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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 7/6/90 -- Vol. 9, No. 1
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
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)
10/03 LZ: MICROMEGAS by Voltaire (Philosophy)
10/24 LZ: THE WORM OUROBOROS by E. R. Eddison (Classic Horror)
11/14 LZ: WAR WITH THE NEWTS by Karel Capek (Foreign 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.
07/13 HUGO BALLOT DEADLINE
07/14 SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: TBA
(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 3E-301 949-4488 hotld!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. Of the next Lincroft discussion book, Evelyn Leeper says:
_H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n has been compared to Chaucer's _C_a_n_t_e_r_b_u_r_y _T_a_l_e_s in that it
is a group of pilgrims telling stories. But there is a basic
difference. In _T_h_e _C_a_n_t_e_r_b_u_r_y _T_a_l_e_s, the stories are about other
people; in _H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n they are about the story-tellers themselves.
And in this area, Simmons does very well, managing to have each
story _s_o_u_n_d as if the teller were telling it: the story told by the
priest sounds the way a priest would talk, the story told by the
soldier sounds the way a soldier would talk, etc. In addition,
each story is interesting in itself. Each story is also almost
THE MT VOID Page 2
novel-length in itself; any one of them, with an ending added on,
could have been published as a stand-alone novel.
The basic story begins with seven pilgrims traveling to the "Time
Tombs," odd structures on the planet Hyperion which are traveling
backwards in time and somehow connected with the Shrike. The
Shrike is a monster that appears to be a humanoid made up of a
large collection of knives and razor blades, leading a friend of
mine to describe _H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n as "Freddy Krueger on Mars." (It turns
out in _T_h_e _F_a_l_l _o_f _H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n that there is a very good reason for
the Shrike and its presence, and that this is more than just a
desire to put in a slasher monster, but many people may be so
turned off by the concept in the first half that they will not read
_T_h_e _F_a_l_l _o_f _H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n.)
In order to figure out what the Shrike is and the secret of the
Time Tombs, the pilgrims tell their stories of how they are
connected with Hyperion. This is how we come to get "The Soldier's
Story," "The Philosopher's Story," "The Poet's Story," and so on.
Of interest to techies is Simmons's understanding of how electronic
bulletin boards work in his description of the All Thing, a
communications network joining all of the Hegemony (also page 199
of _H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n):
Days and nights would pass with me monitoring the
Senate on farcaster cable or tapped into the All
Thing. Someone once estimated that the All Thing
deals with about a hundred active pieces of Hegemony
legislation per day, and during my months spent
screwed into the sensorium I missed none of them.
My voice and name became well known on the debate
channels. No bill was too small, no issue too
simple or too complex for my input. The simple act
of voting every few minutes gave me a false sense of
having _a_c_c_o_m_p_l_i_s_h_e_d something. I finally gave up
the political obsession only after I realized that
accessing the All Thing regularly meant either
staying home or turning into a walking zombie. A
person constantly busy accessing on his implants
makes a pitiful sight in public and it didn't take
Helenda's decision to make me realize that if I
stayed home I would turn into an All Thing sponge
like so many millions of other slugs around the Web.
However, the reader should be warned that _H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n is really just
the first half of a novel, whose second half is _T_h_e _F_a_l_l _o_f
_H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n. Issuing this novel as two volumes is doubly annoying
because the second half is so long and drawn-out that I found
myself saying, "Why didn't Simmons just add another hundred or so
pages onto the first half and wrap the story up there?" But he
THE MT VOID Page 3
didn't, so if you plan on reading _H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n, you are warned.
2. Last issue I was talking about half-hour commercials that try to
make you think they are regularly scheduled prime-time shows. They
have the prime-time television show camouflage down so well they
even have commercials within the commercial. But they are
commercials for the same product. Why even bother? In the middle
of a commercial it's "Let's take a break for a commercial." And as
often as not the inner commercial just repeats scenes from the
outer commercial. It's as if you were sitting in the dentist's
chair and he stops drilling and says, "I'm sorry--you've got to go
to the dentist now."
One of the amazing things about these commercials is the audiences.
