THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/19/05 -- Vol. 24, No. 8, Whole Number 1296
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:
Hugo Awards
Sweet Heroine in Trouble (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
How to Analyze Great Literature (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Do You Know the Way to San Jose? (letter of comment
by Aaron Leeper)
CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (letter of comment
by David Johnson)
THE RUNES OF THE EARTH--THE LAST CHRONICLES OF THOMAS
COVENANT BOOK ONE by Stephen R. Donaldson
(book review by Joe Karpierz)
THIS DIVIDED STATE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (ZORRO, THE FINE ART OF MURDER,
and THE SODOM AND GOMORRAH BUSINESS)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo Awards
Best Novel: JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL by Susanna Clarke
Best Novella: "The Concrete Jungle" by Charles Stross (THE
ATROCITY ARCHIVE)
Best Novelette: "The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link (THE FAERY REEL)
Best Short Story: "Travels with My Cats" by Mike Resnick
(Asimov's 02/04)
Best Related Book: THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO SCIENCE FICTION
ed. by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn
Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form: THE INCREDIBLES
Best Dramatic Presentation - Short Form: "33" (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA)
Best Professional Editor: Ellen Datlow
Best Professional Artist: Jim Burns
Best Semiprozine: ANSIBLE ed. by David Langford
Best Fan Writer: David Langford
Best Fanzine: PLOKTA
ed. by Alison Scott, Steve Davies and Mike Scott
Best Fan Artist: Sue Mason
Best Web Site: SciFiction (www.scifi.com/scifiction)
ed. by Ellen Datlow, Craig Engler, general manager
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Elizabeth Bear
===================================================================
TOPIC: Sweet Heroine in Trouble (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In a recent issue I talked about a book that had a nasty word in
the title. The first half of the word was "bull" and the second
half was a word for a waste product of the bull. In order to not
be filtered out by nanny filters I replaced the "i" in the second
word with an asterisk.
Okay, if you are still not sure what the second half of the word
was make an acronym of the phrase "sweet heroine in trouble." But
what I wrote actually was an acronym of "sweet heroine *n
trouble." It was not enough, believe it or not. We had reports
of people not getting the VOID because their system protected them
from my nasty, nasty language. I do hope this issue goes out and
that the phrase " Sweet Heroine in Trouble" and that the nanny
filter does not kill this issue. And as a message to whoever
installed the nanny filter on AOL, "Friends usually can know you
only uncertainly." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: How to Analyze Great Literature (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was flying back from the World Science Fiction Convention in
Scotland and the transatlantic flight was showing, of all things,
THE WIZARD OF OZ. It had been years since I saw it and I decided
to watch some of it. It was toward the end of the film and the
defrocked Wizard was bestowing his gifts on the major characters.
He is such a loveable old man and whatever he says sounds like
heartfelt wisdom. He tells the Scarecrow, "A heart is not judged
by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others."
Generations of kids have been brought up on this warm philosophy.
I have heard it for years. Finally I am approaching an age of a
sizable fraction of the Wizard's age. Do I see things like the
Wizard does? Are you kidding me? That is a horrible philosophy.
I have known people who have messed up their lives because
expected someone to love them but did not bother loving back.
Who in history can we see has been greatly loved? A lot of
Argentineans loved Eva Peron. She was no prize. A high
percentage of the German people loved Hitler. They were even
willing to die for him. I certainly would not judge Hitler's
heart by how much he was loved.
This whole film (I am talking about the film, not having read the
book in many years) is based on pretty tenuous ethical grounds.
Dorothy really wants to get home. It may be for the best of
reasons but this kid really, really wants to get home. So what
must she do? She is told she has to get the broom of the Wicked
Witch of the West. Someone observes task that would entail
killing the witch. She thinks about it and says the equivalent
of "well, yeah, okay, sure." Luckily she gets to do a Spiderman
and does not actually have to kill her victim. She just sort of
brings about the death as an accident. [Letting the villain kill
himself in an accident is a Spiderman trick. In the films the
villain dies, but Spidey does not do the killing. He just sort
of fradiddles the villains so much that they end up killing
themselves.]
