[continued from previous message]   
      
   reality, they would display regression toward the mean of the   
   population on the ship, which would probably be a bit north of   
   150. In other words, they wouldn’t lose the intellectual advantage   
   they started with.   
      
   For a real world example, the unusually high mean IQ of Ashkenazi   
   Jews (about 115) has been maintained for many generations, to the   
   best of my knowledge.   
      
   The idea that children brought up on a generation ship would   
   resent it as imprisonment seems to fly in the face of common   
   sense. Instead, as other SF writers have suggested, the real   
   problem would be to get the space-born to abandon the only world   
   they've ever known, when they've reached their destination and   
   they're supposed to colonize an unfamiliar and dangerous planetary   
   surface.   
      
   In response to Evelyn's comments on DEVIL'S CONTRACT in the   
   07/04/25 issue of the MT VOID, Taras writes:   
      
   Your description of the sloppy editing in DEVIL'S CONTRACT by Ed   
   Simon made me wonder if was published by a vanity press.   
      
   Treating the Nazi takeover of Germany as a “Faustian bargain” is a   
   stretch. It’s only in retrospect that Adolf Hitler seems satanic.   
   To most people at the time, he was just the same old same old,   
   cynically exploiting Jew hatred to gain power. Nobody thought he   
   would do what he did:  his antisemitic policy was not just evil,   
   it was idiotic. Any Communist dictator could have told him, first   
   win your war, then exterminate whomever you please.   
      
   Evelyn responds:   
      
   DEVIL'S CONTRACT was published by Melville Press, an independent   
   press which probably has minimal staff. It is not a vanity press   
   so far as I can tell; according to Wikipedia, "In 2007, they were   
   named by the Association of American Publishers as the winner of   
   the 2007 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent   
   Publishing." [-ecl]   
      
   ===================================================================   
      
   TOPIC: BACK TO THE FUTURE (letter of comment by Gary McGath)   
      
   In response to Mark's review of BACK TO THE FUTURE in the 07/04/25   
   issue of the MT VOID, Gary McGath writes:   
      
   [Mark wrote,] "The cast is made up almost exclusively of unknowns.   
   The minor exceptions are Lloyd, whose face is familiar from ONE   
   FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST--he played a belligerent inmate--and   
   from TO BE OR NOT TO BE." [-mrl]   
      
   Lloyd was most familiar to me as Kruge in STAR TREK III. [-gmg]   
      
   And John Kerr-Mudd writes:   
      
   He was a taxi driver for the Sunshine Cab Company; Danny Devito   
   was the dispatcher [in the television series TAXI]. [-jkm]   
      
   Evelyn adds:   
      
   Both of these appeared before BACK TO THE FUTURE, so they do   
   count. [-ecl]   
      
   ===================================================================   
      
   TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)   
      
   THE WARS OF THE ROSES: THE FALL OF THE PLANTAGENETS AND THE RISE   
   OF THE TUDORS by Dan Jones (Viking, ISBN 978-0-670-02667)   
   continues English history from his earlier book, THE PLANTAGENETS.   
      
   Alas, I have to note that Viking still lacks a copy editor: "he   
   was decidedly the least impressive of his three elder brothers"   
   implies he was one of his three elder brothers. While the   
   Plantagenets did have a very complicated family tree, I don't   
   think any of them were one of his own elder brothers.   
      
   Jones writes, "... they were outnumbered by three to one." No,   
   "by" is a preposition that needs an object. Either "they were   
   outnumbered by Henry's men, three to one" or "they were   
   outnumbered, three to one" would be correct.   
      
   "Edward IV had been the most capable politician and talented   
   soldier to wear the English crown since Henry V." Given that there   
   was only one king between them (Henry VI), that is like saying   
   "Thomas Jefferson was the only President elected to a second term   
   since George Washington."   
      
   And let's face it, the Wars of the Roses are hard enough to follow   
   as it is. No matter how straightforwardly an author writes--and   
   Jones is on the whole pretty straightforward--that period of   
   English history is just going to be a muddle. [-ecl]   
      
      
   ===================================================================   
      
                                        Evelyn C. Leeper   
                                        evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com   
      
      
              My goal in life is to become as wonderful as my dog   
              thinks I am.   
                                              --Toby & Eileen Green   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)