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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 04/24/92 -- Vol. 10, No. 43
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
05/13 LZ: ONLY BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER by James Morrow (Books we heard are
very good)
06/03 LZ: THRICE UPON A TIME by James Hogan (Time Travel)
06/24 LZ: RAFT by Stephen Baxter (Gravity)
07/15 LZ: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SCIENCE FICTION by David Pringle (SF
reference books)
08/05 LZ: THE SILMARILLION by J.R.R. Tolkien (Alternate Mythologies)
_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.
05/09 SFABC: Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: TBA
(phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday)
05/16 NJSFS: New Jersey Science Fiction Society: TBA
(phone 201-432-5965 for details) (Saturday)
HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 908-834-1563 hocpb!jetzt
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell HO 1D-505A 908-834-1267 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. We don't usually show episodes from TV series for the
Leeperhouse fest, but this year we have already show an American SF
TV retrospective and episodes of the Japanese BUBBLE GUM CRISIS.
Now we are going to show what I consider to be the best in SF
television. On Thursday, April 30, at 7 PM we will show: THE
SURVIVORS (Episodes 1-3).
Our next film fest will be a showing of the first three episodes of
"The Survivors, " and I have claimed for years that I thought that
this was the best science fiction TV series I had ever seen. (I
don't count the 6-part Quatermass serials as being long enough to
THE MT VOID Page 2
be series.) I recommend the series very strongly. In the mid-
1970s I worked in Detroit when the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation) broadcast the first season. What a reaction! People
who had never expressed any interest in science fiction before then
would have animated lunch discussions about the previous night's
episode of "The Survivors."
The plot of "The Survivors" is that almost all of the world has
been killed by a virus. There are perhaps 7000 people left in
Britain, in any case so few left that no two people who knew each
other prior to the virus are now both alive (or at least can now
find each other). Pockets of people are trying to form again into
small societies. Some work out, some do not, and the question of
what makes a society work is central to the series. There are
three or four groups of people claiming to be the British army,
none of which have any real claim to the title. Some group try to
grab up pre-existing food and resources, others try to start
farming anew. The story is very intelligently executed. Don't
expect a lot of special effects, but do expect some very good
writing and some very compelling situations.
One of the reasons I am showing the series is that I would like to
see people writing their local PBS stations and requesting that
they get the series. A friend is making me copies from a San
Francisco area PBS station's broadcast, so it is in syndication. I
have a source, but it loses a lot of the thrill if there aren't
people to discuss the series with.
(If time permits we will show the fourth episode as well, but I
suspect the discussion periods will make this infeasible. -ecl)
(I suspect that people will want to stay and see a fourth episode
even if there is discussion. I may want to if for no other reason
than I will not have seen it since my Detroit days.)
2. Some of you may know that WBAI, FM 99.5 has a two-hour radio
program devoted to science fiction every Saturday morning from 5 AM
to 7 AM. (I have a tape recorder on a timer to get it.) Jim
Freund currently hosts the program, "Hour of the Wolf," invented by
Margot Adler (currently a popular commentator on NPR). Saturday,
May 2, will be the 20th anniversary of the program. WBAI will
spend a whole day devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and
enchantment.
THE MT VOID Page 3
5:00 AM Subject: Terrence McKenna
7:00 AM Subject: Jorge Luis Borges
8:30 AM "By His Bootstraps," Richard Dreyfus in radio drama
10:30 AM "13 Clocks," Radio dramatization
noon Philip K. Dick interview
1:00 PM Piper in the Meadow Straying: science-fiction-related music
2:00 PM "Star Pit," reading by Samuel Delaney
5:00 PM "Soundtrack," science fiction in the movies
7:00 PM "Golden Age of Radio," classic science fiction radio drama
9:00 PM Reading at Dixon Place: current authors reading own works
11:00 PM "Hour of the Wolf" with Margot Adler (2 hours)
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
...mtgzy!leeper
The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping
away of all other desires in the interest of the
desire to know--it involves supression of hopes and
fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective
emotional life, until we become sudued to the
material, without bias, without any wish except to
see it as it is, and without any belief that what
it is must be determined by some relation, positive
or negative, to what we should like it to be or to
what we can easily imagine it to be.
