THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/05/08 -- Vol. 27, No. 10, Whole Number 1509
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Observation (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Godzilla After CLOVERFIELD (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Multiple Massive Electronic Failures (comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
REDEMPTION ARK by Alastair Reynolds (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
HAMLET 2 (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Short Takes (BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE, WAR IN SPACE,
SPIDER-MAN 3, and SMART MONEY) (film reviews
by Mark R. Leeper)
Jews and Chinese Food (letters of comment by Dan Kimmel
and Mike Glyer)
Olaf Stapledon (letter of comment by Guy Ferraiolo)
This Week's Reading (BEYOND STAR TREK, Frederic Brown's
"Answer" and Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question",
WORKING IX TO V, AND HERCULE POIROT'S EARLY CASES)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Observation (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
People confuse their morals with their politics. And their
politics are chosen by self-interest. That allows them to feel
they are courageous and standing by their principles when they are
merely arguing in self-interest. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Godzilla After CLOVERFIELD (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was on a panel at Denvention in which the topic of giant monster
movies was discussed. It got me thinking about them and how the
film CLOVERFIELD will affect them. For most of my life Godzilla
has been a cultural icon. Godzilla is today one of the most
recognizable fictional characters in the world, perhaps. We are
now, however, in a new era on the whole Godzilla thing. It may be
that there can never be another giant monster movie of its ilk.
The film CLOVERFIELD was a nearly entirely different look. It
wiped away some of our much-needed illusions about the giant
monster film. Cinema has lost its innocence with CLOVERFIELD's
message.
One of my earliest cinema-related memories was seeing on television
the original trailer for GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS, the
somewhat butchered American release version of the Japanese film
GOJIRA. That trailer can be seen at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnZ6Ktjynh0. My six-year-old eyes
were dazzled by the huge monster as seen in black and white in the
half-light of night and from a very low angle. It looked
terrifying in ways that THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS and THEM!
could not match. And kids love to be terrified. This trailer
grabbed my imagination. Even more I was grabbed by the real film,
and still more by seeing the original very grim Japanese film
GOJIRA. The Japanese version was not afraid to leave nightmarish
impressions on the viewer. One scene had a mother caught in the
attack and sheltering her children in the protection of a building
telling them that they would soon be with their father. Also you
see the destruction and the people in pain and the chorus of
children lamenting. You got the message that what you were seeing
was harsh, but in the back of your mind there was also a voice
saying "isn't it cool."
The next film Toho made in what was becoming a series was GOJIRA
RAIDS AGAIN. That is one of several titles the film had. It cut
back somewhat on the grimness and stressed more the coolness. By
the time King Kong fought Godzilla in color there was more comedy
and very little emphasis on any the pain these things were causing.
As the series continued the focus moved downward. After a couple
more films Godzilla became a good guy and the defender of Japan.
The films aimed at a younger and younger audience. Godzilla was
made even bigger but given a more rounded and pleasant look. The
films seemed to be aimed at ten-year-olds.
There has now been not one but three series of Godzilla films, and
many other films in the subgenre of "Kaiju" films. Kaiju is
Japanese for "giant monster." A kaiju is more than just a
dinosaur. It is huge and powerful. You could probably kill a
dinosaur with a bazooka. A kaiju is something inspired by the idea
of a dinosaur in the modern world, but it is really supposed to be
a lot bigger and more threatening. Still few kaiju films seem to
touch on the horror of the human toll of having a giant monster
disassembling your city.
Few fans of Kaiju film would disagree that the best of the Kaiju
films was the original GOJIRA that started it all. And the reasons
might vary from fan to fan but they usually boil down to liking the
realistic grimness of the first film.
That was how things stood until the film CLOVERFIELD was released.
There was almost no "ain't it cool" to CLOVERFIELD. It was a kaiju
monster film in which you saw very little of the kaiju. Instead it
is a monster movie informed by the September 11 experience. On
9/11/01 people saw what happened in human terms when buildings were
destroyed by great force. The point of this film was just what all
kaiju films (but GOJIRA) ignored, the human toll of an attack by
giant monsters or by airplanes turned into guided missiles.
CLOVERFIELD was shot with a handheld camera, which not only keeps
expenses low; it gives much more a feeling of immediacy and
reality. Even 3D does not make a film seem so real.
