THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/23/17 -- Vol. 35, No. 52, Whole Number 1968
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Marvel Movies (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
What Is Science Fiction--Chopped Liver? (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
John W. Campbell Memorial Award Finalists (and Winner) 2017
Notes While Reading THE MASSACRE OF MANKIND (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
NINEFOX GAMBIT by Yoon Ha Lee (book review by Joe Karpierz)
MARS: OUR FUTURE ON THE RED PLANET by Leonard David
(book review by Gregory Frederick)
THE MIDNIGHTERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Mona Lisa (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
This Week's Reading (Hugo novella finalists: THE BALLAD OF
BLACK TOM, EVERY HEART A DOORWAY,
PENRIC AND THE SHAMAN, A TASTE OF HONEY,
THIS CENSUS-TAKER) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Marvel Movies (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I guess when all you are is a superhero, everything looks like a
minion of evil. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: What Is Science Fiction--Chopped Liver? (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
Seen on (06/11/17, Essays and Opinions
column):
"Quick: Think of a novel devoted to climate change. Tough, right?
What explains this failure of imagination involving the fate of the
world? ..."
This points to an article that discusses this and never uses the
term "science fiction"--or even the word "science":
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: John W. Campbell Memorial Award Finalists 2017
The John W. Campbell Memorial Award is a juried award presented
during the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction's Campbell
Conference Awards Banquet, and is considered one of the four major
awards for book-length science fiction. (The other three are the
Hugo, the Nebula, and the Locus Awards.)
See http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/campbell-finalists.htm.
2017 Campbell Award Finalists:
Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter: THE MEDUSA CHRONICLES
Don DeLillo: ZERO K
Kij Johnson: THE DREAM-QUEST OF VELLITT BOE
Paul J. McAuley: INTO EVERYWHERE
Nisi Shawl: EVERFAIR
Tricia Sullivan: OCCUPY ME
Tade Thompson: ROSEWATER
Lavie Tidhar: CENTRAL STATION
Colson Whitehead: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Aliya Whiteley: THE ARRIVAL OF MISSIVES
Rick Wilber: ALIEN MORNING
Ben Winters: UNDERGROUND AIRLINES
Nick Wood: AZANIAN BRIDGES
By the time we got this list into the MT VOID, the winner had
already been announced:
Lavie Tidhar: CENTRAL STATION
Note: Of the thirteen finalists, five are alternate history.
===================================================================
TOPIC: Notes While Reading THE MASSACRE OF MANKIND (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
I mentioned in a previous column that I was reading the very long
(for me anyway) novel THE MASSACRE OF MANKIND, Stephen Baxter's
sequel to THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. There are just some more of my
thoughts while reading it.
H. G. Wells wrote several science fiction novels, but the two that
seem to lead the pack of most fondly remembered are THE TIME
MACHINE and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. I have to say I was excited
when Evelyn gave me a gift of the sequel THE MASSACRE OF MANKIND by
English science fiction writer Stephen Baxter. The Wells is the
classic alien invasion story that created a sub-genre of alien
invasion stories just as THE TIME MACHINE is the father of time
travel stories.
George Pal's film version of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS is the very
first movie I can ever remember seeing, and at age three I hated
it. I was also terrified of showerheads for some months afterward.
(See if you can figure out why.) But by the time I was six I was
desperate to see the film again. I would not be able to fulfill
that wish until I was twelve or so. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS has
always been a special story for me. THE TIME MACHINE I have loved
just a step or two down from THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. (But I am
digressing.)
In 1995 Baxter published THE TIME SHIPS, a fairly entertaining
sequel to THE TIME MACHINE. I believe that THE MASSACRE OF MANKIND
novel was expected to be fairly successful if for no other reason
than symmetry (and there are plenty of other reasons). If THE TIME
MACHINE gave way to a popular sequel, lightning might strike twice.
Baxter was the right person to write a sequel to THE WAR OF THE
WORLDS. The demand was there. Baxter had proven he had the
credentials. And as he had done 22 years before, Baxter got the
permission of the H. G. Wells Estate and wrote the novel.
