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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 8/15/97 -- Vol. 16, No. 7
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.oceanstar.com/. Fiona Webster's
site of miscellaneous interesting literary writings and materials
by her. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. I was talking two weeks ago about Becky, Barbie's new
wheelchair-bound friend. It caused quite a stir when it was
discovered she could not roll right into Barbie's Dream House. It
was sort of an education for Mattel to have to follow the Federal
rules for accessibility. Barbie was a ground-breaker being
anatomically correct, but it is a big jump to being politically
correct. But-and remember you heard this here first--as long as
dolls are now going to be instructive and training for the real
world, Mattel has big plans for next Christmas. If all goes well,
Mattel will bring out Mortalia, Barbie's dead friend. Mortalia,
the doll with a built in end, will come with a literally endless
set of accessories. First of all there is Mortalia's Dream Funeral
Parlor. It has a whole big selection of plastic wood-finished
coffins. It could have a beautiful mortuary just as Mortalia would
have always wanted it. And all of Barbie's and Mortalia's friends
can come to the funeral. And it goes without saying Mortalia's
doll friends will all need new black outfits, but her good friend
Barbie will have the loveliest black dress of all. Ken and some of
his friends can carry the coffin. There is the cutest little grave
site with a crank to let the coffin down into the grave. Or if you
prefer Barbie's Dream Crematorium has a place to screw in a light
bulb. It get really hot, and unlike the grave site you can only
play the game once. But don't worry because after you have
cremated Mortalia, the crematorium doubles as Barbie's Real-bake
Oven.
You can have Mortalia's Dream Car with the breakaway windshield.
Mortalia's Dream Car is blue. Then there will be Mortalia's friend
she never knew, Fred. Fred come with his own red Dream Car with a
little plastic six-pack on the seat. Fred comes with some minor
contusions and lacerations, but Fred was a very lucky doll and was
able to walk away from the accident. Pull the little ring in
Fred's back and he says eleven different things like "she wasn't
looking where she was going," and "hey, life goes on." Then there
is a Joyce doll. Joyce is Mortalia's mother. She's dressed in
black also but she has a MADD armband. She also has a black purse.
In the black purse is little revolver. And the cutest license.
Boy, Fred better look out.
Now, there are some educational toys! [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. FRAMESHIFT by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor Hardcover, 347 pp., $23.95,
ISBN 0-312-86325-X) (a book review by Joe Karpierz):
I first experienced Robert J. Sawyer, or Rob, as he prefers to be
called, by reading THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT when it was nominated
for a Hugo. I had never heard of this guy before, so I had no idea
what to expect. THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT was a terrific book, and I
decided to check out more Sawyer.
The next Sawyer book I read was STARPLEX, nominated for a Hugo this
year, which was also a fine story. Not long after that, I found
out that Rob was appearing as guest of honor at Capricon, a local
SF convention in the Chicago area earlier this year, and I decided
to attend to find out more about him. At one of his readings,
during the Q&A session, someone asked him about his science
background. He was brutally honest. His reply was that he had
absolutely zero scientific background, although at one point in his
life he wanted to be a paleontologist, but found out that being a
member of that profession in Canada (where he lives outside of
Toronto) didn't pay very well. He said that what he does when he
writes a novel is call experts in the field that he is writing
about and says "I'm a science fiction writer and I want to get it
right."
He gets plenty of help, and it shows, in his latest novel,
FRAMESHIFT. The list of names in the acknowledgements section in
the front of the book is a mile long, many of them from the Human
Genome Project, which is the center piece of the story. His
protagonist, Pierre Tardivel, is working at the Human Genome
Project investigating junk DNA to see if it isn't so junk (By the
way, I won't attempt to explain the science stuff here - Sawyer
does a terrific job of doing it in the story). He has met and
married Molly Bond, a professor at UC Berkeley, who has the dubious
gift of being able to read a person's surface thoughts if they are
within a certain range. Not to be left out, Tardivel has his own
little genetic thing going on - he has Huntington's Disease, which
is essentially a fatal nervous system disorder that also affects
the brain. At this point, Sawyer shows off the amount of research
he did for this novel, going into some detail about the genetics
involved in both the telepathy (wherein we learn about the term
frameshift) and the disease. And he does it without overwhelming
the reader.
Tardivel works for Burian Klimus, who is a Nobel Prize winner
(although a slightly tarnished one, we learn later). When he and
Molly decide to have a child via in vitro fertilization, Klimus
volunteers to be the sperm donor (since Pierre doesn't want to take
the risk of giving his offspring Huntington's disease) AND pay for
the procedure, which is very expensive.
Things start going a little haywire, as an attempt on Tardivel's
life (the first thing told to the reader in the book) leads him to
investigate a series of murders that appear to be a case of genetic
cleansing, which leads him to believe that Klimus is actually Ivan
the Terrible, a guard at Treblinka, one of the holocaust sites in
Germany. Ivan Merchenko (his real name), has been in hiding for
years. So, Tardivel believes that the father of his child has
committed atrocious war crimes. Meanwhile, there are some shady
dealings going on at the insurance company that Tardivel bought a
health insurance policy from despite his Huntington's disease. He
was insurable due to a new California health insurance law.
What Sawyer has created is a very good near future (or present
time, really) thriller that, given the science involved, might not
be too far from being possible (with the exception of the
telepathy, but what the heck). This really is, in my opinion,
closer to a mainstream techno-thriller than traditional SF,
although the science is very well done, and makes me waffle between
calling it SF or something else. And for all the science in it, we
still get good backgrounds on all the main characters, developing
them nicely, so Sawyer can't be accused of giving characterization
the short end of the deal.
FRAMESHIFT is a fine novel from someone who is rapidly becoming a
big name in the SF field. Check it out. [-jak]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
The world is a vast temple dedicated to discord.
-- Voltaire