Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
02/28/20 -- Vol. 38, No. 35, Whole Number 2108
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, *mleeper@optonline.net *
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Topics:
Correction to Comments on the 1944 Retro Hugo Nominations
in the Dramatic Presentation Category (Short Form,
Part 2)
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
My Picks for Turner Classic Movies in March (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
MADE TO ORDER: ROBOTS AND REVOLUTION edited by Jonathan
Strahan (book review by Joe Karpierz)
This Week's Reading (THE CHILE PEPPER IN CHINA: A CULTURAL
BIOGRAPHY) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Correction to Comments on the 1944 Retro Hugo Nominations
in the Dramatic Presentation Category (Short Form, Part 2)
The final paragraph of this got a bit garbled. It should have
read:
In my introduction to this series of articles I promised the reader
to reveal which two films I considered to be genuine classics.
When I was first becoming a horror film fan I was not quite sure
what to make of CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE. There are certainly
aspects to admire in its well-rounded commentary on children and
imagination. I still am not quite sure what Val Lewton was saying,
but it has enough to keep me guessing. Lewton deserves veneration
after all the years. And the film most easily appreciated is THE
UNINVITED. Those two were the best fantasy films of 1944 in my
opinion. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
March 12, 2020: THE QUIET EARTH (1985) & novel by Craig Harrison
(1981), Middletown Public Library, 5:30PM
*https://www.rulit.me/books/the-quiet-earth-read-351976-1.html
https://www.rulit.me/books/the-quiet-earth-read-351976-1.html*
March 26, 2020: THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT by Edgar Rice Burroughs,
Old Bridge Public Library, 7PM
*https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/551
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/551*
April 9, 2020: THE PRESTIGE (2006) & novel by Christopher Priest
(1995), Middletown Public Library, 5:30PM
May 28, 2020: THE DARK FOREST by Cixin Liu, Old Bridge Public
Library, 7PM
July 23, 2020: CLIPPER OF THE CLOUDS by Jules Verne (a.k.a.
ROBUR THE CONQUEROR, [Fr. title ROBUR LE CONQUERANT],
published by Ace in 1961 in an omnibus titled MASTER OF THE
WORLD, which is the title of the sequel), Old Bridge Public
Library, 7PM
*https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3808
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3808*
September 24, 2020: TBD from Europe/Latin America,
Old Bridge Public Library, 7PM
November 19, 2020: Rudyard Kipling:
"A Matter of Fact" (1892)
*https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16578
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16578*
"The Ship That Found Herself" (1895)
*https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2569
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2569*
".007" (1897)
*https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2569
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2569*
"Wireless" (1902)
*https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9790
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9790*
"With the Night Mail [Aerial Board of Control 1]" (1905)
*https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29135
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29135*
"As Easy as A.B.C. [Aerial Board of Control 2]" (1912)
*https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13085
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13085*
"In the Same Boat" (1911)
*https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13085
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13085*
Old Bridge Public Library, 7PM
Northern New Jersey events are listed at:
*http://www.sfsnnj.com/news.html http://www.sfsnnj.com/news.html*
===================================================================
TOPIC: My Picks for Turner Classic Movies in March (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
In 1968 NASA was preparing for its greatest achievement, the
landing of a human on the moon and bringing him back alive.
Science writer Hank Searles released a novel called THE PILGRIM
PROJECT, envisioning in technical detail how such an achievement
could be accomplished. Much of his technical detail was accurate
or at least credible. The book was adapted into the film COUNTDOWN
(1968), just one year prior to the actual first real lunar round
trip. The novel correctly had the United States and the USSR trying
to upstage each other, the USSR with a soft unmanned landing just
before the United States had its landing. A Soviet unmanned moon
shot attempted a moon landing but ended in failure so there was no
doubt the USSR lost the race to the moon, and there was no question
who had won the race to the moon. See
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_15
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_15* for details of the Soviet
attempts.
COUNTDOWN was the directorial debut of Robert Altman; the actors
included James Caan and Robert Duvall, and a supporting cast
including Joanne Moore, Charles Aidman, and Ted Knight.
[COUNTDOWN, Saturday, March 28, 04:00 PM (ET)]
Top film of the month: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.
Peter O'Toole plays the British war hero who united several Arab
tribes to repel German and Turkish military incursion.
[LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, Saturday, March 28, 04:00 PM (ET)]
Also, TCM is running an entire day of supernatural stories on
Friday, March 27:
6:00 AM Crashing Las Vegas (1956)
7:15 AM Thirteenth Chair, The (1937)
8:30 AM Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
10:45 AM Bewitched (1945)
12:00 PM Brain That Wouldn't Die, The (1962)
1:30 PM Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
4:00 PM Power, The (1968)
6:00 PM Haunting, The (1963)
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: MADE TO ORDER: ROBOTS AND REVOLUTION edited by Jonathan
Strahan (copyright 2020, Rebellion, ISBN 978-1-781-08787-9) (book
review by Joe Karpierz)
Jonathan Strahan's latest themed anthology, "Made to Order: Robots
and Revolution", arrives in the neighborhood of the 100th
anniversary of Karel Capek's famous play "R.U.R.", where we were
introduced to the term robot. But R.U.R. was not the first work to
include the concept of an artificial being, an automoton, an AI,
that is meant to serve man. The concept of artificial entities
made in the likeness of humans has been around for a long time.
And while most people might point back to Frankenstein's Monster as
one of the first examples of this kind of creature, Strahan points
out in his Introduction "Making the 'Other' We Need", that the
concept goes a lot further back than that.
