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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 09/24/93 -- Vol. 12, No. 13
MEETINGS UPCOMING:
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are in Holmdel 4N-509
Wednesdays at noon.
_D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C
10/06 SARAH CANARY by Karen Joy Fowler (Nebula Nominee)
10/27 THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert A. Heinlein (Classic SF)
11/17 BRIAR ROSE by Jane Yolen (Nebula Nominee)
12/08 STAND ON ZANZIBAR by John Brunner (Classic SF)
01/05 A MILLION OPEN DOORS by John Barnes (Nebula Nominee)
01/26 Bookswap
02/16 Demo of Electronic Hugo and Nebula Anthology (MT)
Outside events:
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the second
Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call 201-933-2724 for
details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society meets on the third
Saturday of every month in Belleville; call 201-432-5965 for details.
HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 908-834-1563 holly!jetzt
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell HO 1C-523 908-834-1267 holly!jrrt
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzfs3!leeper
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 908-949-7076 homxc!11366ns
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 908-576-3346 quartet!lfl
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzfs3!leeper
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 mtgpfs1!ecl
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. William Gibson's reading in Central Park earlier this year will
be broadcast Saturday, September 25, at 10PM, on WNYC-AM (820 AM).
[-ecl]
2. I had this exchange with John Sloan wrote about last week's
ConFrancisco media report:
Mark: ... through a nasty freezer accident Snipes escapes and is
terrorizing utopia.
John: Maybe I'm all wet here, but I think the technology exists now
THE MT VOID Page 2
to prevent this kind of accident from happening. I'm am speaking of
course of the zip-lock bag with the red-and-blue-make-green seal.
Mark: Nope, the technology is still only able to make _y_e_l_l_o_w and
blue make green. Some of the best minds have works on it but they
can only get red and blue to make purple at room temperature.
There was a big furor when someone claimed that they could get red
and blue to make green at room temperatures, but their work has not
been reproducible. There are persistent rumors that behind the
Iron Curtain there experiments to make red and blue make borscht,
but it is mostly just grocery tabloids who are spreading that one.
John: If it can hold in spaghetti sauce, it can surely secure
Wesley Snipes.
Mark: Some Wesley Snipes, yes, others, no. There is always the odd
Wesley Snipe that makes it out through the crack.
John: And if they'd used the extra large ones with the printed-on
blanks labels, they could have written right on that bag the
contents and the date it was frozen, maybe even room for a note
"never ever defrost."
Mark: Yeah, but when are you going to do when kids break in with
microwave ovens?
John: Like, I've seen this on advertisements on television, so it
must work. Of course, there is a danger here. Stuff _can_ go bad in
the freezer, so if the criminal was ever defrosted, he could have
been even worse than when he originally went in.
Mark: "Did it make ya' mean, son?" (line from _T_h_e _G_r_a_p_e_s _o_f _W_r_a_t_h)
Actually usually is makes them better. They lose their hardness
and come out all mushy.
John: And meat is especially prone to freezer burn, although what
effect this may have had on Stallone we can only guess.
Mark: I don't know, does it affect white meat differently than dark
meat?
John: Just an idea.
Mark: And perhaps not even that.
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3. THE PLAYER OF GAMES by Ian M. Banks (a book review by Dale L.
Skran):
Ian Banks has written two "Culture" novels in addition to _P_l_a_y_e_r _o_f
_G_a_m_e_s (_T_h_e _U_s_e _o_f _W_e_a_p_o_n_s and _C_o_n_s_i_d_e_r _P_h_l_e_b_a_s), but _P_l_a_y_e_r _o_f
_G_a_m_e_s may be the most direct and accessible. Banks combines
large-scale space opera with mythic writing and touch of splatter-
punk. Some find his novels unpleasant to read, and _P_l_a_y_e_r
certainly presents a vastly unpleasant society, the Empire of Azad.
It also presents a classic SF scenario, as the _C_u_l_t_u_r_e
representative, game-player Gurgeh, is aimed science fiction a
weapon at the heart of the empire.
In some distant time and place, there exists a vast and powerful
empire which calls itself simply the "Culture." But it is not an
empire in any classic sense; it is based on voluntary cooperation
of equals, and has no laws, or at least not very many. The Culture
has outgrown planets, and lives on "orbitals," "plates," and "GSVs"
(General Service Vehicles--vast starships that house billions).
