THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/21/13 -- Vol. 31, No. 51, Whole Number 1759
Clyde: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Bonnie: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
New SF and Fantasy on TV This Fall
Comments on Watching FRANKENSTEIN (1931) (Part 2) (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
MOOCing Around (comments by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE by Nate Silver (book review
by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
My Random Thoughts on FRANKENSTEIN (1931) (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
"Star Trek" and Our Future in Space and Designer Genes
(letters of comment by Gregory Benford, Tim Bateman,
David Friedman, David Harmon, Dan Goodman, and
Keith F. Lynch)
NICKY'S FAMILY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
MUD (letter of comment by Art Stadlin)
This Week's Reading (Hugo-nominated novels and dramatic
presentations) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: New SF and Fantasy on TV This Fall
http://scifichick.com/2013/05/24/new-sff-tv-shows-this-fall-2013/
==================================================================
TOPIC: Comments on Watching FRANKENSTEIN (1931) (Part 2) (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
I am continuing on with comments on James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN.
This week I will talk about the production and acting.
One scene that has been frequently discussed is Fritz's theft of
the brain. The good brain is destroyed when Fritz is startled by a
gong-sound. Some writers have said it was never explained. I
think that is was supposed to be Fritz's cane hitting the collapsed
leaf of a metal table. If you watch the scene the stick is moving
away from the table the instant you hear the gong, but that could
have been a problem synchronizing the sound effect in producing the
film.
Henry has chosen the stone tower as a place to perform his
experiment, a tower that would have been very much at home in a
German Expressionist film. The tower is supposed to guard his
privacy and protect him from interruption while he performs his
great experiment. If you think that the experiment was an error on
Henry's part, look at how bad his judgment was in just choosing
that tower for privacy. Henry seems to have an unending string of
visitors to bother him, mostly at just the wrong moments.
Also, even in a rainstorm the top of the tower seems open to the
elements. This is not a great place to fool with electricity. It
does give him a chance to raise the monster to the sky as if
invoking God. Then when the monster first sees light he again
reaches for God. But later the monster is arsonphobic--afraid of
fire--to use a five-dollar word I got for only $3.50.
I am less than keen on some of the intended humorous touches
probably inserted by director James Whale. There is the comic
relief in the cantankerous behavior of Henry's father, and his
disagreements with his family and with the Burgomaster Vogel. None
of the scenes with Henry's father Baron Frankenstein work on a
modern audience. The best that can be said for him is that he is
not as irritating as Una O'Connor would be in BRIDE OF
FRANKENSTEIN, also under whale's direction. James Whale had a
weakness for irksome villagers and that humor has not aged well.
One of the biggest failings of the script is to rob the story of
its deserted child theme. One major interpretation of the novel is
as a metaphor for child abandonment. Henry acquiesces to allowing
the monster to be killed, but never really abandons the monster as
Victor does in the book. One feels Henry should do more to defend
his creation. In spite of the supposedly criminal brain, the
monster is never really criminal. The creature kills, but only in
self-defense or by mistake.
For a script that brings down the whole novel to a tiny seventy
minutes, far too much time is spent showing villagers dancing and
other festivities that do not advance the plot.
The movie was created with an impressive visual sense, inspired in
large part by German Expressionism. In the tower there are bright
light sources offstage and coming from a low angle so shadows
appear huge and monstrous. The lab itself is a wonderful piece of
design. It was really a collection of unmatched electrical
paraphernalia, but it still is very impressive. It is one of the
great science laboratories in films.
Elizabeth's wedding dress tails behind her by what looks like ten
feet, but somehow also looks like a burial shroud.
Visually it was a mistake to take some scenes in the hills and try
to do them on sets. They are not very convincing.
In the film's original release Henry is killed on the windmill.
But later Universal wanted the actor and character back for a
sequel so an ending was shot to have him survive. They probably
should have removed the scene that shows him broken on the windmill
like a ragdoll only to have him and Elizabeth recovering later.
And I think the writers of the post-release epilog could have come
up with a better closing line than the servants saying, "Indeed,
Sir. We hope so, Sir."
Dwight Frye, who had been effective as Renfield in DRACULA the year
before, was in each of the first five Universal Frankenstein films,
never playing the same character twice.
Elizabeth is played by Mae Clarke, who had James Cagney grind a
grapefruit half in her face in a famous scene in THE PUBLIC ENEMY.
