THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/08/12 -- Vol. 30, No. 50, Whole Number 1705
Jay Gatsby: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Daisy Buchanan: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
The Law of Homogenous Series (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
My Minority Opinion of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Cataloging One's Books (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
EXTRATERRESTRIAL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
DEADLINE by Mira Grant (book review by Joe Karpierz)
This Week's Reading (BRANDWASHED and "Fidelity")
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Law of Homogenous Series (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I saw a trailer for PROMETHEUS, the prequel to ALIEN, and it looked
a lot to me like an ALIEN sort of film. Thinking about it though I
guess that that is pretty much what it would have to be. I mean if
Ridley Scott is going make a prequel to ALIEN, it will not be a
romantic comedy set in space a mining colony. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: My Minority Opinion of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
When I was young I would watch the TV show "The Adventures of Robin
Hood", a weekly British TV show starring Richard Greene as Robin.
I was fairly fond of it, so it was with some trepidation that I
watched some of the programs recently. I was pleasantly surprised
that except for the over-use of minstrel songs the production
values were quite high. (Incidentally, the use of minstrel music
is easily forgivable since most of the story of Robin Hood evolved
in songs of minstrels going back to the time of Robin Hood.
Minstrel songs arguably are inextricably linked with Robin Hood.)
Recently when Turner Classic Movies had a twelve-hour spate of
Robin Hood movies, I wrote that I do not recommend any of the films
as being particularly good in itself, but they were interesting as
a bunch. One of my readers thought I was not being entirely fair
to the 1938 film THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (the one starring
Errol Flynn). I admitted that it gets almost universally high
ratings so it is one of the (many) films for which I have a
minority viewpoint. And I can imagine that in Depression days it
might have been a real spirit raiser. I don't even mind some
anachronism. That practice goes back at least as far as Mallory's
MORTE D' ARTHUR or even THE ILIAD.
But going back to the original minstrel songs ROBIN HOOD has been
sort of a dark story. The tale of Robin and his outlaws was sort
of a glimmer of hope in what was in part a very troubled time. And
even if it were not so troubled, the story of Robin would be.
Somehow the 1938 film is just too merry to be Robin Hood. We see in
the film it is full of men with boisterous high spirits, acrobatics
with horses, Una O'Connor (a personal distaste of mine--though she
is more restrained here than James Whale would have had her be),
fat jokes at Friar Tuck's expense, Tarzan vine swings in a northern
forest, Robin Hood's forest banquet with huge volumes of food just
a minute's walk from starving peasants not invited to join in, deep
belly laughs from the likes of Alan Hale, Errol Flynn athletic
stunts that never muss his long, naturally wavy hair, and Maid
Marion with perfect 20th century makeup. The clothing is in bright
colors to fully exercise the Technicolor but with no period feel. I
love it that King Richard and his entourage say they are trying not
to attract attention and each is wearing a different-colored neon-
bright cloak. Somehow everything is just a little more merry than
I like to think it was or would have been.
Then there is the scene of Robin's first confrontation when he is
sitting in the big wooden chair and is attacked. He tips the chair,
which has a spear right through it, backward so he has his back on
the floor at best no more than an inch from the spear point, but
his feet are off the floor and the seat of the chair is preventing
him from getting his feet down for support. I was curious how he
would get out of this highly vulnerable position. Probably the
fastest way is to roll the chair on its side and then get to his
feet. What does he do? We never find out. The camera cuts away
and when it comes back he is on his feet fighting. But it seems a
foolish tactical move.
I am not saying that if the film shows any joy in 12th century life
the filmmaker has gotten it wrong. People caught up in some of the
most ugly situations in history were able to keep their senses of
humor. But the feeling one gets from this film is that for Robin
and his men it is one long party of fun, lying in trees and
stealing an occasional purse. That is not a realistic view of the
period either. In fact the widespread misery is probably closer to
the truth.
Now I will admit that I accept this sort of antics from Douglas
Fairbanks who played Robin Hood as well as Zorro, the Thief of
Bagdad, and the Black Pirate all in similar lighthearted fashion,
but that was in silent film. Somehow for me silent film plays by
different rules. I don't remember seeing any other film with Robin
Hood as a character playing it so light and frivolous.
As a final note it is a little hard to see Richard the Lion-Heart
and realize it is the same man who Anthony Hopkins played in THE
LION IN WINTER. Somehow with playwright James Goldman's
description he did not come off quite so noble. I guess the film
just does not work for me. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Cataloging One's Books (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Back in 1971 or so, I gave Mark a Hanukkah present of a catalog of
his science fiction books. This was relatively easy--first I
alphabetized the books (which were being stored in my basement),
then I typed up an index card for each author listing all the books
by that author. At the time he had maybe 1500 books, so the pack
of cards was manageable.
