THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/07/06 -- Vol. 25, No. 1, Whole Number 1342
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:
692 Film Trailers (pointer)
I Know There Will Never Be Another You (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Hugo Nominations (comments by Joe Karpierz)
This Week's Reading (TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, OR JUST PLAIN BULL:
HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE; WHAT ROUGH BEAST;
THE 60 GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME;
and A NARRATIVE OF A 1823 TOUR THROUGH HAWAI`I)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: 692 Film Trailers (pointer)
The Digital History web site has 692 film trailers of generally
well-known films that are easily viewable. They play with the
software already on most PCs. Actually, some are cheats. Some
are from Turner re-releases and some are just film clips or ads
for video releases, but they form a sort of history of cinema
(particularly if you follow the link to where they are sorted by date).
See http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/trailers/trailers_title.cfm.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: I Know There Will Never Be Another You (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
The other day I got myself a bottle of orange juice to have with a
sandwich. The label proclaimed it to be "100% juice, nothing
added." While I munched on this lunch I happened to look at the
ingredients. They were water and orange juice concentrate. The
producers lied to me. They said nothing was added and here it had
water added.
"Just the water they took out," my wife said.
"I don't believe it. I think they added different water!"
"Water is water."
"Perhaps, but they took out some water and added different water.
Then they said it was all juice, nothing added."
"Well, after they added the water back it was all juice."
"No, it was a combination of parts of the juice and water. The
concentrate was 100% pure juice. At least I hope so. But if you
start with orange juice, take out the water, and put in different
water you don't have 100% pure orange juice. You have diluted
orange juice concentrate. Doesn't it bother you that in what
they call 100% pure orange juice most of the molecules have never
seen the inside of an orange?"
It didn't.
What can I say? This all ties in with the old Star Trek
question. If Captain Kirk steps into the transporter, has his
atoms disassembled, they are sent someplace else, and they are
reassembled, is this still Captain Kirk? Has Engineering not
killed Captain Kirk, took the building blocks, moved them
someplace else, and with them built a perfect copy of the original
Captain Kirk, one with all his memories, but a different Captain
Kirk nonetheless. Functionally, he is still the Captain Kirk we
all knew and tolerated. The Starship Enterprise can go on as
before because there is something that thinks and functions just
like Kirk. But is it Kirk? Is it not true that Kirk was
disassembled for parts and a new Kirk was built from the pieces.
What if they used *different* atoms? Would that still be Kirk?
What if they made one Kirk with his original atoms and one Kirk
that is functionally the same but they used different atoms? Does
choice of atoms matter? Aren't atoms of a given isotope of an
element all alike? I think every time they transport Kirk he dies
and an exact replica takes his place.
Similarly when you take the water out of orange juice and put in
different water, what comes out may be indistinguishable from
real juice, but it no longer is.
Of course, I realize I am flying in the face of common belief.
When they took London Bridge, disassembled it and moved it to
Lake Havasu Arizona and rebuilt it there, was it still London
Bridge? Most people think it is. I suspect I might accept that
it is still London Bridge, but it did not have a mind. Captain
Kirk had a mind. Well, in a manner of speaking he did. Somehow
it is hard to believe that making an exact copy of him is really
the same thing as having *the* Captain Kirk. An
indistinguishable copy is not the original. That holds true for
the orange juice. It is only virtual orange juice.
Speaking of "100% pure," is anyone else bothered by the sign they
have (or once had) at McDonalds that says "Made with 100% pure
beef"? Does this bother anybody but me? "Shouldn't they say it
is made *of* 100% pure beef? I make my spaghetti sauce with
mushrooms. I could say it is made with mushrooms. That doesn't
mean that there is nothing but mushrooms in it. They could be
making those burgers with pig snouts and worm meal. Then they
could throw in a tablespoon of UMass peanut butter meat loaf.
When you get past the cook's carrots and the peanut butter
somewhere in there is a fiber that came from a bovine. That fiber
is 100% pure beef. Throw it into the witch's brew and you could
say this concoction is made with 100% pure beef. Unless, of
course, the beef is made from water and beef concentrate. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo Nominations (comments by Joe Karpierz)
I don't only read novels. Well, I guess most of the time I do,
but I do vote in other categories in the Hugo awards, so at least
once a year I read fifteen or so short pieces, I watch a few
movies and tv shows, etc. What follows below is how I voted in
selected categories other than Best Novel.
Novella:
1) "Identity Theft", Robert J. Sawyer
2) "Inside Job", Connie Willis
3) "Burn", James Patrick Kelly
4) "Magic for Beginners", Kelly Link
5) "The Little Goddess", Ian McDonald
6) No Award
The novellas were all pretty good. I thought the Sawyer and
Willis stood above the rest, with the Kelly close behind. The
Link was different and decent, I guess, but I don't understand
all the hype behind it. It's not *that* good. The McDonald
didn't do much for me, but wasn't bad. A pretty strong field,
and I would be happy with either of my first two choices winning.
Novelette:
1) "I Robot", Cory Doctorow
2) "TelePresence", Michael A. Burstein
3) "The Calorie Man", Paolo Bacigalupi
4) No Award
5) "The King of Where-I-Go", Howard Waldrop
6) "Two Hearts", Peter S. Beagle
The Doctorow and the Burstein were terrific, and once again I'd
be happy if either won. "The Calorie Man" was interesting, but
didn't do much for me. I've already forgotten the Waldrop, and
the Beagle turned me off inside of two pages.
