THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/17/05 -- Vol. 23, No. 51 (Whole Number 1287)
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:
Lose Weight While Sleeping (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
From Merlot to Cockfosters (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Bookstores (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
Hugo Nominees (part 2) (comments/reviews
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE GREAT WATER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (BOOK ROW, FANTASTIC FABLES, and
WISE MEN AND THEIR TALES) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Lose Weight While Sleeping (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Spam mail came with the title "Lose Weight While Sleeping." There
probably are people to whom that title sounds like a good idea. I
give it a little more thought. Not for me, thank you.
There are people I know who do lose weight while sleeping. I
cannot say I really envy the talent. Most of them are quite
young. When they get a little older their parents are very
anxious to train them to lose weight only during their waking
hours. It makes doing the laundry more pleasant. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: From Merlot to Cockfosters (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
There is a law called "The Law of Unintended Consequences."
According to this law almost all human actions have at least one
unintended consequence. What ever you do, it will have
additional side effects that you did not intend. Sociologist
Robert K. Merton's name is associated with this rule, though I
remember musing about it back when I was in high school and
before it was ever spelled out for me.
I got e-mail from someone asking about why Miles Raymond, the
Paul Giamatti character in SIDEWAYS, despised Merlot wine. The
lines in the film are this:
Jack: "If they want to drink Merlot, we're drinking Merlot."
Miles Raymond: "No, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am
NOT drinking any f***ing Merlot!"
This got us onto a discussion of unintended market consequences
of lines in films and comments in the entertainment industry.
Actually Merlot growers are having some real problems as a result
of this film. Sales of Merlot are down while Pinot Noir sales
are booming.
http://tinyurl.com/aqjxd
Something similar happened when Oprah Winfry said negative things
about beef in her program. The cattle industry has their own
beef with Oprah. That ended in a lawsuit that Oprah won, but of
course it also reminds us that we are morally and sometimes
legally responsible for the unintended consequences of our
actions.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V118/N8/doprah.8w.html
Rumor has it that the old song "Beans in My Ears" was banned from
the radio because kids would hear it and put beans in their ears.
I can find the lyrics, but not documentation of the problems the
song caused.
http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/pages/tiBEANEARS.html
This sort of thing is an old story. Columbia Pictures faced a
similar charge over IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT.
http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/gable.htm
There is a serious issue of whether writers for entertainment are
responsible for the unintended consequences of dialog in their
films. The sad fact is that innocently intended dialog and
character actions can have serious social consequences and the
question arises of who is responsible for them. It can be
considered negligent harm to put dialog in a film and not worry
about the effect it will have on viewers. This is a slippery
slope on either side. Do writers have to self-censor everything
they write? If so, what happened to the First Amendment? On the
other hand, I would not be at all surprised to see little
whimsical slams of one political party dropped into films that
just happen to be in part funded by members of the other
political party. A product placement does not have to be a
product; it can be an idea. It is not clear what can be done
about that. After all, some films are overtly political. It
probably is perfectly legal to make them subtly political in
return for pay. There are accusations that some political
editorials are being paid for by a certain political party in
power now who would like to see political thought spun in their
direction. I don't want to be more specific than that, because I
do not want action taken against me.
Speaking of which, I am bound by unintended consequences of what
I put in writing. But it is not so much by the law. If the
language I use in the MT VOID gets too explicit I cannot send out
the VOID. Some ISPs have language protection for their customers
and will not pass on mail in which I use the bad words. That is
why up above I had to say "f***ing Merlot." If I used the real
word there are some Internet Service Providers who would censor
the VOID and not pass it on to the readers. We have had that
experience in the past. So we end up with a sort of self-
censorship. This is a self-censorship that is stronger than
anything that the Government has ever imposed is. And if the
Government had imposed it, the ACLU would be all over it as an
infringement of First Amendment rights. But we have to live with
it because the body that is imposing the restriction is really not
as reasonable, friendly, and accommodating as the United States
Government is. This restriction is being imposed by a piece of
software written by an un-elected software engineer. Yet she or
he is putting restrictions on me more restrictive than the
government could and with very little legal recourse.
