THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/29/14 -- Vol. 33, No. 9, Whole Number 1821
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
All material is copyrighted by author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent
or posted will be assumed authorized for
inclusion unless otherwise noted.
To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
The latest issue is at http://www.leepers.us/mtvoid/latest.htm.
An index with links to the issues of the MT VOID since 1986 is at
http://leepers.us/mtvoid/back_issues.htm.
Topics:
The Rise of Time Machine Fiction
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
My Picks for Turner Classic Movies for September (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Ethics Versus Religion (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
IN THE COMPANY OF THIEVES by Kage Baker (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
BLACK MILK by Robert Reed (book review by Dale L. Skran)
ROCKS IN MY POCKETS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Credentials Versus Education (comment by Keith F. Lynch)
Tsundoku (letter of comment by Philip Chee)
Baseball and Football and (Science) Fiction
(letter of comment by Jim Susky)
Lustrums and Fortnights (letters of comment
by Kevin Robinson, Peter Trei, Keith F. Lynch,
and Jette Goldie)
This Week's Reading (DR. STRANGELOVE, RED ALERT, THERE'S
MORE TO NEW JERSEY THAN THE SOPRANOS, THE SOPRANO
STATE, and VIDEOHOUND'S WAR MOVIES) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Rise of Time Machine Fiction
Prospect Magazine has an article about "The Rise of Time Machine
Fiction". In particular, it is about the rise of time machine
fiction in mainstream literature:
http://tinyurl.com/void-time-machine-fiction
==================================================================
TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
September 11: OBLIVION (film) and THE WHITE MOUNTAINS by John
Christopher (book), Middletown (NJ) Public Library, 5:30PM
September 25: IN THE OCEAN OF NIGHT by Gregory Benford, Old Bridge
(NJ) Public Library, 7PM
October 9: PI (film) and "The Gimatria of Pi" by Lavie Tidhar
(http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/gimatria.htm) (short
story), Middletown (NJ) Public Library, 5:30PM
October 23: THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2012,
edited by Dan Ariely (selected articles), Old Bridge (NJ)
Public Library, 7PM
November 13: TIME AFTER TIME (film) and TIME AFTER TIME by
Karl Alexander (book), Middletown (NJ) Public Library, 5:30PM
November 20: ROADSIDE PICNIC by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky,
Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
December 11: MIMIC (film) and "Mimic" by Donald Wollheim (story),
Middletown (NJ) Public Library, 5:30PM
December 18: TBD, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 7PM
Speculative Fiction Lectures (subject to change):
September 6: David Mack, Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library, 12N
Northern New Jersey events are listed at:
http://www.sfsnnj.com/news.html
==================================================================
TOPIC: My Picks for Turner Classic Movies for September (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Time for my regular look at what is coming up on Turner for the new
month. These are the films that I would recommend in September.
Remember all times are given for the Eastern Time Zone. If you
live out West you have to make allowances. Remember that all
listings are subject to change, particularly if some former great
screen star dies the week before the film is scheduled.
THE PAWNBROKER (1965), about a Holocaust survivor who runs a
pawnshop in Spanish Harlem is genuinely one of the most intense
films ever made. It came along at a time when people just did not
talk much about the Holocaust and certainly not about the effects
it had on the survivors. But it had a huge effect on the movie
ratings system. Two of its scenes involve the then forbidden
nudity, but they are in not salacious and the film would be ruined
without them. It took a year or two to have the effect, but a new
ratings system was introduced that rated films not by what was
forbidden to show but by what age person was allowed to see the
film. Rod Steiger plays Sol Nazerman--or what is left of him.
Every day he sees the wretched of the world around him coming into
his pawnshop to sell pieces of their lives to Nazerman for five
dollars or two dollars. What is left of Sol Nazerman mechanically
goes through the steps of his job and thinks about his experiences
in the camps.
THE PAWNBROKER was directed by Sidney Lumet who also directed
TWELVE ANGRY MEN, NETWORK, and DOG DAY AFTERNOON. Lumet also
directed, less successfully FAIL-SAFE (1964) [also shown Saturday,
September 13, 3:15 PM] only to have it trumped by Stanley Kubrick's
DR. STRANGELOVE. [also shown Friday, September 26, 1:15 AM]. THE
PAWNBROKER is a beautifully realized piece of art. Quincy Jones
provided the jazz score and it pushes the film forward and adds to
the power. [THE PAWNBROKER will show Tuesday, September 9, 11:45
PM]
There are only a few spaghetti Westerns that most people really
remember. Most people who lived through the Sixties will remember
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS; FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE; and THE GOOD, THE
BAD, AND THE UGLY, the trilogy that made Clint Eastwood a star.
