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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 06/16/00 -- Vol. 18, No. 51
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. Last week I discussed three of the great geniuses of old time
radio: Orson Welles, Norman Corwin, and Lucille Fletcher. But even
the general run of shows was frequently quite good.
Choosing what were the best programs on the radio would be as
controversial as choosing what are the best shows on television.
First of all let me disqualify myself to judge comedy. As I said
earlier I almost never find radio comedy funny. It takes a really
good writer to make me laugh and radio comedy almost never does it.
Jack Benny who was considered hilarious seemed to survive on
repeating the same jokes over and over. And going a step further I
would rather hear a comedy program than a music program. I am also
skipping over sports and soap operas. I am writing here almost
exclusively about radio drama, adult (which is rare in all media),
juvenile, and general.
I would say the twin programs of "Escape" and "Suspense" are among
the best. Each is a half hour suspense story. "Escape" may have
the slightly higher quality stories. Some plays were even done on
both. "Escape" did a wide range of stories including classics by
Kipling and Conrad. They did classic action stories like
"Leiningen vs. the Ants" and "The Most Dangerous Game."
"Suspense" was mostly crime stories. A great story done on both is
"Three Skeleton Key" with three men trapped on an island in a
lighthouse when a derelict boat wrecks on the island bringing a
huge army of rats. As one might imagine, this play pushes the
visual imagination to the utmost.
One of the great classic programs started out as a weekly anthology
crime series with an eerie host, The Shadow. He was not unlike the
later Whistler. He also hosted stories in Shadow Magazine, a pulp.
There were no continuing characters, and the host who did not
participate in the stories. People started asking questions about
who was The Shadow. The decision was made to actually make The
Shadow a participant in the back story, a man who learned in the
Orient the trick to "clouding men's minds" so he could not be seen.
The sponsor was Blue Coal. These were the days when people would
heat their homes with coal and since all coal looks alike, the Blue
Coal people dyed their coal blue. So when you went to the basement
to shovel some coal into the furnace, you knew it was Blue Coal
because it was blue. Anyway the sponsor thought the concept of a
hero with such weird powers was a ridiculous idea that would
destroy the program. The radio producers could create a character
for the Shadow if they agreed to return to the original format just
as soon as it flopped. As it turned out "The Shadow" was
successful and Blue Coal flopped first. The same change occurred
in pulp magazines where a story host called The Shadow was turned
into a super-hero. The two were supposedly the same character, but
the magazines had wonderful garish covers and the character hid in
corners without benefit of clouding minds.
Several other super-heroes followed The Shadow including The Green
Hornet, Chandu, Superman, and Batman. As one might expect there is
only so much quality one can squeeze from a superhero plot. It is
tough to get really good adult drama from a superhero. But there
were good adult shows. Some with real literary value. "Fort
Laramie" was a very grim Western. "Gunsmoke" was also usually dark
in tone. These programs frequently had remarkably well developed
characters and realistic dialog.
For some lighter fare on a weekly basis there was Lux Radio
Theater, hosted by Cecil B. Demille who was a major film director.
Each week it started with "Lux presents Hollywood!" Then each week
they would give you a one-hour radio play that spoiled some motion
picture by giving away the plot. Tricky mysteries like LAURA would
have every twist revealed. Filmmakers apparently thought that this
was good publicity. These shows are entertaining in themselves not
infrequently, but not if you are planning to see the film. Being
fair, remember that in those days you really could give away plots
without doing damage. After a film had had its run in theaters it
was gone, very possibly forever. There was no TV to rerun movies,
no video stores. When a film was gone it was gone and some were
never seen again. Some are only getting seen on cable now.
Next week I will conclude with a discussion where you can sample
old radio yourself. [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN by J. K. Rowling
(Arthur A. Levine Books, Scholastic Press, 1999, Hardcover, $19.95,
435pp, ISBN 0-439-13635-0) (a book review by Joe Karpierz):
So, as I do every year right around this time, I get the list of
Hugo nominees, see just how much the rest of the sf world's taste
differs from mine, and plunge into furious and frantic reading,
hoping to get them all read by the time the Hugo ballot has to be
postmarked. And my mouth fell open because there on the list was
the latest Harry Potter book.
For those of you living in a cave, Harry Potter is all the rage
amongst our younger set, and is causing quite a stir in the narrow
minded adult crowd. There are some folks out there that think that
Potter ought to be banned, at least from the eyes of our younger
folks. Well, the first thing I had to do was get a copy of the
book. So where does a father go to get a copy of a Harry Potter
book? Well, his daughter, of course. In my case, my seven year
old daughter, who has already read the book.
Harry Potter is a wizard living in modern England with his aunt and
uncle, who are Muggles. Muggles are normals - people who have no
magical powers. They know Harry has powers, and they don't like
it. And he doesn't like them. He's stuck with them because Sirius
Black, an evil bad guy (is there any other kind?) killed his
parents. As the story opens, it is near the end of summer holiday,
and it's time to go back to Hogwarts, the wizarding school, where
Harry is a student.
What follows is a nice little adventure about Harry dodging Sirius
Black, our title nemesis. It seems that Sirius has escaped Azkaban
and his guards, the dementors, critters who suck all the joy and
happiness out of you until there's nothing left but a hulk. He
appears to be coming after Harry, since Harry killed the big evil
bad guy, Sirius' boss. The story involves cats, rats, owls,
hippogriffs, enchanted paintings, secret maps, hidden tunnels, and
more twists and turns than you can imagine.
Or not, actually. I see the appeal for the younger set. It's
basically a story of a school age boy and his friends (which makes
it easy for the younger readers to identify with the protagonists)
having a really neat adventure at school. And didn't we all want a
neat adventure at school when we were young. For kids, there are
wonders all over the place. For adults, who've been reading sf and
fantasy for most of their lifetimes, there's nothing new here. The
plot twists and resolutions were quite obvious, and the plot is one
we've seen a hundred times. And of course, I don't think I'm
giving anything away when I say that everything turns out okay in
the end.
Having said all that, it was fun to go back and experience a story
like that. Too often as we get older, we lose the sense of wonder
that turned us on to the genre to begin with, all those years ago.
However, also having said that it was fun, it also has no place
amongst the Hugo nominees in my opinion. Nice book, fun read, nice
escapism, but very out of place. [-jak]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the
universe.
-- Goethe