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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 01/07/00 -- Vol. 18, No. 28
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@lucent.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
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
201-447-3652 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. There are shortages of many things in the world. There is
always somebody who has shortages of food, shortages of petroleum,
shortages of silicon chips, shortages of Beanie Babies, and always
shortages of money. One thing that the world is blessedly free of
is shortages of evidence. Particularly easy is for anybody to find
evidence that he or she was right at some point in the past. Even
people who would seem to be irrefutably wrong can find evidence
that they were right at the time. Somewhere I have seen this image
of a house being washed down a flooded river. On the roof while
they float down the river the wife is telling the husband, "Sure
you said we should leave. But when you said that, the rain wasnt
going to be all that bad. It would have been stupid for us to
leave then." Even most people who have done something really
stupid can give probably give a good explanation why what they did
was the right thing to do each step of the way.
I have no intention of quibbling. I could give you very good
evidence that my warnings about the computer crisis that the year
2000 would bring could have been very bad. I am going to say right
up front that I WAS WRONG. I expected there was a significant
possibility that the computer problems of the year 2000 were going
to be much more serious than they turned out to be. Clearly there
was some misrepresentation about embedded chips failing. Some of
the stories that circulated were just out and out wrong. I think
that if there were some large numbers of cars on the roads that
failed due to hitting the year 2000, we would have heard about it.
I wrote an editorial passing along the story I had heard that some
cars were going to fail because of embedded chips and that story
appears now to have little basis in fact. It is still too early to
tell for sure, but it looks like the world is handling the Y2K
problem fairly gracefully.
In general nothing like having the last two digits of the year drop
to zero had ever happened before and there were no precedents for
determining what level of concern there should have been. People
were finding and fixing problems, but until the thing actually
happens there is no way to know if a significant percentage have
been found or if the surface has only been scratched. Even at this
writing, two days into the year, we know that some problems have
been postponed and do not know what their cumulative effect will
be.
There definitely were some Y2K problems and we will be living with
for a while, then there were some problems fixed in the months
before the turnover, and some in the days after. But overall the
people who were responsible to fix the problems did a good job.
Some of the people who seemed to be giving a lower priority to some
Y2K problems may have been doing the right thing.
Instead of things falling apart, the 2000s started have started on
a positive note. We have had an object lesson that what may appear
to be intractable problems are not always insuperable. The advent
of the 2000s did not turn out to be an ever-advancing falling of
night around the world, as it appeared was a possibility. Instead
what we had was more just a continuation of what our lives were
before end of the last year. It is a good sign for the century and
millennium that will start in 12 months.
I had written some editorials suggesting that people should be
prepared for the worst. At the time that was good advice.
Preparation was insurance. As readers of science fiction we are
comfortable with the knowledge that even low probably events are
possible and should be prepared for. Where there is any
uncertainty it is good to be prepared. So I do not feel too bad
having made some unnecessary warnings. [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. PAST LIVES, PRESENT TENSE edited by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
(Ace, ISBN 0-441-00649-3, 1999, 336pp, US$13) (a book review by
Evelyn C. Leeper):
This is a "shared-world anthology," for which Scarborough has
provided the premise (in "Soulmates"): Tsering manages to implant
the personality of his dead mate, Chime, into himself without
destroying his own, creating "Dr. Chimera." The other authors then
develop this idea independently of each other, each choosing a
different past life to "resurrect," with Dr. Chimera and his
technique running as a thread throughout.
My main problem with this book is that I have difficulty with the
premise that all our personality and memories are stored in our
DNA. (Jerry Oltion's story says MRNA, but Scarborough specifically
says DNA, so Oltion must have gotten it wrong.) First of all,
there is a bandwidth problem. Second of all, this smacks too much
of Lamarckian genetics.
Given that, some of the stories are mildly entertaining. "A Rose
with All Its Thorns" by Lillian Stewart Carl puts the personality
of Anne Boleyn in a (female) Tudor historian at an academic
conference which reminds one of Connie Willis's academic settings
and characters--and performs admirably in that genre.
Not surprisingly, Nina Kiriki Hoffman produces a very strong story
in "Voyage of Discovery," in which the personality of Meriwether
Lewis is implanted in a young woman who has become completely
uncommunicative after an accident. And Carole Nelson Douglas's
"Night Owl" treats the idea a bit differently than the others.
