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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 10/11/91 -- Vol. 10, No. 15
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
10/30/91 LZ: MINDBRIDGE by Joe Haldeman
11/13/91 MT: THE RED MAGICIAN by Lisa Goldstein (Jewish SF)
11/20/91 LZ: THE PUPPET MASTERS by Robert A. Heinlein (Alien
Parasites)
12/11/91 LZ: MIRKHEIM by Poul Anderson (Novels with Names of
Scandinavian Mythological Places in Them)
12/18/91 MT: "The Star" by Arthur C. Clarke (Christian SF)
01/08/92 LZ: EXPECTING SOMEONE TALLER by Tom Holt (Operatic SF)
01/29/92 LZ: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess (Dystopias)
_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.
10/12/91 Autographing: Margaret Bonanno, Michael Friedman, Janet Kagan
(B. Dalton, Willowbrook Mall, Wayne, 1-5 PM) (Sat)
10/12/91 SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: Shelly
Shapiro, editor at Del Rey Books (phone 201-933-2724
for details) (Saturday)
10/19/91 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: TBA
(phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday)
10/29/91 Readings: Wayne Barlowe, Michael Flynn and Doris Vallejo
(Barnes & Noble, Route 17, Paramus, 7:30 PM) (Tue)
11/09/91 Autographing: Ellen Datlow, Janet Kagan, Ellen Kushner,
Melissa Scott, Jack Womack (B. Dalton, Willowbrook
Mall, Wayne, 1-5 PM) (Sat)
HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 834-1563 hocpb!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. Evelyn has subscribed to a magazine called _K_o_s_h_e_r _G_o_u_r_m_e_t. I
THE MT VOID Page 2
really love that title. It is similar to the concept of the
"Special Olympics." The _K_o_s_h_e_r _G_o_u_r_m_e_t is really an inspirational
title. It brings to mind images of people achieving great things
in spite of overwhelming handicaps. If someone can keep kosher and
still make gourmet meals, I can move mountains. It has been an
open secret for years that the most popular Jewish dishes can be
found on the menus of Chinese restaurants.
It's not all the fault of kosher, of course. The Jews are an
oppressed people. We have developed one good kosher food and it
was taken away from us. McDonald's a while back wanted to
introduce a new menu item, bagels, and to illustrate it they show a
guy in New York ... a black guy. I guess they know that Jews would
have better taste in bagels than to get the ones McDonald's would
serve. Maybe they can convince someone that bagels are New York
black soul food. Or perhaps they figured that the only way to put
someone recognizably Jewish on the ad would be to show him in a
long coat and hat with a beard and curly sideburns. And the market
wasn't ready for that!
Anyway, they succeeded. Or somebody did. My Chinese officemate
was asking about Jewish food and I told him bagels were Jewish.
"What's Jewish about bagels?" Yeah. What's Chinese about egg
rolls?
2. Note that by popular demand, Greg Bear's _E_o_n has been replaced
by Robert A. Heinlein's _P_u_p_p_e_t _M_a_s_t_e_r_s on the discussion book list.
[-ecl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzy!leeper
Hell is yourself. When you ignore other people completely,
that is hell.
-- Tennessee Williams
A WORLD LOST by James B. Johnson
DAW, 1991, ISBN 0-88677-498-5, $4.50.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
I recently reviewed S. C. Sykes's _R_e_d _G_e_n_e_s_i_s and said it was
being compared to some of Heinlein's work. Well, if Sykes is
writing neo-Heinlein adult novels, Johnson is writing neo-Heinlein
juveniles.
Yes, our hero Rusty is supposedly 29 years old, but he acts
about half that. (And, no, Rusty does not have a dog named Rin Tin
Tin.) He is a spacer at a time when spacers are the outcasts of
humanity and arrives home after a trip only to discover that "home"
isn't there any more. There is not some mere Wolfeian concept--the
whole planet and its sun are gone. So Rusty starts wending his way
through a Laumerian bureaucracy to try to get help in finding his
planet.
As a juvenile, this book probably passes muster. The strange
dietary habits of our hero, centering around peanut butter, seem
aimed far more at an adolescent crowd than a group of adult readers.
