THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/18/14 -- Vol. 33, No. 3, Whole Number 1815
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Dealing in Science Fiction Classics at Readercon
21 Jokes So Clever You Probably Won't Understand Them
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The V-2 Missile Was a Huge Mistake (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
The Hugo Nominations for Best Dramatic Presentation 2014
(screed, diatribe, and ramble by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
PARTICLE FEVER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
ANCILLARY JUSTICE by Ann Leckie (book review
by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
WARBOUND by Larry Correia (book review by Joe Karpierz)
HARD MAGIC by Larry Correia (book review
by Gwendolyn Karpierz)
DESTINATION SPACE (television review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
GREASEPAINT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (THE SMARTEST KIDS IN THE WORLD and
YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL AND OTHER ENCOURAGEMENTS)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Dealing in Science Fiction Classics at Readercon
Forbes Magazine has an article--with photos--covering the Dealers
Room at Readercon:
http://tinyurl.com/void-readercon
==================================================================
TOPIC: 21 Jokes So Clever You Probably Won't Understand Them
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
From buzzfeed:
http://tinyurl.com/void-21jokes
I got 20 of the jokes and liked all 21. Thanks to Joe Presley who
posted the link to Facebook. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The V-2 Missile Was a Huge Mistake (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
I think the one aspect (two aspects?) of World War II that strobed
my sense of wonder the most were the so-called V-1 and V-2 flying
bombs. My interest in science fiction extended to rockets and
missiles as sort of proto-spaceships. I thought the look and
design of the V-1 was exciting. There was just something nifty
about the look of the V-1 with that engine looking like a cannon
held up a foot or so above the fuselage of the missile.
But the V-2 was the real gobsmacker. It actually looked like a
spaceship. In fact, in cheap 1950s films they frequently used
footage from V-2 launches to stand in for spaceship launches. And
it was the forerunner of real spaceships to come. I was impressed
with a sense of wonder when I saw launch pictures of V-2s. And I
probably was not alone among science fiction fans. The classic
science fiction anthology of the time was ADVENTURES IN TIME AND
SPACE by Healy and McComas. It was all science fiction stories but
for one science fact article "V-2: Rocket Cargo Ship" by Willy Ley.
(Just as an aside everybody knows it as the V-2 short for
"Vergeltungswaffe 2", meaning "Vengeance Weapon 2", but its real
non-propaganda name was the A-4 or "Aggregat 4.")
What I never realized until recently was what a huge blunder the
entire German rocket program had been. In its favor, the V-2 did a
lot of damage and did challenge English morale. Unlike the V-1
there was no way it could possibly be intercepted by the RAF.
There was no warning before people were hit by the bomb. The V-1
you would hear making a sort of buzz. And when that buzz cut out
suddenly it meant that the propulsion had turned off. That was
when you were in trouble. With the V-2 and you were in a certain
radius you would never know what had hit you or that you were even
hit. It sounds like a good weapon. In fact, it was worse at the
sending end than at the receiving end.
I am not talking about the fact that far more people were killed in
production of the V-2 than were killed directly by the missile,
though. About 2500 people were killed by the bomb in London and
estimates range from 12,000 to 25,000 slave laborers killed in
production of the V-2. The Third Reich probably did not consider
that as any great cost, though for once the Germans were not
calling on Jews for the dangerous tasks. There were Jews with
technical knowledge that would have been useful, but the Nazis
supposedly were afraid to let Jews anywhere near their secret
weapon.
A major drawback of the two guided missiles, V-1 and V-2, is that
they were only so much guided. The missiles mostly could hit
London, but they were not accurately guided to their intended
destination. Dropping a one-ton bomb on a teashop was of limited
strategic value to the Germans. There was nowhere near the
precision needed to hit government buildings. On the other hand
London is a big place, and if you are not really picky about
precision bombing special targets then you will find a city the
size of London is hard to miss.
The only hope for hitting really strategic buildings would be to
send enough missiles and to hope. Werner von Braun had promised
the missile could be made really effective, but it turned out to be
a case of too little available too late in the war. A better
missile or a much earlier availability could have made a lot of
difference.
And a V-2 could carry one ton of bombs. It had the advantage over
the B-17 bomber in that it did not require a crew being sent over
enemy territory, but a B-17 could carry six tons of explosives to
multiple targets. A B-17 could do the destruction of six V-2
missiles and probably be more precise in the bargain. What is
more, there is a pilot there to report where the bombs fell. A
pilot could do that, a missile could not. Facing the V-1 menace
earlier, the British had maintained a news blackout on reports of
V-1 bombs hitting just over the coast and near the water. When the
news got back to Germany and there were reports of bombs dropping
only inland the Germans assumed they were somehow overshooting and
the V-1 needed to be re-aimed lower. A lot of missiles ended
falling harmlessly in the water short of the coast because of the
disinformation.
The V-2 would have been a lot more effective if it could have
airburst. But there was no proximity fuse so that it would know it
was at the right altitude. Instead, it would not explode until the
nose of the missile came to a sudden stop, like against a building
or a road.
Now comes the kicker. The V-1 and V-2 were expensive. One V-2
launch required distilling the alcohol of 33 tons of potatoes.
