Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/01/19 -- Vol. 38, No. 18, Whole Number 2091
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Correction and Request
The Great Magdeburg Air Hoax (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The V-1 and V-2 (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
THE DEAD DON'T DIE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE FALL by Tracy Townsend (book review by Joe Karpierz)
Private Rocketry (letter of comment by Jim Susky)
This Week's Reading (A RUSSIAN JOURNAL, DIAMONDS IN THE SKY,
THE DEPARTMENT OF SENSITIVE CRIMES, and WASTE TIDE)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Correction and Request
Dale Speirs's name was misspelled in the 10/25/19 issue. As he
says, "My name is spelled with an 'ei'. That's why I always put it
in the message text, to improve the odds it won't be retyped with
an 'ie'." Needless to say, this failed, because I still retyped it
incorrectly.
Also, Fred Lerner writes, "When you mention books in this section,
could you give the publisher as well as the ISBN? This would help
me (and perhaps other readers) to have a sense of the book's
origins. My expectations of an SF novel comes from Baen or Tor
Might differ from those of a novel from a mainstream publisher or a
small press. I would like to know if a nonfiction book comes from
a university press or a self-publisher." I will try to remember to
do this in the future. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Great Magdeburg Air Hoax (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
It appears that one of the oldest hoaxes in science has finally
been revealed. Much of what we assume in modern physics is based
on assumptions made explaining why helium balloons float. In 1654
Otto von Guericke took two large hollow metal hemispheres and put
them together, creating of them a single hollow sphere weighing a
total of 8.32 tons. Then he supposedly pumped the air out of the
resulting sphere. In spite the metal weighing 8.32 tons the
combination floated away. It later developed a leak and fell from
the sky, nearly killing a dairy cow. It has now been discovered
that von Guericke intended the stunt to be no more than a prank.
von Guericke was remembered as having a wild sense of humor. The
heavy sphere was actually operated by a dwarf. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The V-1 and V-2 (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In high school I was really thrilled by space and science fiction.
Naturally the interest spread to rockets and even to missiles. My
imagination had V-1s putt-putting through the sky and V-2s which
flew so fast you heard them making sound backwards.
That made me interested in accounts of World War II. That
combination brought me around to being fascinated with the V-1 and
V-2, flying bombs. Late in the war the Germans had these two
missiles, which had little to do with each other except that they
both flew to targets a relatively long distance away. Their real
names were the F26 and the A-4 respectively. And their respective
propaganda names were the V-1 and the V-2.
I was a fan of pictures the two German vengeance weapons which I
thought looked much like what spaceships might look like. They
were airborne forerunners of the rockets that would help mankind to
step into space. The question never came up if there was not
something funny about this little Jewish kid who was fascinated
with German secret weaponry.
The V-1 you heard putt-putting as they were approaching. If the
sound went silent you knew the engine had cut off and the bomb was
about to strike. The V-2 did funny things like reverse sound. As
they approached they were silent and you heard their sound only
after they detonated.
I thought the V-1's design with an elevated ramjet engine was a
perfect example of this new 1950s' slang word: "cool." The two
flying weapons were a real threat to the allies in the late days of
the war. The British and Americans worked jointly to fight back
against the production and use of these long-range rocket weapons.
In 1965, inspired by the then popular wave of spy films as much as
by actual history of the military operation Michael Anderson
directed OPERATION CROSSBOW a film that tells the story of the
Allied effort to destroy the German rocket program. The film
begins with an introduction to Hanna Reich, the hero of the German
rocket program. She was a German aeronautic engineer who risked
near certain death riding on a V-1 to debug the V-1 flying bomb.
The British and the Yanks put together a team of operatives to
destroy the rocket production facilities. That operation was
codenamed Crossbow, Operation Crossbow. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE DEAD DON'T DIE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The Dead are yet once again back from themselves when the
Earth pitches a little off its axis and in zombie movie scientific
logic this causes the Dead to return to life in a rural central US
town. Seeing this all happen around them two cop car police
(played by Bill Murray and Adam Driver) are trying to maintain
peace while Driver pessimistically reminds Murray that any
situation looks like it will end badly. Jim Jarmusch writes and
directs. Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
This was probably more fun to make than it to was watch.
The so-called "zombie" sub-genre of horror film has become firmly
entrenched in the national consciousness since George Romero booted
it up in 1968 with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. So many zombie films
have been made in that the fund of potential ideas has been
depleted and now satiric send-ups of the zombie films are much more
numerous enough to constitute their own sub-genre. Comedic zombie
films almost certainly outnumber the serious ones. Part of the
reason is that a zombie film costs a pittance to produce one. It
takes very little resource to make a zombie film. You need some
old clothing and some stage makeup. After that small investment
all you need is the camera and a makeup artist. It is a very low
starting investment.
It is probably impossible to copyright invented zombie lore so we
see ideas freely flow from one film to another. For example, in
DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) the Dead continue to desire the same
merchandise they wanted in life. That idea has rarely reappeared
in the interim, but the same idea returns in THE DEAD DON'T DIE.
There are a few high-profile cameo parts so the viewer can call out
when he recognizes someone like a Danny Glover or Steve Buscemi.
For the most part the cameo segments do very little to tell or
advance the story. The story can be presented cheaply and filmed
in a party atmosphere.
I rate THE DEAD DON'T DIE a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.
Film Credits:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8695030/reference
What others are saying:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dead_dont_die_2019
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE FALL by Tracy Townsend (copyright 2019, Pyr, $18.00,
trade paperback, 464pp, ISBN 978-1-63388-498-4) (book review by Joe
Karpierz)
Uh oh. Stuff just got real.
Okay, I'm being cryptic and I guess jumping ahead a little bit.
