The Devniad Book 62 un zine de Bob Devney 25 Johnson Street, North Attleboro, MA 02760 U.S.A. e-mail: [email protected] For APA:NESFA #360 May 2000 copyright 2000 by Robert E. Devney Bookbits affect large numbers of their fellows. The Stickiness Factor means that there are If you are what you eat, I'm in big specific ways of making a contagious trouble. I'm much more comfortable with a message memorable and impactful. The formulation such as, you are what you read. Power of Context claims that the key in So even though myriad other fanzines help getting people to change their behavior keep us all up on how many books we sometimes lies with the smallest details of really should be getting to, every once in a their immediate situation. while I like to do some reviews regardless. This all sounds pretty dry. But in fact the Here goes. book is juicy with clear, really cool examples If you notice a persistent theme of sex, — including how AIDS caught fire; how sex, sex frolicking through many of the teenage Micronesian suicide became a fad; following selections, who're you going to how Peter Jennings' microsmiles maybe blame, little old me or all those perverse, made millions vote Republican; how the pandering panjandrums of publishing? producers stuck generations of kids on TV's Sesame Street; how the Gore-Tex people Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How rendered their company culture porous to Little Things Can Make a Big Difference ideas (hint: it turns out 150 people is the (2000 hardcover, Little, Brown and Company, effective upper limit for a cohesive social 279 pages, $24.95) group); why Paul Revere succeeded while Intelligent pop sociology that may fellow traveler William Dawes failed; how actually have a point. I have no idea if New York City's crime rate plummeted Gladwell, one of my favorites among the (murders down two-thirds, felonies cut in newer crop of writers for The New Yorker half) due to something called the Broken magazine, is a science fiction fan — but it Windows Theory and a campaign against certainly seems like it. You sense a real SF graffiti; and how to cure teen smoking. sensibility at work here in attitudes like: I'll single out two of my favorite bits. Let's question old assumptions. Step back Gladwell reports a number of those and look at the big picture. Cherish some horrifying psych/soc experiments that conclusions for their sheer neatness. prove such awful things about us as a The neatest ideas here (not necessarily species. Including one where they told Gladwell's own, but grounded in current students at Princeton Theological Seminary research by a number of social scientists) are to prepare an impromptu sermon on a given that social change behaves like an epidemic. theme as they walked through the alley to Also that such change is contagious; that the next building. But in that alley, the little causes can have big effects; and that researchers planted a supposedly change happens not gradually but at one unconscious man, coughing and groaning. dramatic moment: the Tipping Point itself. Turns out the context that tipped people Additionally, Gladwell teases out three into unhelpfulness was not their assigned principles. The Law of the Few says that in a sermon subject, but whether or not they given process or system a few special were told they were late. You can guess the people (Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen) rest. "On several occasions, a seminary start and accelerate the change that will student going to give his talk on the parable The Devniad, Book 62 Page 2 of 14 of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over audience along with stars like Stephen the victim as he hurried on his way." Ouch. Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, David And for posterity, I'll reprint a lost Quammen, or dare I say Neal Stephenson? moment from SF history. Gladwell mentions But everyone reading this fanzine should it in illustrating the personality of a find much enjoyment and an equal serving Connector — that rare person who of information in The Tipping Point. And maintains many friends or acquaintances in more than that, perhaps all you Mavens will multiple strata of society, and links the rest find inspiration for action in its closing of us stay-at-home types together. He's words: "Look at the world around you. It talking about a particular Connector he may seem like an immovable, implacable found in Chicago named Lois Weisberg. place. It is not. With the slightest push — in "Once — and this would have been in just the right place — it can be tipped." the mid-1950s — Weisberg took the train to New York to attend, on a whim, the Science William Barton, When We Were Real (1999 Fiction Writers Convention, where she met a paperback, Aspect/Warner Books, 337 young writer by the name of Arthur C. pages, $6.99) Clarke. [Gladwell must be talking here Call it a picaresque novel of a rather sad about 1956's Newyorcon, the 14th World boy at "the other end of history" who grows Science Fiction Convention (for writers and to be a depressed though certainly sex- fans), where Clarke was guest of honor]. happy soldier and sometime rebel, gripped Clarke took a shine to Weisberg, and next in the jaws of his rearing (under a crushing time he was in Chicago he called her up. 