Perhaps the most unjustly neglected actor in FRANKENSTEIN is
Michael Mark. Mark plays Ludwig, the stricken father who loses his
daughter Maria. The IMDB lists 135 films for Mark, many of them in
the horror genre. Yet few fans know his name. He was in THE BLACK
CAT (1934), MAD LOVE (1935), THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK (1938), SON
OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939), TOWER OF LONDON (1939), FLASH GORDON
CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE (1940), THE MUMMY'S HAND (1940), THE GHOST OF
FRANKENSTEIN (1942), CASABLANCA (1942), SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE
SECRET WEAPON (1942), HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944), PHANTOM FROM
SPACE (1953), THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956), ATTACK OF THE PUPPET
PEOPLE (1958), RETURN OF THE FLY (1959), THE WASP WOMAN (1959),
FUNNY GIRL (1968), and HELLO, DOLLY! (1969). That is an impressive
list of film roles even if he played only tiny parts in most. Yet
few recognize his name. There is, however, a page on him at
http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~u0e53/ michaelmark.html.
But surely being in so many films he deserves more attention.
FRANKENSTEIN as a whole is one of the great milestones of the
horror film.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: MOOCing Around (comments by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
Recently as part of some work I am doing I decided to educate
myself about image processing and recognition. This entailed re-
learning a lot of math I had forgotten, learning even more new
math, and trying to ingest the field of "computer vision" in which
I never formally trained. Via web-surfing, I found a free on-line
course offered by a Stanford professor named Arnold Ng on "Machine
Learning." I signed up and before you know it, I had taken five or
six on-line courses from http://www.coursera.com. Suddenly, and
much to my surprise, it turned out that I had "caught the wave" of
a new trend--the Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, for short, of
which Coursera is the #1 example. Founded by former Stanford profs
Ng and Daphne Koller, Coursera is on a mission to transform
education as we know it while making it free, or at least cheap. I
haven't taken any courses from other sources so my comments only
apply to Coursera.
The mechanics proceed thusly. You go to the web site and sign up.
For the most part the courses are free. They last different
numbers of weeks, but generally in the range of 6-10 weeks, which
is to say they are usually shorter than a typical 15-week college
semester. They don't seem to start on any time boundaries that I
have able to figure out. Most of them claim to require only modest
pre-requisites, but this is sometimes deceptive, as I will explain.
Each course has a "home page" where you start work. New lectures,
homework, and quizzes are released on a weekly basis, and generally
you have two weeks to do them from when they become available, but
sometimes one week and sometimes more than one week. There is no
uniform set of rules; as in college, each professor is a bit
different.
There are usually a couple of hours of lectures on new material
released each week, broken down into segments as short as 5 minutes
up to as long as 25 minutes. During the lectures, which you can
stream at any time, or download and watch with your own media
player, the camera is pointed at a computer screen on which slides
or writing appear. I found the streaming to be the superior
experience; however they made the downloads it often disagreed with
my windows media player to create odd screen effects. Sometimes
the professor will appear in an image that fills the screen, or
that is shrunken and stuck in a corner. The better professors have
well-prepared typed slides with great graphics. The not-so-good
professors rely on writing things out long hand much of the time.
Virtually every professor suffers to a greater or lesser degree
from the "my hand-writing is legible" delusion. Even if the slides
were carefully typed out using LATX (typesetting for math), they
all would add a few notes as they went, and sometimes those notes
are, sadly, difficult to read. In the worst case, most of the
slides are handwritten and hard to follow.
Some of the classes allow the student to listen at a faster than
real-time clip, making the prof sound like Donald Duck. Most of
the classes have inserted little interactive quizzes in the videos
that don't count toward your grade. Sometimes these quizzes are
helpful, but other times the questions asked are about future
material, and you can't get them right no matter what, unless you
look ahead. It is clear that some profs don't have time to make up
the quizzes since they only provide a few of them. Generally, I
found the mini-quizzes helpful. The best thing about remote video
lectures is that you can watch them over and over to help
understand a key point--a couple I watched five times or so. It is
surprising how intimate the lecture seems--partially because the
professor is right in front of you. I know it's a recording, but
it *feels* like sitting at table with someone.
