THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/27/15 -- Vol. 33, No. 39, Whole Number 1851
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
Query (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Puzzle (sent in by Tom Russell)
My Picks For Turner Classic Movies in April (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Why I Hate Travel (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
A MOST WANTED MAN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
SLEEP DEALER (2008) (film retrospective by Mark R. Leeper)
SpaceX Summary (comments by Dale L. Skran)
THE WALKING DECEASED (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
This Week's Reading (THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE and THE
SHOCKWAVE RIDER) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
April 9: EUROPA REPORT (film) and RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA by Arthur
C. Clarke (book), Middletown (NJ) Public Library, 5:30PM
April 23: HEART OF A DOG by Mikhail Bulgakov, Old Bridge (NJ)
Public Library, 7PM
Speculative Fiction Lectures (subject to change):
April 4: David Rountree, Incorporating Real Science in Speculative
Fiction, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 12N
Northern New Jersey events are listed at:
http://www.sfsnnj.com/news.html
===================================================================
TOPIC: Query (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
How come James got the Giant Peach and Quatermass only got the
pit? [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Puzzle (sent in by Tom Russell)
APRIL FOOLS' DAY PUZZLE
What is this common object found in an American home?
It has 19 different words on it, prominently shown.
Giving a little hint would surely be nice...
Some of those 19 words appear more than twice.
Is that enough clues for that object to be known?
Perhaps a math hint will help you some more?
MT VOID readers expect one for sure.
A little simple grade school arithmetic:
Two similar expressions you must pick,
Which when solved equal 19 and 84.
The answer is in the open for all to see.
The object and your eyes have met
if your words include all of the alphabet
except the letters K, Q, X and Z.
If not obvious today, then on the 1st it might be.
[-tlr]
===================================================================
TOPIC: My Picks For Turner Classic Movies in April (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
I am writing this on a 50-ish New Jersey day. I can see the snow
melting and retreating from the sides of my house. I have hopes of
March going out like a lamb after it came in like a lion, or
perhaps more aptly like a polar bear. It is time to share my
impressions of some of the rarer films TCM is showing in April. All
times are from the Eastern Time Zone.
I have mentioned KONGO (1932) before, but it is a rare enough film
that I thought I should mention it again. I have not seen it in a
while so I looked in the IMDB for a short description of the film.
Yes, they give it a short description that agrees with what I think
about the film. Then I looked at who wrote the description and
there was my name. My past is catching up with me. What I said in
this very erudite description was, "This remake of WEST OF ZANZIBAR
(1928) made four years later tries to outdo the Lon Chaney original
in morbidity. From a wheelchair a handicapped white man rules an
area of Africa as a living god. He rules the local natives through
superstition and stage magic and he rules the few white people
through sadism, keeping them virtual prisoners. He lives for the
day he can avenge himself horribly on the man who stole his wife
and crushed his spine. Strong and macabre stuff in a nearly
forgotten horror film." I'll go with that. [Monday, April 6, 8:30
AM]
If you want an idea of how far comic book hero films have come, you
might notice that at 10 AM each Saturday morning TCM is showing
episodes of the first big screen adaptation of the comic book
character Batman, the serial BATMAN. Lambert Hillyer (INVISIBLE
RAY, DRACULA'S DAUGHTER) directed the 15-chapter serial for
Columbia in 1943. And "big screen" is just the problem with the
Batman serial. Every costume problem if up there several times
life size. Lewis Wilson looks a little silly in the often-wrinkly
Batman suit. Spandex was not invented until 1959. There are
wrinkles on the sleeves and torso. The filmmakers never do get the
cowl quite right. Batman looks a little like a court jester.
