The history of the Technic Civilization breaks into two eras, each typified by one main character. The first era, of exploration and settlement, featured master trader Nicholas van Rijn. The second era, dominated by the decline and fall of the Terran Empire, is told through the eyes of Dominic Flandry.
Flandry, in true military tradition dating back to Horatio Hornblower, starts out as an Ensign in the Imperial Navy, and works his way up to a position as personal agent of the Emperor. All the while, the Empire is decaying and dissolving, and throughout his adventures across eight volumes we watch Flandry's ultimately doomed struggle to preserve the good and eliminate the bad.
Young Flandry, as you might expect from the title, is set at the beginning of Flandry's long career. The book includes the first three Flandry novels in chronological order: Ensign Flandry (originally published in 1966), A Circus of Hells (1970), and The Rebel Worlds (1969).
Here Flandry is young, ambitious, and resourceful as he confronts the Empire's enemies, both internal and external. The focus in these books is mostly on adventure and exotic locales (and nobody does those better than Anderson). If you've never read these books, you have quite a treat in store. And if you dimly remember them as fairly old-fashioned SF, you owe it to yourself to rediscover Anderson's inventive imagination. I promise you, these books are fresher than you remember them.
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Don Sakers is the author of Dance for the Ivory Madonna and A Voice in Every Wind. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.
Copyright © 2011 by Don Sakers
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Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS
Dear Stan:
[Regarding the September 2011 Brass Tacks:]
For the benefit of our Canadian friends, the rationale of President Nixon's attempt to change the U.S. measurement system from the existing one to the metric was that many scientists were apparently unable to multiply and divide big numbers by 12. However, with the metric system, all they had to do was use their fingers and toes. But then, someone invented the pocket computer and that solved the entire dilemma. Of course, there were some of us in the second grade who were paying attention and learned the times tables all the way from 1 x 1 up through 12 x 12.
All in fun of course, but back in those prehistoric days, most of the same scientists used slide rulers [sic], which have now become as obsolete as the idea of forcing an entire nation to convert to a foreign measurement system just because it has round numbers and because somebody else is doing it. As it turns out, there are a lot of elements in the real world that do not conform to ten fingers and ten toes. So, while the metric system is “cute” and has its pluses and minuses, it is certainly no panacea.
Look at parsecs and the AU for example. It turns out that whoever invented the universe apparently didn't have ten fingers and ten toes and not much of a sense of humor. So far, they haven't made it easy, though the metric people have rounded some distances to km, e.g. the speed of light, the mean distance to the Sun, and the mean distance to the Moon, to impress the elite with their cosmopolitanism.
Although I was raised to employ our current measuring system, I am quite capable of doing mental conversions. But it takes all the fun out of a story if I have to stop and multiply kilometers by .621 to visualize how far something is. I disagree with you that our system is “embarrassingly and awkwardly stubborn.” I find our system neither. I doubt it makes that much difference which system one employs so long as it serves the need and those in question are comfortable using it. For those who like some other system, they can do as Mr. Blackadder of Ontario, Canada suggests and use the “search and replace” system.
Leonard R. Cook
Goleta, CA
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"Because somebody else is doing it” is not a good reason to do anything, but “Because everybody else is doing it” requires serious consideration when the issue in question is communication—especially when everybody else is doing it for a good reason. The metric system really does make it far easier to do most kinds of calculations, especially the “back-of-the-envelope” approximations that are always a good idea as a reality check and which kids brought up excessively dependent on calculators and computers have never learned to do. Contrary to your cute but nonsensical allegation about scientists not being able to multiply or divide by 12, most of them can, but why should they have to, when it's so much easier to work with 10, 100, etc.? And it isn't just 12; the English “system” also uses many other conversion factors, including (but not limited to) 3, 16, 36, 2000, and 5280.
It isn't the system itself that I called “embarrassingly and awkwardly stubborn,” but the attitude that many Americans display toward any suggestion of changing. The only advantage I can think of for the English system is comfortable familiarity for those who grew up with it and only it. Saying you can do conversions but don't want to be bothered suggests that you're one of these. Of course converting between English and metric units is even more awkward than the conversions within the English system, but nobody actually uses the metric system that way. The way to learn metric measures is to practice measuring a lot of things only in metric units, so that you get a direct feel for their meaning, just as you have for English.
As for AUs, they're a special case. They don't belong to either the English or metric system, but are uniquely useful—because they're easy to use—for some of the commonest calculations science fiction writers need to do in worldbuilding.
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Dear Stan,
As for the new electronic submission format ["The New Way In,” October 2011]: Damn you! You were possibly the last publishers on our great blue pebble to persist in demanding that authors submit works sponged onto strips of wood pulp, and I loved you for it. Now you have lurched off with everyone else into today's world of inchoacy, evanescence, ephemerality. A typed manuscript is a beautiful thing, like a Windsor chair or a painting of an aurochs in cinnabar on the wall of an ancient cave. And now, gone.
It's no good cursing you for it. The world is what it is. Enjoy your Kindle, Stan. But know this: There is at least one Analog reader and hopeful contributor who nurtures in a disgruntled and barely acknowledged corner of his mind the hope of a cataclysm, something akin to a visit to the Earth's surface by an arm of the sun's mass, that would cleanse, purify, destroy all those delicate mists and webs of tamed electrons that have now snatched finally the pen from all artists’ hands.
I love your magazine, Stan. You are a world cultural treasure. But . . . damn you!
Christopher Myers
Lovelock Correctional Center
Lovelock, NV
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(I know you'll still be accepting physical manuscripts for a while. Be sure to let me know when that ends.)
