THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/23/04 -- Vol. 22, No. 30
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:
The Passion (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Dictionaries (letter of comment by John Sloan)
Donald Westlake (letter of comment by Richard Horton)
IVAN VASILIEVICH MENYAET PROFESSIYU (IVAN VASSILOVICH
CHANGED OCCUPATIONS) (film review by
Mark R. Leeper)
REVELATION SPACE, by Alastair Reynolds (book review by
Joe Karpierz)
ROSENSTRASSE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (THE BOOK GROUP BOOK and A CONSPIRACY
OF PAPER) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Passion (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In the news I see that the Pope has seen Mel Gibson's movie THE
PASSION OF THE CHRIST and says that he was very moved by the film.
The film is the story of the last twelve hours of the life of
Jesus. The film, scheduled to be released this February, has
become very controversial because it portrays Jewish authorities
as being responsible to some extent for the death of Jesus at the
end. (Well, I said it was the last hours of his life so that is
not really a spoiler). Jews are somewhat nervous about the film
in these days of rising anti-Jewish hatreds in Europe, the Middle
East, and even in the United States. On the other hand, many
Christians see nothing wrong with the film as long as it is
accurate to the New Testament. If this is what is in the story as
told in every Christian Bible, what could be wrong with bringing
that story accurately to the screen?
There is then a question of accuracy of the film that Gibson is
making. Is THE PASSION faithful to the Gospels of the New
Testament or is it an anti-Jewish slander? What nobody wants to
say about it seems to be that it really could be both. Religions
of The Book (that is, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are just
that. They are based on texts. The texts were written at a time
when the religions were being founded. And if they took the point
of view that all religions were equally valid and good, then they
would not be very effective as texts to attract people to a new
religion. To be effective they really have to say our beliefs are
good and other people's beliefs are bad. The Old Testament, the
New Testament, and the Koran each is negative on the competing
religions that were around at the time the texts were written.
The Old Testament is negative on tribal religions of its time.
The New Testament gives reasons that followers of its teachings
are better than other religions of the time including Jews. The
Koran is negative on both Jews and Christians.
If one is to accurately tell a single story that is based on the
four Gospels, then it will to some extent be negative on the Jews
since John is negative on Jews. In addition it still is an
impossible task because the four Gospels are inconsistent. If one
takes a naturalistic view of the New Testament, that is not
surprising. Mark's was the earliest of the four Gospels and it is
thought to have been written about A.D. 70. The other three were
written decades later. There is, of course, a great deal of
controversy on this point, but most scholars date Mark to about
A.D. 70, Matthew and Luke each about A.D. 85 or 90, and John was
written about A.D. 100. Dating the texts is a difficult matter
and is based mostly on the writing in the Gospels and knowledge of
what other texts seem to have been contemporary. It is then no
great surprise, at least from the naturalistic point of view, that
the four Gospels are inconsistent. In fact, no two of the Gospels
are consistent. For example, no two are in agreement as to what
was written on the Cross. Still, it should be possible for Gibson
to make a single version that is at least largely consistent with
each of the Gospels. But in order to do that, they have to be
consistent with the negative attitudes of John. John, like the
later Martin Luther and the later Mohammed was probably not happy
that Jews did not accept his view of religion and happily convert.
There actually was a great deal of bad feeling among the religious
sects of the time. John's enmity for the Jews shows in his
writing. Gibson's dramatization could have moderated this
attitude with the acting, much as a good actor playing Shylock in
"The Merchant of Venice" can make the character more positive than
Shakespeare probably intended. But a really accurate version of
"The Merchant of Venice" or a really accurate version of an
amalgamation of the four Gospels would have some unavoidably anti-
Jewish sentiments. And modifying the original text's intentions,
for obvious reasons, is not really what Gibson wanted to do in any
case.
I think Jews are not talking about the fact that the Gospel of
John has these anti-Jewish sentiments because it is essentially
asking Christians to choose between a literal acceptance of the
Gospel and political correctness. You do not want to tell someone
that his holy book teaches hatred. The probable reaction is that
if that is the case, then God endorses those hatreds and they are
hence acceptable. Ask Mel Gibson to choose between pleasing the
Jews and accuracy to the Gospels, he will probably choose the
Gospels. Ironically, this means that critics who have seen the
film (and probably some who have not) tell Gibson that it is his
adaptation that is at fault and not the source material. The
source material everybody in polite society agrees is beyond
reproach.
