Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/11/13 -- Vol. 32, No. 15, Whole Number 1775
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Notice (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Promotion for New Remake of CARRIE
30 Great SFF Films You Almost Certainly Haven't Seen
[But Most of Which We Have] (Part 2) (comments
by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
The Fall of the Roman Republic (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
GRAVITY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE CASTLE PROJECT: COLORADO'S HAUNTED MANSION (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
World War II (letters of comment by Peter Trei,
Keith F. Lynch, Tim Bateman, Richard Todd,
and Tim McDaniel)
Team Names (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
This Week's Reading (THEY STILL CALL ME JUNIOR and THE OFFICE
OF MERCY) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Notice (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I have two things to say:
1) Some of you have suggested that the occasional jokes I put at
the beginning of the MT VOID are really part of a fiendish CIA plot
to play with the minds of our readers and to control them. This is
conspiracy thinking of the worst kind. I will say right now that I
have never been paid to run any article in the MT VOID. And
certainly not by the United States Government. It is ridiculous to
think anyone cold control minds in this way.
2) The opening jokes will be on hiatus until the government
shutdown is over.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Promotion for New Remake of CARRIE
==================================================================
TOPIC: 30 Great SFF Films You Almost Certainly Haven't Seen [But
Most of Which We Have] (Part 2) (comments by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)
Continuing on with the films recommended at the LoneStarCon 3 panel
"30 Great SFF Films You Almost Certainly Haven't Seen"
Maybe it is just us, but we *have* seen many of the films that we
almost certainly haven't seen. Mark annotates those films he has
experienced. Today we look at films selected by Elektra Hammond
and Perrine Lurie. [And apologies for misspelling Elektra"s name
as "Electra" at one point in last week's issue.]
Elektra Hammond:
- RUBY SPARKS
[This is a fantasy along the lines of STRANGER THAN FICTION but
from the point of view of the author. A novelist writes about
someone who would be his ideal woman. Somehow she comes to life
from his description. The author then has to come to terms with
what has happened. It is a nice romantic fantasy with a sort of
"Twilight Zone" premise.]
- THE WIZARD OF SPEED AND TIME
[In real life Mike Jittlov made a series of very entertaining
animated shorts for Disney Studios. His best known being
"Animato", "Time Tripper", and "The Wizard of Speed and Time". He
used stop motion and pixilation to create shorts that were
hypnotic, though his effects can now be done better in a computer.
In 1989 he directed and starred in a feature film, THE WIZARD OF
SPEED AND TIME about an animator doing work for an evil film studio
and his own breaking away from them. He used his short films in
the longer one. The evil studio was probably a disguised version
of Disney. The connective plotting felt a bit like it was
muckraking and though released to theaters, it was not really good
enough to complete against contemporary feature films. Much of
Jittlov's animation can now be found on YouTube.]
- MY BEST FRIEND IS A VAMPIRE
[Formulaic 1980s comedy about a teen who becomes a vampire but is
determined not to take human life. Just okay.]
- THE PURGE (2013)
- KNIGHTRIDERS
[KNIGHTRIDERS director George Romero criticizes it, but I think
this is his best film. A travelling Renaissance Fair has jousts on
motorcycles. Some promoters want to super-commercialize the sport,
which brings divisions among the participants as to what their
goals should be, idealistic or profitable.]
- SHOCK TREATMENT
[People who have huge successes generally believe that it was
through their own talent and their efforts to repeat those
successes are frequently embarrassments. SHOCL TREATMENT is
nominally a sequel to THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, a film that
needed no sequel and if it did, this was not it. Brad and Janet
(played by different actors), now married, have an unrelated
adventure. Brad and Janet find that their town as been transformed
into has been transformed into a giant TV set for reality TV.]
- SCREAMERS
[Lesser Philip K. Dick. In wars of the future it will no longer be
easy to tell real humans from robotic assassins. It might have
been an engaging idea when Dick wrote the original idea in the
story "The Second Variety" but now it is just a bleak violent movie
from Canada.]