There are, naturally, a couple of stories dealing with holy relics.
And depending on your interests, you might like the Civil War
themed story, or the sports one, or the author one, or one of the
others. But on the whole, most of the stories seemed merely
repetitive. This, of course, is a problem with commissioned
anthologies, but this topic is even more restrictive than most.
The best stories would stand alone, and even most of the weaker
stories might pass muster if it were the only one of its premise.
But putting them all together takes away any claim of originality,
and just emphasizes their weaknesses. [-ecl]
===================================================================
3. THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: This is an old-fashioned murder story.
There is little real violence, no chases; it is
just one very ingenious, very unscrupulous
person trying to get away with what he can.
But the show is really how he does it and the
suspense of wondering how long he can keep it
up. This is a fairly intelligent thriller with
a villain that one almost has to admire. The
warm 1950s Southern Italy setting works for the
film also. Though he occasionally stretches
credulity, this is a fun film to go along with.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)
For me one of Alfred Hitchcock's best films is DIAL M FOR MURDER.
It is a stage play barely adapted for film, but it is a very good
stage play. We have in it a murderer who is a formidable force.
His talent is not that he strong or fast. He does not come popping
out at anybody. He does not outrun anyone. His skill is that he
thinks very well on his feet. You can actually just see him
thinking out possibilities and almost unerringly find the right
one. Once he makes a decision he stays with it. He never seems
troubled by uncertainty. THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY is about a very
similar sort of criminal genius. Quite a bit younger, but no less
mentally agile is Tom Ripley (played by Matt Damon).
It is 1958. Tom Ripley is, to use his words, "a real nobody," a
bathroom attendant and sometime piano player. But he is good a
mimicry and at forging signatures. He decides that it is better to
be a fake somebody than a real nobody. When he comes in contact
with the Greenleaf family, wealthy from shipping, he passes himself
off as a friend from Princeton of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law),
currently in Italy. He is treated like one of the family for a
while, and Dickie's father Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn) has a
proposition for Tom. He will pay Tom $1000 to go to Italy and
convince Dickie to give up his playboy ways and return home. Tom
goes, meeting Meredith Logue (Cate Blanchett) along the way. In
Italy Tom arranges a meeting and befriends Dickie and his fiance
Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow). All the while he is putting
together plans to kill Dickie and, where necessary for his plan,
take his place. Director Anthony Minghella's screenplay begins
with this setup and brings the characters together and then lets
them simmer together in the warm Italian sun for nearly an hour,
choosing the leisurely pace of a good Agatha Christie film. The
tempo is slow and thrills are cerebral, but we do get to meet and
understand the characters and it pays off in the second half of the
film. We see that in more than one sense that Ripley is expert in
playing people. His one failure is to fool the unctuous Freddie
Miles (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an old friend of Dickie. Freddie
takes an immediate dislike to Tom, complicating the plan.
Eventually there is a murder and Ripley has to be both himself and
Dickie Greenleaf for a while. He is walking a tightrope and must
remember with each person what version of reality he is trying to
project. And as the film progresses his step must become ever more
careful.
The roles must have seemed like a little bit of dj vu for the two
male leads. Damon played the genius of lower class origins in GOOD
WILL HUNTING. Jude Law played the aristocrat whose very identity
is borrowed by someone else in GATTACA. In any case Law seems very
much at home in his roll as the young jazz-loving jet setter.
Damon seems sufficiently controlled. Paltrow is regal. Special
mention should be made of one of the bit parts.
One of the ever more familiar faces showing up in films is Philip
Baker Hall who in here has a small but important roll as an
American lawyer. Hall, in his late 60s, is able to project an
absolute authenticity of authority and at the same time a magnetism
of a person in a position of power. Anyone who has seen the film
HARD EIGHT was mesmerized by his performance from the very first
scene. He has been in films since the early 1970s, but probably
because of his performance in HARD EIGHT he is showing up in a lot
of major films.
The plot of THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY does not take a whole lot of
thought before contrivances become apparent. But under the
influence of the warm Italian sun, the audience is lulled into
going along with it and even being thrilled as Ripley gets himself
into and out of minor scrapes in his amoral attempts to steal a
life. I give the film a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the
-4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
They say that life begins when the kids go away to school and the dog dies. But no man whose wife
believes that can rest easily.
-- Mark Leeper
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