THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/31/07 -- Vol. 26, No. 9, Whole Number 1456
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Playing Catch-Up (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Another Exchange (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The Big Lie (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON by Naomi Novik (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
A NEW WAVE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Ray Bradbury, Robert Sheckley, and the Classics
(letter of comment by Daniel Kimmel)
REVISITING NARNIA (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
Chili Peppers (letter of comment by Michael E. Lukacs)
Language, Tools, Ray Bradbury and STARDUST
(letter of comment by John Purcell)
Snow Leopards, AWAY FROM HER, Ingmar Bergman,
THE INVASION, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS,
and the Chicago Cubs (letter of comment
by John Purcell)
This Week's Reading (THE SFWA EUROPEAN HALL OF FAME
and THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Playing Catch-Up (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
We think we have finally caught up with the backlog created during
our five-week trip to the Canadian Rockies. Our apologies to
those whose reviews, letters, etc., were delayed in being
published. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Another Exchange (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Last week's story about the snow leopard (which by the way was my
own joke and not on the Planet Earth DVD) reminded me of a very
short story I heard many years ago and have not heard since so I
suppose I can claim it.
"Oh Brad, let's not park here."
"Oh Brad, let's not park."
"Oh Brad, let's not."
"Oh Brad, let's."
"Oh Brad."
"Oh."
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Big Lie (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I am watching THE UNIVERSE on the History Channel. At first I
thought it was a really good program. I am finding the program
more and more frustrating. It is clear the scientists who do the
talking know the truth and are just refusing to mention it.
Everybody is hung up on our egocentric ways of thinking we have
had from ancient times. And though astronomers and cosmologists
know the truth they choose not to tell us. You have to figure
the truth out for yourself. Then if you dare you can tell other
people, but even then something inside them will tell them it is
you who are wrong.
What do they tell you? They say the solar system is really big.
You have to go a long way to get to the outer planets. Wrong.
The nearest star is tremendously far away. Nope. We are on the
outer part of a huge spiral arm. Twaddle! And the arm is just
part of an unfathomably gigundo galaxy. And it is just one of
many galaxies that are huge. They are not. And this cluster of
galaxies is enormously tremendously big. No it's not. And light
is just reaching the Earth from long, long, long ago. Again, no.
Big. Big! BIG! Long. Long! LONG! Huge. Huge! HUGE!
Well it is time you knew the truth as only I seem to be willing
to tell it to you. The clusters and the galaxies are not huge.
They are not even big. They are tiny. Even compared to things
that are minute, it is tiny. It is nano-miniscule. There is a
whole lot more out there than this cluster of galaxies. And it
does not take a whole long time to get to the other stars. They
are so close we are just about right there already. And you get
there in a flash. The only problem is that we are so amazingly
tiny and we live such a short, short, short time (in universe
terms) that their nearness doesn't do us any good.
Our thinking has been presumptuous and wrong-headed for a long
time. Protagoras (480 to 410 B.C.) said, "Man is the measure of
all things." And what an egotistical, anthropocentric viewpoint
that is. Well, I suppose that is how we measure things. Most of
our units of measurement come from human body parts (the inch, the
foot, the cubit) or water (centigrade) or the size of our planet
(the meter) or a combination (the gram). The English system
which measured distances by body parts (the foot) is slowly being
replaced by the only slightly more rational metric system where
length is compared to the size of our planet and centigrade
temperatures compare temperatures to the freezing and boiling
points of water. These are all very arbitrary and very
anthropocentric.
We may think the natural way to measure speed is in kilometers
(or worse miles) per hour. That is we divide a certain
convenient fraction of the circumference of our planet (or
multiple of our foot size) divided by a certain convenient
fraction of the time it takes our planet to revolve once on its
axis. Those units may be meaningful on Earth but they become
pointless someplace not on our planet like the moon or Mars.
Earth is just not important in the universe but that is the way we
like to measure the universe. I you wanted to make your formulae
to come out nicely you use the universe's choice of unit of speed,
C, the speed of light. Look at the Lorentz Transform. You see a
lot of (V/C)s. That says measure your speed *your* way, but then
divide by the speed of light, also measured *your* way. If you
just said that your velocity was some fraction of the speed of
light you would just use V. Everything would be much nicer. But
who wants to see signs on the highway that say "SPEED LIMIT
(8.21E-8)*C"? We are just not ready to accept the natural units of
the universe.
We think that C is a really big and inconvenient unit and hard to
deal with. The same thing happens in mathematics. We measure
angles in degrees. 360 is a nice easy number to deal with
because it has a lot of divisors. But that is not the natural
unit the universe chooses for angle measure. Once you get into
calculus you realize that degree measure would make all the
formulae impossibly complex. The natural unit of measure of an
angle is the radian, comparing the radius of a circle to a
fraction of the circumference.
