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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 01/16/98 -- Vol. 16, No. 29
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.bway.net/~hunger/ulysses.html.
James Joyce's ULYSSES for Dummies. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. I have over a thousand magazines come for me to read in a year.
I also get some unsolicited that I am not interested in reading,
but there are over a thousand I do have some interest in. So that
my magazines do not get ahead of me, I have cultivated the habit of
reading a certain number of magazines each day. I keep track of it
on my palmtop so that if I read fewer one day, the next day I have
more. But I read just about the right number so that in the long
run I stay ahead of the number that come in. However when I go on
vacation I get far behind and because the processing rate is only a
bit faster than the in come rate I can end up with months of
backlog. I did some traveling over the summer, making it a big
trip centered around going to the World Science Fiction Convention
in San Antonio. So at this point I still have a big backlog and I
am only now getting to a copy of PLOTKA, a British science fiction
fanzine that in August reviewed the MT VOID. The reviewer is
Alison Scott.
One of the things Alison Scott says is that her favourite bit is my
weekly editorial. That I find rather interesting because every
editorial is an act of sheer desperation. I mean the largest
volume of what I write is film reviews and trip logs. Well, new
films come out every week and I keep having vacations. So I always
have a good idea what to write about there. But I have to come up
with something new to say each week. I remember panicking in
Junior High School because I had o go home and write two hundred
words about a subject of my choosing. How would I choose? What do
I have two hundred words to say about? Now I do that as a hobby.
And I still have moments of panic.
You see every editorial you see in an MT VOID is an act of
desperation. I am using up my last good idea. The editorial
column is in the process of dying all the time. Then I hear
something on the radio, or I make a joke, or I read something and I
think that maybe I could write a few paragraphs on this new idea.
I might be able to prolong the column one more week. My editorials
survive a week at a time. There are those who would turn that into
a metaphor for life. I remember one of my high school poetry
teachers asked me if it wasn't true that the moment we are born we
start to die. Not if you are born healthy, I said. I guess there
are those who want to look at life as a fatal disease. And I
suppose you can take that philosophy. Frankly if I want to be
morbid I watch an old Universal horror film and get it out of my
system. (1933's THE BLACK CAT may well be the most morbid film
ever made. I love it. But I am digressing again.)
But the truth is that the weekly editorial is constantly in a state
of dying. There are times that I am running out of ideas and
nobody guarantees that there will be new ones coming along the way
we are sure that there are new films coming out to write about.
But since Alison was so nice as to write about the MT VOID, I can
answer some of her questions.
What is the MT VOID? Is it a clubzine, a fanzine, or what? Well
it is by origin the notice of upcoming events of the science
fiction club at Bell Laboratories. Evelyn and I came to Bell Labs
in 1978. The Labs sponsored a series of clubs to keep employees
happy. They would throw a little money at them to help keep them
going and let the clubs use their conference rooms over lunch hour.
Now Evelyn and I had been in science fiction clubs in college and
the three and a half years previous that we lived in Detroit. We
figured at Bell Labs there had to be an active science fiction
club. Nope. The closest they had was a bunch of people who pooled
their money and bought the selections of the Science Fiction Book
Club and shared the books through interoffice mail. Now this
struck me as odd. These are supposed to be people on the cutting
edge of scientific thinking. Every World's Fair they set up their
big bulbous buildings to tell people about the world of tomorrow.
Surely they must have a lot of people reading about the world of
tomorrow. Science fiction is part of their stock and trade.
About nine months into our jobs Evelyn and I went to a science
fiction convention in New York City. On the way home I made one of
those suggestion that sounds small, but was really a live-changing
suggestion for the two of us. We could found a science fiction
club at Bell. There were some formalities, but we did it. We
could read a book every couple of weeks and get together and
discuss it. Bell Labs insisted for legal reasons that we not have
"Bell Labs" as part of our name so initially we were the Monmouth
County Science Fiction Club. Never mind that the only people in
Monmouth County who could get to our meetings was people who worked
at Bell Labs. These days just about everybody we know socially are
people who we met through the science fiction club. Certainly the
vast majority of the people who know our names would not have had
we not founded the club.
Members had to be told what books we were intending to read and to
be reminded of upcoming meetings so we started a notice,
handwritten at first. There would be an issue just before each
meeting to remind members to come. There would be an issue after
each meeting to tell members what book was chosen. Soon that
became dull so I started including a few of my own comments and
some film reviews. Evelyn would contribute book reviews.
