THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
02/25/05 -- Vol. 23, No. 35 (Whole Number 1271)
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:
Bookmobile Day (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
No Eye in the Sky (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Puppy Starter Kit and Wild Parrots (letter of comment
by Frank J. Nagy)
THE MESSIAH CODE (a.k.a.THE MIRACLE STRAIN)
by Michael Cordy (book review by Tom Russell)
TRAUMA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (DOUBLE FEATURE CREATURE ATTACK,
RETURN OF THE B SCIENCE FICTION AND HORROR HEROES,
and SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE RUNNING NOOSE)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Bookmobile Day (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Somehow kids today are not as interested in learning as they used
to be. I never waste an opportunity to tell the kids of today
what it was like when I was a kid. I think I'm remembering this
right. The Bookmobile would come down the street with its
pleasant jingling bells on a warm summer day. Kids could hear
those bells blocks away and would go running to their mothers
shouting "Books!" and begging for their library cards. By that
time the Bookmobile Man parked the bookmobile every kid on the
block would be flocking around all yelling at once. The
Bookmobile Man would open the back of his van up. "Who wants
BEEZUS AND RAMONA? I have a new Curious George." The kids would
all clamor at once. "Who wants to read about Madeline's trip to
Paris? Who's interested in the Mushroom Planet? Here's the new
Freddy the Pig adventure." I kept waiting for him to get to the
Space Cat books. The pushier kids mostly got those. I remember
that SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE almost started a fight. But
the bookmobile man would wait for them to go and then pull out a
Danny Dunn book or a MISS PICKERELL GOES TO MARS. Kids don't
seem to be like that any more. I wonder if I am remembering
right and if they ever were. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: No Eye in the Sky (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In Daniel Keyes's novel FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON we see the world
through the eyes of Charley Gordon, who goes from being mentally
retarded in a world he cannot understand to being a genius with a
vision to see and know the world. But late in the novel we
discover his ability to see and understand the world is only
temporary and he must inevitably return to what he was. This
condition of going from a position of perception to return to
blindness is sort of how I feel over the decision to bring down
the Hubble Telescope.
You likely have heard that the White House has cut the funding
for the Hubble Space Telescope from the 2006 budget. What budget
the space agency is getting is given to NASA with the
instructions to use it to bring the telescope down out of orbit
safely without dropping it on anybody's head. Actually NASA is
getting a 2.5% increase in funding but that is all spoken for.
The decision has been that after the Columbia problem that it may
be too dangerous to send up astronauts to try to rescue the
telescope. Instead they plan a simpler but more melancholy
mission. They want to strap on a propulsion module that will
drop the telescope out of orbit and plunk it down safely in the
Pacific Ocean. (Safely if you are not a fish.) NASA has been
directed instead to give its attention to getting the shuttle
fleet operating reliably again.
The scientific community is very disappointed to hear the news.
No other single scientific instrument ever made came close to
having taught us so much about our universe. Because we have the
Hubble we also have much better evidence that the universe as we
know it started with the Big Bang. It has given us compelling
proof of the existence of Black Holes. It has told us the age of
our galaxy. And it has looked into space and showed us vistas we
could not have imagined existed. That is what the Hubble has
done for science. But I am worried about what losing the Hubble
will mean to the non-scientific community. My personal opinion
is that scrapping the Hubble Space Telescope would be regrettable
in a lot of ways we cannot gauge.
There are lots of people who think that the space program is
doing very little for Earth. NASA is not capturing the public
interest as it did in the past and while most of the public seems
to support funding for NASA, they find NASA's objective to be of
low priority and to be matters they cannot relate to. On the
other hand the Hubble Space Telescope actually is giving the
public what it wants. From its unique vantage point of about 360
miles up it shows us pictures of a universe that is more
beautiful than most people, including astronomers, have ever
imagined. Go to science museums and see how many photographs
you see were taken by the Hubble.
Okay, perhaps photographs are not something tangible, but we have
gotten from the telescope a set of images that capture the
imagination of the public. How often have we seen photographs of
huge enigmatic but colorful pictures space. We now can get an
inkling how physics paints the universe with matter and light.
We need the telescope not just for knowledge but even more for
inspiration. There is something about the Hubble images that
capture the imagination. We need the Hubble to strobe the sense
of wonder of everyone from scientists to young kids. We need it
to excite the thirst for knowledge and for exploration. The
telescope and what it saw remind us that we are on one little
island in an ocean of wonders.
Compared to the Hubble, telescopes on the ground see so little.
Even the biggest and best can see only glimpses distorted by a
fluctuating and flowing ocean of atmosphere. The Hubble really
is our eye on the universe. And I for one will be very
disappointed if we let that eye be blinded.
