THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
12/21/07 -- Vol. 26, No. 25, Whole Number 1472
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Question (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Trivia Question
Socialized Services (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I AM LEGEND (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
GOLDEN DOOR (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
What Has been Proved (letter of comment by Mike Glyer)
This Week's Reading (40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS,
THE COMFORTERS, YEAR OF WONDERS, I AM LEGEND, and
TIME TWISTERS) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Question (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
If it really is unsafe to swim within one hour after eating, how
come after more than a third of a billion years we still have
sharks around? [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Trivia Question
There are several English words with an apostrophe in them, such
as contractions and possessives. Name an English word containing
two apostrophes. We will print the answer next week. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Socialized Services (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Not too long ago when we were having some work done on out house
the people doing the work accidentally almost set the house on
fire. And the fire department sent around several men and a fire
engine. It turned out to be minor and we did not need them. But
that is not the point I would like to make. It costs somebody a
fair amount to send around a fire engine and all those men. We
never got a bill. That is all paid for by tax money. We would
never get a bill from the police, which we have not needed
specialized attention from (luckily). That is tax money that
takes care of that also. The government provides services and
pays for them with tax money. And that keeps the price in line.
The police cannot unilaterally raise their wages. If their
quality drops off, they are held accountable. Fire Departments
cannot just say they are going to start charging more for their
services. The government holds them in line. And the quality of
their service has not really noticeably suffered as a result.
Probably none of this comes as a surprise to anybody reading
this. So why am I bothering to say this? I am saying it because
I have been hearing bitter arguments over socialized medicine.
Now why can't we do the same thing with medical care that we do
with police and fire services? For one thing it may be that we
have waited too long. Medical costs are already so high that the
government may not want to take them on. It may also be that
medical care is more personal than police and fire. Police and
Fire services only non-frequently are protecting our persons.
More often the Police and Fire are protecting our financial
wellbeing. Sometimes the police are just protecting rules that
are meant to benefit a few people. Medical people a much larger
proportion of the time are protecting our bodies. For something
so personal we are reluctant to let the government rule it.
I think in medicine there are all sorts of tradeoffs that have to
be decided also. You have to make decisions that affect people's
bodies. Consider the case that one test is 90% effective and
costs $50 and another test is 95% effective and costs $700.
Somebody has to decide whether to save money or spring for the
more expensive test. If the cheaper test fails to detect a life-
threatening condition, is the decision to go with the cheaper
test legally actionable? It may be. Yet if you too frequently
go for the most effective and most expensive test, you quickly
run into big expenses. That is part of what is happening with
the medical system. Police and Fire decide for themselves
whether they will use costly and effective means or less costly
but less effective means. They are really just responsible for
the outcome. If the crime rate goes up in an area, they look
bad.
According to one Internet site, "Healthcare system costs in the
United States are 16 percent of [the Gross National Product] (and
currently increasing 14 percent per year); no other country in
the world has healthcare costs which exceed 11 percent of GNP and
the average among developed nations is 9 percent." The article
goes on to say the costs of benefits including insurance are
hamstringing our competitiveness with other countries. They are
a big reason for outsourcing labor to other countries.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Health/Medicare_For_All.html
I recently had my pulmonologist suggest that I want to get a new
mask for my CPAP every six months. Now a CPAP mask is a fairly
simple mechanism and one that is unlikely to fail. But he
suggested that I should be getting the mask because I do not want
to be buying one on my own because they are expensive. (A fact
that became painfully obvious to me when I was traveling and
found I had forgotten to pack one.) They cost on the order of
$400 for something that is little more complex than a vacuum
cleaner attachment. Further, I asked him how do the masks fail
and he says that the seal to the face leaks. The fact is that a
CPAP is designed to keep the pressure at a certain level and most
masks leak somewhere, some by design. The pump just has to work
a little harder to keep the pressure constant. A leak is a minor
inconvenience. But he points out that the mask is fully covered
by my insurance. I had recently heard an ophthalmologist give me
the same argument when he wanted me to come back for a test
rather than have it done on the same day for which they charge
less. The difference in price is completely covered by my
insurance. Another healthcare professional has told me that I
should not worry about costing the insurance company money, the
insurance companies have "lots of money." That may be, but they
are not going to give up their salaries, they will simply raise
their rates. People paying for their own insurance and people
who get it as a benefit will both suffer. Make no mistake; we
pay a heavy price for costs that are "totally covered."
