THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/18/03 -- Vol. 22, No. 3
Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
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Topics:
The Unkindest Cut (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (ARCHANGEL PROTOCOL, FALLEN HOST,
MESSIAH NODE, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY
GENTLEMEN, "Dr. Ox's Experiment", AMERICAN
INDIAN VICTORIES) (book comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Unkindest Cut (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Don't expect any great thoughts this issue. These are the lazy
silly days of summer and it is time to take a little break. This
week the editorial is going to be a "beach read."
I recently came back from a trip in which I spent a lot of
evenings in hotel rooms and saw more commercials than I ever see
at home. At home most of what I watch is off VCRs and I fast-scan
the commercials. Fervently. When I travel I get to see a little
more of what the rest of the country is seeing. Nowadays the
commercials may be more interesting than the programming round
them.
I see that TV is now running ads for the new Gillette disposable
shaver. Every two years they come up with ads about how their old
shavers were junk. There have a scientific staff who is
researching the art of shaving and coming up with new shaving
systems that keep up with the latest advances. I picture a
laboratory with a bunch of lab rats. Each rat is covered with
white fur except for the muzzle. It has been shaved clean by some
scientist. I can picture a little pink chin sticking out and a
mouth as smooth as shammy. It is a face that I am sure every
female lab rat just wants to kiss. But till recent advances it
has not been possible to create such a rat. Now they have the
design right. Someone came up with the right idea. The new razor
plays music for a closer cleaner and more pleasant shave. No,
really do you know what they have done? They have added another
blade. I guess when they went from one to two blades they figured
that they had the problem licked. I remember the ads of the guys
with their mugs shaved clean as a bambino's posterior. Now years
later they realize it still didn't shave right after all. They
missed the concept but just a bit. It wasn't two blades it
needed--it was three. Three is the magic number. In another few
years they will boost sales by going to four. By the year 2023
they will be up to seven blades and shave cream and aftershave
pishers to give the close, comfortable shave that the 2017 six-
blade model just could never give the user. Now you know why I
grew a beard. If Gillette's razors get any more complicated I'm
switching to Occam's. "Occam's Razors for a clean, simple,
comforatable shave." They seem to respect simplicity. But an
extra blade gives that feeling that you are really doing something
for the shave. Whether it helps or not, it just feels better to
have that blade there. It is a placebo.
That brings me to the issue of placebos. Apparently medicine has
made great strides in what is called "placebo therapy." This, to
my mind, seems to be a positive advance. I was reading that a
major study found that neither Zoloft nor St. John's Wort was any
more effective than placebos in patients with major depression.
Now what worries me is that if they prove it is effective enough
the FDA is going to decide to regulate it to a much greater
extent than they do now. I expect that placebos will be
available then only by a doctor's prescription. I think we have
to protect our right to buy sugar pills over the counter and to
prescribe placebos for ourselves. For years I have been
prescribing placebos for myself. I particularly like the colored
ones with chocolate inside. I prescribe them for myself all the
time. (Oops. The back of my hand is itching. I think I better
go take some placebos.) We have to support our right to buy sugar
pills over the counter.
We could probably take this a lot further. I would like to bring
onto the market Placebocin, a simple mauve pill. It is guaranteed
to be totally "non-puissant," unlike those other drugs on the
market. I have already started on this project. I am waiting to
hear back from the SweeTarts Corporation to see if they want to
produce the pill. I think that if they don't want it I can go to
the people who make Altoids. I am not sure I want to make the
pills that strong, of course. I would like to get one of those
big ads in the newsmagazines where the pill looks good on one page
and then you have the back of the page with all the side effects
in tiny print. I think we can skip the tiny print since the only
side effect is probably obesity. And you would have to take a lot
of those pills for that. I guess we have to worry about
diabetics. Hey, now there's an idea. After a couple years we can
make a sugar-free Placebocin.
Now, how do we open up the market for veterinary placebos? [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This week's column will be somewhat short; I was at Readercon,
which manages to add a lot to my reading list, but doesn't give me
much time to read what currently on it.
Lyda Morehouse has a series of religious-based science
fiction/fantasy. Currently there are three, ARCHANGEL PROTOCOL,
FALLEN HOST, and MESSIAH NODE. They are supposedly specifically
respectively Christian-oriented, Muslim-oriented, and Jewish-
oriented, which makes me wonder what the fourth (last?) volume
will be. I say supposedly because I read only the first one and
part of the second before giving up--it just didn't seem to be
progressing very much. They are, as I noted, both science fiction
and fantasy. Fantasy, because there are angels and God and all
sorts of other religious beings. Science fiction, because there
are advanced computers and networking and futuristic bombs
(including one that has turned the entire Bronx into glass). And
there are also elements of the hard-boiled detective story. I
found the premises and milieu interesting, but feel it would have
been better if paced a bit faster.
I read Alan Moore's graphic novel THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY
GENTLEMEN in preparation for seeing the movie. Of course, because
of a combination of Readercon, reviews, and a frozen shoulder, I
haven't actually seen it yet, but I do recommend the book. I have
frequently found graphic novels confusing, with the art
incomprehensible enough at times (to me, anyway) to obscure
information needed to understand it, but that was not the case
here.
Jules Verne's "Dr. Ox's Experiment", published as a novel with
illustrations, is really only a novella, and a fairly predictable
one. There's some attempt at social satire and commentary, but
Verne is better at the "techie" stuff (in this case, a gas that
causes aggression), while Wells was the sociologist.
Dale R. Cozort's AMERICAN INDIAN VICTORIES (published by
Booklocker.com) is an odd book. It is not, strictly speaking,
alternate history, but rather a discussion of how the conquest and
colonization of the Americas went, and a discussion of a set of
historical changes with brief suggestions of possible results of
these changes. As alternate history it seems like taking the easy
way out--coming up with a list of ideas for stories without
actually writing the stories. But as history, this is perfectly
acceptable, and I would recommend this to people interested in the
historical aspects of that period. (By the way, this in general
is a period well before the "Indian Wars" of the 19th century, so
there are no alternate Custers et all here.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
What I give form to in daylight is only one
per cent of what I have seen in darkness.
-- M. C. Escher
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