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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 08/30/91 -- Vol. 10, No. 9
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
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
12/18 MT: "The Star" by Arthur C. Clarke (Christian science fiction)
_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. What is it about the American road? It seems to attract bad
taste and lunatics. People who come from tasteful homes get on the
road and go in for the most absurd and silly-looking fads you can
imagine. How many people do you know who plaster slogans on the
outside of their house? Not very many. But they do hang them on
their bumpers. Have you seen a house with a sticker that says to
other houses, "Ring you doorbell if you love Jesus"? No, of course
not. At least Christmas wreaths people really do hang in the doors
of their homes as well as on the front grill of their cars. But of
how many of your friends can you say that when you go in their
bathroom and look at their mirrors they have a pair of baby shoes
THE MT VOID Page 2
or foam dice hanging from the mirror? But you see it all the time
in cars. (Actually, come to that, I am still not totally happy we
have to have mirrors in bathrooms. That is generally the room I am
least anxious to look at myself in.)
The history of American car decoration is truly silly and demented.
It would have to include atrocities such a skits to give VW bugs
grilles like Rolls Royces. Then there is the giant ersatz wind-up
key, also for VW bugs. VW owners just aren't normal. There is
something about driving a bug that drives you buggy. I think that
their current ad campaign is based on the idea that VW fans are
really turned on my giant German words that sound like barf-fig-
newton.
If you are a longtime reader of this notice I don't have to tell
you about the silliness of diamond signs and stuffed animals stuck
to car windows. This is because if you are a longtime reader you
may not have brain cells enough to process the information.
Well, what's chewing my parsnips this week are those silly "How am
I driving?" stickers. You know which ones I mean. Some
manufacturer or something had all their trucks put on stickers that
asked, "How am I driving?" and gave a phone number to call and
tattle. Americans love to live by the principle, "If you can't say
something nice, at least it feels good to say it anyway." Now
everyone knows the pronoun is all wrong. the truck driver isn't
going to be at the other end of that line. He's going to be in a
restaurant arm-wrestling and being served pie by a waitress named
Trixie. If you _c_o_u_l_d get him on the phone to complain, you'd hear
some new words. These guys talk more aggressively than they drive.
It has become a new sport amongst truck drivers to obscure that
sign with precision mud splattering. It takes a light touch
driving through mud just the right way.
Then there are the ones who save you the trouble of calling and
right up front they say, "Don't like my driving? Call 1-800-EAT
SHIT." I wonder how many people call that each year.
How was this article, by the way? If you didn't think it was
funny, let me know. I have installed a special phone line; call
1-800-TUF-LUCK.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzy!leeper
Amongst all things, knowledge is truly the best thing:
from its not being liable ever to be stolen, from its
not being purchasable, and from its being imperishable.
-- The Hitopadesa
DEAD AGAIN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Two murder mysteries tied together
by reincarnation. A great deal of tension is created,
but the solution of the mystery is not too surprising and
an action sequence toward the end is just not up to the
style of the rest of the film. There is a great product
placement, however. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4).
When a little-known filmmaker has a film that makes it really big,
it is interesting to see what he or she does with that success. What is
the next film like? When suddenly a filmmaker is respected and has a
little more freedom, what does s/he do for an encore? A little-known
George Lucas had a big hit with _A_m_e_r_i_c_a_n _G_r_a_f_f_i_t_i; his next project was
to bring comic-book space opera in a way that did not suffer in the
transition. That was a success. Spike Lee's first post-success project
was the disappointing _S_c_h_o_o_l _D_a_z_e. Kenneth Branagh, the director and
star of the very successful _H_e_n_r_y _V, has returned with a very stylish
mystery and supernatural thriller with a dream cast. Branagh stars with
his somewhat less well known wife, Emma Thompson. But also on hand in
smaller roles are Derek Jacobi, Andy Garcia, Robin Williams, and
European actress Hanna Schygulla (of _T_h_e _M_a_r_r_i_a_g_e _o_f _M_a_r_i_a _B_r_a_u_n and
_B_e_r_l_i_n _A_l_e_x_a_n_d_e_r_p_l_a_t_z). This is an oddly matched collected of actors
and the screenplay hardly gives them all a chance to make contributions
commensurate with their talents.
A nameless, voiceless woman (played by Thompson) shows up at a
church school. She has been given sanctuary for a few days, but when
she starts having screaming nightmares, the school asks a detective who
is a former student (played by Branagh) to help find out who the woman
really is. The search is heading nowhere when Franklyn Madson shows up.
(Madson played by Jacobi) is a furniture dealer with a talent for
hypnotism. He offers his services to put the mystery woman in a trance
and help her to remember her previous life. And what she remembers is
indeed a previous life, a life in which she was someone else. It was a
life that concluded in a famous murder case of 1949. What is more,
there are indications that her detective friend may be a reincarnation
who was also involved in the same murder. In the past lives a composer
and his wife (also played by Branagh and Thompson) have marriage
problems that end in the wife murdered and the husband executed. At
this point, the uncertainties start to pile up. The reincarnation may
or may not be authentic. Roman Strauss, the composer, may or may not
have been the murderer. And, most disturbing, the events may or may not
be fated to happen again, or perhaps the murder will go in the other
direction as a sort of karmic revenge. The film has a complex plot and
leaves unanswered the biggest question: does the film really make sense
or not? Does the ending really explain all we have seen? Like _J_a_c_o_b'_s
Dead Again August 24, 1991 Page 2
_L_a_d_d_e_r, most of what you can get out of this film you get thinking about
it afterwards.
The photography is stylishly done, particularly in the scenes set
in 1949. They are done in monochrome, but the blacks and whites are
just slightly tinted. At least that is the style element easy to
identify. And the credits intercut with newspaper clippings about the
murder opens the film with a feel almost like that of _M_u_r_d_e_r _o_n _t_h_e
_O_r_i_e_n_t _E_x_p_r_e_s_s.
Oh, one more thing. The best touch in this film is the product
placement. This film _d_o_e_s have a product placement. And as it happens
it is the best product placement you will see in a film this year. It
kind of makes up for all the bad product placements we have had this
summer.
Overall the production values and the acting talent are better than
the story. And the story is better than it seems at the end of the
film. I would still give _D_e_a_d _A_g_a_i_n only a high +1 on the -4 to +4
scale. With this cast it should have been better.
DOC HOLLYWOOD
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A good director turns out his most
commercial but least interesting film. Michael Caton-
Jones, the director of _S_c_a_n_d_a_l and _M_e_m_p_h_i_s _B_e_l_l_e, tells
the story of a big city doctor stranded in a small town
in South Carolina who finds himself bewitched by the
locals. Pleasant but predictable. Rating: 1 (-4 to +4).
This whole film is something of a riddle and the riddle is what is
Michael Caton-Jones doing directing a film like this? First, Caton-
Jones is British and _D_o_c _H_o_l_l_y_w_o_o_d is about small-town life in South
Carolina. That cannot be a subject about which Caton-Jones is
particularly expert. Probably the closest Caton-Jones has ever been to
the American South is watching reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show." That
television show's Mayberry has more than a passing resemblance to Grady,
South Carolina. But Caton-Jones worked on _A_b_s_o_l_u_t_e _B_e_g_i_n_n_e_r_s in a minor
but formative capacity. He went on to direct _S_c_a_n_d_a_l and _M_e_m_p_h_i_s _B_e_l_l_e.
Each of these films was set a generation or so back. Each had notable
actors but no big stars. Each of these films took something of a risk
presenting what could have been an unpopular viewpoint. (An interesting
piece of trivia: Mandy Rice-Davies played in _A_b_s_o_l_u_t_e _B_e_g_i_n_n_e_r_s, Bridget
Fonda played in _D_o_c _H_o_l_l_y_w_o_o_d, and in _S_c_a_n_d_a_l Bridget Fonda played Mandy
Rice-Davies.)
The story of _D_o_c _H_o_l_l_y_w_o_o_d is far from original: big-city boy meets
and falls in love with a small-town of interesting and eccentric
characters. I have seen that plot attributed to Frank Capra, though I
myself cannot think of a single Capra film with a plot that seems to me
all that similar to _D_o_c _H_o_l_l_y_w_o_o_d. I will, however, point out that this
film has a strong similarity to Bill Forsythe's _L_o_c_a_l _H_e_r_o. I would
claim that _L_o_c_a_l _h_e_r_o is by far the better film, but if I were from
Scotland I might well prefer a film to show me exotic South Carolina.
The title is a nickname for Dr. Benjamin Stone (played by Michael
J. Fox), who is headed for a lucrative cosmetic surgery practice in
Beverly Hills when an accident and the damage it causes forces him to
spend some time in Grady, South Carolina. You can probably figure the
plot from there. Boy meets town. Boy hates town. Audience loves town.
Boy meets girl. Girl hates boy. Audience loves girl. Boy loves girl.
Girl starts to like boy. Boy starts to like town. Boy, girl, and town
live happily ever after. Together. Audience leaves happy.
I can be as silly as the next guy and I liked the town and laughed
at the jokes. The town is likable. The town is lovable. What's not to
love about a town where blacks and whites, men and women, city folk and
rednecks all sashay together in perfect harmony, where never is heard a
bigoted word and nobody looks twice at gays. This Southern town is the
Doc Hollywood August 17, 1991 Page 2
Ku Klux Klan's worst nightmare come to life. And the plot doesn't bear
much thought either. One of the characters pays a minor podiatry bill
with a pig whose value is probably ten times the size of his debt. He
could easily have sold the pig, paid his bill, and had a big piece of
change in his pocket.
Then there is the incredible stretching Michael J. Fox. He has a
lot of scenes together with female lead Julie Warner. Somehow when you
see full-length shots of the two of them she is perhaps an inch taller
than he is. In every close-up she has to reach up to a Michael J. Fox
who has a good two or three inches on her. This film is willing to find
endearing all sorts of eccentricities which Grady, South Carolina,
accepts without batting an eye, but would rather create a distraction
than break the taboo that the boy has got to be taller than the girl.
The film has people joke about how short Dr. Stone is, but of course he
finds a soulmate who is even shorter.
_D_o_c _H_o_l_l_y_w_o_o_d is entertaining and pleasant but the audience gets
none of the value of seeing itself through someone else's eyes that they
would get from a Louis Malle film such as _A_t_l_a_n_t_i_c _C_i_t_y. I rate it a
flat +1 on to -4 to +4 scale.
PHANTOM by Susan Kay
Delacorte Press, April 1991, ISBN 0-385-30296-7, $19.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
It seems peculiar to say that the writing of a particular work of
fiction was inevitable. But _P_h_a_n_t_o_m is a novel I really had expected
would be written sooner or later, and while my fiction writing is
probably not up to it, I had wistfully thought on occasion of writing
the story myself. I had even gone so far as to compose, in my mind,
several scenes that might appear in the novel. If Susan Kay and I both
thought of writing the same novel, then very likely there were others.
So what's the novel?
When Gaston Leroux wrote the book _T_h_e _P_h_a_n_t_o_m _o_f _t_h_e _O_p_e_r_a, he had
in mind several details of a life history of the mysterious Erik. The
story requires Erik to be nothing short of a genius, with many diverse
talents that it seems unlikely that a single person could possess. So
when the main action of the novel is over, Leroux gives the reader (in
an epilogue) a very short account of Erik's life. These five paragraphs
are, effectively, a ready-made outline for a separate novel telling the
story of the life of Erik, the Phantom. It must have occurred to many
an aspiring author to flesh out this outline. That is particularly true
now that this novel--once hard to find--is in print from several
different publishers. And, of course, there is a ready market for a
novel that tells us a little more about Erik, due to the popularity of
the stage play and the numbers of people fascinated with the figure of
Erik (as I have been since many years before Andrew Lloyd Webber thought
of doing his play).
The following will tell something of the plot of _P_h_a_n_t_o_m, but no
more than the reader will already know if he or she has already read the
original _P_h_a_n_t_o_m _o_f _t_h_e _O_p_e_r_a. And it is my strong recommendation that
the reader not start this book without having read the original novel by
Leroux. Leroux creates the magic; Kay explains it. Reading the novels
in the wrong order damages the enjoyment of each. Kay's approach is to
break Erik's life into seven periods, each seen from the point of view
of a character of the story. This is a little disappointing in that the
story of Erik's earliest days is told by Erik's vain and selfish mother.
It is one period when we really want to get inside Erik's head and find
out what he is thinking. But Kay denies us that pleasure. We do see
the development of the boy-Erik and he is recognizably the Erik of the
Opera. We also learn of his cruel treatment due to his disfigurement
and the seeds of a perfectly natural misanthropy. If anything, Kay
makes Erik unrealistically too much like the adult we know from Leroux.
Many of his childish angry pranks from this period foreshadow similar
actions in the Leroux.
Phantom August 25, 1991 Page 2
We next see Erik through his own eyes, on the road and held in
captivity by gypsies who exhibit him first for his horrendous ugliness,
then for his talents as a singer. After that a great Italian architect
tells us the tragedy of his three years working with a brilliant
adolescent who wore a mask and already had the intellect of a
superlative genius.
A longer section is narrated by Nadir the Persian, who was
dispatched to bring Erik to the court of the Shah-in-Shah of Persia.
The two become close friends and Nadir tells is of the court intrigues
that first entangle Erik and which then he masters. Erik is finally
able to give his anger at humanity full freedom to express itself.
Erik then tells the reader of his return to France where, like the
Count of Monte Cristo, he exercises his new wealth and power,
manipulating events to allow him secretly to be the true designer of the
Paris Opera House. And he designs it not just to be a superior opera
house, but also as the intricate and deceptive home of which only he can
be the master, a house in which he can move unseen under the floors and
in the walls. As a climax, we get to the main body of the story Leroux,
here retold alternately by Erik and Christine. Finally Raoul completes
the story with what is a disappointing cliched ending.
The very first thing that impressed me about Phantom is Kay's
writing style. Her prose is clear, clean, and unaffected. If that
sounds like a faint piece of praise, it most certainly is not. I find
very few writers have a prose style so clear that when I get to the
bottom of a page I know exactly what happened on that page. Clear
writing is no small feat and Kay's prose is refreshingly clear.
To my taste, however, her style is a little too soft-focused, a
little overly romanticized. We know that Erik has become hard and
cruel. In Persia he turns his genius to creative means of torture of
prisoners of the Shah-in-Shah. We know that this is happening, but Kay
shows us very little of Erik's amoral cruelty. We are spared all but
tiny glimpses of this important facet of Erik's personality. Kay is
taking a safe route, not wishing to alienate more sensitive readers and
following a somewhat lighter interpretation, much as Andrew Lloyd Webber
did. Presumably most of her readers will know the Webber version and
perhaps one or two of the many film versions. The Kay depiction of
Christine Daae' is a bit more sympathetic than the Leroux Christine.
The original tells us just enough to assume that Christine is, to put it
bluntly, not very intelligent. She seems much too easily duped into
believing literally that an angel of music has come from Heaven to tutor
her. Somehow because she can present more of her point of view in Kay's
novel, she comes off as a bit more intelligent. Curiously, Kay sues a
touch to bring out Erik's character that I would have also used had I
written the novel. Erik recognizes that spiders are beneficial
creatures that happen to be repulsive to humans by nature. He is
angered when Christine shows indifference to the killing of spiders.
Erik sees his condition and the spiders' condition as related. Both are
Phantom August 25, 1991 Page 3
hated out of prejudice against their unaesthetic appearance.
I have claimed in a previous article that Leroux intended Erik to
have a universal intellect like Goethe's hidden behind the horrible
face. A friend who also liked the book thought that interpretation was
not really in Leroux's novel. I still contend that it is, and in the
same five paragraphs on which Kay based her novel. But Kay goes much
further than I did, making Erik not just a good architect, not just a
good singer, but the best in all Europe and while he is still no more
than fifteen. Her fervent adulation of Erik is reminiscent of Franz
Liebkin in _T_h_e _P_r_o_d_u_c_e_r_s waxing enthusiastic about what a great house-
painter Hitler was. Kay does not want us to think that there was any
talent that Erik was merely good at without being brilliant.
_P_h_a_n_t_o_m is certainly a novel I wanted to see written, but in some
ways it is not such a good idea. As I said before, there is magic
missing from the more recent book. The Leroux story has the element of
surprise, for example, when Erik turns out to have command of the Punjab
lasso. In the Kay book the reader always knows fairly well what Erik's
talents are at each point in time and where Erik got each of these
talents. The mystery is gone from the character and the events of the
Leroux novel are just a humdrum extension of what has gone before. When
Erik kills with the lasso, it comes as no surprise. While there is some
excitement seeing the pieces of the famous story fall into place, when
Kay gets around to telling that story the Paris Opera House events come
as just one more chapter from Erik's life.
Incidentally, Kay pulls all the right elements in place so that the
Leroux story can proceed exactly as he wrote it, and then she modifies
the original story. For reasons beyond by understanding, she changes
events around. Her version is only moderately faithful to the original
version. She eliminates retelling part of the story and that is fine,
considering how it is being told, but then she moves the chandelier
sequence to just before Raoul and the Persian go together to the
cellars. I did not compare side by side, but I think the death of
Joseph Buquet and the scene of La Carlotta croaking like a frog were
also not at the proper places in the story. Major events of the story
occur out of sequence. With the dramatic versions on film and on the
stage you are grateful if all these events are present anywhere, but Kay
should have better control. These may seem small matters to most, but
as a longtime fan of Leroux's novel I see any divergence from complete
consistency with the original as Kay's breaking faith with her stated
purpose.
This one problem, together with turning Erik into a super-genius of
incredible magnitude, is the biggest weakness of Kay's book. Its
strength is to flesh out the character and give him a life that extends
beyond the pages of Leroux's book. That is a feat that has been
attempted in films before and never with very good results. Kay does
manage it in the book at the same time she is giving us a fairly good
read.
CHEKHOV'S JOURNEY by Ian Watson
Carroll & Graf, 1991 (1983c), ISBN 0-88185-675-9, $3.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
Ian Watson is not a well-known author on this side of the Atlantic,
though he is well-respected in Britain. Maybe it's that his work is
more subtle than the American public wants. (Cynics will claim it's
because his work lacks both torrid sex scenes and extensive descriptions
of hardware, the former being necessary for the mainstream audience and
the latter for technogeeks.) But his subject matter is likely to turn
off the American reader before style even enters into it.
Consider _C_h_e_k_h_o_v'_s _J_o_u_r_n_e_y. Now admittedly Watson may achieve some
accidental sales among those who mistake this for the latest "Star Trek"
novel, but it won't take long for them to figure out that the Chekhov is
Anton, not Pavel, the last name is Chekhov, not Chekov, and the journey
is across Siberia, not interstellar space (though one gets the feeling
the temperature and population density are not all that different). But
the American public is not likely to go for a book about a Russian
playwright.
It turns out there _i_s a spaceship in _C_h_e_k_h_o_v'_s _J_o_u_r_n_e_y, launched in
2090. There is also a centenary documentary being made in 1990 of
Chekhov's 1890 journey across Siberia. These three strands braid
together along with the Tunguska meteor which, like many of the main
characters, becomes "unstuck in time." Watson not only turns cause-
and-effect on its head here: he sticks it on a merry-go-round.
I will admit my knowledge of Chekhov's life and work to be less
than perfect, which meant I occasionally had difficulty determining
where Watson was making changes. And his characterizations of the 1990
and 2090 participants suffers from his failure to predict glasnost,
perestroika, and the general collapse of the Communist bloc. It is
perhaps unfair to have expected him to do so in 1983, but reading about
all the staunch Communists (as well as the rebellious non-conformists)
in a staunch Communist system no longer rings true. Well, think of it
as an alternate universe. The rest of the plot is surreal enough that
this won't be too much additional strain.
I enjoyed _C_h_e_k_h_o_v'_s _J_o_u_r_n_e_y, yet I hesitate to recommend it. It
doesn't have a lot of what people seem to want in science fiction. But
if you enjoy a well-crafted story, or an interesting travelogue, or a
different perspective on a famous author, or just something _d_i_f_f_e_r_e_n_t,
try _C_h_e_k_h_o_v'_s _J_o_u_r_n_e_y.