Men and women, humans and aliens, the genetically modified and the
normal, humanoids and sentient machines, all happily co-exist as
equals in a society that has long ago moved beyond material want.
The semi-military organ of the Culture called the Contact Service
encounters the Empire of Azad, based on an ideology of domination
and ruthlessness, and held together by the playing of a complex and
elaborate game called "Azad." Although capable of war on a
galactic scale (see _C_o_n_s_i_d_e_r _P_h_l_e_b_a_s for a history of the
Culture/Indirian war), mass assault is not the way of the Culture.
A lighter touch is found in the form of Gurgeh, possibly the best
games player in the Culture. A decadent who lives to play games,
Gurgeh finds himself blackmailed into joining the Contact Service
and entering the game of Azad, the victor of which becomes the new
emperor of Azad.
Thus begins a journey into a loci of darkness as the well-meaning
Gurgeh becomes more and more deeply involved in a society so cruel
it allows body parts to be wagered on Azad, and which provides 24-
hour video of live torture to entertain its elite. Banks serves up
both a bucket of plot twists and a fascinating character study
combined in an essay on the playing of games. As you may suspect,
nothing in this cosmic hall of mirrors is quite what it seems, and
even the Player of Games may not survive.
Bank's works are especially interesting as a picture of a direction
we (human culture) could be evolving toward. Although Banks is
sometimes dunned for his vivid depictions of cruelty, we live in a
world where Pol Pot and Hitler murdered millions by torture.
Bank's vision is actually a hopeful one, portraying how a free
society may evolve that is both capable of defending itself against
totalitarian competitors while allowing its citizens the maximum
THE MT VOID Page 4
opportunity to live life to the fullest. The Culture is not
perfect, and Azad and the Indirians are not all evil, but I have
little doubt where I would want to live.
I enjoyed _P_l_a_y_e_r _o_f _G_a_m_e_s the most of the three books in the
Culture series, and it serves as a good introduction to the
Culture. I'm a little unsure who to recommend this to, since it
really is space opera, albeit good space opera, but it strives to
be far more the a mere description of battles won and lost, or plot
twists unraveled. Readers of hard SF will be comfortable here, as
will those with an interest in SF that focuses on different
societies and political systems. Fans of gaming may find this book
especially interesting, although they are warned that Azad is only
sketched out, and the focus is on character and plot, not the
minutiae of game-play.
4. FORTRESS (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule review: This extremely formulaic prison
film set in the 21st century will be more at home on
cable than a Flying Wallenda. Stuart Gordon's
future prison looks like it is from the 21st
Century, but the story feels like it is out of the
1950s--the low end of the 1950s. Gordon is good at
mixing dark humor and horror, but you couldn't prove
it by this tired exercise in Sci-Fi (as opposed to
science fiction). Rating: high -1 on the -4 to +4
scale.
I went with friends to see this one. They had coupons. It was a
dollar to get into the movie and twenty-five cents for popcorn. My
friend Dale got the popcorn. When the film was over I told Dale I
hoped he had gotten a dollar's worth of popcorn because he hadn't
gotten twenty-five cents' worth of film.
Okay, that is a bit of an overstatement. But certainly this was a
film that is better to have seen than it was to be seeing it.
There was a breed of science fiction writing called "space opera"
because it was really just a bad Western or "horse opera"
translated to a science fiction story just by making substitutions.
_F_o_r_t_r_e_s_s is not really a science fiction film at all but a bad
prison film thinly disguised as science fiction because it takes
place in the future. The plot is one long string of prison film
cliches. We have the good guy who is sentenced to prison unfairly
for breaking an unjust law. He is threatened and abused by the
sadistic prison warden while the tough prisoners want make
hamburger out of him. The toughs try beating up on him and can't.
Meanwhile he wins the hearts and minds of all the prisoners but the
toughest con and he proves he has guts by taking a punishment
intended for a weaker friend. But he still has to prove he is the
top of the pecking order by fighting the biggest and meanest of the
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prisoners. By the skin of his teeth he beats up the tough and has
him in his power, but... surprise... he shows mercy. And on and on
ad nauseum. This is a plot built of one cliche after another.
