New fanzine

A new fanzine from me is available at eFanzines.com. It's called Physicality of Words on Paper, since it's really meant to be printed. I made a few copies for the Fearless Fantasy meeting last week, but before submitting it to Bill Burns and his nice fanzine website I tried to correct the worst typos. It's still not the best fanzine I've ever made, but it works as a means of communication.

This first issue (I intend to make more in the future) contains LoCs I got to my oneshot Of Physicists and Fen two years ago. There are also some notes about differences between Sweden and Canada -- is Sweden more science fiction? -- reviews of the webzine Flurb #4, the fanzine Steam Engine Time #7 and Steampunk Magazine #2, and some random thoughts and information about me.

Now it's online. Download a PDF, realize that two column layout is no good for reading on screen, print it, read it, and then send me a comment! (Please be aware that I didn't really have time to make a fanzine but made it in little ten minute intervals I found here and there. No masterpiece. But still.)

No dark matter mining tomorrow

I stayed home today with headache and sore throat. Boring. I start to wake up only now in the evening. No Sudbury for me this week -- so I cannot tell you about the mine or the dark matter detectors.

At least I can point you to some things related to dark matter, things I've found while idly browsing the web today (my ability to concentrate was not so good today, this was the most intellectually stimulating thing I was able to do).

There was a post about The Story of Dark Matter at the physics (among other things) blog Uncertain Principles. It quotes another blog post at sfnovelists.com about the eccentric astronomer Fritz Zwicky who in the 1930's was the first to suggest that the motion of galaxies in galaxy clusters could be explained with the assumption that there is a large amount of dark (i.e. unseen) matter. The comments at Uncertain Principles have more information, and there are also some comments about dark matter in sf (one of them from me of course!).

I have read Zwicky's first papers on this, to be able to quote them in my thesis. I wanted to quote some really old papers, to dig down to the beginning of the search for dark matter, as well as quoting the most recent results. The early ones are easier to keep up with, but harder to find -- I actually had to go down to the basement of the library and find the dusty collections of old science journals. That was fun, I should do that more often! (Otherwise I count on everything being available online, at least through the university.)

But I didn't know anything about the person Fritz Zwicky until now.

Back to the subject of dark matter in science fiction: I also found that there now is a dedicated Wikipedia article about dark matter in fiction. It's not covering everything, but there are examples here that I didn't know about.

I have written a fanzine article (in Swedish) about dark matter in science fiction. I might translate it some day...

Isaac Asimov, rider

I had this conversation at lunch the other day:

-I'm not sure I would have wanted to meet the young Isaac Asimov. He must have been a strange kind of person.

-Yeah, but he's a rider, so what would you expect?

-He's what?

-A rider. You know, an author.

-What? Oh. A writer.

See also A Tale of Two Geddies from Tenser, said the tensor.

I have also noticed problems with understanding the other way. Perhaps not so strange, since I'm the one with the strong foreign accent. Anyway, if I pronounce my name the way I do at home people won't understand what i say. My name is not that strange, but if the intonation is Swedish most people just can not make out the syllables. I have not entirely given up, but found some compromise that still sounds about right to me -- I would feel silly to pronounce my own name in some fake Canadian English.

Update: to clarify: I have no problems with other people pronouncing my name in a way that fits into the rest of their speech. The problem is that I know what my name is and feel silly to make up another way to say it (and yes, when I lived in Jämtland, up north, I still insisted in pronouncing my middle name in the Uppsala way).

Canadian conventions

Today I have not crossed the continent to go to VCon in Vancouver. Montreal is actually within reach, but last weekend I nevertheless stayed in Kingston and did not attend Con*Cept.

I downloaded the Con*Cept pocket program PDF and looked it through. Immediately I felt the effect of being on several concoms through the years, and could not help critically evaluating the schedule. Are people really going to show up at opening ceremonies at 9 in the morning? (Maybe a cultural difference, at home I wouldn't dream of starting the programming that early.) Is it really a good idea to have Tanya Huff on two consecutive panels? But more important: what topics could I reuse or adapt for another convention? I am really thoroughly indoctrinated to think about these things.

But I think these conventions are about an order of magnitude larger than those I've been involved in organizing. Swedish conventions outside of Stockholm rarely have over 150 members. On the other hand they tend to be more focused on literature, perhaps with a gaming corner and a film room but not with much happening except the panels and talks and fannish games and those things. Not much gaming (you go to a gaming convention instead, where noone has heard of fandom -- i like those too) and very little costuming or filk. (But there are lots of important things happening in the bar of course, where people meet and make grand plans for the future (or just have a good time).)