We were in Holmdel, New Jersey, a building whose inter-office mail
code was "HO." Soon AT&T built two more buildings nearby, Lincroft
with code "LZ" and Middletown with code "MT" Most of our members
came from one of the three locations. We combined the three
interoffice codes to rename our club, the Mt. Holz Science Fiction
Society. It was not named for the mountain and only a year or so
later we discovered there really is a Mt. Holz, in Switzerland if I
remember rightly. At the time Mt. Holz could be found in a world
atlas. These days I don't find it. Makes me wonder what happened
to it.
In fact, at least for a while the name was a joke and was
pronounced "Empty Holes." Following that concept we also redubbed
the notice the "Empty Void." We are now mostly electronic. Anyone
who can give us an e-mail address is welcome to get the MT VOID.
Of course, due to AT&T splitting and taking the Middletown building
we probably ought to rename the club and the notice. We have to
give that some thought. We want to give the notice a name that is
science fictional, but that nobody has used. Right now the front-
runner for the name is "Last Dangerous Visions." [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. ILLEGAL ALIEN, by Robert J. Sawyer [Ace, hardcover, copyright
1997. ISBN 0-441-00476-8, 292pp] (a book review by Joe Karpierz):
Robert J. Sawyer is rapidly climbing my list of favorite authors.
In this age of multibook sagas and massive tomes that tell a 300-
page story in 500 or 600 pages, Sawyer turns out standalone novel
after standalone novel, none of which require a forklift to pick up
or a suitcase to take to work to read during lunch hour. Instead,
he tells a nice, tight story with no padding specifically designed
to keep the publishers happy, and his latest is no exception.
ILLEGAL ALIEN tackles the issue of a murder trial in which the
defendant is an alien from another planet. An alien species from
the Alpha Centauri system, the Tosoks, arrive on Earth seeking help
in repairing their spacecraft, which was damaged in a collision out
near the edge of our Solar System. We opportunity grabbing humans
cut a deal with the Tosoks for the repairs to their ship. It seems
we have the materials and they have the know how. The deal is
simple: they get their ship repaired, and we get the technology
that allows those repairs to get made. So, a contingent of humans
and seven Tosoks treks out to California and takes up residence in
a new residence hall on the campus of USC. It is here that the
murder of one of the humans take place. A fellow by the name of
Cletus Calhoun, a country-hick astronomer from Tennessee who is the
host of a show on PBS called "Great Balls of Fire!" is found dead
in his room. One of his legs is severed, he is otherwise expertly
dissected, and several of his body parts are missing. All evidence
points to the Tosok named Hask.
Hask, of course, is arrested and accused of murder. Attorney Dale
Rice is hired to defend him. The problem is, after seeing all the
evidence, Rice is pretty much convinced that Hask is guilty. What
follows, then, is an excellent murder mystery/courtroom drama that
examines the U.S. system of justice as it attempts to try an alien
being in its own court system. Sawyer weaves the intricacies of
the justice system with an exploration of an alien culture and its
reasons for coming to earth in an expert fashion, once again
demonstrating that he has done his research in preparation for
writing a novel. I know that I certainly learned a thing or two
about our justice system that I never thought about before. The
most glaring example of this is the outcome of the trial. I don't
want to say anything about it, lest I give away the mystery, but I
have to say that I was surprised when I read it. The trial
resolution also tells us a little bit about human nature, and how
we may not be such bad folk after all.
There are many, many details about the Tosok culture that I found
fascinating, but once again, anything I write here (if there was
enough of it, anyway), if pieced together (even with blind luck)
could give away some of the story (for some reason, I'm immediately
reminded of monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare, but I'm not sure
the analogy applies). Suffice to say that the aliens are
interesting. But Sawyer's human characters are interesting as
well. We don't need pages upon pages of exposition to learn enough
about Dale Rice, Cletus Calhoun, and the other major human
characters to make them alive and relevant to the story, and Sawyer
doesn't do that. He weaves enough of their background into the
plot itself to make them come alive for the story. In reality,
that's all we really need, and it works well.
So, I heartily recommend ILLEGAL ALIEN, as an sf story, a murder
mystery, and a courtroom drama. I feel you'll be completely
satisfied without straining your back or arms, or taking a massive
amount of time out of your life. And that's a good thing. [-jak]
===================================================================
4. ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN BOY by Allen Steele [Ace, ISBN 0-441-00460-1,
1997 (1996), 267pp, US$5.99 ] (a book review by Evelyn C. Leeper ):
[Though this also has "ALIEN" in the title it is totally unrelated
to ILLEGAL ALIEN, reviewed above, which came out from the same
publisher at just about the same time.]
