Just The Caffeine Talking

The Trip to Iceland, Day 4

After a breakfast in our room (scones and coffeemaker coffee) we crossed Austurvollur Square to the Settlement Museum, a branch of the Reykjavik City Museum. The museum occupies the basement of a building (a hotel, I think) and consists of the in-situ archaeological site of a Viking longhouse from the first settlement of the Reykjavik region.

It's fascinating to see. They can date it pretty precisely by the volcanic ash that settled in the walls as they were being built. In the intervening thousand years the street level has risen about 5 meters — but I was intrigued to see that the house is basically aligned with the modern street above.

The house itself looked almost exactly like the buildings Sir William described in Iceland a millennium later in 1809:

". . . the walls of these are extremely thick, especially at the base, formed of layers of stone and turf, not standing perpendicularly, but leaning a little inwards, and about seven or eight feet high; a sloping roof of turf, laid on birch boughs, makes the whole height of the buildings, which even thus does not reach above twelve or fourteen feet . . . both walls and floors are but seldom boarded: the sides are usually nothing but the black stone and turf, and the bottom only the bare ground. Generally, there are small openings, either in the walls or roof, by way of windows . . . A chimney, or rather an aperture for the emission of the smoke, usually made with a tub, is seen only in the best houses, in others the smoke is left to find its way out at the door, by which, also, the only air that they can possibly receive is admitted."

After that we walked eastward, up hill, to what can only be called the tourist neighborhood: full of souvenir shops, bars, the Punk Museum, and other operations designed to separate foreigners from money. One of them was a great shop selling handmade woollens, where Diane bought a lovely sweater so warm that it is almost impossible to wear indoors.

At the top of the hill is the Hallgrimskirk, the biggest church in Iceland. It's a nifty Gothic-Deco building that looms over the city and has become a national icon. Amusingly, one could fit the entire Cathedral building next door to our hotel, steeple and all, inside the nave of the Hallgrimskirk with plenty of spare room.

The best comparison I can make is to a very different building: Gaudi's Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. Both are superb modernist churches which still call back to their religious heritage. Sagrada Familia is ornate and highly decorated, drawing on the many Gothic and Baroque churches of Spain. Hallgrimskirk is very plain and severe, from the austere tradition of Lutheran churches in Scandinavia.

And, yes, we visited the Icelandic Phallological Museum. The Penis Museum. Of course we did. What can one say about it? A reasonable collection of anatomical specimens — about what one would expect from a college biology department. A collection of snickering artworks and historical exhibits which I found rather scanty. No Roman penis amulets, no Japanese penis sculptures, no ithyphallic Egyptian statues of Osiris.

I have a strong suspicion that 90 percent of the people who visit the Phallological Museum simply take selfies in front of the entrance and don't bother paying to go in.

My science advisor did have a chat with the manager about some deficiencies in the collection — all their baculae (penis bones) were displayed upside down, with the smooth back end up and the tip with lots of fiddly bits at the bottom. Those fiddly bits are sometimes the only way to distinguish closely-related mammal species, but they look more phallic with the back end up.

We did not have penis-shaped waffles at the snack bar.

With the best of good will toward the people running the Museum, my summation is that unless you want to post some selfies of yourself grinning like a fool in front of a whale penis in a jar, give it a miss.

Then back to our hotel for a quick clean-up, and then off to Dill, Reykjavik's Michelin-starred restaurant featuring foods inspired by traditional Icelandic ingredients.

The thing about super-pricey hoity-toity restaurants like Dill is that . . . they're really good. One can chuckle at the relentless use of the word "sustainable" on the Web site of a joint that charges $150 a seat. One can raise an eyebrow at terms like "codfish foam" on the menu — but when some very talented people devote hours to the project of making a really good meal, that's what you're likely to get.

The menu for the evening was as follows:

First, a series of little amuse-bouches including smoked trout (cooked on a traditional Icelandic sheep-dung fire), a tiny bowl of super-concentrated vegetable broth, little cakes of dried wolffish, and an onion cake dotted with sweet carrot slices. We had champagne with that — from France but with a notable "mineral" flavor suited to Iceland.

