THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/10/05 -- Vol. 23, No. 50 (Whole Number 1286)
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
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Topics:
What the Worst-Dressed Superheroes Wear (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
The Lucas Loophole (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Typo [with SPOILER] (letter of comment by Bill Higgins)
Timelines (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
Hugo Nominees (part 1) (comments/reviews by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
LAYER CAKE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
On the Finding (and Buying) of Books (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
HIGH TENSION (HAUTE TENSION) (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (another movie about books, and
GORGON) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: What the Worst-Dressed Superheroes Wear (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
Two fashion experts (?) discuss the worst-dressed comic book
superheroes and supervillains. Included are illustrations. Must
reading for any of you who happen to be radioactive super-mutants
just discovering your new-found powers and may need a costume.
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2916
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Lucas Loophole (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I read a review of the "Star Wars" series that complained about
the absurdity of the whole thing. The author had a number of
complaints about characters and motivations, all very much
matters of taste. Only one complaint had real substance. The
writer complained that the whole idea of a galactic civilization
is absurd. The distances are too great. People seem to flit
around between star systems as if they were states in the United
States. That seems on the face of it absurd.
Actually the complaint is as well aimed at "Star trek" and
BABYLON 5. Of these big three, "Star Wars" needs the assumption
the least. For any of these series to work it is necessary to
have faster-than-light travel. And the writers of space opera
seem by mutual consent agree that they will not be bound by the
strictures of relativistic physics. They hand-wave with magic
like wormholes and space warps. "Star Trek" seems to assume that
space can warp space like a fold in a sheet of paper and they can
take shortcuts. Even if that were possible, the existence of
warp engines implies that they can bend space and generate
shortcuts wherever they want at will. This is nearly pure
fantasy. "Star Wars" does have a hyper-drive, but they don't
explain it as warping space.
Another claim made in "Star Trek" and BABYLON 5 is that you have
special passageways called wormholes that work like the diagonal
passageways in the game "Clue". You pop into a black hole here
and pop out someplace else in the universe unharmed. Various
sources these days say this process probably would crush you,
spaghetti you, or incinerate you. Wormholes do not seem like a
reasonable mechanism for faster than light travel either. We
accept them in stories to allow the telling of the stories. We
willingly suspend disbelief. Fine, but it is still rather
fantastic.
At this point you probably are thinking I am an idiot. "Star
Wars" has faster-than-light hyperdrive. We see it in the film.
The thing is that we are told that what we are seeing is faster
than light travel, but the story does not require it. In "Star
Wars" rapid travel between the stars would be possible not by
wormhole but by loophole. There is a very big loophole that
Lucas has (probably) unknowingly left himself that could make
"Star Wars" compatible with Einsteinian physics. It may not be
consistent with other physics, giving us sound in space and
having ships maneuver as if they were in atmosphere, but "Star
Wars" does not necessarily have to assume faster than light
travel.
The loophole that Lucas has left himself is the phrase "A long
time ago in a galaxy far away...." Part of the implication is
that while this is apparently a very human-like race we are
seeing, they are not us. We are not them. They may not be like
us in all respects. They seem to be able to travel across their
entire galaxy in a very small fraction of their lives. Does this
require faster-than-light travel? Not at all. What it requires
is a lot of time. It could be that we are talking about a race
that is very long lived. Perhaps it is a race that lives long
enough to cross a galaxy in a fraction of their lifetime at
sub-light speeds.
Of course, they do not appear to be long-lived in our terms. Luke
Skywalker appears to age in a short time. They do not seem to
have very long lives compared to ours and they do not perceive
their lives as long, but that is a question of their internal
clocks. They also could be on planets whose rotation to us would
be so slow we almost could not see the rotation since they do seem
to have night and day at intervals that seem to us like our
interval of night and day. But then Mercury in our solar system
has a very long but not infinite day.
It has occurred to me that of earth life forms, trees would make
a better space-faring race than humans since they live so much
longer than us and so the distances of space would not be as
great for them. The races of "Star Wars" could have a galactic
civilization, but probably only if they all live so slowly that
Earth civilization could come and go in a blink of one of their
human-like alien eyes. A set of very slow races like this could
have a galactic civilization in which species come together like
they do in the Imperial Senate.
This is all speculation because Han Solo does claim the Millenium
Falcon can travel at hyper-light speeds. That is not as fanciful
as wormhole travel, but it is still in the realm of fantasy.
Still, if one ignores that one line, Lucas's polyglot universe is
possible. Galactic civilizations are possible. There can be
such universes. Sadly, just not for us Earth people.
