@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society Club Notice - 11/10/89 -- Vol. 8, No. 19 MEETINGS UPCOMING: Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are on Wednesdays at noon. LZ meetings are in LZ 2R-158. MT meetings are in the cafeteria. _D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C 11/22 LZ: THE ABYSS by Orson Scott Card (Underwater SF) _D_A_T_E _E_X_T_E_R_N_A_L _M_E_E_T_I_N_G_S/_C_O_N_V_E_N_T_I_O_N_S/_E_T_C. 11/11 Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: TBA (phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday) 11/11 NJSFS New Jersey Science Fiction Society: Esther Friesner (phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday) 11/19 Gaylaxians (Sunday) (phone 201-672-3044 for details) HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 834-1563 hocpa!jetzt LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell LZ 1B-306 576-6106 mtuxo!jrrt MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 957-5619 mtgzx!leeper HO Librarian: Tim Schroeder HO 3D-212 949-5866 homxb!tps LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 576-3346 lzfme!lfl MT Librarian: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 957-2070 mtgzy!ecl Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 957-2070 mtgzy!ecl All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted. 1. In my capacity as a poor man's philosopher, I have been giving some thought of late to how much of human behavior is really the result of a bunch of little guys getting together and selfishly deciding what they want, then sort of pushing their decision on people. No, I am not talking about city politics or state politics; I am talking about what is going on inside of people without their ever knowing it. You see, you were born infested with genes. Each cell of your body has them. And each of these babies is a mean, if not very bright, individual just struggling to survive. And they are selfish little monsters too. They don't care about anyone but themselves and any copies of themselves that are around. They don't even care about each other. And what is so nasty about them is when they reach a decision, they put the idea in _y_o_u_r head and make you think it was _y_o_u_r idea. It's like Obi- Wan saying, "These aren't the droids you're looking for." THE MT VOID Page 2 Now I know some of you are going to think I'm nuts. A gene doesn't vote and it cannot hypnotically gesture. Right? "What I do is my idea, and I never even think about my genes." Right? Well, do you go around thinking about oxygenating your blood? No, you just breathe. Every animal breathes and virtually no animal or human thinks of it in terms of oxygenating blood, but that is why they do it. These little monsters want to eat so they make you hungry. They decide they want to eat in the future so you go to work. Whenever you look at someone else they size up how many copies of them are likely to be in that other person. You look at your kids and they figure there are lots and lots of their copies in your kids, so they tell us families are nifty things for us to want. In _B_r_o_a_d_c_a_s_t _N_e_w_s Albert Brooks observes "Wouldn't this be a great world if poor and needy were a turn-on?" Why isn't it? Because each of these guys looks at the poor and needy and decides the genes in these people cannot support it in the manner to which it has become accustomed. When a bigot looks at someone of another race as a potential employee, the little jerks inside take a vote and say, "Uh-uh. Not many copies of us in him!" Someone who looks more like the bigot is more likely to get the job because there are probably more copies of the same genes in that candidate. Then the government comes along and says (sort of), "Tell your genes we will cut off the nutrient flow if you don't hire more equitably." The genes make a little face but grudgingly say, "Okay, so we can stay around to make more copies of ourselves, go ahead and hire the black." Our courting rituals are really these little monsters trying to find other genes that will co-operate well with them. Why do parents want to see their children married and having kids? Their genes are saying, "Our copies should make more copies." But, hey, make sure that they join with good genes that will be able to make still more copies of us and provide good nutrient flow." In general, what we find sexy is pretty well correlated to having genes that will co-operate well with our genes. Actually, considering a gene's urge to preserve its copies, it is a little surprising that it doesn't urge us towards incest but, at some level, the genes or perhaps something higher seems to know that this is not a good way to create copies of itself that can go on making copies. While we are on unpleasant subjects, I will mention in passing that it the mind too weak to overrule the urgings of these beaties that turns to rape. Why the genes urge some people to rape should be obvious at this point. These little beasties have a bigger fixation making copies than the sixth person in line for a Xerox machine. So ask yourself next time you feel like going out and cruising chicks whether it is really you who wants to do it or is some gene playing a Lamont Cranston on your mind? Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 957-5619 ...mtgzx!leeper THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Somebody took what would have been a poor re-telling of _P_h_a_n_t_o_m and proved it could be made much, much worse. Believe it or not, they threw in time travel and an immortal Freddy Krueger-esque killer. I thought I was a completist enough to want to see all versions of the semi-classic story, but this was a total and contemptible mess representing the producer's profound and cynical disrespect for his audience. Rating: -3. To date there have been four movie versions of _T_h_e _P_h_a_n_t_o_m _o_f _t_h_e _O_p_e_r_a. The title role has been played by Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, Herbet Lom, and Maximillian Schell. Now there have been four and a tenth. It is clear that somebody was serious about making a version of the semi-classic story and somebody else was not. Nominally Dwight Little is the director of the new film, though his name is pasted over somebody else's on the posters. So what we get is an exquisitely clumsy cross between a lackluster but traditional telling of the story and an episode of "Freddy's Nightmares." Christine Daae is an opera singer in modern-day Manhattan who finds an old piece of music by a forgotten composer who was also a serial killer. She decides to use it for an audition for an opera. During her audition she is coshed on the head by a sandbag and suddenly, with no apparent bewilderment, she is an opera singer from the chorus in 1884 London. The story that is then told is just barely recognizable as a version of _T_h_e _P_h_a_n_t_o_m _o_f _t_h_e _O_p_e_r_a. A great but unknown composer has made a pact with the Devil that if his music should become immortal he would sell his soul. The Devil adds his own little amendment by gouging pieces out of the composer's face. The Phantom can make himself almost normal, but only by sewing pieces of live flesh into his face--so much for the romance of the mask. The Phantom now lives under the opera house and teaches his Christine, mercilessly torture-killing anyone who gets in his way. He skins two people alive and beheads two others. Meanwhile Christine is bewildered as to why she is able to remember the words to sing to the Phantom's music--not remembering that she learned them in New York. Classic scenes such as the chandelier scene and the unmasking are dispensed with entirely--well, sort of. Later when the story returns to the present it turns more into a traditional supernatural molester story. I cannot imagine how this film turned into such an unholy mess. Only part of the mess can be explained by saying they had a gory version of the traditional story and well into the shooting they decided they wanted to turn it into a totally different film. That would explain the Phantom of the Opera November 4, 1989 Page 2 change of directors. It would also explain the credits "Screenplay by Duke Sandefur, Based on a screenplay by Gerry O'Hara." Somebody must have decided they could not sell Robert Englund as anything but a supernatural, unstoppable killer like his Freddy Krueger. The result is a sort of a _P_e_g_g_y _S_u_e _S_i_n_g_s _f_o_r _t_h_e _P_h_a_n_t_o_m _o_n _E_l_m _S_t_r_e_e_t that is a crude hoax that will disappoint Phantom fans, Freddy fans, and everybody in between. I would like to give this film a full -4 but for a little nice opera and a few scenes that were almost an okay adaptation of the story I will give it a -3 on the -4 to +4 scale.