If you let man be the measure of all things it really distorts
your view of the universe. Our distances are way too small, and
our lives are way too short. We have to get past the idea "man
is the measure of all things." Any logical view of the universe
says that something unimaginable happened just short time ago--a
few billion years-- and out of it spewed a bit of matter. And
when some of the matter cooled there were denser parts that we
think of as mega-clusters of galaxies. And if you get of close
and look really carefully you will see those mega-clusters are
made of smaller clusters. Those clusters are made of little
individual galaxies, maybe only 2,000,000 light years apart.
They look almost solid but if you look really closely you can see
the galaxies have an anatomy. Some a pill-shaped and some spin
like pinwheels and have little tiny arms. They are almost too
small to see and you have to really look. If you look
agonizingly closely at one of those arms you might see tiny,
itsy-bitsy individual stars. Now this is going to take some
imagination but some, of these little tiny stars, each almost too
small to consider, have bits of cold matter circling them. And
some of these unimaginably small bits of matter actually have
life on them. Well, it is a sort of life. It is not clear that
a little spark that is just there for such an unimaginable short
instant of time can be called life. If you would pick one of
these tiny life forms up with little tiny tweezers and tried to
look at it by the light of even a neighboring star, it would be
dead well before you got it close enough to look at it in the
light. They just don't live very long.
But these little points of life look at the universe in that
fraction of an instant they are alive and, of course, to them it
looks unimaginably big. But then they are really, really
infinitesimal for the size of their egos and they don't have much
imagination.
Want to feel good about yourself again? Just imagine that
something so tiny, so short-lived, made up of such little pieces
as us beat the odds and became intelligent enough to contemplate
things like the integers and the size of the universe. What are
the chances of *that* happening? [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON by Naomi Novik (copyright 2006,
Ballantine Books/Del Rey, $7.50, 356pp, ISBN 0-345-48128-3) (book
review by Joe Karpierz)
So I finish my reviews of this year's Hugo-nominated novels with
Naomi Novik's HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON, book one of the Temeraire
series.
So, there's a quote attributed to Stephen King on the front cover
that says "Terrifically entertaining." There's one on the back
cover from Time magazine that says "Enthralling reading--like
Jane Austen playing Dungeons & Dragons with Eragon's Christopher
Paolini." Uh, where do I start?
Okay, up-front warning. I'm going to say what sound like some
harsh things, but in reality I did find this book likeable, well
written, and entertaining--but it doesn't belong here.
Terrifically entertaining? Not so much. Playing D&D? Folks, I
played D&D back in the '70s when there were all sorts of
complaints by parents that kids that played (I was in college by
the way) were losing all touch with reality. This doesn't feel
like D&D to me--ask me offline about my involvement in the game.
I won't talk about playing the game--I'll talk about other stuff.
This book isn't worthy of a Hugo nomination, in my estimation,
but then again I don't think most of the rest of the nominees
were all that good either. This book, however, falls far below
the rest of the nominees. Not because it's a bad book--it isn't.
It's just not *that* good.
Folks will say, "But he doesn't like to read fantasy novels", so
he's biased. Well, not quite true. I've read both in my day,
but there's just so much out there to read that I had to make a
choice, and my extreme preference is science fiction. When I
think of Hugo nominated fantasy novels, I think of books like
those by George R.R. Martin or Lois McMaster Bujold. This book
is, well, nice. It reads like a YA novel, which, given that I
have one, almost two YAs in the house, makes it okay in my book.
But not here.
Okay, enough of the harsh stuff. The time is the Napoleonic
Wars. Our story centers around one Captain William Laurence of
the British Naval forces. The book starts with Laurence and his
crew capturing a French ship--and on board is a surprising prize:
a dragon egg. In Novik's world, dragons are normal critters, and
part of the armed forces. The way things work is that, as you
might expect, after hatching, the dragon will bond with someone,
and that someone is his rider/commander/flyer pretty much for
life. Which, in this world, is not good for the "bondee's"
social standing. Aviators are loners, cut off from society and
marriage because they are always away from home, up in the air,
flying one mission or another. Other than flying, how that is
different from being in the Navy is a question to ponder, but in
any case aviators are outcasts. Surprise, the dragon hatches
while still on Laurence's ship and it bonds with Laurence.
The remainder of the story is one of discovery and, I suspect,
set up for the remaining two books in the series. Laurence loses
his girl, of course, and must go into aviator training along with
the dragon, which he names Temeraire. Temeraire is a rare
dragon, not often seen in Europe--a Chinese Imperial. Temeraire
surprises Laurence with some of his abilities, and Laurence
continually calls Temeraire "my dear". (That drove me completely
nuts. Since when does anyone call a dragon "my dear"? By the
end of the book I thought Laurence was going to propose
marriage.). They of course form a strong bond, and by the end of
the book we see them in their first real battle, we learn of one
of Temeraire's powers, what kind of dragon he really is, and how
the aforementioned French ship came by the egg in the first
place.
