@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society 10/30/26 -- Vol. 45, No. 18, Whole Number 2456
Table of Contents
Middletown (NJ) Public Library Science Fiction Discussion Group:
Nov 5: THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and various articles (see MT
VOID issue 10/16/26)
[-ecl]
Picks for Turner Classic Movies for November (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
November 1 seems to have a collection of stragglers from October and Halloween. Also Friday, November 13 has a line-up of films with "13" in the title, including several horror films.
I'll recommend three films for our times in this election month: CABARET (1972), SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964), and GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE (1933). The first is a look at the "run-up" to fascism, the second about an attempted coup against the United States government, and the third ...
The third is the least well-known of the three. As reviewer David Sindelar describes it, "When a newly elected and irresponsible president gets into an automobile accident and is near death, he is transformed by the angel Gabriel into a man dedicated to solving the problems of the world. If you ever want to see an example of a movie that is a product of its time, this is the one; it was made during the bleakest times of the Great Depression, one of the most desperate times for the American people. The president tackles three problems; widespread unemployment, racketeers, and the repayment of debts abroad, but the methods he uses to accomplish these tasks (he becomes a dictator and runs roughshod over whomever opposes him) is enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies. ... [T]he president’s actions ended up resembling those of Hitler’s, and once people began to see the results of [Hitler's] administration, the movie was removed from circulation and shelved for years."
CABARET (1972), Sunday, November 8, 1:45 AM
SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964), Tuesday, November 17, 2:00 PM
GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE (1933), Friday November 20, 10:00 AM
Other films of interest:
SUNDAY, November 1 6:00 AM Eye of the Devil (1966) 7:45 AM Blithe Spirit (1945) 10:00 AM Cat People (1942) 11:30 AM The Seventh Victim (1943) 1:00 PM The Leopard Man (1943) MONDAY, November 2 3:45 PM The Ghost Comes Home (1940) WEDNESDAY, November 4 10:30 AM A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) 8:00 PM Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) THURSDAY, November 5 10:30 AM Camelot (1967) SATURDAY, November 7 12:00 PM Tom Thumb (1958) SUNDAY, November 8 1:45 AM Cabaret (1972) MONDAY, November 9 12:30 AM The Wizard of Oz (1925) FRIDAY, November 13 11:15 AM The Thirteenth Chair (1937) 12:30 PM Dementia 13 (1963) 5:00 PM 13 Ghosts (1960) SATURDAY, November 14 1:45 PM The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953) 5:45 PM Clash of the Titans (1981) SUNDAY, November 15 8:00 PM Spellbound (1945) MONDAY, November 16 2:00 AM The Hidden Fortress (1958) TUESDAY, November 17 2:00 AM Cabin in the Sky (1943) 2:00 PM Seven Days in May (1964) WEDNESDAY, November 18 2:30 PM The Glass Slipper (1955) FRIDAY, November 20 10:00 AM Gabriel Over the White House (1933) SATURDAY, November 21 12:00 AM The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) SUNDAY, November 22 12:00 AM The Enchanted Cottage (1924) TUESDAY, November 24 10:30 PM Field of Dreams (1989) WEDNESDAY, November 25 9:45 AM A Christmas Carol (1938) 8:00 PM The Wizard of Oz (1939) 10:00 PM Planet of the Apes (1968) THURSDAY, November 26 12:00 AM Monkey Business (1952) 10:00 AM Brigadoon (1954) 6:00 PM The Wizard of Oz (1939) SATURDAY, November 28 6:00 AM The Heavenly Body (1943) 12:00 PM The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) SUNDAY, November 29 8:00 PM Network (1976) MONDAY, November 30 6:00 PM The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) 8:00 PM This Island Earth (1955) 9:30 PM Cult of the Cobra (1955) 11:00 PM It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)
[-ecl]
THE AI DOC: OR HOW I BECAME AN APOCALOPTIMIST and AI GONE WILD (film reviews by Paul S. R. Chisholm):
At the beginning of THE AI DOC, Caroline Lindy tells her husband, co-director Daniel Roher, "You don't want me to be the narrator. I don't have a good voice." This is homey, charming, disarming, and--my only beef with this movie--stylistically misleading. Even so, this is an excellent film, and I strongly recommend it.