Except it doesn't take place in some jerkwater prison in the
present, it takes place in Tomorrow. In this future the ZPG folks
_a_n_d the pro-life folks have both gotten their way. The law in "one
woman, one pregnancy." Our hero tried to have a second baby after
their first baby died. So into the clinker husband and wife go.
The prison is privately owned by sadists who somehow can run this
ultra-modern electronic prison on the $26/day/inmate they get from
the state. This prison may be uncomfortable, but it sure is fancy,
and how they run it on $26/day/inmate is beyond explaining.
Christopher Lambert did a decent job as Tarzan in _G_r_e_y_s_t_o_k_e. That
is mostly because there seems to be something strange about him
that is hard to put a finger on and there would be with Tarzan
also. But generally he just is not a very good actor. In this
film his acting seems particularly wooden as he plays John
Brennick, the lone wolf standing up against a society gone wrong.
Loryn Locklin plays Brennick's beautiful blond wife, loved by
Brennick and lusted after by the nasty warden. She is bland but
she can speak her lines and does not bump into the furniture.
Kurtwood Smith who seems to be making a career of playing stern
villains (like the unsympathetic father in _D_e_a_d _P_o_e_t_s _S_o_c_i_e_t_y) here
plays the prison warden. As it turns out there is a little more to
him than meets the eye at first, but nothing that is very
interesting. Still admittedly he is a better actor than either
Lambert or Locklin. Lincoln Kilpatrick--trying hard to be Morgan
Freeman and nearly succeeding--plays a wise old inmate.
Stuart Gordon who is better known for horror directs, but the drab
prison motif robs this film of the black humor that his _R_e_a_n_i_m_a_t_o_r
films and his _P_i_t _a_n_d _t_h_e _P_e_n_d_u_l_u_m had. About the only aspect of
this film that is above rather than beneath expectation is the art
direction and set design. The prison really has a decent look. I
just wish a better story was written to take advantage of the look.
My rating for this is a high -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
5. IRENE AT LARGE BY Carol Nelson Douglas (Tor, 1993 (1992c), ISBN
0-812-51702-4, $4.99) (a book review by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Penelope Huxleigh is back for a third time to relate the adventures
of Irene Adler Norton and Godfrey Norton, and of herself, as a man
from her past returns amid mystery and death.
In _G_o_o_d _N_i_g_h_t, _M_r. _H_o_l_m_e_s, we first met Penelope Huxleigh, who
serves as Watson to Adler's Holmes for a retelling of "A Scandal in
Bohemia" told from Irene Adler's point of view. Adler is not the
"adventuress" Doyle describes, but a liberated woman. She also
solves a murder mystery, finds lost jewels, etc., etc. In _G_o_o_d
_M_o_r_n_i_n_g, _I_r_e_n_e, Irene (now Norton rather than Adler) investigates
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another mystery in which _j_u_s_t _c_o_i_n_c_i_d_e_n_t_a_l_l_y, Sherlock Holmes is
also involved. Now in _I_r_e_n_e _a_t _L_a_r_g_e, Douglas again uses both
Huxleigh's and Watson's points of view at different times and this
(to my mind) detracts from the story. Part of what makes a mystery
work is having the reader get into it and try to reason along. A
single point of view (which could be a third person point of view)
is necessary to maintain this illusion, and this is not what the
reader gets.
There are those who really like Douglas's Irene character. To me,
she seems as much a stereotype of the "Victorian woman with modern
ideas" as Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody or any number of other
examples. And while I could accept the occasional foray into male
disguise, Irene is _c_o_n_s_t_a_n_t_l_y changing into male garb--to
investigate, to explore, to fight a duel.... There's such a thing
as overkill.
The rest of the book is also similar to the first two in the
series. Readers who enjoyed them will like _I_r_e_n_e _a_t _L_a_r_g_e. To new
readers, I would suggest you read them in order rather than
starting with this one. (Douglas has recently delivered the fourth
book in the series, _I_r_e_n_e'_s _L_a_s_t _W_a_l_t_z, to Tor. It is rumored to
have occult or supernatural elements.)
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com
Nothing else in the world ... not all the armies ...
is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
-- Victor Hugo