Many will also remember ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Sergio Leone
directed all those. But you probably have to be something of a
special fan to remember even a few more of these films. That is
perhaps because there are few really good spaghetti westerns.
Individually most are not well-made movies but the sub-genre is
better than the sum of its parts. One of the better spaghetti
Westerns is the 1967 DEATH RIDES A HORSE. As a boy Bill (later
played by John Philip Law) saw his parents murdered by a gang of
outlaws. He finds that a gunman named Ryan (Lee Van Cleef) wants
to get the same men. What at first seems to be a perfect
partnership leads to trouble and the two men become rivals and
enemies. Lee Van Cleef was a familiar presence in spaghetti
westerns and had a face that seemed to tell a story. DEATH RIDES A
HORSE was one of Van Cleef's earliest starring roles.
Somehow Law never seemed much of an action hero, he just did not
have the looks. Still he did seem to get cast frequently in
adventure and action films. DEATH RIDES A HORSE is one of the
better-liked films for spaghetti western fans. The director is the
lesser-known Giulio Petroni. [Monday, September 1, 5:15 PM] Note
that it follows THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932) at 4 PM and it
precedes LA JETEE (1962) at 7:15 PM.
My choice for the best film of September is undoubtedly THE
PAWNBROKER. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Ethics Versus Religion (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
One of the classic ethical questions that arises in a discussion of
religion is, "What do you do if your ethics tell you to do one
thing and your religion tells you something else?" (Or if you
prefer, "What do you do if your ethics tell you to do one thing and
the voice of God tells you something else?"
One might argue that the definitive statement in American
literature is from Mark Twain in THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY
FINN. All his life Huck has been told how slavery is God's will,
complete with Biblical references to support that idea. And so
when he finally gets the opportunity, he sits down and writes a
letter telling Miss Watson where her runaway slave Jim can be
found. But then he thinks about all the time he has spent with
Jim, and looked at the letter and thought about how if he did *not*
turn Jim in, he would be doing a terrible thing and go to hell, and
finally he takes the letter and says, "All right, then, I'll go to
hell"--and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but
they was said."
Everyone knows this passage. But as was emphasized in Ken Burns's
documentary "Mark Twain", it was not just a form of words--Huck
genuinely thought his action would send him to a literal hell, but
he did it anyway. Okay, Huck is a fictional character, constructed
by Twain to his requirements. But if we believe that Huck believes
this and tears up the letter anyway, we almost invariably feel that
he has done the right thing. The fact that God apparently told
Huck to do otherwise we may write off by saying, "Well, all those
ministers and theologians and scholars back then misunderstood what
God wanted." But if that is the case, then why should we believe
anything they say unless it is supported by our own ethical sense?
(Of course, many people back then probably argued that their
ethical sense told them the same thing. But then they too are
relying on their ethical sense as formed by what they have been
told, and not necessarily on God.)
(Earlier, Huck had written about Jim "thinking about his wife and
his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because
he hadn't ever been away from home before in his life; and I do
believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does
for their'n. It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so." Again,
he chooses the evidence of his own eyes against what he has been
taught as gospel.)
So the bottom line seems to be that though even the religious among
us claim that they are following God's commands and not their own
ethical decisions, this does not seem to be the case.
Russell Hoban disagrees to some extent; he seems to feel that there
are those who abandon their own ethical beliefs when in PILGERMANN
he writes, "... the fundamental flaw in God is that He will say
that He requires the sacrifice of Isaac/Isma'il; the fundamental
flaw in man is that he takes his knife in hand to do God's
bidding." In other words, our biggest flaw is to abandon our own
ethical reasoning and rely completely on the pronouncements of God.
[-ecl]
Mark adds:
This is what I refer to as delegating ones conscience to a book or
to another person. And I have to agree it is usually a flaw.
