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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 09/28/90 -- Vol. 9, No. 13
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
10/03 LZ: MICROMEGAS by Voltaire (Philosophy)
10/24 LZ: THE WORM OUROBOROS by E. R. Eddison (Classic Horror)
11/07 MT: WANDERING STARS ed. by Jack Dann (Jewish Science Fiction)
11/14 LZ: WAR WITH THE NEWTS by Karel Capek (Foreign SF)
12/05 LZ: EQUAL RITES or THE LIGHT FANTASTIC by Terry Pratchett (Humorous 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.
10/13 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: TBA
0 (phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday)
10/21 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, Lance Larsen says:
"Micromegas" by Voltaire is labeled a "philosophical tale" and,
that is as good a category as any for it. I, however, am adamant
in insisting that it also fits within the science fiction genre.
Like Olaf Stapledon, who also wrote philosophical tales of SF,
Voltaire was never part of the SF community. (And, until time
travel is a reality, or Callahan's opens, he won't be.) But, the
basic plot devices put this short story clearly in the "first
contact" subgenre of science fiction. This story illuminates the
basic philosophical questions inherent in "first contact" stories.
Voltaire, like many SF writers since, uses the foil of an alien
THE MT VOID Page 2
perception to reveal truth about our own everyday reality.
And, per Evelyn's request, the title is pronounced: MICRO (meaning
small) as in MICROcomputer, MEGA (meaning large) as in MEGAdose, S
(signifying a plural) as in networkS. [-lfl]
[But where is the accent? -ecl]
2. Let me bounce a sort of speculative idea off of you, just
something I have been giving some thought to. Imagine a society
that lives in isolation and numbers its individuals in the low
hundreds. Generally there is little government. The society is
not officially unified under a single leader, though there are a
few stronger members and they tend to have followings. There are
alliances. There are also antagonisms and there are some rules
that cover them. Generally if an individual breaks the rules,
other individuals will voice their unhappiness. There may be
fights for a while with other individuals taking sides, or even
participating in the fighting.
This description fits tribes of humans some ten or twenty thousand
years ago. But that was not what I was describing. What I was
describing was pretty much the state of the world today with the
individual unit being the country. There is a general principle,
it seems to me, that in a society the larger the unit you consider
the individual, the more primitive the behavior. If you consider
the world as an individual unit, it has a very primitive social
behavior. It is sort of like a primitive animal that is just
barely showing interest to see if there are others of its kind
around anywhere. As a world we are doing a little of that sort of
poking our heads up and doing a little preliminary looking around
to see if there are other civilizations out there, but we are not
doing much looking.
We have a considerably more advanced society if our individual unit
is the human. We have fixed laws to govern ourselves; we set up
police forces to help limit strife. We have programs to help take
care of the more needy humans. But each human is an aggregate of
millions of cells and their social structure makes our social
structure as humans look primitive. Each cell has its job to do
and with apparently no consciousness it performs its job. There is
a police force to protect against hostile invaders. This includes
white blood cells and other cells in the immune system. In general
there is very little in the of political questions in the body
politic. Cancer happens when something goes wrong and a set of
cells starts acting against the best interest of the whole, but
that sort of thing is generally uncommon. There are natural
defenses against it and most of the time there is no disagreement
noticeable amongst cells. Notice that taken as a whole the cells
have human intelligence while taken individually each seems to have
just enough intelligence to do its job. This seems to parallel the
THE MT VOID Page 3
situation that nations as a whole seem to have an intelligence and
a will that seems to transcend individual members of the nation.
If all this is true, then the most highly evolved societies of
animals would parallel the society of cells in a single animal.
And, in fact, some animals do have societies that do just that.
Bees, ants, and termites live in societies of almost perfect
cooperation with division of labor and each individual knowing
exactly his/her responsibility. From our point of view this
intuitively seems like a very unpleasant sort of society, in spite
of the fact that it is a society that operates like a well-oiled
machine where ours does not.