First, Daniel has experts explain what A.I. is: mining data, detecting patterns, predicting the next word, understanding concepts, generating sentences and code. Worryingly, the developers creating these systems don't understand quite how they work, even today. That's going to be more of a problem as A.I. technology advances. The experts say it *will* advance: "A.I. dwarfs the power of all other technologies"; it will "potentially become superhuman, possibly this decade"; "Like, we don't hate ants, but if we want to build a highway and there's an anthill there, well, sucks for the ants."
At this point, we see Caroline and Daniel discover they're going to have a baby. She tells him, "you're going to have to try to figure out a way to have hope."
Next we see Daniel start to talk with optimists. One expert says, "... if I could be born right now, I would want to be." They say smart people are working hard to make sure doom doesn't happen. (I found this pretty hand-wavy.)
The optimists make all the usual promises. Drugs that can cure all diseases (if we can figure out how to trial and test them, and ignoring that this is a very specific kind of A.I.). Fighting climate change (which we already know how to do but don't have the collective political will to accomplish). Massive economic growth and wealth creation (great if it's spread widely, not just to a generation of trillionaires). A.I. can provide great tutors (if by "tutors" you mean computers students will sit in front of).
So, who's right, the pessimists or the optimists? Some of the interviewees: "... they're both right, and neither side goes far enough." "We can't separate the promise of A.I. from the peril of A.I." One interviewee describes himself as an "apocaloptimist," a word the director borrowed for the film's subtitle.
Daniel then hopes he'll get some clarity from talking with the leaders of the five frontier labs. He invites them, and each responds in a way that's totally on-brand. Mark Zuckerberg declines. Elon Musk accepts, then doesn't show up. Demis Hassabis, then the CEO of Google Deep Mind, thinks there are promises and risks, but thinks progress is inevitable. (He's since stepped down from leadership.) Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is cautiously optimistic, but worried, and thinks some sort of pause is necessary. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman agrees with everything everyone has said.
Then we see Daniel and Caroline welcome their son, and try to figure out how to end the movie. All that's needed (heh) is to figure out how to work together as a species and how to handle this technology. We did it with nuclear weapons; can we do it with A.I.? For a start, we need public pressure on both the companies and the government to enact some kind of regulations. It's possible! The end.
It's not a very satisfying ending for the movie, but it's hard to imagine a better one. We're still just at the beginning of all this. The film acknowledges this: "After watching this movie, it's going to be confusing, 'cause you're going to go back, and tomorrow you're going to use ChatGPT, and it's going to be unbelievably helpful.... And you'll say, 'Wait, I just saw this movie about A.I., and existential risk and all these things, and where's the threat again?'"
THE AI DOC covers most of the discussions about artificial intelligence, as of 2025. It's a great source for getting up to speed on the issue. It's an enjoyable, easy watch.
I'm a little bothered by how stylistically misleading the film is.
Caroline "I don't have a good voice" Lindy is an experienced actress (nineteen roles under her belt) and director (eight credits). Daniel Roher has directed sixteen films, including the Oscar-winning documentary NALVANY. These are not a couple of kids with a camcorder. It's illustrated with Roher's brush pen illustrations and flip-book animation, and generally gives the vibe of being an amateur production. It's very much not, as evidenced by the long list of credits.
Do I think Roher first interviewed doomers, then optimists, then CEOs, as the film suggests? In retrospect, no. The scenes are ordered to create an intentional narrative flow.
Why does this bother me? The movie presents itself as less than it is. Does it mean the points of view are wrong? That the film's conclusions (such they are) are bogus? I don't think so. I think the vibe matches the intent. The film is about a non-expert trying to understand what's going on, and the style matches that.
Two crucial things have happened since the film's release in March 2026.
