Analog SFF, April 2008 Read online

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  Analog SFF, April 2008

  by Dell Magazine Authors

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  Science Fiction

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  Dell Magazines

  www.analogsf.com

  Copyright ©2008 by Dell Magazines

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  Cover art courtesy NASA

  Cover design by Victoria Green

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  CONTENTS

  Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: MIRRORS AND MIGHT-HAVE-BEENS by Stanley Schmidt

  Novelette: GUARANTEED NOT TO TURN PINK IN THE CAN by Thomas R. Dulski

  Science Fact: NUCLEAR AUTUMN: THE GLOBAL CONSEQUENCES OF A “SMALL” NUCLEAR WAR by Richard A. Lovett

  Novelette: THE BEETHOVEN PROJECT by Donald Moffitt

  Novelette: AMOR VINCIT OMNIA by Craig DeLancey

  Short Story: RIGHTEOUS BITE by Stephen L. Burns

  Poem: GOOD MORNING, CLASS.... by Robert Lundy

  Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: THE HOSPITAL OF THE FUTURE by Jeffery D. Kooistra

  Probability Zero: HOW I SAVED THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION by Robert Scherrer

  Short Story: INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT by William Gleason

  Short Story: THE ANTHROPIC PRECIPICE by Jerry Oltion

  Serial: MARSBOUND by Joe Haldeman

  Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY by Tom Easton

  Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME

  Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS

  Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS by Anthony Lewis

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  Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: MIRRORS AND MIGHT-HAVE-BEENS

  by Stanley Schmidt

  One of the things that make science fiction fun, thought-provoking, and occasionally enlightening is its ability to let readers vicariously experience, if only in imagination, cultures significantly different from their own. Nippon 2007, the World Science Fiction Convention held in Yokohama, Japan, offered readers and writers the chance to do that in reality.

  It was the first Worldcon held in Asia, and any Asian culture is decidedly different from any of the North American, western European, or Australian ones that have hosted previous Worldcons. As science fiction has repeatedly demonstrated, a culture unlike your own can serve as a cultural mirror, calling attention to features of your native society that you may have never thought about because they were too ubiquitous and pervasive to notice—until you're immersed in a situation where those traits are replaced by others. And that experience induces reflection about why each culture is the way it is, whether its ways might be improved, and how and to what extent individual personalities are shaped by their cultures.

  I want to emphasize early and explicitly that, in the musings that follow, I'm not saying or implying that either the American culture I grew up in, or the Japanese one I found so fascinating to visit, is in any objective sense superior or inferior to the other. Each, I suspect, has both strengths and weaknesses, and many people would disagree on which are which. But practically everyone would agree that there are differences.

  There are also similarities, of course. Our world has already experienced a great deal of mixing of ideas and materials, and a first-time American visitor to a big Japanese city like Tokyo or Yokohama is likely to be struck early by the presence of familiar chain stores like McDonald's and Gap. But such a visitor will also notice some very obvious alienness, like the fact that (unless he or she has spent a lot of time preparing for the visit) those familiar signs will be almost the only things he can read. Japanese is seldom written with an alphabet (though it lends itself very well to one); usually it's written with a combination of two syllabaries and thousands of ideographs, which makes achieving literacy a truly major undertaking. Our visitor will soon notice other differences, too, such as the prevalence of “strange” foods like raw fish and seaweed, eating with chopsticks, and the fact that taxicabs are astoundingly clean, with immaculate white lace seat covers.

  But all of those, unfamiliar as they may be to a European or American traveler, are relatively superficial and trivial details. The big differences are both subtler and more profound. They're matters of attitude. An American in Japan can hardly help noticing that essentially everyone he meets is extremely polite. Bowing is so common, on meeting or leave-taking, presenting or accepting anything, that it quickly becomes automatic even for somebody who's never done it before. (The “reflection” side of this observation is that many Americans, to a typical Japanese, must seem appallingly abrupt and rough in their manners.) Lines are orderly, smiles ubiquitous, and the vague feeling of lurking menace felt on so many streets elsewhere simply isn't there. That's not just an illusion, either: the crime rate is extraordinarily low (and to many Japanese, I suspect, it must seem strange that Americans tolerate as much misbehavior as they do).

