THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/12/06 -- Vol. 24, No. 46, Whole Number 1334
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:
Clothes Don't Make Any Man I Know
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Where is Curiosity Today? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
CRAZY LIKE A FOX (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (Hugo nominees: "Burn","Magic for
Beginners", "The Little Goddess",
"Identity Theft", and "Inside Job") (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Clothes Don't Make Any Man I Know (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
I was listening to the play "The Sisters Rosensweig" and one of
the characters is all excited about geting a new clothing outfit,
in pink yet. I think this is a difference in men and women, this
excitement in clothes. I don't think guys get that. On a scale
of one to ten the most exciting clotes I could get excite me to a
level of about two. Well . . . if I could get a uniform from
FORBIDDEN PLANET, that might be up around four. Most clothing is
no higher than a two. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Where is Curiosity Today? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
On a weekly basis I help some local high school students with
mathematics and was recently talking to one about mathematics as
a study. He told me that he could see very little reason to like
mathematics. To him it was just a tool, or worse, an obstacle. I
told him that there was something wonderful about mathematics.
When you prove something in mathematics you know that it is true
(well, not actually true, but it follows from some axioms you
accept). There is a sort of durability to what you discover.
There is a universal quality to it. When you prove to yourself
that the sum of two consecutive integers is never divisible by
two, but the sum of three consecutive integers is always divisible
by three, that will always be true, any time in your life, all
over the universe. That is a minor thing (one he could
understand) but he thought it was very strange that I was
impressed with this fact. He looked at me with a half-smile like
I was a little silly on the subject. Well, perhaps those were not
the most profound facts in mathematics, but they still had the
same permanence.
"What good is it?" he asked. "It is good to know." "What is it
good for?" "What does it have to be good for?" "Why would I
want to know it if it isn't useful?" "Maybe you want to know it.
Not one of your appetites, but you yourself."
I guess that was an allusion. I expressed it that way because
that is how Thomas More expressed it in the film A MAN FOR ALL
SEASONS. Norfolk is trying to convince More to give in to the
King's demands. "I will not give in, because I oppose it. Not my
pride, not my spleen, nor any other of my appetites, but I do, I.
Is there, in the midst of all this muscle, no sinew that serves no
appetite of Norfolk's, but is just Norfolk? There is! Give that
some exercise, my lord!"
What seems to be missing today from students is a sense of wonder
and a curiosity about the universe. What is worse there is a
sense of cynicism that anyone could have such a sense of wonder.
Most sciences have within them some beauty and amazement. There
are questions that are incredibly intriguing. I have grown up
knowing that the universe is expanding. I am used to that and it
makes sense. You could explain that with Newton's physics. But
the fact that it is speeding up and not slowing down in its
expansion makes no sense. So it is intriguing. I want to know
not because I can turn it into money and get a bigger television.
I won't be able to buy more food with the knowledge. It won't
make gasoline cheaper (well, maybe it could at some point). But I
want to know because I want to know. Mathematics has a lot more
unanswered and intriguing questions. But fewer and fewer young
people have a curiosity and a sense of wonder. Science fiction is
suffering the same fate. It is becoming like opera, an art form
predominantly attracting older people. When I first started going
to science fiction conventions most people going were roughly my
age. Now when I go to science fiction conventions most people
going are still roughly my age. They aren't a whole lot younger.
Of course whether current science fiction really does appeal to a
sense of wonder is another question.
But there is not much imagination left in the United States
today. Also there is not much left to the imagination. That is
probably a related trend. There is not as much book reading.
That has given way to visual media of film, television, and PC
oftware where the visual images are handed to the user. It is a
frightening thought that films are more visual now than they were
in the silent era. At first that seems impossible. After all,
silent films were 100% visual. But a film like BATMAN BEGINS has
far more that is visual than anything made in the silent era. The
technology of conveying imaginative images has gotten so good that
the consumer has to provide much less. We let a few creative
people do our imagining for us. Perhaps the future will go to
those countries where the people have less imagination presented
to them and more they have to create for themselves. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: CRAZY LIKE A FOX (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: An impoverished Virginia gentleman farmer finds his
historic property sold from under him and he begins a Quixotic
war to get it back. The rich characters are more the attraction
than the plot. The main character is nor really in the right and
that point is more controversial than intended. Rating: high +1
(-4 to +4) or 6/10
We hear a lot about clashes of cultures these days. This film is
about a clash of a different set of cultures. CRAZY LIKE A FOX
pits the old rural families of Virginia who trace their origins
back to revolutionary times against younger success-oriented
yuppies with less of a taste for tradition.
CRAZY LIKE A FOX is Richard Squires's comedy-drama with a focus
on character more common in British comedies than in American
ones. Roger Rees plays Nat Banks, a gentleman farmer who has had
some financial reverses. Now the state has put up for sale
Greenwood, his dilapidated but historic mansion and the large and
beautiful estate it is built on. Nat remains in denial about the
seriousness of his financial problems. As his behavior becomes
more and more eccentric his wife Amy (Mary McDonnell of GRAND
CANYON and PASSION FISH), a patient and straightforward woman, is
unable to bring him to reality.
