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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 05/11/90 -- Vol. 8, No. 45
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
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.
05/12 Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: Joe De Vito (artist
with a slide show of his work) (changed from previous guest)
(phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday)
05/19 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: Saul Jaffe (editor of
SF-LOVERS DIGEST (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. I got to thinking recently about why it was that I have this
lifelong relationship with sports. Sports and I hate each other
with a passion. Well, I guess it started when I was a little
sprout and had only a mild distaste for sports. This was before I
knew I was a "natural." Yes, there are people who are born
"naturals." Like in the film _T_h_e _N_a_t_u_r_a_l where Roy Hobbs was born
a natural pitcher but it took his father to see it. That was how
it happened with me. I am a natural couch potato and it took my
father to see it. My mother, on the other hand, decided I could
never be popular if I did not know how to pitch a ball. (As an
aside, I knew even then my game would be humor. Mom should have
been able to spot it too, but she didn't always see the humor in my
jokes. Like the time when I was six or seven I asked her to butter
a roll for me and she responded, "Put the butter on yourself" so I
put the butter on myself by spreading it down the front of my
THE MT VOID Page 2
shirt. She didn't catch the humor there. I caught it--oh boy, did
I catch it!)
Anyway, my mother figured I would be a social pariah if I could not
toss and catch a ball. So one day my father, who should have known
better, took me to a local park and tried to teach me normal ball
skills. I don't think my father is used to spectacular failure. I
think I had important issues about dinosaurs on my mind that day.
Either that or Huckleberry Hound. And not being able to catch a
ball I could laugh off with not only grace but with enough humor
that I ended with a greater sense of accomplishment when I missed
the ball than when I caught it. I think my mutual consent we all
decided to wait for the school system to teach me these all-
important ball skills.
Nonetheless, my mother gave me a lot of sports-related gifts on
gift-giving occasions. They were things like a spring-loaded
basketball games, a pair of roller skates, and a catcher's mitt.
The mitt was different from the game and the skates because it
rotted rather than rusting. It is possible I got some gifts that
weren't practical--like clothing--or with some intended point--like
sports gifts or educational gifts. But gifts that don't fall into
these two categories don't come readily to mind. Is it any wonder
I liked the educational gifts best? Maybe that was her intention
all long.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzx!leeper
All political parties die at last of swallowing their
own lies.
-- John Arbuthnot
WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz
Berkley, 1988 (1987c), ISBN 0-425-10746-9, $4.95
LIGHTNING by Dean R. Koontz
Berkley, 1989 (1988c), ISBN 0-425-11580-1, $4.95.
TWILIGHT EYES by Dean R. Koontz
Berkley, 1987, ISBN 0-425-10065-0, $4.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
One of the responsibilities of a reviewer is to not ruin the
possible reading enjoyment of a novel by revealing too much of the plot
in the review. This puts the reviewer at a particular disadvantage in
reviewing novels by Dean R. Koontz. Most books you buy because you know
what they are about and want to know more. Koontz's writing and his
publisher's packaging are such as not to let on what the book is about.
The cover blurbs are intended to be uninformative and, in fact, the big
surprise of most Koontz novels is the explanation of what is going on.
Hence to tell the reader anything useful about what the plot is actually
about is to spoil the surprise. (For this reason plot discussion will
be held to the end of this review and will be flagged with a spoiler
warning.) Koontz writes science fiction novels with horror conventions
and they get packaged as horror. Any real horror he writes apparently
he does under a pen name.
What are the horror conventions? Well, those are conventions
pioneered by Richard Matheson and refined by Stephen King. Like King's
and Matheson's, Koontz's stories are not set in a far-flung future but
in the present or the recent past. He puts in recognizable details--
even brand names--to make the world he writes about one in which the
reader feels at home, at least at first. His main characters are
ordinary sorts of people who find themselves menaced by something. In
the narrow sampling of three of his recent novels I have read and from
conversations with other people, the menace is usually something super-
scientific that has gotten out of hand. While it is not clear that
description precisely fits _L_i_g_h_t_n_i_n_g it is close and it certainly is
true of _W_a_t_c_h_e_r_s and _T_w_i_l_i_g_h_t _E_y_e_s. His writing these days is very
formulaic, albeit enjoyable. His novels are much thicker than the have
to be for the story he is telling, but he has a very lucid writing style
that makes his books go very quickly and reading one is not much
different from sitting down and watching a horror film.
Koontz seems to be very much the popular successor to Stephen King.
