THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
04/19/13 -- Vol. 31, No. 42, Whole Number 1750
George Burns: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Gracie Allen: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Triathlon (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Albert Robida, the Invisible French Giant (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
THE LIFE OF PI and the Poetry of Writing (letter of comment
by John Hertz)
THE DIVINE COMEDY (letter of comment by Sam Long)
This Week's Reading (SIMPLE LIBRARY CATALOGUING)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Triathlon (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
When they have an Iron Man Triathlon at the Olympics don't people
have a big advantage depending on what powers their suit has?
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Albert Robida, the Invisible French Giant (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
When you think of French Science Fiction, particularly in the
earliest days of SF there is one name that stands out and very
nearly eclipses every other French science fiction author. That
is, of course, Jules Verne. Verne wrote about inventions of his
near future. He wrote in a genre we now would call the techno-
thriller. There already were submarines when Verne wrote about
Captain Nemo. But the Nautilus was a very great deal advanced over
under-water vessels of Verne's time, not to say considerably more
reliable. The Albatross was doing what machines started doing some
time about 1903, and then they would take a few years to catch up
to Verne's imaginings. Verne was the great science fiction
imaginer from France. If one goes to the Wikipedia page for French
Science Fiction the names of the less familiar are even broken down
into the categories "Proto science fiction before Jules Verne" and
"after Jules Verne." And every name they give is eclipsed by
Verne." The one name that that stands out most from the non-Vernes
is Albert Robida.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_science_fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Robida
If you know the name of Robida you probably associate it with his
futuristic drawings of aircraft and strange machines. They were
almost prototypes of 1930s pulp covers. Some of his work may be
familiar:
http://tinyurl.com/void-robida
French writer, illustrator, and novelist Albert Robida lived from
1848 to 1926 and so saw a quarter of the 20th Century, a century
that fascinated him. He did not live to see many of his prophecies
in illustration come true, but many have. Unlike Robida's Jules
Verne's works were illustrated by one of the great artists of his
day, Edouard Riou, who had been a student of Gustave Dore. Robida
illustrated as well as wrote his own works. But unlike Riou,
Robida usually had a satirical feel to his artwork. He might draw
a sky so full of flying machines that one was sure in the next
moment there would have been disastrous mid-air collisions.
One of the major differences between Verne's stories and Robida's
are that Verne always put the technology in the hands of a
technological elite. In Robida's imaginings the wondrous
inventions had been adopted by the public at large and have
uniformly transformed society. Though Verne is associated with an
optimistic view of the future, it is more true of Robida, even if
his predictions were half jokes.
Robida has been called the "Father of The Art of Science Fiction
Illustration" and one can certainly see his influence on pulp
magazine covers. While his stories are considered pedestrian it is
his illustration that survives him. Clute and Nicholls' THE
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION attribute to him the inventions of
(the ideas of) germ warfare and the videophone. The latter
appeared in his illustration 'Le Journal Telephonoscopique' from
his novel THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. The illustration done in 1883
highly resembles a picture of a modern family seeing an adventure
film on a wide-screen TV. The big differences are that the
projection equipment is in front of the screen (usually not the
case these days) and the family is all wearing Victorian dress
(also usually not the case these days.)
http://tinyurl.com/void-robida-gif
Robida wrote three futuristic novels about life in the 20th
Century: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (1883), THE WAR OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY (1887), and THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE LIFE ELECTRIQUE
(1890). Sadly for all his fascination with the 20th Century, when
the century actually did arrive his fame really did not. But his
illustrations are still familiar to most science fiction fans, even
if his name is not. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE LIFE OF PI and the Poetry of Writing (letter of comment
by
John Hertz)
In response to Greg Benford's and Mark's comments on THE LIFE OF PI
in the 01/18/13 issue of the MT VOID, John Hertz writes:
I heard there was a movie THE LIFE OF PI, but then I found it
wasn't about the Rhind Papyrus and Archimedes and Lui Hui and
Ramanujan and Kinada and the Palais de la Decouverte. How I want a
drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving
quantum mechanics. [-jh]
Evelyn replies:
I had a similar response when the book came out. Also, every time
I heard about the movie CONSTANTINE I had an instant of thinking it
was about the Roman Empire. And Mark said when he first heard the
title "Autumn in New York", he heard it as "Ottoman New York" and
thought it was an alternate history. [-ecl]
And in response to Evelyn's comments on Jorge Luis Borges's
Lectures in the 02/08/13 issue of the MT VOID, John writes:
Evelyn is quite right to note Borges on the poetry of "A rose-red
city half as old as time" and "The thousand nights and a night".
In particular this is a refreshing alternative to all the
discussion in our field of how s-f is good or bad based on how it
predicts things, or presents correct thought. [-jh]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE DIVINE COMEDY (letter of comment by Sam Long)
In response to Evelyn's comments on THE DIVINE COMEDY in the
04/12/13 issue of the MT VOID, Sam Long writes:
Dante's Beauty Rendered In English In A Divine Comedy
http://tinyurl.com/void-dante
Ref the mentions of Dante in the latest MT VOID. I like James's
idea of using quatrains, which are common in English verse, whereas
terza rima often seems contrived. A lot of French drama is in
alexandrines, which don't work well in English, whereas iambic
pentameter (rhymed or unrhymed) seems natural to us. Thus if I
were translating Corneille's play "Le Cid" into English verse, for
example, I'd use iambic pentameter to do so. [-sl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I recently finished SIMPLE LIBRARY CATALOGUING (SEVENTH EDITION) by
Arthur Curley (ISBN 978-0-810-81649-7) but frankly, what can one
say about a book like that? I suppose the only observation of
interest is that many of the alphabetization rules in it that we
learned in school have been replaced by rules based on computer
sort order. So the old rule to treat words starting with "Mc" as
if they started with "Mac" (e.g., "McBride" precedes "MacDonald",
which precedes "McDougall") has been replaced by alphabetizing by
what is actually there (e.g., "MacDonald" precedes "McBride" which
precedes "McDougall").
On the other hand, I still think that "Dr." and "Doctor" should
both be treated as "Doctor", because frankly, who can remember when
the title is spelled out and when it isn't?
And while one normally alphabetizes numbers as being spelled out,
there is much to be said for occasionally treating them as numeric.
For example, "World's Best SF: 1969" should precede "World's Best
SF: 1970". And "The Fourth Galaxy Reader" should precede "The
Fifth Galaxy Reader".
(You may wonder how someone who just spent a month in the hospital
and a physical therapy facility would not have a lot of reading to
report on. Well, the fact is that such places are full of constant
interruptions and even more constant noise from everyone else's
televisions that any sort of sustained reading is impossible. A
short story or article is about all one can manage.) [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Southerners make good novelists: they have so many
stories because they have so much family.
--Gore Vidal