THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/15/12 -- Vol. 30, No. 51, Whole Number 1706
John Adams: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Abigail Adams: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Question to Ponder (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Sad Discovery (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Does Santino Have an Attack Plan? (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
PROMETHEUS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
The Games of Thrones Trilogy by George R. R. Martin
(review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
PORTRAIT OF WALLY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Robin Hood (letter of comment by Sam Long)
This Week's Reading (OF MEN AND MONSTERS, THE JUNGLE BOOK,
AFTER THE FALL BEFORE THE FALL DURING THE FALL,
HOW TO DISAPPEAR, and book sales) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Question to Ponder (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
What if we hit the singularity and an hour later get an Electro-
magnetic Pulse? [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Sad Discovery (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I guess I am a sentimental sort of guy. I will be in a grocery
store and go all misty. I'll just see a can of tuna packed in
brine and think, "Yes, he would have wanted it that way." [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Does Santino Have an Attack Plan? (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
I often write here about animal behavior. I guess I feel the great
body of knowledge that we have collected about how animals think is
so tainted with human egotism and chauvinism that I take joy in
every example that shows that animals have much better minds than
they have been given credit for. They cannot defend themselves
from human condescension and arrogance. Humans assume they have
the full complement of senses. Friends look at me strangely if I
say I suggest that a dog may have a sixth sense that we do not
share. Nobody thinks twice if I say that we have a sense that a
cave lizard does not. We have the sense of sight and a cave lizard
does not. People may ask me what the sixth sense a dog might have
might be. How would I know? Try explaining what eyesight is to a
cave lizard or a person who has been blind from birth. It
certainly appears that at least some dogs have better memories than
humans. But somehow I cannot look at how a dog behaves and say
this mind is something totally alien or that he just a set of
conditioned responses. There is a mind there and it does not think
all that differently form how my mind thinks.
Three years ago there was a debate about Santino. He is an adult
male chimpanzee in the Furuvick Zoo in Gavle, Sweden. Santino is
an aggressive male. And it is no secret that Santino does not
particularly like the humans who come to see him at the zoo. It is
not hard to guess why. Sometime when you are in a zoo observe the
humans as well as the animals. They call the animals by name if
like Santino the animals have been given names the visitors know.
Or they make sounds like animals call. And when the animals look,
it turns out to be the humans were just hoping for any sort of
reaction from the animal. They are bothering the animal for no
purpose except to get a reaction. It is similar to the behavior of
children who ring doorbells and run away. No wonder the animals
try their best to ignore the humans.
There are lots of good reasons for the animals in the zoo to hate
the human visitors. I remember seeing a monkey island in a zoo. A
boy about ten was looking at the monkeys and mimicking their
sounds. Suddenly a small monkey made what I can only call a panic
scream. Two larger monkeys ran to the young one and linked their
arms in a circle around the baby monkey to reassure him that they
would protect him. Let us just say I do not have a lot of respect
for a lot of zoo visitors. I fully understand why Santino might
not like the crowds that came to see him. He would collect rocks
in the morning and put them in a little cache. When people came
around he would pick up rocks from his cache and throw them at the
people. This was not unexpected. Alpha males throw rocks at
intruders as part of normal chimpanzee behavior. The question was
at what point did he decide that the rocks were to be used as
weapons. Did he actually collect the rocks planning ahead that he
would throw them or was he just picking up what was near at hand
when provoked. We are told that humans are the only animals that
plan ahead and nothing was happening that proved that there was any
forethought in his actions.
That was three years ago. Santino's behavior is a little different
now. He still collects stones in the morning before the visitors
arrive, but now he makes his cache closer to where the humans will
be standing. At the same time he chooses places where the rocks
will be concealed. He even brings in stacks of hay to hide the
stones under. The behavior is consistent with him planning and
preparing a surprise attack on the humans who enter his territory.
