THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/08/06 -- Vol. 25, No. 10, Whole Number 1351
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:
Project Gutenberg Additions
New Heinlein Novel
New Name for Uranus (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Trailer Park Report: Animated Films (film comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Time Travel and Interviews (letter of comment
by Taras Wolansky)
Planets, Time Travel, Hugos, Interviews, and Laserdiscs
(letter of comment by Jack Purcell)
This Week's Reading (STRANGE ANGEL: THE OTHERWORLDLY LIFE
OF ROCKET SCIENTIST JOHN WHITESIDE PARSONS,
BORGES ON WRITING, TWENTY-FOUR CONVERSATIONS WITH
BORGES, THE FIRST TIME I GOT PAID FOR IT,
FILM CRAZY, A MOVEABLE FEAST, and HEMINGWAY FOR
BEGINNERS) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Project Gutenberg Additions
Project Gutenberg has added Andre Norton novels (THE GIFTS OF
ASTI, PLAGUE SHIP, RALESTONE LUCK, STAR BORN, STAR HUNTER, and
VOODOO PLANET). Scroll down from
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/n#a7021.
They also have Garrett P. Serviss's EDISON'S CONQUEST OF MARS (a
quickie rip-off of the Wells novel) at
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19141.
===================================================================
TOPIC: New Heinlein Novel
VARIABLE STAR is a new novel by Robert A. Heinlein that has been
finished by Spider Robinson and will be released in September.
See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/076531312X for more details.
[Thanks to Rob Mitchell for pointing this out, and also to Rob and
to Steve Goldsmith for sending out the MT VOID while we were on
vacation. -ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: New Name for Uranus (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
While the powers that be are considering a revision in the list of
what we call a planet, there has been some discussion as to
renaming the seventh planet. Apparently astronomers are tired of
the jokes and puns on the name Uranus. There is a popular
pronunciation which sounds like you have said something
scatological. There is an alternate pronunciation which gives
rise to puns about another bodily waste. Neither do astronomers
really want to use. One astronomer proposed that the planet
should be called Oberon. Picking up on the "Midsummer Night's
Dream" theme another contingent much preferred Titania. They
could not agree and finally a compromise was reached. The
seventh planet is to be renamed Bottom. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Trailer Park Report: Animated Films (film comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
As is a sort of a yearly tradition I have covered the film studio
presentation of upcoming films given at the World Science Fiction
Convention. These presentations are a custom that goes back at
least as far as MidAmericon in 1976 when a minor filmmaker,
George Lucas, showed his designs for his upcoming film, STAR
WARS. Presentations of upcoming films for the Worldcon became
common for a while but are now a dying tradition. These days one
person comes to the convention with one or two DVD disks of
trailers and there is little to the presentation besides that.
Instead they send advertising giveaways like pins and buttons.
That is less labor-intensive and the same presentation can be
rolled out at different convention with little extra effort. In
fact, they make the package up for another event entirely, the
San Diego Comic-con. That event is much more commercial than the
World Science Fiction Convention but also much bigger so that
from the studios' point of view it has eclipsed the Worldcon. My
knowledge of the films discussed here has been augmented by
references to the Internet Movie Database.
I think that the Golden Age of animated films is right about now.
Certainly studios like Pixar and Dreamworks have shown that
animated films frequently can out-perform films of similar cost
shot in live action. The first trailer for a film presented was
CHARLOTTE'S WEB. Curiously, that is being done live action. I
will talk about that next week. It was followed by a string of
animated films and I will talk about them now.
OPEN SEASON, the first of several animated trailers we saw,
already has trailers in theaters. It seems to be the adventures
of a likable bear and a fast-talking deer. Boog is a tame bear
who escapes and finds himself in woods during hunting season. He
cooperates with Eliot, the deer, to survive the guns that will be
pointed at them. The content is not promising, but the jokes in
the trailers had the audience laughing. Martin Lawrence and
Ashton Kutcher are the primary voices.
When I was young, films for children were expected to be
wholesome. Even for adults they were expected to avoid vulgarity.
Most people who saw a toilet in PSYCHO were seeing that sort of
facility for the first time on the silver screen. These days
the films with scatological humor are mostly made for young kids.
FLUSHED AWAY deals with a mouse who is flushed down a toilet only
to find a wonderland in the sewers of London. Not much is
obvious from the trailer beyond that premise. This film seems to
be all about the adventure of a house mouse learning to live as a
sewer mouse. Oh, boy.