There were Germans starving. Both the Germans and the Allies had
their super-secret mammoth weapons development projects. The
Allies had the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear
weapons. That effort cost $1.9 billion. The Germans had their
guided missile program culminating in the V-1 and the V-2 missiles.
The price tag there was $3 billion.
It makes on wonder if our side won the war of if the other side
just lost it for themselves.
Information for this article was gleaned from several locations.
(Thank you Google.) Primary sources were the Wikipedia article on
the V-2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2#Assessment) and "Werner
von Braun's Pact with the Devil", an interview with Michael
J. Neufeld from WORLD WAR II MAGAZINE, December 2007. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Hugo Nominations for Best Dramatic Presentation 2014
(screed, diatribe, and ramble by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
The 2014 Long From Dramatic Presentation nominations form a pretty
solid list, as has often been the case in recent years. I've seen
four of the five nominees, and liked all of them. I'm disappointed
that EUROPA REPORT was not nominated, of course. FROZEN is a
simply excellent animation, and may well win. Partially a
retelling of the Phoenix Saga from the X-Men, and partially an
upended Disney animation, there are plenty of surprises, a good bit
of fun, and a surprisingly sharp edge that makes us all want to
"Let it Go!" I've reviewed GRAVITY elsewhere, and it's well worth
seeing, albeit a white-knuckle thrill ride that may just be too
involving for some. I've seen PACIFIC RIM recently on Blu-ray, and
it is a wonder to behold visually, as well as a decent SF story,
giant robots notwithstanding. IRON MAN 3 is perhaps the weakest of
the nominees, and suffers from having too much of everything, but
with Ben Kingsley as "The Mandarin" there are thrills and surprises
galore. I've heard good things about CATCHING FIRE, and I look
forward to seeing it. Right now I'm having a hard time choosing
between FROZEN and GRAVITY for my #1 pick, but that's not a bad
thing.
The 2014 Short Form Dramatic Presentation nominees are the usual
discouraging list of "Dr. Who" episodes (four!!! four!!!) and two
other nominees. We live in a Golden Age of TV SF, with perhaps a
half-dozen or more Hugo-quality shows, and yet Worldcon members
persist in treating the short form like it was the "Best Dr. Who
Episode" award. My plea is simple--JUST DON'T VOTE FOR ANY DR. WHO
EPISODES IN 2014. ORPHAN BLACK is excellent TV SF that I have
reviewed elsewhere. Vote it #1 whether you've seen it or not. Or
if you prefer, vote "The Rains of Castamere" from GAME OF THRONES
#1 and ORPHAN BLACK #2. It's hard to say whether "Rains" is the
best GOT episode this year, but there can be little doubt that GOT
is one of the top five, and probably top three, SF/fantasy shows on
TV today. There also can be little doubt that ORPHAN BLACK is of
the same quality. The SF TV show that *really* deserved a
nomination but did not get one is the excellent and getting better
CONTINUUM. This system of nominating episodes of a series is
really horrific. We ought to see five nominations for five
different SF TV shows every year instead of three to four "Dr. Who"
episodes and one or two examples of other items that often turn out
to be obscure fan-centered shorts. Far from bringing attention to
the best SF TV shows, the "Short Form" Hugo shines a spotlight on
"Dr. Who" episodes and obscure one shots that appeal to a narrow
slice of Worldcon fans but find virtually no interest anywhere
else.
So, in summary, GAME OF THRONES and ORPHAN BLACK--GOOD!!!! Don't
vote for the Dr. Who episodes!!! And catch up on CONTINUUM--it
just finished a great third season. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: PARTICLE FEVER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Back in the 1960s people could appreciate and enjoy
scientific accounts of the space program even if they did not
understand all the technicalities. PARTICLE FEVER is a science
documentary for our time. The viewer does not need to have a
scientific background to appreciate and enjoy this account of
scientists trying to uncover the secrets of fundamental particles
that could lead to a better understanding of the universe and its
origins. The film follows six of the 10,000 scientists working for
several years at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. They are trying to
capture and find the mass of the Higgs Boson particle. For once we
have a rarity, a documentary that is not depressing and not even
overly political. Instead it suggests looking at the universe with
a real sense of wonder. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
The Large Hadron Collider is the center of the largest, most
expensive scientific project with the greatest number of people
participating of any scientific endeavor in history. The
experiment is going on at CERN (the European Organization for
Nuclear Research). The particle collider it has built is
underground right under the border between France and Switzerland
not far from Geneva. More than 10,000 scientists and engineers
were required to design, build, and interpret output from it. This
staff came from more than 100 different countries. The collider
itself is a circle as near perfect as it is possible to make it,
and it is a circle 17 miles in circumference. Particles going
clockwise and counterclockwise are accelerated to near the speed of
light and then directed in each others path to collide shattering
each other breaking into many smaller particles so the contents of
the larger particles can be analyzed better understood. By
colliding these particles the accelerator somehow (I admit I am not
sure how) recreates conditions just after the Big Bang.
