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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 06/25/99 -- Vol. 17, No. 52
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@lucent.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The Denver Area Science Fiction
Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
===================================================================
1. On March 13, 1964, at about 3 AM, Catherine Genovese, known as
Kitty to her friends and neighbors, was returning to her Queens,
New York, apartment when she was attacked by a man with a knife.
She called for help and woke her neighbors who yelled for the man
to stop. He went away momentarily, but returned minutes later. He
attacked her three times that hour. Each time Genovese called for
help, each time the neighbors--38 witnesses to the crime--gave her
verbal support, for whatever good it did. But nobody came to her
aid. Nobody even wanted to get involved enough to call the police.
It is, of course, inconvenient to get involved. Worse it is
possibly dangerous. The third attack was fatal.
For a little while afterward the Genovese incident was a point of
national shame. What kind of people had we become to stand by and
let this sort of thing happen? Incidents afterward have shown that
that sort of attitude is really not typical of the American people.
Similar incidents have occurred, perhaps not as newsworthy, and
people have come to the aid of others in danger. I would like to
think that the latter behavior is more representatives of the
American people. Look at nations, however, rather than people, and
it is a different story. Nations act a lot more like Kitty
Genovese's neighbors and for many of the same reasons.
When one starts examining international diplomacy, Genovese-
neighbor attitude is much more common. Many countries consider
isolationism a virtue. That is why there is international
bewilderment as to why President Clinton would want to involve his
country in a war in Yugoslavia. And he did more than that. He
goaded NATO into taking action. And it was a dangerous action.
Countries that become embroiled in the Balkans often find they have
bit off more than they can chew. But then so do people who take on
knife-wielding strangers in the night. Some risks you take because
they are moral. Or put another way, if there were no risks in
being moral it would not be a virtue.
And the motive for our going to war in the Balkans is one we do not
see very frequently in international politics. We were doing it
because of what we, and what most people, would consider inhumane
treatment of the Albanian population of Kosovo. And that was not
just the excuse; that WAS the motive. It was really not to protect
our supply of a commodity like petroleum. It was not because our
diplomats had been kidnapped. It was nothing of the usual sort of
reason. It genuinely was a matter of principle. People were being
murdered and raped and we thought it had to stop.
Going to war for a principle is extremely unusual. It is unusual
to see wars that do not serve a physical need for land or a hatred
or a fear. And of course most wars are for economic gain. People
understand that kind of motive for going to war. And then you make
up excuses like that you had to save the noble German people in the
Sudetenland. But the Serbs are no threat to us militarily and they
are not economic competitors. We went to war because one people
was torturing another people. I am not sure what the right word
is. "Persecuting" is far too mild a word for the raping and
murdering that was going on in Kosovo. There was general consensus
in the United States and the world that the Serb government should
not be doing what it was doing. But it takes more than consensus.
The question was what should our reaction have been? Well, this is
what it could have been. In time-honored tradition of nations of
the world we could have gone to the United Nations and clucked
about the killing in Kosovo. That would have been good and safe.
We would have had an automatic exit strategy. When it was over we
drive up some limousines to the UN and drive our UN staff to
dinner. There is not much risk there. It is always easier to
withdraw diplomats from the UN than to withdraw troops from a war
zone. There would have been no entanglements. Of course, it would
not have stopped anything. But we would be on the record for
opposing genocide. Kitty Genovese's neighbors would have
understood that approach. We would have been opposing the carnage
verbally and the carnage would have continued. But that wasn't
what we did. But we went to war for the human rights of a people
half a world away and a people who do not otherwise touch our daily
lives. There is no big Albanian lobby in Washington. Few
politicians court the Albanian vote. As far as the press has
covered, there was no big Albanian contribution to any Clinton
Election Fund.
