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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 07/12/91 -- Vol. 10, No. 2
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
07/17 LZ: THE VOR GAME by Lois McMaster Bujold (Hugo nominee)
08/07 LZ: EARTH by David Brin (Hugo nominee)
08/28 LZ: QUEEN OF ANGELS by Greg Bear (Hugo nominee)
09/18 LZ: THE FALL OF HYPERION by Dan Simmons (Hugo nominee)
10/09 LZ: THE QUIET POOLS by Michael Kube-McDowell (Hugo nominee)
10/30 LZ: MINDBRIDGE by Joe Haldeman
11/20 LZ: EON by Greg Bear
12/11 LZ: MIRKHEIM by Poul Anderson
_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 SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: TBA
(phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday)
07/22 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: TBA
(phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday)
08/10 Hugo Ballots due
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 mtgzy!leeper
HO Librarian: Rebecca Schoenfeld HO 2K-430 949-6122 homxb!btfsd
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 576-3346 mtunq!lfl
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 957-5619 mtgzy!leeper
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 957-2070 mtgzy!ecl
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. The next Lincroft discussion will begin the annual series of
discussions on Hugo-nominated novels. The first one is Lois
McMaster Bujold's _T_h_e _V_o_r _G_a_m_e, which should appeal to all the
short people in the club (you know who you are)--the hero is 4'9"
tall. But the biggest mistake his enemies can make is to
underestimate him. Though part of a series of books and stories by
Bujold, _T_h_e _V_o_r _G_a_m_e can be read without having any other knowledge
of the series. My one quibble would probably be that it is too
THE MT VOID Page 2
obviously two novellas cobbled together rather than one continuous
story, but then I really loved last year's _H_y_p_e_r_i_o_n which was six
novellas and a connecting story, so what the heck. At least this
way, even if you finish only half before the meeting, you still can
discuss it! [-ecl]
2. As a writer and the main force behind a major international news
publication, the MT VOID, I believe it is very important to present
all sides of an issue. I am _n_o_t the kind of person that you have
to dislocate my jaw if I am not presenting your point of view. No,
sir, never again. A viewpoint has been presented to me and I want
to pass it on and be rid of it. I recently argued against the
eating of beef on the grounds (no pun intended) that a cow/bull is
a reasonably intelligent animal that makes friends with others of
its own kind. You should not be fooled by the fact that it spends
all day eating the same grass it makes doo-doo in; we are not here
to argue matters of taste.
The argument has been put to me that my attitude is unfair to
cattle. (Yeah! Can you believe it?) The argument is that cattle
are bred to be eaten and look at all the cattle I would be denying
life to if I don't eat them ground up in tiny little pieces on a
bun. This argument traces back philosophically to one of the more
common and hence weirder views of the universe. That is that the
universe is a giant amusement park with one ride called The Life.
Souls, in this case cow souls, stand in a long line waiting to ride
The Life. In some parts of the East the belief is that when a cow
soul gets off it says, "Wow! Let's go on that one again!" In our
part of the world we believe that if you rode the ride following
the rules and sat quietly and enjoyed the ride, when you get off
you go and get cotton candy. If, however, you stood up in your
seat and screamed and waved your arms when you weren't really
scared, then when you get off you throw up for all eternity.
Now if no cow soul ever gets off the ride, then the poor cow souls
waiting in line never get a chance to ride. Now what my learned
correspondent is suggesting is that we alleviate the problem by
building an artificial brick wall on the ride where the car rams
into it, killing the passenger. This frees up the car to return
for the next passenger and gives us something we can scrape off the
wall, put on a bun, and eat. And this is supposed to be a kindness
to the cow souls waiting in line. I trust the fallacy in that
argument is now abundantly clear.
3. Thanks to Rebecca Schoenfeld for volunteering to take the
library off Tim's hands. Her room number and phone number appear
above in the colophon.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzy!leeper
TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A big sci-fi (as opposed to
"science fiction") film with amazing special effects has
Arnold Schwarzenegger again playing a robot caught up in
a battle for the future being fought in the present.
Stronger on action than intelligence, it still manages to
expand the ideas of the first film. Rating: +1 (-4 to
+4).
(There are films plotted in such a way that it is very difficult to
say anything without giving away twists in the plot. This review has
been worded carefully to avoid spoilers that have appeared in _e_v_e_r_y
other review I have seen. A spoiler section will follow the review to
discuss matters that could not be addressed in the main body of the
review.)
