From archive (archive) Subject: Re: TWISTOR by John Cramer Summary: Author's comments From: seymour@blake.acs.washington.edu (Richard Seymour) Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Date: 4 May 89 22:19:43 GMT Mr. Everett Kaser of Hewlett-Packard, Corvallis, OR posted some comments and questions about my hard SF novel, Twistor (Wm. Morrow & Co., $18.95 in hardcover) to which I thought I should reply. Since his was an "open letter" posted in sci.physics <100780003@hpcvlx.HP.COM>, I will reply in the same way. First, thanks for the nice remarks, Everett. I'm very pleased that you liked the book. Your comments managed to reach me with no problem. I don't usually read this area myself, but no less than three people at the UW passed on your message to me this morning. You are the first to comment on the accuracy with which the computers and computing were treated in Twistor. That was certainly one of the science-related activities I was trying to describe correctly, based both on my own experience and on suggestions from others. At my laboratory we use computers heavily, and I too have been regularly irritated by the "feed in the data" cliches that abound in SF. The paperback version of Twistor should be out in April of 1990, published by Avon. (However, I should point out that SF hardcovers APPRECIATE in value, and in a few years are worth more than you paid for them, while paperbacks drop in value as soon as you buy them.) SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!SPOILER WARNING!!!!!! Now let me comment on the technical points you raised about Twistor: (1) The Six-legged Animals. As you observed, our basic body design is inherited from some ancient four-legged ancestor. In fact, that ancestor was probably something like a "walking catfish" that could, for its own purposes, propel itself up on the land for brief or extended visits by walking on stubby fins. If you look at any modern fish you will see the two sets of ventral fins that must have evolved into legs. There is no third set of fins, so our ancestors were stuck with being four legged. In Twistor, you may have noticed that the fish have an extra set of fins up front near their gills. These, in my scenario, lead to evolution into six legged amphibians and eventually led to six legged mammaloids like the shadow kitten. I don't buy your argument about extra legs being energetically expensive. Extra legs should spread the energy load around more uniformly and should make for a smoother and less energy-expensive gait, with the added advantage of redundancy in case of injury. For very small animals six legs should be a particularly significant advantage since, due to scaling, they have such a short fall-over time. (2) The Tree/Treebird Symbiosis. It isn't that the trees NEED to have a treebird to groom them, it's that a tree will be healthier because of the grooming of its treebird. The treebird's ultra-territorial behavior, which serves a metaphorical function in the novel, would indeed limit the treebird population to one breeding male per tree. That is a very common pattern in nature, and is, in fact, the reason that birds make birdcalls. Not, as the poet imagines, to express the sheer joy of existence, but rather to warn the other encroaching males away from his territory. The surplus males, ejected from the home tree at a certain age, would have to scrounge in the underbrush until they could find a tree of their own. I didn't go into mating rituals (after all, it was October) but they would probably consists of the treebird male appropriately "decorating" his tree and then enticing interested females to nest in the tree's upper branches. (3) Charged Particles in the Twistor Field. It isn't that NO charged particles or ions can be twisted, it's that the NET charge of the matter twisted must be zero. Think of it in terms of Gauss's law. It wouldn't do to have electrical charge suddenly appear where none had been before. Where would the field lines go? Would they be chopped off at the field boundary? So the Twistor field will rotate only an electrically neutral chunk of matter, and will leave behind a few electrons or nuclei as necessary to achieve neutrality. Anyhow, Everett, thanks for the comments and questions. I'm glad to hear that people out there are reading my book. From uucp Mon May 8 12:37 SST 1989 >From comix.ida.liu.se!matoh Mon May 8 12:37:11 1989 remote from majestix.ida.liu.se Received: by sssab.se (smail2.5) id AA17429; 8 May 89 12:37:11 SST (Mon) Received: from majestix.ida.liu.se by sunic.sunet.se (5.61+IDA/KTH/LTH/1.44) id AAsunic15478; Sun, 7 May 89 06:15:58 +0200 Received: from comix.ida.liu.se by majestix.ida.liu.se; Sun, 7 May 89 03:16:02 +0200 Received: by comix.ida.liu.se; Sun, 7 May 89 02:47:49 +0200 Date: Sun, 7 May 89 02:47:49 +0200 From: Mats Ohrman Message-Id: <8905070047.AA09409@comix.ida.liu.se> To: matoh@sssab.se Status: RO >From root Fri May 5 19:57:57 1989 Received: from sunic.sunet.se by majestix.ida.liu.se; Fri, 5 May 89 19:57:51 +0200 Received: by sunic.sunet.se (5.61+IDA/KTH/LTH/1.44) id AAsunic18905; Fri, 5 May 89 19:58:52 +0200 Received: by sssab.se (smail2.5) id AA12004; 5 May 89 18:36:25 SST (Fri) Date: 5 May 89 18:36:24 SST (Fri) From: MAILER-DAEMON@sssab.se Subject: failed mail To: matoh@majestix.ida.liu.se Message-Id: <8905051836.AA12004@sssab.se> Status: R ======= command failed ======= COMMAND: /bin/lmail 'matoh' ======= standard error follows ======= lmail: Cannot append to /usr/mail/matoh lmail: Return to majestix.ida.liu.se!matoh bad system name: majestix.ida.liu.se uux failed ( 11 ) ======= text of message follows ======= >From majestix.ida.liu.se!matoh Received: from majestix.ida.liu.se by sunic.sunet.se (5.61+IDA/KTH/LTH/1.44) id AAsunic04547; Fri, 5 May 89 03:55:21 +0200 Received: by majestix.ida.liu.se; Fri, 5 May 89 03:54:13 +0200 Date: Fri, 5 May 89 03:54:13 +0200 From: Mats Ohrman Message-Id: <8905050154.AA20906@majestix.ida.liu.se> To: matoh@sssab.se Path: liuida!sunic!kth!mcvax!