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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 02/16/90 -- Vol. 8, No. 33
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
03/07 LZ: THRICE UPON A TIME by James Hogan (Affecting the Past)
_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.
02/21 Discussion of CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ at Old Bridge
Public Library (8PM)
03/10 Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: Terry Bisson
(author of WYRLDMAKER and WALKING MAN)
(phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday)
04/21 NJSFS New Jersey Science Fiction Society: Josepha Sherman
(phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday)
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-225A 949-5866 homxa!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. Like millions of Americans I occasionally have problems
sleeping. Think of it. Millions. That means that even as I sit
here writing at 4 in the morning, there are thousands of Americans
who also cannot sleep. If they only would let me know, I could
invite them over for a quick game of Trivial Pursuit or something.
If one of you out there cannot sleep, you might want to give me a
call. Uh, wait. On second thought this might not be such a good
idea either. You might call me some night when I really am asleep.
Anyway, my number is 555-1234.
Doctors tell us we all have occasional sleepless nights when the
tensions of the previous day creep up on us and then we have some
sort of tension-producing dream like we are supposed to put dead
THE MT VOID Page 2
weevils, one each, into the holes of a large piece of beaverboard.
Suddenly we find ourselves wide awake sating to ourselves, "Ah,
it's morning," and the we look at the clock and it is 3:43 AM.
Then we say to ourselves, "Uh-oh! Now what do I do?" In my case
there is an additional complication--I might as well use a medical
sounding word such as complication, since this is a medical
disorder. The complication is all the Tabasco sauce I put on my
food yesterday. It is igniting the fires down there and making the
beans and things I've eaten jump around. At least when this
happens I don't have to sit in bed asking myself, "Now what do I
do?" I clearly want to be in a different room than I currently am,
but the less said about that the better.
Anyway, so I finish that activity. Of course, that isn't the only
thing that sits me up. I remember the time at 12:30 AM that I
discovered that new 7-UP Gold has caffeine. Now I don't drink two
glasses of anything in the evening without knowing what's in it. I
am wide awake at 4 AM. Now what do I do? Well, as it happens I
have out of the library the very thing. It is a cassette called
"Easing into Sleep." And it bears a warning, "Because the tapes
help you to reach a deeply relaxed state (at this point I am
picturing a very laid-back California as being the most relaxed
state I know) they should not be used while doing anything that
requires a high degree of alertness, such as driving or operating
heavy machinery." Gee, didn't I see something like that on a
bottle of cold medicine once? This must be powerful stuff. That's
it--I cancel my plans to operate any steam shovels or bulldozers in
the next few minutes. "Some may find the use of this tape evokes
significant feelings of anxiety. Should this occur, stop listening
and seek professional guidance." Uh, what am I getting myself into
here? It is beginning to sound as if I should swallow the tape
with a glass of water.
What the author says on the body of the tape is that there are two
sides and when you get through the first side, go on to the second,
though he claims very few people have ever heard the end of a side.
(P.S.~That could be true. I tried playing the tape for Evelyn and
she couldn't stand it.)
The tape starts with monotonous harp music and a man with a soft
voice. Because this whole thing is starting to sound like my most
fleecy nightmare of heaven, let's call the narrator Mr.~Jordan.
The first thing Mr.~Jordan tries to do is to teach me how to
breathe. Now I've been breathing since before I was six years
old--in fact, just about as far back as I can remember. But before
I can get too mad at Mr.~Jordan and his harp music I tell myself
that I have been sleeping almost as long as I have been breathing
(though not all in one stretch) and maybe if I have forgotten how
to sleep I could also have forgotten how to breathe.
THE MT VOID Page 3
It seems the old snoozemeister has some odd ideas about breathing
based on what I judge to be a misunderstanding about sleeping or
biology or something. If you only take shallow breaths you fill up
your lower lungs. If you take deeper breaths you fill up your
middle lungs, and if you take _r_e_a_l_l_y deep breaths you fill up your
upper lungs and can feel it in your shoulders. I tend to take
small breaths so by now my lungs must look like gourds or pears or
some such.
Next Mr.~Jordan moves on to relaxing exercises. You have to
consciously tighten up each part of your body, starting with your
left foot. How Jordan thinks this will be relaxing I am not really
certain. I mean, sure, if I tighten up the foot and relax it, it
will feel less tense than when it was tightened, but so what? I
suspect Jordan was the man who invented the strategy of raising the
price of an item, then dropping it back to what it was and calling
it a sale.
Hey, I'd love to sit and listen more to how Jordan is putting me to
sleep, but it's now 7:30 and I have to get up or I'll be late for
work.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzx!leeper
Acceptance by government of a dissident press is
a measure of the maturity of a nation.
-- William O. Douglas
SUM VII by T. W. Hard
Harper & Row, 1979, ISBN 0-06-011702-8, $8.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Okay, I admit it. I have been intrigued by stories of ancient
Egyptian mysticism since I was a kid and saw the old mummy movies. Out
of curiosity I will probably read any original novel I can get my hands
on that is about resurrected mummies. Surprisingly, so far this policy
has disappointed me only twice. That is because I have found only two
such books and both have been stinkers. One was Anne Rice's _M_u_m_m_y, _o_r
_R_a_m_s_e_s _t_h_e _D_a_m_n_e_d of last year; the other is a novel in some ways very
similar to Rice's written ten years earlier, _S_u_m _V_I_I by T. W. Hard.
Bryan St. John is a medical student, well-versed in anatomy, taken
on an expedition to Egypt to ascertain what he can about the medical
history of any mummies the expedition might find. There they find the
mummy of a great Egyptian architect. But there are two funny things
about this particular mummy. He is carbon-dated to be many times as old
as the hieroglyphics would indicate and he seems almost fresh enough to
be brought back to life by medical science! Not the author is an
M.D. himself and, like many M.D.s, he assumes that everyone just loves
to hear medical details. I mean, how many novels treat the reader to
photographs labeled "Figure 3a, Anteriogram showing patient cerebral
vessels of Sum VII, Contrast injection R carotid, Dept. of Radiology,
University Medical Center"? We get the whole thing: a complete medical
rundown of the mummy as they are bringing him back to life. Michael
Crichton can throw in medical exhibits in such a way as to add
authenticity. Here they seem heavy-handed. And it is just a bit
pitiful to be menaced by a monster who any moment can go into
spontaneous thrombosis. (I wonder how closely the Frankenstein Monster
had to watch his diet, now that I think about it.)
Then there is the big surprise ending that became obvious only
about halfway through the book. It answers such questions as why this
mummy is different from all other mummies, and just how it was that a
primitive people like the ancient Egyptians had the engineering know-how
to build the pyramids. And it answers these burning questions in the
most trite and predictable manner possible. But I do not want to say
too much and ruin the ending for anyone who has never read a tabloid in
a grocery check-out line. You can read this book in one sitting, but
what a waste of a sitting. _S_u_m _V_I_I does not add up to much.