Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/03/20 -- Vol. 38, No. 27, Whole Number 2100
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, *mleeper@optonline.net *
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, *eleeper@optonline.net *
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Topics:
MT VOID Emails: The Saga Continues (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Mini Reviews, Part 3 (BUDDY, THE SERENGETI RULES, BRITTANY
RUNS A MARATHON) (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper)
SEA CHANGE by Nancy Kress (book review by Joe Karpierz)
Christmas Movies and Other Entertainments (letter of comment
by Gary Labowitz)
This Week's Reading (THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL
OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: MT VOID Emails: The Saga Continues (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
A couple of people have sent comments.
Gary Labowitz said regarding multiple emails, "Gee ... I just used
my magic "Delete" key and those extra emails were GHONE. (That's
fannish for ... well, you know.)" [-gl]
John Purcell wrote, "Many thanks for explaining what happened with
the multiple copies of MT VOID appearing in my mailbox last Friday.
The second two came with a spam warning, in case you're interested,
but Evelyn's explanation clarified reasons for the mess. I am in
another listserv that was through Yahoo Groups, and the
administrators of that listserv gave members a few weeks notice to
back things up just in case folks wanted to save information or
prior messages. In any case, glad to have VOID still coming on its
weekly schedule." [-jp]
Evelyn notes:
Since this group had no postings or files except the MT VOIDs,
which are archived both at fanac.org and eFanzines.com
Art Stadlin first asked, "Did you change something? The font is
not so easy to read like it was previously. Just wondering, and
then wrote:
"OK, I just read your intro. This issue did not process via Yahoo.
I guess GMAIL sends it out as fixed-width font in HTML mode...
I suppose of GMAIL will send in HTML, you might as well select an
easier font to read. :-)
Or maybe there is a setting in GMAIL to convert your issue to plain
text before sending?
The joys of list ownership. :-) [-as]
Evelyn responds:
I send it plain-text (it's a '.txt' file, so it can't really be
anything else). When I receive it, both on Gmail and in
Thunderbird, I see it as plain text. When Mark reads it in Opera,
he sees it as plain text. Is anyone else seeing unreadable
formatting, and if so, how are you reading it? [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 3 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper)
More mini-reviews, this time two documentaries and one narrative
film:
BUDDY is a feature-length documentary study of working dogs and
their relation ship with humans. Having a special love of dogs I
would have expected this to be one of the best films of the batch,
but the chapters are long and slow. One comes away at once feeling
affection for the dogs but finding the text of little interest
value. In Dutch with English subtitles. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).
THE SERENGETI RULES looks at a new paradigm for seeing the
interactions of species in nature. Previously it was thought that
human influence had overpowers nature and too often was killing the
order of nature. It is now thought that in some ways nature wins
out. An action in the eco-system damage may damage the entire
system and that change may stimulate a new predator may come to
power. The eco-system may then reach a new stable environment. A
simple collection of rules may govern population sizes. Some
animals are very important to govern the eco-system while others
may not be. The species on which the population sizes most depend
are called keystone species. Importance to the ecosystem is not
the same thing as physical strength. A simple herbivore may be
controlling the system. The documentary is based on the work of
Sean B Carroll. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4).
BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON: This story is a little overly familiar.
They say that it is based on a true story, and I don't doubt it.
The basic story is simple enough that it had to happen before just
by the Law of Averages. Brittany at age 27 wakes up to the fact
she is not taking care of her body nor her mind. She is not strong
enough to fully run a Marathon, but just shaping up the effort is
enough to put her life in order. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4).
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SEA CHANGE by Nancy Kress (copyright 2020, Tachyon
Publications, print ISBN: 978-1-61696-331-6, digital ISBN: 978-1-
61696-332-3) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
SEA CHANGE is something a little different, yet much the same and
familiar, from Nancy Kress. The new novella, in addition to being
smart science fiction is also something of a thriller. It also
heavily relates to our times and our society, and gives the reader
a scary look into what could be in store for not only our nation
but the world in the very near future.
The subject is GMO crops. Carol Denton is an agent in the Org, a
group of clandestine scientists organized into cells - you know the
drill: cells are small, and no one knows where any other cell is,
and who are the members of those cells, so that if one member is
caught the entire organization doesn't fall--that is trying to
convince the world that GMO crops are not only okay, but are
necessary and essential if the world's population is to be
sufficiently fed.
The issue is something called the Catastrophe, an event brought on
by a genetically engineered drug caused the deaths of hundreds of
children, which caused an economic collapse and all the rest of the
things you might expect. The end result was that GMO crops were
banned, and that trying to produce genetically engineered food was
considered a crime. Carol has a personal interest in the situation
in that Renata Black--Carol's real name--had her son die in the
Catastrophe.
The story starts with Carol encounters a self-driving house (heck,
we're still only working on self-driving cars) that is out of
control and causing traffic problems. Carol recognizes a
particular colored marker on the house that indicates that it
belongs to the Org. She goes in to take a look, finds something
unusual (come on, it's not every day your normal self driving house
is out and about causing issues), and the story begins. From there
we move on to political intrigue, romance, deception, and betrayal.
