THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
02/27/04 -- Vol. 22, No. 35
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:
More than You Really Want To Think About on the Subjects
of Vampire Fangs and Mummy Leaves (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
ROBOT STORIES (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading ("The Neanderthal Parallax",
BOOK LUST, A IS FOR ALIBI, THE KILLER ANGELS,
THE SINGULAR ADENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, NEEDLE,
and THE RAPHAEL AFFAIR) (book comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: More than You Really Want To Think About on the Subjects of
Vampire Fangs and Mummy Leaves (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
CSI, broadcast February 5, had someone killed by a vampire killer.
CSI prides themselves on their scientific accuracy, but I was
curious to see if they got their vampire lore correct. (Not that
I would blame them. Films don't seem to get the lore correct
either.) There were two holes in the victim's neck (correct) but
they were vertical and the distance apart, 32mm, of two human eye
teeth (nope). Now that is a common misconception from bad vampire
films. Yes, vampires have two fangs in film folklore and there
are two holes made in the victim's neck. But only one hole is
made by an upper fang. Snakes bite with two upper fangs, but they
have very sharp upper fangs. But bat (and vampire) fangs are not
needle-sharp. Two upper fangs would end up pushing the flesh
away. They would give the biter nothing to hold the neck in
place. They would just need too much force to pierce. Vampires
in folklore bite the way vampire bats bite. They get a fold of
flesh between the upper and lower incisors on one side. Presumably
Bram Stoker knew that when he wrote DRACULA, but he was not
explicit and the more garish films, like VAMPIRE CIRCUS, got it
wrong. The films get one thing right, however, though I am not
sure how. I think they made a double mistake and the two mistakes
canceled each other out. The alignment of the bite holes in films
is usually horizontal. Think about it. The vampire's head would
be perpendicular to the neck. Two upper fangs would position the
holes vertically. A correct upper and lower fang would position
the holes horizontally. It is hard to imagine the position a
vampire would have to use to put two horizontal holes in a neck
with two upper fangs.
(Does anybody else think about this stuff or am I just
strange????)
I was watching a mummy movie the other night. You know, one of
those old Universal films where a mummy comes to life and kills
people. These movies were always a lot of fun in spite of some of
the obvious absurdities. First of all, Egyptians were very short
by today's standards. How scary is a monster about 55 inches
high? If you have seen real mummies, that is about the average
height. What is he going to do grab you around your waist? Then
there is the fact that ancient Egyptians almost never wrapped the
legs separately. There is one mummy I have seen with the legs
wrapped separately and some Hammer Films makeup artist really did
model one of their mummies on the real thing, but the mummies in
Universal's movies in the 1930s and 1940s were wrapped like no
real mummies ever were. Uh, one exception there. Boris Karloff
loses his bandages almost immediately in the original 1933 film
THE MUMMY, but he was the mummy Im-ho-tep. All the other films
were about a fictional mummy named Kharis. Incidentally, just for
your edification, like Dracula there really was a historical
Im-ho-tep. He has been nearly forgotten but he actually was one
of history's geniuses. He was a celebrated physician for the
time. He also was the great architect who invented the idea of
placing tapering mastabas (burial vaults) one on top of another.
In doing so, he invented the pyramid and he built the step pyramid
at Saqarra--the first of all pyramids. He later became deified
like the Pharaoh he built for and was worshipped far longer. I
have heard there were still cults who worshipped him in the Middle
Ages. And his film heartthrob, Anckesen-Amon, was a real person
too. She lived considerably later, however. And she was spoken
for. She was the wife of none other than Tutankhamon. The 1932
scriptwriters may not have meant her specifically, but they really
did mean the historical Im-ho-tep. His history would have been
significant in earlier version of the script. The version they
shot made his historical past less important.
However, most of the old Universal mummy movies are about Kharis,
who is a never-was character. Im-ho-tep was brought back to life
with a magical scroll. Kharis never died due to the use of a sort
of soup made from secret tana leaves. Tana is also a literary
invention and, I can tell you, there were not a whole lot of
leaves that were secret in Egypt. Everything green lives in a
narrow strip on either side of the Nile.
The idea is that Kharis gets three of these leaves during the
cycle of the full moon to keep him alive. Nine leaves and he can
actually walk. More than nine leaves and he will do the Funky
Chicken all over the head and body of anybody who gets in his way.
(Incidentally, while he walks at about one mile an hour and drags
a foot, somehow he manages to catch the fleeing heroine. It must
be due to the intervention of the gods.)