Actually in the serials none of the comic book heroes ever looked
quite right. They all had wrinkled costumes. (Adam West looked so
much better in the 1960s TV version than Wilson looks in the
serials, but that was because spandex had been invented.) The evil
Dr. Daka (played by J. Carrol Naish doing a TERRIBLE, racist
Japanese impression) turns people into robotic zombies, all for the
greater glory of Japanese Emperor Hirohito. Charles Middleton has
a minor role as a mineral prospector. Elsewhere in these days he
played Ming The Merciless. Sorry, I was going to mention this on-
going series last month, but space ran out on me. You can see the
whole serial in individual chapters on YouTube or you can use it to
catch up to TCM. [Saturdays at 10 AM]
Some films like CARNIVAL OF SOULS and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD were
made on minuscule budgets and somehow are all the more effective
because of that. The story seems much more like it is happening in
real life if there is so little spent on the film it has a
documentary feel. "Found footage" films work on the same
principle. I suppose it did not work for BATMAN, but a good
director can sometime make a small budget make the film more
believable. One such film is NIGHT TIDE (1963). Dennis Hopper,
who to this point had been mostly in major films like REBEL WITHOUT
A CAUSE (1955), GIANT (1956), SAYONARA (1957), GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K.
CORRAL (1957), took time out to play in this haunting and
unassuming enigma of a film with definite fantasy elements. Mora
the Mermaid is a carnival sideshow attraction who thinks herself to
be a mermaid, child of the sea people. A sailor who is interested
in her (Hopper) perhaps believes that is exactly what she is. The
style of the film is unhurried and dreamlike with two dream
sequences. It was directed by Curtis Harrington. [Thursday, April
16, noon]
My choice for the best film of the month? Have you ever heard of
Kong? [Monday, April 13, 8:00 PM]
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Why I Hate Travel (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
We recently went on a six-day trip to visit Mark's mother in
Scottsdale. In addition to all the usual aggravations of travel,
we encountered:
1) The parking lot we use at Newark was not taking anyone who did
not have a reservation. We had one, but it was in my backpack in
the trunk, so we had to pull over and dig it out before we could
get in.
2) When we got to the motel, at first they could not find our
reservation. This was because we had made it several months ago,
and since then the credit card issuer had decided that their
database might have been compromised. They issued everyone new
cards--and canceled the old ones, but that meant that when the
motel tried to charge our first night, the card was refused.
Luckily, they held the room anyway (probably because they did not
want to cancel a five-night booking), which was good, because they
were full. (They did try to call us, but I had given our home
number.)
3) We planned on getting together with Mark's brother and sister-
in-law Friday at 5:30 at Jade Palace. Mark looked up the number
and called for a reservation. They had nothing between 5:00 and
8:00, but Mark wrangled a reservation for 5:15. When we got there,
they knew nothing about the reservation and said they did not even
take reservations, but in any case, there were plenty of tables.
It turns out there are *two* Jade Palaces in Scottsdale!
4) We thought we might need to get a ride to the airport in
Phoenix, so we asked my brother-in-law for a recommendation. He
suggested Uber. It turns out that Uber is only available to people
with smartphones. We do not have a smartphone. (Luckily, my
brother-in-law's schedule let him take us to the airport after all-
-thanks, David!)
5) When we returned to Newark, we had a shovel to clear the snow
from around our car, but it was sitting on a patch of smooth ice,
and all it did was spin its wheels. Luckily, the lot's manager
rounded up a helper and they were able to push us out far enough so
we could get traction. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: A MOST WANTED MAN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In his last leading role, and one of his better ones,
Philip Seymour Hoffman is in German government anti-terrorist
intelligence and is tracking a Russian-Chechen who entered Germany
and Hamburg illegally. Based on John Le Carre's novel this film is
something of a workout for the viewer. It does slow in the second
half, but then builds to a startling ending. Anton Corbijn directs
an adaptation by Andrew Bovell. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
John Le Carre's stories are all densely written and require close
attention to follow. A good memory for character names and/or note
taking are suggested. Certainly that is true of the first half of
A MOST WANTED MAN. Frequently his view of the intelligence
community requires skills more like work than entertainment. In a
James Bond film one can be distracted by the scenery or by a female
without losing the thread of the story. Not so with a faithful
adaptation of a Le Carre story. So there is very little glamour in
intelligence as Le Carre presents it. I saw this film on DVD and
was glad of the opportunity to backup and re-listen to what is
being said. It is not helped by Hoffman's mumbling in English but
with a German accent. He smokes too much, drinks too much, and
cares too much. Somehow in a movie we can tell he smells of
cigarettes and sweat.
