June 1992

She doesn't remember seeing the sun rise, her mother's smile or even her own face.

For her life now has only one colour. Black.

Priya lost her sight a decade ago. And as she grew up, she began to recognise the injustice of her handicap. She couldn't go to a regular school like others of her age.

She couldn't play like other kids. She couldn't read. She couldn't see the flowers bloom. The colours in her dress. The laughter in her friends' eyes.

All she can do is cry. And each tear she sheds is a mirror of her own pain ... fear ... and loneliness.

But Priya's case is not without hope. Her blindness, like that of many others, is not without cure. There is a remedy that's simple, doesn't cost anything and is effective. Only it needs you.

A simple cornea transplant can restore her sight. The useless cornea, replaced by a healthy one. And the healthy one could be yours.

Eye removal leaves no scar or disfigurement. And once you've pledged to donate. you'll live with the gratifying emotion that vour eyes will live much longer than y~u. And that some blind

person will see ... through them.

If your heart goes out to the blind during your lifetime, let your eyes go out to them after death. It's the most precious gift you can give them.

To know more about eye donation. and what kinds of blindness can be cured, send us the coupon for a detailed brochure.

Do it today. Remember, miracles can't cure the blind. You can.

r••----•••---·-~---~\ • •

I would like to know more about eye donation cornea grafting. Send me a detailed brochure.

and

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(Kindly fill in block letters)

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Name: Mr.{Ms.____________

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Address:______________

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TIMES EYE RESEARCH FOUNDATION 7. Bahadur Shah bfar Marg.NewDelhi-IIQ002.

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Sight. A gift only you can give.

One of our human failings is our occasional neglect to express appreciation in time to someone who deserves it.

Sometimes, before we think to offer words of thanks or praise, the cherished friend has moved away, the dutiful

2

Nothing Is Impossible

by John Huey

has died. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences avoided this pitfall in the case of Satyajit

8 10

Festival of New American Filmmakers

Ray when, last March, achievement in film.

12

Adults on Campus

14

A Case for Presidential Democracy

18

The Science of Announcing a Discovery

employee has taken another job, or the beloved relative

To American

it honored

filmgoers,

him for his lifetime

Ray was synonymous

with

Indian cinema. To American film directors and producers, he was someone to emulate and to learn from. That's why directors Ismail Merchant and Martin Scorsese launched a letter-writing campaign to urge the Academy to recognize Ray. "We thought it might also be a good idea to send a copy of our letter to a list of about 100 prominent filmmakers, requesting their support for the effort," Merchant told The Washington Times. "The response was stunning."

Merchant and Scorsese got about 60 replies-"passionate, beautiful expressions of admiration for Ray"-and they had their desired effect: Academy president Karl Malden soon called to say that the Academy had voted to give Ray a special Oscar.

The story of Ray's Oscar was recounted

in several of

the numerous press accounts that followed news of his death in April. We have compiled this month a sampling of the tributes that American

newspapers

and magazines

paid to the legendary filmmaker from Calcutta.

Another world-class artist who also passed away in April was science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. We asked Indian science fiction author Mukul Sharma, who once interviewed Asimov, to provide some personal insights into one of America's most prolific and venerated writers. Along with his account, we carry a piece by Asimov himself in which he talks blithely about how he became a famous writer and attained the lofty stature of Grand Master. There obviously was no lack of recognition in his case.

Ray and Asimov were giants of their genres. We will not see their likes any time soon. But every generation produces artists who inspire, provoke, enlighten, and instruct as they did. Filmmaking has been bl~ssed with many "new Rays of success." Several young directors in America have achieved critical acclaim-some with their very first feature length works. They are, by and large, products of some of America's top film schools, and include a group of black artists who are making some gritty, hard-hitting, controversial films about life in America's inner cities. The works of six young American directors will be screened at U.S. Information Service centers in New Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras in the days and weeks to come. To learn who they are and the recognition they have been receiving, turn to page 10.

-S.F.D.

American Tributes-8atyajit

Ray

by Carol B. Aslanian

by P.M. Kamath

by Stephen P. Maran

21 28 30 32 34

Trucker

37

Nebula Awards 22

38

An Argument for Diversity

43

On the Lighter Side

46

A Collector's Passion

The Dance of the Lipizzans

by Nergis Dalal

Focus On ...

Remembering Isaac Asimov

by Mukul Sharma

Seven Steps to Grand Master

by Isaac Asimov

A Review by Suman Ahuja

by Wendell Berry

by Rita Rei! •

Front cover: One of the Indian art objects from the Samuel Eilenberg Collection on display at an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City-Section of a Portable Linga with Shiva and Parvati, Kashmir, 7th century, chlorite, height 7.6 em. Gift of Samuel Eilenberg, 1987. See pages 46-48.

Publisher, Stephen F. Dachi; Editor, Guy E. Olson Managing Editor, Krishan Gabrani; Senior Editor, Aruna Dasgupta; Copy Editors, A. Venkata Narayana, Snigdha Goswami; Editorial Assistants, Rocque Fernandes, Rashmi Goel; Photo Editor, Avinash Pasricha; Art Director, Nand Katyal; Associate Art Director, Kanti Roy; Artist, Hemant Bhatnagar; Production Assistant, Sanjay Pokhriyal; Circulation Manager, D.P. Sharma; Photographic Services: USIS Photographic Services Unit: Research Services: USIS Documentation Services, American Center Library, New Delhi.

Photographs: Front cover-<:ourtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York. 2-3Peter Sibbald, Š 1991. 8-Nancy Crampton. 9-Avinash Pasricha. Io-Columbia Pictures. II top left-Columbia Pictures; top right-Brian Hamill, Twentieth Century Fox: center-Universal City Studios: bottom left-Twentieth Century Fox; bottom right-Michelle Singer. 28-<:ourtesy Tempel Farms. 30 top right-Avinash Pasricha: bottom-R.K. Sharma. 39-Dan Carraco; 40-4 I-David Carraco. 46-48-<:ourtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Published by [he United States Information Service. American Center. 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg. New Delhi 110001 (phone: 3316841). on behalf of the American Embassy. New Delhi. Printed ar Thomson Press (India) Limited. faridabad.

Haryana. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.

Use of SPAN anicles in other publications is encouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor. Price of magazine. one year's subscription (12 issues) Rs. 60; single copy. Rs. 6.

Text by JOHN HUEY Photographs by PETER SIBBALD

Don't try this at home, but consider these two alternative methods for boiling a live frog. If you drop little Freddie into boiling water, he will hop right out, say those familiar with this classic physiological phenomenon. Ah, but if you place him in a pot of cold water and gradually raise the

Above: Dick Hackborn's perspective from his Boise. Idaho. perch made it easier for him to take risks and break new ground at Hewlett-Packard.

He introduced sweeping changes to develop desktop laser printers. which today enjoy the top spot in the trade.

temperature, he will just sit there and boil to death. A pointless animal torture tale, or a crucial parable for business leadership in the I990s? It's the latter, of course, say dedicated analysts of business paradigms and their shifts.

How a word as obscure and awkward as paradigm has fallen into common usage among executives in the United States is difficult to fathom, but it has become truly the buzzword of the age. And because paradigms are so abstract, they are often explained with the aid of frogs and such. Freddie, you see, failed to adjust to a shifting paradigm; he ignored a crucial, if gradual, change in his

environment.

Had he recalled [the American colonial pamphleteer] Thomas Paine, he would have remembered that "a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right" and perhaps have hopped to safety before coming to a full boil.

So if you and your company are trying harder than ever these days but the water keeps getting hotter, your problem may not be the recession--or even that crackbrained vice president of sales you've been blaming for everything. The constant rusty crunch you hear in the background is probably the shifting of the paradigm. And

Nothing Is Impossible

Above: John Trani's Medical Systems, a division of General Electric, outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin, offers a sanctuary to endangered trumpeter swans. But it's open season for managers who don't add value. Right: Few in the U.S. auto industry believed Hal Sperlich's minivan had a market. But he proved them dead wrong. paradigm shifts are like boats-you don't want to miss them. History is littered with shift victims: Buggy makers who turned up their 'noses at Henry Ford's smelly exhaust; candle makers who failed to see the light of Edison's little bulbs; and, more recently, Swiss watchmakers who ignored the tickless threat of digital Japanese watches.

To unbuzz this word a bit, a paradigm-in its business connotation-is simply the conventional wisdom about how things have always been done and must continue to be done. A paradigm shifter is someone who throws out

the rules of the game and institutes radical, not incremental, change-a leader who foments revolution, not evolution.

Typically, paradigm shifters come from outside, or on the fringes of, existing organizations or industries. Their stories are familiar. Ray Kroc, trying to sell milkshake mixers, changed the way the world feeds with his McDonald's restaurants. Ted Turner, trying to turn a buck from UHF television, discovered satellites and changed the way the world gets its news with his CNN (see SPAN, April 1991). Fred Smith, told by investment bankers and his Yale professors that his package delivery idea was stupid, changed the way the world receives its overnight mail with his Federal Express. Alexander Graham Bell, David Sarnoff, Henry J. Kaiser-there has always been a fine line between true paradigm shifters and those we call crackpots. hat's interesting these days is that big corporations, which don't have much tolerance for crackpots, now suddenly aspire to grow their own paradigm shifters, or . find the ones hiding in their midst. Why? Pure and simple: To survive in today's rapidly changing, unforgiving, globally competitive business environment.

"Incrementally fixing the old broken bureaucracy just isn't doing the job these days," says Noel Tichy, the University of Michigan business professor who adapted the boiled frog experiment from the biology lab to management theory. "What's required are quantum ideas for products and services, as well as revolutionary changes in the organization to produce them." Tichy, who has worked extensively with General Electric chief executive officer (CEO) and ultimate paradigm shifter Jack Welch, adds, "It's not just quantum ideas, but the guts to stick with them. In industry after industry, a lot of frogs are waking up and finding it's too late to jump.

Banking is there. Auto has had two chances and may not get a third. And now the computer industry is feeling the heat."

Predictably, paradigm shifting has become a management fad in the United States, complete with books, expensive seminars, videotapes, and motivational speakers. But, as Tichy points out, "this isn't just some cute little gimmick. It's difficult, it's painful, and it involves a fundamental shift in the corporation, including power."

Consequently, the ugly truth is that real paradigm shifting rarely occurs within traditional corporations. And when it does, individual paradigm shifters-usually tenacious, highly opinionated, action-oriented types whose specialty is, after all, rocking the corporate boat-often don't survive the process.

Just ask Hal Sperlich, who had a brilliant but truncated career shifting paradigms in, of all places, the U.S. auto

W

industry. Sperlich was a true "framebreaker"-as these folks are also called-at both Ford Motor, where he led development of the original Mustang under Lee Iacocca, and Chrysler, where he fathered the minivan, the frontwheel-drive box on wheels that changed the car-pooling habits of the American housewife. Today, at the prime age of 61, the former Chrysler president works as a consultant, and he offers this warning to would-be innovators in corporate settings: "You're walking a very lonely road. Life in a large corporation is easier if you go with the flow and don't support major change. People who propose things that are different make more conservative people nervous, and the corporate environment just doesn't reward people for challenging the status quo."

Still, he says, "if you have the ability to come up with things that are different, that create a new market, you can really ring the cash register." The minivan did just that; it created and cornered a market the Japanese hadn't considered, and Chrysler still owns roughly half that market. With over two million units sold, the vehicle has been the mainstay of Chrysler profits since the mid-1980s, Says SperJich: "If we hadn't done minivans, Chrysler would be gone, no question."

But for ¡Sperlich, who first developed the idea while working at Ford, the minivan's creation was a long, frustrating vigil. Like most paradigm shifters, he first defined the mission: To create a vehicle¡ for the housewife that would be more useful than a station wagon but still friendly enough in height, width, and handling to be practical for grocery shopping and car pooling. The breakthrough in design came with the idea of giving the car front-wheel drive, a concept that met stiff resistance all along the way. Unable to sell the minivan at Ford, Sperlich abandoned a 20-year career there and moved to Chrysler, taking his belief in the minivan with him. He met opposition there as well, but two years later Iacocca came over to Chrysler as chairman and quickly backed development of the car. (In 1988, Sperlich took early retirement from Chrysler.)

Sperlich sees his inability to sell the minivan to Ford as symptomatic of a fundamental fallacy in Detroit's product-development paradigm. "They lacked confidence that a market existed, because the product didn't exist," he says. "The auto industry places great value on historical studies of market segments. Well, we couldn't prove there was a market for the minivan because there was no historical segment to cite." Thus, says Sperlich, in Detroit most product-development dollars are spent on modest improvements to existing products, and most market research money is spent studying what customers like among available products. "In ten years of developing the minivan," he says, "we never once got a letter from a housewife asking us to invent one. To the skeptics, that

proved there wasn't a market out there."

As the minivan's checkered history demonstrates, nothing new takes place until top management-in this case Iacocca-eommits to change. For a real paradigm shift to occur within a corpora tion. "there has to be divine discontent with the status quo at the very top, and the courage to do something about it," says Ram Charan, a consultant to many FORTUNE 500 corporations and a former Harvard business school faculty member. At the same time, Charan cautions executives to "stop looking to academic management fads for solutions." Instead, he says, "give the customers what they want and need, Get the quality that's required. Achieve continuous improvement in productivity. Make decisions and execute; that's the real name of the game. That will shift the paradigm if it's necessary." iving customers what they need was the singleminded mantra animating Hewlett-Packard (HP) engineers in Boise, Idaho, when they set out in early 1983 to develop a desktop laser printer for the office market. Back then, the prevailing paradigm in computer printers was the socalled impact or daisy-wheel printer, which was affordable but disappointing in quality. The cheapest laser printer, used only with mainframe computers, cost more than $100,000. But HP did ex~tly what Sperlich talks about: Forecast a market it could create by providing a new product consumers were going to want. Says Dick Hackborn, HP's executive vice president for desktop computer products: "We realized we had an emerging technology converging with an unmet user need."

Astonishingly, by the following year's spring Comdex [computer show] Hewlett-Packard had introduced its first LaserJet printer for $3,495-a desktop machine that instantly shifted the industry paradigm and at the same time altered HP's own accepted rules of how to do business. The results were hard to challenge: HP seized the top spot in the new desktop laser printing market, where it remains today. It has sold some four million units, and it owns an estimated 70 percent of U.S. market share and 55 percent of world share. The experience changed the company.

Before the LaserJet, HP subscribed to its own rigid paradigm. It insisted on developing its own technology for all new products, which were then designed to be used exclusively with other HP equipment, all of which was marketed only by HP's own sales force, which calls directly on businesses. Roger Archibald, one of the original seven engineers assigned to the printer project, believes the Boise location-HP is headquartered in Palo Alto, California-was a major plus. "We were away from the systems division and away from the computer division, and it gave us the freedom to break the rules," he says.

G

Right away, Hackborn's bunch tossed out HP's disdain for not-invented-here technology. Japan's Canon had, in Hackborn's words, "captured the hill" on the technology for the engines in such printers, and the Boise bunch decided to license it rather than invest a lot of time and money to capture its own hill. So HP designed the electronic formatting components of its printers, using Motorola chips; it had Microsoft and others write the software; and it had Canon assemble some of the final product in Japan. "Some of our guys said 'This isn't real engineering,' " says Archibald, "but we were architecting it and making it a viable product. Ifwe had designed it all ourselves, we would have missed the time to market and it would have cost much more."

Such an approach reflects a larger paradigm shift under way worldwide, says Michael Brimm, a management professor at Insead, the European institute of business administration outside Paris. "Big companies are realizing they can't do it alone anymore," he says, "and not just in product design and engineering."

