THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/19/10 -- Vol. 28, No. 38, Whole Number 1589
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Improved Transfer of the 1910 FRANKENSTEIN (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
Stranger Than Science? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
A Defense of (Some) Remakes (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
ATTACK OF THE VEGAN ZOMBIES! (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
FIRSTBORN by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
(book review by Joe Karpierz)
COASTING (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Pi and Powers of Ten (comments by Keith F. Lynch)
Monty Hall Redux (letter of comment by Pete Brady)
This Week's Reading (LITERARY HOAXES, "Jewish Narnia")
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Improved Transfer of the 1910 FRANKENSTEIN (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
The earliest (remembered) film version of FRANKENSTEIN was made at Edison
Studios. This version was made in 1910 and it is thought
that Charles Ogle played the monster, though I do not think that
has ever been verified.
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0001223/
This was long thought to be a lost film. Later a single print in
poor condition was discovered, only to have the discoverer hold it
hostage asking for a special Academy Award for himself for the
find. He never got the award, but a copy did make it to the Web.
I reviewed the film in 2000:
http://us.imdb.com/Reviews/248/24809
A new and considerably better transfer is now available online at
http://tinyurl.com/Edison-Ogle
This is a genuine rarity and I am pleased that it is now readily
available to fans of film and film history. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Stranger Than Science? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I hate to be a killjoy but...
Once and for all, science fiction is still stranger than science.
People have picked this idea up as a modified version of the also
questionable truism that truth is stranger than fiction.
Everyone likes to say that science is stranger than science
fiction, but it just is not so. *Some* science is stranger than
*some* science fiction. I mean quantum theory is stranger than
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, but considering the whole realm of
science fiction and the whole realm of science, I have to award the
strangeness prize to science fiction. Science comes in a poor
second.
I will say that science fiction these days is frequently more
incomprehensible than science. That is because people who explain
science generally are less interested in making it literary and
more interested in making it clear. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: A Defense of (Some) Remakes (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
At a recent science fiction convention I went to a panel whose
subject was the high number of film remakes we are getting. This
is a fairly common convention panel. The idea is to get four to
six people who know something about film to get up in front of the
audience and gang-shag the whole institution of remaking films. I
think I remember being on the panel on the same topic maybe 20
years ago and several times since. And pretty much the same set of
complaints is always raised. How the remake just exploits the
ready market of fans of the original or people who have heard the
original was good and assume the remake will be also. This is the
sort of panel you may enjoy the first time you attend when it gets
your blood hot. But after two or three times on or at such a panel
it is much less interesting.
A year or so ago I was on a panel at a science fiction convention.
I think the title was "Make it Again, Sam." I did not want to have
it be just of retread (or remake, if you will) of previous panels.
So I decided I was going to have to rethink the issue and take an
opposing point of view. His is something I like to do in general.
I take some opinion I have and try to make myself an advocate for
the opposing point of view. If nothing else if done in good faith
it gives you an appreciation for the other side's viewpoint. Of
course I had sat through my share of pointless remakes. The 2008
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL comes to mind as a particularly
painful and dull remake, but there are dozens more. I don't think
anybody wants to see CITIZEN KANE in 3D. (I hope I did not give
some filmmaker an idea.)
I decided I had to be on the opposing side and defend remakes, or
at least find what was wrong in the common argument. The
conclusion I reached was that the problem was not remakes at all.
The problem was bad, uncreative films in general. A film does not
have to be a remake to be bad and uncreative. When I buy a movie
ticket I want to see something I have not seen before. It is
harder for a filmmaker to be original when remaking a film, but it
can be done.
Philip Kaufman's 1978 version of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
told basically the same story as the 1956 version, but he rethought
the story and created tension in some entirely new ways. He
observed that there are many things in our society that seems
strange to us right now, and he used them to make his audience see
the alien in everyday life. (I guess I always thought that mud
baths seemed like an alien idea anyway.) Kaufman found ways of
making the normal seem strange and sinister in ways much beyond
what the 1956 Don Siegel could have done. In the first version if
something seemed weird, it was alien, period. Kaufman's point was
that we have come to accept the strange as normal so what seems
strange still could be perfectly innocent. So we cannot even use
the weirdness of the aliens to detect them. In a world where
people carry the Internet in their pocket and people live more in
Second Life than in their first, that film becomes more relevant
year after year.
