THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/10/08 -- Vol. 27, No. 15, Whole Number 1514
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Yog-Soggoth Nougat
How You Look at It (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
More on Product Placements on Films and Television
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
ACE IN THE HOLE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Smothers Brothers Comedy Album: The Best of Season 3
(DVD review by Mark R. Leeper)
Clarification On Palin and Saturday Night Live (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Saturday Night Live and Tina Fey (letters of comment by
Dan Kimmel, Susan de Guardiola, John Sloan,
and Jerry Ryan)
Robert Sawyer and Product Placement (letter of comment by
Susan de Guardiola)
Product Placement and Sword and Sandal (letter of comment
By Joseph T. Major)
Product Placement and Politics (letter of comment
by Taras Wolansky)
This Week's Reading (SIDEWAYS IN CRIME and THE GIFT)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Yog-Soggoth Nougat
Readers might enjoy reading these "selections from
H. P. Lovecraft's brief tenure as a Whitman's Sampler copywriter":
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/8/15burns.html
===================================================================
TOPIC: How You Look at It (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
AT&T's new ad slogan is "more bars in more places." I would have
expected that slogan from Seagrams. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: More on Product Placements on Films and Television
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Last week I was discussing the proliferation of product placements
in film and television. The upcoming Bond film will be in part ads
for Ford, Omega, Sony, Virgin Atlantic, Heineken, Coca-Cola, and
Smirnoff.
The FCC is still fighting the good (and losing) fight to stop
people from cluttering our lives with ads, at least in movies and
television. In June they were examining a proposal that sponsors
who pay to embed placements in TV should not have their presence
announced at the beginning and end of the program in large letters.
In 2007 alone product placement spending rose to $2.9 billion, a
33.7% increase. Why is it jumping so much? People watching
commercial television have more and more powerful tools to skip
separate commercials, but if one skips a product placement one is
skipping part of the actual program. It does not have a message,
but it is inextricably tied to the program itself.
But putting announcements at the beginning or end of a program
means that people watching on video and digital recorders will
probably skip it. Writers and actors are complaining that they
want the artistic freedom not to incorporate advertising into their
work or at least to be paid a cut of the profits. And they are
also saying that placement disclosures at the beginning or the end
of the program just means the disclosures will not be seen. They
want the disclosure to crawl across the screen at the time of the
product placement. The advertising industry has pointed out that
if you think that a product placement is disruptive now you wait
until you see those disclosures crawling across the screen as they
happen. But more likely sponsors will not want their products
placed into stories if they are going to have to instantly announce
them. This would condition viewers to hate their product. On the
other hand who knows? Sometimes advertising that is irritating
gets noticed and is more effective. (Some of you will probably
remember the phrase "Ring Around the Collar.") And the above rules
might not apply to commercial television.
The Walt Disney Company is considering the possibility of moving
the Disney Channel to free broadcast. Then they will go right on
with advertising and product placements. So much for wholesome
entertainment. They make far more money from advertising than they
make from Disney Channel subscriptions. And they probably figure
besides, how badly will their movies be hurt? It's just kids'
shows anyway, right?
Well, advertising is one industry in which the United States
aggressively leads the world--not that some other countries do not
try the under-handed now and then. Terry Pratchett found out that
at least one of his books acquired a plug for soup bullion in its
translation form English to German. In the middle the characters
sat down for a bowl of a particular soup. Pratchett asked for
guarantees that the publisher would not do that again to his books.
The publisher refused to promise and so he changed publishers.
I think that the advertising industry goes around searching for
blank spaces where they can put ads. Motel room keys used to be
standard metal keys. Today they are computer-encoded cards and as
long as there was some white space on them, they have ads for
specific brands of soda and pizza. How long is it going to be
before you go to sleep to ads projected onto your bedroom ceiling?
Why does this all remind me of Frederic Pohl's and C.M. Kornbluth's
future world in THE SPACE MERCHANTS?