Then a vegetable course of greens, fermented cabbage, a barley risotto, salt-baked beets, sol, and mushrooms. What's sol? A kind of seaweed, known as dulse in the British Isles. "In Iceland, also, it is very commonly eaten, but seldom in a fresh state," according to Sir William.

Next came the fish course, of cod foam with lumpfish roe on rye bread; and cod with mushrooms, seaweed, and birch. We were drinking white wine by this point, another French label which I carelessly didn't write down. The pairings were perfect, though.

And then the meat: some braised lamb (cooked for ten hours!) accompanied by a rutabaga puree. Also a slice of grilled lamb loin with black garlic and a dousing of consomme. These were paired with a red wine, and again I'm sorry I didn't note the labels because it was excellent (the restaurant Web site is very secretive about what wines they serve).

We finished that wine with a vegetable course of rutabaga with wasabi, and a kind of potato puree with berries.

Dessert was a roll cake, chocolate with pickled rhubarb, and a lemon thyme vinegar caramel. I had coffee with that course.

How obsessive are the chefs? I asked our waiter at one point: does the chef pick out appropriate dishware for each menu item? Or are the items inspired in part by the dishware? Oh, no. That wouldn't be obsessive enough. The chef works with local potters to create the right serving dishes for each food. That's attention to detail.

We paid up and walked (a bit unsteadily) back to our hotel. After sharing two bottles of wine and some champagne, my science advisor says she doesn't remember anything after leaving the restaurant until waking up the next morning. I can report that she didn't insult anyone along the way.

Next time: whales!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 3

We had another big breakfast and did a little more walking around the island of Heimaey on Tuesday morning, then boarded the noon ferry back to the Icelandic "mainland." Our car was none the worse for having sat in the parking lot for forty-eight hours — except for a light coating of black dust blown by the wind from the nearby black sand beach.

We drove back westward and stopped for lunch in the town of Selfoss — the childhood home of Bjork and the site of Bobby Fischer's grave — and then turned northward along the Olfusa River to Thingvellir National Park. It's a glorious natural location — a wide rift valley with snow-capped mountains looming off to the north, and the waters of Thingvallevatn lake in the center of it all. I'll let Sir William Jackson Hooker describe the lake:

"A brighter atmosphere now permitted us to catch a glimpse of the neighbouring scenery; and the first thing that drew our attention was the immense Lake of Thingevalle just before us, of which we had hitherto seen nothing, except the margin. It is reckoned fifteen miles long, and from five to twelve miles wide. Near the middle are two fine black insulated rocks, of considerable size and height; the largest called Sandey, the smaller one Nesey, upon which, thousands of the black-backed Gulls (Larus marinus L. Svart Bakr Isl.) annually rear their young. North and south of this lake, were some grand rugged mountains, but at a considerable distance from the place in which we were, and mostly covered with snow." 

We parked at the visitor center and walked down to the Thingvellir historic site. This was the old meeting-place of the Althing, Iceland's original parliament, which met there until just a decade or so before Sir William's visit in 1809. There's no longer a town at the site, just a replica of the old church — and a summer cottage for the Prime Minister of Iceland. That's it. One hopes the P.M. remembers to fill the trunk with groceries and beer before going on vacation, because the nearest package store is thirty miles away.

The landscape at Thingvellir is pure Iceland — a marshy braided river flowing into the lake, but also volcanic chasms filled with glacial snowmelt. Sir William noticed them on his visit:

"When we got here, we looked down into an immense plain, which was every where intersected by chasms in the earth as far as the eye could reach, crossing each other in various directions, though most of them were reat (sic) from east to west: three in particular seemed to extend, in uninterrupted lines, the whole width of the plain, and were terminated on one side by the lake Thingevalle."

All in all, an amazing spot.