A second HP rule went out the window when the LaserJet group decided that proprietary standards, which keep one brand of machine from working with another, didn't-repeat the mantra-"give the customers what they want." The Boise attitude was that the customer simply wanted the best printer at the best price. "In our first reports we wrote that the printers would be targeted at the HP 150 Personal Computer," recalls Archibald, "and then we added, 'and other non-HP personal computers.'That was a real bombshell." A major battle within the company was required, he says, to unveil the printer connected to an IBM PC in the HP booth at the Comdex show. "It was symbolic," he says. "We wanted to show not only that we were compatible, but that we were going to be the industry standard, the IBM PC of printers. And it happened. Today everybody claims to be LaserJet compatible."

The Boise team's bombshell idea was on the cusp of an industrywide move toward universal standards. "The paradigm is shifting away from information hoarding and toward information sharing," says Roy Smith, a project manager at MCC, the Austin, Texas, technology consortium formed by leading U.S. high-tech companies.

Even arch-rival standard-bearers Apple Computer and IBM are discussing a rapprochement that could lead to limited compatibility.

Having broken most of the rules to get LaserJet to the Comdex introduction-where it was met with overwhelming enthusiasm-the Boise bunch wanted to break one more. The LaserJet's creators believed it had to be marketed through dealers such as Computer Land and JWP Businessland.

HP executives insisted that-at $3,495-the machine was too pricey for the retail market and therefore should remain with the direct sales force.

But Hackborn prevailed and the machines were rolled out through dealers. Meanwhile, Hackborn concentrated on maintaining HP's market lead-something the company had not always done well after earlier fast starts-by focusing on rolling out new products in the LaserJet line and making them increasingly cost competitive. "We had a second printer in less than 18 months," he recalls, "and we fortified the hill by pushing costs-and pricesdown." In less than ten years, the price of a full-feature laser printer has fallen as low as $1,295.

Aside from the $1,500 million in annual revenue that the LaserJet provides to HP, it also has been an exemplar for development of other new products. "The LaserJet is my example," says Carolyn Ticknor, an HP general manager trying to develop the market leader in networks, those tricky devices that permit office PCs to talk with one another. Hackborn, a 31-year veteran of the company, has become the archetypal paradigm shifter within Hewlett-Packard, and-from a modest office adjoining a shopping center in Boise-he now spearheads the injection of the LaserJet's lessons into the rest of the company.

Hewlett-Packard, breaking the rules worked by bubbling up from Boise and eventually infecting the larger organism. At a company as mammoth as General Electric (GE), however, the rule book had to be thrown out from the very top to effect a paradigm shift, and when Jack Welch became CEO in 1981 he did just that. The superaggressive former hockey team captain took over a reasonably healthy company and mandated a shocking restructuring.

Pursuing his "fix, close, or sell it" philosophy, Welch sold off major businesses, such as consumer electronics and small appliances, and sent packing some 100,000 employees. He pursued his vision of a less hierarchical G E, with far fewer middle managers and more power accruing to those who remained. The shift was painful. but productivity and profitability-and thus global competitivenesssoared in the 1980s, making Welch a legend and GE's stock a sweetheart of Wall Street.

"People come to me and ask, 'Why was I good enough yesterday but not today?''' says John Trani, the 46-yearold Welch lieutenant who overhauled and runs GE Medical Systems, a $3,000 million high-tech manufacturer situated on a bucolic former dairy farm outside Milwaukee. "It's simple. In 1954, Roger Bannister won world acclaim for breaking the four-minute mile. Today high-schoolers can do that. The standard is always changing, but there's always a top ten and a bottom ten." As a matter of formal policy, Welch demands that all GE's businesses be No. I or No.2 in their industry-globally.

When Trani went to Milwaukee in 1986, GE Medical was neither. The division was a domestic maker of equipment for X-ray, CT (computerized tomography)

A

t

and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanning, and other emerging medical technologies: Its U.S. market share was somewhere above 20 percent but 50 percent of the industry market lay outside the United States, where General Electric had negligible presence. Trani gave himself 60 days to analyze the business and formulate a vision that would change the company's unacceptable paradigm: A domestic player with limited competitiveness in a global industry.

First, says Trani, "half the middle managers went home. They were doing non-value-added work that just didn't have to be done. We had five separate estimates of quarterly sales, and we had a team devoted to negotiating intercompany transfer prices." The cuts helped, but Trani knew he had to go global quickly. So in 1987, GE swapped its consumer electronics business (long ago pushed out of top contention by the Japanese) for the medical systems business of France's Thomson S.A. Earlier, GE had formed ajoint venture with its Japanese distributor, Yokogawa Electric Works. Now it could begin to play within Welch's paradigm. With a world market share exceeding 20 percent, GE Medical is the leader in a fiercely competitive industry whose other big players include Siemens, Toshiba, and Philips. Its share in the CT and M RI scanning business is more than double the nearest competitor. The paradigm has shifted.

Says Trani: "Growth the way we did it is not easy.

Change is never easy when you do it on multiple fronts.

But the organization that adapts itself continuously will win, and for that you have to have leaders and managers who love change." Trani cautions that paradigms don't shift by thinking about them. "At best, the plan is 20 percent of the game," he says. "Execution is 80 percent of it. Pick the right people. Allocate the resources. Build the organization's competency."

At GE, top management forced radical action all across a company they describe as "borderless."

But paradigm shifts sometimes break out in isolated parts of giant companies less focused on radical change. IBMwhose modern success all stems from its bold 1950s paradigm shift to computers-has had trouble more recently wringing out badly needed innovation and speed from its sluggish bureaucracy. Its frog is far from boiled, but the heat is rising, and it has had some narrow brushes with disaster. One such escape came in the form of an unqualified, paradigm-shifting success: The fast-track development of the AS400 midrange computer. Built in 28 months-from conception to first shipment-the AS400 has been crucial to I BM's maintaining competitiveness in a huge market segment it couldn't afford to yield. Introduced four years ago, the AS400 has sold more than 150,000 units and is now tied with Digital Equipment's VAX line as the market leader. In 1990 its sales totaled $14,000 million. Like the creation of HP's

LaserJet, the birth of the AS400 broke one institutional rule after another.

"We didn't want old wine in new bottles," says Tom Furey, who directed the project. "We had to have artificial intelligence, storage offax and telephone data, PBX interface, and lots more. But it had to be quick, so we bet the entire schedule that we could build the processor on the first pass. Ifwe had been wrong, we'd have been dead wrong, and that would have been it for IBM in the midrange computer business." veryone on the project, says Furey, pursued the same vision-to introduce a machine that would be the market leader by 1991. "We had a lot of resistance to change," he says, "but everyone was so inspired by that simple goal that they never stopped." One move that horrified IBM old-timers came when the machine reached the prototype stage. Furey invited customers, consultants, and software suppliers to join in the design process, something simply not done at ultraproprietary Big Blue. "We were risking too much not to do it," says Furey. "We couldn't risk building it in isolation." Being located in Rochester, Minnesota, however-isolated from company headquarters-was a big advantage. "It didn't hurt at all to be in the hinterlands of Minnesota in the dead of winter," he recalls. "We had very few visitors, very few staff people second-guessing us every step of the way." Does Furey, now general manager of IBM's laboratory in San Jose, California, consider himself a maverick? "I don't know. I'm not satisfied with things the way they are, but I don't think I'm antisystem," he says. "I work within the system but throw out old rules."

In today's unforgiving business climate, more and more rule books are winding up in the trash. At British Petroleum, the international oil and chemicals giant, new chairman Robert Horton recently embarked on a corporate restructuring that declared onl.y one sacred cow: The existence of the corporation.

At previously ultrasuccessful Honda-whose market share in Japan has become stagnant-sacred management ground has been churning under the restructuring plow. Before, Honda executives made most decisions by following the late founder Soichiro Honda's nonhierarchical system of gathering at three tables on the executive floor-a table each for issues involving people, finance, and products. Although the tables remain symbolically in place, "Honda saw a need for faster decisions, formalized responsibilities, and a chain of command," says Hirotaka Takeuchi, a consultant and international marketing professor at Japan's Hitotsubashi University. So for the first time, each of Honda's 29 executive officers is assigned to a specific function or division.

Lots of other large corporations in a variety of industries-retail, auto, airline, banking and financial ser-

E

vices, broadcasting, publishing, and advertising-are struggling to adjust to new economic realities. Quite simply, says Ram Charan, "those who don't shift, will get shifted. And no company in the world, No. 1 market share or not, is immune from becoming dust."

One of the toughest things about paradigms is the variety of flavors they come in-geopolitical, economic, sociological, demographic, ethnic, technological, environmental, organizational. Which to look at first?

Of all these, the one most certain to alter the way we work and do business in the foreseeable future is the continuing evolution of information technology. At think tanks such as MCC, the Austin consortium, the buzzphrase these days is "the seamless system of electronic commerce." Key questions being asked at such research institutions: What products and services will be required in the future? How can companies transfer the increased efficiency of shared technology to the bottom line? What are the enabling technologies of the future?

Answers pop up in such currently fashionable concepts as on-demand production, electronic self-design, concurand a custom-targeted electronic rent engineering, marketplace. These concepts are all designed to increase manufacturing flexibility, and some already operate in the real world: â&#x20AC;˘ In Japan, Toyota buyers can select any combination of features and colors they desire on Monday morning, and pick up the car on Friday afternoon. â&#x20AC;˘ Buyers of Motorola pagers can order from a variety of features in several million combinations and have the finished product shipped to them within two hours. â&#x20AC;˘ Some banks can now complete the processing of a mortgage application in 24 hours.

As such applications of technology develop, they are certain to spell profound change in the way customers order and receive goods, the way manufacturers plan and finance inventories, and the way people in the sales chain earn their living. It may be possible that a niche will always exist out there for companies that don't want to change, for executives who are willing to hang their hat on the tried and true. But ifso, it's a damned small niche. For the rest of us. the paradigm-largely driven by technology-is shifting faster than at any time in history. Fear is entirely the wrong reaction, though. Once it has been identified, all that's needed to successfully parry a shifting paradigm, ironically, is old-fashioned smart management, operating with a clear head and confidence in its miSSion.

The alternative is to dig your old Whole Earth catalogs out of the attic and move to the deep woods-where frogs rarely boil.

0 About the Author: John Huey is the senior editor o{ Fortune magazine.

SATYA ITRAY On Oscar night, Satyajit Ray told the world how fond he had always been of American films. He said he was surprised at getting an award from Hollywood country because few of his films have had wide distribution in America.

But the American cineast has been a Ray admirer ever since the days of Pather Panchali. Leading American filmmakers (including Martin Scorsese, Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Milos Forman) were behind the popular campaign (initiated by Ismail Merchant) to award the special Oscar to Ray, and fire-spitting American critics have sung paeans to almost every film of his. In recent years, even the less cinematically aware American has been introduced to-and won over byRay. Seven of his films are widely available from American mail-order home video catalogs: The Apu trilogy, Two Daughters (Teen Kanya),

Devi,

Distant

(Ashani Shanket),

Thunder

and The Home

and the World (Ghare

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution

spoke compassionately ternational community lovers.

to an inof movie

that followed represent a standard that Hollywood has yet to reach.

Mr. Ray ... wa~ a master-the most prestigious filmmaker in a country that makes more movies than any other. His critically acclaimed Apu trilogy-the poetically simple chronicle of a young Bengali boy from childhood to maturity-has been universally recognized as one of the most brilliant series In cinema history .... ... His films found profundity in the intricate intimacies of everyday life and in doing so, they

.. .It will be the Apu trilogy for which Ray will be best remembered .... Attacked by a New York Times review as loose and listless, and unlikely to pass as a rough cut in Hollywood, the lovingly inscribed Pather Panchali remains a landmark in humanist cinema. It and many of the subtle, somber, sometimes mournful but always richly affirmative films

Satyajit Ray [was] one of the world's greatest filmmakers ... [and] one of the leading humanists in world cinema. His credo was: "Art wedded to truth must in the end have its reward."

He made simple but elegant affirmations of life ....

One of the most memorable film experiences of this critic's life was seeing Mr. Ray's magnum

Baire).

On his death, leading American critics and filmmakers expressed awe and praise for the maestro.

SPAN presents excerpts gleaned from American newspapers and magazines.

Satya)it Ray (left) with American filmmakers Elia Kazan (center) and William Greaves at the opening of a festival of Indian films at the Asia Society in New York in 1981.

opus, the Apu trilogy ... in sequence one day at Manhattan's Carnegie Hall cinema. The trilogy [is] among the best films made anywhere in the 1950s ....

Mr. Ray leaves a legacy of more than 30 features, shorts and documentaries .... He was a universalist in his outlook and a filmmaker of many talents .... Satyajit Ray was a product and an adornment of world culture.

-Joseph Gelmis

fluencing filmmakers worldwide, and prompting Martin Scorsese, Ismail Merchant, Steven Spielberg and other luminaries to sound the call that resulted in Ray's special Oscar this year. Says Merchant, "His cinema is a very personal cinema; he influenced me and others to concentrate on the person and the emotions."

His films' were realistic, but poetic ....

Ray was a throwback to the early days of film, when directors not only decreed the action but also wrote the screenplays, advised cinematographers, edited the final product and-in his particular case---<iesigned the posters that promoted their pictures.

-Burt A. Folkart

...! shook Satyajit Ray's hand in 1975 at the Kennedy Center, after the Washington premiere of his 1973 film Distant Thunder... .! was conveying to the Indian director my collegiate enthusiasm for the exquisitely drawn Thunder... .! was also immensely gratified to see that someone from my movie history books actually existed ... .! knew then I was in the presence of a cinema great. .... The eyes were glittery, eyeof-the-tiger intense. The personality was prime British Empire,

Mr. Ray produced memorable images in his films and created credible characters in an indirect, Chekhovian manner, remaining sympathetic to them despite their follies and faults.

Detractors accused Mr. Ray of muting the existence of evil and of being so exquisite that he came dangerously close to being precious. They said his movies were slow-paced and lacked continuity. The consensus was that Westerners had to be patient to follow his leisurely rhythm. "What some consider slow," he responded, "may seem eloquent to Indians."

-Peter B. Flint

Legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray ... brought humanism to the cinema and India to the world ....

His films ... found universal truths in the specific cultural twists and turns of India, in-

Satyajit Ray contemplates a shot during the making of Shatranj Ke Khilari in Lucknow.

cultured and formal, but with a warmth that the English empirical code never particularly advocated. It was a pleasure to loiter around his presence.

That's why, after I shook his hand, I stood around and stared as he shook hands with other well-wishers. I just wanted to watch .... The enthusiasm seems so sophomoric now, so embarrassing. But that moment had been hovering in my subconscious; last March it returned. Yesterday it did again. God, how honored he was with that Oscar. He was really excited. That was obvious.

It was then I realized he wasn't just a great film director. He was an overgrown film fan too.

-Desson Howe

The death of the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray ... from a heart ailment at age 70 made his recent appearance on the Academy Awards telecast even more fortuitous and touching.

Although his shrunken physique came as a shock to anyone who had met Mr.. Ray in his prime, it's gratifying that he had the opportunity to orchestrate his own deathbed scene. And it was an extraordinary performance-

the best of its kind since Clifton Webb's fictionalized farewell as Elliott Templeton in The Razor's

Edge.

Mr. Ray had inspired and assisted the now prestigious team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory at the beginning of their careers.

He recut their debut feature, The Householder, providing Mr. Ivory with a three-day crash course on how footage can be substantially restructured and tightened in the editing room.

Recently, the former proteges were instrumental in lobbying the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a career award for Mr. Ray .... ... [Ray's films] should be preserved as a permanent inspiration to moviegoers who respond to stories devoted to basic human conflicts and struggles, expressed through a somber, perceptive and eloquent visual sensibility.

-Gary Arnold

... His honorary Academy Award [was] a richly deserved tribute to the superb body of cinematic work he had patiently composed over more than three decades .... Ray stressed literary values, especially the delicately shaded verbal expression of subtly shifting psychologies. [His] manner [was] that of a Bengali Henry James ....