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!blake!seymour From: seymour@blake.acs.washington.edu (Richard Seymour) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers Subject: Re: TWISTOR by John Cramer Summary: Author's comments Message-ID: <1884@blake.acs.washington.edu> Date: 4 May 89 22:19:43 GMT References: <101170024@hpcvlx.HP.COM> <26044@pbhya.PacBell.COM> Reply-To: cramer@phast.phys.washington.edu (John Cramer) Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 93 Mr. Everett Kaser of Hewlett-Packard, Corvallis, OR posted some comments and questions about my hard SF novel, Twistor (Wm. Morrow & Co., $18.95 in hardcover) to which I thought I should reply. Since his was an "open letter" posted in sci.physics <100780003@hpcvlx.HP.COM>, I will reply in the same way. First, thanks for the nice remarks, Everett. I'm very pleased that you liked the book. Your comments managed to reach me with no problem. I don't usually read this area myself, but no less than three people at the UW passed on your message to me this morning. You are the first to comment on the accuracy with which the computers and computing were treated in Twistor. That was certainly one of the science-related activities I was trying to describe correctly, based both on my own experience and on suggestions from others. At my laboratory we use computers heavily, and I too have been regularly irritated by the "feed in the data" cliches that abound in SF. The paperback version of Twistor should be out in April of 1990, published by Avon. (However, I should point out that SF hardcovers APPRECIATE in value, and in a few years are worth more than you paid for them, while paperbacks drop in value as soon as you buy them.) SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!SPOILER WARNING!!!!!! Now let me comment on the technical points you raised about Twistor: (1) The Six-legged Animals. As you observed, our basic body design is inherited from some ancient four-legged ancestor. In fact, that ancestor was probably something like a "walking catfish" that could, for its own purposes, propel itself up on the land for brief or extended visits by walking on stubby fins. If you look at any modern fish you will see the two sets of ventral fins that must have evolved into legs. There is no third set of fins, so our ancestors were stuck with being four legged. In Twistor, you may have noticed that the fish have an extra set of fins up front near their gills. These, in my scenario, lead to evolution into six legged amphibians and eventually led to six legged mammaloids like the shadow kitten. I don't buy your argument about extra legs being energetically expensive. Extra legs should spread the energy load around more uniformly and should make for a smoother and less energy-expensive gait, with the added advantage of redundancy in case of injury. For very small animals six legs should be a particularly significant advantage since, due to scaling, they have such a short fall-over time. (2) The Tree/Treebird Symbiosis. It isn't that the trees NEED to have a treebird to groom them, it's that a tree will be healthier because of the grooming of its treebird. The treebird's ultra-territorial behavior, which serves a metaphorical function in the novel, would indeed limit the treebird population to one breeding male per tree. That is a very common pattern in nature, and is, in fact, the reason that birds make birdcalls. Not, as the poet imagines, to express the sheer joy of existence, but rather to warn the other encroaching males away from his territory. The surplus males, ejected from the home tree at a certain age, would have to scrounge in the underbrush until they could find a tree of their own. I didn't go into mating rituals (after all, it was October) but they would probably consists of the treebird male appropriately "decorating" his tree and then enticing interested females to nest in the tree's upper branches. (3) Charged Particles in the Twistor Field. It isn't that NO charged particles or ions can be twisted, it's that the NET charge of the matter twisted must be zero. Think of it in terms of Gauss's law. It wouldn't do to have electrical charge suddenly appear where none had been before. Where would the field lines go? Would they be chopped off at the field boundary? So the Twistor field will rotate only an electrically neutral chunk of matter, and will leave behind a few electrons or nuclei as necessary to achieve neutrality. Anyhow, Everett, thanks for the comments and questions. I'm glad to hear that people out there are reading my book.