Again, this is a nice, tidy, well written, entertaining book--
nothing more. It's lightweight; and while there's certainly
nothing wrong with that, it felt out of place here.
So, my vote. Well, unfortunately, due to real life getting in
the way, I didn't finish HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON before the voting
deadline, so my ballot for the novel went as follows:
1) EIFELHEIM 2) GLASSHOUSE 3) BLINDSIGHT 4) RAINBOWS END
And, if I had read this book before the deadline, I would have
finished this way:
5) No Award 6) HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON
So, what's next? After a short break to catch up on some
periodicals that have been backing up, I'll read HARRY POTTER AND
THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, followed by SANDWORMS OF DUNE. Then,
depending on when I actually finish all those, I'll either read
the next Thomas Covenant book, due out in October (yeah, I know,
that means I'll be reading really slowly), or something else yet
to be named on my to read stack.
Until next time. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: A NEW WAVE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Comedy heist film has some funny scenes. But it loses
its way somewhere along the line and only finds it again in the
last twenty minutes. Desmond, a discontented bank clerk, falls
in with his cinema-loving housemate's plan to rob Desmond's bank.
The story feels padded to feature length. First-time director
Jason Carvey directs his own screenplay and shows promise if not
accomplishment. Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
It is a pity that theaters no longer run double features. There
once was a market for a short film, maybe 65 minutes long, that
could be shown with a longer and stronger film. In the 1940s and
1950s there were lots of decent little B movies made at shorter
lengths. This is not to say A NEW WAVE is that short. This is a
94-minute film that could easily lose thirty minutes and be a
tighter and better film. But what market is there for a 65-
minute film today? A NEW WAVE is positioned as a comic crime
film and the comedy runs out in the first third and there is only
about fifteen minutes of the actual crime execution and its
results.
Gideon (played by John Krasinski of TV's "The Office") is a
super-fan of all the old heist films. He is planning his own
bank robbery with a strategy pieced together from bits of his
favorite crime films. He needs the help of his friend and
housemate Desmond (Andrew Keegan), a disaffected young bank
teller. Desmond hates work and is conflicted about his future.
He cannot commit to his job, to his talent as an artist, or to
his girlfriend Julie (Lacey Chabert). Gideon and his friend
Rupert (Dean Edwards) have planned the crime, but they need some
help from the inside and they decide Desmond in their man. We
follow them as Gideon convinces Desmond, and then the three go to
buy the guns they will need from a very off-the-wall gun dealer.
Then with the crime effectively planned Gideon, Desmond, and
Julie go off in the countryside to play around at an abandoned
drive-in theater with a kid's game gunfight. This might work
with another director in control, but the characters just are not
fun enough for the viewer want to hang around with. There is a
subplot of Desmond's show at an art gallery. Much of this seems
to draw us away from the essential plot.
The film seems to promise a comic crime film, but Jason Carey is
no Donald Westlake. Much of the film is just about Desmond and
his Generation X angst. An hour into the film one has the
feeling that not much is happening and it keeps not happening
until way too near the end. The robbery itself is a bit
straightforward and humdrum. That is not necessarily a fault,
but it is not much of a virtue either. Still the robbery itself
is probably Carvey's best-written sequence with a feel of realism
if not a satisfying complexity.
Veteran actor William Sadler, who plays Julie's father, serves
only a reminder he has been in much better thrillers.
Cinematographer Kambui Olujimi seems to have problems framing
scenes without cutting off the tops of actors' heads. Jason
Carvey feels like he is working too hard to fill a standard size
script. This script was probably not ready to shoot and Carvey
did not have the experience to make the most of what he did have.
He shows signs he might develop into a more accomplished
filmmaker. I rate A NEW WAVE a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or
5/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0421143/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Ray Bradbury, Robert Sheckley, and the Classics (letter of
comment by Daniel Kimmel)
In response to Mark's article on Ray Bradbury in the 08/17/07
issue of the MT VOID, Dan Kimmel writes, "I'm writing not to
complain, but just to put in my two cents. I haven't read
Bradbury's classic SF in years and can't be sure how it holds up.
Within the past few years, however, I did get the opportunity to
immerse myself in the works of another author I idolized in my
youth, the late, great Robert Sheckley. NESFA Press was putting
together a volume of his best short fiction (eventually entitled
THE MASQUE OF MANANA) and its editor, Sharon Sbarsky, asked me--
as well as others--for input on what was the essential Sheckley
short fiction. I went through my extensive set of Sheckley short
story collections. I found in each book there were many stories
that had not held up, or that I could tell (or recall) where it
was going from the start. But there was also one or two or three
stories in each collection that remained as brilliant to me today
as when I had first read them. Those were the ones I
recommended. And while now I can't tell people to just read
everything Sheckley ever wrote, I can tell them--with a clear
conscience--to get this collection and enjoy these great
stories." [-dk]
Mark notes, "My first science fiction book (other than juveniles)
was a copy of the Sheckley collection NOTIONS UNLIMITED that
someone abandoned on a plane. An eight or nine year old Mark
Leeper was boggled to find out that stories like you see on
'Twilight Zone' can be found in a book. It was the highlight of
my summer. If Robert Sheckley had not aged well, I don't think I
would notice it and if I did you could never get me to admit it.