When, finally, the Western world is able to see [Ray's films] as a coherent whole, it will rediscover not only a master filmmaker but also a powerful commentary on the cost of imperialism that is the more eloquent-and devastating-for its lack of crude political rant.

-Richard Schickel "Ray's magic, the simple poetry of his images and their emotional impact will always stay with me."

-Martin Scorsese 0

Festival of New American Filmmakers The United States Information Service is presenting a festival of six films by new American filmmakers at New Delhi (June 1-14), Madras (June 15-27), Bombay (June 29-July 10), and Calcutta (July 13-24). Some of the films have autobiographical tones, representing slices from the lives of their directors-such as Steven Soderbergh's debut-making Sex, Lies and Videotape (best picture at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival) and John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood. Gary David Goldberg's Dad is based on William Wharton's novel about his terminally ill father, and the screenplay mirrors Goldberg's own struggle to buy time for his cancer-ridden parent. Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is fictional but was inspired by a real-life incident in New York.

The other two films at the festival, Raising Arizona and Big, are heart-warming comedies.

John Singleton (above) was only 23 when he made his remarkable debut with Boyz N the Hood last year. The runaway hit, which won stunning reviews and led some to compare him to Orson Welles, is about black teenagers trying to grow up straight in a gang-infested neighborhood of Los Angeles. In the scene at right, high school senior Tre Styles (played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.) clings to his girlfriend Brandi (Nia Long) in a moment of despair. The film touches on such critical issues as racism, education, parenthood, and AIDS.

Spike Lee (above) has written, directed, and produced perhaps the most controversial film made in in recent years-Do the America Right Thing, which depicts the events of one sweltering summer day on a block in New York City dominated by blacks and Hispanics. The hub of all activity in the area is a pizza parlor . owned by an Italian-American.

Tensions build up between the black community and the pizza-parlor owner and his sons over a trivial matter. Before the day is over a young black man is killed by a white police officer, and a riot erupts, which leads to the burning of the pizza parlor by angry blacks. Lee has been praised for his "honesty" in conveying "the harsh truths of ghetto rage and anguish" and he has been savaged for being "irresponsible," for advocating violence, and for having a biased perspective.

The Nell' York Times critic Vincent Canby commented: "In all the ... discussions about the [film's] social and political implications, an essential fact tends to be overlooked: It is one terrific movie." Lee, whose earlier two films (She's Golla Have It and School Da::e) also generated a lot of comment and controversy, is regarded as "the most important black filmmaker working today."

David Picker, former president of Columbia Pictures, has called him "one of the most original young filmmakers in the world." Lee is now working on a film about black leader Malcolm X.

Penny Marshall (below)¡ was a successful television actress before she started making films. Her highly acclaimed Awakenings. starring Robert De Niro, was nominated for an Oscar. Big is an unusual comedy about 12-year-old Josh Baskin (played by Tom Hanks, right in the still at right), whose wish to become bigger is magically granted-he finds himself in the body of a 35-year-old.

The film mixes wistfulness and humor as it unfolds the joys and trials of Josh's new life-and his desperation to become his old self again.

Ethan and Joel Coen, brothers, made their debut with a violent thriller, B/ood Simp/e. Raising Arizona proves their versatility. The film is a delightful comedy about a couple who can't have a child, so they kidnap one from a man who they feel has had one too The many-a father of quintuplets. scene below shows the couple (played

by Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage) welcoming Nathan Arizona, Jr. (T.J. Kuhn) into their lives.

Gary David Goldberg (below) selected a tender father-son story for his debut making feature film, Dad. which he scripted, directed, and coproduced.

Jack Lemmon .(left in the scene above) and Ted Danson (right) play Jake and John Tremont, the estranged father and son who rediscover and renew their relationship.

0

Adults on Campus The 1980s widely were predicted to be a time of declining college enrollments in the United States, given the steady decrease in thenumber of high school seniors graduating each year. Yet, defying all predictions, they rose, rose again, and, when it seemed obvious that they had reached their peak, rose still again.

College enrollments jumped 50 percent in the 1970s from about 8,000,000 to about 12,000,000. In the 1980s, even though high schools were graduating 25 percent fewer seniors, college enrollments went up from 12,000,000 to 13,500,000, a 12.5 percent overall increase.

Individual colleges tend to credit their own attractiveness to high school seniors and assume they are drawing a larger share of a smaller market. While this is an appealing explanation, it does not account for the nationwide increase in enrollments.

Every college can not be maintaining or enlarging its share of a shrinking populace.

What is happening is that the market is not shrinking, despite the undeniable steady decline in thenumberofhigh school seniors graduating each year. Rather, it is expanding. We attribute this to adultstypically defined as those persons 25 years of age and older-going to college in larger numbers than ever before.

The proportion of adult students has been rising steadily in the United States over the past two decades, roughly from 30 percent in 1970 to 40 percent in 1980 to 45 percent in 1987 (the latest statistics available). What it means is that, for every collegian under 25, there is one over that age. A College Board study found that one of every 25 Americans who is 25 years of age and older enrolls in a college course or program, producing more than 6,000,000 adult students annually. The notion that higher education is made up of 18- to 24year-olds from middle-class families is almost as inaccurate as the belief that the average American family is Dad (wage earner), Mom (homemaker), and 2.3 kids.

The proportion of adults attending American universities has been rising steadily over the past two decades.

The College Board study collected profiles of those 25 years of age and older who had returned to college credit study in the past year. The data showed several patterns: â&#x20AC;˘ More women than men study as adults. Females are doing later what some males were able to do earlier in their lives, reflecting a difference in their life schedules. We believe, however, that women most likely will eliminate the head start men have had so that, by age 50, both will have had the same years of college study.

Further, because females are matching the rate of males in enrolling in college after high school graduation, and because they surpass men in enrolling in college as adults, women eventually will obtain mor.e years of college education than men, thereby reversing a past trend. â&#x20AC;˘ Adult participation in college study decreases with increases in age. Life transitions requiring learning slow with age. As adults get older, their lives undergo fewer changes. The pressures on them to acquire new knowledge to cope with those events diminish accordingly.

Career and job changes, for example, occur less often. â&#x20AC;˘ An overwhelming majority (85 percent) of adult students work, and most are employed full time, outside or inside the home. Most adults are very busy people, juggling job, family, and study.

Other interesting patterns appeared in the study of adult and traditionalage students. We commonly associate part-time study with older students. However, there are now increasing instances of part-time study by younger students who are learning in ways typically associated with adults. Younger students are

going to college part time, at night, and on weekends; attending several colleges; stopping out for a semester or a year; not matriculating for a degree; taking occupational programs; commuting to campus, rather than living in dorms; working part time; being married or at least living together; owning automobiles; and raising children.

Another clear and growing pattern of behavior is full-time study by older students, much of it in the daytime. How do we explain that? The answer is as puzzling as the pattern is clear. There are some hypotheses about who these adults are. They might be divorced women with enough financial support to afford fulltime enrollment, married women who want to be home after 4 p.m. with their young children, or married women with grown-up children whose college tuition payments are finished and now can use that money for themselves. They might be people-men or women-who have lost their jobs (or given them up) and are coming back full time to learn new ones.

Finally, let's look atgraduateschools.

A majority of graduate students (55 percent) are 30 years of age or older. Thus, it can be said that all graduate schools in the United States have become adult institutions. If all those 25 and over withdrew from college tomorrow, virtually every graduate school in America would close. The few that remained open would lose more than. half their students.

The way to understand the present or the future is to examine the past.

Go back to 1920. Most Americans did not go to high school-only about 25 percent of them did; 75 percent had stopped by grade eight. By 1940, however, 70 percent were attending high school. That reversal was enough to change the character of American secondary education in only 20 years.

What brought these teenagers to high school, or what sent them? The Great Depression was primarily theca use-l 922

had plenty of work for 15-year-olds; 1932 did not. When Americans lose their jobs, they go to school. When employment for teenagers began to come back in the late 1930s, the jobs were different. They required more skills, which meant more schooling was needed.

In the 1990s, we are seeing the same pattern, but this time for colleges, rather than high schools. The parallels are many.

The 1980s in America were like the 1930s. Many jobs disappeared-some of them for teenagers, but more of them for adults. The I new jobs required more schooling. Many more young people and adults chose ,"ollege-some of the adults going for the first time and others looping back for a second or third time.

Employers began to raise their educational and training requirements for three different reasons: The new jobs were more complex and required more skills. People applying for them already had more education and thus could be required to have still more. In 1920, high school graduates came from the top 20 percent of the population in intellectual ability and perhaps in energy and dedication as well. In the 1990s, even a four-year college graduate does not necessarily come from that top 20 percent of the population. Today, an employer may have to hire a person with a college degree to match a high school graduate of 1920.

The labor market is changing and will keep on doing so for the rest of this century. The loss of jobs, the changing of jobs, and the creation of new ones are the primary triggers that send adults back to college. National studies show that 85 percent of all those 25 and older study because their lives are in transition. They have to learn new skills and acquire new knowledge to cope with career changes.

No other area in life-family, health, or leisure-seems to be as turbulent or to demand as much learning as career changes. As a consequence, some adults are beginning college for the first time.

Thirty percent of these adults did not complete high school, and about 50 percent did not go right on to college after graduating from high school. Some adult students return to finish what they may

have begun earlier. The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities reported recently that only IS percent of students earn degrees within four years, based on the findings of a national study of high school graduates who enter four-year colleges on a full-time basis. Some adults come back continuously over their lifetimes to keep themselves current. Almost one-third of all those returning to community colleges already have college degrees. This picture explains adult learning in the 1970s and 1980s. What will the future hold?

Preparing for the 21st Century As career changes have dominated the reasons adults become college students, they will continue to do so even more as we enter the 21st century, leading more and more adults in and out of the campus gates over their lifetime. Here's why: • In the 1990s and beyond, there will be more jobs than workers. Service industries will create nearly all the new occupations and most of the new wealth. These positions will demand more skills than those today. .

• As the baby boomers age and the baby bust generation enters the job market, the average age of the work force will climb from 36 today to 39 by the year 2000.

The number of young workers aged 16 to 24 will drop by almost 2,000,000, or eight percent. Older employees will need to be kept up to date, given incentives to delay retirement, or trained for entirely new jobs.

• Still more women will enter the work force. More than 60 percent of the new entrants will be female. By the year 2000, 60 percent of women of working age will have jobs. Women will need to be trained continuously to enter and reenter jobs as they try to cope with work and family responsibilities.

• Minorities will constitute a larger fraction of new entrants into the work force. Colleges and employers will need to coordinate more closely to recruit, train, and retrain them.

• Immigrants will make up the largest share in the increase in the work force since World War 1. Even with the new

laws, 600,000 legal and illegal immigrants will enter the United States every year for the balance of the century. They will need initial literacy and basic skills training.

The 21 st century, unlike any other era in our history, will offer major challenges to our human resources capacities as weenter a period of rapid social, technological, and economic fluctuation. This is not to say that the 20th century was stagnant--quite the contrary. The last few decades have been turbulent due to changes in work, family life, the economy, the role of minorities and women, and the demographics of the population. We can expect such upheavals to progress at an even more accelerated rate in the next century. Keepingup with societal changes will consume much energy and require unusual resourcefulness on the part of most Americans.

Earlier research on adult development and education observed that the period of rapid social change was accompanied by commensurate increases in adult learning. Life transitions challenge people and require them to grow and adapt to meet the demands of new roles. This is the environment that explains the widespread participation of adults in education and it will explain their continued widespread participation in education in the years ahead.

As the White House expressed in its submission of the "national goals for education": "Today a new standard for an educated citizenry is required, one suitable for the next century. Our people must beas knowledgeable, as well-trained, as competent, and as inventive as those in any other nation. All of our people, not just a few, must be able to think for a living, adapt to changing environments, and to understand the world around them. They must understand and accept the responsibilities and obligations of citizenship. They must continually learn and develop new skills throughout their lives. We must recognize that education is a lifelong pursuit, not just an endeavor for our children."

0 About the Author: Carol B. Aslanian is director.

Office of Adult Learning Services, The College Board, New York. This article lI'as written with the assistance of Natalie Green.

A Case for

Presidential Democracy

by P.M. KAMATH

Democracies come in many sizes and shapes. One of the constants to all of them is vigorous, unfettered public debate. And one of the popular topics for debate-not surprisingly-is the shape that democracy should take.

Several months ago Prof. Juan Linz of Yale University made a case on these pages for the parliamentary system of democracy. This month, P.M. Kamath, a reader in American Government and Politics at the University of Bombay, argues for the presidential system.

Presidential government is the American contribution to mensely successful in reaping the advantages envisaged by the theory and practice of governing. America's Founding the Founding Fathers-with the exception of secrecy, and Fathers created the presidency in 1787 in the image of the there are no regrets. With the development of the United then prevailing all powerful British monarchy. Americans States as a vibrant democracy, secrecy-the virtue of an aristocratic Republic---=-has given way to competitive imhad experienced confederacy (1776-87), and they now wanted a strong national government with the President as pulses to expose government affairs to the public. As a the fountainhead of executive power. The most important consequence, the United States has fostered a leaky governissue was to protect the nascent Republic and maintain its 13 ment where nothing remains a secret for long. states as the United States of America. With a single Much of the credit for the success of presidential governexecutive, as against the plural, the Founding Fathers hoped ment goes to two basic features of the system. First, the to gain the advantages of "decision, executive power is vested in a President activity, secrecy, and dispatch." who is directly elected by the entire Yet until the end of the 19th century nation as a single constituency for a Americans generally saw their system as fixed term offour years. A President can congressional government. The Presiserve no more than two terms and can be dent was only one of three branches of removed from office only through a government. This was well reflected by difficult procedure of impeachment.

President James K. Polk (1845-49) when Second, to prevent emergence of exeche said that the President is simply a utive despotism and to protect individ-. citizen who has been elected by the ual rights, the system relies on people to manage the government for a separation of powers and checks and limited time. With the expansion of terbalances. James Madison, who became ritory and population, democracy and America's fourth President (1809-17), welfare programs, congressional govwrote in the Federalist Paper No. 51 Woodrow Wilson wrote that ernment has become presidential gova President "is the that "the great security against a gradernment in the 20th century. representative of no constituency ual concentration of the several powers but of the whole people."

Presidential government has been imin the same department consists in giv-

ing to those who administer each department, the necessary national perspective in the race for the White House. constitutional means and personal motives to resist The nature of the single executive makes it preeminently encroachment of the others .... Ambition must be made to suited for managing nationally divisive crises. A President counteract ambition." such as Abraham Lincoln could face the Civil War with the Thus the President as the executive and Congress as the singleness of purpose of maintaining national unity. Such legislature have independent terms, powers, and functions. decisive decision-making in a parliamentary system would But certain powers and functions are divided between the have suffered from a lack of cohesiveness among cabinet two branches to provide checks and balances. For instance, members-leaders of all ideological hues, regions, including the President appoints many high officials of the government in this instance, the rebellious South. but only on the "advice and consent" of the Senate. The Another merit of presidential government is its ability to President is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but make speedy decisions, particularly during a crisis. AbraCongress alone provides the means for their maintenance. ham Lincoln again provides the example. After a cabinet Such checks and balances operate in every aspect of relations _meeting in which the members opposed his position on a between the executive and the legislature. critical issue, he quipped: "Seven nays and one aye. The ayes have it." Equally illustrative is the experience of Franklin The greatest advantage of presidential government arising out of its single executive feature is its Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in systemic dynamics that favor preserving their consideration and signing of the Atlantic Charter during World War II. national unity in a territorially vast state with ethnic, religious, regional, and While the President was on his own at linguistic diversities. The President as a this meeting aboard the HMS Prince of directly elected chief executive has Wales in the north Atlantic Ocean, at emerged as an embodiment of the nathe most consulting some of his handpicked advisers, the Prime Minister had tional outlook. In contrast to this, senators are elected by state constituencies to consult constantly his war cabinet while congressmen are elected from in London (which included Clement small districts. The President, as the Attlee). This shows the relative ease with only national leader, provides legislative which a President can manage a crisis in leadership; he views problems from a comparison to the prime minister. national perspective in contrast to the In a parliamentary system, executive Calling for a balance of powers, maze of parochial and regional aspirapower is vested in a council of ministers, James Madison argued that tions working within the legislature. As and the ministers, members of the leg"Ambition must be made to President Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) islature, are themselves dependent on a counteract ambition." legislative majority for their survival. wrote: "His is the only national voice in affairs .... He is the representative of no constituency but of the Hence, getting a legislative majority is the way to executive whole people." The President can never give up his national power. The practice of continuous accountability of the perspective, because he needs the support of the widest executive to the legislature makes retention of majority majority in the nation. This is a great asset to pluralistic support a major preoccupation of the prime minister, societies afflicted by strong subnationalistic forces. particularly when he does not enjoy a clear majority in the Such a national support base cannot be created by appealparliament, or when he heads a coalition government. Even ing to parochial, ethnic, or sectional interests in the presidenwhen the prime minister enjoys a clear majority there is no tial elections. This has been clearly shown by the experience guarantee that either the prime minister or the ruling party of the Democratic Party since the 1960s. Though it enjoys would complete its constitutional term. Thus, lack of politimajority popular support in the country-there are more cal stability is a hallmark of the parliamentary system in registered Democrats than Republicans-it has held the contrast to presidential government. This instability arises presidency for only 16 years since 1948, while the Repubfrom factors like the proliferation of parties and personal licans, though politically a minority, have occupied the ambition in many parliamentary governments.

