Analog SFF, June 2006 Read online

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  Analog SFF, June 2006

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  Science Fiction

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  ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT

  Vol. CXXVI No. 6, June 2006

  Cover design by Victoria Green

  Cover Art by Jean Pierre Normand

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  SERIAL

  A New Order of Things, Part II of IV by Edward M. Lerner

  NOVELLA

  Puncher's Chance by James Grayson & Kathy Ferguson

  NOVELETTE

  Original Sin by Richard A. Lovett

  SHORT STORIES

  Preemption by Charlie Rosenkranz

  The Door That Does Not Close by Carl Frederick

  SCIENCE FACT

  Solar System Commuter Trains: Magbeam Plasma Propulsion by James Grayson & Kathy Ferguson

  READER'S DEPARTMENTS

  The Editor's Page

  In Times To Come

  The Alternate View by Jeffery D. Kooistra

  The Reference Library by Tom Easton

  Brass Tacks

  Upcoming Events by Anthony Lewis

  Stanley Schmidt Editor

  Trevor Quachri Associate Editor

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  Click a Link for Easy Navigation

  CONTENTS

  Editorial: Can't Argue With That by Stanley Schmidt

  Puncher's Chance by James Grayson & Kathy Ferguson

  Science Fact: Solar System Commuter Trains: Magbeam Plasma Propulsion by James Grayson & Kathy Ferguson

  Original Sin by Richard A. Lovett

  Preemption by Charlie Rosenkranz

  The Alternate View: My Mysterious Father by Jeffery D. Kooistra

  The Door That Does Not Close by Carl Frederick

  A New Order of Things: Part II of IV by Edward M. Lerner

  The Reference Library by Tom Easton

  In Times To Come

  Brass Tacks

  Upcoming Events by Anthony Lewis

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  Editorial: Can't Argue With That

  by Stanley Schmidt

  In the fall of 2005, the Kansas Board of Education outdid itself. Not only did it (again) welcome creationism into its science classrooms, but it did so in one of the most arrogant imaginable ways: it redefined science, removing the reference to “natural explanations” of phenomena as the central goal of science.

  As if the opinion of six members of the Kansas Board of Education will have any effect on what scientists think or do.

  Nonetheless, most scientists cringed at this decision, albeit for other reasons, and they weren't all outside Kansas, looking in. There's a tendency in some circles to snicker at Kansas as “backward” when it does things like this, but it's important to remember that the state is not a monolith and not everyone there agrees with the decision. One of the four dissenting members of the board, Janet Waugh, was perceptive enough to say, “This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world,” a fact you can easily verify by sampling what foreign news media think of these matters. And it was a University of Kansas physicist, Adrian Melott, who said pointedly, “The only reason to take out ‘natural explanations’ is if you want to open the door to supernatural explanations."

  Which, of course, is exactly what proponents of the changed standards want, and most scientists vehemently oppose. It undermines the very foundation of science, which is the idea that what happens in the world follows logically coherent rules and can, at least to a very large extent, be understood by figuring out what those rules are. It has specific methods of trying to do that, and science classes, to be honest, should not attempt to deal with anything beyond what those methods can determine.

  But none of that is my main subject today. Even though I obviously have opinions about it, my main goal here is not to debate the rightness or wrongness of the Kansas decision, and I'm certainly not going to rehash well-worn and scientifically unresolvable arguments about whether there is a God or an “intelligent designer.” That's a subject on which I (unlike some) freely admit I have no real knowledge and can offer no scientific proof one way or the other. What I do want to talk about is the nature of the “debates” leading up to this decision, and what it says about how debates are conducted—and whether, in some cases, they can't be. This is an exceedingly important issue, and it goes far beyond the question of teaching evolution and/or intelligent design. Whether and how people can have meaningful arguments has direct bearing on their ability—or inability—to resolve any question about which emotions run high.

  Yes, I've often said that anything is open to question, and to the extent that this magazine has any fundamental tenets, that's one of them. But that doesn't mean that all ideas are equally valid (an assertion which the universe emphatically and consistently refutes), or that we welcome with open arms any idea that anyone cares to propound, whether or not they can make a sound case for it. Pretending that every opinion is just another point of view, as valid as any other, is demonstrably false and does no one any service. Some things are simply nonsense and deserve to be called such, without waffling or apology. In principle, it would be nice to always be able to show the holders of such beliefs why they are nonsense, without personal animosity but with solid evidence and consistent logic.

