@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society 05/22/26 -- Vol. 44, No. 47, Whole Number 2433
Table of Contents
Mini Reviews, Part 16 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper):
COMPANION (2025): In COMPANION, Josh and Iris meet cute in a supermarket, then the film cuts to later, when they are traveling to a secluded lake cabin (which turns out to be a bit more than a cabin) owned by someone who is apparently a wealthy Russian mobster.
And then twenty-five minutes in, things take a turn. And then they take another turn. And so on.
(They missed a good bet on the switch to the Gregorian calendar messing up Stalin's birthday, though.)
"I feel things. Anger, guilt, sadness. I know what pain feels like." "It's programming."
Released theatrically 31 January 2025.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26584495/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26584495/reference
EDEN (2024): It is hard to believe that Ron Howard directed this film--it is so unlike any of his other films.
Based on a true story, it is in many ways a horror story, albeit with nothing supernatural or even any psychopaths. Dr. Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch come to Floreana in the Galapagos to get away from everything and everyone. But newspapers are reporting about his life there, based on letters he has sent back on the ships that occasionally come by, although they seem to have been misrepresented to some extent.
Soon Margaret and Heinz Wittner show up (along with their son), based on the reports published in the newspapers in Germany, and disturbing their isolation. Margret discovers she is pregnant, and then Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn, who claims to be a Baroness, with two lovers and a servant. The Baroness is a total disaster, totally self-centered, stealing the supplies of the others, bathing in their drinking water supply, and planning to build a luxury hotel on the island. Things soon spiral out of control.
On the other hand, maybe some of the people are psychotic.
There are some liberties taken with the facts. (For example, Margret did not deliver her baby alone while fighting off a pack of wild dogs.)
This film is based on a true story, which was the subject of the 2013 documentary THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR--SATAN COME TO EDEN. If you are going to watch only one of these films, choose the documentary.
Released theatrically 22 August 2025.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26584495/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26584495/reference
JEZEBEL (1938): The whole plot centers around Miss Julie Marsden scandalizing everyone at a ball. A year later Scarlett O'Hara did the same thing, though with her it was dancing as a widow rather than wearing a red dress with uncovered shoulders. (The uncovered shoulders may have been because the film was in black and white, which obviously blunted the effect of the color of the dress.)
As with the most of the films of the 1930s. portrayals of African-Americans and of women and their relationship with men are fairly offensive. We don't see the happy field hands of GONE WITH THE WIND, but that is damning with faint praise. It does show the house slaves as really happy, even when there are no white people around to see them. We see a smiling African-American woman selling flowers, but of course she is not the independent vendor she may seem to people now. Mrs. Kendrick is concerned about her horses standing in the sun, but tells the African-American coachman to keep his hat and gloves on and his coat buttoned. The dialogue of the various African-American characters is truly offensive ("It's like I was struck dumb in both my ears."). There is one nod to a more modern attitude. It's very understated, but when Amy (Pres's Northern bride) is first introduced to the African-American butler, there is an instant when the expression on her face gives away her revulsion at the institution of slavery.
This is yet another film in which someone suggests that the leading man should beat his fiancee with a stick. (The best-known one is THE QUIET MAN, which was 1952, so some offensive tropes hung on longer than others.)
They show how Pres gets yellow fever--he slaps at a mosquito, but thinks nothing of it, because the knowledge of how yellow fever was spread wasn't known until the beginning of the twentieth century. The scenes of the carts carrying the dead, and carrying the living to the leper colony for quarantine, seem to have their echo in the much vaster scene of the casualties at the railroad-station-turned-hospital in GONE WITH THE WIND.