White House for 28 years. This is mainly because the The British experience shows that a two-party system is a Democrats are increasingly seen as promoting ethnic and sine qua non for the success of parliamentary government. other mutually conflicting group interests, which prevents Britain has been able to develop a two-party system mainly them from projecting a national perspective. Hence, voters because of its being a relatively homogeneous society. have been splitting their votes in presidential elections. They Hence, political power has alternated between two main have been giving a majority mostly to Democrats representideological and programmatic parties. The British system ing particular groups and ethnic interests in races for has enjoyed majority governments in the 20th century with Congress, and to the Republican candidate projecting a the exception of minority governments in 1924, 1929, and

1974 (all under the Labour Party). These are considered as three serious candidates in America's winner-take-all system deviations in the British political system. is likely to throw the election into the House of RepreHowever, in a multiethnic society, with cultural, linguistic, sentatives. That is the procedure to be followed if no regional, and religious diversities, development of a twocandidate gets an absolute majority of the electoral college party parliamentary system has proved to be extremely votes. (Technically, the American President is elected by the difficult. Each ethnic or religious group believes that it can electoral college. Each state has as many presidential elecprotect its own group interests better by organizing itself into toral votes as it has senators and representatives serving in a political party and bargaining for a share of power. Ethnic the U.S. Congress. The winner of the popular vote in each and religious groups find it impossible to be a part of a state receives all that state's electoral votes.) Political parties program-oriented, issue-based party. National parties that prefer to avoid the uncertainty of presidential election grew out of nationalist movements usually have fragmented. through the House in which each state has a single vote, More often than not, in a multiparty system no political determined through a vote of the state's representatives. (Only party is likely to get an absolute majority to form a stable two Presidents have been elected by the House-Thomas government. This results in a minority government led by the Jefferson in 1800 and John Quincy Adams in 1824.) single largest party or a coalition of parties, both pregnant A two-party system in a multiethnic, multiracial, and with political instability. A coalition government is by multilinguistic society is the gift of presidential government. definition a compromise of conveProfessor Arthur MacMahan says that nience. Even moderate parties will align the "influence of the presidential office themselves with extreme right or left more than any other factor discouraged parties if survival of the government in the development of the multiplicity of power is at stake. But such marriages of parties. " convenience do not beget political A two-party system cannot be develstability. For instance, in France under oped merely by promoting ethnic or secthe Fourth Republic, 25 governments tional interests. The parties must develop were formed during a brief span of 12 themselves on the basis of certain clearly years. Only the provision of a strong identifiable policies. elected president under the Fifth Presidential government American Republic has provided France with style provides greater scope to recruit some much needed political stability. talented men and women from the oppoIndia, meanwhile, saw two elections and sition party to run the administration.

When the seven members of his three governmentsin a brief period of 18 President Kennedy, for instance, reached cabinet voted against him, President out to Robert McNamara-a Repubmonths between December 1989 and Lincoln quipped, "Seven nays and June 1991. Hence, in my opinion, Juan lican-for the defense department, while one aye. The ayes have it."

J. Linz's recommendation ofparliamenasking another Republican, Douglas tary government "to nations with deep political cleavages Dillon, to manage the U.S. Treasury. His National Security and numerous political parties" is quite off the mark (see Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, too, was a nominal Republican.

SPAN, July 1991).

In the 1980s President Reagan, a Republican, had Jeane Kirkpatrick, a Democrat, as his Ambassador to the United Political instability can also be wrought by the personal ambitions of strong-willed leaders in national politics. If a Nations, with cabinet rank. What really matters in such party has a strong majority in parliament, many capable appointments is affinity between political views of the President and his nominee, and not so much a party label. leaders in the ruling party are uncertain as to when they ever The parliamentary system, of course, does not preclude are likely to get a chance to lead the government if the prime the prime minister from appointing nonpolitical, capable minister continues to win one general election after the other. Such uncertainty leads to political maneuvers to persons from outside the party to cabinet positions. But destabilize party government. This problem is well taken barring exceptional circumstances like a national crisis, a care of by the term-of-office limits prescribed in most coalition government, or a prime minister heading a minorpresidential systems. Presidential aspirants are well aware of ity government, members of the ruling party, particularly the time frames in which their own ambitions must fructify. when it enjoys a comfortable majority, would consider the entry of outsiders to be a denial of positions of power to The direct election of the chief executive in a heterogeneous society like the United States has compelled political themselves. This could lead to crisis within the ruling party, forces to form a broad, fairly centrist and pragmatic twoaffecting government stability. party national system. Ideological and sectional parties do A major drawback of the parliamentary system is its proneness to floor crossing by the elected members on exist, but only on the fringe. This has become necessary because any presidential contest between more than two or the consideration of power, ideology, ethnic loyalty, money,

party. Whenever the center is strong, it aims to break the or other inducements. Floor crossing or political defection legislative majorities of opposition-led state legislatures. invariably leads to political instability, bringing the adminWhenever it is weak, state leaders try to destabilize the center istration to a grinding halt. Such political defection cuts at by using their clout with their party members of parliament. the very roots of democracy by eroding people's faith in their The parliamentary system works on the basis of official elected representatives and the government. As Ivor Jenopposition. If different political parties are in power in states nings observed long ago, "Frequent resignations involve and no party has an absolute majority at the center, forming frequent party splits and party splits lead to short and weak of a coalition becomes difficult. Any cooperation at the governments, which in turn lead to distrust of the democratic center between two or more political parties threatens to blur system." the image of an opposition party waiting in the wings to Political defection, a cause of instability in developing the states or at the center. parliamentary democracies, including India, is a source of come to power-in In the presidential system, however, state governments strength in the presidential system. This is because the function similarly to the central government. An elected principle of separation of powers has made the three governor has a fixed tenure, and a system of checks and branches-executive, legislative, and judiciary-indepenbalances spreads power among the executive, legisladent of one another with respect to their members' terms, tive, and judicial branches. A President may dislike an constituency, office, and powers, but interdependent with elected state governor but he is powerrespect to the sharing of powers. less to shorten his tenure by maneuverThough political affiliation of a leging the state legislative majority. At the islator is the single most important insame time, issue-oriented cooperation dicator of his voting behavior, he is free between political parties in one state is to vote for the proposals of the oppounlikely to affect their fortunes in other sition party. During the 28 years of states or at the center.

Republican administrations in the postIt is often said that the presidential war period, President Eisenhower alone system, because of its concentration of had two years with a Republican majorpowers in the hands of a single execity in Congress (1953-55). But without utive, is structurally prone to degenerate ever worrying about having to leave into a dictatorship much more than the office before the end of their terms, parliamentary system. While there have Republican Presidents like Ronald ReaFranklin Roosevelt had considerable been many cases of South American gan and George Bush have been able to leeway in negotiating the Atlantif: presidential democracies turning into draw support from the Democrats in Charter with Winston Churchill. dictatorships, it is also true that many of Congress on crucial policy issues. those same countries have returned to This phenomenon works the other way, also. Even when Presidents have their own party in presidential systems of democracy. Every country in the erstwhile Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is adopting a majority in Congress-as was the case during the adminpresidential system to mark its rejection of totalitarian istrations of Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter-they are not assured of blind support.

Elected representatives in commUnIsm. Given a clear majority in parliament, prime ministers in America's presidential system discuss, deliberate, differ, or developed and developing nations alike have not always shown defer to the President's legislative program without ever inhibitions in behaving dictatorially. They have stifled debate fearing a premature dissolution of the legislature, or necin the parliamentary party, in parliament, and in the cabinet; essarily losing their hard won seat in the next election. This they have imposed their own decisions on the cabinet. has made the legislature in the United States more powerful The 1990s is the decade of democracy as the events in than any democratic legislature in the world.

Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have shown. If The presidential system works well not only for multidemocracy has come to stay, it is not because it is the perfect ethnic societies but also for territorially large states with form of self-government; unlike dictatorship or totalitarian regional diversities. Such vast states can best be governed communism, it does not believe in self-evident principles. It through a federal system. If such a federal state follows the permits constitutional experimentation to improve the sysparliamentary system, the politics of legislative majority tem of government, as, for instance, Sri Lanka has done. For invariably makes the central government use legislative democratic countries in search of better alternatives, the support for a state chief minister consequent to his extending conclusion is inescapable that presidential government, on reciprocal support to the prime minister. The prime minister balance, is better than parliamentary government, particucan threaten to destabilize a state chief minister by withholdlarly for societies that are multiracial, multiethnic, multiing the support of his men in case the chief minister tries to linguistic, and multi religious. play an independent role, even if both belong to the same D

The Science of Announcing a Discovery How scientists publicize and promote their breakthroughs can be as important to their careers as the discoveries themselves.

Making a major discovery in science is only the first step to fame and fortune, necessary but not sufficient. Almost as important are the how, when, and where of announcing your breakthrough.

Do it right and you may be fixed for life, or even become a household name. Slip up and you will slink away from the snickers of

your colleagues and, worse, the wider world of newspaper readers and television watchers.

The most ballyhooed discovery of our time (apparently false, it turned out) was the announcement at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City that two scientists had achieved nuclear fusion in a glass jar

on the laboratory equivalent of a kitchen table. Controlled fusion is a holy grail, the promise of nearly infinite, clean, and cheap energy. Until the Utah story broke, most scientists had been struggling ahead the only way they knew how-re-creating the unimaginable temperatures and pressures inside stars to achieve fusion. The

news that it could be done at room temperature and pressure was a bombshell.

The two scientists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann (the latter from the University of Southampton in England), broke academia's cherished unwritten rules in announcing their discovery and paid dearly for it. Instead of waiting until a full account of their experiments was published in a scientific journal, they called a press conference. -Worse, with the aid of lobbyists they appealed to the U.S. Congress for direct appropriations to fund their research. The work was so important, they said, that they should have their own instant institute.

Modern-day science does not work that way-most of the time. Results are vetted before they are announced. A paper submitted to a journal is passed first to several referees, people working in the same field who can judge the results being reported. Only if it passes muster is it accepted for publication. Raising money works the same way. Proposals are steered to referees for judgment before a granting agency writes a check. You may get away with breaking the rules if your findings are instantly recognized as correct. But there is all the difference in the world between the sweet smell of success and the odi um of highly publicized error.

Bruce Lewenstein, a historian of science at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told me at least two scientists were so irritated by the appeal to Congress that they let it be known they would "slam Pons and Fleischmann against the wall."

A prominent physicist, Robert L. Park of the American Physical Society, refused to attend a luncheon at which Jerry Bishop of the Wall Street Journal was awarded $3,000 for his coverage of the cold fusion story.

Anger at publicity is not new in the scientific world. American astronomer Harlow Shapley expressed strong disapproval of Robert Millikan, the physicist who measured the charge of the electron in 1910. In The Diary of H.L. Mencken, Shapley recounts a devastating saying about Millikan that he attributes to the Nobel laureate chemist Sir Ernest Rutherford. "Rutherford said that pub-

Iicity grabbing has become one of the learned sciences and a great force in modern life, and that it has become necessary to set up a unit to measure it. This unit, he said, is the kan. It is, however, so large that it has become necessary to resort to a workable fraction of it. This fraction is the millikan."

As a scientist myself, I have seen many erroneous "discoveries"-including one of my own-greeted with substantial publicity. In some cases reputations survive with little damage; in others the unfortunates become objects of derision.

Much depends on how the discovery was announced. It can be OK to be wrong; but to jump the gun and be wrong as well is unforgivable.

The Opening Bid At the bridge table, the player who opens the bidding may not be the one who wins the hand. But in science, the first announcement-the opening bid--estabIishes priority, thereby diminishing the future claims of a competitor who is rumored to have made similar findings.

For a young university scientist, priority in an important discovery can make the all-important difference between being awarded tenure and being out on the. street.

Young or old, once you make a big discovery, you can hit "the circuit"speaking at meetings held in the nicest resorts, addressing rapt graduate students and envious faculty at every ivied campus that can come up with a fat honorarium.

Government grants are easier to come by, which translates into more money for the staff who keep the Bunsens burning while the boss is on the road.

Perhaps just as significant, priority can decide who reaps the financial benefits of a new discovery. A month after Pons and Fleischmann made their announcement, Bishop reported, 40 companies had signed agreements with the University of Utah to inspect patent applications based on the scientists' work.

In my own field of astronomy, it is easy to list cases in which the way discoveries were announced, and the motives of the discoverers, would fail every test of mod-

ern scientific protocol. Astronomers, dare I reveal it, made announcements in ways calculated to bring them maximal credit, priority, and even (lean closer for this) personal gain.

When Galileo introduced his improved telescope, he touted its potential use for long-range detection of enemy ships. As a result, he was granted tenure in his professorship and a hefty raise. When he discovered the four large moons of Jupiter, he hoped to cash in on that application as well. His discovery revolutionized astronomy. Until then, dogma held that everything in the sky revolved around Earth. But here was an indisputable case of celestial bodies orbiting another celestial body. It would be the model for Galileo's heretical thesis that Earth moves around the sun.

One of his concerns in announcing his discovery, however, was to make the most he could out of it. Galileo agonized over whether to call the moons the "Cosmian Stars" after the rich and powerful Cosimo de' Medici, or the "Medicean Stars" after Cosimo and his three similarly wealthy brothers. Which would bring him the most money? He sought advice from Cosimo's secretary and eventually opted for the second choice. Today they are known as the Galilean moons.

Even before telescopes, astronomers knew the importance of publicizing their research. The 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe measured the positions of planets so exactly that Johannes Kepler was able to work out the laws of planetary motions. Brahe equipped his lavish observatory (he once bragged that it had cost the king of Denmark a "ton of gold") with more than scientific instruments. He put in a printing press to bang out announcements of discoveries.

Other early astronomers-Regiomontanus and Peter Apian-did the same. Long before anyone had dreamed of the mimeograph or the fax, astronomers were skilled at getting the word out.

Every rule has its exceptions, and astronomy is no exception.

Some astronomers had to learn how to make a discovery announcement.

William Herschel was that pleasant rarity among great

scientists, a very modest person. When he discovered the planet Uranus, in 1781, with a homemade telescope from his home in Bath, England, he did no more to publicize it than to mention it to a friend.

The friend wrote to the Royal Society, then as now Britain's leading scientific group, in London. The society knew the importance of good PR, whether or not the phrase had yet been invented.