There are people who have no moral sense and perhaps society would
be safer if they got their moral sense from a source outside of
themselves. But such people are rare. Far more people do society
harm by borrowing somebody else's faulty conscience. That is the
source of most religious conflict. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: IN THE COMPANY OF THIEVES by Kage Baker (copyright 2013,
Tachyon Publications, $15.95, 325pp, ISBN 978-1-61696-129-9) (book
review by Joe Karpierz)
Kage Baker is a writer whose work I never encountered--or
experienced--until I read IN THE COMPANY OF THIEVES, a fine
collection of short fiction compiled by her sister Kathleen
Bartholomew and published by Tachyon Publications. Baker died in
2011 of cancer, and Bartholomew is now the caretaker of her work,
continuing to compile and write Baker's short stories and novels
from notes left by Kage. While she died way too early--she was only
58--Baker left an apparent wealth of both short fiction and novels
which the interested reader can mine for gems for years to come.
(Well, years for me, anyway. Remember, I'm the slow reader in the
family.)
The title of this short story collection refers to what is her most
famous series of stories--that of The Company. The Company is a
corporation that exists in the 24th century. They use time travel
and cyborg employees to go back in time to retrieve valuable
objects from the past--whether for their own use or someone else's,
with the trick being that history cannot be changed in the process.
While not all the stories in this book are Company stories, they
are all well-crafted tales that are enjoyable and fun to read.
As I look at the table of contents of the book, I see that I really
like all of them. Two of them, "Rude Mechanicals" and "Hollywood
Ikons", are the two stories that are pure Company stories, and
while I was originally thinking they were my favorites, I realize
that I can't actually say that simply because I like the others
equally. Both of the aforementioned Company stories have as their
main characters Company agents/cyborgs Joseph and Lewis. Think of
them as a sort of comedy team, although they're funny in a non-
overbearing way. In Rude Mechanicals, the story takes place in and
around a stage production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's
Dream" in Hollywood in 1934 at the Hollywood Bowl. While you may
think it's about one thing, it actually turns into what I can only
describe as a madcap adventure of two cyborgs from the future
looking for the Hope Diamond. Or maybe not the Hope Diamond. The
last half of the story is a crazy chase through Hollywood as our
heroes try to retrieve the famous gem. It's nonstop, and I just
read faster and faster because, after all, that's what the story
seemed to call for. "Hollywood Ikons" is one of the stories
finished by Kathleen Bartholomew and once again involves Joseph and
Lewis as they look for the Ikons, talismans of extreme power that
can turn people's brains to mush, and which have been lost, once
again, in the hills of Hollywood, this time in the 1940s. The
story is not so frantic and definitely not madcap, but is
interesting and thought provoking, especially the neat little twist
at the end. Both of these Company stories leave me wanting for
more of the same, and at some point in the future I plan to search
for more of them.
"Mother Aegypt" is a difficult story to describe. We are told it
is a Company story, although it is much different from the two
stories I discussed previously. I'm not quite sure whether the
story is about a scheming con artist trying to make a buck by
taking advantage of Mother Aegypt, or a story about immortal Mother
Aegypt who is tired of her life and life style and just wishes it
were over, or a story about little Emil, who has some mystical
powers that both Mother Aegypt and the con artist are trying to use
to their advantage. It is something of an eerie story, especially
as Baker plows toward the finish which has some really weird things
going on.
"The Women of Nell Gwynne's" is a great story about the women of a
brothel--actually the Ladies Auxiliary of the Gentlemen's
Speculative Society--who help the society member by gathering
information from influential men simply by, well, plying their
trade. They are much more than that however. They are a valuable
part of the Society, and play an integral role in this offbeat tale
involving spies, antigravity, caverns, technical secrets, and a
whole lot of other things. It's a fun tale that shows the women of
the Ladies Auxiliary as influential and important parts of the
procurement and development of advanced technology.
"The Carpet Beds of Sutro Park" is clearly a Company story, but one
that is of a much more different and serious tone than the others
in the book. A Company agent is sent back as an observer in San
Francisco as he is unable to perform any other function due to his
autism, and he ends up observing a woman who is dying of cancer.
This is quite an emotional and heartbreaking story. As the leadoff
story in the book it provides quite the punch.
Perhaps my least favorite story of the bunch is "The Unfortunate
Gytt", another Gentlemen's Speculative Society story. It may be my
least favorite, but it is still an enchanting tale of a man
recruited for the Society in 1855, and his first adventure with
said society. It was a light and fun read, and really, it is
pretty good.
