THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/02/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 44, Whole Number 1491
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
An Inspirational Moment (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Anthony Boucher (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
YELLA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert A. Heinlein
(book review by Joe Karpierz)
THE COUNTERFEITERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (BERTRAM OF BUTTER CROSS and
IN DEFENSE OF FOOD) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: An Inspirational Moment (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Ah, spring is here. People around the world look to this time of
year as being a season of great hope, a time of renewal. Spring
is a time deep symbolic significance. This is the time of re-
birth. There is the eternal cycle of birth, growth, ripeness,
decline, and death. It is the Great Cycle of Life revered by
cultures all over the world. It is a symbol of great fortifying
power and of universal hope. Well, wise up, Bunky. The cycle
may go on, but you sure as Tax Day don't. When you're dead,
you're dead, kid. There's no more picking up the marbles. So
whether there is a cycle or not is pretty much academic. Grab it
now or lose it forever.
[Portions of the above inspirational message may not apply to
parents, Hindus, and residents of the Southern Hemisphere. Void
where prohibited by law.]
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Anthony Boucher (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
There is sad news in the review column I just read in a science
fiction magazine. According to the editor, "There seems to be
some evidence that the boom in science-fiction-in-book-form,
which began about five years ago, is starting to wane." That is
kind of a sad thought since I look forward to this particular
book reviewer and magazine editor's recommendations. Luckily I
have a good-sized collection of books to tide me over during the
hard times coming. The reviewer and editor who is telling me
this is Anthony Boucher in the September issue of the MAGAZINE OF
FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. That is September, 1954.
I know what you are thinking. Have I accidentally fallen into a
time warp? (That was what you were thinking, wasn't it?) Let me
assure you that the answer is no. Certainly not. I have not
accidentally fallen. I intentionally jumped. I meant to do
that.
The story is this. Evelyn had a stand to hold a picture near our
kitchen table. She got the bright idea to liven up the area by
displaying a 1950s issue of GALAXY magazine. That was OK for a
week or two, then I started to get a little tired of it and I
proposed to her that I would change the magazine each week. I
would work my way through the issues we have of GALAXY. After a
month or so I said that I preferred the art work on MAGAZINE OF
FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION in the early Fifties. We have pretty
much a complete collection. She said that F&SF would be fine.
So I am displaying issues of F&SF from 1953 on.
Fairly quickly I realized that it nice to read a little of the
magazines before putting them back on the shelf. Of particular
interest is Anthony Boucher's book review column. We have this
big collection of science fiction books collected over the years,
bought cheaply from used book stores. But what we need is
something to get us really interested in the books. Well
Boucher's contemporary book reviews are just the thing. If he
recommends a book, I can probably walk into the other room and
get a copy. This is something Boucher's original readers would
have probably envied me.
I can actually see the then new field of science fiction develop
during the exciting years of the early 1950s. We go through it
in fast motion were every week corresponds to a month.
This month there is a new writer whose work, Boucher tells me, is
good enough to stand beside Asimov, Clement, and Pangborn. He
had written a very nice juvenile, THE VAULT OF THE AGES. But now
Mr. Poul Anderson is trying his hand with an adult novel, BRAIN
WAVE. This novel, I am assured, is "wholly satisfactory." He is
a little cooler on Jerry Sohl's new novel ALTERED EGO. "It's
almost rational ... as Sohl novels go."
Last week/month Boucher was recommending Robert Sheckley's
collection UNTOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS. His comment on it is both
exciting and in retrospect a little sad. He calls it "as
brightly individual and entrancing a group of science fantasies as
we've seen in some time--from an author who has only barely begun
his career!" Of course, if I reach into my other mind I would
know that a young Mark Leeper would discover Sheckley stories in
another five years when NOTIONS UNLIMITED would become Mark's
first science fiction book intended for adult readers. My other
mind could see the span of that great career including, sadly,
Scheckley's death many years later. No, that is my 2008 mind. It
is a lot more fun returning to my 1954 mind and picking out the
books I want to read. Maybe I will go in and get myself a copy of
UNTOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS and put it on my bed stand.
While my 1954 mind is frolicking through the blossoming fields of
1954 naive science fiction, my 2008 mind is trying to slog
through Greg Egan's DIASPORA. This is the book chosen for our
book discussion. Evelyn, who is in every way a better reader
than I am, is having a hard time making out what Egan is saying.
