THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/09/10 -- Vol. 29, No. 2, Whole Number 1605
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Dome (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
3D: Fad or the Future of Cinema (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
INFERNO by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (audiobook review
by Joe Karpierz)
THE CITY & THE CITY (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
This Week's Reading (CIVIL WAR CURIOSITIES, BABEL-17, and
"Averroës' Search") (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Dome (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I have never been able to appreciate the architectural beauty of
the Jefferson Memorial having lived, as I did, through the era of
roll-on deodorants. [-mrl]
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TOPIC: 3D: Fad or the Future of Cinema (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Most people reading this will be aware that 3D is very big in the
film industry at the current moment. These days most of the high-
profile fantasy films coming out seem to be in 3D. Major
filmmakers are saying that 3D movies are the wave of the future.
Meanwhile television manufacturers are looking into how to best
make a 3D television available at home. Is 3D the wave of the
future? Perhaps. Do I think this is a good thing? Well, I was
impressed with the first few films I saw of the new 3D technology.
The means of making and projecting of films in 3D is so much better
than it has been in the past. Real-D with its circular
polarization really created the effect of seeing objects in
dimension. But if 3D is the wave of the future it will have to
prove itself not just in the technology, but in adding to the art.
I am not sure it is doing that right now.
The production of films has had three major enhancements prior to
3D. They are 1) motion itself, 2) sound, and 3) color. There are,
of course, dozens of technical innovations every year. And there
have been changes like going to wide-screen and the addition of
CGI. But these three have had the greatest impact on the viewer.
Has each really advanced the artistic merits of storytelling and
helped the artist to be expressive?
I think that there is no doubt that motion added a lot over the
stilted slide-show and magic lantern presentations that preceded
it. Further I do not doubt that sound added a lot. It is
extremely difficult to convey dialog with pantomime and title
cards. Silent film acting was of necessity punctuated with florid
gestures. It would be very dull to see realistic human behavior in
a silent film. Try watching people sitting near you in a
restaurant and see if their actions without sound would be
expressive enough on silent film. Expressing emotion without vocal
tone is really a very difficult task. It took only a handful of
years for silent film to give way to sound film.
Adding color to film took much longer. Some films going back to
pioneer films would have some very limited color touches. Georges
Méliès had hand-painted color in his films at least as far back as
1897. Today it is a rarity to see a film done in monochrome, but
not nearly so rare as to see a silent film. I think it would be
hard to make a case that color brought anywhere near the expression
to films that sound did. A high proportion of the best films ever
made were made in black and white at a time when they could have
had color. Many are better for having been made in black and
white. CASABLANCA could have accented the exotic locale and the
sharp gray of the German uniforms if it had been made in color.
Neither was really the point of the film. Color would really have
been a distraction and would undercut the emotion of the story.
Actually these days filmmakers who want to mute the emotion of
films can wash out the color and have the same emotional texture of
monochrome. On the other hand if one is doing a film about the
Arabian Nights or South Sea islands, color conveys more than black
and white. If what you are making is a deeply felt human drama,
generally the best you can hope color to do is not to damage the
tone. It seems that the more serious the film, the less that color
adds over monochrome.
Whatever I say about the artistic value of adding color goes double
for 3D. This is, of course, far from the first time that 3D has
been tried. The 1950s marked the first rush of 3D films. At that
time television was just becoming popular. The film industry was
greatly afraid that free television broadcasts would eclipse the
popularity of films. People were getting sound and pictures right
in their homes. The film industry wanted something that would set
them apart from what people could see in their homes and one thing
they hit on was 3D movies. There are certainly films that are the
better for having 3D. AVATAR and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON did
have those nice flying sequences. Flying is very much a 3-D
activity. You are moving in three-dimensional space. But how much
of the film is involved in 3D activity? There are just a handful
of showpiece sequences. But human drama is not much enhanced by
taking place in three dimensions. CASABLANCA would be at most very
little improved if it were seen in color and probably not at all in
3D. More likely the drama of the story would be lost. In a story
of real human drama is not improved by the feeling you are standing
actually in the midst of the characters.
I would not rule out that some enterprising filmmaker could find a
way to make 3D be expressive in drama deeper than action films.
But that is not happening now. Alfred Hitchcock did one film DIAL
M FOR MURDER in 3D. His 3D direction was fairly good. But that is
a film of dialog and not much in the way of actions. All Hitchcock
succeeded in doing was keeping the 3D from damaging the experience
of the film.
One more consideration is that 3D is useless for five to ten
percent of the audience who do not have binary depth perception.
