What, Again Dangerous Visions: `Eye of the Beholder', Burt K Filer
Joseph Nebus
Burt K Filer
I used to be pretty significantly a fan of Dave Barry, reading
his columns eagerly, pushing good ones on friends who might be
interested, even joining alt.fan.dave_barry exactly in time for the
famous Chuckletrousers Incident. But like many fannish obsessions this
wore down, in time. Even if I wasn't getting the same old thrill I kept
reading faithfully, when someone-or-other put up a Mad Libs-style
Automatic Dave Barry Column Generator. (This was years before The Onion
began running their Barry-impersonation column.)
It didn't make me aware of Barry formulas and boilerplate that I
didn't previously notice, but it did put them all together in such a way
as to force me to wonder, why did I feel like I was missing something if
I didn't catch this week's installment? Objectively, I wasn't actually
hurt by this, but it did separate me from that bit of joy I got reading
this week's installment.
When a creative impulse is reduced to a formula, nothing is
really *objectively* lost: so what if you can churn out adequate Dave
Barry-esque columns in a second, if you enjoy the reading of each one?
And yet it feels like there's a loss, which can be manifested by as
little as knowing a formula *could* exist. This is perhaps evidenced by
the resistance many creative people express towards having themselves or
their work analyzed, or having How It Works explained. And fans can
feel it too; in the most extreme case there are those who resist the
notion of having a story (comic strip, TV show, et cetera) studied for
anything more than the superficial content, rejecting the idea of
subtext or the context of the story's creation or publication affecting
matters. Perhaps they're not afraid that knowing too much about an
artistic work will deflate it, but it does resemble that.
Sculptor Paul Lukas has several phenomenally rare talents. One
of them: his work is universally beloved; it's as though, critics note,
he's managed to remove the subjective impressions of the viewer from his
work and just distill pure beauty. Also, he's got the curious talent of
managing to create metal sculptures in a way that they're inherently
anti-gravitational, so that a sculpture with, say, thirty pounds of
metal in it might weigh only eight pounds.
Catherine Osborn, sciencey-type scientist of science, is really
interested in this phenomenon, which has her on the fast track for a
Nobel Prize and a public hanging as fraud. The controversy proves very
exciting to the science press. Unfortunately the best she's able to do
through rigorous study of the phenomenon is to craft a twenty-kilogram
block of material to weigh eighteen kilograms. Fine work but, really,
Lukas knows something NASA doesn't.
And here's the crux of the story: Lukas doesn't want to be
analyzed. He doesn't want to be studied. He's had sculptures ripped
off repeatedly in the past and is fed up with every possible cover story
for someone trying to photograph his works-in-progress, or study his
methods, or even put his finished work under anything past ordinary
photography.
So when reasoning with Lukas fails, NASA turns to the CIA and a
rapidly bungled attempt at theft; they turn to the old-fashioned methods
of framing Lukas for manslaughter and demanding his cooperation as the
price of liberty. And his talent, studied in the process of actually
making a thirty-pound sculpture weightless, is soon captured and reduced
to formula.
The story is one of those triumph-and-tragedy blends, where
Osborn has the joy of this phenomenal scientific breakthrough but at the
cost of reducing Lukas's creative work to formula. While there's no
denying Lukas was unmistakably wronged in his kidnapping, framing, and
forced labor, many would probably argue he wasn't permanently harmed in
having his talent captured and analyzed and turned into an infinitely
extensible formula which could be applied to mechanisms independently of
their aesthetic value.
So I'm not able to listen to the purely-rational side of me and
say that Lukas should buck up and get over the misery which concludes
the short story. (I know there'd not be serious hope of getting fair
compensation from the CIA for their crimes, as depicted, although you'd
think NASA could at least pay a premium for the statue they force him to
make, which would offer some plastering of money over the wound.) Being
told all you were doing with your aesthetic vision was reducing the
derivatives of a surface to resemble a Steininger series (``that's what
you were doing ... only you didn't know it'', qv
http://www.xkcd.com/793/ ) is believably shattering to me.
The method of creating lower or null gravity through the shape
of something is a gimmick I don't remember seeing elsewhere. This seems
odd to me. I don't suppose that any method of creating antigravity can
possibly work, but given the geometry-and-gravity links so popular the
past 95 years, shouldn't attempts to manipulate gravity by way of the
correct shapes be more popular? It's certainly got an aesthetic
simplicity compared to gravity-wave flashlights or whatever silly method
Star Trek gravity plates are supposed to use. Maybe it feels too much
like sympathetic magic.
What's dangerous about this story? That is, what makes it a
boundary-pusher for the genre? I don't know; I suppose just that
there's a tragic end for the artist which is allowed emotional weight
over the triumphant end for the scientist. That doesn't seem like it
should have been that rare, though. Compare the original ending to
Asimov's 'Belief' (the one where a professor of physics discovers one
day that he can float) ... although, I suppose, it did need to have the
ending rewritten to be published.
DANGER LEVEL: There are probably very funny tragic
results from having an automobile accident
with a weightless 30-kilogram statue in the
back seat. Just saying.
VISION LEVEL: I like the sculpture-and-spaceships
twining of personal objectives here. It's a
good gimmick.
NEXT: ``Moth Race'', Richard Hill.
NEAR: ``In Re Glover'', Leonard Tushnet.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:
> ``Eye of the Beholder''
> Burt K Filer
>
> I used to be pretty significantly a fan of Dave Barry, reading
>his columns eagerly, pushing good ones on friends who might be
>interested, even joining alt.fan.dave_barry exactly in time for the
>famous Chuckletrousers Incident. But like many fannish obsessions this
>wore down, in time. Even if I wasn't getting the same old thrill I kept
>reading faithfully, when someone-or-other put up a Mad Libs-style
>Automatic Dave Barry Column Generator. (This was years before The Onion
>began running their Barry-impersonation column.)
>
You probably don't want to go off on this tangent, but Barry can surpass
himself. Read his "Can Spell" story from the computer book, or the Hiroshima
story from the Japan book. (Or in an actual column, the caustic "Real Speed
Limit" one).
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Joseph Nebus
I'm happy when threads take pretty near any tangent; I tend to
think of the subject as a fine starting point but no limit on discussion.
And you are right, of course: Barry can write extraordinarily well, when
he tries or when the subject is fresh. And his average is helped by the
weekly column being all reruns now, so that if he writes something it's
for a reason besides he needs to produce 600 words by Tuesday afternoon.
That he --- that *everyone* --- has predictable patterns isn't to say he
doesn't rise above them.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David DeLaney
> The method of creating lower or null gravity through the shape
>of something is a gimmick I don't remember seeing elsewhere. This seems
>odd to me. I don't suppose that any method of creating antigravity can
>possibly work, but given the geometry-and-gravity links so popular the
>past 95 years, shouldn't attempts to manipulate gravity by way of the
>correct shapes be more popular? It's certainly got an aesthetic
>simplicity compared to gravity-wave flashlights or whatever silly method
>Star Trek gravity plates are supposed to use. Maybe it feels too much
>like sympathetic magic.
Heh. ObMagic that involves manipulating shapes mentally while adding up long
columns of numbers: De Haven, _Walker of Worlds_/_The End-of-Everything Man_/
_The Last Human_. Though there they're two-dimensional shapes.
Dave "and the Wheel of Time's involves threads and webs" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.