This really is a terrific collection. It is sad that Kage Baker is
no longer with us, but these stories are a reminder of just how
good a writer she was and is just a small sample of the large
number of works she left us. We should all go read more of it.
[-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: BLACK MILK by Robert Reed (book review by Dale L. Skran)
I started BLACK MILK a long time ago, got about half done, and lost
interest. I recently picked it up when I was looking for three
books to take to Loncon3 for Robert Reed to sign. The other two
that I took--SISTER ALICE and DOWN THE BRIGHT WAY--I had read.
Reed is a good writer, but perhaps not the best SF idea person.
Unlike a Stross, a Reynolds, or a Baxter--who fairly burst with
ideas in their writing, Reed comes over as more measured but more
"writerly."
In any case, I decided it was time to take another look at BLACK
MILK, and I've been reading it on my LonCon 3 trip. BLACK MILK
feels like a juvenile. It is written from the first person point
of view of Ryder, a young boy who has been gene tailored to have an
eidetic memory. Ryder lives in a neighborhood surrounded by other
gene tailored children. There is Cody, who has been enhanced by
her lesbian mothers to be stronger and faster than any boy, and
Marshall, whose status-striving uber-rich parents have focused on
making him super-smart. Beth's parents have chosen a child with no
specific tailoring, but who is still the best of everything they
are. This has resulted in an above average girl with uncanny vocal
talents. The group is rounded out by Jack, a product of a lower
class household who seem to spend most of their time partying,
drinking, doing drugs, and getting in trouble with the law. The
exact nature of Jack's tailoring is never described (as best I
recall), but he is driven and highly intelligent, while lacking
Marshall's physical ineptitude.
By writing the story from the viewpoint of young Ryder, Reed is
spared the trouble of providing an adult's view of events. The
kids spend most of their time hanging out in a tree house, hunting
for snakes and a special kind of tailored snow dragon, and doing
kid-stuff, like fighting amongst themselves. In the background
lurks the shadowy Dr. Florida, who takes a special interest in
Ryder and his friends. Dr. Florida (whose name suggests some
association with Walt Disney, at least to me) often brings with him
Lilith, a flunky/mistress. Her name (Adam's wife before Eve)
signals "bad girl" from the moment she appears on stage.
The actual plot seems hardly enough to fill a novella, or even a
novelette. Florida befriends the kids. Eventually it evolves that
some of Dr. Florida's experiments, "spark hounds" intended to
spread life to Jupiter, have gotten lose and threaten the Earth.
The UN swings into action fighting the hounds, and we get a kid's
view of the action as it is described by various TV commentators.
Suddenly Florida shows up and asks the kids to come away with him
to an asteroid he has prepared, believing that humanity has no
chance against the powerful spark hounds. After a certain amount
of drama, the kids are coaxed out of their tree house by their
parents and taken away by Lilith and another Florida flunky to see
the good doctor. After a final conversation with Florida, Ryder
and his friends are ambushed by the UN, resulting in a car crash,
and Ryder is injured. Lilith and the Florida flunky apparently die
in "accident".
This is pretty much it. When Ryder wakes up, the UN has defeated
the spark hounds, and his parents decide to move away to escape the
publicity associated with Ryder's special relationship with
Florida. It appears that Florida intended Ryder to be a "living
memory" of Dr. Florida. Florida has conveniently killed himself
after talking a final time to Ryder. Years later Ryder comes back
to the neighborhood and meets a very odd, much more tailored child
than himself, with which he can make no connection. End of story.
There is a lot of good writing here in the service of a rather weak
story. As a juvenile it is passable, although there are many that
are better. As a story for adults it feels more like a writing
exercise than a real novel. What is Reed trying to say here? The
future he creates seems, especially in retrospect, more a fuzzy
50's future than anything that might really happen. In particular,
the pace of computer/information technology is such that Ryder's
parents work as real estate agents, and he takes over their
business, which seems less and less likely. There is something
called a "personal" that acts like a smart phone or a tablet, but
that's about it. Ryder interacts only with a child's world of tree
houses and snake hunts, and this is the most real part of the book.
Bruce Sterling wrote SCHISMATRIX in 1985, and Sterling still feels
fresh and innovative today. BLACK MILK first appeared in 1989, yet
seems oddly dated.