Short Story:
1) "Down Memory Lane", Mike Resnick
2) "Tk_tk_tk", David D. Levine
3) "Clockwork Atom Bomb", Dominic Green
4) "Seventy Five Years", Michael A. Burstein
5) No Award
6) "Singing My Sister", Margo Lanagan
I'd be happy if any one of the first four won the award--this was
a fairly strong field. On the other hand, I just don't see why
the Lanagan is here at all.
Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
1) SERENITY
2) BATMAN BEGINS
3) THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE
WARDROBE
4) HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
5) No Award
6) WALLACE AND GROMIT IN THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT
SERENITY and BATMAN are head and shoulders above the rest of the
field, and SERENITY is the slam-dunk best of the lot--which is
saying a lot because BATMAN BEGINS would be a Hugo winner in most
other years. I fell asleep on WALLACE AND GROMIT.
Okay, now we'll see how far I am from the rest of the voting
population. I probably won't even be close. :-) [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, OR JUST PLAIN BULL: HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE
(ISBN 1-59102-246-0) deals with logical fallacies, groupthink,
and other obstacles to clear thinking. The problem is that there
have been a lot of books covering this ground already, and this
does not add anything new (except adding more recent examples, I
suppose). And although I am probably somewhat to the left of
center politically, I found the extreme left-wing bias in
Patten's writing and examples to be very annoying. If he is
trying to convince a wide audience, he probably should have
avoided such obvious political bias.
WHAT ROUGH BEAST by H. R. Knight (ISBN 0-8439-5456-6) is a
mystery-cum-horror novel featuring Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan
Doyle as characters. There have been other such novels already,
including THE ARCANUM by Thomas Wheeler (reviewed in the 10/07/05
issue) and NEVERMORE by William Hjortsberg. This is not too
surprising, since Conan Doyle and Houdini were at one time
friends--before they fell out over spiritualism. The character
of Houdini seems drawn a little too broadly, and for that matter
that of Conan Doyle may be as well. If you don't mind some
supernatural elements mixed in with your mystery, you might enjoy
this, but I suspect that there are better Victorian supernatural
horror novels that do not have to work Houdini and Conan Doyle
into them.
THE 60 GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME by Jonathan Vankin &
John Whalen (ISBN 0-7607-0882-7) sounded very interesting, until
I realized that their notion of "all time" was considerably
shorter than even the "young Earthers". In fact, as far as I can
tell, Vankin & Whalen seem to think "all time" began around 1940,
with only two exceptions I could find: "The Lincoln Conspiracies"
and "Those Christ Kids" (a.k.a. The Priory of Zion et al). And
that brings up another complaint: all the chapters have cutesy
titles that often as not given you no clue as to the subject
matter (e.g., "Wake Up and Smell the Gas", "The Secret Team",
"The Lost Boys"). At least it does have an index. But when it
comes to "History's Biggest Mysteries, Cover-Ups, and Cabals"
(the subtitle of this book), I am sure they are many better ones
if one looks at the other 98% of history.
I bought A NARRATIVE OF A 1823 TOUR THROUGH HAWAI`I by William
Ellis (ISBN 1-56647-605-4) while on vacation in Hawai`i (along
with Mark Twain's LETTERS FROM HAWAI`I (reviewed in the 06/02/06
issue of the MT VOID). The Twain is from the late 19th century,
while this is from a much earlier time, and a very different
perspective. Twain was a cynic; Ellis was a missionary. As
such, Ellis spends a lot of time talking about the religious
situation: preaching to the natives, convincing them to abandon
their heathen religion, and so on. (The old religion had been
officially abandoned several years before the missionaries
arrived, so in some sense they were a little late for that. But
it is clear from Ellis's narrative that there was still a strong
belief in Pele, even if the other gods were discarded, and in
fact, this seems to continue into the present.) A few things
caught my eye. At one point, the author is trying to convince a
man not to weed his garden on the Sabbath, and it occurs to me
that while there seemed to be very strict rules about working on
the Sabbath, these rules defined work as something men did. When
the author finished telling the man not to work on the Sabbath, he
probably went back to his home and ate a special Sunday dinner
prepared by his wife.
Ellis also talks about the legend of a giant named Mankareoreo,
who supposedly could pick coconuts as he walked by the trees and
could wade into water six fathoms deep without getting wet above
his waist. Then Ellis says, "The Hawaiians are fond of the
marvellous, as well as many people who are better informed; and
probably this passion, together with the distance of time since
Mankareoreo existed, has led them to magnify one of Umi's
followers, of perhaps a little larger stature than his fellows,
into a giant sixty feet high." [page 101] Of course, if you
asked this missionary about whether Goliath was a giant (or
whether Jonah was swallowed by a big fish, or whether Joshua made
the sun stand still), he would probably have insisted that of
course all those were facts.
Later when he is talking to people on the Big Island, I get the
feeling that all the positive things they say about Captain Cook
is more that they are being polite and telling the missionaries
what they want to hear, than actually giving their account of
what happened. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The amount of violations of human rights
in a country is always an INVERSE function
of the amount of complaints about human
rights violations heard from there. The
greater the number of complaints being aired,
the better protected are human rights in that
country.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan