THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/26/13 -- Vol. 32, No. 4, Whole Number 1764
Romeo: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Juliet: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
H. P. Lovecraft Square
MOOCs (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
My Picks for Turner Classic Movies for August (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
WHEN COMEDY WENT TO SCHOOL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
RUSHLIGHTS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Golems (probably not a letter of comment
from Tablet Magazine)
Google Translate (letter of comment by Charles S. Harris)
Golems (letter of comment from Kevin Robinson)
ELEMENTARY (letters of comment by Tom Russell
and Rob Mitchell)
Slavery (letter of comment by Gregory Benford)
This Week's Reading (THE CASSANDRA PROJECT and IN THE WAKE
OF THE PLAGUE) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
August 1: THE COOLER, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 6:30PM
August 22: [no discussion]
September 26: THE TIME SHIPS by Stephen Baxter, Old Bridge (NJ)
Public Library, 7PM
October 24: THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT by Steven Pinker, Old Bridge
(NJ) Public Library, 7PM
November 21: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? by Philip
K. Dick, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
December 19: THE MOON AND SIXPENCE by W. Somerset Maugham,
Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
January 23, 2014: THE RAPTURE OF THE NERDS by Cory Doctorow and
Charles Stross, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
Speculative Fiction Lectures:
August: [no meeting]
September 7: Ellen Datlow, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 12N
Northern New Jersey events are listed at:
http://www.sfsnnj.com/news.html
==================================================================
TOPIC: H. P. Lovecraft Square
According to the Associated Press, "The Providence City Council has
voted to name an intersection after native son and horror writer
H.P. Lovecraft. The council's chief of staff says a resolution to
call the intersection of Angell and Prospect streets 'H.P.
Lovecraft Square' was approved unanimously earlier this month."
See http://tinyurl.com/void-hpl-square for the full story.
==================================================================
TOPIC: MOOCs (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
People who read the article on MOOCs (Massively Open On-line
Courses) by Dale Skran in the 06/21/13 issue of the MT VOID might
be interested in some data from San Jose State University with
their Udacity MOOCs:
http://tinyurl.com/void-moocs-sjsu
http://tinyurl.com/void-moocs-sjsu2
A few caveats about the content of these articles: The courses
included remedial courses, which may by their nature require more
interaction with teachers. Some students did not have reliable
access to computers at the start of the semester. According to
some reports, the MOOCs were produced in a hurry to meet a short
deadline set by SJSU. And students in SJSU edX (a competitor of
Udacity) courses are doing better in their MOOCs than traditional
students.
[Technically, the courses at SJSU are not MOOCs, because they are
not "open", but are restricted to those categories of students SJSU
allows. But colloquially, they are MOOCs.]
[-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: My Picks for Turner Classic Movies for August (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
This is my monthly listing of films I recommend coming up on TCM.
Somehow this was not a good month on TCM for fantasy films.
September looks a lot better and October will presumably be very
good. But these films are fairly good. All times are given in
East Coast time.
Back when I was in high school, a few years into the Vietnam War,
IBM ran a special presentation on TV of a film I had never heard of
by a director I had never heard of. The director was Stanley
Kubrick who was probably already at work on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
But the film they ran (with only one commercial interruption) was
THE PATHS OF GLORY WITH Kirk Douglas. Douglas had made several
angry, powerful films in the 1950s in delicious black and white
(see his ACE IN THE HOLE), but the capper was THE PATHS OF GLORY.
It would be easy to label this an anti-war film, but that would be
unfair to war. It is an anti-authoritarian film of the first
order. Douglas plays a WWI French Colonel when the fighting
between the French trenches and the German trenches has been
stalemated for many long months. Douglas's commander orders him to
lead an attack that everyone knows will kill a large majority of
Douglas's troops. The film mostly focuses on the aftermath of the
attack. The final sequence of the film is a masterpiece of a
comment on the story. Dialog is by master crime novelist Jim
Thompson. [Friday, August 30, 8:00 PM]
I also have memories of my experience with this film. I was in a
Stanford class on Measure Theory and Advanced Probability trying to
prove some strange inequality when I suddenly thought of a film I
had seen once in which Gregory Peck played a fighting sea captain
in the Napoleonic Wars. What could be more different from Measure
Theory? Immediately after class I skipped over to the library and
borrowed CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER. This is a long novel composed
of three shorter novels by C. S. Forester. These were the first
books in the series chronicling the career of Hornblower, and
occasionally self-doubting and self-deprecating navy genius. There
have been several similar series inspired by Hornblower written
since. There have been the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick
O'Brien. There are the Richard Sharp novels by Bernard Cornwell.
