THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/20/07 -- Vol. 26, No. 3, Whole Number 1450

 El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
 The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent will be assumed authorized for inclusion
unless otherwise noted.

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Topics:
        Bubble Gum Memories (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        Misunderstanding (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        I AM LEGEND and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (comments
                by Mark R. Leeper)
        This Week's Reading (Science Fiction Museum and Hall of
                Fame) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================


TOPIC: Bubble Gum Memories (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Those who remember bubble gum cards of the past may enjoy seeing
the photo images of the complete runs of some of the series.
Central to their collection is the complete run of "Mars Attacks"
cards.  These cards were the lurid cross-breeding of "Horrors of
War" cards form the 1930s with super-science images inspired, I
suspect, by the 1953 film THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.  The site is:

http://www.bubblegum-cards.com/index.html

You can see some of the Horrors of War cards at:

http://www.the-forum.com/EPHEMERA/r69card.htm

[-mrl]

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TOPIC: Misunderstanding (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I guess I just sometimes just react wrong to science fiction
films.  In QUATERMASS II (here called ENEMY FROM SPACE) there is
supposedly a government project to make synthetic food.  An
investigator sneaks around security and comes in contact with the
supposed food.  The contact proves fatal as he escapes from the
tank screaming, "It burns!"  Most of the audience seems to have
gotten nightmares from the scene.  I am there thinking, "When can
they get it on the market and is it better than Tabasco?"  [-mrl]

===================================================================


TOPIC: I AM LEGEND and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)

I see that this year we will get another film version of Richard
Matheson's novel I AM LEGEND.  It is no big feat to choose what
would be the Great British Horror Novel.  It would take most
horror fans about ten seconds and they almost certainly would
come back with either Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN or Bram Stoker's
DRACULA.  But is there a Great American Horror Novel?  If there is,
I think it would have to be Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND.  The
new version will be the first time a film is coming out with the
novel's original title.  (There was a Spanish short called "Soy
Leyenda" (1967) I learn from the IMDB, but it is only fifteen
minutes long.)  In fact, I suspect that few non-fans of horror
will even recognize the name I AM LEGEND.

For those who are unfamiliar with the title, this is a novel
first published in 1954.  As we come upon Robert Neville, he
seems to be the last human in the world.  But the world is not
empty.  It is now populated mostly by something like vampires.  He
lives a lonely existence, killing the vampires as they rest during
the day and hiding in his house at night as the vampires try to
break in or tempt him out.  The situation is just reversed from
Dracula.  One human stalks and is stalked by a world of vampires.
These are not really supernatural vampires in the Dracula sense.
But they are the creatures who were probably the inspiration for
the vampire folklore.  A pandemic diseasehas burned through the
world in the 1970s.  There was no resistance to the disease.

Some of my scariest mental images of plague and what it would do
to modern society come from this book.  Nothing that the
government can do can stop the plague in spite of ruthless
measures to burn the victims as soon as it is even suspected they
are carriers.  Through some freak of nature it turns out that
Robert Neville was the only human who somehow had a resistance.
As the world is dying it becomes apparent that the death that
seems to come at the end of the disease is not really death at
all, but what must be a very deep coma.  The victims come back to
life and the disease has left them with symptoms that closely
match many of the characteristics of vampires in folklore.
Neville spends much of the book trying to understand the biology
of the transformed humans that try to kill him each night.  The
book is not about violent fights and not really about the
vampires at all.  It is about Neville's isolation and how he
copes with the loss not just of his family, but of his species.
He really is the last human.

To the best of my knowledge this is only the second story to
suggest that there could be natural causes for vampirism and to
remove vampires from the realm of the supernatural.  The only
previous such suggestion I know of was in one of the final
Dracula films of Universal's 1930 to 1945 series.  HOUSE OF
DRACULA suggested that Dracula's symptoms were the result of
pressure on his brain.  Of course, that was not a very satisfying
explanation how Dracula could do things like turning into bats.
Attempting to give a scientific reason for supernatural vampiric
powers has become a common mistake.  The vampires in the "Blade"
series seem to have traditional supernatural powers, but they also
seem to be given their condition by blood chemistry.  It is hard
to believe blood chemistry could give powers of so supernatural a
character like the ability to turn into a bat.