When we lose the Hubble Telescope to save some budget money we
will be left with photographs and memories of when we could
really see the a sky that is now distorted and blurry. The
emotion is much like knowing that once we could go to the moon
but at least for now we cannot any longer. The feeling is also
like that of Charley Gordon who knows that at one time he could
perceive the world, but that ability is gone. The capability may
still return. There are plans to go back to the moon and there
are plans to put in orbit a new device, James Webb Space
Telescope. This infrared telescope may well be able to tell us
even more than the Hubble could, assuming it does go up, but it is
still an unknown quantity. For now the public knows and generally
has affection for the Hubble Space Telescope. It is the Hubble
that excites the public and it is a shame to lose the one even if
we may eventually be getting the other. And when the Hubble is
gone, even if only temporarily, again the stars and the moon will
be too far. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Puppy Starter Kit and Wild Parrots (letter of comment by
Frank J. Nagy)
Just had to send in a couple of points...
On the Puppy Starter Kit: Some of my friends tried to convince me
to get a cat for companionship. May 5, 2003, a pair of them
showed up at my apartment door with a Cat Kit: litter box,
litter, food and water bowls, food, cat toys, scratching post and
... a cat. A stray that Bonnie got (while cleaning her van she
thought one of her cats was out and rubbing on her leg but it was
a stranger. Thin and bedraggled, she put some food and water out
for the cat and when she went to check on her, the cat came right
into the house).
So I got a cat who attached herself to me right away. What no
one knew was that Pixel (as I named my Cat Kit; Schroedinger was
appropriate for a physicist's cat but not for a female, so I
named her after the Cat Who Walks Through Walls) was already
pregnant. One month after getting her, she had six kittens. I
found other homes for 3 and today still have Pixel and three of
her kittens.
Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill: During the 1970s I was a graduate
student at CalTech in Pasadena. One morning, I was awoken early
by a great unholy caterwauling. On my way into the lab I came
upon a couple of trees filled with parrots from which the noise
was originating. I was told that this was a flock of parrots
that lived in the San Gabriele valley and apparently originated
from pets that got loose and were able to survive and reproduce
in the wild. [-fjn]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE MESSIAH CODE (a.k.a.THE MIRACLE STRAIN) by Michael
Cordy (book review by Tom Russell)
Our town librarians recently put another bunch of books out on
the "For Sale" shelf; I found THE MIRACLE STRAIN by Michael Cordy
(1997, ISBN 0-380-73042-1) for a dollar. I subsequently learned
it was re-published with a new title, THE MESSIAH CODE, in 2004
(ISBN 0-060-76210-1). Perhaps fans of Dan Brown's "code" book
will also buy Cordy's book? The library bought several copies.
I borrowed one of those to see if Cordy had written an updated
version.
The library system's key words for Cordy's book: "Fiction; Jesus
Christ; Genetic Engineering; Brotherhood." "Fiction" but not
"science fiction"--but any book with a scientist hero and a
computer named IGOR must be science fiction.
Hang in there through the book's thriller-formula opening.
Cordy's better ideas come later. DNA analysis is used to create
hologram likenesses of suspects. A critical genetics lab
experiment yields a baffling result: some groups of the mice
inoculated with "the miracle strain" completely recover from
disease, but others suffer and die. How? Why? Time is running
out to save the hero's daughter. Later a hard-to-accept twist to
the story is revealed to have been subtly presaged by one
character's unusual name.
Did you wonder about the end of Mel Gibson's PASSION? We see
Jesus alive and completely healed--except for the wounds from the
nails. THE MESSIAH CODE has this "flaw." It's a plot element in
a way. Neat. (You'll have to read the book to see what I mean.)
Michael Cordy updated his afterword note for the 2004 publication
under the new title, but the novel itself is unchanged. The
story is set in 2002, five years in the future when published in
1997; it would have been better, perhaps, to reset the dates to
2009 for the 2004 issue. Genetics research hasn't progressed
quite as quickly as Cordy expected.
Cordy's book has similarities to THE DA VINCI CODE and to John
Case's THE GENESIS CODE. It's worth a quick read just to find
out why only some of the mice were healed. (Aha!) I hope the
new title draws new readers. One big caution: skip the parts in
italics--a few not-really-necessary character-explaining
flashbacks that you might find offensive; they're definitely
beyond "R"-rated. [-tr]
===================================================================
TOPIC: TRAUMA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A man awakes from a coma to find his world changed and
things no longer making sense. A film this unpleasant should at
least be absorbing. This one is a hard film to get into and it
really does not reward that effort. Rating: 0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10
TRAUMA offers a lot of mood and a lot of nightmarish images. But
is there a story really worth telling? Is there a story there at
all? (To tell some of what is wrong would spoil the plot, so I
will explain in an afterward flagged by spoiler warnings.) This
story is almost as unpleasant to watch as it would have been in
real life.