It should be noted that Gibson actually does have inaccuracies in
the film. They are not questions of an inaccurate interpretation
of the New Testament. They are historical inaccuracies. Gibson
has the Romans speaking Latin, which he then subtitles into
English. It turns out that they would probably have been speaking
Greek in Judea at that time. That would have been the language
everyone would use for official business, the one language nearly
everybody knew and had in common. This is not a deviation from
the text of the Bible, it is a historical error. It is also one
that is very hard to go back and fix without great expense.
So what should Gibson do about his film, in my opinion? It does
not really matter what I think. Gibson will probably assume that
God is on the side of getting out the message of the New
Testament. To a true believer what God wants is by definition
good. He is only reproducing the same message that the Gideons
put in every hotel room in the United States. It is not like the
content of the New Testament has been a secret to this point and
he is going to reveal it to the world. The fear is that he is
presenting it in a new medium that makes it more accessible to
greater numbers of people. If making the message of Christians
available to people causes suffering, I do not think it is Gibson
who is at fault. A belief system should be measured by the effect
it has on the people who accept it. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Dictionaries (letter of comment by John Sloan)
[In response to Evelyn's observation about bi-lingual dictionaries
last week]
I wonder why they don't make language dictionaries with the second
half printed so that it reads from its own "front" cover upside
down and reversed relative to the first half, like the old pulp
doubles.
Back in 1995 I learned the limitations of language dictionaries
while spending a month in the P.R. of China. It was very
difficult to look up Chinese iconography in a Chinese-English
dictionary, the Chinese portion of which was indexed by the number
and direction of strokes. There was enough subtle variation in
the different font styles that I was never sure that I had gotten
it right except from clues in the context. Pronounciation was
even more problematic. Apparently this is true for native
speakers as well. I witnessed the common act two people having a
conversation in Chinese while tracing icons on their left palm
with their right forefinger to eliminate ambiguity in what they
were saying, something I had read about but was surprised to see
in practice. I hadn't realized how frustrating this all was until
homeward bound I connected through San Francisco and felt tears
welling up in my eyes because I could read the signs in gift shops
in the airport. [-js]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Donald Westlake (letter of comment by Richard Horton)
[Posted to Usenet in response to Evelyn's comments about Donald
Westlake's science fiction last week]
One point about "Donald Westlake's science fiction". He was a
regular contributor to the SF magazines, from fairly low-profile
magazines like the "Original Science Fiction Stories" all the way
to "Astounding", in the late 50s and early 60s. The stories he has
on his web page are, as you note, from "Playboy" in the 80s --
worthwhile stuff, I'm sure, and certainly SF, but from a different
Donald Westlake, in a manner of speaking, than, the "original" SF
writer version of Westlake.
(Westlake published a collection, TOMORROW'S CRIMES, that
included at least some of his early SF stories.)
Speaking as a huge fan of Westlake, I will say that he is a much
better mystery writer than SF writer. [-rh]
===================================================================
TOPIC: IVAN VASILIEVICH MENYAET PROFESSIYU (IVAN VASSILOVICH
CHANGED OCCUPATIONS) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is an enjoyable light musical comedy from the Soviet
Union in which Tsar Ivan the Terrible is transported to the
present in exchange for a lookalike namesake who finds he must
substitute for the real Tsar Ivan. The style is reminiscent of
1960s "mod" comedies.
If you are puzzling over that title, any Russian would know that
Ivan Vasilievich was the 16th century Tsar better known as Ivan
the Terrible. This 1971 film seems to have several different
titles in this country including IVAN VASILIEVICH: BACK TO THE
FUTURE. This is a comedy that in Russia has the stature that
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL enjoys in the United States.
Reportedly, fans memorize lines and use them in daily
conversation. This film is essentially a science fiction comedy
(and perhaps it could even be called a musical comedy). This in
spite of the serious disclaimer at the beginning "Non-science
fictional... not entirely realistic... and not exactly historical
film." The film is directed by Leonid Gaiday, who co-authored the
script with Vladlen Bakhnov. It is based on the play "Ivan
Vasilievich" by Mikhail Bulgakov. If the name Bulgakov is not
familiar, it might have been more so in the early 1970s. Back
about that time Grove Press published two of his satirical novels,
THE MASTER AND MARGARITA and THE HEART OF A DOG. The former is
one of those books I have for years meant to read. I did read
HEART OF A DOG, a delightful short novel about a dog who is turned
into a human and become a bureaucrat. IVAN VASILIEVICH is loosely
based on one of his plays.
