Sunday, June 10, 2007

Richard Dengrove, Alexandria, VA, USA

I loved Challenger 25. Of course, I loved most my article "The Rise and Fall of the Canals of Mars." It was a great masterpiece if I don't say so myself – modestly.

On the other hand, my article "Heinlein's Children: a Review" was a great travesty. It would have been no big deal if, once, I had confused Heinlein's novel Tunnel in the Sky with Time for the Stars; if, once, I had written it Tunnel for the Stars. That could have been forgiven. The problem is that I did it five times and then got it right once. When someone criticized me for making the mistake, I argued that my ideas remain valid. However, that was before I realized how often I had gotten the title wrong.

Also, I got wrong that Farmer in the Sky was set in the asteroid belt. No, it was obviously set on the Moon of Jupiter Ganymede. This should teach me to re-check my facts and spelling.

Not even the cyberpunk novelists of the ‘80s made as glaring a mistake. They did make a big one. Joe Major, in the "Cyber-Punks," is right that they extrapolated from technology current in its time without even extrapolating new technology.

Yet they would have done one good thing for science fiction if only other writers had carried the ball. I suspect regular science fiction has concerned itself too much with elites, military men and other movers and shakers of the future; and has ignored the rest of the population. Cyberpunk gave the future an Underbelly; something needed for a more complete society. Maybe someone could give science fiction a Middle Class as well.

The Cyberpunks may have been wrong; but, in his diary of LA Con, I don't think Mike Resnick made any mistake when he went to the Gene Autry museum. The Western is a part of us that has been lost. I remember, during the ‘50s, when the Western was popular. In fact, I remember a time when the majority of TV shows were Westerns. The past had a myth then as well as facts.

However, no longer. Periodically, there are attempts at Westerns, but they don't come off right. Part of the problem is that the real Western is un-p.c. Even when, as I remember, one hero was an Apache with pre-Hippy long hair.

The big problem, though, is that we don't want to deal with our feelings about the past. We did in the ‘40s through the ‘60s. Costume dramas were big then. The Civil War as a hobby was bigger then. Now poof.

As Mike Resnick is right about the Western, Mary Ann van Hartesveldt is spot on about Scientology. I suspect the reason it opposes psychiatry is that psychiatrists gave ammo for L. Ron Hubbard's second wife, Sara Northrup, to divorce him. I will have to re-read Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies; but if I remember correctly, they considered him "hopelessly insane."

Alex Slate is right that there are several variants on the Yiddish word for dust collector. I am sure his "tschotschke" is one of them. I have often seen it written as "tsotske." However, my father always pronounced it "chotchka."

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