On August 29, 1997, so the story goes, the world is plunged into
nuclear war, though of about six billion people, only about half are
actually killed. The remaining three billion people are locked into a
life-and-death struggle of humans against machines. The machines
achieve sentience and set out to kill all humans to make the world safe
for machine-kind. But the one human who most stands in their way is
John Connor. So the machines send a killer robot, a "terminator," into
the past to the year 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, who is destined to be
the mother of John. The humans manage to send back a human to protect
Sarah Connor. The struggle of these two time travelers and the
conception of John Connor is the plot of the 1984 film _T_h_e _T_e_r_m_i_n_a_t_o_r.
The first robot, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, failed in his mission
so the machines, who could send only one robot back before, suddenly
found a way to send a second robot. The humans, too, who could send
only one human before, find the means of sending back their own
representative for their own second shot. This time each sends to
somewhere around the year 1995, one with a mission to kill the now ten-
year-old John Connor, the other with a mission to protect John Connor.
Their conflict is the story of _T_e_r_m_i_n_a_t_o_r _2: _J_u_d_g_m_e_n_t _D_a_y.
Sarah Connor's reaction to the events of the first film bordered on
the psychotic. She made it her mission to learn everything she could
about guerilla warfare and survival tactics to pass on to her son. She
slept with mercenaries and made friends with military personnel to help
achieve her goal. She was eventually placed in a mental institution and
John was given to foster parents. He seems to have aged fast and
behaves like a much older boy. He even apparently has a license for a
dirt-bike that he rides like a teenager and has broken the security on
local cash machines. One might assume that the sequel is more of a
juvenile film if the main character is so young, but director James
Terminator 2 July 5, 1991 Page 2
Cameron uses that device only to widen the band of audience appeal to
include younger people. Arnold Schwarzenegger is as tough as he was in
the first outing but this time has more of an opportunity to put
personality into his character.
The new script adds some new concepts and forgets about some of the
old. And both actions are welcome. We discover this time around that
the nuclear war was not with the Soviets. This might have been
considered a necessary change since month by month the possibility of
nuclear war between the United States and the Soviets seems more and
more remote. But without the Soviets as foes, the question would be
whom would we be fighting with. The film provides an answer, as Cameron
often does, by borrowing a concept from another major science fiction
film. (See the spoiler section if you dare.) Not entirely gone but
soft-pedaled is the ridiculous idea that only living matter can go
through the time portal. So the time portal strips away clothing and
weapons but for some reason leaves intact other dead matter like hair
and fingernails. However, at one point in the film, the machines of the
future send back a piece of metal and it makes it through just fine
without being living tissue. The concept that some physical process in
the time portal recognizes what is living and what is not is dubious at
best. This of course does raise an inconsistency in the plot, but then
Cameron considers and develops the ideas of the film only enough so they
do not get in the way of all the action scenes. Along those lines it
still has not occurred to the humans of the future (is "still" the right
word for events in the future?) that their efforts might be better spent
in sending back agents actually to avert the war, rather than just to
lessen its impact.
The action scenes and special effects--what most of the audience
has come to see--are delivered, even if not always in the most
intelligent manner. I consider Cameron's last film, _T_h_e _A_b_y_s_s, a much
more intelligent and interesting action film. It had better characters
and a much more engrossing story. In one sequence of _T_e_r_m_i_n_a_t_o_r _2, one
of the good guys is sprayed with machine gun fire that should have been
instantly fatal, but he lives considerably longer to exact his revenge.
It is a little redundant, incidentally, to say that it is a good guy
sprayed with machine gun fire. From a certain point in the plot on, the
good guys undertake to do what has to be done without killing any more
of the bad guys, much like in the Japanese action film _S_a_n_j_u_r_o. The
special effects are extremely well done and undoubtedly account for a
big piece of the film's price tag of somewhere around a tenth of a
billion dollars. That cost was apparently partially defrayed by rubbing
the audience's collective nose in the name of a well-known soft drink.
While much of the special effects budget went into creating some
really impressive robot effects, there was enough left over to spend
some very impressive effects on a dream sequence. In the film _T_h_e _M_o_u_s_e
_T_h_a_t _R_o_a_r_e_d, in the midst of showing some screwball characters playing
tag with a nuclear super-weapon, we see a huge nuclear detonation. The
narrator reassures us that it did not really happen in the plot and the
Terminator 2 July 5, 1991 Page 3
scene was just to remind us what could happen any moment. Similarly, we
see some of the most frightening and realistic scenes ever created of a
city destroyed by a nuclear bomb. And we see them in a dream sequence
to tell us, this is what Sarah Connor is trying to avoid. In those
scenes and many others the audience can only marvel at the incredible
technology used to create this fervently anti-technology film.
_T_e_r_m_i_n_a_t_o_r _2: _J_u_d_g_m_e_n_t _D_a_y is a large film with large virtues and
large faults. Like Mt. Rushmore, it is huge and a must-see, but one
wonders if it really was such a good idea in the first place. I would
rate this Mt. Rushmore of a movie +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
***SPOILER SECTION****SPOILER SECTION****SPOILER SECTION***
One of the nice touches of the script is its use of the audience's
expectations from the previous film to surprise the audience this time
around. Once again you have a mean-looking Arnold Schwarzenegger and a
smaller and more human-looking guy--thin, short, and his ears stick
out--arriving from the future. The natural assumption the audience has
is that the Schwarzenegger robot will be a killing machine aimed at John
Connor, and the other visitor will be playing defense. It would have
caught the audience nicely off-guard when each does precisely the
opposite thing. Unfortunately, you are looking at the first and only
review I have seen that does not spoil this twist for the audience.
Every review also gives away the nature of the bad terminator, a
truly awesome idea for a killing machine which it strikes me was
borrowed from a 1960s DC comic book called "Metal Men." Visually the
effect, a close relative of the "water-tentacle" used in _T_h_e _A_b_y_s_s, is
very impressive. However, the story simply did not carry through with
the power of this killer. In at least three of the scenes, he should
have been able to take out John Connor by turning himself into a strong
clamp and a very long sword. He should have been able to kill any human
within twenty or thirty feet of him fairly easily. There may have been
some rule that said only a certain percentage of his weight could go
into the sword, but if that were the case they should have said so. And
this thing is many orders of magnitude advanced over the old-style
terminator. Where did the new technology come from? It seems unlikely
for 2029 that any such technology will be possible.
It is nice that Sarah Connor starts to use her head, but why does
nobody in the future think in terms of stopping the nuclear war? And
destroying the computers is a good thought for someone like Sarah, but
it probably would not work. It is a standard security precaution to
store important software backups off-site just in case two robots from
the future decide to use your lab as a battleground. Or in case a
defense computer becomes sentient and starts dictating terms. I think
Cameron probably borrowed that idea from _C_o_l_o_s_s_u_s: _T_h_e _F_o_r_b_i_n _P_r_o_j_e_c_t.
One last question: When the liquid nitrogen truck took the liquid
robot into the foundry, am I the only one who knew the next two forces
that would be used against him? No, I thought not.
The Action Film Heroine
Two film reviews by Dale L. Skran, Jr.
Copyright 1991 Dale L. Skran, Jr.
Until very recently, there were almost no action heroines in film,
at least in "real films." By an "action heroine" I mean a woman who
resolves major plot elements via the use of physical action, and not
just as a last resort. This excludes the "rape revenge" story where
some unfortunate woman is "pushed to the limit" and then explodes.
Consider a female Robin Hood. A female Lancelot. The use of these male
examples merely demonstrates the sheer paucity of female action figures,
especially in film.
The use of the phrase "real film" explicitly excludes films in the
"Bimbos from the Death Star" mold, as well as campy efforts such as
_M_o_d_e_s_t_y _B_l_a_i_s_e (note that in the _b_o_o_k_s Modesty Blaise is surely a female
action heroine). The modern female action figure has been almost
exclusively defined by director Ridley Scott in _A_l_i_e_n. Here Sigourney
Weaver plays "Ripley," the co-pilot of an ore-freighter that picks up an
unwanted guest. One by one, the unstoppable alien picks off the crew,
leading to a final mano-a-mano battle between Ripley and the Alien,
which she wins the way humans beat the mammoth and the saber-tooth tiger
-- by being trickier! No other film in recent memory so naturally
accepts a woman as having a vital role - a pilot and level-headed
explorer - and finally as the surviving representative of the human
species.
Ripley returns in _A_l_i_e_n_s (with a different director) and another
female action character - an archetypical marine named Valasquez - who
goes out the traditional marine way. Ridley Scott has moved on to other
things, and in the controversial _T_h_e_l_m_a & _L_o_u_i_s_e has out-done himself.
Scott brings to life a place at least as strange and dangerous (to
women) as the world where the Alien was found - the American small-town
Southwest. _T_h_e_l_m_a _a_n_d _L_o_u_i_s_e is an excellent, finely acted film lensed
beautifully by Scott. Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon star as two small
town women who break away from their dismal existence and repulsive male
associates for a weekend at a cabin together. On the way, they stop at
a bar and a macho bar-stud attempts to rape the innocent Thelma. Louise
rescues Thelma with a gun the compulsive Thelma brought alone more or
less by accident, and then cold-bloodedly kills the bar-stud.
This begins a crime spree that builds logically and culminates with
a final gesture at the Grand Canyon. As events unfold, Thelma discovers
that she has a flair for crime, and both find that once freedom has been
tasted, you can't go back to what amounts to slavery.
SPOILER WARNING - ENDING REVEALED
Action Heroines July 5, 1991 Page 2
As I left the theater, I heard people wondering aloud why Louise
and Thelma decided to commit suicide by driving their car into the Grand
Canyon to avoid capture by about five hundred cops. At the risk of
seeming overly melodramatic, their decision seemed perfectly sensible to
me. Throughout history there have been many who chose to die free
rather than be held captive. If a film were made where black slaves
escaping from Southern Plantation owners elected suicide over capture,
no one would be shaking their heads. What _T_h_e_l_m_a & _L_o_u_i_s_e dares to
suggest is that women are not really free in the United States today.
They live in fear and are subjected to constant unwanted assaults. If
they protest, all too often the justice system does not respond.
_T_h_e_l_m_a & _L_o_u_i_s_e is not an action film in the sense of a puerile
shoot-um-up. It is a serious film with excellent acting, a strong
script (although the truck scene gets too preachy for my taste), and it
just happens to be about two women who attempt to resolve their problems
via physical violence. Rate this a +3 on the Leeper Scale (-4 to +4).
Another recent film with a female action heroine is _L_a _F_e_m_m_e
_N_i_k_i_t_a. In this case, the term anti-heroine may be more appropriate,
but the action is central. Compared by some to the minor _E_n_t_e_r _t_h_e
_D_e_s_t_r_o_y_e_r, _L_a _F_e_m_m_e _N_i_k_i_t_a is a much darker, more serious look at the
underbelly of government operations than most James-Bond-type fare.
Firstly, Nikita is not some wimpy baby doll who is trained by the
French government to do a few karate chops and take fingerprints like a
good little girl. She is instead a raw elemental force on the scale of
the _B_a_t_m_a_n or Rorschach from the _W_a_t_c_h_m_e_n. Giving up and fair play are
not in her vocabulary. Confronted during interrogation with a policeman
who insists that she give her "real name" rather than Nikita she attacks
him (and the entire roomful of cops) with a pencil! Nikita is not a
"nice" person anymore than Bruce Wayne is. She teeters on the twilight
of psychosis, driven by her need for drugs, and absolutely devoid of
conscience.
The French government sees in Nikita material that might, with
effort, be molded into a killing machine, so they fake her suicide in
prison and begin her training (after first shooting her in the leg to
prevent further escape attempts!). It is not gunplay or the martial
arts that she requires training in but simple human things such as
smiling or ordering from a menu. On her first outing to the shooting
gallery she obliterates the paper target with a heavy-duty weapon. The
instructor remarks that she must have used it before. She replies,
"Never on paper." Attempts to teach her the fine points of the martial
arts end disastrously for the instructors (I hope the French have found
some who are more capable!). All this re-emphasizes that Nikita is not
a normal person who is being trained to kill, but a deadly force that is
being refined and directed. Nikita needs all her natural abilities and
training to survive the graduation exercise contrived for her.
Action Heroines July 5, 1991 Page 3
The actual assassinations Nikita is involved with are anti-
climactic. After years of training, she plays a series of minor roles
in complex operations involving many other agents. I found this
bureaucratic style of operation to be highly believable and a welcome
contrast to the lone-wolf activity so often portrayed in fiction and
film.
Finally, after she has become involved in a double life (nurse by
day, assassin by night), she is allowed to plan and execute her own
operation. This goes terribly wrong through no particular fault of
Nikita's, and she ends up on the run, unable to cope any longer with the
stress of her double life.
Overall, _L_a _F_e_m_m_e _N_i_k_i_t_a is a +2 film on the Leeper Scale (-4 to
+4).