There are all the stock elements: boy has girlfriend back home to
whom he's been engaged since childhood, boy meets beautiful female
secret agent, boy and secret agent fight the system to solve the
mystery (using boy's spaceship with intelligent talking computer),
etc. All the "etc." is predictable too. The science, however,
leaves a lot to be desired, even in a juvenile. The Plex Net, a
network of matter transmission booths that have all but totally
replaced classic (albeit faster-than-light) space travel, is never
convincingly explained. On page 35, we find out Rusty is on a
planet "a few hundred thousand miles in circumference." This is
(conservatively) ten times the circumference of Earth and hence one
thousand times the volume. Assuming the same average density,
therefore, the gravity would be a hundred times that of Earth (he's
ten times further from the center) and, when you add to that the
atmospheric pressure you are likely to find, Rusty would be a smudge
on the ground. To get Earth's gravity you would need a totally
impossible average density. (Conveniently, Saturn has a
circumference of slightly more than 200,000 miles, putting it right
in the ballpark. Even with the lowest average density of any planet
the solar system, Saturn's mass is 95 times that of earth.)
A more serious objection--in terms of what _I want young people
to learn--is in how Rusty evaluates people. On seeing one up-
until-now ambiguous character happily playing with his niece, Rusty
says (as first-person narrator), "People with these kinds of values
were not inimical to us and the galaxy. Or so I hoped." Even with
that qualifier, Johnson seems to have forgotten the lessons of
history: "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." Many of
the Nazi war criminals had very happy, loving home lives.
Okay, maybe all this is overanalytical. As a time-killing book
or a juvenile this is okay, but I still can't really recommend it.
THE SCHIZOGENIC MAN by Raymond Harris
Ace, 1990, ISBN 0-441-75398-1, $3.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
I have no idea why this book was written.
Some books are adventure stories. Some have a message. Some
examine philosophical issues. So far as I can tell, this doesn't
meet any of these criteria. It's just that while reading it I kept
thinking that it was all to no purpose. John Heron, the main
character (one hesitates to say "hero") lives in a future city (New
York?) in which a lottery regularly reassigns people's roles. As in
the song "That's Life," one can end up a puppet, a pauper, a pirate,
a poet, a pawn, and a king, as well as just about anything else.
(Shades of Jorge Luis Borges's "The Babylonian Lottery" here?) But
for some reason Heron is asked to take part in an experiment in
which he will dream about ancient Egypt. (The usual scientific
hand-waving occurs here.) So Heron dreams, and in his dream changes
history by saving Cleopatra's son Kaisarion. (Harris is somewhat
idiosyncratic in choosing between Anglicized spellings and
"original" spellings of proper names.)
When Heron awakes, however, he discovers the world around him
has changed. "Ah," you say, "a classic alternate history plot."
Except the changes have little to do with Kaisarion's survival. No
Egyptian temples dominate the New City skyline. No Pharaoh rules
the land. Some of Heron's friends have different jobs, and he has a
different first wife, but that's about the extent of it. History
just doesn't work that way.
At any rate, Heron tries (for insufficiently explained reasons)
to find his way back to his original starting world by tracing his
way down time threads when waking from the "dreams." Classic
alternate history rules say this is impossible--one must return
_u_p_s_t_r_e_a_m of the change in order to return to the unchanged world.
But Heron is mostly concerned with finding only one other person
unchanged, so maybe it is possible.
But who cares? The external world is affected by Heron's
actions but not enough for us to care. And that Heron might or
might not find the person he was seeking was a matter of disinterest
to me. I kept reading expecting something to develop that would
involve me either intellectually or emotionally, but it never did.
I suppose the descriptions of life in Cleopatra's Egypt might
interest some, but they are not enough to make me recommend the
book.
WHORE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: In spite of a poor critical
reception, _W_h_o_r_e is one of Ken Russell's better
films. It is one realistic and degrading day in the
life of a prostitute. The film is often ugly and
bitter, sometimes funny, and almost never erotic. It
is a far cry from Ken Russell's earlier film about
prostitution, _C_r_i_m_e_s _o_f _P_a_s_s_i_o_n. Rating: +2 (-4 to
+4).