P.S. Great minds think alike. National Geographic is also
thinking about the technical problems of the Star Wars universe.
They discuss faster-than-light travel being necessary so I don't
think they have thought about the possibility of super-slow
life-forms. If you are interested you can look at
http://tinyurl.com/ceh2n. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Typo [with SPOILER] (letter of comment by Bill Higgins)
Bill Higgins wrote "I very much enjoyed your ruminations about
'Star Wars' [in which you wrote], 'So was the pod race sequence
of THE PHANTOM MENAGE.' Wasn't there a 'F&SF' competition where
you changed one letter in an SF title? This would belong. Maybe
it's a sequel to 'Phantom of the Opera' in which the Phantom has
*two* girls...." [-bh]
Mark responds, "Really it means a household or a group of people
living together as the ghosts do in [TOPPER]. It occurs in
your sense, in THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, but only as a Menage a
deux." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Timelines (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
In reference to Sherlock Holmes, Evelyn wrote in the 06/03/05
issue of the MT VOID, "I suspect that, like 'M*A*S*H' on
television, or Bernard Cornwell's 'Sharpe' series, there are more
stories than time to fit them into." [-ecl]
Fred Lerner responded, "And what about Cabot Cove, Maine? How is
anyone there ever able to obtain life insurance?" [-fl]
Evelyn adds, "Or St. Mary Mead?" [-ecl]
Mark, on the other hand, says, "There is some sort of field over
Maine that slows the flow of information. Physicists have studied
the phenomenon and just like you cannot send information backward
in time (or you get into the Grandfather Paradox) you cannot move
information faster than glacial speeds in Maine. The news of the
Cabot Cove murders had gotten only as far as Freeport as of
April. Freeport is not acting on it since they are currently tied
up trying to figure out why there has been no word for many years
from 'Salem's Lot." The mailman and the milkman have not been
heard from. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo Nominees (part 1) (comments/reviews by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
Well, there are no Retro-Hugos this year, so I'll have a lot fewer
works to comment on because of that. And because two of the five
nominees for Best Novel (THE ALGEBRAIST by Iain M. Banks and RIVER
OF GODS by Ian McDonald) haven't been published in the United
States yet, that cuts it down even further. I started IRON
COUNCIL by China Mieville but it didn't work for me, and since I
am not going to be voting on that category, I decided to stop. I
already commented on JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL by Susanna
Clarke in the 10/15/04 issue of the VOID. And I just haven't
gotten to IRON SUNRISE by Charles Stross, in part because I find
most of Stross's writing too dense for me (but see my comments on
"The Concrete Jungle" below).
So my comments will focus on the short fiction. (Luckily, Joe
Karpierz will, as usual, cover the novels.) I will try to avoid
giving spoilers, so in some cases I will say very little about the
plot. My comments will be on the works in ballot order; my
rankings will be at the end of each section.
Note that most of the short fiction is available on-line; see
http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/hugolink.htm.
Novella:
"The Concrete Jungle" by Charles Stross (in his collection THE
ATROCITY ARCHIVES) is a science fiction story with Lovecraftian
overtones, as well as a paranoia piece about government
surveillance. I found this to be just about the first Stross
story I've tried that I found understandable. Am I getting
smarter (or more persistent), or he is simplifying his work?
"Elector" by Charles Stross ("Asimov's" 09/04) could be described
as "politics after the Singularity". This is a more typical
Charles Stross, i.e, often almost incomprehensible. (It's
apparently part of a series, but I have read none of the others.)
What can I say about a story that contains sentences such as "Ust
why the Vile Offspring seem to feel it's necessary to apply
exaquops to the job of deriving accurate simulations of dead
humans--outrageously accurate simulations of lon-dead lives,
annealed until their written corpus matches that inherited from
the pre-singularity era in the form of chicken scratchings on
mashed tree pulp--much less beaming them at refugee camps on
Saturn--is beyond Sirhan's ken: but he wishes they'd stop."
("Vile Offspring" and "exaquops" are undefined, and yes, he really
does use a colon there.) It felt like it was better than I was
understanding (if you can follow that), so I've rated it
accordingly.
"Sergeant Chip" by Bradley Denton ("Fantasy & Science Fiction"
09/04) is, on the other hand, more in the traditional style. The
eponymous character is a dog, albeit a very intelligent dog who is
in telepathic contact with his human master/squad captain. If the
war (and general political situation) that they are in seem very
current, perhaps even too topical, one has to recall that the
story could be transposed back to earlier wars as well, so I don't
think one can claim this is merely a screed against the current
war.