It is about 300 pages and Evelyn does not seem greatly excited by
the ideas or the adventure. Hey, no contest. If you want me I
will be back in 1954. You know Groff Conklin has just brought
out a whole book of computer stories called SCIENCE FICTION
THINKING MACHINES. Boucher thinks Conklin has never done a
better job of creative editing. That's for me.
If you have some old science fiction magazines, give this a try.
Sometimes you *can* stop at Willoughby.
[Postscript: In March of 1955 we get an assessment of the fantasy
novels of the previous year including THE BROKEN SWORD by Poul
Anderson, THE VICTORIAN CHAISE LONGUE by Marghanita Laski, and
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING by J. R. R. Tolkien. Of the latter he
says, "Long and even cumbersome though it is, the Tolkein may well
be the year's most distinguished work of imagination." That may
prove true.] [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: YELLA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: German film director/writer Christian Petzold's YELLA is
a suspenseful film carried off without the viewer knowing what
the suspense is all about. It is a film about a capable but very
material woman making her way in a new town. She turns her back
on her unlucky former husband and goes to western Germany where
the financial prospects are better. This is a film where what is
happening in the margins becomes increasingly more interesting
than the main story. During the course of this film something
strange is happening in conjunction with the main story, but the
viewer is never sure what. The mystery happening in the margins
of this story is more interesting than the mainline plot. Nina
Hoss won a Silver Bear prize for Best Actress for her role in
YELLA, and the film won Best Picture by the German Film Critics
Association. It also won Best Picture, Director, Actress and
Cinematography Lola awards (the German equivalent of the Oscar).
Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Yella (played by Nina Hoss) is leaving her home town of
Wittenberge, leaving her husband, and leaving her old life. Her
husband Ben (Hinnerk Schönemann) at one time looked like a man of
great prospects, but his business plans failed and at the same
time so did their relationship. Yella is a smart woman with a
good knowledge of accounting, but she is also a very material
person. Ben can no longer support her in the style to which she
wants to remain accustomed. On top of which Ben is tightening
his grip on her and she knows she must leave him. Ben tries to
one last futile stunt to hold onto her and nearly kills both of
them.
Yella now knows she made the right decision to leave. She is
going to escape from her town in the eastern part of Germany and
go to the richer prospects to Hanover in the western part. Still
shaken by her brush with death, Yella goes to a new town where
she has been offered a high-paying accounting job. Now it is her
luck that is going sour. The job turns out to be a fraud and she
is just being used. Just when things look bleak she runs into
Philipp (Devid Striesow). Philipp is himself a sort of financial
wheeler-dealer who treads a narrow line between honesty and
dishonesty. Expecting to just to use Yella as a distraction for
the other side in negotiations he discovers that Yella can be
more valuable for her mind than for her body. But Yella herself
can be a dangerous ally. Does she want Philipp or does she want
what she can take him for? And what will she do about Ben, who
has followed her to her new town?
The characters in YELLA are a little cold to American tastes.
There are a number of reasons why this may be true. Part of it
may be a cultural difference between how Germans portray Germans
on the screen and how Americans portray Americans. Part may be
because of the specific situation in the film. In addition, much
of the plot is about financial dealings. While everybody is
fascinated with money, somehow it is a subject that does not do
well on the screen. Alan J. Pakula's 1981 film ROLLOVER comes
really close to being financial science fiction and a stock-
market-based thriller and it is about as thrilling as anyone
could make incidents whose impact is shown by numbers on the
screen. It is as hard to make finance exciting in a movie as it
is to make Pilgrims erotic. It just does not work. But if the
finance is not interesting, the metaphysical and fantasy-tinged
margins of this story compensate. Petzold creates prominent
contrasts in the film. The film contrasts what has become of the
old East Germany with the west of Germany. It bounces back and
forth from stifling business offices to frequent interludes with
nature with birds, trees, and especially water. There are
recurrent images of water as a symbol of death and of rebirth.
The press materials that came with the film mentioned that the
film was inspired by a certain semi-well-known American film and
one that I happen to like a great deal. Unfortunately, knowing
the connection with the American film is a massive spoiler. It
tells much too much about where the story is really going. The
original, however, did more on what I can only assume is a small
fraction of the budget of YELLA. For those who have already seen
YELLA, I will leave a link at the bottom of this review for the
American film that inspired YELLA.