To date there have been only two film adaptations of the book I
AM LEGEND.  There was one version that was going to be done by
Hammer Films of Britain with Matheson himself writing the
screenplay.  Somehow they let the project get away from them and
it was made in Italy as an international production, with Vincent
Price playing Robert Morgan (changed from Neville).  The title
became THE LAST MAN ON EARTH or L'ULTIMO UOMO DELLA TERRA.  The
screenplay was supposedly so altered that Matheson wanted his
name taken off and his name appears as Logan Swanson.  That is
his personal penname for works he does not want to be associated
with.  In retrospect this may have been a decision he might have
come to regret. This is not really a bad adaptation of the book.
There are a number of issues concerning who actually directed the
film.  There was an Italian director for most of the actors and an
American for Price.  Some prints listed Italian director Ubaldo
Ragona and some list the American Sidney Salkow.  This was a film
that was unappreciated for many years after its 1964 release, but
now is getting positive critical attention.

If Matheson did not like the Italian production, Boris Sagal's
American adaptation, entitled OMEGA MAN (1971) was much worse and
much less faithful to his story.  John William Corrington and
Joyce Hooper Corrington who adapted the screenplay, turned into a
bad action story full of unsubtle politically correct messages.
Charleton Heston played the hero with a machine gun and a motor
scooter.  Charleton Heston is about as far from Matheson's dark
brooding survivor as is Will Smith, who will be the 2007 Robert
Neville.  On the other hand  the 1964 version would have seemed
miscast also.  Curiously the film featured Vincent Price without
his customary over-the-top style.  I have heard it claimed that
this was Price's best performance in any film.

In spite of the inexpensive production of THE LAST MAN ON EARTH,
it was not only more faithful to the book than was OMEGA MAN, it
probably has remained one of the most faithful of the many
adaptations of Matheson stories to the screen.  That film version
has had a long reach.  George Romero openly admits that the
images of the dead besieging the house of isolated living people
was a major inspiration of THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.  All of
the films that followed in imitation of THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD owe their inspiration to THE LAST MAN ON EARTH and
Matheson's I AM LEGEND.  But few have handled the theme as well.

American International Pictures released THE LAST MAN ON EARTH on
a throwaway double feature with UNEARTHLY STRANGER, a superb
British science fiction thriller, now even rarer than THE LAST MAN
ON EARTH.  I was knocked over by what I thought were two such
excellent films. Both were black-and-white films, probably
contributing to their obscurity.  Neither got much attention at
the time.  UNEARTHLY STRANGER has dropped from sight entirely.
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH seems to have fallen out of copyright and
has become one of those films that shows up on bargain DVDs
that offer something like ten films for five dollars.

Unlike DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, I AM LEGEND is short and powerful
and very sparely written.  The book is two or three hours of sharp
nightmare.  Matheson himself is at once widely recognized and
still under-appreciated.  I hope that before he dies he comes to
be recognized for the astounding length and breadth of his
contribution to American fantastic fiction.  [-mrl]

===================================================================


TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

[This continues the description of the Science Fiction Museum and
Hall of Fame in Seattle.]

The next gallery was "THEM!"  A short video illustrated the
themes of "Robots in Your Future", "Robots: Metal or Mortals?",
"Robots: Our Helpful Servants", and "Robots: Friends of Foes?"

Naturally, the Three Laws of Robotics were quoted:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction,
allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except when
such orders conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such
protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.


A display with Robbie and B9 noted that Robert Kinoshita designed
both of them.  As familiar as everyone is with Robbie, I doubt
that one in a hundred could tell you who designed him.