Engineer Alexander Shurik (played by Aleksandr Demyanenko) builds
a cosmically and comically complex time machine in the living room
of his apartment. It is ready to use on the same day that his
girl friend announces she is leaving him for another man. Shurik
discovers he can use the time machine to see through walls into
his neighbor's apartment just at the moment the apartment is being
burgled. He ends up demonstrating his time machine to the thief
and to the manager of his apartment building. By an odd
coincidence of fate, the manager is named for Ivan the Terrible is
nearly a double for the historical Tsar. Shurik opens a portal to
Tsar Ivan's palace. Through a mishap the thief and the apartment
manager are left stranded in Ivan's palace while the real Ivan is
trapped in 1971 Moscow.
We have two modern people in the Tsar's palace trying to bluff
that they are the Tsar and one of his assistants at the same time
(four centuries apart) that Tsar Ivan is trying to figure out the
20th Century. The comedy style is very much one of the 1970s with
chases and other humorous sequences done with under-cranked
camera, much in a 1960s mod style. Other places there are comic
jokes and humorous allusions to the Serge Eisenstein film IVAN THE
TERRIBLE, Parts 1 & 2. For example, there will be use of costumes
and choral music reminiscent of the earlier films. The DVD even
includes a trailer from IVAN THE TERRIBLE for comparison's sake.
Normally I rate the films that I review, however, there is no fair
way to rate a dialogue-driven comedy film made in another
language. The value of the humor is heavily based on the quality
of the translation and in some cases just pure chance. A funny
line in one language may not have an equally funny translation
into another language. It is difficult to judge how funny this
comedy was in its original language, though it is reputed to be
quite funny. In addition, there are some jokes that assume that
the viewer knows something about Russian culture. At one point
Ivan is fascinated by a painting that a Russian would recognize as
"Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan: November 16, 1581" by Ilya
Efimovich Repin. This is an enjoyable film, but it would probably
be better within Russian culture.
In spite of this film's apparent popularity in Russia, it has
apparently not been seen with English subtitles in the United
States until recently. It is available from the Russian Cinema
Council (http://www.ruscico.com/detail_eng.php?link=157). I saw
this film through the generosity of a friend. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: REVELATION SPACE by Alastair Reynolds (copyright 2000,
Gollancz Science Fiction, ISBN 1-85798-748-9, 545pp., C$11.99
paperback) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
If there's one thing you folks ought to know about me by now, it's
that I like stories with Cosmic Things happening, with Big Ideas,
and with a (huge) sense of wonder (although these days at my age
and unemployed, any kind of wonder at all is pretty good). So
yes, I admit it, I like old-fashioned space opera. So, I was
intrigued when, a few months back (well, before Torcon 3 now that
I think about it), Locus magazine focused on "the new space
opera". Well, as with any Locus article about a literary trend,
it went on and on ad nauseum about what defined the new space
opera. One interesting fact was that it is being led by the
Brits, and that one of the new shining stars from Britain was
Alastair Reynolds, and that he wrote this book called REVELATION
SPACE.
So, while up at Torcon 3, I bought REVELATION SPACE, and its
companion volumes CHASM CITY and REVELATION ARK. After reading
REVELATION SPACE, I look forward to reading those two volumes.
This book is pretty darned big in scope, with some pretty huge
ideas. And while the story itself spans roughly sixteen years,
the scope of the story is more like a billion. Back in the day,
there was something called the Dawn War, and after it was over,
the nominal victors decided that in order to prevent something
that nasty from ever happening again, they would crush any rising
intelligent species so that they would die out--genocide. They
were called, logically enough, the Inhibitors. Our story deals
with whatever happened to the Amarantin - they've disappeared, and
Dan Sylveste is researching and investigating why. Of course, he
doesn't know about the Inhibitors yet, but he does eventually find
out about the Banished, the Shrouders, the Pattern Jugglers, and
. . . well, you get the idea--all mysterious, unknown groups of
entities that play a major part in the story.
Well, it turns out that the Banished were once Amarantin. The
Shrouders are a group that hides itself in an area of warped and
twisted space-time that causes the normal human mind to go bonkers
*unless* that mind is altered by the Pattern Jugglers, who once
encountered the Shrouders.
And where would a story like this be without the obligatory "alien
artifact"--but I'm not sure whether it's Hades the neutron star or
the thing the derelict spacecraft Cerberus holds. The Cerberus
was the spacecraft that once counted one of Sylveste's wives as
one of its crew. Sylveste also managed to leave behind one of his
fellow crewmates outside one of the Shrouds, sending her to her
death.
But oh, the plot thickens, as Sylveste is driven to find out
what's around Hades, and he is opposed by a woman named Khouri who
is recruited by "the Mademoiselle", who wants Sylveste dead for
some reason (which we do find out about as the novel unfolds).