The plot is a comic opera mad scientist story. Dr. Florida never
seems anything but a prop. The spark hounds are only of mild
interest, and I admit that I was turned off by a rather silly book
cover illustration of them. All fighting with the spark hounds is
sketched in and occurs far off-screen.
Perhaps Reed wanted to say something about genetic engineering.
Certainly it is realistic to suppose that only modest changes would
initially be done, and that is the approach he takes. At one point
Florida mentions billions being modified, but with never a clue as
to what those modifications might be. Perhaps this book is
intended as a warning. Ryder is virtually crippled by his perfect
memory, and indeed, although a very good memory is helpful, a
perfect memory seems undesirable. Marshall is a parody of the
spoiled "genius" brat. I'm not saying such kids don't exist, but
he never seems particularly smart in the book. He goes through a
lot of motions of being intelligent, but Reed does not seem to have
a handle on how a smart kid might act. He would benefit from
studying the early lives of some real geniuses. Or perhaps Reed is
suggesting that factors other than intelligence made people like
Turing, Von Neuman, and Dyson what they were, and Marshall is
merely intelligent.
Cody is convincing as the girl as strong as a boy--and stronger
than some men--but her athletic career is ended in the minor
leagues by a "baboon armed pitcher." Does this suggest that her
tailoring was pointless, since it leads only to a genetic arms
race? Beth might be the happiest, but she has been saddled with
parents crippled by torturous experiments in a war that involved
India and resulted in the deaths of over 100 million people. Like
some non-tailored kids, she can never escape caring for her
parents. She is at least a sketch of a real person, but her
problems have nothing to do with gene tailoring. Since we don't
know how Jack was tailored, he operates as a representative of the
"vital lower classes" for Marshall to bounce off of. All in all,
this is a weak treatment of gene tailoring. You never get the
slightest sense of what Florida's overall plan might be with regard
to gene tailoring, unless his concept all along was to create a
disaster like a James Bond villain and escape in his asteroid ark.
If you told me that BLACK MILK was a book that Reed wrote very
early in his career as a workshop exercise in telling a story from
a child's viewpoint, I would find that plausible. I suggest
reading Reed's SISTER ALICE instead of BLACK MILK. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: ROCKS IN MY POCKETS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Written, directed, and animated by Signe Baumane, ROCKS IN
MY POCKETS tells the story of her grandmother and aunts who have a
history of mental illness and multiple incidents of suicide. She
looks at how five intelligent and attractive women struggled with
their internal demons. Bauman illustrates the story entirely in
animation. The images lighten an atmosphere that desperately needs
lightening. Baumane has assembled a remarkably detailed family
history that most people in her position would prefer to forget.
Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
ROCKS IN MY POCKETS is subtitled "a funny film about depression."
That is certainly true, but it is also a depressing film about
depression. The film consists of Latvian-born artist Signe Baumane
telling the tragic story of her family in Latvia concentrating on
mental illness, full-madness, suicide, and nightmarish mental
hospitals, mostly in Latvia under the Soviets. Baumane wrote,
directed, and animated the film. The film is entirely in animation
which helps to lighten the tone. Characters show up that appear to
be part human and part rabbit, demonstrating things like the proper
and effective way to tie a noose or to avoid leaving a mess of
human waste released when hanging oneself. The use of rabbit
images may well tie into some gruesome asides in the story when she
tells how people had to kill rabbits.
But the main emphasis is to tell the story of the family and the
grandmother who had a terrible and tragic life and who might just
have intentionally ended that life. The grandmother, Anna, was
attractive and intelligent. She falls in love with her charismatic
employer, Indoless, a man much older than she is. They begin a
relationship that shatters Indoless's marriage. Anna ends up
married to Indoless, working herself to death climbing a hill each
day to transport forty buckets of water needed for their livestock.
Things go from bad to worse, and Anna has to kill all her feelings.
Anna's story, the most complete of the film, has some historic
scope, a feel for the stresses of 20th century Latvia, telling what
her life was like under the Latvian government, then under the
Nazis, and finally under the Soviets. Under each her situation and
emotional state get worse. There is a strain of potent feminism.
It is unknown if Anna's death was a suicide or not. Without a stop
we plow on to the next generation and tales of bleak luck and
illness, all recounted with ornate detail and odd asides. The
women are all weighted down with the six stones of the title, ready
to hold her down in water and drown her: dread, pain, obsession,
confusion, guilt, and self-destruction.
