THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/30/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 48, Whole Number 1495
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Robert Asprin Obituary (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Flying Over Mars (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The Great Crossover (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The United States' Best Kept Travel Secret (part 1)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
(film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CHRONICLES OF AN EXORCISM (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
The Cold Equations (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
This Week's Reading (PLAINSONG and "The Time Tunnel")
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Robert Asprin Obituary (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Robert Asprin died suddenly in his home on May 22 at the age of
62. He was the creator and author of the "Myth-Adventure" series
and the "Phule's Regiment" series, and also the co-creator and
author of the "Thieves' World" series (with Lynn Abbey). Asprin
was also the founder of the Dark Horde, the predecessor of the
Dorsai Irregulars.
Asprin was scheduled to be the Guest of Honor at Marcon 42,
beginning the next day. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Flying Over Mars (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This is pretty exciting for me. Does this count as a science
fiction movie?
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080519m.html
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Great Crossover (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
A computer science teacher was asked when he thought that
computer intelligence would be in the range of human
intelligence. His response was simply that considering his
students, it would be much sooner than you would imagine. You
know, I can take that two ways. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The United States' Best Kept Travel Secret (part 1)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I think the problem is that the area does not have a name--no
real name that is commonly accepted. I call it "Southern Utah."
Maybe if I want to go to the trouble I can call it "the canyon
country of southern Utah." Even when I call it that maybe I get
a sort of a shrug from most people. I guess most people would
suspect that there are canyons in southern Utah. But it is like
saying I am going to see the cactus of southern Utah. It does
not sound like much. I get a shrug or a nod and a half smile.
The closest to an impressive name is "Utah Canyon Country." But
there is a California Canyon Country, so it sounds like an also-
ran. This part of the United States had probably the most
spectacular scenery in the United States and almost nobody seems
to know it is there.
Not having a name makes a difference. The Canadian Rockies have
a name. If you say "Canadian Rockies" people know what you are
talking about. They see Nelson Eddie and Jeanette McDonald
against a background of majestic mountains, clear lakes, and
evergreen forests. If I say "southern Rockies" you picture just
a drier and sandier version of the above. I have been told that
Alaska is impressive, but I still prefer Utah. In Alaska we saw
glaciers of blue ice leading into icy bays. Very nice. Then I
had to say something like "it is not as nice as southern Utah."
And the reaction was what I expected. Southern Utah? What is he
talking about? I tell you if someone took Australia's great
geological wonder, Ayres Rock, and airlifted it to Capitol Reef
in southern Utah people passing it on the road would at best give
it a quick glance and move on to the next wonder. I have been to
over forty countries and the most impressive scenery I have seen
anywhere is in the National Parks of southern Utah. I don't care
if (almost) nobody knows it.
My mother is not an easy woman to impress. But she lives in
Scottsdale, a day's drive from Utah Canyon country. I knew about
Canyon country and suggested that we show it to her. I thought at
worst it would be nice to spend a week with her going to the
National Parks of southern Utah. But we wanted to see Canyon
Country again and this would be an opportunity to spend time with
my mom. We would drive out from Scottsdale on Sunday, see a park
each day, Monday to Friday, and drive home on Saturday. Mom
later said she was expecting something like Yosemite with
pleasant views of mountains. Utah is actually very different
from Yosemite. This *did* impress her.
On the way we passed some interesting rock formations. I told
her that I hope that at the end of this trip she will be so jaded
that those formations will be boring. But I was a little worried
I was overselling Canyon Country.
Approaching Zion National Park you don't see anything of
interest. Zion is a canyon and hence below ground. So it looks
like uninteresting topography. Then you see a crack in the
ground and as you drive into it you see interesting mounds, peaks
of rock, and we were enjoying those. You drive through a tunnel
a bit longer than a mile. When you come out you feel like you
have been shrunken. You are driving through a canyon. Imagine
if you will a boulder big enough to contain the Empire State
Building. In fact you could align the building top to bottom,
side to side, or front to back. That is one heck of a boulder.