We are expected to believe this is a live spontaneous audience, but
it is the closest thing to a hive mind I have ever seen outside of
science fiction. We are to believe that there are fifty people
here who share exactly the same set of thoughts. There was at
least one show that used the ploy of having the ersatz host bargain
down the price from the phony guest. (I call him an ersatz host
since you could hardly call him a regular participant in a program
that is showing the only episode it will ever have.) The live
audience of fifty people were all dissatisfied with the price as a
whole, but when the guest was bargained down to $29.95 for four
containers of car polish and a chamois, all of a sudden the
audience was happy, every last person. How dumb do they think the
audience is?
Then there are the questions from the audience, people just like
you and me except that they have been coached what questions to ask
and we haven't. For a few dollars extra, an audience member will
ask some question. The guest will then compliment himself for
arranging for it to be asked by saying, "That's a very good
question" and then the guest will give a two-minute answer clearly
prepared ahead of time.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzx!leeper
Fools must be rejected not by arguments, but by facts.
-- Flavius Josephus
STEAM BIRD by Hilbert Schenck
Tor, 1988, ISBN 0-812-55400-0, $3.50.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
First of all, "Steam Bird" is only 148 pages of this book, with
"Hurricane Claude" filling in the rest of the 213-page total. Still,
that is novel length, so I suppose I can't complain too much about
deceptive packaging. And after all, "Hurricane Claude" is the same
whiz-bang-old-technology-brought-up-to-date sort of story, though
steam-powered airplanes do not appear.
That out of the way, what about the stories? Well, I haven't
decided. (Okay, you're asking, why is she reviewing a book that she
hasn't made up her mind on? Well, maybe my comments will help you
decide whether you think _y_o_u'_d like it.) "Steam Bird" is about a
nuclear-powered steam attack bomber. Were I a fan of steam locomotives,
I'm sure I would have enjoyed this more. As it is, however, the concept
of a steam attack bomber wasn't enough to carry the story for me. In
addition, the characters all seemed as if they had been lifted from _D_r.
_S_t_r_a_n_g_e_l_o_v_e, complete with National Security Advisor Andrezoti
Bzggnartsky (whose dialect Schenck renders impossible to read without
reading it aloud) and a general who says things like, "The wing is
ready, sir. We will not fail the country, Mr. President. Nor the world
of steam!"
"Hurricane Claude" also has "old-fashioned" science, this time an
ionized column of air used to break up hurricanes, and the usual plucky
people who have a dream of doing this against all that the bureaucrats
can throw at them.
One of the strangest things--to me, anyway--about these stories is
Schenck's unusual--one might almost say bizarre--way of introducing
homosexuality and/or gay characters. In "Steam Bird" there are no gay
characters (that I noticed) but there is an emphatically homophobic
President; in "Hurricane Claude" there is two gay characters, a plane
named "Gay Enola," and a raving homophobe who, it turns out, is really
repressing his own homosexual urges and comes around to right-thinking
by the end of the story. While this is all very fascinating as
something not often seen in science fiction, I'm not sure that it really
works in the context of telling a story with real characters. Then
again, maybe Schenck isn't trying to do that.
Schenck's characters are so extreme that I can't help but feel he
is aiming for something other than realism. I might almost call it a
"cult book," much as _D_r. _S_t_r_a_n_g_e_l_o_v_e, _R_o_c_k_y _H_o_r_r_o_r _P_i_c_t_u_r_e _S_h_o_w, and
_R_e_p_o _M_a_n are "cult films." While I'm not sure I enjoy this sort of
humor in a literary form as much as in a film, you might want to give it
a try. I suppose on the whole this constitutes a recommendation. (And
if you're a steam locomotive fan, I suspect you'd appreciate "Steam
Bird" considerably more than I did--at least the technical parts.)
A HIDDEN PLACE by Robert Charles Wilson
Bantam Spectra, 1989 (1986c), ISBN 0-553-26103-7, $3.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
A hobo camp during the Depression may not seem the most auspicious
opening scene for a fantasy novel, but at least one has to agree that it
has not been over-used and that, more than likely, the book it begins is
not just another Tolkien rip-off. And _A _H_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_c_e is most definitely
a different sort of fantasy.
From the very first scene, which introduces Bone, who seems to be a
cross between a psychotic and a mental defective, the reader finds
herself (or himself, but hey, I'm the reviewer so I should at least get
top billing) involved with a most unlikely set of characters. There's
Bone, of course, but there's also Travis Fisher, who drifts into town to
live with his Puritanical, Bible-Belt-religious relatives after his
less-than-Puritanical mother has died. And there's Anna Blaise, a
strange young woman who lives in the attic of his relatives' house and
affects everyone's lives most unexpectedly.