- SLIDING DOORS
[One short instant can change your entire life. Gwyneth Paltrow
runs for a subway train as the doors are closing. The film then
splits into two timelines. One is her life if she makes it onto
the train and one is her life if she does not. Using different
looks, there is never any doubt which Paltrow we are seeing and
which timeline we are in. There are some unexpected plot twists in
the double romantic film.]
- THE QUESTOR TAPES
["Demon with a Glass Hand" meets "Run For Your Life". In an un-
sold 1974 TV-pilot written by Gene Roddenberry an android that
passes for human has just part of its programming and wants to get
the rest. It is looking for its creator and for knowledge of what
it was created for. Meanwhile it mixes in with people's lives.]
- "Venom: Truth in Journalism"
Perrine Lurie:
- WINGS OF DESIRE
[Wim Wenders film from Germany. An angel flies around in Berlin
examining people lives. One of the people he observes is Peter
Falk playing someone much like himself. At times it is poetic, but
it can also be overly long, slow, dull, and cold. The angel is
played by the excellent Bruno Ganz.]
- FAR AWAY SO CLOSE
[Wim Wenders wrote and directed sequel to his own WINGS OF DESIRE.
Mostly it is more of the same. We still have Bruno Ganz but lose
Peter Falk for Nastassja Kinski. Again angels wish they could be
real people. Lucky us who are already human.]
- UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD
[Wim Wenders turns from fantasy to science fiction. A couple are
on the road being chased by the CIA because they have a strange
device that allow the blind to see. Meanwhile an Indian nuclear
satellite is falling from orbit and will destroy all life on the
planet. The film was made in 1991 and set in 1999. Wenders is not
a very entertaining director to my taste.
- CITY OF LOST CHILDREN
[French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, on the other hand, is always
entertaining. He fills his films with kinetic visual insanity. He
is probably best known for AMELIE, but his DELICATESSEN and MICMACS
are also visually inventive in a sort of surrealism. CITY OF LOST
CHILDREN begins with a young child in a crib being visited by Santa
only to have things turn sinister when one Santa after another
comes down the chimney packing the room. Jeunet even beats Terry
Gilliam for strange unexpected visual happenings in his films.
This one also has a steam punk atmosphere.]
- THE NAVIGATOR: A MEDIEVAL ODYSSEY
[The men of a medieval village beset by the coming of the Black
Plague believe they can get protection in the "Celestial City". They have to dig a tunnel underground to get to this legendary
city. Whether it is to be taken literally or not, the Celestial
City is modern day Auckland, New Zealand. Can they get a cure for
their village in the Celestial City or must they see their home
die?]
- ALICE (directed by Jan Svankmajer)
[Czech Jan Svankmajer has his own style of animation, mixing live
action and often intentionally jerky animations giving his
animations a three-dimensionality. Terry Gilliam certainly
borrowed a lot of Svankmajer. His animation is surreal, though not
so nihilistic as the animation of the Brothers Quay. This is his
take on Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland. It can be found on
YouTube.]
- EUROPA REPORT
- BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
[This was the first film written by Charlie Kaufman if ADAPTATION
and ETERNAL SUNSHINE. The film has an uneven structure where for
the first third of the film it piles fantasy absurdity onto fantasy
absurdity with a straight face. Then suddenly the addition of new
absurdities stops and Kaufman just plays the cards he has at that
point. The plot involves the finding of a tunnel that leads to a
most unexpected place.]
- BUBBA HO-TEP
[Two old men in a nursing home are or claim to be Elvis Presley and
John F. Kennedy. The two old men are stalked by a mummy from
Ancient Egypt. The film also throws absurdity onto absurdity. The
two marginalized old men fight the onslaught of cloth-wrapped feet.
The film is an adaptation of a story by Joe Lansdale.]
- ROBOT FRANK
[With echoes of Twilight Zone we have the story of an former jewel
thief who is given a household robot to take care of him. Instead
he sets about to corrupt the robot and perhaps lead it to a life of
crime.]
- THE WORLD'S END
- Academy Award short nominees
[This is generally a good collection, though some years the
selection is better than others. I cannot say a great deal because
each disk is different.]
[-mrl/ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Fall of the Roman Republic (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
I have been listening to Dan Carlin's podcast, "Hardcore History",
and in particular the episodes on the fall of the Roman Republic.