  Another contrast likely to impress an American visitor to Japan is a conspicuous lack of obvious diversity. Not a total lack; particularly in the big cities, adolescents are as likely as those anywhere else to try to shock their elders by adopting wildly unconventional fashions. But on a New York City subway car, and to a slightly lesser extent on suburban commuter trains, it's not unusual to look around and see nearly every seat occupied by people of obviously different ethnicity. On Japanese trains—both Tokyo commuter trains and long-distance trains to the north end of Honshu—my two traveling companions and I were almost the only people we saw who did not look Japanese. Immigration, as I understand it, is not encouraged, explicitly or implicitly. A teacher told me that teachers do not see their main mission as teaching their students math or science or history, but teaching them “to be Japanese.” And the attempt to do that extends beyond the classroom: in at least some areas, PTAs patrol disapproved after-school hangouts to keep kids out of them, and PTA participation is mandatory.

  That concept seemed to me to imply that the culture has developed quite specific ideas of what it means to be Japanese, and devotes considerable effort to making sure that everyone conforms to that ideal. That impression seemed to be borne out by my own observations, which I explicitly acknowledge were quite limited (though supplemented by conversations with people, both native and non-native, who have lived there). Much of Japanese life is highly ritualized. There are strict protocols—almost “scripts"—to be followed in all kinds of everyday situations, from eating to bathing to exchanging business cards. Everyone has a role to play and is expected to play it in a certain way. Not everyone has the same role; the very language has built into it an elaborate system of word choices and constructions that are used to express such subtleties as relative status of the speaker and the person being addressed. The pervasive politeness may stem partly from unusually prevalent innate good nature, but it also owes a lot to the prescribed rituals. One informant went so far as to say that much of it is “institutionalized hypocrisy” (as is much etiquette anywhere), but hastened to add that it's “better than the alternative.” It works, and it may well be necessary in a country with more than ten times the population density of the U.S., and no frontier. The function of any system of etiquette is to make people treat each other decently whether they feel like it or not. Where a great many of them must live in close proximity, that becomes more necessary than ever, and may require a stricter system of rul
es. The success of the Japanese system proves that that many people can live in that small a space. Whether they should (assuming they have a choice) is a matter of taste.

  Which leads us to the questions of how congenial any individual might find any culture, and why. Though I found Japanese culture fascinating and in some ways admirable, I never thought that I would feel at home in it on a long-term basis. Anyone who has read many of these columns knows that I see much that I think could be improved in my own culture. Yet, on the whole, I think I prefer it—and I emphasize again that this is purely a personal preference—for its more relaxed atmosphere and tolerance of individual variations. In general, ceremony doesn't do much for me, and I prefer to avoid it when possible. If I had to relocate permanently to Japan, I would feel constricted by the pervasive expectation that I must play a particular role in a particular way.

  Or would I? How much of that feeling is due to my own intrinsic (i.e., genetic) nature, and how much to the fact that I was encouraged and/or allowed to grow up as I did in North America? It's entirely possible that, had I been born in Japan, I would have grown up quite comfortably Japanese.

  Or that I wouldn't. Culture certainly plays a significant role in shaping individuals, even individuals who like to think of themselves as “self-made” rather than products of their environment. But so does the raw material they start with. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict, in her 1934 book Patterns of Culture, devoted much of her last chapter ("The Individual and the Pattern of Culture") to discussing “aberrant individuals,” people who don't fit comfortably in their own culture but would do just fine in another. The reason for this is that cultures choose to reinforce a small part of the very broad range of possible human behaviors, providing ready-made roles for people with natural proclivities for those ways, but not for others. Her own society (1934 Anglo-America), for example, had no room for homosexuals. There is now considerable evidence that homosexuality is not a choice, but an inborn trait. People who had that trait were provided no socially accepted way to “be themselves” in Benedict's America—which led to individual misery and social friction. Amerindian tribes of the Great Plains, on the other hand, had an institution called berdache which provided a comfortable and respected niche for such people.

  Benedict suggests two possible ways to improve the ability of aberrant individuals to function. (I emphasize that she and I are talking about any aberrant individuals—people whose natural tendencies are disapproved and discouraged by their societies—and not just homosexuals, whom I mention here only as one example). One is for the individual to learn to accept himself and create his own ways to live with both himself and an unsupportive society. The other is for society itself to become more tolerant of individual variations. Neither is entirely satisfactory, because one involves simply learning to live with hostilities rather than eliminating them, and the other depends on a large-scale social change that no individual can make happen. Both, however, are possible. A real-life example of the first is psychotherapy for individuals who have trouble fitting into their society. An example of the second is the observation that social movements sometimes can build up enough steam to produce large-scale shifts in attitudes: American society now has far more acceptance of homosexuals than it did in Benedict's day (though it's still far from complete or universal).