Released theatrically 26 March 1938.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26584495/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26584495/reference
[-ecl]
PALACES OF THE CROW by Ray Nayler (copyright 2026, Farrar, Straus and Giroux | MCD, publication date May 19th, 2026, ISBN: 9780374620752, $29.00 (USD), 384pp) (book review by Joe Karpierz):
In a way, I didn't see Ray Nayler's latest novel, PALACES OF THE CROW, coming. In a way, I did. What I didn't see for sure was just how brilliant of a novel this was going to be. I'd heard him talk about this novel on a podcast awhile back. He didn't talk about it much. What he did say was that it was something different for him, more of a historical novel than a speculative one. Now while historical novels are not normally in my wheelhouse, this one drew me in and captivated my attention more than I thought a novel like this could
The story takes place in the early 1940s in Lithuania. Neriya is fascinated and enthralled by a group of super intelligent crows. She meets with them every day, playing games and solving puzzles. One day, Buster (as she's named one of her favorite crows) leads her away from her family's summer home, as the war is closing in around them, with the Russian Red Army on one side and the Nazis on the other. She flees into the forest under the protection of the crows. They seem to be intelligent enough to lead her, guide her, and protect her as she tries to evade the warring factions. She is eventually joined by a young Roma girl named Kezia whose family was murdered by the soldiers; Czeslaw, a Polish deserter from the Russian army; and a nameless young boy who does not speak.
What is the novel actually "about"? Survival, on the surface. Four young people fleeing from the Russians, Nazis, and anyone else who would find and slaughter them. Four young people, scrambling through a torn and destroyed countryside, protected by a band of crows that warn them when danger is coming, lead them away from the soldiers, and help them hide when it is necessary to hide. It's about companionship, friendship, and teamwork. It's about found family in the face of constant terror and pressure. It's about four young people coming together to survive, four young people who just hope to make it to the next day in one piece without losing each other.
It sounds grim and dark, doesn't it? It is indeed. War is grim, relentless. Neriya and the rest don't really have time to rest, or if they do, it's not a very peaceful rest. They are always on the lookout, always worried that they'll be caught, always worried that eventually they will die.
If you're looking for a cheerful book this isn't it.
Eventually, the story splits off into segments in the 1970s. Neriya eventually did survive, make it to university, study crows, and write a paper about them. But if the reader is anticipating discovering the contents of that paper, they will be sorely disappointed. Because this is really not the point of the exercise. Neriya is contacted by Czeslaw, and agrees to meet him where they spent so much time hiding in the countryside. There's another surprise visitor - the boy who wouldn't speak. He still doesn't speak, but we find out why. And as the 1970s segment goes along, Nayler flashes back to the mid-1940s, wherein we found out how the band split up, and why the fourth member of the group is not at the gathering all those years later.
The crows? They had their part to play, of course, and their descendants are there with Czeslaw, Neriya, and the boy who does not speak. But while we don't learn a whole lot about the crows, we do find out that there is significantly more to them than meets the eye (I know, you're thinking we already knew that. Believe me, the revelation about the crows is fascinating). Nayler saved it for later in the book, of course, and I was surprised by it and in awe of it.
I earlier said that I saw this book coming. Nayler has been telling more complex, detailed stories, with the speculative elements taking more of a back seat (If you haven't read "Where the Axe Is Buried", you should) as his work has progressed. Sure, this is historical fiction with a taste of a speculative elements, but it is, if anything else, a literary novel that is brilliantly written, with characters that you find yourself caring deeply about. This is surely Nayler's best novel, and while (as I said earlier) it's not in my wheelhouse, I loved it from start to finish. [-jak]
ONE PIECE (Seasons 1 and 2, live action, Netflix) (series review by Paul S. R. Chisholm):
Manga to anime: Why not? Manga to live action: Why? In the case of ONE PIECE, because it's true to the source material, looks visually stunning, is well acted, and runs at a good pace. I'm enjoying it.
Live action manga adaptations have a poor track record. Series first successfully made into anime are no exception. Consider: THE GUYVER (1991). DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION (2009). 2017 saw a trifecta of failure: FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, DEATH NOTE, and GHOST IN THE SHELL.
For anyone brave enough to risk the odds, ONE PIECE is a natural candidate. It's the best-selling series of sequential art (manga, comics, comic strips) of all time, with 600 million copies sold. Asterix is a distant second at 393 million. Roughly tied at third with 300 million copies: Golgo 13, Lucky Luke, and Peanuts.
In the archipelago world of ONE PIECE, a young man named Luffy grew up during a golden age of piracy. The former King of the Pirates, a genial buccaneer named Gold Roger, announced at his execution: "You want my treasure? You can have it! I left everything I gathered in one place. Now you just have to find it!" (This treasure is referred to as the "One Piece." The manga's creator, Eiichiro Oda, has never explained the phrase since his series began in July 1997.) Luffy vows to find the treasure and become the new King of the Pirates. He has three things going for him: irrepressible cheerful optimism, total blindness to what's impossible, and the power to stretch his body like Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four.