What looks to be an allegory about being yourself has Mumbles, an
Emperor Penguin wanting to tap dance his way in HAPPY FEET.
Unlike penguins who sing to find a mate, Mumbles wants to tap
dance his way into the hearts of females. It will be interesting
to see how people react to this film after seeing the harsh world
that some Emperor Penguins live in MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. I don't
suggest tap dancing when you have the next generation balanced
carefully on your feet. There are advantages to singing. Robin
Williams, Hugh Jackman, Elijah Wood, Nicole Kidman, Brittany
Murphy, and Hugo Weaving do the voices.
It was hard to tell the viewer much about MEET THE ROBINSONS
except that the Robinsons are a weird family that you would
really not want to meet. The IMDB says that this one is about a
boy who has a machine that retrieves memories and somehow he goes
forward in time with it to find a family that needs his help.
Maybe you have to see the film to understand this.
RATATOUIE is the adventures of a rat in France who lives in an
expensive French restaurant. He suddenly realizes that what he
and other rats are eating is garbage. When you are a rat it comes
with the territory. This rat goes off in search of better
cuisine. This sounds like FLUSHED AWAY in reverse. Brian Bird
directs and previously directed THE IRON GIANT and THE
INCREDIBLES, so in spite of the trailer not being very inviting, the
film might still be decent.
TMNT (that seemed from the trailers to be the title though the
IMDB lists it as TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES) is an animated
film telling the further adventures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles. The trailers--there were two of them--had little
information except that there is a falling out between two of the
turtles and they fight something that look like a gargoyle.
There is not much information yet about the plot.
A very repressive Paris in the year 2054, one where spy cameras
are trained on everybody, is the setting for a stylish,
apparently monochrome animated film entitled RENAISSANCE. (The
description in the IMDB says, "In 2054, Paris is a labyrinth where
all movement is monitored and recorded. Casting a shadow over
everything is the city's largest company, Avalon, which insinuates
itself into every aspect of contemporary life to sell its primary
export--youth and beauty. In this world of stark contrasts and
rigid laws the populace is kept in line and accounted for.")
What makes objects appear to be three-dimensional is in large
part the fact that your eyes get different information. They see
together more than one eye can. I would think this means you
cannot go back and make a two-dimensional image three-
dimensional. Apparently with new digital technology you can
extrapolate out the missing information for the left-eye image.
So they can and have made a 3-D IMAX version of THE NIGHTMARE
BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Because the animation looks like a 2-D image
of actual 3-D objects, this is a good choice of a film to choose.
For me, Tim Burton films are a mixed bag. This is one of the
Burton films I really do like. There is a lot of creativity in
all parts of the screen.
Next week I will talk about some of the live-action films that
are coming. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Time Travel and Interviews (letter of comment by Taras
Wolansky)
In response to Mark's article on time travel in the 09/01/06 issue
of the MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes:
Isn't your concept of time travel the way DVD players fast-
forward and rewind?
And in response to Mark's article on interviews in the 08/18/06
issue of the MT VOID, Taras writes:
"You can choose photographs that make the politician you dislike
look like an idiot." Quite right; whenever you see a picture of
a politician (or celebrity) in which he looks like an idiot, this
tells you that the magazine or TV show is behaving unethically.
When people are photographed thousands of times, they will
inevitably be caught making strange, split-second faces.
Similarly, when you have thousands of hours of videotape, you can
make anyone look like an idiot--if you're unscrupulous. You may
have seen Donald Kingsbury's review, ripping Fahrenheit 911 for
doing exactly that.
Even "unedited" interviews have their pitfalls, as Paul S. R.
Chisholm suggests. Nearly all TV interviews outside of studio
are done with only one camera. Thus, after the interview is
over, the on-air personality and the camera crew find a blank
wall somewhere and ask the questions again. The same questions,
hopefully: Jay Leno has a routine in which he inserts himself
into a Presidential press conference and intercuts his comical
questions with the real replies.
A woman interviewer (it may have been Baba Wawa) once laughed
about the praise she had gotten from her network president for
keeping cool during a contentious interview with Khrushchev (or
some other irate leader). All her "reaction" shots were filmed
later, of course.
