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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 05/28/99 -- Vol. 17, No. 48
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@lucent.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The Denver Area Science Fiction
Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
===================================================================
1. We are pleased to announce that the Science Fiction Club library
is now consolidated and catalogued. The catalog is available on-
line (to Lucent members only, so my apologies to the rest of you)
at http://www.dnrc.bell-labs.com/~eleeper/sfclub.htm. Most books
circulate for four weeks at a time. If you want to borrow a book,
please contact Evelyn Leeper (eleeper@lucent.com, 732-332-6218) or
Mark Leeper (mleeper@lucent.com, 732-817-5619). [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. Special thanks go this week to our esteemed factotum who has
been factoting boxes of books to organize the library. Hey, I
could have done it, but it would have taken me a lot longer.
Evelyn has done a lot of work and I want to thank her. [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. After seeing the commotion surrounding the opening of STAR WARS
I: THE PHANTOM MENACE, I feel a little more secure about the coming
of the year 2000. I live in central New Jersey and I got tickets
for the film relatively easily and at the local going price, high
as it is. I believe that is $8.25 per ticket. In New York City
the scalpers are charging $100 for tickets. There is a fear that
if the social order breaks down in New York City that hordes of
marauders are going to attack central New Jersey scavenging for
food. But there were no such hordes coming looking for Star Wars
tickets. Maybe we are far enough away to be safe. [-mrl]
===================================================================
4. Last week I was saying that in general humans have a sort of
prejudice against computers and tend not to trust them when we
should. The big event of disagreement with a computer was in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Three Mile Island was an example of a
minor disaster that could easily have become a very major one. And
it really was started by a minor incident that the computer systems
would have taken care of, but they were over-ridden by a human who
decided erroneously what the computer was doing was wrong and
overrode the computer. The result could well have killed everybody
over much of the Eastern seaboard. What a fascinating alternate
history story is sitting here waiting for someone to write it.
But I think that we hear more of the instances where the computer
is wrong and the human would be right. Banks just love to blame
their errors on a computer failure. "Our computer made a mistake
and posted the wrong interest..." That is the sort of thing gets
said a lot. I think what we are seeing is a new sort of racism.
There was a time when people felt good blaming the nearest black or
Chinese or Jew for any problem that arose. That is because humans
are suspicious of anything that is different. On some level it may
be that we know that people who look the way we do have a lot of
genes in common with us and we are sticking up for those genes. In
any case we trust what we feel is like us and distrust those things
that are different. Consider the history of the Dreyfus Case in
France. A whole nation made a Jew a scapegoat for little more
reason than that he was a Jew and different. And computers are
very different.
So if you are making a movie there is a natural tendency to make
the computer the villain. And on one level that may be a good
thing. If one must make one group the villain, make it a group
that has no feelings at all. Let's face it, the bank's computer
could not care less if someone really wanted to send it to Devils
Island. So in some senses a computer is a safe scapegoat. The
danger is that we will come to believe that trusting computers is
dangerous and that as humans we know better. That was the mistake
we made at Three Mile Island and the next Three Mile Island might
not be so fortuitously defused.
I have the feeling that we are headed to a time when there will be
a lot of mistrust of computers. A human worker may come to work
drunk or may have problems at home and may be unreliable for a
period of time. That is only human. And being human such moments
are scattered. Computers too have their moments of particular
unreliability but they are all synchronized. Most of you probably
know what I am talking about, but I will go into more detail next
week. [-mrl]
===================================================================
5. STAR WARS EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE (a film review by Mark
R. Leeper):
Capsule: What George Lucas does well, he does
better than anyone else. Simply put this film
probably shows the greatest visual imagination
of any film ever made. (Probably only one
non-STAR WARS film even competes). It even has
a few interesting science fiction ideas.
George Lucas returns to many of the values of
EPISODE 4, missing in 5 and 6. EPISODE 1 has a
host of new alien species, another strongly
mythic story, and a few embarrassments, but
overall it is a lot of fun. Rating: 9 (0 to
10), +3 (-4 to +4)
When KING KONG was released the trailers said, "this was what the
films were made for." It may be a bit of an overstatement, but
they were implying that the films are made to show visual
imagination, to translate from somebody's mind's eye to a movie
screen. And KING KONG did just that. Willis O'Brien's stop-
motion animation was a giant leap forward in translating images
from the mind's eye to the movie screen. Things then stagnated for
44 years. Ray Harryhausen refined stop-motion and made some
marvelous films, but there was no major leaps until 1977 and STAR
WARS. The leap made with STAR WARS was really a big jump. It was
also the starting gun on a race to create new kinds of images on
film to stretch the audience's imagination. Since then the field
of special effects has been rapidly developing. In 1999 George
Lucas can no longer hope to create a film so far ahead of the
competition. He can create a film that blends new effects with the
best existing effects sufficiently to trump any other film that has
ever been made. For the most part he is competing only with his
own previous films. The only non-Lucasfilm really to compete is
the otherwise insipid WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.
