THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/27/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 52, Whole Number 1499
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
We were Right All Along! (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The United States' Best Kept Travel Secret (part 4)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Cataloguing (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE INCREDIBLE HULK (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE LAST COLONY by John Scalzi (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
Dalton Trumbo (letter of comment by Taras Wolansky)
This Week's Reading (HALTING STATE, Hugo short stories
nominees) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: We were Right All Along! (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Aha! New studies prove the scientific accuracy of the Odyssey.
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080623_odyssey
This proves the truth of this great document of faith. This is
the scientific truth we can show to the atheists and agnostics out
there to prove that there really are gods. All hail mighty Zeus!
All hail fleet-footed Hermes! All hail wise Athena! [-mrl]
[In the 05/21/86 issue of the MT VOID, Mark wrote, "Some of you
may have seen a book come out recently called THE JASON VOYAGE
that is about some clown who made himself a full-size working
replica of Jason's Argo. He followed the same course that he
thinks that the mythological Jason did. His book follows in the
footsteps of KON-TIKI in which some idiot tried to prove that
ancient sailing ships could have made the trim from Peru to
Tahiti. Then there was THE RA EXPEDITION, in which someone tries
to show that the ancient Egyptians could have sailed to the New
World. It goes without saying that substantiating old myths can
be highly lucrative. I intend to cash in on this market. I have
had a special padded suit and helmet made for myself and I have
the first two chapters written on my forthcoming book THE DOROTHY
ODYSSEY (watch for it at your local bookstore). I intend to get
the material for the remaining chapters next month on my trip to
Kansas. Incidentally, if someone out there is going on vacation
and would like me to take care of their small dog while they are
going, I am looking for a small dog that I can use in my
researches."
And in the 01/04/02 issue, he wrote, "Coming in February: Homer's
THE HOMECOMING. For the many avid fans of Homer, the wait is
over. Homer has finally completed the third book in the Odysseus
Saga. Odysseus has fought, he has wandered, but sometimes
greatest challenges can be found at home. Read Homer's THE
HOMECOMING from Penguin Classics." -mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The United States' Best Kept Travel Secret (part 4)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
"Acre for acre, the canyon lands of Utah are the most spectacular
in the world."
Stewart Udall, Secretaty of the Interior and Park supporter, 1964
I agree.
Concluding this trip account was our last National Park in Moab,
Utah; our last park was Canyonlands National Park. Again, this
is at the top of a canyon looking down much like Dead Horse
Point. Of the five parks this one is the closest to being like
Grand Canyon. Here the Colorado River has ripped though a table
of land exposing layer upon layer of sediment like it had cut
through a layer cake. So you have relatively flat ground with
buttes and mesas in the background and deep trenches cut in it by
the river and the weather.
http://www.moabutah.info/images/hires/Green_River_Overlook.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/3nnka5
I had talked about the diversity before, but this admittedly
looks somewhat like the view from Dead Horse Point. The park has
several of these overlooks. The river ripped a T-shaped scar.
It divides the park into three pieces known as Island in the Sky,
Needles, and the Maze. Last trip we saw Needles. That has more
spires and needles. A mesa has a flat top and is wider than it
is high, a butte is flat topped but it is narrower in some
direction than it is high. Usually it was a mesa at one time and
the sides wore down. If they wear further it is a spire or a
needle. When that wears away there is nothing left. This
picture shows some needles of Needles.
http://marlimillerphoto.com/images/2764lr.jpg
But since in Island in the Sky we were looking at overlooks most
of the rock formations were at some distance. They are still
beautiful, but it is nicer to be close to the rock faces as were
in Zion. Still the 1500-foot cliffs were impressive and there is
over 100 miles of canyon cut from the rock.
We left the park, returned to Moab for lunch. And then went off
to see a museum of the films shot in Moab. We took a public
road, Route 128, and unlike the park there was no admission
price. But the road was impressive enough to be a National Park
all by itself. The road is just a few feet above the river. The
road winds back and forth following the rock face. This was an
unexpected pleasure and it looked very different in each
direction. That was a combination of seeing the colors at a
different time of day and seeing them from a different angle.
http://tinyurl.com/5qlabb
Not surprisingly with their dramatic scenery, Moab and Monument
Valley has been a favorite shooting locale for filmmakers. The
scenery may look familiar from CHEYENNE AUTUMN, ONCE UPON A TIME
IN THE WEST, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, MY DARLING
CLEMENTINE, THELMA AND LOUISE, and a lot more that were filmed
wholly or in part in Moab.