But that is no proof he is planning ahead. There can be no proofs
of a chimpanzee's motives, but there is strong evident that Santino
plans his attacks--something we have not been convinced animals do.
This research in useful to better understand chimpanzee behavior,
but it also tells us a lot about the history (and prehistory) of
humanity. There is also observation that seems to imply that
bonobos may plan ahead. Bonobos and chimpanzees have been seen
apparently crafting tools in advance of when they would be needed.
If chimpanzees and bonobos have a propensity to plan ahead then
humans very probably have had that same capacity since before the
three species branched off from each other. That would place it
some time before 14,000,000 years in the past.
I think the truth is human vanity has prevented humans from
actually understanding animals. It would be just too inconvenient
if we discovered that some of our food animals are thinking,
reasoning creatures.
See
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/chimp-planning-future/
http://tinyurl.com/void-santino
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: PROMETHEUS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: PROMETHEUS is a spectacular film and a spectacularly
frustrating film. Full of earth-shaking ideas, much of the script
just does not make even basic sense. It promises to give us at
least science fictional explanations for some of the great
questions of human existence, but it never has the courage to
answer those questions. With tremendous special effects, much of
the film is just plain unpleasant to watch. To director Ridley
Scott's 1979 ALIEN it is at once a prequel, an origin story, a
remake, and a broadened context. Scott seems to have intended it
as some sort of statement about the relation of science and
religion, but that is lost in the muddle of trying to do too much.
Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Spoiler warning: I will discuss some of the ideas of the film after
the main review. I do not think it will damage the impact of the
film, but be warned.
Ridley Scott and Ron Shusett created the "Alien" creature that has
become as familiar to the world as (the similarly volatile) Mel
Gibson. It inspired the creation of PREDATOR and between them the
two monsters are responsible for lines of movies and books none of
which has Scott or Shusett lent his talents to. Now Scott has
returned to that same universe and as if to laugh at all the films
and books using his creation, he has come back and said, "You think
Alien is bad? His species is just the infestation feeding on a
bigger and more important creature--one that has more serious
implications for humans." (A similar "that's not the *real*
monster" concept was used in the 1956 RODAN.) PROMETHEUS is a real
mixed bag of interesting questions of the relation of religious
belief and science. It looks at the origins of life on Earth and
the Panspermia Hypothesis. At the same time as giving a much
larger context to the creature from ALIEN it is an origin for that
creature and the film follows the lines of that film so that more
than a little of the story is a remake of ALIEN.
As the film opens a pale white alien creature, looking like a
marble statue, stands on an empty rock landscape and (voluntarily?)
commits suicide so that his DNA will be left behind and spread to
this world.
Flash forward to the year 2089 and the discovery is made that
several Paleolithic cultures independently drew the same star map
of six stars on cave walls, a map of a "galactic system" they could
not have possibly seen with their naked eyes. This seems to prove
aliens visited earth in prehistoric times. Fascinated by this
discovery is Peter Weyland (played by Guy Pearce), the founder of a
corporation made fabulously wealthy by the diverting of stimulus
money into tax cuts for the rich. Weyland has funded his own
personal interstellar expedition to the one moon the aliens could
have come from. (Right!)
On Starship Prometheus is a decidedly blue-collar crew in the ALIEN
tradition. The pious Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace of THE GIRL WITH
THE DRAGON TATTOO) has her own struggle between her religious
belief and evidence that a somewhat non-Biblical origin for human
life may have occurred. Shaw is "partnered" in multiple ways with
Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) and together they are the
scientific thrust of the expedition. Elizabeth befriends the
android, David (Michael Fassbinder of SHAME) who is fixated on the
film LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. The crew is commanded by the impassive
Vickers (Charlize Theron), more machine-like than David is.
It is hard to rate a film that does so much well and so much that
is cringeogenically silly. While the first hour is full of
philosophical questions, it is followed by an hour of empty action.