THE FALL is the sequel to THE NINE, the first book in the "Thieves
of Fate" series and the debut novel from Tracy Townsend, which I
reviewed back in May of 2018. If THE NINE is the appetizer, then
THE FALL is the main course, and it is indeed sumptuous. In my
opinion it certainly doesn't suffer from "second book in the
trilogy" syndrome. Indeed, it takes what was presented in THE NINE
an builds upon it, expands upon it, and then turns things upside
down. It answers a great deal of questions from the first book,
but raises a whole bunch more.
Rowena Downshire is no longer a black market courier. Now she's a
clerk in the Alchemist's apothecary shop, the Stone Scales. The
Alchemist, Anselm Meteron (also from THE NINE), and Rowena are once
again together in an adventure, but this one much more interesting
and dangerous. The Alchemist and Anselm are presented with an
offer to go to the Grand Library in Nippon and meet with Philip
Chalmers, one of the characters that started the whole thing to
begin with back in THE NINE. Rowena goes along, of course, as a
member of the team assigned to the task. But the task turns into
so much more as Rowena discovers a computing machine called the
Aggregator, which is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
the reveals that THE FALL gives us.
There are a *lot* of things going on here as Townsend delves more
deeply into the world of these books. We find out more about
Rowena's mother, who has the ability to see into the future (which
is probably the easiest way to describe it). We get what amounts
to an infodump, but a welcome one, that tells the reader the
background and genesis of how religion and science were melded into
one. We learn a whole lot more about the aigamuxa, and discover
that they're not all bad, and in fact once we see the world through
their eyes, we might just become a little sympathetic to them.
Oh yeah, we learn a whole lot more about the Grand Experiment, in
which God the Scientist will be deciding the fate of the human race
based on what he (or she, I suppose) learns about the Nine
creatures being written about in the book that was causing so much
trouble in THE NINE. Well, one of the books anyway. And once we
find out that not all the Nine are humans, well, that takes the
story in a whole different direction. Who doesn't like a little
war now and again, a war in which all of humanity will be
destroyed, and not by that God Scientist fellow? And oh yes, what
does Anselm's father have to do with the entire thing? It
certainly doesn't seem to be anything very good.
Townsend really fills out the world in THE FALL. The novel takes
on a very steampunk feel as Nippon, as well as the Grand Library,
are populated by mechanical creatures, and there are all sorts of
flying contraptions that makes the reader feel as if they've landed
somewhere in the middle of a Girl Genius storyline. The characters
seem fuller and richer at the end of this book. Rowena has become
someone who is a force to be reckoned with, and I cared what was
happening to her at the end.
Townsend left all her main characters in a very deep pickle. There
was a lot going on in THE FALL, but there looks to be a whole lot
more going on in the third and (I presume) the last book of the
series. There aren't many books these days that keep me in the
dark or leave me with the feeling that I don't know where the story
is going. This is one of them, and I look forward to the next
book.
As I write this, I have the book in front of me. My goodness is
the cover art gorgeous. Adam S. Doyle's cover is outstanding, and
something that in the old days would make me pick up the book and
look at it if I ran across it in a book store. Really, THE FALL is
the entire package. Let's hope the final book lives up to the
first two. I think it will. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Private Rocketry (letter of comment by Jim Susky)
In response to comments on private rocketry, Jim Susky writes:
In case you are interested you might look for updates on SpaceX.
"What about it", on YouTube, claims to post two-per-week updates--
others have been closely following SpaceX as well.
The word "amazing" is so-often used for the ordinary and mundane
these days, that it's almost meaningless--but to witness SpaceX's
various first stage Falcon 9 boosters "land on their feet" is
amazing in its un-diminished sense.
So far, SpaceX has placed a number of satellites in orbit and
several times resupplied the ISS. If all goes well, they will
retrieve ISS astronauts in Q1/2020.
Currently SpaceX is testing, in the same careful, incremental,
fashion as Falcon 9, a much larger booster, said to have roughly
double the thrust of the Saturn V. A seeming difference is that
the SpaceX increments are accomplished with mere weeks between
tests--compared with months for Apollo.
The biggest difference, however, is the cost/launch and
cost/payload-mass--which is approaching a small fraction of the
cost using "throwaway" boosters. [-js]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
A bunch of short takes this week:
A RUSSIAN JOURNAL by John Steinbeck (Penguin, ISBN 978-0-141-18019-
9) is an account of his travels in the Soviet Union in the first
years after World War II. Not surprisingly, Steinbeck concentrated
on the common people, who end up seeming not all that different
from the sort of people he has written about in the United States.
DIAMONDS IN THE SKY edited by Mike Brotherton (CreateSpace, ISBN
978-1-978-23392-8) is an anthology of "fact-based" space science
fiction (it was funded by the NSF). It reads like the sort of
science fiction one would have found in the 1950s, and may have
been intended as a young adult book. The e-book is available free
online.
THE DEPARTMENT OF SENSITIVE CRIMES by Alexander McCall Smith
(Pantheon, ISBN 978-1-984-84738-6) is probably intended to be the
first of a new detective series by him. Set in Sweden, the book
seemed to have a lot of puns that work in English, but would not
work in Swedish. I have never really warmed to any of McCall
Smith's books other than the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency"
series.
WASTE TIDE by Chen Quifan (translated by Ken Liu) (Tor, ISBN 978-0-
765-38931-2) takes place in the near future on Giuyu Island in
China dedicated to recycling materials from electronic waste. The
island sounds like a horrific dystopia; the fact is that Guiyu is a
real place now. (A few years ago it was the largest e-waste
recycling site in the world.) WASTE TIDE is definitely a novel in
the category of "if this goes on." [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my
glass.
--David Lee Roth