THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/23/11 -- Vol. 30, No. 13, Whole Number 1668
Heckle: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Jekyll: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
The Birth of Film: Eleven Firsts in Cinema (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Trillion Puzzles (puzzle by Tom Russell)
There Is Nothing Like the Second Time (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Alphas Redux (television review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
Giant Ants--And Not Just Ants (letters of comment
by Andre Kuzniarek and Pete Rubinstein)
Shakespeare's Authorship and Undecidablility
(letter of comment by Gregory Benford)
Turner Classic Movies (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
This Week's Reading (THE LAST UNICORN and A MURDER IS
ANNOUNCED) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Birth of Film: Eleven Firsts in Cinema (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
The Open-Culture website has compiled eleven YouTube links for
important firsts of cinema. Included are the first film (arguable
since it was made to look at the frames individually), the first
Western (THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY), the first science-fiction film
(A TRIP TO THE MOON), the first horror film (THE HAUNTED CASTLE),
the first Frankenstein film (the Charles Ogle version), etc. If
you are interested in the silent films that are the roots of
today's cinema, it is well worth a look.
http://tinyurl.com/mrl-cinema-firsts
Most of these items have been available before. A few are rare.
But if you are interested in film, especially fantastic film, this
is well worth checking out. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Nozzle (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
We live in New Jersey where it is illegal to pump your own
gasoline. The only other state with that regulation is Oregon. I
don't how people in the other 48 put up with it. I was fueling up
in another state--California actually. When the tank was full the
pump said, "Please replace nozzle." Can you believe it? To me the
nozzle seemed still to be working just fine. Anyway, I figured it
did not need replacing, and the people who ran the gas station
should be responsible for maintaining their own equipment. I left
it for the next guy to replace the nozzle, which is probably what
the last guy did. Bad enough we had to pay so much for the
gasoline. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Trillion Puzzles (puzzle by Tom Russell)
[Tom Russell sends along this intriguing puzzle. I admit that I
have not worked through the solution myself, but I will not hold
this puzzle up longer. It was originally submitted in early
August--a vacation, a Worldcon, an earthquake, a hurricane, a power
failure, and several other problems ago. I apologize to Tom for
holding it up.]
Here are three puzzles inspired by all the "trillions" in the news
lately. They're based on the observation that the integers' names
tend to get longer as the integers get larger. There are many
exceptions, of course: TEN is shorter than NINE.
The puzzle requires creating a "staircase" of integer names thus:
ONE
FOUR
SEVEN
ELEVEN
FIFTEEN
EIGHTEEN
TWENTYONE
TWENTYFOUR
TWENTYSEVEN
SEVENTYTHREE
ONEHUNDREDONE
ONEHUNDREDFOUR
ONEHUNDREDSEVEN
ONEHUNDREDELEVEN
...
The series skips over TWO and THREE because neither is exactly one
letter longer than ONE. The series includes FOUR rather than FIVE
because 4 is less than 5: each step is the smallest integer with
name one letter longer than the previous step. Spaces don't count
as letters.
How many letters are in the first step of this staircase which
includes the word TRILLION?
To observe a remarkable feature of the English language names for
the numbers, do the puzzle over again, but don't use any of the
integers used the first time: the staircase is now TWO, FIVE,
EIGHT, TWELVE ...
If you want to play with this puzzle idea even a little more, spell
the names of the integers without their vowels: N, TW, THR, TWLV,
THRTN, TWNTN, TWNTTW, ... [-tr]
[Tom's solution is at http://leepers.us/RussellSolution.txt.
It raises more questions and Tom answers them at
http://leepers.us/RussellExpansion.txt. -mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: There Is Nothing Like the Second Time (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
You see occasionally articles in which celebrities are asked about
the film that "changed their life." Interestingly, several major
figures in science fiction and fantasy give KING KONG as that film
that affected them most deeply. People like Ray Bradbury and Ray
Harryhausen and others saw KING KONG and fell in love with it. I
have to agree that KING KONG would be high on the list that
affected me, but it was not the film that I had a real mania for.
Not being a celebrity myself, I am not likely to be asked about the
film that changed my life, so I have to volunteer the information.