I wondered why the Althing met in such a remote and hard-to-reach place, but after looking at maps and reading Sir William's account of trying to get around in Iceland before paved roads, I realized that Thingvellir is among the more accessible locations in Iceland. If you're coming from the lowlands to the south, you can just ride right up the rift valley or even take a boat up the river and across the lake. From the west, there's a pass through the mountains to Reykjavik. Travelers from the northwest of Iceland could go by boat to Reykjavik and follow the same route. I don't know how anyone from the east coast got anywhere; I assume they had to brave the seas and then go upriver.

After a couple of hours admiring the beauty of Thingvellir, we got back in our car and drove to Reykjavik. It's not far, really — just 47 kilometers, or about 30 miles, and as I said, there's a pass through the mountains. It is, however, one of the dreariest places I passed through in Iceland. Oh, sure, there's magnificent mountains on either side, but the valley itself is just an endless expanse of grass and rocks.

Sir William didn't think much of it, either:

"From this place, till we got to the banks of the Lake of Thingevalle, nothing interesting occurred. The country, through which we passed, consisted either of a dreary moor, over which large masses of rock were every where scattered, or of a disagreeable morass, into which our horses every now and then sunk up to their bellies."

But after half an hour of driving we crested one last hill and saw the bustling modern city of Reykjavik and its suburbs before us. There's almost no transition between wilderness and city — chiefly because there aren't any farms to speak of.

With the help of our onboard GPS we navigated through Reykjavik to the old city center. And I do mean the center: our hotel was the historic Hotel Borg, on Austurvollur square, next to the cathedral church and the current Althing building. Like most things in Iceland, they are quite modest. The cathedral is a nice little clapboard church, and the Althing looks like a pre-World War I American high school built of lava blocks.

The Borg Hotel itself is very comfortable, with a cool Art Deco aesthetic. I suspect that it went through a period of unfortunate "modernization" in the Sixties and Seventies, and the current owners are restoring the interiors to their original glory. The hotel was founded by Johannes Josefsson, who the hotel Web site describes as a "strong-man and adventurer." He wrestled in the Olympics and toured with the Barnum & Bailey circus, but in 1927 he retired back to Iceland and built the country's swankiest hotel.

We had dinner at a seafood place around the corner, as the Borg's own restaurant was being renovated while we were there (I understand it's due to re-open soon). And with that, it was off to bed.

Next time: Dill!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 2

We slept for about twelve hours on our first night in Iceland, then went downstairs for an excellent buffet breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Lots of different breads, a kind of baked scrambled egg dish, skyr (Icelandic yogurt — you're going to see that a lot), cold cuts, and so forth. And a very exotic Icelandic dish, which Sir William was at pains to describe to his readers:

"However, even this was not all; for a large dish of Waffels, as they are here called, that is to say, a sort of pancake, made of wheat-flour, flat, and roasted in a mould, which forms a number of squares on the top, succeeded the mutton. They were not more than half an inch thick, and about the size of an octavo book."

Well-fortified with breakfast, we put on our stoutest boots and walked a block to the old lava flow from 1973 which buried half the town of Heimaey under ten meters of rock. That lava was heading for the harbor, and would have choked it off and destroyed Heimaey's fishing industry. With no sheltered harbor, the island would be effectively inaccessible. Icelandic emergency crews sprayed cold seawater onto the advancing front of the lava flow to cool it and create a dam to divert the flow away from the harbor. There's even a monument to the heroic diesel pumps which saved the town.

The lava flow also displays the site of the old geothermal heating system, which tapped the heat energy of the cooling rock to heat Heimaey. It ran for 20 years until the dropping lava temperature made it impractical. Still, 20 years of effectively free energy isn't bad, especially for a town which gets all its electricity — and all its fresh water! — from the mainland.

At the southern end of the lava flow we began to climb up the cone of the Eldfell volcano, the source of all that melted rock. Until 1973 Eldfell was a sheep pasture, but in January of that year ash and rock began erupting from the ground. By summer the eruption had created a 200-meter mountain, and added two and a half square kilometers of land to the island.