Time passed. New acquisitions got additional lines on a card
(albeit now out of alphabetical order with other titles) or new
cards. What used to fit into one card box now took two, then
three. This was too much to carry conveniently, but about this
time we were able to transfer this to 80-column cards (manually
key-punched, of course), each with author, title, series number (if
any), and cost. These fields were fixed length--any author's name
with more than 28 characters was brutally truncated. Ditto for
titles that had more than 40 characters. The cards took up more
space, but one could generate printouts every few months and put
those in binder(s). This worked for another ten years, then we
were able to store the information in memory (which also let us
switch to upper- *and* lower-case). But the printouts were still
too unwieldy to carry to bookstores.
So we resorted to what I called the "Hebrew" method. I wrote a
program that removed from the catalog the series and cost
information, along with all spaces, all punctuation, all lower-case
vowels, and all "common" prepositions and articles. (That last one
played havoc with Alan Dean Foster's "Into the Out Of"!) So the
first few Poul Anderson entries looked something like:
AndrsnPl.AftrDmsdy.AllOnUnvrs.Avtr.BstPlAndrsn.ByndBynd
I then printed this in tiny font, four pages to a sheet, then
trimmed it to a pack about 2.5"x5"x1" thick. It was bizarre-
looking, but it was (usually) sufficient to check if we had a
particular book or not.
It was a glorious day when palmtops arrived. It finally became
possible to put the actual, original catalog on something portable
that we carried around all the time.
Of course, right about this time we started having different
problems in cataloging. Up until now, the question was pretty much
whether a book was hardback, trade paperback, or mass-market
paperback, and these were easily indicated by a special character
for each. (We will omit for now Galaxy Magabooks and Ace Doubles,
the bane of every catalogers existence.) But when electronics got
common, things got complicated.
Currently we have books in hardback, trade paperback, mass-market
paperback, 3.5" diskette, CD-ROM, and on disk, as well as
audiobooks on cassette, CD, CD-ROM, and MP3 on hard disk. The
books in electronic form are variously in .txt, .doc, .rtf, .pdf,
.epub, .mobi, and who knows what else. Even more complicated,
every once in a while, various items on disk are transferred to
external hard drives or CD-ROMs to free up space, so we have to
keep track of where everything currently is.
Arggh!
And Mark just got a Kindle. This is not going to simplify our
lives, at least in terms of cataloging. We don't just want to know
if we own a book, we want to know where it is, and whether it's
paper, audio, or electronic. If it's audio, we need to know the
format--an MP3 is easy to take on a vacation, a cassette not as
much. If it's electronic, is it on the computer hard drive, or an
external hard drive, or a CD-ROM, or the Kindle?
Double arggh!
I expect things will get more complicated. What about electronic
books stored "in the cloud"? E.g., if we buy a book from Amazon
and do not currently have it on a device we own, but stored in our
account there, how does one catalog it, and is that different from
having access to books in Project Gutenberg? (Well, it must be
different, because I am not going to add all of Project Gutenberg
to our catalog!) [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: EXTRATERRESTRIAL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: EXTRATERRESTRIAL is an amiable romantic comedy with a
science fiction premise. Nacho Vigalondo follows up his TIMECRIMES
(LOS CRONOCRIMENES) with a lighter touch, neither as taxing nor as
rewarding as his previous film. Waking up with a hangover, Julian
Villagran as Julio realizes he does not know the woman he has been
sleeping with. He also slept through the coming of a giant alien
spaceship hovering over his city. The film is done on a small
budget with minimal special effects and not even much action. The
Spanish film is amusing, but Vigalondo will have a hard time
surpassing TIMECRIMES, and he is not near to doing that here. Fans
of romantic comedy may better appreciate EXTRATERRESTRIAL than will
science fiction aficionados. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Nacho Vigalondo's first feature film to both write and direct was
the Spanish film TIMECRIMES, a clever time travel film with
complexities to rival the time travel paradox stories of Robert
Heinlein and David Gerrold. The good news is that Vigalondo's
second full-length film that he writes and directs is another
science fiction film. The bad news is that EXTRATERRESTRIAL really
does not rank with TIMECRIMES. This is a story whose plot is
occasionally driven by the science fiction (one idea really), but
it is not about that idea. And no twists are presented as
intelligently or as engrossingly as they were is his previous film.
Yes, it is good that it is a human comedy, not unlike what we might
get from Pedro Almadovar, but there are many of those. This is not
nearly the intriguing puzzle for the intellect that TIMECRIMES was.
That was where his work stood out as being really individual.
Vigalondo is not playing to strengths that made his first film
strong.