Now, I am not advocating actually moving toward such a highly
regimented society. I do not think that we would are ready as yet
for that. Every attempt to institute a government along those
lines has and probably will for some time continue to meet with
failure. That is because the individual will not voluntarily lay
down self-interest for the good of the whole the way a bee will.
But at some point in bee society evolution bees started identifying
their success with the success of the hive.
In some sense I consider biological evolution to be a random walk,
but I am not so sure about socio-political evolution. I could well
believe that the social structure of the aggregate imitates a
primitive precursor of the social structure of the individual.
Turning that around, you could say that the social structure of the
individual is advanced beyond that of the aggregate. Cells have
more evolved societies than do humans, but theirs is the direction
we are moving in.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzx!leeper
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed,
without any other reason but because they are not already
common.
-- John Locke
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT ALMOST BLANK
GOODFELLAS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A very realistic view of organized
crime follows the life of a minor organized crime figure
from 1955 to almost the present. The structure is
autobiographical at some expense to the dramatic impact.
Rating: +2 (-4 to +4)
Back in the 1930s Warner Brothers made a reputation for themselves
making gangster films. That was the heyday of Cagney, Raft, Robinson,
and Bogart. But I don't remember them ever making a gangster film as
realistic as their current _G_o_o_d_F_e_l_l_a_s. First of all, _G_o_o_d_F_e_l_l_a_s is
"based on a true story." It is, in fact, based on the memoir _W_i_s_e _G_u_y
by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with the film's
director, Martin Scorsese. And the film is structured like a memoir.
It is long for a film (146 minutes) and is mostly episodic, with the
episodes being somewhat related. Dramatically it is not structured like
_S_c_a_r_f_a_c_e with a beginning, a middle, and a satisfying ending. Instead,
it is structured like a documentary, but for one puzzling exception. It
starts during an incident in 1970, then in a flashback, as if
reminiscing at that point, tells of Henry Hill's career in crime since
1955, returns to the 1970 incident and continues the story, still in
recollection style, until about 1980. What makes it even more puzzling
is that the 1970 incident, while moderately important, is not a pivotal
point in the story.
This is the story of Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta), a gangster
of Italian-Irish descent. Hill is part of a small group of crooks and
killers that is sort of a satellite of the Mafia. Only those of pure
Italian descent may actually be part of the Mafia. Hill started at age
13 parking cars and running errands for a local gangster. He loves the
work and the respect and feat it brings him from the neighborhood. From
there one thing leads to another as he hijacks trucks and steals
shipments at nearby Idlewild/Kennedy Airport. Eventually he is involved
in a six million dollar theft, in murder, and in cocaine. What looks
like an enjoyable life early on gets more and more serious and
nightmarish. We see life in organized crime and in the social world
surrounding crime. There is loving attention paid to Italian food
through most of the film. Scorsese has the texture of the criminal very
believably presented.
It is clear that life gets more serious for Hill as time
progresses, but Liotta's looks change very little in the course of the
film. His face is not very expressive, and we have a hard time knowing
how he feels at times. Jimmy Conway (played by Robert DeNiro) is more
expressive and does seem to change as time goes by. It is unfortunate
that DeNiro accepts top billing, since he certainly had less than half
GoodFellas September 22, 1990 Page 2
the screen time that Liotta has. DeNiro and Paul Sorvino (as Paully
Cicero) play Hill's two bosses and mentors in crime. Rounding out the
topliners are Joe Pesci as the volatile gangster Tommy DeVito. His
performance is likely to be the one best remembered from the film.
One comes out of _G_o_o_d_F_e_l_l_a_s not feeling greatly entertained but
with the feeling that you have seen an authentic view of modern crime.
I rate it +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
ConFiction 1990
Con report by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper
(Part 1)
ConFiction, the 1990 World Science Fiction Convention was held
August 24 through August 28 in The Hague, The Netherlands. The
attendance was approximately 3000 (including day members). More notable
than the total attendance was the national distribution--this was as
close to a true Worldcon as we've gotten. As far as I could tell, every
European country the size of Luxembourg or larger was represented except
for Greece, Turkey, Albania, and Portugal. This includes all the
"Eastern Bloc" countries, who had dozens of representatives--a busload
arrived from Czechoslovakia, for example. There were also members from
Israel and Malaysia. The newsletter cited the following statistics as
of Sunday: 709 Britons, 556 United Statesians, 360 Dutch, 160 West
Germans and 40 East Germans (this is the last con making this
distinction!), 92 Finns, 42 Poles, 10 Czechs, 8 Yugoslavs, 5 Russians, 3
Bulgarians, 2 Tasmanians, 2 Hungarians, 2 Israelis, 2 Malays, 1
Rumanian, and an unspecified number of other nationalities (Australia,
Japan, and European countries not named above all had sizable
contingents). This made the convention more interesting as one could
get many perspectives on science fiction (and life) from the multi-
national membership.
Facilities
The convention was in the Congressgebouw (Congress Centre) in The
Hague. The closest hotel, the Bel Air, was about a ten-minute walk away
and was used for some of the parties. The attendees were spend over
many hotels. Ours (the Flora Beach) was about a mile away; a tram ran
from a stop about ten-minutes' walk from the Congress Centre to its
front door, but you had to allow at least 45 minutes for a round-trip,
making it tough to drop back to your room to pick stuff up.
There were few restaurants within walking distance of the Congress
Centre, and none that were open for dinner. Near our hotel were dozens,
but they weren't serving dinner past about 9 PM, making the scheduling
tricky. Luckily the Centre restaurant was not unreasonably priced (as
these places go) and there was a cafeteria-style food service as well
that was open throughout the day, including a "Fan Special" for 9.95
Dfl. (that's 9.95 guilders, or about $6).
Because of the layout of the Centre, the Dealers' Room and the Art
Show had to keep the same hours, making the Art Show less accessible
than at other conventions. The auditorium used for the major events was
very comfortable and afforded everyone a clear, if occasionally somewhat
distant, view.
ConFiction September 9, 1990 Page 2
Registration
Registration opened the day we arrived, but we spent our time doing
tourist things (a separate log of our vacation is available on request).
We registered on Thursday at about noon. This was _a_f_t_e_r we had
discovered (by looking at Kate's program) that Mark was now a program
participant, so we went to the Program Participants' Registration Desk.
Our badges were not there, so they sent someone to get them from regular
registration. Our schedules, etc., were also not there; we had to go to
the Green Room for those. They did have the Program Participant
ribbons, but not the Hugo Nominee ribbons.
The Green Room had the schedules (the stick-on labels with them
arrived later), but it took a lot of checking around to find the Hugo
Nominee ribbons and pins. I discovered that I was on, not the one panel
I had been told about, but _f_o_u_r panels, and scheduled to do a reading!
I got the latter canceled, however. (I did find in my mailbox when I
got back home a complete schedule, but obviously the schedule for
mailing them failed to take into account that many United States fans
would be leaving a week or two before the convention to do some touring
in Europe first.)
The Pocket Program was extremely confusing--there were _n_o program
item descriptions. So, for example, I found myself on a panel called
"Anthropomorphics: From Bogeyman to Puppetmaster" with no idea what it
was about. But that was okay--the moderator was in the dark as well!
The Pocket Program was also divided into two sections, one for primary
track and one for secondary track items, but within the sections there
had been no attempt to have the items at the same time line up
horizontally (the rooms formed the columns). So to figure out what was
happened at any given time was extremely difficult. By Saturday, they
realized this and starting issuing one-sheet block schedules for each
day, and these helped a lot. (Of course, for these they listed
participants by last name only--luckily Mark and I had it sorted out
ahead of time who was doing what.) There was a map of the Centre, with
one or two rooms labeled with different names than in the program guide,
but in general reasonably well done. There was no index by
participants. (At the gripe session, the committee said that they had
lost their programming database two weeks before the convention and that
was the cause of many of the problems. I'm not sure I see how.) And
there were no name cards for the participants to set on the table in
front of themselves, leaving the audience to peer myopically at name
tags instead.
The convention souvenir book was a soft-cover 152-page book, which
managed to misspell one of the Guests of Honour's names on the first
page. It had all the usual bibliographies, stories, lists, and articles
(including one on the Gaylactic Network, which given the Netherlands'
history of tolerance is not at all surprising).
The usual supply of freebies (there is usually a book or two
available) was not there, but that is probably due to transportation
costs. Later on we did see copies of some European magazines being
ConFiction September 9, 1990 Page 3
given away. The badges were not as readable as those from recent
Worldcons--they were done with an old ribbon or something.
Dealers' Room
The Dealers' Room (a.k.a., the Hucksters' Room) was small, not
surprising given the location--most dealers would have had to pay a
large transportation cost. Some dealers did a lot of mail-order
business--we bought a couple of T-shirts from a United States dealer who
had some there but gave a discount if you ordered them to be shipped
direct to you. There were a few British dealers, a German dealer with
an enormous stock, and an assortment of Dutch, French, and others. As
usual, books probably represented less than half of the room and there
were used book dealers, but no antiquarian-type book dealers that I
recall, and of course, new book dealers. I expected to find nothing on
my want list, but I did find one Sturgeon that Kate was looking for and
saw another British edition of a new book I wanted, but given its size,
decided to hold off until I saw it in the United States.
The one unusual aspect this year was the number of currencies
making the rounds in the Dealers' Room--Dutch guilders, British pounds,
German marks, United States dollars, and who knows what else. There was
much discussion in the daily newsletter about the conversion rates
charged by the dealers for British merchandise--the general rate seemed
to be 4 Dfl to the pound, though the bank rate was 3.37, and this
generated some ill-feeling. Actually, the fact was the dealers didn't
want people to pay in guilders, because then they would have to convert
them to pounds and that would cost them. The newsletter suggested that
Dutch fans buy pounds from British fans who wanted to buy guilders and
both parties would benefit.
The VAT (value-added tax--something like sales tax) also drove
people crazy. The VAT on most things was 6%, but on music-related
items, it was 18.5%. Since the prices quoted always included the VAT,
all that happened was people couldn't figure out why filksong cassettes
were so expensive....
Art Show
I got to the Art Show twice (once in advance of its real opening as
a program participant, and once during the convention). It was small,
not surprisingly, but it did have a nice assortment of artwork--not the
same stuff one sees over and over at conventions in the United States.
For example, Juraj Maxon from Czechoslovakia displayed some extremely
elaborate pen-and-ink works ("Eskulap" was particularly notable) and
Lies Jonkers from the Netherlands had some beautiful alien landscapes
(including "Kakuheiki," my favorite). The three-dimensional category
suffered somewhat, with a much smaller percentage of the art show than
usual. Prices were high and many items not for sale, but others were
affordable. Of course transporting them was impossible, so I guess you
can't win. The room was big enough that it was not at all crowded and
ConFiction September 9, 1990 Page 4
viewing the pieces was not the major effort it sometimes is in fuller
shows.
Con Suite
There was no traditional con suite, but the fast food area had
tables where people could gather, and throughout the Centre were other
gathering places. There was a fan lounge, but it was relatively
inaccessible and sometimes used for programming. The exhibits (History
of World Bidding, SF Around the World) were in half of the Art Show
Hall. The limited space and lack of display cases resulted in the
omission of the "History of Worldcon" exhibit which had been scheduled
to travel to every Worldcon for the next few years. The Message Board
was conveniently located near the main staircase and food areas.
Programming
Given that it's impossible to see everything at a Worldcon, I will
cover just the programming I attended. (For a comparison, the program
book lists 337 program items as compared to 833 at Noreascon 3, not
counting films or autograph sessions.)
Opening Ceremonies
Thursday, 2 PM
These were well-attended, more than at other conventions.
Classical music was played as a platform rose from below the stage
revealing the Guests of Honour (Joe Haldeman, Wolfgang Jeschke, Harry
Harrison, Andrew Porter, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro). The Dutch Minister
of Cultural Affairs gave a speech which was a bit patronizing--she told
us that even though science fiction was reading material, there was some
good literature in it--and the Guests were introduced.