Luffy gained his ability by eating a "devil fruit." These fruits bestow superpowers, a unique power for each person, usually one never seen before in any other work. Many of Luffy's foes, and perhaps some of his allies, also have supernatural powers. Luffy acquires a ship and a loyal crew, sets out to find the One Piece treasure, and has some somewhat goofy adventures.
That's the setup for the manga, the anime, and now the Netflix live-action series.
ONE PIECE was filmed entirely on practical sets (with some limited use of blue screens). Some of them are huge. There are two separate sets for the deck of Luffy's ship. In season two, a three story sound stage hosts a twelve minute swordplay set piece. Yes, it's ridiculous and over the top (think Hong Kong martial arts films), but it's fun to watch and helps develop one of the characters. Whether we see characters looking down from a crow's nest, looking up at the ceiling of a giant's cave, or climbing a mountain, the verticality of the sets makes the series look gorgeous.
Manga has no cast. Anime has only a voice cast. Live action needs a great cast, and this series has it, starting with its main character. Iñaki Godoy's long, wiry arms and legs make him look as if he's already stretched. The joy he shows in interviews comes through when portraying Luffy's boundless optimism, and his Mexican accent somehow enhances how goofy he sounds. Mackenyu, an American-born Japanese martial artist and actor (and son of martial arts legend Sonny Chiba), portrays Zoro, the first mate training to become the world's greatest swordsman. Nami, the highly skilled navigator played by Emily Rudd, is convincingly cheerful and taciturn as the plot demands. Taz Skylar is Sanji, who only fights with his legs to protect the hands he uses as a master chef. (The actor trained extensively in both cooking and fighting to prepare for the role.) Jacob Romero Gibson rounds out the season one cast as Usopp. He's somewhat of a coward, and rarely tells the truth when a fabulous story will do; still, he's a sniper who ultimately comes through when the crew needs him.
Manga creator Eiichiro Oda is heavily involved in the Netflix production. He approved every member of the main cast and, as an executive producer of the show, advises the cast and crew members. His association with the series keeps it true to the original source; everyone involved enjoys his presence.
Some manga and anime series seemingly take forever to advance the plot. The Netflix production moves much faster. The sixteen episodes across two seasons cover the same material as 91 anime episodes and 154 chapters of the manga.
The live action ONE PIECE is not aimed at children. There's a lot of violence and killing, though very little gore. The language can get salty. In the first live action episode, one male character is shown naked from behind; I think they wanted to throw in the "nudity" keyword and discourage parents of very young children.
It's a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to season 3. [-psrc]
Inspired by Becky Chambers? (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
As reported by The Guardian, a humanoid robot was initiated as a Buddhist monk.
The story (by Raphael Rahsid) says in part:
I, robe-ot: the android monk working to reboot the faith of South Korea's Buddhists
Amid rows of colourful lanterns strung across the courtyard of Jogyesa temple in Seoul, an unusual ceremony unfolded this week: monks held a Buddhist initiation for a humanoid robot draped in saffron robe.
They placed a string of 108 prayer beads around the robot's neck and affixed a lantern festival sticker to its mechanical arm in place of the traditional yeonbi ritual, in which burning incense is lightly pressed against the skin.
The robot was then presented with a formal certificate listing its manufacture date, 3 March 2026, where a human initiate's birth date would normally appear.
"At first we discussed it casually," Venerable Sungwon, the order's cultural affairs director, says about the robot ceremony's origins. "It began almost as a joke. But the more we thought about it, the more serious it became.
...
During the ceremony on 6 May, Gabi walked before an assembly of monks and worshippers, bowed towards the temple and received five Buddhist precepts.
Precepts - the ethical rules governing Buddhist practice - were specially adapted for Gabi. Four prohibited harming life, damaging other robots or objects, engaging in deceptive behaviour or acting disrespectfully towards people.
The fifth rule - not to overcharge - proved the trickiest.
"Humans drink alcohol and overdo things, right? So what's the robot equivalent?" Ven Sungwon says. "People might think the overcharging rule is just about batteries, but really it's about excess."