What is needed? The same sort of uniform control that Canada
has. If that is socialized medicine, so be it. For a long time
our dollar was stronger than the Canadian dollar because we had a
stronger economy and we felt that meant we were doing things
right. But we are hamstringing ourselves. We ought to look to
places like Canada as models for how to run a healthcare system.
We may not be able to get medical costs back into line. We may
not even be able to stop the growth of the bite of medical costs.
But we really need to slow that growth. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: I AM LEGEND (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Richard Matheson's classic horror novel I AM LEGEND
comes to the screen with CGI and lots of guns, most of which work
against rather than for the story. Will Smith plays Robert
Neville robbed of most of his anguish and his advancing madness.
Some of the visual images are nice, but this is a story that
needs to be made on a low budget to really work. Rating: +1 (-4
to +4) or 6/10
If one were to choose the Great British Horror Novel it would
likely be DRACULA or perhaps FRANKENSTEIN. The Great American
Horror Novel would probably be Richard Matheson's 1954 I AM
LEGEND. Stephen King acknowledges the debt he owes to I AM
LEGEND and to Matheson in general. This short novel reverses the
conditions of DRACULA. In this story there is a single human in
a world full of vampires. By day Robert Neville hunts vampires
as they avoid the sunlight. At night the tables are turned as he
barricades himself in his house and the vampires try to break
their way in or tempt him outside and into their clutches. What
has left the world in this state was an all-consuming pandemic.
A deadly plague has ripped through the human race, killing all
but one man. However, while the plague appeared to bring death,
it did not really. Instead it put its victims into something
deeper than a catatonic sleep. After a period of time they rise
up again with many of the classic characteristics of vampires.
The flashbacks are rich in some very basic human fears. One is
the fear of disease and of being its victim. The other is the
fear of not being its victim, losing all ones loved ones and
being left alone. And I suppose we all have some revulsion of
the dead made even worse with the fear they will arise.
Prior to the current film version there were two others. The
first was an American/Italian co-production starring Vincent
Price, called in the United States THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964).
Charlton Heston starred in a 1971 version entitled THE OMEGA MAN.
The latter was in my opinion terrible and very different from the
novel. The first version was fairly faithful to the book based
on Matheson's screenplay, though Matheson objected to changes and
used a pseudonym. The novel and the first adaptation inspired
George Romero to do the similar story NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
(1968) and hence all zombie films owe their inspiration to the
original Matheson novel. The novel was one of the first sources
to suggest the idea that vampires were not supernatural beings
but diseased humans. One of the virtues of the story as a source
for film is its minimalism. It requires no special effects and
only minimal makeup effects. This undoubtedly was an attraction
for Romero. The makers of the Italian version seem to have
realized this. THE OMEGA MAN went in for exaggerated makeup for
the infected and big action scenes, some involving large guns.
The new version I AM LEGEND starring Will Smith also has its guns
and action. And in this version the infected turn into rabid
CGI-animated monsters that are a far cry from anything a virus
could likely produce.
It is a little hard for me to evaluate the new film version
without comparing it to the book and to THE LAST MAN ON EARTH.
The new film version (directed by Francis Lawrence) does not take
full advantage of the story but does have some original and very
nice touches. The premise is that Robert Neville (played by Will
Smith) is the only human left in Manhattan and maybe the world.
In this version it is a human-made plague from a virus originally
intended to cure cancer. The plague seems to kill people, but
then brings them back as monsters. Neville wants to turn these
vampires human again by nullifying the infection. But he is
being slowly driven insane by his extreme loneliness, his
memories of the loss of his family, and this unending regimen of
hunting vampires by day, and being hunted by them at night.
