THE MT VOID
11/10/23 -- Vol. 42, No. 19, Whole Number 2301

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Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 9 (BLACKBERRY, IT'S A WONDERFUL KNIFE)
(film reviews by Mark R. Leeper
and Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE DOWNLOADED by Robert J. Sawyer (audio book review
by Joe Karpierz)
This Week's Reading ("Year's Best" anthologies)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 9 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)

This is the ninth batch of mini-reviews:

BLACKBERRY (2023): BLACKBERRY is a semi-fictional telling of the
history of the Blackberry phone, much as THE SOCIAL NETWORK was for
Facebook. It has an introduction by Sir Arthur C, Clarke which
talks about uses for cell phones that fits right in with what we
saw during the pandemic. The main characters are "Mike
Lazaridis"--inept, quiet, and easily pushed around, but also the
owner of the company (RIM)--and "Douglas Fregin"--too self-assured,
too loud, and thinking that he runs RIM. At the start of the film,
the staff of RIM uses its only(!) phone line for personal dial-up
Internet. "Jim Balsillie" takes over, in an incandescent rage at
how everything is being run.

A lot of the plot is somewhat accurate, but although the characters
have the same names as the people in real life, they apparently
bear little resemblance to those real-life counterparts (hence the
quotation marks). It's a fascinating movie, though not quite up
the level of THE SOCIAL NETWORK, THE CROOKED E--THE UNSHREDDED
TRUTH ABOUT ENRON, or for that matter WALL STREET, but take it all
with several grains of salt.

Released theatrically 12 May 2023. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4), or 6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21867434/reference>

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

IT'S A WONDERFUL KNIFE (2023): It seems an odd tradition for the
film industry to make films with violent murders for the Christmas
season, but that's show business. IT'S A WONDERFUL KNIFE has a
serial killer wandering the streets killing people on Christmas Eve.

You can tell Angel Falls is a great place, because it's full of gay
and interracial relationships, including gay, interracial
relationships. (And the first person to die is not
African-American.) But there is a nasty real estate developer who
wants to ruin it all, with a commercial development called Water's
Cove.

All the descriptions of this film seem to latch onto the idea that
the "alternate town" is an actual alternate reality (assuming that
is not an oxymoron) rather than a dream or vision. I'm not sure
that's a major change, especially with the explanation the film
eventually gives. Another change is that the main character is
much younger than George Bailey (gotta grab the young demographic)
and female.

The biggest problem is why, after killing the psycho killer in our
world, our main character thinks things would be better if she had
never been born. With George Bailey, at least there is some reason
for that belief, Yes, I suppose it could be just saying, "I wish I
had never been born," but that is drifting back into dream/vision
again.

There are nods to IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE: Angel Falls rather than
Bedford Falls, a reference to being a Clarence, etc. There are
also nods to current political situations. Other than that, it's
pretty much your basic slasher film. [-mrl/ecl]

Released theatrically 10 November 2023. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4), or
6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27619382/reference>

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

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

TOPIC: THE DOWNLOADED by Robert J. Sawyer (copyright 2023, Audible
Originals, 5 hours and 39 minutes, ASIN: B0CKTV55X9, performed by
Brendan Fraser, Luke Kirby, Vanessa Sears, Colm Feore, Andrew
Phung, full cast) (audio book review by Joe Karpierz)

I've been reading Robert J. Sawyer's works since 1995's THE
TERMINAL EXPERIMENT, a finalist for the Best Novel Hugo in 1996.
That novel didn't win the award that year, but to be fair, it was
up against some pretty heavy competition (which is not to say that
it wasn't heavy competition to the other finalists). Folks who
have read my reviews over the years know that I've enjoyed his
work. He's won more awards than I can count, including the Hugo
(HOMINIDS), Nebula (THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT), and John W. Campbell
Memorial Award (MINDSCAN), just to name a few (I mean, we could be
here all day listing out the awards he's won, including the Aurora,
Seiun, and others). While he's never stopped writing, he's been
off the radar when it comes to fiction awards (although he's
received all sorts of lifetime achievement awards) since 2012.
This is a mystery to me, as I feel his writing has gotten better in
the last decade. Maybe it's the time he's spending between novels
that is giving that result. Whatever the reason, it's a welcome
trend.

Which brings me to THE DOWNLOADED, an Audible Original. It's a
departure from 2020's THE OPPENHEIMER ALTERNATIVE, but a return to
the type of story that Sawyer is known to write. It's a mix of
science and technology with religion, with more than a few moral
and ethical questions thrown in along the way. It's also
compelling, fast paced, and compact. There's no wasted filler
here. And the novel is performed (rather than read) by a stellar
cast, led by Oscar winner Brendan Fraser.