Unlike the two Rays above I did not fall in love with my film on
first seeing. In fact, to be honest I absolutely hated it. Well,
I had an excuse for my bad taste. The year was 1953, and I was
three years old. My parents hated science fiction, but for some
reason they took the family to see the most spectacular film that
was playing. That was THE WAR OF THE WORLDS starring Gene Barry
and Ann Robinson. This is the first film I ever remember seeing.
At my tender age in 1953 I did not understand, much less
appreciate, what it was that I was seeing. I remember the lesson I
learned was that not all showerheads were good showerheads. These
showerheads in the movie sprayed some sort of deadly red water.
This kind of water can kill you instantly. According to my parents
I was scared through the whole movie. I remember more being bored
in non-showerhead scenes, but who knows? I think the deadly
showerheads might have been too much for my young impressionable mind.
It was two or three years later that Saturday morning television
would have two sci-fi (in retrospect I won't even call them
"science fiction") programs back-to-back. I don't remember the
order but there was "Captain Midnight" and "Commando Cody: Sky
Marshal of the Universe". Captain Midnight was a vigilante with
his own jet, the Silver Dart, and a scientific lab. He frequently
fought science-based threats like the electrified man whose touch
was death. Commando Cody was the sky marshal for the whole dang
universe, but he mostly hung out mostly on just one planet, namely
Earth. He had a rocket ship and--now this was cool--he had a
rocket pack so he could fly like Superman. He could fly from one
rocket ship in flight to another one and sneak aboard to clobber
the bad guys. At age five or six I had decided that science
fiction was where the action was.
And I also remembered that I once had seen a whole science fiction
movie. It was called THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. And it had monsters
and spaceships. Wow! I really, really wanted to see THE WAR OF
THE WORLDS again. I could remember two scenes. I remember there
was some sort of death-ray. (I now knew it wasn't a showerhead.)
I also remember there was a scene that looked like it took place in
a bunkhouse. Into this bunkhouse came a floating ball that was
shiny and black and had three big lenses in a triangle: red, green,
and blue. I got some of the details wrong but when I see the film
today I know exactly what scenes I was remembering. I must have
been about six when I decided I just had to see THE WAR OF THE
WORLDS again.
But in those days you rarely got a chance to see an old movie
again. They would play old movies on TV sometimes, but never the
one you really wanted to see. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS became an
obsession with me. By age nine I owned a copy of the Classic
Illustrated comic book of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. I tried to
convince my teacher to let me read the book for a book report, but
let her switch me to DANNY DUNN AND THE HOMEWORK MACHINE.
When they showed a flying wing airplane on TV I would tell people
they had one of those in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. I am not sure how
I knew that, but I did know the film featured a flying wing. I
avidly collected "Mars Attacks" trading cards and with ghoulish
thrills I would see read about the terrors unleashed by the
Martians. I know that their cards were a lot like THE WAR OF THE
WORLDS. I waited and waited, but the film never showed up on TV.
Finally when I was about fourteen a local theater was showing two
George Pal films on a double feature. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS was
playing with CONQUEST OF SPACE. Sunday afternoon I was there. I
arranged to be dropped off and picked up so that I could sit
through THE WAR OF THE WORLDS twice. CONQUEST OF SPACE was okay
for me at age 14. It was just a delay for me between the first and
second showing of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. I was surprised it was as
good as it was. And there were the scenes I remembered. That was
the most eagerly awaited film of my life. I had looked forward to
seeing the film for about eight years. Then that was a big
fraction of my life. I even remember having dreams about the film.
About three years later THE WAR OF THE WORLDS was shown on network
television and I could see it a fourth time, but you know, there is
nothing like the second time. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Alphas Redux (television review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
I am going to assume you read my previous review "Alphas" of the
pilot episode of the SyFy channel summer show ALPHAS and are
already familiar with the basic setup. I have now seen some more
episodes, and I think this show is well on its way to being
something special. I can say without reservation that this is the
best SF show on SyFy during this summer, marginally edging out
EUREKA, and strongly leading over WAREHOUSE 13 and HAVEN. It is
much better than THE CAPE or NO ORDINARY FAMILY, and a very strong
competitor to HEROES.