So there it was, THE MASSACRE OF MANKIND, the authorized sequel to
my beloved THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. But for me the new book just
does not work nearly as well as the sequel to THE WAR OF THE
WORLDS. In THE TIME SHIPS, the characters have time travel. That
opens a whole universe up to them. There are a lot of places they
can go to find adventure. This gave Baxter great possibilities for
ideas and invention with his earlier book.
But THE WAR OF THE WORLDS really shuts down on the storyteller.
The Wells invasion novel was a picture of people of Wells' day
interfacing with aliens who are basically just ciphers with big
guns. That can entertain the reader for a while as the reader sees
the conflict two very different technology levels. Wells'
description of the people of his day fleeing in panic is okay, but
it is not what attracts people to read the book. But THE WAR OF
THE WORLDS is a short book. If it had to be written for twice the
length Wells would have had to go into the minds of the aliens
more. There really are not many other places to go with the story.
Baxter took up the task, and so he also has to describe people of
the early 1900s in contact with inscrutable aliens. But the people
are rather dull and the fighting is repetitive. And there is not
much fighting in the first half of the novel. Most of that comes
much later in the new book, and when it does much of it is largely
informed by the history of the Great War. The book has far too
many characters and far too many pages.
In addition the book needs a powerful visual component. People
want to be excited by the visualization of the Martians and their
war machines. Rare is the printed edition of the novel THE WAR OF
THE WORLDS that has no illustrations and no hint of what the
Martian war machines must look like. Especially the Classics
Illustrated visual images show tremendous imagination. The cover
of the Jeff Wayne musical version has some really nice painting of
the Martian weaponry:
http://tinyurl.com/mtv-wayne
For a selection of illustrations see:
http://tinyurl.com/mtv-twotw
Notice how much time and effort was spent describing the missing
visual experience for the Mercury Theater broadcast:
http://tinyurl.com/mtv-orsonwelles
The new book (at least the edition I received) has on its cover
what looks like a just-okay illustration of the original THE WAR OF
THE WORLDS:
http://tinyurl.com/mtv-baxter
It's nothing to get excited about. Neither were the descriptions
in the book. The book is mostly about dull-ish people caught up in
the war with the aliens. Wells had that covered pretty well. Much
of the book seems padded and often not very engaging. Baxter's
book takes place about fourteen years after the original and people
just have not changed that much in the few intervening years. And
this book tells the reader no more than the original as to how a
Martian war machine can walk with three legs on a tripod.
At least some of the characters in the Wells are intended for
humorous effect. Usually in the Wells I do not get his joke. The
same may be true of the Baxter characters. Also, the Martians are
just about like they were in the Wells book. We do not learn a
whole lot more about them. Meanwhile, the plot of the Baxter is
not very different from the plot of the Wells. The book takes the
original plot and has only bits of excitement scattered throughout.
In any case, this book is a little bit of a slow and laborious
slog. If the reader is expecting an experience anything like
reading the Wells novel, or even like TIME SHIPS this book is not
recommended.
Baxter is a good writer, but I cannot see that H. G. Wells' novel
needed a sequel and this sequel seems over all a miscalculation.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: NINEFOX GAMBIT by Yoon Ha Lee (copyright 2016, Solaris,
$9.99, 317pp, ISBN 978-1-78108-449-6) (excerpt from the Duel Fish
Codices: a book review by Joe Karpierz)
There is nothing worse than discovering a new (to you) author and
discovering you're head over heels in love with that author's work.
I can hear you saying, "But wait, that's a good thing, right? More
good new stories to read." Of course that's a good thing, but the
more good fiction that's available to us from more sources, the
more we're likely not to run into a clunker. There's nothing worse
than picking something up and wanting to throw it against the wall.
If we read material from authors that we like, we're likely to
always have something we appreciate reading and spending precious
time on. Now the other side of the room is stating, "But wait a
minute, if you stay only in your comfort zone, how will you find
new authors and new types of fiction to read?"
Hence, the annual Hugo finalist list. I'll be the first to admit
that I don't read enough during the year to be able to nominate
from a wide pool of stories. My life doesn't permit that. I do,
however, plunge headfirst into the Hugo finalists list every year,
and nearly every year recently someone has jumped up to blow me
away, at least initially. In my personal experience, in recent
years we have Ann Leckie (although the luster faded quickly for
me), N.K. Jemisin, and Cixin Liu. Mind you, these are all from the
Best Novel category. The issue could expand exponentially if I
were able to read all the short fiction too.
