@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society 08/18/17 -- Vol. 36, No. 7, Whole Number 1976
Table of Contents
Hugo Award Winners 2017 and Worldcon 75:
Video recordings were made of many of the events and panels at Worldcon 75 in Helsinki and can be found at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT_U7RhKFr-If4pusZY6g8A/videos.
Insurance Catch-17 (comments by Mark R. Leeper):
You should not get insurance against reincarnation in New Jersey. When you go to collect having past lives is automatically considered a pre-existing condition. [-mrl]
What is Happening to the Mainstream Film Industry? (comments by Mark R. Leeper):
As is probably not very surprising, this year has a disappointing one for the major studios. They continue to follow the same pattern of making chapters in major franchises and spending more and more on visual effects. Then they expect they can draw on a big domestic and a big foreign market. It is easy to make a chapter of a franchise. Most of the creative work can be done for the producer. You write a story that is different but not too different from the previous films in the franchise. You outsource the creation of special effects. Maybe you even get the same writers. But you need only limited creativity. People will come for your visual effects, but only for so many chapters. But franchises only draw on just so many people. Eventually you probably have more people jumping off than jumping on.
China is a big market for American film for now, but they have their own culture. They grew up with Sun Wukong, not Spider-Man. Spider-Man does have exotic appeal in some markets like China, but that goes only so far. Just like African Americans wanted to see more of their own people, the Chinese probably want to see people they can identify with on the screen.
Meanwhile Disney has bought the Marvel Comics set of franchises and the Lucasfilm "Star Wars" films. (Well, George Lucas used to claim that when he made the first "Star Wars" film he "wanted to make a children's movie, to go the Disney route." It looks like he finally did in a roundabout way.) These films are written in their own universe. There is a "Star Wars" universe. There is also a Godzilla "Monsterverse" universe.
The oddest entry in this race is Universal turning its 1930s and 1940s horror films into some kind of universe where the monsters become superheroes together. It will not be just all the monsters appear in one place like HOUSE OF FRANKENSIEIN. It will go beyond that, but I am not sure where. This is the strangest of film franchises. What are they going to do? Will they turn Dracula and Lawrence Talbot into crime fighters? And as their flagship film they have made THE MUMMY as an action film starring Tom Cruise. It sounds like they were out of good ideas before they even got started. They intended to build a loyal audience for the their series of films with a film that got a 15% critical approval on Rotten Tomatoes. That is not a very good start. For those who know the ratings systems the IMDB's aggregate rating was 5.7/10 and Rotten Tomatoes saw it get a fast 16 percent. That is not the most auspicious start.
The American film industry, which is the most powerful film industry in the world, is having serious problems. Their budgets keep growing and they need new international markets. A franchise is just does not stay a good way to go. Once you have seen how the Incredible Hulk smashes things seven different ways, do you really have some desire to see the new film where he does it an eighth way?
You have a younger generation who is living on their iPhones and who do not have the patience to watch a comic book on the screen. And you have an older generation who are getting too old to have much interest in comic book films. And tying them together there is a weak economy. It used to be that a special effects extravaganza would bring in crowds. That has been going on since the days of silent films or KING KONG (1933). But budgets today are outpacing grosses. And the one thing that will really improve a film, good writing, is getting harder for the studios to recognize or harder to trust. Studios do not want to be too demanding on audiences. The good writers are abandoning the studios and going to video of one form or another.
So what is to be done? I love cinema too much to declare that it is a dying medium. But the film industry has been ready for several years for a big shake up. It may be that video or some new medium will steal their audience. Cinema had a similar problem in 1969. Then Hollywood had to re-discover the small film. That year the small film that led the way was EASY RIDER. I am hoping that Hollywood will come to respect small films with good writing. Otherwise we will have a bunch of empty theaters with passersby watching video off their iPhones. [-mrl]
Hugo Award Rules Changes (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
A summary of the changes; I did not try to explain the items that failed.
HIDDEN FIGURES and Hugo Eligibility (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
The Hugo Administrators issued the following statement as part of the Hugo Awards press release:
"The eligibility of HIDDEN FIGURES in this category was queried; it was suggested that as "non-fiction", it belonged rather to Best Related Work. We determined that this is, frankly, ridiculous.
In the first place, HIDDEN FIGURES is not a non-fictional documentary, but a dramatised reconstruction of historical events, as have been many other Best Dramatic Presentation finalists through the years-most recently, two finalists for Short Form in 2014 were about the production of "Doctor Who", one of them similarly a dramatised reconstruction of historical events (the other briefly featuring this year 's Hugo Administrator in a crowd scene).
In the second place, even if HIDDEN FIGURES had been a non- fictional documentary, it would still have been eligible in this category. A non-fiction finalist won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1970 (the TV coverage of Apollo 11) and there was a non-fiction finalist in Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form as recently as 2012 (The Drink Tank 's Hugo acceptance speech).
We noticed some references to "the Apollo 13 exception", as if some special allowance had been made in that and other cases. There was and is no special allowance, just implementation of the rules as they are written"
[In my opinion, they made the right decision for the wrong reason. The description of eligibility is "Any theatrical feature or other production, with a complete running time of more than 90 minutes, in any medium of dramatized science fiction, fantasy or related subjects ..." Space travel/exploration is clearly a related subject. The whole purpose of amending the definition to include related subjects was make films such as THE RIGHT STUFF, APOLLO 13, and HIDDEN FIGURES explicitly eligible. -ecl]
Relativity (comments by Gregory Frederick):
As you probably know; Einstein became world famous in the early
1900's due to observations made by an astronomer during a solar
eclipse proving that light from a star was deflected by the
gravitational well of the Sun. This was only possible because you
can only see stars near the Sun's edge during a solar eclipse.
