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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 08/23/91 -- Vol. 10, No. 8
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
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
11/13 MT: THE RED MAGICIAN by Lisa Goldstein (Jewish science fiction)
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.
09/14 SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: TBA
(phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday)
09/21 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: TBA
(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 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. Of this week's LZ discussion book, Dale Skran says: "QUEEN OF
ANGELS makes a solid attempt to put the reader about fifty years in
the future (2047). Unlike Brin's world-shattering EARTH, QUEEN OF
ANGELS has an almost microscopic focus on several characters and a
police-procedural plot updated to include nano-technology.
Unfortunately, Bear makes the mistake of having one of the
characters be an AI coming into self-awareness after arriving in a
distant star system. The plot posits that the AI was launched in
2032, an event I consider unlikely in the extreme given the current
moribund state of our space program. Although QUEEN OF ANGELS has
many interesting ideas, I enjoyed Brin's rock-um sock-um EARTH
THE MT VOID Page 2
(which also had many interesting ideas) far more. Still, both Brin
and Bear deserve special attention for daring to write that most
difficult of SF novels -- one that takes place about 50 years in
the future. Recommended. Has a better shot at the Nebula than the
Hugo due to large amounts of stylistic experimentation, stream-of-
consciousness writing, and detailed characterization."
2. Well, the time has come for the changing of the guard. The Mt.
Holz Science Fiction Society has three libraries and three
librarians. With only three librarians you would not expect to
have two leaving at the same time and two new librarians coming in.
But we do. So this is probably a good time to express our
appreciation for the two librarians who are leaving and our even
greater appreciation to the one librarian who is staying. (Hey,
look--let's be reasonable. If we only show appreciation for
leaving librarians, more librarians will leave. Right?) So our
greatest appreciation has to be expressed to Mr. Lance Larsen.
Many of you in Lincroft already know Lance by sight if not by name.
He is the gentleman whose head is a long way from the floor but
whose hair is not.
Leaving we have Tim Schroeder. Now what can we say about Tim? He
is one of those people who takes things easy and is preternaturally
natural. I never realized how unaffected he was until the night he
was at my house when he took a drink of soda in a glass. Much
later in the evening he was still fiddling with the now dry glass.
Apparently out of absentmindedness I found him sticking a
stockinged foot into the glass. Now that is a world-class level of
lacking affectation, I can tell you. After that I was always
careful to be sure to be a good host and always keep his glass
full. I think we all want to wish Tim good luck and prosperity.
(He's not leaving AT&T, but has moved into an office that has no
extra room for the library.) I would award him the glass that he
stuck his hoof in, but we got rid of it long ago. Tim will be
replaced by Rebecca Schoenfeld in HO 2K-430.
Last but not least--unless you count by pounds--we want to thank
Evelyn Leeper, the former Middletown librarian and accomplished
kvetch. The Middletown library has left her office and is
currently in my office. I am sure we will all want to wish Evelyn
health, happiness, and prosperity. And of those three the one we
hope most for her is prosperity. I mean, I'd like to see her with
the Mercedes-and-a-Porsche-in-the-garage sort of prosperity. We'd
like to see her living a life of luxury in a big house with her
husband and servants and faithful dogs. We want to see her with a
fantastic video room with thousands of movies on cassette. And
window treatments on the living room windows.
If this is the sort of thing you want to see Evelyn have, just send
me the money and I'll see her family gets it. (Oh, incidentally,
the library and I are in MT 3D-441.)
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzy!leeper
ONLY BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER by James Morrow
Ace, 1991 (1990c), ISBN 0-441-63041-3, $4.50.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
God is alive and well and living in New Jersey (Brigantine Point,
to be precise). If that seems unlikely, it's because you haven't read
James Morrow's _O_n_l_y _B_e_g_o_t_t_e_n _D_a_u_g_h_t_e_r.
If one takes as a premise that God had a son two thousand years ago
(and I've accepted far more outre' ideas for the sake of a story), then
Morrow's extrapolation makes sense. Last time a male was born to a
female without male assistance. But God is an equal opportunity
employer, and so this time a female is born to a male with female
assistance. (Well, science helps.) The last one was Jesus Christ; this
one is Julie Katz. The last was wonderful (according to the official
version); this one is a regular hell-raiser (so to speak).
A modern-day (literal) daughter of God is likely to face some
problems growing up, and Julie is no exception. Her life is complicated
by the growing tide of Christian fundamentalism. In a skillful parody
of the story of Herod's Massacre of the Innocents, Morrow has the
fundamentalists first appear when they blow up a sperm bank and research
center and almost destroy Julie, who is saved only because her father
fled with her, or rather with the jar with her embryo, shortly before
the attack. His use of a Saab instead of a donkey as the getaway
vehicle is merely another nod to the 20th Century.
Julie grows up, is tempted by the Devil, meets up with her brother
(half-brother?), and through it all seeks for her mother. (Well,
everyone makes God in his or her own image, right?) Her life parallels
that of the last of God's offspring, but with a modern twist. Julie see
things more from a 58th Century perspective than from a 38th Century
one, more from an American than an Aramaic. Through it all, Morrow
centers on the human aspects of religion. He shows us the potential for
good and the potential for evil present in any major religious movement.
In this, Morrow continues a theme he has used in previous works, notably
his "Bible Stories for Adults."
In one way, _O_n_l_y _B_e_g_o_t_t_e_n _D_a_u_g_h_t_e_r is similar to Nikos
Kazantzakis's _L_a_s_t _T_e_m_p_t_a_t_i_o_n _o_f _C_h_r_i_s_t: it allows the child of God to
be very human. Now, my feeling is that if the claim is that 2000 years
ago God's son became human to share in human suffering, then it is not
unreasonable to give him human faults, frailties, and feelings. If he
has no human feelings, then he is not really human. Morrow seems to
agree with this, and Julie is definitely human. This sounds as if it
could be heavy-handed and preachy (certainly the film version of _T_h_e
_L_a_s_t _t_e_m_p_t_a_t_i_o_n _o_f _C_h_r_i_s_t was), but Morrow displays a much subtler touch
than he has in some of his previous works (notably _T_h_i_s _I_s _t_h_e _W_a_y _t_h_e
Only Begotten Daughter August 15, 1991 Page 2
_W_o_r_l_d _E_n_d_s) and the result is thought-provoking rather than
authoritarian.
_O_n_l_y _B_e_g_o_t_t_e_n _D_a_u_g_h_t_e_r will not appeal to people who either reject
religion outright (though as I said, more far-fetched premises have been
accepted in science fiction and fantasy--look at all the gods and
goddesses in _T_h_e _I_l_i_a_d, and people still read that) or who take their
religion so seriously that they allow for no leeway in its examination.
(A third set, of course, may be those who are unfamiliar with the story
Morrow is paralleling. In our ever-diversifying United States, this is
becoming a readership to be reckoned with.) But for the reader who
wants to take a new look at an old legend, I highly recommend _O_n_l_y
_B_e_g_o_t_t_e_n _D_a_u_g_h_t_e_r. The fact that writing science fiction about religion
limits one's audience in the ways I described means that not many people
are doing it, more's the pity, and among those brave souls, Morrow is
one of the best.
==============================================
TALKING MAN by Terry Bisson
Avon, 1987 (1986c), ISBN 0-380-75141-0, $2.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
This review may be futile: the book in question is four years old
and, while not out of print, not extremely easy to find either. But
it's a good book, a fun book, and maybe you'll run across it someday.
Who knows? Now that Bisson has won a Nebula and may win a Hugo (for
"Bears Discover Fire"), they may even reprint it.
_T_a_l_k_i_n_g _M_a_n starts out in Kentucky, as many of Bisson's works do.
Bisson is one of the new authors who have discovered that the rural
South makes an excellent setting for fantasy. If the plot of _T_a_l_k_i_n_g
_M_a_n is a little too much like the plots of other fantasies full of
wizards and spells of un-being and all that folderol, Bisson makes up
for it in the setting. And his setting keeps changing. As the spells
begin to work, things change. The Mississippi becomes wider, flows
through a deep canyon, flows north. Bisson's characters deal with all
this change using their ingenuity, but there is also a fair amount of
luck (meaning convenient auctorial intervention).
The cover, by the way, is reminiscent of the cover of Jack Womack's
_T_e_r_r_a_p_l_a_n_e! Womack is the "other" Kentucky science fiction writer. It
makes one wonder if everyone in Kentucky drives an old maroon car with
white sidewalls and funny white lights around it.
RED GENESIS by S. C. Sykes
Bantam Spectra, 1991, ISBN 0-553-28874-1, $4.99.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
_R_e_d _G_e_n_e_s_i_s is the first of a new series from Bantam Spectra. My
comments on this series in general are at the end of this review, but
first I will discuss _R_e_d _G_e_n_e_s_i_s.
_R_e_d _G_e_n_e_s_i_s has been described as being Heinleinesque, and not
without reason. Sykes gives us a powerful business tycoon as our strong
main character. Convicted of killing millions through a series of
accidents involving toxic waste, Graham Kuan Sinclair is exiled to the
Martian colonies--forever. Forbidden any contact with Earth, any news
of Earth, even a watch showing Earth time, he must make his way, without
money or inherited power or influence. (Yes, the parallel to Edward
Everett Hale's "Man Without a Country" is obvious--Sykes quotes Hale at
the beginning of the novel.) Since there's never any doubt Sinclair
will survive--at least not to my mind--the only question is whether he
will remake the new world to his liking and control it the way he did
Earth, or learn a new humanity and social conscience. With the spate of
"powerful man suffers serious misfortune and finds sensitive inner self"
movies this year (_R_e_g_a_r_d_i_n_g _H_e_n_r_y, _T_h_e _D_o_c_t_o_r, _D_o_c _H_o_l_l_y_w_o_o_d), this plot
may look old, but I'm sure _R_e_d _G_e_n_e_s_i_s was written before any of the
films were made and merely reflects a social trend. But even with the
handicap of familiarity, Sykes manages to balance the libertarian with
the socialist to achieve an ending that doesn't hand the reader a canned
party line in either direction. If some of the plot elements are
unlikely, obvious, or both--well, I'm willing to forgive them for the
sake of a good story with good characters, which this is.
Asimov's introduction about Mars reads like all his science essays
over the past twenty-five years and Eugene Mallove's closing essay on
Mars says nothing new. Their inclusion makes the book look as if it
were aimed at a school audience ("Learn science through science
fiction!") and needed some educational material. But anyone who needs
the material probably won't find the story interesting, because the
story assumes the reader knows something about Mars. (Not to mention
that a package with such pretensions to education should not include the
canard about the Great Wall of China being the only man-made object
visible with the unaided human eye from the moon. To distinguish an
object twenty feet wide from 240,000 miles would require the eye to have
a resolution of 0.001 _s_e_c_o_n_d of arc--physically impossible given the
dimensions and placement of the retina's rods and cones. And if it
could detect an object twenty feet wide and thousands of miles long, it
could also detect I-80, which is considerably wider.) It's a cute
packaging trick, but the novel is strong enough to stand on its own.
_R_e_d _G_e_n_e_s_i_s is a very promising first novel for Sykes and an auspicious
start for "The Next Wave."
Red Genesis August 20, 1991 Page 2
Bantam Spectra's "Special Editions" series seems to have fallen by
the wayside (or been replaced by their "Signature Editions," reprints of
books they feel did not get enough attention the first time around).
This new series is "The Next Wave," which Bantam describes as a
"dramatic new series of books at the cutting edge where science meets
science fiction." Packaged by Byron Preiss Visual Publications, each
book has an introduction by Isaac Asimov and a scientific essay relating
to the novel's subject matter, as well as a novel by a (relatively) new
author. I suspect the latter is true in part because the entire work is
copyrighted by Byron Preiss Visual Publications rather than by the
author, the essayist, and the cover artist. (Asimov retains the
copyright on his introductions--but then, he's Asimov.) This bothers me
in part because this means the cover artist is uncredited inside (though
there is the signature "Jensen" on the cover art itself, strangely
enough with a copyright symbol, so who knows who _d_o_e_s own the
copyright?), and in part because having the novel's copyright assigned
to Byron Preiss Visual Publications implies that any financial benefit
goes there as well. I could be wrong, and Sykes is entitled to make
whatever deal she wants in any case, but I prefer to be sure the author
is benefiting from her or his work.
None of this has anything to do with _R_e_d _G_e_n_e_s_i_s, of course, which
I highly recommend.
THE WILD BLUE AND THE GRAY by William Sanders
Questar, 1991, ISBN 0-446-36142-9, $4.50.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
"The Wild Blue" in the title is "the wild blue yonder"; "the Gray"
are the airmen of the Confederate States of America. Yes, it's another
"What if the South won the Civil War?" alternate history. But this one
doesn't take place on the North American continent, but instead on the
European battlefields of World War I, or rather, above them. In this
universe the Confederate States is helping the Allies (Britain, France,
and presumably Russia) fight the Central Powers (Germany and Austro-
Hungary). And our main character, Amos Ninekiller, is on loan to the
Confederate air force from the Cherokee Flying Corps of the Indian
Nations.
The details of how the South won are left somewhat hazy--the
British navy came in on their side, but no other real information is
given. Sanders instead sticks to telling a good World War I adventure
story set in the universe. And a good story it is, with action and
danger. Sanders can describe a dogfight or a battle so that you feel as
if you're there. Perhaps he's no Humphrey Cobb or Erich Maria Remarque,
but he does not gloss over the horrors of war in order to tell his story
either.
By using a Cherokee as his main character, Sanders is able to show
us everything from an "outsider's" point of view. He even manages to
touch briefly on an issue that the United States armed forces in our
universe didn't come to terms with until after World War II: racial
integration. (Am I reading too much into it to see a parallel with the
current furor over the military's continued discrimination against gay
and lesbian soldiers? Probably.)
Now, any alternate history fan knows that half the fun of reading
an alternate history story is picking nits. And I have some--minor ones
to be sure, but this is part of the game. For starters, William Falkner
didn't change his name to Faulkner until 1924, eight years after the
story takes place. The character mentioned on page 130 (no fair
peeking!) did not get involved in politics until later either. And the
inclusion of a madam named Rhetticia O'Hara whose father always said,
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a --," can only be described as a serious
miscalculation brought on by the author's having read too many Simon
Hawke "Time Wars" books.
Sanders also uses some stock alternate history tricks. (This is
not a complaint. Every genre has its conventions.) One character muses
how if the Union had won then the current war wouldn't be in the mess it
was (when of course the reader knows that it did and it was). Sanders
also takes a jab at a recent president at the end of chapter 2 by
Wild Blue and the Gray August 16, 1991 Page 2
describing a parallel situation in the alternate world, which led me to
fear that every chapter might have a similar punch line. Luckily, they
didn't. Consider this a hint to the beginning alternate history reader:
check the chapter and scene breaks. Things that happen right before
them are frequently meaningful parallelisms; things that happen right
after them are usually not. For example, if you have an alternate World
War II novel, at the end of a chapter you might get:
After checking in, Frank decided to drop by the mess to
meet his shipmates. The only man sitting there was a
young man in his twenties. Frank approached him. "Hi,
my name's Frank Clark."
The man stuck out his hand. "Please to meet you," he
said in a thick Boston accent. "I'm John Kennedy."
while at the beginning of a chapter the same scene would read:
After checking in, Frank decided to drop by the mess to
meet his shipmates. The only man sitting there was a
young man in his twenties. Frank approached him. "Hi,
my name's Frank Clark."
The man stuck out his hand. "Please to meet you," he
said in a thick Boston accent. "I'm Bill Jones."
Anyway, to get back to the work at hand, Sanders seems to go with
the "tide of history" theory in that World War I in this universe is
remarkably similar to World War I in ours, but fans of the "great man"
theory will find him sympathetic to their cause as well. While I
greatly enjoyed _T_h_e _W_i_l_d _B_l_u_e _a_n_d _t_h_e _G_r_a_y, Sanders does leave a couple
of loose ends lying around (for possible sequels, no doubt--one is even
_c_r_e_a_t_e_d toward the end of the book) that I would have preferred to see
tied up. Still, the book stands by itself and provides a thumping good
read, nothing to be sneezed at today. Highly recommended.