Another well-known Captain who initially was inspired by Hornblower
is James T. Kirk. The film adapts those first three novels that
Forester wrote. The books probably deserved a better adaptation.
Hornblower is supposed to be very plain looking and would not look
much like Gregory Peck. Half the film is based on the first novel
BEAT TO QUARTERS. The next third is based on SHIP OF THE LINE.
That leaves only a sixth of the film for FLYING COLOURS.
Christopher Lee has a small role as a Spanish Navy Captain who
crosses swords with Hornblower. Great naval battle scenes
punctuate this film. [Thursday, August 15, 6:00 PM]
We get to see Gregory Peck in a very different vein in DESIGNING
WOMAN. At the time it was made there had been several popular
comedies with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. This film was
probably written with them in mind, but the script was shot with
Gregory Peck, and it suffered none at all by the substitution.
Grace Kelly was cast as the female lead, but she had given up her
acting career to marry the Prince of Monaco. She probably would
have been a little too demure of the role. Peck plays a newspaper
sportswriter doing an expose on organized crime infiltrating the
fight racket. Off in Florida to cover a golf tournament he meets a
fashion designer who is as different from him as seems possible.
Yet opposites attract. Bacall becomes suspicious and obsessed with
a woman out of Peck's past, but what she really should be concerned
about are the gangsters ready to kill husband. Adding to the
confusion is Maxie Stultz, a punch-drunk prizefighter given to Peck
as a bodyguard. Vincent Minelli directed the script by George
Wells. Wells won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
[Thursday, August 15, 01:15 PM]
THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933) was made the year after DOCTOR
X with the same Vitaphone sound and the same two-strip Technicolor.
And the film reunites Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. The film was
remade in 1953 in 3D with Vincent Price as HOUSE OF WAX. The film
is creepy and atmospheric. In the remake director Andre de Toth
had Phyllis Kirk as the lead and was shooting in 3D and had to sell
both to the viewer. I think that director Michael Curtiz did not
romanticize Fay Wray in the same way. It is just a bare bones
horror tale and that makes it more effective. [Thursday, August
29, 9:15 PM]
The best of the month is to me PATHS OF GLORY. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: EAARTH by Bill McKibben (book review by Tom Russell)
Perhaps MT VOID readers contemplate which work of science fiction
has done the best job of predicting what life on Earth will be like
in the future.
Will it be as portrayed in THE JETSONS or as in MAD MAX? Or
something else?
Edward Snowden has showed us that we are already living in a world
predicted by one of my all-time favorites: THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST.
That movie is probably high on the list of long-time MT VOID
subscribers. It got the bad guys wrong (well, maybe not), but the
scary evil they were doing it got correct.
So here we all are living on a "future Earth" and we didn't even
know it. We don't like it, but there's not much we can do about
it.
Bill McKibben reveals that in many ways we are not living on the
Earth as we have known it. Rather, we are living on a different
place, which he gives the new name Eaarth. One little
disappointment with the book is that McKibben never reveals why he
chose that particular name. I was also disappointed when the book
ended: I was expecting one more chapter; instead there were forty
pages of notes and acknowledgments. But as a whole this book is a
"must-read" for anyone who is concerned about what is becoming of
our planet.
Just to be clear, McKibben doesn't touch at all on how the Earth
has become "Eaarth" compares to predictions from science fiction,
but MT VOID readers might use his book to score their favorites.
Here's one little "score" for SOYLENT GREEN which I've noticed: In
the movie the character played by Edward G. Robinson watches a film
of what life had been like on Earth in the past. One striking
scene from that film was a grand field of daffodils. Now it turns
out that daffodils are the only flowers in our yard that the deer
don't eat. Poisonous. So, coincidence that daffodils survived to
"the end" in that movie?
McGibben doesn't mention daffodils but does describe something
going on today on Eaarth that is eerily similar to SOYLENT GREEN: a
farmer in Vermont is using whole dead dairy cows for compost (page
159). Five per cent of all dairy cows die each year, a lot of
cows. They make good compost, fertile soil for soy beans or
lentils.