The mountain is a half-cone. The crater is open on the north side (where the lava came out). This means that when one climbs it, one is climbing along the narrow ridge between the crater and the outer slope of the volcano. Fortunately it's currently inactive, so the bottom of the crater is just a flat expanse of dirt and rocks. But the actual material of the cone isn't solid lava. It's more like gravel. A huge pile of gravel.

So we chugged up the slope, with steep slopes to either side covered with jagged volcanic rocks younger than either of us. Slipping and falling wouldn't be fun. To add to the tension, it's windy on the island of Heimaey, doubly so up on top of an exposed mountain.

We did stop halfway up to take a picture across the channel to the main island of Iceland, with mountains and glaciers looming in the distance. The picture shows one of the other Vestmannaeyr islands, which has no permanent inhabitants but does feature a hunting lodge. Exactly what you're supposed to hunt there isn't clear. Seagulls? Kidnapped sailors?

After laboring up the narrow ridge we made it to the top, and braced ourselves against the aircraft warning light to survey the view. It was amazing. I'm sorry I don't have a picture from up there, but I wasn't about to fish my phone out of my pocket and risk having it blown out of my grip.

We descended, which was physically easier but harder to navigate, and walked back to our hotel through the town, stopping at a supermarket to pick up some well-deserved drinks and a snack. The snack was Hraun, an Icelandic candy bar which has become one of my all-time favorites. It's sort of like a Kit-Kat, only bigger, with a much thicker layer of chocolate over the cookie. The name means lava rock, and it kind of looks like it. Highly recommended.

After a rest we went back over to the western shore of the island, a little farther south than the day before, in hope of puffins. No puffins. Wonderful views of the uninhabited islands offshore, stretching off to the newest part of Iceland, the island of Surtsey, born in 1967.

In late afternoon we went back through the modern town of Heimaey, and got a glimpse of ordinary life in Iceland. Saw a new development of houses going up — each with its own hot tub, because hot water to soak in comes just behind oxygen as a necessity of life in that country. Japan, another volcanic island, also has its hot spring baths. Curiously, Italy — which has plenty of hot springs and practically invented baths — seems to have lost that tradition. Maybe the Mediterranean climate makes staying cool more important to Italians.

We stopped for "kebabs" in town, as most of the restaurants were still closed for the Easter holiday. Kebabs in Europe are what Americans call Gyros. I think that's because America got Greek immigrants who started restaurants, while in Europe the food was introduced by Turkish guest workers.

Though tired, we resisted the urge to go to bed early because it was predicted to be a clear night and we wanted the chance to see the Northern Lights. So we stayed up until twilight ended (it only got full dark at 10:30 p.m.), and hunted around Heimaey for a spot that didn't feature high-intensity street lighting. Eventually we found a little park, and stood around looking at the sky for about an hour. Alas, the weather on the Sun was too good, because there wasn't any activity to see. So at last to bed.

One final observation on Heimaey: for an island that's two miles wide by three miles long, there are a heck of a lot of cars there. Two reasons I can think of. First, there's a lot of steep slopes on that island. Walking around takes effort, and if one had to carry anything it would get very tiresome very fast. The second reason is that you can take your car on the ferry to the "mainland" and drive to Reykjavik or wherever. I was amused to see that Icelanders don't take off the snow tires until April's over.

There's even kind of a car culture. We saw a couple of dudes driving their boss vintage street rods around Heimaey, and at least once at night I heard what sounded very much like an impromptu drag race.

Next time: The Thing!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 1 (second part)

The ferry ride to Heimaey took about 20 minutes and was the quietest boat ride I've ever taken. We later discovered that the good ship Herjolfur is electric-powered, with a big recharging plug on the dock at Heimaey. It makes sense for a short-haul ship in a country with plentiful geothermal power and no local hydrocarbon fuel. (I'm willing to bet the ship has a diesel auxiliary power plant for longer voyages or emergencies.)