Christian Petzold's story-telling is slow but intriguing. He
builds suspense without defining letting the viewer know what to
be uneasy about. That is not easy to do. I rate YELLA a high +1
on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0806686/
SPOILER: This film is strongly inspired by
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0055830/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert A. Heinlein (copyright
1965 by Robert A. Heinlein, Blackstone Audiobooks, 12 CDs, ISBN
0-7861-9885-0) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
Book two in my Heinlein education is the 1965 classic THE MOON IS
A HARSH MISTRESS, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel in
1967 and runner-up for the same award in 1966. I don't recall
ever seeing a novel eligible in two different voting years--I
presume it has something to do with the fact that it was
serialized in If Magazine across the end of 1965 and the
beginning of 1966. It would be his last Hugo-winning novel.
The story is set on the moon in 2075. The colonists, or Loonies,
are either criminals or political exiles or descendants of the
same. The moon is governed by the Lunar Authority, which has put
in place a warden to keep things in line. Our story starts with
one Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis, a one-armed electronics and
computer expert on assignment to repair the central computer that
runs the lunar colonies. Mannie has been called in because the
central computer pulled a practical joke by paying one of the
janitors or some such an outrageous sum of money. Mannie makes a
fascinating discovery--the computer has achieved self-awareness.
Mannie names him Mycroft Holmes, after Sherlock's brother, or
Mike for short. Mannie and Mike become friends. Mannie works out
a method of communicating with Mike, and it's apparent that
something will be brewing shortly.
Mannie attends a meeting of a group of anti-Authority activists,
where he meets Wyoming Knott, or Wyoh for short, a beautiful
blond revolutionary from Hong Kong Luna, one of the many warrens
on the moon. She gives a speech at the meeting, but some of her
views are rebutted by Professor Bernardo de la Paz, or "Prof".
Prof is an old instructor of Mannie's from long ago. Together,
the three of them, along with the help of Mike, begin plotting a
revolution that will eventually give the lunar colonies their
freedom.
My suspicions are that most of the readers of this esteemed
journal (any bonus points for that one, Evelyn? :-)) know the
story. It follows a nice little progression: the plotting of the
revolution, the take-over of the colony after some Authority
thugs rape and murder innocent women, the trip to Earth to plead
the Loonie case (now *that* sounds wrong) to the Earth
authorities, the attack on the Lunar colonies by Earth, and the
Loonies' retaliation, eventually ending in freedom for the
Loonies.
I enjoyed this novel much more than I did METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN,
but there were some things that annoyed me a bit. In my opinion,
Wyoh degenerated from the beginnings of a very strong character
to yet another stereotypical Heinleinian woman. Yes, she did
contribute to the revolution, but as far as strong female
characters go, I like my women like "Babylon 5"'s Susan Ivanova
or Delenn. The endless description of the details of plotting the
revolution drove me nuts after a while--I just got tired of it.
We also get an extended glimpse of Heinlein's Libertarian views
on government as well as his revolutionary views on the different
types of marriage, an idea that may be intriguing but one that
I'll never ever get used to. We learn about rational anarchists,
and the catch phrase TANSTAAFL ("there ain't no such thing as a
free lunch") takes hold here.
So, would I recommend this book to someone? As representative of
late-prime Heinlein, certainly. Yes, it won the Hugo, and it is
considered one of the all-time classic works of the field, but
it's not in my top ten (maybe we'll get into that sometime). It
was certainly an enjoyable novel, and it was entertaining on top
of that. A pleasant listen.
Oh, that brings me to the reader, Lloyd James. His voice grated
on me after awhile, and the accents he gave to the characters
were distracting. I guess I'm spoiled--I like the guy who read
Card's EMPIRE.