And thus we come to this year's entry into the "I gotta start
reading all of this guy's stuff too" fray: Yoon Ha Lee. I
remember reading a short story of his, "The Battle of Candle Arc",
in one of the David Hartwell collections a few years ago. The
events of that story are referred to in Yoon Ha Lee's first novel,
NINEFOX GAMBIT. I should point out that to me he's a new writer.
Lo and behold I've just discovered that he's had over 40 short
stories published, many of which have ended up in the collection
Conservation of Shadows (and of course, the next thing I know, I
buy the ebook of that collection). The sequel to NINEFOX GAMBIT,
RAVEN STRATAGEM, has just been published as I write this, and it's
already on my shelf waiting to be read.
Can you tell that I really liked NINEFOX GAMBIT?
NINEFOX GAMBIT is space opera military science fiction. I haven't
read a lot of military sf recently, but I am fond of space opera.
There is certainly a lot of military sf being published these days.
The story here is simple--on the surface. Captain Kel Cheris is
disgraced because of her use of an unorthodox and unconventional
battle tactic. She will be allowed to redeem herself and her
career by taking back the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the
heretics. Simple, straightforward, and to the point.
That, however, is as simple as it gets. Yoon Ha Lee throws in so
many new and interesting ideas that the reader needs to be alert
and actually pay attention to the story. There is no skimming with
NINEFOX GAMBIT. Yoon Ha Lee does not coddle his readers with this
book. He assumes that the reader is intelligent and can pick up
things along the way, but it can take a little bit of work. Not
work like reading through a dense novel which contains dozens of
characters to keep track of written in flowery language over
several novels. No. This is a sort of puzzle kind of novel: the
reader is constantly thinking "what do they mean by that?"; "how
does that fit in with what happened over there?"; "what is really
going on?"; and of course, the biggie, "what exactly is
'calendrical heresy' anyway?"
Going back to an earlier part of this review for a moment, I
mentioned that Cheris was disgraced for the use of an
unconventional battle tactic. The Kel have something instilled
into them called "formation instinct". All battles are conducted
using various and sundry known formations that are appropriate for
what is trying to be accomplished. She steps outside of those
formations, and this sends her down the path of the story the novel
tells. She has to win the right to lead the expedition to take
back the Fortress of Scattered Needles in a sort of contest against
other military leaders by proposing a plan that is better than all
the rest. She proposes using the undead warrior Shuos Jedeo as the
weapon. Jedeo has never lost a battle, but the problem is that
during one battle Jedeo slaughtered two armies, one of which was
his own. Now he is kept in an undead state and revived when the
hexarcate (the system of government) needs him. Jedeo is
"attached" to Cheris; they communicate mentally most of the time,
but no one else can see him. The army that Cheris commands knows
of Jedeo's presence and involvement, which makes things much more
interesting as unusual tactical and strategic decisions are made.
So, is the Fortess retaken? That would be telling, but it's really
beside the point. What is appealing to me though is the abundance
of new ideas that Yoon Ha Lee presents in the book. While the
formation instinct is something new to me, and attaching an undead
warrior to a live soldier to go into battle must have been done
sometime in the long history of science fiction, my winner of "new,
interesting, and complex idea of the year" is the calendrical
heresy. The calendar is not just a way to tell the passing of time.