[Postscript: After I wrote this I saw a news story that in Las
Vegas Fox TV news commentators have iced coffee cups on their desks
within camera range. The cups have the brand name perfectly
centered to get attention. And the cups never change from day to
day. The level of coffee is always the same and the ice never
melts. That is because the cups are totally fake. They are
plastic mock-ups of McDonald's iced coffee. They are a deception
by Fox News who apparently do not expect their audience would ever
question their integrity.] [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: ACE IN THE HOLE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: ACE IN THE HOLE from 1951 is Billy Wilder's take on human
selfishness and callousness makes for one of the most angry and
cynical films ever made. Kirk Douglas stars as a newsman who
manipulates people to develop an unfortunate accident into a
national news story at the expense of all who cross his path.
There is a lot of bitterness and a lot of truth in this film.
Rating: high +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
Billy Wilder was one of our great directors of film noir going back
to 1944's DOUBLE INDEMNITY. His trademark evolved to a combination
of human comedy and cynicism. These days he may be best known for
lighter comedy films like SOME LIKE IT HOT, but he was
transitioning in the early 1950s. At that time his films, such as
SUNSET BLVD, were heavier on the dark themes and lighter on the
comedy. Later films like THE FORTUNE COOKIE had less social
message and more comedy. For my taste the darker and grittier
films are his best. My choice for his number one film (yes, better
than SOME LIKE IT HOT) is ACE IN THE HOLE. This may be his most
biting look at humanity. The film was a failure on its first
release in 1951. It was later re-released as THE BIG CARNIVAL
(which is the title it played under on television as well), and
again it flopped. But today it is respected as one of Wilder's
best.
The film was a formidable convergence of Wilder and Kirk Douglas,
who himself made several razor-sharp, bitter films in the early
Fifties. This was only his second of those films, the first being
CHAMPION. Here Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a former big-city
reporter who has been fired from eleven of the biggest newspapers
in the country mostly for drinking and philandering. Now his car
has broken down in Albuquerque and he is forced to get a job on a
tiny local newspaper. He is keeping an eye open for a story he can
ride back to a big time newspaper, but after a year that eye is a
little bleary. The magic story seems never to come along. Then on
his way to cover a rattlesnake hunt he stops at an isolated gas
station and finds the owner has been in a cave collapse in the rock
cliff Indian burial ground behind the little gas station/lunch-bar.
Tatum sees his chance to make this a national news story with real
human interest in the victim and his rescue. All he needs is to
get some local cooperation. And Tatum knows exactly how to play
everyone from local officials to roadside gawkers. As he works the
movie audience gets a course in how the media manipulates local
officials and their own readership.
As the rescue attempts become a national news sensation, Tatum
knows just how to play the locals, the big city reporters, and the
victim's less than grieving wife. She is not sure if she wants out
or Tatum. But Tatum's biggest love is Tatum.
This is not a film for the timid. The view is one of humanity
rushing in to take advantage of the accident with so little regard
for the victim. They have little more concern for man at the
center of the misfortune as insects do as they crawl over a
carcass. Tourists argue over who was the first to arrive at the
accident site. Trains leave off visitors who run to the quickly
assembled traveling carnival with its Ferris wheel and cotton
candy.
Wilder's writing is dark and funny. Douglas's dialog is sharp and
pulls no punches:
Tatum: Mr. Boot, I was passing through Albuquerque; had breakfast
here. I read your paper and thought you might be interested in my
reaction.
Boot: Indeed I am.
Tatum: Well, to be honest, it made me throw up. I don't mean to
tell you I was expecting the New York Times, but even for
Albuquerque, this is pretty Albuquerque.
Boot: Alright, here's your nickel back.
Tatum takes an almost sexual pleasure in telling one of the older
writers on the newspaper how he could build her murder into a great
news story. "I could do wonders with your dismembered body," he
says purring like a big cat.
Seeing this film is a strong affecting experience. I rate it a
high +3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 9/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0043338/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Smothers Brothers Comedy Album: The Best of Season 3 (DVD
review by Mark R. Leeper)
1968 was perhaps the most dramatic year of the 20th Century. The
United States was deeply embroiled in the war in Viet Nam. There
was a strong protest movement at home, but almost none of the
protest was shown in the entertainment media. NASA was getting
ready to land a man on the moon to fulfill a mission given it by a
President who was assassinated five years earlier. But the memory
of assassination was still strong, having been refreshed by two
more assassinations, those of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther
King. 1967 had been the summer of love and the generation of the
hippies was still going strong. Young people were still painting
themselves, talking about the grooviness of love--especially the
free kind--and of flowers. The Beatles were extolling the virtues
of psychedelic drugs and their music mingled with that from other
groups who followed suit. In the spring of that year the USSR had
suppressed its dissidents in Czechoslovakia and in the fall the
United States had suppressed its dissidents in Chicago. I went
from being the high school senior who never dated to being the
college freshman, deeply in love with the same woman I am in love
with today. The TV news did not see itself as a profitable
entertainment medium in those days, so the entertainment media saw
itself as an escape from just about all that was happening that was
momentous.