How could such a big boulder get there? Well, it fell off the
rock face behind it three times as high. The sides of the canyon
vary in height but go up to about three-quarters of a mile. That
is a heck of a lot of rock. So the question is less there did
the boulder come from but what kind of a noise did it make when
it fell. This road will give you some idea what it is like to
travel in Zion:
http://tinyurl.com/6ccbtz
The Grand Canyon--much more well-known--might be as impressive,
but I have never gone very deeply into it. Canyons are more
impressive looking from the base. At the canyon of Zion you go
right to the base. My mother said she did not know there was
topography like this anywhere in the United States. Are all the
parks we are going to like this one, she asked? No, they are all
different. It is not a long drive from Zion to Bryce, but the
conditions are just a little different there. We spent Monday at
Zion feeling very small next to the rock behemoths. You can look
at the huge rock formations and feel you have the measure of
their size. Then you seem a tiny camper driving along a road
beside one and realize that you had the scale all wrong.
Next week I will continue raving about the other parks. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (film
review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Indiana Jones is back and looking for the secrets of a
lost civilization in Central or South America (and the script
seems not sure what the difference is). This film is a
compendium of geographic misinformation as well as solid
collection of action sequences. Rather than being an adventure
centered on religious folklore, this time Indy is involved with
aliens and New Age ideas. As expected the thrills just keep
coming, but like its hero the action is getting a little old and
little stiff. Steven Spielberg directs. Rating: high +1 (-4 to
+4) or 6/10
Spoiler warning: This review has some spoilers of minor details
in the film.
The Lost Race story, popular in the late 1800s, is not dead. Nor
is Indiana Jones, popular in the 1980s. After nineteen years in
both real time and story time, Professor Jones (Harrison Ford, of
course) has been forced into a new adventure in the world of
1957. There is no way to make this a prequel the way TEMPLE OF
DOOM was. Harrison Ford is 65 years old and looks it. Indiana
Jones still does some marvelous physical feats, but you rarely
see Indy's face when he is doing them. His stunt double is
getting lots of work. Karen Allen is back as Marion Ravenwood
and is well preserved enough to still be attractive. But many of
Indiana's stunts have been handed off to new character Mutt
Williams (played by Shia LaBeouf). Mutt is adventuresome himself
and could himself almost be called a young Indiana Jones.
At the film begins Stalinist thugs have kidnapped Indiana in the
hopes of finding a valuable thingee that has something to do with
psychic power. The Nazis have been dispatched by history so
Stalin is the power behind the new villains. It seems that
Stalin is as superstitious as Hitler was, though come to think of
it, in the world of Indiana Jones, Hitler was right to believe in
the Ark and the Grail. The chase for the valuable thingee will
take Indiana and his party once more into tombs and temples with
booby traps. One major difference is that the three previous
films are based on folklore itself based (at least nominally) on,
respectively, Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity. This time the
inspiration is not a major religion but simply New Age thinking
and conspiracy theories. Many touches have been put into the
film to remind one both of Spielberg's and of Lucas's early
films. To say more of what touches would be a spoiler.
Indiana's chief nemesis is Irina Spalko (played by Cate
Blanchett). Spalko carries a sword and apparently sports a
Louise Brooks wig. Indiana's chief partner, in addition to Mutt
Williams, is Mac McHale (Ray Winstone), a friend of dubious
value. Along the way they pick up Ox Oxlay (John Hurt), an
archeologist whose mind has been destroyed by contact with a
crystal skull. Rounding out the group is Marion Ravenwood of the
first film who returns here. There are four major surprises in
the script, two of which are that you guessed each of the other
two at least thirty minutes before the revelations.
Some nice moments enliven the film. There is a nice eerie moment
early in the film, which on retrospect could have been taken
intact from the 1954 Mickey Rooney comedy THE ATOMIC KID.
Perhaps a little out of place for the feel of the series are the
comic shots, highly digital, showing prairie dog reaction shots
to the action. One touch may or may not have been intentional.