Daggit in the 1978 "Battlestar Galactica" was played by a
chimpanzee in a suit, which they had.  They also had a giant
"Alien Queen".

"SETI: Fiction and Fact" had subsections "Are We Alone?", "The
Drake Equation", "Communication Across the Stars", "Are They Here
Already?", and "Where Are They?"  There was, of course, a video
about aliens.  With "A Martian Odyssey", Stanley Weinbaum was
noted as the first author to present an alien as a "person" (or
more accurately a being with a personality, motivation, etc.).
With "Destroyer", A. E. Van Vogt was the first to write from the
alien point of view.

In the center of the room was an "Interplanetary Cafe", which was
not rally a cafe.  It had a special section on "The War of the
Worlds" which included the lesser-known work "The Martian" by
George du Maurier, and a section on "Heat Rays and the Cold War".
"The Invasion Continues" had various sequels and spin-offs: "The
White Mountains" by John Christopher, "The Second War of the
Worlds" by George H. Smith, and "War of the Worlds: Global
Dispatches" edited by Kevin J. Anderson.  Finishing up were items
from "The Coneheads" and "Red Dwarf", and models and items from
"Destination Moon".

We finished this about 1:30PM, so this room also took about an
hour.


There was a separate room that was strictly an art exhibit.  I
think this may change periodically.  Currently it was "Alien
Encounters", with artists' depictions of aliens.  The exhibit
included:

- "Buccaneers of Venus", J. Allen St. John ("Weird Tales",
   January 1933)
- "The Radio Planet", John Schoenherr
- "Giant of Ganymede", Leo Morey ("Amazing", August 1939)
- "The Wizards of Senchuria", Frank Kelly Freas
- "Abduction of Big Red", Frank R. Paul ("Science Fiction",
   October 1940)
- [untitled], Ed Emshwiller
- "Starman Come Home", Malcolm Smith ("Universe", September 1954)
- "Lair of the Cyclops", Richard Hescox
- "Priestess of Pakmari", Earle K. Bergey ("Thrilling Wonder",
   Summer 1944)
- "Death of the Moon", Robert Fuqua ("Amazing", January 1944)
   (This some had really well-defined buttocks on the humanoid alien
   for the time.)
- "The Dragon Masters", Jack Gaughan
- "Once in a Blue Moon", John Forte ("Future", August 1942)
- "Warchild", Richard Corben
- "Thorns", Gary Ruddell
- "The Remaking of Sigmund Freud", Barclay Shaw
- "Regan's Planet", Ed Emshwiller
- "Fair Game Preserve", Paul Blaisdell ("Other Worlds", September
   1956)
- "Native Tongue", Jill Bauman
- "The Biological Revolt", Frank R. Paul ("Science Fiction Plus",
   March 1953)
- "Mother of Winter", Donato Giancoola
- "Watersong", Joe DeVito
- "Runts of Cygni C", (unknown)
- "Rogue Queen", Mike Ludlow, 1951
- "Rogue Queen", Jill Bauman, 1995
- "Twin Worlds", Leo Morey ("Amazing", April 1937)
- "Brighton Beach", Jim Burns, 1987
- "Interplanetary Zoo", Jill Bauman
- "Speaking in Tongues", Stephen Youll


Quotes at the end of the entire exhibit included:

"The future isn't what it used to be."  [Arthur C. Clarke]

"The future is up for grabs. it belongs to any and all who will
take the risk."  [Robert Anton Wilson]

"That which is never attempted never transpires."  [Jack Vance]

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go
beyond them into the impossible."  [Arthur C. Clarke]

We finished the Museum about 2PM, so the whole thing took four
hours.  There is a shop, but it consists almost entirely of
souvenir hats, shirts, etc., with the Science Fiction Museum logo
on them, and hardly any books (or even DVDs).

[to be continued, with comments on the EMP, and closing thoughts]

[-ecl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
 mleeper@optonline.net


            The best way to convince a fool that he is
            wrong is to let him have his own way.
                                           -- Josh Billings