@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society 08/07/26 -- Vol. 45, No. 6, Whole Number 2444
Table of Contents
Mini Reviews, Part 22 (LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, SOME LIKE IT HOT, THE MOUSE THAT ROARED) (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper):
LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (1978): I cannot be absolutely sure, but I think even the first time I saw this when it originally came out, I thought Laurent was totally unsympathetic, and my opinion has not changed. Even if one makes the argument that things were different then (although, alas, we seem to be back-sliding towards it now), the way he handled it was terrible. He was too cowardly to tell Albin himself, and didn't even try to suggest that maybe if Albin went out just for that evening...
This was originally a play, then became a movie, then a musical, then an American remake (THE BIRDCAGE), and now a revival of the musical. The original is probably still the best, though the cast album from the musical is one of my favorites.
SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959): In the introduction and outro on the TCM showing, Alan Shankman talked about the two ways of showing drag and particularly drag humor: men who are in drag but still clearly heterosexual, and men in drag who are clearly gay (or "queer", which was Shankman's preferred term). In SOME LIKE IT HOT, it is clearly the first for most of the film, but towards the end, we see Jack Lemmon's character leaning into the queer side, retaining his drag persona even when alone with Tony Curtis's character, and particularly in his facial expression at the very end.
Shankman also pointed out that while at the beginning the two don't even have coats and are freezing, when they become women, they suddenly had massive wardrobes of expensive clothes, My thought was, "If that were the way real life worked, we'd have a lot more drag queens now."
THE MOUSE THAT ROARED (1959): THE MOUSE THAT ROARED is another British film about a peculiar geographic/political quirk in Europe. Well, Europe in the geographic sense of including the British Isles, as opposed to "continental Europe".
I mention this because the film begins by claiming that Grand Fenwick is the only English-speaking country in Europe; obviously they intend this to mean continental Europe (which by the way doesn't include any of the Mediterranean islands, not that this affects this statement).
It also claims that at 15.3 square miles, Grand Fenwick is the world's smallest country. Even at the time of the film this wasn't tru: Vatican City was 0.17 square miles, and Monaco was 0.8 square miles. Since then, Nauru (at 8 square miles) and Tuvalu (at 10 square miles) have displaced it even farther from the record.
But back to the common thread with another British film, PASSPORT TO PIMLICO (1949). In THE MOUSE THAT ROARED Grand Fenwick is an anomalous country in the middle of Europe that somehow has not been absorbed by any of its neighbors. In PASSPORT TO PIMLICO. it is discovered that part of Pimlico is actually part of Burgundy, and hence not subject to British law--in particular, post-war rationing and pub closure hours.
(That Burgundy is now part of France, and would make this part of Pimlico French rather than independent is not even considered.)
And there is yet a third example: ALL AT SEA (a.k.a. BARNACLE BILL) (1957). In this Ealing comedy, someone wants to open an amusement pier, runs into a lot of regulations from the town, and figures out that they can turn (technically) the pier into a foreign naval vessel, thus avoiding all these rules and regulations.
One can certainly argue that the whole concept of Grand Fenwick requires that "willing suspension of disbelief" that Coleridge described. But one is entitled to only one such unlikelihood in a book or film, so I think I am entitled to point out that there is no way that an air raid drill would result in *everyone* going into the air raid shelters, leaving Manhattan empty. And if you actually did believe this, you would have to also believe that basements with *open* gratings in the sidewalk above them would serve as air raid shelters, or that everyone in Manhattan could fit into the subways (and basements, I suppose). They wouldn't.
Oh, and I watched THE MOUSE THAT ROARED on June 30, as my closing tribute to Pride Month.
[-ecl]
"Preaching to the Choir" by Adrian Tchaikovsky (copyright 2026, Solaris, publication date August 11, 2026, 176pp, ISBN: 978-1-837867-30-1) (book review by Joe Karpierz):
Anyone who reads my reviews, or talks to me about genre writers, or who has to listen to me blather on about which writers they should read, knows that I've become quite the Adrian Tchaikovsky fan. He is a prolific author who writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories, and I haven't read a book of his that I haven't liked. Imagine, then, my delight when I received an email from NetGalley informing me that Solaris had approved my request for an advance reader copy. Honestly, I'd forgotten that I'd requested it, so it was a pleasant surprise when it showed up in my inbox a couple of weeks ago.
"Preaching to the Choir" is the second of Tchaikovsky's Terrible Worlds: Transformations novellas. In it, Ross Enderbough invites his girlfriend Elena Mendes on a trip to England to introduce her to his very rich, very upper crust, and very eccentric family during one of their once in a generation family gatherings. Ross left England for the United States to get away from the family, as he doesn't get along with them. However, attendance at the family gathering is mandatory, so he doesn't have much choice as to whether he should attend. The problem is that outsiders--meaning spouses and girlfriends--are not invited or allowed at the gathering. Elena is not welcome, and although the older family members try to get her to leave and stay somewhere off the grounds, they eventually relent. There is an undercurrent of tension, however, between the family and Elena.
