@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society Club Notice - 9/25/87 -- Vol. 6, No. 13 MEETINGS UPCOMING: Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are on Wednesdays at noon. LZ meetings are in LZ 3A-206; MT meetings are in the cafeteria. _D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C 10/07 LZ: EON by Greg Bear (Books Someone Wants To Read) 10/14 MT: Humor in SF (Anvil, Biggle, Harrison, Laumer, and Russell) 10/28 LZ: WILD CARDS I and II by George R. R. Martin (ed.) (Superheroes) 11/04 MT: Bookswap (*not* in the cafeteria; room TBA) 11/18 LZ: ODD JOHN by Olaf Stapledon (Spotlight on Olaf Stapledon) 12/02 MT: Military SF 2 (Anderson, Dickson, and Laumer) (tentative) 12/09 LZ: POSTMAN by David Brin (Post-Disaster Recovery) 12/23 MT: Superheroes (authors to be determined) 12/30 LZ: FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS by Stanislaw Lem (Foreign-Language Authors) 01/20 LZ: 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA by Jules Verne (Classics) 02/10 LZ: DRAGON WAITING by John Ford (Recent Fantasy) HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 834-1563 mtuxo!jetzt LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell LZ 1B-306 576-6106 mtuxo!jrrt MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3E-433 957-5619 mtgzz!leeper HO Librarian: Tim Schroeder HO 3M-420 949-5866 homxb!tps LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 576-6142 lzfme!lfl MT Librarian: Will Harmon MT 3C-406 957-5128 mtgzz!wch Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 957-2070 mtgzy!ecl All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted. 1. As you can see above, in our moment of need, Will Harmon came through and agreed to be the Middletown Librarian. Since this is a great load off my already over-loaded mind, I will break with tradition and not say anything insulting about Harmon in this issue. I usually will try to say something insulting about any member I mention in the notice, but because it was so good to find anyone at Middletown willing to do ANYTHING, I will let the poor fool off easy this time. 2. I have mentioned from time to time the famous Middletown swing. (Do you know that doubters have actually questioned its existence? There are even people at Middletown who haven't even seen it. It sits down in a little depression by the side of the road and nobody THE MT VOID Page 2 seems to be able to cheer it up.) In any case, the planned Middletown Employee Swing Awareness Day (MeSad) seems to have gotten bogged down in bureaucratic hassles. First of all, the "I swing at Middletown" bumper stickers that were to be handed out to each employee as publicity were confiscated by the AA department for their suggestive content and for the non-businesslike message they would send to upper management. The trivia contest that was planned had to be called off because nobody on the swing committee could think of a single trivia question relating to swings. There was to be a cake cutting at 2:30, but at 2:23 the weather turned bad and someone left the cake out in the rain with all the sweet, green icing flowing down. (Hey, that has a kind of ring to it!) So the swing is still out there unused during the day. Apparently the night crew make more use of it. I guess that's why it's called the swing shift. 3. All right, so I blew it. I meant to recommend SABELLA as the Tanith Lee vampire novel, but my fingers typed ELECTRIC FOREST instead. So shoot me. [-ecl] 4. We had intended to conclude my convention report this issue, but the number of reviews and articles we received was higher than expected and there just wasn't space. So we will have part 2 (through the Hugo Awards and the fireworks) in this issue, and the conclusion in the next issue. The issue after *that* will have part 1 of Mark's convention report, which is also planned as a two-parter. However, if we have too much material.... [-ecl] This issue contains a number of film reviews, some for films which may be need the end of their life-cycle in theaters, but there's always video, cable, television, etc. We also have a commentary (of sorts) on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION by Mahendra Pratap. STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION premieres according to the following schedule (only cities near major AT&T locations are listed here): CITY STATION TIME SLOT Altoona/Johnston, PA WWPC 2 ? Chicago, IL 50 ? Columbus, OH WTTV 28 1900 Sat Oct 3 Denver, CO KWGN 2 ? New York, NY