@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society 04/17/26 -- Vol. 44, No. 42, Whole Number 2428
Table of Contents
Last week's text version of the MT VOID contained a couple of stubs that should have been removed. And both versions (text and PDF) had a word dropped from one of the headings; it should have been "STORIES YOU NEVER HEARD OF", not "STORIES YOU NEVER OF". Double ooops. [-ecl]
Mini Reviews, Part 12 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper):
OUTLAND (1981): Sometimes you just watch to watch a trashy science fiction movie, which is why I watched OUTLAND. Described as HIGH NOON in space, this gets the science rather spectacularly wrong, as well as being a totally unoriginal plot. Were it not for Sean Connery and Frances Sternhagen, there wouldn't be any reason to watch this at all.
For starters, they are on Io, which the introduction says has one-sixth Earth gravity. But everyone is clearly operating in normal 1G Earth gravity. Partway through, they introduce a zero-gravity room, entirely surrounded by a 1G environment. I suppose this implies they have anti-gravity, but nothing is ever said about this, and even some of the scenes outside the base (including falling) seem to be Earth gravity. Certainly it would be easier to work in a lower-gravity environment. On the other hand, having people firing projectile weapons (or playing golf) in a non-familiar gravity would be near impossible, so the filmmakers were stuck.
Also, in the zero-gravity room, blood flows *up* rather than just hangs there.
Having projectile weapons in a station on a zero-atmosphere moon seems ill-advised, especially since the villain's "best men" don't seem to realize that shooting a hole in an outside wall is a bad idea. For that matter, in this movie (as in many others) vital tubes and connectors to the spacesuits seem very tenuously attached.
I also have a real problem with the whole idea that if he has a one-year tour of duty, and his wife doesn't like it, that's the end of the marriage. Apparently the writers never knew any military families. (Later on, it turns out that the one year on Io is apparently in addition to one year deep sleep each way. This makes no logistics sense.)
And while Sternhagen is an interesting character, this film still fails the Bechdel test. (Connery's wife and son serve no useful function in the plot. You expect that she will come back, or they will be threatened somehow, but nothing of that sort happens.)
Released theatrically 22 May 1981.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082869/reference
What others are saying: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/outland
CAST A DEADLY SPELL (1991): CAST A DEADLY SPELL is an H. P. Lovecraft / Raymond Chandler pastiche. It's convenient that Lovecraft's middle name really was Philip, because the detective named H. P. Lovecraft can be called "Phil" (after Philip Marlowe). And it has Fred Ward, who is always good.
The basic plot is that the "Old Ones" of the author Lovecraft are real, and in late 1940s Los Angeles someone is trying to summon them. Everyone uses magic, except private eye Lovecraft, because he wants to "own his own soul" (a line straight out of Raymond Chandler: "Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine" from THE HIGH WINDOW).
The only problem is what to watch following this. The obvious choice would be its sequel, WITCH HUNT, but that's not very good. Probably CABIN IN THE WOODS will do.
(The Region 1 DVD I got on eBay for CAST A DEADLY SPELL has no UPC code and fairly minimal information on the cover, as well as having only a trailer for extras, and no subtitles or closer captioning. My suspicion is that it is not entirely legit. There are, however, many copies of a Region 2 DVD apparently dubbed in Spanish, which strikes me as odd, and does me no good. The trailer on my DVD was very fuzzy, which had me worried, but the actual film was quite clear and sharp.)
Released on HBO 07 September 1991.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101550/reference
What others are saying: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cast_a_deadly_spell
THE HIDDEN (1987): THE HIDDEN stars Kyle McLaughlin (after DUNE and BLUE VELVET, but before TWIN PEAKS), Claudia Christian (pre-BABYLON 5), and Clu Gallagher (whose career spanned a third of a century before and a third of a century after THE HIDDEN). But its claim to fame for science fiction fans is that this seems to have taken its inspiration (to put it kindly) from Hal Clement's NEEDLE: the plot involves an alien cop chasing another of his kind, a criminal, with the twist that these aliens live inside humans. If you're wondering which plot I'm describing, the answer is "both". The major difference is that NEEDLE is a young adult novel, and THE HIDDEN is definitely not (it was rated R, though it would probably be a PG-13 today).