But we're in the present, and "Made to Order" contains sixteen
original stories by some of the top writers in science fiction
today. And while we may think of any of Asimov's creations, or
Robbie the Robot, or the Robot in "Lost in Space", or the two
endearing mechanical creatures in the Star Wars movies as the prime
example of robots, the creations presented here are not only a
little different, their stories are a little different.
My favorite in the collection is Ian R. Macleod's "Sin Eater", in
which a robotic sin eater goes to the Vatican to perform his duties
on the last living pope, and indeed probably one of the last
physical humans, as most have uploaded themselves into the next
phase of existence. Macleod's tale takes the reader inside not
only the personal history of the character of the pope, but into
the process of sin eating. I was blown away by the twist at the
end, and as a person brought up Catholic I did not see it coming
but it sure hit me pretty hard.
Rich Laron's "An Elephant Never Forgets" is a brutal tale of an
artificial construct being manipulated to, well, help a pretty
nasty guy do some pretty nasty things. The central character is
fully aware that someone has done something to him, but he doesn't
know how, and he doesn't know why. As the story unfolds, we
realize that like many other robots, he was just being used.
Alastair Reynolds (one of my current favorite authors) gives us
"Polished Performance", a tale about a group of robots who try to
resolve the problem that a good deal of the humans on their ship
for an interstellar voyage have perished in their cryogenic
containers. It's a nice little story of class differences within
the group of robots and how one of the lowest class robots comes up
with a solution to save the day. It's not a deep story, but it
does try to make the point that even robots can divide themselves
into classes.
A story that I didn't much care for as I was reading it, but upon
reflection realized is a truly powerful story, is Sofia Samatar's
"Fairy Tales for Robots". A human is preparing a robot for
awakening and is telling that robot human fairy tales in a way that
relate to the lives of robots. A really sneaky story that took
awhile to hit me, but once it did I was bowled over.
Another story I liked a lot was Suzanne Palmer's "Chiaroscuro in
Red", about a college student who is given sole ownership of a
robot by his parents--robots are typically owned by conglomerates--
and his efforts to repair the robot himself and make it useful even
though the model is obsolete. It's a fun story.
I also enjoyed Sarah Pinsker's (I seem to always enjoy a Sarah
Pinsker story) "Bigger Fish", the story of a PI looking into a
murder of a wealthy businessman only to discover that the murderer
was definitely not someone he expected, and in fact the whole thing
is downright sinister at the end of it all. It gave me the creeps.
Annalee Newitz gives us "The Translator", a story of a human being
who has the gift of being able to talk to AIs. The AIs are
leaving, but before they leave they give the human race an
invaluable gift. The idea that the AIs will help us, but only if
we work to understand their message, is a nice one, and a good
lesson for humanity.
Saad Z. Hossain gives us "The Endless", about an AI that has been
sold and repurposed and is out to get revenge on his new bosses.
It's a well-told and funny story about revenge and rebellion,
perfect for the theme of this anthology.
All the stories in the book are terrific. There are stories in the
anthology by Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Peter Watts (a favorite of mine,
with a good one here), Daryl Gregory, Tochi Onyebuchi, Ken Lui (who
never disappoints), Peter F. Hamilton (yet another favorite of
mine) and John Chu. Many of these authors are award winners, and
those that aren't should be. I'm probably drawn to Strahan's
anthologies because his tastes are similar to mine, and once again
he does not disappoint. This is an outstanding anthology by one of
the leading short fiction editors of our day. Fans of robots--and
all related artificial constructs--will enjoy it. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE CHILE PEPPER IN CHINA: A CULTURAL BIOGRAPHY by Brian R. Dott
(Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-19532-4) is the first
book I am reviewing through NetGalley.com, and I hope the
formatting is not typical of their books. For starters, it is in
PDF format, which makes it impossible to enlarge the font, and also
difficult to read on my Kindle e-reader. I can manage to read it
on my Kindle tablet, although I have to rotate the device and read
it in landscape mode because of the line length. (I don't think I
could even do this on the e-reader.) And I had great difficulty in
getting it onto my Mac.
Then within the file there seem to be all sorts of formatting
detritus: "-1"s, "0"s, and "+1"s preceded or followed by dashes.
And words seem to split over lines without even any hyphenization.
Okay, that gets rid of all the technical nitty-gritty. Now on to
the content.
The Chinese recognized five flavors: sour, sweet, bitter, salty,
and pungent. Of particular interest to us Sichuan cuisine fans is
Dott's brief discussion of the spices in the "pungent" group that
chile peppers replaced in China, in particular, the Sichuan pepper
(fagara). As he notes, "In addition to their flavor, the shells
also have a numbing or anesthetic quality." Other foods in this
group include onion, garlic, ginger, and cinnamon, as well as the
relatively more recent anise, fennel, clove, and black pepper. (It
also served as a substitute for salt as a flavoring, since the
production and price of salt was controlled by the government.)
The problem for us Sichuan cuisine fans is that Dott's book is
heavy on the academic and light on discussion of the actual food.
Dott covers the mentions of chili peppers in books on medicine, in
artworks, in government reports, in every possible aspect. One
problem is that he seems to repeat himself a lot, at least to my
un-academic reading. There seem to be multiple sections that talk
at length about medicinal uses, for example. And there is a long
section of footnotes and bibliography. (The main text ends on page
196 of a 296-page book.)
Maybe one needs to be a more serious student of the intersection of
food and culture than I am to really appreciate this book. I
cannot deny it is well-researched and well-written, but I was
expecting something more like THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES:
ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF CHINESE FOOD by Jennifer 8. Lee. As
long as you know what to expect, you can judge whether this is a
book for you. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
*mleeper@optonline.net *
I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get
to the end and say to myself, "Well, that's not going to
happen."
--Rita Rudner