Hoffman plays Gunther Bachmann who has his own investigative team
planting an unlimited number of microphones and cameras to spy on
suspected spies, terrorists, and their allies. It is almost
comical to see him able to spy on just about anything no matter
where it happens. His team finds a Russian-Chechen, suspected
terrorist who has come to Hamburg to claim his inheritance from his
terrorist father. Bachman's team spies on and collect information
from anywhere they can get it to try to solve the enigma of the
intruder. In this Bachmann's superiors are totally unsympathetic,
making demands on Hoffmann and his team. Meanwhile Hoffman gets
unexpected support from the American CIA who have sent a
representative (Robin Wright) to benefit from Bachmann's findings.
For once the CIA happens to be pushing in Bachmann's favor.
It is interesting stylistically that the film chooses to substitute
German accents for German language. These days most films would
have German characters speak their own language and then would
subtitle it. That would probably limit a film's prospects. It is
an older convention to use foreign accents for foreign languages.
This is a view we rarely see of intelligence work with different
agencies pitted against each other as much as they are the enemy.
And just who the enemy is is far from clear. Not all of the fog of
war is on the battlefield. Hoffman's last leading role is it own
kind of spy film, far removed from the fields of James Bond. I
rate it high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10. After a limited
release in August, 2014, the film is now on DVD and is rentable
(currently not streamable) from NetFlix.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1972571/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_most_wanted_man/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SLEEP DEALER (2008) (film retrospective by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In what is perhaps twenty years into the future a small
village near Oaxaca is dying because a foreign corporation has
bought and dammed their river. Memo, a young man who inadvertently
caused the death of his father, flees the village and goes to
Tijuana where people have jacks installed in their arms to more
directly interface with the Internet. Several technologies are
projected into the future in a very believable extrapolation of the
present. Alex Rivera directs a screenplay he coauthored with David
Riker and gives us one of the best science fiction films of the
last decade. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
Memo, played by Luis Fernando Pena, lives in a remote village near
Oaxaca in Mexico. Even calling Santa Ana del Rio a "village" may
be overrating it. But the town has been pulled into the negative
side of globalization. An international corporation has dammed the
river that is the village's lifeblood and is charging the locals
inordinately high prices for them just to get the water they need to
live. Memo unintentionally gets the village destroyed and his
father killed by American drones supposedly protecting the dam so-
called "aqua-terrorists." No longer able to live in they place he
has lived all his life. Memo flees from his village to Tijuana
where he can get a tele-presence job doing work in the United
States while never leaving Mexico. To work he has to use a
technology that has not yet reached Memo's village. This provides
the Americans what we are told they always wanted, Mexican labor
without the Mexicans.
Jacks are implanted in the users' forearms so they can connect
their nervous systems directly to the Internet, which they see with
virtual reality. Installing jacks has replaced the drug trade in
the illicit underground economy in Tijuana. The more Tijuana, "the
city of the future," has been changed by cutting-edge technology
the more it remains the same squalid border town crime center.
Leonor Varela (Luz Martinez) is the love interest, who may be
another danger for Memo.
Perhaps one problem is that the ending of the film is a little
simplistic. One really wants to know what happened next and things
might be very different for Santa Ana del Rio given a month or two.
There is probably more to the story, but it is not Memo's story.
Director Alex Rivera gives us a film full of plausible evolutions
of current technology with a believable if not pleasant feel for
how these changes will fit into our world. Rivera throws in some
telling touches. When the locals of Memo's village talk to local
bots, the bots always speak first in English and then repeat in
Spanish. English speakers get the advantage. Memo's town is shown
in earth tones. When Memo is in Tijuana the scenery is colored in
bright mostly-primary colors as if by neon.