This all would be hard to bear without the imaginative animation
that covers the entire story. Baumane uses a combination of
papier-mache for the background of her images and sometimes for
imperious people, and combines it with flat animation. This gives
it a feeling of some depth but still the characters are drawings.
The images she creates are often dreamlike, surreal, and frequently
stream of conscious. The animation serves to hold the viewer's eye
on the screen much as the narrative, told rapid-fire in a Latvian
accent, holds onto the viewer's ear.
If the film offers any ray of hope in the so bleak world of this
film it is references to the speaker now living in New York, having
escaped the desolate world of Latvia for a second chance in the New
World. And the very film indicates that Baumane has found in
animated cinema a creative receptacle for all her dark moods of
hopelessness. I rate ROCKS IN My POCKETS a low +2 on the -4 to +4
scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2961890/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rocks_in_my_pockets/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Credentials Versus Education (comment by Keith F. Lynch)
In the context of how expensive new textbooks are, but how one can
rarely sell or even give away an older edition, Keith Lynch wrote
on Usenet: "It's interesting that textbooks cost upwards of $100 in
a context where they'll get you credentials, and often less than $1
in a context where they'll only get you an education. That shows
the relative value our society assigns to those two things."
[-kfl]
Mark notes:
[Let us not underestimate the marginal value of credentials over
education. Suppose the textbook is ATLAS OF NEUROSURGICAL
TECHNIQUES: BRAIN. I would choose the man with credentials every
time. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Tsundoku (letter of comment by Philip Chee)
In response to Tim Bateman's comment on tsundoku in the 08/22/14
issue of the MT VOID (wondering whether it derives from tsunami and
Sudoku), Philip Chee writes:
According to Jim Breen's WWWJDIC, it [means] buying books and not
reading them, and is from [two words meaning] volume, product
(x*y), acreage, contents, pile up, stack, load, amass; and read.
[-pc]
[Philip included the Japanese characters, but ASCII email won't
handle them. One imagines that tsunami comes from the same first
word (pile up), so they are related. -ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Baseball and Football and (Science) Fiction (letter of
comment by Jim Susky)
In response to Evelyn's comments on baseball and fiction in the
08/01/14 issue of the MT VOID, Jim Susky writes:
Let me first dispense with a peripheral observation: in baseball
the foul lines are not (even theoretically) infinitely long. This
has nothing to do with the finite nature of a well-hit baseball,
but is a matter of rule.
A foul ground ball does not become foul until it is touched or
rests in foul territory short of first and third bases.
Occasionally a ball will go into that foul territory and return to
fair territory and remain fair when touched or comes to rest.
A home run ball (the usual beyond the fence type) is fair if it
passes to the fair side, or hits, the "foul pole" (some have asked
why is this not call a "fair pole"?). A home run ball is often hit
with a great deal of spin, which causes the ball to curve (not fly
ballistically). When a right-hander pulls ("hooks") his home run
ball it will curve left. It will sometimes pass to the right of
the left field foul pole and land on the foul side of the extension
of the foul line. It is still a fair ball and the home run is
recorded.
Now, the fair/foul judgement for a very high fly ball *does* depend
on the vertical extension of the foul pole. That line IS INFINITE.
Another reason for the SF/Baseball connection might be that
Baseball, its ethos, and certainly its terms have sunk very deeply
into American Culture. Golf (and possibly Tennis) aside, Baseball
has by far the deepest literary tradition of all the sports.
Consider that major league baseball alone, from 1901 to the late
50s, had 1232 regular season games/year--in cities which all had
several newspapers. With expansion to 30 teams and 162 games, that
number has grown to the 2430. The sheer volume of opportunities to
write about last night's game dwarf Golf and Tennis as well as the
other major American Sports. And recall that for decades pre-1900
Baseball was essentially "the only game in town" (though football
and basketball were invented respectively in 1869 and 1891).
Finally I leave you with the famous George Carlin routine on
Baseball and Football--funny because it is almost completely true;
video at .
PS--Not "finally". I'll add that football is a metaphor for
history's most deadly serious game--WAR. My theory is that this is
why football commentators speak with a stressed, moderately loud
voice--because the game is soo SERIOUS. This bleeds over into
characterizing excellent teams as LOSERS because they did not win
the Super Bowl (the NFL, you see, is SUPER SERIOUS). The prime
examples are the Minnesota Vikings, which has a 0-4 record in Super
Bowls, the Denver Bronco--also 0-4 before finally winning it, and
the Buffalo Bills--0-4 yet again.
