THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
04/01/22 -- Vol. 40, No. 40, Whole Number 2217

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Sending Address: evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
All material is the opinion of the author and is copyrighted by the
author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent or posted will be assumed authorized for
inclusion unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to eleeper@optonline.net
The latest issue is at <http://www.leepers.us/mtvoid/latest.htm>.
An index with links to the issues of the MT VOID since 1986 is at <http://leepers.us/mtvoid/back_issues.htm>.

Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 12 (MANDIBLES, FIRST DATE, DRIVE MY CAR)
(film reviews by Mark R. Leeper
and Evelyn C. Leeper)
Topical Films (letter of comment by Evelyn C. Leeper)
DANGEROUS VISIONS edited by Harlan Ellison (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
This Week's Reading (collecting short stories)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 12 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)

Here is the twelfth batch of mini-reviews, with movies featuring
cars in some fashion.

MANDIBLES (MANDIBULES): In MANDIBLES, two minor criminals find a
giant fly the size of a cocker spaniel in the trunk of a stolen car
and decide to train it to help them steal things (a la Oliver
Twist). The characters are as inept as those in a Coen Brothers
film, and the plot is also as strange. It also looks like the
filmmakers got many of their ideas from the 1958 version of THE
FLY. The film is in French, but with well-done subtitles which
are readable on all backgrounds.

Released theatrically 07/23/21; available on various streaming
services. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4), or 6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10375106/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mandibles>

FIRST DATE: The title is "FIRST DATE" and it is a first date that
none of the characters will ever forget. It starts as a mildly
vulgar comedy, but you cannot make a funny comedy with just people
you detest, and the tone changes to really downbeat and violent as
the film goes on. This is a film that has a Quentin Tarrantino
vibe. It also has a retro Southern California font for opening
credits, which makes it look like it will be lighter than it is.

Released theatrically 07/02/21; available on various streaming
services. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4), or 6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8897874/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/first_date_2021>

DRIVE MY CAR (DORAIBU MAI KA): This is a very slow-moving film
about a experimental theatrical director who has been recently
widowed. He is currently doing a multilingual version of "Uncle
Vanya", with cast members delivering lines in Chinese, Mandarin,
English, and Korean Sign Language. There are lines from "Uncle
Vanya" and other familiar plays worked into the plot. There are
also tensions among the cast members when they are not acting, as
well as between the director and the cast, and the director and his
driver, all of which take a long time to be explained. The film is
in Japanese, and the subtitles are often useless because they blend
into the background.

Released theatrically 11/24/21. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4), or
6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14039582/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/drive_my_car>

[-mrl/ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: DANGEROUS VISIONS edited by Harlan Ellison (copyright 1967,
Doubleday Science Fiction, Book Club Edition, 544pp) (book review
by Joe Karpierz)

Many of you who read my reviews may be asking yourself, "You mean
he hasn't read DANGEROUS VISIONS before?". Surely he has, and this
review is of a re-read of the book. I assure you that's not the
case. DANGEROUS VISIONS is fifty-five years old and I have never
read before now. This would also imply that I've not read AGAIN,
DANGEROUS VISIONS, and that is also true. So why now, fifty-five
years after its original publication (and granted, just a couple of
years before I became interested in reading science fiction), would
I pick up this well known and famous anthology? As readers may
know, J. Michael Straczynski, he of BABYLON 5 fame (among other
things) and the executor of Harlan Ellison's estate, has decided to
put together and publish the one book that Harlan could not: THE
LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS. I decided that since I respect and like
Straczynski's work, and I knew he would put together a great
anthology, I would read the first two Dangerous Visions books in
advance of the release of the final book. A discussion about
*that* book coming together is for another day and another writing.

Most of you have probably read DANGEROUS VISIONS and are familiar
with the idea for the book and the stories within it. To
summarize, the field of science fiction was changing, and in the
eyes of many--Ellison and Michael Moorcock just to name two--the
change was needed. It was time to break away from the old type of
stories, to tell new ones that would break long-standing taboos in
the field. Indeed, this book helped usher in the New Wave of
science fiction. It contained stories that were outside the
mainstream of science fiction, with topics and subject matter that
was avant garde at the time. Contributing authors were both new
and established. Veterans Theodore Sturgeon, Poul Anderson, Damon
Knight and Robert Silverberg (among others) are here, along with
relative newcomers to short fiction, such as Samuel R. Delany (and
we all know the stellar career he had).