There was one exception to all this high-powered silence. On
television there was one network TV show that still was trying to
comment on the world and give its unapologetically liberal, non-
evenhanded message. The program was the "Smothers Brothers Comedy
Hour". This would run Sunday night opposite the western "Bonanza".
I will be honest. I was not a fan. First I did not find the
comedy team particularly funny. Their jokes always played the same
note. Tom always played a frustrated child in a man's body and his
brother always played a bemused straight man. If there was more
than just vague interest, it was for the viewer to decide how much
of Dick's reprimanding Tom was part of the act and how much was
sincere. They had good singing voices, and they combined good folk
singing with heir monotonous humor.
But what this show offered is that it actually said something. The
Smothers freely pushed their liberal agenda and challenged power in
the United States. And they got their share of licks for it. They
program was heavily censored by the network and eventually
cancelled. It is not that their political satire was all that
powerful. Certainly it does not seem that way from the vantage
point of a year when a "Saturday Night Live" routine became the
subject of national debate. But in the three years that the
program was on under constant threat of cancellation, they were the
only game in town. Seen from 2008 their humor seems mild, as Tommy
Smothers points out in a surprisingly self-deprecating prolog, but
for 1968 and 1969 it was amazing what they got away with. Because
I remember the political situation of the late 1960s this material
is for me more impressive today than it was when it was first
broadcast. The Smothers Brothers were determined to push the then
limits of what was being shown on television. They talked about
minority relations, war, and even got some sexual material past the
censors. They also kidded the network about its censorship. CBS
was probably the most liberal of the three commercial networks, but
in those days the Smothers Brothers' kidding was beyond the limits
of what the network was willing to tolerate. Each episode shows
the telltale jumps and scars of censorship cutting. Within weeks
the show would be completely cancelled, not for ratings--it was in
the top twenty programs on television--but because the show was
going too far to often in the opinion of the network. The battle
with CBS is documented with actual memos in the bonus material.
The political humor is still fairly impressive. What is not
political was not really funny for me in the 1960s and it is less
so today. Just as the comedy they did in the 1960s was not my cup
of tea, their music was not the kind I liked at that time either.
My taste ran more to classical music. What I am finding surprising
is how enjoyable their musical interludes are. This was a time
when melody was very important in most popular music. Singers like
Donavon, Dion, Judy Collins, and even Mama Cass Elliot did very
listenable songs with lyrical melodies. Much of this music has
become classic.
Not all of their artistic decisions make sense. They included a
short film about the National Hot Rod Association that I certainly
could have done without. But there are plenty of chapter stops.
If something less interesting is on, one can always hit "Next" on
their remote. There is also something amazing about seeing
comedians like George Carlin, Steve Martin, and Bob Newhart as they
were when they were at the beginnings of their careers when they
still were young.
For reasons known best to themselves Time/Life is releasing the
three seasons of the program in reverse order. They have started
with season 3, will go on to season 2 and then will release season
1. Not all of the broadcast episodes are in the package. As the
title suggests, these are what the Smothers Brothers consider their
best material. Before and after each episode there is a commentary
on the episode by the two brothers and perhaps some of the guests
from the episode. There is a lot of additional supporting material
including more interviews and candid shots of rehearsals.
This time capsule of the late 1960s is a lot of fun, some of it
edifying, and quite worth the effort to find. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Clarification On Palin and Saturday Night Live (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
In my comments on "Saturday Night Live" in the 10/03/08 issue of
the MT VOID, I did not make myself clear on comedy routines and
Sarah Palin and I got some negative mail. It was suggested that I
was against satire. I certainly am not. I was told that the
comedy routine was relevant to the discussion because it was so
spot-on like Palin. I still disagree with that that makes the Fey
routine relevant. Let me devote a little more prose to this
question. I may have to overstate this to explain what was mostly
an off-hand comment. I have heard several people saying that the
Fey routine sums up what they don't like about Palin. But I think
the comedy routine is an irrelevancy. If I put the names "Tina
Fey" and "Sarah Palin" in news.google.com it finds 7680 news
articles that link their names. In vanilla google.com it is
1,360,000 sites that link the names.