Panel: GGGGuuuueeeesssstttt ooooffff HHHHoooonnnnoooouuuurrrr--------HHHHoooonnnnoooouuuurrrr oooorrrr HHHHaaaarrrraaaassssssssmmmmeeeennnntttt????
Thursday, 4 PM
Norman Spinrad (USA) (mod), Poul Anderson (USA),
Algis Budrys (USA), Robert Silverberg (USA)
The room for this was packed--not surprising if one considers that
the panelists are all distinguished enough to have been Guests of Honour
at conventions. We arrived late and Spinrad was in the middle of
describing traveling to the Metz Science Fiction Film Festival, which
involved a fourteen-hour flight through Keflavik, Iceland. At one point
he had to do a television interview in French, which they subtitled--in
French!
The panelists drifted into SCA (Society of Creative Anachronism)
stories of people fighting in jousts, including making sure everyone
knew that Harlan Ellison was defeated in a joust by Paul Zimmer, who was
then defeated by Fritz Leiber. They reminisced about the Stardust
Hotel, used for one Westercon, in which the entire staff had just been
ConFiction September 9, 1990 Page 5
told they were being let go, and which was the hooker headquarters
besides.
Silverberg related how when he was one of the Guests of Honour at
Heicon, he arrived at the banquet late with one of the other Guests of
Honour, only to discover that no one had reserved any seats for them and
they had to sit on chairs back in one corner. Another story related how
at one convention the Guest of Honour was accidentally presented with
the hotel bill for the entire convention.
At this point, one of the audience members, deciding that the
harassment part of the panel title was being overlooked, asked Budrys,
"Is the function of a writer to communicate?" Upon being answered in
the affirmative, he then asked, "Why are the articles in _F&_S_F so hard to
read?" Budrys responded, "Maybe the problem lies with you." Silverberg
followed this by a long and very refined description of a "Budrys
review," which he says frequently starts as praise and gradually drifts
into a total hatchet job on the work in question. Eventually the
audience harasser was hooted down and left.
When I asked if anyone cared to comment on the Ellison article in
_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s (about fans mistreating pros), Silverberg did relate that one
time a fan asked him to autograph _D_y_i_n_g _I_n_s_i_d_e (a book about telepathy)
and that as he was doing so the fan said, "I didn't realize you were one
of us too." Silverberg said he should have replied, "Well, if you were
you'd realize I'm not." Spinrad added his stories about being
approached by neo-Nazi fans of his _I_r_o_n _D_r_e_a_m, which he mentioned the
American Nazi Party has on its recommended reading list "because of the
happy ending." Spinrad also said that he once had two fans volunteer to
be his slaves. That was the good part, he said; the bad part was that
they were totally unsuitable for the position.
Silverberg says that he occasionally gets requests to be Guest of
Honour at a convention which he does not want to attend, and replies,
"My schedule won't permit it." This works most of the time, but
sometimes the convention persists year after year and even asks what
year he would be available, at which point he must reply something like,
"I'm sorry, but I will never attend another convention in Upper Moosejaw
as long as I live."
Budrys once took a Greyhound bus to a convention and ended up
having to change the tire on it because the driver didn't know how.
On the whole, the panelists said they had extremely positive
reactions to being Guests of Honour and had no funny stories about happy
incidents. When I asked what the _b_e_s_t thing that ever happened to them
as Guests of Honour was, Budrys said he was once given the original
cover art for his novel _W_h_o?, Anderson said he was given a case of
Heineken, Spinrad said he was given a bottle of Scotch for Harlan
Ellison which he didn't deliver, and Silverberg said he met his wife.
