I wrote a few days ago about Russia’s proposal of an international mission to Mars. In that article, I wondered if the Russians could meet the financial obligations that they would incur if such a project were undertaken. The financial problems of the Russian space program are well-documented; they have, for example, raised money for their cash-strapped operation by licensing the hulls of their rockets for advertisements and auctioned off old test vehicles. Well, their problems go far deeper than that, and it now appears that this may be — and probably is — a way for the Russians to secure more Western (and, mainly, American) financial backing for their space program. A Mars mission would involve a long-term commitment of capital, which is not exactly in great supply in Russia these days.

(Thanks to the Captain for the information.)

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I’ve been nursing a cold for the last couple of days, which is why I’ve been absent from posting since Friday.

The problem with summertime colds is the degree of incredulity they create. Since it’s not the time of year that I associate with colds, not only is there the typical suffering of a runny nose and a sore throat and all the rest of it, but there is an additional sense that “I can’t believe this is happening! How on Earth did I get a cold? Nobody I know has one!” If this were October or November, say, I would have little difficulty accepting the fact that I have a cold right now. As it is July, though, the whole thing seems a bit stupid.

Now, it’s off to ladle some more DayQuil down my throat.

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Imagine, if you will, that in every room in your house there is a vacuum cleaner — in fact, imagine that at no point in your life are you ever more than, say, ten feet from a vacuum cleaner — at work, in the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom, the car, everywhere. And further imagine that the vacuum cleaner nearest you is always running, so that at no point in your day can you not hear the sound of a running vacuum cleaner. You must constantly talk to be heard over it. You must turn the TV on loud enough to be heard over the vacuum cleaner, or you must wear headphones cranked high enough to overcome the noise.

This, according to Scientific American, illustrates the noise level on the International Space Station. A running vacuum cleaner produces a sound level of roughly 75 decibels. According to NASA, the worst sound levels in the Station are a consistent 70-72 decibels (in the Russian module), with the levels in the American module in the 50-60 decibel range. The United States Navy, on the other hand, limits regular exposure to ship-board noise over 60 decibels. This is a growing problem for the ISS, as well, because more and more equipment is being taken up and installed.

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The Russians have proposed a joint mission to Mars. I am all for this; I believe that four or five hundred years from now this era will be chiefly remembered because this is when humanity’s exploration of the stars began. A joint mission sounds exciting, and is probably the way to go, as a mission of this magnitude is quite probably beyond the capacity of any single nation or agency to mount. A few questions, though:

:: What would be the actual point of such a mission? If we’re merely looking to explore the Martian surface, that would be much better achieved — and much more cheaply, too — by further enhancements of the robotic missions that have already taken place. Despite the well-publicized failures of a few Mars missions, we have had great success exploring Mars remotely — the Sojourner vehicle was a triumph, as were the Viking landers. If the point is an Apollo type mission — go there, snap a few pictures, collect some rocks, come back, and then say “Well, we can go there. What’s next?” — then I must wonder if that’s the best reason to go. The only reason such a mission would make sense, as far as I can see, is to serve as a precursor to actual colonization of the Red Planet. Is that the case? I don’t know. But if we’re looking to start colonization of other worlds, perhaps the Moon would be a better place to start.

:: Can the Russians really meet the financial obligation of this mission? They’ve had problems coming up with the money and materials they pledged for the International Space Station, and a Mars mission would be far more expensive.

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IMAGES OF THE WEEK

The Signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Trumbull.

The Declaration of Independence, by Thomas Jefferson. (Click on the image for a transcription of the Declaration.)

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A Concord Hymn

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled;

Here once the embattled farmers stood;

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps,

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We place with joy a votive stone,

That memory may their deeds redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

O Thou who made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free, —

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raised to them and Thee.

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In the new issue of Science Fiction Chronicle, novelist Alan Dean Foster provides a review of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Of course, this is somewhat old hat since the film has been in release for over six weeks, but still it’s an interesting review. Foster gives the film a fair-minded review. For example, he says that the film’s love story is “neither as grating as the majority of critics contend nor as passionate as it ought to be”. This seems fair to me, although I am still not convinced that Lucas was ever striving for passion in the first place. Foster gets a couple of details wrong about the film — he states, for instance, that during the arena scene Anakin and Obi Wan do not use their Force powers to try to confuse their attacking beasts, but Anakin clearly does just that (it’s how he is able to calm the beast long enough for him to jump onto its back). Foster also utilizes the (sp?) tag after every Star Wars proper noun in his lengthy review, but throughout he spells “Anakin” wrong, rendering it as “Annakin”. (No, that’s not a critique of the review content; rather, a pointing-out of a funny detail.)