The reviews have been very mixed on EPISODE 1, but the ones who in
the past have been most receptive to fantasy on the screen,
especially Roger Ebert, have been quite positive. I think that
Lucas is determined that EPISODE 3 will absolutely blow away even
the new jazzed-up version of EPISODE 4.
Certainly for me the new film was a satisfying experience. There
is undeniable excitement from the very beginning in seeing the Fox
banner and hearing the opening chords of a new Star Wars film.
George Lucas is starting a new trilogy but hardly needs to rekindle
excitement in the series. Teens born after the release of the last
three film line up for the new film, a significant number are
wearing costumes from the series or jackets with decals for "pod-
racing," a sport depicted in EPISODE 1. It would be hard to live
up to all that expectation, but the new film probably manages.
Lucas is trying not so much to recapture the feel of the whole
series but of the first film in specific. EPISODE 4 took place in
a polyglot universe where many different species of aliens
interacted with each other in a very matter-of-fact manner. Often
the interactions were light and comical. That universe was missing
in EPISODE 5 and though it partially returned in EPISODE 6, the
interactions were not nearly as fun. In EPISODE I Lucas again
takes different alien races and tosses them together as casually as
Robert Altman tosses together different personality types. On once
more he has a story with the resonance of a strong mythic core as
he did in EPISODE 1.
Just what the plot is I will not say in detail since any number of
other reviews will have it and I have heard that something like six
different authors have books that tell the plot from a Terry Brooks
version down to one or two children's books. In the plot a war is
starting over, of all things, taxation. At first that seems a
lackluster motivation for all the fireworks of something called
"the Star Wars." But it is also a very realistic touch. Taxation
started the American Revolution and other wars through history.
The "millions for defense but not one cent for tribute" attitude
may very believably be part of the Star Wars universe. So we have
the Federation as the bad guys and one rebellious republic as the
good guys. Lucas has finally officially made his nasties "the
Federation,"--perhaps a direct allusion to the para-militarist
Federation of STAR TREK. Now we will see what the STAR TREK people
will do to retaliate. The real Star Wars may be a battle between
STAR TREK and STAR WARS science fiction series with Lucas selling
special effects to both sides. But I should get back to the plot.
When a conflict between the Federation and the Republic turns to
open acts of war Jedi knights Qui-Gon (played by Liam Neeson) and
Obi-wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) on a mission to Queen Amidala
(Natlie Portman). Accompanying them is Jar Jar Binks. Binks is
done entirely in three-dimensional animation. He seems to be from
a race descended from Hadrosaur-like duck-billed dinosaurs. Having
a duckbill, the animation of his mouth can use visual gags that
usually were the sole province of the animators of Donald Duck.
The group is also joined by a handmaiden from Queen Amidala's
retinue.
Along the way this group stops off on desert world Tatooine. There
they encounter a boy of mystical birth who is suffused with the
force and whose coming may have been foretold in prophecy. Lucas
does not simply remake his previous successes--though there are of
few repeated scenes--but he does give us a larger context for his
story. He gives us some new concepts including a different
understanding of what the Force really is.
The script borrows from more than just mythical sources. Anything
that Lucas sees that seems nifty at the moment is grist for showing
up in some way in the films. The sweeping lines of an SR-71
Blackbird are borrowed for a silver interstellar ship in this
version. There are robots that are probably inspired by the
wheelies in the Frank L. Baum Oz books. Little touches from THE
ABYSS and BEN HUR are also present. One can imagine that touches
of this film will be imitated by other films for years to come.
George Lucas has again raised the bar on what audiences will
consider a good fantasy image on film. His story values may not
keep pace, but his greatest contribution has always been in visual
imagination.
Lucas is too good a director not to have at least competent acting
throughout the film. As with EPISODE 4 he has his most
distinguished actor, in this case Liam Neeson, playing the wise
Jedi knight. But it is a role that requires only a limited amount
of acting. A Jedi keeps his emotions in check, Jedi knighthood a
less demanding role. Neeson carries his SCHINDLER'S LIST
reputation with him and beyond that he needs only behave dignified.
In fact the only really unusual acting in the film comes from
Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala. Dressed in Chinese Imperial
Mandarin robes she seems very stiff and uses an irritating
autocratic diction making her a difficult character to like. It
does become clear from the plot why Lucas wanted this, but it does
not entirely work to the film's favor. The film has almost a
Japanese styling. In a samurai film the filmmaker uses a
distancing effect between the viewer and the samurai. One rarely
gets inside the samurai's head. And royalty are generally even
more stiff and impenetrable. This attitude of Japanese films may
have its roots in Japanese society and making royalty or a samurai
too comprehensible would almost be impertinence. Lucas seems to
have borrowed those values for this film. In EPISODE 4 one knew
what made Luke do what he did and in this film we know what makes
young Anakin tick, but Jedi Knights are a bit more inscrutable.