The year is 2059, and technology exists such that people can be put
into cryonic suspension while their minds are still awake within a
massive quantum computer. There obviously can be many uses for
this technology, and Sawyer explores a couple of different ones,
and that exploration makes for some fascinating storytelling.
There are two groups of people that undergo this cryonic
suspension. One is a group of astronauts that is getting ready to
make a one-way interstellar voyage to colonize a far distant
planet. The other is a group of convicts who agreed to serve their
sentences in this unique prison. In both cases, with the aid of
the aforementioned quantum computer, the time they experience
within virtual reality is different from what passes in reality.
The convict we do follow, Roscoe Koudoulian, is a convicted
murderer who will serve his twenty-year sentence in the virtual
reality while only a few months pass by in the real world. The
astronauts, including Dr. Jurgen Haas, will spend 500 "real" years
in cryosleep traveling to the new planet. And yes, quantum
entanglement allows the downloading of the astronauts' minds across
the vast interstellar distances. After all, the quantum computer
resides on the earth--they won't just take it with them.

Of course, as one would expect, something goes terribly, terribly
wrong. I mean, that's the way of these things, right?

The story unfolds via a series of interviews conducted by a
mysterious entity, whose identity is revealed later in the novel.
This is certainly not the first time this technique has been used
in literature, and Sawyer uses it effectively and masterfully to
extract the backgrounds, motivations, and histories of the
characters. Through the series of interviews, we learn how the two
very different groups react to the situation they're in. Oh, did I
mention that both groups woke up and were downloaded back into
their bodies under circumstances they weren't expecting? As in,
the astronauts woke up on time but still on earth, and the convicts
over-served their sentences by hundreds of years? The two groups
have to learn to live and work together in the world in which they
find themselves. And oh yeah, there's another catastrophe on the
way. Because of course there is. And don't forget that mysterious
entity. So yes, there's a lot on their plates.

And yes, as previously stated, Sawyer does deal with many moral,
ethical and political questions and situations. One of them is
quite new, facilitated by the onset of the cryonic suspension
technology, and one is as old as the hills. But asking and
addressing these questions is absolutely nothing new in science
fiction. Science fiction is nothing if not political, and has
always addressed moral and ethical issues. These are the backbone
of this story, and what makes it a great story.

I cannot possibly say enough about the production of the novel.
This isn't just a narration by a bunch of high powered actors; this
is a full scale production with all sorts of audio effects used to
immerse the listener into the story. In fact, the novel is
recorded using Dolby Atmos, so if your listening device is capable
of producing that sound the novel should be listened to that way.
Audible has assembled an award-winning cast, and their
professionalism shows through in the performance. I've listened to
full cast productions in the past, but this is the first time I've
listened to one with full audio effects. And while it is short,
clocking in at under 6 hours (I see that the print edition, when it
is released in May is going to be 180 pages long), it's as long as
it needs to be.

Sawyer's work continues to get better as time passes. Both the
OPPENHEIMER ALTERNATIVE and THE DOWNLOADED are his best works in
years, and I'm not trying to downplay his other novels. These two
are just that good. I highly recommend both, but they each appeal
to different audiences. THE DOWNLOADED is a terrific science
fiction novel, one of the best I've read in 2023. It's the kind of
novel I've been wanting to read in a long time, and I sure hope to
see more like this one in the future. [-jak]

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

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

Three years ago, James Davis Nicoll had a column about THE BEST
SCIENCE FICTION STORIES 1949 edited by Everett F. Bleiler and
T. E. Dikty--the very first "Year's Best" of science fiction
stories (it ran from 1949 to 1954, along with a "Year's Best SF
Novels", 1952-1954). Through the years many other editors have
taken up the baton: Judith Merril (1956-1968), Lester del Rey
(1972-1976), Donald A. Wollheim (1965-1990), Terry Carr
(1972-1987), Gardner Dozois (1984-2018), David Hartwell & Kathryn
Cramer (1996-2013), Jonathan Strahan (2007-2019), Rich Horton
(2006-2021), ... You could even include Isaac Asimov if you want
to count his retrospective "Great SF" series (though the choosing
was reportedly done by Martin H. Greenberg, and Asimov just wrote
the introductions to each story).

My favorite series these days is the one from HarperCollins, as
part of their "Best American [xyz]", where "xyz" could be "Science
Fiction and Fantasy", "Essays", "Mystery Stories", "Science and
Nature Writing", and so on. (There was also a short-lived
"European Fiction" series.) The primary editor is John Joseph
Adams, but each year has a different co-editor, and what I like is
how (at least in the "Science Fiction and Fantasy" series) works
are chosen from sources I would never have known about. The
stories chosen may not be the "best" (and by whose choice and what
metric?), but they are a way for readers to find really good
stories that they might not otherwise have seen. (The major
drawback, of course, is that all the stories must be American.)

That's what I liked about the Datlow & Windling series of "Best
Horror & Fantasy" (though I pretty much read only the Windling
fantasy choices)--it wasn't full of familiar stories from familiar
sources.

(And there are two types of "hidden gems": stories from science
fiction and fantasy sources that do not have a big circulation, and
stories from *non*-science fiction and fantasy sources that people
who read only/primarily in the field almost definitely missed.
(Someone might have noticed a science fiction story in PLAYBOY, but
what about something from a college literary magazine, or an
English-language magazine published in another country?) Clearly
even the best editor cannot read everything, but they can certainly
do a better job than I can. [-ecl]

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

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net


O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.
--Saint Augustine

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