For me Will Smith is out and out wrong for the role of a man with
such mental anguish. He does not have the range to play someone
mentally breaking down. Smith seems to have gotten into physical
shape to play Neville as an action hero, a complete misreading of
the novel. Smith's never has much chance to get as lonely as the
character in the book. Though much of the film he has a dog for
companionship and talks to her like she is a sidekick. He also
talks to mannequins, which is probably a symptom of his solitude,
but it is treated very lightly. We see not the pain that Neville
feels but instead his spirit of soldiering on.
Francis Lawrence's directing of the screenplay by Mark
Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman have spiced the story up with
battles and chases through dark buildings, sadly dumbing down the
concept. There are hints that the infected might be intelligent,
but it never goes much beyond their setting the same sort of
traps for Neville that he had previously set for them. The story
is so distorted that the infected seem to be little more than
fierce animals and no longer capable of having legends. So when
for the first time a film takes the title of the novel, it is
given a different meaning. What is nice about the film is its
visualization of Manhattan abandoned for three years and already
in the process of being reclaimed by nature.
Perhaps the biggest problem of this film is the size of its
budget. The best versions of I AM LEGEND, namely THE LAST MAN ON
EARTH and arguably NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD were made in black
and white for pocket change and were much more effective because
of that. The real problem with I AM LEGEND it that there is just
too much money on that screen. Most of it just ruins the tone.
I would rate I AM LEGEND a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10. The
film leaves the way open for a sequel. Warner may already
working on II AM LEGEND. We see in the film a 2009 billboard
suggesting that Warner Brothers, who produced this film, will
then be releasing a film that brings together Superman and
Batman. I am surprised they will take that long to make that
one.
For those interested in seeing the original film version THE LAST
MAN ON EARTH, it has fallen into public domain and is very
available in a low-quality transfer in what must be a dozen
different DVD horror film collections. There are higher quality
transfers available at higher prices. For those highly tolerant
there is even a free low-resolution version on line at the URL
below. Since this was a minimalist film and not a highly visual
one, it does not suffer too badly from the low-quality
reproductions.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1663597729999672400
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: GOLDEN DOOR (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is a slow but richly textured look at the early
1900s experience of Sicilian immigrants leaving all they know to
come to America and to be processed to become American citizens.
The film has something to say to Europeans and Americans alike.
Without ever appearing to be didactic, it conveys the confusion
and fear of thrusting oneself into an alien and mysterious land.
The early parts require some patience, but the film richly
rewards that patience. I know of no film that so patiently and
so completely documents the Ellis Island experience. Rating: +2
(-4 to +4) or 7/10
Told with very little dialog and with little more plot, GOLDEN
DOOR documents the story of a Sicilian family's journey to
America in the early 20th century. Writer and director Emanuele
Crialese gives us what might almost be a docu-drama of the
emigration experience. It is done mostly in long takes with
little explanation to the viewer. We start by seeing life in the
hills of Sicily. Here we do not learn much of the family's
background and instead we follow a wide range of their current
experiences. Here is how they sell their animals. This is how
they buy clothing for the journey. That is how they purchase
food. This is what it is like in the crowded hold of a boat when
there is a bad storm. A wide range of experiences are dramatized
as the Mancuso family sadly leaves the home they have known and
sets out on the frightening adventure of moving to a new country
so far away.