There is no story in this collection titled "All-American Alien
Boy," but the subtitle of the book gives us the answer to the
title: "The United States as Science Fiction, Science Fiction as a
Journey: A Collection." Who is the "All-American Alien Boy"? It's
Steele. But it's also each of us. (Well, some of us are All-
American Alien Girls, but you get the idea.)
After all, isn't there something a bit alien in the idea of renting
out your body for science ("The Good Rat")? Alien, yes, but also
very capitalist and, well, American. Whether it's the shopping
mall, the demolition derby, or Rock City, Steele takes something
very American, and shows us how alien it is at the same time.
As if that isn't enough, Steele's introductions actually add
something to the understanding of the stories. Too many authors,
when confronted with the task of introducing their own stories,
resort to either a bald description of how they came to write the
story, or some brief--preferably humorous--anecdote about it.
Steele uses this opportunity to talk about the ideas behind the
story--what he thinks about UFO abduction stories, for example.
What this means is that even if you have all the stories from their
original publications, this book is still worth getting. [-ecl]
===================================================================
5. WAG THE DOG (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: What might have worked nicely in a
20-minute film does not keep satire going for
97 minutes. To protect a President from an
accusation of child molestation, a spin doctor
decides to create a fictional war with Albania
to act as distraction for the American people.
It is fun for a little while seeing the
political image specialist and the Hollywood
producer brainstorm epic images inspired by
those of previous wars and then see them
actually implemented with 90s technology. But
the film becomes repetitious with insufficient
plot and occasional gaps in credibility. Both
Robert DeNiro's and Dustin Hoffman's parts are
under-written with more of an eye toward satire
than to character. Hoffman does a better job
of rising above the limitation. Rating: low +1
(0 to 10), 5 (-4 to +4) There are spoilers in
this review, but none that were not in the
trailer that ran in movie theaters.
New York critics: 13 positive, 1 negative, 2
mixed
Somewhere lost in WAG THE DOG's 97 minutes is a bright, funny,
pointed, and even frightening 20-minute film. The film makes some
good points about the state of political images, about technology,
and about the American public. But the film says it all concisely
fairly quickly, then says it again, then for good measure says it
again. Eventually the movie which from the outside would seem
short out-stays its welcome. It is surprising that Barry Levinson
thought that he could get by with one-dimensional characters in so
repetitious a story however engaging and important the central idea
was. Levinson knows the value of good characters. He built his
reputation with DINER and he directed AVALON. Both are films with
very real, very believable characters. This instead is an idea
film, but it gives us the same idea over and over. The script is
by Harry Henkin and David Mamet based on the novel AMERICAN HERO by
Larry Beinhart. It tells us that what we remember from the wars of
our past are images and ceremonies. For example, from World War II
we remember the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima and a sailor
kissing a girl in New York City when the war is over--the visual
images of that war that had power. From Vietnam we remember a
young girl running screaming in a street after a napalm attack;
then there is the illegal pistol execution in another street.
These images could always have been orchestrated and many probably
were. And as time has passed the creation of these images has only
become easier and less expensive with techniques like digital image
processing. The government feeds us images rather than facts, or
at least such is the implication of WAG THE DOG.
It is less than two weeks to the national election and the
President is in big trouble. It seems he is accused of sexually
abusing a Firefly Girl, part of a troop visiting the Capital
Building. (I know that our current President is unpopular in some
quarters, but even so this seems like a somewhat exaggerated
premise.) An image expert, Conrad Brean (Robert DeNiro), is called
in protect the President from the accusation and after some
deliberation he determines that the best strategy is to give the
President a military victory in the few days before the election.
A war has to appear to start up and the President has to appear to
win the war in just the short period of time before the election.
Brean determines that the winning approach is to fabricate a war
with Albania. To bring off such a war he needs the help of a top
Hollywood producer. His choice is the handsome, graying Stanley
Motss (Dustin Hoffman).
From there the film goes into a series of repetitious cycles.