In CLOVERFIELD we see the people caught in the deadly dust clouds
when buildings are unexpectedly demolished. We see what happens to
people caught in these buildings. People get hurt. People get
killed. CLOVERFIELD is not about a monster attacking a city. It
is about the human toll of having a giant monster attack a city.
One of the signature moments of the Godzilla series occurs at the
end of GODZILA 2000. The story is really over and the filmmakers
wanted to give us one last touch. So Godzilla, standing in the
middle of a city, flames a circle around him. It was just a sort
of parting shot. After CLOVERFIELD viewers are more likely to ask
what happened to the people who were charbroiled just for being
within his reach? This is no longer the innocent victory gesture
it was intended.
The kaiju sub-genre has been faltering for a long time. One
seriously wonders where it can go now that CLOVERFIELD has
sensitized viewers. Even watching the older Godzilla films they
seem far more naïve than they did before. They ignore the major
part of the story. But how many films can be made about the
painful effects of such an attack. I suspect the CLOVERFIELD
really was the kaiju film to end all kaiju films... literally.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Multiple Massive Electronic Failures (comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
We went on a two-week vacation recently and had what has to be
the most unlikely series of failures you could imagine (or
rather, couldn't imagine).
Less than a week before leaving, for example, we had some work
done on the house exterior. Shortly after they started
working, our (cable modem) Internet connection died (problem
#1). Our first thought was that they has disturbed the cable,
but they denied it. So we called the cable company, and an
automated message said that there was a known outage in our
town and they were working on it. Okay, we waited.
The next morning the recording was gone, and they said that
problem was fixed. But ours wasn't. So they sent someone
out, and he discovered that the underground cable had gone
bad! (Think about this a minute. What are the chances that
our underground cable would go bad just when there is a town-
wide outage *and* work being down on our house?) He laid a
temporary above-ground cable, but couldn't lay the permanent
one for another week (after we were gone). This mean we had
to cancel the lawn mowing for that week, but at least we had
cable/Internet service until we left.
(Oh, it turned out that the cable had actually gone out
earlier that morning, and naturally that was the day when we
had hoped to record six movies off TCM!)
Anyway, we get to Denver and suddenly the flash card in my
palmtop starts acting up, with corrupted files indicating
possible bad sectors (problem #2).
Backups are your friend.
And not backups thousands of miles away. Luckily, I had taken
an extra flash card, loaded with backups of my important
files. So I swapped that in.
Then we discovered that at least some of our rechargeable
batteries would be completely discharged after only three or
four pictures (problem #3). Luckily we were not in picture-
intensive mode, so we managed with the decent batteries and
occasional use of alkaline batteries.
And then we got home, and our PC would not start (problem #4).
I don't mean it wouldn't boot up completely--it wouldn't even
power up.
This was not entirely unexpected--we had been having power-up
problems for a while. If the PC were powered off, one needed
to unplug the power cord from it for an hour, then plug it
back in and start it up. Well, we unplugged it before leaving
to save ourselves the hour, but instead of being over-heated
it seemed to be that it over-cooled or something. Anyway, it
was dead.
Backups are your friend. Especially on external USB drives.
Especially when the absolutely last thing you do before
shutting off your computer is to run your incremental backups.
So we got back on a Tuesday evening. On Wednesday morning, we
went to the Post Office and picked up our mail, then went next
door to the library for an hour on the PCs there. Then it was
off to the Apple Store where we bought a new iMac. (Luckily,
because we knew we were having problems, we knew exactly what
we wanted to buy.)
It was amazingly fast to set up the iMac, and within a day we
had loaded our mailers and browsers and imported our old mail,
bookmarks, addresses, and so on. [Problem 4.5 was that I lost all
the mail I had received over the previous two weeks. Luckily I had
seen it and had some idea what I had lost. -mrl]
The biggest problem is spreadsheets. Microsoft Office 2008 on
the Mac does not read Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets (problem #5).
And I had about two hundred Lotus spreadsheets on my palmtop.
Luckily, we have a really old PC (from the mid-1990s). Its
version of Excel *can* read Lotus spreadsheets. So all I had
to do is upload the spreadsheets to the old PC, read them into
Excel, write them out *as* Excel, then upload them to the Mac.