As an example of how extreme this power of software can be there
is a well-known account, documented in a fanzine (as well as
several other places, but I will give a little plug to the fine
fanzine Plokta). They said:
"If you're a computer geek who happens to live in Scunthorpe, you
should be careful about who you pick as your Internet Service
Provider. America OnLine has expanded into the UK market whilst
retaining its self-appointed position as the guardian of American
public morals. Although they deny that they censor Internet
articles, it is rumoured that AOL once closed down a support
forum for women with breast cancer because of the wicked use of
the word 'breast'. They have now turned their attention to the
fair city of Scunthorpe. People living there who have attempted
to register for AOL have discovered that the name of the town is
rejected by the server because it's rude. Complaints were to no
avail; AOL has decreed that Scunthorpe is rude and has renamed
the town Sconthorpe. Anybody who uses the name Scunthorpe in an
article will find that their writing is electronically vaporised.
Plokta wonders why they didn't just go the whole hog and rename
the town Lower Corte."
"All of this is reminiscent of a scene in Superman, in which
Superman flies over London with Lois Lane. A Piccadilly Line
train is visible in the foreground. Unfortunately, this meant
that it was necessary to retouch every frame to blank out the
destination board; you can't say Cockfosters in a PG-rated movie.
And if you do happen to live in Cockfosters, I wouldn't bother
ringing AOL."
http://www.plokta.com/plokta/issue1/aol.htm
Gee, now that I have talked about all this, I am wondering if I
have now created an issue that AOL will refuse to send to its
members. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Bookstores (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
Evelyn wrote in the 06/10/05 issue of the MT VOID, "And now I
hear that new books will be getting even more expensive.
Penguin is going to be coming out with a "premium" paperback,
selling for around $10. "
Dan Kimmel responsd, "Now I feel old. I remember when
paperbacks topped $1.00 for the first time, and how shocking
that was. However while I share your penchant for used
bookstores and libraries (and the delightful "library sale"),
there are times where price should not be the deciding factor.
I have my order in for the new Harry Potter at our local
children's bookstore, which is offering a 20% discount. I know
I could get a better deal elsewhere, but this store is a
treasure and I want to support it. There's something to be said
about a specialty bookstore where you can come in with a vague
description of the sort of book you're looking for (something
with pigs for an 11 year old who is not an advanced reader) and
they come up with several suggestions." [-dk]
Evelyn comments, "The phrase 'local children's bookstore' is
meaningless here, unless one extends the notion of local thirty-
five miles and across a state border to New York. :-)" [-ecl]
She also points people to the rec.arts.science.fiction.written
FAQ, which says:
17A. Are chain bookstores (particularly superstores) evil?
Yes, if you live in an area which had several large, well-
stocked independent bookstores that went out of business when a
chain opened a megastore there.
No, if you live in an area that had no bookstores (or only a
mall bookstore) before the chain opened a megastore there.
Which is a fancy way of saying your mileage may vary, and this
topic is unlikely to be resolved by discussion here.
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo Nominees (part 2) (comments/reviews by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
This continues/concludes my discussion of the Hugo fiction
nominees.
Short Story:
"The Best Christmas Ever" by James Patrick Kelly (scifi.com
5/26/04) is about a man surrounded entirely by robots ("biops")
who take on the forms of family, friends, pets, and whatever else
is needed to keep him happy. But he isn't. This is another
story for which I can't understand its nomination. It's not that
I don't like Christmas stories. I do like "A Christmas Carol"
(the Alistair Sim version), "It Happened One Night" and "Miracle
on 34th Street", and also Thomas Hardy's poem "The Oxen". But on
the whole, the mere invocation of the holiday is not going to
boost a story in my estimation.
"Decisions" by Michael A. Burstein ("Analog" 01-02/04) is yet
another Burstein story with memory as an important, if not
central, aspect. As with many of the stories nominated this
year, there was a certain self-congratulatory note (for the human
race, not for Burstein personally). It does seem as though there
is a bit of a formula for getting nominated for a Hugo: say
something positive about readers, or writers, or humanity, and
you get an extra boost. I found the ending of this a bit hard to
accept, in a couple of ways.
"A Princess of Earth" by Mike Resnick ("Asimov's" 12/04) is a
tribute to reading, or at least to one of the classic characters
of science fiction. This has an even thinner premise than the
other stories about reading this year.
"Shed Skin" by Robert J. Sawyer ("Analog" 01-02/04) has a plot
involving uploading a duplicate of oneself into a robot. This is
very similar to several other notable stories over the past few
years, and in particular this seems to be a response to David
Brin's KILN PEOPLE (reviewed in the 04/25/03 issue of the MT
VOID). I'm not sure how much new this adds to those stories, but
at least it is centered on an idea.