I rate SLEEP DEALER +3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 9/10. The film is
in English and subtitled Spanish, though most of the dialog is in
Spanish. SLEEP DEALER is available for streaming from NetFlix.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sleep_dealer/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SpaceX Summary (comments by Dale L. Skran)
I've been intending to write a round-up of SpaceX's many
activities, but as I'm pressed for time, I was inspired to provide
this link to a www.parabolicarc.com blog post that does more or
less what I intended:
http://tinyurl.com/void-spacex
What SpaceX is undertaking by itself is similar in scope to the US
Manned space program in the early 1960s, although costing far less
and with many fewer employees. It is really quite amazing to see an
undertaking of this scale. It is more amazing that this is only
one of many private space efforts going on right now, although it
is certainly the largest. A major reason for this is that the very
rich have gotten into the space business in a big way, and there
seems to be more to come. Another recent parabolicarc post listed
the billionaires that are investing in space:
http://tinyurl.com/void-space-projects
So hang on to your hats, hot jets, and clear ether! The Space Age
has really only just started. [-dls]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE WALKING DECEASED (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
In response to Mark's review of THE WALKING DECEASED in the
03/20/15 issue of the MT VOID, David Goldfarb writes:
[Mark writes,] "Our story opens as Sheriff Lincoln (played by Dave
Sheridan) awakes in a hospital coming out of a coma and finds the
world he knew has come to an end while he was unconscious. (Note
the reference to 28 DAYS LATER, and to THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS.)"
Well, possibly referring to those. More directly, referencing (==
"lifting wholesale") the situation at the very beginning of THE
WALKING DEAD, in which Sheriff Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln)
awakes in a hospital etc.
(Possibly you knew that, but if so it's not obvious.) [-dg]
Mark replies:
I think I saw the first season of THE WALKING DEAD, but have not
seen it since. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
As probably most readers know by now, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE by
Philip K. Dick (ISBN 978-0-679-74067-4) is set in an alternate
universe in which the Axis won World War II. So when Random House
put on the back a New York Times Book Review quote saying, "Philip
K. Dick's best books always describe a future that is both entirely
recognizable and utterly unimaginable," one does not know if Random
House realized that THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE was not actually set
in the future, or if the reviewer was reviewing some other book
entirely, or indeed, if the reviewer was reviewing THE MAN IN THE
HIGH CASTLE and saying something negative about it.
There does seem to be a misconception about the plot. It seems to
me that the book with the book (THE GRASSHOPPER LIES HEAVY) is
often described as describing our world. It does not; it describes
a third outcome, where the Allies win, but where Roosevelt has only
two terms, and there are various other differences as well.
The title "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" comes from Ecclesiastes
12:15. If it sounds unfamiliar, it is because the familiar King
James Version renders it as, "Also when they shall be afraid of
that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond
tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and
desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the
mourners go about the streets." Several other versions say, "The
grasshopper drags itself along." I do not think there is a
standard translation that renders it as Dick has it.
The Japanese characters seem to talk in a sort of pidgin English,
or rather a stilted and slightly incorrect English. For example,
in describing THE GRASSHOPPER LIES HEAVY, someone says, "No science
in it. Nor set in future. Science fiction deals with future, in
particular where science has advanced over now. Book fits neither
premise." (In particular, it is English without definite or
indefinite articles.) At least one reviewer attributes this to
racism on Dick's part, particularly as the German characters all
speak perfect English. But the American characters also use this
"pidgin" when speaking to the Japanese ("One cannot judge by book
being best seller.") or even when thinking to themselves ("Pilfer
customs right and left, wear, eat, talk, walk, as for instance
consuming with gusto baked potato served with sour cream and
chives, old-fashioned American dish added to their haul. But
nobody fooled..."). The reviewer may be right but there seems to
be more to it than that.
THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER by John Brunner (ISBN 978-0-345-46717-1) was
written in 1975, but is remarkably prescient about what life would
be like in the twenty-first century. (Brunner acknowledges Alvin
Toffler's FUTURE SHOCK, so I suppose it is not entirely
surprising.) For example, Brunner writes, "He laid a slip of paper
in front of her. It bore a message in firm clear handwriting,
unusual now that most literate kids were taught to type at seven."