"Time Ablaze" by Michael A. Burstein ("Analog" 06/04) is a
competent enough story, but nothing new or special. The entire
plot was predictable from the beginning, and I have no idea why
this made the ballot when there are so many more original stories
around. This story does continue a theme I've seen in a lot of
Burstein's work, that of memory and remembrance.
"Winterfair Gifts" by Lois McMaster Bujold (in the anthology
IRRESISTIBLE FORCES) is another Miles Vorkosigan story. Way back
when, when I was young, and most of you probably not born yet,
"Galaxy" magazine ran a back cover on which the left column was
the start of a Western story, and the right column was the start
of a science fiction story which was identical to the left column
with just a few word replacements (e. g., "blaster" for "six-
shooter"). And at the bottom, it said that "Galaxy" was going to
have real science fiction, not just Westerns tricked up as science
fiction. "Winterfair Gifts" is a romance/mystery tricked up as
science fiction, and another mystery is how it got nominated for a
Hugo.
My voting order: Stross ("Concrete"), Denton, Stross ("Elector"),
No Award, Burstein, Bujold
Novelette:
"Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality,
with Air-Planes' by Benjamin Rosenbaum" by Benjamin Rosenbaum (in
the anthology ALL-STAR ZEPPELIN ADVENTURE STORIES) has a long,
complicated title, and that's just a sign of what is to come. The
Benjamin Rosenbaum of the title is a pseudonym for a "Plausible
Fable", a.k.a. "PlausFab" (think "SciFi") writer in an alternate
universe that is not a Democritan materialist one (as ours is),
but one in which the world seems to have its own consciousness and
purpose through the Theory of Five Causal Forms. (If I were to
compare it to another work, it would be Richard Garfinkle's
CELESTIAL MATTERS.) And Rosenbaum (our Rosenbaum, that is) adds
another level of difference in the supremacy of the Karaite view
of Judaism over the Rabbinical one. You either like this sort or
stuff, or you don't, and I can't help feeling that if you don't,
the addition of zeppelins won't help it. I liked it--a lot.
"The Clapping Hands of God" by Michael F. Flynn ("Analog" 07-
08/04) is a first-contact story, with the twist that the humans
come from a future in which Islam is the primary religion. It's
well done, though I'm not sure the twist is not just that--a
gimmick rather than an integral part of the story.
"The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link (in the anthology THE FAERY
REEL) seems like a typical fairy tale translated to an urban
setting. As with many of the nominees, my only question is why
this was deemed Hugo-worthy.
"The People of Sand and Slag" by Paolo Bacigalupi ("Fantasy &
Science Fiction" 02/04) is about soldiers and a dog (again!). But
the soldiers are genetically engineered so that they are no longer
really human--they can regenerate lost limbs, and eat anything
(including the sand and slag of the title). The dog is *not*
engineered, and the soldiers have never had any experience with a
natural dog. This is probably a good story, but it is also very
unpleasant.
"The Voluntary State" by Christopher Rowe (scifi.com 5/5/04) is
another story I found, for some reason, unreadable. Maybe my age
is starting to show or something, but a lot of "cutting-edge"
fiction seems more like "the death of a thousand cuts" to me.
My voting order: Rosenbaum, Flynn, No Award, Link, Bacigalupi,
Rowe
I will conclude next week with the short story and dramatic
presentation (long form) categories. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: LAYER CAKE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: LAYER CAKE is a violent but intelligent crime film from
the United Kingdom. The unnamed main character has his own
philosophy of how to stay alive and profit from the cocaine trade.
In the course of a few days, his philosophy will be put to the
test as he is involved in a totally confusing set of schemes that
just keep getting bigger and more convoluted. In addition to the
many layers, the story has some serious violence and many dead
bodies. Just following what is going on is a big job, but the
film has its rewards. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
British crime thrillers tend to be crisp, violent, and totally
engaging. Films like THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY; GET CARTER; LOCK,
STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS; THE KRAYS; SEXY BEAST; and the
excellent but little-known MR IN-BETWEEN are some of the best of
their genre anywhere. For LAYER CAKE, J. J. Connolly adapts his
own novel of the same title to the screen. At the beginning of
this film the unsuspecting viewer is standing on a whole pile of
rugs and should be prepared to have them one at a time pulled out
from under him.
The main character of LAYER CAKE is never named, so I will call
him Craig since he is played by Daniel Craig. Craig is
temporarily in the cocaine business and tells his philosophy of
how to succeed and stay alive. Simply put, he says to be a
straight arrow, or as straight as one can be in the cocaine
business. He plays the game prudent, honest, careful,
conservative, and simple. He makes no person his victim and makes
no man his enemy. His goal is to make a chunk of money quickly
and then to get out of the business without looking back.