Director Mark Levinson, once himself a particle physicist at
Berkeley and now a filmmaker tells the story of five years at CERN
as few filmmakers have the background, the understanding, and the
clarity to tell. The film covers the years from 2008 when the
collider was first turned on to 2012 when the Higgs Boson was
finally isolated and its mass found. The Higgs Boson is believed
to be the particle that holds matter together and that gives other
particles mass. Knowing the mass of the Higgs Boson may tell us
whether a multiverse model of the universe is true or if the
competing supersymmetry model is correct. Each theory predicts a
different mass for the Higgs Boson, so it would be extremely
valuable to isolate one in order to observe the mass.
Levinson's film follows six scientists and the ups and downs of the
huge job of preparing for the experiment and then collecting an
analyzing the data from the experiment. With frequent interviews
in a variety of accents they tell the viewer what they are doing.
One gets the feeling that particle physicists are people much like
us except that they seem to drink more coffee. To keep this story
moving apace the editor is Walter Murch who edited films like GHOST
(1990), the 1998 re-edit of TOUCH OF EVIL (1958), and THE TALENTED
MR. RIPLEY (1999). Here he gives the film pacing and creates
genuine suspense even in viewers who cannot appreciate the
implications of the results.
So what does all this effort add up to? What will understanding
the Higgs Boson do for humanity? Nobody in the world knows.
Whatever is discovered, it will have literally cosmic implications.
This is pure science, not applied. One can never know what
applications this sort of knowledge can lead to. But most
practical science started out with just looking for scientific
truth. This is a film that feeds the imagination and is the most
exciting documentary so far in 2014. I rate it a +3 on the -4 to
+4 scale or 9/10. I have to say that being a lover of mathematics
and science fiction the dichotomy of boson mass implications
appeals to me. A multi-verse, an infinite set of parallel
universes, appeals to my science fiction side. Supersymmetry
appeals to the math maven in me. Either discovery would be
exciting.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385956/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/particle_fever/
For more information start with http://tinyurl.com/mrl-BigBang
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: With a story that asks once again "why can't we all get
along?" we have the special-effects-laden account of human epidemic
survivors coming into conflict with apes of human-level
intelligence. More intelligence and less fighting could have made
this a better film. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is the second film in Fox's reboot
of their Planet of the Apes series. The first series had CONQUEST
OF THE PLANET OF THE APES followed by BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE
APES. The sounds out of order to me. If the planet were conquered
why would there still be a battle for it? Here again we have RISE
OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011) followed by DAWN OF THE PLANET OF
THE APES (2014). Are we to believe the planet rose before dawn?
The newest chapter starts where the coda in the credits of the last
film left off. The Simian Flu virus is spreading around the world.
The virus is deadly to most humans but makes apes more intelligent.
Flash forward ten years and we learn a few humans were genetically
immune to the virus. They have been through a holocaust left to
the imagination and perhaps sadly never depicted. Meanwhile a
society of good solid salt-of-the-earth super-apes are living in
Muir Woods not far from the Golden Gate Bridge whose high towers
they climb so gracefully. They use the bridge towers as a sentry
point to defend their colony.
The apes are led by Caesar (played Andy Serkis made with motion
capture to look like an ape with human facial expressions). The
apes do not even believe that any humans survived the virus until a
handful of them show up in their woods. It seems that some of the
human survivors have set up a small community in what used to be
San Francisco. With permission to go through the ape-controlled
wood they could get to the hydroelectric dam and provide power to
local humans and, incidentally, apes. Getting along together,
humans and apes, would be a win-win situation, but peace between
species is a delicate thing and an unstable equilibrium.
I have to admit that I ruined this film for myself. From very
early on in the film I started seeing the story of a well-
intentioned but didactic 1950s Western. You have the settlers and
the cavalry on one side and the Native Americans on the other. You
have a bunch of people on each side trying to bring peace and you
have troublemakers and you have troublemakers on both sides trying
to stir people up so they will fight. Seeing the film in that
light shows off every cliche and there are a lot. And if the
viewer does not pick up on the Native American parallels the ape
fighters even wear war paint. Seen from that light this may be a
cutting edge science fiction film, but it is one with a Western
plot that was worn out fifty years ago.
The big attraction of *RISE* OF THE PLANET OF THE APES was Caesar,
an ape with human and hence readable expressions. That took him a
long way in winning the audience sympathy. In *DAWN* OF THE PLANET
OF THE APES his expression is again readable. It just is no fun.
His face is a constant scowl. He has been frequently mistreated by
humans, and it looks like that experience has made him mean. But
he is really just the care-worn but wise leader of the apes. Koba
(Toby Kebbell) a human-scarred bonobo is the real angry ape. These
two apes, and most of the others, are dark in personality. Like
the film in general, the forest dwellers are solemn and humorless.
The apes are a perfect complement to a San Francisco that seems
constantly rainy and overcast.
The film is directed by Matt Reeves, best known for helming LET ME
IN, the Hammer Films remake of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. As with RISE
OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, the script is written by Rick Jaffa,
Amanda Silver, and Mark Bomback, at a higher quality and more
believable level than the original series. Unlike the "X-Men"
films, even if you missed the predecessors in the series it is
fairly easy to get up to speed understanding what is going on. The
human peacemakers are played by Jason Clarke and Keri Russell,
neither of whom have enough screen presence to steal a scene from a
manhole cover, let alone a CGI ape.