Contrast with Baseball, which has exactly the same number of
champions/year as football. In eighteen consecutive years of
division championships the Atlanta Braves won the World Series only
once. They were rarely called "losers".
[-js]
Mark responds:
I guess what you are saying is right. I have to admit little
interest in Baseball or, as in a previous piece of mail alcohol. I
will take your word on them. I am afraid I never developed a taste
for either. I guess that make me a nerd. [-mrl]
Evelyn replies:
The fair/foul line is not infinitely long, but it is arbitrarily
long. That is, it is as long as the builders of the ballpark want
to make it. If they chose, they could put the foul pole three
miles out if they wanted to, or on Mars. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Lustrums and Fortnights (letters of comment by Kevin
Robinson, Peter Trei, Keith F. Lynch, and Jette Goldie)
In response to Evelyn's comments on the vocabulary of the author of
the Borges bio in the 08/22/14 issue of the MT VOID, Kevin writes:
I was aware of "lustrum" meaning five years [ago]. See
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lustrum
I would consider anyone using it in normal conversation as just
showing off, however.
There is also the old corollary to Murphy's Law I once read, to the
effect that "measurements will always be expressed in the most
inconvenient units: such as a rate measured in footlongs per
fortnight."
I learned that a "fortnightly" came out twice a month, because as a
lad I read the W. F. Buckley, Jr. era NATIONAL REVIEW, and WFB was
a shameless sesquipedalian and lover of obscure words.
I once urged a fellow political activist that, in order to get his
point across to potential voters, we should "eschew latinate
verbosity." [-kr]
Peter Trei responds:
["Lustrum" is] new to me!
I've always heard it as "furlongs per fortnight".
A fortnight is two weeks, not half a month. Half a month is
"semimonthly". [-pt]
Keith F. Lynch also notes (re "fortnight":
Not quite. It means every two weeks. [-kfl]
Kevin responds:
Yes, [re furlongs] you are right. I only ever encountered "furlong"
in the context of horse racing, but then I was NY Daily News
carrier, and had been reading it ever since I learned to read. At
first, just the comics and sports held my attention, but two strips
revolved around horse players: the venerable "Mutt & Jeff," and
another strip that I think only appeared in The News. I don't
think it was "Joe & Asbestos."
The extended "Murphy's Law" I was misquoting was an appendix to an
assigned text in my buddy's engineering textbook.
[Re fortnights:] Yes, that's so. 26 issues a year, rather than 24,
though I think NR may have skipped a fortnight every now and then
for staff summer vacations, or the Christmas season. [-kr]
Jette Goldie points out:
Fortnight = "fourteen nights". [-jg]
Evelyn adds:
And a "sennight" = "seven nights" = a week. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Our film-and-book discussion group chose DR. STRANGELOVE; OR HOW I
LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB [DSOHILTSWALTB] as the
August film, and RED ALERT by Peter Bryant (ISBN 978-1-596-545816)
as the book. This book has a strange history. It was originally
published in 1958 in the United Kingdom as TWO HOURS TO DOOM under
the pseudonym "Peter Bryant" (the author's real name was Peter
George). The French translation listed the author as Bryan Peters.
George later sued Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler for their 1962
novel FAIL-SAFE, which he claimed had an almost identical premise.
George collaborated with Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern on the
script of the film, and also wrote a novelization of it, released
under his real name as DR. STRANGELOVE; OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP
WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB. While they were filming DSOHILTSWALTB
Kubrick was worried that the film FAIL-SAFE would eclipse
DSOHILTSWALTB, so he sued the filmmakers, saying that he owned the
creative rights to the novel RED ALERT, from which FAIL-SAFE had
been plagiarized, and this delayed the opening of FAIL-SAFE by
almost a year.
So ... three titles, three author credits, three screenwriters, and
two lawsuits. Is this a record?
It is clear this is an old book. Early on, people are called to
the Pentagon at 5:30 AM, and Bryant writes, "At that time of
morning traffic was light. Even those living twenty miles out, by
driving at eighty or ninety on the almost deserted highways, were
able to report within fifteen minutes of the summons." Today,
twenty miles out is probably a minimum, not a maximum, and even at
5:30 AM the roads would scarcely be "almost deserted."