Unfortunately he must leave this well-ordered life when his boss's
boss, Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham), asks Craig to take on
assignment somewhat out of his line. He is to find the missing
runaway daughter of criminal ganglord Eddie Temple (Michael
Gambon). Also he is to try to get hold of a missing haul of one
million ecstasy tablets. Craig hates to leave behind his plan for
living, but he does not want to make enemies either.
Telling much more would damage the reader's enjoyment of the film.
The writing of the script is like a golf ball, hard and taut with
lots that is tightly wound, dangerous, and unpredictable just
below the surface. The scenes with plot twists are edited to make
the surprises all the more shocking. When the plot turns it is
usually a hairpin turn. The film is full of weird low-lifes,
strange in different ways. Everybody has a past that affects
their present in unexpected ways. That is one thing that keeps
the film going. People keep doing things that make no sense until
more of the story is known. Craig has a bewildering mess to
navigate while he is trying to stay alive. The film is hard to
follow and probably will be the subject of countless conversations
over coffee after the movie is over. The accents and unfamiliar
slang do not make the film any more understandable to Yanks.
Matthew Vaughn is directing for the first time, though he has
produced films like LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS. Daniel
Craig may be familiar as Paul Newman's trouble-making son in ROAD
TO PERDITION or as Sylvia Plath's philandering husband in SYLVIA.
This gangster may be the most scrupulous character I have seen him
play. For a while he was even named as a possible candidate for
the role of James Bond in the upcoming CASINO ROYALE. Michael
Gambon, an all-purpose character actor and who is always
excellent, plays a voluble but enigmatic crime lord.
LAYER CAKE will be for some very hard to follow, but the
atmosphere makes it all worthwhile. A fun film for fans of the
British gangster genre. I rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or
7/10. (By the way, please do not write me with questions of what
actually happened in this one. I have seen it only *once*. I
hope it will be clearer on the second viewing.) [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: On the Finding (and Buying) of Books (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
People have occasionally asked me where I hear about and find all
the books that I review or comment on. The answer is threefold:
the library, annual book sales, and used bookstores. The question
of where I find out about them has an additional answer: Arts and
Letters Daily (http://www.aldaily.com). While I do get some
recommendations elsewhere, this is probably my primary source.
[I don't always know where *my* next meal is coming from. Hey,
Evelyn, where do you want to go for dinner? -mrl]
You may notice that new bookstores are not listed. That is a
function of several factors, two being the cost of books and our
retirement. Lest people worry, no, we aren't wondering where our
next meal is coming from, but dropping $75 for an annotated
Sherlock Holmes (when I already have two different ones, and this
one is the short stories only, with the novels yet to come) seems
foolish. If I have patience, it may well show up used much
cheaper. For example, I just bought a used annotated
"Huckleberry Finn" for $12.95 (list price was $39.95).
But I'm not buying as many used books either. [No comment.
-mrl] We always went to the library a lot, but the lack of space
in our house due to decades of previous book-buying has convinced
me to use the library more. So, for example, the three Sherlock
Holmes novels I recently reviewed were all checked out of the
library, where in the past I probably would have bought them--and
then read them once and stored them for decades.
In our area, also, there are no used bookstores nearby--the two
closest are each about 45 minutes away. So I'm not constantly
tempted by them. Even when I do go, I buy less. This last
weekend, I bought just three books (a biography of George Eliot,
THE JEW IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD, and Wilkie Collins's THE
MOONSTONE) at the Cranbury Book Worm, where previously I would
buy a whole stack. And two hours in the Strand resulted in my
finding just one book (the aforementioned Twain). My biggest
purchase was at the relatively small Mercer Street Books, where I
got Phaidon's THE ART BOOK, Pat and Fred Cody's CODY'S BOOKS, Bev
Jafek's THE MAN WHO TOOK A BITE OUT OF HIS WIFE, Theodore
Roosevelt's THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS, and Byron
L. Sherwin's GOLEMS AMONG US--all books I am unlikely to find in
my library system.
[See my previous "no comment." -mrl]
Of course, I'm lucky in that we have a good library, and a good
inter-library loan system. But those who do not, there is only
the solace of used book buying, often on-line. This is becoming
more of a minefield than before, as more and more inept vendors
get involved in it. It used to be that if you saw a book
described, you had a reasonable expectation of that description
being accurate. Now it's becoming all too common to order what
purports to be book and get a completely different one. Everyone
seems to call everything a first edition, and I've seen a lot of
listings that describe a paperback book as a hardcover--or even as
"Hardcover. . . . "Paperback binding"! (It's even worse with
DVDs, because many times the cheapest vendors ship bootlegs.)
