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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 01/09/98 -- Vol. 16, No. 28
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 (and aannouncement): Because the Worldcon is
being held early this year, Hugo nominations must be received by
*MARCH 10* to be counted.
See http://www.spiritone.com/~jlorentz/hugos/ for a copy of the
ballot and details on who may vote. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. Four other knighted science fiction (or fantasy) authors
(besides Sir Arthur C. Clarke) are Sir Kingsley Amis, Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, Sir H. Rider Haggard, Sir Fred Hoyle.
There are also a couple of barons: the Right Honourable Edward John
Moreton Drax Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, and Baron Edward George Earl
Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote at least one science fiction novel, THE
COMING RACE. [-ecl]
===================================================================
3. It is 6:20 AM on January 1, 1998. I am up early even though I
was up past 2 AM. Why am I up? Well the coming of the new year
has me a little nervous. I am thinking about the millennium
problem in science fiction terms. What is going to be like in just
two years? Well let me say at the start I have no idea, but I am
picturing something very dramatic that our science fiction writers
have missed the boat on. The image I have is December 31, 1999
Japan winks out. As one time zone after another goes past midnight
we see the countries in that time zone come to a halt. That is
what a day just two years off may be like. That is a really scary
image. I am not saying that will happen, but at this point it is a
possibility and is a lot more probable than a lot of the futures we
read about. You know how many stories were done of nuclear war
coming. Also very dramatic. But let me tell you, this future of
the technology winking out on a front moving west at 1000 miles per
hour, this really could happen.
First a review of what the base of the problem is. A lot of
computer programs were written assuming that you could use a two
digit number for the year. To any program written in this way we
will very soon be going from the year 99 to the year 00. This
means the program will think that the world has jumped back 99
years when you and I think that it has advanced one. This could
break all its calculations. Complicating the problem is that
programming takes many forms. It is not just in the form of
computer programs, the very chips we put into computers are
essentially computer programs made out of matter. That was what
shocked me into writing the last piece I did on the problem,
learning that some cars are dependent on pollution control chips
that divide by the last two digits of the year. The whole chip has
to be replaced or the car will not run and it will fail some time
around the fateful midnight.
Our technology has long chains of dependencies. That gives a
problem like a Year 2000 bug its power. Think of yourself as if
you were a technological entity. You are a big computer controlled
system. So you make a high priority preparing for the year 2000.
All the lines of code that control your heart are checked out and
fixed. The same for your brain (and think what a big job that is).
Word is your pancreas checks out A-OK. Lungs are all set. Some
programmer stayed up nights and got your lymph nodes working
perfectly. Your kidneys took a lot of attention but they are all
set. Team after team came in and made sure everything would work.
It was a huge task. And you know what happened? The team that was
working on your liver missed one place where the year is used.
Come that fateful morning two years off first there is no liver and
then there is not going to be a you. You are a large network of
inter-dependent processes and all of them have to work. Of course
this is an absurd example. You are a system of biological parts,
not computer components.
But most everything humanity has built over the last thirty years
or so is dependent on computational parts. And the parts we most
rely on are systems of inter-dependent processes. Power plants
have complex computer control systems. One or two pieces
overlooked really could bring down the whole power plant. Power
plants themselves are inter-connected. One power plant going down
can take down its neighbors. That is particularly true if the
neighbors just happen to be having their own computer problems at
the same time and are vulnerable. The whole grid winks out. Then
it does not matter what computers have been fixed for the problem.
They may have great software, all fixed for the year 2000. They
just are missing electricity. So they go down. Some have battery
backup, they can stay up a while. But how soon can the computers
that caused the problem be fixed without electrical power? And
with even unrelated things like cars failing? It can't. And add
that other computers are failing as soon as they come up. As near
as we can tell, that was what took out Japan. China was next and
when midnight came it went dark in its turn. There was wide-scale
looting in India when the technology stopped there. But the first
real violence we heard form a few battery-powered reporters came
when the curtain of darkness swept over the Middle East and pent up
religious hatreds suddenly were no longer pent up. Europe went
next with more riots and looting. At about that same time what was
once called "the Dark Continent" was again dark.