  It occurred to me when I first read Patterns of Culture that there could be a third way: “therapy by matchmaking,” in which individuals were analyzed and relocated into cultures more compatible with their intrinsic natures. Everybody could benefit: the individuals relocated would find themselves in more congenial surroundings, and their new homes would get more of the kinds of citizens they preferred. It wouldn't be easy to implement, of course; both individuals and cultures tend to resist change, even if it's good for them.

  On the other hand, sometimes change does occur. In 1934, Benedict wrote, “No society has yet attempted a self-conscious direction of the process by which its new normalities are created in the next generation.” And yet, it seems quite a bit of such conscious direction has occurred in the U.S. in the last few decades—not by the society as a whole, perhaps, but by big, vocal groups within it. I've already mentioned the shift in attitudes toward homosexuals, but there are many other examples involving, for example, other types of sexual behavior, smoking, and race. So I find it not inconceivable that some future societies may not only be more tolerant of individual variations, but more willing to try “citizen exchange,” where individuals neither happy nor welcome in the land of their birth would be welcomed into others where they'd fit more smoothly.

  I don't see that happening soon, but in the somewhat shorter term I can easily imagine that we'll get more chances to learn more about how people are shaped by their cultures and what determines how well they fit into a particular society. If human cloning becomes practical and accepted, for example, we may see more examples of what happens when genetically identical people are raised in different cultural environments. Somebody might even do that as a deliberate experiment. There would, of course, be the predictable cries of, “You can't experiment with human beings!” But, in fact, every new human being is a unique experiment. And with cloned individuals, where staying with natural parents is not an issue, future generations may not see any essential difference between raising two clones in different cultures to see how they turn out, and a family relocating to a different country to raise kids the old-fashioned way.

  In any case, however we get it, more knowledge about how individuals are related to the cultures that produce them should be valuable and potentially useful.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Stanley Schmidt

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  Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Astounding), Vol. CXXVIII, No. 4, April 2008. ISSN 1059-2113, USPS 488-910, GST#123054108. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One-year subscription $55.90 in the United States and possessions, in all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within eight weeks of receipt of order. When reporting change of address allow 6 to 8 weeks and give new address as well as the old address as it appears on the last label. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. (c) 2007 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. Protection secured under the Universal Copyright Convention. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. All stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name or character. Any similarity is coincidental. All submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope, the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manu
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  Novelette: GUARANTEED NOT TO TURN PINK IN THE CAN

  by Thomas R. Dulski

  Some conspiracy theories aer right—but not in the way their proponents think.

  You sweat in a suit in Palm Beach, even in February, so I had the air on max in the rented Buick. At a traffic light I took another pull on the Starbucks in the cup-holder and caught my eyes in the rearview mirror. Dark circles and bloodshot. I'd been in a card game that broke up at dawn and had just time to shave and shower the cigarette smoke out of my hair. Somehow, I had remembered how to tie a Windsor knot.

  Traffic was light on the drive up from Miami—it was Saturday and anybody with sense or money was home in bed. I pulled into a service station and checked myself out in the mirror in the john. Brooks Brothers dark pinstripe, white shirt, gold cufflinks, red and green striped tie, red lapel handkerchief. You'll pass, you asshole, I thought. But you had to wait until Romero and Vargas cleaned out your last hundred. When are you going to learn to fold? This could be big, and you almost blew it for a poker game. I splashed some water on my face and popped a handful of breath mints. Roderick had said eight. I would actually be early.

  I drove around the shopping district past a lot of exclusive “high end” shops with their lights still off and their alarm systems armed, ignoring the sensuous voice of the GPS on the dash. At 7:50 I decided I'd killed enough time and swung down La Brea as directed. It wasn't long before the scenery started shouting “MONEY” in big letters: monogrammed gates with intercoms and video cameras, ten-foot walls topped with spikes or razor wire. It was the kind of neighborhood that greeted you with an implied “Who are you and how did you get my address?” Roderick's money came from real estate, but not this sort, unless it was a minor sideline. A hasty internet check when I had gotten the call listed him as a mogul of shopping malls and industrial parks. Around a sweeping curve of manicured date palms I caught sight of the marina, straight ahead with the Atlantic and a glaring morning sun behind it.