But the story is not just all about that stuff. In typical Nancy
Kress style, we learn about GMOs because of her expertise in
biological sciences. The infodumps, such as they are, really
aren't. They're snuck into the narrative in such a way that the
reader may not realize they are being educated about a subject that
is import now, not just in the time of the story. Kress also weaves
family concerns into the story as she normally does (see her recent
Yesterday's Kin novels). So even though the trappings are not of a
typical Nancy Kress story, it really is a typical Nancy Kress
story. As usual, it's also well and smartly written in a style
that makes it easy for the reader to get involved without that
sense of being talked down to.
If I had to pick a nit about something, I would say that at novella
length, the story is too short. It seems to me that there is a
whole lot more there that can be expounded upon. The story is
good. I expect that it could be a whole lot better if it was novel
length. It would not surprise me if Kress was planning on
expanding the novella into at least a novel, if not a trilogy, much
like the "Yesterday's Kin" trilogy. The subject of GMO crops needs
more room to breathe, and the public needs to know more about them.
SEA CHANGE is a really good start. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Christmas Movies and Other Entertainments (letter of comment
by Gary Labowitz)
In response to Mark's comments on Christmas movies in the 11/30/19
issue of the MT VOID, Gary Labowitz writes:
Thanks, Mark, for keeping me on your list. I enjoy the reviews,
but wonder how you guys read and see so many things! I hardly have
time to see a short new TV series now and then. I want to do more,
but there just isn't that much time to sit down and read anymore.
I usually like the first version of a film that I saw. I still
prefer the Sims version of Christmas Carol, and the earlier Jekyll
and Hydes. I can't stand most of them, not even liking the Spencer
Tracy (1941), preferring the Fredric March (1931). I saw them both
as a youngster, and they both stuck in my head, but I think I saw
the March version first. So.
The books I tend to like the most are ones with well-done
illustrations, and that's what mostly stays with me. Unfortunately
most of my books are gone by the way now and I miss them, but never
get around to rereading the longer ones, like Moby Dick and most of
the Dickens work. One summer when I was still in college, at the
suggestion of a teacher, I started through all the Dickens novels,
and got fairly into the pile, but never made it through. I think
I've started Middlemarch about three times, and never finished it!
Perhaps you could recommend a movie version for me. I see it is
all over TV, but remember ... the first one I see is what I
usually like the best. So make it good.
Other than this miserable ending of my reading/acting/watching life
my wife and I do go to a lot of theater here in Philadelphia, but I
grow tired of their trying to "pep them up" with current settings
and agenda filled preachy stuff. We have dropped most of our
subscriptions and try to select our outings to specific shows we
expect to "follow the script." It's starting to get hopeless, with
several shows we have walked out of in mid-play. We went to see
"Chicago" a favorite musical of mine, and left during the first
intermission when the cast came through the audience preaching
about their political preferences (anti-Trump, of course; they are
SO daring), and plopping down on audience members laps to get up
close and personal. Such crap from a major venue (The Arden) and a
waste of our time. I was afraid of what we might hear when we went
to a concert last month, which had a "sub title" of "New
Beethoven," I was afraid they would be adding banging on trash can
lids, and the like, for a new sound for an old favorite (the violin
concerto) but it turned out okay. They just played Beethoven and
it was swell.
My history with the concerto goes back to when I was on the radio
in Kansas City, running the weekend Evening Classics program. I
had a horrible headache and fell asleep during the first side of
the transcription (we did disks in those days) and broadcast seven
minutes of "dead air" with the inner lead out grooves playing! A
phone call to the studio woke me up, and I hit the start of the
second disk immediately, shut off the studio speaker, and answered
the ;phone. There was no one there. I found out years later that
it was my wife calling to ask what was going on, and when she heard
the music resuming, she hung up. That was when I was at KCUR-FM
when we first revived it. We were the second NPR station in
Missouri (St. Louis being first), and I was a young announcer,
technician, station electrician, librarian, etc. at the "new
station." All alone on a Friday evening, running the station, and
sleeping. Bad scene.
Anyway, it's been a long trip getting to 81 and sitting around
wishing I had read more books through the years and had left all
that science fiction stuff alone. It ate up a lot of time over the
years. I hardly touch it any more in any form.
Thanks again, and I hope to read some of the books you have
recommended ... but I'm not sure I will get around to them. I'm
busy mostly trying to get an Etsy site up to speed selling some of
my calligraphy. I may not succeed at this attempt, however. Same
issue: not enough time. [-gl]
Mark responds:
I am glad you are finding the MT VOID useful. I have to credit
Evelyn with doing the vast majority of the reading. She is a
powerhouse reader and one of the most intelligent people I have
ever met. Of course that is my biased opinion.
I have to tell you that the Fredric March Jekyll and Hyde and the
Sim Christmas Carol are very widely considered to be the best
versions. Tracy had to be forced to do Jekyll and Hyde and hated
the film. -mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Final comments on THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN
EMPIRE by Edward Gibbon (Penguin, ISBN 978-0-307-70076-6), from
Book III (I read only through the fall of the Western Empire this
time):
"A people, who still remembered that their ancestors had been the
masters of the world, would have applauded, with conscious pride,
the representation of ancient freedom; if they had not since been
accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the
unsubstantial visions of liberty and greatness."