"Travels with My Cats" by Mike Resnick ("Asimov's" 02/04) has its
main character reading a travel book about exotic places as a
young boy, falling in love with it, and being later visited by
the author's ghost. Again, this is an okay story that was
probably nominated more for its paean to the power of writing and
the promise of the future than for being a really high-quality
story. Is it just me, or are a lot of these starting to seem
formulaic and predictable?
My voting order: No Award, Sawyer, Resnick ("Travels"), Burstein,
Kelly, Resnick ("Princess")
Dramatic Presentation (Long Form):
In this category, I suspect most people are at least somewhat
familiar with the nominees, so I don't have to describe them too
much.
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND: This is my clear choice--
intriguing ideas, tight script, good acting. Unfortunately, that
meant it got nowhere near the press coverage of the other four,
and nowhere near the audience. I suppose I should be happy it
even made the ballot. ("It's an honor just to be nominated.")
(The premise is that there is a procedure that can wipe away part
of one's memories--for example, all recollections of a failed
love affair. I mention this because there are probably still
readers out there unfamiliar with this movie.)
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN: This is a reasonable
adaptation of the book, but doesn't really add a lot to it.
THE INCREDIBLES: This seems to be everyone's favorite, and it is
enjoyable with some interesting ideas.
SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW: It has a lot of
interesting visuals, but the story is not well-formulated, and
acting is weak. (Well, considering that everyone was acting to a
blue screen, I am not too surprised.) If you're into art design,
you must see this.
SPIDER-MAN 2: I have no idea what the appeal of this is. I know
Roger Ebert thought it was the best film--not just the best SF
film--of the year, but I can't see it.
My voting order: ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, THE
INCREDIBLES, No Award, SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW,
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, SPIDER-MAN 2 [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE GREAT WATER (GOLEMATA VODA) (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: THE GREAT WATER tells a great deal about totalitarianism
and human nature. It is a timeless story about power and is a
fine piece of filmmaking. At times, however, this is a painful
film to watch. But in the last fifteen minutes it turns out to
be a complex, ironic, and ultimately very moving story. Rating:
low +3 (-4 to +4) or 8/10.
The story of THE GREAT WATER takes place in the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia. In Yugoslavia in World War II, the
Communist Marshall Tito led the primary resistance to the Nazis
in Yugoslavia. When the war was over the Communists under Tito
ruthlessly seized control of the country in the name of and with
the methods of Stalinism. Eventually Tito would be a moderating
force against the power of the Soviets, but those days were years
after the main body of the story. THE GREAT WATER is mostly
about how the force of Soviet tyranny was used to indoctrinate
the orphaned children of parents considered enemies of the
Soviets.
As the film opens an important politician, Lem Nikodinoski
(played as an old man by Meto Jovanovski) has suffered a heart
attack and may be dying. As he lies in his hospital bed he
remembers in the summer of 1945 how as an orphan of parents who
were enemies of Tito he was seized by the Soviet army and taken
to a bleak institution in Macedonia. The building is an ugly
deserted factory turned into an orphanage. We see a young Lem
(now played by Saso Kekenovski) whose wide-eyed fear makes him
look almost like a mouse. And he has reason to fear. The
Stalinist system has no compassion for the child of what it
considers traitors. Staff and older children alike bully Lem.
Compassion seems to come only from one attractive girl Verna and
perhaps the potential for compassion from the Comrade Olivera, a
woman perhaps in her late teens who is a drill master for the
orphans' military-like training. The camp is overseen by Komrade
Ariton (Miko Apostolovski), an ambitious martinet who oversees
the indoctrination of the orphans into their new religion of
worshipping Comrade Stalin. While Lem is still new to the system
an attractive boy even newer to the orphanage/camp, Isak Keyton
(Maja Stankovska), is brought in. Lem decides to make Isak his
friend, though Isak seems to want no part of Lem.
THE GREAT WATER looks at the evils of a totalitarian system.
People must force themselves to be hypocrites and profess love
for Stalin just to get along. Insincere self-denunciations are a
matter of form. Also we see how vulgarians seem to be the ones
who profit from system that looks for obedience and professed
loyalty over character. The film effectively makes both points.
We see the methods by which the young were weaned from their
previous religion and forced to accept the Stalin as their god.
The strong point of the film is the acting. The production
values are frequently excellent but there is perhaps a little too
much use is made of color filters to create mood. The film is
narrated in English with dialog in Macedonian. (The narration
may possibly vary by country of release.) The film is directed
and co-produced by Ivo Trajkov with a screenplay by Vladimir
Blazevski based on the (reportedly young adult) novel by Zhivko
Chingo.