That was it for the planned trip, but not all for the scenery.
Saturday the trip back to Scottsdale took us though Monument
Valley. Again the spectacular scenery was just there off the
public road. Anybody who is a fan of old Western movies will
recognize much of Monument Valley. Many Westerns were shot
there. Especially those film of John Ford from STAGECOACH on use
and reuse the scenery of Monument Valley.
http://tinyurl.com/58er9l
http://tinyurl.com/585ncv
I have to say that the photography does not capture the grandeur
of the scenery well. In a photo everything looks closer and
smaller than it really is. These are Godzilla-sided features and
they look like just the oddly shaped hill out back.
I guess the point of this series of articles is to give something
of the feel of the Canyon Country of southern Utah. But it is
also to point out that we in this country really do not seem know
what a treasure we have in these parks. When we were walking
around Zion, about two-thirds of the voices we heard were in
English and one-third in foreign languages. A high proportion of
the visitors to these sites comes from other countries. They
probably have seen these sites as background for films and wanted
to see the real thing. My mother commented that she lived for
about three decades in California, not all that far from Utah.
People talked about other travel destinations, but southern Utah
was rarely if ever mentioned. I have been a lot of places around
the world, and I can think of none that I have seen that beat
southern Utah for sheer natural spectacle. I cannot imagine that
anyone who sees it can come away not thinking it was at the very
least worth the trip. I hope somebody comes away from this quick
account with the feeling of my-gosh-I-had-no-idea-what-it-was-
like. And let me assure you that even now, if you have not been
there, you still have no idea.
Incidentally, I took the easy-cheesy way out of showing the
sites. I just looked for web photos publicly available on the
Internet and linked to them. I want to thank the various
providers of those images for sharing their experience and
allowing me to point out the images to people. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Cataloguing (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
For most libraries and most books, I have had reasonable success
in going to where I expect the book to be and finding it. Partly
this is because several years of working in libraries left me
with a good sense of the Dewey Decimal System, but a lot of it is
the notion that book cataloging follows some standards.
The problem is that in my area now, book cataloguing follows far
too many standards. Take as an example THE NEW WEIRD edited by
Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.
Four libraries in my library system have the book. One library
catalogues it as "813 V Paper", one as "SS [Short Stories] NEW",
one as "SF NEW", and one as "FIC NEW". And the "NEW" in the last
three does not mean that it is shelved with the new books; it
means that it is alphabetized in its category under its title,
not its editor. There is a separate notation if it is filed with
the new books rather than on the regular shelves.
I have commented before on the fact that my own town's library
has some paperback fiction, mystery, science fiction filed in
separate paperback sections, but also has some inter-filed with
the hardbacks. And some anthologies are filed under the title
and some under the editor. The result is having to check in as
many as *eight* places to find a book: Is it fiction or science
fiction? Under the title or editor? With the new books or on
the regular shelves? And all this is assuming that they have not
put it on a special display shelf somewhere. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE INCREDIBLE HULK (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The Army created but cannot control Bruce Banner, the
Hulk. Banner's anger has the power to turn him into a bouncing
ten-foot monster as hard as rock. Edward Norton (who plays
Banner) is one of the finest actors of his generation. This may
not be the best film for him, but he is an asset to the film. THE
INCREDIBLE HULK is a darker and grimmer superhero film with a
more tragic hero than we have seen of late from the Marvel films.
Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
[Following the main text there is a minor spoiler on some points
that did not work for me.]
Within weeks of each other we have seen at theaters two Marvel
Comics superhero films. While they also stand alone, they are
really chapters in a longer story whose arc has yet to be
revealed. IRON MAN and THE INCREDIBLE HULK are both good as
superhero films go. The public seems to prefer IRON MAN, which I
reviewed previously and gave a high +1 on the -4 to +4 bell-curve
scale. THE INCREDIBLE HULK gets the same rating, but of the two I
give the edge to THE INCREDIBLE HULK. Why do I prefer this film?