The approach to Heimaey is amazing: steep volcanic cliffs rising straight out of the sea, with a narrow entrance to the harbor. Sea birds nest in the cliffs and whirl around over the water. The whole island group is utterly fantastic-looking, like something off of an album cover or a fantasy novel.

Once ashore we dragged our bags to the Hotel Vestmannaeyjar and then went in search of lunch. Unfortunately, Sunday the 17th was Easter Sunday, and the Icelanders are pretty serious about their Easter observances. Only one place was open, a tourist-oriented bar & grill by the waterfront. The menu was mostly pub food — burgers and the like — with a few ostentatiously "exotic" items: whale steak, puffin, or reindeer burgers. The kind of thing you photograph with your cell phone and post to social media. "Check it out! I'm eating WHALE!"

I'll admit it: I had the reindeer burger. I can't really say what reindeer tastes like because the burger was loaded up with stuff like cheese and cranberry jam to offset the flavor. What I could taste was kind of halfway between lamb and beef.

And no, I have no qualms about eating Prancer. Reindeer aren't native to Iceland (nothing without feathers is, really). I'll let Sir William take it:

"These animals were first introduced into this country (according to Von Troil) in the year 1770, from Norway, by order of Governor Thodal. Ten out of thirteen died on the passage. The three remaining ones have done extremely well, and bred so fast, that at this time Count Tramp reckons that there are about five thousand head in the island. They are, however, quite useless to the natives, for no attempts have been made to domesticate them, nor can the inhabitants afford to buy powder and ball to enable them to kill then for provision."

Evidently the Icelanders have armed up since 1809, as I saw it on the menu a few other places.

Even though we'd been up for about 24 hours by that point, it was still afternoon (and afternoons go on a long time at that latitude in April), so we put on our walking shoes and went out in search of birds. The desk clerk at our hotel said he had spotted a puffin only the day before, so we headed for the cliffs at the west end of the island, about a mile away.

The landscape of Heimaey is phenomenal, with volcanic cliffs and old craters right next to the town. The town itself is . . . functional. Older buildings have corrugated iron roofs and siding (not a bad idea when occasionally flaming ash is in the forecast). Newer buildings are that boxy Scandinavian style which makes me think all their architects were big LEGO fans as children.

Eventually we reached the western cliffs, passing some replica medieval Icelandic houses along the way. We saw a gorgeous view across the water of more fantastic offshore rocks. Plenty of gulls, plenty of oystercatchers, plenty of terns, even a couple of pigeons and a wood duck, but not a puffin to be seen. Still, the scenery was great, and we spent an hour out there before plodding back to our hotel and collapsing into bed. Thirty-three hours awake is long enough.

Next time: The Volcano!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 1 (first part)

A few years ago the Crack Team and I went to Europe aboard Iceland Air, because they had good cheap fares and fly out of Logan Airport in Boston. Like all modern long-haul airliners, the plane had little video screens at each seat, and those little screens played promotional videos about how swell it would be to visit Iceland. They worked: we added Iceland to our big list of places to visit.

After the disruptions of the Coronavirus epidemic, we were in the mood to take a trip this year, masks and tests be damned. Iceland seemed like a good destination to re-accustom ourselves to international travel. It's a relatively short flight (only 5 hours), not too expensive, and it looked about right for a one-week vacation.

During our planning, I came across what became my Bible for this trip. Journal of a Tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809, by the eminent botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker. Over the course of my life I've learned a valuable way to seem intelligent: if you want a good introduction to any subject, find a book by a 19th Century Briton. There will be one, if not several, because 19th Century Britons went everywhere, did everything, and wrote about it obsessively. Sir William was the third member of our party, and since I could save his book on my phone, he didn't need a plane ticket or meals.

So off we went. On Saturday afternoon, April 16, we drove out to scenic Framingham, Massachusetts, to catch the Logan Express bus to the airport (and thereby achieved a seven-fold reduction in the cost of parking). Checked in and boarded the plane, and then flew through the extra-short night to Keflavik airport at the western tip of Iceland. Got processed, picked up our rental car, and drove out into a new country.

