This post serves no other purpose than to make sure I remain near the top of search-results for the word “Clenis”. Move along. Nothing to see here.

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Short Fiction Month Update:

I’ve delved into science fiction in the last couple of days. Ray Bradbury’s “The Million Year Picnic” was a particularly fascinating story set on Mars; one of these days I really should delve deeper into Bradbury. (I’ve only read a handful of his short stories over the years.) Andre Norton’s Mars story, “Mousetrap”, puts an intriguing spin on the old “Prospector on Mars” bit. I also read two short ones by Arthur C. Clarke, an old favorite of mine whom I haven’t read much in a long, long time: “The Secret”, which involves some bit of mystery on the Moon (a plot device which might well have been partly recycled into 2001: A Space Odyssey), and “Reunion”, a one-pager that takes the old idea that humans were originally “seeded” on Earth by aliens and gives it a little twist at the end that probably hit a lot harder in 1971, when the story first appeared, than now. (These stories are available in the second volume of The SFWA Grand Masters, a three-volume set that I find indispensible.)

Finally, I read a very impressive novella the other night: “The Chief Designer”, by Andy Duncan. (I read it in The 19th Annual Year’s Best Science Fiction, but the novella is also available on line.) This story explores the fascinating early days of spaceflight, from the vantage point not of the more familiar Americans (told in The Right Stuff, among other places) but that of the Soviets, focusing on the shadowy figure known to the West only as “The Chief Designer”. This is the genius who, although totally unknown, always seemed to be one step ahead of the Americans in those early days of spaceflight. Duncan paints a thoroughly compelling portrait of this man that is, so far as I can tell, factually accurate, beginning with the rescue from the Stalin gulag of the political prisoner who would go on to become the driving force behind the Soviet Union’s early dominance of the space race. Duncan’s story is particularly moving in the way he manages to portray the Chief Designer’s elusive nature, even to those who knew him.

Another fascinating story in the same Year’s Best anthology is Maureen F. McHugh’s “Interview: On Any Given Day”, which takes the form of an interview with a teenage girl living in 2021. This story is notable for its extrapolation of a future world based on what the world right now looks like, and for the blending of such with attitudes and views that seem to be universal to teenagers, no matter when they live. (By the way, this year’s round of Year’s Best anthologies should start appearing sometime over the next month or so.)

Next up: I revisit Edgar Allan Poe’s prose fiction.

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I have a question: Why, in the course of spending over 6500 words theoretically defending the concept of reason, in which one starts promisingly but eventually veers off (and predictably, at that) into a tiresome tirade against liberals, would you invoke NPR, of all things, as your catch-all, “Look at them stoopid libruls” shorthand insult? Especially when those stoopid libruls probably aren’t that much more enamored of NPR than you are?

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You’ve worked as a policeman your whole life, protecting the innocent, enforcing the law. You retire with honors, then take a job as a security guard, working the metal detector on the ground floor of a skyscraper in order to help pay for your wife’s arthritis medication. You’re sitting there, on a slow day, reading your newspaper, when a girl walks in wearing a trenchcoat. She issues no demands, no warnings, no “freeze” or “drop your gun.” She just tears you in half with a spray of machine-gun fire, then does cartwheels along the walls while killing all your friends.

Somewhere, faintly, you can hear a theater audience cheering.

That’s from Fifty Reasons to Avoid The Matrix Reloaded. And then follow the links to 50 Reasons Lord of the Rings sucks.

For extra credit, seek out the review of Attack of the Clones. Hilarity beyond compare.

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I’m a bit conflicted here: I should hate Jane Galt, because she got a job (whereas I am still without money-generating activity), but then, she’s just reduced the freelancing talent pool (assuming she was a freelance writer, a point on which I am unsure) by going back to actual employment, in which case, I should be thankful to her.

So, Jane, congratulations, good luck, and I hate you.

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I checked the DVD of Camelot out of the library last week, and on Saturday night I watched about half of it.