Ben (played by Colin Firth) is in an automobile accident and the
world seems to have changed for him. He feels disoriented and
out of place, problems that his psychiatrist seems to make only
worse. He is seeing a strange figure in a parka. His interest
in ants and spiders turns into a laxness and at odd moments we
see them crawling on his body. He meets and befriends a neighbor
Charlotte (Mena Suvari) and she takes him to a psychic who claims
that his wife is not dead. The death of his wife seems to
parallel the murder of a famous rock star and in odd ways it
seems to blend into it. Ben retreats deeper and deeper into his
own thoughts. There are lots of little clues as to what is
happening but try as the viewer might they do not add up. The
spiders, the ants, the shoes, the parka, what does it all mean?
Marc Evans directs this psychological drama from a screenplay by
Richard Smith. It is unique in more ways than one including
being the only film I have ever seen that individually credits
featured ants. The film tries that hard to be weird. It
succeeds at that, but I require more from a film. People who do
not like ants and spiders may want to avoid this film. For some
originality I will give this film a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or
4/10
Major Spoiler...Major Spoiler...
The story that I saw is not internally consistent. Much of it
hinges on the question of whether Elisa was in the car at the
time of the crash. Assuming the car was not vaporized (and it
wasn't) the investigating police would know how many people from
the car were killed in the crash. If the police knew, then Ben
would have known unless this is one more film that turns out to
be all in someone's head. Discussing the film I voiced this
opinion and another viewer said that we were really seeing just
what was in a psychotic's mind. That does seem to be the only
consistent explanation, but if the only explanation that makes
the content of the film possible is one that says that in this
film virtually anything could have happened the filmmaker has
broken faith with the audience. If the filmmaker is going to
expect that the audience is going to invest logical consideration
of his images, he has a responsibility to make sure those images
have some logical meaning. They should not turn out to be the
result of a dream or psychosis in which anything could happen and
nothing is known. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I have in the past talked about how expensive McFarland books are
for the general reader. (For example, the CHRISTOPHER LEE
FILMOGRAPHY by Tom Johnson and Mark A. Miller costs $55.) But
McFarland has a program to print some of their older titles,
often in omnibus editions, at much more reasonable prices. So,
for example, Bill Warren's classic work on Fifties science
fiction films, KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES, cost $35 for each of the
two volumes in 1982. Now they are available as a single volume
for just $40, which after you consider inflation makes it even
more of a bargain.
Two such omnibus volumes are Tom Weaver's DOUBLE FEATURE CREATURE
ATTACK [containing ATTACK OF THE MONSTER MOVIE MAKERS (1994) and
THEY FOUGHT IN THE CREATURE FEATURES (1995)) (ISBN 0-786-41366-
2), and RETURN OF THE B SCIENCE FICTION AND HORROR HEROES
(containing INTERVIEWS WITH B SCIENCE FICTION AND HORROR
MOVIEMAKERS (1988) and SCIENCE FICTION STARS AND HORROR HEROES
(1991)) (ISBN 0-786-40755-7). Weaver has been called "The King
of the Interviewers" and these articles are collected over his
many years of interviewing actors, directors, producers, and
other filmmakers connected with classic science fiction and
horror films. These are all pretty much "grab-bag" collections
rather than by theme, so if you are interested in people who
worked in Roger Corman films, for example, you will find them
spread over all the volumes. On the other hand, if you are a fan
of classic (and not-so-classic) science fiction and horror films
and the people behind them, these are for you.
One theme running through many of the interviews, by the way, is
that of the actor who wants to be taken seriously and who thinks
of a particular role in a science fiction film as just another
job to pay the rent, and then discovers twenty or forty years
later that that role is what they are most remembered for. Most
are pleased that they are remembered, but the pleasure is often
tinged with sorrow for lost opportunities if that casting led to
them being consider "only" a science fiction actor (or in the
case of Eugene Lourie, a "dinosaur director"). Boris Karloff
always talked about how grateful he was to the Monster for making
his career, but he had made eighty films before that without
"hitting it big". For an actor to be typecast before he feels he
has had a chance is a different situation. In any case, some of
the actors do make appearances at conventions and such, but few
are actually science fiction fans. I find it interesting that
Jane Wyatt seems to be much more in demand by "Star Trek" fans for
appearances and autographs than Joseph Pevney. Who, you're
probably asking is Joseph Pevney? He wrote the episode, "Journey
to Babel", in which Wyatt appeared.
And speaking of fan cults, Donald Thomas's SHERLOCK HOLMES AND
THE RUNNING NOOSE (ISBN 0-330-48647-0) is yet another collection
of "new" adventures of the master sleuth, and a pretty good one.
Thomas sticks to the Victorian/Edwardian milieu and doesn't add a
lot of sex or out-of-character goings-on. However--WARNING!!--
this is the British/Canadian title of SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE
VOICE FROM THE CRYPT (ISBN 0-786-71325-9), so don't be fooled
into buying both!! Thomas's first Holmes book, THE SECRET CASES
OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (ISBN 0-786-70636-8) does not appear to have
any aliases. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
When men are easy in their circumstances,
they are naturally enemies to innovations.
--Joseph Addison