And Amidala in her this white makeup and stiff Imperial robes is
even more so.
Ewan McGregor has little acting to do but sound like Alec Guinness
and fight like Mark Hamill. This is not his film. Jake Lloyd as
Anakin has a lot of personality and screen presence for one so
young. Having him behaving as adult as he does gives the film at
times the feeling of a children's film. But because we know what
will happen to him, it should be remembered that even at this point
he is possessed by both superhuman talents and a potential for
evil. It is his life and the battle within him that is the central
thread binding together STAR WARS. (That may not have been the
initial plan, but with Lucas trimming the series back to six
episodes that is how it has turned out.)
Rounding out the cast are two familiar actors in dispensable roles.
You have to wonder why an actor of Samuel Jackson's stature takes a
role that might just as well be played by an unknown in a squid
mask. Terence Stamp and Samuel Jackson get their cards stamped as
being Official Star Wars Characters but have little to do and once
they do it they leave the story without a trace. Their action
figures will need no moving parts.
It might have been a temptation to re-cycle much of the older John
Williams STAR WARS musical score, but that was not what he did.
The CD has 74 minutes of music and besides the requisite opening
music and a small trace of the old Obi- Wan theme, none of the
music is familiar. This film has more new music than most totally
new films. Some is of a familiar style, but much is experimental.
Frequently the new score uses unexpected choral arrangements. Only
one piece seems a bit out of place. The triumphal march at the end
of the film sounds a little too much like a marching band's
football half-time music. Perhaps STAR WARS music has been mauled
by so many marching bands that Williams wanted to appease the bands
by giving them something to play without them fouling up his better
music.
Perhaps the most interesting touch to EPISODE I may be an
unintentional result of making the film out of chronological order.
STAR WARS is a bit like a spectacular film that you came into in
the middle and stayed for a second showing to see the parts the
viewer missed. Lucas does some interesting things with the origin
of his series. He gives Anakin an origin that has strong parallels
to the Christ story. Making any other character a Christ figure is
usually pretentious, but here it is pure audacity. We already know
that Darth Vader will be the second most evil force in the Star
Wars universe. To say then he is really like Christ takes more
courage and imagination than most films show these days. One
starts looking for a holy Trinity and quickly finds a father and
son manifesting the same Force. Is the Emperor the Holy Ghost? We
have to wait and see where Lucas is going with this. Few people
have realized how subversive the series has been already. Lucas
repeatedly has images of a not very powerful or technologically
advanced people fighting a large and much more advanced military.
Lucas reportedly has admitted privately that his prototype for the
good guys of the Rebellion was the North Vietnamese. We know whom
that makes The Empire, don't we?
What is not good about the film? I do thing there are a few
problems. There is a bit too much silliness going on. The concept
for the announcer at the pod race was a foolish idea that should
have been left on the cutting room floor. I would have toned down
but not eliminated the hijinx of Jar Jar Binks. It may be my
hearing but many of the new creature accents are hard to
understand. In addition Bink's people add an extra syllable, "sa,"
to many English words that is at first very difficult to
understand. These accents could be toned down or subtitled. Queen
Amidala tells us multiple times that her people are under attack
and are being killed, but surprisingly for this oh-so-visual film
series the plight of her people is never shown. Lucas is
supposedly mimicking the style of serials when he opens with a
sheet of explanation of what has gone before. But in a movie
serial that exposition was intended to tell the audience what has
gone before in the previous chapter of the serial. It would never
be used in the first episode. Lucas misuses it when in the first
episode he uses it to set up what has gone before.
The flying junkman could be interpreted as an offensive Jewish
stereotype. Or he could be just a stereotype of a junkman. I am
not sure if that is not as bad.
The light-saber fights seem to go on too long, but at least they
demonstrate Kendo as a fighting style, which makes them a little
more interesting. Certainly the fights are more engaging than the
endless fights in which anything could happen in THE MATRIX. And
finally I would say that "Feel, don't think" is a lousy philosophy.
Starting a new trilogy George Lucas has to arouse interest in the
series. Certainly the pre-release reception this film has gotten
has got to have been as successful as anything Lucas could have
hoped for. The reviews to this point have been mixed, but a series
that is always at its high-point will become tiresome. STAR WARS
EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE is imperfect, but it surpassed my
expectation. I would give it a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on
the -4 to +4 scale. It is a nice neat packet of well-crafted fun.