At that time Herschel was a professional musician and only an amateur astronomer, one who had a knack for building telescopes.

Members of the Royal Society realized that Herschel could advance the art of telescopes, if only he could devote full time to it. They arranged for him to meet with King George III, who soon after awarded Herschel a stipend and made him a royal astronomer. Herschel went on to build the great telescopes of his age and to make important discoveries, including the deduction that the Milky Way is shaped like a disk or lens, and we are inside it.

Herschel had to be prodded into selfpromotion, and we admire his modesty.

And yet too much modesty can hold up the progress of research. A good example is the discovery of Neptune. Its existence had been deduced from the motion of Uranus, which seemed to be affected by the gravitational pull of a planet beyond it. This conclusion was reached and an-

nounced independently by two young mathematical geniuses, John Couch Adams in England and Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier in France. But they lacked the personal printing press of Brahe, the selfpromotion skills of Galileo, and the intercession of the scientific establishment that Herschel enjoyed. Adams and Le Verrier were given short shrift by the scientific leaders in their respective lands. On at least one occasion when Adams went to show Britain's Astronomer Royal his most recent calculations on the existence of Neptune, he was turned away by the butler.

Treated little better by the leading astronomers of France, Le Verrier was finally reduced to the ignominy (for a Frenchman) of writing to Germany for help. Even then, his claims might have been ignored at the Berlin Observatory had it not been the director's birthday when the letter arrived. While the director went home to party with his family, two low-ranking young astronomers seized the chance to use the observatory's 22.8centimeter refractor to search for the purported planet. In less than an hour they found the blue disk of Neptune. The scientific establishments of England and France, which had ignored the evidence for Neptune's existence, began a crossChannel war of words over whether the English or the French deserved the credit

for what the Germans had finally found.

The fine line that present-day scientists walk between self-aggrandizement and progress-slowing shyness involves more than the niceties of etiquette.

Hasty announcements draw intense criticisms, but so do delays. In AIDS research, for example, some activists are demanding that new drugs be made available to patients before proof of their efficacy is published in peer-reviewed journals. Even in a field like astronomy, where no finding is likely to help or harm the public health, those who sit on discoveries too long are likely to be criticized.

When the discovery of the planet Pluto was announced by Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1930, for example, some astronomers were upset to find that it had been kept secret for at least three weeks. Ostensibly this was done so that the glad tiding could be reported on what would have been Percival Lowell's 75th birthday (and the 149th anniversary of Herschel's discovery of Uranus). It was Lowell, after all, who had endowed the observatory, predicted the existence of a planet beyond Neptune, and launched the search. Critics suspected there was a second motive: By keeping the discovery quiet, the Lowell astronomers could track Pluto and be first to calculate an orbit for it. Had the discovery been announced immediately, institutions with more-suitable telescopes might have run circles around Lowell Observatory's orbitdetermining capabilities.

Apparently there was no thought of naming the new planet for a king or president, although Lowell's widow is said to have floated the idea of naming it Constance, after her.

Astronomers often cite pulsars as a prime example of a discovery that was kept secret too long. Pulsars are rapidly spinning collapsed stars, only a few kilometers in diameter, from which we receive regularly spaced beeps of radio emissions. At first England's Cambridge University astronomers who discovered them suspected the beeps might be radio signals from alien civilizations. Although found by graduate student Jocelyn Bell in (Text conlinued on page 44)

T I~ 1Jc:I~I~ l:t "I guess I've wanted to be a trucker ever since 1was a child, " says 48-year-old Harold Groff. Groff's pride in his profession is evident, Above: Truck driver Harold Groff conducts safety checks on his vehicle at regular intervals during his five-day 2,500-kilometer round trip.

Left: Sunday afternoon is the time Groff uses to calculate his profits by the week and by the kilometer driven.

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even after 28 years as a truck driver, 23 of those as an independent businessman who owns and operates his own truck.

Groff puts some 130,000 kilometers a year on his rig, traveling weekly between Boston, Massachusetts, and the Baltimore-Washington area. He hauls many small shipments rather than one large round trip, load. The 2,500-kilometer with loading and unloading, takes him five days. "I have a lot of clients to keep happy," he says. "It's a bit more specialized, a bit more tedious than carrying one load, but serving numerous clients fits my personality and makes my income less vulnerable."

For most of his years as an owneroperator, Groff has leased his services to Refrigerated Food Express, Inc., which has a fleet of 75 trucks and also contracts with other truck owners. Groff receives some accounts from the larger company and brings in some clients on his own. "I enjoy the challenge of getting customers," he says. He has 70 food producers as clients, 30 to 40 of whom he services each week.

Groff's 18-meter-long cab and trailer is a cab-over tractor, where the cab sits on top of the engine. "I prefer that to the long nose, where the driver sits behind the engine," he says. "For all the stops I make, my truck needs to be as short as possible for easier maneuvering, with the most trailer space possible."

When Groff started driving for a living, roads were smaller and facilities for trucks were fewer and farther apart.

Today, most of the roads he travels are major highways with heavy traffic.

Top: Groff chats with the owners of a grocery firm: he is welcomed as a trustedfriend by the clients whose products he transports.

Center: The trucker delivers an order to the loading dock of a supermarket.

Left: Groff's 16-wheel, 18-meter-long, refrigerated Freightliner is one of 160,000 such trucks that haul perishable food items in the United States.

Groff uses a two-way radio to keep in touch with clients and to communicate with other drivers; they keep each other posted with weather and road conditions.

"We need good truckers just like we need good teachers and good nurses and doctors."

"I have several driving plans to deal with traffic backups near a city, but sometimes 1 can't win and 1 end up sitting and twiddling my thumbs."

Left: Before he sets out on a trip, Groff thoroughly checks his truck.

Below: Groff uses a self-service pump at a gas station; in America the cost of diesel is slightly less when you pump it yourself.

He listens to both commercial and citizen's band radio (mostly used by truckers) for traffic reports. (In most American cities, the police broadcast regular reports of the current traffic situation-which roads have jams and snarls, which are clear, where traffic is building up, etc.)

"I have several driving plans to deal with traffic backups near a city," says Groff, "but sometimes I can't win and I end up sitting and twiddling my thumbs."

In a typical week, Groff leaves his home in Lititz, Pennsylvania (about halfway between New York and Washington, D.C.), on Monday at 2 a.m.; makes several pickups in Vermont (goat cheese, pasta, cheese-cake cookies) from small entrepreneurs; delivers the products in Boston; sleeps overnight in a motel; picks up deliveries around the Boston area (frozen batter for muffins and pastry, frozen veal, and fresh baked brisket) and heads south for Washington, 715 kilometers away; sleeps in his truck (behind the driver's seat is a bed) at a truck stop on the New Jersey Turnpike on Tuesday night; delivers the products in the BaltimoreWashington area; sleeps in a motel; loads the truck for the northbound route (ham, frozen bread dough, processed meats, turkey products, and juice); sleeps in his truck at a truck stop Thursday night; delivers the Baltimore-Washington load in Boston; and returns home Friday to his wife and three children.

Trucking, with its many newspaper stories on overloaded trailers and drivers taking pills to stay awake, has a somewhat unsavory image with the public.

Consequently, Groff often speaks to driver-education classes at high schools about his profession and how to handle vehicles on the highways. "We need to rid ourselves of a few bad actors. Recruitment and knowledge of the profession should begin in the schools," Groff believes. "We need good truckers just like we need good teachers and good nurses and doctors."

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"Someday, when 1 get old, I'm going to think, 'I am very happy that 1 was a truck driver.' This way of life has allowed me to be governor of my own destiny."

Abo\'e: With his will' and three children, Groffsays a blessing be.flire Sunday breaklast.

Above lelt: The Gro.fl home, which he also uses as office, o.flers a quiet, comfortable haven from the roar of the road.

Far left: For recreation, Groffsings in a regional men's choir. He also teaches a children's class at church on Sundays.

Left center: Before embarking on another week on the road, Gro.fl checks son Jeremy's schoolwork.

Left: Collecting toy rigs is a natural hobby jar sons in afamily steeped in trucking lore andjargon.

I

was t my son's special treat for me-a trip to Tempel Farms in Northern Lake County, Illinois, to see the famous Lipizzan stallions performing the breathtaking leaps and majestic promenades that were once presented before European royalty in the 16th century.

I was in the United States last summer visiting my son (a professor of economics at Northern Illinois University) and his family.

Knowing my passion for animals, he took us all to the American home of the Lipizzans.

This prized Austrian breed of horses originated during the 16th century when the Royal Court of Imperial Austria imported Spanish stallions to improve their domestic stock. The Lipizzans were originally bred for wars.

Their spectacular leaps, jumps, and turns gave their riders an added advantage in hand-tohand combat, since it helped them avoid foot soldiers and

Left: One of the prized Lipizzans of Tempel Farms, Neapolitano Serafina, with George Williams atop, performs the Capriole, a difficult leap into the air.

Left below: Young Lipizzans prance around. Born dark, they gradually lighten till they reach the classic whiteness of the mature Lipizzan.

plunging swords.

But the Lipizzans are more famous for their exploits off the battlefield. In an era when riding was an art form, the Lipizzans ulbecame-and still are-the timate embodiment of classical riding. Their magnificence can be traced back to the renowned Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria, where for four centuries the Lipizzans have been bred and trained to perform, as the Encyclopedia Americana puts it, "airs on and above the ground."

So treasured are the Viennatrained Lipizzans that during World War II, U.S. General George Patton ordered a special mission to forestall advancing Russian troops who were planning to capture the horses. This thrilling military rescue was the subject ofa Walt Disney film, The Miracle of the White Stallions.

The late Tempel Smith and his wife, Esther, imported the first 20 Lipizzans to the United States in 1958. The couple, determined to have an American performing arts center comparable to the Spanish Riding School, worked hard at making the dream come true. By the summer of 1982 when Tempel Farms (a division of Tempel Steel Company of Chicago) opened to the public for the first time, the Tempel Lipizzan herd had grown to 350, more than one-third of the world's entire population of the rare horses.

Today Tempel Farms has the largest privately owned herd of Lipizzans anywhere. A full-time staff of international expertsmany of whom have worked at the Spanish Riding Schoolworks with the horses, taking them through the long years of training required to make them perform to the highest standards of the art of classical dressage.

The Tempel Lipizzans have performed at several presidential inaugurals and at special exhibitions at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

Performances for the public are held at Tempel Farms from

June through September.

Our date with the dancing Lipizzans is on a bright August day. Although we are early, the parking lot is already jammed with cars.

There are people all around and music (Strauss, to which the horses perform) in the air. And then the show begins ....

First into the enclosure come the colts, who are either dark chocolate or paler brown.

(Lipizzans are born dark and lighten gradually through the years till they reach the classic whiteness of the mature stallions.) Let loose by their handlers, they frisk around the ring, kicking up their legs and bucking, much to the delight of the children. These young creatures will be carefully observed for the first four years of their lives, to see which of them has the potential to train for the difficult movements of classical dressage.

Next come the young stallions still in the process of being trained. They ride around the arena, trotting, walking, and cantering in straight lines, changing tempo and gaits smoothly. The highlight of the show, of course, p~rformance is the breathtaking by the trained stallions. The first of the figures of the haute ecole is a smooth, skimming walk diagonally across the field. Then come the Piaffe, a sort of musical trot in one place; the Passage, an extremely collected trot in which there is a moment of suspension; the Pirouette, in which the horse canters in slow motion in a tight circle; and, finally, flying leaps and springs-the airs above the ground.

The Levade, the Courbette, and the Capriole-all need great strength and intelligence. In the Levade, the horse rears up on his hind legs in the classical pose of equestrian statues. He sits well

balanced on his haunches, maintaining an angle of 45" or less to the ground. In the Courbette, still sitting on his haunches, he leaps forward on his hind legs in a series of jumps. The spectacular Capriole has the stallion leaping up and, high up in the air, kicking out dramatically with his hind legs-it's almost like seeing the mythical flying horse Pegasus.

These movements are done both on the long and short reins as well as with the rider on his mount. The music changes for each different set of figures and the horses effortlessly pick up the cue. So perfect is the rapport between rider and horse, built up over many long years of training and working together, that there do not seem to be any perceptible directions or instructions from man to animal. To the casual observer it seems as if the rider is just sitting there, hand lightly on the reins, motionless and balanced perfectly.

It is astonishing-almost like witnessing a miracle-to see these huge solid animals turn, leap, and soar up into the air as though they had become creatures of air and light. The sun's rays glancing on their flowing white tails, the scarlet and gold saddlecloths, the red reins, and the gleaming, polished boots of the riders ... the image will live with me forever.

Sometimes in my dreams I see the white stallions dancing, leaping, and turning, luminous against the backdrop of clear blue skies, and I ask myself, for whom do these beautiful stallions perform? For themselves, for the men who train them, or for the multitudes who throng to see them? Are these silent, majestic animals even aware of the thrill that they give us all?

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About the Author: Nergis Dalal, a Dehra Dun-based free-lance writer, has published several novels and short stories. She has also written stories for the BBC Overseas Service.

For years Time-Life Books on health, nature, science, computers, cookery, parenting, and other subjects have entertained, enlightened, and educated readers the world over.

Now there is an Indian edition of Time-Life Books. Under a license from Time-Life Inc., a division of Time Warner Inc., Bombay-based L.B. Publishers & Distributors recently brought out two titles, The Fit Body and

The U.S. Embassy has announced that the American Consulate General in Calcutta will cease to issue immigrant visas as of July 1,1992. All pending immigrant visa cases in the Calcutta region will be transferred to the U.S. Consulate General in Bombay.

However, the Consulate General in Calcutta will continue to handle immigrant visa applications for orphans to be adopted

by American citizens, as well as for fiances/fiancees of American citizens. The Consulate General in Calcutta will also continue to handle nonimmigrant visa applications for tourists, businessmen, and students from the eastern region of India.

The Embassy is planning to transfer the immigrant visa files from Calcutta to Bombay during June and July. The Consular Section in Bombay processes a

Getting Firm, of Time-Life series on Fitness, Health and Nutrition.

"The Indian edition has been brought out in order to conserve the country's precious foreign exchange reserves and to demonstrate to the world that our printing and publishing industry has come of age," says S. Laxminarayan, managing director of LB. Publishers, which has exclusive distribution rights for Time-Life Books in India.

Under the agreement, the Indian company will pay ten percent of the cover price as royalty to the American company. This is much less than what it costs in foreign exchange to import a bookabout 60 percent of the price.

L.B. Publishers also has plans to bring out other TimeLife Books, in English as well as in other Indian languages.

-Mukul

Bansal

large volume of immigrant visa cases, using a modern computer system to track the caseload. All of the transferred Calcutta files should be fully integrated into Bombay's system by the end of August.

Until that time, individual applicants are requested not to inquire about the status of their cases. Once the Calcutta files are transferred to Bombay, the Bombay Consulate General will notify affected applicants directly of their new Bombay "case number." This "case number" should be referred to by applicants whenever making inquiries.

The Embassy invites interested parties seeking further information to write to the Immigrant Visa Section, U.S. Consulate General, Lincoln House, 78 Bhulabhai Desai Road, Bombay 400026

Ambassador William Clark, Jr., recently signed an agreement under which Grasim Industries, Bombay, will receive a grant of $322,000 from the U.S. Trade and Development Program (TOP) to conduct a feasibility study for the establishment of a steel plant with an annual capacity of one million tons. B.R. Nahar, president of the Vikram Ispat Division, signed the agreement on behalf of Grasim Industries.

Grasim is currently setting up a gas-based hot briquetted iron plant in Raigad, .Maharashtra, with a capacity of 600,000 tons per annum. The detailed feasibility study for this plant was also conducted under a TOP grant, awarded to Davy Dravo of the United States in 1991.

The U.S. Trade and Development Program provides funding for feasibility studies for major projects with American consultants. To date, the TOP has made grants aggregating about $7.5 million to a broad cross section of Indian public and private sector companies, giving them easier access to state-of-the-art U.S. technology.

