THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
12/19/03 -- Vol. 22, No. 25
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
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Topics:
Sobering Thoughts (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Answer to Last Week's Puzzle (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Discussion of AMERICAN GODS (announcement by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
Keep Your Delpros. We Had the Apex. (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
(film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE FOG OF WAR (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Acquisitions (book comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (IN THE PRESENCE OF MINE ENEMIES,
ENDER'S SHADOW, SEABISCUIT) (book comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Sobering Thoughts (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
We just passed a big event that even Evelyn and I did not notice.
The science fiction club at Bell Laboratories was founded
something like November 1978 when Evelyn and I attended a Lunacon
and decided we wanted more science fiction activity at work. The
club met every three weeks (initially every two weeks) and we
would discuss a novel. That meant a notice had to go out right
after meetings to tell people what to read for the next meeting,
and another one had to go out just before meetings. So two
notices would go out every three weeks. Almost immediately we
started including film and book reviews. Some time in 1979 or
1980 the notice went to a weekly. The MT HOLZ SCIENCE FICTION
SOCIETY is really just the continuation of that club and the MT
VOID is the continuation of that notice. The magazine you are
reading has been going for 25 years, almost all of which it has
been a weekly fanzine. That is 1300 weeks so the MT VOID has gone
to press more than 1250 times. I cannot think of any other
fanzine that has gone to 1250 issues. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Answer to Last Week's Puzzle (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
We had a lot of responses to last week's puzzle. First, the
definitions for the words given last week (alphabetized):
adapertile: easily openable
adytum: inner sanctum of a temple
agathodemon: good spirit
alcalde: mayor or magistrate (used a lot in "Zorro" movies)
apozemical: infused
aspergill: brush used to sprinkle holy water
calineries: cajoleries (pleadings)
camorra: Mafia-like secret society
cupellation: assaying gold or silver from lead in a small,
flat vessel
diapason: full range of a voice or instrument
goetic: pertaining to witchcraft
grimoire: book of magic spells
ithyphallic: having an erect penis
kakodemon: bad spirit
mephitic: bad-smelling
monophysite: referring to an early Christian heresy that Christ
has only one nature
opopanax: a fragrant plant
paludal: marshy or malarial
perllan: Welch orchard
retromingent: urinating backward
sepoy: rank of Indian soldier
subadar: rank of Indian soldier
We had nine responses.
David Shallcross is the "winner" with 10: monphysite, mephitic,
diapason, grimoire, cupellation, adytum, sepoy, camorra,
ithyphallic, and goetic.
David Goldfarb said, "I have seen before and have at least a vague
idea of the meaning of 9 of those 22 words, to wit: monophysite,
mephitic, grimoire, sepoy, ithyphallic, alcalde, aspergill,
kakodemon, and goetic. (I would think that most fantasy readers
would know 'grimoire', 'kakodemon', and 'goetic'.)" [Apparently
not people reading the fantasy published today. :-( -ecl]
Dan Ritter knew 8: grimoire, sepoy, subadar, ithyphallic,
aspergill, agathodemon, kakodemon, and goetic. Dan also said,
"Of these, I would expect grimoire and subadar to be
common knowledge, although I would spell it subhadar."
Pete Rubinstein knew 6: monphysite, grimoire, sepoy, subadar,
ithyphallic, and alcalde. He described this as, "I know a few
(very few)," which may be true, but he's still doing better than
most. He also sent definitions, and defined "ithyphallic" as "a
hard-on (in exactly what context did this show up????)." [I don't
know exactly, but the book the words were from was a book about
cats. -ecl] He also said he knew "alcalde" "from many episodes
of Zorro!" Though he concluded, "6 out of 22, my mother the
English teacher would be disappointed," I don't think so. He
added, "I'll try these on her when I next speak to her." I would
be curious to know the results.
Charlie Harris had seen 5, but said:
After deciding what I thought they might mean, I checked
dictionary.com. Disappointingly, I earn only partial credit,
at best. I came closest with paludal, for which the phrase
"paludal swamp" and a corresponding image came to mind. But
since paludal *means* swamp, that phrase would be a pleonasm.
(Nevertheless, Google does find two instances.)
Next is diapason, which I knew was an organ stop, but had no
idea what is distinctive about it or what it sounds like.
dictionary.com says "Either of the two principal stops on a
pipe organ that form the tonal basis for the entire scale of
the instrument."