In the film APOCALYPTO (2006) the wife of the main character is
shown to be in a very dangerous situation and needs her husband
to rescue her. INDIANA JONES puts people in the identical
situation and shows that it is not actually dangerous at all.
Since it is not dangerous, I can see no reason Spielberg to put
his characters in this non-dangerous situation except to poke fun
at APOCALYPTO.
In general one does not see an Indiana Jones movie for its
intelligent plot or for factual accuracy. This film has some
very serious geographical errors, but in addition we see just
taken for granted some things that are simply not true. 1)
Indiana Jones assumes that gunpowder is magnetic. Gunpowder
consists of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur. It is not
magnetic. Confusing things is that later in the film some
traditionally non-magnetic substances prove to be attracted to
the super-magnets in this film, but Indiana Jones does not know
that early in the film. 2) The super-magnets attract metal
buttons, swords, and anything else that should be magnetic but
apparently not Jeeps. Jeeps would have been made of magnetic
material in 1957 as now. 3) Later in the film, stone that is
being put in place by resting it on sand in a container and then
letting the sand run out. It would not lower the stone any lower
than the height where the sand is leaking out. We see such a
stone descend further. 4) I have no idea what is the tensile
strength of a large snake, but I seriously doubt it can be used
as suggested.
Well, what are the geographic errors? David Koepp (who wrote the
screenplay) really seems to have a deep confusion about the
differences between Peru and Mexico. Peru and Mexico are about
2600 miles apart. Much of the film takes place in Peru on the
Amazon and in the mountains. That was where the Inca
civilization was, but all of the architecture we see is in the
ornate Mayan style from thousands of miles to the north. The
Incas never used this style. The native language in Peru is
Quechua, which Indiana says he learned riding with Pancho Villa.
Villa rode a long way from where Quechua is spoken. The area
where Indiana goes is referred to as "Meso-America." The most
southern part of Mexico is considered to be part of Meso-America,
but Peru is much further south in South America. We see a 1957
map that lists Belize. There was no place with that name until
June 1973. [Thanks to my wife, Evelyn, for catching many of
these errors.] I will very likely get complaints that people do
not go to an Indiana Jones film to learn geography, but if
geographic errors bother me, I have to report them.
This is very much a turn-your-mind-off sort of film with some fun
action sequences. There is nothing wrong with that. But I would
have hoped turning off the mind should not have been so
necessary. I rate INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL
SKULL a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0367882/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: CHRONICLES OF AN EXORCISM (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: CHRONICLES OF AN EXORCISM is a low-budget, direct-to-
DVD, pseudo-documentary horror thriller. The title tells most of
the story; the film shows an exorcism. Not surprisingly the
style is much influenced by THE EXORCIST but is done in a crude
"Blair Witch Project" filming style. The roughness of the
filming style works for the film, but cut corners undermine the
effort frequently. The film seems stretched out by seemingly
endless on-screen Bible-reading and prayer. Nick G. Miller (who
co-writes, directs, and stars) is spread a little thin, and the
resulting film will be effective only for the most susceptible.
Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
Horror films do not quite work the way films in other genre work.
One might think that a well-polished, well-produced film would be
a more effective one. But horror does not necessarily work that
way. For a film to have a visceral impact it has to seem real.
Films like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or CARNIVAL OF SOULS work
well as they do because they have a feeling of truth actually
created by their unpolished production values. The style of a
better production can get between the viewer and the story. THE
BLAIR WITCH PROJECT has started a more recent spate of horror
films that get their power from their apparent crudeness.
CLOVERFIELD is another recent example.
The title of this film tells most of what the viewer needs to
know about CHRONICLES OF AN EXORCISM. Shot with shaky handheld
cameras in and around a ramshackle house in the country, we see a
story of a woman possessed by demons and the attempts to destroy
the demons by a team of stealth exorcists. (Why stealth? The
film claims that the Catholic Church has renounced exorcisms but
still sanctions them in secret. Actually I believe it revised
the rites in 1999, but it has not renounced them altogether.)