Last month, Ambassador Clark received the Charles E. Cobb, Jr., award for his initiative in promoting U.S. trade with India.

The Cobb award is presented annually to a U.S. Foreign Service career officer serving abroad who has been innovative and successful in developing trade and promoting exports for the United States.

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The great Mughal gardens of India were the subject of a two-day major international symposium held last month in Washington, D.C. "Mughal Gardens: Sources, Representations, Places, and Prospects" was the theme of this year's annual Dumbarton Oaks Landscape Architecture Symposium, sponsored jointly

by Dumbarton Oaks and the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Asian Art. In his presentation, James Wescoat of the department of architecture at the University of

Colorado in Boulder said that the magnificent Mughal gardens of historic India are still major cultural sites and centers of ongoing research. Among the most famous are the gardens at the Taj Mahal in Agra and Shalimar Gardens in Srinagar (left) "An important aspect of this conference," Wescoat noted, "was to understand these important cultural sites where the environment and society come together. The function of gardens [is] aesthetic and social. In addition, gardens were symbols of the political and cultural identity of the Mughal emperors."

In conjunction with the symposium, Elizabeth Moynihan, scholar and author, presented a lecture titled "But What a Happiness to Have Known Babur."

Babur (1483-1530), who conquered northern India and established the Mughal dynasty, was also a gifted designer of gardens.

Among the other scholars who presented papers at the symposium was Irhan Habib of Aligarh Muslim University, who spoke on "Economic and Social Aspects of Gardens in Mughal India."

"The backbone of a country's economy in today's world is its industry.

And the heart and soul of a healthy industry-whether it is a manufacturing industry or a service industryis automation."

That was the thrust of a lecture delivered by Odo J. Struger, senior vice president of technology development for the American automation giant Allen-Bradley, at a conference on automation in New Delhi last month. The conference, titled the Automation Technology Summit, was jointly sponsored by AllenBradley India Limited and the Indian chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Some 200 Indian

At 22, Priya Mayadas Sable is an accomplished concert pianist and composer, who has won several awards in the United States at the student and national level.

On a private visit to India recently, primarily to introduce her American husband David Sable, whom she married last year, to the country of her birth, Priya gave piano recitals in Bombay, Calcutta, and Delhi.

Priya was born in Calcutta to parents who had their music education at the Royal Academy of Music in England. She gave her first performance when she was four and composed her first piece at the age of six. To nurture her talent, her parents migrated to the United States in 1975,where Priya studied at various music schools, including the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division, which offered her a scholarship, and the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, from where she graduated with a degree of bachelor of music.

Priya has won numerous awards. At the Manhattan School of Music, she received, among others, the Dora Bornstein Memorial Award for outstanding pianist and the Peter Lewis Silver Award for excellence in music and theory studies. Other awards include a first prize from the Florida Federation of Music Clubs.

Her compositions have also won her many accolades. When she was eight, three of her compositions were performed by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Isaiah Jackson, in a concert called "Young Masters." At 11, she became the her youngest person ever to win a prestigious national award-for first String Quartet-in the Broadcast Music International, a competition for student composers.

Yet for Priya the best is still to come. "I frankly believe that learning to play the piano is a lifelong project," she says, "because there is always something to improve upon as you go along."

-Sayi!ri

Makhijani

technocrats and engineers from public and private sector companies throughout India attended the one-day meeting. .

Struger dealt at length on the advantages-and the problemsof switching over to automation. Automation, he said, helps optimize the use of equipment and the maintenance of schedules; speeds responses to process contingencies, changing market demands, and product changeover; increases production; and reduces processing time, energy use, and labor costs.

India, he said, has some of the ",most talented minds in the field (of automation]. I know from my own experience-about half a dozen senior [Indian] engineers work with me; they are hardworking and result-oriented. If the talented minds are given the proper direction, Indian industry is bound to take a big leap forward."

In his opening remarks at the conference, Jayanta Chatterjee, president of Allen-Bradley India Limited, said that Indian industry "has to catch up with the global technological progress so as to keep its product quality in line with international standards."

-A. Venka!a Narayana

Remembering

ISAAC ASIMOV Part I: The Man "Way back in about 1960 I wrote that there were three steps to salvation. The first one was speech. Then came writing.

And then came printing."

-Isaac Asimov, from an interview with the author And then came reading.

When I was a child and the world was a little younger and there were no communication satellites over my head, my father accidentally introduced me to science fiction (SF). He was a member of a club where children were only allowed to eat potato chips or swim. It was a stupid rule but I diligently did both till the day an ear infection made him maroon me in the confines of the club's mournful and melancholic library full of dusty old books and dustier, older people reading them.

I remember I was ten or II and kept walking around that maze of gloomy shelves, one finger tracing the tops of those tomes, one thought racing through my mind: How do I get out of this place?

There were no Hardy Boys books and no Secret Sevens, so, with indifference, I picked up something called Best SF I or 2 or 3. I like to think that was a small contribution to the fourth step to salvation. Mine at least.

Today I have lots of SF anthologies and lots of heroes. Not persons who peopled those stories but people who conjured up those persons. One such is Isaac Asimov with whom I've had a heavy, one-sided, love-hate relationship.

I loved him for the way he wrote; I hated him for my not being able to write like that. Apparently I'm not alone. When I was talking to the new-wave spokesperson Thomas Disch-the SF author Newsweek described as the most for-

American midably gifted unfamous writer (and considered to be one of the genre's most tough and unbrokering critics)-a few years ago, he said, "I think Asimov is writing the Foundation things exactly as though it were still 1952 and I think his vision of the future has remained in place."

How many of ours have?

Mine took a magical leap forward four years ago when Mannika Chopra of the Saturday Times called me from New Delhi to ask if I'd like to interview the man.

"You're kidding," I said.

"No way," she replied, "the good folk at the USIS have arranged it all. Brush up on a couple of laws of robotics and come on over."

But when the higher-than-tech equipment had been set up, the satellite links established, the audience hushed into awe, and Asimov was ready across a transpacific silence to receive the first question, I had amen stuck deep in my throat.

Childhood's end.

ME: Er .... Ten years ago you wrote that nothing of any importance had happened to you.

How could you say that and what would you consider happening to you other than world fame, money, cult following, and so many hundred book titles behind you?

HIM: I haven't traveled; I haven't climbed

Mukul Sharma, currently thefiction editor of Saturday Times (of The Tiines of India), is a former editor of Science Today (2001).

He has published several science fiction (SF) stories and a book of collected SF.

mountains: I haven't met famous people. and I haven't had a narrow escape from death. For the most part I simply sit at my typewriter and write and exercise my imagination.

Lucky us. Those mental calisthenics have yielded a two-volume guide to Shakespeare's plays, a commentary on Kipling and Byron, a guide to the Bible, annotated versions of Don Juan. Paradise Lost, and Gulliver's Travels, a treasury of humor, a history of physics, a treatise on the music of Gilbert and Sullivan. a chronology of science and discovery. and. of course, all things psychohistorical in a galaxy far away called the Foundation Tetralogy. Not to mention the three-anda-half laws of robotics because, "I've added," he said, "another law in my recent novel Rohots and Empire, which I call the Zubel's Law which is a more fundamental law than the first one CA robot may not harm a human being, or, through an action, allow a human being to come to harm'). This law generalizes to say that a robot may not harm humanity directly or through an action."

And in between Asimov wrote 467 titles. Often three of them simultaneously.

That's traveling light?

ME: You mentioned categorically that you don't travel. But supposing you decided suddenly that you wanted to go somewhere. where would you go? Would you, for instance, plan to come to India? Or is it too far away and would involve a long plane journey, which you are not particularly fond of?

HIM: I've taken ships in my time to Europe and I've taken trains across the United States. so I can, on rare occasions, take a few trips. If ever I decide to retire and before 1 die. 1 suppose the first thing I would want to do would be to visit the Soviet Union because I was born there and it always strikes me that I

would like to see the town in which I was born and which I left 65 years ago and never returned. Certainly it would be interesting to go to India as well. But I must admit this is more likely to remain a dream than become a reality.

Part II: The Legacy Accepting the Grand Master Nebula Award in 1986 for a lifetime's achievement in science fiction (see pages 34-36), Asimov said, "Anyone made Grand Master in his lifetime is ipso facto a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame after he has left us for the Great and Perpetual Convention in the sky."

Now that Asimov has left us for whatever other things may be lying about in all the plurality of heavens and earths undreamt of by Horatio's philosophers, isn't it time to ask why this Russian kid

who taught himself to read English at the age of five while consuming pulp science fiction in his parents' candy shop in Brooklyn, New York, was being so prescient and, later, modest?

"If you don't mind, I would like to say I do feel humble, and I am honored, and I owe it to lots of other people--especially the great John W. Campbell, Jr., who drove me both mad and to the heights."

Twenty-eight-year-old SF kingmaker Campbell, editor of Astounding ScienceFiction, was only mildly threatened on June 21, 1938, when our terrified 18-yearold kid made, as Asimov said, "his awesome pilgrimage to his office." He had a story called "Marooned Off Vesta," which saw 17 rejection slips before making it into the light of print. Campbell read him a quote from Emerson's essays-something about how, if human

beings could see the stars only once in a thousand years, they would get a big kick out of it. As a result in September 1941 "Nightfall" appeared, considered by many-but not its author-to be his best piece of short science fiction.

In 1990 Nightfall appeared again; this time in book-length form, co-authored by another science fiction writer, Robert Silverberg. The reception it received can be considered a seminal, though oblique, commentary on Asimov's accomplishment and heritage. At least as far as his science fiction is concerned.

The book was savaged; the co-author called a "sub-contractor."

What happened?

Simple. Asimov had shown he had staying power. While other major league authors such as Theodore Sturgeon. Ray Bradbury, Judith Merril, Walter Miller.

Jr., Alfred Bester, John Wyndham, Algis Budrys, Damon Knight, James Blish, Robert Sheck ley, Joanna Russ, and Harlan Ellison either gradually tapered off or completely stopped writing, Asimov just kept going. Also, other top rankers even started opting out of the field itself. Samuel Delany is now head of the department of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts where most of his writing is nonfiction; J.G. Ballard turned to semiautobiography and his Empire 0/ the Sun became a mega-Spielberg film in 1987; John Sladek who wrote extensively about robots is now an executive in a firm that designs real robots. While Asimov ...just kept going.

So much so that in a recent issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Thomas Disch virtually owns up to that fact when he says, "I remember how at a 1969 SF convention I spoke dismissively of the 'dinosaurs' then impeding the proper appreciation of young mammals like myself. Twentythree years later all but a couple of the dinosaurs I had in mind remain the commanding presences in the field ...and some of my fellow mammals now look more and more like dinosaurs."

The other odd in the couple, of course, being Arthur C. Clarke.

Together Asimov and Clarke fashioned a commonality of futures in the

early 1950s, which, although sometimes dismissed as being a "cheery Buck Rogers universe of space travel and infinite economic expansion," nevertheless managed to ride out the invasion of the mid-1960s "mammals" whose own futures tended to destroy the icons of the edifice they inherited and, in the process, themselves.

Amazingly, the duo then turned around and faced the latest SF "peak," the cyberpunks of the 1980s and 1990s whose graffiti is generally an affirmation

that the future is a mess and a lot of it "is in terrible repair, and the rest is mostly an electronic illusion, but you might as well enjoy it while it lasts." Historically they are still too close for us to reap the rewards of hindsight, but going by an op-ed piece that appeared in The New York Times of January 7, 1991, it seems the new guard is definitely floundering. In it Lewis Shiner, a cyberpunk writer, publicly resigned from the movement. "I'm 3? years old," he said somewhat chill-

ingly, as if perpetrating the myth that most great works of art are accomplished before the age of 35 or that science fiction writers are under a peculiar obligation to stay young.

There you have it, Isaac Asimov was 72 years old when he died in April this year.

One of the last things he said to me in that interview was, "I don't want to die, particularly because I've got many more books to write."

He was working on, as usual, three. 0

Seven Steps to Grand Master In 1986 the Science Fiction Writers of America declared Isaac Asimov a Grand Master, a title bequeathed no more than six times a decade to a living author of science fiction for a lifetime's achievement. In this light-hearted essay, Asimov makes it sound like something that just happened to him because he had the right name, lived in the right place, and met the right editor at the right time.

Step 1-1 Take an Ocean Trip

r was born in Russia. The land had just gone through World War I, a revolution, a civil war, and foreign intervention. To inflict myself on the nation at such a time was rather merciless of me, but I plead not guilty. The act that led to it was that of my parents.

In late 1922, my parents decided it might be a good idea to emigrate to the United States. They were getting along; they were not in dire poverty; they had not suffered unduly as a result of the troubles the land had been suffering-but they suspected that they might be better off in 'the long run in the United States.

One of the problems they had to face, I imagine, was whether to take me along. I was not quite three years old, and what with me contracting double pneumonia, falling into a nearby pond and (after some hesitation) being pulled out by my mother, and inflicting other joys of the sort on my parents, I imagine they felt they might be better offin the long run in the United States by themselves.

However, largely because (I suspect) they could find no one

foolish enough to take me off their hands, they sighed and put me in a knapsack so that they at least wouldn't have to waste a ticket on me. I crossed the ocean with them, and we arrived in Brooklyn in February of 1923, a little past my third birthday.

This was my first step to Grand Masterability. Had I remained in the USSR, I dare say I would have received an adequate education and would have taken to writing and would even have begun to write science fiction-making use of the Cyrillic alphabet, to be sure-but I don't think things would have gone as well for me there as here. In 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. I was 21 at the time, and I suspect I would have been in the fighting and might well have been killed or, worse, been taken prisoner. Or, if I had survived, I might conceivably have gotten in trouble with the regime because of my tendency to speak out of turn. (I have frequently gotten in trouble in the United States for that reason, come to think of it.)

And, finally, I don't know if they have a Grand Master award in the Soviet Union, so all in all, that ocean trip was essential.

Step 2-1 Insist on My Identity Once we were in the United States, my parents realized that they had gained a new status-that of being "greenhorns."

Everyone was eager to advise us and to guide our faltering steps down the pathway to American citizenship, especially those old settlers who had gotten off the ship five years earlier.

One neighbor woman said to my mother, in my hearing (I was

four or five by then and so small for my age that no one noticed me-so that I got stepped on a lot), "Why do you call him Isaac, Mrs. Asimov? With a name like that, he will always have a stigma on him." (Translation: "Everyone will know he is Jewish.")

My mother said, "So what should I call him, Mrs. Bindler?"

And Mrs. Bindler (or whatever her name might have been) said, "Call him Oiving." (Translation: Irving. This is a grand old aristocratic English family name.)

My mother was very impressed and would undoubtedly have accepted the suggestion, but, as I said, I was listening with each ear. I was not yet old enough to understand the semantic fact that the name of a thing is not the thing itself. I didn't understand that I was merely called Isaac and that I could be me whatever I was called. (Or as I once put it-rather neatly, I thin.k-"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.")

What I thought was that I was Isaac and if I were called anything else, I wouldn't be me. Whereupon I raised what we called in those days "a holler," absolutely refusing, under any conditions, to allow myself to be called Oiving. I was Isaac and I intended to stay Isaac-and I did. My mother simply wilted under the force of my indignation.

Without me knowing it, that was my second step toward Grand Masterdom. Had I accepted Oiving, it would have proved every bit as stigmatic as Isaac, for so many Jewish mothers had sought escape for their young hopefuls in that direction that Oiving became as Jewish as Isaac and without the biblical cachet of the latter name. (Besides, Newton's name was Isaac, too, and that's even better than the Bible, as far as I'm concerned.)

Having escaped Isaac, I would have ended by despising Oiving and would have changed my name to Ian. Then, realizing that Ian went but risibly with Asimov, I would have changed my last name to Ashford, and it would have been as Ian Ashford that I would have written my science fiction.

