found in Heinlein's Sixth Column/The Day After Tomorrow, itself a reworking of material supplied by John W. Campbell. All have access to its power, and the unparalleled freedom that results, anti-gravity cloaks and almost total environmental control (the book begins with a description of a "symchromy," an optical symphony on a grand scale) being throwaway mentions in the first couple of pages.

On Earth 2, subtronics was kept as a secret by "The Party" and a totalitarian state was created. Later in DT3 an Earth 3 is discovered to exist, where an attempt was made to suppress the discovery, with a resulting war that destroyed most of humanity and ripped open the Earth's crust to such an extent that rapid geological weathering removed so much CO2 from the air as to produce an ice age. This may be the first mention of the "greenhouse effect" in science fiction, incidentally.

There are versions of Thorn in all three worlds, and versions of Clawly on at least Earth 1 and Earth 2. But on Earth 1, they are fast friends, and Earth 2, they are bitter enemies, the difference being primarily Clawly's personalities. On Earth 2, he is a Party member, while the Earth 2 Thorn is part of the Resistance, such as it is.

But despite the fact that the connections between the worlds has been severed by the "experimenters" who now live outside of normal time, the worlds are not totally separate. There remains a connection between individuals who have duplicates on other parallel worlds: They dream each other's dreams. The dream visions of utopia are a grinding torment to those who live in the totalitarian dystopia. And as a result of this desperate yearning of millions of minds, the barriers between the worlds are beginning to blur. Sometimes, someone goes to sleep in one world, and awakens in another.

So the plot thickens, events transpire, and eventually there is considerable resolution. You can find DT3 in various versions on either Amazon or ABE books. Wildside Press seems to be promising a release, but it doesn't appear on their website, so caveat emptor. I have both the Binary Star reissue (which also contains Spinrad's "Riding the Torch," it's printing as Galaxy Novel #28, and the two original issues of Astounding. I told you I liked it.

Lately, I have been haunted by that initial vision from Destiny Times Three, the portrait of a world of people yearning so profoundly for something better than what they have that the walls of reality have begun to crumble. Or, if you will, think about people who are so enamored by a dream life that they cross over and take up living there.

A minor point in the book, it's true, but still…

We have news items that World of Warcraft gamers have died from devoting so much time and energy to the game that they neglected such matters as eating and sleeping. Second Life seems to sometimes create an almost religious fervor and perhaps a Ponzi scheme in those who choose to spend a lot of time there. Such things are hardly new, of course. Many of us recall the guy who got into Dungeons and Dragons just a little too enthusiastically, or the fellow who tried to use his SCA credentials for something out in the real world. There are "RenFaire" bums, just as there are those who have tried to spend their entire adult lives surfing. Sure, I get that.

I also get that we seem to have switched "autobiographical fiction" with the "fictional autobiography." The former is pretty inevitable; the latter seems a lot more fraudulent, doesn't it?

Then there are the "reality shows," made so very omnipresent by the writers' strike. Most such fair is just new variations on old game shows, but some of it shows a new sort of creepy voyeurism for voyeurism's sake, where the old line about a celebrity being "famous for being famous" gets too close to the truth.

What is the result when millions of people yearn for fame as the only thing they can imagine that will fill their emptiness? Do the walls of reality begin to crumble when everything becomes a reality show?

Ah, sure, I'm just being dyspeptic here, or maybe even dystopian. It's still possible to live a normal life. But I do get a little peep of horror when I consider how extraordinary an effort that can take.

I Can't Resist These

"The Pied Piper of Basin Street" featuring Jack Teagarden:



Ecstacy: Louise Brooks, set to the band Underworld.



And if you want to know "Why Louise Brooks?" you can read this.

Vamp in the Middle

“I’m playing this song with a vamp in the middle…” – John Hartford

vamp - n.
1: a seductive woman who uses her sex appeal to exploit men
[syn: coquette, flirt, vamper, minx, tease, prickteaser]
2: an improvised musical accompaniment
3: short form for vampire

The first time I read Fritz Leiber’s “The Girl With the Hungry Eyes,” I was probably in my early teens, in transition from the triumvirate of Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke to Leiber, Sturgeon, and Sheckley (I might have said Bester instead of Sheckley, but Bester had at least temporarily left the field for the steady paycheck offered by Holiday magazine).