Back in 1962 a satirist named Vaughn Meader recorded a comedy album
in which he did his impressions of John F. Kennedy. One of the
routines had Kennedy asked now that we had a Catholic President,
how soon could we expect a Jewish President? Meader/Kennedy
responded with standard democratic boilerplate that anybody could
become President; religion was no longer an obstacle, etc. etc.
But then finishes up his long speech with a parenthetical "Of
course, being Catholic I couldn't vote for him." It was a funny
bit and a lot of people quoted it. But when they were discussing
Kennedy himself it *never* came up that I can remember. Nobody
that I heard said that there was a lot of truth in comedy sketch.
At least they did not in the political debate. Kennedy was judged
by what he himself did and said.
I am not a big fan of Sarah Palin. And I think she has looked
pretty bad in front of a camera. But I will give her this. She
should be judged for who she is and what she has done, not by what
some impressionist did in a comedy routine. It is fine to laugh at
"Saturday Night Live", but it then should be quickly forgotten.
Instead it keeps coming up in more serious discussions. In serious
discussion if Tina Fey has been an accurate imitation show me those
scenes of Palin being herself, not Fey being like Palin.
[Postscript: After writing this I watched "Meet the Press" and
"Face the Nation," which I do every week to get some hard news. On
"Meet the Press" they had an excerpt of the "Saturday Night Live"
routine from the previous evening. On "Face the Nation" it was
limited to Rep. Roy Blunt thinking it important enough to tell a
national audience that, "Tina Fey does a great job talking out this
'maverick' term." By coincidence later in the program Bob Schieffer
bemoaned, "Our politics has been dumbed down so low that many
Americans no longer take seriously anything our leaders say." You
said it better than I could, Bob.] [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Saturday Night Live and Tina Fey (letters of comment by Dan
Kimmel, Susan de Guardiola, John Sloan, and Jerry Ryan)
We had *many* letters in response to Mark's comments on "Saturday
Night Live" and Tina Fey in the 10/03/08 issue of the MT VOID.
See Mark's clarification above as well as his comments here.
Dan Kimmel writes:
Mark is right, of course, that we should not select our presidents
(or other elected officials) based on a comedy sketch, but that
rather misses the point. The reason that Tina Fey's dead-on
portrayal of Sarah Palin is resonating is because it encapsulates
the utter cynicism of John McCain's selection of her. Palin is so
out of her depth that she's essentially in protective custody to
keep her from repeating her terrible interviews with Charles Gibson
of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS. Indeed Jon Stewart (another comic
who has become essential viewing for political junkies) did a piece
on "The Daily Show" where he played clips side by side of Palin
seriously answering a question and Fey repeating her answer almost
verbatim to huge laughs precisely because the answer was little
more than word soup. That she delivered her rehearsed sound bites
at the debate last night with a wink and a smile isn't fooling
anyone except those who want to be fooled.
With much of the media doing such a terrible job in reporting the
news (and it's not the imaginary "liberal bias" I'm referring to),
it's left to the comedians to point out the truth. Stewart, Fey,
Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher -- and their writers -- are, in fact,
speaking truth to power but wrapping it up with jokes. They are as
important in their way as, for example, cartoonist Thomas Nast was
in helping to expose and bring down "Boss" Tweed and Tammany Hall.
Tina Fey's sketches on Palin are as much a legitimate part of the
debate as an op-ed column or a roundtable of pundits. [-dk]
Mark replies:
By bringing Fey's routine into the argument the people weaken it.
Whether the impression is as accurate as you claim or not becomes
part of the contention. How certain are you that a good comedian
could not make an impression of you look like an idiot? I am just
saying we should be talking about Sarah Palin herself and her
actions. Bringing in Fey's impression only clouds the issue.