First, I am never likely to meet a playboy arms dealer like Tony
Stark. Do I doubt that such a person drives around war zones
drinking cocktails? Let us say I am unconvinced. Perhaps
characters like this exist in the real world, perhaps not. On
the other hand I can well believe that there are people living in
the slums of Brazil coming to terms with personal problems like
anger. Do I believe that when they become enraged they grow to
twice their scale, turn the color of avocados, and adopt a doors-
optional policy for getting around? Perhaps they do in their
imaginations. For me that is not a big stretch. And do these
people become so possessed by their rage that they become
supremely violent? You bet they do. For me Bruce Banner (The
Hulk) is a much more believable main character than is Tony
Stark. He is a man of very common emotions, simply exaggerated.
Needing the violent outlet while detesting it is very real. Iron
Man being kidnapped and forced to develop missiles is not quite
as real and certainly less primal.
The plot of THE INCREDIBLE HULK can be summed up in two or three
sentences. In the Ang Lee THE HULK the military used super-
science to turn Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) into an awesome
fighting man. When he gets mad enough to fight he becomes a ten-
foot-tall monster. After the early transformations he did some
really bad things (only hinted at for those who have not read the
comic or seen THE HULK). Banner ran away and is now hiding out
in the crowded slums of Brazil trying to learn to manage the
world's deadliest rage. To keep busy he corresponds
electronically with an enigmatic friend whom he knows only by the
code name Mr. Blue. The army, personified by General Ross
(William Hurt), has tracked him down and sends a special
commando, Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), to capture him. Well, we know
how well that will work. And admittedly here and elsewhere there
are few real surprises in the film. Banner evades capture and
works his way back north to an East Coast school, Culver
University. At this school is his girlfriend Betty Ross (Liv
Tyler) and the scientist Mr. Blue (Tim Blake Nelson). (There are
also quaint bicycle-stands labeled "City of Toronto".) There he
will find the ultimate confrontation--or at least the biggest in
the film.
Marvel films seem to be developing their own style that continues
from film to film. We have the cameo for Stan Lee. This time he
is not at the end of a garden hose as he was in the last X-Men
movie, and he is not at the end of a conversation as he was in
IRON MAN. This time he is the end. More specifically he is a
very much a loose end in the plot. I waited in vain for the plot
to explain what happened to his character, but if it was there I
missed it. Also there is a certain inexorable predictability in
the plotting. There is segregation of each to his own type.
What does a man in a power-suit fight in the climactic battle?
He is matched against a man in a bigger and more mighty power-
suit. What does a hulk fight in the climactic scene? It has to
be a bigger meaner hulk. Another element of the Marvel style in
recent films to have a final scene at the end of the credits. It
has some unexpected twist to reward those audience members who
stay through the credits. X-MEN 2 had such a scene, as did IRON
MAN. Here the scene is moved to the beginning rather than the
end of the credits. It looks like someone in production decided
that too many people were missing what could be a pivotal teaser
scene. Stan Lee is not the only in-joke casting. We get to
see/hear Lou Ferrigno as both the voice of the Hulk and as a
minor character. There are cute allusions to Godzilla movies, to
King Kong, and even to Tiananmen Square.
Edward Norton acts with a low-key style. I am not sure he
conveys the angst as much as was needed, but his persona is a
nice counterpoint to the thrashing monster he becomes. The most
memorable acting in the film is from Tim Blake Nelson, whose
boyish glee for studying the Hulk makes him one of the most
likeable mad scientists in recent film history. Nelson, some of
the realistic settings, the tragedy of the main character, and
the dark style make this a better than average Marvel superhero
film. For my money it is also better than the very recent IRON
MAN. I rate it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0800080/
Minor spoiler warning:
I did have a few problems with the script. At one point after a
blackout spell Banner asks a stranger, "where am I?" The
stranger responds, "In Guatemala." If a stranger asked you where
he was, would you say "the United States"? My wife wanted to
know how Banner had managed to cross the Panama Canal without
anyone noticing how really big and green he was. Perhaps he had
switched back to Banner. After all, the rules of this particular
mutation are unclear. There is a nice tender King-Kong-Anne-
Darrow sort of scene in which he is Hulked, but does not seem to
have been angry for hours. Why is he still engorged?