On the other hand, if the journalist is on the same side as the
politician, then we well may ask, "To what extent is the
interviewer collaborating with interviewee?"
An article in "The Wilson Quarterly", maybe a half-year back,
made the point that a high IQ is not necessarily the most
desirable thing in a leader. As an example, the author gave us
JFK and Richard Nixon: based on the military IQ tests both men
had to take, JFK scored 121; Nixon, 145. (By contrast, the IQ
tests of the 2004 candidates gave Bush only a slight advantage
over Kerry.)
But even if nearly everything about JFK was fake--his healthy
"vigah", his ideal Catholic family life, his intellectualism
(e.g., the ghost-written Profiles in Courage)--at least his
famous verbal wit was real, I thought.
Only months later did it occur to me that while the press hated
Nixon--in his press conferences, they were picador to his bull--
they loved JFK. How many of the witty exchanges were scripted, I
began to wonder. [-tw]
Mark replies:
Is my concept of time travel the same as how VCRs speed up time?
It is inviting to compare the two because most time travel
functions have analogs on a VCR. Still, there are really good
reasons to NOT use VCRs as an analogy. VCR signals are (I think)
24 frames a second. When they broadcast a film, most films are
24 FPS. Reality is continuous. That confuses just about any
discussion you might have. Fast-scanning on a television is
showing an interval of frames, skipping some and showing some
more. But are the intervals chosen on frame in length or, say,
three frames in length. You get into issues that do not fit well
with time travel.
As for embarrassing photos, you just have to get a DVD of the
most charismatic actor speaking and step through the sequence a
frame at a time. It will not be long before you find one frame
that out of context makes him look bad. (I seem to remember them
using this phenomenon to good effect with Reese Witherspoon in
ELECTION. They froze frame at just the right spot to make her
look silly.)
As for filming the interviewer at a later point after the
interview, I think that that fit into the plot of BROADCAST NEWS
where and interviewer (William Hurt) was apparently so moved by
the person he was talking to that he cried. Then it turned out
that he was being filmed later and it was an act. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Planets, Time Travel, Hugos, Interviews, and Laserdiscs
(letter of comment by Jack Purcell)
In reponse to Mark's articles on a variety of things in the
09/01/06 issue of the MT VOID, John Purcell (who apparently reads
the issues from the web pages) writes:
I was just reading Jack Speer's "Up to Now" last night, in which
Donald Wollheim figured so prominently, so your opening about
Pluto was rather timely. I now understand the jury's being
recalled about their recent judgements. "Twelve Angry Planets"?
[I know of only the Angry Red Planet. -mrl]
My wife and I love the original movie version of THE TIME MACHINE
with Rod Taylor. Like the book, it's a great sociological
statement about the human race. It is a wonderful, fun movie.
[Wells wrote frequently about the future of mankind both
sociologically and biologically. I believe that even the WAR OF
THE WORLDS Martians were supposed to be like a future stage of
human evolution. -mrl]
Your musings about time travel are interesting. One must operate
out of assumptions in regards to this concept, such as that time
and space move in concert and at the same rate. I understand
your argument, and it does make sense, but I'm not much of a
theoretician about this kind of thing. Still, an interesting
discussion. We will have to see what some other folks say when
they weigh in on this topic.
[I either do not follow that or do not see how they could not.
-mrl]
As far as the Hugo Winners go, read the 15th issue of my zine
"And Furthermore" for my take on the Fan Hugo Awards. It should
be posted to efanzines sometime later today. Good for David
Hartwell to finally win! I met him at Iguanacon and enjoyed
talking with him; a very nice man.
[We were very pleased to see him win finally. -mrl]
Interviews can be either tough to do or they can be easy,
depending upon how well interviewer-interviewee mesh together. I
don't like it when an interviewer goes in with preset negative
attitudes of his "target". It may make for an interesting sound-
byte or three, but I don't like adversarial interviews. Paul
Chisholm's comments about the "60 Minutes" methodology might be
apocryphal, but I can see where people might get the notion of
post-interview editing that includes additional footage and so
on.
Yeesh, I remember Laserdiscs. When I was Second Shift Supervisor
at a distribution warehouse for Musicland Group way back when,
those things didn't move at all. Nobody really had players for
them. DVDs and VHS tapes are ideal, though. We're getting quite
a collection of both here.