One would expect that if the world as we know it were to come to an
end, most of us would be aware of the fact. But Julia (played by
Michelle Jenner) and Julio (Julian Villagran) had been partying the
night before and apparently had come to Julia's apartment to cap
off the evening in bed together. Neither of them really remembers
each other, but they know they must have hit it off. Now they
awake to be nearly alone in their city. There is nobody in the
street below the window. And above them is a silent hovering
spacecraft the size of a city. It is like something out of
DISTRICT 9 or INDEPENDENCE DAY. What are the intentions of the
aliens? Will they be hostile? If so what will be their strategy?
What can Earth people expect?
Now this should be enough to worry about, but then Carlos (Raul
Cimas) shows up to protect Julia. Carlos has been Julia's on-
again-off-again lover for years. He seems oddly willing to accept
the story that Julia just invited Julio to her apartment when she
saw him collapsed in the street. Then Angel (Miguel Noguera) who
lives next door also arrives and tries to play off Carlos and Julio
against each other in the hopes that he will get a chance with
Julia. The three men vie for Julia's intentions, semi-oblivious to
the mass invasion of alien ships--thirty over Spain alone. But the
alien presence hangs over everything they do literally as well as
figuratively. Eventually current events begin to take their toll
on the proceedings.
For much of the film, EXTRATERRESTRIAL seems a mash-up of ideas
from stories from Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" mixed with romantic
comedy. Vigalondo knows how to get the most from a Euro when he is
making a film. He has no big effects budget, but he can tell a
science fiction story without using expensive visual effects.
ESTRATERRESTRIAL is not really about the science fiction content.
The premise only drives the playful comedy aspects. There is
sexuality in the story, but nothing that is explicit or gross the
way an American film might be now. It is a film written for an
adult audience that does not pander to an "adult" audience. I rate
EXTRATERRESTRIAL a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1680133/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/extraterrestrial_2012/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: DEADLINE by Mira Grant (copyright 2011, Orbit, $9.99, 608pp,
ISBN 978-0-316-08106-1) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
You know, this could become a lovely habit. What's that, you ask?
Well, this is the second year in a row that I've actually been
enjoying reading the Hugo-nominated novels. As I've stated many
times in the past, a lot of the nominees are not books that I would
normally read, but every once in a while I get surprised. Last
year's FEED, the predecessor to DEADLINE, was one of those that
surprised me enough that I wanted to read DEADLINE whether or not
it was nominated this year. So, I happily swiped it back from my
daughter when she got back from college and jumped right in.
The story begins not long after the end of FEED. Shaun Mason,
brother of the deceased Georgia Mason - who if you remember ended
up being shot by Shaun as she turned into a zombie after she was
targeted by Governor Tate and his cronies - is now the nominal
leader of the newsblogging site "After the End Times". It is a
position he does not want. He is still devastated not only by the
death of his sister, but by the fact that he is the one that pulled
the trigger to put her out of her misery. To make matters worse,
"George" still talks to Shaun in his head. Shaun, and the rest of
his staff, has come to terms with this issue, but it is
particularly unclear whether Shaun is crazy or there is something
else going on here.
Shaun was an Irwin - one of those folks that goes out into the
field picking on zombies, riling them up for fun, ratings, and
profit. Shaun doesn't do that any more--the loss of his sister has
taken the zest away. But then things change, and that's when the
story gets rolling.
Dr. Kelly Connolly, a researcher from the Memphis office of the
Centers for Disease Control, has come to his office in Oakland to
see Shaun and the team. She faked her own death at the CDC with
the aid of clone to bring the team data regarding the Kellis-
Amberlee virus that points to some very interesting and disturbing
trends. The data dealt with what is known as a "reservoir
condition", a condition in which a person has an obvious case of
the virus and should have amplified, but did not. George was one
of those, as the reservoir of the virus was around her eyes. It
seems that certain researchers were looking at the data and coming
to very uncomfortable conclusions. Those researchers were either
leaving the CDC or, mostly, dying. Kelly faked her own death to
get out of the CDC with the data so that the information could be
studied and verified.
And what the data revealed was something very frightening indeed.
What was worse was that at about the time the team was reviewing
that data, a zombie outbreak occurs in Oakland, right in the area
of the office of After the End Times. The team barely gets out in
time, but the cost is one member of their team. Thus begins a mad
dash around the country that results in the team discovering that
there is a very large and widespread conspiracy in the works
regarding the virus. It's not exactly clear how big it is, but
suffice it to say that the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.
This is *very clearly* the second book in a trilogy--you'd be able
to tell even if you didn't know that it was. The book advances the
story along, but really never definitively settles anything at all.