'He matriarchy) and of powerful militaristic was at a pay phone,' Weisberg recalls. 'He corporations that soullessly rule a galaxy of said, is there anyone in Chicago I should potential immortals. Got all that? meet. I told him to come over to my house Barton writes like Joe Haldeman with a … I called Bob Hughes. Bob Hughes was hard-on. Or a frankly more accomplished, one of the people who wrote for my paper more serious Catherine Asaro on downers. [an underground weekly cleverly called The How about Iain Banks with a lot less ironic Paper].' Pause. 'I said, do you know anyone distance? Forget comparisons: He's a first- in Chicago interested in talking to Arthur class talent with his own voice, and When Clarke. He said, yeah, Isaac Asimov is in We Were Real was definitely one of the best town. And this guy, Robert, Robert — SF books written in 1999. Wish I'd seen it Robert Heinlein. So they all came over and before I picked my Hugo nominations. sat in my study.' Pause. 'Then they called There's not much sense in my going on over to me and they said, Lois … I can't and on about this one. You've got to read it remember the word they used … It was to appreciate its own strong, strange flavor. something about how I was the kind of Though I'll tell you one more thing: person who brings people together.'" There has never been another science I'll leave it to you to think about who in fiction novel so fascinated by vaginas. your circle is a Connector. Of course, it's obvious to me immediately that half the Peter Abrahams, A Perfect Crime (1999 members of NESFA are Mavens. As is, ex paperback, Ballantine Books, 367 pages, officio, just about any decent fanzine writer. $6.99) Malcolm Gladwell talks down to us a bit A smart, intense mystery about Francie too much from time to time throughout his Cullingwood — a smart, intense Boston art book, particularly in prefaces and appraiser suffering the pangs of the love conclusions. Some of the material seems a that dare not speak its name. No, not that degree too buffed up, repetitively love, another kind. presented, and simplified for my taste. I This guy Abrahams certainly knows how can't quite put him in the first rank of to write a sentence and pace a scene. Those science writers for an intelligent lay are no small gifts; doubt I find one new The Devniad, Book 62 Page 3 of 14 mystery author a year this good. I'm less Spain to what will be northern California, certain about the overall story here: dude. Francie's weird genius Boston Brahmin But Stirling has certainly read Jared husband is drawn a lot less convincingly Diamond and Peter Farb and William than she, and speaking of convincing how McNeill as well as John Keegan. Warfighting many coincidences can we be expected to aside, he also works in convincing sketches take? of current thinking about civilization- Still, there are interesting things said building, as well as plenty of fascinating here about sex, radio psychologists, killer details on farming on Long Island, carving tennis, the role of the PC in breaking up canoes in California, and building sewers in marriages, how short a time it's been since Babylon. nice girls eschewed tattoos, why brains are He even has one really memorable no substitute for personality or indeed character, Commodore Marian Alston- sense, outsider sculpture, and did I mention Kurlelo of the Coast Guard of the Republic sex? of Nantucket: a strong, katana-wielding, gay Smarmy little closing coming up: A African-American warrior woman. Marian is Perfect Crime may not be perfect, but missing the island's master strategist and La it would be a real crime. Suprema of its armed forces. And escaped from her commander's closet in the uptight S. M. Stirling, On the Oceans of Eternity late 20th century Coast Guard, here and (2000 paperback, Roc, 630 pages, $6.99) now she finds true love partnered with a When it comes to military SF, my adult bawdy blonde tribesbabe from ancient liberalism battles it out with my Sgt.