Released theatrically 30 October 1987.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093185/reference
What others are saying: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hidden
[-ecl]
"A Magazine for Earthlings Who Dream of Outer Space":
The New York Times reports on SPACE JUNK, which "bills itself as the first magazine to look at the culture of space travel--not just astronauts and prospective space tourists, but meteor hunters, stargazing communities and sci-fi fans."
The article goes on to explain, though, that it's not a science magazine, but more an art book, and published only annually (with a newsstand price of $41--and what sort of peculiar price is that?).
And at the end of the article, one of the editors admits, "Space is a red herring in the issue. It's not about the act of space travel. It's that feeling of the unknown, of the future, that engages me."
Unpaywalled link (good for thirty days):
[-ecl]
THE SUBJECTS (2015) (film review by Dale Skran):
I just watched THE SUBJECTS on Amazon Prime. Directed Robert Mond, this low-budget Australian SF film starts with a simple premise--a group of people are locked in a sound studio for eight hours after taking an experimental drug. They are all desperate for money, and, as it turns out, lacking in human connection to the point that no one knows any of them are participating in the trial.
This is a low-budget film with unknown Australian actors filmed entirely in one room. For all those limitations, it is a surprisingly interesting and engaging story. I am rating it +1 on the -4 to +4 scale overall, but perhaps +2 in terms of ideas. This is a film with bloody low-budget horror effects, and a good deal of sexual innuendo and humor, so only for teens and up.
SPOILER ALERT STOP READING NOW
The basic idea is that the experimental drug gives each subject a different super-power. Some of those powers seem pointless, while others quickly result in fatal accidents. But there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye. I'm not going to give away every twist of this twisty story, but it has a great treatment of the dangers of time-travel. Another theme is that as the powers are used, they feel good, but their scope increases. What at first seems a weak joke soon becomes God-like in impact. This is a serious meditation on the real-world impact of giving ordinary folks transcendent superpowers. The ending reminds me a bit of the final episode of "Sapphire and Steel", an obscure SF series starring David McCallum, which you can also see on Amazon Prime. [-dls]
Pluto (letters of comment by Peter Trei and Paul Dormer):
In response to Evelyn's comments on Pluto in the 04/10/26 issue of the MT VOID, Peter Trei writes:
Frankly, I'd like to see Pluto re-instated as a planet. I don't really care if doing so is inconsistent. It isn't like there's some system that's going to break if we call it a planet.
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
- Walt Whitman
Beside, if the IAU is going to be consistent, then Neptune has to be cancelled as a planet too: It hasn't cleared Pluto from its orbit. [-pt]
Evelyn adds:
I have seen it claimed that Earth, Mars, and Jupiter haven't cleared their orbits either. And also that no one is really clear on what "clearing their orbit" means. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood#Disagreement. [-ecl]
Paul Dormer responds to Peter:
It's not so much what you want to call it as what is useful for planetary scientists. Planets do one thing, dwarf planets another.
In Pluto's case, there is no orbital dominance. Apparently, it doesn'tclear other bodies out of the way.
I found this article online:
https://littleastronomy.com/planet-vs-dwarf-planet/
Incidentally, this reminds me of a news item from last week about how EU regulations might mean that marmalade will have to be called "citrus marmalade" in the near future. This has annoyed all the anti-EU brigade, although I think the whole thing has been blown up.