There are several questions left open by the film, but I want to
note a few. I also want to make an observation.
Why does beheading kill an imperial droid? Why anthropomorphize a
fighting robot so much as to have a human vulnerability?
In EPISODE 4 R2-D2 does not know Obi-Wan. That is fine since he
might have had that memory wiped. But Obi-Wan did not have his
memory wiped. Why does he not remember R2-D2?
The junk dealer flies on what are obviously non-aerodynamic wings.
Is this just an error or are we intended to believe that he is in
part levitating?
Curiously in visual film fantasy the important years occur at 22-
year intervals. 1933 saw a big leap with KING KONG. 1955 was a
lesser jump with THIS ISLAND EARTH, followed shortly by FORBIDDEN
PLANET. Two major studios had competed with each other to create
the more impressive space opera. The first STAR WARS film, a major
jump, was 1977. This film which is again a large but lesser jump
in fantasy visualization was released in 1999. I wonder what we
can expect for 2021? [-mrl]
===================================================================
6. TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG by Connie Willis (Bantam Spectra HC,
1998, Science Fiction Book Club Edition, ISBN 0-553-09995-7, 434pp)
(a book review by Joe Karpierz):
I like time travel stories. I like stories by Connie Willis.
Therefore, it follows that I like time travel stories by Connie
Willis. Well, sometimes.
Time travel stories are amongst the oldest in the sf genre. The
earliest that I can remember, and probably the most famous, is THE
TIME MACHINE by H. G. Wells. My favorite kind of time travel story
is one in which the characters don't just visit another time, but
specifically go back to the past and muck with things, thus
changing the future, which may be the present from the perspective
of the characters. Usually this involves some sort of paradox. A
standard time travel paradox question raised at sf conventions is
"if you go back in time to kill your grandparents, would you blink
out of existence?" So, we can either change the future, or cause
massive paradoxes (anybody who's ever watched Doctor Who is
extremely familiar with both). Sometimes the paradox is
intentional, sometimes it's something the author just failed to
take into account for some strange reason.
A few years ago, Connie Willis wrote a very good time travel novel
called DOOMSDAY BOOK, which co-won the Hugo the year it was
published. TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG is set in that same universe,
but while entertaining, doesn't live up to its predecessor's
standards.
The story takes place in 2057, and Lady Schrapnell is rebuilding
Coventry Cathedral, destroyed back in WWII by a Nazi air raid.
Since "God is in the detail"s, she wants to duplicate the cathedral
exactly. Her last obsession is something called the bishop's bird
stump, and she wants it very badly. So badly that every one
involved in the time travel institute, who stands to receive a lot
of money from Schrapnell if they find the stump, and therefore
recreate the cathedral, is hunting for it and everything else she
is asking for. Our hero is Ned Henry, who has made so many "drops"
that he is time lagged, is badly in need of a rest. So he's sent
to Victorian England to run a mission, then take a long deserved
rest away from the chaos.
Let me interject here to say that Willis has a nice little design
for her time travel environment. When an incongruity is caused,
the time travel net automatically, and on its own, corrects it.
One of the things it does is cause "slippage," a phenomenon wherein
you don't quite get where you want to, because the timeline doesn't
want you to. Some time/place combinations are impossible to get to
because they are crisis points. The net just won't let you go
there.
Anyway, Ned goes back to Victorian England, as it turns out, to
deliver a cat, which another time traveller, Verity, saved because
the butler for the family she was staying with at that time threw
it into the Thames (cats are extinct, sad to say, in 2057, so she
wanted to save it). Verity is in Victorian England to try and read
the diary of one Tossie, great grandmother or so of Lady
Schrapnell. It's already starting to get too complicated to
explain. Needless to say, the institute thinks that the cat being
rescued has caused an incongruity, and they want it fixed.
Trust me people, it's more complicated than that.
Yes, it's a mystery novel as well as a time travel story. And it's
not a bad mystery novel. The mystery can be unravelled with all
the clues given to the reader, but it is extremely convoluted.
Henry proposes a solution based on an extremely involved fix of the
incongruity caused by the missing bishop's bird stump that I found
a little over the top. And while it all fits, well, I found that I
didn't care.
Willis always writes entertaining novels, and many are laced with
her trademarked and snappy banter, as is this one. But I never
really cared for any of the characters, although I wanted to
strangle Tossie on at least a half dozen occasions. And while I
was mildly interested in finding out the solution to the mystery, I
was disappointed in it, and I was never really engrossed by the
novel.
So, if you like Connie Willis and time travel stories, this one is
probably okay for you. It just isn't Hugo material. [-jak]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely
engrosing. To be on the alert is to live, to be
lulled into security is to die.
-- Oscar Wilde
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