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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.