The gathering is held on the grounds of a family mansion built hundreds of years ago. The story takes place almost exclusively within the mansion, with some forays out to the overgrown and unkempt grounds. The mansion is creepy, labyrinthine, and as you might guess, holds many secrets. The family itself is no better when it comes to being creepy and holding secrets. As the story advances weird things happen, and the younger members of the family begin to question what's going on and why they are here at all. This ends up being a good thing for Elena, for as an outsider she feels much the same way. The elder members of the family keep telling them that they will learn what is happening soon, but once Elena spots a dead body being carted out of the mansion, "soon" isn't soon enough.
I wasn't aware that Tchaikovsky wrote horror stories, although novellas like "Walking to Aldebaran" and "Hungry Gods" should have been a clue. "Preaching to the Choir" is a creepy gothic horror novel, complete with the creepy architecture of the mansion with scary things lurking around every corner in the dark, frightening things lurking on the mansion grounds, and the monstrous creatures that are at the heart of the story. The family secret--because every story like this involves a family secret--is not only frightening from a body horror standpoint but is frightening from the implications of what is revealed about the family.
"Preaching to the Choir" is another fine work from Tchaikovsky. Sure, we've seen the "let's take the girlfriend to meet the weird family" any number of times, and scary gothic mansions that contain odd and frightening things in the dark are not unusual either, but this story works because the characters are believable, the plot is well handled, and the story is written with Tchaikovsky's usual skill. The story is a slow burn, but once it picks up it gets moving and before you know it, it's over. I do recommend this for all fans of Tchaikovsky, as well as fans of well written horror. [-jak]
MOBY DICK (1930) (letter of comment by Gary McGath):
In response to Mark's review of MOBY DICK (1930) in the 07/31/26 issue of the MT VOID, Gary McGath writes:
I'd never heard of this MOBY DICK before. I can see why.
Recently a Leslie Fish video about Moby Dick called my attention to the version with Patrick Stewart. It's on YouTube. I've only watched about fifteen minutes of it so far, since I plan to watch it with a friend in the near future, but it looks well-done and close to the book.
(Trivia question: Which "Star Trek" character quoted Ahab's last words?)
By the way, the New Bedford Whaling Museum's souvenir shop has an entire bookcase full of various editions of and commentaries on Moby Dick. I recommend visiting it if you're in the area.
Evelyn responds:
The "Star Trek" question is, IMHO, too easy.
I had semi-planned to go to New Bedford this summer (with a stop at the Niantic Book Barn on the way), but it's hard for me to get up the enthusiasm (or whatever) needed to do this as a solo trip. [-ecl]
Mikhail Baryshnikov Quotation (letter of comment by John Hertz):
In response to the Mikhail Baryshnikov quotation in the 07/31/26 issue of the MT VOID, John Hertz writes:
Your Baryshnikov quotation in HE MT VOID 10 Jul 26 (vo1. 45 No. 2, Whole No. 2440) brings to mind this story of the great Rabbi Zusha of Hannopil (his name and "Hannopil" variously rendered in English e.g. "Zusya", "Anipoli")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zusha_of_Hanipol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannopil,_Khmelnytskyi_Oblast>
One day his students found him weeping. "Rabbi," they cried, "why do you weep? You are so wise and saintly." He said, "I am afraid of what they will ask me at my death and Judgment. I am not afraid that they will ask 'Why were you not more like Moses?' I am afraid that they will ask 'Why were you not more like Zusha?'"
[-jh]
UFO Sightings (letters of comment by Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Keith F. Lynch, and Charles Packer):
In response to a link to an article on UFO sightings in the 07/31/26 issue of the MT VOID, Lawrence D'Oliveiro writes:
[The article says,] "The sci-fi thriller, starring Emily Blunt and Colin Firth, will serve for many viewers as a primer on modern UFO mythology, with flying saucers crashing down in the American Southwest, US military personnel swooping in to sequester the spaceships and their egg-headed crew members, and Men in Black-style agents fanning out to silence anyone with knowledge of the visitation.
How could such a myth coexist in the same minds of a nation where it is taken as a given that the Government is inherently incompetent and will always make a hash of things, without private help? [-ldo]
Keith F. Lynch responded:
Well, according to mainstream UFO mythology, men in black and UFOs coexist with widespread public knowledge of men in black and UFOs. So the men in black are obviously not competent at keeping themselves or UFOs secret.
Why, I hear they've even made multiple Hollywood movies about both phenomena!
Or maybe that's just intended to make us think the concepts of men in black and UFOs are completely ridiculous. Thus everyone will ignore the risk until we learn too late that aliens are real, that they are here To Serve Man, and that it's a cookbook.