It is a way of life, a belief system, a way to hold moral fabric
together. And it can be a weapon. And no, I don't understand it
all. At least not yet. But combine all those ideas with political
intrigue and a well written, fast paced story, in my mind this is
may be the best novel of the year, a year in which there have been
so many terrific novels. I hope RAVEN STRATAGEM can continue the
excellence that NINEFOX GAMBIT has displayed. That would be a
terrific thing indeed. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: MARS: OUR FUTURE ON THE RED PLANET by Leonard David (book
review by Gregory Frederick)
An award-winning space journalist Leonard David wrote this
companion book for the National Geographic TV series. The TV
series, was a mixture of documentary and fictional drama directed
by Ron Howard. This large format picture book is overflowing with
stimulating photographs and artists' drawings illustrating the
planet Mars, the technologies used to survey the planet and future
plans to land humans on Mars. Orbital views, made from thousands
of images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, reveal the complex
Martian terrain of craters, canyons, dunes, and volcanoes, as well
as the landing and crash sites of past Mars missions. The human
requirements are examined, from the need for water, to the layer of
the toxic chemical perchlorate on the surface, radiation, and the
nearly total absence of gaseous oxygen. Many experts are
interviewed in the book and they provide an incredible depth of
insight on all the issues facing a human mission to Mars. The
experts include people such as historian John Logsdon, policy
experts like Marcia Smith, entrepreneurs and innovators like Elon
Musk, Mars engineers like JPL's Rob Manning, planetary scientists
such as NASA's Chris McKay and Planetary Protection Officer
Catherine Conley, also astronauts like Stanley Love who has already
been on a long duration spaceflight and veteran Buzz Aldrin whose
lifetime of experiences provided a great perspective on human
exploration. This book is a feast for the mind and the eyes.
[-gf]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE MIDNIGHTERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: THE MIDNIGHTERS is a short, sharp shock of a crime film,
keenly directed. It is helmed by Julian Fort who also wrote the
screenplay. Leon Russom plays Victor, a safecracker being paroled
after 35 years. He has every intention of going straight with the
rules of parole until his son shows up unexpectedly with a plan
that is promised to be a sure-thing of a bank job. The dialog is
excellent and the characters well-written, but especially good is
the casting. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Safecracker Victor Lustig (played by Leon Russom) has been in
prison for 35 years. You can see the years in prison on Victor's
face. Now he is 72 and his new parole officer is laying out his
new rules. They are almost as bad as the rules were in prison.
Leon hopes he still has money stashed away going back to the time
he was convicted. He has a right to hope, but this kind of hope
doesn't do him much good. His old friends are just not big on
business ethics. Victor has little money and has to face a world
he no longer understands. And ... surprise ... his son Danny
(Gregory Sims) shows up. The boy is as good with electronics as
Victor is with locks, but he is still stealing. Victor's release
makes him available to use his special talents on a bank job that
Danny is planning. And it may well be that he can use his father,
a prospect that does not exactly thrill Victor. He does not want
to see the cocky youngster make the same mistakes he made.
It is a puzzle just what makes this a particularly magnetic crime
film. It is clever but not flashy. It is less like THE INSIDE MAN
and more like the classic RIFIFI. The dialog is crisp in the best
tradition of a David Mamet film. It is delivered well from a well-
chosen cast. The acting is usually very smooth and never worse
than good. Victor does not look like an action star. He has a
face like a basket of used laundry and ironically that give him a
certain charisma. He has a perfect look for film noir.
The photography is sharp and does not leave it up to the viewer to
figure out what happening. The one use of an overly familiar
effect is the digital equivalent of an under-cranked camera so
traffic, like Victor's life, goes by in a flash. The film goes to
a tight 86 minutes. That time does not always have pitch perfect
pacing, but the dialog and the acting always compensate where
needed.
But for some familiar actors, e.g., John Wesley, this appears to be
a low budget film but carried off smoothly. I rate it a high +2 on
the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10. Currently the film is playing the
festival circuit, but it is probably going to get a better release.
Film Credits:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2938066/combined
What others are saying:
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mona Lisa (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
In response to Mark's comments on Mona Lisa in the 06/16/17 issue
of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
My favorite Mona Lisa factoid is that the painting was apparently,
at one time, cut down to fit into a smaller frame. In a book about
the painting, examples are shown of copies made throughout the
centuries (as one does with unpopular paintings), and before a
certain date, the copies are wider and show more of the pillars and
background.
Leonardo's pigments (often concocted by himself in the teeth of
tradition) have shifted toward the green in all the photos I see of
the picture. I corrected them in Photoshop to more lifelike (i.e.,
red) hues, and I like it a lot better that way.