Anyway, getting back to my subject, it occurred to me to wonder
how many of these leaves were needed to keep Kharis alive. There
are about 13 cycles of the full moon per year and they seem to
give the leaves to the mummy about 4 nights each cycle. That is,
each cycle of the moon is about 4 weeks, but each cycle of the
full moon, whatever that is, seems to last about 4 nights. So the
mummy will usually get 12 leaves per cycle of the moon. There are
13 cycles per year, so just maintenance to keep a mummy alive will
cost you 156 leaves per annum per mummum. Now say once a decade
you have to raise Kharis to polish off the odd tomb desecrator or
misguided Egyptologist. Maybe you have to raise your mummy 2
nights in that decade. That is 18 tana leaves per annum, if we
spread the cost out. Just as a round figure, let's say you will
disperse 160 tana leaves per year. Now Egypt fell as a major
power about 2000 years ago after having been among the top three
world powers for 3500 years. It would be safe to estimate Kharis
was first placed in his case about 1500 BC, or 3500 years ago.
That would imply he has consumed something like 550,000 tana
leaves so far. Figuring 10 leaves to the ounce, 16 ounces to the
pound, Kharis has already consumed 3400 pounds of leaves (or 1545
kilograms, if you prefer). They show these leaves being kept in a
little box. It is possible that 1-3/4 tons of leaves are hidden
in other boxes in the tomb, but it seems like a task that would be
difficult to keep a secret back when he was buried. In Ancient
Egypt--remember little strip of green or either side of the river
in the middle of the desert--to collect tons of leaves certainly
must has peaked someone's curiosity. I wonder how long the secret
would have been kept.
(Note: Parts of this essay have appeared in this notice before,
but, well, I've had a bad week.) [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: ROBOT STORIES (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Five stories involving robots in some ways conjure
memories of the original Twilight Zone series. These are simple
stories, most with a strong insightful element. All but one
really says more about humanity than about robots. Greg Pak's
first feature film has at least three films here that have more
human drama than most films in theaters today. Rating: low +2 (-4
to +4) or 7/10. Minor spoiler warning: These stories cannot be
adequately discussed with giving away some of the plot details.
This review should not damage the enjoyment of the film.
Greg Pak is a Yale graduate Rhodes Scholar who until this point
has limited his filmmaking to short films. With ROBOT STORIES he
takes four short tangentially related films and turns them into
one feature film. The opening credit sequence modestly adds a
fifth story, or rather a new first story.
This first sequence is animated and if you do not look quick it is
passed, yet it sets the tone for the stories that are to follow.
The story that runs under the credits shows us a robot, one of a
line of robots, that malfunctions in the direction of creativity
and personal freedom. The other robots see the malfunction and
choose to follow suit. They opt for human values over mechanical
ones. In fact, robots are only a motif for the stories in this
collection. Robots become a pretext for Pak to look into his
human characters. Only the story "Machine Love" is actually
mostly about robots and it is the least interesting of the five
stories.
"My Robot Baby" features Tamlyn Tomita and Vin Knight as Marcia
and Roy, a yuppie couple who are anxious to adopt a baby. First
they must prove that they have the responsibility to take care of
a young life. They are given an ovoid robotic surrogate baby to
care for. It simulates a baby and records the care it receives.
One could say it is a logical descendent of a Tamaguchi, the
electronic pet that requires care or it dies. Caring for the
mecha-baby brings back memories of Marcia's own troubled
childhood.
"The Robot Fixer" is really not science fiction at all. As her
son lies in a coma after an automobile accident, a woman (Wai
Ching Ho) feels helpless. She determines that she must perform a
symbolic act to show her devotion to her son. His one fascination
in life was his toy robot collection. She determines that as an
act of faith she will restore the collection, finding replacements
for missing parts and rebuilding the toy robot. This is not a
science fiction story. If the boy had been interested in models
of jet planes rather than robots there would have been no science
fiction connection at all.
"Machine Love" is the slightest of the five stories. Writer and
director Greg Pak stars as Archie, a robotic clerical temp in a
business office. Initially seriously dedicated, he nonetheless
finds love. This may well have been the first of the stories
filmed and it has the most rough edges. The input ports on
Archie's neck and back seem to be corn plasters. The data that
Archie types in is always the same page. Archie's job seems to be
typing data into a PC terminal. Why an advanced data device like
Archie would use any interface as cumbersome as a human keyboard
is unclear.
"Clay" is an emotionally charged but simple story of a great
sculptor (Sab Shimono) who is dying but resisting immortality.
