@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society 10/23/20 -- Vol. 39, No. 17, Whole Number 2142
Table of Contents
FROM HELL IT CAME (1957) (film retrospective by Mark R. Leeper):
The New York Times, which likes to give one-line reviews for movies scheduled for TV has a quick phrase for this film: "FROM HELL IT CAME? BACK SEND IT." Well, I can certainly see where they are coming from. In truth this is not a very good film. Actually, in truth I should use stronger language. The idea of a tribal folklore monster coming to life would not be a bad one. But that is about the only thing that is good about this often genuinely incompetent film. There was a strong temptation to say this is not really a science fiction film at all but a horror film with some science fiction elements.
As I assume most of my readers know in the 1930s up into the 1970s it was common practice for movie theaters, particularly drive-in theaters, to have double or more features, offering the public two or more films for the price of one. Too frequently the second feature was of minimal budget. That sounds like a bad thing, but the second film often was made with more creativity than the main feature attraction. The filmmakers were less likely to depend on large profits and they would take chances trying to find a concept that might intrigue a filmgoer who stumbled on the poster. Instead of something only semi-unimaginative like a giant ant or a giant spider or some other giant arthropod or crustacean, you might get a giant evil, angry tree stump. The latter was featured in FROM HELL IT CAME. Sadly the strange idea of a walking tree was the best part of the movie.
The concept of FROM HELL IT CAME is that if a man has been treated
with sufficient injustice, in this life he could come back not as
an avenging ghost but as a Tabonga. What is a Tabonga, you ask?
It is a walking (and avenging) spirit wrapped in a tree trunk." Do
you want to see what an angry tree stump looks like? Well, it sort
of looks like a cross between an angry Orthodox rabbi and a
cinnamon sticky bun. See
The story deals with Kimo, the son of a recently murdered chief of
a tribe on a South Pacific atoll near where a nuclear test took
place. Kimo is accused of the crime and found guilty through the
treachery of his wife. The real murderer is the new chief of the
tribe. But Kimo has been friendly to the visiting American
scientists investigating the effects of radiation, and Kimo's
friendship has bred suspicion. Kimo's punishment is to have a
dagger driven through his heart and to be buried in the ground
standing up in a box of tree logs. Kimo's last words are a threat
to be stronger in death than his accusers are in life.
After the execution, the plot action slows down as the scientists
tell each other things they should already know about the
background of the story. Subtle how the script works! But true to
Kimo's curse his vengeful spirit does come back. Out of his grave
grows a stump with a face. The native tribe has a legend that
vengeful spirits can inhabit trees and come to life. The resulting
monster is called a vengeful spirit or Tabonga. When the
scientists investigate they find the stump has a heartbeat like a
human. The scientists find the heartbeat failing and give the tree
an experimental drug to strengthen the heartbeat. The Tabonga
comes to life as a rubbery-looking version of Kimo with a knife in
its trunk and an angry face. Finally in the last twenty minutes of
the film the Tabonga goes on a rampage killing Kimo's enemies.
While none of the acting rises above high school play quality, some
lines by bit actors are notably terrible. Tod Andrews is the only
really familiar actor. He was best known in the late Fifties as
TV's Gray Ghost,' based on the Southern Civil War hero John Mosby.
The Una'Connor Irritation Award goes to Linda Watkins as Mrs.
Kilgore who talks incessantly in a horrible Australian accent.
At some point this film had some potential because it did have a
really different monster, the Tabonga created by Paul Blaisdel.
However, the monster looks like a tree from The Wizard of Oz or a
McDonald's ad. It looks entirely too stiff in the upper parts and
rubbery around the arms and legs. The angry face on it just looks
silly. Where we hear words in the native language it does not
sound like a South Pacific dialect. The whole telling of the
backplot in details dropped in conversation that is contrived.
The pacing keeps anything of plot interest until the last twenty
minutes. Most the script is a holding action to just awkwardly
delay any action to transform the two minutes of story-into a
seventy-minute film. The film has enough problems without its long
dull stretches for people to tell each other what has happened.
