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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 12/20/91 -- Vol. 10, No. 25
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
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.
12/21/91 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: TBA
(phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday)
01/11/92 SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: Katina
Alexis (horror writer) (phone 201-933-2724 for details)
(Saturday)
HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 908-834-1563 hocpb!jetzt
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell LZ 1B-306 908-576-6106 mtuxo!jrrt
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzy!leeper
HO Librarian: Rebecca Schoenfeld HO 2K-430 908-949-6122 homxb!btfsd
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 908-576-3346 mtfme!lfl
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzy!leeper
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 mtgzy!ecl
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. One of the advantages of being in the Science Fiction Club and
getting the MT VOID is that you get to hear first about the books I
am writing. It was here that I first announced my self-help book
for the 1990s (actually then it was for the 1980s, but it clearly
was ahead of its time). I am talking, of course, about my _W_h_e_n
_G_o_o_d _T_h_i_n_g_s _H_a_p_p_e_n _t_o _P_e_o_p_l_e _Y_o_u _C_a_n'_t _S_t_a_n_d. This is a book that
has surprised all of us in the selectivity of its publisher appeal.
Like _W_a_t_e_r_s_h_i_p _D_o_w_n and _C_a_t_c_h-_2_2, it looks as if it is going to go
to a large number of publishers before someone publishes it and
makes a killing. It may have finally found the right publisher,
though I have not heard back from them. I am not sure what is
taking so long since with a name like Naval Academy Press you would
think they would have the self-discipline to respond sooner. At
first I thought they were just waiting for the Persian Gulf War to
get over. I thought I could speed things with a follow-up letter
THE MT VOID Page 2
reminding them of how many of the sailor-boys would be disappointed
they did not get promotions after the war and how useful they might
find my book. I guess they are still just deliberating. (If I
don't hear from them soon, I will remove the dedication to John
Paul Jones. And it'll serve them right!)
Now I have been hearing how a lot of you are disappointed with the
book _S_c_a_r_l_e_t_t that tells the further adventures of Katie Scarlett
O'Hara. The problem is that Scarlett just ran out of Civil War.
You and I both know that the last hour of _G_o_n_e _w_i_t_h _t_h_e _W_i_n_d: _T_h_e
_M_o_t_i_o_n _P_i_c_t_u_r_e is a total bore. It's got that boring stuff with
the little kid on the pony. Gag me with a julep. Nobody cares
about all that because there is no war going on in the background.
That's boring. Who cares about Scarlett after the Civil War!
What you don't find out in _G_o_n_e _w_i_t_h _t_h_e _W_i_n_d is about the _o_t_h_e_r
Katie O'Hara! Yup. The Belle of Charleston, South Carolina,
before the War was Scarlett's cousin, Katie Chartreuss O'Hara. My
_C_h_a_r_t_r_e_u_s_s tells of her life on the plantation before the War and
of her exciting adventures during the Civil War. It is also the
story of handsome, mysterious Brett Chamberlain, part patriot, part
scalawag, and his fiery love affair with Chartreuss. I've already
got ten pages written and I can tell you that nothing like this has
been written before. And when published, the cover of the book
will say, "Guarantee: This novel contains positively no boring
post-Civil War sequences or you can return it to get double the
purchase price back."
2. Bill Higgins (a.k.a. "Beam Jockey") writes in response to Mark
Leeper's recent review of _S_t_a_r _T_r_e_k _V_I: _T_h_e _U_n_d_i_s_c_o_v_e_r_e_d _C_o_u_n_t_r_y:
Just read your review of _S._T._V_I. I should remind you that
Shakespeare-slinging has always been a hallmark of _S_t_a_r _T_r_e_k
_C_l_a_s_s_i_c, especially in episode titles. _S_t_a_r _T_r_e_k _L_i_t_e does
considerably less, and also recognizes other literary influences on
occasion. I found myself wondering, "Gee, don't the Klingons have
any playwrights of their own?" I don't usually indulge in Trek
commentary, but...
You say, "Other touches were irritating, like repeated allusions to
both Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes. It is a strange and unlikely
touch that Klingons revere William Shakespeare and even claim him
as a Klingon." This bothered me until I began to think about it.
What did the Klingon general mean by "reading Shakespeare in the
original Klingonese?" I guess he was just joking. But what if he
wasn't?
Could Shakespeare have written his plays in Klingonese secretly,
then translated them into English? But how would he know the
language? He lived centuries before humans invented interstellar
flight.
THE MT VOID Page 3
But when did Klingons invent interstellar flight?
Possibly it was long before humans did. Possibly Klingons landed
on Earth in Shakespeare's time, and the Bard had a chance to meet
them and learn their language? Maybe a scoutship returned the
Zeroth Folios to the Klingon Empire long before the plays were
mounted on the boards of the Globe?
Or was Klingonese Shakespeare's _n_a_t_i_v_e tongue? He does have kind
of a high forehead, in all the pictures of him I've seen...
Which suggests the following scenario: Will leaves Klingon, passes
himself off as an Englishman, and goes into showbiz. He is
familiar with millenia of Klingonese literature; selecting the very
best of the classics, he translates them into English and passes
them off as his own work.
(Connoisseurs will recognize a twist on a plot that often occurs in
time-travel stories, where a guy from the future brings back
inventions or works of art or literature and makes his fortune in
the present. In fact, _S_t_a_r _T_r_e_k _L_i_t_e used a variation on this plot
just the other week.)
So perhaps Shakespeare really _d_i_d_n'_t author the plays of
Shakespeare, but only cribbed them from an alien culture. Ancient
Astronauts ride again!
[-Bill Higgins]
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
...mtgzy!leeper
We are convinced that sooner or later capitalism will
perish, just as feudalism perished earlier. ... All
the world will come to Communism. History does not
ask you whether you want it or not.
-- Nikita Khrushchev
Eventually that's all it asks.
-- Mark R. Leeper
THE WORLD NEXT DOOR by Brad Ferguson
Tor, 1990, ISBN 0-812-53795-5, $3.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper
As the book begins we are shown what is clearly a post-
holocaust town in upstate New York. And, like so many poorly
written post-holocaust novels, this one has everything too easy--
lots of stuff to scavenge, no residual radiation, no real damage to
the area. But this _i_s_n'_t poorly written, because in _T_h_e _W_o_r_l_d _N_e_x_t
_D_o_o_r, it _i_s "the world next door"--a world in which the atomic war
came in 1962, when such a fortuitous outcome was still possible.
But life is not entirely idyllic for the people of the town of
McAndrew. For one thing, they're all starting to have strange
dreams, dreams that the reader recognizes immediately as being of
our timeline, dreams of what the dreamers would have been doing had
"Kingdom Come" not come. And other strange things are happening.
Songbirds are returning, and deer, ... and then cats and dogs--not
wild cats and dogs, but animals obviously well fed and cared for.
Just what is going on?
This would seem to me to be a sufficient story, but Ferguson
adds more. There is an attempt by the armyEMor what passes itself
off as the army--to take over the town. There are other, more
distant government pressures. There is a whole subplot of romantic
entanglements and conflicts. I found the love story an awkward
intrusion on the rest of the story, and the resolution of the
political aspects a little too facile and unconvincing. Either of
these plotlines alone might not have grated, but using both of them
is like piling Ossa on Pelion. (Or perhaps more accurately, Pelion
on Ossa, with Olympus as the dream plot. The former reference is
Virgil's _G_e_o_r_g_i_c_s I:281; the latter is Homer's _O_d_y_s_s_e_y XI:315.) But
the dreams, and what they mean, and what they lead up to, did keep
me interested through all this. On the whole, _T_h_e _W_o_r_l_d _N_e_x_t _D_o_o_r
is a worthwhile book with one too many subplots.
(This novel is an expansion of Ferguson's short story "The
World Next Door," which appeared in the September 1987 _I_s_a_a_c
_A_s_i_m_o_v'_s _S_c_i_e_n_c_e _F_i_c_t_i_o_n _M_a_g_a_z_i_n_e and _T_h_e_r_e _W_i_l_l _B_e _W_a_r _V_I_I_I:
_A_r_m_a_g_e_d_d_o_n! edited by Pournelle and Carr.)
FATHER OF THE BRIDE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Mix two parts wedding-planning
comedy, two parts sweet sentiment, and one part
slapstick comedy, and you get a sugary, light holiday
confection. Steve Martin gives away his daughter and
a lot of money at the same time. An enjoyable family
film. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).
Steve Martin, who showed us the hopes and fears of being a
father of younger children in _P_a_r_e_n_t_h_o_o_d is continuing on that theme
with an older daughter in his update of 1950's _F_a_t_h_e_r _o_f _t_h_e _B_r_i_d_e.
He has inherited Spencer Tracy's philosophizing but little of
Tracy's dignity. This is a film that pulls in at least three
different directions at once as if it just was not sure what it
wanted to be when it grew up. It tries first and foremost to be a
touching sentimental story of a father coming to terms with the loss
to another man of a daughter whom he loves very much. At the same
time it wants to be a sort of _M_r. _B_l_a_n_d_i_n_g_s _B_u_i_l_d_s _H_i_s _D_r_e_a_m _H_o_u_s_e
for weddings--a film about a simple man discovering how complex and
expensive it is today to put together a wedding. Then Steve
Martin's roots are in physical and slapstick comedy, so this comedy
pulls in that direction also. The film simply does not work as all
three and the physical comedy is certainly what should have been
cut.
The story is simple enough to be called trite. George Banks
(played by Steve Martin) talking to the camera tells about his
daughter's wedding which has just taken place and about the five
months since his daughter (played by Kimberly Williams) returned
from Rome and announced she had fallen in love and intended to get
married. Martin reacts with anger and with distrust of his
daughter's choice (played by George Newbern). We follow the parents
to their first meeting with their daughter's future in-laws. George
turns this meeting into an embarrassment big enough to last a
lifetime.
Then there are the wedding arrangements themselves. All
arrangements are made through the services of Franck (played by
Martin Short), a somewhat swishy European with an impenetrable
accent. (I rather hope this film does not get shown in China. The
average Chinese does not earn enough in eight months to pay the
per-guest cost of this wedding.) There are hassles over cost; there
is the obligatory lovers' tiff. There are wedding preparations.
Then the wedding begins and the film loses almost all of its humor
and turns to sentiment so thick you can cut it with a knife.
Father of the Bride December 15, 1991 Page 2
Between _F_a_t_h_e_r _o_f _t_h_e _B_r_i_d_e and _B_e_a_u_t_y _a_n_d _t_h_e _B_e_a_s_t, it seems
that Disney is banking very heavily on sentiment this Christmas-
time. But the characters in _F_a_t_h_e_r _o_f _t_h_e _B_r_i_d_e are cartoonish and
two-dimensional. The real humanity is in the characters in _B_e_a_u_t_y
_a_n_d _t_h_e _B_e_a_s_t. Steve Martin and Diane Keaton make a likable married
couple in the live-action film, but they do not have much human
complexity. Kimberly Williams, as their daughter, is certainly
attractive and is as sensual playing basketball as Nastassia Kinski
is dancing. But this Christmas film is like a chocolate Easter egg.
It is sugary sweet around the outside and very light because it is
really hollow. It is worth seeing once. I rate it a +1 on the -4
to +4 scale.