The war really did have some costs. There were some errors. At
least temporarily we alienated China and Russia--paragons of
morality neither. They need our approval much more than we need
theirs. Clinton lost some points in his popularity polls. They
will come back. I certainly expect that the history books will see
that Clinton did the right thing and in the words of Mark Twain he
really did gratify some and astonish the rest. But rightly or
wrongly we have for years taken on this role of being the moral
leader of the world, and one of the prices of that role is
occasionally we have a responsibility to lead morally.
We could have been entangled in another long conflict. It still
might happen. We took one very large risk to set things right in a
political backwater that really does not amount to much in world
politics. But then knife-wielding assailants are dangerous too,
and Kitty Genovese was just a barmaid. [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. TARZAN (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Disney Studios has made three films
about the Tarzan-like Mowgli. No they finally
have made a film about Tarzan himself, but what
a disappointment. They have aimed it at a very
young audience and thrown in a lot of
anachronistic humor. They have turned their
backs on all but the basics of the original
plot. The Phil Collins songs are nauseating
and the so-called comic style is just as bad.
The animation is great, but little else will be
of interest to Burroughs fans or adults. This
is a real letdown for Disney animation after
MULAN. Rating: 4 (0 to 10), low 0 (-4 to +4)
Disney Studios seems to love the concept of feral children. They
have made three films from Rudyard Kipling's THE JUNGLE BOOK. Now
they are starting in on Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs's even more
popular character originally inspired by the Mowgli tales. And
with luck, starting is all they will do. Tarzan would be a good
choice for Disney studios since Disney never feels particularly
obligated to be faithful to the source material. After all, why
bother? Their version will be the canonical one after it is
released anyway, right? But Burroughs fans are used to
disappointment. With all the many theatrical film versions of
Tarzan almost none have been accurate to the Burroughs conception.
Until the Disney version the original 1918 film version of TARZAN
OF THE APES and the first half of GREYSTOKE: THE LEGEND OF TARZAN,
LORD OF THE APES are the only films that even look at where Tarzan
came from and how he got to be Tarzan. The rest just assumed there
was this man in the jungle.
In the new Disney animated version we begin with a mother, father,
and baby escaping from a burning ship and trying to survive ashore
in equatorial Africa. (In the book they were Alice and John
Clayton, but the name Clayton is used in this film for the
villain.) At about the same time the she-gorilla Kala (voiced by
Glenn Close) lost her own baby to Sabor the fierce leopard who
holds Kala's tribe in fear. The grieving Kala hears the cry of a
human baby and finds a tree house destroyed by Sabor, and in it a
dead man and woman, and their still-living baby. Over the
objection of her mate Kerchak (Lance Henrickson) and the
disapproval of the other apes Kala adopts the baby, naming him
Tarzan. Tarzan (Alex D. Linz as a boy and Tony Goldwyn as a man)
grows up an outsider with an androgynous friend Terk (Rosie
O'Donnell who brings entirely too much Rosie O'Donnell humor to the
film). Tarzan struggles to win the approval of Kerchak, but
Kerchak is a bigot who is not ready to accept a human into his
family. (Yes, there are many politically-correct lessons in the
course of the film.) Eventually Tarzan meets humans who come in an
expedition to find gorillas. The expedition is made up of
Professor Porter (Nigel Hawthorne), his daughter Jane (Minnie
Driver), and guide Clayton (Brian Blessed). Of course, the
expected love story is told one more time.
I cannot think what Disney's studios could have done to so alienate
Hans Zimmer that he would leave them in the lurch when they so
desperately needed him. Zimmer, who scored films like THE LION
KING, has a feel for the sound of African music. He could have
done a beautiful score for TARZAN. Instead we have a collection of
totally obnoxious songs by Phil Collins. Mark Mancina's music
harmlessly fills in the spaces. On the other hand, the animation
is little short of wonderful with odd stylistic touches that mix
flat animation with some impressive three-dimensional animation.
In Disney's new tradition, a different team animates each of the
major characters. One advantage of this, I suppose is a lot more
people can be working in parallel on a single scene, yet a single
character is consistently animated through the entire film. Some
parts of the screen may look like traditional flat animation;
others will seem to be almost filmed as live-action. It could be
bothersome having more than one animation techniques in a single
scene, but it really is not. The one animation problem is that the
words do not really fit the characters' lips well.