Just to prove there is always someone who does not get the memo,
the tree monster is called a Tabonga in the film but in the trailer
it was called a "baronga." The fact that the trailer producer
decided the coining of a different generic name for the monster is
"a baranga'". [-mrl]
Turner Classic Movies is running this on October 29, 5:15 PM. (If
this isn't enough tropical horror for you, it will be followed by
DEATH CURSE OF TARTU at 6:30PM.) [-ecl]
THE LAST EMPEROX by John Scalzi (copyright 2020, Tor Books, 308pp, ASIN: B07QPGW9FS, ISBN: 0765389169, Audible Studios, ASIN: B084RNDS97, 8 hours and 7 minutes, narrated by Wil Wheaton) (audio book review by Joe Karpierz):
John Scalzi is nothing if not dependable and consistent. You know
what you're going to get with a Scalzi novel. Fast paced writing,
interesting characters, well thought out worlds, and a very
satisfying story. THE LAST EMPEROX, the final book in the
Interdependency trilogy, is no exception.
The apocalypse is coming. Well, not yet, anyway, but soonish. The
Interdependency, a galactic spanning empire held together by the
Flow, a not-well-understood method of traveling between systems.
The Flow is also Scalzi's way of getting around the FTL drive
problem. We know that the Flow is going to collapse, eventually
isolating all the systems in the Interdependency. As a reminder,
it is called the Interdependency for a reason. Systems can't
support themselves, and they all depend on each other via the Flow
stream. It is up to Emperox Grayland II--otherwise known as
Cardenia Wu-Patrick--and her lover, Flow physicist Lord Marce
Claremont, to figure out a way to save the people of the
Interdependency.
But of course it's never that easy, is it?
The huge cast of scheming, conniving characters from the first two
books, THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE and THE CONSUMING FIRE, are back to
make life difficult and interesting for Grayland. Grayand made a
lot of enemies at the end of book two, exposing the member of a
rebellion and sending them to prison. Nadashe Nohamapetan
continues to orchestrate assassination attempts in an effort to get
Grayland off the throne and get herself seated there. She's not
the only one, of course, and as it becomes obvious that there are
as many people that want her dead as want her alive, she needs to
come up with that plan to save the people of the empire. What's
different about her plan, as opposed to the plans of the opposing
nobles, is that she wants to save everyone, and they want to save
themselves.
Claremont is a brilliant scientist, and he is working to find a way
to save the people of the Empire. He is making headway, but not
much--it's slow going. It turns out that he's working with at
least one hand tied behind his back, and it is only after the
restraint is removed that he can come up with something that will
save the entire Interdependency. Not all at once and not
immediately, but it can happen.
The other character that I want to mention here, and one that
became a fan favorite, is the vulgar, foul-mouth Lady (and we all
use the term loosely) Kiva Lagos, who is not even the head of her
own house but has somehow been put in charge of the House
Nohamapetan financial assets (which believe me, comes in handy
here) as well as being assigned to the Emperox's Executive Council.
To say that she has more than a few enemies is an understatement.
So, in 308 pages (or 8 hours and 7 minutes, which is the way I
consumed the novel), Scalzi manages to summarize what has gone
before, continue the palace intrigue, deliver a terrific story, and
give the reader a satisfying ending while managing to throw a few
surprises in for good measure. And while Scalzi has tied up this
story very nicely, there are threads out there that he has left
dangling that he could write additional novels in the
Interdependency universe, although if he does only time will tell.
As he did with the first two books in the series, Wil Wheaton
narrates with his usual enthusiasm for the story and the
characters. I can hear Scalzi's voice in Wheaton's narration, and
there's no one I'd rather have reading Kiva's lines--Wheaton does
it so well that it's hard to remember that everyone hated him as
Wesley Crusher all those years ago. Beverly would not be happy
hearing what is coming out of his mouth. Well, Kiva's mouth,
anyway. [-jak]
GALILEO AND THE SCIENCE DENIERS by Mario Livio (book review by Gregory Frederick):
This is a history of science book about Galileo and the beginnings
of modern science based on mathematics, observation and
experimentation to investigate the World and the Solar System. But
also it covers the difficulty that Galileo had to deal with when
the Catholic Church tried to censor him. Using a much-improved
telescope created by Galileo himself, he observed the Moon, the
phases of Venus and the four large moons of Jupiter which orbited
Jupiter. After viewing these objects he was convinced that
Copernicus was correct in that the Sun was at the center of our
Solar System and that the Earth and other planets orbited around
the Sun. Until Copernicus most thought that the Earth was at the
center of our Solar System and everything orbited around it.