Then there are people whose eyes do not align when they focus or
who suffer from amblyopia. And others get eyestrain. There are no
good figures I know of, but a significant fraction of the population
cannot use 3D. The deaf did not stop the sound revolution, but it
is a consideration.
I guess my feeling about 3D is that it is a tool for the right
purpose, but it is a purpose that does not occur all that
frequently. If it is a flying sequence where spatial relationships
matter--like a WWI biplane dogfight--I think that there is a real
place for 3D. I cannot think of a single scene from Shakespeare
that 3D would do much for. (P.S. In retrospect, perhaps the murder
of Julius Caesar.)
If 3D really takes hold we can expect it to be used a lot for
Cinema d'Blo'em'up. But it just is not going to add much drama to
serious stories. It is just a way to make films more like
amusement park rides. If that is the wave of the future, I suspect
it will be bad for cinema. But deep down I suspect that the 3D
craze may be just temporary. It really is there to give films in
theaters an edge over home video. 3D was really the last advantage
that your movie theater had over home video. But it really has not
been around for long before home video is promising to offer 3D.
When it is no longer a novelty at theaters I think the studios will
lose interest in it.
Independently, Roger Ebert wrote an article on the subject of 3D's
contribution or lack thereof. It can be found at
http://tinyurl.com/267cdby if the reader wants another take on a
related question. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: INFERNO by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (copyright 1976
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc., 5 hr
42 min, narrated by Tom Weiner) (audiobook review by Joe Karpierz)
Back when I was in high school, I read GALAXY magazine. In 1976,
the magazine serialized INFERNO, by Niven and Pournelle. I loved
the novel so much that I a) read a whole bunch more Niven and
Pournelle before I got tired of them, and b) wanted to read Dante's
Inferno, after which the Niven and Pournelle effort is patterned.
I never did read Dante, alas, but I always remembered INFERNO with
a kind spot in my heart.
And then the inevitable happened. Niven and Pournelle wrote a
sequel a couple of years ago. I wanted to read (or listen to) that
sequel. But I hadn't read INFERNO since 1976. So, armed with
audible.com credits, I purchased INFERNO. And I'm glad I did.
Those readers who have been around forever--or at least since the
70s--are probably familiar with the book. Allan Carpentier, a
science fiction writer, drank too much at a convention and fell out
a hotel window to his death. When he came to, he was inside a
bottle at the vestibule of Hell. Crying out for help from G(g)od
(he's agnostic), a guide, Benito, releases him from the bottle and
offers to take him to the exit from Hell. The problem is, that
exit is located in the lowest circle of Hell, at the feet of
Lucifer.
Carpentier, though, doesn't buy the fact that he's in Hell--he
calls it Infernoland, as if it were a giant amusement park built by
some sick developers trying to make a buck. He takes Benito up on
his offer, though, since he doesn't see much else that he can do at
the moment. He spends a lot of time doing what any good science
fiction writer would do--he tries to figure out how the place
works, the scientific setup behind it, etc.
His outlook changes, however, when he is injured, and watches
himself heal. There's no man made artifact that can do that. He
slowly comes to realize that he really is in Hell, and that he
needs to get out. He really needs to get out. He believes this is
Hell, but as he watches the punishments of the damned get worse and
worse, he has a hard time reconciling the place with a G(g)od that
would punish people like this.
For those of you who haven't read the book, I won't spoil the
ending, nor will I give away who his guide really is. Suffice it
to say that the novel is an interesting investigation into the
psyche of a modern SF writer trying to understand why a loving
G(g)od would create a place like this. The story does mimic Dante
in many places and ways, so I'm told. Probably the one downside to
this novel is that it does feel dated. Hell is populated by
Western (read U.S.) characters who have a Christian outlook on
life. The book's language, treatment of women, and views on
homosexuality are clearly from a different era. However, this is
one terrific novel.
Narrator Tom Weiner does an outstanding job with the source
material, playing multiple male and female parts with extreme
skill. Weiner really adds to the quality of this audiobook.
The next time someone tells you to "go to hell", pick up a copy of
INFERNO. You'll be glad you did. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE CITY & THE CITY (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
[Spoilers ahead]
In response to Joe Karpierz's review of THE CITY & THE CITY in the
07/04/10 issue of the MT VOID, Fred Lerner writes:
Joe Karpierz wrote, "And now there's THE CITY & THE CITY, which I
actually enjoyed--but in my opinion has no elements of the
fantastic in it whatsoever." He then went on to say that "the
setting is a physical location that has two cities--countries,
actually--occupying it at the same time--Beszel and Ul Qoma. ...
the idea is that a person in one city may not notice or see anyone
in the other city. If they accidentally notice someone in the
other city, they must "unsee" them--act as if they didn't see them
at all."