Most classes have a weekly quiz that counts toward part of your
grade, although the details of how much it counts and how many
times you can take the quizzes vary. The "normal" approach is to
allow the students to take the quiz a number of times, say three
times, but the quizzes change each time you take them. Basically,
the quizzes are generated out of a pool of weekly questions, and
the order of the answers always changes. They are instantly and
automatically graded on submission. I found that if I was allowed
to take them three times, it was pretty easy to get a high grade,
although keep in mind that some of the questions have multiple
correct answers. Also, the difficulty varied a lot, all the way
from simple recall questions to seemingly impossible proofs or
mathematical calculations. One class took the curious approach of
allowing you to take the quiz as many times as you wished, but not
telling you the correct answers for each question (i.e., just
giving you your total score, 5/7 correct) until after a final
deadline for credit. This turned out to be harder than you might
think, and was an interesting experience.
The difficulty level of the classes varied quite a bit. Ng's
"Machine Learning" felt like a junior- or senior-level engineering
class. Koller's "Probabilistic Graphic Models"--the hardest by
far--seemed like a graduate level class. My most recent class on
image processing was easier, more like a freshman or sophomore
engineering class. Most of the classes had optional programming
assignments, and two levels of credit. Only one class, Hinton's
"Neural Networks for Machine Learning" class required both the
weekly quizzes and the programming assignments. I learned the most
from Hinton, although the class was far from easy, because he went
to more trouble to break up the programming assignments into doable
chunks. He also allowed students to freely discuss the math needed
to do the assignments but prohibited any exchange of code. This
worked well for me since in many of these classes there are three
steps [1] doing the math, [2] converting the math to vector form,
and [3] implementing the code in Matlab [Matrix Laboratory, a
programming language used by a lot of the courses], and [1] and [2]
could be extremely complex. In fact, Hinton left to homework
derivations that most professors would provide in class.
Matlab was a special problem for me. Most of the courses said
having calculus, linear algebra, and some programming experience
was all you needed. On paper, I am extremely well-qualified, but I
found that I was very weak in converting calculus solutions to
matrix/vector form, which is critical for many of the classes.
Also, although I am an experienced programmer, and in fact had just
taken a year of "Java" courses, the road to Matlab was bumpy. In
the first two classes, I was pretty lost and gave up after doing
the first programming assignment. Eventually a friend told me that
you need to start with understanding that Matlab is completely
untyped, i.e. "A" can be first an integer, next a matrix, and then
a character, depending on what is assigned to it. If you are
familiar with languages like Pascal, C, C++, or Java this is
initially very confusing. Hinton's class really simplified the
first assignment, reducing it to a kind of multiple choice among
suggested lines of code that would complete a more complex program.
The next assignment required writing short code segments, and
eventually we moved on to writing entire subroutines. Hinton also
provided us with most of the code we needed so that we did not have
to put in place an overall data handling structure from scratch,
which also made things a lot easier to understand. I do not want
to give the impression that Hinton was a soft touch--with him,
writing the code was only the beginning. Typically, you had to
then spend 5 to 10 hours per assignment training the neural net and
testing it with various parameters to get specified results.
The MOOC courses deliver top-quality lecturers. With one
exception, I thought all of the teachers were excellent. Each was
a major leader in their field who has written important textbooks
or published major papers. Hinton is one of the top neural network
people in the world--just google "New York Times" and "Hinton."
Koller's book, "Probabilistic Graphic Networks," reminds me of
"Principia Mathematica" or Knuth in its complexity and length.
Each is strong in their own way. Ng has better physical and
graphical intuition, Kohler describes math better, Hinton has
superior high-level summaries, and Sapiro integrates Matlab demos
into the lectures best.
Not all classes have finals, but some did. I tended to get in the
90-100% range on the quizzes and in the 60% range on the finals,
for which you are time limited and get one try. I found the finals
to be surprisingly pressured although they are open notes, open
book, and open internet. Koller was fond of asking questions about
new material during the final where you had to learn a complex
concept and answer questions based on it in about 15 minutes.
One advantage of the MOOCs are the open forums. Typically, there
are moderated forums on each lecture, each quiz, and each
programming assignment. The posting of actual answers is policed,
and violator's messages are removed. However, errors in quizzes
get corrected fast based on student questions/feedback, and the
quality of the best posters is very high. Generally, you interact
only with the course TAs, but some profs wade in themselves,
notably Hinton. There may be 100s or 1000s of students who don't
have a clue, but most of them don't post, and you can ignore the
ones that post nonsense. It's safe to say that I got as much out
of the forums as I would have gotten out of classroom Q&A or lab
sections run by TAs. It's not quite the same as working through a
problem set with friends, but sometimes it's better--the forum
posters are usually smarter than your friends!
