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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 04/22/94 -- Vol. 12, No. 43
MEETINGS UPCOMING:
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are in Middletown 1R-400C
Wednesdays at noon.
_D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C
05/11 TBA
06/01 Hugo-nominated novel TBA
06/22 Hugo-nominated novel TBA
07/13 Hugo-nominated novel TBA
08/03 Hugo-nominated novel TBA (tentative)
08/24 Hugo-nominated short stories TBA (tentative)
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 MT 2G-432 908-957-5087 j.j.jetzt@att.com
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell HO 1C-523 908-834-1267 j.j.jetzt@att.com
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 m.r.leeper@att.com
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 908-949-7076 n.j.sauer@att.com
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen HO 2C-318 908-949-4156 l.f.larsen@att.com
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 m.r.leeper@att.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 e.c.leeper@att.com
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. The next meeting topic will be announced by next week (April
29). If the Hugo nominees are announced by then, it will be one of
the five novels nominated; otherwise we will find something to tide
us over until our Hugo nominee string.
===================================================================
2. There is an old question of whether life imitates art or art
imitates life. Actually I think it is clear that both are true to
some extent. Art is less and less interested in imitating life as
it become more and more abstract. That could be because we have
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cameras for really realistic art these days and also because really
realistic painting is a slow and detailed process. Impressionism
is really the art of saving yourself a lot of effort sweating the
details and having people impressed by how well you can get away
with it.
But it seems true that also life imitates art. There is the old
question of whether we are becoming a violent society because that
is how we represent ourselves in film. People look at what they
see in the big and small screen and try to imitate it in real life.
This could be some nimnull seeing Beavis and Butthead play with
matches and do the same thing himself. Or it could be Adolf Hitler
seeing the destruction at the beginning of the film _T_h_i_n_g_s _T_o _C_o_m_e
and saying he needs to be able to create the same effect in real
life. That is a true story, at least if an issue of Ripley's
"Believe It or Not" is to be believed. (Hitler also really liked
the film _M_e_t_r_o_p_o_l_i_s according to Fritz Lang's biography and
according to Trivial Pursuit his favorite film was _K_i_n_g _K_o_n_g.
Apparently he was a real fan of fantasy films, an historical
insight you rarely see in the history books. That's just a slight
digression.)
So life does imitate art. But in an odd cessation of the laws of
causality, prehistoric life seems to also imitate contemporary art.
It used to be that paleontologists laughed at dinosaur movies
because the dinosaurs shown were just too big. Not only did they
out-scale any of the fossils that had been found, they were bigger
than any fossils that ever would be found. After all there are
theoretical limits to how big you can have a reptile before it
becomes structurally unsound. And the dinosaurs in films are just
too darn big. And they started telling us how big a reptile can
get.
Well naturally, just a short time later they discovered the remains
of flying reptiles that were impossibly large. They called them
Rodans after the monster in a Japanese sci-fi movie. What we think
of a gentle sauropods started turning uncooperative. Both
seismosaurus and supersaurus, subsequently discovered, go beyond
the theoretical size limits of reptiles. Now the people who used
to trumpet loudly about size limitations on dinosaurs are just
quietly waiting to see what else will be discovered. Mother Nature
does not like having limitations put on what she can do. They
haven't found any two-hundred-foot-tall Godzillas (four hundred
feet feet in the English-language version) and probably never will,
but nobody is really sure what the limits are anymore.
The latest is that Spielberg's _J_u_r_a_s_s_i_c _P_a_r_k exaggerated the size
of velociraptors for artistic effect. Raptors were nasty but they
were not as big as they appeared in the film ... it was thought.
And his advisors complained that Raptors were just not that big.
Apparently Mother Nature saw the film and said "I got to get me
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some of those." Before the film even was released fossils twenty-
foot-long, 1500-pound Raptors were found in Utah. They called them
Spielberg's Raptors (or Utahraptors for the state where they were
discovered). It's not nice to underestimate Mother Nature.
===================================================================
3. MYSTERIUM by Robert Charles Wilson (Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-
37365-X, 1994, 288pp, US$11.95) (a book review by Evelyn C.
