THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
04/29/22 -- Vol. 40, No. 44, Whole Number 2221

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
My Picks for Turner Classic Movies in May (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Jackie Chan Vs Buster Keaton Vs Harold Lloyd (pointer
by Greg Frederick)
FIDDLER'S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN (film review
by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
Mini Reviews by Evelyn, Part 4 (TURN BACK THE CLOCK (1933),
AS THE WORLD TURNS (1937/2019)) (film reviews
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
COMFORT ME WITH APPLES, THE TIME MACHINE, SEVERANCE,
NIGHTMARE ALLEY, END OF ETERNITY,
and LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (letter of comment
by Heath Row)
This Week's Reading (HERO OF TWO WORLDS, ROME'S REVOLUTION)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)

Meetings are still fluctuating between in-person and Zoom. The
best way to get the latest information is to be on the mailing
lists for them.

May 5, 2022 (MTPL), 5:30PM, in-person: S1M0NE (2002) [SIMONE] &
novel "Remake" (1995) by Connie Willis <https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/connie-willis/41753-remake.html>
(reprinted in Willis: "Terra Incognita" &
"Futures Imperfect")
May 26, 2022 (OBPL), 7:00PM, ZOOM: THE DREAMING JEWELS
by Theodore Sturgeon

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

TOPIC: My Picks for Turner Classic Movies in May (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)

It is hard to imagine a film with a less distinct title than is MY
NAME IS JULIA ROSS. The name Julia Ross is one not likely to be
remembered by anyone. This title was a good deal more familiar in
its own time. The story appeared in magazine form, in a radio
play, and in a motion picture. In this strange mystery everybody
seems to insist the main character's name was something else; in
the mansion where Ross finds herself she is told she is someone
else with a name she does recognize. Her only connection to the
name she remembers is her insistence that her name was really Julia
Ross. This is a what-is-going-on sort of mystery. One can see
ideas that would later also show up in NORTH BY NORTHWEST in this
film.

[MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS (1945), May 22, 1:00AM]

Evelyn notes:

While the science fiction and fantasy films are thin on the ground
in May, there is Turner's usual Memorial Day marathon of war films,
running from the evening of Thursday, May 26, through Tuesday, May
31.

Alas, this precludes them doing a Christopher Lee centenary
celebration on May 27, the 100th anniversary of Lee's birth. In
fact, they have *no* Christopher Lee movies in May. Through the
magic of home video, however, you can construct your own. Note:
Lee's favorite movie was THE WICKER MAN (1973), so be sure to
include that.

[-mrl/ecl]

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

TOPIC: Jackie Chan Vs Buster Keaton Vs Harold Lloyd (pointer by
Greg Frederick)

Greg Frederick writes:

Cool action and stunt filled video... I often wondered why Jackie
Chan's stunts seemed to be comical, well now I know why.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stuLoOXkutI>

[-gf]

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

TOPIC: FIDDLER'S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN (film review by Mark
R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)

FIDDLER'S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN, directed by Daniel Raim, and
written by Daniel Raim and Michael Sragow, is more than a
"making-of" documentary. The people involved with making the film
talk not just about making the film, but their own backgrounds and
emotions, and how they affected their work. The documentary covers
backers' initial skepticism about the stage play, and the film, and
then covers the making of the film from multiple points of view.

NOTE: See the movie before the documentary; it will not work as
well the other way around. (On the other hand, it is probably
unlikely that there will be many people who haven't seen the
original film who would watch this.)

The film FIDDLER ON THE ROOF enhance the stage play with
photographic views of the various lifestyles in Anatevka,
beautifully brought to the screen by Norman Jewison. As one would
expect, this documentary is illustrated by numerous clips that are
familiar from the film,

It is worth noting that Jewison, his name notwithstanding, is not
Jewish. In fact, he tells the story of growing up in Toronto with
the other children in his school thinking he was Jewish. The
various ramifications of that led him to a life of supporting
social justice, so it is not surprising that one of his other
Academy Award nominations was for IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT.
(Another was for MOONSTRUCK, a film with many similarities to
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.)

Jewison had directed musical variety shows on television, a
background that served him well while directing FIDDLER ON THE
ROOF. He talks about the various people considered for Tevye
(including some surprises). As it tells the story of each character
being cast one feels like cheering for that casting. This is the
story of Tevye the Milkman and his five daughters, but the only
ones interviewed are the three oldest daughters, and the stories of
their casting and experiences are interleaved, which does tend to
make them less individualized.

John Williams was the musical director of the film, a fact not
known by many. He is better-known for such little films as STAR
WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, etc., etc. (Williams is
considered the most popular film composer of all time.)

Other people involved in, or affecting, the production who are
interviewed or discussed include production designer Robert Boyle,
violinist Itzak Stern, Roman Vishniak, and Marc Chagall.

The Anatevka village they produced for the film seems almost
overdone in its atmosphere of the Russian Jewish life of the time
in which the film is set (1905 and the few years following).

In places this "making if" documentary is as touching as the film
itself. It is mentioned that the filming location, Yugoslavia, is
no more, just as Anatevka is no more. What isn't mentioned
(because the film was made too soon) is that this "Russian" village
of Anatevka is actually in what is now Ukraine, and references to
the area around Anatevka, and Kyiv specifically, as being in
Russia, are both outdated and topical, as are the scenes of the
Anatevkans being attacked by Russian troops and being forced out of
their homes as exiles.

Released 04/29/21. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13660266/reference>

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

[-mrl/ecl]

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

TOPIC: Mini Reviews by Evelyn, Part 4 (film reviews by Evelyn
C. Leeper)

This month I'll review two films that ran on Turner Classic Movies,
one a time travel fantasy, and one a story of a future war and a
mad scientist.

TURN BACK THE CLOCK (1933): This is a fantasy film that showed up
on Turner Classic Movies in April during their Thursday movies
about time. Most of these were familiar (e.g., THE TIME MACHINE),
but this was unfamiliar. Also, the plot is familiar: Joe Gimlet
(Lee Tracy) regrets the decisions he has made and wishes he could
live his adult life over. And guess what? He is hit by a car,
knocked unconscious, and wakes up back in 1914. The problem is
that he is even more of an idiot than William Feathersmith (Albert
Salmi) in the "Twilight Zone" episode "Of Late I Think of
Cliffordville", or Paul Driscoll (Ana Andrews) in "No Time Like the
Past". Not only does Gimlet keep telling people that he knows
what's going to happen, but he cannot seem to remember that he is
in his past, and also cannot remember things like the date of the
Armistice (even though he was a soldier) or when the stock market
crash happened. This may be because Tracey was primarily a comedy
actor, and this film decided it needed to be a comedy. Most of the
plot seems to be about how he chose the wrong woman to marry and
keeps talking about that. I suppose it's amusing enough, but
considering how much he presumably knows and tries to change, there
is no real alternate history to speak of.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024704/reference>

AS THE EARTH TURNS (1937/2019): This one on Turner Classics Movies
is a real curiosity: a silent film shot in 1937 but not released
until 2019. Director Richard Lyford, who died in 1985, made
several award-winning documentaries, but this very early attempt of
his languished until clips appeared in a "trailer park" reel and
people became interested. It's about a future war, and the best
that can be said about it is that it is not totally inept. There
are some weird "goofs" in the script. One scene takes place in
Washington, D.C., at "the Equatorial Time Center of the United
States", whatever that means. There is also a "tidal wave" in
Great Salt Lake, which has no tides.

The model work is painfully amateurish, and the staging overly
dramatic, with acting very much at the overdone level common to
silent films. The music (by Edward Hartman) was apparently added
recently, but Hartman wrote in the style of silent films, keeping
everything consistent. (This is unlike Giorgio Moroder for
METROPOLIS or the Alloy Orchestra for various films.)

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9203354/reference>

What others are saying: <https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/as_the_earth_turns_2019>

Both of these films may still be available on "Watch TCM" (or
whatever it's called, or may show up in the future.

[-ecl]

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

TOPIC: THE EXTRACTIONIST by Kimberly Unger (Publication Date July
12, 2022, Tachyon Publications, ISBN: 9781616963767) (book review
by Joe Karpierz)

When I reviewed NUCLEATION, the debut novel by Kimberly Unger, I
said in part "The story has really just begun, and I'm interested
in finding out what comes next, whether it's in the NUCLEATION
universe or something else from Kimberly Unger. I believe she's a
writer to watch." Unger's new novel, THE EXTRACTIONIST, has done
nothing to change my mind about that assertion.

