THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/21/04 -- Vol. 22, No. 47
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
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent will be assumed authorized for inclusion
unless otherwise noted.
To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Topics:
Hugo-Nominated Short Fiction (announcement)
Apropos (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Pineapple Pizza (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Comments on A WRINKLE IN TIME (letter of comment
by Dan Kimmel and response by Evelyn C. Leeper)
BLIND LAKE by Robert Charles Wilson (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
This Week's Reading (WHEN LIFE NEARLY DIED, THE MEZUZAH
IN THE MADONNA'S FOOT, CITY OF THE BEASTS, and
INTRODUCING ARISTOTLE) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo-Nominated Short Fiction (announcement)
The Neil Gaiman story is now available on-line as well as all the
other stories (URLs listed last week) at:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/StudyinEmerald.asp
Thanks to Travis Cartwright for this information. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Apropos (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
A local jewelry store has billboards up all over that looks like
they are fairly staid ads for their store with a lot of blank
space. Then it is supposed to look like someone has spray-painted
over the ad "Amy will you marry me?" it is supposed to look very
romantic. I just feel I am supposed to say "Awwwwww!" when it
see it. And that is a lot of aw-saying because there are a lot of
those billboards around with identical spray-painting. I guess it
is supposed to conjure up feelings of old-fashioned romance, the
kind that led to buying lots of jewelry. Just to make it a little
more topical I have wanted to get a matching color of spray paint
and sign it "Susan." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Pineapple Pizza (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
It has come to my attention that there are people out there who
are putting pineapple on pizza. I am happy to say that the
movement at least did not start in the United States. I hear
about it mostly from Britain.
There are plenty of us, probably most of us, who hear that and
give a little cringe of disgust, but we have come to accept a
live-and-let-live society in which we are expected to turn a blind
eye to attacks upon our most cherished traditions. But there
comes a time when we have to admit to ourselves that the whole
concept of pizza is imperiled. When anybody can put anything they
want on a piece of round bread and tell us that we have to accept
it as "pizza" something has gone very wrong with the whole order
of things.
You may ask yourself, what difference does it make if some people
are putting pineapple on pizza? Let me tell you why it makes a
difference. I know that when I was first dating we would go out
for a pizza. I thought I knew what a pizza was. The lady thought
she knew what the pizza we were going out for was. Surprise!
Neither of us knew. At least if you listen to these pineapple
people, neither of us knew. They had their own plans in mind for
what a pizza had to be, and it didn't matter what we thought.
When I was in a work environment there were people who did not
want to go out to lunch for Chinese. Some people had never eaten
Chinese and did not know what it was or if they would like it.
Some people did not want to go to a bar for a grilled hamburger.
That was a funny environment. Greek food with those little pieces
of lamb? Forget it. But everybody knew pizza. Everybody liked
pizza. Well, as long as we stayed away from white clam pizza
everybody knew what they were getting. A lot of important
business relationships were cemented over pizza. Pizza was the
All-American dish. And those relations started with agreeing that
we liked pizza. Well, that era is just about over now. Now there
are two kinds of pizza. There are the pizzas with pineapple and
pizzas without. And when I say pizza, do I mean with or without?
Nobody will know. That basis of trust will soon be gone.
You put pineapple on a pizza and you get, well, I don't know what
you get but it surely is not pizza. It may be some sort of
dessert thing, but it isn't a pizza. And if you call it a pizza
you betray every true pizza that has ever been made. You betray
everyone who has ever eaten a pizza and thought they knew what a
pizza was. A pizza with pineapple is no longer a pizza.
I think the thin edge of the wedge was when we started tolerating
onions on pizzas. Then it was anchovies. Now there are all sorts
of weird things people put on pizzas. But pineapple is a new low.
When you reach the point that some people are putting pineapple on
pizzas things have gone wrong and you have to draw the line. You
have to say things are going too far and as accepting as you have
been willing to be in the past, some things really cannot go. If
we don't take a stand soon, in ten years we won't know what the
heck we mean when we talk about pizza. What we need is a national
Defense of Pizza Act before the word "pizza" becomes totally
meaningless.
Now any such law cannot be made to apply to Britain and other
places where civilization has fallen to the extent that people are
putting pineapple on pizza. True, Americans will be able to
travel to Britain to get pineapple pizzas. But at least they will
have to go abroad for them. America will be an island of sanity
where the traditions like real pizza still mean something to us.
I would like to think that Canada and Mexico still have enough
sane people that they join us in our efforts to respect the
institution of pizza. I would like to think that. But I am
afraid that they may be just as crazy as the rest of the world.