  Which is why I had very mixed feelings when, during the months before the Kansas board redefined science, hearings to debate the question were boycotted by many organizations of scientists and science teachers. Admittedly nobody has time to craft a careful response to every odd idea that might come down the pike, and as one of the scientists appalled by the Kansas decision, I appreciate the concern of some of the boycotters that the subject of the debate was so utterly foreign to the mainstream of science that their presence might give credence to something that didn't deserve it. As Harry McDonald, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, said, “Public hearings and votes are not how the ‘truth’ of science is determined. We don't have to lend the credibility of science to the hearings."

  But at the same time, I realized that this wasn't just any uncomfortable idea, but a biggie: a fundamental attack on science as a part of people's education, being pursued aggressively by people determined to have their way and quite likely to get it. Might the scientists’ refusal to participate in the hearings be taken as conceding the point? Some people took it exactly that way, and made political capital of the claim. Brian Sandefur, a board member of an organization called Intelligent Design Network, asked, “Are they afraid to show up? Are they afraid to defend themselves?"

  I knew they weren't, but it did occur to me that, in addition to not wanting to dignify the proceedings by acting as if they took them seriously, they might have been inclined to stay away because they figured participating would be a waste of time. I could well imagine that they believed that the hearings were just for show and the outcome predetermined—that it wouldn't matter what logical arguments they gave, because the decision-makers’ minds were made up and they would not have listened seriously to anything the “evilutionists” said.

  Ov
er the ensuing months, I became increasingly convinced that such a suspicion was well-founded, and increasingly sympathetic to the boycotting scientists. Quite likely it would have been a waste of their time to participate in the “debates.” I reached this conclusion partly because of continuing news coverage on the deliberations in Kansas and related ones elsewhere, and partly because of some of the discussion I saw on the “Readers’ Forum” section of Analog's own website, growing out of my October editorial on “Cowardice in the Classroom.” That editorial was about de facto suppression of teaching about evolution even in places where it was officially in the curriculum. The forum discussion started there, but eventually drifted far afield, with a considerable stretch of it occupied by people arguing about the existence of God and possible reasons for accepting or rejecting it.

  Some sensible, thought-provoking things were said there, covering a wide range of views, but I also saw a good many examples of some dismaying and unfortunately widespread tendencies. Misrepresenting or twisting what another person said, for example, or jumping to conclusions logically unrelated to the premises, and in general presenting arguments that superficially sound reasonable but aren't, and don't even present a target clearly enough defined to aim logical arrows at. Several times I found myself tempted to respond to something (a temptation I generally try hard to resist, because getting drawn into an argument at one point is likely to make it hard to avoid responding again and again and again). And several times I resisted the temptation, not only for my usual reason, but because the thing I wanted to refute was too inherently illogical to lend itself to a logical response, and context suggested that even if I tried, the effort would be futile.

  Let me describe one example, without naming any names, just to illustrate the kind of thing I'm talking about. One forum participant suggested that it would be interesting to compile a list of Analog authors who believe in God, but then said that probably wouldn't be a good idea because, in his opinion, I would probably blacklist them. This did require a terse, pointed, and frosty response, because his conjecture was totally groundless and totally false: nothing in my editorial either explicitly or implicitly suggested such a thing, and it's not even remotely true. If I saw anything to be gained by it, I could easily start his proposed list for him; I can easily name regular Analog contributors who represent several branches of Christianity and a couple of Judaism, others who are agnostics, still others atheists, and still others whose religious beliefs or lack thereof I neither know nor care about. His allegation fell short of the legal definition of libel only because it was a false speculation that I might do something rather than a false allegation that I did do something.

  What was interesting, for purposes of this discussion, was his response to my brief note explaining all this. Very politely, in a perfect textbook illustration of disingenuousness, he said that if he had misconstrued anything in my editorial, he would appreciate it if I would point it out. Very briefly, I was tempted to try, but quickly decided there was no point in it. There was no specific thing in the editorial even remotely related to the conclusion he had drawn. I couldn't point to a sentence and say, “This is where you went wrong.” He had misconstrued the whole thing, and somehow jumped from the totality of what I said to an offensive conclusion in no way related to anything I'd said.

  And you can't argue with that—literally. That statement is not an admission that he's right; it's just an observation that the logical disconnect between what I said and what he said is too complete to bridge logically. You can't criticize the logical steps in an argument that doesn't use any.

