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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 09/26/97 -- Vol. 16, No. 13
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. URLs of the week:
http://www.npr.org/news/tech/970812.seti.html and
http://www.bigscience.com/setiathome.html. NPR's story on
SETI@home, the plan to use surplus cycles on volunteers' PCs to
analyze data for the SETI (Search for ExtraTeresstrial
Intelligence) project. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. Suggestion to members in Lucent. Go to a Barnes and Noble and
show them that you have a Lucent badge. Ask them if they give a
discount for Lucent employees. Rumor has it that the Barnes and
Noble right near Middletown gives you a 20% discount. Hot stuff,
particularly for big book fans such as we. Does it extend to other
branches? I dunno. Does it work for AT&T? I dunno. But it pays
to ask the question. [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. This year's Hugo winners:
- Best Novel: BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperCollins
Voyager; Bantam Spectra)
- Best Novella: "Blood of The Dragon" by George R. R. Martin
(ASIMOV'S 7/96)
- Best Novelette: "Bicycle Repairman" by Bruce Sterling
(INTERSECTIONS; ASIMOV'S 10/96)
- Best Short Story: "The Soul Selects Her Own Society ... by
Connie Willis (ASIMOV'S 4/96; WAR OF THE WORLDS: GLOBAL
DISPATCHES)
- Best Non-Fiction Book: TIME & CHANCE by L. Sprague de Camp
(Grant)
- Best Dramatic Presentation: BABYLON 5 "Severed Dreams" (Warner
Bros.) Directed by David J. Eagle, Written by J. Michael
Straczynski, Produced by John Copeland
- Best Editor: Gardner Dozois (ASIMOV'S)
- Best Professional Artist: Bob Eggleton
- Best Semiprozine: LOCUS edited by Charles N. Brown
- Best Fanzine: MIMOSA edited by Dick & Nicki Lynch
- Best Fan Writer: Dave Langford
- Best Fan Artist: William Rotsler
- John W. Campbell Award: Michael A. Burstein
Button seen on the way in: "If Windows 95 is Y2K-compliant, why
isn't it called Windows 1995?"
===================================================================
4. Okay, wacky theory time again. Some of this I have expressed
here before but I have some new pieces.
Why do we all get into flying one way or another? If we don't
actually fly we get fascinated with birds or kites or paper
airplanes. Perhaps not everybody, but a lot of people feel it
would be natural to glide on our own. Most of our impulses are to
stay away from snakes and spiders and dangerous things. But it
somehow would seem natural to us and not scary to fly. We dream
about flying. Can it be that at one time in our evolution we did
fly? After a fashion.
We are the only primate that does not have fur. We are the most
intelligent primate. Mammals without fur tend to be dolphins,
whales, and other aquatic beasties. There are those, I think
Desmond Morris is one, who think that we were aquatic apes at one
time. It would explain a lot about us. But what does this have to
do with flying? Ask a dolphin. Dolphins don't walk around on the
bottom of the sea. A dolphin glides by line of sight. Could it be
that dreams of flight are just dreams of living in a denser medium
that supports out weight. An aquatic ape might well find flight in
its own medium perfectly natural. But that leaves a question of
why would we still want to fly. If we ever were aquatic apes we
surely are not now. Well there are apparently behaviors that are
linked to genes. I recently saw a documentary on dog behavior that
said that if you want to punish a Border Collie, you don't give him
any sheep to herd. Retrievers one and all think that it is the
greatest thing in the world to run and get something that has
fallen from the sky and bring it to the master. Sled dogs have an
innate urge to pull. They will be frustrated and somehow not feel
whole if they are not pulling something. An aquatic ape will adapt
to land, but will still feel the urge to effortlessly glide. Take
away the opportunity to fly from an aquatic ape and you will
frustrate him. Perhaps we still feel the need to glide like a
dolphin does. Hence our dreams of flight. [-mrl]
===================================================================
5. MT VOID SUMMER MOVIE POLL from Tom Russell:
Vote for the best science fiction movie of the summer of 1997.
We've done some initial screening of choices, and have altered the
titles and plot lines a little to avoid bias or spoilers.
(2) "Close Encounters of the Prime Kind"
Computer geeks outsmart the US Army and federal agents when
they decode a message using primary school arithmetic.
(3) "Beach of Dreams"
Odd family reunion on a beach in Florida, or maybe elsewhere.
(5) "Search for Television Intelligence"
Network of satellite dishes gets *billions and billions*
of channels but only picks up one very, very old TV rerun.
(7) "Dark Force Won"
Threatening government research project is the target of a
religious fanatic.
(11) "Mir's Flashbacks"
A rich capitalist boards Mir. He's in worse health; gets to
wear a zip-loc spacesuit.
(13) "Return of the Jodie"
Cute tunnel traveller comes back to Earth at a time and place
she may never have left.
(17) "Sequel Opportunity"
The government's investigation of a scientist's claim is closed
but another woman may have withheld supporting evidence.