In spite of the marvelous CGI lavished on this production to make
the apes look like apes, they anatomically seem to have the
dimensions of humans. I guess the legs are too straight and too
long and the spines are too straight. My theory is that with all
the effects thrown into the film, there would still be too many
apes to do with CGI alone so they still put humans into ape suits.
That was how they did all the apes of the first series. Human
proportions were not so noticeable in RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE
APES, but there are a *lot* of apes in DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE
APES and they cannot give each the attention it requires.
One thing that is of interest in this reboot of the "Planet of the
Apes" series is that while the two newer films can be their own
series, they also work as a continuation of the older series. In
that series there was always a question to how apes and humans
could so exactly change places. The apes live in the wide world
and the humans are put in cages and zoos. The DAWN OF THE PLANET
OF THE APES rather neatly goes a long way to answer that question.
Switching places could easily be the future of the apes and humans
in the new film. At this point they are pretty close to being on
an even footing. We are left at the end with a world in which
there will be more war between apes and humans and the odds are
fairly even. That alone adds interest to this film. Sadly, we
know in advance too much of where the series is going. I rate DAWN
OF THE PLANET OF THE APES a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2103281/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dawn_of_the_planet_of_the_apes/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: ANCILLARY JUSTICE by Ann Leckie (book review by Dale
L. Skran, Jr.)
It was with some trepidation that I started reading ANCILLARY
JUSTICE. It has won both the Nebula and the Arthur C. Clarke
award, and sometimes such award winners are over-rated. Also, I
have seen various articles and reviews relating to the usage of
gender pronouns in ANCILLARY JUSTICE which left me with the
impression that the book was a feminist tract. However, I am
pleased to report that ANCILLARY JUSTICE is indeed Hugo-worthy.
ANCILLARY JUSTICE is really three types of SF combined into one
story--a space opera, a world-building story, and a hard-SF post-
Singularity story. ANCILLARY JUSTICE has many of the traditional
tropes of space opera--mighty battle fleets, a Galactic Empire, a
Galactic Emperor, force-field battle suits, stargates, and so on.
These elements are presented with no explanation and are simply
used as story background. Without going into details, Leckie does
some first class world building in ANCILLARY JUSTICE. Although she
states in an afterward that the Galactic Empire, here called the
"Radch," is based on Rome, it never feels like Rome. The worlds
all feel deeply alien--perhaps originally human, but twisted by
time and circumstance into something quite different.
ANCILLARY JUSTICE is at its best as a hard-SF post-Singularity
story. It can be viewed as a universe in which a single person
(male or female or AI--it is never clear), one Anaander Mianaai,
has become post-human and established themselves as the supreme
tyrant of a vast empire via the means of splitting their
consciousness over a very large number of bodies. Within this
sphere of control, Miannai has established a fleet of AI controlled
ships which primarily use as soldiers human bodies directly
controlled by the AIs. These "corpse soldiers" are called
"ancillaries."
The main character of the book is the JUSTICE OF TOREN, a Justice
class warship. There are two interweaved story threads. One
follows the adventures of Breq, the last surviving ancillary of the
JUSTICE OF TOREN. The other follows the JUSTICE OF TOREN during
the sequence of events that leads to a tragic situation where the
ship is destroyed with Breq as the only survivor. It is important
to keep in mind that Breq is the JUSTICE OF TOREN, or at least all
that remains.
The gender pronoun issue comes up because to the JUSTICE OF TOREN,
bodies (and genders) are like suits of cloths. Breq appears to be
female, but gender has only an arbitrary meaning in such a post-
human existence. This setup allows Leckie to speculate in some
depth about how such AIs and ancillaries might think, feel, and
live. There is an element here of Commander Data learning to be
human, but Breq is always Breq, more than a bit removed from
humanity. And least one get the feeling this story is all hearts
and flowers and tea-drinking ceremonies, Breq is a ruthless and
super-humanly capable killing machine, remote from human concerns
and ethics, operating according to her own sense of justice.
That's about all I'm going to say about the plot. There are a few
too many tea-drinking sessions, and some unlikely plot twists where
Breq meets people from her former life, but overall the story is
well thought out. ANCILLARY JUSTICE is a great first novel by Ann
Leckie, and is probably going to get my Hugo vote.
Stross's NEPTUNE'S CHILDREN is good economic science fiction, and a
worthy Hugo candidate, but I'd put it a close second after
ANCILLARY JUSTICE. I plan on voting Correia's WARBOUND third.
I've seen postings on the Net that dismiss both Stross and Correia
as being unreadable or simply not at the Hugo level. This isn't
true, and in some other year, with some other nominees, I might
have ended up voting either book as #1, but this year, ANCILLARY
JUSTICE deserves the Hugo. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: WARBOUND by Larry Correia (copyright 2013, Baen Books, ISBN
13-978-1-4516) (excerpt from the Duel Fish Codices: a book review
by Joe Karpierz)
So, we come to one of the more, um, discussed novels on this year's
ballot. Its presence on the ballot, as well as the presence of
other nominees littered throughout a few of the other categories,
has been blogged about, tweeted, discussed, dissected, vilified,
trashed, and, oh, about a hundred thousand other things over the
weeks since the ballot was announced. It was even talked about
briefly here in the Void recently. I would be foolish to say that
all the discussion did not negatively alter my perception of the
book going into reading it. However, I did make every effort to
read the book on its own merits without the influence of the
swirling discussion.