Or maybe aliens aren't real, but are faked by AIs in order to distract us from the real threat, Terminators. [-kfl]
Evelyn adds:
These led to an enormous thread on rec.arts.sf.fandom, political in nature, which I will not include here. [-ecl]
Charles Packer went in a different direction:
It amused me to discover that in 1947 the second person to witness a flying saucer was named Byron Savage. He was quoted as affirming the veracity of the story by the first person to witness one, Kenneth Arnold. Both names, of course, allude to British poets. [-cp]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
This is a break from comments on books to a meta-comment on bookstores--in particular the ones we (Kate and I) visited on the way to Readercon.
Readercon's "Dealers Room" is actually called the "Bookshop" and that's pretty much all it sells. (Well, okay, because David Gerrold was a Guest of Honor, his table was also selling tribbles.) But that doesn't mean we didn't start buying books before the convention.
We started on Wednesday. After I drove up to Massachusetts, Kate and I went to The Raven Bookstore in Shelburne Falls, passing their most famous landmark, the Bridge of Flowers--a pedestrian bridge that has gardens along both sides of the walkway; this is a landmark I remember my father taking us to back in the 1960s--he was a big fan of flowers, gardening, etc. (See note at the end of this article for an example.) At The Raven I found THE AESTHETICS OF FANTASY LITERATURE AND ART by Roger C. Schlobin, which looked interesting.
The Raven is located in an old warehouse which also contains a lot of other, smaller shops, including Nancy L. Dole Books & Ephemera. This was a very small store (one room about the size of a large bedroom), and I didn't find anything there.
Thursday we drove to Burlington (MA) by way of West Brookfield, which has Quaboag Book Shop. This was very large, having somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 books (according to the owner). Here also I found one book, THOMAS JEFFERSON'S QUR'AN by Denise A. Spellberg. Kate, however, found a lot, because while we were there, someone brought in a large quantity of vintage SF paperbacks.
Then we drove to Burlington and the Used Book Superstore, which also claims over 100,000 books. But while it may have as much as Quaboag (or even more) the stock is less interesting--and not as cheap. First, a lot of the books seem to be new books with slightly discounted prices. (I got MONK AND ROBOT by Becky Chambers, list price $18.99, for 20% off, or $15.18.) They apparently have a system where, when used books come in, they are priced with labels the "color of the month". Then they have sales where the oldest books (in this case, those with purple labels) are 75% off their originally labeled price, the next oldest 40% off, and the next oldest 20% off. I'm not sure how often they have these sales, but we hit one, and so I got HARD TIMES by Dickens and VIEUX CARRE by Tennessee Williams at 75% off ($0.99 and $1.48) and BORGES AND ME by Jay Parini and WALT WHITMAN'S AMERICA for 20% off ($4.78 and $3.17).
One complaint: the labels they use are more designed to protect the store from people switching labels than to protect the books from label residue, with the result that I needed to use Goo-Gone on most of the books I bought.
(You can tell fantasy has overtaken science fiction--the fantasy section was three times the size of the science fiction section. When I was in college--and dinosaurs roamed the earth--fantasy was a few books stuck in the science fiction, will no section of its own.)
At Readercon itself, I picked up a few books from the "freebie" table, which I think started at conventions as a place for publishers to put out flyers, bookmarks, and occasionally books. It has mutated into a book swap area, where ordinary fans drop off and take books and magazines. My goal is to take less that I drop off, and I certainly achieved that, since I got only three books for myself (though I did pick up a couple for a friend, and a few for Kate--more vintage SF).
What I got was Lafcadio Hearn's IN GHOSTLY JAPAN, Rich Horton's YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY 2012, and Mark Kurlansky's BASQUE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
My major acquisition, however, was the complete set of the first 33 PM Press "Outspoken Authors" series--slim volumes, each featuring a story or two, an essay, and an interview, all from one author. They were priced 10% off for one, 50% off for five or more, and $165 for the set. By the time I had picked about a dozen of them, it came to so much that it made more sense to buy them all. (The list prices varied from $12 to $16, so even with 50% off, my total had come to over $100--and I had pulled only about a third of them. The set worked out to $5 each.)
The dealer was actually surprised anyone bought the whole set, and when I saw him later he said I was the only one, partly because Samuel R. Delany's volume had sold out fairly quickly.
(It was described as the "complete set", though there have been subsequent volumes, one a collection of interviews and six more regular volumes.)
No more bookshopping is planned until September, when we will return to Second Time Books and Book Garden.
Promised note about my father and gardening:
When my father was in Vietnam in 1967/1968, the Air Force base decided to boost morale (or something) by having a competition for the best-looking building (or something like that). So my father put a border of plants and flowers around his building, bringing in the wooden 2x4s for the border on a bicycle and writing my mother to please send him some fertilizer in an envelope for it. Apparently even in the middle of a war, he wanted to garden.
[-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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