@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society 07/24/26 -- Vol. 45, No. 4, Whole Number 2442
Table of Contents
NEW YORK (mini-series review by Evelyn C. Leeper):
This is more a collection of random thoughts and NEW YORK, the 1999 mini-series by Ric Burns, than a review.
DEI hatred goes way back: Peter Stuyvesant hated the diversity of New Amsterdam. When Central Park was being constructed, Seneca Village and other areas inhabited by African-Americans and the poor were razed, and its location far from lower Manhattan (where most of the poor lived) and strict regulations made it more a park for the wealthy than for all New Yorkers. And of course, there were the 1863 riots, which started as draft riots, but rapidly escalated into race riots. (And Episode Seven, about Robert Moses, shows that this tradition was carried on.)
Washington Irving was the first American to earn his living as an author.
Burns claims that De Witt Clinton was the most important person to live in New York because he oversaw the construction of the Erie Canal, which was the first real access to anything coming from the West. (His cousin, Simon De Witt, helped design the grid system of Manhattan's streets.)
Trigger warning for Episode Four: it has The Don in it.
The peak year for immigration seems to have been 1907, with over a million immigrants. During this period (1890-1920), the Irish looked down on the Italians the same way the English had looked down on the Irish.
In Episode Six, the narrator refers to 1944 being the third year of World War II. No, it was the *fifth* year: September 1, 1939, is almost always given as the start of World War II. And that is ignoring all the fighting in China (starting in 1937) or Ethiopia (starting in 1935).
Episode Seven ends on an upbeat note, but is still very depressing for two reasons. First, much of what it covers is how Robert Moses (and other urban planners) destroyed much of what made New York New York, and ruined tens of thousands of lives--possibly hundreds of thousands--in the process. And second, though it ends talking about how New York recovered from the loss of manufacturing, the exodus to the suburbs, and the financial crisis, throughout the series we have been seeing shots of New York showing the World Trade Center in the background (or from the air). The series (and this episode) were from 1999, and we know what's coming, even though Burns didn't. It's as if someone made a documentary in 1928 about how wonderful everything was going. [-ecl]
Last Week's Neglected Gems (comment by Evelyn C. Leeper):
I just noticed that all three of last week's "neglected gems" had titles that were compound words: KNIGHTRIDERS, LIFEFORCE, and BRAINSTORM. [-ecl]
Space Jam and Earth-Like Exoplanet with Atmosphere (pointers by Evelyn C. Leeper):
From (where else?) The Guardian:
"Space jam: astronomers detect 'raspberry sugar' on dust cloud in Milky Way
"Detection of erythrulose shows compounds that are key to life can form in expanse between stars
"The simple sugar erythrulose appears to be produced through chemical reactions on tiny interstellar dust grains. A natural sugar found in raspberries and used in fake tan lotions has been detected in an enormous cloud of dust and gas that lurks near the heart of the Milky Way. The discovery does not suggest that the galaxy revolves around a distant civilisation of pale, safety-conscious frugivores, but shows that compounds important for life can form in the frigid expanse between the stars."
Full story at:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/13/natural-sugar-cloud-dust-gas-milky-way-erythrulose
Also from The Guardian:
"Earth-like exoplanet found to have an atmosphere
"Scientists discover the first confirmed atmosphere around rocky planet outside our solar system that is within the habitable zone
"The search for life outside our solar system has taken another twist as researchers revealed they have discovered an atmosphere around an Earth-like planet 49 light years away that could have liquid water on its surface. Atmospheres have previously been found around gas giant exoplanets as well as 'sub-Neptunes'. There have also been signs of such envelopes around rocky exoplanets that sit outside their star's habitable zone--a region in which liquid water could exist on the planet's surface, and hence potentially support life. But the new discovery is different. 'This is the first actually observationally confirmed atmosphere on a rocky planet in the habitable zone outside of our solar system,' said Dr Collin Cherubim, the first author of the study, who until recently was based at Harvard University."
Full story at:
[-ecl]
Matt Damon Just Wants to Go Home (film comments by Paul S. R. Chisholm):
Matt Damon just wants to go home.
More accurately, his characters do:
More:
Time Magazine suggests a few more:
https://time.com/4162254/cost-of-rescuing-matt-damon/
Maybe someone can weave WE BOUGHT A ZOO into this narrative, but I can't. [-psrc]
Evelyn notes:
Coincidentally, I am listening to the Teaching Company's "Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature's Most Fantastic Works" by Prof. Eric S. Rabkin. In the introductory lecture he talks about Vladimir Propp's thirty-one basic "functions" in Russian fairy tales, of which #20 is "the hero travels back to his home". This idea also appears in Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" with seventeen functions in three groups, the third of which is "Return".