But the only output device on the old PC is diskette, and the
Mac does not read diskettes (problem #6).
Luckily, the palmtop is the solution as well as the problem.
I could use the serial connectivity cable to connect the
palmtop to the old PC, then upload through that, then download
the Excel files to the palmtop through that, then use the
palmtop's flash card in the USB card reader on the Mac.
Except that one of the connectivity pins had broken off on my
palmtop (and since I never used it, why bother to get it
repaired?) (problem #7).
Backups are your friend. This includes hardware backups.
Luckily I had a spare palmtop. (I suppose I could have used
Mark's but that would have been inconvenient.) So I had to
transfer all the files from my old palmtop to the spare,
remembering to install the special drivers for the large flash
card.
Now the only problem is that once the spreadsheets are on the
Mac, the only way to get them back on the palmtop in a usable
form is to reverse-convert them on the old PC. (Before I
could read the same files on either the PC or the palmtop.) I
cannot even save them as comma-separated files on the Mac and
import them on the palmtop, because the Mac puts quotations
marks only around text fields that themselves contain commas,
while the palmtop's program assumes that *all* text fields are
contained in quotation marks, and hence converts any non-
quoted field to numeric! So I basically have to decide what
lives where.
I've sure something else can go wrong, but I haven't yet
figured out what it is. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: REDEMPTION ARK by Alastair Reynolds (copyright 2002,
Gollancz Science Fiction, C$10.99, 646 pp, ISBN 0-575-07384-5)
(book review by Joe Karpierz)
Have I mentioned the problem with my to-read stack? Actually, I
know I have because I just finished reading the reviews I wrote of
REVELATION SPACE and CHASM CITY, two other novels by Alastair
Reynolds. I complained that it took me three years to get around to
reading CHASM CITY after REVELATION SPACE, and that I wanted the
interval to be much shorter between CHASM CITY and the next book,
REDEMPTION ARK.
It was. It was only a year and half or so this time.
REDEMPTION ARK is the second book in the "Revelation Space" trilogy
(for lack of a better name) but the third in the "Inhibitor"
universe (which includes CHASM CITY). It is just as good, if not
better than the previous books.
The story this time surrounds the items known as the Doomsday
Weapons, or hell-class weapons. They are the objects of everyone's
desire this time around, and every one for various reasons, but
there is one underlying reason for the whole thing: the Inhibitors
are coming. The Inhibitors are those machine intelligences that
have decided that the best thing to be done for the galaxy is to
stifle the expansion of intelligence in the galaxy. In REDEMPTION
ARK, our buddy Dan Sylveste set off an alarm that alerted the
Inhibitors to the expansion of intelligence in this part of the
galaxy, so they decided it was time to pay us a visit.
Our caste of characters is large: Nevil Clavain, a Conjoiner who
used to be a Demarchist but has decided to defect *back* to the
Demarchist side when he finds out what's really going on with the
weapons (and did I mention there's a war going on between the
Conjoiners and Demarchists, and the Conjoiners are winning the
war?); Ana Khouri, a holdover from the REDEMPTION ARK, who is
working with Ilia Volyova, to evacuate the planet Resurgam before
the Inhibitors destroy the system, with the odd thing being that
Khouri is working for the government (as the Inquisitor) trying to
find Volyova, the hated Triumvir who is accused of some nastiness
or another; Thorn, a terrorist who eventually helps with the
evacuation of Resurgam; Scorpio, a "hyperpig", a mutated pig with
intelligence who is another nasty criminal critter in all this
mess; Skade, a Conjoiner who wants the weapons for her own
purpose; the Captain (you remember the Captain, don't you, from
REDEMPTION ARK?); and a few others littered along the way that
makes this story very complex and yet for me very compelling.
Oh, yeah, did I mention that the Inhibitors were building a machine
right in the Resurgam system that would destroy it when it was
finished? Or did I mention that the weapons are programmed with
intelligence and personalities, so that dealing with them can be a
royal pain?
While this book is certainly space opera, it's not the kind of
space opera that you and I read when we were young. There are very
big and very complex ideas here, and there's much more going on
than there ever was in those pulps that we read all those years
ago. I'm hoping that these books by Alastair Reynolds go on to
make the kind of impression and have the kind of affect on the
field of SF that a lot of the stuff we read years ago did--we need
more books like this, in my opinion.