Also, as Evelyn has pointed out, the real hero of the film is
Toto. The dog pulls the fat out of the fire more often than not.
It is Toto who shows the real nature of the wizard. But does
anyone care at the end of the film that Elvira Gulch still has an
order for the dog to be destroyed? Dorothy is home and that is
what counts.
My father-in-law's favorite novel is LOST HORIZON. He likes the
idea that if you live in peace and tranquility you live a very
long time. Maybe it only seems that way. But, if you read the
novel, just living in peace in Shangri-La is not enough.
Somebody has to bring in things that cannot be found on a high
Tibetan mountain. Caravans have to be paid to bring in goods.
How do they pay them? If you read the novel--this one I did
read--there is gold in them thar hills. There is a rich vein of
gold running through Shangri-La. Well, heck, what kind of a
message is that? You too can live in peace and contentment if
you have the right frame of mind, you are willing to go with the
flow, and as it happens you have just a whole bunch of gold to
pay for it all. Getting back to comic book heroes, it reminds me
of the recent DAREDEVIL film. As I said in my review "In his
angst Daredevil asks himself the question 'Can one man make a
difference?' And I think the film answers inspirationally with a
resounding 'Yes, one man with radioactive mutant super-powers can
make a difference.' I think that is a message we all needed in
these troubled times." This is news I can use? [Thanks go to
Bill Higgins for reminding me periodically of that turn of phrase
by quoting it in his signature file.]
My father thought that instead of science fiction I should have
been reading good books like he read as a kid. His choice was
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. What is the message of this great
novel by Dumas? If you are poor there is little hope for you.
The wealthy and the powerful can use you as they will. But . . .
but if you have money--I mean a lot of money--then you have
power. You have the power to pulverize your foes, to see them
flail in your clutches, and to ruin the lives of their families.
Money is the power to crush your enemies. And it may even bring
you peace and contentment.
I guess I have this talent looking at other people's favorite
stories and seeing them with new eyes. Back in ninth grade
English we were reading PUDDINHEAD WILSON by Mark Twain. That is
the book in which there is a good black man held down by society
and by a nasty white man who had been raised with him. [Spoiler
alert.] The bad white man gets his comeuppance. But as a final
kick it turns out that Wilson can prove the black man and the
white man had their identities crossed. The two were
accidentally switched at an early age and the skin tones were so
similar it was impossible to tell it had happened. I said, on
the exam no less, that Twain had given in to the prejudice of his
day by having the white man be the good man and the black man is
bad. Old Mrs. Wanager took off from the grade saying that she
thought I had missed the point. I learned that day the terrible
lesson that exams and irony do not mix. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Do You Know the Way to San Jose? (letter of comment by
Aaron Leeper):
My cousin Aaron Leeper joins the discussion of lines on the
Earth's surface with the following observation:
"Jews all over the world turn toward Jerusalem to pray. The
direction from New York toward Jerusalem on a flat map is
south-eastward, so local architects in New York routinely design
synagogues to have the seating face that direction, more or less.