Several problems with the script and its visualization show how
this film talks down to its audience. We see Tarzan skid over
tree-limbs with obvious skate-boarding motions. And the tree limbs
would have to be thirty feet long or more for the time he spends on
each limb. And where in the world are there so many major
waterfalls in such close proximity? We know immediately that
Clayton is a villain because he is so ugly. Just once it would be
nice to have an attractive villain and an ugly hero. (Lookism
apparently continues to be exempt from the Disney agenda.) How
likely is it that the expedition has brought a magic lantern and a
praxinoscope and hence is prepared to teach Tarzan about
civilization. This seems like in the worst traditions of
"Gilligan's Island."
There are no African people in this version. That is not
surprising since however they are portrayed there would be someone
unhappy with the representation. Though Africans are present in
the original novel, Disney decision-makers probably thought it was
best side-stepping the issues of including them in their
adaptation. There have been some people taking issue with the fact
they have been eliminated, but it is relatively few. It is ironic
that the filmmakers may be afraid to put in native Africans since
they have Tarzan himself ask the question, "why are you afraid of
anything different from you?" Apparently the filmmakers felt they
themselves had something to fear. But it is doubly ironic because
Tarzan himself is a symbol of the power of diversity. After all he
is presumably the lord of the animals because he is actually human,
and he is an invincible hero among humans because he was raised by
animals.
Disney studios had the potential to make a very good adaptation of
the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic fantasy TARZAN OF THE APES.
Instead they have set their sights considerably lower and made a
film that will have little appeal beyond grade-school level
audiences. I rate it a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low 0 on the
-4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. DISTRACTION by Bruce Sterling (1998, Bantam Spectra, HC, $23.95,
439 pp, ISBN 0-553-10484-5) (a book review by Joe Karpierz):
It took me the longest time to figure out why DISTRACTION is
classified as a science fiction novel; I look for more than just
"well, Bruce Sterling is an established science fiction writer,
therefore it *must* be science fiction novel." I scratched my
head, shrugged my shoulders, and came up with "I get it--it's a
political science novel, with the operative word being science.
Therefore it must be science fiction."
Sheesh.
I have a tough enough time with the "soft" sciences being the
central theme of a science fiction novel without having to deal
with something like political science being thrown in the mix.
Now, I know that this really isn't a "political science" novel, but
it's the only way I could justify it, even though it contains many
trappings of "near future" science fiction novels. It even has
some neurological science mumbo-jumbo near the end of it, but by
then it doesn't count.
DISTRACTION follows the story of one Oscar Valparaiso, a political
spin-doctor and campaign advisor to a newly elected Senator from
Massachusetts. The good old U.S. of A. is one screwed up country,
politically, socially, and economically. There are some sixteen
political parties, the country is broke, and Wyoming is on fire
(and Sterling never delves into this one for the reader, and yet
I'd find this one intensely interesting). And Oscar decides he
wants to save "big science," or something like that.
Oscar has a couple of problems, however: one of them is his
"background problem," which is genetic, and the other is Green
Huey, the politically corrupt governor of Louisiana, the location
of a big government lab. It does turn out that Green Huey is
behind everything (like *that's* a surprise) from the start,
including the big neurobiological thingamabob that works its way
into the end of the story.
But, I say, so what?
I find Valparaiso completely unbelievable. By the time the novel
was over I wanted to slap him upside the head with all the politcal
weasel wording that he used in ordinary conversation. I also
wanted to smack every other character who bought into him, asking
if they were stupid or what? I also just couldn't suspend my
disbelief for the way he got out of some situations. Other than
the characters acting stupid, I could pretty much deal with the
rest of them. The only character that I thought was interesting at
all was Green Huey, maybe because his motivation made sense (and
don't ask what that says about me--I don't want to know myself).