When the British and Americans needed to put an air base in Iceland during World War II, they picked the tip of the long Reykjanes Peninsula, which sticks out of Iceland's southwestern corner. It was mostly flat, mostly uninhabited, and near the sea lanes they wanted to patrol.

It's also a very volcanically active region. The name means "smoking peninsula" because of all the steaming vents and fumaroles. That activity comes from the fact that this peninsula is actually part of the Mid-Atlantic Rift, where Europe and North America are pulling apart.

All of which means that when you leave the modern international airport which succeeded that old wartime base at Keflavik, you drive through an unearthly landscape of old lava flows, not-so-old lava flows, and recent lava flows. Here and there, seemingly at random, are little clumps of buildings like Moonbases, and in the distance the snow-covered mountains of Iceland's interior loom through the clouds of volcanic mist. It's all the result of geology and geopolitics, but the effect is a wonderful introduction to the country: you're definitely in a new and different place.

We drove east, through the gap in the mountains and down a scary escarpment into the broad low southern valley of Iceland. That region's a huge swampy alluvial fan of volcanic dirt washed down from the mountains of the interior by half a dozen meandering rivers. The ground is turf, cut by scores of little streams and ponds. Here and there one can see a few actual fields waiting to be planted. There are more towns (though still not many), and a great many horse farms. I had dark suspicions about whether those horses might show up on the menu later in our visit, but no, apparently Icelanders like their sturdy little horses a lot, and so do tourists, since every farm advertised riding tours of the area.

Sir William on horses in Iceland: "The horses of the Icelanders are small, but strong, and though, for want of a proper supply of food, generally in a miserable condition during the winters, when they for the most part are kept among the mountains to procure their subsistence as they can; yet, in the summer, when grass is plentiful, they are well furnished with flesh, and, if not worked too hard, will even grow fat. Every Icelander keeps his riding horse, and many of the peasants have, also, from fifty to sixty, or even a hundred, others for burden. These of course are useless in the winter, but, as soon as the fisheries commence, or the season for trade summons their masters to Reikevig and other ports, they are all called into employ . . . No wheel carriages of any kind can be made use of in the island: every thing is therefore transported upon horses, which renders a number of these animals of the greatest importance to those Icelanders who live at a distance from the coast."

Nowadays transport is by car, and I have to say the Icelanders I saw seem almost as car-loving as Americans, even though every drop of fuel has to be imported. There are two reasons: Iceland looks like a small country on the map, but it has vast empty expanses. It feels very big. And second, there are no trains. A landscape consisting basically of mountains, lava flows, glaciers, and swamps would be nightmarish for building a rail line, and nobody has attempted it. Building highways was probably difficult enough, and a lot of the roads in the interior of the island are unpaved and only passable in summer. The difficult terrain also means Iceland has a very busy domestic airline market, with flights from Reykjavik and Keflavik all over the island.

After driving for a couple of hours and a nap at a roadside parking lot, we stopped to visit the LAVA Centre in Hvollsvollur. This wasn't part of the plan; we mostly just wanted to find a restroom and some drinks, and it was open.

I'm very glad we stopped. The LAVA Centre is one of the best little educational museums I've seen. It's all about the geology of Iceland, and includes a viewing platform from which one can see the peak of Mount Hekla, twenty miles away. There's also a video about Iceland's volcanoes, and exhibits on different types of eruptions, different types of lava and igneous rock, and the giant magma plume underneath the island which drives all of this. We had a delightful chat with one of the geologists at the museum and went away impressed. Highly recommended if you're in that part of Iceland.

A good thing, too, because our traveling companion was little help. "I forbear to speak of the mineralogy of the island, because my ignorance of that important branch of natural history would prevent my being able to offer any remarks farther than I could collect from other authors. Few countries, perhaps, present so interesting a field for the geologist."

We couldn't stay at the LAVA Centre as long as we might have wished, as we had to push on from Hvollsvollur in order to make the noon ferry sailing from Landeyjahofn to Heimay. Landeyjahofn is literally nothing but an artificial harbor, parking lot, and a terminal for the ferry. There are no houses or businesses, except a small airport nearby. The only reason it's there is the ferry to Heimay.

