All reviews copyright 1984-2020 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN by Alan Moore:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/18/2003]
I read Alan Moore's graphic novel THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN in preparation for seeing the movie. Of course, because of a combination of Readercon, reviews, and a frozen shoulder, I haven't actually seen it yet, but I do recommend the book. I have frequently found graphic novels confusing, with the art incomprehensible enough at times (to me, anyway) to obscure information needed to understand it, but that was not the case here.
V FOR VENDETTA by Alan Moore and Judy Groves:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/21/2006]
I wanted to read V FOR VENDETTA by Alan Moore and Judy Groves (ISBN 0-930289-52-8) to compare it with the movie. But I found it very difficult. Why? Well, although the font size is about the same as most books, the vertical spacing is much tighter, with almost twice as many lines per inch, and the font is an irregular sans serif type, rather than a standard serif type. I suspect it becomes harder to read as one's eyesight gets worse, which may be one reason that graphic novels are more popular among the young. (Similarly, magazines or web pages that use odd color combinations, such as purple letters on a black background, seem to be aimed at those with perfect eyesight.) I managed to read about two-thirds of it, but it was too much eyestrain for me to finish.
CATHOLICS by Brian Moore:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/20/2006]
CATHOLICS by Brian Moore (ISBN 0-829-42333-8) was made into a 1973 made-for-television movie. Back then, it was science fiction; now it is alternate history. The premise is that Vatican II was followed by Vatican III and Vatican IV (which changed the nature of the Mass and banned private confessions in favor of collective confession by the congregation). In particular, the rulings of Vatican II (the Mass in the vernacular, with priests facing the congregation, are being enforced. A monastery on an island off the coast of Ireland has persisted in saying the Mass in Latin and Rome has sent a representative (Martin Sheen in the movie) to deal with the problem. This is definitely a more philosophical (and theological) script than one usually finds in a made-for-television movie, and is recommended. (I found it on an EastWest double feature DVD for a dollar! I will note, however, that the music can at times be very obtrusive.) The movie does concentrate on the "Latin [Tridentine] mass" and only mentions the other aspects (confessions, ecumenicalism, etc.) in passing, while these figure more importantly in the book. Ironically, just a few days ago it was reported that the Pope is about to sign a document that would make it easier for priests to celebrate the Mass in Latin than it currently is.
"The Children's Hour" by Lawrence O'Donnell (C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner):
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"The Children's Hour", Lawrence O'Donnell (C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner): This is about implanting a human brain in an artificial body, but the side effects see totally unlikely. On the other hand, there seems to be so much emphasis on how Clarissa's beauty affects everyone who sees her that I have to wonder if Moore and Kuttner were trying to make a point about the emphasis placed on a woman's appearance over her mental abilities, even if those are superior.
"Doorway into Time" by C. L. Moore:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/31/2019]
"Doorway into Time" by C. L. Moore is one of the many finalists in ISAAC ASIMOV PRESENTS THE GREAT SF STORIES 5 (1943). There is a certain irony to his introduction, which says in part, "[Moore's] stories seemed 'masculine' because htey didn't deal with the petty fripperies that readers expected of women authors," followed by the story, of which the first three paragraphs are spent described the main character's robe, followed by more paragraphs about jewels and other "fripperies." This is yet another story in which the humans are secondary characters (or in some cases, what the reader was supposed to assume were the aliens).
"No Woman Born" by C. L. Moore:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/01/2006]
"No Woman Born" by C. L. Moore is a novella about a woman who was
turned into a cyborg. As an updating of the Frankenstein story,
it has its merits, but it did not strike me as a classic in the
same way that the novels that were chosen did. It is available
in several anthologies; you can look up an up-to-date list at
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"No Woman Born", C. L. Moore: I found this story of a human brain
housed in a mechanical body quite good (although with what seemed
to me an over-emphasis on beauty) right up to the end, when it took
a sharp left turn into "super powers" territory. It made no sense
to me and diminished the story.
"There Shall Be Darkness"
by C. L. Moore:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/18/2018]
"There Shall Be Darkness", by C. L. Moore (Astounding Science
Fiction, February 1942): This combination of science fiction,
primitive race, and barbarians was quite popular 75 years ago. It
doesn't read so well now, but the main female character is
interesting in being strong while still not alienating the male
readers of the time.
"The Twonky"
by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/25/2018]
"The Twonky", by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner (Astounding Science
Fiction, September 1942): This is another story that does not show
its age. Oh, the setting is clearly the 1940s, but it is not full
of outdated science, or sentences or phrasing that make it seem
antiquated, or grotesquely sexist attitudes. And it is proof that
the current concerns about A.I. controlling us are not new at all.
VINTAGE SEASON
by C. L. Moore:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/15/2011]
I recently re-read VINTAGE SEASON by C. L. Moore, or Henry Kuttner,
or Lawrence O'Donnell, or whatever combination of those is credited
as the author. (The story is credited to different authors in
different places and they are all names for Moore and/or Kuttner,
who formed a wife and husband writing team.) And then I watched
the film based on it, which has even more names than the author of
the novella (hard as that is to believe). It is known variously as
THE GRAND TOUR, DISASTER IN TIME, GRAND TOUR; DISASTER IN TIME, and
TIMESCAPE. (Given that I think of it as "Vintage Season", I
always have great difficulty looking it up!)
To explain why I re-read and watched this, and to comment on it,
involves SPOILERS. If you don't want SPOILERS, stop now (this is
the last review this week).
The story involves a group of tourists who seem very out of place
in the B&B they have somewhat commandeered. They keep saying very
odd things that make it very easy for the reader to figure out
what's going on; one wonders why the B&B owners are so slow on the
uptake. (Hint: they keep making references to London in 1666 and
Europe in 1348.)