Now, I haven't read THE CITY & THE CITY, so by rights I've got no
business quarrelling with a review written by someone who has. But
this review seems inherently self-contradictory. If the premise of
the story, as Joe describes it, isn't fantastic, then what is?
[-fl]
Evelyn notes, "Well, as I wrote in my column in the 04/30/10 issue
of the MT VOID, there is Baarle, a real city that seems physically
similar to Beszel/Ul Qoma in that it has enclaves within enclaves,
etc. The 'un-seeing' part does not apply in Baarle, however, and
that part, as well as what originally caused the situation
("Breach"), seem to be what people point to as the fantastic
elements. However, I strongly recommend that you read THE CITY &
THE CITY--it's one of the few books that really excited me over the
past decade or so." [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
CIVIL WAR CURIOSITIES by Webb Garrison (ISBN-13 978-1-55853-315-8)
seemed promising. After all, there are lots of Civil War
curiosities; here are just three:
1) General Sedgwick being shot and killed be a sharpshooter the
moment after he said, "They couldn't hit an elephant at this
distance."
2) Wilmer McLean living at both Bull Run at the start of the war
and Appomattox Court House at the end.
3) John Wesley Powell losing an arm but going on after the war to
explore the Colorado River.
I could list many more, but I won't.
But although Garrison devotes an entire chapter to soldiers
handicapped by the war, he never mentions Powell. Nor does he
relate the Sedgwick incident. He does cover Wilmer McLean but on
the other hand he manages consistently to misspell Mary Boykin
Chesnut's name. In short, I was disappointed.
BABEL-17 by Samuel R. Delany is an old book (it was first published
in 1966), but I had never read it before. One reason was that
other Delany books I had read (DHALGREN, NOVA) had put me off
Delany. Thinking about it, though, I wonder if some of that was
that I had read those books when I was too young for them (NOVA
when I was 22, DHALGREN when I was 25). Delany is not an easy
author, and maybe one needs more maturity than I had then. At any
rate, BABEL-17 when I was 59 did not seem nearly as hard to read
(except maybe for Part Four, which I think is *supposed* to be hard
to read). What made me pick it up was hearing that it was based on
linguistics, and in particular on the idea of a(n artificial)
language which has no first-person-singular pronouns (or first-
person-plural, or second-person either). Having just finished
listening to John H. McWhorter's Teaching Company course on human
language, I was eager to read stories that used some of the ideas
that I have just heard, and BABEL-17 did this. Delany definitely
uses the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis here--the idea that not having a
first-person-singular pronoun will affect how a person regards
himself (as opposed to the Sapper-Worf hypothesis, which says that
Picard should transfer Worf to the bomb squad).
And consider the following passage: "I saw a bunch of the weirdest,
oddest people I had ever met in my life, who thought different, and
acted different, and even made love different. And they made me
laugh, and get angry, and be happy, and be sad, and excited, and
even fall in love a little. ... And they didn't seem to be so
weird or strange anymore." The fact that this book is from 1966
means that this was written three years before Stonewall, so its
lack of subtlety is understandable.
Oh, and there is humor as well. One off-stage character is named
Muels Aranlyne, and he had written a book titled EMPIRE STAR.
Samuel R. Delany wrote a novella titled EMPIRE STAR in 1966.
Re-reading "Averroës' Search" by Jorge Luis Borges reminded me of
all those "future archaeology" books. I have previously referred
to Gary Westfahl's article about this genre, "The Addled
Archaeology of the Future", which discusses Edgar Allan Poe's
"Mellonta Tauta" (1849), John Ames Mitchell's THE LAST AMERICAN
(1889), Robert Nathan's THE WEANS (1960), and Macaulay's MOTEL OF
THE MYSTERIES (1979). "Averroës' Search" postulates that Averroës,
when he read the words "tragedy" and "comedy" in Aristotle's
"Poetics", had no idea what they meant because he had never seen a
drama, or rather never saw anything he recognized as a drama. For
shortly after he has been thinking on what the terms might mean, he
glances out the window and sees three boys "playing" with one
standing on the shoulders of the second, and the third kneeling
with his head on the ground. Averroës recognizes them as being the
muezzin, the tower, and the congregation, but makes no extension of
this to a dramatic form. And when his friend Abulcasim describes
seeing a play in China, his description is similar to the "future
archaeology" style--the interpretation of what is going on is just
a bit off. (Even when he explains the idea of drama, though, one
of the people listening asks why they needed twenty people to tall
a story that one person could tell just as well.) [-ecl]
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Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I like long walks, especially when they're
taken by people who annoy me.
-- Fred Allen