THE MT VOID
02/24/23 -- Vol. 41, No. 35, Whole Number 2264

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Correction to ORPHANS OF THE SKY (correction
by Joe Karpierz)
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in March (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
"Lost in the Moment and Found" by Seanan McGuire
(audio book review by Joe Karpierz)
FLESH GORDON (letters of comment by Hal Heydt
and John Halpenny)
The MT VOID (letter of comment by Guy Lillian III)
This Week's Reading (WEIRD THINGS CUSTOMERS SAY IN
BOOKSTORES) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: Correction to ORPHANS OF THE SKY (correction by Joe
Karpierz)

Ugh. Rereading the Heinlein review before I post it to Goodreads
and Amazon. In the review I said that the dwarf (Bobo) that
captured Hugh Hoyland was two-headed. Bobo was not two-headed.
Joe-Jim was, which I did state correctly.

Sorry about that. [-jak]

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

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

Meetings in Middletown are in-person; meetings in Old Bridge are
Zoomed, at least through the winter season. The best way to get
the latest information is to be on the mailing lists for them.

March 2, 2023 (MTPL): STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982) &
novel by Vonda N. McIntyre
<https://epdf.pub/wrath-of-khan.html>
March 23, 2023 (OBPL): ORLANDO by Virginia Woolf (Zoomed)
April 6, 2023 (MTPL): ORLANDO (1992) & novel by Virginia Woolf
May 25, 2023 (OBPL): ATTACK SURFACE by Cory Doctorow

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

TOPIC: Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in March (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)

April may be the cruellest month, but March is the hardest to do a
TCM pick for, because every year they do "31 Days of Oscar" and run
pretty much all the same films every year. They're good films, but
how many times can one recommend NETWORK? (Okay, the last time we
did so was nine years ago.)

So here are a couple of worthy films which may have been
recommended before, but are worth re-watching:

Back in my earliest days of film reviewing I was frequently asked
what was the film I thought was the best film I could recommend.
It was a Quatermass film. But that was hardly fair because I was
such a fanatic on science fiction. What was my best non-SF film?
I would choose A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Henry VIII insisted all his
loyal lords endorse his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his
royal marriage to Anne Boleyn. The acting is first rate.

[A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (1966), Sunday, March 27, 8:00 PM]

LOST HORIZON (1937) is one of Frank Capra's rare forays into
fantasy. It is based on a James Hilton's novel. Four Americans,
including a famous diplomat, in civil-war-torn China escape only to
find they have been kidnapped. Expecting death at any moment they
are taken by airplane high into the majestic mountains of Tibet to
Shangri-La a mystical place where peace and consideration rule and
removed from the stresses of the "civilized" world, people
naturally live for hundreds of years. When first shown the film
was hated by the audience. Capra made an instant decision to cut
the credits from the first reel and splice them onto the second
reel, and to throw out the first reel. It has never been found but
instead of a slow start the viewer is immediately dropped onto a
Chinese airfield in chaos. This was a radical change in style from
a dignified slow start to a sudden drop into the middle of the
plot. The story grabbed the audience and never let go. The film
stars Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Edward Everett Horton, and Sam
Jaffe.

[LOST HORIZON (1937), Wednesday, March 22, 11:45PM]

Other films of the fantastic of note in March:
03/02 4:30 AM Mighty Joe Young (1949)
03/07 6:00 AM Gulliver's Travels (1939)
03/07 2:15 PM 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T., The (1953)
03/07 4:00 PM Jungle Book (1942)
03/07 10:30 PM 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
03/11 1:15 AM The Time Machine (1960)
03/11 3:15 AM Destination Moon (1950)
03/11 5:00 AM Forbidden Planet (1956)
03/15 2:00 PM Seven Days in May (1964)
03/22 8:00 PM Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
03/22 9:45 PM The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
03/22 11:45 PM Lost Horizon (1937)
03/23 2:15 AM The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
03/23 4:15 AM tom thumb (1958)
03/23 6:00 AM A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
03/23 8:30 AM Brigadoon (1954)
03/24 8:00 PM Dr. Strangelove (1964)
03/24 9:45 PM Network (1976)
03/25 12:00 AM The Great Dictator (1940)
03/31 10:00 PM Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)
04/01 12:00 AM Poltergeist (1982)
04/01 2:00 AM What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

[-mrl/ecl]

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

TOPIC: "Lost in the Moment and Found" by Seanan McGuire (copyright
2023, Macmillan Audio, 4 hours and 53 minutes, ASIN: B0B1JPP4PB,
narrated by Jesse Vilinsky) (audio book review by Joe Karpierz)

"Lost in the Moment and Found" is the eighth entry in Seanan
McGuire's "Wayward Children" series. There is a danger that the
story gets stale when you hit the eighth book, and that repetition
can set in. I looked back at my review of the seventh book, "Where
the Drowned Girls Go", and I saw that I made the same point, and
went on from there, and I certainly wasn't very positive about the
book or the series at that point I suppose that's a bit unfair, as
the first few stories in the series were fresh and different, but
as the series went on the message was burying the story.

And then along came "Lost in the Moment and Found". This entry is a
standalone story in the series, and that fact alone breathes a bit
of fresh air into the saga. Eleanor West's school barely has a
mention in this story--and it comes at an appropriate time--but the
rest of the premise is the same. Young child runs away from her
situation, finds a door, walks through it, and finds herself in a
mystical, magical place wherein she learns a lesson or three. What
is different this time is that the message of a person being who
they are and accepting who they are (and all the rest of the
messages that come with that) is not the point of the story. Oh
yes, there's a message, but it's a different kind of message, one
that should make us all think about the things we want and the
things we get.