-- Bertrand Russell
TOTO THE HERO
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: The reminiscences of a man who
blames all the pain of his life on a friend with whom
he believes he was switched at birth. Childhood and
adult fantasy intertwine with reality as Thomas
(nicknamed Toto) plots his revenge on Alfred.
Strange but likable film. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4).
(Warning: there are spoilers in this review.)
Thomas van Hasbroeck is unstuck in time. Well, in fact his
whole family was a little unstrung in various ways. Thomas grew up
with the childish fantasy that he had been switched with another
baby, Alfred, in the nursery and the rich kid across the street
really belonged to Thomas's family and Thomas belonged to the rich
family. Through life, every misfortune Thomas suffered he blamed on
Alfred. Every piece of good fortune Alfred enjoyed should have gone
to Thomas. Thomas blamed Alfred for the loss of the two women he
loved. One was his sister Alice, who was attractive and had a
natural flair for arson and incest. Later it was Evelyne, who loved
Thomas but married Alfred. All this is a set of disjointed
reminiscences of the old Thomas as he plans his revenge on Alfred.
At each age, we see Thomas's fantasies of revenge against the
dastardly usurper Alfred. Usually they are framed as scenes from a
spy film about the great Toto--Toto is Thomas's nickname. And part
of what the film is about is the function of fantasy as an important
part of how we see reality. Thomas must know that he is making most
of his fantasies up, but they impact strongly on his world view.
Flashing forward and backward in time, we see little enigmatic
memories as flashes that will later be fleshed out. Eventually we
discover that the film has played a nifty little sleight-of-hand on
us--a double sleight-of-hand, in fact.
The director and screenwriter of this Belgian-French-German
production is Jaco van Dormael, who went from being a clown to being
a children's theater director to being a film director. He has fun
with children and the way they look at the world.
This film has been getting a lot of positive comment after
appearing at several film festivals. It is a little slight for the
comment it is getting, but it is worth seeing. I give _T_o_t_o _t_h_e _H_e_r_o
a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
THE FANTASTIC CIVIL WAR edited by Frank McSherry, Jr.
Baen, 1991, ISBN 0-671-7206-5, $4.50.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper
This anthology is brought to you by the same group of people
who produced _T_h_e _F_a_n_t_a_s_t_i_c _W_o_r_l_d _W_a_r _I_I: Frank McSherry, Jr.;
Charles G. Waugh; Martin Harry Greenberg; introductions by
S. M. Stirling; and a cover by Ken Kelly that is visually striking
but totally unrelated to any story in the book (and extremely
similar to the one of _T_h_e _F_a_n_t_a_s_t_i_c _W_o_r_l_d _W_a_r _I_I, which is also
totally unrelated to any story in that book). And just to keep the
record straight for any readers outside of the United States, this
is the United States' Civil War that is being discussed.
About a third of the book is Ward Moore's classic _B_r_i_n_g _t_h_e
_J_u_b_i_l_e_e, not the first "what if the South won the Civil War?" (the
first I know of were Winston Churchill's "If Lee had not Won the
Battle of Gettysburg" from _S_c_r_i_b_n_e_r'_s December 1930 issue, James
Thurber's "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox" from _T_h_e _N_e_w
_Y_o_r_k_e_r's December 6, 1930, issue, and Virginia Dabney's "If the
South had Won the War" from _S_c_r_i_b_n_e_r'_s October 1936 issue. Milton
Waldman's "If Booth had Missed Lincoln" in _S_c_r_i_b_n_e_r'_s November 1930
issue is not quite the same premise), but certainly the best-known
and most highly regarded. About this all I need say is it's a
classic and if you haven't read it, you should.
