Lincroft-Holmdel Science Fiction Club Club Notice - 5/8/87 -- Vol. 5, No. 43 MEETINGS UPCOMING: Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are on Wednesdays at noon. LZ meetings are in LZ 3A-206; MT meetings are in MT 4A-235. _D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C 05/13 LZ: TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO by Reincarnation Phillip Jose Farmer 07/15 LZ: (unknown, but it will be in 1B-205) HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 834-1563 LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell LZ 1B-306 576-6106 MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3E-433 957-5619 HO Librarian: Tim Schroeder HO 3M-420 949-5866 LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 576-2068 MT Librarian: Bruce Szablak MT 4C-418 957-5868 Jill-of-all-trades: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 957-2070 All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted. 1. Science now has proof that Einstein's theory of relativity has unexpected holes in it. For centuries Newton's view of the universe held up as being a correct model. Einstein said that Newton was close to correct, but not precisely correct. He also said you could tell the diffence in some phenomena that are subtly different from what we expect. Certain stars will appear to be in slightly different positions than we would exect from the Newtonian model of the universe because the light rays have been subtly bent by gravity. Now for quite some time the Einsteinian model of the universe has held up. However the Einsteinian model predicts that there would be a double feature Leeperhouse film festival on May 14. Note that the number of films times the day of the month is 2 times 14 or 28. The Einstein model of the universe correctly predicts that constant as 28. However, the actual factors turn out to be 1 and 28. And since showing 28 films on May 1 would require sending information backward in time, we can only conclude that only 1 film will be shown on May 28. "Ah," the ghost of great Einstein says, "that solution cannot possibly work because one film does not have the mass to hold down an entire Leeperhouse film festival." And of course he would normally be right. It must be that the film festival is planning a very heavy showing. A film twice as massive as the usual film we show. Such things do exist, but would have been unavailable in Einstein's day. (Heck, I hear they didn't even have VCRs then!) We will be showing a double-mass film, Abel Gance's four-hour silent classic NAPOLEON. This is the complete restored version. Why don't you show up, and I will try to get Einstein's ghost there, if he isn't too embarrassed at - 2 - making a fool of himself! Mark Leeper MT 3E-433 957-5619 ...mtgzz!leeper =============================== ABANDON SHIP! A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: This is the story of an overcrowded lifeboat. It is a good treatment of the hard decision between being humanitarian and risking killing everyone on the lifeboat or being crueller but more realistic. This film tells more about the nature of disaster and how people react to it than all the disaster films Irwin Allen ever made. In my review of the film _A_l_i_e_n_s, I said that one of the reasons it was not as good as _A_l_i_e_n was that it introduced a weak and sympathetic character. There is an unwritten romantic code in horror and disaster films that says that most women and children, particularly the appealing ones, are safe. In _T_h_e _P_o_s_e_i_d_o_n _A_d_v_e_n_t_u_r_e there are a lot of people who start the journey to safety and one by one the strong characters die off. Carol Lynley and two children survive, if I remember right. I think everyone loves to see the weak survive but nobody really believes it. I guess it is just a cinematic convention. I just saw on cable (from Atlanta) the 1957 film _A_b_a_n_d_o_n _S_h_i_p! (Oddly enough I had never heard of it until very recently and I think someone described it to me just about a week or so ago.) This is the story of a very overcrowded lifeboat and the captain who really has to make some hard decisions about who is going to live and who is going to die. These decisions are based on logic, not on what will play well to an audience. The film covers topics often reserved for post-holocaust films--and often side-stepped even there. In specific, there are questions of triage. No medical supplies can be wasted on those who are too sick or disabled to continue. There are two or three nice ironic twists at the end of the film and the revelation that this is a true story, which perhaps accounts for why it seems so believable. The film is the real stuff. I should mention the film stars Tyrone Power and a host of faces familiar from British films and TV. And, let us face it, I love just about any film that has two warring factions, both of which seem right. _A_b_a_n_d_o_n _S_h_i_p! (British title: _S_e_v_e_n _W_a_v_e_s _A_w_a_y) is just about the most thought-provoking disaster film I can imagine. Rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.