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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 10/18/91 -- Vol. 10, No. 16
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. I was talking about this magazine, _K_o_s_h_e_r _G_o_u_r_m_e_t. I am not
THE MT VOID Page 2
sure what the cover dish is, but it looks to be oversize chunks of
meat with soggy carrots and beans swimming in a sort of gravy that
has an eighth of an inch of fat floating at the top. And this is
the dish on the cover. This is the one that is supposed to sell
the magazine! They go downhill from there.
Now I open up the magazine and what do I find? There is, in an
advertisement, a recipe for Yom Tov ("Good Day") Gefilte Fish Pie.
Now I don't know how many of you out there are familiar with
gefilte fish. I know the lucky ones aren't. Gefilte fish are
balls or cakes of ground fish in a sort of half-jelled sauce.
Originally it was not developed to eat, I believe. Kosher farmers
would bury cakes of gefilte fish around the boundary of their
farmyard. That way they would not have to chase away the
neighbor's pigs. There are some smells too disgusting even for a
pig. Then one year during a famine, a farmer dug up and ate a
gefilte fish ball and declared it good. It became part of standard
kosher cuisine. Years later the farmer was credited with a second
discovery for the same incident when it became known that what he'd
actually discovered was a truffle.
Anyway, this ad starts out, "Everyone knows that
Gefilte Fish is great right out of the jar." (I prefer it to be
right out of the city I'm in.) And then they go on to tell you
that their gift to you is this recipe for Gefilte Fish Pie. Now
take it from me, if you find the concept of a fish pie to be
revolting, it is orders of magnitude worse as a gefilte fish pie.
In no other human cuisine in the world could there be anything else
like Gefilte Fish Pie. In kosher cooking it might actually be one
of the better dishes. Jews believe in suffering and they think of
Gefilte Fish Pie as the edible equivalent of a hair shirt.
2. A correction: Last week in my review of _A _W_o_r_l_d _L_o_s_t I claimed a
planet with 10 times the radius of Earth would have 100 times the
gravity, thinking it has 1000 times the mass, but you're 10 times
as far from the center of gravity. As a couple of people have
pointed out, I forgot the inverse square law, so the gravity is
only ten times Earth's. Rusty _s_t_i_l_l couldn't walk around normally,
but he probably wouldn't be a smudge on the ground either. (Maybe
I should claim it was just a test to see who's reading closely.
Yeah, that's it! It was a test!) [-ecl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzy!leeper
Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it,
and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to
everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they
agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color
of their skin.
-- Wendell L. Willkie
THE MISADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES edited by Sebastian Wolfe
Citadel Press, 1991 (1989c), ISBN 0-8065-1235-0, $10.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
Frequently "new" collections of Sherlock Holmes stories consist
primarily of stories which have previously been collected elsewhere.
So when I saw this collection of lesser-known stories, including one
appearing here for the first time, I was immediately interested.
Alas, I forgot there is often a reason why some stories are rarely
reprinted: they're not very good.
Wolfe claims to have tried to balance burlesques, parodies, and
pastiches, but seems to have overloaded the book with too many of
the first two. (A burlesque is "a literary or dramatic work that
seeks to ridicule by means of grotesque exaggeration or comic
imitation." A parody is a "literary or musical work in which the
style of the author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or
in ridicule." A pastiche is "a literary, artistic, or musical work
that imitates the style of previous work.") Maybe I just prefer more
serious stories, but I found most of the take-offs--be they
burlesques or parodies--annoying. This included Maurice Baring's
"From the Diary of Sherlock Holmes," John Dickson Carr's "The
Adventure of the Paradol Chamber" and "The Adventure of the Cork-
Singleton Papers," Robert L. Fish's "The Adventure of the Dog in the
Knight," and Stephen Leacock's "The Great Detective." Of this batch,
only P. G. Wodehouse's "From a Detective's Notebook" was at all
entertaining. My major objection to all of these is that they make
Holmes even more of a buffoon than Nigel Bruce made Watson. Even
John Lennon's outrageous word-play couldn't save "The Singularge
Experience of Miss Anne Duffield."
Of the serious stories, most deal with Holmes copies, rather
than Holmes himself. "The Martian Crown Jewels" by Poul Anderson
postulates a Martian Holmes (Syaloch, actually) who lives on "The
Street of Those Who Prepare Nourishment in Ovens" and who solves a
most unlikely mystery--but then, the solution may not be any more
unlikely than some of Doyle's. Anthony Boucher's "The Anomaly of
the Empty Man" has its Dr. Verner (Verner being the name of one of
Holmes's distant relatives) with a nicely ambiguous ending. "The
Adventure of the Snitch in Time" by August Derleth and Mack Reynolds
uses the Solar Pons character of the former and the science fiction
sensibilities of the latter to write a story that unfortunately
requires the central character to be more of a lawyer and less of a
detective. H. F. Heard's "Mr. Mycroft" story, "Dr. Montalba,
Obsequist," has little to recommend it; its concept is unusual, but
not well-developed.
Misadventures S. Holmes October 8, 1991 Page 2
Sherlock Holmes _p_e_r _s_e appears in only two serious stories:
Ardath Mayhar's "The Affair of the Midnight Midget" and Philip Jose'
Farmer's "The Adventure of the Three Madman." The former is a new
story, never before published. It chronicles a heretofore unknown
case, but for a change is told by Mrs. Hudson rather than by
Dr. Watson or an external narrator. This puts the writer at a
disadvantage, however, because s/he is forced to recount most of the
solution of the "mystery" by recounting by letter to Dr. Watson what
Holmes has said. (To write the story _a_s a story would be out of
keeping with Mrs. Hudson's character.) Watson at least could give
us background and clues as he described accompanying Holmes, but
Mrs. Hudson gets almost everything secondhand, and we get it
filtered further.
The Farmer piece is the longest in the book and is in keeping
with Farmer's other pastiches of famous fictional characters (e.g.,
Tarzan, Doc Savage). Farmer had previously written a book-length
(well, a short-book-length) Holmes pastiche titled _T_h_e _A_d_v_e_n_t_u_r_e _o_f
_t_h_e _P_e_e_r_l_e_s_s _P_e_e_r. Like that tale, "The Adventure of the Three
Madman" is also set in Africa; like the other, this also has an
unusual set of supporting characters, including Kipling's Mowgli, a
tribe out of H. Rider Haggard, and a Hollywood film crew, as well as
German spies and British aviators. (Estimating the likelihood of a
film crew making a movie in Central Africa during World War I, even
if the Germans and the British weren't fighting right there at that
time, is left as an exercise for the reader.) Farmer does as well
with this mix as anyone could--and of course manages to include
zeppelins as well--but it was all just a little over the top for me.
Of all the stories, only the Anderson, Boucher, and
Derleth/Reynolds appealed to me. Even adding the Farmer in (as I
suspect most people would), this collection is marginal at best.
Readers would do better with Martin H. Greenburg's _N_e_w _A_d_v_e_n_t_u_r_e_s _o_f
_S_h_e_r_l_o_c_k _H_o_l_m_e_s or even Richard L. Green's _F_u_r_t_h_e_r _A_d_v_e_n_t_u_r_e_s _o_f
_S_h_e_r_l_o_c_k _H_o_l_m_e_s.