THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/07/12 -- Vol. 31, No. 10, Whole Number 1718
Superman: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Lois Lane: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups (NJ)
Hugo Award Winners
The Incredible Sameness of Snowflakes (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
SERVING UP RICHARD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE (letter of comment
by Peter Lux)
Neil Armstrong (letter of comment by Greg Frederick)
This Week's Reading (THE ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS and ALIEN
FROM THE STARS) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Lectures,
etc. (NJ)
September 13: GATTACA (1997), Middletown (NJ) Public Library,
discussion after
September 27: CYBERIAD by Stanislaw Lem, Old Bridge (NJ) Public
Library, 7PM
October 4: Film: OCTOBER SKY (1999), Old Bridge (NJ) Public
Library, 6:30PM
October 18: THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN by Alexander McCall
Smith, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
November 15: TRIGGERS by Robert J. Sawyer (tentative), Old Bridge
(NJ) Public Library, 7PM (note this is the *third* Thursday)
December 20: DEATH OF A SALESMAN by Arthur Miller, Old Bridge (NJ)
Public Library, 7PM
Speculative Fiction Lectures:
September 8: Ginjer Buchanan (editor at Ace Books), Old Bridge (NJ)
Public Library, 12N
October 6: Ellen Datlow (Hugo-Award-winning editor), Old Bridge
(NJ) Public Library, 12N
November 3: Michael Penncavage (author), Old Bridge (NJ) Public
Library, 12N
Northern New Jersey events are listed at:
http://www.sfsnnj.com/news.html
==================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo Award Winners
BEST NOVEL: AMONG OTHERS by Jo Walton
BEST NOVELLA: "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson
BEST NOVELETTE: "Six Months, Three Days" by Charlie Jane Anders
BEST SHORT STORY: "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu
BEST RELATED WORK: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION
(Third Edition)
BEST GRAPHIC STORY: "Digger" by Ursula Vernon
BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM: GAME OF THRONES (Season 1)
BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM: "Doctor Who: The Doctor's
Wife"
BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM: Sheila Williams
BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM: Betsy Wollheim
BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST: John Picacio
BEST SEMIPROZINE: Locus
BEST FANZINE: SF Signal
BEST FAN WRITER: Jim C. Hines
BEST FAN ARTIST: Maurine Starkey
BEST FANCAST: SF Squeecast
JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER: E. Lily Yu
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Incredible Sameness of Snowflakes (comments by Mark R.
Leeper)
Well, here it is, summertime. It is hot. I decided this week to
talk about a cold subject. My topic is snowflakes. Just sit
someplace cool and read it.
I just heard it again the other day in a nature documentary.
Snowflakes! There are so many snowflakes in the world with no two
alike. People are all so astounded about how there can be
trillions of snowflakes in the world and no two are just alike. I
mean is that really at all unexpected? There are also about a
trillion rocks. (I don't know the figure. I am guessing.) You
find me two rocks that are just the same and I will be impressed
with snowflakes being all different. Nobody gets excited that no
two rocks are the same. It is not the differences in rocks that
impress most people. Rocks are strong and snowflakes are fragile.
Everybody gets mushy over snowflakes.
What is really amazing about snowflakes is not difference but
sameness. Picture a snowflake. It has six "legs" and they are all
decorated the same way. Each leg looks just like its five
partners. How does one leg know how the other legs are going to be
decorated to decorate itself in the same way. In a sense there has
to be some way they are communicating with each other so that each
knows to decorate just like the others. Sure they are all
connected at a hub and at that hub is a bit of dust or some such
that the snowflake froze around. Now that bit of dust is not
symmetric. Yet the snowflake it creates is symmetric. Is there a
snowflake's equivalent of DNA. Where is the message to an
individual branch of the snowflake that the Central Committee has
decided that this is going to be our theme for all six branches.
What is to stop a healthy, not partially melted, snowflake from
having one branch that is different from the others?
For that matter can you perform surgery on a snowflake to
transplant a different branch onto it so that the flake has five
legs that are the same and one that is different? (Would it end up
looking like a snowflake from THE FLY?) Would a snowflake reject a
foreign branch that is not decorated the same way the other five
are. Is there some sort of H2O molecular police force leg of the
snowflake that would reject a foreign branch? Does it go to a
transplanted branch and say "Excuse me, sir. I notice that you are
not the same shape as the other five of us. Can you prove you were
naturally born on this snowflake?" "I'm sorry, officer, I don't
know what you mean." "I mean we all have straight stems with a
block on the end of the branch. You are wider at the base and have
this thing that looks like a bow-tie at the end. You're going to
have to leave the snowflake."