(19) "The Silence of the Aliens"
sC.adr.nleir.Sfaynag.marienhtdna.ssSredaeErDIT.OIVTMtsrep
eaeLkra.lMeybdeyCojnoenebot.stihtaetorwcllessuRtmoT sC.adr
Send response by the end of summer. [-tlr]
===================================================================
6. MIMIC (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Guillermo del Toro needed a better story,
but his visual style and his offbeat direction make
this a horror film that gets the viewer where he
lives. This is certainly the scariest giant insect
film I remember ever seeing. Mutated six-foot (and
six-footed) insects live in the depths of the New
York Subway System. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) 7 (0
to 10). There is a small spoiler following the
review as I discuss a premise point.
Guillermo del Toro was an unknown new director in 1994 when his
CRONOS played the arthouse circuit. It turned out to be a fresh
and arresting take on the vampire film. Mexican horror film to
that point had a reputation for shoddy production values. Del Toro
brought a fascinating no-holds-barred morbidity to his work that
made the film rich and memorable. He is back with his second film
and he proves to be just about the only filmmaker in the world who
could have pulled off a giant insects in the subway plot and turn
it into a film worth watching.
Three years ago a deadly disease carried by cockroaches was killing
and crippling children. The approach to kill all the cockroaches
was to create a sterile cross between a praying mantis, a termite,
and a cockroach that would kill off cockroaches and then die off
itself. Dr. Susan Kyle (Mira Sorvino) was the entomologist who
created the new insect. The approach seemed to work perfectly, but
now Kyle is seeing signs of a new insect in the subway tunnels that
could be more dangerous than the original disease. But there is
something else going on. Strangers seem to be running around the
city furthering the ends of the insects. They are shady characters
who seem to inhabit the dark corners of the city. And they have a
special interest in Dr. Kyle.
This is an odd role for Academy Award winning Sorvino. At base
this is an overly familiar story. Science has created a monster
and now a few people have to fight it. Sorvino could certainly
have chosen a film with a more original and less cable-fare-like
plot had she wanted. But in this second film del Toro shows us
exactly what his strengths and weaknesses as a filmmaker will be.
He does not have really original plot ideas. Here he takes a short
story by classic science fiction writer Donald A. Wollheim, but
still turns it into a familiar plot. But the only film with a
comparable style is his CRONOS. He has a marvelous way of keeping
secret that this will be a story that has been done before. His
telling is atmospheric and not quite linear. He creates perhaps
too many characters, certainly at the beginning, but the major
characters are fairly unique. Most interesting is a small boy who
may be a genius and who may be retarded, but we are never sure
which. Del Toro has carefully distorted color to heighten the
ominous atmosphere. He plays with light and darkness preferring
the latter. If the obvious is inevitable, at least del Toro keeps
it at bay for a good long time.
If del Toro's work is to be compared to any other filmmaker, I
would choose film producer Val Lewton. He makes terrific
atmospheric B-pictures that are better than most of the A-pictures
around. Both take the familiar and imbue it with a sense of real
dread. I would give this second effort a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
SPOILER WARNING:
The whole premise behind the title sounds like one that would come
from Donald A. Wollheim, but it is faulty. It is true that insects
and other creatures with a short generation time mimic their
predators. But this is only with frequent contact with the
predators. It is not a mystical process, but natural selection, a
form of evolution. We would have had to been killing off a lot of
six-foot insects in the subways before by chance some would look
like humans and that would render them some protection. There is a
lake in Japan where the crabs have backs that look like masks of
humans. After a great battle was fought on the lake fishermen who
pulled crabs from the lake would throw back the ones whose back
look vaguely like human faces, thinking them to contain the souls
of those killed in the battle. Over hundreds of years the only
crabs that were safe were those that had really good renderings of
masks. A species whose predator did not constantly select for
resembling itself would not come to resemble its predator. [-mrl]
===================================================================
7. EVENT HORIZON (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: A good cast, good special effects, and
an intriguing title all go to make a really
exciting-looking coming attraction. The film
itself has nearly nothing of value that was not
in the trailer. This is not so much set in the
universe of modern physics as in Clive Barker's
horror universe. This film is a loser.
Rating: -1 (-4 to +4), 3 (0 to 10)
I have heard it observed that any film that starts out with an
aerial view of a city is not a film worth seeing. That may be
helpful on cable, but not for films in a movie theater. I guess I
would claim that any film whose publicity uses the word "terror" is
a film well worth avoiding. I saw a coming attraction for EVENT
HORIZON and thought that it looked pretty good. At the time I did
not realize that I knew the rule about the word "terror." I knew
but knew not that I knew. I only realized that I knew when I
looked up some information about this interesting looking film on
the web and saw the word "terror" in the ad, that I realized it had
to be a bad film and I knew that only on the basis of seeing that
one word. PSYCHO is one film that could be said to produce terror,
but the ads did not use the word. Hitchcock never claimed to be a
master of terror; William Castle made that claim. As a rule of
thumb, if you are terrified by a William Castle film you should
wait five or six years until you hit puberty and try it again.