Technology has advanced to the point where his consciousness can
be downloaded to a computer before his birth-body dies. He would
essentially go on living and his mind would continue without his
body. (Whether this would be really his consciousness continuing
or a computer merely simulating his mind is an important issue but
not really discussed.) The sculptor prefers death to an
electronic life without tactile sensation.
Like the sculptor taking unpromising lumps of clay and sculpting
human images from them, the ROBOT STORIES takes the so frequently
simplistic motif of science fiction stories and uses it to
experiment with emotion and make some profound discoveries about
what it is to be human. Rod Serling, in his best episodes of THE
TWILIGHT ZONE, could perform a certain alchemy. He would take a
simple science fiction story and find deep emotional values
inside. (Consider the episode "The Lonely," in which a convict
played by Jack Warden exiled to an asteroid gets a robot played by
Jean Marsh for a companion. It could well have been the
inspiration for ROBOT STORIES.) While Pak is not yet in his
class, Rod Serling would have probably liked ROBOT STORIES very
much. Pak writes with wit and insight. It is hard to find a
single rating for an anthology film, but I rate ROBOT STORIES a
low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10. The film is getting a
spotty release around the country, first to film festivals, then
to major city art theaters. Perhaps it will get a wider release
in later months. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Last week, I referred to Robert Sawyer's new trilogy as his "H"
trilogy, but Joe Karpierz points out that it is actually called
"The Neanderthal Parallax".
For people looking for where to start on a particular topic or in
a particular genre, Nancy Pearl's BOOK LUST is probably a useful
resource. (Of course, these days, people are more likely to
google for something like this.) Pearl's book is a list of
categories and topics, each with a brief starter bibliography.
For example, for science fiction, she recommends (in this order)
Mary Doria Russell's THE SPARROW, Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S GAME,
Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series (particularly the first book),
Frederik Pohl's GATEWAY, Clifford Simak's works (particularly
SHAKESPEARE'S PLANET, WAY STATION, CITY, and DESTINY DOLL), Sir
Arthur C. Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END, Joe Haldeman's THE FOREVER
WAR, Roger Zelazny's NINE PRINCES IN AMBER, Frank Herbert's "Dune"
series (though she didn't say how many of them), and Ursula K.
LeGuin's THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS and THE DISPOSSESSED.
Pearl gives separate lists for fantasy and horror, but she also
has a separate cyberpunk list as well: William Gibson's
NEUROMANCER; Neal Stephenson's SNOW CRASH and CRYPTONOMICON; Eric
S Nylund's SIGNAL TO NOISE; Pat Cadigan's TEA FROM AN EMPTY CUP
and DERVISH IS DIGITAL; Rudy Rucker's SOFTWARE and WETWARE; John
Brunner's THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER; Bruce Sterling's ZEITGEIST, HEAVY
WEATHER, and HOLY FIRE; William Gibson's PATTERN RECOGNITION; and
the anthology HACKERS (edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois).
Our mystery discussion group read Sue Grafton's A IS FOR ALIBI,
and the only thing worth noting is that one woman found the idea
of a woman detective who went around with a gun in sort of Philip
Marlowe style totally unrealistic--she didn't know any women who
could do that. However, after several people said that they did,
and pointed out that there were certainly woman soldiers these
days, she conceded that younger readers (meaning younger than
forty, I suspect) might not find it so unbelievable.
On the other hand, Michael Shaara's THE KILLER ANGELS was a big
hit with the "original" book discussion group--everyone thought it
was wonderful. We ended up with a discussion split between the
book and the Civil War itself, especially its causes.
Alan Stockwell's THE SINGULAR ADENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES is yet
another collection of Holmes pastisches, acceptable but nothing
special, and missing that spark that the best ones have.
I re-read Hal Clement's NEEDLE as a stroll down Memory Lane, and
concluded that it is really a "young adult" novel. And though
Hunter talks about the clues that give the fugitive's host away,
when I flipped back through the book, I couldn't really find where
they were revealed to the reader, somewhat marring the mystery
aspect. (Hal Clement died October 29, 2003, for those who have
not heard. -mrl)
Ian Pears's THE RAPHAEL AFFAIR is a better mystery, but it
definitely requires at least some knowledge of art to appreciate
it. It (and his other art mysteries) are a lot shorter than his
book AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST, so they are good books to
start with to get an idea of his style. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Quality questions create a quality life.
Successful people ask better questions,
and as a result, they get better answers.
-- Anthony Robbins
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