  Moreover, had I tried, I saw no reason to believe that anything I said would have any effect. The gentleman in question, in other parts of the discussion, repeatedly made reference to things I'd said, but in each case he twisted them into things I would never have said. Why should I believe that anything new I might say would fare any better? It seemed clear to me that his opinion was set in stone, and he simply wasn't going to hear anything anyone said that didn't harmonize with it.

  Again I stress that my intent here is not to pick on this gentleman, who is certainly welcome to hold whatever beliefs he wishes; or even on the Kansas Board of Education, which is less welcome because it's imposing its beliefs on thousands of schoolchildren. I cite both of them merely as examples of the kinds of difficulties we face in getting people to hold a rational discussion of any emotionally charged issue. Those difficulties are themselves a major problem, because we're surrounded by such issues, and our future will be largely shaped by what kinds of decisions we make about them.

  We need to get a lot better at doing that.

  One of the skills we all need in order to do so is saying exactly what we mean and listening to exactly what others say. Another is critical, logical thinking. Science courses should be one of the best places for learning both those skills. Six members of the Kansas Board of Education are not enough to prevent that from happening in the nation as a whole, but there is disturbing evidence that they are just one of the more extreme manifestations of a trend. There is also evidence, more encouraging, that that trend is not yet anything like unanimous: voters in Dover, Pennsylvania, soundly voted out a school board that wrote intelligent design into the curriculum there.

  Let's hope that might set a trend—because if we don't keep the science in science classes, and non-science out, it doesn't bode well for the future of science in this country, and perhaps for the future of the country in general. Stem cell research and other areas that will play a large role in shaping the world's future will not grind to a halt in other countries just because this one turns its back on science. If we do that, we may be left behind in far more ways than we realize.

  Copyright © 2006 Stanley Schmidt

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  Puncher's Chance

  by James Grayson & Kathy Ferguson

  Sometimes playing it safe is not an option....

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  Illustrated by William R. Warren, Jr.

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  David gazed out the station window, searching for a glint of sunlight off the Low-Earth-Orbit MagBeam platform. It was impossible to spot from this distance, especially against the mottled blue and white backdrop of the Earth, but he searched nonetheless. He made out the shape of North America through murky clouds. Three years before, on a day much like this, his father had perished down there, an infinitesimal speck of humanity buried under a mountain of volcanic ash. He turned to see Gin Fukazawa's face appear on his desk monitor. He grinned at the sight of the Space Transit System's LEO supervisor, twenty years his junior, and shuffled through the piles of tools on his desk for the connection switch.

  “Hey, Gin, couldn't wait four more hours to see me?"

  “You wish. Looks like three weeks before our paths cross again."

  David sighed. “Le
t me guess. Your boss wants some Martian ice to cool wine at a political function?"

  “We all have to please our masters, which is why today you'll be pleasing me by conducting an inspection tour of the High-Earth-Orbit MagBeam platform with a top official from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.” She wagged a finger at him. “And you'll be on your best behavior."

  David groaned. “Another VIP shuffling through? Do I kiss his shoes first, or curtsy? I never remember."

  “I'm serious, David."

  “So am I. How often do I get real space work these days? I signed up as an engineer, not a desk jockey or nursemaid. At least give me something worth doing while I'm up here."

  “Well, I'm very sorry your work's not all fun and games, David, but this is important. This woman wants to tank the appropriation budget for the new colonization shuttles and shut down the Mars colony. Why else the surprise visit? She appeared out of nowhere, stuck her nose into every nook and cranny, requisitioned our manifests and incident reports. She's looking for trouble—and the way she's looking, she'll find it."

  Gin's serious brown eyes glowered at him from the monitor. She never looked better than when she scolded him. The prospect of weeks away from her made him frown. Soon enough, her promotion to Mars Colony Coordinator would take her from him permanently. David didn't want to think about spending his retirement on Earth without her.

  “You run a tight ship, Gin. I'd sail anywhere with you."

  Gin frowned. “If today is any indication, we're all about to drown."

  “What's up?"

  “The incoming transport is having computer trouble, so we're bumping the McAuliffe from the maintenance schedule.” Gin raised a hand to stop his protest. “It's not like the old boat doesn't get regular maintenance. You spend half your time on platform tinkering with it."