These characters soon find themselves swept up in the bigotry and
narrow-mindedness of the times, or for that matter of any time. To say
what develops from this, how the characters interact, and how it is
resolved, would of course be giving away too much, and I wouldn't want
to do that, because (as you might have guessed) I'm going to recommend
that you read this book. It probably isn't a spoiler to say that Anna
and Bone are as much symbols for aspects of our own humanity as they are
characters, and that this is perhaps paradoxically what makes them in
turn the fleshed-out characters they are.
This is not to say that sometimes the prose isn't, well, overripe.
For example, this sentence (on page 14) made me feel as if I had fallen
into the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: "Haute Montagne ('where the
railroad meets the wheatfield') might once have wanted to be a city, but
that ambition had died--or at least had been set aside, like the hope
chest of a young woman destined for spinsterhood--in the Depression that
had come like a bad cold and stayed to become something worse, some
lingering if not fatal disease." (For those who don't know, the
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a contest for the _w_o_r_s_t starting
sentence of a novel.) Maybe the fact that I just read the third volume
of winners [?] in that contest influenced me here. On the other hand,
one wonders if bad writing is not sometimes in the eye of the beholder
and if some of the "bad" beginnings were presented as good beginning
sentences, we wouldn't belive that as well. But now I'm drifting off
into my regular rant against the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose
Competition....
But overly florid writing notwithstanding (or perhaps even
contributing), _A _H_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_c_e is a book well worth seeking out.
MEMORY WIRE by Robert Charles Wilson
Bantam Spectra, 1990 (1988c), ISBN 0-553-26853-8, $3.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
Where Wilson's first novel, _A _H_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_c_e, is a fantasy, this is
science fiction. Yet both cross the boundaries between the two: _A
_H_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_c_e has elements of science fiction (especially towards the
end) and _M_e_m_o_r_y _W_i_r_e, for all its high-tech beginning, draws on the idea
of dreams and visions as a part of life.
The main character in _M_e_m_o_r_y _W_i_r_e, Raymond Keller, has implanted in
his head electronics that make him the perfect reporter: they record
everything he sees and hears perfectly. He is sent to Brazil, where
"they" ("they" being the usual corporate and government baddies) have
discovered an alien artifact that may contain the total knowledge of the
aliens and hence give the holder of limitless power. The fact that it
also can bring out eidetic memories makes it valuable to anyone who
wants to remember or relive their past. Most of the novel is spent with
characters chasing and being chased, though while this is going on we do
get to see Wilson's vision of the 21st Century.
The major weakness of this novel is the ending--all the villains
are too easily defeated or give up. And, needless to say, the end is
very predictable. The strengths are Wilson's descriptions of 21st
Century life and of the dream-like states of his characters. On the
whole I found this a disappointment after Wilson's promising beginning
with _A _H_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_c_e, but not enough so that I would totally give up on
him. Rather, I would hope that he would concentrate where his strength
is, on fantasy rather than on science fiction.
GYPSIES by Robert Charles Wilson
Bantam Spectra, 1989, ISBN 0-553-28304-9, $4.50.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
In _G_y_p_s_i_e_s, Wilson's third novel, he returns to the realm of
fantasy in our current world without totally abandoning science fiction.
Karen discovers at a very young age that she can "sidestep" into other
worlds, opening a window or a door into them by force of will. But it's
not only she--it's her brothers also who have this talent. Where did it
come from? What does it mean? And what is the meaning of the Gray Man
whom she sees in these other worlds?
As in _M_e_m_o_r_y _W_i_r_e, his second novel, Wilson eventually has the
military trying to exploit these talents, and this is what Wilson uses
to create the major tension at the end of the book, but that is not what
I found the most memorable aspect of the novel. (In fact, in many ways
the end of the novel was fairly predictable.) Rather it is his
description of Karen's gradual discoveries about herself and her talents
that make this a worthwhile work. _G_y_p_s_i_e_s has the same almost-mystical
quality that made his first novel, _A _H_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_c_e, a memorable debut.
The prose style of _G_y_p_s_i_e_s is more polished than that of _A _H_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_c_e,
and as I have with Wilson's previous two books, I give this a strong
recommendation.