And now all of New York City is going to be composting food and
anything put in the new brown containers. The brown containers'
contents will be picked up and hauled away just as in the movie.
(This is a more recent development than McKibben's 2010 book.)
To the Brookdale students who we met while volunteering at the
canoe-launch spot at Thompson Park (hope you read the MT VOID),
thank you for telling us, "Read this book!" [tlr]
==================================================================
TOPIC: WHEN COMEDY WENT TO SCHOOL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Directors Ron Frank and Mevlut Akkaya tell us the story of
American humor being reinvented by comedians in the resorts of the
Catskills. A whole generation of Jewish comics got their starts.
From the late 1930s to the late 1960s the resorts offered food,
relaxation, and comics. From busboys wanting to make a start to
internationally known comedians, Jewish humor was a big part of the
resort experience. WHEN COMEDY WENT TO SCHOOL is a highly
entertaining history of comics in the Borscht Belt during its
golden years. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
WHEN COMEDY WENT TO SCHOOL is a history of the resorts in the
Borscht Belt--the resort are of the Catskill Mountains in upper New
York State. There a mostly Jewish clientele largely from the
frantic New York City would take two weeks off each year and come
for the clean air of the Catskills to decompress, relax, eat
altogether too much of the legendary food--usually offered 24 hours
a day, and to laugh at comic busboys, clowns, cooks, and with staff
members and entertainers. The funny guys had names like Sid
Caesar, Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Jerry Stiller, Jackie Mason, Mort
Sahl, Mel Brooks, Buddy Hackett, Henny Youngman, and Lenny Bruce.
Put that much talent in one small area and you are bound to have
cross-pollination of ideas (and in some cases outright theft of
jokes). Comedy was as indispensable a part of the Catskill
experience as was the seven varieties of breakfast herring. To get
an idea how many great comics came out of the Borscht Belt see
Wikipedia on Borscht Belt--Comedic legacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borscht_belt#Comedic_legacy
WHEN COMEDY WENT TO SCHOOL tells the story of Jewish comedy in the
Borscht Belt. The screenplay, by Lawrence Richards, has interviews
with famous funny guys and a few not so famous people who saw it.
But mostly they interview well-known Jewish comics, still funny.
Everyone tells their reminiscences and the comics also tell some of
their jokes.
Frank and Akkaya also give us a little of the broader story of how
humor became such a personal thing with a people persecuted through
the centuries. It was their safety valve and their way to stay
sane. They laughed at life. Jews have laughter in their genes,
and sense of humor is a survival trait. WHEN COMEDY WENT TO SCHOOL
mixes serious reporting with laugh-out-loud jokes. Comics tell
stories of their past. Jerry Lewis tells of the first laugh he
ever got from an audience. Jackie Mason tells us why he gave up
being a rabbi and became a stand-up comic instead. It was a golden
age for comedy and one that will probably never return.
The story is narrated by Robert Kline, comic and himself a former
Catskill busboy. The film breaks the era of the comedy in the
Catskills into two pieces. Prior to the end of World War II the
hotels were comic chaos. Staff members pulled stunts and got
laughs from the crowd. After the war things got more formal.
There would be one comic at a time doing stand-up behind a
microphone. The suggestion is made that this is the origin of the
stand-up comic. There certainly is a lot of the history of
American comedy in this film. Sadly, it all came to an end.
Television brought comedy right into the home. Many of the TV
comedians had learned and honed their craft in the Catskills.
This is a delightful entertainment that packs a lot of information
in entirely painlessly. This is a fun piece of history and thank
goodness it is preserved in this film. I rate WHEN COMEDY WENT TO
SCHOOL a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2167056/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/when_comedy_went_to_school/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: RUSHLIGHTS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: RUSHLIGHTS claims to be based on a true story. I am not
sure I believe it. Reality is just not that twisty. Billy and
Sarah, two young lovers, each a little crooked, go to flyspeck
Texas town Tremo so Sarah can impersonate her look-alike roommate.
The roommate, recently deceased from an overdose, was to inherit a
large sum of money. They stand to be very rich if Sarah can pull
off the fraud. But their deception turns out to be just one more
thing in Tremo that is not what it seems. With more engaging leads
this film might be one that people would want to see a second time-
-just to get straight all that happened. Co-written and directed
by Antoni Stutz, the RUSHLIGHTS script keeps the viewer guessing.
Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
RUSHLIGHTS reminded me of early Coen Brothers. When the surprises
start they just keep coming. Billy Brody (played by Josh
Henderson) and Sarah (Haley Webb) are young and in love, and both
have shady pasts. Sarah's roommate, who happens to look a lot like
Sarah, dies of a drug overdose. Billy finds a letter to the
roommate saying she is about to inherit a large sum of money from
an uncle in Tremo, Texas. Billy and Sarah decide that Sarah looks
enough like her roommate to impersonate the dead girl long enough
collect the money. The two go to Tremo not knowing the rats' nest
of complications their attempted deception was about to uncover.
There they find themselves between their lawyer Cameron Brogden
(Aidan Quinn) and Sheriff Robert Brogden, Jr. (Beau Bridges), two
brothers who take opposite views of the young couple.
This film falls into the "Southern town with lots hidden under the
surface" category. The lighting is distinctly film noir-ish with
characters carved out of darkness. The photography is stylish and
the film looks better than it feels. Before it is over there will
be a lot of shooting, a lot of violence and even more blood.
The film would be intriguing but both of the main characters are
plagued by flat acting. Josh Henderson is supposedly familiar from
TV's revival of "Dallas", though I cannot say I have seen it. We
see very little into their characters, perhaps intentionally from
the script. Perhaps for reason top billing goes to Aiden Quinn and
Beau Bridges who really are in supporting roles. Perhaps they have
more name recognition than the younger actors.
It is not clear that some of the plot twists really contribute much
to the story. They may be there for surprise value, but if they
were not there it would be essentially the same story. A few are
genuine twists. At times the film does not make a lot of sense.
The script should have said something about how the discovery of
the roommate's corpse back in L.A. is not going upset their plans.
Holes in the plans stand there like the elephant in the room that
nobody seems to think of.
There is some suspense in this film and I cannot deny there are
surprises. With better actors this could have been a solid
thriller. But if the main characters cannot make the viewer care
what happens to them, the rest of the goings on does not matter
much.
I rate RUSHLIGHTS a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536437/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rushlights/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Golems (probably not a letter of comment from Tablet
Magazine)
Probably not in response to Mark's comments on golems in the
07/19/13 issue of the MT VOID, Tablet Magazine ran an article by
Liel Leibovitz titled 'Hollywood's New Golems, on the Loose, Storm
the Box Office'. However, it is about building artificial
creations for self-defense, rather than about traditional golems.
The full article is at http://tinyurl.com/void-new-golems.
==================================================================
TOPIC: Golems (letters of comment from Kevin Robinson and Joseph T.
Major)
In response to Mark's comments on golems in the 07/19/13 issue of
the MT VOID, Kevin Robinson writes:
Micheal Chabon was probably aware of Len Wein & John Buscema's 1974
comics version of The Golem:
http://tinyurl.com/void-golem-comics
http://www.comics.org/series/2128/covers/ for the Strange Tales
cover gallery
Per http://www.sugarbombs.com/kavalier/?page_id=4:
"As a child, Chabon was a dedicated comic book geek, collecting DC
and Marvel titles. His grandfather had been a typographer at a
plant New York where comic books, among other things, were printed.
His grandfather would bring home bags of free comics for Chabon's
father. Chabon told the Onion A.V. Club in 2000 that 'when I
started reading, my father thought it was only natural that I
should take an interest in comic books, too, and he started
bringing me comics to read, although he wasn't getting them for
free.'" [-kr]
Mark responds:
I had not been aware that there were Golem comic books, but that
would have been about a decade after I was into comic books. In
the 1960s I never saw a reference to golems in comics. And that is
a little surprising. Everything I have heard leads me to believe
that there was a higher proportion of Jews among comic book
creators and writers than there was among matzo bakers. [-mrl]
Joseph Major writes:
[Mark writes,] "We have strip-mined our sources for good film
monsters."
I would say the decline really began in 1948 with ABBOTT AND
COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. Over the next eight years the classic
monsters became comic foils for Bud and Lou.
By 1962 they were harmless sorts, singing "Monster Mash" for fun
and games.