Feedback/ratings mean nothing--I've seen many comments on positive
feedback that says, "Shipped wrong version, but gave a prompt
refund." If this is what passes to a positive experience these
days, that's sad.
But all these on-line booksellers are in part why used
bookstores--where you can see what you are buying--are
disappearing. Not that our area was ever flush with them, but
the three closest to us have closed within the last four years.
And now I hear that new books will be getting even more
expensive. Penguin is going to be coming out with a "premium"
paperback, selling for around $10. So we will now be getting the
British gradations in books, with their "A", "B", and "C"
paperbacks having parallels in our mass-market, premium, and
trade paperbacks. Considering that new fiction in hardback goes
for $25 or more, and non-fiction is often $35 or more, more and
more people are waiting for some sort of paperback. The article
at http://tinyurl.com/9rwnt says that these will be a half-inch
taller than mass-market paperbacks, so anyone who has built
shelves especially for mass-market paperbacks will probably not
like these. They will have bigger print (29 lines per page
versus 38 in the mass market edition of one title) and better
paper quality, and will be labeled as "Specially designed for
comfortable reading." Whether the premium paperbacks are
successful depends on whether people see them as cheaper trade
paperbacks or more expensive mass-market paperbacks. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: HIGH TENSION (HAUTE TENSION) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
[This review was published in the 10/31/03 issue of the MT VOID,
but is being re-run because it is finally getting a release here.]
Rating: -1 (-4 to +4)
This is a French slasher film directed and co-written by Alexandre
Aja. In spite of a slight continental feel and a little lesbian
relationship, this film is solid cliche from the early days of
slasher films. It is one cliché after another, and then at the
end the writer plasters on an ending that is logically
inconsistent with the rest of the film.
HAUTE TENSION opens in a very standard way. Two young women visit
a farmhouse where one's parents and brother work. The audience
has seen that a killer is operating in the same area, driving an
old truck. On our first view of the killer he tosses a woman's
head out the truck window and it falls in a cornfield. This is
just to announce the killer's proximity to the characters. We
have a few scenes intended to make the audience jump, but which do
not seem to advance the plot. Then the action starts.
There is a knock at the door. The owner of the house opens the
door and is sliced and diced. The killer continues his way
through the house like a rolling Vegematic killing everyone he
finds. These sequences are very violent but not much new. There
are three people in the house than the two young women, but
somehow you know the others will be dispatched quickly so the
killer can concentrate on terrorizing the two main characters.
Eventually there are some twists in the plot, but just enough to
make what we have seen inconsistent. The ending raises a lot of
questions that cannot really be answered by the story. This is
not a film for fans of the subtle or the original. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Returning to a topic I first mentioned in the 04/01/05 issue of
the MT VOID, Kate Pott pointed out that A LOVE SONG FOR BOBBY LONG
is another movies very much about books.
Because I'm reviewing the Hugo nominees in a separate article,
this will be a shorter column than usual, with just one book.
Peter D. Ward's GORGON: THE MONSTERS THAT RULED THE PLANET BEFORE
DINOSAURS AND HOW THEY DIED IN THE GREATEST CATASTROPHE IN EARTH'S
HISTORY (ISBN 0-14-303471-5) is definitely in the running for
longest title. Ward writes about his experiences in researching
the Permian/Triassic (P/T) boundary and the cause(s) of the
Permian extinction, the biggest mass extinction on earth. I
gather that the cause(s) are still a subject for debate, but what
there can be no debate about after reading this book is how
unpleasant paleontology can be. Ward describes days of heat
stroke, poisonous snakes, ticks carrying deadly Lhasa fever, civil
unrest, and crime rates that meant no one ever went out after
dark. That anyone stays in this profession is surprising. (Then
again, Mark reminded me that Garrison Keillor talked about how we
know so much more about the natural history of the Bahamas than of
Antarctica because the scientists would much rather do research in
the Bahamas than in Antarctica.) It's a fascinating book, even if
you end up thinking that Ward must have a streak of masochism in
himself. [-ecl]
[Interesting comment. Studies prove that over 85% of people who
have a streak of masochism have it in themselves. The second most
common place to keep it is in the top bureau drawer. -mrl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
In the fight between you and the world,
back the world.
-- Franz Kafka