“Girl” made it to television in the early 1970s, as one of “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery” episodes. “Night Gallery” was an embarrassment toward the very end to Serling’s television career, the embarrassment being primarily to due the producer, Jack Laird, who also sometimes wrote and directed, or at least got credited as such. “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” was particularly mishandled, beginning with the casting of Joanna Pettet as “The Girl.” Pettet is conventionally good looking, and appeared in several other Night Gallery episodes, both of which reducing her impact as “The Girl.” "The Girl" should, at the very least, have eyes that dominate her face. Amy suggests Christina Ricci, and I think Ricci would nail it (not that Ricci was even alive in 1972, but you get the idea).

A bit of searching also tells me that there are two films with the same title, one an exploitation film (about lesbians) made by William Rotsler in 1967; Rotsler was a friend of Lieber’s and probably got permission to use the title for a film not based on Leiber’s short story. The other is an actual vampire film made in 1993 by someone named Jon Jacobs, and by all reports is just god-awful.

I re-read “Girl” after seeing the Night Gallery episode, just to make sure I remembered it correctly, i.e. as being good. It was. I then re-read it maybe a decade later, and remember a faint sense of disappointment. The vernacular used to tell the story seemed stilted, and I was bothered by just how many times and how many ways Leiber telegraphed the ending.

Then I re-read it last night for this essay, and lo and behold, it’s even better than I thought when I first read it. The vernacular style is irrelevant (and my older and wiser self realizes that for me to critique a vernacular from several years before I was born is just me being an ass). And the multiple attempts by the narrator/author to prepare the listener/reader for the ending feels like a man trying to work up the nerve to divulge something so horrific that he hardly dares remember it. And no matter how many times I’ve read it, the ending still punches through my defenses:

“I want you…I want everything that’s made you happy and everything that’s hurt you bad. I want your first girl…I want that pinhole camera… I want your mother’s death… I want Mildred’s mouth. I want the first picture you sold…I want the gin. I want Gwen’s hands. I want you wanting me. I want your life. Feed me, baby, feed me.”
--Fritz Leiber, “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes”

I’ve made no secret of my nigh-unto-worship of Fritz Leiber as a writer, and I’m hardly alone. Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have both said as much. And I’ve written a long essay on Leiber, "Sleeping in Fritz Leiber's Bed," New York Review of Science Fiction, May, 2004.

In that essay, I also talk about a kind of fantasy story that is about fantasy, rather than having actualized fantasy elements. Lieber’s “The Secret Songs” and “The Winter Flies” (aka “The Inner Circles”) are examples, as is “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and "That's What Happened to Me" by Micheal Fessier (which is also an “unreliable narrator” story).

Although “Vamp in the Middle” was always the title, my Hollywood Pitch title was “The Fabulous Baker Boys meet The Girl with the Hungry Eyes.” Of course there are three young musicians in Vamp, and only two Baker Boys, but the image of a musical group auditioning for a “chick singer” who could show some cleavage and help them get gigs was one of the images that fused together in the story. Another was one of someone staring into the depths of a mirror, trying to see her own reflection, but never being able to convince herself that she was real when she was alone.

There are, after all, reasons for all those hoary vampire tropes. Some people do need other people around to reassure themselves of their own reality, and those people are very attracted to show business and the possibilities of gorging themselves on fame.

The hardest thing about “Vamp” was the ending, of course. I knew I’d never be able to match the impact of “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes,” and besides, I was tapping into a different Leiberian ore body anyway. The narrator is yet another lost soul who has somehow escaped what should have been his doom, but he’s not sure what it was he escaped, and what sort of life he then committed himself to. Ultimately, he’s not even sure he didn’t imagine it as some sort of dark tale constructed out of a much more mundane and sordid reality.

My thanks to William Sanders who recognized the ambiguity, and to Lawrence Watt-Evans, for convincing Mr. Sanders that the right sort of ambiguity still qualifies as speculative fiction.

http://www.helixsf.com/index.htm

Helix is view supported, just like Public Television, only without those annoying pledge drives. Or like a church. So drop some coins in the collection plate and make the devil dance.