Horror is read pretty much by two sorts of readers. There are the inner
circle who attend horror conventions (much like science fiction
conventions) and look at horror as a real literary form. Then there are
the light readers, many of whom find horror novels being sold in grocery
and drug stores and who read it as a momentary diversion much as they
would watch television. There are far more of the latter. For a while
both sorts of reader were fans of Stephen King and there was a feeling
Koontz May 11, 1990 Page 2
of unity among horror readers. King is, however, in decline, and the
two groups are really separating again. The inner circle are moving on
to writers such as Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell. Most of the light
readers do not want anything so intense as Barker writes. Koontz is
certainly one of, if not _t_h_e, most popular writers among the light
readers.
The horror market has made a sort of second career for Koontz who
has been writing for longer than Clive Barker, even longer than Stephen
King. Koontz, who was born in 1945, had science fiction novels
published back in the 1960s. He was considered sort of a second-rank
science fiction novelist, though one of his novel, _D_e_m_o_n _S_e_e_d, was
adapted into a film with Julie Christie. At least one horror writer,
less successful, has said on a panel that Koontz deserves his current
popularity and came by it "the right way: busting his tail for years."
At this point I will go into the plot of the three novels.
SPOILERS FOLLOW.
_W_a_t_c_h_e_r_s: This is Koontz's most popular novel from the straw poll
I have taken. And it is mostly for the introduction of his most likable
character, a dog of human intelligence, sort of like Lassie and
endearing for just the same reasons. Einstein is not the main character
but he certainly is the reason for the book's success. Outwardly
Einstein looks like any dog, but he is the result of government
experiments to increase the intelligence of animals and use them on the
battlefield. Unfortunately, one of their other experiments got free at
the same time and it hates all humans but even more hates Einstein--why
is never clearly explained. Travis Carnell adopts the apparent stray
dog and once he wins Einstein's trust, the dog begins communicating with
him about the danger he is in, because by adopting Einstein, Travis has
made himself the target both of unscrupulous government agents and of a
rampaging monster. Every Koontz seems to have a boy-meets-girl (or vice
versa) plot but in this one, one has more affection for the boy and girl
than in most. Perhaps the reader still feels sappy over the presence of
the dog.
_L_i_g_h_t_n_i_n_g: This is really a story about how a woman reacts to
having a time-traveling guardian. Laura Shane has been protected from
many of life's most unpleasant moments by a sort of guardian who seems
to keep showing up in the nick of time to save her. The guardian can
see nasty things that are going to happen to her and prevent them before
they happen. There are also time travelers with less benevolent plans
for her. This would have been a fairly pat story, but is much improved
as a result of the nature of the society these time travelers are coming
from. I was fully expecting a nice plot twist at the end, much of the
groundwork for which had already been set, and was disappointed when it
did not arrive. Still, a pleasant novel with more adventure than
horror.
Koontz May 11, 1990 Page 3
_T_w_i_l_i_g_h_t _E_y_e_s: We start out in the mind of a killer who is the
only one who can see that some of the people around him are not people
at all but what he calls "goblins" in human disguise. Nobody else is
privileged to have the perception to see goblins but our killer knows
them on sight, he claims. Well, as is not a very big surprise, the
goblins are real and they are shape-changers. They are not, however,
supernatural, but the invention of a pre-human civilization who used
them as a sort of weapon. They have their own mission that they are
carrying out. Our main character joins a carnival to hide from the
police who for some reason think the goblins he has killed are real
humans. The story is about his war with the goblins and his attack on a
goblin stronghold.
These are all nice light readable entertainment, not bad choices
for upcoming beach reading.
=================================================
THOSE WHO HUNT THE NIGHT by Barbara Hambly
Del Rey, 1989 (1988c), ISBN 0-345-36132-6, $4.50.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
This was billed as somehow related to Sherlock Holmes, so of course
I had to read it. Other than being a mystery set in Victorian (or
possibly Edwardian--the blurb bills it as "the period of Sherlock
Holmes") London, it has little connection. It is all told from the main
detective's point of view; his "assistant" (in this case his wife) is
not his biographer. As a vampire novel, it makes a pleasant enough
diversion, but Harry Turtledove's "Gentlemen of the Shade," with
vampires stalking Jack the Ripper, who is one of their own, makes this
look thin-blooded (if you'll permit the pun) by comparison. If you're
looking for a book to take to the beach or to read on the plane, this is
acceptable, but I can't really recommend it beyond that.