WPIX 11 2000 Mon Oct 5 (premiere) Orlando, FL WCPX 6 Sat 2330 Philadelphia, PA WTAF 29 2000 Tue Sep 29 (premiere) In case you haven't guessed, I suspect the New York date is set so as not to fall during the Jewish Holy Days--WPIX knows its market, I'd say. People living near some of the stations may have to call for details. Those in New Jersey should note the WTAF date! [-ecl] Mark Leeper MT 3E-433 957-5619 ...mtgzz!leeper HELLRAISER A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Non-stop slam-bang action creepshow makes writer-director Clive Barker seem sicker than he actually is. Lots of sex and violence, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Clive Barker is the new _w_u_n_d_e_r_k_i_n_d of horror fiction. While Stephen King writes pretty much in the well-trodden areas of horror-- clairvoyance, psi powers, vampires, etc.--Clive Barker seems to create startlingly new ideas that are usually totally off the wall. You cannot be sure what territory a Barker story will take you to, but you can be pretty sure it won't have anything as familiar and reassuring as a blood-sucking vampire. You may encounter a malevolent talking pig, or a haunted burial shroud; one of his more horrific stories involved a giant. It was perhaps the first horror story with a giant in two centuries. Now following in the footsteps of Stephen King, who wrote and directed his own horror film _M_a_x_i_m_u_m _O_v_e_r_d_r_i_v_e, Barker has written and directed _H_e_l_l_r_a_i_s_e_r. Well,.... I heard someone in the audience echo almost word for word the thoughts I had watching the film: "The guy who made this film is one sick son of a bitch." Take _R_e-_A_n_i_m_a_t_o_r, remove the humor, than add more gore, more graphic violence, and more imagination, and you have something approaching _H_e_l_l_r_a_i_s_e_r. The story deals with a man who bought an ornate puzzle box. The box seems to be the key to a universe of sex and torture. At least I think that was what it was. Things are just not very clear. Barker, who is usually a good story-teller, just fails to do a very good job of story-telling. Instead the film devolves into a sequence of imaginative gross-out scenes with some very spare connective tissue. Nothing makes a whole lot of sense and there is little point in asking, "If that guy is really the king of the dead, or whatever he is, why does he have his head marked up like a Rand McNally globe and why has he driven all those nails in his head? Does he just think it looks 'punk'?" _H_e_l_l_r_a_i_s_e_r must be the ultimate of some kind of film. Whatever it is, it certainly is very much what it is. If you like the sort of thing that _H_e_l_l_r_a_i_s_e_r is, you're sure going to love this film. And you might want to get some therapy while you are at it. I guess I'd give _H_e_l_l_r_a_i_s_e_r a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. THE RACE FOR THE DOUBLE HELIX A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Made-for-TV BBC film gives a more rounded view than does Watson's book _T_h_e _D_o_u_b_l_e _H_e_l_i_x. A very fine film with a lot to say about the discipline of science research. For years the issue has been hotly contested. How good is British television really? I think everyone agrees that some of the best things on American television came from Britain. It is hard to beat programs like _I, _C_l_a_u_d_i_u_s, but they are just a few occasional good programs. Certainly British television has its share of stupid situation comedies that do not get seen over here. Well, it seems to me that their good programs are so good that their bad television shows can easily be overlooked. Around the middle of September I start thinking back on what was the best film I have seen the previous summer. I had pretty well determined it was to be De Palma's _U_n_t_o_u_c_h_a_b_l_e_s this year when just under the wire I saw something better. And it was a made-for-TV film, made by the BBC for British television. The film ran on the Arts and Entertainment cable station and was called _T_h_e _R_a_c_e _f_o_r _t_h_e _D_o_u_b_l_e _H_e_l_i_x. It featured superb acting by Jeff Goldblum as James D. Watson and Tim Piggot-Smith as Francis Crick. Watson and Crick are the two unconventional scientists who worked out the structure of DNA. The film is about many things. Among other things, it is about a conflict between two approaches to science. You can go for the gold, or glory in the truth and doing things the right way. The first approach is personified by