That effort began with the fact that this is the third book in a
trilogy--to be precise, the complete title is WARBOUND: BOOK III OF
THE GRIMNOIR CHRONICLES. It's been well documented in these parts
that I'm not fond of series books. I favor the standalone book
that can tell its story in one nice package. However, much like
finally caving in and getting a smartphone a few years ago, I
realized that I had lost that battle--if it ever was a battle--and
now grudgingly accept that some really good stuff is being written
in the series format. However, as I've decided in the past, that
in the case where the nominee was book X in a series of Y (and in
this case, X = Y for the math fans out there), I would read it and
judge it on its own merits. If the book can't stand on its own
and be good, well, then it's not deserving of the award--and vice
versa, of course.
The good news about WARBOUND is that a reader with any intelligence
whatsoever can easily figure out What Has Gone Before without too
much difficulty. Correia helps us along the way, so that by the
time we get not too far into the book (for certain values of not
too far) we're pretty much caught up on what has been going on.
"The Grimnoir Chronicles" takes place in an alternate world of the
1930s. A world in which there is magic, there are aliens, and
there are blimps. So we have fantasy, science fiction, and
steampunk. And there are zombies. So I guess there's horror here
too. But not really. Anyway. Those people capable of magic are
called Actives (I'm purposely not looking any of this up in the
glossary of magical terms at the end of the book. This is pretty
straightforward stuff.), and magic manifests itself in different
ways in different people. We have Brutes, Mouths, Travelers, Cogs,
etc. There are non-magicals too (I'm tempted to call them Muggles,
but that would be just wrong). FDR is president, and if this is
what FDR was back in the day I'm glad I wasn't alive.
So what's going on here? Well, it seems there's an interstellar
critter--the Enemy--that wants to come and destroy us. There's
another being out there, called the Power, that is trying to use
humanity to channel all the magical power to fight the Enemy. See,
there's this kind of Active called the Spellbound. There's only
one Spellbound in existence at any one time. The Spellbound goes
about killing other Actives and sucking in their magical power,
thus becoming more powerful with every death. I'll leave it to the
reader to figure out what the Spellbound is supposed to do.
I've resisted naming characters up to this point, in part because
the other half of the Duel Fish Codices did that for me [see Gwen's
review of HARD MAGIC below] and most of those characters are still
around, and in part because, well, only one is really that
important: sixteen-year-old Faye. You may play connect the dots at
your leisure.
Somewhere in here is a really good story wanting to get out. The
concept of magic as being explained via science--well, sort of--is
intriguing. An alien intelligence that is trying to use humanity
to fight off a nasty foe by giving humanity all the power it needs
piques my interest, but does cause one to ask why it just can't
fight off the superbad guy by itself (the answer, of course, is
that each individual power as manifested within individual human
beings is needed and, when summed with all the rest, is a force
that cannot be resisted. Okay, I made that up, but absent any
explanation in the book, well, I had to come up with something).
But there's so much stuff that gets in the way that there's no way
to put it aside and see the book on whatever merits it has. The
big cliche used here is rounding up all the Actives into towns so
that eventually the Enemy can pick them off at its leisure (we've
never seen that before, have we?). I'm so tired of that trope, and
I LIKE the X-Men and other Marvel storylines that used it, but by
now it's been overdone. So, Faye and Francis are apparently in
love with each other. I can't really tell--the character
interactions are nothing to write home about. And the editing on
this is horribly sloppy. At one point, an Active is walking
through Shanghai and meets a contact who tells him to "turn left
when you get there (where ever there is, and it may actually be to
turn right, but you'll get the idea shortly)". He gets there and
turns RIGHT (or left, depending on my last parenthetical) and
*arrives at exactly where he's supposed to be*. Wait, what? There
are also numerous instances of phrases like "couldn't hardly",
which of course ought to be "could hardly". If that phrase was
actually uttered by one of the characters, I wouldn't even be
mentioning it because it might be part of normal speech of the
times. But it wasn't utter by a character--it was a narrative
description. For example: Faye "couldn't hardly" bend over. Now,
that sentence wasn't in the book, but you get the idea.
I'm okay with Correia having legions of fans. I may not think much
of this book, but his fans are actually reading, which is a good
thing. I just think they can do so much better. And so can
Correia. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: HARD MAGIC by Larry Correia (copyright 2011, Baen, $15.00,
407pp, ISBN 978-1-4391-3434-4) (excerpt from the Duel Fish Codices:
a book review by Gwendolyn Karpierz)
See, I was going to be all /ambitious/.
HARD MAGIC is the first book of "The Grimnoir Chronicles"; the
third book, WARBOUND, is of course nominated for a Hugo. Duelist
Fish Dad skipped to book three, but me, oh no, /I/ was going to
start at the beginning. I was going to read /all/ of them.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
I honestly went into HARD MAGIC expecting to love it. It's noir
urban fantasy in an alternate timeline where there is, of course, a
divide between those with inherent magic, called Actives, and those
without. The book switches points-of-view with alarming frequency,
but according to both the blurb on the back and the cover on the
front, our two main characters are Jack Sullivan and Delilah Jones.