In 1964, they became suburbanites, if an unusual sort, and "The
Munsters" was quite ordinary. I admit that Fred Gwynne's Herman
Munster was truer to Mary Shelley's portrayal of Frankenstein's
Monster than any of the classic Universal movies the portrayals in
the show ere based on, but he was still living between Ward & June
Cleaver and Jim & Margaret Anderson.
So, by the 1970s, the famous Chicago columnist Mike Royko could
watch a monster movie marathon with his son, only to be annoyed by
the filial comments of "This is supposed to be scary?"
As a result, as you say, monsters got more monstrous. And thee had
to build a franchise, so Jason and Freddy got killed in fire or
gore or whatever, only to return unharmed and stronger than ever in
the next installment. [-jtm]
Mark responds:
I, too, have been unhappy to see the classic monsters degraded in
low comedy. But at least for me the making them non-scary is not
an issue. I simply am not scared by movies. I remember being
scared by an episode of Alfred Hitchcock when I was five years old,
and at ten PSYCHO and HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM did scare me.
After that a few films made me tense, but they have not done that
for a long time. For me the virtue of the classic horror monsters
was never that they were scary, but they were a sort of dark
fantasy. So scary is not the issue for me.
But I like the idea of vampires and werewolves and the Frankenstein
monster and I like good stories involving them. So the decline you
point out is a sad one though at the same time Hammer Films came
along and was for a while revitalizing the classic monsters. I
like to see the idea of the monsters respected. A vampire that can
be downed with a karate kick is much less impressive than one that
a kick would do nothing to stop. But I think today's monsters are
much less interesting and have gone from bad--the slasher and
stalker--to nearly as bad--the 200th film about so-called
"zombies." The Syfy channel seems to be pioneering its own kind of
horror film of the "TarantuShark" variety. If these were made with
any kind of quality they would be decent. But the filmmakers are
very poor at just creating characters to care about.
Perhaps each generation just creates new monsters out of what
scares them. There still are good monster movies being made, but
it is a rarity. I think I would say CABIN IN THE WOODS is the best
I have seen in years. It too is not really scary, but I can see it
was trying to be engaging. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: ELEMENTARY (letters of comment by Tom Russell and Rob
Mitchell)
In response to Mark's reply to Tom Russell's comments on ELEMENTARY
in the 07/19/13 issue of the MT VOID, Tom replies:
Thanks for your reply. We don't have any cable TV and so do get
desperate for something to watch. After we had seen all of the
"Monk" re-runs on 9 we tried Elementary. Maybe watched about half
the episodes? Agree with your comment about it being much like a
typical crime show. The final episode was best. That one I'd
recommend, assuming you might catch as re-run. Well, I'd be
interested in your comments on it." [-tlr]
And Rob Mitchell writes:
With respect to ELEMENTARY:
As a dedicated Sherlockian, I shake my head when I watch
ELEMENTARY. My wife is a fan, so I watch it with her. I do find
it an engaging mystery series; the cases are clever and the
solutions plausibly uncovered. However, it is *not* a series about
Sherlock Holmes, regardless of the name of the protagonist. I
really enjoy BBC's SHERLOCK--I don't need my Holmes always in
Victorian England--but it you are going to move a character out of
his/her native state, at least be true to the *spirit* of the
character. Otherwise, change the character's name and indicate the
original character is an inspiration.
I liked HOUSE for that reason; although Sherlock Holmes was an
inspiration, Gregory House was not Holmes. However, in ELEMENTARY,
the lead character is petty, manipulative, short-tempered, sexually
active and adventuresome--not at all what I expect Holmes to be. I
regularly complain to my wife, "I'd like this show a lot better if
the protagonist was named John Smith...".
It's the same problem as I had with Jackson's THE TWO TOWERS (I
know Treebeard, and that's not Treebeard), and in a general sense,
with the original STARSHIP TROOPERS (an OK film, but *not* an
accurate adaption of Heinlein's novel). [-rlm]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Google Translate (letter of comment by Charles S. Harris)
In response to Evelyn's comments on Google Translate in the
07/19/13 issue of the MT VOID, Charles Harris writes:
I've noticed quite a few instances of Google Translate dropping a
negative. I haven't investigated further, but try to remember to
check the original if it's a significant statement. [-csh]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Slavery (letter of comment by Gregory Benford)
In response to the various comments on slavery in the 07/19/13
issue of the MT VOID, Gregory Benford writes:
On cost of buying slaves: I got my numbers from a whole book on
such alternative ideas, THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, by a UCR
economic historian.