Nice ish, Mark. If this goes on, I just might have to subscribe to
your newsletter. [-jp]
[Thank you. We try. Hey, if you want to subscribe we are
offering a half-price offer all this month. Instead of the usual
zero charge this month we are charging half of that. -mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
STRANGE ANGEL: THE OTHERWORLDLY LIFE OF ROCKET SCIENTIST JOHN
WHITESIDE PARSONS by George Pendle (ISBN 0-15-100997-X) is a
biography of the man who developed solid rocket fuel, then got
involved in Aleister Crowley's religious cult, and eventually
blew himself up under somewhat suspicious circumstances. Along
the way he was heavily involved in science fiction fandom and
LASFL/LASFS. In fact, he seems to have taken some ideas for
rockets from early Jack Williamson stories, introduced L. Ron
Hubbard to Aleister Crowley's cult (gee, I wonder what effect
that had :-) ), and known most of the major science fiction
authors of that time. Interestingly, of all the authors he knew,
it is one of the oldest who is still around to provide
information to Pendle: Jack Williamson (born 1908). Forrest
J. Ackerman (born 1916) and Ray Bradbury (born 1920) are also
still with us, but so many other authors died much younger:
Asimov (1920-1992), L. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000), Robert
A. Heinlein (1907-1988), L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), Willy Ley
(1906-1969), and Alva Rogers (1923-1982).
I had read most of the Jorge Luis Borges available through my
library system, but I was recently in a Library not in the system,
so I read a couple of books that they had: BORGES ON WRITING
edited by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, Daniel Halpern, and Frank
MacShane (ISBN 0-525-47352-1) and TWENTY-FOUR CONVERSATIONS WITH
BORGES (ISBN 0-394-62192-1). The latter is a collection of
interviews by Roberto Alifano carried out between 1981 and 1983,
and I will make a couple of comments. In "Funes and Insomnia",
Borges claims that "memorious" is not an English word. Actually
it is a very old word, dating back to at least 1599; Shakespeare
uses it a year later in TIMON OF ATHENS.
In "Books", Borges says, "Scripta manent verba volant (The
written word stays, the spoken word flies). That phrase doesn't
mean that the spoken word is ephemeral, but rather that the
written word is something lasting and dead. The spoken word, it
seems to me now, is somewhat winged and light...."
And then later, he adds, "I believe that books will never
disappear. It is impossible that that will happen. Among the
many inventions of man, the book, without a doubt, is the most
astounding; all the others are extensions of our bodies. The
telephone, for example, is the extension of our voice; the
telescope and the microscope are extensions of our sight; the
sword and the plow are extensions of our arms. Only the book is
an extension of our imagination and memory."
I read a couple of books on the film industry recently. THE
FIRST TIME I GOT PAID FOR IT edited by Peter Lefcourt and Laura
J. Shapiro (ISBN 0-306-81097-2) is a collection of short articles
by screenwriters writing (mostly) about their first paying jobs
(though some drift off-topic). Some are humorous, some
depressing, and some merely informative. I found enough
worthwhile to recommend the book to film fans, but I suspect that
everyone will disagree on which the worthwhile ones are.
FILM CRAZY by Patrick McGilligan (ISBN 0-312-28038-6) is
presented as a collection of interviews with famous directors and
writers. However, for a few of the people, there is no
interview, but just an article by McGilligan about the subject,
with some quotations. (The entry for Reagan is an article rather
than an interview, and was written early in his political
career.) As articles in a magazine they would be interesting,
but they make for a rather lightweight book.
A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway (ISBN 0-02-051960-5) is
Hemingway's reminiscence of Paris in the 1920s. However, as
Errol Selkirk noted in HEMINGWAY FOR BEGINNERS (ISBN
0-863-16128-6), it was not written until shortly before his death
in 1961, and indeed the final editing was after his death. (The
book was finally published in 1964.) So a lot of the memories
are colored by intervening events: fallings-out with friends,
literary successes or failures, and so on. Still, it does give a
picture of what Paris was like in that era, and unlike George
Orwell in DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON, Hemingway was not
stuck in a restaurant kitchen washing dishes, but was hob-nobbing
with the literary lights of that time. (HEMINGWAY FOR BEGINNERS
gives a good summary of his life, but the artwork in it does not
do as much to amplify the contents as the artwork in the books in
the "Introducing" series.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
There are more fools in the world
than there are people.
-- Heinrich Heine