Goldblum's Watson, a boorish Yank who is a duomaniac. His goals are to get a girl and a Nobel Prize. Anything in life that does not further his attempts at one goal or the other is not to be tolerated. Espousing the other point of view is Rosalinda Franklin, to whom science is a turn-the-crank operation of putting enough work into your goal, going from square one to square two, to square three,...until you have achieved your goal without once making an intuitive leap. The film is about the politics of science and the viewer comes away with an education in how those politics work as well as one of how the structure of DNA was determined. It is the story of how three men won a Nobel Prize based greatly on the work of one woman who neither got a piece of the prize nor, because she was a woman, was she even allowed to join the men in the lounge of the building where they worked. _T_h_e _R_a_c_e _f_o_r _t_h_e _D_o_u_b_l_e _H_e_l_i_x is a powerful, excellent film. If this sort of thing gets shown often on the BBC, I may pack my bag. Rate it a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale. STAR TREK and the Case Of Missing Restraints A Simple Question About Star Trek by Mahendra Pratap It will not be inaccurate to say that I have seen probably every TV episode and definitely all motion pictures bearing the name "Star Trek." If I happen to catch a glimpse of a "Star Trek" show on the TV, I can usually recall the entire episode. As it has for everyone else, _S_t_a_r _T_r_e_k has delighted and entertained me for years. It has been challenging and thought-provoking at times, silly and laughable at others, but always entertaining. One question about this wonderful show has, however, puzzled me often. You will recall that in many episodes, the Starship Enterprise encounters hostile creatures, robots, aliens, spaceships, etc. In fact, sometimes it engages in full-fledged battle with other spaceships of equal or superior technology. In other episodes, the Enterprise passes through a "rip in time" or "warp in space time", according to Mr. Spock, the science officer of the Enterprise. In yet other episodes, the Enterprise accelerates to the speed of light and beyond. Usually, this is done under duress and with great deliberation. Let us take the case of the battle as an example. The other forms of crisis mentioned above can be dealt similarly. Generally a red alert is issued before the battle. During the battle, the phasers are used, the force fields are applied, evasive actions are taken, etc. Sometimes the Enterprise suffers a direct hit from the enemy fire. It is often a very moving experience for all aboard the Enterprise. All hell breaks loose. The chairs (sometimes the tables also) fly all over the control room of the Enterprise. The communications officer monitoring the airwaves, the chief engineer in the engineering section, the personnel overseeing the phasers, the security officers, and Captain Kirk himself are violently thrown from their stations. Much valuable time is expended in asking questions like "who is hurt?" and "how serious is the injury?", generally by Captain Kirk during and after the jolt. One must admit, however, that the Enterprise personnel know how to take the fall; the serious injuries are, therefore, not common. By now you must have guessed my question. Yes! Why don't the Enterprise personnel use *seat belts* or any other means of restraints during the battle? I am sure Mr. Spock can calculate with great accuracy the odds against injuries or being thrown violently to the other side of the room with and without seat belts, taking into account all the relevant factors. If the seat belts are not the answer, either because they seem too primitive or because they are not efficient enough, again Mr. Spock can help. Once the problem is correctly spelled out, his logical mind will surely find the solution. A new television series, called _S_t_a_r _T_r_e_k: _T_h_e _N_e_x_t _G_e_n_e_r_a_t_i_o_n is about to begin. It will be interesting to watch if the new series will solve "the case of missing restraints"? In fact, advertisements for this new series prompted me to write this note. It may help save serious injuries in the 24th Century! NO WAY OUT A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Solid suspense thriller cleverly disguises what should have been familiar material. It begins slowly and deliberately but packs a punch when it finally takes off. Watching _N_o _W_a_y _O_u_t, I had the feeling I was watching the