Carlin traces it through Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Marius,
Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar, but some of the most striking
parallels between then and now are in the period of Tiberius
Gracchus.
At the time of Tiberius Gracchus the accumulation of most of the
land in the hands of the few (i.e., wealth disparity) was causing
major problems. Tiberius was elected Tribune of the Plebes, and as
such, proposed enforcing the existing law limiting land holdings by
a single individual, but with recompense paid to those who had
illegally acquired too much land. This (not surprisingly) was
opposed by land-holders. Since the veto of a single Tribune was
enough to block a bill, the land-owners found a (land-holding)
tribune who would veto it.
So according to Plutarch, Tiberius "issued an edict prohibiting all
other magistrates from transacting public business" and prevented
quaestors from drawing out money from, or putting money into, the
public treasury until a vote was held (government shut-down).
Other versions say he used his veto to prevent any bills from being
passed, but the effect was the same--he shut down the government.
Eventually the bill finally passed. But in retribution, the land-
owners in the Senate refused all requests from Tiberius even
reasonable ones (e.g., a tent for work in redistributing land).
Tiberius then ran for tribune a second time, which some describe as
against the law (though this is not entirely clear), and everyone
agrees was against tradition. (Of course, when FDR ran for a third
time, that was against tradition, but not against the law.) In
other ways as well, he used the tribunate in ways not intended.
Tiberius then proposed a lot of social reform measures, including
decreasing the period of military service, giving people the right
of appeal from juries, and calling for the admission of equites
onto juries. The "crowning touch" was when Tiberius disputed the
Senate's right to dispense the land that the King of Pergamon's
willed to "the people of Rome", and the grounds that he as Tribune
of the Plebes, and not the Senate, represented "the people of
Rome."
Ultimately, violence ensued, and Tiberius was killed by a mob
stirred up by his opponents in the Senate.
For what it's worth, Dan Carlin lists the following as frequently-
given causes of the fall of the Roman Republic:
- the wealth disparity between rich and poor
- government corruption, including the bribing of judges which in
turn destroyed the justice system
- defects in the Roman finance system, which was the first modern
financial system, and hence a "beta version"
- the power of the mob (including the Tribune of the Plebes, etc.)
- the conversion from a citizen army to a professional army whose
members served under specific generals- human ambition taken to
extremes
- the inability to scale government up from a city-state to an
empire
- the rise of the business class (a.k.a. knights, a.k.a. equites)
Now I admit that they are a lot of differences between then and
now. But the parallels that do exist are disturbing. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: GRAVITY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In a spacesuit you can't bite your fingernails. On a
mission to repair the Hubble telescope things go very wrong and two
astronauts are set adrift in space. They have to engineer their
own rescue against huge odds. This is a film of solid tension and
suspense set against the exquisite background of orbital space.
The film is visually beautiful and the science for the most part
seems on the money right down to how the spacesuits move in a
weightless environment. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney star and
the film is directed by Alfonso Cuaron of CHILDREN OF MEN. Rating:
high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Back when I read science fiction as a teen I generally liked
stories that had a high level of credibility. Those stories had
authors like Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein who used to be accurate
to the science of the day. Writers like Arthur C. Clarke usually
would base a good story around scientific principles. He would
write a novel like A FALL OF MOONDUST, in which a lunar surface
vehicle would fall into an ocean of dust and would have to be
rescued obeying the physical laws of a very not earthlike and
hostile environment. This is a very different breed of science
fiction from the sort we see in action films like this year's
OBLIVION or ELYSIUM.
GRAVITY is a film that realistically looks at a problem that
happens in orbit around the Earth and must be solved with
scientific and engineering genius rather than with guns. But we
get few science fiction films of that sort. In fact, while APOLLO
13 was technically a history film and GRAVITY is science fiction,
they are very close in spirit. The conditions of space create the
problem and it has to be solved using knowledge of science and
engineering and one heck of a lot of creative thinking. Let me
give you this straight. When you have to face this sort of problem
failure darn well *is* an option, even if it is a tragic one. In
fact it can be darn near inevitability. And that is what gives the
story its suspense.
Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George
Clooney) are space walking outside the space shuttle trying to
repair the Hubble Telescope. Stone is still wet behind the ears
and is all business. Kowalski has more homespun, slightly off-
color jokes than did Spielberg's Abraham Lincoln. He jokes with
Stone and he jokes with Mission Control (played not too
surprisingly by Ed Harris). Then it all goes wrong. Nearly
everything that Stone and Kowalski need to survive is blown away.
They have to depend heavily on each other if they are ever going to
get back to Earth. The film is short, 91 minutes, and there is not
a lot of plotting to it. We get just a rudimentary back story for
the two major characters. For them what is important is what is
happening here and now. Then the rest of the film is just an
extrapolation from the set-up as to what the characters might do to
save their lives.
The cause of the problem seems very unlikely and very dependent on
coincidence (though I am not enough of an expert to say for sure).
What seems even more improbable is a set of coincidences in the
last ten minutes of the film. And more unlikely still is that when
large objects collide in this film we hear them on the soundtrack,
in spite of the fact we are in a vacuum. When large bodies collide
I am sure I heard a bump sound. The claim has been made that is
only true in the trailer, but I am sure I heard it happening in the
actual movie.
There are only seven characters in the entire cast and four of them
are only voices. One is CGI with an actor's voice. This is a film
about the wonder and terror of orbital space flight above the
planet. Stone is a medical engineer in space for the first time
who has little confidence and has to be taught by Kowalski to
handle herself in an emergency. Pilot Kowalski who has been flying
space missions for decades is a blunt instrument with course jokes
who considers himself just a fancy truck driver, but he gives the
kind of kind support you would want from someone who was lost with
you in space.
Alfonso Cuaron coauthored the script with his son Jonas Cuaron.
They gave us a human story far from any other humans. It is
genuine science fiction of the purest kind. I rate GRAVITY a high
+2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
I am going to be nit-picky. One inaccuracy is that it is
impossible to place the setting of this story in time. There is no
Chinese space station in 2013 so it takes place some years in the
future, but also there will be no more space shuttles in space.
NASA probably is moving on to using the Space Launch System (SLS).
Undoubtedly it could have been used in this film rather than the
Space Shuttle, but SLS has as yet little audience recognition
value.
Wikipedia on the Space Launch System:
Film Credits:
What others are saying:
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE CASTLE PROJECT: COLORADO'S HAUNTED MANSION (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The Croke-Patterson Mansion, considered one of the most
haunted sites in Denver, is studied by its new owner, Brian
Higgins. Higgins claims to have seen ghostly happenings while
renovating. This film tells the history of the mansion, the
stories about some of its former owners, shows some automatic
camera footage worthy of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, and reveals Higgins'
own speculations why this house seems to attract spirits. What
director Higgins captures on film is less than convincing to the
skeptical eye. Rating: 0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10
Full Disclosure: I am a confirmed skeptic when it comes to
paranormal stories. There is not much in this that could convince
me of the existence of ghosts. I keep an open mind, but there is
no evidence in this film that would be difficult to fake for the
camera.
The Croke-Patterson Mansion really is a notorious building in
Denver and has been the focus of stories of ghosts and strange
happenings. Much like the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, it has
stoked local imagination and inspired legends. Whenever you have a
local myth of this sort it will attract stories that are purely
made-up but attention-getting or profitable. Director Brian
Higgins, who is also the building's owner and its newest architect,
wants to turn the mansion into a "boutique hotel" with a mysterious
reputation. This may suggest his motives for making this film.
The Croke-Patterson is an ornate Chateau-esque home built in Denver
in 1891. The building is purported to be haunted and it is the
setting for a large collection of stories and rumors of odd noises,
odder odors, guard dog suicides, and apparitions. In working on
the building Higgins came in contact with the building's strange
history. He decided to spend some nights in the house and set up
an automatic camera to record any strange phenomena. The results
he brought together to create this documentary.
The film divides its narrative into chapters on topics such as
Thomas Patterson, a newspaper editor who traded ranch land to own the
house.