An Annotated Filmography of Ray Harryhausen
Film comment by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
From 1958 to 1977 Ray Harryhausen was Hollywood's king of film
special effects. For putting fantasy images on film there was nobody
else anywhere near his class. He may by the only single technician in
cinema history to have had his own large and active fan following. For
a while there was even a semi-professional magazine, _F_X_R_H, devoted to
how he created the effects he did. While he had a wide range of
effects, many his own inventions, he is best known for three-dimensional
animation, generally called stop-motion animation, though he calls his
brand of it "Dynamation" or "Super-Dynamation." As a boy he was
fascinated by _K_i_n_g _K_o_n_g and became a staunch fan of its animator Willis
O'Brien, whom he later worked with. He grew up a close friend of Ray
Bradbury and each influenced the other.
His films are:
- MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949)--Apprenticed to Willis O'Brien, Harryhausen
helped to animate the title gorilla. The film itself is a rather
mundane children's film in the tradition of the Lassie films. It
did, however, win an Oscar for its special effects, probably a
much-belated tribute to _K_i_n_g _K_o_n_g.
- BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1952)--This was Harryhausen's first solo
feature film. It tells the story of a dinosaur released by an
atomic blast who makes his way to New York City. He wreaks havoc
and is killed at Coney Island. Not badly scripted and it gave
Harryhausen a chance to do dinosaurs on film. It also started
Harryhausen's long relationship with Columbia Pictures. _B_e_a_s_t _f_r_o_m
_2_0,_0_0_0 _F_a_t_h_o_m_s spawned many giant monster films in the 1950s and
was also the inspiration for the first Godzilla film. _B_e_a_s_t _f_r_o_m
_2_0,_0_0_0 _F_a_t_h_o_m_s was based, but not very much, on "The Foghorn" by
Bradbury.
- IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955)--In spite of the importance of
_B_e_a_s_t _f_r_o_m _2_0,_0_0_0 _F_a_t_h_o_m_s, it did not convince Columbia that
Harryhausen was an important force. This film had a lower budget
and was aimed at a young audience. A giant octopus from the deep
sea trenches comes to the surface and menaces San Francisco. Years
later Harryhausen revealed that his offer to Columbia was based on
the number of tentacles they wanted and they settled on six!
- EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)--Low-budget again, but you
would not know it to look at the film. The saucers were his first
attempt at flying effects. The film climaxes with an impressive
battle in Washington D.C.
Ray Harryhausen July 1, 1990 Page 2
- THE ANIMAL WORLD (1956)--Harryhausen was lent to Warner Brothers to
do the dinosaur effects for a semi-documentary about the evolution
of animal life. He worked with O'Brien. (I do not remember the
film well and it has not appeared anywhere in many years.)
- TWENTY MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957)--Harryhausen's next entry was
another film targeted for Saturday matinee crowds. It opens with a
spectacular scene of a spaceship crashing nose-first into the
coastal waters off Sicily. The centerpiece of this film is a
creature hatched from an egg brought from Venus by the spaceship.
The Ymir, as Harryhausen called it, looked like a cross between a
man and a dinosaur. The birth of the Ymir is a really nice piece
of animation. The film could have had a better story but it is
still an enjoyable monster film.
- THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958)--Harryhausen wanted to try doing
animation in color and chose to do an Arabian Nights fantasy that
would have real monsters. Somewhat to Harryhausen's surprise, the
choosy Bernard Herrmann not only agreed to score the film but was
really enthusiastic about the project. Harryhausen packed the film
with wonders such as cyclopes, a dragon, and a monster two-headed
bird. Columbia, who had only meager expectations for the movie,
found it to be one of their best-grossing films that year. From
this point on Harryhausen would aim at more adult audiences and
have bigger budgets to do it with. Harryhausen's fans generally
consider this to be his best film.
- THE THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER (1960)--On the face of it one would
expect Swift's satiric fantasy to be a perfect project for
Harryhausen. Unfortunately, the script was just not very good. It
tried too hard to be charming even to the point of throwing in a
song or two. Some nice effects work, including a fight with an
alligator, but generally this was not much fun.
- MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)--Jules Verne's story is pretty much
straight adventure until science fiction elements enter toward the
end. Not content with that, the producers plastered on a number of
monsters to liven things up and Harryhausen created the monsters.
Included were giant bees and a giant crab. Good score by Bernard
Herrmann.
- JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963)--Harryhausen's fans generally
consider this a classic second only to _T_h_e _7_t_h _V_o_y_a_g_e _o_f _S_i_n_b_a_d
among his films. It is probably the best script for any of his
films and while, generally accurate to the myth, it gave
Harryhausen lots of room to do the type of effects he does best.