kind of film they used to make in the 1940s. It has the slow build-up of _L_a_d_y _f_r_o_m _S_h_a_n_g_h_a_i. We are halfway into the film before we know why we are watching these characters at all. Also, it struck me that it had the sort of double-meaninged title that suspense films of the 1940s had. There was a suspense film called _T_h_e _B_i_g _C_l_o_c_k that really did have a big clock in it, but the title meant more that the main character had a time limit and things were moving inexorably ahead like clockwork. In this film, Tom Farrell (played by Kevin Costner) at one point does find himself in a building with no way out, but it also refers to his problems for which there seems no way out. But even after seeing that _N_o _W_a_y _O_u_t was based on a novel called _T_h_e _B_i_g _C_l_o_c_k. It didn't even occur to me that this film was a remake of _T_h_e _B_i_g _C_l_o_c_k, so cleverly was the story reframed. Tom Farrell, a Naval Intelligence officer, falls in love with Susan Atwell (played by Sean Young) after meeting her at a Washington Inaugural Ball. After a tour of duty, he is called back to Washington to work for Secretary of Defense David Brice (played by Gene Hackman). This gives him an opportunity to be with Susan, who happens to be seeing Brice also. This love triangle leads to a situation that has national security implications. _N_o _W_a_y _O_u_t is solid thriller material. It was in its original telling, and this re-telling is every bit as suspenseful. The moving of the story from the Time-Life Building (_T_h_e _B_i_g _C_l_o_c_k did not call it that, but clearly that was what it was) to the Pentagon helps to disguise the original material but did not damage it. Costner has the greatest empathy value has has had in a film. Sean Young, who is usually just attractive, comes off as extremely erotic under George Donaldson's direction. Particularly surprising is that George Dzundza, who usually plays creeps (particularly the neo-Nazi leader in _S_k_o_k_i_e), carries off a sympathetic and likeable characterization. _N_o _W_a_y _O_u_t is uniformly a solid thriller, well-produced up to, but not including, the final twist in a twisty plot. Rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. THE FOURTH PROTOCOL A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Pierce Brosnan is a Soviet agent and Michael Caine is a British agent trying to track him down. This is a good "spy-procedure" sort of thriller that is just a bit too much like Frederick Forsyth's previous _D_a_y _o_f _t_h_e _J_a_c_k_a_l. Frederick Forsyth writes good suspense stories about political intrigue. He is best known for _T_h_e _D_a_y _o_f _t_h_e _J_a_c_k_a_l and _T_h_e _O_d_e_s_s_a _F_i_l_e. They are clearly written and tense thrillers, though if the truth be known, there is a certain sameness about them. While there are major consequences to what is happening, his stories really come down to a sort of chessgame between two men, one good and one evil. Nobody else is really important in the story. Just about everyone else is a prop. _T_h_e _F_o_u_r_t_h _P_r_o_t_o_c_o_l is a new film based on a novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth. _T_h_e _D_a_y _o_f _t_h_e _J_a_c_k_a_l dealt with a lone assassin in the pay of political extremists whose mission is to kill Charles DeGaulle. We see how the assassin works and thinks. We also see a police investigator, one who is not altogether popular with his superiors, and we see how he is able to discover an amazing amount of information about the assassin. And that information, together with a modicum of dumb luck, are sufficient to avert the assassination. With minor substitutions, we have the same story here. Instead of a political extremist group, we have a rogue general in Soviet intelligence. The general sends a sort of assassin, Petrofsky (played by Pierce Brosnan), to head up an operation in Britain. Trying to uncover the operation is John Preston, played by an aging Michael Caine. Preston takes his orders these days from an officious supervisor played by Julian Glover, who seems to make a career of playing unlikeable officials (including Breen in _F_i_v_e _M_i_l_l_i_o_n _y_e_a_r_s _t_o _E_a_r_t_h). Only this time, the assassin's mission is not to kill a single man. _T_h_e _F_o_u_r_t_h _P_r_o_t_o_c_o_l is solidly acted with Caine a likeable if independent-minded agent. Pierce Brosnan is not very good at showing emotion, but as emotionless killers he is just fine. There are a host of other