I thought sepoy has something to do with people in the Asian
British colonies, but had no idea what.
I thought grimoire has something to do with wizards, but had
No idea what.
Then there were my guesses about words I've never seen:
alcalde: something Spanish (of Moorish origin), maybe a
stew.
goetic: pertaining to navigational calculations? Well,
even dictionary.com doesn't know that one: "Did you
mean geotic?"
perllan: dictionary.com doesn't know perllan either, and
it's not fair including words from foreign languages,
so I will claim partial credit for "a local area
network implemented via perl scripts".
Barbara Cormack knew 4: grimoire, adytum, aspergill, and goetic.
She added, "I think I know ithyphallic and ought to know opopanax
and some of the others. I think someone has been reading about
magic of the 'ceremonial' or Key of Solomon variety. [Actually, as
noted above, it was a book about cats. -ecl]
Peter Anspach knew 3: mephitic, grimoire, and aspergill. "And
that's it. I have seen 'adytum' and 'sepoy' before, but can't
recall what they mean. And I believe 'agatho-' pertains to the
aging process, so I could take a guess at 'agathodemon', but I've
never encountered the word before." [Actually, it's from
"agathos", meaning "good", one of the few bits of Greek I remember
from college. You're thinking af "anti-agathics"--anti-ageing
drugs--but I have no idea of the origin of that word. -ecl]
John Jetzt knew 3: sepoy, paludal, and alcalde.
Ian Gahan said, "I could manage three, grimoire, sepoy and
goetic. Was this a book by William Hope Hodgson by any chance?"
Stephen Massie wrote: "I only knew one word 'Sepoy' which is the
rank of low private in the British-Indian army. I recognised one
other word 'aspergill' (or aspergillum) but had to look it up to
check (holy water sprinkler). I figured ithyphallic had something
to do with phallic symbols used in early Greek plays but I didn't
previously know the word. All the other words I have not seen
before. Must be a result of the Scottish education system." [I
don't think so--we Americans didn't do any better, and Ian,
another Scot, got three. I think it's a function of reading books
about magic and religion. -ecl]
George MacLachlan noted, "As an exercise I cut and pasted the list
of words into my MS WORD 2000 program. It was happy with 6 of the
spellings: mephitic, diapason, cupellation, adytum, camorra, and
ithyphallic."
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Discussion of AMERICAN GODS (announcement by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
For people in the central New Jersey area, there will be a
discussion of Neil Gaiman's Hugo-winning AMERICAN GODS at 7PM on
Thursday, January 22, at the Old Bridge Public Library (Route 516
just east of Route 9). Please come join us--you don't have to be
an Old Bridge resident. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Keep Your Delpros. We Had the Apex. (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
You know, your grandchildren will look at you like you are weird
and ask you something like, "You mean you grew up before AE5s and
for connectivity there wasn't even the Internet? Most of your
life you had never even heard of Delpros? You were an adult and
Delps hadn't even been invented yet?" But you will be able to
look at them smugly because they missed the high-point. You in
your lifetime saw things go to their peak and then start sliding
backward.
Say you want to drive from New York to Boston. There was a period
when that took a long time. Then better and better roads were
made with more Interstate highways. For a while you could make
the drive in something like five hours. These days the traffic is
so bad that it takes longer each year. It is up to about seven or
eight. You have a bunch of people seduced by the philosophy that
they want taxes cut because they know how to spend their money
better than the government does. But they are not buying new
roads with their tax cuts.
There was a window of time when you could fly from Paris to Los
Angeles at supersonic speed. You needed the Concorde to do it.
And the Concorde has recently had its last flight ever. We have
lost that capability.
As a civilization we had and lost the ability to get people to the
moon. It may come back. Maybe. But it is not here now.
Remember the thrill of getting cable to escape commercials? There
isn't much left there that is commercial-free. If you just turn
on our cable box the default station drops you into an
"infomercial." And even when you are watching what is between the
ads they are putting little decals--I don't know what they are
called--over the corners of the picture with announcements of
upcoming programs, ads, and logos. They intentionally make them
as distracting as they can manage with moving parts. One I saw
had a little car drive across the bottom of the screen to announce
some automobile-related event.
