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Table of Contents
Mini Reviews, Part 15 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper):
ANACONDA (2025): This is not a reboot of the 1997 ANACONDA, but rather a meta-film about a reboot of the 1997 ANACONDA. Jack Black, once again playing a man involved with movie-making who doesn't really know what he's doing. He is not the producer, but the producer is equally inept. The producer comes up with the idea that because they had such great fund making a horror film when they were twelve years old, they should remake one of their favorites, ANACONDA. (The producer just happens to have been given the rights by the widow of the owner, who liked him when we was an actor on a television show.)
Just as in KING KONG, Black pushes them to continue when any sensible person would head home. Instead of angry natives, there are illegal gold miners who are just as dangerous, if not more so, than the anaconda.
This is clearly a 21st century movie--there's an extended scene about someone who is "pee-shy" which for some reason makes me think of something Christopher Guest would do if he was not as refined, subtle, and understated as he is.
And then it gets totally weird.
I have to ask myself why I am watching this instead of all the much higher quality movies on my "to-watch" list (which, frankly, is pretty much everything on my "to-watch" list, except maybe FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER).
Released theatrically 25 December 2025.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33244668/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33244668/reference
HOT SPRING SHARK ATTACK (HOT SPRING SHARK ATTACH) (ONSEN SHAKU) (2024): If you thought SHARKS IN VENICE was stupid, you haven't seen HOT SPRING SHARK ATTACK. The premise is that construction at a hot springs resort has reawakened prehistoric sharks. Okay so far, but then they add the premise that because sharks are cartilaginous, they can compress and fit through the pipes to the hot springs--and to all the plumbing in the town. They compare this to how octopuses can fit into very narrow spaces, but octopuses can do this because they have only soft internal structures--no bones, but no cartilage either. (For that matter, the teeth that we see in the sharks are clearly non-compressible and too large for the pipes.)
The sharks also emit methane gas (making it impossible to use firearms against them), and an EMP which disables any electronic weapons.
But wait--there's more. The sharks are not only able to break up through manhole covers, but also through ordinary pavement, beach sand, playground dirt, and so on, and then after attacking they vanish back underground, leaving the surface as undisturbed as it was before!
So the heroes use a 3-D printer to print a full-size functional sub in a few hours...
There's also some bare-chested "Bath Diver" who is able to breathe underwater and saves various people at the last minute, often by punching the sharks.
And the special effects are truly terrible. Japanese kaiju films of the Showa Era were known for unconvincing miniatures; this has the most unconvincing CGI I think I have ever seen.
And the whole thing is just a remake of JAWS set in Japan.
Released theatrically 05 July 2024.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33244668/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33244668/reference
GRAVITY and THE MARTIAN are very popular films, and they are certainly entertaining, but they are also dangerous, because they make the average viewer think that all the problems one encounters in space can be overcome. Perhaps not easily, but a couple of conveniently located space stations or a few potatoes can solve anything.
THE MARTIAN (the film, but even more so the book) does go into details about how to "science the sh*t" out of things, so it's is slightly better than GRAVITY, which just sort of hand-waves how (for example) Stone is able to match orbits with various spacecraft.
(And now we have PROJECT HAIL MARY, which has gotten very good reviews, but also apparently has some hand-waving and such. However, I won't see it until it's available on DVD (or possibly Amazon Prime if I see it at a friend's house).
GRAVITY (2013):
Released theatrically 04 October 2013.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33244668/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33244668/reference
THE MARTIAN (2015):
Released theatrically 02 October 2015.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33244668/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33244668/reference
[It's interesting that both were released the first week of October. The first week of October in 1957 was when Sputnik was launched; in fact, on October 4. Hence the title OCTOBER SKY for the movie, which was *not* released the first week of October.]
[-ecl]
Apes Are More Like Us Than We Ever Thought--Another Animal Story (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
"Bonobos enjoy pretend tea parties and chimps think rationally: why apes are more like us than we ever thought
"A series of stunning findings about great apes' mental capabilities in recent years has transformed how we see our closest relatives
Clear plastic cups and pitchers adorned the wooden table in Des Moines, Iowa. Invisible juice was poured and presented to Kanzi, who enthusiastically chose the fake filled cup, playing along with the man who had come to visit. In many ways, it was the quintessential scene of a children's imaginary tea party. Only Kanzi, at 44 years old, was a bonobo.