Interesting that you should call the liberal bias of the media
"imaginary." I consider myself a liberal; I vote liberal; but I am
honest enough to say that I think there is a definite liberal bias
in the media. I have felt it for years. It was just a feeling for
a while until I saw a way to put a metric on it. I did find a way
to actually get statistical evidence of this bias I was seeing. In
fact it is not hard to find. I have written about it in the VOID
before. For a long time I have made a sort of mental statistical
tally and discussed the results with Evelyn. The tally is
definitely in the favor of liberal bias. The article, a little
dated, can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/markleeper/leeperprinciple.html.
This method gives good statistical evidence that the bias is real.
If you have a good convincing method for showing the bias is
imaginary, I would be happy to see and consider it.
The thing is that we are so used to the biases of the media we do
not notice them. As the saying goes "we don't know who discovered
water, but it probably wasn't a fish." [-mrl]
Susan de Guardiola writes:
On the SNL issue, I think the politically meaningful element is
that Fey was able to use sections of Palin's responses to Katie
Couric word for word; they made so little sense they work equally
well as a comedy routine as they do as serious responses to
questions. I personally find that more than a little alarming; I
don't need all politicians to be brilliant orators, but an ability
to form coherent thoughts and sentences seems like an important
basic skill. [-sdg]
Mark responds:
I think bringing Fey's routine in the argument only muddies the
issue. Are you sure that Obama's words taken out of context and
delivered by a good comedian might not come out equally funny? And
if so the test is invalid. One can easily enough point out that
Palin is incoherent and unprepared without mentioning Fey. The
fact that a comedian can make a candidate's words sound funny may
not be a reliable test, but saying that one cannot follow what
Palin is trying to say is a good argument. [-mrl]
John Sloan writes:
I'm a little surprised to hear these words coming from you, Mark.
When has political satire not been a part of the national political
debate? When have political parties not used political satire as a
strategic weapon? When have political pundits not used political
satire to clarify and promote their positions on the issues through
the use of humor and visual and written caricature? In a way it's
self defining: the SNL skit is important because people on both
sides of the issue think its important. [-jls]
Mark answers:
I have a response to this in this issue.
I was not suggesting we eliminate satire. Satire should be used to
highlight issues. That is what it is for.
I am saying that the fact that Tina Fey makes Palin sound
ridiculous is not for me a convincing argument. People should be
able to make up their minds about Palin based upon what Palin
actually said, not how she was imitated in a comedy sketch. I
don't like Palin but I don't think she should be judged by somebody
else's joke. I think that Palin's incoherence is a bad sign, but I
am amazed how many people cannot come out and say that without
mentioning Tina Fey. Satire can make points about Palin, but she
should be judged by the content of her record rather than by what
jokes she inspires. [-mrl]
Jerry Ryan writes:
On the subject of "Saturday" Night Live being part of the politics
of the time... You can leave aside that Palin and Fay look
amazingly alike, and that Fay has a note-perfect impression of Palin
down pat. That's just good entertainment.
I think the reason that it's getting such national attention is
that there has been so little press exposure of Palin.
Furthermore, the interesting point is that the script for the
second SNL sketch was basically Palin's words from the Couric
interview, unchanged and unadorned.
Of course, I have a strong political bias in this race--I've
donated to a Presidential campaign for the first time in my life--
and I suspect that someone on the other side of the aisle will not
find this as funny or attention-grabbing as I did! [-gwr]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Robert Sawyer and Product Placement (letter of comment by
Susan de Guardiola)
On Robert Sawyer, [Joe] and I disagree on his merits as a writer,
though I can see how his ideas would perhaps appeal to me more in
short stories than in novels. But I'm curious that given your
discussion of product placement in movies you don't mention it in
context of Sawyer's recent Hugo nominated-novel, which was so
littered with plugs for the Atkins Diet that I wondered if they'd
contributed to his advance. I found this very intrusive and it
contributed to my dislike of the book. [-sdg]
[Susan's blog can be found at http://www.rixosous.com.]
Mark answers, "I did not read Sawyer's novel, nor did I make any
comments about Sawyer. I believer what you refer to is Joe
Karpierez's review of a Sawyer novel." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Product Placement and Sword and Sandal (letter of comment
by Joseph T. Major)
In response to Mark's comments on product placement in the 10/03/08
issue of the MT VOID, Joseph Major writes:
Editorial Written ... The example that comes to mind of explicit
product placement is LOVE HAPPY (1950), the Marx Brothers movie
with Marilyn Monroe. (She only appears in one scene, but the image
of her in Groucho's clutch is priceless.)