Which also reminds me of the episode of YES, MINISTER where EU regulations would mean that sausages as made in the UK would have to be labelled "reconstituted offal tubes". This led to Jim Hacker becoming prime minister. [-pd]
THERE IS NO ANTIMEMETIC DIVISION (letters of comment by Rob Mitchell and Steve Milton):
In response to Paul S. R. Chisholm's review of THERE IS NO ANTIMEMETIC DIVISION in the 04/10/26 issue of the MT VOID, Rob Mitchell writes:
YouTube has a short film with that title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v8AsTHfAG0
I've watched the film; it's not bad for a short. The concept is underdeveloped, but potentially intriguing. I have no idea if it's related to the book--the liner notes credit "Based on the short story 'We Need to Talk about Fifty-Five'." [-rjm]
And Steve Milton also writes:
There is a short video floating around somewhere in the internet with the same title. It begins with the second in command in the division accused of being a spy, because her boss doesn't recognize her. [-smm]
Evelyn notes:
A bit of searching indicates that the short story and the book were written by the same person/pseudonym. [-ecl]
THE TRUE BELIEVER (letter of comment by Dale Skran):
In response to Paul S. R. Chisholm's review of THERE IS NO ANTIMEMETIC DIVISION in the 04/10/26 issue of the MT VOID, Dale Skran writes:
[Paul S. R. Chisholm wrote,] "[THERE IS NO ANTIMEMETIC DIVISION] was one of the three books Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark recommended on a recent podcast interview with Ezra Klein. ... The other two were Ursula K. LeGuin's A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA and THE TRUE BELIEVER by Eric Hoffer." [-psrc]
I also strongly recommend Eric Hoffer's THE TRUE BELIEVER. The book was mostly about communism, but reached beyond other such books to classic status, with terse, epigrammatic writing that transcends politics. Written by the self-educated longshoreman Hoffer, and mercifully free of "academese," THE TRUE BELIEVER is one of the most important books I have read. [-dls]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
THE NIGHT ATTILA DIED: SOLVING THE MURDER OF ATTILA THE HUN by Michael A. Babcock (Berkley, ISBN 978-0-425-20272-0) was a disappointment. I suppose the fact that it was published by Berkley (a mainstream press part of Penguin) rather than an academic press should have told me something. And that Babcock was a philologist by training rather than a historian might have been another clue. Another way to tell that this book is aimed at a popular, rather than an academic audience, is that the author is listed on the cover as "Michael A. Babcock, Ph.D." In general, it seems to me that academic books may list degrees on the title page, but not on the cover.
Though I would think a philologist--someone who focuses on words--would know that it should be "toe the line", not "tow the line". I have long since given up on most publishers having proofreaders, or for that matter copy editors: on page 38 Babcock says that Mama and Atakam were impaled; on pages 60 and 61 he says they were crucified. He also misuses the word "fortuitous": it does not mean "lucky", but rather "accidental" (although now the dictionaries often give a second definition of "lucky" because it is so often mis-used).
Also, one of the maps of one diplomatic journey is missing the lines indicating the actual journey. And oddly, Babcock refers late in the book to, "[a] young general named Aspar (whom we've already encountered several times, most notably as Marcian's patron)." It seems odd to say "a young general named Aspar" rather than just "Aspar" when he has already been introduced. (Babcock also writes later of "a dwarf named Zerko" after having earlier given us a multi-page history of Zerko. Again, a strange construction.)
While I'm at it, let me say that Babcock writes very informally, using phrases such as "tow [sic] the line", "carrying water for the Church", and "an eighteen-minute gap, as it were", as well as writing a fair amount in the first person singular, including anecdotal--and irrelevant--stories of trudging home in the cold after leaving the university library.
Babcock provides pronunciations for some of the names, but not all, and even when he does, it's not necessarily when he first mentions the name. And he bounces around chronologically as well, e.g., stopping in the middle of the description of Priscus's report of dinner with Attila to give the back story of Zerko, a dwarf [Babcock's term] in Attila's court, and also Zerko's future after the dinner, before returning backwards in time to the main thread. (This account of the dinner has appeared in various "Eyewitness to History" books. Mark was particularly taken by it.)
And while he provides some basis for thinking it was possible that Attila was murdered, his presentation of it is so difficult to follow that I did not find it convincing. Every once in a while he inserts a block that says "Exhibit Ten" (or whatever number) and some piece of evidence, but I never could figure out if it was referring to what he had just written, or what he was about to write. [-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Quote of the Week:
I said I'm two and a half billion years old because when
I was young the earth was two billion years old and now
it is four and a half billion years old so I must be
two and a half billion years old.
--Paul Erdos
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