You don't know who to trust these days.
Write your congressman and tell him we need a Defense of Pizza Act
and we need it NOW so Americans will know clearly what a pizza
is. We need a law in black and white that says "no pineapple"
before every pizza we have ever eaten is spoiled by this
subversion of the whole concept of pizza. [-mrl]
[To my readers not from the United States puzzling over this
editorial: This has been an inside political joke. You can put
pineapple on pizza if you want and it is fine with me. Please
believe you do not need to send me (more) angry letters. And you
do not need a Defense of Pineapple Pizza Act. You can put
whatever rubbish you want on your pizza. Why not try watermelon?
[-mrl]]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Comments on A WRINKLE IN TIME (letter of comment by Dan
Kimmel and response by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Dan Kimmel responded to my comments on A WRINKLE IN TIME by
saying, "Haven't watched the TV movie yet and read the book nearly
40 years ago. Evelyn admits she missed the target age (as I did
reading Catcher in the Rye in my 20s. Yawn!). What remains with
me over the years is that chilling image of a suburban street
where every family was in perfect sync with their neighbors. For
a young reader, that's pretty scary stuff, and it led me further
into the world of fantastic fiction. By the time they were
assigning stuff like Brave New World and 1984 I had long since
read them. However, without further elaboration Evelyn writes,
'The fact that I'm way over the target age for the book may have
affected my opinion, or the fact that it is so overtly religious,
but it isn't something that I personally can recommend.'"
"I'm not saying it's not 'overtly religious' but it's been a long,
long time since I've read it. Could you fill in the blank?
That's the first time I recall coming across that reaction to the
book." [-dk]
Since someone else asked the same thing (in person), I will respond
here. I guess primarily I'm referring to three passages:
- the quotation of Psalm 98 ("Sing unto the Lord a new song")
(chapter "A Black Thing", page 82 of my edition). This is
omitted in the movie.
- the quotation from John 1:5 of the New Testament ("And the
light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it
not") (chapter "The Tesseract", page 108) and the listing of
Jesus as a fighter against the Dark Thing. I'll note that this
mention has disappeared from the film version, though Mother
Theresa and St. Francis have been added.
- the long quotation from I Corinthians 1:25 beginning "The
foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God
is stronger than men" (chapter "The Foolish and the Weak", page
244). I think this was also omitted in the movie.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: BLIND LAKE by Robert Charles Wilson (copyright 2003, TOR,
ISBN 0-765-30262-4, 399pp, hardcover) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
Our third installment of Hugo nominee reviews comes from our
second Canadian author in the group - Robert Charles Wilson (the
other being Robert J. Sawyer). And like Wilson's last nominee,
THE CHRONOLITHS, I came away disappointed.
BLIND LAKE is a federal research installation in Minnesota where
scientists are observing the everyday life of aliens on a far
distant planet - the lobsters, if you will. The scientists are
using a technology that they barely understand or even have much
control over. It's a kind of sentient, self-modifying, highly
advanced, computer (called O/BEC, for those of you who love
acronyms) that has figured out a way to look at far away planets.
Blind Lake is one of two of these kinds of installations, the
other being Crossbank. All that is being watched at Crossbank is
a bunch of flora and fauna - no living, sentient beings there.
Then something happens at Crossbank (we find out later), and a
quarantine/lockdown in placed on Blind Lake. No one can get in or
out, and supplies are delivered by automated vehicles. Anyone
attempting to leave is killed by robotic, flying drones.
Our characters are many and varied, and as with other Wilson
novels, well developed. Marguerite Hauser (one of the
researchers) and her ex-husband Ray Scutter (one of the
administrators still on site when the lockdown hits) are at odds
with each other over both the direction of the project and their
daughter Tessa, who has seen a strange entity called Mirror Girl
both at Crossbank (where they were before Blind Lake) and at Blind
Lake. Chris, Elaine, and Sebastian are journalists of sorts who
are doing a story for a magazine about Blind Lake. Chris gets
involved with Marguerite, which drives Ray closer to the edge. He
has written a book that some people accuse of causing a prominent
man to commit suicide. Elaine is a respected scientist, and
Sebastian has written a pseudo science/religion book. They are
assigned because they have different viewpoints and can come at
the story from a different angle.
Well, the gist of the story is that strange things begin to happen
at Crossbank and the lobster planet. The Subject, as he is
called, decides to change his boring existence and go for a trip
away from his life, something that no one was expecting. At
Crossbank and elsewhere, strange structures are popping up -
starfish shaped structures. And the same kind of structures are
discovered on the boring planet with no life.