At the end of the MOOC the instructor mails you a certificate in
PDF form that states the class, the level you performed at, and
your score. Coursera is offering real college credit in
combination with a remote proctoring approach, but I have not taken
any of these classes yet. It is my impression that perhaps only
10%-20% of the students that start the classes finish. Many
students are, in effect, "auditing" the class.
Based on forum discussions and my own judgment, I'm confident that
the "official" on-campus versions of all these classes are harder.
Firstly, they are up to 50% longer and so cover more material.
Second, there is tighter control of prerequisites, which allows the
professors to assume more and move faster. Third, I suspect you
don't get do-overs on quizzes. Finally, programming assignments,
one suspects, are not optional! This does not mean that the MOOCs
have little or no value. I have learned a great deal from them,
although I think I would have learned more on-campus. On the other
hand, free!!!
One major weakness in Coursera's classes right now is that they
have a large number of fun and interesting classes, with a few of
the curriculum mainstays like circuit analysis. What they don't
have is a progressive set of classes that you can start with to
build yourself up to the level of the more advanced courses. They
desperately need a two-course sequence in Matlab, for example, or a
two-course sequence in linear algebra, or just four semesters that
cover all of basic calculus. Until they can provide this sort of
ladder, regular colleges are not in serious danger.
It is easy to see that many educational institutions are threatened
by MOOCs. It seems like it would be possible to assemble a MOOC
that would provide the first two years of college better than 90%
of the colleges in the US. I also thought Coursera was
surprisingly good at presenting "cutting edge" courses. Hinton's
neural nets class was a particular gem, bringing the student very
close to the actual point at which the most advanced research is
conducted. In any case, check out a MOOC and see for yourself--
it's free! [-dls]
[If anyone has any experience with systems other than Coursera and
wants to add their comments, feel free. -ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE: WHY SO MANY PREDICTIONS FAIL--BUT
SOME DON'T by Nate Silver (book review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
Normally I try to summarize the most important aspects of a book
when I review it, but in this case instead I will limit myself to
mere endorsement. This is the best popular science book I've read
in the last ten years, maybe in the last twenty. No one can call
themselves educated who is not familiar with the material in this
book. THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE should be required reading for all
college students, as well as anyone who votes, works in science or
engineering, is engaged in business or investment activities, or
thinks they want to gamble on sports or play poker. Nate Silver
deserves his ranking by TIME as being among the 100 most
influential people in the world.
In short, THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE is an excellent book - packed
with as much real information and insight as ten other books of
above-average quality. Nate Silver's advice ranges from excellent
to profound. In addition to all this, the book is well written and
easy to follow. Topping it all off, after you have read THE SIGNAL
AND THE NOISE you will really understand Bayes's Theorem and its
application to real world problems.
In summary, THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE has my highest recommendation-
-read it as soon as possible--you are not ready for the twenty-
first century until you have read this book! Since I know that
some of you will not follow this advice, I am concluding with a
list of distilled recommendations based on the book:
- Don't trust economic forecasts--they are often wrong.
- Don't trust political forecasts made by television pundits--they
are often wrong. However, you can rely on Nate Silver's website,
fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com.
- Don't try to start a new professional baseball team as an easy
way to make money--the people already running teams know what they
are doing. FYI--Silver created PECOTA, at the time of invention
the best program for predicting baseball success.
- Listen to weather forecasts--they are often correct, and getting
more correct all the time.
- Ignore earthquake predictions but if you feel the slightest
tremble, immediately leave the building.
- Even though forecasts of future pandemics are sometimes wrong, it
is still a good idea to get your flu vaccine.
- If you want to gamble on sports, the bar set by professional
gamblers is high, and you would be wise to avoid doing so.
- Given that machines now play better chess than humans, embarking
on a career as a chess professional may be unwise.
- If you are currently playing poker for money on-line or
otherwise, the odds are heavily toward the proposition that you are
a "whale," i.e. a sucker. Stop immediately! FYI--Silver is a
former professional poker player.
- The fact that past and current predictions of climate change may
be inaccurate does not mean climate change is not occurring.
- Scarily enough, we can look forward to infrequent but large
terrorist attacks, unless we adopt more of the methods used by the
Israelis.
[-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: My Random Thoughts on FRANKENSTEIN (1931) (comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
The film has an introduction, a unusual stylistic touch, although
it is similar to the ending speech of DRACULA.
There are interesting graphics under the credits. In particular,
the eyes remind one of the Salvador Dali sequences in SPELLBOUND.