If someone about 160 pounds actually threw a helicopter, it is
the human who would do most of the flying according to the laws
of physics. You learn to ignore the fact that he would have to
be a lot more massive as the Hulk than he is as Banner. It is
therefore probably bad form to show an examination table that
held Banner perfectly well moments before but crushes under the
massive weight of Hulk. It rubs our noses in the fact that
Banner's mutation circumvents conservation of mass. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE LAST COLONY by John Scalzi (copyright 2007, Tor, $23.95,
320pp, ISBN-13 978-0-7653-1697-4, ISBN-10 0-7653-1697-8) (book
review by Joe Karpierz)
So, now we come upon a book that's an example of good
storytelling. John Scalzi's THE LAST COLONY is the final book in
his Old Man's War trilogy, and it is a satisfying end to the
story.
OLD MAN'S WAR followed the story of John Perry, member of the
Colonial Defense Forces. We learned about how members of the CDF
are recruited, the fact that there are a bunch of hostile races
out in the galaxy, and that the CDF is there to protect humanity.
In THE GHOST BRIGADES, we followed the story of Jane Sagan,
member of the Special Forces, an elite group of troops who are
cloned and grown and are extensively augmented to handle more
tough and unusual assignments. In THE GHOST BRIGADES, we follow
the Special Forces as they try to track down a traitor to
humanity and stop him before he gets too far with his plan.
In THE LAST COLONY, Scalzi brings the two together, along with
their adopted daughter Zoe (whose real father was the
aforementioned traitor in the previous book), as they are
recruited to lead a brand new colony that is being formed in
defiance of the orders of the Conclave, a conglomerate of alien
races that has banded together to stop colonization by any race
that is not a member of the Conclave.
John and Jane are already firmly settled into another colony
after their careers as soldiers have come to an end. They're not
sure they want to go, but they are convinced by old friends and
superior officers, and away they go to the colony planet of
Roanoke. And the minute they arrive, it becomes apparent that
they were being misled, and in fact the whole story is a cover
for an elaborate Colonial Union plot to weaken and destroy the
Conclave.
This is really a very entertaining story as we follow along with
John and Jane as they try to figure out what the real story is
and how to work it to their advantage as well as save the colony
of Roanoke from destruction by the Conclave. We meet lots of old
friends from the previous novels and the intriguing and honorable
leader of the Conclave, who to me comes across as a much more
straightforward and honest guy than the leaders of the CU and CDF
as they try to destroy the Conclave in a way that deceives their
own colonists and puts them in danger of being destroyed.
So, the question is whether this is actually worthy of a Hugo
Award. I honestly don't know. I liked the book immensely, and
given the field it's in it might stand a chance. But I don't
think it stacks up to past Hugo-winning novels.
A good read and a good and entertaining story. You'll enjoy it.
[-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Dalton Trumbo (letter of comment by Taras Wolansky)
In response to Mark's review of TRUMBO in the 06/13/08 issue of
the MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes:
"The story of Dalton Trumbo's career is told, based on the play
of the same name by Dalton's son, Christopher Trumbo." Ouch!
This immediately screams hagiography. I cannot imagine a more
unreliable source.
Dalton Trumbo had "character" only if character means being a
slavish follower of the Stalinist party line. When Hitler and
Stalin made their famous pact, the Communist Party of the United
States was ordered to do pro-Nazi propaganda. Party members who
really had character broke with the party at that time. But
Trumbo stayed, and obeyed.
In THE REMARKABLE ANDREW (1941), he brought back the ghost of
Andrew Jackson to warn America not to help the treacherous
British, who were standing alone against Hitler at the time. His
anti-war novel, JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, was actually being serialized
in the Communist Daily Worker--at the moment Hitler betrayed his
"fraternal socialist ally" and Trumbo turned from pacifist to war
hawk overnight. He withdrew the book from publication, and when
people wrote him asking for it he denounced them to the FBI.