I liked Bradbury but I think I probably much preferred Sheckley."
[-mrl]
Dan goes on, "I suspect I would have the same reaction if I
revisited Bradbury. FAHRENHEIT 451 and other novels aside (as
well as his screenplays), I'm willing to bet that there are
stories in 'S is for Space,' 'The Illustrated Man,' 'The Martian
Chronicles' and 'R is for Rocket' that would chill me to the bone
or move me to tears today much as they did back when I first read
them. Stories like 'The Veldt' and 'There Will Come Soft Rains'
and 'Mars is Heaven!' so impressed me that I can still remember
the titles." [-dk]
Mark responds, "I remember the titles since they have been
dramatized often. The latter two were in THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES
and are the sort of thing I was referring to in my comments.
None of those do that much for me any more. 'There Will Come
Soft Rains' in particular cloys for me now." -mrl
Dan continues, "Others I recall only as plot outlines. However I
have no doubt that a collection of 'The Best of Bradbury' would
amply demonstrate why he is one of the great writers of SF, and
not merely a footnote along the lines of, say, Murray Leinster or
Eric Frank Russell, who did a few landmark stories but most of
whose works are best left forgotten. (Anyone who has not read
Leinster's 'First Contact' or Russell's 'Appaloosa' are missing
two classic short stories of the genre.)" [-dk]
Later, in response to Mark's comments above on classics, Dan
wrote, "No need to belabor this but this reminds me that there
are some 'classic' films that I admire rather than enjoy. I'd
much rather watch STRANGERS ON A TRAIN or NORTH BY NORTHWEST than
VERTIGO, and I'm more moved by THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
than THE SEARCHERS. Sometimes it is just a matter of personal
taste. And I don't disagree with you on Bradbury vs. Sheckley,
either. :-)" [-dk]
And Mark replies, "Perhaps I agree. I have seen both NORTH BY
NORTHWEST than VERTIGO so many times I am not that anxious to see
either usually. You know I think there are script problems in
VERTIGO. I am not sure I am moved by THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY
VALANCE, but I like it better than THE SEARCHERS and have seen it
more frequently. I also have found serious script problems in
Valence. Let me give you something to look for the next time you
see it. Three shots cannot be fired so precisely that you hear
only two. Yet we can count three shots that the script says went
off. Stoddard's (that is Stewart's) is one of the two shots, but
whose is the other? It is different in the two shots of the
scene. Once it is shot by Valance (Marvin) and once shot by
Doniphon (Wayne)."
"In fact, the two scenes played back to back are noticeably very
different. And the position of the bullet and the direction that
Valance fell should have told where the bullet that got him came
from. The only way that the film really works is if Tom Doniphon
is lying about his shot, which it really would make sense for him
to do in order to save Stoddard's career."
"My theory is that Ford went to shoot the film and discovered the
script really did not work unless Doniphon is lying. Ford subtly
shot the film as if Doniphon really is lying for the sake of his
friend. Watch the film again and see if I am wrong. In addition
to which, we are told at the beginning that Dutton Peabody fired
Stoddard from a job reporting for the 'Shinbone Star'. I defy
you to tell me when it was that Stoddard could have worked for
the 'Shinbone Star'. [And on Bradbury vs. Sheckley], Bradbury is
the only place we disagree." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: REVISITING NARNIA (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
In response to Evelyn's comments on REVISITING NARNIA in the
08/17/07 issue of the MT VOID, Fred Lerner writes observing that
Evelyn speaks about C. S. Lewis having a Roman Catholic view, and
says, "You do know that Lewis was an Anglican, not a Roman
Catholic, don't you? (Humphrey Carpenter reports that Tolkien
felt that Lewis's Ulster upbringing left him with a strong
residue of anti-Catholic feeling.)"
Evelyn answers, "I think I remembered that in the back of my
mind, but I probably assumed that the general beliefs were the
same, and looking at http://tinyurl.com/39berm (for example),
this seems to be true for the specific beliefs I was referring to
(redemption, and the role of priests). Still, I should have
changed those references to Anglicanism." [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Chili Peppers (letter of comment by Michael E. Lukacs)
In response to Mark's two-part article on chili peppers in the
07/06/07 and 07/13/07 issues of the MT VOID, Mike Lukacs sends the
following:
From a recent issue of Popular Science Magazine:
Can I die from eating too many hot chili peppers?