ConFiction September 9, 1990 Page 6
Panel: BBBBNNNNFFFFssss HHHHaaaavvvveeee TTTThhhheeeeiiiirrrr SSSSaaaayyyy
Thursday, 7 PM
Leo Kindt (The Netherlands) (mod), Justin Ackroyd (Australia),
Waldemar Kumming (West Germany), Mark Leeper (USA), Bruce Pelz (USA)
This room was considerably less crowded than the last, perhaps
because there was no explanation in the program book of what "BNF" stood
for (big-name fan). The panel mostly discussed what constituted a BNF;
Mark claimed he was not one, but it seems to me if other people say you
are a BNF, their vote outweighs yours. Though initially BNF-dom was
geographic in nature (a BNF in California might be totally unknown in
Texas), I claimed there were now localities other than geographic and
cited Usenet as an example: there are people known worldwide, but only
to other people with Usenet access. Bruce seemed to like this idea.
About the only other thing the panel established they had in common
was that they liked to travel--but since this panel was held in the
Netherlands, it is clear this was not a random sample of fans, or even
of BNFs. However, someone suggested that fans like to travel to "see
things through different eyes" and that this _w_a_s connected with science
fiction, to which I think everyone agreed.
Panel: AAAAnnnntttthhhhrrrrooooppppoooommmmoooorrrrpppphhhhiiiiccccssss:::: FFFFrrrroooommmm BBBBooooggggeeeeyyyymmmmaaaannnn ttttoooo PPPPuuuuppppppppeeeettttmmmmaaaasssstttteeeerrrr
Thursday, 8 PM
Jack Chalker (USA) (mod), Judith Hanna (USA),
F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre (USA), Evelyn Leeper (USA)
This panel was suggested by someone who then didn't come to the
convention, so the topic was ill-defined to say the least. We talked
mostly about anthropomorphizing non-human life-forms (and inanimate
objects) and whether one could write a really alien alien. Someone
(Hanna?) claimed that everyone who uses computers a lot
anthropomorphizes them--I disputed that and still do. I mentioned that
in the United States, though, we do have Mr. Coffee, and that a friend
of ours has extended this to Mr. Word Processor and Mr. Microwave. (Why
always Mr.?) We also name hurricanes and tropical storms. And, of
course, we anthropomorphize our pets mercilessly (is there anything
sillier than the little sweaters we make them wear?). Hanna pointed out
that most animal rights activists are childless, though audience members
said this may be as much a function of childless people having more time
to be activists in anything as of childless people anthropomorphizing
animals.
Jack Chalker talked about seeing a Betty Boop cartoon in which she
puts on a pair of stockings with a hole in the toe, and her big toe
grows a face and hands and points to the hole. This, he feels, could
really traumatize young children that _t_h_e_i_r toes might do this. There
was also the mention of commercials and advertisements which put faces
on food and have them talk to you (e.g., McDonald's ads). There is a
fine line between humor and horror--I keep remembering the bit from
_T_h_r_o_u_g_h _t_h_e _L_o_o_k_i_n_g _G_l_a_s_s when Alice is introduced to the plum pudding
ConFiction September 9, 1990 Page 7
and the leg of mutton.
As far as alien aliens go, one problem seems to be that even when
an author does try to write one, the reader is likely to put his or her
own (mis)understanding of the aliens' motivations on them. (I confess
to doing this in Greg Benford's "Alphas," for example.) One person
suggested using plants as characters, but even these are
anthropomorphized. The ultimate anthropomorphism might be Arthur Conan
Doyle's "When the Earth Screamed," though Olaf Stapledon does quite a
bit of it in _S_t_a_r _M_a_k_e_r, _N_e_b_u_l_a _M_a_k_e_r, and _T_h_e _F_l_a_m_e_s as well.
Alien aliens also make it difficult for the reader to "connect"
with the story, so a human main character for them to empathize with is
almost a necessity. MacIntyre referred to the "Post-Campbell Shift" to
a universe no longer human-dominated (John Campbell was known for his
insistence on human domination of the universe in _A_s_t_o_u_n_d_i_n_g stories),
and cited "The Persistence of Vision" by John Varley as a particularly
violent reaction to this.
This led as to a bit of discussion of "human aliens"--for example,
the Kikiyu of Resnick's "Kirinyaga" stories, whose outlook is in many
ways alien to the average American or British reader. Chalker talked
about how Resnick got started writing supermarket tabloids and how when
he (Resnick) first went to Africa, he fell in love with it, though I got
the impression that Chalker felt Resnick was more in love with an
idealized sort of Africa and perhaps not entirely in touch with the
realities there. (Then again, I could be confused.)