"The experiment, carried out at the Ape Initiative facility in 2024, was the first to empirically test and document pretend play in a great ape species, with the results published in the journal Science in February. The study adds to an expansive repertoire of research over the past decade that has uncovered robust similarities between ape and human behaviours, upending long-held beliefs about how we distinguish ourselves from our closest kin.
"'It seems to be a recurring thing in our field where people come up with reasons why humans are special and unique, and then scientists like me test it out, and we find that, actually, maybe we're not that special after all,' says the study's lead author, Amalia Bastos, a comparative psychologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. 'That animals, too, are capable of secondary representations or imagination.'"
...
[Other examples in the article include the previously discovered knowledge that "apes were intelligent, that they could solve puzzles and use tools, that they built strong social relationships and could learn symbols and sign language, and that they could pass the mirror test, recognising their reflections to suggest some level of self-awareness." But recent discoveries include that chimpanzees and bonobos can remember past groupmates for decades, and that when presented with stronger evidence, chimpanzees rationally revise their previously held beliefs, and that apes apparently have a theory of mind, "the ability to understand that other individuals have their own thoughts, beliefs, desires, intentions and knowledge that may differ from our own."]
The full article--well worth reading--is at:
[-ecl]
HALCYON YEARS by Alastair Reynolds (copyright 2025, first U.S. edition January 2026, Orbit, 326pp, $19.99 trade paperback; audio book publisher Orbit, 12 hours and 15 minutes, ASIN: B0FY85RZ2Y, narrated by Tim Treloar) (audio book review by Joe Karpierz):
Who knew that we needed a science fiction noir private investigator story set on a generation starship complete with feuding families, mysterious murders, a disgraced cop, a robot sidekick that is having trouble regaining its memories, and a couple of mysterious sisters named Ruby Blue and Ruby Red? Oh, you bet we needed that. And that private investigator? None other than Yuri Gagarin. Yeah, *that* Yuri Gagarin.
HALCYON YEARS, Alastair Reynold's latest novel, starts out with Yuri getting into an altercation at a bar while investigating a domestic case. Slowly, but surely, Reynolds drops bits and pieces and hints that the story is not taking place on Earth, and also not in what the reader would think is the future. There are telephones with answering machines (and, in a classic way of getting around the "why don't they have cell phones in this future story?"), landlines, cameras that use actual film, and other things that make you want to scratch your head in puzzlement. But one thing that is clear, as things slowly but surely get revealed, is that the story is taking place on a generational starship that is getting close to its destination.
The story begins to heat up when, after the altercation at the bar, the aforementioned Ruby Blue pays a visit to Yuri's office to hire him to investigate the deaths of children of the feuding Urry and DelRosso families. Ruby Blue gives Yuri a set of credentials from the Department of Works, which seems to open a whole set of doors for him to perform his investigation. But the further he digs, the worse it gets. He interviews a doctor who was involved in the care of one of the kids that was killed, and not long after that doctor is murdered via an automobile accident, at which point the doctor's wife comes on to the scene and becomes an important piece of the ever growing, ever more complicated investigation. While all this is going on, Ruby Blue has Yuri retrieve a robot who starts out with faulty memories and is a bit bumbling, but which becomes more valuable than Yuri thought it would. To add to the complexity, Ruby Blue's sister Ruby Red inserts herself into the scene, telling Yuri to drop the investigation.
But wait, there's more. Yuri's only friend on Halcyon--the name of the ship, by the way--Milvus, has some suspicions about the journey that he wants Yuri to help him verify, which he does try to do when he goes outside the ship to do some investigation into the murders of the two children (I keep saying children, but they were both "coming of age", so maybe that isn't the best term for them. They were both about to get involved in the Undertaking, but were killed before that could happen.), but when he returns Milvus has been murdered before he could give some important information to Yuri. Along the way, Lemmy Litz, the previously mentioned cop who was disgraced by one of the families because he got too close to the truth, attaches himself to Yuri and eventually becomes key to the resolution of all the mysteries going on.
And who is Yuri, anyway? Yuri does appear to be who his name says he is. He was famous 200 years before Halcyon left for its destination, but was frozen in cryosleep until he was needed for... what, exactly? And why Yuri specifically? And what do the Ruby sisters have to do with this? And just how long has this feud been going on between the Urry and DelRosso families, and what is it all about. And what is the Undertaking, anyway? With all this going on, there is still the question of what Milvus thought was actually going on with Halcyon and its journey to its destination.