There just seems to be something about having a massive tentacle
wound around your throat that that just drives all of the
philosophical questions right out of your head. But science
fiction that revels in questions albeit brief and unanswered is so
rare that I do not want to say anything that might scare it away.
I hate to think of a world in which the most intelligent science
fiction film around is on the level of AVATAR. I may be being a
little charitable here, but for the philosophical content I would
give PROMETHEUS a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Spoiler warning:
One question that is not very clearly answered is at what point in
our evolution was the alien intervention. If it is well before our
ancestors evolved to the modern form, how is it that the random
walk of evolution took us to a shape so similar to that of the
intervening aliens? If the involvement was after our ancestors
took modern form, why are supposedly close relatives like bonobos
and chimpanzees so much like us in form and in DNA? Bearing on
this question is the question of why an image of a globe found on
the alien moon seems to be of our present-day Earth. It could be
what the map of Earth looked like when humans began, but it looked
very differently when all life began. The question of when the
first scene might have occurred arises but is frustratingly
unanswered. Scott leaves us to draw our own conclusions.
Also, the film tells how the corporation found a specific moon and
just the right place on that moon to find the aliens who had
visited Earth. That is ridiculous. The stars are so far away they
are not visible from Earth and are in another galactic system.
With so crude a source one probably could not distinguish a cave
painting of the Big Dipper from one of the Little Dipper, and they
are prominent and visible in the night sky. There would be
billions of matches in another "galactic system," (a term which
they misuse, by the way).
Oh, and Nature makes lots of straight lines. Look at the edge of a
crystal.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/prometheus_2012/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Games of Thrones Trilogy by George R. R. Martin (review
by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
The "Game of Thrones" Trilogy, consisting of:
GAME OF THRONES
CLASH OF KINGS
STORM OF SWORDS,
and also reviewing
HBO Game of Thrones Season 1
GAME OF THRONES (GOT) is an enormous series. The books weigh in at
807 pages, 969 pages, and 1128 pages, respectively, about 3,000
pages all told. There are hundreds of characters and dozens of
locales. The first book contains a cast listing that runs to 25
pages, growing to 46 pages by the third book. And, truth be told,
these are not padded books like RETURN OF THE NATIVE, vast and
vastly dull. The first volume is very tight, and while there is a
bit of extra stuff in books 2 & 3, by normal standards each volume
is a page-turner, packed with action and character development.
With the sheer size of the series laid out (and with two more books
available to read that I have not yet read) it should be clear that
I am going neither to attempt to summarize the plot, surely a
fool's parade, nor to list the main characters, since I don't wish to
die of old age while doing so. Instead, I will focus on what I see
as some of the major themes that have made GOT a popular series and
now a very popular HBO TV show.
Firstly, these are adult books, with adult themes. The characters,
as you may have guessed from the title, are mainly concerned with
the pursuit of power unconstrained by any merely ethical
considerations. Politics is the theme everywhere in GOT, and it is
about time! When was the last time that you read a popular novel
that focused mainly on different forms of government and the effect
of power on human character?
As you may have heard, these characters also have *sex* and lots of
it. They seem to live in a kind of pre-Christian era, where
Puritanism has yet to arrive. And yet, this is a tale of honor as
well. The noble lord Eddard Stark struggles to do right while
surrounded by the most vile and corrupt associates. The rag-tag
army of men that make up the Night's Watch have sworn to give up
having families and being part of the political life of the kingdom
to spend their lives guarding a massive ice wall 700 feet high,
that, rather like Hadrian's Wall in England, keeps back the
northern barbarians. Except in this world, something far worse
than mere barbarians is rising in the north.
However, GOT is not merely an adult tale of intrigue and warfare.
Interspersed with medieval noir, we have large helpings of
characters straight out of Heinlein--the man who learns better, and
the boy/girl who grows up. These tales, far from being grim and
pointless, are about bad men becoming better men, and about
children who aspire not just to be leaders, but great leaders who
bring justice to all. Some tales take a darker turn, as innocent
children forge themselves in the fire of medieval violence and
chaos into something akin to vengeance given human form.