The exorcists are Fathers Michael and Lucas (played by Matthew
Ashford and Nick G. Miller, both a little young to be well-
experienced exorcists). They have cast out demons in Eastern
Europe, South America, and "the jungles of Korea." (Korea has
jungles?) Pastor Bill (Ray W. Keziah) has brought them here to
exorcise the demons possessing Tina (Dara Wedel) in front of
documentary camera. Not everyone in the group agrees what
treatment is needed.
I am not Catholic myself, so the proceedings do not have a lot of
credibility for me. I am willing to suspend disbelief about as
much as I did for THE EXORCIST thirty-five years ago. It does
not take a lot more since that script seems to have been used as
a handbook for the religious background of this film. It is
similar to the fact that most vampire films seem to follow the
rules found in Bram Stoker's novel DRACULA even though the actual
folklore itself varies a great deal from country to country. Not
a whole lot happens in this film that did not happen in THE
EXORCIST. Hearing that this is a multiple demon possessing
instead of one possessing the woman does not give the film a lot
more impact. Nor is it clear why as claimed that the principles
discovered in this exorcism would help thousands of people. For
much of this film we just see people praying over a convulsing
woman.
Visually the film frequently has problems. The possessed woman
is played by Dara Wedel who is a little too sexy to make the
proceedings seem credible. She wears white contact lenses with
little black irises. But since the white of the lenses does not
match the white of her eyes, the result just looks silly. When
she speaks we hear on the soundtrack her voice and a deep bass
voice, presumably that of a demon. A similar effect was used on
the soundtrack of THE EXORCIST. Most of the effects are borrowed
familiar from THE EXORCIST.
This is that sort of horror film that really needs a Friday night
or a great deal of suspension of disbelief. I rate CHRONICLES OF
AN EXORCISM a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0999970/
For Vatican policy on exorcism see:
http://www.trosch.org/chu/exorcism.htm#cwn.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Cold Equations (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
In response to Mark's article on "The Cold Equations" in the
05/23/08 issue of the MT VOID, Steve Milton writes, "With regard
to the story 'The Cold Equations', there is one solution where
the girl lives; the pilot sacrifices himself. This is where I
thought the story was going when I first read it." [-smm]
Mark responds, "If the ship could do without a qualified pilot,
maybe by robotic control, why have a pilot in the first place?
The premise of the story, whether properly stated or not, is that
the ship needed everything it had but the girl. The premise of
the story, properly written or not, is that being unable to
change the laws of physics one of two bad outcomes must take
place and it is wrenching to have to be the person who makes the
decision. Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two very
unpleasant evils. Two other stories that have the theme are FAIL
SAFE and the non-SF SOPHIE'S CHOICE." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Our book discussion group read PLAINSONG by Kent Haruf (ISBN-13
978-0-375-70585-4, ISBN-10 0-375-70585-6). It was better than a
lot of the current fiction chosen for discussion groups in that
the people all seem like the sort of people you might meet in the
supermarket--there are no serial killers, wacko fundamentalists,
etc. But the one element I am going to comment on is the lack of
quotation marks. From what I read about this, this may be a new
trend among fiction writers: leaving out the quotation marks
altogether and having the paragraph structure and internal clues
let the reader know who is talking. Many reviewers liked this,
saying it gave the book an immediacy and a feeling of involvement
for the reader. Others found it distracting and confusing. I am
in the latter camp. It was not always confusing, but as someone
who grew up reading books with quotation marks, I did find it
distracting. It is perhaps less of a gimmick than writing an
entire book without the letter "e", but it still seems a gimmick.
I have been watching episodes of "The Time Tunnel" (courtesy of
Netflix), and have a few comments to make on the notorious
"Revenge of the Gods" episode set at ancient Troy. First of all,
"The Time Tunnel" in general made use of footage from various
historical movies when appropriate (and sometimes when not). So
the Krakatoa episode used footage from KRAKATOA, EAST OF JAVA,
the Battle of New Orleans episode used footage from THE
BUCCANNEER, and so on. For Troy, however, the producers had no
Trojan War movie to use, so they used footage from THE 300
SPARTANS.