A comparison to HEROES is difficult because HEROES is a
essentially a live-action super-hero comic, with good acting and
some interesting plot threads, but still limited by the source
material. ALPHAS instead reminds me of an Eric Frank Russell, Ted
Sturgeon, or Poul Anderson story from the late 1950s or early 1960s
more than a comic. Sturgeon's MORE THAN HUMAN or Anderson's
TWILIGHT WORLD come to mind as examples. These well written
classic novels focus on groups of mutants with a variety of
"powers" that work together but none are as "super-duper" as a
comic character like Superman or Thor. This creates a very
different feel to the story. As I have said in the past--one man
in a powered suit yields IRON MAN, a superhero tale, while 10,000
men in powered suits results in STARSHIP TROOPERS, an SF war story.
ALPHAS, as we shall see, is more along the lines of 10,000 men in
powered suits, and in the first few episodes has a lot more
maturity and plausibility on display than the entire HEROES series.
Episode 2 "Cause & Effect" introduces a new character, Marcus
Ayers, who escapes from an ambulance driving him from Binghamton
(the prison/hospital where uncontrollable alphas are kept) to a
mysterious fate. It turns out that Marcus was a patient of Dr.
Rosen's in the past, but after an incident where Marcus caused a
building to burn down, Rosen drugged Marcus and had him taken to
Binghamton. Now Marcus is back, looking, apparently, to kill Dr.
Rosen. Marcus has powers somewhat similar to Hicks, but even more
so--he has a mentat-like ability to instigate long, low-probability
chains of events to create large effects, like a building blowing
up, or a car accident that allows him to escape from many armed
men. He is also obsessed with chess, and sees all his interactions
with the world as a controllable game. His abilities apparently go
beyond mere projection of events into altering probabilities ala
the Avengers' Scarlet Witch, making him extremely powerful.
Without giving the plot away, Marcus proves a formidable foe, and
one suspects that he will literally resurface later. This episode
develops the idea that Binghamton and its' leadership [some of whom
die in this episode] may be less than beneficial for Alphas.
In episode 3 "Anger Management" the team investigates a series of
incidents where random people erupt in violent fits of rage, in
some cases with loss of life. While struggling to adjust to their
new offices [their previous headquarters was compromised in the
pilot], the team gradually tracks down the responsible alpha, who
turns out to be a troubled teen with pheromone powers. It turns
out that Bill Harken, the hyperadrenal, is immune to the
pheromones, which allows them to escape from a bad situation.
Alas, their handler, Don, is killed by one of his own men as a side
effect of the pheromone attacks. The episode has a very touching
final scene where Hicks befriends Gary Bell (the transducer) by
knocking out a microwave antenna that has been irritating hum.
This is not a major story arc episode, but it does develop the
characters and the feel of the team. I've read reviews that
complain that that actors seem to be asleep and that the action is
poorly done--I simply don't agree. These are professional actors
trying to play fully human characters, not strutting arrogant
heroes or cackling villains with handlebar mustaches. And the
action scenes work just fine--but in a police procedural--which is
in large part what this is--action is not the main point of the
story.
Episode 4 "Rosetta Stone" greatly expands the scope of the story
arc, and we learn a lot more about "Red Flag" - the main opposition
to Rosen's team. The Alpha team has learned of a Red Flag safe
house, and an assault is undertaken, with the Alpha team supported
by a large number of heavily armed government agents. Harken and
Hicks lead the way, with Rachael (who, it has been revealed by now,
was a CIA translator before being discovered by Rosen) acting as an
overall CapCom for the assault. The assault is less than
successful, with two of the Red Flag alphas getting away. However,
a third person, Anna, who at first appears completely mute and
highly autistic, is found in the house. It develops that she is an
omnipath--she understands all languages but cannot speak herself.
She communicates by making sounds with household items around her,
speaking her own language that eventually they learn to translate
into English. From the materials in the house, they discover that
the two escaped Red Flag operatives are planning on blowing up a
drug factory that is producing a cure for birth defects. Red Flag
believes that the drug will "reduce neuro-diversity." I'm not
going to say how this all turns out, but we already have more new
and interesting ideas 15 minutes into the show than we see in many
episodes of HEROES put together.
ALPHAS is, rather like THE MENTALIST, mainly a police procedural
with some kind of genre-like story arc, but with bits of spy story
and post-human evolution thrown in. ALPHAS is unique in that it
has pretty much the least powerful super-humans ever, and is thus
actually more plausible than a Bond or Mission Impossible movie.