Astronomers in this country plan to repeat that type of observation
during the upcoming eclipse. They want to use the modern equipment
of today to get the best accuracy possible of this deflection. But
an even more extreme version of was studied recently by European
astronomers who observed this happening to three stars near the
immense gravity well of a black hole. The link to this recent
study on space.com is AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL (film review by Art Stadlin):
Yesterday we went to the movie house to see AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL:
TRUTH TO POWER. Let me start with the obvious: If you saw Al
Gore's first movie, and hated it, you won't like this one either.
If you liked the first movie, you may like this one better.
The production qualities, such as the beautiful outdoor shots in
Greenland, the camera angles, music, and so forth were very well
done. This is not some jerky-camera home movie.
The story is very easy to follow, with fewer graphs and charts than
I remember in the first movie. In some ways this is a movie as
much about Al Gore the man as it is about global warming and
climate change. There's Al Gore the Senator's son. Al Gore the
college kid. Al Gore the Congressman. Al Gore the Presidential
candidate. And Al Gore the climate activist.
It was interesting, I thought, that this movie is *not* overtly
political. It's much more about the reality of the impact of
global warming. Yet, politics creeps in. After all, climate
change is a political hot potato, regardless of what consensus
there is in scientific circles. A prime point of this movie is the
question, Why? Why so much push back on the data that the earth is
warming, and sea levels are rising?
As Gore points out, the victims worldwide are primarily the poor.
The poor have no big money to support their cause. Big money has
warped the political process in Washington.
I won't spoil anything that might surprise you. There was one
particular event during the W. Bush years that surprised me. And
then there's Trump. To those who deeply believe in the cause of
saving the planet, there is nothing flattering in this movie about
Bush and Trump. Enough said.
Al Gore is 71. (My wife looked it up.) I got the feeling this
movie could be his capstone or tribute for generations to remember
him by. Despite the Bush and Trump set-backs, the movie portrays
Gore as an even-tempered man-with-a-mission who takes each setback
as a challenge to do more than before for the cause.
As documentary-style movies go, I'd rate this one very high. [-as]
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE by James Bryce (book review by Gregory Frederick):
This book delves into the history of Germany and Italy from the
fall of the Western Roman Empire to the early 20th Century. The
author originally wrote this book in 1864 and it was reprinted with
corrections in 1906. Later reprintings occurred as recently as
1968. Therefore, the author's viewpoint is from the past. The
details of why Germany and Italy did not become nation states until
the late 1800's is examined. England, France and Spain were nation
states long before Germany and Italy gained this national status.
The Holy Roman Empire is responsible in large part for the late
emergence of Germany and Italy as nations. After the Roman Empire
in the West fell in the late 400's Rome was plagued by frequent
attacks by the Lombards. The Pope in Rome could not get any
military assistance from the Eastern Roman Empire also known as the
Byzantine Empire so he turned to Charlemagne, king of the Franks in
Germany for help. Charlemagne defeated the Lombards and was
crowned by the Pope as the first Holy Roman Emperor. The Holy
Roman Empire territory at the time of Charlemagne and for some
years after consisted roughly of present day Germany and the
northern part of present day Italy. This Holy Roman Empire existed
from 800 to 1806 but as time progressed its emperors eventually
lost real power over their territory as rebellions in Italy and
other parts of Germany kept them occupied. Also, the emperors were
chosen by a group of electors who tended to select weak rulers.
The electors were seeking more power and control of their own local
territories in Germany and preferred weaker candidates for the role
as emperor. The continual fracturing of the Empire and weakness of
the emperors allowed for the princes and dukes to divide Germany
and Italy into small domains that would not easily coalesce into a
nation state. Additionally, the Pope in Rome created his own papal
states. Interesting and valuable information about the formation
of modern day Europe is provided in this book but it is not an easy
read. The author uses some words from a bygone era and therefore
it takes a real effort to understand the text. [-gf]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
We recently watched THE MARTIAN and read THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir
(ISBN 978-0-553-41802-6) for our book-and-film group. While I have
commented before on the book several times now, I found interesting
some of the questions about the film from people who had not read
the book.
For example: Rich Purnell (who develops a new strategy for saving
Mark Watney). In the book, he is developed enough as a character
that we understand that he is on the autism spectrum. His behavior
in the film makes sense if you know this, but without foreknowledge
of it (or unless you are a good guesser), his character makes no
sense.
There was also some discussion of the ethnic backgrounds of the
characters. Venkat Kapoor (definitely an Indian name) became
Vincent Kapoor (and half Indian and half African, because he was
played by Chiwetel Ejiotor). Mindy Park was read by most people
(including Weir) as Korean, but definitely was not Korean in the
film. Weir himself says he never specified their ethnicities.
Annie Montrose is also considerably less strident in the film
version (probably because the filmmakers had to clean up the
language to get a PG-13). And a lot was omitted from the film: the
second dust storm (and indeed most of the journey), the loss of
communications, the equipping of the rovers, etc. The rover
(singular) in the film had no airlock, and instead of a second
rover, there seemed to be something more like a flatbed trailer.
The hab airlock is much larger than in the book, in which Watney
complained about how little dirt he could bring in at any one time,
and also described as the size of a phone booth. (How does Watney
even know what a phone booth is by the time THE MARTIAN takes
place.) His shovels are also larger, and the mission goes a few
days longer on Mars before they abort (for no reason I can tell).
The retrieval plays out differently, and the film adds a final
sequence taking place several years after the rest of the story.
[-ecl]
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Mark Leeper
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Quote of the Week:
Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand,
water is water. And east is east and west is west and
if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce
they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
Now you tell me what you know.
--Groucho Marx
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