Jake Sullivan is an ex-con--and, supposedly, a private eye,
although to be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have known this without
the blurb telling me so, since I'm pretty sure he did absolutely
nothing related to being a private eye except mention an office
once. He's a type of Active called a "Heavy"--or a "Gravity
Spiker"--but has been Studying Hard and has managed to expand into
other fields of magic, where most Actives have only one type.
His femme fatale counterpart--or, well, she /would/ be the femme
fatale, if this had /actually/ had the slightest relation to a
noir--Delilah Jones is an Active called a "Brute." Unlike her cover
shot, she actually has dark hair, but I guess the blonde look was
more appealing. Brutes are extremely tough and known for their
magically-enhanced physical strength. When I first read this about
Delilah, I was pretty excited to see a female main character known
for her brute strength, who clearly wasn't going to be prevented
from fighting. (Who could stop her?) She enters into a fight with
Jake, and her first line is...
"You were trying to /smoosh/ me, Heavy!"
Oh, good. She talks like a four-year-old.
It was pretty much all downhill from there.
Somewhat luckily, Delilah doesn't actually turn out to be much of a
main character. She disappears, and her female-main-role is
usurped by Faye. I spent most of this book convinced Faye was ten
years old. It turns out she was about sixteen.
Her internal narration was peppered with words like "squished" and
"the bad men," and her prominent character trait seemed to be that
she was obsessed with cows. I kid you not, she seemed to think
that cows were the greatest animals this earth has ever seen. She
called a woman a cow, and then internally regretted it because she
liked cows so much.
In fact, Delilah probably turned out to /be/ my favorite character
(although Jane and Dan were admittedly kind of adorable), possibly
because she didn't spend a whole lot of time on the page having her
personality mangled by the complete lack of follow-up on any
characterization from which the rest of the cast suffered. Her one
moment of tragic empathy was shortly followed by an actually
suspenseful scene, which resulted in her not being terribly
prominent in the rest of the novel again. Shame.
Essentially, every moment in this book that could have been turned
into intriguing character development is hastily dropped at the
side of the road and either beaten to death by passing semis as it
is stated over and over in completely non-compelling terms, or else
it is never seen again. Madi, for example, has made so many
magical changes to his body that he can hardly feel anything, and
occasionally hurts himself on purpose just to see if he can. This
is a trait I have always found fascinating in characters, but here
it is simply announced to us repeatedly until it sounds kind of
ridiculous and tired. Alternatively, Faye kills someone for the
first time when she is ten years old--I'm sorry, sixteen or
seventeen--but she never seems to react to this at all. How does
she feel about this? Apparently, she does not care. That's
probably something she should get checked out. Especially since
she just keeps doing it.
Of course, it wouldn't be convenient for her to suffer emotional
trauma like that or anything. She's like ten, right? She just has
to keep being her happy bubbly ten-year-old self who loves cows
because she grew up on a farm! And who is also hellbent on revenge,
obviously. But ten-year-olds are good at revenge. Oh, and she
possibly has a crush on Francis. Which is weird because he's
twenty-something and she's like ten. Or, uh, sixteen?
***
There's no complexity to this novel. It does not even try to delve
into the grey areas. At one point, a group of Grimnoir knights are
discussing the difference between good magic and evil magic, and
Jake actually asks how you can define evil magic. The response?
"I can't define evil, but I sure as hell know when I see it."
Well, that was easy.
Or, one of my personal favorite moments: A "Mouth" (who can
influence people to do what he says) faces up to some gangster
goons, and wants to take them out. However, he hesitates, and
first asks, "Are you /bad/ men?"
"I've killed three people for Lenny Torrio!" said the first one
proudly.
The second one snorted. "Big deal, I once broke an old lady's hip
because she owed Mr. Capone protection money; then I beat her head
in 'cause she got lippy."
The Mouth takes this as evidence that he can tell them to kill each
other, because only bad people can be influenced to such horrible
deeds. I mean, wow, imagine if those goons had possessed some
inkling of humanity! Good thing good and bad are so black and
white! That could've gotten messy!
***
I could rant for so much longer about this book. The setting
doesn't have the slightest bit of description; there's no noir
atmosphere, nothing to remind us that this is set in the 1930's at
all, unless "squished" counts as 30's slang. I don't think Correia
could really decide what he wanted his world to be, either, because
it's just one big conglomeration of every single genre: urban
fantasy, noir, steampunk (there are dirigibles), innate magic /and/
spells, zombies, demons, alternate history, and--I kid you not--
aliens. There's a big alien creature coming from some other...
elsewhere. I don't know. It's just /everything/. Not to mention
that obnoxious habit of Capitalizing Everything that has to do with
Magic Ever. It's not necessary. We readers, we have some modicum
of intelligence, you know? We can figure out that Actives are
Magical. I promise.