I'll cover the voyage to Heimay and our stay in the Vestmannaeyjar next time.

Discover an Archipelago of Lost Worlds

I'm pleased to report that the long-awaited anthology Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms is now available. It's edited by John Joseph Adams and features a pretty impressive lineup of contributors, including Theodora Goss, Cadwell Turnbull, and Becky Chambers. The seventeen stories in the book are all about visits to hidden or imaginary lands — a micro-genre which was once a mainstay of fantastic adventure fiction but which gradually faded away under the influence of decolonization and satellite mapping. My own contribution is called "Out of the Dark," and is another work in the ongoing Billion Worlds series. I'm pretty eager to get my hands on a copy myself. 

In other Billion Worlds news, I just handed in my draft of the next Billion Worlds novel, a prequel to The Godel Operation with the working title The Scarab Mission. More news as that progresses toward publication. Until then . . . 

. . . get Lost!

The Zydeco Operation

The Godel Operation comes to Acadiana! On Wednesday, September 22, I'll be doing a reading and signing at southwestern Louisiana's premier book shop, Beausoleil Books of Lafayette, from 6 to 8 p.m. The event is free and all are welcome.

Come on down and hear some of the adventures of Daslakh and Zee in the Billion Worlds of the Tenth Millennium! I'll answer any questions and sign whatever is put in front of me. 

Did I mention this bookstore has a wine bar? That's the hallmark of a truly advanced civilization.  

Steely-Eyed Missile Robot

Congratulations to the Perseverance rover on its successful landing on Mars. Pretty impressive job for a rookie pilot! Let's all wish it a long career of rolling around the Martian landscape.

ADDENDUM: Almost as impressive as the landing is the amazing improvement in data return. Forty-five years ago, when I watched the Viking landings on Mars, it took hours for the first still photos to reach Earth. Today Perseverance sent back pictures within a few minutes.

SECOND ADDENDUM: Here's a video, with control-room chatter synched to the images, of the final descent. If you've ever wanted to dive six kilometers down to the surface of Mars, this is what it looks like. (Remember that the "control" room people are watching ten-minute-old video with no way to interfere. The probe was entirely on its own.)

 

The Lost Manuscripts of Lemuel Gulliver, Part the First

Historians and students of literature were tremendously excited by the recent announcement by Oxford University that several volumes of unpublished notes by Lemuel Gulliver had been found in the Bodleian Library. 

Dr. Gulliver was a little-known 18th-century explorer, the first European to visit Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and other lands of the Pacific. His accounts of those voyages were edited and published by the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, and for many years were considered to be purely fictional, until those islands became important battlegrounds during the Second World War.

The notebooks discovered in the Bodelian Library contain much material which Swift elected to leave out of the popular edition of Gulliver's works. Evidently Swift, no scientist himself, thought the public would be bored by Dr. Gulliver's observations and theories on the biology of the peoples he encountered. These new discoveries restore Dr. Lemuel Gulliver to his proper place as a naturalist and early investigator of the field of biomechanics.

Here's the first deleted section, from his manuscript on Lilliput:

During my stay in Lilliput, I was continually astonished by a singular feature of the Architecture in that Kingdom, namely the utter Absence of stairs  or other means of climbing from one floor to another within a dwelling. Remarkably, this Absence did not discommode the Lilliputians in the slightest degree. To ascend, they simply leapt from one story to the next, without any sign of undue Exertion or loss of dignity. I even witnessed an elderly Lilliputian, his hair whitened and his back bent with age, vault up to his Chamber on the third floor of his house in a single bound!

In a like manner, the Lilliputians I observed did not trouble to climb downstairs — indeed, there were none to climb — but simply flung themselves out the nearest Window if they wished to alight upon the Ground.  Several times I witnessed Lilliputians in the Towns leaping across the Streets from one upper-storey window to another, showing no fear of falling, and if they did chance to miss their Aim and tumble to the ground, they showed no ill Effect of their misadventure.