Peter Jackson kept the basic story of KING KONG, but broadened the
characters. Some of his additions were mistakes. The T-Rex in the
flying trapeze and the Central Park Idyll were touches I could have
done without. But Ann Darrow is a much more interesting character
in his film. The whole story seems a bigger adventure. But at the
same time I think he was respectful to the original.
A filmmaker has a responsibility to create a good film. If he
remakes a film, it needs to give the audience something more than
the first version did. If he thinks he can do that by remaking
CASABLANCA he is setting himself an awesome task. If he really is
that good, then more power to him. But if he falls short of that
mark, he has only himself to blame. If he wants to remake a film,
he should pick a film that he knows he can improve upon. I
personally was not greatly impressed with William Castle's 1959 THE
HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. When it was remade in 1999 by William Malone
I thought it came fairly close to surpassing the quality of the
original film. And that is exactly the kind of film that should be
remade. The original was not so fine that anyone really felt that
remaking it was a desecration. The remake had an interesting look
from good production design. It was not really on a par with the
1999 THE HAUNTING. The latter had spectacular production design by
Eugenio Zanetti. But I think that the verdict of history is that the
1999 THE HAUNTING was a mistake because the original is such a good
film. If a filmmaker is going to remake a film, he should pick a
film that is not so highly respected.
But we get a lot of films that are completely original stories and
are just not very good films. Occasionally we get remakes that are
improvements on the original and are interesting films of
themselves. The new THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is bad not
because it is a remake. It would have been bad even if it had been
totally original. Had it been a good film of itself, the fact that
there had been a previous version might have hurt its quality
simply because the story is not new. But that drawback could be
balanced by making it an intelligent film. There was little attempt
at intelligence.
If I needed anything to convince me that remakes need not be bad,
nothing could do it more eloquently than a DVD collection I purchased
recently called "The Golden Age of Television." It includes TV plays
from the 1950s including "Marty," "Patterns'" "Requiem for a
Heavyweight," "Bang the Drum Slowly," and "Days of Wine and Roses."
Each of these is a good play, though essentially a movie, and each
was remade considerably differently as a feature film. And each of
those resulting films is good all by itself, even when one has seen
the original. I wish I could see the original "12 Angry Men." I
suspect it is quite good, but I will still love Sidney Lumet's
remake.
It is not remakes that are bad; it is unrewarding films. A remake
can be rewarding or not. It is the fact that so many remakes are
unrewarding films that has given remakes a bad name. But that is
an unfair generalization. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: ATTACK OF THE VEGAN ZOMBIES! (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The vines go after the people and the zombies go after the
wine in ATTACK OF THE VEGAN ZOMBIES! Writer/director/star Jim
Townsend has a feel for older horror films and fresher ideas for a
zombie movie. The action scenes do not work really well, but
Townsend knows not to let this degenerate into too much of spoof
too soon. The film is available from amazon.com. Rating: high +1
(-4 to +4) or 6/10
The first nice surprise about ATTACK OF THE VEGAN ZOMBIES! is that
at least for a while it is not at all the sort of tongue-in-cheek
spoof that the title suggests it is. Instead it is a low budget
horror film with feet firmly planted in the 1960s low-budget horror
film. In fact, if it were not for the obvious digital texture of
the visuals, it might feel like a 1960s drive-in attraction. The
story at least begins by taking itself seriously with a few lapses.
This film could have taken advantage of its low budget to add more
realism, but writer/director/actor Jim Townsend--a freshman at each
of these jobs--was apparently not sure that was what he wanted to
do.
Joe Bryant (played by Townsend) and his wife Dionne (Christine
Egan) are having a hard time making their vineyard and winery work.