Full story at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/08/jogyesa-temple-south-korea-humanoid-ai-robot-gabi
What I want to know is whether any of the monks was familiar with Becky Chambers's "Monk & Robot" duology (A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT and A PRAYER FOR THE CROWN-SHY). A search doesn't turn up anything that references both of them, but Gabi's story is only a day old as I write this. [-ecl]
The Guardian's List of 100 Best Novels of All Time (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Well, I'll just list the science fiction/fantasy novels here. And I suppose it's not their list, but the results of a poll of "172 authors, critics and academics".
The full list is at https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time
Here are the SF/F novels:
(One of the illustrations for the article has the unfortunate alternate text of "Headshot of Salman Rushdie".)
[-ecl]
Proof We Are Living in the 21st Century (comments by Dale Skran):
I am editing the hardback version of "A Dream Renewed" and I found this sentence:
"Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield memorably played his guitar aboard the International Space Station, performing and recording his rendition of David Bowie’s 'Space Oddity' in a widely viewed YouTube performance."
A 20th century person would ask:
1 - There is an International Space Station?
2 - There are Canadian astronauts?
3 - What is this "YouTube" thing?
The one question a 20th century person would probably not ask is "Who is David Bowie?" [-dls]
Not Just Apes, but Fish and Jumping Spiders (letter of comment by Andre Kuzniarek):
In response to Evelyn's comments on apes in the 05/15/26 issue of the MT VOID, Andre Kuzniarek writes:
[Evelyn wrote,] "Apes Are More Like Us Than We Ever Thought". [-ecl]
And fish apparently pass the mirror test:
Which I coincidentally ran across in my YouTube feed last night [21 minutes, "We've Been Testing For Consciousness Wrong"]:
Jumping spiders are also really smart, something I've experienced personally many years ago [39 minutes, "Jumping Spiders Shouldn’t Be This Smart"]:
They are certainly rather charming for spiders--on the surface anyway, and as long as they remain tiny compared to us. ;-) [-ak]
Evelyn adds:
Jumping spiders are featured in the film EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS. [-ecl]
"Uncleftish Beholding" (letter of comment by Hal Heydt):
In response to Evelyn's comments on "Uncleftish Beholding" in the 05/15/26 issue of the MT VOID, Hal Heydt writes:
[Evelyn wrote,] "Wikipedia points out that at least four of the words used in the story are not from Anglo-Saxon: 'around' is from Old French, and 'rest', 'ordinary', and 'sort' are from French." [-ecl]
They missed a word (Dorothy spotted it in our copy). Anderson used "time" where the Anglo-Saxon rooted word would be "tide". [-hh]
Evelyn responds:
Where is this? I can't find it. [-ecl]
Hal replies:
Our copy (it was a NESFA edition put out as part of his being a Guest of Honor) isn't on the shelf. IIRC, the line is "Soothly, we live in a mighty [time]." [-hh]
Evelyn responds:
The online version I found says, "Soothly we live in mighty years!" which is also what my copy of Anderson's 1996 collection ALL ONE UNIVERSE has. The story originally appeared in ANALOG in 1989.
However ...
Poul Anderson was a Guest of Honor at Boskone in 1976. The NESFA book for that year was HOME BREW, and it contained an essay by Anderson titled "Uncleavish Truethinking", which was later revised to become "Uncleftish Beholding". Although Michael Siemon said in Usenet's talk.origins (22 Nov 2011) that "a quick scan of the text seems to show it as unchanged from the original," apparently there was at least one change, probably because someone pointed this out. [-ecl]
Hal then writes:
It may have been Dorothy who pointed it out to Poul. [-hh]
And in a bizarre coincidence (unless it was actually triggered by the comments in last week's MT VOID), James Davis Nicoll's review column on 05/19/26 is about "Uncleavish Truethinking"/"Uncleftish Beholding":
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/uncleavish-truethinking
A comment to it by Dave Siegel notes, "In the intro to the reprint of 'Uncleftish Beholding' in his collection ALL ONE UNIVERSE Anderson challenges the reader to translate 'undrunkstuff' which was not used in the original article."
[-ecl]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Back in 2016 I wrote seven columns about THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS. Now I've read THE STRANGE HISTORY OF SAMUEL PEPYS'S DIARY by Kate Loveman (Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-009-55411-4) and I have comments on what I wrote as well as what she wrote.