Now I am a strong believer in the value of name recognition.

No one would have noticed or remembered a name like Ian Ashford. However, the name Isaac Asimov attracts notice at once. People laugh and have long discussions over how it might be pronounced. When a second story appears with the same name, they see it again, and before long they can hardly wait for another story by me. Even if the story is no good, the name makes a terrific conversation piece. I would have sunk without a trace if I had not had the good sense to keep my name.

Step 3-1 Live on the Subway Line I was 18 years old and I finally had a story I wanted to submit to John W. Campbell, Jr., the new editor of Astounding ScienceFiction. The trouble was I didn't know how to do that. The logical way was to mail it to him, but the story, plus envelope, weighed just over three ounces, which meant four three-cent stamps, or 12 cents altogether.

If I went by subway, it would be five cents each way, or ten cents altogether. Of course, the subway would mean half an hour of my time each way, but in those days, my time was worth

nothing. Weighing the relative values of 12 cents and ten cents, I came to the conclusion that two cents was valuable stuff. I therefore took the subway.

Approaching the receptionist in an agony of fright, I asked for Mr. Campbell, expecting to be thrown out with the manuscript following me, divided into four pieces per page. Campbell was willing to see me and we talked for an hour. He gave me a quick reading and sent me a quick rejection with a very kindly and helpful letter. After that, I visited him once a month and I was on my way.

How did that happen? What was the deciding factor?

Easy! I lived halfa block from a subway station. Had I lived in Fargo, North Dakota, the railroad fare would have been more than 12 cents. For goodness sake, if! had lived in Staten Island, the ferry would have added ten cents to the round-trip fare, and comparing 12 cents and 20 cents, I would have put the envelope into the letter box. I would then never have met John Campbell, and I would not have received the kind of encouragement and charisma that poured forth from that great editor.

Hurrah for the subway station. I might never have made Grand Masterhood without it.

Step 4-1 Walk in at the Right Moment I tried to come to Campbell with a new idea every time I saw him. Every oncein a while, though, Campbell had an idea of his own. In the competition between a writer's idea and one of Campbell's ideas, it was Campbell who always won-at least, when it was I who was involved.

One day Campbell had a terrific idea, and he was aching to force it on some writer. He never told me the details, but the picture I have in my mind is of Campbell sitting there like a vulture waiting for an innocent writer to enter his lair (assuming vultures have lairs)-any innocent writer.

It must have come as a nasty shock to him when I, aged 21 and just as innocent as they come, walked in and said, "Hello, Mr. Campbell." It's undoubtedly a tribute to the manner in which that idea had him in its grip that after a momentary shudder, he dismissed the idea I was trying to describe and said, "Never mind that, Asimov. Let me read you this quote from one of Emerson's essays."

He read it-something about how if human beings could see the stars only once in a thousand years, they would get a big kick out of it.

"They wouldn't," said Campbell. "They would go nuts. I want you to go home and write that story. About-face! March!"

I went home, trembling with fear, sat down at my typewriter, and tapped out "Nightfall." It appeared in the September 1941 Astounding and got the cover. It was my first smash hit, after nearly three years of trying. Robert Heinlein made it with his first story; A.E. van Vogt made it with his first story; Arthur C. Clarke made it with his first story; and I was almost as good-I made it with my 16th story.

"Nightfall" marked a turning point. From the moment of that sale, I never failed to sell a single word of fiction I wrote (though

on rare occasions it took two or three submissions to do so).

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night screaming because I have dreamed that Theodore Sturgeon or Lester del Rey had walked into Campbell's office half an hour ahead of me that day. If they had, bang would have gone my Grand Mastership.

Step 5-A Friend Insists One of the stories') I didn't sell-at first-was a novella entitled "Grow Old Along with Me." I wrote it for Startling Stories at their request and, in the end, they rejected it. That happened in 1947, six years after "Nightfall." It rattled me. I decided that I had passed my peak-after all, I was 27-and I was sliding down the abyss to join Ed Earl Repp and Harl Vincent (two science fiction writing idols of the early 1930s).

Two years later, Doubleday decided to start a hard-cover line of science fiction novels. For that, they needed novels. I, of course, with my usual ability to keep my finger on the publishing pulse, knew nothing about it.

But I had a friend-Fred Pohl.

He came to me and said, "Doubleday is looking for a novel.

How about the one you wrote for Startling?"

I said, "Fred, it's only 40,000 words. And it's a stinker."

He said, "So if they like it, you can lengthen it. And if you don't tell them it's a stinker, they might not find out."

But I didn't want to go through another rejection on the story, so I said, ''I'd rather not submit it."

"I insist," said Fred.

I was not proof against Fred's quiet pertinacity, and Ilet him have the story. He let Doubleday have the story. Doubleday asked me to extend it to 70,000 words and took it. It appeared in January 1950 as Pebble in the Sky, and it has earned me money in each of the 74 Doubleday statements I have received since then.

What's more, it got Doubleday into the pleasant habit of accepting my manuscripts as a matter of course. As of today, they have published 102 of my books and have several in press.

I'm sure that I would have been a reasonably successful writer on magazine short stories alone, but I would have been far poorer than I am today if I had not written my novels, and I would be nowhere near as well known. In fact, if Fred had not insisted on submitting the story on that day in 1949, I doubt I could ever have qualified for Grand Mastercraft.

Step 6-A Critic Asks a Question In 1957, I published my novel The Naked Sun in book form.

It was a science fiction mystery. Also, it had a rather understated love story in it, with a rather touching final scene between the lovers.

Damon Knight reviewed the book, and he wasn't in the least impressed by the science fiction or the mystery. (I suppose he's entitled to his opinion, but I don't suppose it very hard.) However, he liked the love story. "If you can write like that, Asimov," he asked rhetorically in the course of his review,

"why do you bother writing science fiction?"

To which I answered in a letter that appeared in the magazine in which the review had earlier appeared, "Because I love science fiction. No matter what else happens, I will never stop writing science fiction."

And then, in 1958, the very next year, I suddenly grew tired of science fiction. A sequel to The Naked Sun died in the typewriter, and I realized that I was anxious to write nonfiction.

And yet how could I stop? I remembered my answer to Damon's question, and I simply couldn't go back on my profession of love. rt was while I hesitated that Robert P. Mills, then editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, asked me to write a monthly science column. I leaped at it, for that would enable me to write nonfiction and yet stay in the science fiction field. It was the perfect Talmudic solution. The first science column appeared in the November 1958 issue of F & SF, and the column still continues to this moment, 29 years later. For 20 years after that first column, I wrote mostly nonfiction. Mind you, I didn't give up my science fiction altogether. In that interval I wrote two novels and dozens of short stories, but compared to my earlier production, it seemed like very little.

Had it not been for the F & SFcolumn, which would not have come about, perhaps, without Damon's question and my answer, I surely would have been forgotten by the fans and been thought of as another David H. Keller. That column kept me going till the founding of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in 1977 and Doubleday's insistence in 1981 on my return to novels put me back in the mainstream. That column, by keeping me constantly in the public eye during the dry period, made it possible for me to earn Grand Masterness.

Step 7-1 Survive Naturally, I had my vicissitudes. There was a hemithyroidectomy in 1972 and a mild heart attack in 1977. I survived both handily. And then, in the fall of 1983, my angina suddenly got so bad I could scarcely walk the length of the hall in my apartment house.

On December 14, 1983, I had a triple bypass and came out of it in fine shape, thanks to a very clever surgeon. The morning after, I said to him, "The nurses tell me the operation went very well."

And he answered, "What do you mean 'very well.' It was perfect.'"

And so it seems to have been, and had it not been, there is scarcely any chance that an award would have been handed to me now. It was to that surgeon then that I owe my Grand Masterity.

The conclusion? Simple. I had nothing to do with it. If my parents hadn't brought me here; if my mother hadn't decided to let my name be; if a subway line hadn't existed at my very feet; if I hadn't wandered into Campbell's office at the right moment; if Fred Pohl hadn't insisted; if Damon Knight hadn't asked a question; and if a surgeon hadn't had a good day-I'd be left with nothing. As it is, I'm Grand Master-and I love it just as though I'd done it all myself.

0

are playing "a major role." The 45 percent and the "major role" are allowed to defray all other costs. That the farm family now furnishes labor and (by its increased consumption) income to the economy that is destroying it is seen simply as an improvement. Thus the abstract and extremely tentative value of money is thoughtlessly allowed to replace the particular and fundamental values of the lives of household and community.

Obviously, we need to stop thinking about the economic functions of individuals for a while, and try to learn to think of the economic functions of communities and households. We need to try to understand the long-term economies of places-places, that is, that are considered as dwelling places for humans and their fellow creatures, not as exploitable resources.

What happens when farm people take up "off-farm work"? The immediate result is that they must be replaced by chemicals and machines and other purchases from an economy adverse and antipathetic to farming, which means that the remaining farmers are put under yet greater pressure to abuse their land. If under the pressure of an adverse economy, the soil erodes, soil and water and air are poisoned, the woodlands are wastefully logged, and everything not producing an immediate economic return is neglected, that is apparently understood by most of the society as merely the

normal cost of production.

One thing that this means is that the land and its human communities are not being thought about in places of study and leadership, and this failure to think is causing damage. But if one lives in a country place, and if one loves it, one must think about it.

Two facts are immediately apparent.

One is that the present local economy, based exclusively on the export of raw materials, like the economies of most rural places, is ruinous. Another is that the influence of a complex, aggressive national economy upon a simple, passive local economy will also be ruinous. Tn a varied and versatile countryside, fragile in its composition and extremely susceptible to abuse, requiring close human care and elaborate human skills, able to produce a great variety of products from its soils, what is needed, obviously, is a highly diversified local economy.

W

e should be producing the fullest variety of foods to be consumed locally. in the countryside itself and in nearby towns and cities: Meats, grains, table vegetables, fruits and nuts, dairy products, poultry and eggs. We should be harvesting a¡ sustainable yield of fish from our ponds and streams. Our woodlands, managed for continuous yields, selectively and carefully logged, should be yielding a variety of timber for a variety of purposes: Firewoorl, fence posts, lumber for building, fine woods for furniture makers.

And we should be adding value locally to these local products. What is needed is not the large factory so dear to the hearts of government "developers" and local "boosters."

To set our whole population to making computers or automobiles would be as gross an error as to use the whole countryside for growing corn or Christmas trees or pulpwood; it would discount everything we have to offer as a community and place; it would despise our talents and capacities as individuals.

We need, instead, a system of decentralized, small-scale industries to trans-

form the products of our fields and woodlands and streams: Small creameries, cheese factories, canneries, grain mills, sawmills, furniture factories, and the like. By "small" I mean simply a size that would not be destructive of the appearance, the health, and the quiet of the countryside.

If a factory began to "grow" or to be noisy at night or on Sunday, that would mean that another such factory was needed somewhere else.

Tf waste should occur at any point, that would indicate the need for an enterprise of some other sort. If poison or poll ution resulted from any enterprise, that would be understood as an indication that something was absolutely wrong, and a correction would be made. Small scale, of course, makes such changes and corrections more thinkable and more possible than does large scale.

I realize that, by now, my argument has crossed a boundary line of which everyone in our "realistic" society is keenly aware. I will be perceived to have crossed over into "utopianism" or fantasy. Unless I take measures to prevent it, I am going to hear somebody say, "All that would be very nice, if it were possible.

Can't you be realistic?"

Well, let me take measures to prevent it. I am not, I admit, optimistic about the success of this kind of thought. Otherwise, my intention, above all, is to be realistic; I wish to be practical. The question here is simply that of convention. Do I want to be realistic according to the conventions of the industrial economy, or according to what I know of reality? To me. an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable. and reckons its value only as money, is not acceptable because it is 110! realistic. I am thinking as I believe we must think if we wish to discuss the hes! uses of people, places. and things. and if we wish to give affection some standing in our thoughts.

If we wish to make the he.l'! use of people, places, and things, then we are going to have to deal with a law that reads about like this: As the quality of use increases. the scale of use (that is. the size of operations) will decline, the

tools will become simpler, and the methods and the skills will become more complex. That is a difficult law for us to believe, because we have assumed otherwi'se for a long time, and yet our experience overwhelmingly suggests that it is a law, and that the penalties for disobeying it are severe.

Let me return to the countryside I described at the beginning. From birth, I have been familiar with this place, and have heard it talked about. For the last 25 years I have been increasingly involved in the use and improvement ofa little part of it. As a result of some failures and some successes, I have learned some things about it. I am certain, however, that I do not know the best way to use this land. I do not believe that anyone else does. I no longer expect to live to see it come to its best use. But I am beginning to see what is needed, and everywhere the need is for diversity. This is the need of every American rural landscape that I am acquainted with. We need a greater range of species and varieties of plants and animals, of human skills and methods, so that the use may be fitted ever more sensitively and elegantly to the place. Our places, in short, are asking us questions, some of them urgent questions, and we do not have the answers.

T

he answers, if they are to come, and if they are to work, must be developed in the presence of the user and the land; they must be developed to some degree by the user on the land.

The present practice of handing down from on high policies and technologies developed without consideration of the nature and the needs of the land and the people has not worked, and it cannot work. Good agriculture and forestry cannot be "invented" by self-styled smart people in offices and laboratories and then sold at the highest possible profit to the supposedly dumb countrypeople.

That is not the way good land use comes about. And it does not matter how the methodologies so developed and handed down are labeled; whether "industrial" or "conventional" or "organic" or "sustainable," the professional or professorial

condescension that is blind to the primacy of the union between the individual people and individual places is ruinous. The challenge to the would-be scientists of an ecologically sane agriculture, as biologist David Ehrenfeld has written, is "to provide unique and particular answers to questions about a farmer's unique and particular land." The proper goal, he adds, is not merely to "substitute the cult of the benevolent ecologist for the cult of the benevolent sales representative."

The question of what a beloved country is to be used for quickly becomes inseparable from the questions of who is to use it or who is to prescribe its uses, and what will be the ways of using it. If we speak simply of the use of "a country," then only the first question is asked, and it is asked only by its would-be users. It is not until we speak of "a beloved country"-a particular country. particularly lovedthat the question about ways of use will arise. It arises beca use, loving our country, we see where we are, and we see that present ways of use are not adequate.

They are not adequate because such local cultures and economies as we had have been stunted or destroyed. As a nation, Americans have attempted to substitute the concepts of "land use," "agribusiness," "development," and the like, for the culture of stewardship and husbandry.

And this change is not a result merely of economic pressure and adverse social values; it comes also from the sta te of affairs in our educational system, especially in our universities.

It is readily evident, once affection is allowed into the discussion of "land use," that the life of the mind, as presently constituted in the universities, is of no help. The sciences are of no help, indeed are destructive, because they work, by principle, outside the demands, checks, and corrections of affection. The problem with this "scientific objectivity" becomes immediately clear when science undertakes to "apply" itself to land use. The problem simply is that land users are using people, places, and things that cannot be well used without affection. The ~conomist to whom it is of no concern whether or not a family loves its farm will

almost inevitably aid and abet the destruction offamily farming. I hope that my country may be delivered from the remote, cold abstractions of university sCience.

But "the humanities," as presently constituted in the universities, are of no help either, and indeed, with respect to the use of a beloved country, they too have been destructive. (The closer I have come to using the term humanities the less satisfactory it has seemed to me; by it. I mean everything that is not a science. another unsatisfactory term.) The humanities have been destructive not because they have been misapplied, but because they have been so frequently understood by their academic stewards as not applicable. The scientific ideals of objectivity and specialization have now crept into the humanities and made themselves at home. This has happened. I think. because the humanities have come to be infected with a suspicion of their uselessness or worthlessness in the face of the provability or workability or profitability of the applied sciences. My impression is that the great works are less and less taught as religious scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy said they should be:

With the recognition "that nothing will have been accomplished unless men's lives are affected and their values changed by what we have to show." My impression is that in the humanities as in the sciences the world is increasingly disallowed as a context. 1 hope that my country may be delivered from the objectivity of the humanities.