There is no known case of a person dying from eating too many
peppers, although several masochists have certainly tested the
limits. The reigning king of jalapeño consumption is Nevadan
Richard LeFevre, who last October set the International
Federation of Competitive Eating record by downing 247 pickled
jalapeños in an eight-minute time limit.
Looking to top LeFevre and win a place in the Guinness Book of
World Records is Anandita Dutta Tamuly, a woman from India who
devoured 60 Bhut Jolokia peppers-the hottest pepper in the world-
in just two minutes on national television. But she might not
have anything on Mexico's Manuel Quiroz, who also wants a shot at
the eating record and can squeeze habanero juice into his eyes
without blinking.
Freakish tolerance levels aside, scientists have found that
eating peppers can have medical benefits. Last March,
researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles found
that the chemical that makes peppers hot, capsaicin, can kill
human prostate-cancer cells grown in mice. The scientists
estimated that the dosage was equal to a 200-pound man eating
three to eight habanero peppers three times a week.
But is there a deadly dose of spicy peppers? Researchers at
Niigata University School of Medicine in Japan ran tests on mice
to find out. After several hefty doses of pure capsaicin, most
of the mice died of lung failure. Don't worry, though--you'd
have to eat hundreds of thousands of jalapeños in one sitting to
get the equivalent dose, and, the LeFevres of the world
notwithstanding, most people beg for mercy after a dozen.
-Brandon Miller
===================================================================
TOPIC: Language, Tools, Ray Bradbury and STARDUST (letter of
comment by John Purcell)
In response to the 08/17/07 issue of the MT VOID, John Purcell
writes:
Unfortunately, there really has been a rise in sexually charged
language in family programming. My guess is that television
script writers and producers believe that children nowadays are
more sophisticated and mature, so they'll create material to
reflect that belief. All I can say to this is "Ptooey!" My son
is eleven years old, has no interest in girls, enjoys soccer and
other sports, and his favorite TV shows are still cartoons. I
know these things will eventually change, but maybe it's best if
we just let kids be kids and not try making them into little
adults.
As for British tools vs. American tools, both countries use
different names for the same tool, which makes things even more
confusing. What we all should do is follow that Red Green
dictum, "any tool can be the right tool." The world could be
such a simpler place...
You know, your little essay about Ray Bradbury being the new
James Fenimore Cooper raised some very good points. I have
always enjoyed Bradbury's writing because it was so poetic and
evocative; he was probably the first real "literary" stylist that
the 20th century science fiction and fantasy genre produced. I
have to agree with you that Bradbury's science was at times
suspect, but he wrote so danged well that the reader didn't care
that much about the lackluster science. Personally, it was
Bradbury's observations about the human condition that impressed
me the most; that and his eloquent writing style.
FAHRENHEIT 451 remains my favorite Bradbury novel, and I think
there is no doubt that it is about censorship. His recent
comment that the book was about people's "disinclination to read"
is probably colored by current reports about the rise in
aliteracy in America: people who know how to read, but have no
desire to read. In other words, many Americans possess a lack of
reading motivation. Now, this is a real problem in higher
education, and happens to be my dissertation's research focus.
There has been a fair amount of press coverage about aliteracy
since the new century began, and perhaps Bradbury simply picked
up on this trend and added it to his personal interpretation of
the novel. After all, we can never read the same book twice and
come away with the exact same result; new information, new
experiences, etc., affect what we bring to a text when we read
and re-read it. I think this is what happened when Ray Bradbury
made his comments; he added a newer interpretation
based on newly acquired information. Overall though, I agree
with you, Mark; FAHRENHEIT 451 is definitely about censorship
with sub-themes running through it as well. It is still a
wonderful book, and one that I would recommend to my students who
might be interested in seeing how a science fiction writer
tackles the topic of censorship.
When I read--hah! how's that for a touch of irony?--that
Bradbury was awarded that special Pulitzer Prize for lifetime
achievement, I was impressed. Not because this gives validity to
the literary standing of science fiction and fantasy, which have
now long enjoyed popularity and literary standing, but because of
the literary value of his work. Will future generations of
literary critics inside and outside the SF field continue to
recognize Bradbury's worth, or will they delegate his work to
that category of "it was a product of its time"? An interesting
question to watch for in the coming years. Still, I think
Bradbury was a very influential writer and helped to lift the SF
genre out of its ghetto, and I am glad he received that Pulitzer
Special Award. Congratulations to him!