There is an army of skeletons (well, perhaps only a platoon), the
multi-headed hydra, and flying harpies. But the best effects are a
huge Poseidon coming out of the sea and the great bronze giant
Talos.
Ray Harryhausen July 1, 1990 Page 3
- FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964)--Only marginally more faithful to its
source than was _M_y_s_t_e_r_i_o_u_s _I_s_l_a_n_d. The screenplay is by the
excellent Nigel Kneale, though it is not one of his best efforts.
Kneale's best touch in the film is in the first few minutes.
Harryhausen's effects too start out good but become humdrum once
the explorers set off for the moon. The effect of the sphere
breaking loose of its greenhouse and flying skyward makes one wish
Wells were around to see it. What we see of the lunar world is
adequate but not really imaginative.
- ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (1966)--On this go-around Harryhausen was
working for Hammer films. It was about as good as you could make a
film about dinosaurs and prehistoric people living together.
Harryhausen's dinosaurs were done as well as he ever had done them,
but they could not overcome the premise. More attention was given
to Raquel Welch in his first sexy role. Somebody decided to use a
photographically enlarged lizard as a dinosaur in one scene, but it
is hard to believe it would have been Harryhausen.
- THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969)--Willis O'Brien always wanted to do a
film with cowboys against dinosaurs. O'Brien wanted to call the
film _G_w_a_n_g_i. He wrote the story for _B_e_a_s_t _o_f _H_o_l_l_o_w _M_o_u_n_t_a_i_n but
it fell short of his vision. After his death Harryhausen decided
to make the film and he put in his best dinosaur animation ever.
The story takes place in Mexico in cowboy times but the story is
still strongly reminiscent of _K_i_n_g _K_o_n_g. As a Western it is not
very good but the dinosaurs are great. There are convincing scenes
of live-action cowboys roping stop-motion dinosaurs. I have never
figured out how he integrated the two and had the ropes connect
them.
- THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1974)--After a hiatus Harryhausen
returned to the screen with the second of his Sinbad films. It
includes fantastic creatures from many mythologies but its high
point is a six-armed Kali with all six arms moving at once. For
the first time in a while the story was decent (with a notable
exception in how the villain--played by Tom Baker--was finally
dispatched). Harryhausen unfortunately put too many of his effects
in scenes too dark to make out detail. Good score by Miklos Rosza.
- SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER (1977)--The most recent of
Harryhausen's Sinbad films was released the same weekend as _S_t_a_r
_W_a_r_s. It had some nice creations, such as an intelligent baboon
and a troglodyte, but there was also some sloppiness with overly
obvious matte lines. But its worst feature was a script in which
both the good guys and the bad guys kept making unrealistically
stupid blunders. ("Is this the map you are looking for? How did
you know it exists?") Harryhausen did try something rather
ambitious by making some of the major characters animations. But
still this film is the weakest of the three Sinbads. (Sinbad
always gets the girl at the end and is unattached at the beginning
Ray Harryhausen July 1, 1990 Page 4
of the next film. It is unclear what he is doing with those
women.)
- CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981)--Harryhausen's most recent film was for
MGM rather than his usual Columbia. This was to be everything
_J_a_s_o_n _a_n_d _t_h_e _A_r_g_o_n_a_u_t_s was, plus having big-budget actors such as
Burgess Meredith, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Clair Bloom, and
Ursula Andress. It was popular with audiences for a summer but it
lacked finesse. Harryhausen did some amazing animation, including
an excellent flying horse and a spectacular scene of a city
engulfed by water, but some of the ideas (such as having a cute
mechanical owl) were simply misfires. Harry Hamlin was just not a
very engaging actor as Perseus. The film ended up ponderous and
dull.
Harryhausen has not made a film since 1981. Stop-motion effects
are now very common in films and their novelty has worn off.
Harryhausen mastered them just early enough that he could build a career
on them and become know. His apprentices, People such as Jim Danforth
and Dave Allen, will probably never be as well-known as their mentor
was. These days stop-motion effects compete with computerized visual
effects, often gory make-up/prosthetic effects, and rubberized monsters.
There are more special effects but less sense of wonder. But there are
a lot of fans grateful to Harryhausen for showing Hollywood what could
be done in putting fantasy on film.