And that's my only knock against the book, and yet, it may be what
makes it strong. FEED ended with the reader having a face to point
at for the bad guy. While the reader never really knew who was
behind it all, at least there was *someone*. With DEADLINE, there
isn't - not at all. We're just left with this feeling that things
are going to get much much worse before they get better. And as in
FEED, Grant leaves us with a bit of a shocker at the end. And
that's all I'm going to say about that.
This is a good book. Once again, I don't think it's going to win
the Hugo, but it's a worthy entry on the shortlist. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
BRANDWASHED by Martin Lindstrom (ISBN 978-0-385-53173-3) is an
updating of Vance Packard's THE HIDDEN PERSUADERS. But to some
extent Lindstrom has made his job difficult by being unclear about
what he is criticizing. If indeed it is the use of brands, then he
has interpreted this so widely as to made the term meaningless.
"I decided that I would not buy any new brands for one solid year
[but] I would allow myself to continue to use the possessions I
already owned.... Under the terms of my detox, I wasn't even
allowed to buy a book, a magazine, or a newspaper (yes, I think of
all these as brands that tell the world who you are or, in some
cases, would like to be perceived as being), and let me tell you,
those fourteen-hour transatlantic flights get pretty boring with
nothing to read."
Well, he seems to be saying that he didn't actually own any books
when this started. And while I understand that a publisher might
constitute a brand, I am not sure how a used copy of an old book
from a defunct publisher would count as a brand. Lindstrom allowed
himself to buy generic orange juice, or an apple, but those also
tell the world something about who he is or wants to be perceived
as being. Indeed, any choice does that.
(For that matter, has he never heard of public libraries? His
rules said he could not buy a book, but one does not buy books from
the library, just borrows them.)
And that apple he bought--was it a Granny Smith, or a Gala, or a
Fuji? Those are all brands in the sense that they were developed
to be marketed a certain way--as sweeter than others, or tarter, or
juicier, or *something* that distinguishes them. He wouldn't buy a
meal in a restaurant if it came with Adirondack tomatoes, but
apparently this did not extend to apples.
Lindstrom also claims that "jars and containers are deliberately
engineered so that when we unscrew [them] at home, we'll hear that
comforting "smack" sound, further reassurance that what we've
bought is fresh, clean, and safe--never mind that the smacking
sound was created and patented in a sound lab to manipulate us into
believing that the marmalade [his example] was flown in from
Edinburgh just this morning." He does not seem to know that the
sound comes from releasing the vacuum seal, or noticing that an
unopened jar of (say) spaghetti sauce can sit on the shelf for
months with no problem, but once opened (unsealed), will go bad
fairly quickly.
Certainly one of Lindstrom's more controversial claims is that one
of the tools companies use to sell their product is religion. The
example he gives is halal certification; he notes that a Muslim
told him that "to make up for his lack of devoutness he'd begun
buying more and more halal-certified brands". What these brands
are selling, Lindstrom says, is "purity, spirituality, faith,
virtue, and in some cases atonement". One can, I suppose, make
this argument, but what is interesting is his choice of halal
rather than kosher. In the United States, anyway, the notion of
"kosher" would be much more familiar to his readers, and one
wonders if Lindstrom thought it less likely to attract criticism if
he described halal certification as a marketing ploy than if he
applied that description to kosher certification. (It could also
be that kosher certification is much more widespread, so Lindstrom
may not consider it as distinguishing.)
For some reason I was recently reminded of a Greg Egan story,
"Fidelity". The premise is that there is a new procedure that will
freeze your emotions. Couples who are in love have the procedure
done to make sure they will always be in love. A woman wants to
have the procedure, but her husband is not as eager. He's just a
little bit uncertain about whether he is completely in love with
her. But she convinces him to do it, and when they leave after the
procedure, all he can think is, "It can't--it truly *can't*--get
better than this."
I thought of this story when I saw the film S1M0NE (about a
producer/director who produces a digital star for his next film).
As I said in my mini-review of S1M0NE, "Though he starts by wishing
that ... as a director could have complete creative control over
his films, there is a great scene when he realizes that this comes
with a price: he will never get less than he wants, but he can
never get more than he already has either."
I must admit I mis-remembered a couple of details of the Egan
story. For example, I thought it was in ANALOG, while it was in
ASIMOV'S. (I also did not remember the title or the author--thanks
are due to Joseph Nebus for answering my query on
rec.arts.sf.written.)
As for Egan's story being in ASIMOV'S rather than ANALOG, I think
that is an understandable error on my part. Egan is considered
one of the "diamond-hard" science fiction writers, yet according
to his bibliography page, he has had only one story appear in
ANALOG ("Beyond the Whistle Test", 1989) while he has had about
fifteen or sixteen in ASIMOV'S. Somehow it seems like it should
be vice versa. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Although we, the French, love the United States,
our respect and admiration are not based on
gastronomy nor on nutrition.
--Michel Montignac