familiar faces including, I think (and someone can correct me if I am wrong), the same actor who plays Max Headroom, in this film playing an obnoxious American. As suspense films go, _T_h_e _F_o_u_r_t_h _P_r_o_t_o_c_o_l is not the most cerebral, but it is several cuts about American suspense films like _B_e_v_e_r_l_y _H_i_l_l_s _C_o_p. Give it a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. THE BIG EASY A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Drug gang wars and police corruption in New Orleans are the background for this story of two people who are adversaries in public and lovers in private. The film is a good advertisement for the easy lifestyle of New Orleans. Things are happening pretty fast in The Big Easy--that's the town you and I know as New Orleans. The Big Easy is called that because things go pretty slow and easy down there, at least most of the time. But just now the police are investigating a gang war that is anything but easy. Some hoods--"wise guys," they're called--are getting killed in some pretty nasty ways. The police, including Remy McSwain (played by Dennis Quaid), are investigating. But the police are themselves being investigated. The Assistant District Attorney, Anne Osborne (played by Ellen Barkin), is in there looking for signs of police corruption. Now Remy comes from a family of policeman and they are all good guys, but, like other policemen, they do take advantage of certain privileges they get for being policemen. And that's the kind of thing that Osborne want to know more about. _T_h_e _B_i_g _E_a_s_y has three stars: Quaid, Barkin, and New Orleans. _A_n_g_e_l _H_e_a_r_t made New Orleans seem a little sinister; _T_h_e _B_i_g _E_a_s_y shows you a friendlier, happier New Orleans. With all the slap-happy fun down at the Police Department, you wonder how anyone ever gets anything done fighting crime. Everyone is just a good old boy who loves Cajun music, 'gators, and Tabasco Sauce. It is a charming picture whether or not it is true. Quiad is likable as McSwain, though his Cajun accent seems a little forced and varies in intensity from scene to scene. The odd thing is that the plot seems fresh and original until the last ten minutes or so. Then suddenly things start looking like just about every other police film of the last five years. And that is a shame, since that last impression is the one that stays with you. _T_h_e _B_i_g _E_a_s_y is good as a travelogue and at least passable as a police story and as an object lesson in honesty. Rate the film a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. Conspiracy '87 Con report by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1987 Evelyn C. Leeper Part 2 Panel: Tomorrow Belongs to the Illiterate Saturday, 5pm Kim Stanley Robinson, William Gibson, James Patrick Kelly The subtitle to this panel was "wired-up cyberspace or after the holocaust?" but the topic was so vague as to make the panel almost incoherent. As if to deny a decline in literacy, Gibson spent the entire time writing. Unfortunately, what he was writing was his name on dozens of autograph sheets for insertion in an anthology, and this meant he wasn't paying a lot of attention to, or participating in, the panel at hand. Robinson and Kelly tried to take up the slack, but they presented mostly disconnected facts and observations. For example, the United Nations figures show that the younger a population, the more literate it is, and claim a literacy rate of 99.5% in the United States. All the first indicates is that no government wants to admit that they are doing a _w_o_r_s_e job of spreading literacy than their predecessors. I think the second is overly optimistic, even though in absolute figures it means about a million Americans are illiterate. Whether computers would lead to a post-literate society was brought up and the panelists countered by observing that the big push in computers today was toward desk-top publishing--more books rather than fewer. Someone brought up the ideas of "historical literacy" or "scientific literacy," but Robinson felt that was changing the definition of the word "literacy" from what the panel was there to discuss. This seemed like a petty distinction since the panel hadn't been so focused or directed up to this point that a slight change in topic would have hurt. The issue of "easy" versus "difficult" authors arose. While authors who write in "workmanlike Campbellian prose" are usually considered easy to read, the concepts they describe ("The door dilated." "Trantor was a planet covered by city.") are not within people's everyday experiences and are often difficult for the new science fiction reader to understand. Who is the audience science fiction writers are aiming for? Is it 14-year-old boys? Or is the graying of the science fiction readership mentioned in another panel the case? Are the young becoming "functional-only" literate? Interesting questions, to which the panel provided no answers and (unfortunately) not much insight. Conspiracy September 14, 1987 Page 2 Masquerade The Masquerade was scheduled from 6pm to 10pm, We had planned to see a film and eat at 8pm, but decided to eat at 6pm and then catch the second half of the Masquerade. However, the Masquerade ran until only about 7:30pm, meaning that by the time we finished eating we had missed it. I guess most non-British fans didn't bother to try to bring costumes and British costuming fandom is much more limited than costuming fandom in the United States. One woman told us that in her town she had to send away for silver sequins, for example, because they just weren't available anywhere near her. Only in the United States do you have 6-hour masquerades. Film: _D_e_a_t_h _L_i_n_e Saturday, 11pm At 11pm, we went to the Odeon to see _D_e_a_t_h _L_i_n_e (a.k.a. _R_a_w _M_e_a_t). Conspiracy had arranged to use a first-run cinema for its 35mm film program in the morning and late at night. The theatre (actually one screen of a multi-screen cinema) is stepped so that you can easily see the screen over the heads of the people in front of you. Unfortunately, the condition of this film was not up to theatrical standards, with scratchiness and bits missing throughout. (I heard that other films were in much better condition.) The film itself was unusual in that the interesting part was the non-fantasy part. As soon as they switched scenes to the main premise it got very dull. The premise is that in the 1890s there was a cave-in at a new station and line being constructed at Russell Square and several Irish labourers (men and women) were supposedly killed. The construction company went bankrupt and couldn't afford to dig out the bodies. As you probably guessed, the labourers didn't die but survived and reproduced, and their descendents are replenishing their food supply from the platform at Russell Square--and not from the candy machines either. That was the dull part. The good part was Donald Pleasence as a quirky, crabby police inspector. Christopher Lee had a minuscule part (less than five minutes on screen) and was undoubtedly there to provide a big "name" in the credits. Panel: Rockets and Rayguns (What Has the Space Race Achieved?) Sunday, 11am Robert Forward, Charles Sheffield, David Brin The first half of this was devoted to setting up a satellite link to Sri Lanka to present Arthur C. Clarke with the SFWA Grand Master Award. The connection was not very good and apparently it was the local connections rather than the satellite causing most of the problems. The transmission delay (the time for the signal to go from Britain to the satellite and then to Sri Lanka) was irritating and Clarke observed we Conspiracy September 14, 1987 Page 3 may be the last generation to talk to each other without such a delay as a normal thing. Clarke said that the only time he thinks about how he is able to sit in Sri Lanka and talk to someone in London is when it doesn't work. He expressed regret that he couldn't make the convention but said he would if it were held in Sri Lanka, at which point someone called out "Sri Lanka in 2001!" which is sure to be a button soon. The panel mentioned that Brin was a Californian living in London, Sheffield from Washington DC but now living in Yorkshire, Forward a Canadian living in Scotland, and Clarke an Englishman living in Sri Lanka, indicating the international nature and planet-wide perspective that science fiction has. In fact, Brin claims that the most important event of the space age was the pictures of the entire Earth sent back by Apollo 8, which took the word "planet" from the science fiction community and gave it to the world. Forward, who had another talk on anti-matter, claimed that in 20-30 years we would have anti-matter propulsion at a cost of $10M per milligram of fuel. If that sounded high, he said, consider that a grain of salt is about 10 milligrams (roughly) and, if it were anti-matter, could take us to Mars in 3 or 4 months. Brin had said that we were engaged in the "other