Anyway. When will I go to a Canadian convention? Perhaps at the end of March, to Ad Astra in Toronto. The web page is ugly and has some navigation problems, and is probably not going to attract anyone who does not know about conventions from other places. It works well for the purpose of informing someone like me, which is probably the intention of it anyway, so I should not complain too much. But this is strange:

If there is a Panel you wish to see please go to the Panel Suggestion Page.

Note: Anything submitted after January 5th, 2007,
may not make it into the panels for 2008.

It has to be a typo, or they will not get any suggestions at all -- and then they could just remove the option to leave suggestions.

Well well. Keycon has a much more attractive web page, and I would be tempted to put it higher on my priority list if it was not located in Winnipeg. Far away. Sort of. Not as far away as Vancouver and VCon, but far enough to scare me a bit even though I'm not sure what it means in money or time. Canada is enormous, in case you didn't know. The distance from Kingston to Winnipeg is 2245 km -- the length of Sweden from north to South is 1572 km.

If I'm going to a convention far away I have my old dream of visiting Readercon, which could be possible now that I'm on the right continent -- this is clearly a higher priority than Keycon.

Moving here has been incredibly expensive, even after being reimbursed for the actual travel costs. As a postdoc I'm better payed than ever in my life, but I'm not yet really sure what that means in practice (with a family to feed and everything). I'll have to start saving soon, and hope that I can afford some travel next year! (I have good hopes for Ad Astra at least.)

How and why in physics

What you do is not the same as why you do it. When you read about physics in the press it's always about the great breakthrough or the fascinating big questions -- science journalists want the exciting angle of course. But the work we do every day for the advancement of knowledge is often very far from all of this, especially for us experimentalists.

I might work on the search for dark matter -- but what I really do is trying to make sense of the calibration data for our detectors.

That's why I really like the US LHC Blog. It's very much about the dayly grind, about what physicists really do. Read the post On Stupid Mistakes -- just because it's a good story, but perhaps also because SNO plays a part.

I hope to go to SNOLAB next week. I promise to tell you about it when I've been there.

Passion for astronomy and other things

Cosmic Variance has a post on the contribution of amateurs to astronomy.

I have actually joined the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the local course in observational astronomy. I know a lot of things about cosmology and the history and structure of the Universe, but I don't know very much about what I can see in the night sky. I felt that this could be a nice hobby, and I always like learning new things. My husband used to be interested in astronomy when he was younger, and this is something we could have fun doing together with our daughter.

But I'm still very far from being a passionate amateur astronomer. Actually, I'm not even that passionate about dark matter (or detector calibration), which sometimes makes me feel bad. Everyone knows that a scientist should love the research more than everything else -- but somehow I just don't have these strong feelings about it.

To quote the Cosmic Variance post:

Most of us have some peculiar thing about which we care far more than we’re officially supposed to, and that brings us strange and deep pleasure, for reasons we don’t fully understand.

And I know what my passion is. Surely you have noticed by now: science fiction and fandom. And I know other scientists with strong passions for things outside their day job, so I'm not alone. Someone once said that it's best to work with your second biggest interest in life, and save the best for your spare time. That way you will not destroy the fun of it in the daily grind.

It's important to preserve the enthusiasm, because it's something very precious.

This reminds me of a passage in the novel Dark Matter by Rodman Philbrick (probably the best novel with that title):

By day they appear quite normal, but when the sky darkens on moonless evenings, beware the pale night creatures dragging strange, tubular devices into the wilderness. I know that twilight world, having once been a devoted amateur myself. In no other field of science is the amateur so capable of doing good work. Back yard astronomers do a significant amount of the necessary but boring grunt jobs disdained by the professionals. They plod thruough the tedious work of star surveys, record meteor sightings, determine the precise rotation of planets, discover comets, note errant asteroids, observe neglected galaxies, report on supernovas, and in general behave as a huge, dedicated reserve of unpaid, under-appreciated martyrs to science.

Long live the devoted star geeks, and everyone else doing things just because they like it!

World day against the death penalty

Today is the World Day Against the Death Penalty. You can act by signing the petition.

GUFF losers

I was nominated for GUFF this year, as you might remember, and I didn't win. Together with Johan Anglemark I made a GUFF Loser's Fanzine, click on the link to find a pdf that can be downloaded from eFanzines.com!