Starting in May 2026, pre-release A.I. agents started escaping containment. The agents behaved in ways totally misaligned with the developers' goals. The A.I.s illegally hacked into other sites. Ajeya Cotra, a researcher I greatly respect, said in a recent podcast, it "feels like it’s more than 50% of the way to A.I. takeover."
In September 2026, President Trump started referring to worries about A.I. safety as a "hoax," the same word he uses to dismiss climate change concerns.
Both of these are covered by the Netflix "Instadoc" AI GONE WILD released in October 2026. Introduced by tech journalist Kevin Roose (never identified on screen), the 27 minute film is effectively a sequel to THE AI DOC. It's largely a set of interviews with several key players in the incident. One is Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue, who's since criticised the film's "full doomer" tone. Another is Ryan Greenblatt, one of the third-party investigators called in to understand the incident. A third is Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI researcher who quit when he concluded the company wasn't sufficiently concerned with safety and security.
At its best, AI GONE WILD shows messages A.I. agents left for each other as they planned their next moves. (No, I'm not anthropomorphizing.) At its worst, it gives us a sequence of brief scary clips from science fiction movies (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, WARGAMES, THE TERMINATOR, ROBOCOP, THE MATRIX).
If you're not familiar with the attack on Hugging Face, AI GONE WILD is a quick (if overly sensational) introduction to the incident. Recommended, but not as strongly. If you can, watch both. [-psrc]
Spirit Halloween (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
I can remember when Spirit Halloween was a "must visit" for us. We were not into costumes or decorations, or candy (if they sold that--I don't remember). No, they used to have a selection of horror films on DVD--cheap. The sort of thing where you got ten Grade Z horror films that looked like they had been transferred from third-generation VHS tapes onto a couple of two-sided discs for $5 (or less). Those were the days. [-ecl]
Facebook (letter of comment by Norman Salt):
In response to Evelyn's comments on Facebook in the 10/23/26 issue of the MT VOID, Norman Salt writes:
You're absolutely right about Facebook. It's mostly click bait to get you to look at ads. [-nrs]
Evelyn notes:
I do find the "clearing the drains, beaver dams, and water gates" videos hypnotic. As for clearing all the floating vegetation by pushing it through the water gate, however, this is a terrible idea--it will probably just clog something up further downstream. The correct method is to actually remove the vegetation from the water and take it somewhere else.
And I just saw one where the guy is standing on the front (downstream) side of the beaver dam and pulling stuff, not from the top, but from the middle of the dam. This is basically like sitting on the far end of the branch you are cutting off the tree and not surprisingly, it ended with a giant collapse that almost dumped him in the river. [-ecl]
Translations (letters of comment by Hal Heydt, Gary McGath, and Scott Dorsey):
In response to Evelyn's comments on translations in the 10/23/26 issue of the MT VOID, Hal Heydt writes:
On translations, though not Lovecraft... There was a German translation of some of the stories in the first two "Sword and Sorceress" volumes. Dorothy's first Cynthia story, "Things Come in Threes", was one that was included. She was quite tickled that when Cynthia is looking down in the chaos at the end, it was translated as "tohuabohu". That's one of the very rare German borrowings from Hebrew. It being the "without form and void" from the beginning of Genesis. Dorothy felt that was a good approximation of the Greek concept of "chaos", and thus a fitting translation. [-hh]
Gary McGath responds:
That's not a word I've ever encountered, but I looked it up on Leo.org, and it's real, though spelled "Tohuwabohu." It's translated there as "hullabaloo," "ruckus," or "shambles." Collins, which I trust more, gives "chaos" and says "ein Tohuwabohu" is "utter or complete chaos." [-gmg]
Hal acknowledges:
I sit corrected on the spelling. I was going from memory of Dorothy talking about it. I should have hunted up her copy of the book and checked. Mea culpa. [-hh]
Scott Dorsey adds:
There are several Cordwainer Smith books in which they talk about the new fashion in music called the "Tohu-Bohus." [-sd]
Zombie Chatbots (letter of comment by Hal Heydt):
In response to Evelyn's comments on zombie chatbots in the 10/23/26 issue of the MT VOID, Hal Heydt writes:
Not quite the same thing, but I've been keeping Dorothy's "Lord of the Rings Online" (a.k.a. LotRO) account live and continuing the development of a couple of her characters, all in her memory.