What this meant, of course, was that this episode ended up with
*three* levels of errors. First, there were the errors inherent
in THE 300 SPARTANS, such as the fact that it shows horsemen
using stirrups when in fact they had not been invented for
several hundred years (after Thermopylae, or a millennium after
Troy).
Then there were the errors made by using the Battle of
Thermopylae to represent the Battle of Troy. The costumes,
armor, etc., are all anachronistic, but the fact that the Trojans
seem to be dressed as Persian warriors is particularly egregious.
And the Greek shields all have a lambda on them--okay for
representing the army of Leonides at Thermopylae, but meaningless
for the Greeks under Agamemnon.
And then there were the errors that the "Time Tunnel" writers
added themselves. For some reason all the characters are called
by their Roman names (Ulysses, Jupiter, Minerva, etc.)--except
for Paris (whose name was Alexander in the Roman form). I guess
they figured the viewers would confuse him with Alexander the
Great if they called him Alexander. They also introduce a
character named Sardis, a Greek who goes over to the Trojan side.
There is no such character, either in Homer or in Virgil. (Note:
here is the connection to books--this is a book column, after
all. :-) )
Oh, and the Greeks and Trojans all speak English. This is
particularly irksome because in some of the other episodes, Doug
and Tony meet people who speak other languages. Admittedly, in
those there is usually a convenient English-speaking traveler to
help them out, but still, it indicates that there was at least a
nod to the language problem.
At one point, the base team decides to send hand grenades and
sub-machine guns back to Doug and Tony. (Why? Don't they worry
about introducing these into history?) So they tell the
character Jiggs to get some, and ten seconds later he returns
with a sack of weapons. Were these just sitting around in the
time tunnel control room? Later, after Jiggs is accidentally
sent back, he is retrieved, first with some error such that he
returns as an old man, and then a second time as his original
age. One question unanswered is whether Jiggs remembers being
old the first time they bring him back out of the tunnel.
Another is why they can manage to bring Jiggs back *twice* and
Doug and Tony not at all.
And why do Doug's and Tony's clothes magically return to their
original clothes right before they are transported to a new time?
As with all the shows, the footage shot specifically for the show
seems incredibly set-bound, which is even more obvious when
inter-cut with the film footage. When they land on the beach, it
is obvious that it is just a thin layer of sand over a floor.
(Other shows which have people actually at the meeting of sea and
shore are obvious filmed at a back-lot artificial pond.) And, as
one often finds, the floors and ground are too clean and the
clothing, furniture, and props too perfectly made.
(I also suspect that the sword-fighting techniques shown are not
appropriate to the time, but I cannot be sure.)
When "The Time Tunnel" was first on (in 1966) I loved it. Let's
face it, there was not much in the way of televised science
fiction back then. (Now, of course, one can get science fiction
shows 'round the clock.) I am still a fan of time travel stories
but I have (I suppose) become more discriminating. I can still
enjoy "The Time Tunnel" as a fun cheesy show from my youth, but
as little else. [-ecl]
[For information on writing without "e" see
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-lip1.htm.
In "The Time Tunnel" the use of English is not the error it might
seem. The use of English for foreign languages is an artificial
convention often used in films and plays. After all, everybody
spoke English in BEN HUR. It is meant here to mean that everybody
is speaking Ancient Greek and that the time travelers are fluent
in conversational Ancient Greek. That makes the two physicists a
little too accomplished, but it is not the biggest absurdity of
the TV series. In THE GREY ZONE a German is angered because two
Poles are speaking in Polish which he does not understand.
However, in the scene all three are speaking in English. -mrl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
A man's women folk, whatever their outward show
of respect for his merit and authority, always
regard him secretly as an ass, and with something
akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings
seldom deceive them; they see the actual man
within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic
fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the
best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the
common phrase makes it, feminine intuition.
-- H. L. Mencken