Main point is we could've just bought our way out. Also, many
medical costs were absorbed by individual soldiers, especially the
Confederates.
Evelyn adds:
That would be THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA by Robert L. Ransom
(ISBN 978-0-393-329117), I assume. And for non-Californians, UCR
is the University of California at Riverside. [-ecl]
Mark responds:
I think that the primary reason we could not buy our way out of
slavery is that it was not making a strong enough statement.
Slaveholders would be seen as benefiting from slavery with the
government's agreement. We had four years of civil war that did
immense damage, but at least it made a very strong statement.
Another reason we could not buy our way out was that it would have
had to go through Congress. It is very hard to get a peaceful
political solution to a problem agreed upon as we are seeing with
our current Congress. On the other hand, once one cannon is fired
the issue is well on its way to being resolved, though at a very
high price. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE CASSANDRA PROJECT by Jack McDevitt and Mike Resnick (ISBN 978-
0-937008-71-0) is described by some as an alternate history, but I
would say it is really a secret history. The difference is that in
*alternate* history things are definitely different, while in
*secret* history things are different from what they seem.
Maybe the difference between alternate history and secret history
is best shown be example:
Alternate history: A standard one is that the Axis won World War II
and everyone knows it (e.g., FATHERLAND by Robert Harris, THE MAN
IN THE HIGH CASTLE by Philip K. Dick).
Secret history: The classic one is that there is a hidden
organization that controls the entire world, but most people are
unaware of it and still think that nations, etc., are what counts
(e.g. THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION). Better-known science
fictional examples of secret history would be Michael Flynn's IN
THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND and the "Men in Black" films.
[I think of it as a secret history is an *alternate* way we might
have gotten to the world *as we know it*. -mrl]
Anyway, while there are clearly some changes to the history of the
space program, these seem to be mostly because the authors did not
want to have the real astronauts (and others) as major characters
in the secret history they were describing. It is one thing to
have long-dead scientists involved in secret doings to control
history, but authors balk at using living people in similar
situations. This could have been written with no changes to known
history, which is what makes it secret history to me.
The book also has a Heinleinesque feel in its promotion of private
industry doing so much better at space travel than the government,
and it would not surprise me to see this in line for the
libertarian Prometheus Award. Alas, the explanation of what is
going on is fairly predictable (yes, all of it).
IN THE WAKE OF THE PLAGUE: THE BLACK DEATH & THE WORLD IT MADE by
Norman F. Cantor (ISBN 978-0-965-32378-9) certainly sounded
promising. I thought the idea of examining the Black Death
thematically rather than chronologically would provide a different
perspective, but Cantor spends so much time on digressions and
irrelevancies that he fails to do this. He spends pages describing
the background and entourage of Princess Joan of England, most of
which is irrelevant to the topic at hand. And he gets the notion
of life expectancy wrong in the process. The life expectancy for
Princess Joan at birth might have been twenty-five, but if she
survived infancy, it was much closer to fifty.
Indeed, a major flaw is the number of errors Cantor makes. As one
more example, he repeats the urban legend that "Ring Around the
Rosies" was from the 14th century, when the earliest reference is
in the 19th century. His most egregious claim, however, is that
the Jews contributed to the paranoia that led to the persecutions
and pogroms against them by their adoption of Kabbalah, which
Christians connected with witchcraft just at the time the
witchcraft persecutions began in force as well. As several
reviewers have noted, this is "blaming the victim," and
particularly offensively.
And speaking of reviewers, after I finished this book, I found
myself thinking, "Am I the only one who thinks this is not a very
good book, and is offended by the surmises about the Jews?" Well,
thanks to Amazon and Google, it was fairly easy to discover I was
not an outlier. (I should note that I try to avoid reading other
reviews until I have come to my own conclusions about the book in
question.)
Anyway, this leaves me with a dilemma. I have no desire to keep
the book, but if I think it is that bad--and misleading--should I
really sell it (or donate it somewhere) and hence inflict it on
someone else? Alas, the only other option is to throw it out, and
I still hate throwing books out. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and
mathematical relation to each other.
--James F. Cooper