There is a *lot* going on in this book, more than I have time to
write about or you should read in a book review. What I will say
is that if you're into space opera, love good old fashioned space
battles, weird technologies, intriguing characters, and mysteries
that will keep you guessing until the end of the book, then you'll
enjoy this novel. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: HAMLET 2 (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Awkwardly written and borrowing heavily from other
comedic films, this film is about an actor/playwright/teacher
who is not particularly good at anything he does. Then he
puts together a play involving Hamlet and Jesus in a time
machine and discovers he is good at causing an uproar. There
is a germ of a good idea here, but only a germ. The film is
trying to go in too many different directions at once. It is
just a thin storyline on which the writer has hung too many
unfunny jokes. Andrew Fleming directs and co-writes. Rating:
0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10
Humor is very subjective and some other viewers might find the
film much more funny. HAMLET 2 is a tribute to some of the
funniest moments in cinema. One can see in it bits from
TOOTSIE, Woody Allen's early comedies, THE PRODUCERS, and
Inspector Clouseau. However, rarely have all these bits been
borrowed to less effect. Perhaps because the bits are all so
familiar, they needed an extra twist for them to have some
punch. Instead they are poorly delivered with little comic
timing. The central plot could have been developed, but was
instead just an outline and gags were glommed onto it wherever
the writers could think of them. A Peter Sellers has the
right timing and the right false-dignity so that when he
catches his hand in a door it is funny (at least sometimes).
But when Steve Coogan tries to imitate the same stunt his
timing and his attitude is wrong and the joke comes off tired.
Thrown gratuitously into a scene it does not have the same
snap. On the other hand a teen audience might find some of
the humor a little less stale. Most of the wit of a comedy
should arise from character. Here more comes from the
circumstance, with characters left undeveloped.
Steve Coogan plays Dana Marschz, a failed actor, a failing
drama teacher, and a miserable playwright. He in not sure how
to teach acting and inspire his disinterested class, how to
convince the school board to not cut the drama program, or how
to write an original play. He is even not sure how to
pronounce his own last name. Marschz seems to have little to
offer his classes beside platitudes that for him are deeply
felt, but seem really irrelevant to his students. In this
Arizona school there has been a big influx of uninterested
Latino students. One of them pointedly is not portrayed as a
typical Latino tough guy, but the script treats most of the
rest of the class very superficially and stereotypically. In
most teaching movies the students are well characterized.
They are, after all, the most important part of the classroom.
Here most of the students are merely props. They are not
developed at all.
Marschz's drama classes do an annual play, till now always a
near-transcription of a blockbuster movie. The teaching of
drama is being dropped from the school curriculum. Dana's
last play is an original story, "Hamlet 2" in which the Prince
of Denmark escapes death and together with Jesus takes a time
machine back in time to save all the characters whom William
Shakespeare had die in his play. The vulgar language of the
play and the use of Jesus has polarized the Tucson, Arizona,
community between people who object to his treatment of Jesus
and those who defend artistic freedom. Meanwhile Marschz is
having personal problems. He is having a less personal
relationship with his wife (Catherine Keener) and a more
personal relationship with alcohol. Which all goes to make
the story seem deeper than it really is. The plot has several
lapses in logic. Somehow his class manages to put on a play
with Broadway style production values, though the effort to
get it so is never really shown. Bits of the musical play
within the story are good. Sadly we see even less of the play
"Hamlet 2" than Mel Brooks shows us of his "Springtime for
Hitler".
Steve Coogan has a long history of British comedy particularly
for playing his alter-ego, the smug, venal, and superficial
radio and TV personality Alan Partridge. In American comedy
he does not have the same resonance. I rate it a 0 on the -4
to +4 scale or 4/10. There are several pieces of vulgar
language in the film that some viewers might find
objectionable. I found them neither objectionable nor
particularly funny. In fact, that sums up how I felt about
the entire film.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1104733/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Short Takes (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper)
BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE
Back in the days when Toho Films of Japan were first seeing
the popularity of their early Godzilla/Gojira film they made
three films of Earth fighting alien attacks, very probably
inspired by George Pal's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. The films
probably would look a little hokey to anyone too young to have
lived through that period, but the films were a lot of fun.
