THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/14/03 -- Vol. 21, No. 37
Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
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Topics:
Violence Against Equality (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
SHADOW PUPPETS (book review by Joe Karpierz)
TOGETHER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (THE TURK: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF
THE FAMOUS EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHESS-PLAYING
MACHINE and CRIMSON SKIES) (book comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Violence Against Equality (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The Wall Street Journal pointed out this except from an
editorial by Colbert King:
"Guess how many reports of violence against women were made to
the D.C. police in 2000. I'm talking about domestic violence,
sexual assaults, desperate calls for civil protection orders.
Ready? More than 22,500. That's right. Violence against women
made up about 50 percent of all reported violent crimes to the
D.C. police in that year. If those numbers take your breath
away, they should."
Wow! Any violence is bad, but I never realized that only half
the violence in crime is against men and half is against women.
I guess that's pretty bad. In the ideal and fair gender-blind
society a much higher proportion of the violence should be
against men, right? Isn't that the assumption? Isn't that
reasonable?
The truth is that I have always had mixed feelings about the
attention that "violence against women" gets. Yes, it is a
problem. Nobody disagrees there. If we could end it we should.
Any violence against any member of our society is a serious
problem. Why do we focus so much on "violence against women" in
particular? Still can't see why that bothers me? Let me put it
this way. What if the FBI was to make a big thing each year?
Every January 15 they would make a major statistical
announcement. What are the figures for the previous year of
(gasp!) Violence Against White People? Everybody waits with
their hearts in their throats. Have white folks been more or
less victimized? Overall were white people safer or less safe
than they were the previous year? Hey, the number of crimes of
violence was up. But the white population was also up. Per
capita white people were actually safer than the year before.
All right!!! Everybody heaves a sigh of relief and goes back
about their business. The country is safe for white people.
I think people would be bothered about all this fuss being made
about one race over all the others. Certainly violence against
people is bad no matter what race they are. The same should
probably be true of gender. We would hardly want a special
Violence Against White People Office funded by the tax dollars.
Look up the phrase "violence against women" in the Google Search
Engine and you find 458,000 links devoted to this admittedly
very serious problem. Look up the phrase "violence against men"
and you find 3,290. That is a ratio of better than 139 to 1.
That should tell you how much more attention violence against
women gets. Pretty much the first site you find is the United
States Department of Justice's Violence Against Women Office.
(There is no such thing as a special Violence Against Men Office.)
Domestic violence against either gender is a serious problem,
but this office does not find domestic violence within its
purview, unless the victim is a woman. I think that a woman
need not use this office and can use the name legal channels a
man would if she has been victimized, but she has this office as
an additional option a man does not because, well, she is a
woman. The very name of the office is evidence of sexism in the
system.
Inherent in all this is the assumption that women are both weak,
frail little things needing exceptional protection and they are
special. It says that while violence against the innocent may
be bad, that evil is compounded if the victim is a woman.
(Considering that less attention and tracking is necessary,
perhaps we should even offer a punishment discount if criminals
have harmed only males.)
Now you would think that women's equality organizations would be
really irritated by this patronizing treatment by the
government. It is after all a serious impediment to equal
treatment of both genders under the law. To the contrary the
National Organization for Women, for example, LOVES it. They
don't want to see it go away. They have at their web site the
following warning dated March 5, 2003. "Ashcroft Is Downgrading
the Office on Violence Against Women. Ask Your Senators and
House Member to Oppose This Action! Please take a few minutes
to help keep the issue of ENDING violence against women at the
top of our nation's policy agenda. This week we need to speak
out against Attorney General John Ashcroft's efforts to weaken
the status and the mission of the Office on Violence Against
Women." See .
The fact that women's equality groups acquiesce to and even
encourage special attention to be given to crimes in which women
are the victims is very indicative of just how serious they are
about equality. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SHADOW PUPPETS by Orson Scott Card (TOR, Copyright 2002,
ISBN 0-765-30017-6, Science Fiction Book Club Edition) (book
review by Joe Karpierz)
In my review of the previous book in this series, SHADOW OF THE
HEGEMON, I wrote the following (oh, by the way, I started out
the review in much the same manner, so you can guess what's
coming):
This is a military novel, a political novel, a novel about
diplomacy. Which, I suppose, is all well and good if that's
what you're interested in and looking for.
Well, guess what? We get more of the same. Which kind of makes
me wonder where Card is going with this series. The other thing
I wrote in the last review was that ENDER'S SHADOW, the first
book in the series, was only good because it told the same story
as Ender's Game from a different point of view, and that the
second book was boring. The good news is that this book
certainly isn't as boring, and while it's still not as good as
the first one, it's much better than the second one.
However, as I said in the last paragraph, but put in a slightly
different fashion, I want to know What He's Trying to Say, Why
He's Trying to Say It, and Why Should I Care? I don't know how
many more books he's planning to write in this series that
started off to be three books (although I *think* I read in an
interview in Locus that he's now up to five), but this certainly
seems like a transition, second-book-in-the-trilogy kind of
thing.
Our story begins with the release of Achilles de Flandres from
Chinese control by the Hegemon Peter Wiggin, brother of Ender.
Peter thinks he can control Achilles and use him for his own
purposes. Bean and Petra leave the Hegemon forces at the
beginning of the novel after Bean is not allowed to go on the
"rescue" mission and they find out what Peter is planning.