And the writing style. By far, the most painful thing about this
novel was the writing style. I have to restrain myself because I
don't /really/ like to just make fun of people, but holy snap, the
writing style. In short? Nearly every single moment of this book
was torture for me. Sure, the occasional character popped up who
could've changed things, but it was never followed through on.
They were left to the wayside in favor of an exhausted plot and the
names of lots and lots of guns. Maybe it isn't fair to judge book
three on book one, but--Hugo nominee or not--I will /not/ be
reading the rest of the series. I just can't. Life is too short.
The remainder of this review will be dedicated to satirizing the
agonizing sentence structure that passed for writing style in this
novel. Please stop here if you wish to continue regarding me as a
decent person.
I had better review a book I like soon, or you might stop believing
I enjoy reading at all.
***
"It hurt unbelievably bad."
You know what else hurt unbelievably bad? That sentence.
"She ate her sandwich. It was good."
I'm pretty sure I was writing sentences more complex than this by
second grade. If not sooner.
"...sounding embarrassed, just like back when Dad used to catch
[him] doing something bad, like torturing animals or setting
fires."
Because that's how I feel whenever Dad catches me torturing
animals. Embarrassed. Whoops! Shouldn't have been doing that, I
guess! It might've been bad!
"Her pain was killing him inside."
Are we... are we thirteen?
And, my personal favorite, upon one of the characters learning that
the woman he loves cannot come back from the dead...
"He died inside."
Yup. [-gmk]
==================================================================
TOPIC: DESTINATION SPACE (television review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
Recently I've been watching old-fashioned "realistic" SF to educate
myself about early ideas of how the space program would turn out.
I picked up this pilot for a CBS 1959 TV-series that was never
given the go-ahead via an Amazon recommendation. DESTINATION SPACE
stars Harry Townes as Jim Benedict, the leader of America's space
program, and the creator of a space wheel sarcastically nicknamed
"BB" for "Benedict's Billions." The most familiar cast member may
be Edward Platt who plays Dr. Easton, but who is perhaps best known
as "The Chief" from GET SMART.
In many ways this is a poorly put-together pilot. The dialog is
often stiff and unrealistic, and the acting mechanical. The
special effects are done cheaply by re-purposing scenes from THE
CONQUEST OF SPACE in such a way that they barely make sense. A
rocket that has a large wing for landing on Mars is here presented
as a Moon rocket, for example. Some of the sillier scenes from THE
CONQUEST OF SPACE appear, as when people "walk the plank" to "free
jump" from a shuttle rocket to the station. In reality, jumping
into free space without a tether or maneuvering rocket is just a
slow drift to suicide. There is also a tacky subplot concerning two
women in Benedict's life.
However, in other ways this is by far the best "realistic" SF of
this era that I've seen. The plot revolves around various attempts
to launch a moon rocket. The first is halted when meteors strike
the station. The second is delayed when a key valve freezes and
feats of daring-do are required to fix things. In each case, the
delay results in millions of dollars of additional costs. The
middle part of the episode is taken up with Congressional hearings,
where Senator Royce, played by Robert Cornthwaite, grills Benedict,
demanding to know why the moon rocket doesn't fly from the ground
directly to the Moon? It is worth keeping in mind that the real-
life Senator Royces won, and the real moon rocket did fly directly
to the moon, pushing off by many decades a space station and
shuttle rockets to sustain it. The dialog in these fictional
hearings could have been lifted from recent Congressional hearing
with only minor wording changes.
I'm not rating DESTINATION SPACE, but it is a *must see* for space
advocates and SF fans who are interested in this sort of thing.
[-dls]
Mark adds:
In 1959 and 1960 there was an entire TV series on the subject of a
fledgling space program. It was "Men Into Space," not to be
confused with the film FIRST MAN INTO SPACE (1959). It was that ran
for 38 half-hour episodes. Writers included David Duncan, Jerome
Bixby, Ib Melchior, and James Clavell. All 38 episodes are
available on YouTube. See http://tinyurl.com/MTV-MenIntoSpace.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: GREASEPAINT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This documentary is the story of one man who wanted to be
a clown, the circus he founded with his family as performers, and
the larger family of all the performers in his show. Director
Daniel Espeut's organization for the film is rather by the numbers,
but he shows us a segment of society with a lifestyle we have
rarely seen. Along the way he includes testimony of famous clowns
on what is the art of the clown. The film is generally good-
hearted, giving us a loyal family and a supportive group of
performers. Only late in the film do we get a feel for some of the
friction between circus members that has been going on all along.
Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
GREASEPAINT is the documentary of NoJoe's Clown Circus, a traveling
circus that performs eleven months of the year and in that time
will put on maybe 600 shows. The NoJoe has about six performers,
three of whom are one family. The circus is really built around
founder Joey Thurmond, who performs under the name NoJoe. The
clown named Miss Jamie is really Joey's wife Jamie. Under the
makeup Toot is really their son Tyler. The primary non-family
member is Fluffy, really Hernan Colonia. Director Daniel Espeut
chronicles the life on the road of the tiny NoJoe Circus.