We are now apparently just now at the point when children will no
longer be taught cursive writing (except for their own signatures--
heaven only knows what is supposed to happen when someone gets
married and changes their name.)
In his Delphi counseling Brunner anticipates crowd-sourcing as used
by Wikipedia and others: Ask a very large number of people a
statistical question, consolidate their replies, and "they tend to
cluster around the actual figure as recorded in almanacs, yearbooks
and statistical returns."
As Brunner puts it, "It's rather as though this paradox has proved
true: that while nobody knows what's going on around here,
everybody knows what's going on around here."
Brunner talks about buildings being "ecofast". We do not have that
term, but we do have "green", which covers the same features: heavy
insulation, recycling, garden areas, etc.
In his description of late twentieth century geo-politics, Brunner
is (not surprisingly) less accurate. (Can it be that technology is
driven by the Tide of History and politics by the Great Man?)
However, he was pretty accurate with his first Philippine woman
president, Sara Castaldo. Brunner said she cut their annual murder
rate in half. After the Philippines' first actual woman president,
Corazon Aquino, took office, the crime rate did in fact drop
considerably.
On the one hand, Brunner talks about "computer remotes", which
sound like dumb terminals connected to a mainframe somewhere (the
common set-up in the 1970s). On the other hand, it is not clear
that a tablet connected to the Internet does not fit Brunner's
description just as well.
Brunner anticipates the "murse": "the list of what people felt to
be indispensible had long ago reached the stage when both sexes
customarily carried bulky purses when bound for any but their most
regular destinations." I have talked about this in the context of
traveling--these days, the electronics I carry weighs almost as
much as my entire suitcase did thirty years ago. Netbook, camera,
cell phone, GPS, power cables, batteries, chargers, ... the list
seems endless.
But there is more to it than that. Watch a movie from the 1930s or
so. When a man gets dressed, he puts in his pockets a thin wallet,
a few coins, a handkerchief, and a comb. The wallet had a few
bills, and maybe a union card or (rarely) a drivers license. A
wallet now contains cash, credit cards (probably at least three),
ATM/debit cards, a drivers license, an auto club card, a medical
insurance card, a drug insurance card, a library card, several
supermarket/restaurant/cinema discount cards, business cards,
business cards for *other* people. a couple of photos, ... And it
is not just a house key that he might carry (though back in the
1930s people did not seem to lock their doors all the time)--
today's man carries a house key (or two, depending on his security
system), a couple of car keys, a safe deposit box key, a mailbox
key, an office key, a desk key, a briefcase key, ... And that is
just the wallet and keys.
(Okay, so that was a bit of a diversion.)
"Having been prepared with a light-writer, which unlike old-
fashioned mechanical printers was not limited to any one type
style--or indeed, to any one alphabet, since every single character
was inscribed with a laser beam at minimum power..." Laser
printers were conceived in 1969, but the first commercial
implementation was not until 1976.
Brunner seems to have bought into outdated notions of sexual
orientation, with the omniscient narrator saying of Halflinger,
"Having been jilted by a girl, he teetered on the verge of turning
skew [gay]..." (One is forced to say that if every male jilted by
a female turned gay, there would be a *lot* more gay men around!)
And there is something odd about Brunner's description of the
characters in the first scene: we are told one is a white man, one
is a black man, one is a woman, and the man in the chair is naked
and shaven. Much later we find out in a roundabout fashion that
the man in the chair is also black--perhaps Brunner avoids giving
this detail at the beginning to make him someone we can all
identify with (gender aside). But there is something about the
idea that saying one character is a woman is considered sufficient
to describe her, as if no other aspect of her appearance mattered.
The ending of THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER would seem to presage the Eric
Snowden, though whether the effect of the latter will match the
former is still undetermined (though I would say doubtful). [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics.
I can assure you mine are still greater.
--Albert Einstein