Leeper):
I have liked all of Robert Charles Wilson's previous books (_T_h_e
_H_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_c_e, _M_e_m_o_r_y _W_i_r_e, _G_y_p_s_i_e_s, _T_h_e _D_i_v_i_d_e, _T_h_e _B_r_i_d_g_e _o_f
_Y_e_a_r_s, and _H_a_r_v_e_s_t), which is even more interesting when you
consider how widely they vary. _T_h_e _H_i_d_d_e_n _P_l_a_c_e is a fantasy set
in a hobo camp during the Great Depression, _M_e_m_o_r_y _W_i_r_e is a
science fiction story of cybernetics in 21st Century Brazil,
_G_y_p_s_i_e_s is about the military trying to use children who can
"sidestep" into other worlds, _T_h_e _D_i_v_i_d_e is about the experimental
enhancement of intelligence, _T_h_e _B_r_i_d_g_e _o_f _Y_e_a_r_s is about time
travel, and _H_a_r_v_e_s_t is about aliens who come to transform the human
race into something higher. If there's a pattern here, I don't see
it. (And lest there be any confusion, this book is _n_o_t by the co-
author of the "Illuminati" books. That is Robert _A_n_t_o_n Wilson.)
And now we have _M_y_s_t_e_r_i_u_m, a book based on gnosticism. I must
admit that gnosticism in the early Christian church is not one of
my strong points. From a historical perspective, I know that
gnosticism led in part to Manichaeism and the religion of the
Bogomils, but I am less clear on their doctrines, so I have to take
_M_y_s_t_e_r_i_u_m based on what Wilson conveys within it. (I hope he's
more accurate on gnosticism than on mathematics--where he refers to
the "anthropic principle in the language of set theory"--or
physics--where he describes a thirty-degree incline as "not
steep.") Of course, one might claim that since one of the basic
principles of gnosticism is hidden knowledge Wilson doesn't have to
convey it clearly. After all, in Luke 8:10 it is said, "Unto you
it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to
others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing
they might not understand," a very gnostic concept.
The town of Two Rivers, Michigan, is happy when the government
builds a secret laboratory nearby, disappointed when they discover
the employees won't be pumping money into the local economy, and
surprised when they wake up one morning to discover that their
entire town has been transported to a world like theirs--but
different. Their country--whatever it is--seems to be at war with
New Spain, and the Proctors have arrived to bring the town under
control. No one is quite sure what has happened, but Howard Poole
is sure it has something to do with his uncle, Alan Stern.
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The three parts of _M_y_s_t_e_r_i_u_m are entitled "Mysterium," "Mysterium
Tremendae," and "Axis Mundis" (reminiscent of the three sections of
_A _C_a_n_t_i_c_l_e _f_o_r _L_e_i_b_o_w_i_t_z). Each begins with a brief excerpt from
Stern's diary, heavy on the Greek terms but somewhat helpful in
understanding the religious basis not only of this new world but
also of the book itself. Because gnosticism is the key to what's
happened to the town of two rivers.
I have a couple of minor quibbles. Given the time of the "world-
split," it seems unlikely that names such as Boston and Meso-
America would be use. (Wilson attempts to explain this by having
Graham note, "The movements of people, the evolution of language.
It's as though history wants to flow in certain channels. Broad
ethnic groupings persist, and there are roughly analogous wars, at
least up until the tenth or eleventh century. There are plagues,
though they follow different patterns. The Black Death depopulated
Europe and Asia no less than five times," but I'm not convinced.)
And his science is sloppy (see my comments about set theory and
thirty-degree slopes earlier). But in spite of these problems, I
found _M_y_s_t_e_r_i_u_m to be an engrossing novel. I may not believe the
religious underpinnings of it, but then the same was true of _A
_C_a_n_t_i_c_l_e _f_o_r _L_e_i_b_o_w_i_t_z and that didn't stop me from liking that.
This uses religion slightly differently, of course, but read it for
yourself to see how.
===================================================================
4. AGYAR by Steven Brust (Tor, ISBN 0-812-51521-8, 1994, 254pp,
US$4.99) (a book review by Evelyn C. Leeper):
I greatly enjoyed Steven Brust's _T_o _r_e_i_g_n _i_n _H_e_l_l, and have heard
good things about his other books. But I have been unwilling to
jump into the middle of the Vlad Taltos novels or other associated
books, and _C_o_w_b_o_y _F_e_n_g'_s _S_p_a_c_e _B_a_r _a_n_d _G_r_i_l_l_e seemed probably
atypical of his writing style. (Of course, that might also have
been true of _T_o _R_e_i_g_n _i_n _H_e_l_l.) So I was pleased to see that at
least there was a non-Taltos Brust book available.