Finally, Foster points out in passing what could be an interesting plot point: that we don’t necessarily know that Luke and Leia have the same father; we only assume they do. I’m not sure about this. In Return of the Jedi, Obi Wan specifically tells Luke that the “other Skywalker” is his twin sister. How they could be twins and not have the same father is beyond me, unless it turns out that Luke or Leia is actually a clone. (Now, that might be an interesting twist indeed.)

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POETICAL EXCURSION #5

“Annabel Lee”, by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

She was a child and I was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love–

I and my Annabel Lee–

With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud by night

Chilling my Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me;

Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud, chilling

And killing my Annable Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we–

Of many far wiser than we–

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:–

Fore the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel lee;

And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so,all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bridge,

In her sepulchre there by the sea–

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

This poem first captivated me when I read it in my eleventh grade English class, and my appreciation of it has only deepened throughout the years (fifteen of them, to be precise). Chiaroscuro — the alternation of light and dark — is one of the oldest of tools in visual art, and it is also frequently employed by poets through their imagery. Poe’s “Annabel Lee” is no exception.

The “light” of the poem is found, at first, in the construction of its verse. Just reading this poem aloud, with no attention paid at all to the meaning, is pleasurable. Poe uses alliteration and repetition of words to maximum effect, starting in the very first line: It was many and many a year ago. His scansion is masterful, creating a lilting sense of rhythm and beauty. The “light” of Poe’s chiaroscuro in “Annabel Lee” is found in the language and its rhythm. Reading this poem seems soothing at first, as if Poe has created a mere tribute to a particular love.

Chiaroscuro, though, also involves darkness, and in this poem the darkness of the content — Poe’s message — stands in stark contrast to the “light” of the soft and pleasing form the poem takes. Consider the first stanza: in just the first two lines, Poe creates a feeling that is almost mythological — he could be talking about Helen or Dido or Guenivere, some beauty from long ago. But the name of the beloved, Annabel Lee, somehow undermines that construction. It is not a name that one would associate with “many and many a year ago” in “kingdoms by the sea”. The last sentence gives an indication of the narrator’s possessive nature: a maiden who lives with no other thought than to love the narrator and provide an object for his affection. We are on treacherous psychological ground already, setting the stage for the darkness that is to come upon us, quite suddenly, at the end of the second stanza when the narrator’s idyllic love story is revealed to be something that the angels covet.

We are told in the third stanza that a wind came to chill Annabel Lee, and thus her kinsmen came to take her away and shut her up in a sepulchre / In this kingdom by the sea. Note Poe’s construction here: not, “She died and was buried by the sea”, but rather that she has been taken away from me by her kinsmen — specifically, her high-born kinsmen. In one easily overlooked phrase, the narrator suggests that Annabel Lee’s love for him is illicit .

Then things become still darker in the fourth stanza. The narrator blames the angels for sending the chill that killed Annabel Lee, but again, Poe’s construction suggests something else. Note the narrator’s Yes! at the beginning of the third line, as if he has grasped onto a new explanation and already decided that this must be the correct answer. He also employs the parenthetical as all men know…. in an attempt to give his lie the credibility it needs. Only then, at the end of this particular stanza when the narrator has deflected the blame for Annabel Lee’s death from himself, does he admit in specific language that she is dead.

The psychology becomes even more urgent in the fifth and sixth stanzas, when the narrator reveals the depth of his obsession with Annabel Lee. He tells us that his and her souls are now intertwined, that neither the angels nor the demons Can ever dissever my soul from the soul / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. The narrator dreams of her constantly; he sees her face in the sky. Four of the poem’s last fifteen lines end in breathless pauses, and the repetitions in the sentence construction mount, impelling us forward to the poem’s conclusion, when the narrator tells us that each night he sleeps beside Annabel Lee In her tomb by the sounding sea. Is this meant literally? Is Poe telling us that the narrator actually enters her tomb and sleeps at her side, or is he merely using the ghoulish imagery to further suggest the level of his obsession? It seems to me that the latter is more likely, given the poem’s careful psychological construction and its lack of such stark “death” imagery until that point. Of course, Poe was no stranger to writing about the “unquiet coffin”, as Stephen King would call it, so the possibility of the former cannot be ignored.

“Annabel Lee” is a masterpiece of Gothic literature and truly representative of Edgar Allan Poe’s genius.

(NOTE: In some editions of the poem — notably, that published by the Library of America in its collection of Poe’s poetry and tales — the last line of “Annabel Lee” reads, In her tomb by the side of the sea. This is actually the final line according to Poe’s finished manuscript of the poem, with In her tomb by the sounding sea existing in earlier drafts. Whatever Poe’s feelings and reasons for changing this line, I simply prefer the earlier version over the later, “complete” version.)

