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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 07/18/97 -- Vol. 16, No. 3
MT Chair/Librarian:
Mark Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-5619 mleeper@lucent.com
HO Chair: John Jetzt MT 2E-530 732-957-5087 jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 732-949-7076 njs@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist:
Rob Mitchell MT 2D-536 732-957-6330 rlmitchell1@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-2070 eleeper@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
201-933-2724 for details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society
meets on the third Saturday of every month in Belleville; call
201-432-5965 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. URL of the week: http://www.SF3.org/Tiptree/index.html.
Information about the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and a list of this
year's short list and winners. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. Last week I was talking about how I came to find a restaurant
that had chicken wings of legendary hotness called The Wings of
Death. As soon as I heard of them I knew I was going to have to
challenge them. So in spite of momentary setbacks I find the
restaurant.
Well, in we went and there appeared to be no The Wings of Death
under the appetizers. Perhaps they were not considered to be all
that appetizing. No they had a separate panel on the side. And
yes, if you could eat them in all their intensity, Gimpi's foots
the bill. They warn on the menu that they have a sauce that is 100
times hotter than jalapeno peppers. The don't say if they are the
classic jalapenos or US jalapenos. Mexican jalapenos turned out to
be too hot for US restaurant patrons so a kinder, gentler and more
boring jalapeno was developed for the US. Now why would they want
a mild jalapeno for the US? I wonder. But did I want to risk a
dish so spicy that if I could finish it I got it free? Sure, what
the heck.
Now it turns out that if you order The Wings of Death you have to
sign a waiver freeing the restaurant of legal responsibility if you
have a negative side effect. Like if you die. And they list all
the things that could happen: do not attempt if you have heart
trouble, that sort of thing. Just trying to make the wings sound
more scary, I thought. So I signed it. And I waited. The server
eventually brought the wings. Two chicken wings on a bed of
lettuce. Each wing is two pieces, of course, one shaped like a
small drumstick, one more wing-like. So I just had to eat four
pieces. A server asked if I would like some bread with the wings.
Sure, I said. If you eat something too hot, bread usually helps to
cool it down.
I took a bite of a wing and it was just an extra-hot Buffalo wing.
With a couple of bites I had the first piece down, but had to admit
they were darn hot. Not bad enough that I thought I could not
finish them, but it was not going to be a pleasant culinary
experience.
The other server told us we could buy more of the sauce if we
really wanted it. Apparently the owner of the restaurant bottles
his own hot sauce and sells it professionally. When we got home we
looked up the sauce in our Mo Hotta Mo Betta Catalog. Mo Hotta Mo
Betta is a mail order house dealing in human misery in the form of
bottled sauces. They used to be indispensable, but these days you
can find suitable fiery sauces in grocery stores if you really
look. But we still get their catalog from the old days and it is a
good guide to what sauces are out there. They list on their
"Scarrry [sic] Hot Sauces" page AFTER DEATH SAUCE. "After Death
Sauce was developed at Gimpi's, a trendy restaurant in New Jersey,
locally famous for their chicken from pepper extract and they warn
that it has a 'heat level a few points south of Purgatory!
[Rating:] TOO DARN HOT."
Finally the bread came. And I needed it by then. Just to put up a
good front I smiled at the server and said "tangy!" "You're
welcome," she replied. Sprightly conversation wasn't going to get
far. Particularly because it was obvious just about ever gland in
my body was secreting all at once. I was sweating, my nose was
running, the works. It could be that my use of my tongue was not
at its best either.
I had finished three of the four pieces when the main course
arrived. I had ordered a catfish sandwich with fries. By this
point my tongue felt like I had burned off the outside and most of
the center. The sandwich would probably have been good, but I was
not tasting all of the flavor. In moderation hot foods seem to
make my taste more sensitive, but the spicing here was not so much
moderate as punitive for having the audacity to not want to pay for
the wings. Eating the last wing together with the sandwich I
managed to finish the four pieces of chicken. Victory was mine.
And I was feeling only a little pain. A server came up and ask if
I wanted her to take away the dish with the chicken bones. Well, I
really didn't want to see them again, but at the same time I would
have liked them to stay there and visible. I told the server that
she was a witness that I had eaten the whole order. There is a
certain pride there and with mixed emotions I watched as they took
away my trophy of four chicken bones.
I had met the enemy and defeated it. So the story is over. Or is
it? Actually the worst was to come. And will come next week. [-
mrl]
===================================================================
3. FREEDOM & NECESSITY by Steven Brust & Emma Bull (Tor, ISBN 0-
312-85974-0, 1997, 444pp, US$25.95) (a book review by Evelyn C.
Leeper):
I have mixed feelings about FREEDOM & NECESSITY. On the one hand,
it captures very well the feel of the nineteenth century epistolary
novel (or first-person narration in general). On the other, it is
slow- moving and hard-to-follow, in part because the various
characters who are narrating are either concealing information from
each other, or are simply mistaken about what is happening.
The story is set in England of the mid-nineteenth century.
Although several reviews have hinted that this is some sort of
alternate history, it really seems at most a secret history, if
that. Yes, there are real historical figures interacting with the
main (fictional) characters, but that does not an alternate history
make. So in this historical England, we discover that James
Cobham, whom his family thought drowned --in fact, saw drowned--is
in fact alive, though without any memory of what has happened in
the months between his "death" and his re-appearance. Though he
doesn't actually re-appear in a flourish, but only in secret and to
his closest friends.
In addition to trying to solve the mystery of James's absence, and
avoid a more permanent demise, the characters also discuss Kant and
Hegel and the British class system.
One might ask at this point why this book is being promoted a s
science fiction (or perhaps more accurately, fantasy). The answer
is--I don't know. It seems more because Brust and Bull are known
as SF authors than because of any inherent SF aspect to the novel.
(I suppose that in itself may constitute a bit of a spoiler.) There
are certainly goings on that have fantastical origins, meanings, or
referents, but they are (so far as one can tell) completely mundane
in actuality.
And while there were aspects of the plot that held my interest, the
resolution is too pat, too dependent on people acting in seemingly
irrational ways, too dependent on people *depending* on people
acting in irrational ways. Or, strangely enough, on people acting
rationally when one would expect them to act irrationally.
Ultimately, I think my problem with FREEDOM & NECESSITY is that it
imitates the nineteenth century style without completing achieving
its content or characterization. I like authors such as the
Brontes and George Eliot, but while FREEDOM & NECESSITY captures
some of their style, it doesn't quite capture their essence for me.
(I realize that some might say that complaining that Brust & Bull
are no George Eliot is an unfair comparison, but there you have
it.) [-ecl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position
of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively
to other matter; second, telling other people to do
so. The first is unpleasant and ill-paid; the
second is pleasant and highly paid.
-- Bertrand Russell