Actually, perhaps what makes a snowflake so symmetrical may come
down to a nature-nurture sort of question. Is it some feature of
the particle at the center of a flake that determines how the
branches will develop? That would be a sort of genetics of
snowflakes. Or is it environment? As the snowflake is forming
there are tiny changes of temperature and humidity up in its cloud.
All six branches are subjected to pretty much the same nano-
environment since they are very close on the snowflake. Maybe it
is environment that determines how the snowflake is formed and
however that shapes the flake is repeated twenty-three times.
Twenty-three???? Where did twenty-three come from?
Most people who look at snowflake say that it is six-way symmetry.
You have six identical branches each of which is somehow nice and
symmetrical. Actually you have six branches, but each of those
branches has four-way symmetry. It is symmetric from left to right
with the left side being a mirror image of the right side. But it
is also symmetric from front to back. Now on something so tiny as
a snowflake the front very nearly *is* the back, but they are
different parts of the snowflake even if they look the same. So
this one little random bit of the snowflake is there twenty-four
times. It is there twelve times identically and twelve times in
mirror image. And the ice crystal acts like a three-dimensional
kaleidoscope, creating symmetry from randomness. It repeats this
random shape 6x4 or 24 times. One 24th has a shape and it is
repeated 23 more times.
So it could be the snowflake is really a record of nano-
meteorological conditions and the report is just repeated twenty-
four times a single snowflake. But if that is true, would a
snowflake that formed just tiny distance away be almost the same?
It is something to think about. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: SERVING UP RICHARD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: What begins as a dark comedy becomes a grim psychological
horror film with a battle of wits between the Hutchins couple who
perform ancient Mesoamerican blood rituals including cannibalism
and their captive, a man of whom they intend to make a meal. From
his cage, a prison cell set up in the Hutchins house, Richard
Reubens plays a cat-and-mouse game. Written and directed by
veteran TV actor Henry Olek, the film has moments of tension, but
moves too slowly in the middle act. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Richard (played by Ross McCall) had thought the dog-eat-dog world
of finance was bad. Now he is in a world of people-eat-people.
Until recently Richard worked for a failing Wall Street firm. He
had kept secret from his fellow workers that the company was going
under and they were all to lose their jobs. The collapse came and
Richard feels guilty. Wanting to distract himself from his guilt
he is getting himself a flashy vintage Ford Mustang. He is going
to answer an ad for the car, and as he later reflects "the smallest
decisions lead to your biggest mistakes." The Mustang is being
sold by Everett Hutchins (Jude Ciccolella) an anthropologist and
expert on pre-Columbian Zapotec culture. The offer is, however, a
trap and a blowgun dart puts Richard in a prison cell built in the
Hutchins house. The Hutchins it seems have revived and perform
Zapotec rituals here in the comfort in what seems like a pleasant
suburban house. Susan Priver, the executive producer of SERVING UP
RICHARD, plays Glory Hutchins, a sort of child-woman trying to be
as pleasant as possible to the man she will be preparing as food.
Richard immediately sees her childish qualities as useful and may
be the key to a possible escape. This possibility becomes even
more promising when Everett goes alone on a six-week trip leaving
Richard in the custody of Glory. But the question is whether Glory
is strong enough to be of any help and at the same time
impressionable enough to be turned to being willing to help
Richard.
SERVING UP RICHARD is at its best when it seems to have a sense of
humor in the first act. It effects something of the tone of EATING
RAOUL (1982). But there is nobody in this film who can sustain the
gruesome silliness like Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov did in that
film. So there is a bit of fun with the concept, but that dries up
and is replaced by a serious contest of wills between Richard and
the Hutchins. The film is a little slow in the second act then,
waiting for tension to grab the viewer, though little true tension
is generated. The script, written by director Olek from a story by Jay
Longshore, hints at undefined supernatural shamanist powers
from Everett, but the evidence is ambiguous. This film is clearly
shot on a low budget with very little shot outside of the films
main set, apparently a living room cut in half by prison bars.