The writers seemed to have borrowed a bit from Bruce Sterling
stories like SUNKEN GARDENS, and recognize that the price of a real
super-power might be a loss of something we take for granted as an
every-day ability. Even if the Alphas might not naturally evolve
(although some of them might), almost all of them seem like they
could be designed by gene-engineers with a deep knowledge of
biology and physics. This makes them quite unlike most Marvel and
DC superheroes, whose powers are so vast and fantastical as to lie
completely in the fevered power dreams of 10 year olds.
To put this a bit more in the context of the Marvel Universe,
Captain America, Daredevil, Hawkeye, and the Scarlet Witch are
among the weakest Marvel heroes. Captain America has the strength
and endurance of an Olympic Athlete combined with super-human
endurance and metabolism. Daredevil has super-humanly acute senses
and bodily control. Hawkeye is a merely human circus performer
with trick arrows. The Scarlet Witch can make unlikely but
possible events happen.
The Alphas Bill Harken (hyper-adrenal) and Cameron hicks (hyper-
kinesis) together about equal one Captain America. The Alphas
Hicks and Rachael Pirzad (synesthete) together about equal one
Daredevil. The Alpha Hicks could emulate the skills of Hawkeye or
Bullseye. The Alphas' villain Marcus is a something like a
combination of the Thinker and the Scarlet Witch. The point of all
this is that the characters in Alphas scrape along the bottom of
the Marvel Universe in terms of raw power. Only truly unpowered
characters like DC's Batman are weaker.
Episode 5, "Never Let Me Go", was the first Alphas outing that I
felt had a serous defect of a directorial nature. Rosen and Rachel
visit a small town to investigate reports of mysterious deaths.
For about 5 minutes, the action feels like an archetypal zombie
movie, with dim lighting and shambling menaces. Suddenly the
lights come on and we get the whole Alpha team in the small town
and the story starts to make sense. I found the "zombie" sequence
incongruous and it seemed unlikely that Rosen would wander around
an empty and darkened police station with just Rachel as backup.
Fortunately, things get interesting after that. The menace turns
out to be someone with the power, essentially, to make anyone fall
completely in love with them, and then kill them by withdrawing
their affections. At first this seems rather limiting, but as it
turns out, it can be pretty dangerous. I really like this villain
since, again, I found the power "just over the edge" of reality--
something that seems like it might be possible. The motivation is
also well established--much more so than for many "comic book" bad
guys.
One nice scene has Gary [the transducer] looking for the menace in
a high school and finding some members of the football team who
decide, after hearing his rendition of some unflattering comments
about them Gary has taken off nearby emails, to teach him a lesson
in manners. Hicks comes to Gary's rescue in a well directed fight
scene that is well thought out in that there really isn't much
fighting--Hicks never throws a punch and no one lands a punch on
Hicks. It's a bit like asking how a 5 year old would fight an NBA
player. The answer is that such a fight is not really possible--
the NBA player, barring tripping on a banana peel, can easily avoid
the kid. And this is what you see--Hicks easily avoiding a large
number of powerful looking high school athletes while responding
with Daredevil-like moves that only work if you are 10x as agile
and fast as your opponent.
This episode develops the Rachel/Rosen relationship, making it
clear that they go way back, and that they are a lot like Jean
Gray/Xavier in the X-men in terms of how they interact. Another
thing that I did not like about this episode was the introduction
of Lindsey Wagner [of BIONIC WOMAN fame] as Dr. Calder. This is
handled very lightly, but as can be found by surfing the net, this
Dr. Calder is the same Dr. Calder that is a series semi-regular on
WAREHOUSE 13. SyFy has already established that WAREHOUSE 13 and
EUREKA are in the same universe with a series of cross-over
episodes, and it appears that SyFy intends all three shows to be
linked. I like EUREKA and WAREHOUSE 13, but they are very
different in tone and plausibility from ALPHAS. WAREHOUSE 13 is a
completely implausible fantasy based on magic, while EUREKA is a
mostly implausible set of retro-future stories based on super-
science with a layer of more plausible acting and ideas. ALPHAS
for the most part is straight science fiction--there really are no
"impossible" powers or Star Trek "miracle particles" to explain
things. Although no permanent damage was done by having Dr. Calder
show up [the only hint of a link is that she asks very few
questions about the mysterious doings and implies to Rosen that she
often deals with things of this nature] I think fitting these shows
into the same universe is basically a bad idea. Of course, DC and
Marvel have both gone down this road--Dr. Strange and Iron Man
exist in the same universe, and these comics are really different
in tone, writing style, and ideas.