Eliza McKay is an Extractionist. She didn't necessarily start out
as an Extractionist. She messed around in a dangerous way with
nanotechnology that put her in a bad way with the law. Her
licenses for that kind of work were revoked, and now she is working
to get back her licenses and respectability by taking contracts to
go into the Swim (think cyberspace) where people upload into
digital persona for various reasons and get them out when they're
stuck in there. She's really good at it. She has a high-powered
computer system wired into her brain, and the combination of that
computer system and her programming and virtual reality skills make
her a highly desired Extractionist.

She takes a government job to go into the Swim and find the digital
persona of Mike Miyamoto, an operative who is investigating a
criminal case. The goal is to preserve the evidence that he has
found there. The problem is that he has found something so
disturbing that the persona doesn't want to come out of the Swim.
With McKay's employers - yes, the government, but the explanation
is not as straightforward as you might think, and that's not so
surprising given the nature of the story - not being the only ones
trying to retrieve Mike's persona, McKay must race against time and
her opponents in an effort to get Mike's persona out of the Swim.
When McKay is actively attacked by a malicious program in the Swim
during one attempt to find Mike - a program dubbed the Beast - it
becomes obvious that there is more going on here than she bargained
for.

McKay runs into what seems like non-stop attacks that are designed
from preventing her from achieving her goal. In addition to
attacks by the Beast in the Swim, there are hired thugs who break
into her home in an effort to hack into her cybernetic implants,
and she is injured in an accident when her self-driving vehicle
goes on the fritz-- something that never happens in her world (but
we're still worried about here in our day). What she discovers
throughout the course of the novel is a massive, complex coverup
involving a big corporation and the government.

Unger has woven an action-packed tale that is a spy thriller with
believable science, technology, and situations that keep the reader
engaged. At one point in my life I wrote software for a living,
but I can only dream of being able to write the code that McKay
does in the novel or that Unger does in real life. In order to
make this story work the Swim and the interactions with it must be
believable, and while maybe some of the concepts are beyond our
abilities right now, I never felt as if what McKay was doing was
not achievable. Maybe not in the near future, sure, but somewhere
along the line it could happen. Combine that with a fast paced and
complex tale of corporate and governmental intrigue, Unger has
given the world another winner.

I said at the top that Unger is a writer to watch. With what I
feel are two winning novels under her belt, she's not only a writer
to watch but a writer that will be contributing great stories to
the science fiction field for a very long time to come. [-jak]

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

TOPIC: COMFORT ME WITH APPLES, THE TIME MACHINE, SEVERANCE,
NIGHTMARE ALLEY, END OF ETERNITY, and LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (letter of
comment by Heath Row)

In response to the 02/11/22, 02/18/22, and 03/04/22 issues of the
MT VOID, Heath Row writes:

I recently received MT Void #2210, 2211, and 2213 via the National
Fantasy Fan Federation franking service. N3F president George
Phillies often distributes copies of the fanzine, and it's a
welcome occasional presence in my inbox. Thank you for publishing
so consistently--weekly!--and for reviewing and recommending so
many interesting books and movies.

In #2210, Joe Karpierz's review of Catherynne M. Valente's COMFORT
ME WITH APPLES was intriguing enough that I've added it to my
reading list. $18 feels a bit dear for a 100-page hardcover, and
the book costs $11 as an ebook, but perhaps the library has it
available. The description reminded me a little bit of the novels
of Paul Tremblay (THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD), Shari Lapena
(THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR), and Liz Nugent (LYING IN WAIT). Grocery
store book rack thrillers, basically, or any book with a title
including "next door" or "across the street." Good stuff.

Evelyn's comments on the recent book discussion group selection, H.
G. Wells's THE TIME MACHINE made me yearn for a regular book group.
I've dialed into a library SF discussion group across the
country--and read its selected title twice--but I could use
something more frequent with people I know otherwise through fandom
or locally. Maybe that's something I can explore through LASFS or
the N3F. I've been enjoying the short fiction of Wells recently
and highly recommend "The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes," "The
Crystal Egg," "The New Accelerator," "The Star," "The Magic Shop,"
"A Vision of Judgment," and "The Queer Story of Brownlow's
Newspaper," as well as the 2001 television miniseries THE INFINITE
WORLDS OF H. G. WELLS, of which I've only watched one episode.
I'll watch another.

Your comments on SEVERANCE in #2211 were my first indication that
the show is science fiction! I thought it was just another sad
workplace drama or satire. Didn't even know it was set in Bell
Labs Holmdel, which is an attraction in and of itself. I'll have
to reassess and consider watching. I'm surprised Cathode Ray
hasn't mentioned the show in his N3F TV column on SF, fantasy, and
horror programs, "Rabid Ears."