So while the idea that characters in films are trying to return home may not be universal, it certainly has its place in stories centered around a hero. [-ecl]
Science vs. Scientific Knowledge (letter of comment by Lawrence D'Oliveiro):
In response to Greg Frederick's review of THE EDGE OF KNOWLEDGE in the 07/03/26 issue of the MT VOID, Lawrence D'Oliveiro writes:
[Greg writes:] "One of the book's most compelling themes is the idea that ignorance, when approached scientifically, is productive rather than discouraging. Krauss argues that science advances not by claiming certainty but by continually testing ideas and confronting unanswered questions. He reminds readers that many concepts that seem obvious today for example; the age of the Earth, the existence of galaxies beyond our own, or the structure of DNA, all were once mysteries. By placing today's unsolved problems in historical context, he demonstrates how scientific knowledge evolves through curiosity, skepticism, and evidence." [-gf]
Worth distinguishing betwee
* "Science" -- the process of acquiring knowledg
* "Scientific knowledge" -- the product of the process, which also
feeds back into the process.
Every human culture has its own store of traditional knowledge, acquired over many centuries or millennia. But ask them about their processes for acquiring knowledge, or for verifying its correctness, and you draw a blank. Everybody simply assumes their traditional knowledge is correct. And no-one has any idea where it actually came from.
Science is about making those points explicit. [-ldo]
THE DISH (letters of comment by Paul Dormer, Scott Dorsey, and Lawrence D'Oliveiro):
In response to Evelyn's comments on THE DISH in the 07/17/26 issue of the MT VOID, Paul Dormer writes:
I remember seeing that on TV many years ago. [-pd]
Scott Dorsey adds:
It is one of my favorite films ever. We showed a beautiful 35mm print of it at Arisia one year and we got a small but very appreciative audience.
And yes, I did give the five-minute talk about quadrant tracking systems first because I don't think the film explains adequately why it's so bad to lose the bogey. [-sd]
Lawrence D'Oliveiro adds:
Jokes were made about the radio telescope being situated in the middle of a sheep paddock.
But then again, where would be a better place to put it ...? [-ldo]
BRAINSTORM (letters of comment by Steve Coltrin and Lawrence D'Oliveiro):
In response to Evelyn's comments on BRAINSTORM in the 07/17/26 issue of the MT VOID, Steve Coltrin writes:
[Evelyn writes,] "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." [-ecl]
Ooh, this would be a good double feature with STRANGE DAYS (1995), in which society has contemplated that idea and said "hahahaha no".
Similarly:
[Evelyn writes,] "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." [-ecl]
And one of [STRANGE DAYS's] principal characters is one such pornographer. Add in a predicted 1999-12-31 which was a) much more interesting than mine and b) eerily prophetic of more recent years, while having the sunny belief that they might not lead to as shitty a place as we're in now. (Some things would not put butts in seats back in 1995.) [-sc]
As I understand it, STRANGE DAYS was rather hard to find for some time; currently it is streaming courtesy the Mouse. [-sc]
Lawrence D'Oliveiro writes:
[Evelyn writes,] "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." [-ecl]
Also its release got held up by over a year, I think as a result of said misfortune.
Also Douglas Trumbull's directorial debut--he who was responsible for the memorable special effects on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (for which director Stanley Kubrick took the credit--and the Oscar).
Every few years, it seems, the Feds want to go back to Robert Wagner and talk to him about that last night his wife was alive ... [-ldo]
KNIGHTRIDERS (letter of comment by Lawrence D'Oliveiro):
In response to Evelyn's comments on KNIGHTRIDERS in the 07/17/26 issue of the MT VOID, Lawrence D'Oliveiro writes:
[Evelyn writes,] "(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.)" [-ecl]
There are fight scenes in Shakespeare. It's just a matter of making them suitably graphic.
As Uncle Fester did, to totally gratuitous excess, in the first "Addams Family" movie ...
Or was it really him? [-ldo]
Non-Existent Books (letter of comment by Hal Heydt):
In response to Joe Karpierz's review of DEATH OF THE AUTHOR in the 07/17/26 issue of the MT VOID, Hal Heydt writes:
In Dorothy's (published) novel A POINT OF HONOR she wrote in internal reference to a non-existent work, THE GOLDEN ROAD. Some of her friends immediately piped up wanting to read THE [line missing] [s]o there it sits as an un-published (but complete) work. It needs at least one minor edit, but is a full work. [-hh]
Evelyn adds:
Stanislaw Lem wrote three collections of reviews of non-existent books: A PERFECT VACUUM, PROVOCATION, and ONE HUMAN MINUTE. [-ecl]
THE WORLD THE CIVIL WAR MADE (letters of comment by Paul Dormer and Keith F. Lynch):
In response to Evelyn's comments on THE WORLD THE CIVIL WAR MADE in the 07/17/26 issue of the MT VOID, Paul Dormer writes:
Cromwell has a lot to answer for. [-pd]
Evelyn notes:
But one thing Jews remember him for is that he finally let Jews back into England in 1656, after they had been expelled by Edward I in 1290. [-ecl]
Keith F. Lynch replies:
It's odd that England has had numerous civil wars, but "The English Civil War" only refers to the 1640s one. Similarly, it has had several regencies, but "The Regency" refers only to 1811-1820. And it has had eleven kings called Edward, but the "Edwardian era" refers only to the rule of Edward VII, so called because his name was Albert and nine previous kings had been named Edward.
