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Table of Contents
Mini Reviews, Part 21 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Three more of Mark's "Neglected Gems":
KNIGHTRIDERS (1981): When this came out in 1981, it looked as though George Romero was beginning to mature as a filmmaker, moving from low-budget horror films dealing with monsters and the disintegration of society to a film with ideals and sentiment. Alas, this was a one-off. After it came out, Romero said that he got this out of his system and never had to make another film like it. Described as "a unique blend of EASY RIDER and EXCALIBUR," this is the story of a traveling Renaissance Fair which has its jousts on motorcycles rather than horses. Romero manages to get a lot of carnage in even without zombies, yet there is more to the story than that.
(And the carnage is what probably brought in the audiences. We used to attend a Renaissance Fair in Tuxedo, New York, with the main attraction for us being the staging of a Shakespeare play. Then one year when we called to ask which play they were doing, they said they had dropped it, because it had always been scheduled against the joust as the last main events of the day, but almost everyone went to the joust instead and it wasn't worth the expense.)
As a result this had become a film that was not easy to find. It didn't get a VHS release until 1997 (when VHS was on the way out), a DVD release in 2007, and a Bluray release in 2013, while Romero's other films got much speedier releases. Now it is available even in streaming (free on Kanopy if your public library subscribes, and other services as well).
LIFEFORCE (1981): LIFEFORCE is a film best remembered for its one long sequence where a naked woman is walking through a building. At the time that was notable. Now, of course, science fiction films have plenty of nudity, but nevertheless, that is what LIFEFORCE is remembered for. Based on Colin Wilson's SPACE VAMPIRES, the producers decided to go with a less direct title. The vampirism in question is of "lifeforce" and the basic idea is that the aliens spread vampires through the human race, the vampires suck out the lifeforce and then release it, and the aliens feed on it. An interesting idea, which Mark saw as having connections to QUATERMASS & THE PIT.
BRAINSTORM (1983): Watching the film this time, I found myself thinking of the Babel Fish from THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. The idea is that by allowing direct recording of memories, feelings, etc., we could achieve understanding of other people and hence resolve conflicts. But as Douglas Adams suggested, "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
The film does look at other uses of the technology, including two of the most popular uses to which any new technology is applied: war and pornography.
The film suffers by having its star Natalie Wood die two-thirds of the way through filming, so some scenes had to be filmed with her sister Lana Wood as a stand-in with modified camera angles.
Frankly, I think one of the film's appeals to Mark was what Lillian Reynolds says to Alex Terson: "You were a hack at Stanford and you were a hack at Bell."
[-ecl]
Sam Neill and THE DISH (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Actor Sam Neill (full name Sir Nigel John Dermot Neill) passed away July 13. All of the articles talk about how well known he was as Alan Grant in the "Jurassic Park" films, but whenever I heard his name, I always thought of THE DISH, which one article talked about as a "little-known film". I first saw THE DISH at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2000 and wrote, "Wonderful film about the (mostly) true story of the role played by the radio telescope at Parkes, Australia, in the Apollo 11 moon landing. The telescope was originally one of the backups for the live television transmission from the moon, but when the schedule changed, it became the primary. One of the other Australian directors said that it seems as if all Australian films had to be about quirky characters, and this has its share, but it also has the magic of the space program (a lot of original NASA footage was used) and the problem-solving element of APOLLO 13. Sam Neill is the 'name' star, but the rest of the cast puts in excellent performances as well. (Note: This came in second in the People's Choice Awards.)"
[CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON came in first.]
An article in WIRED said:
"Sam Neill Inspired a Generation of Scientists"
"The actor, who died at age 78 on Monday, embodied a passionate approach to research and positive masculinity in his role as paleontologist Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster JURASSIC PARK."
The article also mentioned THE DISH and EVENT HORIZON. The full article is at https://www.wired.com/story/sam-neill-inspired-a-generation-of-scientists/. [-ecl]
DEATH OF THE AUTHOR by Nnedi Okorafor (copyright 2025, William Morrow, 446pp, hardcover, ISBN-10: 0063391147, ISBN-13: 978-0063391147, listening length 16 hours and 12 minutes, ASIN: B0D6NNWRSC, narrated by Liz Femi, Anthony Oseyemi, Jason Culp, Chris Djuma) (audio book review by Joe Karpierz):
Zelu is a paraplegic Nigerian-American author and an adjunct professor at a Chicago university. At her sister's wedding, she learns that she's lost her job at the university, and her mainstream novel is a failure--she can't get it accepted or published anywhere. She is frustrated and despondent. She returns to the U.S after the wedding to live with her Nigerian immigrant parents as she had to leave her apartment since she could no longer pay the rent and all the associated bills. While at her parents, she develops the idea for a science fiction novel called "Rusted Robots", a post-human science fiction epic set on an Earth that has only one remaining human. The rest of the population is divided into two warring factions of robots: the Humes, those which assume bodies that look like humans, and AI NoBodies, which reject the human form and are intent on destroying all Humes.