Canadian fan history

I just learned from Claw of the Conciliator that a significant sf-collector and fan has donated his collection to a library. I wanted to know more, and googled Chester Cuthbert. In this way I found A History of Canadian SF Fandom by Garth Spencer, and a long and informative blogpost by Randy Reichardt at the Pod Bay Door blog about Chester D Cuthbert and the story behind the donation, including links to pictures and other interesting things.

I like stories like this (quoted from Randy Reichardt, link above):

In the mid-1970s, when I was active in sf fandom and lived in Winnipeg, I made regular visits to Chester’s home on Saturdays, where the local group of sf fans would congregate on an almost-weekly basis to swap stories, discuss the latest novels and writing, report on conventions, and make plans for our various fanzines and upcoming trips to sf conventions. Chester, who turns 95 on 15 October 2007, welcomed us into his home, and would often share stories of the glory days of past decades in the world of sf fandom. In the 1950s and 1960s, other local fans had descended upon Chester’s house, and spent many a Friday evening until the wee hours doing the same as our local group, nicknamed Decadent Winnipeg Fandom (DWF), did in the mid-1970s.

I want a Decadent Kingston Fandom!

By the way, today is Thanksgiving in Canada and I'm not working (well, not much anyway). (My husband decided to buy some turkey, and since I love sweets I got us a pumpkin pie.) Since some of us found it inconvenient to have a meeting between Thanksgiving and the election on Wednesday we moved the Fearless Fantasy meeting to next Tuesday. (If you are in Kingston: we will meet at Indigo about 7PM and then find a coffee place where we can sit and discuss A Wrinkle in Time and other things, and then decide on the book for next month.)

A Wrinkle in Time

It seems difficult for me to find time to write nowadays. I should try to write down a few notes about this book before too much time passes since I read it, especially since at least Johan and Elliot wanted to know what I thought about it. This is not a proper review, only a few notes. (BEWARE: minor spoilers below.)

The first thing I have to say is a general comment: books for children are never as good if you read them when you are grown up. This has two reasons. The first is that almost nothing is really new anymore. You recognize everything, can compare it to how others have done the same thing. You also notice clichés and clumsy use of language. These are things I have thought about before. Something I realized when reading this book is that if I were eight years old I would be totally immersed in it, I would live in the book and think about it a lot, perhaps reread it. Now I finish it almost before I get a feeling for it. This must be the first time I complain about reading too fast, finishing a book too quickly!

So what did I think?

In the beginning I didn't really like it. I'm not sure how to explain what I mean, but I thought it was talking down to the readers, a little patronizing like really old books for children can be. Also, I didn't like Charles Wallace, the little brother. He is too annoyingly clever, not a believable five year old. He's obviously intended to be something else, not like other human beings, but I didn't even find him a believable very special different kind of child.
There was also too much emphasis on looks in the begonning-- why is it important that the mother is beautiful, and Calvin's mother is ugly? There is even a discussion between Meg and Calvin about who is handsome and who is not. This adds nothing to the story and is just annoying. (I would never have noticed when I was nine years old, this would not have been interesting, and so I would have ignored it.)

What I did like right from the beginning was the positive view of science and inquiry. This is yet another example of fantasy that "[sees] the increasing of human knowledge as an exciting adventure" (I've been collecting examples ever since Gregory Benford complained about the rise of fantasy and connected it with the declining respect for science). Although I think that Heinlein in some book used exactly the same explanation for travelling faster than light as they here use for explaining a tesseract, only using a scarf instead of a piece of string.

There was some kind of turning point where I started to appreciate Meg as a protagonist who is really independent -- she does not just accept things and can even be stubborn and sulky. She is not nice all the time, and that makes her easy to relate to. She goes through a crisis when she has to face the fact that her father cannot solve all problems, something that is also easy to relate to: everyone has to go through the discovery that a parent is not a in every cericomstance the mighty protector that we (hopefully) learn to trust as infants. Growing up is difficult, and interesting.

In the end I think I mostly liked the book, but it would certainly have been a better read twenty years ago or more, when I was the right age for it.

I also noticed what I believe are heavy influences from C.S. Lewis. When they come to the place where the strange old women (who are not old women) belong it is described in a way that reminds me very much of Lewis. The clockwork-like mechanical aspect of the evil of the planet where the father is imprisoned also reminds me of the villains in the Space Trilogy, especially That Hideous Strength. I'm even more strongly reminded of that book when IT turns out to be a brain without body -- Lewis also describes something talking through a severed head which is artificially kept alive (reminds me of the Baphomet of the forced Templar "confessions", that is probably where Lewis got the idea).