THE GREAT WATER has its grim and painful and even disturbing
moments. Stay with it. Even the harrowing moments have a strong
reason for being in the film. I rate it a low +3 on the -4 to +4
scale or 8/10. If this is not on my top ten of the year, 2005
will be a very good year indeed. I suggest the viewer stay
through the end-credits, as the story really is not over until
the final frame of the film. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador's BOOK ROW (ISBN 0-7867-1305-4) is
described as "an anecdotal and pictorial history of the
antiquarian book trade." Anecdotal, yes, but not really
pictorial--except for the end papers and eight center pages there
are no pictures. And as the title suggests, this is more
specifically about the bookstores and booksellers of Fourth
Avenue in New York than the broader subject of antiquarian book
selling in general.
Mondlin and Meador focus on the personalities (and practices) of
the booksellers, with fewer stories about particular books or
events than I would have liked. But there are a few. One
bookseller had a woman come from a Rolls-Royce, looking for a
copy of Jared Smith's ARITHMETIC. It was an old book, and she
knew it was a "trillion-to-one chance", but it was a book her
father had written. The dealer went back and pulled out a
leather-bound copy from 1860. But even more astonishing, it was
her original book, with an inscription from her father!
Not all the stories are as heart-warming, at least to the
authors. One is of two partners who are called to a hotel by the
manager who wants to sell them a room full of books left by a
tenant. All he wants is $75 (just to get rid of the books), but
the partners spend so long looking at the marvelous treasures
there that when they went to leave the manager said that the
hotel's attorney had told him to wait and contact the heirs of
the tenant first. The deal fell through and a year later the
heirs sold just forty of the books at auction for $60,000. One
gets the feeling that the authors sympathize with the distress of
the partners, but I would say that they should have known that
the hotel owner should contact the heirs. (In THE NINTH GATE, we
have less sympathy for the people who are cheated by Depp because
they seem greedy. In this real case, the heirs were not even
aware of the books.)
Of all the booksellers described, the ones of most interest to me
were Haskell and Ann Gruberger. They ran the Social Science Book
Store, which for many years was a mail-order business only. In
1967 they opened a retail shop on Fourth Avenue, only to be faced
with rising rents. A pair of events in 1969 (an offer to take
over their space from one person, and an offer from McGill
University to buy their stock) led them to close that store. But
that did not leave the book-selling business. They moved to
Northampton, and opened The Old Book Store, which they described
as a "Supermarket of Old and New Books with Something for
Everyone". And The Old Book Store is where Mark and I spent may
happy hours (and many dollars, though the prices were quite
reasonable) while we were in college in Amherst. And we still
do--The Old Book Store is still there, in the basement of the
building where it opened almost forty years ago.
Ambrose Bierce's FANTASTIC FABLES (ISBN 0-486-22225-X) is full of
cynical fables. A sample: "A Man Running for Office was
overtaken by Lightning. "'You see,' said the Lightning, as it
crept by him inch by inch, 'I can travel considerably faster than
you.' 'Yes,' the Man Running for Office replied, 'but think how
much longer I keep going.'"
There is also "Aesopus Emendatus", a collection of twists on
Aesop's fables, such as: "A fox, seeing some sour grapes hanging
within an inch of his nose, and being unwilling to admit that
there was anything he would not eat, solemnly declared that they
were out of his reach."
As noted, there is a very strong thread of cynicism in this
collection. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Bierce ended
up so disillusioned with humanity that he went off to Mexico with
a death wish.
Elie Wiesel's WISE MEN AND THEIR TALES (ISBN 0-8052-4173-6) also
has a thread of cynicism, or at least a way of looking at the
"heroes" of the Bible and finding them less than perfect. For
that matter, God does not get off scot-free either. For example,
in the story of Sodom, Wiesel concludes that everyone--Abraham,
Lot, Lot's wife, and even God--do wrong. Only Lot's two
daughters appear to be blameless. And why do we revere Sarah
when she treated Hagar and Ishmael so badly? Why does Aaron get
a pass even though he built the Golden Calf when so many others
were killed? Wiesel searches the Torah, the Talmud, and other
midrashic sources in an attempt to explain these and many more
cases. Or rather, he attempts to tell us how the rabbis and
scholars explained them. He points out, though, that sometimes
these explanations seem to be have made up just to justify what
the Torah said, and there is no basis for them. And he doesn't
always accept them as sufficient justification. You'll have to
make your own decisions. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
You know children are growing up when they
start asking questions that have answers.
-- John J. Plomp