Yet if you fly to Jerusalem from New York, you will head in a
north-easterly direction, heading vaguely toward Iceland! The
'Great Circle' route, i.e. the shortest line connecting New York
and Jerusalem, is at great variance with the intuitive direction
. . . because of the curvature of the globe. The best way I
found for quick and dirty determination of the shortest direction
between remote cities (as an amateur radio operator who wanted to
aim his antenna for reception of far-off continents) was to simply
pick up a globe and put a finger from each hand on each of the
cities in question and follow the imaginary line connecting the
two fingers. Obviously, there's no point in doing this for nearby
cities, but for very remote cities the results were quite
unexpected at first." [-al]
Actually the shortest path from New York to Jerusalem is over Nova
Scotia, the English Channel, and the North of Italy. A standard
map with the equator in the middle distorts distances, as any flat
map will. A northern polar projection shows the path marginally
more accurately. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (letter of comment by David
Johnson)
In Evelyn's review of CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY in the
07/22/05 issue she said, "One change from the book is that
Charlie's father is still alive-- maybe Burton thought that far
too many children's movies had dead parents." David Johnson wrote
to say, "Ummm, no. While the first movie had Charlie's father
dead (apparently, so that Wonka could be more of a "father figure"
to him in the film--not to mention in the 60s and 70s, it was rare
to see any child in a film/TV with both parents), the book has
always had him quite alive. He's stated to have a job (at least,
for the first couple of chapters--then he's let go and things get
thin) at a factory screwing the caps on tubes of toothpaste. He
is, however, pretty much a non-entity in the book. Then again,
except for Grandpa Joe, all of Charlie's relations are basically
just there, with maybe a line or two (with who says that line
mostly interchangeable with any of the other family members)."
[-dj]
[I must have been thinking of the movie. I would look in the book
to see where I was confused, but I can't seem to find it since it
hasn't gotten reshelved yet and I have no idea where I put it!
-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE RUNES OF THE EARTH--THE LAST CHRONICLES OF THOMAS
COVENANT BOOK ONE by Stephen R. Donaldson (copyright 2004, Putnam,
$26.95, ISBN 0-399-15232-6) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
Back a gazillion years or so ago--okay, only about twenty-eight,
new writer Stephen R. Donaldson burst onto the fantasy scene with
the first Thomas Covenant novel, LORD FOUL'S BANE. I remember my
first attempt to read that novel--it failed miserably. I put it
aside, something less than half finished (and I suspect even less
than that), wondering why I tried. Covenant was whiny, after
all, and it didn't seem to be going anywhere. So I let it sit
for awhile, and tried again later (how much later I don't know--
that was, after all, twenty-eight years ago). And for some
inexplicable reason, not only did I finish it, I was hooked.
There were a total of six Covenant novels across two Chronicles--
the second, oddly enough, is called "The Second Chronicles of
Thomas Covenant". And they flew off the shelves, and were mostly
acclaimed by fans and critics as "wonderful things." Oh, there
were problems--the writing was way over the top and too heavy
handed, Covenant was a whiny SOB, among others, but in general it
was very, very successful. The inside front flap even claims
that the "Chronicles" helped create the modern fantasy genre. I
don't know about that, but I know I liked it a lot.
Just a side note here. Back then, I was writing book reviews for
"The Log of the S.S. Voyager", the fanzine of the Purdue
University Science Fiction Club. In those days, though, these
things were written on paper with a pen or pencil, or maybe typed
if I had access to a typewriter. I would have loved to see what
I'd written about these books back then.
Anyhow, Donaldson has decided to pick up where he left off and
finish the story with "The Last Chronicles". Runes starts ten
years after the end of the last book. Linden Avery has adopted
an autistic boy. Joan Covenant, Thomas' wife, has gone insane,
and is in the care of Linden Avery at the hospital at which she
works. Roger Covenant, the son of Thomas and Joan, has come to
Linden to plead his case to have her released into his custody.
After all, he is an adult now, and can take responsibility for
her. The thing is, all he really wants is her white gold wedding
ring (oh boy, here we go), and Jeremiah, Joan's autistic son, has
just built an extremely accurate Lego model of Revelstone, the
Keep of the Lords of the Land, in her apartment.
Yeah, weird stuff is going to happen, don'tcha know.