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This book was written with the world’s finest word processor, a Waterman cartridge fountain pen. To write the first draft of such a long book by hand put me in touch with the language as I haven’t been for years.I even wrote one night (during a power outage) by candlelight. One rarely finds such opportunities in the twenty-first century, and they are to be savored.

–Stephen King, author’s note to Dreamcatcher.

I was thrilled when I read this statement by Stephen King, one of the world’s most popular storytellers, just as I was excited when I learned that Neal Stephenson, author of the brilliant SF novel Cryptonomicon, is writing his next novel in longhand with a fountain pen. Why did these revelations excite me so? Because I write all of my own fiction first drafts with a fountain pen, as well as occasional notes for my longer posts to Byzantium’s Shores. Of course, this is no superstition on my part; my decision a few years ago to write with a fountain pen was not borne of some desire to be like the Big Boys who also use them. I have very real and (to me) practical reasons for using a fountain pen.

Parker Duofold Fountain Pen

I recently took an online typing test and discovered that I type at around 70-80 words per minute. This, apparently, is a decent rate — although I do generate a fairly large number of typographical errors; luckily, I am also a fairly decent proofreader, so these errors are almost always fixed. So why not just type my first drafts on the computer? Well, there is the general factor of comfort. After sitting in front of a computer screen at a day job for eight hours, I find it very hard to summon the desire to do the same at home. Writing longhand allows for the “change of scenery” that is so often needed. Plus, it allows a level of portability that is unavailable to anyone not lucky enough to own a laptop (and a fountain pen’s ink reservoir makes writing possible for far, far longer than the standard laptop battery). I can pack up my pages and my pens — I always have two of them filled with ink — and go, say, to the library or to a restaurant or even to a park to sit and write. This flexibility is wonderful.

My other main reason for writing longhand is connected to that typing speed test I spoke of above. While my fingers can type at that speed, I find that except in very rare cases my brain cannot keep up with my fingers. Lines of dialogue do not come fast enough; adjectives and descriptors tend to be pedestrian; and in the worst cases I can stall completely on a crucial plot point. I find that typing speeds up my process to a degree that my muse simply cannot meet, and thus writing by keyboard suffers. Writing longhand seems to slow down the physical process enough that my brain can keep up.

I also have an aesthetic reason for writing longhand: because a few years back I became fascinated with fountain pens. A fountain pen is an elegant tool, pleasurable in the hand and also in the way the pen interacts with the paper. A good fountain pen almost feels like a paint brush when writing, and it is fun to watch the line of wet ink left behind by the pen dry and become permanent. Fountain pens also adapt to the hand of their owner over time; the tip wears a certain way, owing to the amount of pressure applied and the angle of the pen utilized by the user. After a long enough period, a fountain pen becomes truly its user’s pen; another person picking up the same pen might find it scratchy and barely usable, because the pen has adapted to its user’s hand.

Fountain pens are also lovely objects in themselves, some of the finest ones available being art objects in their own right. Witness this stunning Omas pen, hand-carved in a 30-pen limited edition for the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America:

Absolutely beautiful. Of course, I don’t own a single pen of this sheer beauty, but as with wine one does not need to sample the highest end products to take pleasure in them. Even the cheaper fountain pens — a good, “introductory” pen will run between $25.00 and $35.00 — may seem ridiculously expensive at first, but one is very unlikely to lose a fountain pen, and with proper care a fountain pen will last for many, many years. If you’re looking for some small antidote to the “disposable society”, a fountain pen is a fine place to start.

Here are a couple of links to fountain pen sites:

:: Levenger is a catalog company that deals in a lot of high-end office supplies. If you want a portfolio in soft-grain leather, for instance, this is the place to go. They also carry a large selection of writing instruments, including some of their own make. Their True Writers are beautiful pens, but my favorite is still my Gotham fountain pen with its art-deco styling.

:: Swisher Pens does nothing but pens, and they do them extremely well. A very fine site.

:: The Fountain Pen Page is precisely that. This is a good source of general information about fountain pens and pen collecting, with suggestions on good pens for beginners, advice on pen selection and care, and a comprehensive set of links to pen-related sites.

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I complained the other day about a particular bit of incompetence on one of Buffalo’s local news stations. Well, one of the other stations was not to be outdone. On Saturday, as everyone probably knows, President Bush underwent a colonoscopy during which he transferred power to Vice President Cheney, for all of about an hour. Bush was back on the job by mid-afternoon. However, this didn’t stop Channel 2 from cutting its primetime news promos as follows:

“President Bush undergoes a medical procedure and is forced to transfer power to the Vice President! When will the President return to power? The latest information on his condition, live at eleven!!”

I’m wondering if this isn’t just the type of thing that Chevy Chase was skewering when he would say, “This just in: George Washington is still dead.”

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