Peter takes Achilles into the Hegemon compound and gives him
power and authority. Peter eventually has to be rescued by his
parents - and resents every minute of it, even though he knows
they're right.
Bean and Petra go off on their own. Without going into too many
details, reluctantly Bean comes to realize that he loves Petra
(after she figuratively hits him over the head with the notion
that she loves him and wants to bear his children), and marries
her. He is, of course, reluctant to have children because he
has Anton's Key, which is what made him what he is and will kill
him by the time he's thirty or so. This sets off a set of
events in which Petra is implanted with one of several embryos
"tested" negatively for Anton's Key (I'll let you read about
that) so that the child will live a full life, unlike Bean.
Then there's the brewing war involving China, India, Thailand,
etc. - that whole thing out there that makes me wonder what Card
is trying to say. Oh, I know that the war is the result of all
the nations trying to exert independence after having to band
together for the Formic Wars, and we all know that Asia and the
Middle East are volatile, but why did he choose there. Well,
yes, there's a new Caliph now (you can read about that too), so
he needs to work that in, but by his own admission this was
difficult because of the current tensions in that region. He
needed to "get it right".
All in all, there is much resolved, and much left hanging. Some
of the resolution seemed a little too contrived for me, as if
Card had to finish the book in a certain number of pages. And
one of the particular resolutions, while in my opinion a nice
one to have done, leaves me wondering where the conflict will
come from in the next book.
As I said, I liked the book better than the previous one, but to
me, the series is in danger of ending up like Card's
"Homecoming" series - five books about nothing.
As a side bar, this means I've actually liked two books now that
are in Locus's recommended reading list for 2002 - this one and
Brin's KILN PEOPLE. The world is coming to and end. :-) [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: TOGETHER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: China brings us a very personal story of a young violin
virtuoso who goes from his village to Beijing to make the most
of his art. Much of the story concentrates on his father, an
honored chef at home who takes a job as a restaurant delivery
boy in Beijing to be near the son he so loves. The music is
great, the story is great, and the film is just excellent in all
regards. Rating: 8 (0 to 10), low +3 (-4 to +4).
One of the surprises of the Toronto Fest this year was the world
public premiere of the latest film by Chen Kaige, HE NI ZAI YI
QI (TOGETHER or I AM WITH YOU). Kaige is known for previous
films TEMPTRESS MOON, FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE, and the underrated
THE EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN. These do not make him a director
from whom we would expect so personal and poignant a film, but
TOGETHER is consistently surprising.
Based on a true story, it is the narrative of the close father-
son relationship between thirteen-year-old violin prodigy
Xiaochun (Tang Yun) and his father Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi). Liu
is a popular and successful chef, but his dream is that his son
will become a great and famous violinist. Liu decides to take
Xiaochun to Beijing for a national music competition and to stay
there to further his son's career. The chef takes a job as a
restaurant delivery body to support his son in Beijing.
Xiaochun takes only fifth place at the competition, but finds a
teacher who knows he deserved better and who wants to take him
on. Xiaochun has several close and engaging relationships: with
his father, with his teacher, and with his attractive neighbor
Lily. (Chen Hong, Chen Kaige's wife who also produced the film.)
Lily at first looks down on Xiaochun and later sees him as a
valuable friend. Lily is really the first woman that Xiaochun
has known well. He never knew his mother and was brought up by
his father. Just as his father enriches Xiaochun's life, the
boy enriches the lives of his teacher and of his neighbor.
Throughout runs the theme of what is the proper use of talent.
However in China there films have a much greater message of the
individual's responsibility to society and so Chen's take is
perhaps a little different than it would be in a Western film.
There are, perhaps, unintended messages in this film for a
Western audience. We see Lily's apartment. By the film's
dialog she supposedly lives fairly well, but the apartment walls
are just ugly poured concrete with rough edges. Xiaochun has
two teachers in the course of the film. One lives in squalor;
the other, somewhat more mercenary, lives in opulence. That
affluent teacher, incidentally, is played by director Chen
Kaige. The message of over-commercialization of great music is
a comment on negative influences of Western society.
Throughout the film we hear the beautiful music that Xiaochun,
his teachers, and others play. The Chinese seem to have taken
to Western classical music much more than the West has taken to
Eastern music. For many the orchestration will be a real
drawing card, much as it was with the films SHINE and HILARY AND
JACKIE. TOGETHER is a very unusual Chinese film. It has been
picked up for distribution by MGM and is scheduled for May
release. I rate TOGETHER an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +3
on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I've finished both Christopher Priest's THE SEPARATION and
Elizabeth Moon's THE SPEED OF DARK, but want to devote full
reviews to them. So what else have I read?
Well, there's THE TURK: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FAMOUS
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHESS-PLAYING MACHINE by Tom Standage, which is
the story of "The Turk," the famous . . . . Standage doesn't
reveal the secret of "The Turk" until almost the end of the book,
but I suspect most readers will either be familiar with it, or
guess the secret. What's interesting is the career of "The Turk,"
including playing against Napoleon at one point.
As part of my alternate history reading I read CRIMSON SKIES, a
tie-in to the game. It's three novellas (or perhaps novelettes)
rather than a single novel, and the first and third stories are
at least entertaining, if not great literature. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the
blood of the martyr.
-- Muhammad
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