There is a chapter on the architecture. There are
chapters devoted to eyewitness accounts of strange happenings in
the house. Of particular interest is the chapter on Night 1. The
automatic camera picks up lights on the wall. Higgins quickly
dismisses the possibility that what he is seeing are so-called
"orbs." Orbs are the film says, "ghosts traveling as balls of
light." He claims instead it is dust. It looks nothing like dust
or like orbs. It is very obviously a beam from a light coming from
the right of the camera with the source out of camera range. It
loses its round shape when it hits a wall at a different angle--
just what you would expect from a flashlight beam. By not
acknowledging the obvious, Higgins sheds serious doubt on his
credibility.
There is not a lot in this "documentary" you could not find in a
"found-footage" horror film. None of the images captured on camera
would be hard for even an amateur filmmaker to create.
THE CASTLE PROJECT: COLORADO'S HAUNTED MANSION is being released in
the Halloween season, which of course seems appropriate. But there
is not much reason to consider this as being any more than a low-
budget horror film dressed as a documentary. I hate to squelch the
cottage industry built around the reputation of this mansion, but I
rate THE CASTLE PROJECT: COLORADO'S HAUNTED MANSION a 0 on the -4
to +4 scale or 4/10.
THE CASTLE PROJECT: COLORADO'S HAUNTED MANSION was released on DVD
October 1 and will also be available through video on demand.
Film Credits:
What others are saying:
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: World War II (letters of comment by Peter Trei, Keith
F. Lynch, Tim Bateman, Richard Todd, and Tim McDaniel)
In response to Tim Bateman's comments on World War II in the
10/04/13 issue of the MT VOID, Peter Trei writes:
All three Baltic States had significant anti-Soviet resistance
Movements after the Soviet Union re-occupied the area. After
Stalin's death in 1953, there was an amnesty offered to the 'Forest
Brothers', which many took up, effectively ending the resistance.
Some hung on; one of the last Estonian FBs committed suicide rather
than be captured in 1978.
The last known surviving Japanese Army soldier was arrested in 1974
in Guam. [-pt]
Keith F. Lynch asks:
In what sense did WWII extend to 1953 in Lithuania? [-kfl]
And Tim B. responds:
As [Peter Trei] alludes to above, after the Germans were kicked out
by the Red Army in 1944 or 1945, some Lithuanians decided to try to
kick the Soviets out. This is simplification, as is the notion that the
Lithuanians fought all invaders, i.e. allied with Germany
against the Sovs, then with the Sovs against Germany, then fought
the Sovs alone. [-tb]
Keith replies:
I wouldn't consider defense against Soviet aggression, other than
By Axis power, to be a continuation of WWII. [-kfl]
Tim B. replies:
Well, it's the old "definition of WWII" question, isn't it?
Clearly for Lithuanians, the issue was that they were invaded by
the Germans and then, immediately after, invaded by the Soviet
Union. At least. I suspect that what was going on at Midway and
Hiroshima was of as much concern to them as the main war was to
George Washington in 1776. [-tb]
Tim McDaniel says:
Your timeline differs from mine. In mine, the Soviets occupied
Lithuania in June 1940, then the Germans occupied it in June 1941,
then the Soviets occupied it again around July 1944. And the first
(Soviet) occupation was based on a Soviet-German pact dividing up
central Europe, so I think it's plausible to argue that it was tied
up in WWII. [-tmd]
And Tim B. agrees:
I have to make you right here. I had an idea that I'd left some
complication off the beginning, though I thought that it had to do
with Lithuania (and possibly other Baltic states) being occupied by
the U.S.S.R. in or after May, 1941, when Germany invaded the
U.S.S.R. If Wikipedia is correct (http://tinyurl.com/void-baltic),
the Russo-German carve-up goes back to 1939. [-tb]
Richard Todd answers Keith:
Dunno about Lithuania or 1953, but IIRC there's a sense where for
some Germans the war didn't end until 1950 or so [*]--some German
POWs were kept in Russian POW camps years after the official end of
the war in 1945. ObSFTrivia: one of those young German soldiers
was Walter Ernsting, who later went on to become one of Germany's
most famous SF writers.