Several Learned Gentlemen among the Lilliputians and Blefuscudians reported to me that none of their Race has any fear of a fall, as they can alight safely, no matter the height from which they have fallen. Indeed, they thought my natural Caution in going up and down to be unmanly, and I was occasionally the object of Ridicule for it.

Upon my return to England, I had the occasion to mention this remarkable Circumstance to my neighbor Dr. Erasmus Darwin.  He informed me that this Conduct of the Lilliputians is perfectly natural, and is a necessary Consequence of their extraordinary Diminution.

"Consider, Dr. Gulliver," (said Dr. Darwin to me) "that the weight of a man is in proportion to his volume,  if we assume that there be no material difference between the Lilliputians and ourselves but only one of scale. Therefore a Gentleman of Lilliput, proportioned like yourself but having a height of only six inches, would weigh but 1/1728 of what you do, or slightly less than two Ounces, that being the cubic power of 1/12."

I replied that this Weight was precisely that of such Gentlemen of Lilliput as I had occasion to place upon the Scales.

"But consider, Dr. Gulliver: the active Power of the Muscles is in proportion to their Area in cross-section. Our Lilliputian Gentleman's leg muscles would be 1/144th the size of yours in Area, and thus in Strength, as that is the square of 1/12." As he spoke he made some rapid calculations with a lead pencil upon a sheet of foolscap.

"Surely that cannot be right," I interjected.  "For that would mean he would be twelve times as strong as I, in proportion to his size."

"That is exactly right, Dr. Gulliver. He would indeed be stronger — in proportion. If you yourself are able to leap to a height of (let us say) three feet, that is, a height equal to one-half your own, then a Lilliputian would be capable of leaping twelve times as far in proportion, or six times his own height. In fact, the proportions cancel themselves out, so we are faced with the startling conclusion that a Lilliputian can leap as high as you yourself, Dr. Gulliver! The people of Lilliput have no need of stairs, for to jump up a Storey requires no greater effort for them than for you to ascend a single step."

PhilCon 2020 Goes Virtual

This year's PhilCon — the venerable Philadelphia-era science fiction con now in its 84th year — is going to be all-online. On the plus side that means no New Jersey traffic and mall food; on the minus side it means no spontaneous conversations in the hotel lobby, no room parties, and no basic human contact. But a virtual convention is better than none at all. 

Still, as in past years I will be participating, from my office in Massachusetts. Here's my schedule:

 

Friday November 20, 5:30 p.m.: Online Gaming: Not Just for Pandemics

Michael Ryan (moderator), Robert Hranek, James L. Cambias, Debby Lieven

The four of us will be discussing how the ongoing epidemic has affected how people play games -- will we go back to tabletops and rec rooms again, or is online gaming the future?

 

8:30 p.m.: From the Iron Bank to CHOAM: Business in Fiction

James L. Cambias (moderating), Anthony Dobranski, Elektra Hammond, Tom Doyle, Ian Randal Strock

A panel about the role of business and economics in fantastic fiction. How does a world's economy affect the stories one can tell? What does fiction get right and wrong?

 

Saturday November 20, 5:30 p.m.: The Oceans of Space

James L. Cambias, Tom Purdom, Kelli Fitzpatrick

I think I'm moderating this one. The three of us will discuss famous maritime science fiction, and how new discoveries in and beyond the Solar System may influence future ocean stories.

 

Sunday November 21, 1:00 p.m.: The Search for the Philosophers' Stone

Robert Hranek (moderator), Anastasia Klimchynskaya, James Prego, James L. Cambias, Elizabeth Crowens

We'll look at the history of alchemy, how discoveries in chemistry and physics changed our understanding of how matter works, and look at some other concepts which have shifted over time.

 

4:00 p.m.: Reading

I'll give con goers a glimpse into my forthcoming novel The Godel Operation, and the amazing far-future setting The Billion Worlds.