Next up is THE GHOST BRIGADES by John Scalzi, after which the Hugo
reading will begin.[-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE COUNTERFEITERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The Austrian-German production THE COUNTERFEITERS is
good cinema that deals with serious moral issues. It is about
the ethical question of concentration camp prisoners prolonging
their lives by helping the Nazi war effort. The issue is at what
cost is survival. Writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky does not
give a pat and easy answer. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Based on a true incident, THE COUNTERFEITERS tells a story that
is roughly parallel to SCHINDLER'S LIST, but makes its central
theme a moral issue that was entirely side-stepped by the
Spielberg film. The story involves concentration camp inmates
who survive by allowing the Nazis to use their talents to further
the German war effort. Of course, many prisoners were in the
position from the Jewish Sonderkomandos to the slave laborers who
assembled the V-2 rockets at Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp to
many different types of slave laborers in the camps. Nearly
everybody who was not murdered was put to use in some way for
their Nazi captors. Is this work acceptable in the name of self-
preservation? Does it become less acceptable if the work being
done actually makes a strategic difference in the war? In
SCHINDLER'S LIST workers were making enamel cookware for the
army. It did not make a big contribution to the Nazi war effort,
but it made a difference. In THE COUNTERFEITERS the work being
done could easily destabilize the economies of Britain and the
United States.
Stefan Ruzowitzky's film focuses on Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch
(played by Karl Markovics) a counterfeiter who is living a high
life in Berlin of the early 1930s. Then he is captured by police
Superintendent Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow). Herzog does
not hide his admiration for Sally whom he admits he considers the
best counterfeiter in the world. In time not dramatized in the
film Sally goes to prison. When the political situation becomes
worse he is moved to Mauthausen concentration camp. There Sally
is able to trade his talent as a graphic artist in return for
some modest mouthfuls of food, and hence is able to stay alive.
Suddenly he is transferred to Sachsenhausen camp. Expecting the
worst he finds instead that he has been hand-picked by Friedrich
Herzog. Herzog is heading a project to destabilize the economies
of enemy countries. He is using his knowledge of counterfeiting
to run Operation Bernhard, an operation within the camp to print
up millions of counterfeit pounds and dollars. They will be put
into circulation intended to ruin the economies of the United
States and Britain. Not incidentally the money is also needed to
buy petroleum and other resources that the Third Reich is running
short on.
Within the camp Herzog has a whole printing shop staffed with
dozens of prisoners working on creating undetectable forgeries of
foreign money. Herzog's admiration for Sally's skills prompts
him bring in the master forger to manage his shop. Just a few
feet away people in the thousands are being murdered and the
staff of this shop is living in conditions perhaps not
comfortable, but easily survivable.
Not everybody in the shop feels that this sort of survival is
worth having knowing that it is supporting the Third Reich and
helping them to continue their factory murder practices.
Counterfeiters are playing ping-pong in their off-hours where
murders are taking place right outside the windows. Adolf Burger
(August Diehl) is Sally's press operator who wants to sabotage
the project, even if it will bring the Nazis down on the whole
shop of workers. Sally has to decide between protecting the
workers who are depending on him for their safety or sacrificing
them all to stop the Nazi plan. For a man who is basically a
ruthless criminal, he is in an unfamiliar position making serious
moral decisions.
The film's grim visual style complements the subject matter. The
colors are washed out in the camp scenes to give an atmosphere as
downbeat as could be created in monochrome. As Sally, Karl
Markovics shows little emotion. He coldly calculates and plans
to do what he can to do good without doing bad in the process.
Films about moral issues are not uncommon. Films that leave the
questions open are considerably rarer. This film trusts the
viewer to make his own moral judgements as well as dramatizing a
nearly forgotten chapter of history. I rate it a high +2 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0813547/
For more information on Operation Bernhard, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Burger.
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
BERTRAM OF BUTTER CROSS by Jeffrey E. Barlough (ISBN-13
978-0-978-76340-4, ISBN-10 0-978-76340-8) is the fourth of
Barlough's "Western Lights" books, the first three being DARK
SLEEPER, THE HOUSE IN THE HIGH WOOD, and STRANGE CARGO. Those
were published in trade paperback editions by Ace, but apparently
they did not sell as well as Ace hoped, so this volume (and the
upcoming ANCHORWICK) is being issued by Gresham & Doyle.
While the books are part of a series, they each stand on their
own. The back-story of the series is that the last Ice Age did
not end, so Pleistocene mammals still survive: mastodons,
smilodons, and short-faced bears, among others. There are also
Lovecraftian touches, connected in part with "the Sundering",
which has destroyed all but a small area of civilization, now
stuck in a Victorian Era culture--hence place names such as
"Yocklebury Great Croft" and "Upper Lofting, Butter Cross,
Wuffolk".