Times Square, which had been ready for its biggest New Years ever
had a change in plans. People had been listening to the news all
day, or lack of news, from parts east. A few people were in the
streets but most had stayed home as if a tidal wave was coming. As
indeed it was. For the few that were present a local disk jockey
was at the microphones that had been arranged days earlier for some
very different sentiments. As the minute approached the stragglers
in the street checked their watches nervously. "Ten... Nine...
Eight..." [-mrl]
===================================================================
4. AS GOOD AS IT GETS (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Capsule: Jack Nicholson plays a misanthropic
apartment dweller who makes a hobby of being
nasty to people. When he is pulled into
relationships with a waitress and his gay
neighbor he begins to come out of his shell and
show a little humanity. The plot twists are
all fairly predictable, but James L. Brooks
give us some characters we can care about and
an amiable plot. One can almost see this as a
pilot for a TV comedy series. Rating: 6 (0 to
10), 1 (-4 to +4)
James L. Brooks has built a career being the executive producer on
some of the most popular TV situation comedies including "The Mary
Tyler Moore Show," "Rhoda," "Taxi," "The Tracy Ullman Show," and
"The Simpsons." His touch is comedy with a strong dose of human
character, especially characters with foibles. His film-work has
been more spotty but includes TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and BROADCAST
NEWS. His new film AS GOOD AS IT GETS is more like his TV series
than it is like his better films. In it he tells the story of a
solitary misanthrope, a hermit living in is big city, who finally
discovers his humanity and finds joy in relating to the very people
he despised previously, not at all unlike Ebenezer Scrooge. The
film's release around Christmas time only exaggerates the parallels
to Dickens's A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
Melvin Udall (played with the usual gusto by Jack Nicholson) is a
boy-man who lives by himself in a New York City apartment building.
And by himself is just how he likes it since there is nothing he
can see that is very positive in his neighbors or anyone else for
him to care about. He is finishing his 62nd book in a series of
romance novels whose popularity he ascribes to the fact that he
actually loathes women. His hobby is candor raised to the level of
a martial art. There is a firm mutual hatred between him and his
apartment neighbors, particularly Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear of
SABRINA), a gay artist. Simon's dog messes the hallway, and Melvin
wants to see the little dog destroyed. Melvin's favorite person in
the world (meaning he has only a mild dislike for her) is Carol
Connelly (Helen Hunt of TWISTER) the waitress who serves him at a
local restaurant. Circumstances--with a strong assist from Simon's
professional manager (Cuba Gooding, Jr.)--force Melvin to take
Simon's dog into his apartment and care for him. In spite of all
his worst instincts, Melvin finds himself actually liking the dog
and this opens a chink in his shell that allows him to start
relating to both Simon and Carol. What follows one of the last act
of A CHRISTMAS CAROL played in slow motion. Melvin also takes an
interest in medical care for Carol's sickly (dare I say "Tiny-Tim-
like") child.
The film itself is sporadically funny and occasionally touching,
but offers little that is not available on TV. One difference
between this film and a TV comedy is the shock value of Nicholson's
comments and insults. Melvin goes well beyond the limits of Archie
Bunker or even of the Simpsons making obscene suggestions about
Simon's sex life. One can do that in a movie and not face TV
censorship, I guess, but they do little to improve the viewing
experience.
Beyond the go-for-the-throat comments, Brooks has done here little
that he could not have done on the set of a situation comedy.
Certainly this is a story told on a smaller scale than his TERMS OF
ENDEARMENT or BROADCAST NEWS. The script, which Brooks co-authored
with Mark Andrus is funny only on a hit and miss basis. Perhaps
part of the problem is that once it is established what a creep our
main character is, the audience has less emotional investment in
seeing him rewarded with a happy ending. One is torn between
whether the best ending has him finding happiness or being hit by a
truck.
This is certainly one of Brooks's more minor contributions to
American entertainment. The film is watchable, but tepid. I rate
it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
5. JACKIE BROWN (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Quentin Tarantino's third directorial
effort is a well-made if surprisingly
uncreative crime drama based on Elmore
Leonard's RUM PUNCH. The busy Samuel L.
