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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 2/2/01 -- Vol. 19, No. 31
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@avaya.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@avaya.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@avaya.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 was discussing Phillip J. Longman's article "The
Slowing Pace of Progress." A copy is available at
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/001225/change.htm. While I
found fault with some of his arguments, I had to agree with his
conclusions that the rate of progress could well be slowing down.
In some ways the future is slipping through our fingers. One thing
that is causing this is the sad fact that we are no longer funding
science the way we once did. More and more money has been cut back
from the National Science Foundation. NASA is on a very tight
budget. And engineers are not paid well either. In the 1950s,
engineering was a respected job that paid well. In the second half
of this century salaries for engineering have not kept pace with
the economy. Productivity has increased in engineering but that
has only meant we could get by with fewer engineers. Professions
like law and medicine have paced the economy much closer. We are
not investing in our future as much as we used to do.
Longman points out that our lifestyles are not changing as fast as
they once did. He says we have nice tools now like the Personal
Digital Assistant--e.g., the Palm Pilot. That makes things easier,
he points out but it does not actually alter the human condition.
The lightbulb had a much greater effect on the human condition. It
meant that people could make use of more of the day. Evening hours
no longer had to be so sedentary a time of day. The electrical
motor and the gasoline engine had profound impacts on our life
style. Actually I am one of the few people I know who feels that
his Personal Digital Assistant really did alter the character of my
life, but few people use it to the degree that I do. And I will
concede that the engines, motors, and lightbulbs have a much
greater effect. Computers have done a lot more to revolutionize
business than they have to home life.
The implications are that society may in fact be slowing down. We
see a younger generation that is highly computer literate and to
our older eyes that looks like progress coming hard and fast. But
simply using the tools really does not bring progress. The
question is whether or not they are innovative. It is the rate of
innovation that brings progress and not simply the ability to
comprehend the current tools. And certainly there will be some who
are innovative, but it is not really clear that the rate of
innovation is not dying off. When the younger generation gets
their hands on a computer are they reconfiguring it to make it
faster or are they just playing Tomb Raider?
Part of what is happening may be that we are becoming a little too
fearful of the costs of progress. I am not talking about money but
about lives. When our country expanded into the West, it was not
unusual to lose a dozen people to poor planning, perhaps
starvation, perhaps being killed by Indians. And the spread
continued. How long was the spread into space derailed by the loss
of the seven Challenger astronauts? We should not squander lives
carelessly in the pursuit of progress, but we have to learn to
accept that some lives may be nobly lost. How many people were
lost to smoking or to drunken drivers that same year? And what do
we have to show for that?
If we become a society that lives well off of the progress made by
earlier generations, we will simply stagnate or worse we will begin
to fall backward. My fear is that that will happen and we will
just sit here on Earth using up resources until there are no more.
I think I would rather see the human race go with a bang from a
technological disaster than from a whimper death like that. [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. L'ATLANTIDE (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
This 1961 film seems to appear in the United States most frequently
under the title JOURNEY BENEATH THE DESERT. It is based on Pierre
Benoit's 1920 novel ATLANTIDA. That novel is heavily derivative of
H. Rider Haggard's SHE. Both books had multiple silent adaptations
and each was adapted into a film in the 1960s. (SHE was adapted
also once in the 1930s.) Each is about a lost civilization found
in Africa and ruled over by a beautiful but evil female tyrant. In
this film three men crash a helicopter in the Sahara only to find
that caverns underground hide the lost civilization of Atlantis.
This desert was once under water and Atlantis was then an island,
but the ocean receded and sands covered the city. Antinea, the
evil queen of Atlantis, holds the men prisoner. They are desperate
to escape knowing that the desert above their heads will soon be
used for a nuclear test that will obliterate the lost city.
The Italian/French production of L'ATLANTIDE was directed by
classic director Edgar G. Ulmer who earlier directed films like THE
BLACK CAT and DETOUR. Nearly every aspect of this film falls short
of its potential. The inexpensive sets are small and lack
imagination. One unimaginative set just has a curtain as a
background and a vase in the foreground. The musical score is weak
and creates little emotion in the viewer. The model work is poor
and frequently obvious. The men's costumes are unimaginative robes
and the women's are just skimpy. The acting is of the quality of
that of a Machiste muscle man movie. The dialog in the dubbed
English version is at best uninspired and occasionally overripe.
All of these factors make it hard to meet this film halfway. A
film like this needs to grip the imagination but this one never
quite achieves a feel of H. Rider Haggard it desperately requires.
This rates a 4 on the 0 to 10 and a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
3. MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
This film has been one I had been curious about for decades. I
finally sprang for a copy from Sinister Cinema. It is a French-
Italian production though it takes place near Amsterdam. A writer
comes to a small town to write an article on what the locals call
"the Mill of the Stone Women." It is no longer a functioning mill.
The inside has been turned into a clockwork display with moving
stone statues of women in sadistically macabre poses. The writer
becomes entranced with the owner's beautiful but fatally ill
daughter. The story is slow-paced but atmospheric. Many of the
visual images are striking and make good use of images of stone
statuary. The acting is not engaging and is further hampered by
poor dubbing. The twisted interior of the mill recalls the
expressionism of early German and American horror films. MILL OF
THE STONE WOMEN, Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY, and Roger Corman's
HOUSE OF USHER are stylistically similar though all were made in
1960. The setting is unusual but the plot when one finds out what
is going on is one very commonly used in 1960s horror films from
Europe. There are some decent touches, but not enough to put this
film on anybody's must see list. I rate it a 5 on the 0 to 10
scale and a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@avaya.com
There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
-- E. L. Kersten