By contrast, the American Civil War wasn't a civil war at all. The South was not attempting to put Jefferson Davis in the White House. [-kfl]
[A long discussion followed about what constitutes a civil war, which appears to resolve as "a civil war is what I point to when I say it." -ecl]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
"Masterpieces of Short Fiction" was one of the Great Courses/Teaching Company courses that I picked up at Second Time Books, taught by Professor Michael Krasny. Since I am reading all the stories, I will comment on them, but since they are short stories, the comments will also be short (well, mostly).
1. "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe: This was also the introductory lecture, so Krasny spent a lot of time introducing the concept of the short story, and so he spent less on the actual story than he did in subsequent lectures. For this one, I got more from the notes in the copy I read than from the lecture. The notes, for example, pointed out that Montressor is quite ignorant about Amontillado (and wine, for that matter)--he apparently doesn't know it is a sherry, for example. Whether this is intentional on Poe's part, or that Poe himself was confused, is not clear. (Krasny pronounces it with "lla" as "la" rather than as "ya", which I think is incorrect, and also refers to a "space capsule" when he means a "time capsule".)
2. "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne: At the beginning, the narrator claims that Faith is "aptly named", so unless we are to believe them to be an unreliable narrator, we have to believe she is not actually at the Witches' Sabbath. So the two possibilities are that her appearance there is an illusion generated by the Devil to fool Goodman Brown, or that the whole thing is a dream. Krasny seems to find significance in the character being called "Goodman Brown", which indicates to me that he doesn't realize that "Goodman" was a title the equivalent of "Mister". There is an irony there, but it is not as though Hawthorne chose the name out of a whole pool of possibilities.
I think this story probably inspired "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benet. In "Young Goodman Brown", the Devil tells Goodman Brown, "I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and that’s no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip’s war." In "The Devil and Daniel Webster", Webster insists on an American jury, and what does he get?
"For there was Walter Butler, the loyalist, who spread fire and horror through the Mohawk Valley in the times of the Revolution; and there was Simon Girty, the renegade, who saw white men burned at the stake and whooped with the Indians to see them burn. His eyes were green, like a catamount's, and the stains on his hunting shirt did not come from the blood of the deer. King Philip was there, wild and proud as he had been in life, with the great gash in his head that gave him his death wound, and cruel Governor Dale, who broke men on the wheel. There was Morton of Merry Mount, who so vexed the Plymouth Colony, with his flushed, loose, handsome face and his hate of the godly. There was Teach, the bloody pirate, with his black beard curling on his breast. The Reverend John Smeet, with his strangler's hands and his Geneva gown, walked as daintily as he had to the gallows. The red print of the rope was still around his neck, but he carried a perfumed handkerchief in one hand. One and all, they came into the room with the fires of hell still upon them, and the stranger named their names and their deeds as they came, till the tale of twelve was told. Yet the stranger had told the truth—they had all played a part in America."
3. "The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol: Like the next story ("The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant), this is basically a "be-careful-what-you-wish-for" tale. Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin's name means "harmless", but also sounds like the Russian for poop, so the reader already thinks of him as a schlimazel. He needs a new overcoat, and by scrimping and saving, is able to buy one. He glories in it, but it is ultimately the cause of his downfall.
4. "The Necklace" (a.k.a. "The Diamond Necklace") by Guy de Maupassant: Reading this I was struck by two things. First, early on it follows the general outline of the Cinderella story. (That I just listened to the "Classical Stuff You Should Know" episode on Cinderella probably had something to do with this.) Mathilde lives a dreary life, and when there's a ball, she can't go because she doesn't have a gown, or jewels. Then somehow they are provided, and she goes and charms everyone. (After this, the story diverges.) It is also clear that authors such as O. Henry were influenced by the story.
Maupassant does seem to have a very classist attitude. In spite of saying, "Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are [women's] sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies," Maupassant seems to imply that Mathilde's problems arise because she is not satisfied with her place in life.