The plot is the basic plot of the movie, but without the Dr.
Strangelove character or any of the satire or black humor. Much of
it seems dated at this point, not just the traffic descriptions,
but the stereotypes and racism. He writes, "He thought of the
Russian peasant; stubborn, obstinate, accustomed to suffering and
perhaps even welcoming it. Latent in all the Slavs, he thought, is
the urge for self destruction, the mute acceptance of nemesis once
nemesis is seen to be at hand." And if he's negative on Slavs, he
thinks the Mongolians little better than animals.
But probably the biggest way it is dated is that our existential
threats these days do not come from large stockpiles of Russian
missiles, or buried cobalt doomsday machines, but from an entirely
different set of weapons and strategies.
This month's general discussion group discussion book was THERE'S
MORE TO NEW JERSEY THAN THE SOPRANOS by Marc Mappan (ISBN 978-0-
813-54586-8). It consists of a lot of stories from New Jersey
history, some as well known as Molly Pitcher or the "War of the
Worlds" broadcast, while others deal with less well-known
characters and incidents. (And as a lead-in to the next book, his
final chapter is called "Brief History of Corruption".)
But apparently all anyone knows about New Jersey *is* the Sopranos,
because we also have THE SOPRANO STATE: NEW JERSEY'S CULTURE OF
CORRUPTION by Bob Ingle and Sandy McClure (ISBN 978-0-312-60257-4).
Unfortunately, Ingle and McClure blew their credibility with me on
page 5. Repeat after me: Dirt does not vote or pay taxes.
Remember the graphic of the United States map showing how much more
area voted for Republicans than Democrats? As many people pointed
out, dirt does not vote or pay taxes, people do, and the people in
the smaller states (such as New Jersey) outnumbered those in the
larger states (such as Alaska).
Well, Ingle and McClure have pulled the same trick in this book.
They claim that with 19,120 elected officeholders, 154,400 state
workers, and 444,000 local employees, New Jersey has an average of
81 government workers per square mile, and that the national
average is 6 government workers per square mile. They do add,
"Now, New Jersey is the most densely populated of the fifty states,
but even so the difference between it and the rest of the country
is striking." However, this serves merely to lure the unwary into
thinking what they say is true, or meaningful. Let's do the math.
New Jersey has an area of 8723 square miles. Adding up the state
and local government workers gives us 598,400, or about 69 per
square mile, not 81. Even adding in the elected officeholders as
well gives us only 617,620 workers, or 71 per square mile.
Now let's look at government workers as a percentage of the
population (a more reasonable measure, I think most people would
agree). First we need to get the number of government workers in
the United States. The area of the United States is 3,794,000
square miles. Six workers per square mile means there were
22,764,000 government workers in the United States in 2005 (when
the book was written).
In 2005, the population of the United States was approximately
300,000,000. Dividing this into 22,764,000 workers gives us 0.076
workers per person. New Jersey had a population of 8,750,000.
Dividing this into 617,620 gives us 0.071--*less* than the national
averages!
It may be that New Jersey is as corrupt as Ingle and McClure say.
And it may be that the large number of local governmental units is
a cause. But the claim that New Jersey is wildly over-stocked with
government workers is just not borne out by the numbers.
The rest of the book is a recounting of all the various schemes,
conspiracies, and corruptions of state officials in New Jersey.
Ingle and McClure do see some bright spots, though. Alas, one of
these is the U.S. Attorney, Chris Christie, whom they see as
someone who is fearlessly going after corrupt officials. Now, nine
years later, after "Bridgegate" and a variety of other less-than-
honest doings, this bright spot has dimmed considerably. (In
separate articles, Alec MacGillis and Ryan Lizza have detailed
Christie's rise to power, including his appointment as U.S.
Attorney with absolutely no legal training or judicial background.)
And while we're mentioning errors, let me note one in VIDEOHOUND'S
WAR MOVIES by Mike Mayo (ISBN 978-1-57859-089-6). In his
description of the film THE LIGHTHORSEMEN, Mayo writes, "The Light
Horse is "mounted infantry" as opposed to cavalry, though the
details of that distinction--beyond the troopers' use of rifles and
bayonets--are not too important." This is 180 degrees off--in the
climactic scene, the distinction is critical. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Is life worth living? This is a question for
an embryo not for a man.
--Samuel Butler