space race," that of beating the decline in resources occurring on Earth. This, by the way, is a concept Stapledon enlarged upon in _L_a_s_t _a_n_d _F_i_r_s_t _M_e_n. Sheffield responded to this by calling it "temporal chauvinism"--that every generation has seen itself as the peak, the culmination of humanity's striving. All three conceded, however, that there was some truth in Parkinson's Third Law: Delay is the deadliest form of denial. Regarding the United States program, Sheffield said "the gargoyles are now running the cathedral," and that the reson robotic probes are popular with the bureaucracy is that piloted missions imply both greater risk and greater publicity. The latter would be okay, but not the former. NASA is caught in the bind of wanting to capture the public's imagination and attention without taking risks. And, as they say, "No guts, no glory." Once again, the old standby of the United States and the U.S.S.R. as the hare and the tortoise was trotted out. Equally predictably, it was said that the West lacks not only continuous commitment to space, but the ability even to have such a commitment. One of the panelists (I forget which one) said that there is a saying: "You don't Pearl Harbor America." The Soviets Pearl-Harbored us in 1957 and again in 1961, but they've learned their lesson and now everything they do is "just an incremental step." The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, they say.... At the end, the discussion degenerated into a pro and con SDI argument and I left early. In reference to the title, though, Sheffield summed up the way to look at it. "The space race," he said, "is the Conspiracy September 14, 1987 Page 4 human race." TV Show: _C_o_l_o_n_e_l _M_a_r_c_h _I_n_v_e_s_t_i_g_a_t_e_s Sunday, 12 noon _C_o_l_o_n_e_l _M_a_r_c_h _I_n_v_e_s_t_i_g_a_t_e_s was a British television series starring Boris Karloff as Colonel March of Scotland Yard. This episode was entitled "The Missing Link" and concerned the theft of the skull of "Damascus man," or the missing link, from a museum in London. (For the reader untrained in archaeology I will point out that no such skull actually exists.) The show's only connection to science fiction was that Karloff starred in it, and it was a pretty typical show of the time--nothing special. TV Show: _T_h_e _A_d_v_e_n_t_u_r_e_s _o_f _D_r. _F_u _M_a_n_c_h_u Sunday, 1:30pm They were supposed to show _A_d_a_m _A_d_a_m_a_n_t _L_i_v_e_s before this but they had some problems and eventually showed some other television show instead. That ran late, so I saw some of it. It used masks and appliances not unlike some of the effects in the "Star Wars" movies, particularly in _R_e_t_u_r_n _o_f _t_h_e _J_e_d_i. I suppose it's very similar to the way the Muppets are done. I'm surprised it hasn't been picked up by American television. I wonder what it was. _T_h_e _A_d_v_e_n_t_u_r_e_s _o_f _D_r. _F_u _M_a_n_c_h_u (maybe they felt calling him "Dr." would help counteract some of the racism?) was another old television show, but American. How Fu Manchu and Nayland Smith ended up in Los Angeles is not clear. This episode, "The Counterfeiters of Dr. Fu Manchu," has Fu Manchu trying to extort some atomic power plant plans from the United States government by threatening to flood the country with perfectly counterfeited money. A kidnapped chemist manages to send his wife word as to where he is being held (even though he was blindfolded when he was taken there) through a code that he used during the war to let her know where he was. Somehow this breaking of wartime secrecy and security doesn't seem to bother anyone. Guest of Honor Film Show & Interview: Ray Harryhausen Sunday, 3pm This program item consisted of 50 minutes of film clips from Harryhausen's movies, followed by an interview of Harryhausen conducted by John Brosnan and a question-and-answer period. In response to one of Brosnan's questions, Harryhausen said the most difficult sequence to film was the skeleton sequence for _J_a_s_o_n _a_n_d _t_h_e _A_r_g_o_n_a_u_t_s. One trend he discussed was the growing cost of making films--_B_e_a_s_t _f_r_o_m _2_0,_0_0_0 _F_a_t_h_o_m_s cost $200,000, while _C_l_a_s_h _o_f _t_h_e _T_i_t_a_n_s cost $11,000,000. And while it was true the octopus in _I_t _C_a_m_e _f_r_o_m _B_e_n_e_a_t_h _t_h_e _S_e_a had fewer than eight legs for budgetary reasons, it had six rather than the five that most people have heard about. Harryhausen also said that they never were able to get permission to film