First there is the brainstorming session where Brean and Motss talk
in understated tone about what sort of an image they need to
impress the public. Not surprisingly, this sounds almost like they
are planning for the production of a film. They hit on some idea
upon which they can agree. The suggestion is actually produced and
we see a few of the steps that go into the production to make it
seem possible. Finally we see the final implementation as the
public would see it and it is some variation on some image that
inspired the public in some previous war. A song will sound very
much like a song we remember, or some monument to the war heroes
will look like some famous monument, aut cetera. Binding these
cycles together is a bit of a plot, but not much of one.
The film offers two good actors in the lead roles, Dustin Hoffman
and Robert DeNiro. But there is little in this film to give much
of a clue to who these people really are beyond what their jobs
are. However, DeNiro plays his role a bit suppressed and Hoffman
takes advantage of this to appear a much more outgoing person
amused by the political machinations and his new-found power. The
two are accompanied by Anne Heche, who seems to have been added to
this film as an after-thought. She has little to do but tag along.
People who are nearer to either the film industry or the political
process may find that there is much in this film that is on-target,
but for many viewers this film will be an argument that there is
still a place for the short film and perhaps it should be used more
often. I rate this film a 5 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +1 on
the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
6. THE SWEET HEREAFTER (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: An opportunistic lawyer comes to a
rural Canadian town in which a school bus
accident has killed many of the town's
children. With a smooth sincere-sounding line
he turns grief into anger in the hopes of
building a class action lawsuit. Atom Egoyan's
non-linear telling gets in the way a little,
but this is a powerful statement about the law
and about grief. Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2
(-4 to +4)
New York Critics: 17 positive, 1 negative, 1
mixed
Atom Egoyan makes complex that often fit together like puzzles.
His EXOTICA was a complex story that was never complete until the
final scene made sense of things. THE SWEET HEREAFTER is not so
tightly wound, but it is very tightly bound emotionally and still a
puzzle. With this film Egoyan takes a close hard look at a cold
British Columbia town in mourning after almost an entire generation
of its children was wiped out in a tragic school bus accident. As
the community tries to heal itself and carry on after the loss it
is visited by a smooth and vaguely sinister lawyer. Mitchell
Stephens (played by Ian Holm) implants in the minds of the
townspeople that what is called for is not peace but a vengeful
class action lawsuit. He convinces the locals that their should be
no forgiveness for the guilty and that whenever there is an
accident of this sort, there is always somebody who is guilty.
There is always somebody who should be made to pay. He is the
lawyer that they want to get them that payment and he will keep
only a third for himself.
In the hands of a lesser director Mitchell could easily be reduced
to being a one-dimensional devil. The script, written as well as
directed by Egoyan, based on the novel by Russell Banks, dissects
that character of Stephens. Stephens has a daughter on drugs and
willing to do any self-destructive action to spite her father. For
this daughter Stephens feels an icy helplessness and a sort of
frozen rage. Icy and calculated are all of his reactions in an
Oscar-worthy performance. In the course of the film we learn a
great deal about him and where and how he lost his emotions. A
major theme explored in this film, and there are several, is things
that are out of people's control and feelings of utter
helplessness. There is some fascination with the understated way
that Stephens does his job. He searches for the parents who can
best make a winning case for him and are the most susceptible to
being won over. He also carefully checks them out for weaknesses
that could harm his case.
Egoyan has some nice stylistic moves. The bleak Canadian winter
seems to pervade the entire film and reflect the coldness of the
people in the town who have isolated themselves from their
emotions. The icy weather acts upon people and performs its own
mischief including the central tragedy of the film. Conversations
in the film are anything but volatile. People seem to think out
their next response with notable pauses in the conversion. Then
the film returns again and again to the theme of the Pied Piper.
On one level the town has lost its children, disappearing not into
a hole in a mountain that closes up but into a hole in the ground
that also closes. On another level the grief of the parents has
made them vulnerable to the outsider who wishes to lead them to
where they might not otherwise not want to go. Egoyan holds off on
showing the viewer the actual accident until late in the film. He
shows it with a frightening simplicity. No dramatic music. The
school bus just skids over the curb on a hill and out of sight
slips down a hill onto a frozen pond where it slowly sinks. But it
has a greater emotional impact than some of the fiery crashes we
have seen elsewhere this year.
This is a film I expect to see on several best of the year lists,
including my own. I suspect that it will not be remembered at
Oscar time, being a modest Canadian film, but it certainly is one
of the best of the year and will be on my top then list. I rate it
a +8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-
mrl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
Television is democracy at its ugliest.
-- Paddy Chayefsky
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