Without a beloved country as context, the arts and the sciences become oriented to the careers of their practitioners, and the intellectual life to intellectual (and bureaucratic) procedures. And so in the universities we see forming an intellectual elite more and more exclusively accomplished in intellectual procedures: Promotion, technological innovation, publication, and grant-getting. The context of a beloved country, moreover, implies an academic standard that is not inflatable or deflatable. The standard-the physical, intellectual, political, ecological, economic, and spiritual health of the country--eannot be too high; it is as high, simply, as we have the love, the vision, and the courage to make it.

1 would like my country to be seen and known with an attentiveness that is schooled and skilled. 1 would like it to be

Wendell Berry and his wife, Tanya, plow their farm in Port Royal, Kentucky, the old-fashioned way-with horses.

loved with a minutely particular affection and loyalty. I would like the work in it to be practical and loving and respectful and forbearing. In order for these things to happen the sciences and the humanities are going to have to come together again in the presence of the practical problems of individual places, and of local knowledge and local love in individual peoplepeople able to see, know, think, feel, and act coherently, and well without the modern instinct of deference to the "outside expert. " That a scientist and an artist can speak and work together in response to the practical problems of individual places I know from my own experience. All that is necessary is a mutuality of concern and a mutual willingness to speak common English. When friends speak across these divisions or out of their "departments," in mutual concern for a beloved country, then it is clear that these diverse disciplines are not "competing interests," as the university structure and academic folklore suggest, but interests with legiti-

mate claims on all minds. It is only when the country becomes an abstraction, a prize of conquest, that these interests compete-though, of course, when that has happened all interests compete.

But in order to assure that a beloved country might be lovingly used, the sciences and the humanities will have to do more than mend their divorce at "the university level"; they will also have to mend their divorce from the common culture, by which I do not mean the "popular culture," but rather the low and local wisdom that is now either relegated to the compartments of anthropology or folklore or "oral history," or not attended to at all.

Sometime ago, after I had given a lecture at a college in Ohio, a gentleman came up and introduced himself to me as a fellow Kentuckian.

"Where in Kentucky are you from?" 1 asked.

"Oh, a little place you probably never heard of-North Middletown."

"I have heard of North Middletown," I said. "It was the home of my father's great friend and colleague, John W. Jones."

"Well, John W. Jones was my uncle."

1 told him then of my father's and my own respect for Mr. Jones.

"I want to tell you a story about Uncle John," he said. And he told me this: When his Uncle John was president of the bank in North Middletown, his policy was to give a loan to any graduate of the North Middletown secondary school who wanted to go to college and needed the money.

This practice caused great consternation to the bank examiners who came and found those unsecured loans on the books, and found no justification for them except for Mr. Jones's conviction that it was right to make them.

As it turned out, it was right in more than principle, for in the many years that Mr. Jones was president of the bank. making those "unsound loans," all of the loans were repaid; he never lost a dime on a one of them.

I do not mean to raise here the question of the invariable goodness of a college education, which I doubt. My point in

telling this story is that Mr. Jones was acting from a kind of knowledge, inestimably valuable and probably indispensable, that comes out of common culture, and that cannot be taught as a part of the formal curriculum of a school. The students whose education he enabled were not taught it at the colleges they attended.

What he knew-and this involved his knowledge of himself, his tradition, his community and everybody in it-was that trust, in the circumstances then present, could beget trustworthiness. T)1is is the kind of knowledge, obviously, that is fundamental to the possibility of community life and to certain good possibilities in the characters of people.

Though I don't believe that it can be taught and learned in a university, I think that it should be known about and respected in a university, and I don't know where, in the sciences and the humanities as presently constituted, students would be led to suspect, much less to honor, its possible existence. It is certainly no part of banking or of economics as now taught and practiced. It is a part of community life, which most scientists ignore in their professional pursuits, and which most people in the humanities seem to regard as belonging to a past now useless or lost or dispensed with.

Let me give another, more fundamental example. My brother, who is a lawyer, recently had as a client an elderly man named Bennie Yeary who had farmed for many years about 120 hectares of hilly and partly forested land. His farm and the road to his house had been damaged by a power company.

Seeking to determine the value of the land, my brother asked him if he had ever logged his woodlands.

Mr. Yeary answered: "Yes, sir, since 1944 ...1 have never robbed [the land]. I have always just cut a little out where I thought it needed it. I have got as much timber right now, I am satisfied ... as I had when I started mill runs here in 1944."

That we should not rob the land is a principle to be found readily enough in the literary culture. That it came into literature out of the common culture is suggested by the fact that it is commonly

phrased in this way by people who have not inherited the literary culture. That we should not rob the land, anyhow, is a principle that can be learned from books.

But the ways of living on the land so as not to rob it probably cannot be learned from books, and this is made clear by a further exchange between my brother and Mr. Yeary.

They came to the question of what was involved in the damage to the road, and the old farmer said that the power company had destroyed 13 or 14 water breaks. A water break is a low mound of rock and earth built across a hilly road to divert the water out of it. It is a means of preventing erosion both of the roadbed and of the land alongside it, one of the ways of living on the land without robbing it.

"How long ... had it been since you had those water breaks constructed in there?"

"I had been working on them ... off and on, for about 12 years, putting them water breaks in. I hauled rocks out of my fields ... and I would dig out, bury these rocks down, and take the sledgehammer and beat rock in here and make this water break."

T

he way to make a farm road that will not rob the land cannot be learned from books, then, because the long use of such a road is a part of the proper way of making it, and because the use and improvement of the road are intimately involved with the use and improvement of the place. It is of the utmost importance that the rocks to make the water breaks were hauled from the fields. Mr. Yeary's solution did not, like the typical industrial solution, involve the making of a problem, or a series of problems, elsewhere. It involved the making of a solution elsewhere: The same work that improved the road improved the fields.

Such work requires not only correct principles, skill, and industry, but a knowledge oflocal particulars, and many years; it involves slow, small adjustments in response to questions asked by a particular place. And this is true in general of the patterns and structures of a proper human use of a beloved country, as

examination of the traditional landscapes of the Old World will readily show: They were made by use as much as by skill.

This implication of use in the making of essential artifacts and the maintenance of the landscape-which are to so large an extent the making and the maintenance of culture-brings us to the inescapable final step in an argument for diversity: The realization that without a diversity of people we cannot maintain a diversity of anything else. By a diversity of people I do not mean a diversity of specialists, but a diversity of people elegantly suited to live in their places and to bring them to their best use, whether the use is that of uselessness, as in a place left wild, or that of the highest sustainable productivity.

The most abundant diversity of creatures and ways cannot be maintained in preserves, zoos, museums, and the like, but only in the occupations and the pleasures of an appropriately diversified human economy.

The proper ways of using a beloved country are humanities, I think, and are as complex, difficult, interesting, and worthy as any of the rest. But they defy the present intellectual and academic categories. They are both science and art, knowing and doing. Indispensable as these ways are to the success of human life, they have no place and no standing in the present structures of our intellectual life. The purpose, indeed, of the present structures of our intellectual life has been to educate them out of existence. I think I know where in any university my brother's client, Mr. Yeary, would be laughed at or ignored or tape-recorded or classified. I don't know where he would be appropriately honored. The scientific disciplines certainly do not honor him, and the "humane" ones almost as certainly do not. We would have to go some distance back in the literary traditionback to Thomas Hardy, at least, and before Hardy to William Wordsworthto find the due respect paid to such a person. He has been educated almost out of existence, and yet an understanding of his importance and worth would renew the life of the mind in this country, in the university and out.

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"And I'm tired of working for peanuts."

the summer of 1967 and confirmed that fall, the first one was not announced until late February 1968. The radio telescope used by Bell and Antony Hewish, the professor who supervised her work and later received the Nobel Prize, was ideal for finding pulsars, but telescopes elsewhere were much better suited to studying them in detail. Thus when the halfyear delay between detection and disclosure became known, other researchers suspected that the delay was designed to allow the Cambridge astronomers to cash in on their discovery without fear of competition.

Thomas Gold, the Cornell cosmologist who was then director of Arecibo Observatory, home of the world's largest radio dish, told me in 1990, "It has been said the pretense was made that they sat on [the discovery of pulsars] to avoid frightening the world [with the possibility] that there were alien men." Frank Drake, a distinguished radio astronomer at the University of California in Santa Cruz, adds that the pulsar secret was "an example of a ruthless suppression of a discovery, a matter of insuring 'credit' in all caps [capital letters]."

Then there are the discoveries that are not kept quiet long enough to be confirmed, and that often are promptly disproved. I had a brief taste of heady fame in mid-1968 when colleagues and I at Kitt

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findings secret, not only because each wanted to be the first to announce a valuable observation, but also because as Earth turned, the supernova became lost from view at any given observatory for precious hours. To follow rapidly changing phenomena, astronomers had to alert one another about what to look for. Thus, among the dozens of accurate reports there were inevitably, in all the wild excitement, some premature ones. It was announced, for example, that the supernova was of Type I, meaning that it was one component of a double star. Within a day or so, it was clearly seen to be a Type II, the explosion of a single, massive star.

About the same time, one observatory announced that the blue supergiant star Sanduleak -69°202, which was at the precise position of the supernova, was still there, that it had not exploded. Within weeks, this was found to be exactly wrong: It was indeed Sanduleak that had gone boom in the night. Two observatories on two different continents detected a "mystery spot" emerging from the supernova. Possibly a blob of gaseous matter, it was said to be moving away from the supernova at a hefty fraction of the speed of light. No one has seen the mystery spot lately, however, and many astronomers now think it never was.

Theory predicted a newborn pulsar would appear in the ashes of the super-

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Peak National Observatory in Arizona thought we had found visible light coming from a pulsar. Shortly after we detected these extremely faint emissions with a 127-centimeter telescope, the moon became full, making the night sky too bright to continue the observations.

The first pulsar conference in the United States was about to convene in~New York and my announcement there of our findings made a small sensation, not to mention The New York Times. Best of all, a competitor who used the 305-centimeter telescope of Lick Observatory in California was reduced to reporting his confirmation of our discovery with supposedly better evidence from a bigger telescope. At the next dark of the moon, astronomers around the world trained their telescopes on the location of our visible pulsar, but no one ever saw it again. We had, for good reason, jumped too soon. I have often felt that the Californian's confirmation may have saved my professional neck.

Yet seemingly premature announcements of some astronomical discoveries are, I think, absolutely essential. Take Supernova 1987A. Here was the closest exploding star in almost four centuries. It was changing noticeably, day by day, even hour by hour. Every new development was of extraordinary scientific interest.

No astronomer dared keep

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A Collector's Passion Samuel Eilenberg spent 35 years building up a priceless collection of Indian and other Oriental art objects. In 1987 he donated most of them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Left: Seated Transcendental

Buddha Vairochana.

Seated Four-Armed Ganesha.

Shiva Seated with Uma (Umamaheshvara).

Indonesia, Java, Central Javanese period, ca. late 9th century, bronze, height 19.3 em. Gift of Samuel Eilenberg, 1987.

India, Tamil Nadu, Chola period, late 12th-13th century, copper, height 7.3 em. Gift of Samuel Eilenberg, 1987.

Nepal, Thakuri dynasty, 11th century, copper, height 28.3 em. Purchase, Rogers Fund, 1987.

Hanging Lamp in the Form of a Kinnari.

Male Head. Pakistan, Gandhara region, 4th century, terracotta, height 21.9 em. Gift of Samuel Eilenberg, 1987.

Indonesia, Java, Central Javanese period, ca. second half of 9th-early 10th century, bronze, width 18.9 em.

Gift of Samuel Eilenberg, 1987.

Below: Ringstone with

Four Goddesses and Four Date Palms. India, Mauryan period, 3rd-2nd century BC, stone, diameter 5.9 em.

Lent by Samuel Eilenberg.

S

amuel Eilenberg's first trip to Bombay, in 1953 to teach mathematics for a semester, transformed him as a collector. "There I really saw Indian and Southeast Asian art for the first time and fell in love with it," he said recently. "I particularly liked the metalwork."

Over the next 35 years, Eilenberg pursued Asian bronzes in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Thailand as well as in Europe.

Although limited in income as a professor of mathematics at Columbia University, he bought hundreds of exquisitely detailed metal and stone artifacts~eities with many arms; creatures depicted as half human, half bird; an elephant-headed god; and a goddess with clubs and spears in her hair.

These images are among the 187 bronze and stone objects exhibited in "The Lotus Transcendent: Indian and Southeast Asian Art From the Samuel The Transcendental Buddha Vairochana (?) Seated in Western Fashion. Indonesia, Java, Central Javanese period, ca. mid-9th century, bronze, height 13.lcm.

Gift of Samuel Eilenberg, 1987.

Eilenberg Collection" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

(The exhibition opened in October 1991 and closes this month.)

Most of the works on view were part of Eilenberg's 1987 gift to the museum of more than 400 Asian artifacts. A few were lent by the collector to the show, and the rest-24 items-were donated by him to Columbia University, which sold them to the museum and used the funds to establish a mathematics chair in Eilenberg's name.

"This is the single most important collection of Javanese bronzes outside Indonesia and Holland," said Martin Lerner, the curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art who organized the show. "Prior to Professor Eilenberg's gift, the Metropolitan owned perhaps four or five Indonesian bronzes that could be exhibited proudly. Suddenly we have a few hundred."

By the time Eilenberg embarked on buying bronze Buddhas, bells, scrolled finials, cylindrical basins, and spherical reliquaries, his collecting instincts were well developed. As a boy in Warsaw, he chase(j- after stamps and coins; when he came to the United States in 1939, he focused on meerschaum pipes.

Collecting Asian art proved far more challenging, visually and historically, said the 78-year-old collector. Most objects are small, from two to 20 inches tall (about five to 50 centimeters). Made between 2000 BC and the 1400s AD, they represent many cultures.

All the objects, however, display an aesthetic unity in design complexity-geometric shapes abound-and sculptural vigor.

Among the most impressive bronzes are the oldest and the youngest in the show-both of which are as dynamic and leanly sculpmodeled as Giacometti tures. One is a 12.5-centimeter tall Indian sculpture of a woman borne by a pair of Brahman bulls, from about 2000 BC; the other is

a 25-centimeter Javanese pull-toy cart with masked driver, from the 15th century.

A witty 12th-century finial from Thailand depicts the goddess Apsaras, a celestial creature who flies through the air, feet up, as if belly-flopping. Among the animal bronzes are a few charmers: A plump 14th-century boar from Java and a crafty-looking ninth-century Indian leogryph.

Tireless in tracking Indonesian and Indian objects and a tough negotiator, Eilenberg made 12 or 15 trips to the East. "You try to get as close to the source as you can, because every time a piece changes hands, the price goes up," he said. "I bought a lot in the East and a lot in London, where I found pieces that had recently come from India or were fresh on the market from old British collections. " Other pieces surfaced in Amsterdam. "In 1957 I read that Sukarno had kicked ollt the Dutch," he said. "So I knew people would be bringing collections back. I wrote a couple of letters, and when I arrived in Paris, there was a letter from Holland from a lawyer looking to sell his collec1ion. I bought 35 pieces for the glorious sum of $4,500."

While collecting bronzes, Eilenberg always has his eye out for other unusual objects. He has formed substantial holdings in Javanese gold of the tenth to the 14th centuries and betel nut cutters of the 14th to the 20th centuries.

About 40 of his 800 betel nut cutters went on view in October 1991 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London-the first stop on a tour that includes several cities in Europe and the United States.

0 About the Author: Rita Reif, a reporter in The New York Times culture neil's department, is the author of Living With Books,The Antique Collector's Guide to Styles and Prices, Home: It Takes More Than Money, and a \\'Orld guide to antique shopping.

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