John Agyar is new in town, and leading a somewhat peculiar life.
He lives in a haunted mansion, where he converses in a quite normal
fashion with the ghost of the ex-slave Jim. (This isn't Hannibal,
Missouri; I doubt there is an intentional reference here.) He is
seeing two women, Jill Quarrier and her roommate Susan Pfahl. And
he's being pursued by a third woman, Laura Kellen whose intentions
are not exactly friendly.
Brust manages a style that is modern enough for the setting, yet
poetic enough for the feelings and the mystery and the strangeness
of what is happening. He keeps the reader just slightly off-
balance, delivering a surprise here, a twist there, but never
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enough to overthrow what has come before. This is a book that
slowly unfolds and opens itself, like the roses on the cover. (And
my the way, the cover by Jim Burns is an excellent rendering of a
painting described in the book itself (pages 219 to 220), and no
fair skipping ahead to it!). Agyar, and the town of Lakota, and
what happens there all form something you won't soon forget. I
recommend _A_g_y_a_r and I may even brave the Dragaeran series if this
is indicative of Brust's writing.
===================================================================
5. BLACK BIBLE CHRONICLES: FROM GENESIS TO THE PROMISED LAND
interpreted by P. K. McCary (African American Family Press, ISBN
1-56977-0000-X, 1993, 190pp, , US$14.95) (a book review by Evelyn
C. Leeper):
Perhaps best described as "the Torah for homeboys," this is the
first of a series of books translating (or "interpreting," to use
McCary's term) the _B_i_b_l_e into urban language. This volume covers
the five books of Moses (_G_e_n_e_s_i_s, _E_x_o_d_u_s, _L_e_v_i_t_i_c_u_s, _N_u_m_b_e_r_s, and
_D_e_u_t_e_r_o_n_o_m_y); a second volume has already been published covering
the four gospels (called _R_a_p_p_i_n' _w_i_t_h _J_e_s_u_s). But as a Jew I was
understandably more interested in this volume.
This translation omits large sections of these books, particularly
the genealogies (the "begats"). Since the footnotes reference this
translation back to the chapters in the complete version, I don't
consider this a big fault. More problematic is McCary's somewhat
loose translation. The use of the term "church" to refer to the
Temple may not be too unreasonable (though it points out the
Christian focus of this translation, rather than a Judaic or
Islamic one), but the translation of "Sabbath" into "Sunday" in
several spots is irksome and deceptive. And, for example, the
translation of Leviticus 18:21 as "he can't put her children on the
altar to be burned 'cuz that'll cause the ultimate in punishment"
may not be an accurate rendering of what the original says: the
King James translation is "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed
pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the
name of thy God: I am the Lord," and Maimonides says this refers to
passing an old practice of passing a newborn child through the
smoke of a fire as a pagan rite (_T_h_e _G_u_i_d_e _f_o_r _t_h_e _P_e_r_p_l_e_x_e_d, Part
3, Chaper 37). On the other hand, "Don't mess with someone else's
ol' man or ol' lady" is probably a better rendering of the intent
than "Thou shalt not commit adultery." (The latter seems to lead
to all sorts of hair-splitting over the precise definition of
adultery.)
I notice, by the way, that while most of the Laws in _L_e_v_i_t_i_c_u_s are
retained, the prohibitions against homosexual behavior between men
seem to have vanished. Not only does McCary include all the other
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sexual prohibitions ("And the Almighty didn't want folks peeping on
people they had no business seeing naked"; "It was especially
uncool to get down with any animals"; "The Almighty didn't want
kissin' cousins getting hitched, and brothers weren't to sleep with
their mothers or any wife of your dad's, whether she's your mother
or not. Granddaughters, daughters, and half sisters are out of the
question for doing the wild thing, just as your aunt or your
sister-in-law"), but even the clothing ones ("Mix matching clothes,
like wool and linen, isn't just a fashion downer, it ain't
happening here"). One can only conclude that political correctness
is at least partially responsible for this omission.
_B_l_a_c_k _B_i_b_l_e _C_h_r_o_n_i_c_l_e_s is certainly an unusual translation, and one
that is surprisingly engaging. It manages to bring a life and a
directness to the story that traditional translations don't.
Whether it will reach its intended audience is not clear, but it
could well find a favorable reception with an audience looking at
it as a literary work rather than an inspirational one.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
m.r.leeper@att.com
The world is a spiritual kindergarten where bewildered
infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.
-- Edwin Arlington Robinson