Though one might think this book would contain alternate
histories of the Civil War, there are several pieces which are
science fiction or fantasy and _n_o_t alternate histories. Robert
E. Howard's "For the Love of Barbara Allen" is a touching love
story--not at all what one might expect from an author best known as
the creator of Conan the Barbarian. "The Valley Was Still" by Manly
Wade Wellman is _n_o_t a departure from that author's style, however,
since Wellman is known for tales of backwoods witchery and magic,
and the story delivers that--and delivers it well.
Several stories suppose some sort of Southern super-weapon.
(Look at that alliteration!) In Eric L. Davin's "Avenging Angel"
the weapon is home-grown. This seems to have a Vernian touch, but
the main story is one of those "it seemed like a good idea at the
time" ones. In this case, the super-weapon's effects are very
different from what was expected. (I also see some possible
extrapolations for alternate Hiroshimas here.) In "The Chronicle of
the 656th" by George Bryam, a regiment of soldiers from 1944
suddenly finds itself hurled back in time eighty years. They have
weapons more powerful than any of that time; they also have both
Northerners and Southerners in their ranks and both of these ideas
are used to develop the story. Jack Finney's "Quit Zoomin' Those
Fantastic Civil War April 20, 1992 Page 2
Hands Through the Air" has an inventor with a time machine go
forward in time looking for a new weapon and return with the Wright
Brothers' plane.
"The Long Drum Roll" by Harry Turtledove is an excerpt from his
upcoming novel of the same name. In this, Afrikaaners from the 21st
Century come _b_a_c_k in time to help the South and hence achieve their
vision of a better world. It's hard to judge this excerpt except to
say that it makes me want to read the novel when it comes out. (I
find it ironic that the introduction for this, as for all the
stories, is written by S. M. Stirling, whose best-known works are a
series of alternate histories based on the premise that defeated
Southerners founded a South African state and eventually became a
major world power. And now the idea has come full circle, so to
speak. Though if Turtledove hasn't been updating his manuscript, he
will be writing about alternate Afrikaaners as well.)
Charles L. Harness's "Quarks at Appomattox" _i_s an alternate
history--but not in the way you think. In this case, the time
traveler is Oberst Karl von Mainz, Colonel of the Army of West
Germany of 2065, fine when the story was written in 1983, but now a
noticeable historical artifact, as is von Mainz's reference to
"Leningradoh, St. Petersburg to you of the 1860s]." Yes, and to the
rest of us also, with little chance of reversion, I would say.
The two remaining stories are time travel without being
alternate histories. John M. Ford's "Slowly By, Lorena" is another
in Ford's "Alternities" series. In this one, the time traveler is a
doctor who went on a ten-day trip to a simulated Civil War and got
stranded there for five years. (Okay, I lied--this is an alternate
history. But the alternate history aspect is not the point.)
Rounding out the book is "Time's Arrow" by Jack McDevitt (original
titled "Hard Landings") which has a time traveler go back to
Gettysburg as well as to other destinations. The fact that the
Civil War is only a small part of the story makes it a weak choice
to conclude this particular book, though the story itself is a
perfectly good story.
I suppose there may be enough material for a third volume, _T_h_e
_F_a_n_t_a_s_t_i_c _A_m_e_r_i_c_a_n _R_e_v_o_l_u_t_i_o_n, but then what? _T_h_e _F_a_n_t_a_s_t_i_c
_S_p_a_n_i_s_h-_A_m_e_r_i_c_a_n _W_a_r? _T_h_e _F_a_n_t_a_s_t_i_c _P_e_r_s_i_a_n _G_u_l_f _W_a_r? When they
get to _T_h_e _F_a_n_t_a_s_t_i_c _G_r_e_n_a_d_a _I_n_v_a_s_i_o_n, we'll know they're tapped
out.