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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 06/01/90 -- Vol. 8, No. 48

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

06/20 LZ: PRENTICE ALVIN by Orson Scott Card (Hugo Nominee)
07/11 LZ: HYPERION by Dan Simmons (Hugo Nominee)
08/01 LZ: A FIRE IN THE SUN by George Alec Effinger (Hugo Nominee)
08/22 LZ: RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA by Arthur C. Clarke
09/12 LZ: STAR MAKER by Olaf Stapledon (Formative Influences)

_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.

06/09 SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: picnic
(phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday)
06/16 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: Social/Dance
(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 mtunq!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 will continue with my memories of the early days of my
relationship with sports in the hopes that it will somehow be
therapeutic. After what I have said previously this next piece
will be no doubt a real jawdropper. From the very beginning in gym
class I excelled over every one of my classmates. In a class of
about 35 students, Mark Leeper was Number One in gym class! Our
first class and the gym teacher told us to put our arms up
horizontal and I was the only one who knew what horizontal meant!
My dominion and exalted position in the class lasted until the gym
teacher wanted us to kick a large rubber inflated ball tossed at
us. That was when I fell about 33 places in the ranking ladder.
In fact, I ranked higher than only Perry Kittridge, who looked like

THE MT VOID Page 2

the gumdrop who wished he could be a real boy but who didn't get
his wish.

However, as time went by my experiences in gym class became more
like everybody else's. Isn't everybody picked last every darn time
when teams are being chosen--even picked after Perry Kittridge, the
(almost) human gumdrop? (Hey, I don't feel bad about picking on
Kittridge. In addition to being fat and stupid, he was mean. His
father was a jeweler who spoiled him rotten. I remember the time I
lent him a pen to take a test and when I asked for it back in the
next class--gym class, in fact--he threw it across the gymnasium
floor. Then there was the time Kittridge and Stuart Eichenbaum got
into a fight. Eichenbaum was a Kittridge clone who may have
weighed a few pounds less and had maybe a couple more IQ points. I
wish I'd seen it. The gym teacher called it "two tons of fun" with
his usual gym teacher sensitivity.) These days I picture Kittridge
fat and divorced but making four times my salary working an hour
and a half a day running his daddy's jewelry store.

I suppose I was a little jealous of Kittridge because the refugee
from Candyland got picked before me on kickball teams. When he
came up to bat (kick?) the players from the outfield came into the
infield because it would have taken a special exemption from the
laws of physics for Kittridge to kick the ball more than six feet.
At least they didn't all come into the infield when it was my turn
to kick. They did things like line up at the water fountain.
They knew all they needed was one guy to pitch the ball and one to
catch it. (I hope you realize these are not happy memories I'm
giving you! Except for the "two tons of fun," that is.) Now I
wonder why anyone thinks gym class does people so much good.

2. The May 7 issue of MIS WEEK has an article on page 35 about the
new Futures Center in the Franklin Institute Science Museum in
Philadelphia. This 90,00-square-foot addition has eight new
permanent exhibits which use an interactive computerized
information system called Unisystem to tie them together via a
local area network.

Unisystem's goal is to tailor the exhibits to the sophistication
level of the visitor. The Museum's directors describe the Futures
Center as a "smart museum" far ahead of any other museum in the
world.

The eight exhibits, which focus on the 21st Century, are
FutureVision, FutureComputers, FutureSpace, FutureEarth,
FutureEnergy, FutureMaterials, FutureHealth, and the Future and
You. The FutureHealth exhibit, for example, has an imaging system
that lets you see how your face will (probably) age over the years.
The FutureComputers exhibit has technologies familiar to most
AT&T-ers--robotics, artificial intelligence, and computer-aided
design--yet the article claims they are presented in such a way as

THE MT VOID Page 3

to fascinate even the most knowledgeable.

Other exhibits show you how a microchip is made, let you design a
car with CAD software, pit you against a computer in a game of
tick-tac-toe (ho-hum), let you fly over a computerized model of
Philadelphia or see the "smart house" of the 21 Century, or try
using a robotic arm.

And of course there's always the rest of the Franklin Institute as
well. [-ecl]

Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzx!leeper

Think of the dull functioning of dogma, age after age.
How many milions have been led shunted along dogmatic
runways from the dark into the dark again... endless
billions, and at the gates, dogma, ignorance, vice,
cruelty, seize them and clamp this or that band upon
their brains.
-- Theodore Dreiser

Capsule review: A thousand-year-old Lapp legend is
the basis of this short, entertaining, occasionally
bloody children's film from Lapland that will be
entertaining for adults also. How often do you get
mystical legends in films from Lapland? Rating: high +1.

The plot has been done many times before, often but not usually as
well. But this time there is a good reason for the well-worn plot.
This time it is an adaptation of a millennium-old legend from Lapland.
In the Tenth Century the story was considerably newer.

Aigin, a teenager, returns from hunting one day to see his family's
camp overrun by marauding invaders, the Tchudes. His parents and his
young sister have been murdered. There are about eighteen of these
Tchudes, all dressed in black and armed to the teeth with crossbows: the
leader's crossbow is decorated with snarling fangs. There is no doubt
these are pretty nasty dudes. One slip and Aigin is running for his
life through the frozen landscape. He runs for help to a nearby village
but rather than help Aigin they seem more anxious to pack up and run
than to fight back. So Aigin decides he must fight the Tchudes himself.

The attraction of _P_a_t_h_f_i_n_d_e_r is not in the storyline, which would
be as easily fit to a post-Holocaust society and has been many times
from _R_o_a_d _W_a_r_r_i_o_r on. Where _P_a_t_h_f_i_n_d_e_r stands out is its depiction of
Tenth Century Lapp culture. We get little hints of Lapp mysticism and
culture. We learn superstitions, such as the belief that once you have
killed a bear your gaze is deadly for three days. The entire story is
framed in a mystical context in which each person has a totem reindeer
who appears at pivotal moments in a person's life.

This is basically a children's film with a little violence. That
is more acceptable for children's films in other cultures than it is in
ours. Still, it is a well-constructed and filmed children's story, and
one that adults would enjoy also. I would rate it a high +1. At 88
minutes it is a trifle short, but it is enjoyable.