You know when I was a kid you had to do a lot of ripping to open a
box of cereal. They might have a tab and a slot on the top of the
box, but frequently you destroyed the top of the box of cereal
when you tried to open it. The glue might be too strong or the
perforation did not work. As time went buy packaging improved and
was easier to open and easier to reseal. If you buy a bag of
dried fruit today you cannot only open it with your bare hands,
frequently it has a zip-lock to allow you to seal it airtight
again. Cans of soda used to require a pry, a special tool to
open. Later they came with tabs, but the tabs ripped off entirely
as a separate piece to befoul the environment. Fish would swallow
the tabs and damage themselves. Beverage cans got better, because
there was a competitive advantage to making a can that was
environmentally safe and at the same time convenient for the user.
All these are improvements. But packages have gotten too
convenient. The industry decided that to stop shoplifters they
had to make a package that was REALLY tricky to open. Forget
about customer convenience. We now get small electronics and
optical equipment in these nice plastic packages that allow the
store owner to hang the items easily on a rack. The only problem
is that when you get these plastic packages home they take you
forever to rip open. There is no instruction on how to get these
things open and they make it as tough as they can. I am darned if
I know how to open one of those packages without destroying the
package and the cardboard backing inside. Packaging is getting
harder and harder to use all for very good reasons that don't
consider customer welfare very well.
And now there is something new. One of the reasons why people
used to want to go to movies as soon as they were released is to
see a pristine print of the film. The longer a film is used, the
more times the print goes through the projector the more it gets
worn. We have all seen old prints of films with vertical lines
dancing back and forth across the screen. This means that the
film was scratched in showing or in careless rewinding. You want
to have as few visual distractions on the surface of the film like
blemishes. Many films still have a little oval show up in the
upper right corner of the frame just before the end of a reel.
They call it a "cigarette burn" because that is that is what it
looks like. This is how a projectionist knows there is a reel
change coming up and that he should be prepared to hit the pedal
to change projectors. Frequently this is not even needed these
days because the reels have been spliced into one big reel in a
horizontal platter. I am not sure if current films still have the
cigarette burns for this reason; it may no longer be needed and
the filmmakers want as little distraction as possible on the
screen. Disney Studios has been known to be the leader in the
industry in this regard, releasing absolutely beautiful prints on
expensive film stock. It has been true until recently that you
would always see a really beautiful image on a Disney print.
At least that was how things were a month ago. Now some studios
are no long as interested in making their prints look good. In
fact, now they are actually putting blemishes on films that are
intended to be noticeable. I noticed it in MASTER AND COMMANDER
and in 21 GRAMS. There are big red dots on the screen in some
scenes. They are just there for a flash, but they are irritating
and distracting. Why the big red dots? It is an anti-piracy
scheme. If that print is borrowed, transferred, and uploaded to
the Internet, when that film is downloaded those dots will show.
With these dots it will be possible to tell from the image on the
Internet from what print that binary copy was made. The scheme
was developed at Kodak something like twenty years ago with
unnoticeable dots. It is called the CAP Code scheme. But dots
like Kodak specified are not visible from an Internet copy.
Someone is taking the Kodak scheme but is no longer concerned
about not irritating the customer and is using these big Bozo dots
that are very obvious when they flash on the screen. I am all in
favor of fighting piracy. But only up to the point that I start
having their efforts damage my film-going experience.
The film industry is currently running ads with films saying that
piracy hurts their industry. They say one should only see film
from legitimate sources and that films are worth it. That is
their tagline, "Films are worth it." When I have seen the ads I
have agreed, "Darn right they are." I have never knowingly
watched a copyrighted film off the Internet. The industry has my
full support until they decide they can damage my film experience
by defacing the print they are letting me see. I hope that future
generations will not have to put up with ugly-looking films
because that is what the film industry feels it has to do to
prevent privacy.
So whatever little jim-jams are coming along, we are going to have
grown up without, but we still had the best of things, before they
went back downhill. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Peter Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS completes its cycle
with THE RETURN OF THE KING, a spectacular film of complex battles
and breath-taking scenery. This film offers a fairly decent
adaptation of the book, an engaging storyline, and high fantasy on
a level that has never been matched on the screen. I don't think
it makes sense to rate this chapter separately, though I will say
that for me it didn't disappoint. I give the entire three-chapter
story my highest grade. Rating: 10 (0 to 10), +4 (-4 to +4)
New Line Cinema gambled their future giving Peter Jackson
$300,000,000 to adapt a classic novel THE LORD OF THE RINGS to the
screen. That sounds like a lot of money, but considering the
resulting film was the length of six feature films broken into
three double-length feature films, that was not such an astounding
budget. The New Zealander had a spotty track record, and even his
best films were of selective appeal. It was a big gamble. One
has to admit that it paid off wildly successfully for New Line.