One credit reads "From the novel by Mrs. Percy B. Shelley", a very
peculiar way to refer to her.
Balderston (who did the script for this) also did DRACULA.
The gravedigger throws his hat on the ground, but when he is done
he picks it up from a pointed rock. Frankenstein and Fritz do
likewise, but later we see Frankenstein's coat (and a hat that he
wasn't wearing) on a stick, and even later the hat has disappeared
again.
Frankenstein combines his errands--first the graveyard, then the
gibbet.
There are women in Goldstadt Medical College, making one wonder
when this takes place. Goldstadt seems to be in the "then-present",
but the graveyard and gibbet seem to be from an earlier time.
The hanging skeleton is bouncing in close-ups of Fritz in the
classroom, but not in long shots.
The interior seems very large for a watch tower.
The Creature gets a criminal brain, but is not a criminal. It is
not clear whether they think that the brain caused the criminality
or that the criminality formed the brain, but the only message in
the actual script is that the concept of a "criminal brain" is
meaningless.
The watch tower shows definite influences from German
Expressionism.
"One man crazy, three very sane spectators." What is Fritz, chopped
liver?
When we first see him (after the "coming alive" scene), why does
the Creature back into the room?
Do orange blossoms really keep for three generations?
Who does the Creature kill? It seems to be just Fritz, Dr. Waldman,
and Maria, which doesn't seem to mesh with the notion of him
rampaging through the countryside. For that matter, how can
Maria's father know that Maria was murdered?
How come Maria doesn't just stand up in the water? Unless there is
a huge drop-off she is close enough to the shore that it must be
fairly shallow.
The sky during the search is obviously a backdrop.
Clearly, Frankenstein and the Creature originally died. The coda
shows Frankenstein living, and the sequel brings back the Creature.
[-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON by Saladin Ahmed (copyright
2012, DAW Books, 288pp, $24.95, ISBN 0-756-40711-7) (book review by
Joe Karpierz)
Saladin Ahmed's THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON ("Book One of The
Crescent Moon Kingdoms"), is the final Hugo nominated novel that
I'll be reviewing this year. It's probably fitting that I leave
the most disappointing book to the last. That statement sounds a
bit harsh, and maybe it is. Let me just get there, I guess.
THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON is a Sword and Sorcery novel of sorts;
well, upon further reflection, it definitely *is* a Sword and
Sorcery novel. What's different about it is that it does not take
place in the typical medieval England setting. It takes place in a
Middle Eastern setting, and it has more in common with "1001
Arabian Nights" than traditional Sword and Sorcery novels.
It is also the debut novel for the author, much like THE HUNDRED
THOUSAND KINGDOMS was a few years ago for N. K. Jemisin, which was
also a Hugo nominee and the first book in a series. I'd heard many
good things about THRONE, much like I did THE HUNDRED THOUSAND
KINGDOMS. And both books bring something different to the table,
with KINGDOMS dealing with gods and demons walking among us, and
THRONE having an unusual setting.
So, what is THRONE all about?
THRONE seems ultimately to be about a power struggle between the
currently reigning Khalif of Dhamasawaat and the Falcon Prince, a
Robin Hood of sorts for the people of the city. However, they are
not the major characters of the story--at least not of the story
that is told in this book. This is in part the story of aged ghul
hunter Doctor Adoulla Makhslood. Adoulla has spent his life
hunting and killing monsters that threaten the citizens of
Dhamaswaat. He is assisted by Raseed, a member of the Order of
Dervishes. Adoulla and Raseed have seen a lot of action together,
but Adoulla is tired. He would like to retire. But time and time
again, ghuls show up on the scene, and Adoulla must once again come
to the rescue of his jeweled city.
And, in fact, a ghul makes another appearance, and Adoulla and
Raseed leave the city to track it down, and come upon a
shapechanging girl, the last of her clan, which was destroyed by a
very nasty set of ghuls. And so, once again, Adoulla and Raseed
set out to deal with the evil creature. This particular time,
though, the adventure causes the pair to cross paths with two of
Adoulla's closest friends, the Khalif, the Falcon Prince, and the
secret of the Throne upon which the Khalif sits.
Two things become clear in something of a hurry. First, the story
is bigger than the reader first thinks it might be. While Ahmed
wraps most of the story lines of that were introduced in this
novel, it is very clear that there is more to the saga of the
Crescent Moon Kingdoms that can fit in one novel. Second, well,
there's nothing tremendously original or unusual about this book.