La Gioconda is the Marilyn Monroe of the art world, perhaps. More
popular at some times than others, but there's always been someone
who liked her a lot. [-kw]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Well, here we go again. With no Retro Hugo ballot this year, I am
reduced to reading the current finalists. And with the new
balloting rules, there are now six finalists in each category
rather than five. Since I am not a member of the Helsinki
Worldcon, I will not be getting "The Package" (of finalists), but
luckily, almost all of the short fiction is available either free
on-line, or from my public library. Given that some of the few
that were not were only on the ballot because of the Rabid Puppies,
I was not going to spend money to get them.
It used to be that ANALOG and ASIMOV'S dominated the short fiction.
Now it is Tor.com and UNCANNY. While the novellas are all print
copies, only two of the dozen novelettes and short stories were
published in a print venue, and each appeared in an e-publication
very shortly thereafter.
Best Novella
All the novellas except for the Kij Johnson were available in my
library system. All six were published as standalone volumes
rather than in a magazine. This is a fairly recent trend in
science fiction, possibly as a response to the tendency of novels
to get longer and longer, and even turn into never-ending series.
THE BALLAD OF BLACK TOM by Victor LaValle (ISBN 978-0-7653-8786-8);
While this story stands on its own, if one realizes it is written
as a response to H. P. Lovecraft's "The Horror at Red Hook", one
will appreciate it more. For starters, without this connection it
looks as though LaValle had decided on his own to set this story of
the Old Ones in 1920s New York with all its racism and inequality,
rather than the "traditional" rural New England setting associated
with Lovecraft. (At the very end LaValle adds another real-world
connection, but I won't spoil it here.) But "The Horror at Red
Hook" is set in 1920s New York, and indeed, THE BALLAD OF BLACK TOM
is just a re-telling of the events of "The Horror at Red Hook" from
a different point of view (though "just" is more dismissive of
LaValle's work than it deserves). One wonders how Lovecraft would
have reacted to this addition to the Cthulhu Mythos, written by an
African-American, with an African-American hero and quite a few
evil white guys--in fact, like the exact reversal of Lovecraft.
The result is the best of the vision of Lovecraft, literary
writing, and modern sensibilities.
THE DREAM-QUEST OF VELLITT BOE by Kij Johnson (ISBN 978-0-765-
39141-4): not readily available to me
EVERY HEART A DOORWAY by Seanan McGuire (ISBN 978-0-7653-8550-5):
At last, a story that is straightforward and comprehensible! The
concept (a boarding school for teenagers who had disappeared into
"imaginary" worlds and then returned to our world) made me think it
was similar to something Neil Gaiman would write. This is one of
those books that makes the proposed YA Hugo so iffy--is it YA or
not? (Well, since it is novella length, it wouldn't be eligible as
a novel anyway.) If you are looking for a more traditional work,
this fits the bill.
PENRIC AND THE SHAMAN by Lois McMaster Bujold (ISBN 978-1-596-
06815-5): This is part of a continuing series by Bujold, and while
it is okay, I suspect if I were more familiar with the series, I
might have appreciated it more. As it was, I often found myself
thinking I was missing something in my understanding of what was
going on.
A TASTE OF HONEY by Kai Ashante Wilson (ISBN 978-0-7653-9004-2):
This started out as one of those fantasies patterned after our
world but not in it--where the geography and ethnic groups seem to
map somewhat onto those of our history, but not quite (sort of like
George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire"). Then it revealed
itself to be more a far future version of our world (I think), but
clearly with a lot of fantasy woven in, and finally one gets
another jolt at the end. Oh, and it is told in non-chronological
order. With all this, the actual plot seems rather thin and
unoriginal. But if the setting keeps you engaged, it may be worth
it for that.
THIS CENSUS-TAKER by China Mieville (ISBN 978-1-101-96734-8): I
have read this twice (once when it came out, and again for this
ranking, and it just does not do anything for me. This is odd in
that I really love some of Mieville's works (e.g., THE CITY & THE
CITY), but I guess that is just because he has a wide range of
styles.
My ranking: THE BALLAD OF BLACK TOM, EVERY HEART A DOORWAY, PENRIC
AND THE SHAMAN, no award, A TASTE OF HONEY, THIS CENSUS-TAKER
Not ranked: THE DREAM-QUEST OF VELLITT BOE
Next week: the novelettes and short stories. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long
enough.
--Groucho Marx