FULL SPECTRUM 2 edited by Lou Aronica,
Shawna McCarthy, Amy Stout, and Patrick LoBrutto
Bantam Spectra, 1990, ISBN 0-553-28530-0, $4.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
_F_u_l_l _S_p_e_c_t_r_u_m was the most talked-about anthology of 1988,
containing one Nebula winner and three Hugo nominees. Even so, I was
not entirely happy with it, and volume 2 seems to be a major step down
from that, even though it does contain two Hugo nominees, David Brin's
"The Giving Plague" and Michael Swanwick's "The Edge of the World."
(One definite improvement is the absence of the overly gushy
introductions to the stories that marked the first volume.)
The problem is that most of the stories in _F_u_l_l _S_p_e_c_t_r_u_m _2 are not
much more than average stories. There is no "Fort Moxie Branch," no
"Voices of the Kill," no "Dead Men on TV." Most of the stories are
okay, but they are the sort of stories that fill in a magazine, not
those which are featured. David Ira Cleary's "All Our Sins Forgotten"
and Karen Haber's "A Plague of Strangers," for example, strike me as
very typical _A_n_a_l_o_g stories. (The placement of Brin's "The Giving
Plague" immediately following "A Plague of Strangers" makes me wonder
who decided the order of the stories; these are two that I would never
have put adjacent to each other.) Robert Sampson's "A Plethora of
Angels" is cute, but nothing special. "Shiva" by James Killus starts
out promising, but cheats at the end.
There are some above-average stories. I liked Steven Spruill's
"Silver" even though I don't believe the underlying mythology, which in
this case means a double suspension of disbelief. (Read it and see what
I mean.) "As a Still Small Voice" by Marcos Donnelly is an unusual
study in psychology, but again poorly juxtaposed with the story
preceding it. (Perhaps some convention panel can discuss how editors
decide what order to place stories in in an anthology. I think 20-sided
dice may be involved....) Greg Bear's "Sleepside Story" falls into the
same genre as Mark Helprin's _W_i_n_t_e_r'_s _T_a_l_e and Viido Polikarpus and
Tappan King's _D_o_w_n _T_o_w_n--whatever that is (magical realism, perhaps?).
Swanwick's Hugo-nominated "The Edge of the World" has some interesting
images, but not much of a pay-off. The final story, "The Part of Us
That Loves" by Kim Stanley Robinson, provides a nice warm ending to the
book and a new twist to an old legend.
On the whole, I would rate this anthology above average, but only
slightly, and find it difficult to recommend this over a truly
innovative anthology such as Joe Lansdale and Pat LoBrutto's _R_a_z_o_r_e_d
_S_a_d_d_l_e_s or any number of other anthologies featuring new writers.
KALEIDOSCOPE by Harry Turtledove
Del Rey, 1990, ISBN 0-345-36477-5, $3.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
Though Turtledove's shorter works have been collected before, those
collections were specialized: one collection was _A _D_i_f_f_e_r_e_n_t _F_l_e_s_h, his
stories of an alternate world in which _H_o_m_o _e_r_e_c_t_u_s settled the Americas
rather than the ancestors of the Indians, and the other was _A_g_e_n_t _o_f
_B_y_z_a_n_t_i_u_m, a collection of his stories set in an alternate history in
which Byzantium never fell. But _K_a_l_e_i_d_o_s_c_o_p_e, as the name implies, is
not a single-themed collection, but more varied.
There is one "sim" story ("sim" being the name for the descendents
of _H_o_m_o _e_r_e_c_t_u_s found in the Americas when the Europeans arrived). But
though "And So to Bed" starts out promising--set in 1661, it is the
earliest of the sim stories I have read--it ends with a blatant ripoff
of a later historical occurrence in our world. "A Difficult
Undertaking" is another story set in another one of Turtledove's
existing mythoi, his Videssos cycle.
"Bluff" was based on an interesting premise, but I found it
difficult to suspend my disbelief (though others more trained in
psychology have praised it). "The Road Not Taken" suffers the same
problem--Turtledove has fascinating ideas, but can't always make the
reader accept them. Suspending one's disbelief in "The Weather's Fine"
is even harder: the idea that time is like weather and when you talk
about it being "in the upper sixties," you mean everyone is wearing love
beads is a bit hard to take. But if you can go with the flow, so to
speak, the story is worthwhile. But in this case, the premise is not
intended seriously, and I suppose it's no more ridiculous than what
happens to Alice after she falls down the rabbit hole and no one berates
that for being unbelievable. "Hindsight" is one of the better science
fiction stories in which science fiction and science fiction authors
play an important part that I have read, and considerably above Larry
Niven's much-touted "The Return of William Proxmire."