Yes, the setting is a little different, but other than that this
book is perfectly ordinary. It is nicely written, it is easy to
read and follow, and tells a nice, straightforward story.
But didn't I say this was something that I wanted in every book?
Well, yes, I did. I won't deny that. However (and this is true of
four of the five novels that were nominated this year), there is
nothing that special about it. It is very ordinary, and thus in my
mind is not Hugo material. Having said that, I can tell you that I
believe that four of the five novels probably cannot be considered
Hugo material. There is only one, and in my mind that one is
lacking a necessary element for a Hugo-winning novel. Yes, I
gushed over BLACKOUT, but in reality, none of these books stands up
to and against some of the great novels of the past that won the
award, and certainly not THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON. That's not
to say that I didn't enjoy the book. It was a pleasant read. It's
just not a *great* book.
And now, I will take something of a break--well, maybe. On June
17th, before this review appears in the MT VOID, I will be
undergoing an operation to completely replace my arthritic left hip
(the pain meds I'm on right now may be contributing to the fact
that this review is more, um, incoherent than usual). I will be
spending my recovery time reading the Hugo-nominated short fiction,
watching the Hugo-nominated movies, and basically trying to fill
out a reasonably complete ballot. I'm currently listening to
Heinlein's TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE. I'll review that eventually. In
any case, until next time.... [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: NICKY'S FAMILY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Nicholas Winton, like Raoul Wallenberg, found himself in a
country under Nazi oppression while the German military was
murdering Jews. He arranged papers to allow Jewish children to be
taken into Britain and adopted. Matej Minac directs and co-writes
the story of Winton and the children whose lives he saved. It
includes the poignant bittersweet stories of parents who gave up
their children to save their children's lives. Rating: +2 (-4 to
+4) or 7/10
Matej Minac directs and co-writes with Patrik Pass a documentary,
with dramatized portions and extensive interviews, telling the
story of Sir Nicholas Winton, who at the beginning of WWII,
arranged to save the lives of 669 children from the German invaders
of Czechoslovakia.
There have been now several films of those heroes who risked their
position, their fortunes, and often their lives to save large
numbers of Jews and other victims who would otherwise have been
ground under the Nazi heel during the Holocaust. Some names are
familiar: Raoul Wallenberg, Oscar Schindler, Chiune Sugihara,
Varian Fry. Sadly, by the time these people's contributions to
human decency are recognized, to many of them are no longer with
us. This is not surprising since these people did what they did as
adults seventy years ago. One of the delights of NICKY'S FAMILY is
discovering that Sir Nicholas George Winton--called the "British
Schindler,"--is alive and apparently spry at 104 years of age.
This film tells the story of Winton and of 663 children, mostly
Jewish, whom Winton saved in winter of 1938-9. He did this by
arranging for transport and entry into Britain, part of the
Kindertransport mission. Winton was in Czechoslovakia as the
Holocaust was ramping up. He saw that while no country but Britain
was allowing in more than a handful of refugees, Britain's House of
Commons had set up not quotas but conditions for allowing in
refugee children. The difference was crucial. Winton created an
organization, made of just himself, to aid parents trying to find
safe havens for their children. Parents were frantic to give their
children over to Winton's custody in the desperate effort to give
the children a means of survival they could not share.
Primarily the story is given by eyewitness testimony, mostly from
people whose lives were saved. Amateur and professional film
recreating those times accompanies this testimony. There is also
dramatization of incidents in Winton's rescue. The film shows us
the children's lives in Czechoslovakia before the invasion of the
Germans, and then the painful story of what happened to these
children when faced with Nazi persecution and murder. We are shown
in dramatizations Nicholas Winton disobeying his supervisors to
work to save refugees. We are told what happened when the children
were shipped by train and boat to England. Here the tone again
lightens and we see the children adapting and living far better
lives in England.
It was an interesting approach to shift the focus of the action
from Eastern Europe to Britain. The real and horrifying drama was
not in the fate of these children, but in that of their parents,
most of whom were going to their deaths. The horror of the
situation is exemplified by a mother who as the children's train
was pulling out of the station had her child handed from the train
into her arms only to realize moments later that she was condemning
her own child to death and at the last moment handing the child
back through the window. It was a last-minute decision to spare
her child the death that was awaiting her herself.