The crops have a long history of not doing well at this location
under the control of both Dionne's father and later of Joe. Dionne
wants to make a go of it and asks for the help of her mother, whom
only Dionne knows is a genuine, modern-day witch. The mother
(H. Lynn Smith) agrees to use a fertility spell that includes using
some of Joe's blood, blood that the witch does not know is a little
polluted with alcohol. The spell makes an extremely robust crop,
so much so that a local professor brings four of his students to
the vineyard to study the phenomenon. The students are two very
exaggerated nerdy-Trekkies who add a little unwelcome comic relief
and two gratuitous lesbians to do what they do best. Sadly, the
vines are just a little too robust as well as being predators
looking for--not blood for once--but wine. They go after people
because the people have wine in their blood if they have been
drinking. (I don't think it is still wine when it hits the
bloodstream, maybe some sugars and some alcohol--but I can go with
it.) The vine's victims return to life as green-skinned zombie
winos. By this point a little too much of the film's earlier
serious tone has been compromised and squandered.
This film could have used its low-budget more wisely. But the
creation of green-skinned zombies does not work for the film.
First, they look like an image out of the original Star Trek of the
1960s. Secondly, the green makeup does not cover the flesh-tone
skin beneath. They never look like green people; they look like
normal people in green greasepaint, which is what they are. More
care could have been taken with the makeup. Townsend and Egan turn
in acceptable performances that get the idea across effectively in
roles that are not greatly demanding. And cinematographer Max
Fisher does a particularly good job of creatively framing the action.
The comic relief is not particularly funny, but the nostalgic 1960s
feel to the film makes it all worthwhile. And it is nice to see a
few fresh ideas in a horror film for a change. I rate this a high
+1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1380852/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: FIRSTBORN by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (copyright
2008, Del Rey, $7.99, 410pp, ISBN 978-0-345-49158-9) (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
I find myself in a monster of a dilemma: I, the self proclaimed
extreme disliker of series novels, have found myself in the process
of reading or listening to some eight to ten series (I lost track
after a while. I tried to write them all down to find out exactly
how many I was reading, but for some reason gave up; I probably was
too depressed just looking at the list.
I decided that it was time to wrap one of those series up, so I
grabbed FIRSTBORN, by Clarke and Baxter, off the to-read stack, and
commenced to finishing a trilogy. Unfortunately, it looks like I
didn't finish a series. More on that near the end of this review.
If you remember my reviews over the last three years when I started
the trilogy, I disliked TIME'S EYE but loved SUNSTORM. My reaction
is, once again, thud. Clarke and Baxter make a valiant effort to
duplicate the success of SUNSTORM, but that effort mostly falls
flat.
At the beginning of the novel, Bisesa Dutt is awakened from a long
stint in suspended animation--some nineteen or so years. However,
there's no rest for the weary. It seems that an alien object has
entered our solar system, and is headed for earth. It seems that
our friends, the Firstborn, have decided that since the sunstorm
didn't do the trick a couple of decades prior, it was time to send
a quantum bomb, or "Q-bomb", to finish off humanity. Bisesa heads
up to Mars with her daughter Myra and a Spacer named Alexei.
There, she will encounter a couple of surprises--one of which takes
her back to Mir.
You remember Mir, don't you? That's our patchwork world, made up
of various timeslices of humanity's past. Bisesa starts out in
Babylon, but ends up across the ocean in old Chicago, where she
hears from Myra in our realspace about plans to communicate with
the Martians on the Mir-like Mars of the past. Yeah, it's got
something to do with what Bisesa found up at Mars.
Back on earth, our leaders are preparing a starship to take on the
Q-bomb. But, as you might expect, whatever that ship does just
does not work against the Q-bomb. And it's still heading straight
for our planet.
So what's up with these Firstborn anyway? It seems that they've
been around since the beginning of the universe, and they realize
that the key to longevity is energy. Any other race that consumes
energy in an irresponsible manner must be destroyed.
So here we are then--doomed to die. At the hands of aliens.
Again. Who don't like what we're doing even though they've
technically never even met us--although they've seen us through
their Eyes. Again. Us poor humans. Always the brunt of it.
Yep, we've seen it all before.
Oh, there are a couple of interesting items. The space elevator,
while not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination, is used
here in a somewhat clever fashion. But the coolest idea in the
book is not explored anywhere near enough. When it comes time to
decide the fate of the Earth and Mars, that decision is not left up
to the leaders of the world powers--all of civilization discusses
it on the networks. *Everyone* gets to put their two cents in and
make a world-shattering decision. *Everyone*. And it worked.