Turtledove hits every sub-genre. The horror stories include
"Crybaby" (which may hit a bit too close to home for some) and
"Gentlemen of the Shade," an excellent vampire story which has (for me
anyway) a nicely un-final ending. (Yes, I suppose this means there
could be a sequel, but it can also stand as is, hinting at what the
future may hold.) "The Castle of the Sparrowhawk" and "The Summer
Garden" are Turtledove's high fantasy efforts; I found the former had
interesting characterizations, but couldn't finish the latter. "The
Girl Who Took Lessons" is not science fiction, fantasy, or horror--well,
not exactly.
Kaleidoscope May 11, 1990 Page 2
Not all the stories are successful. "The Boring Beast," co-
authored with Kevin D. Sandes, was apparently written when they were
intoxicated. It shows. If you think that having a main character named
Condom the Trojan makes a story funny, you may like this one. I don't,
and I didn't. "The Last Article" is another alternate history, this
time postulating that Hitler's armies made it to India and were
controlling it when Gandhi tried to use his policy of non-violence
against them. It is, alas, very predictable.
Still, the hit rate is high: four very good ("The Weather's Fine,"
"Hindsight," "Gentlemen of the Shade," and "The Girl Who Took Lessons"),
five acceptable, and four disappointing. All in all, _K_a_l_e_i_d_o_s_c_o_p_e is a
good introduction to Harry Turtledove's wide range of talents.
"The Wheels of If" by L. Sprague de Camp
"The Pugnacious Peacemaker" by Harry Turtledove
Tor Double #20, 1990 ("The Wheels of If" copyright 1940, 1968),
ISBN 0-812-50202-7, $3.50.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
Tor has picked up the torch dropped by Ace in issuing "double
novels," actually closer to double novellas in most cases. Here each
half seems to be slightly over 30,000 words; the Hugo definition for a
novel requires 40,000. But this double is the first (to my knowledge)
in that the two halves are connected. Oh, Ace did its share of doubles
where the same author wrote both halves, but the two pieces were always
independent. Here the Turtledove is a sequel to the de Camp. For this
reason, Tor has decided _n_o_t to use the back-to-back, double-covered
format we have come to know (and as amateur librarians, to hate) and has
instead issued this as a normal book, with one story following the other
and a standard front and back cover. This at least saves the artist
from having the artwork on one cover splattered over by the UPC code,
though in order to fit both titles and authors on the front cover, the
artwork is reduced to a two-inch square. And the spine, though it has
the mirror-imaged Tor logo in the center, has both titles facing the
standard (U.S.) way, which is to say the reverse of the standard
(British) way. Interestingly, the Turtledove gets top billing, even
though it is the second half, probably because it is the new half. (On
the first page, by the way, Tor says that they will be doing more of
this sort of classic/sequel pairing with a non-"flip-flop" format.) And
now that you are totally bored with publishing minutiae, what about the
contents?
"The Wheels of If" is a classic, not just in the sub-genre of
alternate history, but in science fiction as a whole. And it has aged
surprisingly well, being as readable now as (I imagine) it was half a
century ago. (Has L. Sprague de Camp really been writing that long?!)
New York attorney Allister Park wakes up one day to find himself in
another New York, one in which he, his friends, and his old job don't
seem to exist. But not to worry, because the next day he's out of that
and into a New York in a world in which the Revolutionary War never
happened (or we lost it). After another few days of world-hopping, he
eventually finds himself permanently in New Belfast, the result of a
world in which the Synod of Whitby in 664 A.D. decided in favor of the
Celtic Christian Church rather than the Roman. And what's more, he's in
the body of a rabble-rousing bishop. Seeing how he manages, and finding
out how he got there occupy the rest of the novella.
In "The Pugnacious Peacemaker" Park is now a respected jurist and
hence is called in to solve a dispute between the Incas and the Moors in
South America. Having been to the area he is writing about, I can say
with some confidence that he portrays it for the most part extremely
Pugnacious Peacemaker May 4, 1990 Page 2
accurately, though I don't think there are any "steaming tropical ports"
on the South American coastline anywhere near where a train for Kuuskoo
(Cuzco) would depart from--that part of South America is particularly
arid and in fact it _n_e_v_e_r rains in Lima. But Turtledove captures
Kuuskoo perfectly--it was almost like being there again.