Salvatore Mancuso (played by Vincenzo Amato) has heard wild
stories of how good life is in America, and he credulously
accepts them. He takes his mother and his two sons and sets out
to find this mystical land. Most of what we see is very real,
but occasionally the film gives us little surrealistic insets of
Salvatore's dreams of the new country. In one of people dwarfed
by the huge vegetables they have pulled up from the ground. The
film goes on and on with what were probably typical occurrences,
the experiences of thousands, rather than characterizing this one
family. The story starts to be particularized when the family is
getting a photograph as a souvenir of their leaving. Unbidden an
attractive woman drifts into the picture and poses with the
family as if she is one of them. Salvatore is too polite and
surprised to say anything. When the picture is taken the
mysterious woman drifts off again. She is an Englishwoman
travelling on the Italian ship and seems to have picked out this
family for something, but for what purpose? Lucy (Charlotte
Gainsbourg) seems to hang over the family and even play peeking
games onboard ship with the bemused Salvatore. The film builds
to a fabulously reconstruction of the immigrant experience at
Ellis Island. We have see this before in films, but even in
documentaries at the museum we rarely get so intimate and
complete a view of so many different parts of the experience of
being processed at Ellis Island and the immigrants' fear of
rejection. The film is not judgmental for or against the system.
It just gives a very dispassionate recreation.
The style of the film is somehow reminiscent of Italian neo-
realism. It shows life, warts and all, and spends little time
explaining itself to outsiders. The spell is broken when some
late 20th Century music is incongruously added to the score. The
pacing is very slow to give the viewer a chance to get into the
texture of a scene. A similar approach was used by Amos Gitai's
KEDMA, but somehow it works better here.
It is odd seeing Vincent Schiavelli having a role in what is to
me a current film. Schiavelli died of lung cancer in 2005 and
his presence in this film demonstrates how long it must have
taken to make this film. His role in this film is mysterious and
abbreviated due to the fact that he died while making the film.
His unusual face will be familiar from films as far back as ONE
FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST.
One of the most memorable set pieces is looking down on a sea of
people standing almost silently and as we look they separate and
we see that one mass was on the stern of the boat and the rest
were on the dock. As they separate we feel the separation of the
emigrants as they leave what they know and head towards what they
do not know.
This film richly documents a chapter of both European and
American history as seen from the European perspective. I rate
GOLDEN DOOR a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10. The Ellis Island
sequences should be shown at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0465188/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: What Has been Proved (letter of comment by Mike Glyer)
In her column in the 12/14/07 issue of the MT VOID, Evelyn wrote,
"Adams and Heath claim that 92% of Americans own at least one
Bible, yet fewer than half can name the first book of the Bible.
(Then again, all they know is that 92% of Americans *say* they own
at least one Bible.)"
Mike Glyer writes, "Yes, it is always a good question to ask
yourself 'what has been proved?' by a particular piece of
information. One often has to fall back on that question in my
work, where so much effort is invested in legal smoke and
mirrors." [-mg]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS: DARWIN, INTELLIGENT DESIGN, GOD,
OXYCONTIN, AND OTHER ODDITIES ON TRIAL IN PENNSYLVANIA by Matthew
Chapman (ISBN-13 978-0-061-17945-7, ISBN-10 0-061-17945-0) is an
account of the Kitzmiller v Dover case of 2005, with several
parents suing the Board of Education in Dover, Pennsylvania, over
its attempt to introduce "intelligent design" into high school
biology classes. Chapman just happens to be the great-great-
grandson of Charles Darwin (which does not seem to have
influenced his views), and was raised and educated in Britain
(which does). Even though many European countries have official
state religions, they seem to have no problem with teaching
evolution in the schools, and no interest in cluttering it up
with "intelligent design", "creationism", or "last Tuesdayism".
In fact, on the whole they think Americans are a bit loony to
have a problem with evolution at all.
Anyway, the book covers the trial, but also includes a lot of
editorializing by Chapman. I particularly found Chapman's
personal opinions of all the participants annoying at times,
though others may prefer his approach. A better (in my opinion)
account was "Nova"'s "Judgment Day--Intelligent Design on Trial".
(This uses recreations for the trial scenes, so there may be
undetectable bias. This can be watched on-line at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html.)
Chapman's title comes from an exchange at the end of the trial.
One of the defense lawyers said, "By my reckoning, this is the
fortieth day since the trial began, and tonight will be the
fortieth night, and I would like to know if you did that on
purpose?" Judge Jones replied, "That is an interesting
coincidence, but it was not by design."