The movie goes this one better, piling Ossa upon Pelion, as it
were, in a way that very much reminded me of recent events. As the
saying goes, it's one damn thing after another. However, the movie
also has a subplot of the B&B owner having lost his wife in a car
accident, having a father-in-law who is trying to take his daughter
away, etc., in addition to the owner becoming more directly
involved in the technology. All this helps fill out the time and
add some action scenes, but really is not essential to the story.
(And this is similar to the current film SOURCE CODE, in that it
worries that the basic premise is not enough for a movie, and so
adds a lot of additional and unnecessary plot.)
The novella is available in a Tor Double paired with Robert
Silverberg's IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, the same story told from a
different point of view (ISBN 0-812-50193-4). So in effect, you
can experience three versions of the same story.
"Werewoman"
by C. L. Moore:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/20/2014]
"Werewoman", C. L. Moore (Leaves #2, Winter 1938; Robert Hoskins,
THE EDGE OF NEVER): The initial publication of this story was in a
small-press magazine--so small, in fact, that only sixty copies
were printed! True, that would have been more than enough for
everyone at the 1939 Worldcon to get a copy, but I am sure that did
not happen, and this is another example of a story that would not
have been nominated if regular Hugos had been given out in its
eligibility year. Does that mean one should not vote for it
because one is voting as if it were that year? I don't think so,
and the existence of the electronic Hugo packet is evidence that
availability should not be considered a factor.
Be that as it may, "Werewoman" is one of C. L. Moore's "Northwest
Smith" stories. I have a quibble with the title: the prefix
"were-" comes from the Old English "wer", or "man", so a "werewoman"
would be a man who turns into a woman. This is not what is
happening in the story. But apparently this is a term widely used
to signify a woman who shape-shifts rather than a man. "Werewoman"
is strong on atmosphere, but a bit weak on plot.
EARTH'S LAST CITADEL
by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/10/2019]
Is EARTH'S LAST CITADEL by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner (ISBN
978-0-441-18112-4) really a novel? With only 128 pages in my edition,
it seems more like a novella. It seems a typical pulp story of a
motley group of people transported into the far future. Moore and
Kuttner have a couple of Nazi spies for topicality, but when
everyone ends up thousands of years in the future, that distinction
seems to become meaningless. (Perhaps if one of the other
characters had been Jewish, that would have added some additional
conflict.) There is a slight Lovecraftian tinge to the aliens but
I cannot see anything special about this.
BRING THE JUBILEE
by Ward Moore:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/02/2005]
BRING THE JUBILEE by Ward Moore (ISBN 0-345-40502-1, but more
readily available in THE BEST ALTERNATE HISTORY STORIES OF THE
20TH CENTURY, edited by Harry Turtledove, ISBN 0-345-43990-2) is
a classic alternate history story, and one of the first. Yes,
there were quite a few before it, but considering that the field
took off only in the last fifteen years, something from fifty
years ago qualifies as a seminal story. Unfortunately, the
alternate history aspect does not seem to be the main focus of
the story; Moore seemed to be more interested in the utopian
society that was set up, and in Barbara's personality (which none
of us in the discussion group could quite understand).
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/05/2014]
A newly formed discussion group was reading BRING THE JUBILEE by
Ward Moore (ISBN 978-1-434-47853-5), so we decided to give it a
try. I found a lot of interesting bits; for example, in Moore's
alternate United States there were government-run lotteries in the
1940s. And the main character talks about the humane treatment of
Negroes in the Confederacy--well, who knows, maybe in the alternate
world it is true. The Whigs apparently promote "trickle-down"
economics, just like in our world. And Moore consistently uses
"Southron" (which is indeed a real word) instead of "Southern".
But the most interesting change seemed to be the use of apostrophes
in contractions. It appeared as though the "punctuation" in the
United States changed a lot:
I spent quite a while trying to figure out how a Confederate
victory would make this happen. I shouldn't have bothered--it
turns out that Moore felt about apostrophes the way e.e.cummings
felt about capital letters, and who won the Civil War had nothing
to do with it!
"Clash by Night"
by Lawrence O'Donnell (Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore):
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/17/2019]
"Clash by Night" by Lawrence O'Donnell (Henry Kuttner & C. L.
Moore) is a tale of mercenary armies on Venus 1400 years in the
future from when it was written. As such, its references to
Dickens, Wagner versus Strauss, the Crusades, the Charge of the
Light Brigade, and the Knights of Malta fighting Saracens serve as
constant stumbling blocks, snapping the reader out of the far
future. It is as if people today made references to Beowulf,
Khosrovidukt versus John of Damascus, the Punic Wars, the Battle of
Zama, and the legions of Rome fighting the Seleucids. Oh, and
spelling it "uisqueplus" is cute, but frankly, spelling tends to
simplify, not complicate. Moore has written stories with strong
females; this is not one of them. In fact, though its treatment of
gender was fairly standard for the time (and certainly in keeping
with supporting the wartime situation of the time), it rings false
now as a picture of the future.
"When the Bough Breaks"
by Lewis Padgett (C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner):
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"When the Bough Breaks", Lewis Padgett (C. L. Moore & Henry
Kuttner): This seems very similar to their previous story, "Mimsy
Were the Borogoves". Both have precocious children being educated
by futuristic toys to have exceptional mental powers. This is a
bit more downbeat, however, and one wonders if at some point
[SPOILER] Moore and Kuttner started thinking about the childhood of
someone like Hitler and whether getting rid of them early might not
be a good idea. Because this has those philosophical aspects (at
least as far as I can tell), it rates higher than many of the other
stories.
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