Reynolds does a masterful job of telling this noir detective story in the context of a generation starship's journey gone wrong. And this is where Reynolds finally brings in the grand epic space saga that we're used to getting from him. While this doesn't overwhelm whatever else has been going on during the rest of the novel, it plays a key, pivotal role in how the Halcyon got into the trouble it's in to begin with and how that trouble contributed to what's going on with its inhabitants.
HALCYON YEARS is a terrific novel, one that surprises at every turn but still manages to keep the reader in suspense until the end. The characters are interesting, and the noir aspect of the tale makes it a fun story to read. I highly recommend HALCYON YEARS. It's a grand addition to Reynolds' body of work that keeps getting better with every entry. [-jak]
Hugo Voter Packet (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
As a follow-up to my comments on the Hugo Voter Packet in the 05/01/26 issue of the MT VOID, I will add that File 770 has listed the contents of this year's packet at:
https://file770.com/whats-in-the-2026-hugo-voter-packet/
Worth noting is that it includes four complete novels, five complete novellas, all the novelette and short finalists, five complete series (totaling thirty-six books), four Lodestar novels, and a variety of samples and links for other finalists. [-ecl]
Ambrose Bierce, WHO?, and NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (letter of comment by John Hertz):
[My apologies for printing this so late. The typewritten letter John send me got lost under a stack of fanzines and I only now found it. -ecl]
In response to the quote by Ambrose Bierce in the 03/06/26 issue of the MT VOID, John Hertz writes:
In THE MT VOID 2422 (6 Mar 26, Vol. 44, No. 36) you might productively have said that line about faith by Ambrose Bierce was from his DEVIL'S DICTIONARY.
In response to Taras Wolansky's comments on WHO? in the same issue, John writes:
I recommend Budrys' WHO? to Taras Wolansky--and generally.
In response to Taras Wolansky's comments on NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR in the same issue, John writes:
Brother Wolansky's point of view is often valuable. He goes too far in saying Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR is "about" Stalin. As Nabakov said, to call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.
[-jh]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
This column turns out to be a bit of a sequel to last week's (about the Norman Conquest). There is a pointer to a blog post "How Far Back in Time Can You Understand English?" ( https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-back-in-time-understand-english) and another to a story by Poul Anderson that eschews all non-Anglo-Saxon words (almost).
"How Far Back in Time Can You Understand English?" begins:
A man takes a train from London to the coast. He's visiting a town called Wulfleet. It's small and old, the kind of place with a pub that's been pouring pints since the Battle of Bosworth Field. He's going to write about it for his blog. He's excited.He arrives, he checks in. He walks to the cute B&B he'd picked out online. And he writes it all up like any good travel blogger would: in that breezy LiveJournal style from 25 years ago, perhaps, in his case, trying a little too hard.
But as his post goes on, his language gets older. A hundred years older with each jump. The spelling changes. The grammar changes. Words you know are replaced by unfamiliar words, and his attitude gets older too, as the blogger's voice is replaced by that of a Georgian diarist, an Elizabethan pamphleteer, a medieval chronicler.
By the middle of his post, he's writing in what might as well be a foreign language.
But it's not a foreign language. It's all English.
None of the story is real: not the blogger, not the town. But the language is real, or at least realistic. I constructed the passages myself, working from what we know about how English was written in each period.
It's a thousand years of the English language, compressed into a single blog post.
Read it and notice where you start to struggle. Notice where you give up entirely. Then meet me on the other side and I'll tell you what happened to the language (and the blogger).
The other pointer is to Poul Anderson's "Uncleftish Beholding" ("Atomic Theory"), which begins:
For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.
And the penultimate paragraph is:
Today we wield both kind of uncleftish doings in weapons, and kernelish splitting gives us heat and bernstoneness. We hope to do likewise with togethermelting, which would yield an unhemmed wellspring of work for mankindish goodgain.
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.
"Uncleftish Beholding" appeared in the Mid-December 1989 issue of the magazine ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT and was reprinted in Anderson's collection ALL ONE UNIVERSE, and may be my favorite Anderson story. Wikipedia reports that "Douglas Hofstadter, in discussing the piece in his book 'Le Ton beau de Marot', jocularly refers to the use of only Germanic roots for scientific pieces as 'Ander-Saxon.'" [-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Quote of the Week:
If there were a verb meaning 'to believe falsely,' it
would not have any significant first person, present
indicative.
--Ludwig Wittgenstein
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