Antoinette--Antsy, because she can never sit still--witnesses her
father dying at Target on one of their daddy-daughter days out
(this is not a spoiler as it happens right at the beginning of the
story). It's a traumatic event, of course, and a little of her
dies inside. She has, after all, lost her father. It is the first
of many things that she will lose in the course of the story. Her
mother remarries, and it doesn't take very long for Antsy to
determine that he is not a good man, and he doesn't make any effort
to hide it.

It is at this juncture that the crisis point occurs, the crisis
that sends Antsy towards her door. McGuire warns us ahead of time
of the disturbing act. While the act never occurs, it's pretty
clear what the new husband intends. He certainly is a creepy
individual, and Antsy is correct to run away. She finds her door,
and ends up in a shop where lost things are found. Clearly, Antsy
is lost herself, and lost any number of things, including her
father, family, and childhood.

She is taken in the old woman that runs the shop and her talking
magpie assistant. She learns to work in the shop, and throughout
her time there gets to visit any number of worlds through the doors
that are in the shop. She's very happy with her situation, but she
does miss her mother. But one day she makes the discovery that
everything comes with a price. The price is high, and it cost her
something she can never get back.

"Lost in the Moment and Found" is a return to form in the "Wayward
Children" series. While it's not the best in the series--my
personal favorite is "Down Among the Sticks and Bones"--it's pretty
close. It will be interesting to see how McGuire ends the series
with the ninth and final entry in the series.

Jesse Vilinsky is a capable narrator. I don't know that I've heard
her narrate anything prior to this book, and as usual I don't feel
as if I'm capable of commenting on a narrator with any authority.
The most I can say is that she did nothing to take me out of the
story. I probably need to listen to her narrate a few more books
before I can form a good opinion of her narrating abilities. [-jak]

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

TOPIC: FLESH GORDON (letters of comment by Hal Heydt and John
Halpenny)

In response to Heath Row's comments on FLESH GORDON in the 02/17/23
issue of the MT VOID, Hal Heydt writes:

[Heath Row writes,] "The producers even edited the movie to avoid
an X rating, in the end earning a rating of R." [-hr]

IIRC, it was originally released as X-rated and it was a later edit
that got a version an R rating. [-hh]

John Halpenny adds:

Long ago, it was a midnight movie on Canadian television, and I'm
pretty sure that version was X rated. [-jh]

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

TOPIC: The MT VOID (letter of comment by Guy Lillian III)

In response primarily to the 01/27/23 issue of the MT VOID, Guy
Lillian III writes in THE ZINE DUMP #57:

MT Void Vol. 41, No. 31, Whole Number 2260:

Reviews and thoughts on SF in whatever form, books, films, cave
carvings--you can expect almost anything from Evelyn and Mark,
energetic and entertaining. This issue--latest as of the end of
February; there will have been more--gives the results of the
Online Critics Movie Awards, which--like many other critics'
groups--went ape over EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. (I prefer
TAR and the new version of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, but who
cares what I think?) More to the fannish point, Evelyn takes on
problems she sees with the Chengdu Worldcon, and there are plenty,
and they are not trivial. I commend her for voicing them, and
recommend this weekly e-zine wholeheartedly. [-gl]

Evelyn notes:

Most of these problems with Chengdu have been voiced by others; I
merely collected them into one list (with my comments). The one
about the Hugo packet was not one I had seen before, though. [-ecl]

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

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

While I was searching the library catalog for books about
bookstores, I found WEIRD THINGS CUSTOMERS SAY IN BOOKSTORES by Jen
Campbell (Harry N. Abrams, ISBN 978-1-468-30893-8), and decided to
read it, or more specifically to read the Spanish translation,
COSAS RARAS QUE SE OYEN EN LAS LIBRERIAS (translated by Bernardo
Dominguez Reyes) (Malpaso, ISBN 978-8-415-99687-3), because the
latter was available via Hoopla, while I would have to request an
inter-library loan for the original. And as a bonus, the Spanish
translation has an additional chapter of things heard in Spanish
bookshops. The latter has an exchange that probably would not make
sense (without a footnote) to non-Spanish audiences: a customer
asks for EL LAZARILLO DE TORMES, but says not to ask him who the
author is because he cannot remember. EL LAZARILLO DE TORMES is
famously anonymous. (Someone else asks his companion who wrote the
Bible, and is told "Jesus Christ.") Another customer is looking
for THE CANTERVILLE GHIST--by Garcia Lorca. (No, it's by Oscar
Wilde.) Of course, the person who said he looked through the
entire Shakespear section but couldn't find OF MICE AND MEN was in
a British bookstore (albeit a Welsh one).

There are the usual questions of "Do you sell X?" where X could be
coffee, ice, screwdrivers, condoms, yarn, ... Well, the last one
was asked of a bookshop called Ripping Yarns, so it is not an
entirely unreasonable question. There are multiple instances of
people wanting to drop off their (very young) children while they
go elsewhere. And so on.

This is the sort of book best borrowed from the library--it's very
"frivolous" and not something to be re-read. You could give it to
your favorite bookseller, but they have probably seen it already.
[-ecl]

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

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net


A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of
ignorance is just as bad.
--Bob Edwards

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