_T_h_e_l_m_a & _L_o_u_i_s_e has been quite controversial and _L_a _F_e_m_m_e _N_i_k_i_t_a
would be if it ever got a wide release. There is a scene in _4_8 _H_o_u_r_s in
which Richard Pryor enters a bar with a gun and a badge, saying
something like, "I'm your worst nightmare -- n****r with a badge." For
all too many men, guns are badges of their own virility, and the thought
of women handling them skillfully makes them nervous. Perhaps they
remember a saying from the old West: God made men, but Colonel Colt made
them equal. It applies to women as well.
[Yes, before you ask, Dale has seen _T_e_r_m_i_n_a_t_o_r _2; a review of that may
eventually be forthcoming. -ecl]
Three Summer Reviews
Film reviews by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
I have come back from three-and-a-half weeks in eastern Europe, so
I have a lot of catching up to do. I do not really have the time to go
out and see a lot of movies and write reviews. Oh, I am still seeing
movies, but for a while I will have time to review only the biggees. I
have now seen three comedies, for none of which did I really plan to do
my full write-up. But three small reviews can go together to make one
article. I will review them in order of increasing respect.
_N_a_k_e_d _G_u_n _2-_1/_2: _T_h_e _S_m_e_l_l _o_f _F_e_a_r is something of a
disappointment. The team of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker worked like a
well-oiled machine to make some pretty funny comedies. Now they have
split up and gone in three directions. With this film that machine is
operating on only one piston, David Zucker. He wrote and directed the
film without either of the other two people. The film has about the
same number of jokes, but only about a third of the laughs and nothing
particularly hilarious. What is worse, the film tries to be about a
serious subject. In _A_i_r_p_l_a_n_e! the trio was, in part, saying how silly
their own story was. Even the original _N_a_k_e_d _G_u_n tried to steer clear
of any hint of seriousness. Here we have a bunch of just okay jokes
hung on a paper-thin plot about a conspiracy against the environment.
The film has a laugh or two but in general is kind of tired. I give
this one only a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale, though I did enjoy Lloyd
Bochner's allusion to what is probably his most famous role. (I don't
count that a spoiler, because who remembers Bochner's famous role
anyway?)
Better constructed and with some better gags is _S_o_a_p_d_i_s_h. This is
occasionally a pretty funny comedy, though never as madcap as intended.
The story, of course, is about the back-stabbing, the politics, and the
personal crises that go on behind the scenes of a popular soap opera,
"The Sun Also Sets." Sally Field plays the main character of the
program, but will not be for long if another actress (played by Cathy
Moriarty) has anything to do with it. The jealous Moriarty constantly
flirts with the show's producer (played by Robert Downey, Jr.), getting
him to make decisions that are driving Field crazy, including bringing
back Kevin Kline, who many years before was Field's on- and off-screen
lover. Whoopi Goldberg brings her _S_t_a_r _T_r_e_k: _T_h_e _N_e_x_t _G_e_n_e_r_a_t_i_o_n
personality to the screen as Field's friend and confidante as well as
the show's writer. The plot is contrived and this is hardly a
believable picture of how a soap opera is made, but at least the gags
are mostly funny. I rate it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. The best scene
is Kevin Kline's _D_e_a_t_h _o_f _a _S_a_l_e_s_m_a_n.
Not too surprisingly, the best comedy is from the writers of
_P_a_r_e_n_t_h_o_o_d. Three upper-middle-class Easterners in their late thirties
Three Reviews July 8, 1991 Page 2
end up fish out of water in a real cowboy cattle drive. Yeah, it sounds
like eight different bad movies on cable, except it's not teenagers.
But that does not mean that this film could not possibly be done right,
and writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel do pull this one off with
attention to character and some solid human values. This is not the
kind of script that Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd get, in part because
they just do not deserve it. This is a film about mid-life crisis and
the meaning of friendship. Once you realize these are characters who
have fears and consciences and feel pain, when there are action scenes
they mean much more. The three are played by Billy Crystal, Daniel
Stern, and Bruno Kirby as childhood friends who take unusual vacations
together. This time they take a packaged vacation to learn basic cowboy
skills and go on a real cattle drive--more real than they at first
expect. They have a chance to talk out their problems and their
relationships and learn to operate as a team. There is a major
character named Norman and Billy Crystal's reaction to Norman's first
appearance makes the best scene of any of these three films, and also is
perhaps the most real. _C_i_t_y _S_l_i_c_k_e_r_s is worth seeing and rates a +2 on
the -4 to +4 scale.