I am really glad that there is a publisher willing to publish
Barlough, because I love his style. Here, for example, are the
opening paragraphs of BERTRAM OF BUTTER CROSS:
"In the springtime of our grandparents--that is to say, when our
grandmothers and grandfathers all were very young--there occurred
in the town of Market Snailsby, in Fenshire, a mystery of
singular character and incident. More precisely, it was the
unraveling of this mystery that occurred, for the mystery itself
had been a staple of popular legend for a good many years, during
which time it had resisted all solution. This is the story of
the working out of that mystery, and of what was discovered in
Marley Wood, and who discovered it and how, and what came of it
all in the end."
"Market Snailsby was one of those long, lazy, meandering sorts of
towns that are often met with in the marshlands. Its quaint old
houses and ancient cobble streets were scattered in profuse array
along the banks of the River Fribble near its junction with the
River Lour. The Fribble was rather wide for a Fenshire river,
but not very deep, and navigable only by the lighter barge
traffic. It was a good eel-river, though, and a fine one for
fishing, and of much benefit to the townspeople. There was a
beautiful old stone bridge crossing it, at a point midway between
the Market Square and the Church of All Hallows. On the other
side of the bridge, on the river's south bank, stood the pretty
little ivy-covered posting-inn called the Broom and Badger. It
was here at the Badger that the drivers of the mastodon trains
used to put themselves up, after putting their teams out behind
it on the broad, open stretch of meadowland that was Snailsby
Common."
If that doesn't grab you, well, then maybe this is not for you.
One difference that has occurred with the change of publishers is
that this book (at 270 pages) is considerably shorter than the
pevious ones (484, 318, and 481 pages, respectively). Whether
this is Barlough's choice, or whether Ace asked for the previous
novels to have a certain minimum length longer than this, I do
not know, but at least now I have the feeling that Barlough is
able to write the novels the way he wants to. (ANCHORWICK, I
notice, seems to be back in the longer range--387 pages)
I loved this book, and I eagerly await ANCHORWICK in October.
(I noted in my review of STRANGE CARGO that Barlough seems to be
part of the movement called by Frederick John Kleffel "The New
Victoriana", which includes books by such authors as Tim Powers,
Neal Stephenson, and Susanna Clarke. See
http://trashotron.com/agony/columns/2004/09-03-04.htm for more
on this movement.)
IN DEFENSE OF FOOD: AN EATER'S MANIFESTO by Michael Pollan
(ISBN-13 978-1-594-20145-5, ISBN-10 1-594-20145-5) is a plan for
an intelligent diet and is in some ways a continuation of his
OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA. Pollan again talks about "nutritionism"--the
change from emphasis on foods themselves to an emphasis of
components of foods (e.g., vitamins, Omega-3 oils). It all builds
to Pollan's final section, devoted to the mantra: "Eat food. Not
too much. Mostly plants."
Pollan has several "rules of thumb" for determining what "food"
is:
- "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize
as food."
- "Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a)
unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or
that include d) high-fructose corn syrup."
- "Avoid food products that make health claims."
- "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the
middle."
- "Get out of the supermarket whenever possible."
The rationale for the third one is that only the big food
companies can manage to get the FDA or American Heart Association
to approve their claims; it's difficult for the local potato
grower to get FDA or AHA approval for health claims for potatoes
(and harder still to figure out how to put them on each potato!).
The last rule is meant to encourage people to buy from farmers'
markets. I'm all for this, but it just doesn't not seem very
practical around here. There are produce stores *called*
"Farmers Market" and such, but they are not true farmers' markets
in the sense of selling locally grown produce directly from the
farmer to the consumer(*). In the summer, one can find some
stands with very limited supplies, but if one is supposed to eat
"mostly plants," this is not a shopping plan that will achieve
that goal in New Jersey.
(*) At my local produce store, I saw some tomatoes once where the
sign above them said "Jersey tomatoes", the printed weight label
said "Israeli tomatoes", and the sticker on the tomatoes
themselves said "Canada"! [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic
because he has gone from knowing nothing to
believing nothing.
-- Maya Angelou, PBS,
28 March 1988