And yet Sterling introducing Green Huey's big science thingamabob
well past the half way mark of the novel, and really only delving
into it near the end, ticked me off to no end.
I guess that's what it comes down to--Sterling didn't do anything
interesting, in my opinion, with the ideas that were interesting to
start with. So, as a result, the novel itself wasn't interesting
to me at all.
I tried. I really did. I wanted to give this novel a fair shot.
And I did. And I *still* don't like Bruce Sterling novels. [-jak]
===================================================================
4. LIMBO (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: A failing economy and times of stress
in Alaska take their toll on an ex-fisherman, a
singer, and her daughter. John Sayles wrote,
directed, and edited LIMBO with a good feel for
dialog and character. He holds off a long time
before revealing where the plot is going,
leaving even the viewer in limbo. Rating: 7 (0
to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)
Limbo is "a place or state of restraint or confinement; an
intermediate or transitional place or state; a state of
uncertainty." The essence of limbo is being between this and that.
Limbo is waiting. One knows what has passed, but not what is
coming. John Sayles has constructed LIMBO like a fractal pattern
of limbos within limbos. Alaska is in limbo politically. And
within Alaska the town of Port Henry is in limbo economically. And
within Port Henry most people are within a state of limbo in their
personal lives. As the film opens a major chapter has just ended
in the life of Donna De Angelo (played by Mary Elizabeth
Mastrantonio). When the film closes a major chapter in her life is
about to start and there is complete uncertainty as to what that
chapter will hold for her. The film covers that period of limbo.
It also covers a limbo in the life of Joe Gastineau (David
Strathairn), once a fisherman that he can no longer be and waiting
for the next chapter in his life.
LIMBO begins with a 1950s travelogue showing what wonderful times
it is in Alaska. The film has faded, but not as badly as the local
economy. Hard times have hit in Port Henry, Alaska. With demand
vanishing for canned salmon the local economy is slowly dying.
Factories are closing one after another. A few wealthy people plan
the next big thing for Alaska with more enthusiasm than wisdom.
("Think of Alaska as one big theme park.") Within Port Henry
people are trapped between the old and the new. Their old jobs,
mostly in the local salmon canning plant, are coming to an end.
There may be a future for Port Henry or there may be just oblivion.
Donna has for years stayed without commitment with one man and then
another. In her singing career she does the same. Currently she
has a not very good job singing in the local saloon. She has a
troubled daughter, Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), who has seen her
father only twice. Unknown to her mother, Noelle has a friend and
confidante, Joe Gastineau, and in spite of his much greater age
Noelle is starting to think of him in romantic terms. Joe used to
be a fisherman, but for his own reasons wants to stay away from the
water--not an easy feat in Alaska. Donna is sour on all men and
barely notices when she meets Joe that he may in fact be something
special. Still, the two of them build a relationship.
For most of the film Sayles lets the story drift along without any
obvious direction. We just spend time with the three main
characters getting to know them very well. Noelle is very
intelligent but completely alienated from her mother and is
rebelling purely by being morbid. The film delves into her
relationship with her mother as Donna and Joe become increasingly
serious about each other. Eventually all three relationships will
be tested by hard realities of survival in the Alaskan wilderness.
This is a film that has been wisely cast. David Strathairn and
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are two very fine actors who rarely get
the public attention they deserve. Certainly they are far more
talented than many actors with much more bankable marquee value
are. Mastrantonio even does her own singing in this film.
Strathairn has the quiet, likeable stage presence of a Henry Fonda.
Kris Kristofferson is along with a small role as the bush pilot
Smilin' Jack.
Sayles's story is an enigma and a curiosity. It very clearly is an
independent film, because it does some things and goes some places
that are more intelligent than profitable. Not everyone will be
pleased by some of the decisions that Sayles makes, but on
reflection, it is just those decisions that are the point. I give
LIMBO a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-
mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
[Democracy is] the blugeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.
-- Oscar Wilde