GOT is also in some sense the negative of Niven's THE MAGIC GOES
AWAY. In the world of GOT, there were dragons, magic, and
monsters, but they have become historical. Warfare proceeds just
as it would in our world, with knights fighting with swords and
arrows and siege engines. But behind the scenes, magic is making a
comeback--dragons are being hatched, sorceresses have arrived from
distant lands, and vile creatures of the cold are moving south with
the ending of a ten-year summer. Martin's magic always requires
sacrifice--real shedding of blood--to create any major effects.
Magic is never an easy way out for anyone.
Among the more interesting characters is Daenerys Targaryen,
sometimes called Daenerys Stormborn, The Unburnt, Mother of
Dragons, and, one suspects, in time, Daenerys the Conqueror. As
the sole survivor of the previous regime, she has traveled the
world looking for safety after the fall of the dragon lords of
Westeros. At her lowest ebb she is sold by her cruel brother to a
barbarian chief in return for a promised army. One step at a time
she rises, earning each of her names, in pursuit of a restoration
of the Targaryen House. Conservative commentators have noted that
she seems to embody a balance between ruthless action and the
liberation of the oppressed. I fully expect that in volume 6 or 7
she will return to Westeros with her dragons and the mighty horde
of freed slaves that now follow her, leading to the inevitable
battle royale. In the Heinleinian parlance, Daenerys is the girl
who grew up to be a queen, and more than a queen--a ruler, a
conquerer, and mistress of dragons.
But there are other stories of children growing up. The two I like
the best are those of Jon Snow (Stark) and Arya Stark. John Snow
is the bastard son of Eddard Stark, who takes the vow and joins the
Night Watch on the wall in the north. Through a long series of
difficult decisions and strenuous adventures, the end of the
trilogy finds Jon the Lord Commander of the Nigh Watch, which, in
one of Martin's political experiments, runs via direct democracy.
Arya Stark is a girl of eleven who loves to roughhouse and hates
the thought of being a princess. Something of a trouble-maker, she
ends up being one of two surviving Stark girls after Eddard is
executed for treason (you'll observe that few of the major
characters in the first book make it out of the trilogy). She is
drafted into a group of orphans and criminals being impressed to
serve with the Night's Watch. One act at time, starting with
killing a stable boy while escaping the initial massacre, Arya is
honed into an instrument of vengeance. She prays each night for
the death of her enemies, listing each by name, and makes more
progress on the list than you might suspect. Known by many names--
Arry, Nan, Weasel, and Cat--she lives in secret, moving from one
lesson to the next, learning from some of Westero's most dangerous
men, and finally ending the trilogy at what appears to be a school
for assassins in a land across the ocean. With the inevitability
of night falling and winter coming, Arya Stark will be back in
volumes 6 and 7 to complete her list.
And then there is the man who learned better. Most fans of GOT
like Tyrion Lannister, also known as the Imp, the best, but his
elder brother Jaime Lannister seems in some ways more interesting.
Think of Jaime as an evil Sir Lancelot--the top sword fighter in
the land, but willing to throw a young boy to his death to conceal
his incestuous affair with his sister. He is known best as the
"Kingslayer" since his major achievement in the revolt against the
Targaryens was to stab the king he was sworn to protect in the
back--literally. By the end of the first book Jaime is the man you
love to hate, but two volumes later he is on a rough road to a kind
of redemption.