There is certainly an interesting mixture of ideas here. There is a visit to a two dimensional planet and the wonder of discovering that there might be other senses with which other creatures perceive the world. There are problems to be solved, and there are the troubles of being different (and the conclusion that equal is not the same as alike). Enough to induce at least some sense of wonder if you are susceptible at all.

Finally: I noticed that this book is on the list of most challenged books. I will make sure that my daughter gets a copy to read if she wants to!

Do you know the Bible?

When we are on the subject of Bible knowledge (see the comment to the previous post) I have to mention The Harlot by the Side of the Road. My husband just finished this book, and it seems very interesting: it's about the stories in the Bible which are rarely mentioned, the censored parts if you will, the ones that are never told in Sunday school. I want to read it too, at some point, but my husband returned it to the library so I will have to remember to get it.

And I also want to take the opportunity to link to the thematically related Elliot's Adult Bible Quiz (the post starts with another quiz). Here are the answers.

OK, I confess that this is not my best subject. I'm beginning to think that it would be fun to polish up my Bible knowledge a bit!

Heliocentric

Our intuitive grasp of physics is (as intuition tends to be) based on generalizations of experiences of how things usually work. This is usually a good thing.

Too bad that experience we build with our senses in a particular environment is not very helpful when it comes to understanding the underlying principles. This is why people often find physics difficult -- it is counterintuitive. I'm not talking about quantum mechanics here, you can probably recall how people scratch their heads in high school physics when trying to grasp Newton's laws. (You mean that if I throw a ball it will continue in a straight line until an external force acts on it? That's not true! Everyone knows that it will lose speed and eventually fall to the ground. OK, so without gravity it would not fall, but it must come to a stop, since it left my hand and nothing is pushing it. What friction? No, I'm not buying this!)

Now, our adaption to certain circumstances make us very clever at surviving and using our environment. But as you see, it's only with an effort we can put ourselves outside this field where we are experts and feel at home. What we experience when we do that can perhaps be described as sense of wonder, or just vertigo. When the perspectives shift, and we realize that everything is much bigger and the things we take for granted are only marginal special cases of everything. Some people don't like it at all, they just stay with the things they are used to and comfortable with -- out of laziness, mostly, but perhaps sometimes out of insecurity.

Given this, I was a little surprised when I just a minute ago was reading an essay by Isaac Asimov (by the way: I just confirmed that he is really a much better writer of popular science than of literature, I was never able to enjoy any of his novels, but rather like the essays I've found). In this piece he was very indignant about a poll where 21 percent of American adults answered that the Sun goes around the Earth. He attributes this state of ignorance to reading of the Bible, specifically two verses.

I must say that Asimov really has much higher thoughts about people than I have. Perhaps because he was a very cerebral person himself. I usually consider myself to be mainly cerebral, because I don't trust emotions. Nevertheless, I believe that people don't always want to think that much.

Imagine the situation. Someone stops a woman on the street: "Quickly, does the Sun go around the Earth, or does the Earth go around the Sun?" What do you think is the most likely explanation to why she picks the wrong answer:

1) Well, the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. Everyone can see that it's moving across the sky -- of course it goes around the earth. Now, can I continue with what I was doing?

2) Hmm, now what did they say in Sunday school? It was something about a battle, and someone wanted to fight longer -- or something like that. Now, I'm sure I remember that they said that God stopped the sun, not the earth. Therefore it must be the sun that moves around the earth, which is fixed.

No. A few might have reasoned along the lines of my second alternative, but I'm sure that Asimov definitely overestimated most of the people who picked the wrong answer. He thought that they had thought about it, and arrived at a conclusion after reading a book (they just didn't take the right book for learning about celestial mechanics).

I have the impression that most people don't want to think too much at all, if they can avoid it. Some of them might listen to people who can tell them what they should think so they don't have to bother (and some of those might end up as biblical literalists), but most will not even care enough to do that. They will just agree with what people around them say, or avoid having any opinion at all.

Despite this I tend to like people I meet, I'm really quite friendly. I just have to add this so you won't think that I'm a misanthropic intellectual snob ;-) And now I've written something, and therefore I'm happy. Good night!

Update: The essay I talked about here is "The nearest star" in The Secret of the Universe (first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction October 1989).

I also corrected some typos above.

Nerd test

OK, I have taken the nerd test:





I don't know much about tv series, hence the low score on sci-fi/comics.