The story of what is happening to the parents might have been more
dramatic, but Minac keeps the camera eye on the children and their
reaction to the British environment so alien to the lives they have
known. Minac keeps the film to ninety minutes to avoid becoming
ponderous. The children adapt. Flash forward to 1988 and Winton's
actions and heroism finally become more generally known. Winton
himself never mentioned the children he had saved. We move forward
to the children today living in England but who never knew that it
was Winton who saved their lives. Where Stephen Spielberg in
SCHINDLER'S LIST was content just to show the large number of people
alive because of Oskar Schindler, Minac goes beyond to show
what the people who owe their lives to Winton are doing with those
lives.
NICKY'S FAMILY is not as dismal as other stories from Holocaust
documentaries. There are many positive notes as well as the
welcome difference that the hero in question is still alive so we
can see Winton brought together with the then children he saved.
And Sir Nicholas Winton deserves all the adulation he gets. I rate
NICKY'S FAMILY a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1961438/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/nickys_family_2011/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: "Star Trek" and Our Future in Space and Designer Genes
(letters of comment by Gregory Benford, Tim Bateman, David
Friedman, David Harmon, Dan Goodman, and Keith F. Lynch)
In response to Dale Skran's article on "Star Trek" and our future
in space, Gregory Benford writes:
I largely agree with Skran on space, some good points about
economic reality. I said some of this earlier in "Reason"
magazine:
http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/25/science-fiction-faces-facts
Skran misses Bigelow's hotel, planned for launch around 2015. The
soon-to-be-published but now-gettable STARSHIP CENTURY anthology
deals with such prospects in
detail, as did the Symposium 3 weeks ago:
http://www.starshipcentury.com
On designer genes, I also wrote this:
http://reason.com/archives/1995/11/01/biology-2001
Much has changed but strikingly, the genetic revolution has so far
delivered not much of real help in longevity, alas.
I like seeing these summary pieces--good stuff! [-gb]
Tim Bateman writes:
[Dale says,] "Just as capitalism replaced mercantilism which in
turn replaced feudalism as economic systems, there may well come an
improved economic system..." [-dls]
Did Karl Marx not theorise this some decades ago? [-tgb]
[Dale continues,] "... perhaps birthed into existence by
combination of nano-tech replicators and mass utilization of
intelligent robots making jobs as we know them untenable going
forward. However, this future economic system will come when it
comes. It is minimally decades in the future, if not centuries, and
it may not come at all." [-dls]
I'd tend to agree with this more. Forcing it won't help; that was
tried, again decades ago, in Russia... [-tgb]
On this same section, David Friedman writes:
I don't think feudalism really was an economic (as opposed to
political) system--certainly markets and trade and investment and
such existed on a substantial scale through the medieval period.
And capitalism hasn't replaced mercantilism. The central
mercantilist error, the belief that a positive balance of payments
is good and a negative balance of payments is bad, is alive and
well, unfortunately. Governments continue to meddle in economies
on more or less mercantilist arguments.
I'm not even sure that the twentieth century was, on net, less
mercantilist than the eighteenth. [-ddf]
David Harmon responds:
ObSF: Miriam, the protagonist of Charles Stross's "Merchant Princes"
series, sees severe problems with the zero-sum mercantilist outlook
of the ruling establishment and plans to introduce reforms by
creating real economic value in ways they have overlooked. The
ruling establishment resists these efforts. [-dh]
To Tim's comment on Marx, Dan Goodman replies:
Sort of. As I understand it, his theories took for granted that
industry as he knew it would continue forever--but under a
different kind of management. [-dsg]
And Keith Lynch replies to this:
I don't know if it's from Marx, but one common socialist criticism
of capitalism is that it will inevitably break down when technical
progress comes to an end. [-kfl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: MUD (letter of comment by Art Stadlin)
In response to Mark's review of MUD in the 06/14/13 issue of the MT
VOID, Art Stadlin writes:
Thank you for your excellent review of MUD. I knew nothing of this
movie when my wife requested I go with her to see it on Mother's
Day. Frankly, I was very surprised that I enjoyed it so much! Not
even one good car crash. Instead, this story is so much more about
the human spirit and an exploration of deep feelings and emotions.
Told through the eyes of a 14-year old, the story brings into
contrast the innocence of youth with the realities of adult life.
This is also a study in life on the river, or at least a small
slice of it. And a little bit of fantasy to think there might be
an island in the river, or a river bank so secluded that someone
could hide there for weeks on end.
McConaughey will surely get Hollywood kudos for his fine
performance. However, at least to me, the strength of MUD is in
the casting of those two 14-year old boys. Could they have
selected any two less perfect for those roles? I seriously doubt
it. They were amazing and "Ellis" should get an award for his
performance.