When the subject of a film is sex, don't trust my opinion.
Generally what the critics like, I don't. I thought _s_e_x, _l_i_e_s &
_v_i_d_e_o_t_a_p_e was dry and dull. The characters bored me. Yet the film
was almost universally applauded by the critics. Generally I am not
very impressed by films about sex. Also I am not keen on Ken
Russell. Russell is more interested in putting strange images on
the screen than he is in telling a story. With the exception of _T_h_e
_D_e_v_i_l_s and _L_a_i_r _o_f _t_h_e _W_h_i_t_e _W_o_r_m, ken Russell and I don't seem to
agree on what makes a good film. _W_h_o_r_e is a Ken Russell film about
sex and prostitution that has gotten a thumbs-down from most of the
critics. That is three strikes against the film. Who knows what
possessed me to see the film? Yet once the film started I was
totally engrossed by what I was seeing. Admittedly it is cartoonish
and some of the scenes do not work. Occasionally Theresa Russell
out-and-out misreads lines. Yet there is an undeniable narrative
vitality here. Theresa Russell is a frank and vulgar prostitute
telling us about her profession as she sees it. If some of her
stories seem contrived, it is because that is the way she remembers
them.
The film covers a single day in the life of Liz, a prostitute.
Initially the film seems nearly plotless. It appears to be just a
portrait of the world of the streetwalker. The portrait is pieced
together form unconnected incidents punctuated by Liz explaining to
the audience what she is thinking and feeling. By the end of the
film we are no longer sure that we have not crossed over into a
story that Liz is telling herself. Much of the narrative is in
Liz's mind and memory anyway. She speaks directly to the camera and
it becomes her confidante throughout the day. She tells the camera
her past: a horribly failed marriage, how she got into the business
of prostitution, how she got a pimp--perhaps more accurately how he
got her. And we see a cross-section of customers from gentle to
vicious. Ken Russell does have an eye for the ugly!
_W_h_o_r_e seems to a sort of penance on the part of director Ken
Russell. His 1984 _C_r_i_m_e_s _o_f _P_a_s_s_i_o_n was probably the most positive
Whore October 8, 1991 Page 2
view of prostitution since _I_r_m_a _l_a _D_o_u_c_e. Kathleen Turner as China
Blue found prostitution a creative and fulfilling art that blesses
her that gives and him that gets. In the seven years since that
film it looks as if someone has been talking to Russell. In _W_h_o_r_e
prostitution is a living death of being manipulated, lied to, and
beaten. Russell drags in every vulgar symbol of sexuality he can
muster, yet avoids being erotic. This is a film well-suited to the
NC-17 rating.
_W_h_o_r_e is an adaptation of a play by David Hines, an English
taxi driver who patched together a play based on stories he'd heard
from prostitutes who had been his customers. Even as third-hand
stories, much of what we have seen is told with skill and ower. I
give _W_h_o_r_e a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Chicon V 1991
Con report by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
(Part 4 of 4)
Non-Hugo Awards
never
Alas, there was no non-Hugo award ceremony this year. Last year
ConFiction arranged a special ceremony for the Gigamesh Awards
(Barcelona), Seiun Awards (Japan), King Kong Awards and King Kong
Service Medal (The Netherlands), and the ASFA Chesley Awards.
Unfortunately, the ceremonies were very poorly attended, even by the
European fans, and rumor has it that some of the Japanese contingent
left in a huff because the Seiuns (previously awarded at the Hugo Awards
ceremony) had been relegated to this separate and largely ignored (by
the attendees, anyway) program item. So the rest of the awards
disappeared from the programming altogether and the Seiuns were back in
the Hugo ceremony. (Best short story in translation was George Alec
Effinger's "Schro"dinger's Kitten"; best novel in translation was David
Brin's _T_h_e _U_p_l_i_f_t _W_a_r; best dramatic presentation was _G_i_n_g_a-_U_c_h_u _O_d_y_s_s_e_y
which was scripted by Gregory Benford. Ironically, the Hugo Award
ceremony program booklet had a misprint which left "Schro"dinger's
Kitten" off and had George Alec Effinger listed as the author of another
story which was actually by a different author. There was an
announcement of the winners of the Prometheus (Libertarian) Awards in
the daily newsletter; these were awarded Sunday at 6 PM as announced in
a small item in the daily newsletter (after being previously announced
for Saturday at 5 PM), and the winners were F. Paul Wilson for _A_n _E_n_e_m_y
_o_f _t_h_e _S_t_a_t_e (Hall of Fame Award) and Michael Flynn for _I_n _t_h_e _C_o_u_n_t_r_y
_o_f _t_h_e _B_l_i_n_d (Best Novel).
Hugo Awards
Sunday, 9 PM
First the awards:
Novel: _T_h_e _V_o_r _G_a_m_e by Lois McMaster Bujold, Baen Books
Novella: "The Hemingway Hoax" by Joe Haldeman, IASFM April 1990
Novelette: "The Manamouki" by Mike Resnick, IASFM July 1990
Short Story: "Bears Discover Fire" by Terry Bisson, IASFM, August
1990
Non-Fiction Book: _H_o_w _t_o _W_r_i_t_e _S_c_i_e_n_c_e _F_i_c_t_i_o_n _a_n_d _F_a_n_t_a_s_y by Orson
Scott Card, Writer's Digest Books
Chicon V September 1, 1991 Page 2
Dramatic Presentation: _E_d_w_a_r_d _S_c_i_s_s_o_r_h_a_n_d_s, 20th Century Fox
Professional Artist: Michael Whelan
Professional Editor: Gardner Dozois
Semiprozine: _L_o_c_u_s, Charles Brown
Fan Artist: Teddy Harvia
Fan Writer: David Langford
Fanzine: _L_a_n'_s _L_a_n_t_e_r_n, George Laskowski
John W. Campbell Award: Julia Ecklar
First Fandom Award: Robert A. W. Lowndes
Big Heart Award: Julius Schwartz
Special Awards: Elst Weinstein for the Hogus, Andrew Porter for
_S_c_i_e_n_c_e _F_i_c_t_i_o_n _C_h_r_o_n_i_c_l_e
(The last four are not Hugos.)
Now my comments: At least First Fandom is down to one award per
year (over the preceding three years they gave out ten!). Fred Pohl,
the presenter, also did us all a favor and named the recipient before
giving the biography, which saved us all trying to guess who it was. In
Andy Porter's acceptance speech, he said if people wanted to find out
what was wrong with the Hugos they should read his next column--a bit
ungracious, by most people's comments afterward. I think the biggest
surprise was that _T_h_e _V_o_r _G_a_m_e won, since most people seemed to assume
it would be either _Q_u_e_e_n _o_f _A_n_g_e_l_s or _E_a_r_t_h.
The Hugo this year was acrylic on a marble base and designed by
Todd Hamilton.
Marta Randall, the mistress of ceremonies, previously held the
record for the shortest Hugo Ceremony (90 minutes). She wanted to beat
it, but the addition of the Seiun Awards into the ceremony made that
impossible. By the way, she referred to the Seiuns as the "Japanese
Hugos," an incorrect use of the Hugo name, and I assume the Mark
Registration and Protection Committee will mention this to future
presenters to avoid this.
Marta Randall also had some humorous comments about the fiction
categories, claiming that the short story was the pinnacle of
achievement, and developing that theme. For example, when she got to
the novelette category, she described a novelette as "the first step of
the wholesome all-American short story toward a bloated dekology."
Chicon V September 1, 1991 Page 3
Coincidentally (at least I think it was coincidentally), the presenters
got larger in size as the categories increased in word count, a fact
that was pointed out with some amusement by George R. R. Martin (the
novella presenter): Martin claimed that if this was planned, then
Gardner Dozois must be presenting the award for novel (he wasn't). In
his acceptance speech for the novella version of "The Hemingway Hoax,"
Joe Haldeman said that people had asked if they should buy the novel if
they already had the novella and he wanted to assure them that the only
difference between the novella version and the novel version was that
for the novella version he had cut 15,000-20,000 words of explicit sex
from the novel. (No one reported if there was a run on the novel in the
Dealers' Room the next day.)
After the Hugo Awards ceremony, we proceeded to the parties of the
evening. First, of course, we went to the Hugo Losers' party (although
a few of the winners snuck in as well). MagiCon gave each nominee a
coffee mug inscribed "MagiCon / Hugo Nominees Party / Chicon V /
September 1, 1991"; last year Chicon gave out drink coasters with
rockets needlepointed on them. At this rate of escalation, I figure the
1995 worldcon will be giving out table service for six and the 1996 one
will give you the china cabinet to keep it in. :-) I had a good time
talking to people, but the room was much more crowded than the one last
year (which had been about four times the size, with fewer attendees).
I helped staff the door for a while, since this was a closed party.
People seemed determined to crash this party, and tended to arrive in
groups, with one program participant (it was open to program
participants as well as nominees--maybe this was why it was so crowded)
bringing in four "guests." After a couple of minutes, the participant
would leave, but the guests would remain. One participant apparently
did this twice, but the door crew then decided he was not allowed back a
third time even if he was a program participant. Other people said they
were just looking for someone, but frequently when we kept an eye on
them we discovered them picking up a drink and blending in once they got
in. (They were then politely asked to leave.) Perhaps it was the
announcement of this as being open to program participants as well that
caused the crashers to appear, since that required a much wider
publicity than had it been nominees only. (I'm not trying to be a
party-pooper here, but MagiCon budgeted for a certain number of
attendees, no doubt to give them good feelings about MagiCon and
encourage them to be participants there as well, and it isn't fair to
MagiCon to ask them to pay for a bunch of other people who are not going
to reciprocate. And there were other, open parties.)
After this, we also dropped in on the Phantom of the Opera party.
(Actually, Mark spent a fair amount of time here while I returned to the
Hugo Losers' party, and he got to talk at length to John Flynn.)
Heather Nachman and others had spent a lot of time decorating their room
in a "Phantom of the Opera" theme, complete with fallen chandelier. I
hope someone took pictures. A lot of people were dressed in suitable
costumes (I guess my tuxedo might even count in that category), though
again the emphasis was on the Lloyd Webber version. It wins my prizes
Chicon V September 1, 1991 Page 4
as Best Theme Party and Best Decorated Party!
Panel: CCCCaaaannnn WWWWeeee RRRReeeeaaaacccchhhh VVVViiiinnnnggggeeee''''ssss SSSSiiiinnnngggguuuullllaaaarrrriiiittttyyyy????
TTTThhhheeee MMMMeeeeaaaannnniiiinnnngggg ooooffff EEEExxxxppppoooonnnneeeennnnttttiiiiaaaallll PPPPrrrrooooggggrrrreeeessssssss
Monday, 1 PM
Dale Skran (mod), Jim Baen, Bill Higgins,
Chip Morningstar, Tom Van Horne
Official Description: "Vernor Vinge suggested that the increase of
knowledge and innovation will go ever faster until civilization suddenly
breaks through into an unguessable new state. Is this inevitable? Are
there forces that will slow progress down? Or will new pressures always
arise to increase the pace of change?"
Skran started by pointing out that although this was a panel on
Vernor Vinge's Singularity, neither Vinge nor Marc Stiegler (author of
"The Gentle Seduction," another work of fiction dealing with the same
ideas as Vinge's) was on the panel. Vinge himself has pointed to other
works as promoting or using the same idea, notably Greg Bear's _B_l_o_o_d
_M_u_s_i_c.
So what is Vinge's Singularity? Well, the panel did not do a very
good job of defining it, but I'll try to summarize what they said. In
Vinge's works (_M_a_r_o_o_n_e_d _i_n _R_e_a_l _T_i_m_e and _T_h_e _P_e_a_c_e _W_a_r), he has a
mechanism that freezes people and their immediate surroundings in
"bobbles" in time and eventually they pop out in the far future. A
bunch of people who have been through this discover that, as the time
they were encapsulated progresses, the technology that they have and
understand increases exponentially. That is, while someone encapsulated
in 2000 is advanced beyond someone encapsulated in 1995, someone
encapsulated in 2001 is even further advanced beyond the 2000 person,
and so on. Eventually it is true that a difference of even a few days
makes a major difference in level. And one more thing--all human life
seems to have disappeared from Earth at a certain point in time
(sometime in 2015, I think). This is the Singularity and the
disappearance aspect has led some people to name the Singularity the
"Techno-Rapture."
This disappearance is _n_o_t, however, what the panelists were talking
about, but rather the notion that technology and knowledge could advance
so fast that there would come a time when "all things not impossible are
possible" or when people on the other side of the singularity become
incomprehensible to us. I'm not sure what this means and clear
explanations were not forthcoming. The latter implies that people would
"cross" the singularity at different times, but I don't know if that was
intended or not. At any rate, to keep _m_y terms clear, I will use
"singularity" (lower case) to mean the technological break-through and
"Singularity" (upper case) to mean the "Techno-Rapture."
Now that you have this definition, you can understand why people in
the audience named such works as Arthur C. Clarke's "Nine Billion Names
Chicon V September 1, 1991 Page 5
of God" and Robert A. Heinlein's "Year of the Jackpot" as having similar
themes. (Assuming you've read them, of course, but since they're
classics if you haven't read them you should.)
Skran and Higgins started to list eleven forces that could prevent
the singularity from happening. This was probably a mistake, since I
think many in the audience still didn't have a clear idea of what the
singularity was. They got as far as institutional inertia and market
inertia before the discussion veered off entirely. One force leading
towards the singularity was the increasing speed of communication,
mentioned before in many other panels, and which Higgins pointed out
meant that "your jokes are [no longer] new to most people." Someone else
pointed out that if the singularity was being considered as the knee of
the curve in a chart showing exponential growth (which people had
referred to earlier), than by changing the scale of the axes you can
move the knee around. Do you start your time axis at 1950? 1900?
1500? 5,000,000 B.C.E.? And what is the metric on your "technological"
axis? To the Middle Ages, it might have been books printed, but as more
and more information becomes electronic this becomes less meaningful.
So what is the metric?
Things got fuzzier and fuzzier. Panelists claimed the singularity
could be some dramatic increase in intelligence through technology
(sounds almost like Poul Anderson's _B_r_a_i_n _W_a_v_e--though that didn't use
technology--or Daniel Keyes' _F_l_o_w_e_r_s _f_o_r _A_l_g_e_r_n_o_n), or it could be some
simple breakthrough such as happened when people switched from Roman to
Arabic numerals. In regard to the former Van Horne pointed out that
"before you make someone smarter, you have to understand what makes them
smart."
Two more forces opposing the singularity were mentioned (they never
got anywhere near listing all eleven): fear of technology and the
distraction of virtual realities. The former was hotly discussed, with
many people, including some of the panelists, that a fear of technology
did not necessarily make someone a mindless Luddite, and that recent
events at Three-Mile Island, at Prince William Sound, and at innumerable
other places would lead even the most technophilic amongst us to be
justifiably wary of unrestrained and uncontrolled technology. As Baen
said, "Any technology is dangerous." As the power of the technology
increases, its danger also increases, or rather, its potential for
damage increases. The complaint (about virtual realities) seemed, to me
at least, to be just the latest incarnation of the protests we have seen
for thousands of years about how the world is going to hell in a hand-
basket. Three generations ago, jazz was ruining the younger generation.
Then it was rock 'n' roll and television that were the villains. Then
it was video games. Now it's virtual realities, in the form of
realistic video games in which you feel as if you are in the game, that
will do progress in. I remain skeptical.
The Fermi Paradox was raised. (The Fermi paradox asks why, if the
universe is so hospitable to intelligent life, we haven't found any
Chicon V September 1, 1991 Page 6
other intelligent life-forms yet. Why haven't they contacted us?) I
forget if there was any connection between this question and the
ostensible topic, but Morningstar did have an answer: no one has
contacted us because they're all off reading netnews.
Miscellaneous
The hotel had an automatic check-out through the television, but it
was not working (or over-loaded). Luckily we had requested a copy of
our bill earlier (before breakfast) so we could divide up the cost, so
we were able to just drop off the keys at their "Express Check-Out" and
go.
As usual, I'll list the Worldcons I've attended and rank them, best
to worst (the middle cluster are pretty close together, and it's getting
harder and harder to fit the new ones in, perhaps because the cons of
fifteen years ago are hard to remember in detail):
Noreascon II
Noreascon III
Noreascon I (my first Worldcon)
Midamericon (on the basis of the film program, perhaps)
LACon
Chicon V
Discon II
Seacon
Confederation
Chicon IV
ConFiction
Conspiracy (mostly due to hotel problems)
Iguanacon (partially done in, in my opinion, by politics)
Suncon (the location change from Orlando to Miami didn't help)
Nolacon II (extremely disorganized)
Constellation (they over-extended themselves)
In a hard-fought battle, Winnipeg won the bid for 1994. 2107 votes
were cast: 1012 for Winnipeg and 957 for Louisville. 719 were mail-in
votes and 1388 were cast at Chicon V. It took fourteen hours to count
the ballots because Chicon had failed to validate any of the mail-in
ballots (verify that each voter was a member of Chicon V and had paid
his or her voting fee), or any of the ballots cast at the convention.
In addition, it took a while to get a hard-copy of the Chicon V
membership list to do validation against. In any case, the results were
available in time (though barely) from the Sunday WSFS business meeting.
Anne McCaffrey, George Barr, Barry B. Longyear, and Robert Runte are the
Guest of Honour. (This switching back and forth between "Honor" and
"Honour" is getting to me!) The convention with be called Conadian and
be from September 1 through September 5, 1994. Next year's contest is a
two-way race for 1995: Atlanta and Glasgow.
Next year in Orlando!
Chicon V September 1, 1991 Page 7
[I would like to add that while I did have videotapes of several of the
panels, I decided not to watch them again to write this. There were two
reasons for this. The first is that I would need to spend an hour to
watch a one-hour panel--one can't skim a videotape. The second is that,
given a videotape in front of me, I would have been tempted to be even
more thorough, and at 16,000 words, this con report is long enough
already!]
THE NEXUS by Mike McQuay
Bantam Spectra Special Edition, 1989, ISBN 0-553-28178-X, $4.50.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
When television news reporter Denny Stiller first finds Amy
Hale, the autistic healer, he sees in her a story and a ladder to
success. (I was reminded of Billy Wilder's _A_c_e _i_n _t_h_e _H_o_l_e, though
the similarity does not extend much further.) That it takes him,
and most of the other characters in the book, as long as it does to
realize the extent and implications of Amy's power is a major
problem--they have (in the story) days to figure out what the reader
has only the time it takes to read a few chapters to do. When
everyone does realize the ramifications of this discovery, the novel
switches to an atmosphere very similar to Stephen King's
_F_i_r_e_s_t_a_r_t_e_r, and becomes increasingly less convincing. The
machinations of the government, the scheming of the television
evangelist, and even the actions of the general public never ring
quite true. And the ending is, alas, totally unbelievable. This
may be McQuay's major weakness--four years ago when I reviewed his
_M_e_m_o_r_i_e_s I also noted a tendency toward _d_e_u_s _e_x _m_a_c_h_i_n_a.
McQuay does use an unusual technique, though. His story is
about television newscasting (among other things) and many key
scenes, including most of those not involving the main characters,
are written as television scripts. This is a bit unnerving at
first, as I found myself saying, "But there could possibly have been
television cameras present to film this." I'm note sure whether
McQuay was commenting on our propensity to accept what we see on
television as more real than what we read about, or to underscore
how artificial and staged many "impromptu" moments are, or something
else entirely.
McQuay has a lot of good observations to make, and takes his
pot shots at all the right people (in my opinion), but I never
believed his plot and this reduced _T_h_e _N_e_x_u_s to a polemic rather
than a fully developed novel.