For some reason I can't recall, someone related the story of Ray
Bradbury working on the script for _M_o_b_y _D_i_c_k for John Huston. Part way
through the filming, Huston came to Bradbury and said that he had a
telegram from Jack Warner saying that they needed something in the film
that viewers could relate to, so could Bradbury please write in a sexy
stowaway? Bradbury got practically violent over this and after much
argument with Huston, Huston revealed it was all a joke. MacIntyre
pointed out that if that had been filming Melville's _R_e_d_b_u_r_n there would
have been plenty of sex in it--all gay sex, though, which means there
was even less likelihood that they would have filmed it in the 1950s.
(It wouldn't surprise me if this paragraph causes a great revival of
interest in Melville's writings--or at least in _R_e_d_b_u_r_n.)
Panel: SSSSFFFF FFFFiiiillllmmmmssss aaaafffftttteeeerrrr tttthhhheeee DDDDeeeeaaaatttthhhh ooooffff SSSSFFFF FFFFiiiillllmmmmssss
Thursday, 9:30 PM
Johan-Martjin Flaton (The Netherlands) (mod),
Cees Groenewegen (The Netherlands)
The two panelists were, I believe, responsible for the ConFiction
film program, which was somewhat limited but did include a few hard-to-
find items (more on this later). They bemoaned current films' lack of
story, characters, and general development that one sees in literature.
Cinema uses science fiction, they said, for the whizzes and bangs. Of
ConFiction September 9, 1990 Page 8
course, there are some exceptions (_B_r_o_t_h_e_r _f_r_o_m _A_n_o_t_h_e_r _P_l_a_n_e_t, _M_a_n
_F_a_c_i_n_g _S_o_u_t_h_e_a_s_t, _T_h_e _N_a_v_i_g_a_t_o_r), but the mere fact that one can list
them indicates they are noticeable by their rarity. The panelists also
missed black and white films, which they felt were better in the sense
that black and white doesn't hide things as well as color.
Unfortunately, this panel could have used either more content or
more panelists to fill it out; as it was, it seemed a bit thin and
stretched.
Panel: MMMMTTTTVVVV &&&& CCCCNNNNNNNN &&&& HHHHaaaammmmbbbbuuuurrrrggggeeeerrrrssss
Friday, 12 noon
Karlheinz Steinmuller (East Germany) (mod), Alejo Cuervo (Spain),
Ellen Datlow (USA), Takumi Shibanu (Japan)
Steinmuller began by pointing out that, in _L_a_s_t _a_n_d _F_i_r_s_t _M_e_n, Olaf
Stapledon wrote about an Americanized world--had we in fact reached that
point? Rather off the point, it was observed that American science
fiction was certainly ethnocentric (Stapledon was British, so can't be
included in this statement). Datlow asked why, if this was the case,
people in other countries read American science fiction. The example
was given that _P_r_e_n_t_i_c_e _A_l_v_i_n, nominated for a Hugo this year, was about
_U_n_i_t_e_d _S_t_a_t_e_s history, and it was almost expected that fans all over the
world would be able to read and understand the references. Yet, as one
audience member pointed out, this didn't work in reverse: there is a
Spanish story entitled "The Last Lesson of Cisneros" by Gabriel Bermudez
and he would be very surprised if any Americans understood any of the
references. (I observed that, given the state of education in the
United States, most Americans probably wouldn't understand _P_r_e_n_t_i_c_e
_A_l_v_i_n either.) This led to some comments about cultural illiteracy,
including one by someone whose initials were E.G. (sorry, my notes seem
to have failed me here) that "instead of real information we have facts
about things that did not happen."