You might not think so, but to me the ads for STARDUST look
interesting, and I'd like to see the movie. I have not read
anything by Neil Gaiman yet--can you believe that? I can, given
how busy I have been with doctoral work and my teaching career--
so I have no idea how well the movie version will stack up
against the original text. You certainly gave it a high mark, so
that's a good reflection on the film. That right there makes this
a worthy flick to take in. Do you think the movie has Hugo
nomination written all over it? Or will that happen because so
many people love Neil Gaiman's work and his name is so well-
known, resulting in the film's nomination next year? (Now I've
done it; brought the "popularity contest" of the Hugos to the
pages (?) of MT Void. Please don't hate me, Mark.)
With that, I think I'll close up shop here on this loc and get
onto other things. Thank you for the zine, and we'll have to do
this again next week. Until then, all the best. [-jp]
Mark responds: "It is hard to judge if STARDUST has Hugo
potential. The whole setting with stars coming to Earth in human
form seems a little sugary. People are staying away from the film
because they say it looks silly. However, fans may respect
Gaiman's name to see it anyway and discover how entertaining the
film is." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Snow Leopards, AWAY FROM HER, Ingmar Bergman, THE INVASION,
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, and the Chicago Cubs (letter of comment by
John Purcell)
In response to the 08/24/07 issue of the MT VOID, John Purcell
writes:
"Good afternoon, Mark! A very nice touch to open your latest MT
VOID with that snappy repartee from "Planet Earth." I love this
kind of unintended silliness. Or was it unintended? Check the
script." [-jp]
Mark responds, "Ulp! I was a little unclear. This was more my
joke inspired by seeing them film a snow leopard." [-mrl]
John continues, "In your commentary about AWAY FROM HER, I have
to agree with you that SPIDERMAN 3 doesn't strike me as
successful "Sci-Fi"--if anything, the Spidey movies are better
classified as adventure/action films--and that the premise of
AWAY FROM HER sounds much more interesting to me. " [-jp]
Mark says, "For me it was one of the most interesting films of
the year as well as being one of the most emotional. But I see
things in science fiction terms. " [-mrl]
John goes on, "Popular culture has this narrow-minded opinion
that SF movies are slam-bang action movies with snappy special
effects that will knock people back into their movie seats.
Sorry, but in my mind, a real science fiction movie will take an
idea and explore its ramifications/implications as much as
possible. The problem with that concept is that Hollywood cannot
accept it since Big Bucks aren't involved. They figure "real
science fiction" is supposed to have space ships with heroic
characters engaged in shoot-'em-ups somewhere deep in the
uncharted cosmos and are not thought-provoking 'idea movies'.
There have been quite a few successful (in my mind)
psychological/sociological science fiction movies: BICENTENNIAL
MAN leaps to mind, FORBIDDEN PLANET and THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD
STILL are idea movies, as are 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY and SILENT
RUNNING, even that Will Smith version of I, ROBOT raised some
excellent ethical/moral questions and somewhat explored them.
Unfortunately, in the latter case, the special effects still won
out--as well as the box office draw of Smith. Yes, I agree that
a good science fiction film can intelligently explore ideas
without losing its audience. The problem right now is the common
denominator: the movie ticket buying audience. As if they know
anything... *sigh* In any case, I will have to rent AWAY FROM
HER; it sounds very interesting to me, and is the kind of science
fiction that I would probably enjoy." [-jp]
Mark notes, "Well, again don't assume it is science fiction. I
just saw ideas in it that could well be science fictional. That
is my lens. George Lucas has claimed that the time of the really
big budget film is passing. He thinks they will go back to being
in the $15M range. I think my choices for best science fiction
film of the 1990s and the best of the 2000s have both been lower-
budget idea films. They would be the GATTACA and ETERNAL
SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. (THE FINAL CUT is no slouch
either and it probably did not cost a lot.) A big-budget film
cannot afford to take chances on being too deep for the audience
to understand." [-mrl]
John then writes, "Speaking of intelligent film-making, may
Ingmar Bergman rest in peace, but I never have really enjoyed his
movies; THE SEVENTH SEAL was okay, but other than that, I am not
a fan of Bergman films." [-jp]
Mark comments, "I fully agree. " [-mrl]
John goes on, "The same thing goes for Hollywood's recent
infatuation with re-makes. I have no desire to see THE INVASION.
I enjoyed the first and second versions (1956 and 1978), and
can't remember when the third version came out. (Please refresh
my memory.)" [-jp]
Mark replies, "Abel Ferrara, who makes gritty crime films like
THE BAD LIEUTENANT, made THE BODY SNATCHERS in 1993. There were
some good character actors. Meg Tilley was the lead, and it was
just okay. I seem to remember it mostly taking place on an army
base. (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0106452/)" [-mrl]
John then says, "But I am really surprised that you gave THE
INVASION a decent rating: 6/10. There must be something good in
there, I guess. Does Nicole Kidman go topless? Other than that,
nothing else would get me into the theater to watch this movie,
let alone rent it when it goes to DVD in four months or so."