EVENT HORIZON is essentially a haunted house film in space that
rather artfully uses scenes and touches from a lot of different
films to tell a new story. There is a lot of ALIEN and a lot of
HELLRAISER with bits of THE HAUNTING, FORBIDDEN PLANET, 2001, STAR
TREK VI, MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN, THIS ISLAND EARTH, and
probably others I missed.
These days too many films tend to have a great look but not very
much content. It is the music video aesthetic. This is a film
with great visual images, but the plot is really basically the
haunted house film in space. The film shovels images at the viewer
so fast that it is difficult to interpret just what has been seen,
and really it may not matter. When you find out what is really
going on, it is a real letdown. This has to be one of the least
intriguing concepts possible for a film. I will not give it away,
but this is more a Clive Barker sort of horror film in a science
fiction setting than it is a science fiction film. The title is
the most intriguing thing about the film, but "Event Horizon" is
just the name of a spacecraft, and there is no internal evidence
that anyone involved in the production knew even what the term
meant.
This film is really a good cast wasted. Sam Neill and Laurence
Fishburne are, of course, major actors. I suspect they will take
the money and run. But what makes the casting particularly unusual
is the inclusion of Kathleen Quinlin of I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE
GARDEN. She is an actress who always added a certain fragility to
her roles. She is sort of the anti-Bette-Davis. Here that quality
is not just ignored, it is plastered over and she is nearly
unrecognizable. She is cast against type and brings nothing
special that is usable to her role.
This is a film that needed a writer with vision, but instead had
one with a high concept. I would rate this letdown a -1 on the -4
to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
8. KULL THE CONQUEROR (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: King Kull comes to the screen as
Rafaella Di Laurentiis continues her father's
series of Robert E. Howard adaptations. Badly
damaged by a horrible musical score and
unmemorable villains and a bit too much sex,
the film is still manages to be an acceptable
adolescent adventure. Rating: high 0 (-4 to
+4); 5 (0 to 10)
Last year we had the film THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD tell us about the
personality of Robert E. Howard who from rural Texas spun yarns of
barbarians fighting sorcerers. His chief character was Conan but
some of his stories were about King Kull and took place in an
earlier never-was. Kevin Sorbo, who plays TV's Hercules-with-pants
stars as the title barbarian. The chief problem with this film is
that it tells its story without worry too much what its audience
is. The plot is a little lightweight for an adult audience and has
a little too much sex-play for a children's film.
Kull (Kevin Sorbo) is a barbarian fighter come to join an army in a
country with an old and unbalanced king. The king has several sons
fighting for the throne. In a fit of anger the old king kills some
of his sons and Kull fights the king to stop him. Mortally wounded
the old king names the angry barbarian newcomer as his successor.
Suddenly Kull is a king with new enemies trying to steal his
kingdom. And his enemies are willing to make bonds with the forces
of evil including an old sorceress, Akivasha (Tia Carrere) who is
revived from the dead to be an ally of the vengeful brothers.
The film is written by Charles Pogue who gave us DRAGONHEART last
summer. While it is not a highly ambitious goal to capture Robert
E. Howard's style in a script, he does a reasonable job. The
villains could have had a little more depth. Of course one of
Kull's better villains, Thulsa Doom, was borrowed for CONAN THE
BARBARIAN. Conan lived well after Doom in Howard's pseudo-history.
Here the problem was the script had times when it was a little hard
to follow and there was perhaps a little too many "Shall I undress
now, your highness?" scenes for a film essentially intended for
adolescent audiences.
Director John Nicoletta makes unfortunately makes little effort to
preserve the period feel and it is here that the film falls down
the most. The horses are shoed and have bridals that would look
too modern in a Civil War film. But Nicoletta's biggest mistake is
in allowing Joel Goldsmith's totally misplaced main theme. It is
difficult to evoke so ancient a period with electric guitars and
Joel's attempt is merely jarring and obnoxious. The visual effects
are not always convincing, including some bad mattes, but for me
that is a small fault.
Sorbo is not the most exciting actor in the world. Charleton
Heston claimed he was cast in a lot of historical films because
people thought he had a historical sort of face. I am told by one
of the women that Sorbo's great virtue is his pectorals. But Sorbo
does not really evoke a historical period. Part of it may be that
he never dresses for the period. As with the Conan films, there is
an odd mix of cultures and races in the primeval world. Most of
the sets are Egyptian-looking. Sorbo's sidekicks include a priest
of an unknown cult played by Litefoot, who played the title role of
INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD. Tia Carrere is of Chinese descent, I
believe. Then there is Harvey Fierstein as a pirate captain. I
cannot honestly say he was badly cast since had I never seen him
before he might have not seemed all that strange in this role. For
once his gravelly voice might have made him seem tough.
Tone down the sex and this might have made a decent matinee film.
As it is there is a lot of sex but no nudity and a lot of violence
with virtually no blood. I rate this one a high 0 on the -4 to +4
scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
Politics, n. strife of interests masquerading
as a contest of principles.
-- Ambrose Bierce
I thought that was most of the world's religions.
Not yours of course.
-- Mark Leeper