There are thirty-three stories here, and in addition to the authors
I've already listed, I'll mention Philip Jose Farmer, Philip K.
Dick, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Larry Niven, Carol Emshwiller,
and R. A. Lafferty. Some of the authors in the book I read for the
first time when I read this book; others are familiar names.

This anthology was a big deal at the time, and in many ways set the
tone and direction for the field for the field going forward. I
decided to do a little bit of digging in the Science Fiction Awards
Database to see the honors that stories contained in DANGEROUS
VISIONS accumulated. The thing that should be noted is that back
in 1968, the year after the book was published, there were only two
major fiction awards presented: the Hugo and the Nebula. For the
Hugos, stories gathered two winners ("Riders of the Purple Wage" by
Philip Jose Farmer for Best Novella--tied with Anne McCaffrey's
"Weyr Search) and "Gonna Roll the Bones" by Fritz Leiber for Best
Novelette) and five total nominations (the aforementioned winners
plus "Faith of Our Fathers" by Philip K. Dick in the Novelette
category; and "Aye, and Gomorrah..." by Samuel R. Delany and "The
Jigsaw Man" by Larry Niven in the Short Story category. For the
Nebulas, there were two winners (the Leiber and the Delany), and
two other nominations (the Farmer, and "If All Men Were Brothers,
Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?", by Theodore Sturgeon in the
Novella category).

My favorite? By far, "Gonna Roll the Bones", by Fritz Leiber. And
I really could see that Delany was going to be a force, if he
wasn't already, with "Aye, and Gomorrah...". Honestly, I couldn't
get into "Riders of the Purple Wage". But six different stories
being at least nominated out of a total of thirty-three? That's
just under 20% of the stories (if I did my math right) in the
anthology and is absolutely amazing. Honestly, there are any
number of other stories here that could have been nominated for one
of the two awards, but as I look at the stories that did make the
nominations list, well, there's no shame in losing out. And, as
I've said before, with any anthology there are going to be some
stories that make you scratch your head.

I do understand why this anthology was a game changer for the
field, something new and different at the time it was published.
I'm fairly certain that if this book was published today, it would
not garner the attention that it did back then, simply because the
stories it contained back then influenced the short fiction that is
being written today. What was a dangerous vision back then is
simply another vision today. In that respect, the book did what it
was intended to do, and the field is better for it. [-jak]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Topical Films (letter of comment by Evelyn C. Leeper)

In response to my comments on topical films in the 03/25/22 issue
of the MT VOID, I want to add THE CONTENDER (2000). [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

I wrote a couple of months ago about DISCURSO E HISTORIA EN LA OBRA
NARRATIVA DE JORGE LUIS BORGES by Nicholas Emelio Alvarez. To go
with this I am also reading FICCIONES and EL ALEPH--or should I say
"El Aleph"s? Because there are at least five variant editions
(counting both Spanish and English):
- A 1949 Spanish edition with thirteen stories
- A 1952 Spanish edition with seventeen stories
- A 1971 Spanish edition with eighteen stories
- A (sort of) English edition [year unknown] titled THE ALEPH AND
OTHER STORIES 1922-1969 (translated by Andrew Hurley) with various
stories, but only some from EL ALEPH, and some from FICCIONES and
elsewhere,
- A 1970 English edition titled THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES
1933-1969, but translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni

Another English-language collection, LABYRINTHS, contains pieces
from a variety of Spanish collections, and has translations by
Donald Yates and James Irby. The only two comprehensive works of
Borges's fiction are the Spanish OBRAS COMPLETAS (three volumes,
plus a fourth of collaborations with other authors, which includes
non-fiction and poetry as well), and the English COLLECTED
FICTIONS, with translations by Andrew Hurley.

All this makes collecting all of Borges's fiction difficult for an
Anglophone. In Spanish, when the publishers assembled non-fiction
pieces they had previously missed in the first two volumes, at
least they did not re-issue a new, totally chronological set, but
just added a third volume.

All this will seem familiar to collectors of Mark Twain. Way back
in the day (1957, I think), Bantam issued "The Complete Short
Stories of Mark Twain". It wasn't. About the same time "The
Autobiography of Mark Twain" (both edited by Charles Neider) was
published. That was also inaccurate--Twain's true autobiography
was just recently published in three thick volumes.


There have been sets of Twain's writings, sets of a couple of dozen
books, but even those are probably incomplete. [-ecl]

===================================================================

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net


I feel more like when I woke up today than I do now.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)