That's a culture-changing sort of process, and one that has
ramifications for the future, and it's too bad it's not explored
further in this novel.
I won't give away the ending, other than to say this. There has to
be, and will be, more. The story doesn't end here. It's
disappointing that we don't actually meet the Firstborn, but I
suspect that will be taken care of in further books in the series.
Baxter won't be writing them with Clarke's help, of course. Maybe
he'll be free to explore these worlds and ideas in a way that will
make them interesting and exciting.
This book wasn't it. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: COASTING (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is a simple little story in a low-budget but nicely
turned-out film. Two people in unsatisfying and incompatible
relationships find each other and are attracted. There is just one
little problem... The dialog is entertaining, but where the film
is going and that there will be a problem is predictable (though
perhaps not what the obstacle is). Michael P. Noens directs and
co-writes an unpretentious story of slightly frustrated love.
Jonathan C. Legat and Stephanie Wyatt are appealing as the young
couple. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Wes (played by Jonathan C. Legat) is in a job that doesn't quite
suit him and has a fiancee who does not quite fit him. He has
returned to Stillwater, Illinois, for the funeral of his brother's
girl friend. Lauren (Stephanie Wyatt) has a boy friend she is not
quite compatible with. She has come to Stillwater to photograph
the funeral of her friend. Both go to the wake and noticed each
other. That evening in the hotel bar they strike up a
conversation. A joke or two passed between them and soon they are
playing pool together and enjoying each other. They hit it off,
but then go their separate ways. Neither can forget that they met.
Wes goes back to his work at an employment agency that seems to
service mostly welfare recipients who do not really want a job.
Both have partners who just do not satisfy them. Neither can
forget the other. Eventually they know that this thing was meant
to be. Each is willing to throw over his/her current partner, but
there is one more twist that fate is to throw in their path.
The structure of the early parts of the film is familiar. We have
one long sequence of the couple's "meet cute" in a bar with flashes
outward of each's unsatisfying careers and relationships, all
calculated to show that the two were just going nowhere and to pull
the viewer into the new relationship. One place where the script
could be stronger is in the dialog, which is of some interest but
somehow never establishes the couple's compatibility on an
emotional level. We see that they smile at each other and that
there is some physical attraction, but there is no reason to feel
that this relationship will be any stronger than the relationships
the two had previously. Somehow we would like something stronger
than smiles to demonstrate the bond that these two might be able to
form. In the recent LAST CHANCE HARVEY the Dustin Hoffman and Emma
Thompson characters seem to be able to mesh on a higher level than
just the physical. The same is true of the couple in BEFORE
SUNRISE. Each has something beyond the physical to offer the
other. The script seems to assume that is they are attracted
sexually that is the basis for a strong rapport.
This could be a sort of "love is enough" sort of romance, but once
we establish that that sort of attraction did not last in each
person's previous relationships--relationships that probably
started just as amicably as the new one--we need some evidence that
the new bond will not just coast downhill the same way. Later in
the film we see an obstacle to the relationship and we want to feel
that the obstacle is worth overcoming, but it will not be if they
allow the new relationship to stagnate like their previous ones.
In a film from a small production company, writing is extremely
important. It may be optimistic to hope for strong writing in a
tiny $10,000 production from the young company CNGM Pictures, but
the company cannot match the majors with visuals or with star
power. Writing is the one area where small companies can afford to
compete with the major studios and production companies. This is a
light enjoyable souffle of a film whose main point cannot be
discussed here. It entertains for 90 minutes without having much
lasting impact. I rate it a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Possible spoiler: while this film may have an interesting idea,
John Sayles got there first and much more effectively in one of his
best films. But then John Sayles is John Sayles.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1262876/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Pi and Powers of Ten (comments by Keith F. Lynch)
In response to Mark's (and Evelyn's) comments on powers of ten in
the 03/12/10 issue of the MT VOID, Keith F. Lynch writes:
There's no longer any ambiguity in what billion and trillion mean.
The UK abandoned the billion^12, trillion^18 system over
thirty years ago. The French abandoned it in the 19th century.