[-jp]
Mark answers, "No nudity. But it came close to ambivalence on
whether being taken over was such a bad thing. There were some
very strong analogies to mood altering drugs." [-mrl]
John summarizes, "Retreads of classic films don't interest me
very much." [-jp]
Mark comments, "For me it depends on what they do with it.
Curiously, enough SF fans seem to like it more than the general
run of critics. Gary Westfahl has some interesting things to say
about it in LOCUS (available at
http://www.locusmag.com/2007/Westfahl_Invasion.html)." [-mrl]
John then writes, "More movie notes! I have never known that
FLATLAND was made into movies! Years ago I had a copy of the
book--a Dover facsimile edition, if I remember correctly--and
enjoyed it despite being an English geek and not a math geek. It
is an interesting concept and story, and these film versions
sound like they are worth searching out. Thank you for the
review. Interesting stuff. Okay--I have to ask this about a
musical version of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: are you serious?!?
This, I simply cannot imagine. Val Kilmer as a song-and-dance
Moses? No, please... say it ain't so... Lemme guess: the voice
of the Burning Bush is provided by James Earl Jones, and the
Pharaoh does this snappy number about dying first-born sons while
locusts do this synchronized multi-legged kick-line behind him.
Oh! And don't forget the frog chorus: "knee-deep in bree-deep /
no longer any sleep-deep." With wireless mic-headsets, too. Too
bad Dick Shawn's been dead for so long; he would have made a
great Pharaoh... " [-jp]
Mark answers, "You aren't far wrong; see details at
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0489853/." [-mrl]
And Evelyn responds, "At least one blog says that Kilmer also
provided the voice of God. Another one says that there was no
voice of God. Frankly, I don't recall." [-ecl]
John closes, "Finally, I need to update my loc in #1455
[08/24/07]: the Chicago Cubs are currently in first place in the
National League's Central Division. Has anybody else besides me
noticed a drop in temperature? Thanks for the issue, Mark. See
you next time. " [-jp]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I am not going to review THE SFWA EUROPEAN HALL OF FAME edited by
James Morrow (ISBN-13 978-0-7653-1536-6, ISBN-10 0-7653-1536-X),
but I will make a couple of comments on it. First, look for this
in your library at Dewey Decimal 808.83(9762) if you cannot find
it in fiction or science fiction, as the Dewey Decimal number is
the cataloguing data Tor provided. It seems like a great way to
hide from its main audience in libraries, though it should not
affect bookstore placement.
As Morrow notes, all but one of the sixteen stories are from the
Indo-European family of languages (that one being from Finnish).
Of the fifteen, seven are from Romance languages, four from
Slavic, two Germanic, one Nordic, and one Greek. (No Hungarian?)
Clearly "European" here means continental Europe and does not
include Britain. (One wonders if there will be future
anthologies for Latin America, Asia, and Africa.)
Finally, let me talk about translations. This has a new
translation of Richard de la Casa and Pedro Jorge Romero's "The
Day We Went Through the Transition". This translation is by
Yolanda Molina-Gavilan and James Stevens-Arce. The story
previously appeared in English in COSMOS LATINOS (edited by
Andrea L. Bell and Molina-Gavilan) in a translation by Molina-
Gavilan alone. (That earlier translation was a finalist for the
Sidewise Award in 2004.) The most obvious change is that the new
translation is in the present tense, while the older one is the
past tense (as is the original). In addition, though, sentence
structure is different, sentences and even paragraphs are in a
different order, and so on. If you cannot decide which
translation to read, the original Spanish is available on-line.
As an example of what I mean, here are the third and fourth
paragraphs from each, which explain the Transition:
Spanish (without accents, etc.):
La transicion es un cl sico. Al menos una vez por semana hay
que hacerla, y en ocasiones hasta dos o tres veces en un
mismo dia. ¨Por que todos los terroristas, de uno u otro
bando, tienen semejante fijacion con ese periodo? ¨Por que no
intervienen mas a menudo en la guerra civil o en el asunto de
la armada invencible? Supongo que, simplemente, la transicion
esta tan llena de posibilidades, hay tantos caminos abiertos
simultaneamente que todo bando pol¡tico o grupo economico se
cree capaz de ajustar el proceso de forma que triunfe su
particular posicion.
Parece tratarse tambien de una fijacion particularmente
española. Otros paises sufren tambien ataques terroristas que
pretenden cambiar la historia a su gusto, pero esos casos se
producen una o dos veces al ano. Sin embargo nosotros tenemos
que lidiar hasta con treinta casos a la semana y m s de la
mitad pueden situarse en la transicion. Parece que los
españoles estamos tan insatisfechos de nuestra historia y
somos tan incapaces de aceptar que otros hayan triunfado en
el pasado que realizamos grandes esfuerzos por cambiarla. En
cualquier caso, no importa: el trabajo del Cuerpo de
Intervencion Temporal de la GEI es evitar que esas
situaciones se den, y en particular cuidamos mucho de la
transicion.