[*] I thought it was 1950 (as best I recall from reading the
Langhans bio of Ernsting), but according to
it was actually
1952 instead. Either way, still a fairly long time. [-rt]
Keith responds to Richard:
How long after 1945 did the other Allies keep Axis POWs? How long
after the end of a war are POWs usually kept? It usually takes
some time to make sure that a war is really and truly over.
It's my understanding that most of the many Americans who fly
POW/MIA flags believe that after 40 years Vietnam is still holding
American POWs. [-kfl]
On the original question of the end of the war, Tim McDaniel says:
In another sense, the war didn't end for Germany until 15 March
1991, when the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to
Germany took effect. The war was with "Germany", which didn't
exist from 1950ish until 1990, so a peace treaty couldn't happen
until there was a Germany to negotiate and ratify it. In the
Treaty, Germany accepted the Potsdam Agreement and certain other
conditions (borders, limited numbers of armed forces, former East
Germany could not have foreign forces or nuclear weapons, et
cetera).
In such a sense, World War II still continues: there's been no
formal peace treaty between the Japan and the USSR/its continuation
state. [-tmd]
Keith responds to Tim McD:
Huh? It was Nazi Germany which negotiated and ratified the peace
treaty. (The Nazi regime briefly continued to exist after the
Allied victory. See
)
Is Japan still trying to get the south half of Sakhalin back?
A better argument can be made that the Korean war never ended,
since there's still great hostility. [-kfl]
And Evelyn notes:
Check the entry in Wikipedia for the "Treaty on the Final
Settlement With Respect to Germany" that Tim mentioned above. The
Potsdam Agreement of 1945 was merely a provisional agreement.
[-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Team Names (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
In response to Mark's comments on team names in the 10/04/13 issue
of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
Actually, "the Broncos" isn't completely out of date as a team
name, and it was pretty forward of them at the time to think of
naming themselves after a line of autos. I hope they get a good
piece for that, or at least a free truck every so often. Continuing
the conceit, I suppose, I could point to the Durham Bulls and the
Mighty Ducks, but where are the Seattle Starbucks? the Cupertino
Apple Corps? the Burbank Peacocks?
If I was in charge of naming teams, apart from the inevitable civil
unrest and rash of suicides, I might go for the new nebulous that
athletic associations seem to go for these days, and try to make
the names suited for their locales. Thus, the DC Gridlock, the
Boston Snarl, the LA Sprawl, and the Denver Brown Cloud, for
starters. [-kw]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THEY STILL CALL ME JUNIOR by Frank Coghlan (ISBN 978-0-786-46381-7)
is Coghlan's memoir of his life in Hollywood as the child actor
playing Billy Batson in the "Captain Marvel" serials and later in
the navy as a pilot and Hollywood liaison. While some of the
various anecdotes are interesting (and occasionally salacious), the
long plot descriptions of every film he was in serve more as
padding than as revealing of anything worthwhile. This book is an
example of the minimal editing that McFarland reportedly does, with
such errors as "descendants" when "ancestors" is meant, or
"gratuitously" instead of "done at no charge." Unless you are
fascinated by child stars, there is little here to enthrall you.
THE OFFICE OF MERCY by Ariel Janikian (ISBN 978-0-670-02586-2) is
marketed as adult fiction but reads like a YA novel, and not a very
good one. Though many reviewers compare it to 1984, it is closer
to BRAVE NEW WORLD, with its decanting of Alphas, Betas, and so on,
with its use of the word "mother" as an obscenity, and with its
contrast between the highly controlled and structure "Inside" and
the primitive "Outside".
The book is full of awkward constructions, such as "she clutched a
synthetic-protein wool (or prote-wool) blanket close to her neck."
"Synthetic-protein wool" the blanket may have been, but we would
not write in a realist novel, "She clutched an alpaca wool blanket
close to her neck," let alone call it a "alp-wool" blanket. I am
reminded of the tendency in early science fiction for people to
wear chronographs instead of watches and use visi-ports instead of
windows. (Apparently in this future they have "waste-release
stalls" instead of toilets.)
And the entire story is based on something that is unlikely, to say
the least. All in all, you can skip this one. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.
But this wasn't it.
--Groucho Marx