At the end of the movie, Harpo is fleeing from the bad guys over a
rooftop. He escapes using several billboards; one of the most
noticeable being a Mobil billboard with a flying horse, "moving"
through the use of multiple images and neon lights--and Harpo moves
with it.
The movie ran into financial troubles at the end and the producers
(Lester Cowan and Mary Pickford) sold advertising.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041604/
And in response to Mark's comments on peplum in the 09/26/08 issue
of the MT VOID, Joseph writes:
I'm surprised no one mentioned THE SONS OF HERCULES, which was a
bunch of those Maciste movies repackaged for syndication in the
sixties. It didn't take a lot to entertain us in those days.
[-jtm]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Product Placement and Politics (letter of comment by Taras
Wolansky)
In response to Mark's comments on product placement in the 10/03/08
issue of the MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes:
In the SF world, Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) is
particularly rich in product or trademark placements. They were
all appropriate to the story and added to the verisimilitude, back
then. Forty years on, though, they have a campy, ironic air, given
that several of the corporations did not survive until the real
year 2001.
Then again, in the alternate universe in which we had giant bases
on the Moon in 2001, maybe Pan Am is the spaceline of choice.
One of the best trademark placements of recent years is in THE LAST
MIMZY (2007), loosely based on "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" (1943) by
Kuttner and Moore. It's too good a joke to give away here, though!
P.S.: Remember that the Senate usually needs the cooperation of
both parties to move business forward. When the Democrats were in
the minority, they used the threat of filibusters to prevent the
Senate from strengthening oversight of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac,
which have been described as piggy banks for Democratic special
interest groups. Perhaps not coincidentally, the top four
recipients of campaign contributions from those corporations, over
the last 20 years, were Sens. Dodd, Kerry, Obama, and Clinton. See
http://tinyurl.com/5w38tk. [-tw]
Mark replies:
I don't really remember the product placement in MIMZY. A quick
check of the Internet tells me what it was but not why it was so
good.
I like your postscript. You are saying that even with all the
advantages that the Republicans had in all three branches of
government and the ability to appoint the country's chief financial
officers, it was the Democrats who got us in the mess. Also I have
to remember the phrase "which have been described as..." That one
could be useful. In other words, I take it, *you* are not making
the accusation. No, it was somebody else. And the somebody is
unnamed. But, yes, the accusation has been made and is hanging
around in the air somewhere. You are just passing along what you
heard. Thanks for the heads-up on the accusation. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
SIDEWAYS IN CRIME edited by Lou Anders (ISBN-13 978-1-844-16566-7,
ISBN-10 1-844-16566-3) is an anthology of (mostly) alternate
history mystery stories. As is also true of science fiction
mysteries, the biggest problem is reconciling the two, in that the
alternate history means that some of what we know and take for
granted in our world is not true in the story's world, and yet we
are in general expected to be able to pick up clues based on
something being out of place. For example, if a clue is the
presence of a written note, it is important that we know whether
most people can write or not.
But in addition, the author has to come up with both a reasonable
alternate history *and* a reasonable mystery, and this is not easy,
especially in short story form. The result is often lopsided. For
example, "Sacrifice" by Mary Rosenblum has the most interesting
alternate history (Aztecs not conquered by Spain). But it is
hampered by too much "info-dump" about the alternate history, not
to mention bad proof-reading (missing or superfluous commas in
particular), and copy-editing--Rosenblum scatters Nahautl words
throughout, even when an English word would be just as good, but
then refers to a "turkey", surely incorrect in this world. Tobias
Buckell's "The People's Machine" is also set in an Aztec-Empire-
survives world--this seems to be very popular these days. But
Bucknell's story has a conclusion that makes no sense. (I'm not
talking about the solution to the crime, but rather to the thoughts
of the protagonist at the end.)
Both Kage Baker's "Running the Snake" (Boudicca successful) and
Theodore Judson's "The Sultan's Emissary" (no Crusades) show
different histories of England, and both run into the same problem:
too much the same or similar after centuries. In Baker's case,
it's Shakespeare; in Judson's, the entire royal line. Judson also
has problems with names such as Abdul Erickson representing someone
from a long line of Norse Muslims--but he would be something like
Abdul Jafarson then.