Galileo printed his books in Italian instead of Latin so that
everyone could read them. Galileo was able to deduce that objects
fall with the same gravitational acceleration by using inclined
planes and rolling balls down those planes. This way he could slow
down the motion and time the movement. Newton used Galileo's ideas
and went even farther to create Newtonian physics. Galileo thought
that science and religion can co-exist as long as the conclusions
of science concerning physical reality are accepted without any
intervention of religious beliefs trying to denounce those provable
facts. The author went on to state that science today also faces
push back from those who deny the scientific facts of climate
change and evolution for example. So, though this book is about
what happened in the 1600's it is still relevant today. [-gf]
SEVEN OF INFINITIES (letter of comment by Arthur Kaletzky):
In response to Joe Karpierz's review of SEVEN OF INFINITIES in the
10/16/20 issue of the MT VOID, Arthur Kaletzky writes:
It isn't at all hard to imagine sentient spacecraft having sex with
humans: it was pretty commonplace in Iain M. Banks's Culture.
They just make an avatar of the appropriate species and, if
applicable, sex and/or gender.
Continent class General Systems Vehicle Gegenbeispiel*, originally
of the Culture but now loosely affiliated to the Ah-Forget-It
Tendency, by its avatar Arthur Kaletzky (assumed Culture identity:
"Sun-Earther Artur Ester dam Bol'shayanikitskaya19") *the
translation from Marain into English, Counterexample, doesn't sound
nearly as good as the one into German. [-ak]
Musical Accompaniment to Silent Films (letters of comment by Paul Dormer and Gary McGath):
In response to Evelyn's comments on the musical accompaniment to
silent films in the 10/16/20 issue of the MT VOID, Paul Dormer
writes:
The problems with the organ at Noreascon Two were reported in the
Souvenir book, I recall. (My first visit to the US.)
I went to a showing of AELITA at the Barbican Centre in London
abouttwenty years ago. Live piano accompaniment. Unfortunately, a
couple of times the film jammed and melted. The pianist stopped
playing until the projectionist fixed the problem.
I recall it was part of a double bill with THINGS TO COME. [-pd]
Gary McGath adds:
I wasn't there [Noreascon Two] but later heard that a Leslie Fish
concert was scheduled in a room next to where Kiley was practicing
for the movie. The soundproofing was somewhere between inadequate
and nonexistent.
Kiley's name was very well known in Boston, thanks to constant
mentions on Red Sox broadcasts. [-gmg]
Paul replies:
I hadn't discovered baseball in 1980, although a friend I was
travelling with took a shine to it and became a Red Sox fan. There
were three of us sharing a motel room somewhere in New England and
the Sox were playing the Angels in California so the game was going
on late at night. And we were all jetlagged still. Two of us
wanted to sleep but Tim wanted to know how the game would end. And
believe me, if you've been watching cricket all your life, baseball
at first seems very boring. They'd been playing an hour and only
scored one run. Some crickets could have scored a century in that
time. (The record is still Gary Sobers scoring 36 off of six
deliveries.)
I probably had not even heard of Fenway Park in 1980. Last night I
stayed up to see the end of the Ray-Astros game. [-pd]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
[When I discussed offensive attitudes last week, and talked about
Arthur Conan Doyle, I didn't mention the most egregious: his
treatment of the Mormons in A STUDY IN SCARLET.]
On the Coode Street Podcast, they are doing short conversations
with authors, and one question they ask is what comfort reading
they are doing during this time of pandemic. So I thought I might
give you some idea of my mindset with my comfort reading over the
last several months. There are books I am re-reading and (usually)
not reviewing.
Currently on my queue in this category are Jose Saramago's CAIN,
Christopher Priest's THE ISLANDERS, and more short stories by
W. Somerset Maugham. [-ecl]
Go to our home page
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Quote of the Week:
The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical
treatment of a large part of physics and the whole
of chemistry are thus completely known, and the
difficulty lies only in the fact that application
of these laws leads to equations that are too complex
to be solved.
--Paul Dirac
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