Also, any claim that over 10^18 decimal digits of pi have been
computed with today's technology would be obviously absurd. So a
trillion in that sense can't have been meant.
Here's a table of when pi was first known to each power-of-ten
number of digits, and how many years since the previous such
record:
1400 1
1706 2 306
1949 3 243
1958 4 9
1961 5 3
1973 6 12
1983 7 10
1987 8 4
1989 9 2
1997 10 8
1999 11 2
2002 12 3
We're not yet halfway from 10^12 to 10^13 digits. So perhaps this
progress is slowing down. If so, it's just as well, since it is,
as you mention, a perfectly useless thing to do.
The continued fraction expansion of pi does appear to be completely
patternless. The geometric mean of those terms appears to approach
Khinchin's constant. Khinchin proved this is true of 100% of real
numbers, but not of all of them. However, neither he nor anyone
else has ever proven that it's true of any specific real number
such as pi.
Curiously, the continued fraction expansion of the second-best
known transcendental number, e, is *not* patternless. (Its decimal
expansion apparently is.)
A number being irrational (which pi and e are) means that the
decimal expansion will never terminate or repeat. But it doesn't
necessarily mean it's patternless. Pi is probably "normal,"
meaning that every possible pattern of decimal digits occurs about
equally often in the long run. But nobody has proven that pi is
normal. Anyhow, even normal numbers can have obvious patterns to
them. For instance the number constructed by writing every whole
number, in order, after a decimal point (i.e. .123456789101112...
is normal. "Patternless" is in fact a very slippery and hard to
define concept.
Note that I'm not using the term "random." Since pi is a specific
number, it makes no sense to call it random. The results of a
deterministic calculation can never be random. [-kfl]
Mark responds, "I am always impressed by how much math Keith
knows. By the way I was guessing in the original article that
there might be a nice continued fraction expression for pi. It
turns out that if you ease the restriction that all numerators have
to be 1 there are continued fractions that express pi. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Pi_and_continued_fraction."
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Monty Hall Redux (letter of comment by Pete Brady)
In response to comments on the Monty Hall problem in the 01/22/10
issue of the MT VOID, Pete Brady writes, "I suggest we change the
Monty Hall problem so that two doors conceal goats and the third
conceals a car, except that the car is a Toyota." [-ptb]
Mark replies, "Hey, I got my first Toyota in 1973 and loved it so
much that I have only owned Corollas since. It was a superbly
designed car. For me that means it has been reliable with little
care. If they have soured, and I think they have, it has only been
over the last few short years. (I think their service has soured
somewhat also.) If they are having problems now it is likely
because of software that they bought rather than making themselves.
It is hard to debug a non-reproducible problem. They tried to grow
too much too fast. But I still am a Toyota fan." [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
LITERARY HOAXES: AN EYE-OPENING HISTORY OF FAMOUS FRAUDS by Melissa
Katsoulis (ISBN-13 978-1-602-39794-1) begins with Brian McHale's
categorizations of hoaxes into the genuine hoax, the entrapment
hoax, and the mock hoax. Though not specifically stated, this book
does not cover journalism hoaxes (other than the "serialized
memoir" sorts (such as Stephen Glass's articles).
One thing that struck me was how many of the stories of these
hoaxes were made into movies: Grey Owl (GREY OWL), the
autobiography of Howard Hughes (HOAX), FORBIDDEN LOVE by Norma
Khouri (FORBIDDEN LIE$), Mark Hofmann (not a movie, but the radio
play "The Salamander Letter").
Katsoulis divides the genuine hoaxes into a set of categories
reminiscent of the Chinese taxonomy in Jorge Luis Borges's story
"The Analytical Language of John Wilkins". ("In its remote pages
it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to
the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens,
(f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present
classification, (i)
frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a
very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken
the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.")
The taxonomy of hoaxes she uses divides it up into such categories
as "The Eighteenth Century", "The Nineteenth Century", "Native
Americans", "Celebrity Testaments", "Australia", "Religion", etc.
While I will admit there is not much overlap between Native
American hoaxes and Australian hoaxes, in general the categories
are not at all parallel.