Switching gears a bit to discuss season 1 of GOT on HBO, the first
season covers the first book of the trilogy, and it is my
understanding that the just completed 2nd season covers the 2nd
book of the trilogy. Supposedly, the 3rd book is so large that it
will be split over two seasons on HBO. Watching the DVDs was a bit
like seeing the WATCHMEN movie--a great storyboard for the book,
but lacking a lot of the depth of the book. Still, as TV goes, GOT
HBO is complex, demanding, and adult, and, I warned you, full of
*sex*. Contrary to what you may have heard, at least in the first
season, HBO toned down the sex in the book, or at least moved it
around. There is a tendency to not show the main characters nude
when they are nude in the book, but instead add in some scenes with
a nude whore, played by an unknown actress, here and there. In a
couple of cases expository lumps are slapped onto scenes with nude
women, presumably to see if you pay close attention to every
detail!
All in all, GOT is a highly readable fantasy series, in my view,
far more readable than LORD OF THE RINGS. I find the political
thinking interesting, and the characters worth following. In case
you haven't figured this out--the books and the HBO series are
strictly for older teens (with parental permission) and adults.
There is also quite a bit of medieval violence--hand chopping,
heads on poles, etc. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: PORTRAIT OF WALLY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: PORTRAIT OF WALLY relates the story of one of the 20th
century's most controversial conflicts over the ownership of a
piece of art. Egon Schiele's portrait of his mistress was
stolen/confiscated by the Nazi "authorities" during the Holocaust.
The painting subsequently fell into the hands of a private Austrian
museum. The former owner, now living in New York, saw it on
display while it was on loan to the Museum of Modern Art. This
opened the issue of who now owned the stolen painting and what
restitution to the former owner had to be made. Andrew Shea has
filmed a compelling documentary of a story involving property
rights, war restitution, art, anti-Semitism, the future of art
museums, and political power. The story is surprisingly complex
even for the field of art. The film is a dramatic expose of a
stunningly sleazy art world rife with theft and bigotry from
people, some of whom are prominent people. Rating: low +3 (-4 to
+4) or 8/10
In 1912 the painter Egon Schiele painted two paintings, one of
himself and one of his mistress Valerie Neuzil, affectionately
known as Wally. The painting was eventually sold and owned by
Austrian and Jewish art dealer Lea Bondi. When Nazi Germany
annexed Austria the Nazis confiscated Bondi's art gallery. Bondi
had hoped to retain "Portrait of Wally"--not actually part of her
gallery but hung in her apartment. Bondi had hoped to keep the
painting, but it soon became clear that any such effort would have
been tantamount to pointless suicide. Bondi fled Europe with her
life but leaving her art holdings behind.
In the confusion at the end of the war the painting went to the
Austrian government and though an oil painting is was claimed to be
a drawing that was part of another collection of Schiele's art.
That collection went to the Austrian National Gallery. Bondi
wanted to reclaim her property in 1946 and asked Rudolph Leopold
for assistance in making her claim. Leopold approached the
National Gallery, warned them they might soon lose "Portrait of
Wally" anyway, and convinced them to trade it for some paintings
from Leopold's collection. Leopold now claimed the painting was
his and refused to give it up to Bondi. Bondi tried to retrieve
the painting until her death in 1969. Meanwhile the Austrian
government bought 5400 works from Leopold's collection, including
"Portrait of Wally", and created the Leopold Museum with Rudolph
Leopold director for life. The Leopold Museum claimed the painting
came from the other collection of Schiele art. In late 1997 and
early 1998 the painting was lent to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)
in New York. There it was seen by Bondi's survivors and they
started legal proceedings to try to get back their property while
it was still in the United States.
The complications of the case went on and on. A United States
federal judge ruled that the painting could not be considered
"stolen" because the American military had returned it to the
Austrian government in 1945. The Justice Department had the judge
reverse that ruling since the military did not have the power to
make the painting non-stolen. The MOMA claimed that by contract it
was bound to return the painting to the Leopold Museum. Other
American museums entered the debate on the side of the Austrian
government, claiming that not returning the painting would have a
tragic cooling effect on the system of museums lending and
borrowing artifacts between museums. And there were many more
complications.