"Rusted Robots" turns out to be a bestseller, garnering millions of fans all over the globe. Zelu, who's never read or written science fiction before this, turns into an overnight success. She has a huge social media following; she appears on television news programs and talk shows. Along the way, she is approached by an MIT scientist named Hugo Wagner, who has developed a device that will enable paraplegics to walk. She has also caught the attention of billionaire Jack Preston, who is putting together a commercial space flight program and who wants her to be a passenger on one of his flights.The book is made into a blockbuster movie that is completely unrecognizable when compared to the novel, white washing the Nigerian characters and setting it in the U.S. instead of Nigeria. All of this attention and success is troublesome, of course, as Zelu needs to navigate social media, Hollywood, reporters, television personalities and her family. She is having to learn what it means to be a successful writer and all the attention, both positive and negative, that comes with it. In what is clearly a parallel between Zelu and George R.R. Martin, the public is clamoring for the sequel to "Rusted Robots" and is getting very impatient with her. She is ambushed by a TV interviewer regarding her "exos" (what she calls her artificial legs) and how she is representing other paraplegics who can't afford what she has. This results in a social media backlash that she needs to navigate.
Zelu also has a very complicated relationship with her family. They are used to sheltering and protecting her, since she became disabled at the age of 12 when falling out of a tree. They do not support her efforts, and attempt to prevent her from persuing her dreams. All her siblings have successful, traditional careers, and her family doesn't understand why she must continue to write this weird sci-fi stuff. They are afraid to let her do anything she wants. Zelu eventually moves out, of course, once she has become successful and has the means to live on her own, but they continue to try to influence her decisions.
As many people probably already know, "Rusted Robots" is told as a novel within a novel. Chapters are interspersed within the main story, and tell of the relationship between Ankara, a Hume, and the NoBody (or Ghost) Ijele, introduced into the body of Ankara by the last human on Earth, Ngozi, after Ankara is damaged in an effort to aid in repair. The relationship is complicated by the fact that the war between the Humes and the Ghosts is coming to a head. Just to complicate matters, there is an invading army headed towards Earth that will make things even more interesting.
I have a very split and complicated feelings about DEATH OF THE AUTHOR. The more I thought about it after finishing the book, I realized that my favorite characters are Ankara and Ijele; I do not like any of the humans central to the story. Zelu herself is not a very likeable character at all. Oftentimes her reactions to things are not believable to me, although admittedly I am neither Nigerian or paraplegic, both of which may influence Zelu's behavior in ways I do not understand. Her family is not very likeable either. Her parents are controlling and manipulative, and her sibling are just nasty to her. None of these characters are sympathetic. Hugo Wagner and Jack Preston (yes, you might as well replace his name with "Elon Musk") aren't in the book enough to allow the reader to make any informed opinion about them.
On the other hand, as is usual with Okorafor's books, this is well written with nicely developed main characters, and is a good story on top of that. However, I found that I just didn't care enough about either the characters or what was occurring in Zelu's story. I was more interested in "Rusted Robot", and discovered that I wanted to read that book, not Zelu's story at all. It's all a matter of taste, I suppose, and my taste is apparently different than most, since it is winning awards and gaining accolades. It's an okay book, but not Hugo-worthy, in my opinion. [-jak]
THE MUMMY (1932) (letter of comment by Gary McGath):
In response to Evelyn's comments on DRACULA (1931) in the 07/10/26 issue of the MT VOID, Gary McGath writes:
Speaking of the Universal horror movies, I recently noticed that the opening music for "The Mummy" is from Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake." They really should have used something from "Sleeping Beauty." [-gmg]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
THE WORLD THE CIVIL WAR MADE edited by Gregory J. Downs and Kate Masur (University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 978-1-469-62419-8) sounded interesting when it was mentioned in an article I read, but it turned out to be written in academese, and I read only two of the articles.
"Emancipating Peons, Excluding Coolies: Reconstructing Coercion in the American West" by Stacy L. Smith talked about how the 13th Amendment was applied in situations not usually mentioned in its regard. Smith demonstrates that the Chinese Exclusion Act was as much enforcing the 13th Amendment as an act of racism, although it is clear that it was a tool of racists as well. (The basic claim was that the system by which Chinese immigrants came to the United States was a form of slavery.) And the attempt to apply the 13th Amendment to the peonage system in New Mexico by the Peonage Act of 1867 was less effective, in part because there was never any good way to enforce it; sharecropping and other practices which were accepted were basically just another form of peonage.
"'Not Quite Constitutionalized': The Meanings of 'Civilization' and the Limits of Native American Citizenship" by Stephen Kantrowitz looked at the phrase in the 14th Amendment "subject to the jurisdiction [of the United States]." This phrase led to much confusion (as it is doing today, though in a different sense). Many Native Americans were still part of their respective tribes and satisfied with that, but many felt they wanted to leave their "political" tribal affiliations and become full American citizens. Often this was because as tribal members, they were constantly being moved off "their" land to somewhere else. As full citizens, they would have clear title to whatever land they had bought or otherwise acquired and could not be pushed off it. Needless to say, many white Americans had a problem with this. And tangled up in all this was the notion that before Native Americans could become full citizens they needed to be "civilized"--which usually meant *at a minimum* dressing as European-Americans, farming rather than hunting, speaking English, and becoming Christians. [-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Quote of the Week:
It says a lot about the US, when they ban lawn darts but
you can still buy semi-automatic weapons in a department
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--Brian Manz
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