The organization of the narrative is straightforward. We start
with a biography of Joey Thurmond. Joey at nineteen was a
professional wrestler when his back was broken. It was
questionable whether he would walk again, but after recovery he
became a rodeo rider and a policeman. While he was on the police
force he supplemented his wages with stints being a clown until he
decided that the police job was good steady work that he hated. He
quit the force to become a full-time clown. He brought his life
and later his son into the business with him and still later non-
family performers. Joey has bet every cent he has on the circus.
He has no pension, no life savings, no stocks. All his finances
are on the line. If the circus fails he will have no money. Joey
feels his dream is strong enough to inspire this whole family and
runs them like a despot.
We move on to the clowns' semi-secret skill. What is the
philosophy of "clownhood"? We are told what it is not. It is not
just wearing grease paint and fooling around, but we are never told
much of what it really is. There are specialized skills a clown
needs to know. Some children, and even some adults, have a natural
fear of clowns and some time is spent in the film on what is the
best way for a clown to seem non-threatening for little children.
From there we look at some of the day-to-day drama of the business.
Hernan is a fifth-generation circus performer, but he is an illegal
immigrant and desperately in need of a green card that he cannot
get. Espeut moves the cameras to what is circus life with the
family on the road. Joey has prosaic problems like paying his
performers. He gets bad checks. The rising price of gasoline
alone could sink his tiny circus. And Joey is constantly revising
and improving the show. Joey antagonizes his loved ones by always
appearing to love his family second and the circus first. Is the
circus dearer to him than his own family?
GREASEPAINT gives us a look behind the painted faces, the bright
red noses, and the giant grins to see what the clowns are really
thinking about. I rate it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
GREASEPAINT is on DVD and will be out on video on demand August 1,
2012.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2983602/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/greasepaint/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE SMARTEST KIDS IN THE WORLD AND HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY by Amanda
Ripley (ISBN 978-1-4516-5442-4) follows three exchange students in
three countries that out-perform the United States on the PISA
(Program for International Student Assessment) tests: Finland,
South Korea, and Poland. Ripley was trying to figure out what they
were doing right, and what we were doing wrong. The answer is
complex--for example, almost everyone agrees that South Korea has
gone overboard in its efforts. But the bottom line seems to be
two-fold: 1) make education important, and 2) insist that teachers
be highly qualified and trained.
The first part has many aspects. A big one is that schools in the
United States spend a lot of times on things other than education--
in particular, sports. Youth sports in other countries are
organized by community clubs or other organizations, not in the
schools. A side effect of our emphasis on sports is that we hire
coaches and then have them teach classes almost as a sideline.
This impacts the second part. In other countries, teachers have to
be in the top of their class, have to be educated (including a full
one-year internship) for six years, and have to have a degree in
the field they will be teaching.
As for making education important, all these countries require
students to pass stringent tests to get into university. And these
are important; consider South Korea:
"On the eve of the big test, ... the younger students cleaned the
classrooms for the seniors. They purged the walls of posters and
even covered the flag so that test takes would be able to focus on
the college entrance exam without any distractions. ... The whole
country obsessed over the test. Korea Electric Power Corp. sent
out crew members to check the power lines serving each of the one
thousand text locations. The morning of the test, the stock market
opened an hour late to keep the roads free for the more than six
hundred thousand students headed to the test. Taxis gave students
free rides. ... Police officers patrolled the school perimeter to
discourage cars from homing their horns and distracting the
students. ... During the English language listening portion of
the test, ... airplanes were grounded to reduce unnecessary noise."
Compare this with the SATs in the United States, where students
take much shorter tests, and take them multiple times so they can
pick and choose the best score for each section to send to the
colleges they apply to. The only thing that comes close to getting
this sort of attention in the United States is high school football
in Texas. (In high school, our chess team won all its matches, but
their results were read in the morning announcements only if there
was time after announcing that the junior varsity baseball team had
lost to the local junior high school.)
The question of exams brings up another issue: the concept of
responsibility. In these other countries, students take exams
under strict conditions, get graded on them, and that is their
grade. There is no "Can I retake this because I had football
practice the night before?" or "Can we use the books during the
test?"
And this ties in with the other book I read this week, YOU ARE NOT
SPECIAL AND OTHER ENCOURAGEMENTS by David McCullough, Jr. (ISBN
978-0*06-225734-5). This grew out of a graduation speech given by
McCullough (son of the famous author). A lot of what McCullough
says addresses this attitude of "I'm special and deserve special
treatment." Closely related is, "We should never let any child
ever fail at anything, or get a bad grade, or suffer any
consequences for mistakes." The result is that often the first
time a child (now an adult) encounters negative consequences or
even criticism is in college (if they are lucky), or when they hit
the real world after college.
In Poland, in South Korea, in Finland, or indeed in almost any
other country, students have to excel to get into college. Here
they merely have to show up for classes in high school (or maybe
not even that). It is not surprising that so many of them drop out
of college after a year or so. In other countries, there are
vocational schools and other paths for the non-college-bound.
But it is worse than that. High school graduates in other
countries have a knowledge of math, of reasoning, of how to analyze
problems, of how to organize their thoughts and communicate them.
All too often, high school graduates here have none of these.
Industries looking for factory workers say that high school
graduates are not trained enough in even these skills for the jobs
that are now available. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I was sleeping the other night, alone,
thanks to the exterminator.
--Emo Philips