The characterization was thin, and by today's standards the
special effects were primitive, but perhaps that is what makes
these films fun. BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE was made in 1960. It
followed THE MYSTERIANS and was succeeded by WAR IN SPACE.
Poor dubbing was actually part of the fun. But while the
visual images often were poorly executed, the images they
created were very imaginative. On any objective scale this is
not a great film, but at least it is fun. Rating: high 0 or
4/10
WAR IN SPACE
This film made several years after BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE is
supposed to capture some of the feel of THE MYSTERIANS and
BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE. In fact it is a poor TV-level film
made in reaction to the release of STAR WARS. It even has a
demon Wookie that looks like Chewbacca with horns. Even in
Japanese the words don't seem to fit the lips. The story is
set in 1988. Earth is under attack by the Emperor of the
Galaxy who is attacking Earth from an interstellar ship shaped
like a Roman galley. Earth sends a special spaceship to Venus
to fight back. The idea that the Emperor would put himself in
such a dangerous position is just one more really stupid idea.
Those who expect the quality of plotting, the look, or even
the quality of music score that was present in previous Toho
films will be disappointed. If they spaceship looks a little
familiar, it is a model of the submarine used in previous
films tricked up to look like an interstellar craft. Toho's
science fiction films were never great, but they usually could
be counted on to have a higher level of quality or
entertainment. Rating: -2 or 1/10
SPIDER-MAN 3
I admit I may be one of the last science fiction fans in the world to see
SPIDER-MAN 3. I liked the first film in the
series but was not keen on #2, and #3 does not do much for me
either. In this film three different super-threats descend on
New York City at the same time. One is a creature that
arrives in a meteor much like the old "The Blob", but it turns
Peter Parker black and makes him selfish. One is an escaped
criminal who falls into a particle experiment and becomes a
pile of sand held together by thought power. Just how eyes
made of sand can possibly see. And Peter Parker's former best
friend (who was the son of the original Green Goblin) dons the
Green Goblin paraphernalia and becomes Green Goblin, Jr. Of
course the story leads to a giant fight among the three and
Spider-Man. The plot also involves Spider-Man's girlfriend
falling from being the featured star of a Broadway musical to
being totally unemployed and then reduced to being a waitress.
It is hard to say which plot is the least credible. Most of
the action is made of fast-paced but when can do anything you
imagine with CGI you really need a good imagination and the
filmmakers not here. None of the individual stories are
particularly good but you do not have to stick with one for
long before the film flashes to the story. The plots are
almost as full of holes as a spider web. By the way a mineral
dendrite is not the same thing as a cellular dendrite. And
once again Stan Lee has a cameo and tells the audience that
one man can make a difference. When that one man has spider
super-powers the message is not very convincing. The writing
seems like the first draft of a script rather than a finished
product. Rating: +1 or 6/10
SMART MONEY
This is a 1931 film from Warner Brothers starring Edward
G. Robinson and featuring James Cagney. As such it is a
curiosity as it is the only film these two movie gangsters
appeared together. But people used to films like LITTLE
CAESAR and PUBLIC ENEMY are going to be disappointed with this
not very engaging crime film. The crime is gambling, which
was illegal but did not threaten the general public so did not
really arouse much emotion. In fact, unless there is cheating
involved it seems less than totally immoral. This is the
story of the rise and fall of a big gambler, Nick Venezelos, a
Greek barber who becomes a big-time gambler. After being
taken by other gamblers, mostly cheaters, he proves to be the
best of all. The Warner crime films of this time are popular
and still this is a film that few remember. And just about
nobody remembers it fondly. Part of the problem is that while
organized crime is an issue that involves the audience,
gambling is a crime that for the most part only hurts the
gamblers themselves directly. More people feel that they
themselves could be victims of gangsters, less fear being
victimized by gamblers. Rating: +1 or 6/10[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Jews and Chinese Food (letters of comment by Dan Kimmel and
Mike Glyer)
In response to Mark's article on Jews and Chinese food in the
08/29/08 issue of the MT VOID, Dan Kimmel writes:
Mark's thoughts on Jews and Chinese food hit the spot. Several
years ago I wrote a piece (for Boston's "Jewish Advocate" yet) on
an animated PBS program called "Arthur's Christmas Special." It's
based on the series (and the books by Marc Brown). The pertinent
excerpt:
On the special, Francine's best friend Muffy is upset that Francine
isn't coming
to her big Christmas party, and then learns
why: the Frensky family is gathering that night to celebrate
Chanukah using a menorah that has been in the family for years.