And there is something about Maupassant saying, "She would have liked so much to please," followed by "to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after," that implies she doesn't so much want to please others, but herself. She's not as sympathetic a protagonist as one might think.
And her husband is no prize. He's been stashing money away to buy himself a gun and have a shooting vacation--instead of spending a little bit to make his wife's life a little easier or pleasanter.
And like "The Overcoat", this is about someone who wishes for something they think is wonderful, revels in it, and then pays a big price.
5. "The Lady with the Dog" by Anton Chekhov: I have read this story a couple of times and frankly, it does nothing for me. Apparently it's considered a classic, one of Chekhov's best, but I can't see it. I don't feel this way about all of Chekhov's work, though I lean more to the dramas. Of the "Big Four", I think UNCLE VANYA, THE SEAGULL, and THE CHERRY ORCHARD are excellent; I am less keen on THREE SISTERS.
My one "complaint" is that Chekhov seems to have a very negative view of middle-aged women. In both THE SEAGULL and THE CHERRY ORCHARD, the older women are total "flibbertigibbets"--neither has any business sense, or any concept of money. Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya in THE CHERRY ORCHARD refuses to make any decision that might save the estate, relying on some sort of miracle while handing out outrageous tips and alms. Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina in THE SEAGULL is totally self-centered and won't even give her son money to replace his shabby clothes, or to buy him a coat, with the excuse that as an actress all her money is spent on *her* clothes. For that matter, Helena Andreyevna Serebryakova in Uncle Vanya is not middle-aged (she is 27), but she also seems to lead a useless life and can't manage to do anything useful. It is not clear that the woman in "The Lady with the Dog" is any better, but again, she is young, and apparently neither she nor the narrator can come up with a concrete plan to resolve their problem. Maybe that's just what Chekhov likes to write about.
6. "The Real Thing" by Henry James: Umberto Eco once wrote an essay about hyperreality. EBSCO describes it thusly, "Eco examines how Americans create and venerate perfect replicas of reality, allowing him to reflect on philosophical questions about the nature of reality itself. The title essay highlights his observations during a road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where he encounters various hyperrealistic representations, such as wax replicas of Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' and meticulous recreations of historical spaces like the Oval Office. Through these examples, Eco raises critical inquiries about authenticity and representation, engaging with longstanding philosophical debates about what constitutes reality." Henry James did it almost a century before, in this story about how two professional models are better able to represent a variety of types of people than the actual types themselves, i.e., they can seem more representative of an upper-class couple than an actual upper-class couple. ("Travels in Hyperreality" was written in 1986; James write "The Real Thing" in 1892.)
7. "Araby" by James Joyce: This story apparently has a lot of references to Catholicism which were not obvious to me. It also is a move away from 19th century story-telling and into the 20th century. I will have to see how the rest of the 20th century stories strike me, but this one (and many of Joyce's stories) just don't connect with me, or vice versa.
8. "My First Goose" by Isaac Babel: This is probably the shortest story in this class. The main character, a bookish sort, is assigned to a Cossack unit, and initially they ridicule him. So he brutally kills an old woman's goose and demands that she cook it for them, and then he is accepted. Babel had a strange relationship with the Cossacks. Presumably as a Jew he would despise and fear them, but instead he rode with them.
9. "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway: This is a Hemingway story. Two men come into a diner. They are looking for another man. They tie up the owner and the cook. Later the two go away and a patron goes to warn the victim. He warns him. The victim doesn't try to get away. The patron goes back to the diner. The cook doesn't seem to care. The patron decides to leave town.
10. "A Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka: As I note below this seems to be somewhat related to "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", although more in its use of the carnival/circus themes than in straight magical realism. The idea of the carnival/circus as a fictional setting recurs in other authors as well, notably Ray Bradbury, Angela Carter, and William Lindsay Gresham.
11. "Rocking-Horse Winner" by D. H. Lawrence: We all wish we could see the future, and often as not it is to know the winning lottery numbers. But before the lottery there were horse races (and there still are) and that was what people dreamt of knowing. Lawrence looks at the idea that this knowledge is not free, that it comes with a price, and also that the drive for money can overwhelm all reason and natural feeling. The boy pushes himself beyond all reason because he hears his parents always talking about money; the parents encourage him because all they think of is the money.
This has been made into a classic film in 1949 with Valerie Hobson and John Mills, as well as a later made-for-television film and two shorts.
12. "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield: "The Garden Party" is a study in opposites: upper class and lower class, empathy and insensitivity, life and death. Laura wants to empathize with the lower class, but can't escape her own upbringing. She expresses sympathy for the bereaved family, but goes ahead with the party. She sees death, but thinks it looks like life.
[-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Quote of the Week:
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
--George Eliot
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