SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.com http://www.well.com/~bubbles/ Issue #138 New Moon of March 29, 2006 Contents copyright 2006 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of "fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I get a cut of the profits. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. Details of how to sign up are at the end. ********************* Something got me thinking about that nursery rhyme about the cat and the fiddle. Notice that the rhyme, at least in the versions I've seen, doesn't say what the cat is doing with the fiddle. Is it doing anything? A real cat could do little more with a real violin than pluck the strings more or less at random with its claws, or maybe sit on it when it senses that some nearby human wants to play it. But this is a nursery rhyme that speaks of trans-lunar cattle and animated tableware, and it's often illustrated with an anthropomorphic cartoon cat playing a violin the way a human would. Given the circumstances that's not unreasonable to assume. But it's not the only possibility. There are lots of other things cartoon cats might do with fiddles. Here are some of them: The cat could hold a funeral for the strings, if they're really catgut or the cat thinks they are even if they aren't. The cat could rearrange the strings and the tuning pegs to make a stretch rack for torturing mice. Even as-is, the strings might make a good cheese slicer. Why would a cat want sliced cheese? For catching mice. The f-holes are probably too small for a violin to be really useful as a litter box. But the cat could try. If there's a building the cat wants to know the height of, and the cat doesn't have a barometer, the violin can be substituted for almost any height-determination method that does not involve measuring air pressure or spilling mercury. Try a Google search on building height barometer for details. Note that the violin may not be heavy enough for some of those methods to work well. Filling it with sand might help. Or maybe the cat already has a sand-filled violin left over from a failed litter-box experiment. That should do nicely. Prop the violin up (using the strings as guy wires?) and arrange stones around it like a sundial, and start a rumor that it's a mouse version of Stonehenge. Then when mice start coming on Solstice and Equinox days, eat them. Since cats are not known for their skill on the violin, collect money from humans in exchange for not attempting to play. There may be other things a cat could do with a violin that I haven't thought of yet, but for now this looks like enough. ********************* Speaking of fantasy creatures making music, a recent issue of a fanzine (Xenofilkia, see http://thestarport.org/xeno/ for more info) has a cover showing a mermaid playing a harp, with a ship off in the distance. I'm wondering where she got the harp and how long she'll be able to keep it. Do the mer-people have their own undersea civilization with artisans who make such things? Do they trade with the land people? Do they salvage them from shipwrecks? Or do they do some of all of these? I'm also wondering how long a harp made by and for land people would last in the hands of a mermaid. If it's of traditional wooden construction the constant exposure to salt air and water can't be good. And what of the strings? The salt air would tend to corrode them as well. So she'd better enjoy that harp while she can, because it won't last very long. On the other hand, if it was made by undersea artisans they should know how to make a harp that will stand up to seashore conditions. Then she should be OK. Nowadays a children's toy harp made of plastic might be the best bet for something made by land people with no thought given to use by mer-people. But the ship in the distance has sails, so the scene is probably from a world that doesn't have the technology to make plastics. But then again, in a world that has mermaids they may be able to preserve things like wooden harps by magic. ********************* Another thought: A mermaid would be hard put to play the type of harp used in symphony orchestras because it uses foot pedals to do sharps and flats. Even with the pedals on a piano, a mermaid tail would be kind of clumsy. On the other hand, what musical instruments might mer-people have that land people would not be able to play well? ********************* In Silicon Soapware #137 I brought up the question of why so many magical worlds don't have the kinds of technology we see in our world. My theory was that the magic interferes with what we think of as scientific experimentation, so the key discoveries don't get made, but that technological things taken there from worlds like ours would generally work. Someone on the email list chimed in with a different explanation. In his fantasy universes the physical laws are different, possibly to the extent of not even having atoms as we know them, and our technology just plain doesn't work there. He has good reason to make that assumption: He's into gaming, and doesn't want smart-aleck players bringing technological stuff (even something as seemingly simple as gunpowder) into his game worlds. So when someone tries it, he just declares that It Does Not Work. He has coherent explanations within the context of his magical universe, and appears to have thought it through pretty well. It's just not the kind of thing I would have initially assumed. But then I got to thinking of how both types of worlds might fit together into one overall system. Basically worlds that were similar to one another would be close together (in some vaguely-defined meta space) while dissimilar ones would be farther apart. In that system the types of worlds I usually dream up would be near this world while the ones where technological stuff doesn't work would be farther away, and the cartoon worlds inhabited by the likes of Fritz the Cat or Bugs Bunny would be even more distant. Scattered between and among these might be null universes whose laws do not allow life to exist at all. For