There are many more plot devices and twists and characters that
the reader encounters, not all of which eventually are explained
away. Just who is the mysterious "Captain", and what part does he
play in all of this, aside from the obvious--well, we think it's
obvious at the end, anyway.
I really liked this book. The only problem I had with it is the
usual--why does it need to take over 500 pages to tell this story?
The setup is long, and sometimes is tedious, but there is the
payoff at the end. When Reynolds finally gets to resolving the
whole thing, it moves much faster than the rest of the book. Some
judicious editing, in my opinion, could have told the same story
in a tighter fashion.
Nonetheless, it's a good one. I highly recommend it. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: ROSENSTRASSE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Rating: +3 (-4 to +4)
ROSENSTRASSE dramatizes for the first time a little known incident
from the Holocaust. In the cold of the winter of 1943 German Jews
who had married Aryan women were arrested and put in a detention
center, formerly a Jewish community center, preparatory to being
transported east to concentration camps and death. Just outside
on the street many brave wives gathered to wait for some sign of
their husbands. Pleading for release and expecting no more than
one last look at their husbands, they gathered in the street.
There could be no similar protest by Aryan husbands of Jewish
wives since they would have been drafted for the military. But
women were not drafted so these women could gather in their street
for their vigil.
The story, told in German and English, begins in modern New York
where Ruth, a Jewish survivor is mourning the death her husband.
When her thirty-three-year-old daughter Hannah sees a woman she
does not recognize at the funeral, she investigates and finds that
she is a cousin who gives Hannah new information about how her
mother survived the Holocaust. Her mother had hidden her identity
and religion and had been "adopted" by an Aryan woman whose Jewish
husband had been arrested as part of the Rosenstrasse round-up.
Under the guise of collecting information for a book, Hannah goes
to Germany to interview her mother's protector. There she learns
the story of the Rosenstrasse incident.
Director and co-writer Margarethe von Trotta has acted in films by
Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlondorff. She has been
directing films since 1975. Her ROSENSTRASSE is a powerful drama.
However, its greatest power is in the flashback sequences. More
time is spent on the present than is really warranted by the value
given by that part of the film. The framing sequence is
necessary, perhaps but could have been made briefer and the time
more profitably spent on the historical material which is the real
hear and soul of the film. This incident has been treated in two
documentaries previously, but it is still a little known incident
and one that has a fascination for the viewer. Another problem,
pointed out by the director herself, was that much of the reason
the events took the course that they did was the fact that a very
large number of women were involved in the street vigils. Von
Trotta's budget did not allow for so many extras to be added to
the cast. Not enough attention is paid to the Germans, and indeed
the Europeans in general, who in quiet ways resisted or even
sabotaged the Holocaust. Although appreciation is frequently
shown for some of these people, many heroes remain obscure.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
In an attempt to get some ideas of how to rejuvenate our book
discussion group(s), I read Ellen Slezak's THE BOOK GROUP BOOK.
While the descriptions of the various groups were interesting,
they were not very helpful. First of all, most of the groups
described were all-woman groups (or even more specifically, all-
woman feminist groups). Our group is not an exact even split, but
of the eight regulars, three are men. (Supposedly, one test of a
group is to ask if they want to read Ernest Hemingway. The
assumption is that even in a mixed group, the women will veto him.
I'll have to try this, although I seem to recall our group reading
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA a few years ago.) Our biggest problem
currently is picking books that the library has enough copies of,
since the group formed on the supposition that people would not
have to buy their own books. Currently, our tentative plan for
the general book discussion group is to read books off the summer
high school reading lists during the school year, and wing it
somehow over the summer when these are tied up. The mystery
reading group seems more successful in getting copies of books
(though I couldn't get this month's selection). The science
fiction group has a major problem in that library culling has
resulted in very few books being available in more than one or two
copies in the entire library system.
(If anyone is in a reading group, I would be curious as to the
size and make-up of the group, as well as what it reads and how it
chooses it.)
Of particular interest to Jewish readers might be a book *not*
read for any group, David Liss's A CONSPIRACY OF PAPER. This is a
mystery set in the early eighteenth century in England, during a
time after Cromwell had allowed Jews to return to England legally
for the first time after their expulsion by Edward I in 1290. The
main character is basically a private detective before such a
thing existed, who left his family of stock jobbers to become a
thief before settling into a somewhat more respectable profession.
After complaining about all the economics lectures in Robert A.
Heinlein's FOR US, THE LIVING, it may seem odd that I am
recommending this, because there is a lot of "expository lump"
about the financial situation in England at the time. But
proportionally it is considerably less than in Heinlein, and there
is actually a plot that goes with it. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Pessimism is only the name that men of
weak nerve give to wisdom.
-- Mark Twain
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