I ended up liking "Never Let Me Go" and it ends with a rather X-men
like situation where some of the Alphas team up to help save one of
their own using "personal energy." I'm trying to avoid saying
exactly what happens, and my use of a term like "personal energy"
is deliberately misleading, but I found the situation more
plausible than similar events that occur routinely with the X-men
comic characters.
There are four more episodes that have aired, and each is
interesting in its own fashion. Episode 6, "Bill and Gary's
Excellent Adventure" follows Bill Harken as he tries, with help
from Gary, to solve a kidnapping and get his old FBI job back. The
story concludes with the Alphas team facing off against some
ordinary criminals, who, although clever and ruthless, find they
have encountered something a bit beyond the normal. Episode 7,
"Catch and Release," guest stars Summer Glau as Skylar Adams, an
intuitive inventor somewhat along the lines of the Marvel Comics
character Forge, or any number of genius-level SF characters.
Skylar is caught in a cross fire between two of her customers, both
of which turn out to be government agencies, and she enlists Nina
Theoroux (the mental control artist) and an old pre-Rosen friend of
Skylar's, to help her escape her bondage to the NSA and perform a
mysterious task. In an interesting scene that shows how ALPHAS is
going to differ from the X-men, Rosen destroys the device that
could have become Cerebro and allowed him to find new alphas
easily.
Episode 8, "A Short Time in Paradise," brings the team the closest
to total defeat that it has come yet when they encounter a cult
leader who appears to be an angel. [**spoiler alert ***] The cult
leader has yet another seemingly minor power that leads to deadly
results. The conclusion is especially shocking when Rosen ends up
shooting the cult leader to prevent a Jonestown-style massacre.
This endpoint is a strong signal that ALPHAS lives in a "real"
world where Superman does not always save the day.
Finally, Episode 9, "Blind Spot," finds that alpha team installing
a new-fangled prisoner interrogation cell. It gets used on a
mysterious doctor, played by Brent Spiner, who is apparently blind.
As events move along, it should not surprise you to find that the
cell does not hold the prisoner and that a lot more is going on
then meets the eye--literally. This episode ends up as [***
spoiler ***] a three-way smack-down between the doctor, the Alphas
team, and a mercenary named Griffin. Griffin and the prisoner are
both alphas, and their powers are far more plausible than the usual
run of comic book stuff. The episode thickens the plot as we find
that the mysterious doctor regards Red Flag as a "fringe element"
not representative of the mainstream revolutionary movement, while
Griffen works for an unknown paymaster, who seems to be yet another
independent faction with its own agenda.
Unlike FALLING SKIES, which has a tiresome tactical feel that
reminds me of some David Drake novels I never finished reading, and
has taken so many episodes to get interesting that I lost interest,
ALPHAS has nicely balanced introducing the characters with
advancing the background story arc. So go watch ALPHAS--Monday
night 10 pm SyFy--and enjoy the best new show of the summer.
[-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Giant Ants--And Not Just Ants (letters of comment by Andre
Kuzniarek and Pete Rubinstein)
In response to Mark's comments about giant ants in the 09/16/11
issue of the MT VOID, Andre Kuzniarek writes:
I think the position of "1" on the scale of matter itself is
probably another important factor, kind of like the way water does
not scale when trying to film miniatures. You have to take the
actual viscosity into account, and that is probably related to
underlying factors ultimately stemming from the way its molecules
align. Similar to how a small mammal can survive a fall uninjured
that would injure us, or how a small insect can survive any fall
because of a very low terminal velocity. And of course heat
regulation is another factor, in mammals especially. Bigger
mammals burn up, smaller ones freeze.