Yolanda Molina-Gavilan (2003):
The Transition is a classic. Someone has to go through it at
least once a week, and sometimes even two or three times on
the same day. Why are all the terrorists, from both sides,
fixated on that time period? Why don't they intervene more
often in the Civil War, or in that Invincible Armada affair?
I suppose that the Transition is just so full of
possibilities, there are so many simultaneously open paths,
that every political camp or economic group believes it self
capable of adjusting the process so that its particular
position triumphs.
It seems to be a particularly Spanish fixation as well.
Other countries also suffer from attacks by terrorists who
attempt to change history to their own liking, but those
cases happen once or twice a year. We, however, have to
manage up to thirty cases a week, and more than half of them
may be placed at the Transition period. It seems that we
Spaniards are as unsatisfied with our own history and are so
incapable of accepting that others have triumphed in the
past, that we make great efforts to change it. It doesn't
matter, in any case: the work of the GEI Temporal
Intervention Corps is to stop these situations from
happening, and we pay particular attention to the Transition.
Yolanda Molina-Gavilan and James Stevens-Arce (2007):
The Transition is our hottest troublespot. We must restore
it constantly, sometimes two or three times a day. Most
countries endure timeshift attacks no more than twice a year,
but El Gripo Espanol de Intelligencia registers as many as
thirty a week--over half targeting the Transition.
Apparently, we are so unhappy with our own history and so
resentful of other nations' triumphs that every disaffected
group feels the past can be altered to its advantage. But
our territories don't show much interest in reconfiguring the
eras of the Civil War or the Invincible Armada. Perhaps
because the Transition was our last major cultural paradigm
shift prior to the discovery of Temporal Theory, it seems
especially rich in potential futures, especially ripe with
possibilities. ..."
I have no idea *where* that last sentence came from--the original
has nothing like it. My impression is that Molina-Gavilan's
translation is the more accurate one; the joint one by Molina-
Gavilan and Stevens-Arce is more a retelling that a translation.
And the reason may be in the introduction, where James Morrow
describes working on a translation of a French story, and says,
"I found myself intuitively noodling with the sentences: striking
out arguably superfluous words, hunting down needless
repetitions, searching for le mot juste, all the usual things.
By the midpoint of the trip I was in a bittersweet mood,
lamenting the sorry circumstance that so few SF translations ever
receive this sort of joyful tweaking." I have great respect for
Morrow, but he and I have very different philosophies of
translation: I want a translation to be as accurate (though not
necessarily literal) to the original as possible, while he seems
to think a translator should also function as an editor.
And while we are talking about translating between languages,
let's talk about THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION by Michael Chabon
(ISBN-13 978-0-007-14982-7, ISBN-10 0-007-14982-4), which had its
origins in a phrase book. In an interview
(http://tinyurl.com/2385em), Chabon has described the origins
of this book as being the phrasebook SAY IT IN YIDDISH, published
by Dover as part of a series of "Say It in [language]".
Wondering where one would use the Yiddish phrases for "Do you
have a tourniquet? and "What is the flight number?" Chabon
constructed just such a place, a Yiddhkeit Sitka, Alaska, which
in Chabon's alternate history had been made a refuge for the Jews
during World War II, and a homeland afterward. Chabon has
combined the alternate history with the hard-boiled detective
novel, and come up with something unique. (There have, of
course, been other alternate history novels set around changes in
the Holocaust: Philip Roth's THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, Philip
K. Dick's THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, and Martin Gidron's THE
SEVERED WING. Chabon is aware of at least the first two of
these.)
(Chabon's original article on SAY IT IN YIDDISH may be found at
http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=1113.)
Lisa Goldstein has said, "THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION might not
be rigorous enough for purists" (http://tinyurl.com/22qjx5), by
which she means that not every difference is explained. But I
think this is a virtue--too many people writing alternate history
feel they have to explain everything. (E.g., "He opened a can of
Blarg Cola, again reminded of the atomic bomb on Atlanta that
destroyed the old Coca-Cola company and let Blarg grab the
market." This *is* not an example from THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S
UNION!)
I might make a few minor quibbles. Chabon uses "papiroses" as
the plural of "papiros"; it should be "papirosn". (This would be
less important were there not a classic Yiddih song called
"Papirosn".) And he has a cafeteria serving both corned beef and
cheese blintzes, which is possible, but highly unlikely in a city
as outwardly religious as Sitka.
But these are minor, and even for people not looking for a
Yiddishkeit alternate history, the hard-boiled detective aspect
gives it a much broader appeal than it might otherwise have.
Highly recommended. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The wise man, even when he holds his tongue,
says more than the fool when he speaks.
-- Yiddish Proverb
--
Evelyn C. Leeper
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses
are not subject to the regulation of conscience. -Adam Smith