What is marvelous about this pairing is that neither story makes
the other one look bad by comparison, though the styles are quite
different. De Camp writes in a sort of 1940s wise-cracking Humphrey
Bogart style (well, I know what I mean even if you don't); Turtledove
writes with straightforward modern prose. De Camp and Turtledove also
have very different attitudes toward women in their stories. De Camp's
Park is a womanizer who definitely sees women as objects; Turtledove has
him maturing to someone who can fall in love (and with someone of a
different race and culture). (This is not intended as a negative
comment on De Camp--he wrote to the conventions of his time, and given
that Park ended up as a bishop, his interactions with women were at a
minimum anyway.)
If you are a fan of alternate histories, this is a must-buy. Even
if you already have "The Wheels of If," this double volume is a treat.
So treat yourself!
WIDE AWAKE AT 3:00 AM by Richard M. Coleman
Freeman, 1986, ISBN 0-7167-1796-4, $11.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Dr. Coleman, the author of this book, is a psychologist
specializing in sleep therapy. I believe I have seen listings of his
book sold commercially, but the copy I read was apparently acquired by a
friend free with a subscription to _S_c_i_e_n_t_i_f_i_c _A_m_e_r_i_c_a_n. In fact, that
is probably just the wrong audience for the book. While I probably
could not put together 1500 words on the subject of sleep, I found it
remarkable how much of the material in the book I already knew. I think
just about anybody with an interest in science will have heard enough
over the years on the subject of sleep that nothing much in the book
will seem like new knowledge. If anything, the book's real value is
that it brings together in one place where it can be referenced a lot of
diverse information on the subject of sleep that in the past most people
have heard only a piece at a time.
The book is divided into eight chapters. The first just sets the
stage by establishing that we have biological clocks with a natural
cycle synchronized to the 24-hour cycle of light and dark. Deprived of
any indication of what time of day it is, our natural cycle expands to
about 25 hours. Due to circumstances such as varied sleep times or
cross-time-zone travel, we can inadvertently shift our sleep cycle until
we no longer can sleep at the right times. The most reliable, if
somewhat extreme, form of therapy is to isolate the patient away from
any indication of the actual time and let the natural 25-hour cycle take
over until the hours of sleeping shift around the clock to coincide with
the convenient and desired times. The patient is then removed from the
controlled environment and deemed cured.
Coleman's third and fourth chapters deal with the problems caused
by (respectively) shift work and jet lag. I was particularly interested
in the latter due to my frequent vacations involving travel.
Unfortunately, the strategy I have found most effective is unlike
anything Coleman discusses. His suggestions involve going to your
destination days early to adapt to the time difference, staying on home
time, eating a diet high in protein for alertness, going to a 25-hour
schedule until you are synchronized, and using drugs. (What works for
me is the night before the plane flight I keep myself up all night.
This confuses my internal clock as well as fatiguing me enough so that I
sleep on the plane. When I land I try to spend some time outdoors. My
confused internal clock then resets itself by the sun. I am a little
drowsy the first evening but the next morning I am fully acclimated to
the time zone. Caveat: I have not tested this on long westbound
flights, but it does work _f_o_r _m_e on long eastbound flights. Returning
from these flights doesn't count--it is much easier to reset the
internal clock back to the original time than to set it to a different
time.)
Wide Awake at 3 AM May 5, 1990 Page 2
The fifth chapter summarizes what is known about the biological
reasons for the need to sleep. Unfortunately, it adds up to a big
question mark. Most people deprived of sleep go to pieces so it really
is a need, but different people require different amounts of sleep, and
in at least one case cited a man who has not slept in forty years.
Traumatized about sleep, this man has found himself incapable of sleep.
He does need periodic rest but never drops into sleep. He often feels
drained and his memory is failing but he does not suffer the classical
symptoms of sleep deprivation.
Chapter six is on the interpretation of dreams and topics such as
lucid dreaming. In lucid dreaming, the subject learns to recognize
consciously when he is dreaming and to control the dream to purported
psychological benefit. Chapter seven is about insomnia, which is split
into five categories. And his final chapter continues on to less common
sleep disorders such as sleep apnea and narcolepsy.
None of these subjects should be new to most readers of _S_c_i_e_n_t_i_f_i_c
_A_m_e_r_i_c_a_n and certainly none of the material is particularly startling,
but as an organization of the many things you have probably heard about
sleep over the years, it probably is a reasonable reference.