on the Golden Gate Bridge Conspiracy September 14, 1987 Page 5 because the officials didn't want to alarm the public with the thought that a giant octopus could destroy the bridge. Harryhausen described how shots containing both modelwork and human actors were done. The human actor was timed and choreographed to precisely match the modelwork. For the lassoing in _V_a_l_l_e_y _i_n _G_w_a_n_g_i, a jeep with a pole was used. The actor lassoed the pole and the jeep simulated the pulling of the dinosaur. Later the jeep and pole were matted out and the dinosaur added. Harryhausen also talked about the problems of multiple film crews at popular locations. While filming one of the Sinbad movies, for example, a Spanish galleon from the filming of _T_h_e _A_r_m_a_d_a drifted across the area they were filming. Harryhausen disliked both the new King Kong films ("They're ruining the good name of Kong.") and colorization. For the original _K_i_n_g _K_o_n_g, he say O'Brien used Dore's engravings as a guide toward how to get depth, with differing levels of light for foreground, midground, and background. All this would be lost with colorization. Mark asked how he determined how Pegasus would land. Harryhausen said that with the wings over the shoulders the lift was all in front, so the hind legs had to land first, but that he did test several different landings to see what looked most realistic. He mentioned an Italian Hercules film with winged horses having only three-foot wings as the sort of ludicrousness that he tried to avoid. Though after _C_l_a_s_h _o_f _t_h_e _T_i_t_a_n_s there were some plans to film _F_o_r_c_e _o_f _t_h_e _T_r_o_j_a_n_s about Aeneas and the founding of Rome, Harryhausen seems to have decided to retire from movies and now works on bronze sculptures of figures from his films. Hugo Awards Sunday, 8pm We ate dinner and then went to queue up for the Hugo Awards ceremony. First we got told to queue at one spot, then we got moved to another. We couldn't sit in the main arena, which was reserved for nominees, pros, etc., but had to sit in the balcony. This in spite of the fact that the seats in the main arena were half-empty. In addition, the first seats that we took, on the side, had their view of the screen blocked by large speakers. So we moved to center seats to get a better view. We had hoped that they would show clips from the dramatic presentations, but they just showed slides of the posters. Well, on to the awards: Best Novel: _S_p_e_a_k_e_r _f_o_r _t_h_e _D_e_a_d, Orson Scott Card Best Novella: "Gilgamesh in the Outback," Robert Silverberg Best Novelette: "Permafrost," Roger Zelazny Best Short Story: "Tangents," Greg Bear Conspiracy September 14, 1987 Page 6 Best Non-Fiction: _T_r_i_l_l_i_o_n _Y_e_a_r _S_p_r_e_e, Brian Aldiss with David Wingrove Best Semi-Prozine: _L_o_c_u_s Best Editor: Terry Carr Best Dramatic Presentation: _A_l_i_e_n_s Best Pro Artist: Jim Burns Best Fanzine: _A_n_s_i_b_l_e Best Fan Writer: Dave Langford Best Fan Artist: Brad Foster John W. Campbell Award: Karen Joy Fowler Seiun ("Japanese Hugo") for Best Novel in Translation: _N_e_u_r_o_m_a_n_c_e_r, William Gibson Seiun for Best Short Story in Translation: "Press Enter," John Varley First Fandom Award: Bea Mahaffey Big Heart Award: Wiktor Bukato from Poland and Tetsu Yano and Takumi Shibano from Japan shared this award. I couldn't understand their names and the newsletter listing the awards didn't think that these last four awards were worth listing, but luckily Mike Glyer listed them in _F_i_l_e _7_7_0. They also re-awarded Arthur C. Clarke his SFWA Grand Master Award, without satellite link this time. Both times it was accepted by his brother Fred, who looks just like him. Fireworks Sunday, 10pm The awards were over by 9:30pm, giving us plenty of time for the fireworks display on the beach. The British have more noise-makers in their displays, while almost all of the American displays is visual. Also, because we were so close, they could do a lot more low-level and ground-level stuff. There was one effect like a giant white veil or curtain which I had never seen before. It would have been perfect except that standing in the breeze after sweating in the Hugo Awards put the final touches on my cold which decided to hit in full force. So afterward, I went back to the room and talked with Chuck, Dave, Kate, and Cynthia. Eventually Dave and Mark went to see _S_t_a_t_i_c and everyone else left so I caught up on my log and went to sleep. (End of Part 2)