I applaud Mark's enjoyment of NIGHTMARE ALLEY. After watching the
recent movie, I read the novel--which is a doozy. If you haven't
read it, it's even sharper and more bleak than the film. William
Lindsay Gresham sure could write. We also watched the original
movie, which is more solidly noir than the new film, but the ending
was a bit of a disappointment. Not at all what we expected, and
while almost as bleak a turnabout at the end--returning to the
beginning in a different way--it's not at all true to the book.
Still, all versions are highly recommended, especially the novel.

Even though Isaac Asimov's END OF ETERNITY might not have held up
well over the years, I haven't read it yet, so I'm curious about
the time patrol and "basic state." Having just read Robert A.
Heinlein's THE DOOR INTO SUMMER and watched a recent film
adaptation, time travel has its appeal in recent days. But I can
understand books not aging well. For example, I never really read
Tom Swift books when I was younger, but I recently turned to the
first installment, TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR-CYCLE to see what all
the fuss was about. I'm sure later editions smoothed out the
racist portrayals, but holy crow, the first edition was
enlightening in its inappropriate representations. There's a new
"Tom Swift Inventors' Academy" series that I'm sure is much more
vanilla and inoffensive.

And from #2213, we also enjoyed LAST NIGHT IN SOHO. I am
resonating strongly with your taste, which is a good indicator that
future reviews and recommendations will bode well.

See you next week! [-hr]

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

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

HERO OF TWO WORLDS: THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE IN THE AGE OF
REVOLUTION by Mike Duncan (Public Affairs Books, ISBN
978-1-5417-3033-5) is somehow vaguely dissatisfying to me, and I
think it is because it is neither fish nor fowl.

When I worked at Bell Labs, my department head insisted that the
tex of formal memoranda, reports, etc., should not use
contractions, an he also objected to words such as "amongst". (And
did not understand the correct use of "comprise", but that's a
whole other story.) Duncan is writing a "serious" book, but every
once in a while throws in informal usage such as "screwed up" or
"face plant", and also throws in the occasional sentence fragment.
These would be fine in a podcast, but I find them stumbling blocks
in reading this book. I understand that Duncan is normally writing
for his podcasts, where they would be fine, but I have to wonder
where Public Affairs Books' editor was.

That aside, the book is certainly well-researched and thorough
(Duncan moved to Paris for three years to be able to access all the
sources there). There is a bit more foreshadowing than I would
have chosen (e.g., "he hoped something something, but it was not to
be" sort of thing), but that may be just my taste. (For that
matter, perhaps my other objections are as well.) I'm not sure I
got much more out of this than I did from the "Revolutions"
podcasts, but for those not listening to them, it certainly covers
the territory.

Another book connected to Mike Duncan's podcasts and books is
ROME'S REVOLUTION: DEATH OF THE REPUBLIC AND BIRTH OF AN EMPIRE
(Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-199-73976-9) by Richard
Alston. This could serve as a follow-on to Duncan's THE STORM
BEFORE THE STORM: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
(Public Affairs Books, ISBN isbn). However, while Alston's book
may be one of the best covering the period of the first century
B.C.E. through the early first century C.E., there are a lot of
books covering this period. (There are also a lot of movies and
television shows, but don't trust any of those for accuracy. Only
HBO's ROME comes close on the historical figures, but the two main
characters are totally fictional.) Duncan's book is the only one I
know of that covers how the Republic got to a state leading to the
end of the Republic.

One paragraph definitely struck me as topical:

Earlier in the trip, [Auguste] Levasseur met some hard-core
Jacksonian partisans in the Pennsylvania militia who threatened to
take up arms if their man lost. After Adams won, he ran into them
again. "Well," Levasseur said, "the great question is decided, and
in a manner contrary to your hopes, what do you intend to do? How
soon do you lay siege to the capital?" They laughed. "You
recollect our threats," one said, "we went in truth to great
lengths, but our opponents disregarded it and acted properly. Now
that it is settled all we have to do is obey. We will support
Adams as zealously as if he were our candidate, but at the same
time shall keep a close watch on his administration and according
as it is good or bad we will defend or attack it. Four years is
soon past, and the consequences of a bad election are easily
obviated."

How times have changed! :-( [-ecl]

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

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net


The major advances in civilization are processes that
all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
--A. N. Whitehead

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