". . . snatched finally the pen from all artists’ hands . . ."? A bit melodramatic, don't you think, considering that nothing has been snatched from anybody's hands? The “pen” has changed forms many times over the centuries, but artists still find artistic ways to use whatever forms are currently in use.
A Windsor chair or an aurochs painting is a thing of beauty in large part because of its rarity and its status as an example of a bygone era. The same may be true of a typed manuscript, when most of them are gone. But for intrinsic beauty, that's hard to appreciate when you deal with thirty pounds of them every week—and the good ones are virtually indistinguishable from good computer printouts.
Ephemerality, on the other hand, is a real concern, about which I've often written and spoken myself. But it's only a serious concern when records are kept only in electronic form. A hardcopy of a story printed out by a computer with good materials is no more ephemeral than a typed copy of the same story. However, the story produced on a computer has huge advantages from the writer's point of view, including the ability to produce new copies almost effortlessly. That is where the ephemerality problem arises: electronic versions produced with old hardware
and software may be difficult or impossible to read with new ones. But as long as hard copies exist, new ones can be made from them in exactly the same (laborious) way as from a typed copy.
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Dear Stan,
Thanks for your thoughts about population and its neglect by professionals in your November editorial in Analog.
Your readers might like to know about the talks by Al Bartlett, eminent retired physics professor at the University of Colorado. He has written extensively about population and exponential growth and delivered a talk, “Arithmetic, Population and Energy,” many, many times. This is his website, from which you can choose to hear his talk: www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmeticpopulationenergy.html
I want also to mention Ch. 2 of my textbook Energy (Pearson, 2006, 3rd Ed.), which deals with population as well.
Regards,
Gordon Aubrecht
Professor of Physics, OSU
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Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS
by Anthony Lewis
29 March-1 April 2012
WORLD HORROR 2012—At the Mountains of Madness at Salt Lake City, UT. Guests: Sherrilyn Kenyon, Mike Mignola, P. N. Elrod. Membership: $110 1 September to 31 October 2011; $130 1 November to 31 December 2011. Info: www.whc2012.org; [email protected]; World Horror Convention 2012, PO Box 360, Orem, UT 84057
6-8 April 2012
LEPRECON 38 (Arizona SF conference with emphasis on SF/F art) at Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, Tempe, AZ. Artist Guest of Honor: Franchesco!; Author Guest of Honor: Joe Haldeman; Local Artist Guest of Honor: Mark Greenawalt; Gaming Guest: Todd VanHooser. Membership: TBA (see website). Info: www.leprecon.org/lep38; lep38@leprecon. org; +1.480.945.6890; LepreCon 38, c/o Leprecon, Inc., PO Box 26665, Tempe, AZ 85285-6665.
6-8 April 2012
MINICON 47 (Minneapolis SF conference) at The Double Tree Bloomington, Minneapolis, MN. Author Guest of Honor: Ted Chiang; Fanzine Guest of Honor: Christopher J. Garcia; Artist Guest of Honor: Frank Wu; Special Guest: Brianna “Spacekat” Wu. Membership (until 15 March 2012): Adult $45, Student (13-20) $30; kids (6-12) $20; children (0-5) free; supporting: $15. Info: mnstf.org/minicon47; PO Box 8297, Lake Street Station, Minneapolis, MN 55408.
6-8 April 2012
MARCON 47 (Columbus OH area SF conference) at Hyatt Regency Columbus, Columbus, OH. Author Guest of Honor: Tamora Pierce; Editor Guest of Honor: Paula Guran; Media Guest of Honor: Kyle Gass; Science Guest of Honor: Dr. Bradley Lepper; Filk Guest of Honor: Erica Neely. Membership: Adult $60, Children (0-12) $30; Kids-in-tow: free when accompanied by a paying adult at all times. Info: www.marcon.org; Marcon, PO Box 141414, Columbus, OH 43214.
20-22 April 2012
ODYSSEY CON 12 (Madison WI area SF conference) at Radisson Hotel, Madison, WI. Writer Guests of Honor: Larry Niven and Steven Barnes; Game Designer Guest of Honor: Kenneth Hite. Memberships: (until April 2012) Adult $35, Student $25, Youth (6-12) $15; (thereafter and at the door): Adult $45, Student $35, Youth (6-12) $25. Info: www.odysseycon.org; Odyssey Con, PO Box 7114, Madison, WI 53707
30 August-3 September 2012
CHICON 7 (70th World Science Fiction Convention) at Hyatt Regency Chicago, IL. Writer Guest of Honor: Mike Resnick; Artist Guest of Honor: Rowena Morrill; Astronaut Guest of Honor: Story Musgrave; Fan Guest of Honor: Peggy Rae Sapienza; Agent Guest of Honor: Jane Frank; TM: John Scalzi. Membership from 1 October 2010 until some later date (see website for latest details): Attending through Spring 2011: Adult (22+): $125; Young Adult (17-21): $100; Child (5-16): $75; Kid-in-tow (0-4): FREE; Supporting: $50. [Ages as of 30 August 2012]. This is the SF universe's annual get-together. Professionals and readers from all over the world will be in attendance. Talks, panels, films, fancy dress competition—the works. Nominate and vote for the Hugos. Info: chicon7.org/; [email protected]; Post Office Box 13, Skokie, IL 60076.
Copyright © 2011 by Anthony Lewis
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Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Astounding), Vol. CXXXII, No. 3, March 2012. 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) 2011 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 manuscripts or artwork.
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Visit www.analogsf.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.
Analog SFF, March 2012 Page 24