Now, Camelot has never been my favorite musical. Despite the wonderful songs (as if anything less could ever be expected of Lerner and Loewe), the King Arthur story needs a lot more space than is available in just about any movie. I don’t think the definitive filmed version of the Arthurian matter yet exists, although John Boorman’s Excalibur comes reasonably close. (I also admire the telefilm Merlin from a few years back, but it doesn’t specifically tell the Arthurian story, so it can take liberties as it needs.)

But now, oh my God, Camelot is almost unwatchable. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I mean, I always thought the dialog was clunky, but now I think it’s just awful. And the casting is staggeringly bad — Vanessa Redgrave as Guinivere is abominable, and watching Franco Nero perform Lancelot’s songs had me reaching for the remote. (Thank God they dubbed his singing. Otherwise I might have done myself in.) Richard Harris is the only good thing about this movie, but even he suffers a bit. I’ve never been able to really wrap my head around the idea of King Arthur as the well-meaning boob.

I’m just amazed at this movie. Really.

(While I’m on the subject of Arthurian movies, I listened to the score of First Knight the other day. That was a bad movie, too, but it at least tried something interesting with having Lancelot not be this perfect guy tempted by nasty Guinivere. As for the score, well — it’s by Jerry Goldsmith, which means that by definition it’s hailed as a masterpiece in film music fandom circles. And for the life of me, I can’t understand why. It’s competent, but not particularly distinguished, epic music. It really doesn’t sound like anything grander or better than any other epic music Goldsmith has done in the last fifteen years or so, and it’s not remotely as good as his classic works such as The Wind and the Lion. I think this is more an example of the “Jerry Factor” — the tendency of any Goldsmith score to be elevated to classic status by virtue of its being composed by Goldsmith — than anything else.)

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Huzzah!!!

In the greatest boon to CD shoppers in history, the Borders in Buffalo has ditched those horrible spinning-display towers for the Naxos CDs, and put them in normal bins just like everything else. They still keep the Naxos stuff separate, though, which is terrifically convenient, since I browse Naxos CDs differently than I browse the mainstream classical selection. (Since Naxos CDs retail around 7 or 8 bucks, I tend to be a lot more adventurous when buying them. I’m far more likely to try some composer I’ve never even heard of on a Naxos CD than I am on a full-price disc by, say, Deutsche Gramophon. And Naxos CDs tend to be of very high quality, in terms of performance.) But now the annoying towers are gone, which means that the Naxos CDs are much more likely to remain in alphabetical order.

But then, they didn’t have the specific Naxos CD I wanted in stock. Oh well. That just gives me another excuse to go to Borders next week.

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My review of that book I didn’t like is now up at GMR. No, I wasn’t too mean. I merely outlined some reasons for my displeasure.

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SDB is back to flogging atheism, this time within the framework of explaining the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning.

I was glad to see SDB avoid a very common error in defining the two kinds of logic: the idea that deductive reasoning proceeds from general premises to specific conclusions, while inductive reasoning involves general conclusions derived from specific premises. This, however, is not the case: the difference lies not in whether the premises are general or specific, but in the logical relation between the premises and the conclusion.

In a valid deductive argument, if the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true. This is not the case with an inductive argument: in an inductive argument, the conclusion can still be false ever if the premises are true. Thus, what is at stake with inductive arguments is the likelihood that the conclusion is true.

This also demonstrates the difference between an algorithm and a heuristic. An algorithm is a sequence of steps that, followed correctly and in the correct order, will yield a precise result, each time those steps are followed. A heuristic is also a sequence of steps, but there is no such guarantee with a heuristic. Thus, when a heuristic is called for, the trick is to choose the steps for the greatest likelihood of producing the desired result. In some sense, a recipe for a cake is an algorithm, whereas a military strategy for removing a Middle-Eastern dictatorship from power is a heuristic. (The distinction between algorithms and heuristics is of central importance in the field of artificial intelligence.)

Ergo, God doesn’t exist and my Jacksonian daddy can kick your Tranzi daddy’s ass. So there.

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The latest entry in the “Water is wet” Sweepstakes is now available.

Is anyone besides me wondering if life should bear this much resemblance to a George Carlin monologue?

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