E: Some things have not changed all that much, although they may
not be assured of bread, but of security, or (presumed) greatness.
"The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often
assume the appearance, and produce the effects, of a treasonable
correspondence with the public enemy."
E: In other words, never attribute to malice what can be explained
by stupidity.
"But when the prodigal commons had not only imprudently alienated
the use, but the inheritance of power, they sunk, under the reign
of the Caesars, into a vile and wretched populace, which must, in a
few generations, have been totally extinguished, if it had not been
continually recruited by the manumission of slaves, and the influx
of strangers."
E: I am not sure I agree with the argument that a population will
just disappear with slaves and voluntary immigrants, which seems to
be what Gibbon is saying.
"... at length consented to raise the siege, on the immediate
payment of five thousand pounds of gold, of thirty thousand pounds
of silver, of four thousand robes of silk, of three thousand pieces
of fine scarlet cloth, and of three thousand pounds weight of
pepper."
E: Apparently pepper was in some sense almost as valuable as gold
back then. (This is, of course, black pepper, since chile peppers
were unknown in the Old World at that time.)
"Such extravagant promises inspired every reasonable citizen with a
just contempt for the character of an unwarlike usurper, whose
elevation was the deepest and most ignominious wound which the
republic had yet sustained from the insolence of the Barbarians."
E: Of course, in our time extravagant campaign promises would never
get an "unwarlike" candidate elected...
"But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the
burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible
source of discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed, that the
restoration of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction.
The preeminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently
violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles, who
complained that they were become the subjects of their own
servants, would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary
monarch."
E: In other words, the nobility did not like being controlled by
those "above" them, but felt they had the right o control those
"below" them.
"Eutropius was the first of his artificial sex, who dared to assume
the character of a Roman magistrate and general. ... The subjects
of Arcadius were exasperated by the recollection, that this
deformed and decrepit eunuch, who so perversely mimicked the
actions of a man, was born in the most abject condition of
servitude; that before he entered the Imperial palace, he had been
successively sold and purchased by a hundred masters, who had
exhausted his youthful strength in every mean and infamous office,
and at length dismissed him, in his old age, to freedom and
poverty. ... This strange and inexpiable prodigy awakened ... the
prejudices of the Romans. The effeminate consul was rejected by
the West, as an indelible stain to the annals of the republic; and
without invoking the shades of Brutus and Camillus, the colleague
of Eutropius, a learned and respectable magistrate, sufficiently
represented the different maxims of the two administrations."
E: Apparently Gibbon shared the Roman attitudes towards eunuchs.
"But the whole body of Imperial dependants claimed a privilege, or
rather impunity, which screened them, in the loosest moments of
their lives, from the hasty, perhaps the justifiable, resentment of
their fellow-citizens; and, by a strange perversion of the laws,
the same degree of guilt and punishment was applied to a private
quarrel, and to a deliberate conspiracy against the emperor and the
empire."
E: In other words, the people in power started claiming that
personal insults wre not just insults, but treason.
"But if the interval between two memorable aeras could be instantly
annihilated; if it were possible, after a momentary slumber of two
hundred years, to display the new world to the eyes of a spectator,
who still retained a lively and recent impression of the old, his
surprise and his reflections would furnish the pleasing subject of
a philosophical romance."
E: And so time travel was invented.
"... it may be observed that the monarchies, both of the Huns and
of the Moguls, were erected by their founders on the basis of
popular superstition. The miraculous conception, which fraud and
credulity ascribed to the virgin-mother of Zingis, raised him above
the level of human nature; and the naked prophet, who in the name
of the Deity invested him with the empire of the earth, pointed the
valor of the Moguls with irresistible enthusiasm."
E: It is interesting that to Gibbon a virgin mother among the
Mongols is a popular superstition, while he presumbly would never
call the belief in the Virgin Mary "a popular superstition." After
all, he accepts the darkness across the earth during the
Crucifixion as fact even though historians never mention it.
"This reflection naturally produced a dispute on the advantages and
defects of the Roman government, which was severely arraigned by
the apostate, and defended by Priscus in a prolix and feeble
declamation. The freedman of Onegesius exposed, in true and lively
colors, the vices of a declining empire, of which he had so long
been the victim; the cruel absurdity of the Roman princes, unable
to protect their subjects against the public enemy, unwilling to
trust them with arms for their own defence; the intolerable weight
of taxes, rendered still more oppressive by the intricate or
arbitrary modes of collection; the obscurity of numerous and
contradictory laws; the tedious and expensive forms of judicial
proceedings; the partial administration of justice; and the
universal corruption, which increased the influence of the rich,
and aggravated the misfortunes of the poor. A sentiment of
patriotic sympathy was at length revived in the breast of the
fortunate exile; and he lamented, with a flood of tears, the guilt
or weakness of those magistrates who had perverted the wisest and
most salutary institutions."
E: And this sums up Gibbon's view of the causes of the fall of
the Western empire.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
*mleeper@optonline.net *
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should
be thrown with great force.
--Dorothy Parker