Writers Andrew Shea and David D'Arcy and director Shea have
assembled the complex story and present it with on-screen
interviews explaining the entire enthralling controversy in detail
and what is perhaps its final resolution.
For those who think that a documentary made largely of interviews
is dry and monotonous, PORTRAIT OF WALLY is a bombshell. A complex
legal controversy is made enthralling and not infrequently
shocking. Treachery, hypocrisy, bigotry, and outright theft are
brought into daylight by the story of this one painting. The film
is a history lesson and a thriller. I rate PORTRAIT OF WALLY a low
+3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1919017/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/portrait_of_wally/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Robin Hood (letter of comment by Sam Long)
In response to Mark's comments on Robin Hood in the 06/08/12 issue
of the MT VOID, Sam Long writes:
Myself, I always enjoy watching ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS! Errol
Flynn has nothing on Cary Elwes.
I remember the TV series "The Adventures of Robin Hood", with
Richard Greene; they were enjoyable for a youngster like me, and I
daresay they do hold up well. I remember that, at the end of the
program, a "minstrel" with a lute came out and sang, "We'll have a
merry time again / With Robin and his Merry Men. / And folk who'll
bring him to you then, / Ask a word with you." [cut to a
commercial for the sponsor]. And there was the theme song: "Robin
Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen, / Robin Hood, Robin
Hood, with his band of men. / Feared by the bad, / Loved by the
good, / Robin Hood, Robin Hood Robin Hood.", which the Monty Python
crew parodied so well in the "Dennis Moore, highwayman" skit.
(Lupines!) In the late 1960s-early 1970s, I was stationed in
England, and enjoyed the (Eric) Morecambe and (Ernie) Wise comedy
show on the BBC. On one show they had Richard Greene as their
guest star ... but I didn't recognize him at first, because he had
put on some weight, and it was only when Wise (I think it was) came
out with a toy bow and arrow that I realized who the guest star
really was.
(We just bought a 60-inch flat-screen HD-TV. Watching movies on it
is great.) [-sl]
Mark responds:
With Mel Brooks's films I tend to prefer the early, funnier films.
I do remember the TV "Robin Hood" with Richard Greene well. I
remember Greene in swashbuckling and horror films into the 1970s.
He was in the film TALES FROM THE CRYPT.
I envy your 60-inch. I always wanted to get a close as possible to
the real theater experience at home. I hire two teenagers to have
a conversation behind me and I put double-faced tape on the bottoms
of my shoes. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
When I read OF MEN AND MONSTERS by William Tenn (ISBN
978-0-345-29523-1), my first thought was that this was inspired by,
or a response to, the speech by the artilleryman in H. G. Wells's
WAR OF THE WORLDS:
"Well, it's like this," he said. "What have we to do? We have to
invent a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be
sufficiently secure to bring the children up. Yes--wait a bit, and
I'll make it clearer what I think ought to be done. The tame ones
will go like all tame beasts; in a few generations they'll be big,
beautiful, rich-blooded, stupid--rubbish! The risk is that we who
keep wild will go savage--degenerate into a sort of big, savage
rat.... You see, how I mean to live is underground. I've been
thinking about the drains. Of course those who don't know drains
think horrible things; but under this London are miles and miles--
hundreds of miles--and a few days' rain and London empty will leave
them sweet and clean. The main drains are big enough and airy
enough for anyone. Then there's cellars, vaults, stores, from
which bolting passages may be made to the drains. And the railway
tunnels and subways. Eh? You begin to see? And we form a band--
able-bodied, clean-minded men. We're not going to pick up any
rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings go out again. ... Those who
stop obey orders. Able-bodied, clean-minded women we want also--
mothers and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies--no blasted rolling
eyes. We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and
the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought
to die. They ought to be willing to die. It's a sort of
disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race. And they can't
be happy. Moreover, dying's none so dreadful; it's the funking
makes it bad. And in all those places we shall gather. Our
district will be London. And we may even be able to keep a watch,
and run about in the open when the Martians keep away. Play
cricket, perhaps. That's how we shall save the race. Eh? It's a
possible thing? But saving the race is nothing in itself. As I
say, that's only being rats. It's saving our knowledge and adding
to it is the thing. There men like you come in. There's books,
there's models. We must make great safe places down deep, and get
all the books we can; not novels and poetry swipes, but ideas,
science books. That's where men like you come in. We must go to
the British Museum and pick all those books through. Especially we
must keep up our science--learn more. We must watch these
Martians. Some of us must go as spies. When it's all working,
perhaps I will. Get caught, I mean. And the great thing is, we
must leave the Martians alone. We mustn't even steal. If we get
in their way, we clear out. We must show them we mean no harm.
