The Phantom Milo John M. Ford is still curmudgeonly. (Yes, this is that Water Still Wet feature promised below.)

The Economist’s weekly feature obit was on John R. Pierce, and gosh all friday, was it weird.

Of course they mentioned Telstar and The Fateful Naming of the Transistor, but the writer apparently got obsessed with the idea that this really smart and productive guy wrote, you know, sci-fi, and could not let go of said idea, despite the usual Big Press Journalist combination of a) knowing diddly-squat and b) cutesy condescension thereabouts. This would not matter nearly so much if the damn thing didn’t spend more than half its length on the skiffy stuff. (There is, perhaps mercifully, no mention of John J. Pierce.)

There’s a certain shallowness of scientific background, too—Pierce’s pseudonym was indeed “J. J. Coupling,” but the electron phenomenon from which he took it is “J-J coupling,” hyphen, no periods. And John W. Campbell would never have called Pierce by his pseudonym in private. But I digress.

It’s impossible to deduce whether the writer has actually read any of Pierce’s fiction. He cites one story, “Period Piece” from 1948, and refers to its protagonist as a “cyborg.” Well, leaving aside that the protagonist is properly an “android,” the word “cyborg” didn’t exist in ‘48; the obituarist is clearly trying to show off how much sci-fi jargon she, he, or the software knows, and, stop me if you’ve heard this one, blowing it.

Oh well. I hesitate to think of what would have happened had they picked on Damon. Fiery retribution from the heavens, is my guess.

[12:08 AM]