The entrapment hoaxes she discusses include the Spectra, Alan
Sokal's fake postmodern paper on the linguistic aspects of quantum
gravity, and Jean Shepard's promotion of the non-existent book I,
LIBERTINE by Frederick Ewing. The latter is known to science
fiction fans because there was such demand for the book that
eventually it was created, ghost-written by Theodore Sturgeon and
with a cover by Kelly Freas.
Oprah Winfrey has been taken in by several of the hoaxes (Forrest
Carter, James Frey, Margaret B. Jones, Herman Rosenblat), which
should perhaps make one skeptical of her claims about other people,
miracle cures, etc.
What I found most interesting, though, was how these hoaxes were
exposed. Most were not as obvious as the one that claimed to have
letters written by Mary Magdalene in colloquial French (!), but so
many seemed to be inept. One was exposed when a letter they
produced as authentic had a ZIP code--but predated the ZIP code
system. Other hoaxes have fallen apart when they include area
codes that are newer than the date when the stationery on which
they were printed was produced, non-existent lot numbers for real
estate, or (in the case of FORBIDDEN LOVE) having the River Jordan
flowing through Amman (it doesn't even come close--sort of like a
book describing the Hudson River flowing through Boston).
Major flaws in the book include that it has no index, no
bibliography, and no footnotes. The writing could also use
editing--I found several instances of misplaced modifiers, awkward
phrasing, etc.
(Speaking of which, I often notice writers ignoring parallel
construction, but what about pseudo-parallel construction, e.g.,
"He got awakened, ready, and his coat"? Is there a name for this
sort of thing?)
I just read an article titled "Why There Is No Jewish Narnia" by
Michael Weingrad (http://tinyurl.com/yhv63m5), in which he begins
by saying, "I cannot think of a single major fantasy writer who is
Jewish, and there are only a handful of minor ones of any note."
Well, to start with, Weingrad explicitly excludes science fiction
from fantasy. But even so, Neil Gaiman is hardly, as they say,
chopped liver. Or Michael Chabon. Or (to get more classical)
Isaac Bashevis Singer. Weingrad gets around the latter by saying,
"the supernatural does not itself define fantasy literature, which
is a more specific genre. It emerged in Victorian England, and its
origins are best understood as one of a number of cultural salvage
projects that occurred in an era when modern materialism and
Darwinism seemed to drive religious faith from the field.
Religion's capacity for wonder found a haven in fantasy
literature." Why this means that Franz Kafka is not writing
fantasy is not clear to me. That he thinks this means that Chabon
and Gaiman are not writing fantasy is a total mystery--until you
realize that when Weingrad says "fantasy" he means explicitly high
fantasy, full of medievalism, knights, chivalry, magic, wizards,
etc.
Then he says, "Aside from an aversion to medieval nostalgia, there
is a further historical reason why 20th-century Jews have not
written much fantasy literature, and that is, inevitably, the
Holocaust." I guess Lisa Goldstein, Jane Yolen, and all the others
who are writing what *I* thought were fantasy stories about the
Holocaust don't count either.
"The Jewish difficulty with fantasy is not only historical and
sociological. It is theological as well, and this has to do with
the degree to which Judaism has banished the magical and
mythological elements necessary for fantasy. To put it crudely, if
Christianity is a fantasy religion, then Judaism is a science
fiction religion. If the former is individualistic, magical, and
salvationist, the latter is collective, technical, and this-
worldly." This seems to be to be incorrect in its description of
both Christianity and Judaism, but also to a great extent beside
the point. Weingrad is actually reviewing a couple of books that
he *does* consider fantasy, and the "dearth" of Jewish fantasy
writing he is decrying is really a dearth of fantasy based in a
Christian tradition (medieval chivalry) but written by Jews.
But why should Jews try to write fantasy in a Christian tradition?
We have our own rich tradition, and many Jewish writers past and
present have written in that tradition. That Weingrad refuses to
recognize these as "real" fantasy is his problem, not ours.
[After I wrote this, I discovered that many people have responded
similarly to Weingrad--Neil Gaiman among them.]
[-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
After all, all [Shakespeare] did was string
together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-- H. L. Mencken