So, by one means or another, Roger, Joan, and Jeremiah are off to
the land, and Linden follows along not far behind. The problem
turns out that the land is overcome by caesures, rifts in time,
and is plagued by something called Kevin's Dirt (another side
note: Kevin? Lord Kevin? Kevin Landwaster? Good grief, I like
male Anglo-Saxon names as much as the next guy, but *Kevin* in a
fantasy setting?), which blocks earthsense. Oh yeah, the Staff
of Law has been lost by Anele, who was in charge of keeping it.
He lost it and came through a caesure to the present time. The
Bloodguard are now the Masters of the Land, and are keeping the
secrets of earthpower away from everyone, for the reason that the
use of earthpower will only lead to Corruption.
Anyway, Foul has Jeremiah, and the Staff was lost in the past.
What better thing to do than to use a caesure, which only travels
forward in time, to go *backward* to get the staff, aided by ur-
viles and the Ranyhyn, no less? Linden believes that she needs
the Staff to rescue Jeremiah and defeat Foul. And oh yeah, we
don't know where Roger and Joan are at this point.
Remember a couple of reviews ago when I said I put a book down to
read WAR OF THE WORLDS and then HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD
PRINCE? Yep, it was this thing. It was slow, tedious, and
tremendously boring. LORD FOUL'S BANE revisited, as it were.
The problem is that Donaldson takes at least a couple of hundred
pages just going over what happened in the first six books,
reminding the reader by weaving it into the story of our heroine
and her companions. Well, while I did need the reminder, I
really don't think it needed to drag out quite so long.
But after I finished HALF-BLOOD PRINCE and picked up where I left
off, things weren't so boring anymore. Things started to happen,
and it moved quicker and got more interesting. Interesting
enough that I had a desire to finish it in short order.
Still, this book has its shortcomings. Aside from Linden being
overwrought about everything, the writing still goes over the top
on occasion. And the story moves more slowly than it needs to.
My neighbor says he felt manipulated once he finished it. I
didn't feel that way, but I do feel like a good portion of my
time could have been better spent reading another book.
However, there are three more to go--yep, it's going to end up
being four books. Let's hope they get better as they go along.
[-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THIS DIVIDED STATE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Steven's Greenstreet's documentary of the political
firestorm created when Michael Moore was invited to speak at Utah
Valley State College shortly before the 2004 election. The state
is overwhelmingly Republican and Orem City, Utah, was
overwhelmingly against allowing Moore to speak. The film covers
the fight that followed and gives a disturbing, if repetitive,
view of the political polarization of the country. The film
criticizes demagogues on both sides of the issues.
Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Orem City, Utah, calls itself Family City, USA. In a state that
is 75% Mormon and 92% Republican, it sees itself as representing
Christian and American family values. In September 2004, in
spite of this climate, Jim Bassi and Joe Vogel of Utah Valley
State College invited liberal filmmaker Michael Moore to come to
speak. The speech would be just two weeks before the 2004
election. They could not have expected the size of what happened
next. Large factions of the right wing community mobilized to
protest and to try to prevent Moore from speaking at UVSC. The
organizers had expected some resistance, but were taken by
surprise at the vehemence and fury of those opposing Moore's
visit. The debate becomes one of an angry argument over the
meaning of freedom of speech and the First Amendment of the
Constitution.
A great deal of what the film about is the anger and extremity of
the right wing views in the community. The fears expressed went
to claiming that Moore hated the town and his coming to speak in
order to destroy the community and everything that it stands for.
Leading the charge and really the central figure of the
documentary is Kay Anderson whose arguments are intolerant and
unconstitutional. He assumes that that anyone who disagrees with
him is wrong and simply does not understand the situation, but
adds positively "perhaps someday they will." The conservative
activists bring in Sean Hannity, Fox News commentator, to fight
their cause. Hannity's approach is to hold a public meeting to
discuss the issue in which those who argue for the liberal side
are shouted or booed down or called up on the state and put on
the spot to represent the entire liberal cause.