John Meaney's "Via Vortex" is a "Nazis won" story, but involving
the use of energy vortices for teleportation in what seems like a
particularly unlikely and bizarre way. There is far too much
"peculiar science" to make this a believable alternate history (at
least to me).
Stephen Baxter's "Fate and the Fire-Lance" is yet another of the
"history repeats itself across timelines" sub-genre, this time with
the son of a (Serbian) Roman Emperor being assassinated in 1914.
This story is weakened by the extremely unlikely introduction of a
royal tutor, first as translator and then as detective, fully
accepted by the police.
Jack McDevitt's "The Adventure of the Southsea Trunk" has someone
else publishing the first few Holmes stories that Doyle wrote but
could not sell in that world, but the whole thing seemed like a big
"so what?"
Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "G-Men" takes us to a change point, but so
little forward of it that we have to do all the extrapolation. (I
agree with William Mingin when he says in his review of SIDEWAYS IN
CRIME in "Strange Horizons": "To my mind, the most pleasing and
productive sort of alternate history story gives us a world in
which there has been a significant historical disjunction some time
in the fairly distant past, so that we find ourselves in a
political and cultural reality much different from our own. The
stories themselves tend to (but don't have to) occur some time
after the hinge event, and also in the 'past,'" relative to our own
time."
Jon Courtenay Grimwood's "Chicago" has cloning and memory
adjustments in Capone's era without any explanation whatsoever.
Some are not even alternate histories. Pat Cadigan's "Worlds of
Possibilities" is a many-worlds story with not much focus on any of
them. The same is true of Chris Roberson's "Death on the Crosstime
Express". S. M. Stirling's "A Murder in Eddsford" is one of his
"Change" stories (the laws of physics change on March 17, 1998, and
you can no longer get "a useful amount of mechanical work out of
heat." This is way too off-the-wall to even be considered as
fantasy, let alone a reasonable alternate history. (At least Poul
Anderson's BRAIN WAVE had a reasonable answer for why everything in
that story suddenly changed.)
Paul Park's "The Blood of Peter Francisco" is so dense with
cultural referents that I am unable to understand it. The same may
well have been true of his "Roumania" trilogy, which everyone
seemed to like a lot more than I did. So I will only say that I
may be tone-deaf to his appeal, and you should judge it for
yourself. (In his review, William Mingin says this is an example
of what the "Turkey City Lexicon calls "Card Tricks in the Dark:
'Elaborately contrived plot which arrives at (a) the punch line of
a private joke no reader will get or (b) the display of some bit of
learned trivia relevant only to the author. This stunt may be
intensely ingenious, and very gratifying to the author, but it
serves no visible fictional purpose.")
Both "Murder in Geektopia" by Paul Di Filippo and "Conspiracies: A
Very Condensed 937-Page Novel" by Mike Resnick and Eric Flint are
supposed to be humorous, but I found them both too much interested
in constant culture references and other humorous techniques to
tell an interesting alternate history story. (Which is not to say
it cannot be done--just that they did not do it.)
Of the great Islamic poets, the best known in the West are probably
Omar Khayyam, Rumi, and Hafiz. I cannot say for sure, but I
suspect that a fair part of Hafiz's fame may be due to Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, who has Sherlock Holmes say, "You may remember the old
Persian saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub,
and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.' There
is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of
the world." ["A Case of Identity"] I should note, however, that
extensive searches by Holmes scholars have failed to find any such
quotation anywhere in Hafiz's writings.
In any case, THE GIFT by Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
(ISBN-13 978-0-140-19581-1, ISBN-10 0-140-19581-5) is an attempt to
create a modern translation of Hafiz. However, at times I think
Ladinsky gets a bit *too* modern. For example, "The Clay Bowl's
Destiny", Ladinsky translates the the last phrase as "In/His
sublime,/Ball-busting course/Of/Spirit/Love." (Ladinsky also seems
to want to maximize the number of lines, and minimize the number of
words per line.) One also finds the word "dropkick" and poems
called "The Bag Lady" and "There Could Be Holy Fallout".
A more representative sample of Hafiz might be "The Sun Never
Says": "Even/After/All this time/The sun never says to the
earth,/You owe/Mr."/Look/What happens/With a love like that,/It
lights the/Whole/Sky." [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I have made this letter longer than usual
because I lack the time to make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal