@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society Club Notice - 02/14/92 -- Vol. 10, No. 33 MEETINGS UPCOMING: Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are on Wednesdays at noon. LZ meetings are in LZ 2R-158. _D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C 02/19 LZ: V IS FOR VENDETTTA by Alan Moore and David Lloyd (Dystopic Graphic Novels) 03/11 LZ: THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS by Stanislaw Lem (Who defines reality?) 04/01 LZ: THE LORD OF THE THINGS by Barry Trooks (Tolkien rip-offs) 04/22 LZ: WONDERFUL LIFE by Stephen Jay Gould (Science non-fiction as a source of ideas) 05/13 LZ: ONLY BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER by James Morrow (Books we heard are very good) _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. 02/15 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: TBA (phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday) 02/23 Film Fest: EMPIRE OF THE AIR/RADIO DAYS (1 PM) 03/14 SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: Barbara Hare (computer gaming) (phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday) 03/30 Hugo Nomination Forms due 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: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 908-949-7076 homxc!11366ns 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. Our next book discussion is in Lincroft Wednesday, February 19; Rob Mitchell sends the following blurb: Location: London, Great Britain. Time: about 15 years in the future. Political situation: a limited, near-miss, nuclear exchange nine years before has nudged Great Britain into a fascist THE MT VOID Page 2 government. Parliament has been dissolved, replaced by "the Head," a collection of surveillance and police forces (e.g., the Ear monitors telephone conversations while the Eye uses videocameras to spy on the citizenry "for their own protection."). Most popular culture has been eradicated, replaced by military pomp and official pronouncements. The economy is shattered; a well-off few, while the abused majority lead lives of quiet despair. Yes, this may sound like a variation of the same themes found in Orwell's 1984, and indeed the background in Alan Moore's V FOR VENDETTA no doubt owes much to the earlier work. But Moore has a different story to tell, and a different medium to tell it in, and therein lies the reasons for discussing his work in the next Lincroft SF meeting. V FOR VENDETTA consists of two parallel storylines. One thread deals with a man, known only as "V," who decides to strike back and reclaim Britain from the fascists. In some ways he is a superman, physically (but plausibly) athletic, extremely well-versed in literature, history, and music, an expert in psychological and urban warfare, and apparently with access to great wealth. Wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, V initiates his campaign against the Head by blowing up the House of Parliament, on Guy Fawkes Day, of course. Part of this thread shows us the people of the Head; who they are, why and how they run the government, and how their responsibilities and ambitions mesh or clash as they try to track down someone they publically claim is a psychopath, and privately see as a very personal threat to their lives. The second thread involves a 16-year-old girl, Evey, driven to prostitution by poverty. She is inept enough to proposition as her first customer a member of the Finger's vice squad, but is saved from his brutal response by V. V takes her away, and without lowering either his literal or figurative masks, tries to spark a love of freedom within her. To her credit (and Moore's!), she is not a perfect student, mindlessly accepting V's political and social agendas. She thinks and questions, and undergoes a spiritual rite of passage as the story progresses. Told in a graphic ("comic bookish") format, V FOR VENDETTA is considered by some to be the best story ever written in that medium. I'm not sure I agree, but V FOR VENDETTA certainly operates on the same emotional, mental, and artistic levels as Spiegelman's MAUS and Moore's WATCHMEN. A powerful story, visually and verbally, with no easy answers -- this is V FOR VENDETTA. Although the world situation has changed since Moore wrote his story, human nature has not. Moore's observations and conclusions about human weakness and strength are well-taken and relevant to the world today...especially in an election year.... [-jrrt] THE MT VOID Page 3 2. The next LeeperHouse fest will again be on a Sunday afternoon. We got a good crown last time . The last fest was a look at the future; the next will be a look at the past and the early days of radio. On Sunday, February 23, at 1 PM, we will take two different looks at the formative days of broadcasting. One is an outstanding documentary about radio; one is a story set in the golden days of radio. The Wireless Wonder EMPIRE OF THE AIR: THE MEN WHO MADE RADIO (1991), dir. by Ken Burns RADIO DAYS (1987), dir. by Woody ALlen Like most of the country I was very impressed with Ken Burns's long documentary _T_h_e _C_i_v_i_l _W_a_r. Now he has put the same care and style into the creation of radio and the three men who did the most to make it happen: Lee DeForest, Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff. Engrossingly covered are the friendships and feuds among these three men. Burns could probably take the Brooklyn Bridge and make it interesting. Woody Allen creates a fictional reminiscence of his family and friends during the early days of radio. Allen intertwines his story with legends and remembrances of 1940s radio. A complete review of _R_a_d_i_o _D_a_y_s is published elsewhere in this issue. 3. Dale Skran writes: Recently at my instigation, the LeeperHouse Film Festival showed "Bubblegum Crisis" Episodes 1-4. The response was strong, and when Episodes 5-8 are available, I plan on organizing a follow-on event. Interest has been expressed in ordering information for "Bubblegum Crisis" and other AnimEigo products. Their address is: AnimEigo, Inc P.O. Box 989 Wilmington, NC 28402-0989 Phone: 919-799-1501 Their catalog is really rather limited, but appears to be growing. It includes: "Madox-01," "Riding Bean," "Bubblegum Crisis" (8 episodes), "Bubblegum Crash" (3 episodes), "Vampire Princess Miyu" (forthcoming), and a variety of T-shirts, posters, and what-not. They take VISA, etc. All products are subtitled Japanese animation. The subtitling is of good quality, with different speakers in different colors, outlined letters, etc. So far, I have found them to be reliable in terms of delivery, quality, etc. This is clearly a low-budget operation, supposedly run by animation fans, so I urge you not to run off copies for all your friends. [-dls] THE MT VOID Page 4 4. Due to the length of this notice, the results of the time travel contest are postponed until next week. [-ecl] Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 ...mtgzy!leeper Inquiry is human; blind obedience brutal. Truth never loses by the one but often suffers by the other. -- William Penn GRIFFIN'S EGG by Michael Swanwick St. Martin's Press, 1992, ISBN 0-312-06989-8, $15.95. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper In response to complaints about rising prices for novels-- somewhere around US$25 for a hardback these days--and also that novels are getting too long and bloated, some publishers are responding by publishing novellas in book form at lower prices. (Pulphouse took this a step further and is doing short stories in paperback at US$1.95 each.) The first such novella I noticed was _T_h_e _H_e_m_i_n_g_w_a_y _H_o_a_x by Joe Haldeman (though it turned out that that had been fleshed out to novel length--about 150 pages, or 45,000 words); now we have _G_r_i_f_f_i_n'_s _E_g_g by Michael Swanwick. How successful this trend will be is unclear. Unit pricing has always been popular with readers; years ago a friend of ours had a "penny- a-page" rule for books which by now must have been modified to at least a penny-and-a-half. Perhaps realizing this, Haldeman said in his acceptance speech for the Hugo for Best Novella for "The Hemingway Hoax" 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. At any rate, whether US$16 for a 100-page book will be more acceptable than US$25 for a 500- page book remains to be seen. Now admittedly everything I've said so far is crassly commercial and has nothing to do with art or entertainment, which are presumably what books are about. So what about the novella itself? Set on the moon in a future in which mining and manufacturing are carried out on the moon to avoid destroying the earth's ecosphere, it seems to be about how this is destroying the moon. Then a thermonuclear exchange occurs on earth and it seems to be a "how will we survive in isolation" story a la Heinlein. Then it shifts to bio-chemical warfare, mind-altering drugs, .... There is just too much here for a novella--the plots twists are too rapid-fire. It's ironic, but this would have been better as a novel. As a novella, all the good ideas are just too dizzying. (The title is from a Vachel Lindsay poem quoted before the title page. It is, alas, extremely sexist and it's inclusion, coupled with some of the events in the story, gives the story a slant that I suspect Swanwick did not intend.) RADIO DAYS A film review by Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Woody Allen recaptures the days of his youth in this comedy about the lives of people he knew and people he heard on the radio. Essentially a plotless reminiscence, it may well be his best work in quite a while. These days there is no such thing as a typical Woody Allen film. It used to be that you could expect very zany comedy from Allen, then his films took a turn for the introspective, then the serious, then the experimental. _R_a_d_i_o _D_a_y_s is as close as he has come to zany comedy in quite a while, though if the truth be known it is closer to Jean-Shepherd-style humor than to what we are accustomed to from Allen. _R_a_d_i_o _D_a_y_s is a nostalgic look at common people and a pop culture during the late Thirties and early Forties. In the world portrayed by Allen there are two classes of people. There are the common people from Allen's Jewish neighborhood and there are the glamorous radio stars whose entertainment is woven into the fabric of everybody's life. On the whole _R_a_d_i_o _D_a_y_s, like life, is essentially plotless. It goes nowhere but forward in time. If anything, it is a collection of short stories tied together in a framing sequence that is Allen's life (or Allen's character's life) during this period of time. The stories seem to be gossip legends about radio stars--the sort of thing everybody has heard but no two people have heard exactly the same way. Actually Allen invests very little personality in the radio stars in the stories. When you hear a gossip story, there is very little you learn about the characters of the story themselves than that. On the other hand, the people that the Allen character meets in his daily life are very real and very well fleshed out. They are funny and they are real. Allen's sets and locales to recreate the feel of the period were chosen with a certain economy but are nonetheless flawless. We never feel we are looking at a present-day street with a few old cars thrown in to make it look older. The attention to detail on the sets is nearly flawless. The one false note is the repetitive showing of Pepsi-Cola ads and people drinking Pepsi, a move rather more crass than Allen has shown in the past. I personally enjoyed _R_a_d_i_o _D_a_y_s more than the acclaimed Hannah and Her Sisters, Allen's previous film. That film was predominantly about sex and relationships. _R_a_d_i_o _D_a_y_s is about common people and their entertainment. Maybe that says something about me. I give _R_a_d_i_o _D_a_y_s a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.