example, in some universes close to ours the key physical constants might be different, so that stars don't shine or most chemical elements never formed. I don't know what the analogous things might be for more magical places, but they would almost certainly exist. In any event, nobody goes to those places. I note them here because when you travel between worlds you have to be careful not to land in one of the dead ones by mistake. You could instantly cease to exist. Any transition from one universe to another would have to be between ones that are fairly similar. If you wanted to go from here to some distant cartoon universe you'd need to make several intermediate stops along the way, all in universes in which your body could continue to exist while becoming a little more magical and cartoon-like with each transition. And you would have to avoid landing in any dead worlds. It would be a bit like those word puzzles where you have to get from (for example) FROG to KISS to PRINCE by adding, deleting, or changing one letter at a time in such a way that every intermediate step is still a word. In some cases the journey would be simple and easy, other times it could be quite long and roundabout, while still other destinations may not be reachable at all. Also, different kinds of beings would have access to different sets of universes. We humans, for example, might be able to go to magical universes with fire-breathing dragons while the dragons would not be able to exist in ours. But then they, on the other hand, might do just fine in some places where we humans couldn't exist. Robots, on the other hand, would be viable in yet a different set of worlds. And again, we could co-exist with them in some but not in others. Think of doing the FROG to KISS to PRINCE puzzle in other languages. Even if the starting word translated to "frog" and the ending word to "prince" with some word in between translating to "kiss", the other stepping-stone words would be quite different. And in some languages it might not be possible at all, even if it's easy in English. This seems worthy of further thought. ********************* One of the rules posted at a recent Witches' convention was to the effect of "If you invoke it, you should dismiss it when you're done." That led me to wonder if entities that people invoke and forget to dismiss end up at Lost & Found. That might be worth a cartoon or something. ********************* The "For Better or For Worse" comic strip episode of March 16, 2006, http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/001711.php ends with a monster appearing under the floor. Is it a dream? My thought was that maybe it's from the Void between strips and will drag her off to "Rose Is Rose", where the Drain Monster will devour her toes and leave her, dazed, bleeding, and toeless, somewhere in the margins of the page. Then the phone calls will start coming in from readers complaining of blood all over their funny papers... But then maybe the Drain Monster isn't all that evil. Perhaps he'll be decent enough to drop her off with Rex Morgan, M.D., or maybe the hospital the wife in "Jump Start" works at. Is that too much to ask? ********************* At some future planning meeting for Martian terraforming project, one of the members rises to speak. "I have a Cultural Heritage item to propose. But first let me give you some personal background. My grandparents had a big collection of old science fiction: Movies and radio dramas and even books by Verne, Niven, Bradbury, plus a lot more you've probably never heard of. When I was a kid I watched and read it all. It shaped my childhood dreams, and is probably one of the main reasons I'm part of this team today. And I know others who have similar feelings, although perhaps not as strong as mine. [Signals for the wall to display an old hand-drawn image of Mars as seen through one of the first telescopes] I realize this may not be feasible, but if it isn't please try not to laugh. It's important to me. When we terraform Mars ... ... Can we put in canals?" ********************* Recently I attended a convention devoted to science fiction and fantasy-related music: http://www.consonance.org/ This issue's poem came from there. One of the big events was a Saturday afternoon memorial circle for Cindy McQuillin, a prominent singer-songwriter who had passed away a few weeks before. The moderator was Dr. James Robinson, her domestic partner. His opening remarks included the line "Don't make me cry before we start." That stuck in my mind, and a poem (with rhyme, possibly to have a tune written for it later) started coming together in my head and finally emerged during dinner break. I wrote it down on the back of a flyer and read it at an open circle later that night. It seemed to be well received. I may write a tune for it, but won't get jealous if somebody else gets to it first. There's a shift in meter for the last line of each verse, and it seems to want a pause before that line to make the meter work. But that's something that'll be easy to incorporate into the tune. ********************* Don't Make Me Cry Before We Start For Cindy McQuillan 1953 - 2006 A singer has passed into silence And so we are gathered today, Rememb'ring her joys and her sorrows In music that she loved to play. We honor her life and her art -- Don't make me cry before we start. The circle is constantly turning. New voices are joining the old In songs sung by those gone before us, A treasure more precious than gold. The memories tug at my heart -- Don't make me cry before we start. And now as I gaze 'round the circle Through eyes growing misty with tears I think of new voices who'll join us As circles revolve though the years On the journey that no one can chart -- Don't make me cry before we start. -- Tom Digby written approx 18:00 03/04/2006 entered 07:58 03/06/2006 dedication 16:34 03/29/2006 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time. If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both. 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