Nat refuses to cooperate with the sale of the property and
suspects the motives of the two buyers, a nice-seeming couple who
claim they want to make only minimal changes to the property.
Nat reacts by dressing in a Confederate uniform and brandishing a
sword while spouting Shakespeare. He will not leave the estate
he feels so much a part of. While his wife and children move to
the nearby town, he takes up residence in a cave on the property
and begins living off the land like his hero Stonewall Jackson.
Richard Squires's script is somewhere between comedy and drama.
It rarely gives in to broad comedy, concentrating instead on
well-defined characters and on emotions. The characters are
fictional but based on real people. The historical details that
are salted into the script are also authentic. The reaction of
the critics to the film may well have been an education for
Squires himself. He professes not to understand why some viewers
are siding against Nat. The legal battle will resolve itself
into a conflict between a close association of the local gentry
and the outsiders who have the law on their side. Who is right
in the conflict is less clear-cut than Squires realizes. If it
is difficult to side with the mercenary strangers, it may also be
difficult to choose the priggish gentry who band together to
fight illegally for one of their own. This is becomes obvious
when he endangers the lives of some of the very people who are
standing with him. Meanwhile the viewers can compare the
eccentricity of Southerners and Southern law in Virginia with
those in Georgia as seen in MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND
EVIL.
Roger Rees is actually a British actor from the Royal Shakespeare
Company who is perhaps best known as the title character in that
company's production of "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas
Nickleby", a 510-minute miniseries that ran on American
television in 1982. He is a little hard to recognize behind a
short growth of beard and an affected Virgina accent that is
occasionally unconvincing.
CRAZY LIKE A FOX uses its beautiful Virginia setting, well
filmed, to underscore the value of this land. But not all the
film works just as Squires expects. I rate it a high +1 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 6/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Last week, I commented on the Hugo-nominated novels. Now it is
time to start commenting on the short fiction nominees. I will
begin with the novellas.
"Burn" by James Patrick Kelly (ISBN 1-892-39127-9) was yet another
Hugo nominee that I gave up on. There was just something about
the writing style that I found impenetrable.
Last year Kelly Link won the Hugo for novelette for "The Faery
Handbag", a story that I found okay, but nothing special. This
year she has a nominated novella, "Magic for Beginners" (in MAGIC
FOR BEGINNERS, ISBN 0-1560-3187-6; also F&SF Sep 2005), and my
reaction is about the same. Jeremy, Elizabeth, and Karl are
friends who watch a mysterious television show which runs at
random times on random channels, yet somehow they always know when
it is on. Then Jeremy's mother inherits a wedding chapel and a
phone booth in Las Vegas, and Jeremy starts getting strange
communications from the phone booth which may or may not be
connected to the show. It seemed fairly pointless and uninvolving
to me.
[The plot seems inspired by a Japanese horror film. -mrl]
"The Little Goddess" by Ian McDonald (ASIMOV'S Jun 2005) is set on
the near-future Indian subcontinent. India has splintered into
several nations, all jockeying for position and power. The
narrator begins as a goddess, chosen after a series of spiritual
tests, but this is a position that will end after a few years, not
with her death, but with puberty. She then finds herself trying
to become a normal person again, but having been a goddess creates
certain drawbacks. I really enjoyed this, both for the story, and
for the milieu. (In general, I recommend McDonald's work. I have
not had a chance yet to read his Hugo-nominated novel from 2004,
RIVER OF GODS, but I am looking forward to it.)
"Identity Theft" by Robert J. Sawyer (in DOWN THESE DARK SPACEWAYS,
edited by Mike Resnick, ISBN 1-582-88164-2) is a hard-boiled
science fiction mystery story in the vein of Isaac Asimov (on the
SF end) and Raymond Chandler (on the hard-boiled end). (Sawyer
has written at least one science fiction mystery story before,
ILLEGAL ALIEN.) Alexander Lomax (the first-person narrator) is a
detective on Mars hired to find the missing husband of his new
client, both of whom are "transfers"--people whose consciousnesses
have been transferred to mechanical bodies. As usual, Sawyer
deals with a lot of issues: the nature of identity, consciousness
and individuality, and of course the mystery itself. There do
seem to be a couple of flaws in the reasoning, though, which
detract from the story. (At one point Lomax says that a certain
murder must have been committed, but later we discover that this
is not true. Since his reasoning is part of what is given to the
reader as explanation, it seems unfair for it to turn out to be
false.)
I already reviewed "Inside Job" by Connie Willis (ISBN
1-596-06024-7; also ASIMOV'S Jan 2005) in the 03/03/06 issue of
the MT VOID. I did, however, fail to note that it had been
published in ASIMOV'S as well as by a small press in a limited
edition. And now it is available on-line (at least temporarily to
Hugo voters), as are all the other short fiction nominees.
My vote: McDonald, Willis, Sawyer, no award, Link, Kelly [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
If you don't ask why this? Often enough,
somebody will ask why you?
-- Tom Hirshfield