Yes, I know. But they're intelligent things, and they won't hunt
us down if they have all they want, and think we're just harmless
vermin. ... After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn
before-- Just imagine this: four or five of their fighting machines
suddenly starting off--Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian
in 'em. Not a Martian in 'em, but men--men who have learned the
way how. It may be in my time, even--those men. Fancy having one
of them lovely things, with its Heat-Ray wide and free! Fancy
having it in control! What would it matter if you smashed to
smithereens at the end of the run, after a bust like that? I
reckon the Martians'll open their beautiful eyes! Can't you see
them, man? Can't you see them hurrying, hurrying--puffing and
blowing and hooting to their other mechanical affairs? Something
out of gear in every case. And swish, bang, rattle, swish! Just
as they are fumbling over it, swish comes the Heat-Ray, and,
behold! man has come back to his own."
It's all in the Tenn: the gigantic size of the invaders, mankind
living in burrows, the use of the drains, the winnowing of the
weak, the attempts to harness ancient science to help mankind and
possibly defeat the invaders. It is not unusual to see a science
fiction novel written in response to another (consider Robert
Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS, Joe Haldeman's THE FOREVER WAR, and
John Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR), so to assume OF MEN AND MONSTERS was
is not all that far-fetched.
(Other examples of responses include Donald Kingsbury's
PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS in response to Isaac Asimov's "Foundation"
series, and several short stories in response to Tom Godwin's "The
Cold Equations".)
One also sees elements of the classic "generation ship" trope,
particularly the idea that after a few generations the inhabitants
will have imperfect knowledge of what their actual situation is.
Robert A. Heinlein originated this, in the second "generation ship"
story, "Universe" (written for the May 1941 ASTOUNDING, less than a
year after Don Wilcox wrote the first, "The Voyage That Lasted 600
Years", AMAZING, October 1940). In OF MEN AND MONSTERS, humanity
(or at least many of the tribes thereof) think that their burrows
and the monsters' house (or even more specifically, the monsters'
storeroom) is all there is to the universe. They have rote
learning of some astronomy, but no idea what it means. (Shades of
John W. Campbell's "Nightfall" as well?)
I recently watched the 1942 version of THE JUNGLE BOOK (with Sabu)
and noticed a couple of details. In the book by Rudyard Kipling
(ISBN 978-1-420-93279-9), Buldeo the village hunter is negative on
Mowgli, calling him "the Jungle brat" and in general being
dismissive of him. But in the film, he is a fanatic about Mowgli,
proclaiming of him: "This is a thing of the jungle. This boy has
been reared in the jungle. He has the evil eye. I warn you all--
he had the evil eye. He is a wolf; let one in and all will follow.
He will bring down the jungle upon us." This is far more than
Buldeo says in the book--and very similar to what the Nazis were
saying about the Jews, the Roma, and others in 1942. It is
possible I am reading too much into the film, but it is also true
that war-time films often had a war-related message even when they
were about something else entirely.
The film also relies a lot on nature and travel footage, which are
often clearly of a different film stock than the footage filmed
specifically for the movie. Alas, the Technicolor (on the DVD
version I saw) has not aged well. At the beginning the storyteller
is identified as the one wearing "the yellow turban," but when you
see him, the turban looks white. Also, some reels are darker than
others, meaning that people change skin tone when the reels change.
