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| From Technology Review, October 1994 My Mind Explores the Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . By David Brittan MR. B. IS A COURTLY old gent who lives in Nevada, where he enjoys playing blackjack, reading Technology Review, and studying the Bible. Oh, yes, he's also designing a starship. Most of the technical details are well in hand (the ship will run on "Einstein's mass-energy"), but a few hurdles remain. One problem is the size of the cathodes—"as big as buckets!!" Another is the estimated $50 million cost of building such a craft. "Just WHERE are we going to get THAT kind of money?" Mr. B. laments. The question is not merely academic: without a starship, he might never return to his native Saturn. In letters that run to five or six pages—single-spaced and printed on both sides, with no margins to speak of—Mr. B. has been regaling one of Technology Review's editors with his insights and theories at least once a month, and sometimes twice in the same day, for half a year now. It is a one-sided correspondence. With no encouragement whatever, Mr. B. is glad to share his memories of King Arthur, by whom he was personally knighted, or his discovery of the four types of inertia—"grams, torpors, torpids, and photas"—or his views on the value of money, which, by a complex chain of reasoning that has to do with the global distribution of sunshine, works out to 25 cents per person per day. Throughout it all, references to the Book of Revelation throb persistently. Mr. B.'s correspondence is unique only in its particulars. We receive dozens of such letters a year, each setting forth a view of reality that no one but the sender can fully grasp. As a magazine of science and technology, we seem to be a magnet for alternative cosmologies, disproofs of relativity, unorthodox theories of gravitation, perpetual-motion schemes, and warnings of global catastrophe. Ms. K. writes: "I smelled something totally unknown to me capable of destroying human life. Using a handbook of physics and chemistry, can you help me quickly identify it before a system is destroyed? It smells sweet and quickly makes a human faint. Hurry." A proposal for "a better way to launch payloads into space" champions the little-known concept of "gyrothrust," wherein gyroscopes tilted at a certain angle can counteract the pull of gravity. It is followed up by a note that says, "Upon closer examination I believe that such a motor would not work." Then there's the bulletin about the "Bejing flue" epidemic that was supposed to kill millions of Americans infected with AIDS by the Russians; the appointed month came and went. Often, the letters are written in a frenzy of productivity, ideas for new inventions spilling forth like coins from a lucky slot machine. After one such binge—ranging freely from solutions to the riddle of the pyramids to plans for sterilizing sewage with "atomic light"—a correspondent signs off: "My body spends most of its time in this room, but my mind explores the universe." Judging by the idiosyncratic literature amassing in our file cabinets, countless other minds are on a similar journey. But where are they coming from, and why does their itinerary so often include Technology Review? I RECENTLY SHARED a sampling of letters with James Ellison, a prominent Boston-area psychiatrist. Leafing through the stack of mail—some handwritten, with words capitalized and underscored at random, some flamboyantly word-processed or adorned with cut-out pictures—Ellison cautioned that nothing definitive could be inferred from a letter. His diagnoses tended to be broad: "It could be mania, it could be schizophrenia, or it could be someone who's just good and drunk." Even so, patterns began to emerge. The sheer output of many letter writers—a quirk known as hypergraphia—made Ellison think of temporal lobe epilepsy. Seizures caused by this condition can spark intense bursts of expressive activity. They can also bring on a cosmological or ultrareligious turn of mind. "Often," said Ellison, "you see a focus on the profound questions of life—right and wrong, morality, divinity, justice, that sort of stuff—but going on at great length, to the point where it can be kind of overwhelming. Sometimes people like that pursue careers as writers." Or possibly as starship designers who pen 5,000-word letters and cite verses from the Apocalypse. The tenacity with which Mr. B. clings to his odd ideas is a trait common to many of our cosmic explorers. According to Ellison, delusional beliefs can restore order to lives that have been fractured by mental illness. "Such people often go through a period of confusion that then subsides as their delusion crystallizes and they become reorganized around their false belief system," he told me. "It gives them a new meaning, whether it be that the FCC is torturing them by broadcasting voices into their head or that they are the Antichrist. It eases the turmoil of Who am I, What am I?" If our letters are any indication, people piece their psyches back together in ingenious ways. Ellison particularly admired the resourcefulness of Mr. O., who cures unpleasant sensations with little gadgets built from household ingredients. Using only a wire coil, a thumbtack, and a cigarette (nonfilter), Mr. O. managed to block out "malicious telepathy." A device consisting of crystals, an AA battery, and a jar of flat beer stopped "unexplained pain" in his groin. Like many of the correspondents, Mr. O. has unwavering faith in the technological fix. I wondered aloud whether delusions often crystallize around science and technology—whether, in fact, publications like Technology Review draw a disproportionate amount of mail from the outer limits. Probably not, according to Ellison. "Such people develop their own cosmology that includes elements of whatever they hear about or know about. The ones who write to Rolling Stone have delusions about rock stars." So what do these individuals want with us, or with any magazine? Perhaps only to be heard. "Everybody has a story to tell," said Ellison. "Writing a letter to the editor can be extremely validating and healing. There is a wish to be acknowledged as a person with an important idea to share." Alone once again with my collection of oddities, I ask myself how well we have answered the writers' call for acknowledgement. Not very, I'm afraid. Most of the letters have met only with embarrassed silence. A few have prompted a sterile thank-you and a quick brush-off—which may be the best we can do without gaining an interstellar pen-pal for life. But I might from now on add a postscript that Mr. B. included in one of his letters to this magazine: "I like the way your mind works, and I hope life is treating you fairly." db |