Jackson this time plays a scheming low-life and
dealer in high-powered guns to drug lords. A
delivery of a half-million-dollar payment
sparks games of cross and double-cross. The
production is over-long and over-powered with
name actors, some in surprisingly small roles,
but at the end of the day it is a good, solid
drama. And by today's standards the violence
the actually fairly light. Rating: 7 (0 to
10), +2 (-4 to +4) Very minor spoilers in a
section after the review.
Tarantino has become a cult item after the success of RESERVOIR
DOGS and the award-winning PULP FICTION. He is the director that
everybody caught early in his career and on his way up and from
whom everybody expects great things. That put a lot of pressure on
him to make his third film be really something special. His public
may be disappointed to discover that they now have to invest two
hours and thirty-five minutes in his new film and in return they
will get a plain, old-fashioned, unspectacular crime drama. This
is just a good, hard-boiled crime film, perhaps with a somewhat
convoluted plot. Most directors could be proud of JACKIE BROWN as
only a third effort, but I suspect that it will fall well short of
the expectations for the over-hyped Tarantino.
Ordell Robbie (played by Samuel L. Jackson) is an ambitious and
vicious gun dealer working out of his Hermosa Beach pad owned by
his girlfriend Melanie (Bridget Fonda). To Melanie life is eating,
sleeping, getting stoned, getting it on, and watching TV. To most
other people dealing with Robbie, life is short, or at least it is
once they become inconvenient to Ordell. But Ordell wants to get
out of the gun business and in general out of the business
business. He thinks it is time to retire to Mexico with Melanie
and his low-life, lower-IQ partner Lou (a role that wastes Robert
DeNiro's talents). But before Ordell can retire he wants to get
half a million dollars in payments up from Mexico. His courier is
Jackie Brown (Pam Grier, still around after a quarter of a century
of black exploitation films). Jackie is a stewardess for a cheap
Mexican airline and supplements her meager income by running
payments for Ordell. But this time it gets her into trouble.
Jackie is arrested by ATF agent Ray Nicholette (Michael Keaton) and
policeman Mark Dargus. That makes her inconvenient for Ordell,
both she and Ordell know it. Her one edge is that Ordell does not
know that she knows it. She strikes up a shaky partnership with
the honest-seeming bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) whom
Ordell uses professionally. Together they have to outsmart Ordell
to stay alive.
It is difficult to believe that this Samuel L. Jackson is the same
one who was in EVE'S BAYOU. Jackson is a powerful and versatile
actor who has been getting a lot of work, but deserves the
attention he gets. One actor who does not get the attention is
Robert Forster, who is something of a poor man's James Garner. He
has Garner's ease and grace in a role, but just does not have
Garner's following. For a treat sometime see his HOLLYWOOD HARRY-
-not a great plot, but a fun performance by Forster. Moving down
the list we get to Robert DeNiro, Michael Keaton, and Bridget
Fonda. And what are they doing in this film? It is nice to see a
familiar face in a role, but these are parts that should have gone
to some deserving second-stringers who could have brought just as
much to the film as the people cast. I suppose they may have
wanted to work with Quentin Tarantino. But still, folks, let's
move aside and give some other actors a chance to be seen.
The film is by far Tarantino's least violent film, as some of his
fans will be happy to know. Violence is neither a plus nor a minus
with me, but I do know of people who refused to see PULP FICTION
because of its violence. Overall, Tarantino has made an acceptable
film, even if it is over two and a half hours long. If it has less
magic than his previous work, it certainly has competence. I rate
it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Spoiler.... Spoiler.... Spoiler.... Spoiler.... Spoiler....
Spoiler....
Are you kidding? In a dressing room? Presumably some have
discreet anti-shoplifting surveillance. I doubt that anyone who
knew what they were doing would ever assume that a dressing room is
completely private.
There is a humorous bit at the beginning that involved a cameo by
Demi Moore. I wonder how realistic that was? I also wonder if the
noise from Keaton's leather jacket was intended as a subtle joke.