Cepheid Historicals

About a month ago, I was e-mailed by the ex-roommate and ex-leader of the Texas A&M Cepheid Variable SF Club, after many years out of touch. I was contacted because of a yearly "Monkeygiving" celebration held by ex-members every year the weekend before Thanksgiving. (Named in honor of an off-campus group residence nicknamed after the famous Kurt Vonnegut short story, "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse") Shortly after, I did a Google search. Perhaps I was using too many search terms, but the only thing that turned up was http://libraryasp.tamu.edu/cushing/collectn/lit/science/sci-fi/science%20fiction%20texas%20am.pdf.

A message or two a week was passed with friends from that era in my life and I noticed that we were CCing the e-mail to more than 10 people. I decided this was enough people to justify a mailing list, so I floated the idea today of starting one one on Yahoo. I'd picked Yahoo because of local L.A. LUG friend Charles's recomendation of their services. I'd picked the name Cepheid Historicals so as not to collide with any current activity of the club, and also since it was mainly just so the 'old timers' could keep in touch. I managed to get started on the project a few minutes after one response to my e-mail.

The process was pretty easy, but I do have a complaint that it required skipping out of my preferred Lynx to use Firefox to navigate Yahoo's group starting process. As usual, it took a bit of floundering around to reach this conclusion. This is in contrast to the Google services I use, which as time goes by seem to get more Lynx/text browser friendly, or at least maintain some core functionality that can be accessed without graphical browsers. However, as I knew from joining and posting to Yahoo based groups, opposed to actually starting one, you could still carry out those activities purely by e-mail.

I sent out the announcement of the group to about 15 people, and one person subscribed while I was deciding on my subscription preferences. Two other people have subscribed on the first day, one person from two addresses. One person posted a link to a wiki already set up for ex-members, http://wiki.cepheid.org/index.php/Main_Page. This spurred me to google again. I don't know if it was using laxer search terms, actually being wide awake or that the 'bots at Google were finally clued into a need to fill, but a wealth a of results turned up. The actual club at TAMU is going stronger than ever, charging semester membership dues, with interest groups working away and Club and AggieCon entries in Wikipedia. I was there, actually just a bystander, for AggieCon No. 2, but there it is in Wikipedia. Must of been for real!

Heinlein in PolyDimension

Continuing the Blogging experience, so far successfully using the Lynx text mode browser and using some guidance from a book checked out from the Los Angeles Public Library, "Publishing a Blog with Blogger" by Elizabeth Castro, Peachpit Press.

I usually try to make the monthly meeting in West Los Angeles of the Karl Hess Club (KHC), named in honor of the political philosopher and welder. The Nov 2007 meeting was on "Rand and Heinlein: Beyond This Horizon", conducted by McCall Jones III.

At the meeting some attendees expressed, what I take to be, an impression of Robert A. Heinlein (RAH) as a militarist writer who never deals with ambiguity, uncertainty or doubt and is therefore of no concern. Some spoke of "Starship Troopers" (ST) as if it was the most representative statement of Heinlein's personal beliefs. I tried reading ST and gave up, while in high school or maybe earlier. All the talk in it seemed endless, and not what I wanted at the time. I've read several of his other novels, far from all of them, but my main impression of RAH is from having read all of the available short stories and novellas and a big chunk of his essays. Before commenting on my three favorite Heinlein stories, I want to suggest (tongue-in-cheek) that the central story, key to understanding RAH is not "Lost Legacy" as asserted by KHC speaker/RAH scholar Bill Patterson, but "--And He Built a Crooked House--", with it's multi-dimensional habitat a metaphor for RAH himself.

"Life-Line", RAH's first published story, is a stirring tragedy dealing with the political theory of special interest groups colliding with the economic theory of risk. We see similar social stuggles in the world today, such as Californias current economic civil war (So. CA/"Hollywood"/Traditional media vrs. No. CA/Digital Technology/Open Source). Right now I'm partway through watching the movie "Giant" - cattle/farming/old wealth vrs. oil/technology/new wealth in Texas. Many people have commented on their opinion that the basic idea behind "Life-Line", a machine that charts human life is bogus. I disagree - as time passes, Heinlein's idea only seems more plausible - the machine in the story merely charts out what we now know as a Feynman Diagram. FDs were used by it's namesake Richard Feynman to revolutionize back-of-the-envelope calculations on the frontiers of physics, but with RAH they are not for elementary subatomic particles, but for an entire human body. The book "A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel And Einstein" also seems pertinent. Could anyone of kicked off a writing career with a stronger story?

"No Bands Playing, No Flags Flying" was rejected for publication by John W. Campbell because it was non-fiction. In my mind it is linked Jorge Luis Borges story "The Challenge" - superficially both are brief, just a few pages, both deal with the subject of courage. Borges story rang so true he was bombarded with letters perporting to tell the real story of the protagonists crippling showdown with an anonymous thug from the other side of town. It rings true because it stands in for Borges own showdown with the anonymous, unseen forces that blinded him, and not so anonymous, all too often seen political forces that would hound him. Similarly, Heinlein cuts past hundreds of dreary pages about life in a tuberculosis sanatarium and deals directly with a crucial confrontation equal to Borges in significance.

"Water Is For Washing" is an extrapolation on Heinlein's essay on patriotism. The central character overcomes several irrational fears, literal phobias in some cases, prejudices in others, to act on Heinlein's definition of patriotism as given in his essay, surviving a geological catastrophe in the process.

An Alternate History Scenario.

I have to wonder how different peoples perception of RAH would be if "Stranger In a Strange Land" had been filmed first instead of "Starship Troopers". As his wikipedia entry hints, would these same people be dismissing him as a countercultural, New Age flake instead of a fascist militarist? It had been pointed out at previous KHC meetings even in ST, most of the people doing public service in the scenario's society are *not* in the military. RAH sold a lengthy 'action adventure war' story. It was Monty Python that finally filmed "A Day In the Life of a Chartered Accountant".