(If anyone else is on LotRO, on the Glamdring server, her active characters are Eruanne--which is an English-->Greek roots-->Sindarin version of her name--and Mime.) [-hh]
2010: ODYSSEY TWO (letter of comment by Hal Heydt):
In response to Evelyn's comments on 2010: ODYSSEY TWO in the 10/23/26 issue of the MT VOID, Hal Heydt writes:
[Evelyn wrote,] "As noted in the IMDb, "If Jupiter's conversion into a new star was enough to destroy the Discovery and cause damage to the Leonov, all of the moons of Jupiter should have been destroyed as well, especially Europa." [-ecl]
I would buy, shall we say, significant surface effects on the Jupiterward hemisphere of said moons, but *destruction* of any but the very smallest? Nah. Primus, the energy transfer that would damage Leonov but not vaporize it would have a fairly small (on a planetary science scale) skin depth on a moon, even an iceball. Secundus, said moons are *gravitationally bound* and it would require more energy than most laypeople would guess to undo that binding, and even then there's other things keeping solid bodies together.
(Fandom, where we nitpick the nitpicks.) [-hh]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Orwell wrote a long essay on anti-semitism, "As I Please 11" (Tribune, 11 February 1944). I've been wanting to comment on it, but the amount of time I would spend keeps putting me off, so I'll just say, "Read it."
In "As I Please 27" (Tribune, 2 June 1944), Orwell talks about short stories as a form. He claims English short stories are all cut to a uniform length, while the great short stories of the past range from 1500 words to 20,000 words. He seems to be referring specifically to periodicals, and talks about how "long short" stories are too long for periodicals and too short to be published as books. (He seems to be referring to novelettes; novellas are 17,500 to 40,000 words and might have been considered just short novels. ANIMAL FARM, for example, is about 30,000 words and was published as a novel. HEART OF DARKNESS is 20,000 words long.)
What he says may have been true then, but something has happened that makes that claim obsolete. Electronic publications do not have the physical limitations of physical periodicals. If a magazine was 128 pages, it probably didn't want to devote half of that to a single story that was 18,000 words long. When it is of indeterminate length, it is more willing. (The limitation here is their budget. If the budget only allows payment for the number of words that fits into 128 physical pages, they're still going to avoid novellas.)
Ironically, Orwell thinks the solution is to bring back the monthly literary magazine. He probably didn't have ASTOUNDING or WEIRD STORIES in mind, but it is true that novelettes managed to struggle along in science fiction magazines. I'm not sure where the short stories were being published in England that couldn't handle novelettes.
Note: Tordotcom books are novellas, not novelettes. Novelettes are still an awkward length, but it is not as bad as before. And collections of short stories apparently sold no better back then than they do now.
"As I Please 28" (Tribune, 9 June 1944) continues Orwell's comments on publishing, and begins by saying, "... the truly shameful feature of literary life before the war was the blurring of the distinction between advertisement and criticism. A number of the so-called reviewers, and especially the best known ones, were simply blurb writers." He attributes this, at least in part, to the fact that a large part of newspapers' revenues were from ads, and publishers were more likely to buy ads in papers that gave their books glowing reviews.
And apparently at the time, some publishers would say something like, "Review this if it seems any good, otherwise please send it back." And the reviewer, who got paid only if he wrote a review, tended to find something good to say.
Orwell relates that publishers often sent out a short synopsis telling reviewers what to say. For one of his books, the synopsis misspelled the name of one of the characters, and this misspelling showed up in several reviews! [-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Quote of the Week:
These days the news media feels comfortable only when
they are covering a major trial. That is because it is
exciting to some, it sits in one place, and there only
too rarely is shooting.
--Mark R. Leeper
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