Jackson turned out a trilogy of films that deliver on most counts.
He managed to get a script that is both reasonably faithful to the
novel and at the same time is flashy enough to work on the screen
and to even have a wide appeal. I saw the third chapter with an
octogenarian and sat near a six-year-old. Both were looking
forward to seeing the film and both seemed to enjoy it. There
were a teen behind me who enjoyed the film more than I enjoyed his
kicking the seat.
The production design by Grant Major is first-rate, delivering
some astonishing visualizations of Middle Earth. All the
architecture seems fantastic, but some areas seem to borrow from
Scandinavia, some from Indian hill forts. None seems out of
place. Peculiar fauna was invented for the film and implemented
with generally very convincing digital effects. Almost everything
to look at in the film is wonderful. The acting is frequently
exciting from good actors, though casting was a little heavy on
the teen heartthrobs. But the film also has respected actors of
the caliber of Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, John Rhys-Davies, and
Bernard Hill.
This trilogy delivers its $300,000,000 directly to the screen. It
has a look that is refreshingly original, at a time when so many
films come out looking like THE MATRIX (UNDERWORLD and
EQUILIBRIUM, to give two examples). Adapting 1960s TV shows seems
to have given way to adapting Marvel Comic Books among the most
popular films. But THE LORD OF THE RINGS is a genuine original.
Most images on that screen look like nothing I have seen on the
screen before. The film repeatedly shows vitality and
imagination.
This chapter continues and completes the adventures, of course, as
Frodo (played by Elijah Wood) wends his way to Mordor, the darkest
and most evil place in Middle Earth. He is accompanied by the
loyal Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) and the treacherous Gollum (a
superb blend of ones and zeros, voiced by Andy Serkis). Much more
than in previous chapters this is Gollum's film, with a lot of
screen time and more coverage of his strange schizophrenic inner
conflict. Gollum is a real character with depth. While they head
into Mordor to face its Orcs and monsters, most of the rest of the
characters move toward the mammoth battle for Minas Tirith.
Through the use of CGI, Peter Jackson provides us with what is
probably the most spectacular battle every put on the screen.
This conflict has catapults, dragons, elephants (or the local
equivalent), corsair ships, archers, Orcs, ghost armies, and a
cast of tens of thousands, even if most are digital. This is not
the battle you imagined when you read the book. This is the
battle you wish you could have imagined when you read the book.
For once the filmmaker is leading the imagination, not roughly and
crudely approximating it with clunky images. The only place that
the script really fails is at the very end when Jackson seems
unwilling to let the story go.
I will not give this individual film a rating since it does not
stand by itself. It is the final third of a very long film. In
spite of the narrative occasionally being a bit dry, I give the
entire THE LORD OF THE RINGS a 10 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +4 on
the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE FOG OF WAR (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4)
There are not many filmmakers famous for documentaries. There is
Ken Burns, Michael Moore, and perhaps third place goes to Errol
Morris. Though his name is not a byword, he has made the notable
documentaries THE THIN BLUE LINE; A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME; FAST,
CHEAP, & OUT OF CONTROL, and MR. DEATH. Inspired by reading the
memoirs of Robert S. McNamara he made THE FOG OF WAR. McNamara
was the Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968. In this film
McNamara offers opinions about American foreign policy from the
Second World War to the present, but especially during his term as
Secretary of State.
Considered historically a hawk, McNamara' version of the events
casts a very different picture. He is very conflicted about the
policy toward Cuba and Vietnam during his term. He was reluctant
to take the office of Secretary of Defense and his personal
philosophy was one of restraining the executive, a position born
out by quotes from actual recordings of telephone conversations.
The film gives particular insight on McNamara's attitude toward
American policy in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War.
McNamara boils the lessons of his experience to eleven points.