I would guess a gorilla's max scale factor is probably 2-1, if even
that... [-ak]
And Pete Rubinstein reminds us that there is a case of gigantism in
a mammal. He sent some pictures of a giant rabbit, maybe five
times the scale of a normal rabbit. This is real. You can see
that it is not really quite just a larger version of the rabbits we
know. There is some distortion of the features. I don't know if
this rabbit occurred in nature, like the ants, or was specially
bred for gigantism. You can see the pictures at
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/giant-rabbit.shtml. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Shakespeare's Authorship and Undecidablility (letter of
comment by Gregory Benford)
In response to the comments on Shakespeare's authorship in the
09/16/11 issue of the MT VOID, Gregory Benford writes:
I always read your fmz at fanac.com. I note you didn't take issue
over Shakespeare's identity, a subject that's interested me for
ages. The hardest matter to account for, to me, is the absence of
a single letter written and signed by the man. [-gb]
Mark replies:
No, I did not choose sides on the "Shakespeare's identity issue."
That may be my mathematical background. I don't think there is any
evidence left that tells us conclusively who wrote the Shakespeare
plays. That makes it undecidable. In physics or history when a
conjecture is undecidable it becomes more intriguing. In
mathematics a conjecture proven undecidable loses most of its
interest. No good mathematician stays up nights trying to prove
the Continuum Hypothesis.
Another similar mystery is who was Christopher Columbus actually.
He was supposedly Genoese. But while he was articulate in Spanish,
I have read that he was inarticulate in Genoese, which would have
been his native language. Columbus himself was secretive on his
origins. There are several competing theories as to who he really
was. It is probably true that a great deal of what we think we
know about history is just not true. [-mrl]
Gregory responds:
Agree on undecidable issues ... and actually decided one [Newcomb's
Paradox] recently, in http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.1343. [-gb]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Turner Classic Movies (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
In response to Mark's comments on Turner Classic Movies in the
09/09/11 issue of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
Thanks again for the TCM movie lists! Every time I see THE
UNINVITED in a schedule, I think "Hey, is that the one Raymond
Chandler co-wrote?" As always, the answer turns out to be no, that
was THE UNSEEN. And it bids fair to remain unseen, with THE
UNINVITED getting a lot more showings--two in October!
I wonder if THE BAD SEED would seem any better to me, now that I've
had time to get used to the performances. [-kw]
Mark responds:
I am not sure I consider the performances so bad. Little Rhoda
gets under your skin. But I think that was a conscious decision by
the director. Her performance and that of the handy man are both a
little over the top, but I suspect that the whole situation is
supposed to feel surreal. It is the last five minutes that really
damage the film. I think it was a women's film and LeRoy was
playing to what he perceived was that audience. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The Middletown science-fiction-book-and-movie group chose THE LAST
UNICORN by Peter S. Beagle (ISBN 978-0-451-45052-4) for its
September meeting. The book is considered a classic (it was even
chosen by Lin Carter for the Ballantine "Adult Fantasy Classics"
line). I found it just so-so; what seems to be the big joke--the
magician being named Schmendrick--is merely puerile, and nothing
else really works for me either. Even so, it is better than the
movie made in 1982 based on it, which is *terrible*. To start
with, it is a musical, and the songs are painful to listen to. I
also found the animation primitive, but that may not be a valid
complaint since someone said it was animation in the anime
tradition (or perhaps that it was proto-anime). At any rate,
nothing about it worked for me except the talking skull, which I
did like.
Every time I read an Agatha Christie novel, or listen to a BBC
radio adaptation of one, I find yet more flaws. For example, in A
MURDER IS ANNOUNCED (1950), Miss Marple tells Miss Blacklock that
all the friends she had as a young girl are gone and there is no
one who remembers her as she was then. Then in her very next Miss
Marple novel, THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS (1952), Miss Marple is asked
by an old friend whom she knew as a teenager to help another
friend, who was the third member of their clique back then.
And when it comes to coincidences, A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED may hold
the record. There are at least three characters whose presence in
Chipping Cleghorn is completely coincidental, the circumstances
that permit the third murder are very contrived, and the way Miss
Marple exposes the murderer is completely out of left field. But
oddly, as with similar problems in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Holmes stories, somehow they do not seem to matter. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The universal medicine for the Soul is the Supreme
Reason and Absolute Justice; for the mind,
mathematical and practical Truth; for the body,
the Quintessence, a combination of light and gold.
--Albert Pike