Almost all could have been filmed in and around a real suburban
home. Beyond that the film has only four characters who interact
and are around for more than a moment. The film could very easily
be adapted into a stage play.
SERVING UP RICHARD is something of a mixed bag of an apparently
whimsical film title and concept, some over-the-top gory images,
and a serious conflict of attitudes and acting. To some extent it
has the feel of an old EC comic like "Tales from the Crypt". A man
does some bad things and then is thrown into a horrific situation
completely unrelated to his crimes, but indicating that the
Universe has a nasty sense of justice. At the same time it is a
film of the present where the crime is topical financial chicanery.
This is not the stuff of a solid, serious film. But SERVING UP
RICHARD has its moments of fun and does keep the viewer guessing
where it will be going. I rate it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or
6/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1766143/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/serving_up_richard/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE (letter of comment by Peter
Lux)
In response to Mark's comments on GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE in
the 08/31/24 issue of the MT VOID, Peter Lux writes:
I couldn't let you slip GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE by so easily.
Hammond is very likeable--*too likeable*! This movie supposedly
got a good box office response when it was first released but it
played to the darker spirit of the Great Depression. Millions
were out of work and felt that many of their problems were caused
by the financiers, the criminals, the politicians, and foreign
governments who were playing Americans as patsies. Sound familiar?
Since all these elements had the resources to twist the laws in
their favor, clearly the only way for the working stiff to get a
break was to find a defender willing to blast his way through the
corrupt legal system--use the army on the gangsters, intimidate
foreign powers with the navy, give money to the demonstrators in
the street, and generally use the powers of the state to shake
down the 1% for the sake of the 99%. I also sensed an ethnic taint
in "Diamond" the top gang leader.
As I recollect, this film was very successful and profitable; but
to their credit when the studio saw what was happening in Germany
they appreciated the danger this film presented and pulled it from
distribution. It lay unknown in the archives until Turner bought
them and felt the historical value outweighed the evil of the
political message.
Every time I start thinking that a Nazi Germany could never happen
here I watch this film to dispel my complacency. No one thought
it could happen in Germany either--one of the most intelligent and
educated populations around. Take GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE out
of its dated "1930s cool" idiom and recast it in a "modern cool"
style, and I think you'll have a good picture of what it will look
like here if it ever happens. Remember Brecht:
Therefore learn how to see and not to gape
To act instead of talking all day long
The world was won by such an ape
The nations put him where this belongs.
But don't rejoice too soon at your escape
The womb he crawled from is still going strong.
Sorry for the diatribe, but I had to get that out--at heart this
is a very dangerous movie. [-pl]
Mark responds:
I am not sure I would say dangerous, but certainly it is
politically interesting. I would like to think that the United
States public is not so willing to be manipulated as they would be
by this film. Then again ... ask me again in November. It was
directed by Gregory La Cava, who also three years later directed
another film about class and the common man with MY MAN GODFREY
(1936). Carey Wilson, who wrote the story, had a long history in
Hollywood, including co-authoring the original 1925 BEN-HUR. I do
not know much about either man's politics. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Neil Armstrong (letter of comment by Greg Frederick)
Greg Frederick sends the following:
You probably have heard about the recent death of Neil Armstrong,
the first man on the Moon. But I imagine most people do not know
how many times he survived a near-death situation and saved himself
and at times the life of another astronaut. Maybe you know about
the situation where he took control of the lunar lander during the
Apollo 11 landing on the Moon and manually landed the lander in a
safe flat area when the on-board malfunctioning computer was trying
to land the ship in a field of large boulders which would have
destroyed the craft and killed him and Buzz Aldrin. There was
something like less then thirty seconds of fuel left for the
landing but he just coolly took control of the craft without even
telling mission control what he was planning to do. There was not
even time to explain this better approach to mission control.
He also avoided death when training on a lunar-lander training
vehicle back in Florida. This training craft was basically
malfunctioning and then it crashed with Neil using a rocket
assisted parachute device to jettison himself away just before the
crash and explosion. After this near death experience he just went
back to his office and started doing paperwork. He was cooler then
Steve McQueen.
Neil was also the pilot/astronaut on Gemini 8. The mission of
Gemini 8 was to dock with an orbiting Agena rocket. The flight's
objective was to practice this docking maneuver for Apollo. When
his spaceship started to roll end over end in an uncontrollable
fashion after docking he again manually took control and undocked
from the Agena and used the Gemini retro rockets to stabilize the
Gemini 8 spacecraft, saving himself and his fellow crew member from
blacking out and an eventually dying in space. I believe he did
this without much assistance from NASA's mission control.