After the friends make up, one of the funniest moments in the show
occurs when Muffy asks what Francine and her family do on Christmas
if they don't celebrate it. Simple, answers Francine, we go to the
movies.
'I think that came from growing up in New York where Christmas was
Chinese food and movies,' said [series head writer Peter] Hirsch.
'We wanted to show that to that kid the day was not all that
important.'
And a P.S. -- Flanken and gefilte fish are a matter of a taste, and
taste better with horseradish. (I like gefilte fish.) But anyone
who doesn't think chopped liver isn't a great treat needs to have
his taste buds examined. Or go to a different deli. [-dk]
Mark replies, "I definitely agree with you that flanken and gefilte
fish are a matter of a taste, and do taste better with
horseradish. I will go a step further and say that horseradish
tastes better without flanken or gefilte fish. As going to a
different deli where chopped liver tastes good, I have looked for
such a deli all my life." [-mrl]
And Mike Glyer asks:
How much of what I have experienced as "delicatessen" food would
you classify as Jewish food--pastrami apparently is. Because I
have wondered if one of the points of convergence are foods that
depend for their flavor on a greater fat content. Dim sum
certainly does, and so does pastrami.
And I mean that literally, not as an inference about how many
calories are in a serving. Favorite foods of other national
cuisines can have a lot of calories, but they may come from carbs
or starches. [-mg]
Mark responds, "It is hard to sum up what are Jewish foods and what
are now just part of our overall national cuisine. Bagels were
once Jewish but have been co-opted by the majority. Bagel with lox
and cream cheese is probably still Jewish. On the other hand there
is nothing Jewish about an Einstein's bagel. Jews know bagels too
well to not know the difference between an Einstein's toroid roll
and a real bagel. Einstein has now confirmed this by offering a
ham on bagel sandwich. If someone points out that food is Kosher,
using the word, it is more likely to be really Jewish. Though you
see the 'K' or the 'U in a circle' on lots of products that are not
pointedly Jewish. On the other hand 'Kosher Style' as in 'Kosher
Style Corned Beef' could mean that they bludgeoned the cow and then
hid the evidence." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Olaf Stapledon (letter of comment by Guy Ferraiolo)
In response to Evelyn's column on Olaf Stapledon in the 8/29/08
issue of the MT VOID, Guy Ferraiolo writes:
Question: "? being more a work of fantasy, or even of theosophy,"
Did you mean theogony or theology? Theosophy is very specific.
[I specifically meant theosophy; Stapledon seems influenced by
Madame Blavatsky et al. ?ecl]
Comment: "Indeed, his notion of the mechanics of planetary
formation is very outdated: "I knew well that the birth of planets
was due to the close approach of two or more stars, and that such
accidents must be very uncommon."
This understanding of planetary formation was scientific orthodoxy
in the 1930s.
It's actually crucial to Lensman. In those novels the Milky Way
and Andromeda galaxies have already collided and are now separating
and it is this very rare event which has caused these two galaxies
to have many planets, the collision having caused the normally rare
close approach of stars to be much more common. So when the
Lensman and Arisians fight the Eddorians for control of these two
galaxies, apparently a large enough venue, it's really for the
universe since this galactic collision is presented as a unique
event. Other galaxies might have a planet to two in the entire
galaxy.
SPOILER: Note that the future galactic collision plays a crucial
role in Alastair Reynold's books, too.
Comment: [someone said writers] "are responding to the challenge
which Stapledon made clear constituted a chief raison d'etre for
the genre: to replace traditional mythologies of a universe
tailored to the human scale with one which--without falsifying the
findings of modern science or denying the terror they have stirred
in all our hearts--can redeem them for the imagination."