Another aspect of this film I found interesting was the way in
which the story unfolded. While not unique, it was certainly a
nice twist. Instead of a lot of front-end (and often boring)
character development before the heart of the story, in MUD we get
right into the story! It is only in the course of the movie that we
begin to unfold previous events and relationships important to
understanding the motivations and emotions of the characters. Now,
I find myself wanting to see it again (when it comes out on DVD) so
I can watch it *with* the knowledge of how the characters have been
developed and their deeper relationships with each other. [-as]
Mark replies:
You write a pretty good review yourself. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
And my Hugo nominee reviews begin. As usual Joe Karpierz has
reviewed the Hugo-nominated novels, and I will cover the short
fiction. However, I will still say a few things about the novels.
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (ISBN 978-0-316-09812-0) is full of
all sorts of technical details (a.k.a. "infodump") about
terraforming and other sciences, so it is somewhat surprising that
Robinson makes an elementary mistake, when he says: "Charon, half
the size of Pluto, has a surface temperature of fifty K. The Next
closest moon-to-planet size ratio is Luna to Earth, with Luna one-
fourth the size of Earth. Pluto has a 2,300-kilometer diameter;
Charon, 1,200 kilometers." [page 327]
Charon is *not* half the size of Pluto--it is one-eighth the size
of Pluto. And Luna is one-sixty-fourth the size of Earth.
Other than that, my main problem was that stripped of all the
infodumps, extracts, lists, and other stylistic elements, the plot
was extremely minimal, and of the sort that one might have found in
ANALOG back in the 1940s--in a novella, not a 561-page novel. (And
though the main character is female, she is the only female I
noticed in the book, which would also be in keeping with the
1940s.) I know it won the Nebula, but I can only assume that is
because the SFWA gives it more points for style than I do.
BLACKOUT by Mira Grant (ISBN 978-0-316-08107-8) is the third and
final book in the "Newsflesh" trilogy. Books in series almost
always suffer from one of two problems: they spend too much time
recapitulating what has happened in the earlier books, or they are
hard to follow or meaningless for those who have not read (or don't
remember) what has come before. In the case of BLACKOUT, it is the
latter problem. It is conceivable that people will do what the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did with the "Lord of
the Rings" trilogy and give the award to the final episode,
intending it to represent giving the award to the series as a
whole. But as a book standing on its own, it does not stand on its
own. (On the plus side, it has several female characters, and they
talk to each other about things other than the male characters.)
I started CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S ALLIANCE by Lois McMaster Bujold
(ISBN 978-1-451-63845-5) but it had the same problem that the Mira
Grant novella did--if you were not up to speed by having read all
the other works in the "Vorkosigan" universe, you would probably
have problems following this.
I reviewed REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi (ISBN 978-0-765-33479-4) in the
09/14/12 issue of the MT VOID
(http://fanac.org/fanzines/MT_Void/MT_Void-3111.html#8. It is a
well-constructed meta-fiction, and I do like meta-fictions.
THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON by Saladin Ahmed (ISBN 978-0-7564-0711-
7) was okay. As many have noted, it is nice to find a fantasy not
based on some European mythology or legend, and it is nice that
though this is the first book in a series, it does actually have an
ending, albeit one that leaves room for sequels. However, on the
down side, the female characters are not developed as well as the
male characters, and it seemed as though Ahmed could not decide if
this was taking place on an alternate Earth with a slightly
different geography, or a completely unrelated world. It really
must be the former, because the names of kingdoms, animals, foods,
etc., are all from Earth, but the addition of the fantasy elements
and the map depicting a non-Earth geography works against this
interpretation. (Yeah, I know, a lot of fantasy has this problem.
"A Song of Fire and Ice" seems to take place not on our Earth, but
it has horses and all the biology works like our biology.) It is
not that I disliked THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON, but that I do not
think it Hugo-worthy.
My voting order is: REDSHIRTS, no award, THRONE OF THE CRESCENT
MOON, BLACKOUT, 2312, CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S ALLIANCE.
As far as Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, all I can say is
"Thank Ghu for THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, because the rest of the
candidates are all below 'No Award'."
Next week: the short fiction. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I'll tell you exactly what I would do if I were 20
and wanted to be a good writer. I would study
maintenance, preferably plumbing. So that I could
command my own hours and make a good living on my
own time.
--Gore Vidal