Oh, and the outcome? The plaintiffs ( who opposed the teaching of
intelligent design) won. Judge Jones minced no words when he
referred to "the breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision" to
promote intelligent design. Ironically, by the time the Board of
Education lost, though, almost all those who had tried to promote
intelligent design had been replaced by "evolutionists" in the
fall 2005 election. (In fact, one of the new Board members was
also a plaintiff in the case.) So in some sense the winners had
to pay the fine and costs anyway!
[And this whole drama is starting again in Pinellas County in
Florida. There some schoolboard members are pushing to teach
intelligent design along with evolution. As an interesting
coincidence they are trading ideas with their neighboring
Hillsborough County School Board who also seem to want to avoid
endorsing evolution. Hillsborugh was the name of the fictional
place where the "monkey trial" was held in GONE WITH THE WIND.
http://tinyurl.com/2xcppd -mrl]
I read THE COMFORTERS by Muriel Sparks (ISBN-13
978-0-140-01911-7, ISBN-10 0-140-01911-1) because a film reviewer
noted that the basic idea of STRANGER THAN FICTION--that someone
suddenly starts hearing a voice narrating what they are doing and
thinking and realizes that they are a character in a novel--was
taken (without credit) from THE COMFORTERS. This appears to be
true, but I found THE COMFORTERS strangely un-engaging. Maybe it
was because the novel that the character was in was not very
good.
Our book discussion group chose YEAR OF WONDERS by Geraldine
Brooks (ISBN-13 978-0-142-00143-1, ISBN-10 0-142-00143-0) for
this month's discussion. The book is about a plague village in
England that voluntarily seals itself off from the outside world
in an attempt to prevent the spread of the plague. This is based
on an actual village that did this, and many characters are based
on actual people. (But not all--the end note discusses some
specific fabrications.) In my opinion, the book is a little too
much "female empowerment"--there are long sections about the old
wise woman midwife with her herbal cures, etc. I haven't read
DOOMSDAY BOOK by Connie Willis in a long time, but that is the
obvious comparison, and I think the Willis is better.
I re-read I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson (ISBN-13
978-0-765-35715-1, ISBN-10 0-765-35715-1) after seeing the movie.
I have to agree with Mark--the movie that us most faithful to the
book is the 1964 version, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. In fact, the
current film credits not just Richard Matheson but also the
screenwriters of the 1971 film, THE OMEGA MAN, for the story. So
not surprisingly, the current film resembles that in many ways.
Of the current film, I will say that it is probably worth seeing
the movie for the production and set design, but not for the
action sequences or make-up. One note: the 1954 Fawcett edition
of I AM LEGEND is 160 pages long; the 1995 Tor edition (reprinted
in October 2007) is over three hundred pages long. This is not
just larger print and wider margins--the Tor edition also
includes ten additional short stories, hence is actually a
collection. Normally one would expect a title such as I AM
LEGEND AND OTHER STORIES, but I guess they felt that just I AM
LEGEND was stronger. [The novel is 159 pages of the Tor edition.
-mrl].
TIME TWISTERS edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg
(ISBN-13 978-0-7564-0405-5, ISBN-10 0-7564-0405-3) is an
anthology of seventeen stories, about two-thirds alternate
histories, the rest time travel or similar. (Some pretend to be
alternate history, but I don't count stories that go right up to
the change and then stop as true alternate histories. Nor do I
count stories where the change is purely local, such as someone
marrying a different person, but no other real change.) As with
all too many of these theme anthologies, the stories are mostly
uninspired, seemingly written more to write a pre-sold story than
from any true inspiration on the part of the author. The only
stories than seem to rise above this are Harry Turtledove's
"Occupation Duty", Robert E. Vardeman's "The Power and the
Glory", and Skip and Penny Williams's "One Rainy Day in Paris".
[-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a year.
And that which was prov'd true before
Prove false again? Two hundred more.
-- Samuel Butler