Other panelists noted that Americans are finally picking up other
cultures to write about. Japanese science fiction was characterized as
a black hole, importing a lot, but exporting very little science
fiction. (One suspects that translators of Japanese can make far more
money translating technical and business-related works.) Interestingly,
Shibanu pointed out that in Japanimation, cars drive on the right side
of the road, even though in Japan they drive on the left! A Swiss
audience member pointed out later that a French economist said that the
French try to sell what's French, while the Japanese try to sell what's
wanted. And culture tends to follow economy, with a delay.
The issue of translation in general generated some discussion.
With more people reading English than any other language, more American
and British science fiction will be exported than that of other
countries because it doesn't need translation. (This, of course,
creates a feedback loop--since more English-language books are
available, learning English as a second language gives you the greatest
ConFiction September 9, 1990 Page 9
advantage, so yet more people learn it, and so on.) In fact, Cuervo
said that in Spain two Japanese stories appeared recently in Spanish,
but they were translated from English translations rather than directly
from the Japanese! Of course, in some countries, the copyright
conventions are not upheld, so Fred Pohl found himself as the "co-
author" of "The Wizard Masters of Peng-Shi Angle" ("The Wizards of
Pung's Corners") with a Chinese translator he had never heard of, and
when he had someone translate a bit of the story back to English, he
discovered he didn't recognize that either. The French do comics rather
than novels, thereby getting around much of the problem--pictures need
no translation. (It has been said that silent movies were universal,
and the advent of the talkies was a bad thing in that regard.)
From the audience, F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre expressed the opinion
that the multitude of words English has to express similar ideas meant
that English lends itself more to literature than other languages. This
was, of course, hotly disputed by many people.
In addition to the language barrier, there seem to be geographic
barriers. Though Spain shares a common language with most of Latin
America (and Puerto Rico), little science fiction is imported from that
area. Even the magical realism for which Latin America is known comes
into Spain mostly through the mainstream publishing lines. In general,
in fact, science fiction is imported far more than fantasy or horror.
As far as content, there is still a problem. People ask for
stories with more Japanese flavor, for example, but then they don't
understand them because they haven't the background. An example of this
phenomenon that I noted is in the film _A _G_r_e_a_t _W_a_l_l. An American couple
goes back to visit the husband's sister and brother-in-law in China.
There is a scene by their father's grave in which the American couple
put their arms around each other's waists, and the Chinese couple looks
embarrassed by this. Unless you know that public displays of affection
are frowned upon in China, this scene will go right by you. And for the
Japanese, it is pointless to ask authors to write with a more American
flavor--that's what they get in English all the time! Even William
Gibson's much praised use of Japanese culture is only landscape; Shibanu
finds it interesting, but not at all accurate. On the other hand,
Shibanu thought that these Japanese influences in cyberpunk where how
Japan _w_o_u_l_d export its culture.
Shibanu talked at length about Japanese culture, which he admits
was imported from China but changed to suit the Japanese. And this
selectivity is still going on: Japan has adopted Western toilets, but
not Western bathtubs, because the latter is far more culturally
ingrained. Japanese science fiction, he says, developed from 1950s
United States science fiction. In 1989, there were 700 science
fiction/horror/fantasy books published in Japan, 280 of which were
original science fiction, and 180 of which were translations. It is
unusual to hear a Japanese credit another country's culture. But
Shibanu indicates this ethnocentrism is new; up to 100 years ago, Japan
ConFiction September 9, 1990 Page 10
imported culture from elsewhere and didn't feel particularly
ethnocentric. Shibanu said in fact that he was bothered by the new
Japanese imperialism. (Whether this was merely for the benefit of the
audience, or really true I cannot judge, of course. Still, it is easy
to believe that there are Japanese, especially science fiction fans, who
take a more global view.)
There was mention made of the "quota quickies" of the British film
industry--films produced to satisfy a requirement that for every N films
imported, M films had to be produced in Britain (I don't know the exact
numbers). Steinmuller compared this to an East German law (recently
junked, no doubt) that allowed only 40% of the pop music played on the
radio to be Western. As he put it, "Our impression as ex-socialists is
that this doesn't work."
(Note: This panel reinforced my feeling that multi-national panels
are more interesting, but that they also proceed at a slower pace, as
people search for the right words.)
(end of Part 1)