The climax is unsatisfying to me. We certainly learn more about
the structures, the Subject, and all of our characters. The end
of the quarantine seems a bit odd, contradicting the need for a
quarantine to begin with (I won't go into it here). It's well
written, and the characters are well fleshed out. But the end is,
again, unsatisfying. I want to learn more about the structures
and the mysterious universal sentience, or whatever those
structures seem to represent. While the best SF deals with the
effects of technology and science on its characters, it can fall
short if it doesn't do enough with that science and technology.
This one fell short, in my mind. Again, unsatisfying in the end,
and a nice read, but that's about it. Not Hugo quality.
Next up, SINGULARITY SKY. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Two weeks ago, I wrote about Michael J. Benton's book about the
Permian mass extinction, WHEN LIFE NEARLY DIED. In the book, he
attributed the extinction to volcanic eruptions, but new evidence
may indicate that it was caused by an asteroid impact instead.
See for more details. For an article
disputing the new evidence, see .
Trudi Alexy's THE MEZUZAH IN THE MADONNA'S FOOT: A WOMAN DISCOVERS
HER SPIRITUAL HERITAGE (ISBN 0-06-060340-2) began as an
examination of the phenomenon of Fascist Spain as a haven for Jews
fleeing the Nazis, among them Alexy's parents. It covers this, of
course, with stories both of the Jews and of the people who helped
to save them, but it also expanded to include the stories of
Marranos in Spain and the Crypto-Jews of the American Southwest as
well. This was a wise decision, I think, because the original
idea was not all that different from many other books. It's true
that Alexy does attempt to explain why a country that expelled its
Jews five centuries earlier, and persecuted any suspected Jews for
another three hundred years, and was friendly with Nazi Germany,
would make such an effort to rescue Jews from the Nazis. Her
conclusion--that because the Spanish had no experience with Jews
for so long that they had no basis for any anti-Semitic feeling--
is intriguing but not entirely convincing or encouraging. But her
experiences dealing with Marranos and Crypto-Jews, and their
reactions to her research, are far more interesting from a
psychological point of view.
Isabel Allende's CITY OF THE BEASTS (ISBN 0-06-050918-X) is a
young adult novel whose hero is the fifteen-year-old Alexander
Cold. Alexander has to stay with his grandmother because his
mother is ill, but his grandmother is going on a journey into the
Amazon jungle to look for "the Beast" and so Alexander has to go
along. It's a combination of Arthur Conan Doyle's LOST WORLD and
W. H. Hudson's GREEN MANSIONS, with some CREATURE OF THE BLACK
LAGOON thrown in. It's a bit too politically correct at times,
with the peaceful natives who really are much wiser and more
spiritual than the "civilized" people, but if you can accept that
it's not a bad magical realism adventure story.
Rupert Woodfin and Judy Groves's INTRODUCING ARISTOTLE (Totem
Books, ISBN 1-84046-233-7) is yet another in the graphic book
series of introductions to various scientific, cultural, and
philosophical subjects. This one is a bit harder going, and is
sprinkled with drawings of later philosophers who covered some of
the same topics but who are not always identified. I guess they
assume that if someone reading this book sees a picture of a
brooding man in a World War I trench and the word "Tractatus",
they will automatically think "Wittgenstein".
I am reminded of one of my favorite moments. When I was working,
there was a table where people from our project tended to gather
for lunch. Four or five of us would often get into discussions
about philosophy or theology, but not everyone was into these
topics, preferring cars or sports. One day we were discussing the
implications of transubstantiation and one person was explaining
that "the problem is that you've all bought into the Aristotelian
notion of substance," just as one of the cars-and-sports folks
arrived and started to sit down. The bemused expression on the
latter's face was quite amusing.
However, this brings me to a problem with this book (and others in
this series): the index is very skimpy. It fits (one suspects by
design) on a single page, and doesn't include the word "substance"
at all, or "morality", or many other concepts that do appear in
the book. I guess I'd say that this book is a good introduction,
but not good as a book to refer back to, and may serve best to
help the reader decide whether to continue in studying Aristotle.
(Even here I have a quibble. The author says, "[R]eading
Aristotle in the original is not an easy experience." However,
his subsequent remarks lead me to believe he doesn't mean not just
in the original Greek, but even in translation, because he then
recommends a lot of books about Aristotle rather than suggesting
which translations might be the best.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes
the fundamental ills of society. If we're
looking for the source of our troubles, we
shouldn't test people for drugs, we should
test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed
and love of power.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70
http://us.click.yahoo.com/Z1wmxD/DREIAA/yQLSAA/J.MolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mtvoid/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/