This is essentially the goal of much of H. P. Lovecraft's work,
although taken in a positive way rather than in the very
pessimistic and dark way he saw it. I think the explosion of
scientific knowledge in the early part of the 20th century had a
lot more effect than we usually understand. It was still going on
in the 1920's and 1930's so it was extraordinary work, cutting edge
stuff, that HPL and Stapledon were doing. Of course, despite the
more nominally acceptable prose style of Stapledon, HPL is vastly
more influential these days. Since I've been reading a lot about
and by HPL recently, I see a connection rarely noted.
I'm going to read some Stapledon to see how it meshes with HPL.
[-gf]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
BEYOND STAR TREK: PHYSICS FROM ALIEN INVASION TO THE END OF
TIME by Lawrence M. Krauss (ISBN-13 978-0-7522-2464-0, ISBN-10
0-7522-2464-6) is not entirely beyond "Star Trek", as Krauss
uses several examples from that series. But he also discusses
"The X-Files", 12 MONKEYS, INDEPENDENCE DAY, and so on. For
example, the first chapter is Krauss's analysis of why the
invaders in INDEPENDENCE DAY really did not need to fire
anything at us to defeat us.
On the whole, the book is yet another attempt to write a
science book for the layperson, though the use of "Star Trek"
and other popular television shows and movies to initiate
ideas and illustrate examples will probably do a lot to make
this rise above the rest of the genre. While some may object
to this approach, I figure that anything that gets people
(especially teenagers) interested in reading about science) is
all for the best.
Krauss does make the occasional error. For example, on page
92 he talks about Joseph Banks Rhine and telepathic
communication and says, "[Rhine's] popularizations, combined
with the interest of the publisher of the pulp magazine
'Astounding Science Fiction', helped fuel public interest...."
It was the editor of the magazine--John W. Campbell, Jr.--not
the publisher, who latched on to telepathy. And when, in
talking about time travel and changing events, he says, "[If]
you go back in time to try to kill Hitler before he became
Fuhrer--when he fact he survived until shortly before the end
of the Second World War--you will trip at the crucial moment,
or the gun will misfire," I'd like to think that the "aside"
regarding real history is stylistic rather than added because
Krauss thought his readers wouldn't know what happened to the
real Hitler.
Bud Webster's column in the latest "Helix"
(http://www.helixsf.com/pastmasters.htm) is about Frederic
Brown, and as part of it he compares "Answer" by Frederic
Brown with "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov. Webster
points out (rightly, I think) that Brown covers the same
material in 250 words that Asimov takes 2500 to do. And he
also notes that what most people remember as the last line of
"Answer" is actually three sentences from the end. But I
think he is wrong that people think that Asimov wrote the
Brown story, partly because the last line of the Asimov story
is even more memorable than the "last line" of the Brown.
(Both stories have been anthologized many times; see
http://www.isfdb.com for a list.)
WORKING IX TO V by Vicki Leon (ISBN-13 978-0-8027-556-2, ISBN-
10 0-8027-556-7) is about all the various jobs, professions,
and occupations in the ancient world (Rome and Greece). The
ones touted on the cover and in the advertising are orgy
planner and funeral clown, but I found a note in one of the
other entries more interesting. For town crier, Leon says,
"To enhance his verbal communication in those unamplified
times, the crier drew on 'chironomia', the laws of
gesticulation also used by actors, orators, and demagogues ...
which can be seen on series like HBO's ROME...." This confirms
what I had thought while watching ROME, in which I found the
system of gestures of the town crier (played by Ian McNeice)
absolutely fascinating. There is apparently a standard
treatise on this by John Bulwer, "Chirologia or the Natural
Language of the Hand" (1644).
I finally got around to requesting from the library system
HERCULE POIROT'S EARLY CASES by Agatha Christie (ISBN-10
0-396-07021-3). I'm pretty sure I had read these stories before,
but I had forgotten that Christie's novel THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE
TRAIN was basically just a longer version of "The Plymouth
Express". One problem with short stories as Poirot mysteries is
that there is much less opportunity to introduce suspects, clues,
and so on. (I am reminded of the--possibly apocryphal--story of
the radio "mystery" show on such a tight budget that they had
money for only three actors: the victim, the detective, and the
killer. There was not much mystery there!) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
If you follow reason far enough it always
leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
-- Samuel Butler