The rest of the Hollywood Ten were also following orders, when
they refused to admit their membership in the Party. The CPUSA
was not a political party in the ordinary sense, but rather (as
we now know) an agency of the Soviet Union for espionage,
propaganda, and sabotage, so Congress had very good reasons to
ask questions about it.
With delicious irony, during the recent strike, the screenwriters
threatened to blacklist anybody who crossed a picket line. As a
result, for months no actors dared appear on the Jay Leno show.
(But Leno beat Letterman in the ratings anyway.) [-tw]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I had started HALTING STATE by Charles Stross (ISBN-13
978-0-441-01607-5, ISBN-10 0-441-01607-3) earlier this year and
gave it up as too difficult (the introduction of too many
characters in rapid succession, too much jargon, etc.). But I
read a review that said that after a somewhat confusing
beginning, the book settled into a more understandable form. So
I tried again, and read about a third before I concluded than it
wasn't true for me. Stross has written a book with three point-
of-view characters, and written it in the second person. Yes,
that's right--in every chapter, the point-of-view character is
"you", but you are a different person each time. One result is
that you lose many of the reminders of who the point-of-view
character is that you would have in a normal third-person
narrative. (Even a first-person version might be easier.) And
on top of that, the characters write in a combination of Scottish
dialect, police jargon, and computer jargon. It is even worse
than BRASYL in terms of the dialects, because there is no
glossary at the back. (I checked this time.) It may be good for
Scottish computer types, but not for me.
Joe Karpierz is doing his annual reviews of Hugo-nominated
novels, so I suppose I will do the reviews for the short fiction.
(I am attending this year [in Denver] and next [in Montreal].
However, unless a last-minute entry edges out Australia in 2010,
I will be skipping that year as well.)
I will start with the short stories this week, and continue with
the novelettes and novellas next week.
"Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter (THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE
FICTION) is a sort of classic British disaster story, with the
disaster coming from cutting-edge physics rather than something
like a plague or a meteor collision. The problem is that there
seemed to be far more British "stiff-upper-lip-ism" and far less
chaos than one would expect these days.
I found "Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear (ASIMOV'S Jun) a fairly
bland post-holocaust story about a post-war robot and a boy.
Maybe it was supposed to be touching or something, but it did
nothing for me.
"Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" by Ken MacLeod (THE NEW SPACE OPERA):
I assume that the title is a reference to the "Outer Limits"
episode "Wolf 359" (which was also referenced in "Star Trek" in
the episodes "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" ["The Next
Generation"] and "Emissary" ["Deep Space 9"]), but MacLeod's
story has no other apparent connection to that episode.
[Would a reference to Altair necessarily be an allusion to
FORBIDDEN PLANET? Wikipedia says "Wolf 359 is a star located
approximately 2.4 parsecs or 7.7 light years from Earth. It is
one of the nearest stars; only the Alpha Centauri system and
Barnard's star are known to be closer." -mrl]
Judith Berman has bemoaned the change in science fiction from a
focus on the future to a focus on the present, or even the past.
"Distant Replay" by Mike Resnick (ASIMOV'S Apr/May) is an example
of this, as indeed are many of Resnick's recent stories. In
"Replay" an old man meets a young woman who looks, acts, thinks,
and even smells like his late wife--but as she was decades
earlier. This sort of sentimental story appears to be popular
with the Hugo voters--both Resnick and Connie Willis have a long
string of nominations and wins for this sort of thing--but I
think I prefer my science fiction more, well, science fictional.
"A Small Room in Koboldtown" by Michael Swanwick (ASIMOV'S
Apr/May) is basically "CSI: Supernatural", and the solution turns
on something supernatural that the reader cannot possibly be
expected to know, so while the "CSI" element is kind of cute, the
ending doesn't work for me. On the other hand, the setting is at
least interesting, and farnkly, its competition is not very
strong.
My ballot order: "A Small Room in Koboldtown", "Who's Afraid of
Wolf 359?", no award, "Distant Replay", "Last Contact", and
"Tideline". [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Of all the communities available to us there
is not one that I would devote myself to,
except for the society of true searchers,
which has very few living members at any time.
-- Albert Einstein, 1949