I read THE DIARY primarily from the Project Gutenberg site, which
used the 1893 H. B. Wheatley edition (which was in public domain).
Even though the Wheatley was more complete than the previous
Braybrooke edition (see below), Wheatley had bowdlerized it in a
couple of ways. First, he replaced isolated "naughty" words with
(bracketed) replacements (e.g., replaced "pissed" with
"[dirtied]"). And second, he also deleted all the most salacious
bits, replacing them with ellipses. These excised portions had
been written in "code" (basically a combination of French,
Spanish, and Latin, with what Pepys appears to have thought were
oblique references to his "thing" and other fairly obvious
meanings); some can be found at
The hard-copy edition (from Harper Collins) includes all these
passages, but neither translates nor footnotes them, so you can
read, "After dinner I found occasion of sending him abroad; and
then alone avec elle je tentoy a faire ce que je voudrais, et
contre sa force je la faisoy, bien que pas a mon contentment."
(It is like reading the Dover editions of Sir Richard Francis
Burton, where the salacious bits are in Latin, and Dover provides
no translations or footnotes either. Of course with Google
translate, this is not as much of a problem as it used to be.
Dover's excuse is that they are reproducing the book as printed,
either from original plates or photocopies of text.)
I suppose I should digress a bit here about the various editions
of Pepys's diary. I had learned from A. Edward Newton's A
MAGNIFICENT FARCE was that "in the first edition, only about half
of the [Pepys's] Diary was published, and this was edited and
expurgated by Lord Braybrooke to an extent which became apparent
by degrees. ... Finally, and not until 1893, there appeared an
edition, edited by H. B. Wheatley, which gave the Diary complete,
with the exception of a few passages, amounting in all to about
one page of text, which, he says, cannot possibly be printed."
Loveman goes into much greater detail, but alas, does not provide
a table showing all the editions and what they included and
excluded.
And this was particularly interesting to me because in 84 CHARING
CROSS ROAD, Helene Hanff writes (on October 15, 1951), "WHAT KIND
OF A PEPYS'S DIARY DO YOU CALL THIS? this is not a pepys' diary,
this is some busybody editor's miserable collection of EXCERPTS
from pepys' diary may he rot. I could just spit. where is jan
12, 1668, where his wife chased him out of bed and round the
bedroom with a red-hot poker?" [all sic] And Frank Doel replies,
"First of all, let me apologize for the Pepys. I was honestly
under the impression what it was the complete Braybrooke
edition...." Well, Doel was almost definitely right in this,
because this episode with the poker is not in the (much abridged)
Braybrooke edition, at least according to the version I have found
on line (archived independently in two different places, so there
is a bit of validation there). It is in the Wheatley edition.
But to return to Loveman... She begins by summarizing Pepys' life
and career to help understand the contents of the diary, and what
various eras thought was important. Pepys apparently wrote a lot
more, both published and unpublished, and many people thought his
writings on the creation of the modern English Navy would be his
lasting legacy. Yet it is his descriptions of the Restoration,
Charles II's court, and especially the Great Plague of London and
the Great Fire of London that have captured people's imaginations.
During World War I, Robert Massie Freeman wrote "A Diary of the
Great Warr By Saml Pepys, Jnr., Sometime of Magdalene College in
Cambridge and of His Majesty's Navy Office... With Effigies by M.
Watson-Willaims", in the style of (the original) Pepys, and this
was so popular it was followed by a second volume. During and
after the Second Great Fire of London (December 29-30, 1940),
people turned to Pepys as well.
And more people also came to keep diaries themselves, perhaps
hoping to become famous, or perhaps just hoping to let future
generations know how the lived.
One reason for all the various editions which gradually were
"un-bowdlerized" was that the original would certainly have been
declared as obscene by the various boards controlling
publications, and only as mores changed could more of the excised
passages be restored. Gradually the various tests became applied
to the work as a whole, so an individual obscenity was not in
itself grounds for banning the work, and the question of whether
the publication of the work served the public good became more
important.
The last chapter addresses Pepys's less desirable characteristics,
to wit, that he was a rapist and an enslaver (in addition to
taking bribes and in general being dishonest). Some of the
evidence Loveman quotes is from documents other than the diary,
but much of it is in the (now complete) edition. [-ecl]
Go to our home page
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Quote of the Week:
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
--C. Northcote Parkinson