The rough-edged narrative spends its first hour on the firestorm
before Moore's speech. Stylistically the film is a little
irritating. It has it repetitious with Anderson presenting the
same views over and over. In addition, the film keeps returning
to one participant whose only qualification for the attention
seems to be that he has a strong physical resemblance to Michael
Moore. In the final half-hour when Moore himself is present in
Orem City, the film takes an ironic twist. This speech which so
many fought so hard for and against is one of astounding banality
and almost totally lacking in substance. He praises the courage
of the committee that invited him. He thanks the people in the
audience who had served in Iraq and promises that the Democrats
will bring the soldiers home. He tells the audience that they
have just two more weeks of George Bush as President. Moore's
speech is less a discussion of the issues and more a pep talk
given in a state where it would be unlikely to do any good.
Moore seems totally unable to give a speech worthy of the effort
and the fighting that was necessary to bring it about. We see
indignant Nader-ites ejected from the auditorium for using some
of the same techniques that Moore would use. And as the film
wryly points out, Moore endorsed Ralph Nader in 2000. Then Moore
leaves UVSC with the brouhaha over his speech still going on.
The real heroes of the story are Bassi and Vogel who originally
invited Moore, who stood up to the criticism, and who were left
with lawsuits against them after Moore had left.
This is a film with many surprising ironies and the agitators on
both sides look bad in the end. This film is a sobering look at
what the entire political process has become and is becoming. It
rate THIS DIVIDED STATE a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Isabel Allende's ZORRO (ISBN 0-06-077897-0) continues the
tradition of newer authors writing origin stories for characters
(often heroes or super-heroes) whose lives were joined in media
res by their original creators. So we got, for example, YOUNG
SHERLOCK HOLMES to explain that character's background (rather
poorly, I'll add). Johnston McCulley made Zorro the son of a
hidalgo, but did not say much more. All his later stories were
sequels. The movies embellished this background somewhat (and in
fact McCulley picked up some ideas from the first movie for his
later stories), but Allende has gone in a different direction,
emphasizing (some might say inventing) Zorro's Indio roots (his
mother here is a mestiza freedom fighter), a more equal
relationship between him and Bernardo, and, most interesting, the
emergence of the Zorro persona in Spain rather than in
California. There's a lot about the efficacy of Indio medicine
and other elements than might be labeled as too "politically
correct" were it not for the fact that the whole Zorro story of
someone defending the Indios from the rapacious Spanish invaders
is already pretty politically correct. Much of the story takes
place in Napoleanic and post-Napoleanic Spain, so if you're a fan
of Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" series, this should fit right in.
Certainly an intriguing novel, although you may disagree with the
direction in which Allende has taken the character.
THE FINE ART OF MURDER edited by Ed Gorman, Martin H. Greenberg,
and Larry Segriff, with Jon L. Breen (ISBN 0-88184-972-3) is a
massive collection of over a hundred articles and lists such as
"Why Cozies?", "Does Anybody Love a Researcher?", "Humorous
Crime, or Dead Funny", and "Some Notable Religious Mysteries".
While some are outdated (a 1993 article on mystery bookstores is
almost entirely of only historical interest now), and various
others not of great interest to some readers (I, for example, have
little interest in true crime or serial killer stories), but with
so much ground covered, there is bound to be more than enough for
readers with some interest in mysteries.
Barry Malzberg's THE SODOM AND GOMORRAH BUSINESS (ISBN
0-671-77789-0) is perhaps most notable for a single prescient
sentence. Malzberg describes the Watts riots after Robert
Kennedy's assassination, and then writes, "Then Chicago in the
eighties when the Twin Towers toppled, and the Prudential went."
(I realize that sounds as though he thinks the Twin Towers were
in Chicago, but I'll note that the line is from the point of view
of a narrator who has been at best spottily informed about
history. Alas, when one thinks about it, a lot of today's
students would do equally badly in sorting out events of fifty or
sixty years ago.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers
are punished unless they kill in large numbers
and to the sound of trumpets.
-- Voltaire