-- Empathize with your enemy
-- Rationality will not save us
-- There is something beyond ones self
-- Maximize efficiency
-- Proportionality should be a measure in war
-- Get the data
-- Belief and seeing are both often wrong
-- Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning
-- In order to do good you may have to engage in evil
-- Never say never
-- You cannot change human nature
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Acquisitions (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Normally, spring and summer are book sale season, and I said a few
weeks ago I had added 48 books to my "to-read" stack at a
warehouse sale, but that I was probably set until next year--or at
least until next March and the big Bryn Mawr used book sale in
Princeton and the East Brunswick library sale.
Well, I was wrong. Oh, I suppose I was set in the sense that I
had enough to last me, but that didn't count for much when the
nearest used book store decided to go out of business (or rather,
to scale back and go Internet-only). Given that I had a store
credit there, I sort of had to get books. But it was almost the
same situation as trying to spend the last few dollars of Czech
currency on candy before leaving--everything was so cheap I had to
buy an entire carton to use up less than $20 in credit. (It could
have been worse--I think the final day was going to be $1 a box!)
One consolation was that I only added 24 books this time (or 7000
pages, versus 9500 pages last time).
So what did I get? There were eight John Dickson Carr mysteries I
hadn't read, along with eight mystery anthologies. I also got
three first-person Civil War accounts (Henry Kyd Douglas's I RODE
WITH STONEWALL, J. H. Kidd's A CAVALRYMAN WITH CUSTER, and Colonel
John S. Mosby's memoirs, GRAY GHOST), as well as an omnibus of
Bruce Catton's three volumes on the Civil War. Add to these a few
philosophy books and that's about it.
We also picked up some books I didn't add to my reading stack (so
they weren't counted above): L. Ron Hubbard's BUCKSKIN BRIGADES, a
rare R. A. Lafferty, and four hard-to-find John Wyndham books.
(The latter two descriptions are actually redundant--in the United
States, pretty much all Lafferty is rare, and pretty much all John
Wyndham books are hard to find.)
Now as long as no other bookstores have going-out-of-business
sales, and I don't drive by just as someone is putting boxes of
rare books out to be recycled or something, I should be all set.
Except that last time I was at the library, I checked out four
books--because, I suppose, I hadn't a thing to read. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The main book I read was Harry Turtledove's IN THE PRESENCE OF
MINE ENEMIES, an alternate history expanded from the short story
of the same name, set in a 2003 in which Germany has won World War
II. The plot revolves around a group of Jews who have survived as
"secret Jews" (in much the same way as the Marranos survived in
Spain in the 16th century). The premise was laid out in the short
story, and the book takes it and then adds a couple of situations
where the Jews might be caught, as well as a major change in
government. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be copied for
history a little too closely. For that matter, so is Fuhrer "Kurt
Haldweim", who is almost always referred to by his full name to
keep reminding you who he's supposed to be, while other people are
often referred to by last name only. (I'll note that a Google
search indicates that "Haldweim" is completely made up--no such
name appears to exist for anyone.) This tendency towards word
play has lured Turtledove into having one character refer to
another character's statement about having "a yen for sushi" as a
pun--when both are talking in German. I also thought that the
level of technology was not sufficiently explained--much of it
paralleled ours, but ours was developed as part of the Cold War.
I guess my main problem with this book, though, was the obvious
re-tooling of recent political events. I know history repeats
itself, but this I thought was over-doing it a bit. It's the sort
of book that if you have an interest in alternate history or
Jewish science fiction (or both), you will want to read it, but
it's not clear it would have the wider appeal of, say, Robert
Harris's FATHERLAND or Stephen Fry's MAKING HISTORY.
My library science fiction discussion group read Orson Scott
Card's ENDER'S SHADOW, a parallel book to ENDER'S GAME. Though
people say it stands alone, I'm not convinced of that. (I read
ENDER'S GAME years ago, so I can't completely judge.) The
"general" discussion group read Laura Hillenbrand's SEABISCUIT,
which I found almost impossible to read. I don't know if it was
the style, or the fact that I don't know much about horse racing
and got lost by technical terms, but I found that as soon as
Hillenbrand started describing the actual racing, I got lost. The
fact that I had seen the movie also meant that I kept overlaying
that, including its actors, characterizations, etc., onto the
book. Conclusion: always read the book *before* seeing the movie.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments,
you must always come back to the pleasant
fact that there are only ten of them.
-- H. L. Mencken
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