(Mark came in while I was watching it and said he had seen some of
it on TCM recently and it had excellent color there, so someone
must have restored it recently. The DVD version I saw was on one
of those "15 Films for $5" DVDs.)
The film is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes when Mowgli talks to the
animals, it is in animal language that we (and the humans other
than Mowgli) do not understand (wolf howls, monkey chattering,
etc.), but when he talks to the cobra, they both speak English and
Mahala also understands them.
For that matter, the girl and the whole sub-plot of the treasure
trove at lost city were added for the film. I guess the animal
stories alone--including a tiger attack on the village--were not
considered exciting enough.
AFTER THE FALL BEFORE THE FALL DURING THE FALL by Nancy Kress (ISBN
978-1-616-96065-0) looked very promising: Kress is an excellent
writer and this was a stand-alone novel of under 200 pages--a rare
breed these days. Unfortunately, the novel was highly
unsatisfactory. *SPOILERS* There are three threads interwoven,
one taking place during 2013, one during 2014, and one during 2035.
The characters in the post-apocalyptic 2035 have their own view of
what has happened. They are frequently confused by what is going
on, so the reader knows to distrust some of what they say or think,
but even so the objective facts presented indicate a certain past
history. However, as the earlier threads leading up to the
apocalypse are revealed, they make pretty much everything the 2035
characters think and say wrong, and even call into question the
objective facts, as well as leaving a *lot* of unresolved
questions. For example, are there any Tesslies? If not, what are
those things they are seeing, and who built all the technology they
are using? And isn't it convenient that the young characters from
2035 were able to collect exactly the items they were going to need
later without having any understanding of what those items were
when they grabbed them because they had never seen them before
(e.g., tents or bags of seeds)? The "intelligent being" that Kress
seems to propose might conceivably be able to orchestrate the
events of 2013 and 2014, but the technology et al of the 2035
thread has to be considered as beyond the realm of possibility
without some additional explanation.
HOW TO DISAPPEAR by Frank M. Ahearn with Eileen C. Horan (ISBN 978-
1-59921-977-6) was recommended in Bruce Schneier's blog about
security (http://www.schneier.com), and since the library had a
copy, I figured I would read it. Of course, the first thing to
think about is that if I *were* going to try to disappear, checking
books out of the library is the wrong way to go about (even if they
are not for specific destinations). The thing to do is to go to a
different library, where I am not known, and read the books there.
I also discovered that it is easier to disappear if you are not all
over the Web and the Internet already (no surprise there).
A final note of this year's Friends of the Library book sales: Our
own library just had theirs, and it was a bit of a letdown.
Probably the reason was that the ongoing sale throughout the year
means that the annual sale does not have the volume or quality that
it used to. We found only half a dozen books during the regular
sale (though that did include an academic book on 3-D movies and
another on the dinosaur films of Ray Harryhausen). On bag day,
however, we bought 25 books for $5--we are experts at bag-packing.
(The first rule is to avoid the hardcovers, *especially* any by
Robert Jordan or Stephen King!) These included several "Flashman"
novels, a couple of film scripts, some miscellaneous fiction and
mysteries, and a CD-ROM "Star Trek Encyclopedia" which may or may
not work with current operating systems. As far as mysteries go,
Old Bridge seems to be a mystery hotbed, with three full tables'
worth (and more being brought in all the time, while science
fiction had about a half a table. The regular prices seem to be a
dollar for mass-market paperbacks, two dollars for trade
paperbacks, and five or seven dollars for DVDs! (During the bag
sale, the DVDs and other higher-priced items were removed.) Five
to seven dollars seems totally out of line for used DVDs unless
they are multi-disc sets or otherwise special, but some I see there
I have also seen in dollar stores. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics,
many times.
--Winston Churchill