He was a test pilot for NASA's dangerous X-15 rocket plane program
and a Navy jet fighter pilot during the Korean War. I think he
flew at least fifty missions over North Korea. In one mission part
of his wing was torn away by a power cable but he still managed to
fly his plane back to friendly territory and then parachuted to
safety.
After Apollo 11 he worked in NASA as an administrator and then
retired from NASA to teach engineering at a University in Ohio. I
just borrowed the five-DVD collection titled "From the Earth to the
Moon" from the library. This was a miniseries on HBO some years
back which covers the Mercury, Gemini and then the Apollo missions.
You will see Neil Armstrong doing his amazing deeds for the Gemini
and Apollo missions in this docu-drama series. [-gf]
Mark replies:
I knew of Armstrong's death and of how he saved the Apollo 11
mission. (Actually this just came up while Evelyn and I were at
the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.) When Mission
Control says, "We're breathing again," most people did not know how
serious they were.
I had not heard of the crash landing. You hear about the heroics
of Chuck Yeager and James Lovell, but not so much about Armstrong.
Evelyn and I saw FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON when it was first
broadcast and again when we got it on DVD. Actually we purchased
it in Armstrong's home town. We had just gone to the Armstrong Air
and Space Museum there. Anyway the two best episodes are not
directly related to the space program ironically. One deals with
teaching the astronauts how to do geology. The other is about
Georges Melies. It is timely after the release of HUGO. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This month's book discussion group choice, THE ASTONISHING
HYPOTHESIS: THE SCIENTIFIC SEARCH FOR THE SOUL by Francis Crick
(ISBN 978-0-684-19431-8), is mis-named. The "astonishing
hypothesis" is a form of determinism--everything is reducible to
the activities of neurons. Of it, Crick says: "There are, of
course, educated people who believe the Astonishing Hypothesis is
so plausible that it should not be called astonishing. ... I
suspect that such people have often not seen the full implication
of the hypothesis. I myself find it difficult at times to avoid
the idea of a homunculus. One slips into it so easily. The
Astonishing Hypothesis states that *all* aspects of the brain's
behavior are due to the activities of neurons. ... Many of my
readers might justifiably complain that what has been discussed in
this book has very little to do with the human soul as they
understand it. ... Such criticisms are perfectly valid at the
moment, but making them in this context would show a lack of
appreciation of the methods of science."
There are several problems with this. First, the book is *not*
about the "scientific search for the soul"--indeed, the soul is
barely mentioned. Most of it seems to be about how vision works.
Crick explains that this is because that is one of the easiest
brain functions to study. (I am reminded of the joke about the
man looking for his keys under the street light.)
Second, Crick spends a lot of time talking about vision and color,
and describing various optical effects and illusions, but there
are no color plates or illustrations.
Third, I find it rather patronizing that Crick tells the reader
that if she does not think the hypothesis is astonishing, that is
because she does not understand it.
Mark gave what I thought was a good parallel to much of what Crick
was saying: a television picture is due to the actions of
pixels, yet the collective result seems to be more than just the
sum of the parts.
As is often the case, the discussion group drifted off-topic,
talking about such diverse topics as how many brains an octopus
has, the possibility of multiple origins of life, and "the doorway
effect." The last is the fact that you are more likely to forget
something when you pass through a doorway. For example, if you
get up to get a pen and walk ten feet within the same room, you
will probably remember why you got up. But if you walk ten feet
into the next room, you are more likely to get there and find
yourself thinking, "Now why did I come in here?"
I read ALIEN FROM THE STARS by R. L. Fanthorpe (no ISBN) because I
felt I should read something by this (somewhat) infamous author.
What I discovered was that Fanthorpe *loved* infodumps, and every
once in a while he would bring the action to a screeching halt
while one character gives a highly technical lecture on biology or
whatever to another character. They are so technical, I have no
idea if they are accurate. I am glad I have some idea of what
Fanthorpe's writing is like, but I cannot recommend it. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I see it all perfectly: there are two possibilities,
one can either do this or do that. My honest opinion
and friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it,
you will regret both.
--Soren Kierkegaard