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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 04/13/90 -- Vol. 8, No. 41
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
04/18 LZ: HOWLING MAD, by Peter David (The Lighter Side of Werewolves)
05/09 LZ: Incarnations of Immortality Series, by Piers Anthony
(Mythology as Science)
05/30 LZ: L. RON HUBBARD PRESENTS WRITERS OF THE FUTURE #5 (New authors)
_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.
04/21 NJSFS New Jersey Science Fiction Society: Josepha Sherman
(phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday)
05/12 Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: Jill Bauman
(agent for artist Walter Velez, with a show of his work)
(phone 201-933-2724 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. Of the next Lincroft meeting, Rob Mitchell writes:
What images spring to mind when you hear the word "werewolf?" Some
malevolent, supernatural beast immune to most harm, subject to
monthly cycles of bloodlust and humanity -- right? Of course,
because that's the stereotype of the werewolf legend, fueled by
dozens of Hollywood films, most of which are poor rip-offs of each
other.
Peter David knows the stereotype, and is as bored with the
traditions as he is fascinated by the man-wolf dichotomy. His
werewolf novel, HOWLING MAD, is a different sort of lycanthropy
THE MT VOID Page 2
story. Everyone knows what happens a man is bitten by a werewolf
-- every full moon the poor fellow turns into a wolf. But if a
*wolf* is bitten by a werewolf -- what happens during the full
moon?
Joshua is the human name for this new twist on the man-wolf legend.
Peter David does a convincing job of getting into the mindset of a
wolf who finds himself occasionally painfully distorted, pink,
almost hairless, and devoid of a sense of smell. When Joshua is
captured and brought to a New York zoo, an animal-rights activist
named Darlene crosses paths with him, and the story takes off. By
the time it's done, we've watched Joshua's struggle to cope with
his occasional humanity while seeking a way to return to his lupine
mate, Darlene's efforts to educate Joshua and help him return to
his mate in spite of her love for his human form, a vampire named
Duncan, and an encounter with the werewolf that started it all.
Yes, some aspects of the book are played for laughs. David's
penchant for combining straight-forward suspense with wry humor, as
seen before in KNIGHT LIFE (King Arthur in present-day New York),
is in excellent form. For example, when Duncan the vampire is sent
to the zoo to destroy Joshua's wolf form, he can't -- vampires
cannot enter private territory without being invited and wolves are
even more territorial than humans. Joshua's first night in New
York as a human, howling at Darlene's doorstep, is both ferociously
funny and disarmingly sweet. And when Joshua finally meets Duncan,
the latter's explanation for why vampires and werewolves exist had
me snickering for hours ("Are you partners in evil?" "No, real
estate... Never bilk a gypsy.").
If the book has a flaw, it's the almost-too-sudden end of the book,
with all plot threads resolved in a few pages. This problem may be
in part due to David's career as a well-known writer of comic
books. Nonetheless, I found HOWLING MAD to be a funny, engrossing,
and fascinating twist on a hackneyed character type. It won't win
Hugos, but it should win David some fans.
2. I have been talking recently about lawyers and it occurs to me
that the laws of thermodynamics can be applied to the economy. The
First Law is lawyers get a cut on every piece of food we buy, every
record, every screwdriver, everything. No purchase is free of
legal expense and that is where all money eventually.
Somebody was recently figuring the amount of heat given off by a
piece of electrical equipment. He just took the input power and
converted it to British Thermal Units. I asked if that was valid
since the electricity surely will be doing things other than just
heating the room. My friend told me that was irrelevant. It all
goes to heat; everything else it does, running the piece of
equipment, is just what it does _o_n _t_h_e _w_a_y _t_o _b_e_c_o_m_i_n_g _h_e_a_t. It
still all becomes heat.
THE MT VOID Page 3
So as you probably already know, that is much like our economy.
The government prints money and it all eventually goes to lawyers'
pockets. Our entire economy functions on what the money can be
made to do on its way to being stockpiled by lawyers. As an
example of this principle, I remember a few years ago there was a
telethon for Ethiopian famine relief and due to some mix-up a
lawyer was put in charge of the proceeds. The lawyer ended up
taking something like 95% of what was collected. This is true.
Now I would contend that putting a lawyer in charge of the money is
the economic equivalent of a short circuit. The money should have
gone to buy grain from some concern that had a legal staff and what
the legal staff wouldn't get would go to buy things such as cars
from companies with legal staffs, etc. It would eventually all be
dissipated in legal expenses, but a bunch of hungry Ethiopians
would have eaten in the meantime. By putting a lawyer in charge of
the money, it got short-circuited and went immediately to the
lawyer.
Now, I don't blame the lawyer. Every occupation has standards and
if he had handled all that money without stealing it, he would
essentially be letting down every other lawyer in the world. Don't
be misled by the fact that he gets a reprimand from the Bar
Association. They are just upset because had the money gone to
ease hunger, they would have all gotten a chunk. But deep down
each member really admires the crook and wants to figure how he can
pull a similar deal. There is no point in blaming lawyers any more
than you blame smallpox for being smallpox.
I think we should have Underwriters Laboratories extend their
expertise to charities. A UL-approved appliance has been checked
that it will not short-circuit; a UL-approved charity will be
checked so that at no point will the proceeds be put in the hands
of a lawyer. They just have to wait.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzx!leeper
The proper study of mankind is science, which also
means that the proper study of mankind is man.
-- I. I. Rabi
STRANGE INVASION by Michael Kandel
Bantam Spectra, 1989, ISBN 0-553-28146-1, $3.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
This short novel (very short--152 pages, and by my estimate just
over the 40,00-word minimum in the Hugo definition for novel) is just
the sort of thing one would hope a line such as the Bantam Spectra
Special Editions would publish. A Dicksian (_n_o_t Dickensian!) slide
through the story of how one schizophrenic saves the world from
invaders, _S_t_r_a_n_g_e _I_n_v_a_s_i_o_n whiplashes its "hero" all over the world to
fight off invaders who try to conquer the world through hedonism, ennui,
and any other psychological tool they can muster. Only the fact that
our hero is a psychological mess to begin with (he has a difficult time
separating the invaders from his ordinary visions of monsters crawling
up his wall) protects him. Kandel takes the standard plot of "Earth
threatened by invaders and saved by Everyman" and twists it fifteen
degrees to "Earth threatened by invaders and saved by total wacko." One
gets the impression that the hero was (and perhaps still is) only a step
away from being one of the ranters on the street corners or people who
talk to trash cans. In fact, he does spend a fair amount of time
talking to inanimate objects in _S_t_r_a_n_g_e _I_n_v_a_d_e_r_s--but then sometimes the
aliens do disguise themselves as trash cans.