THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/29/21 -- Vol. 40, No. 18, Whole Number 2195

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)
NIGHT OF THE DEMON (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
My Picks for Turner Classic Movies in November (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
NO TIME TO DIE (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
"The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
WOLFGANG (film review by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)
LICENCE TO KILL (letters of comment by Gary McGath and
Keith F. Lynch)
This Week's Reading (HINT FICTION, THINKING IN NUMBERS,
THE SCIENCE OF CAN AND CAN'T) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

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

Both groups have returned to the B.C. (Before Covid) schedules,
and the films will be shown as part of the Middletown meetings.

November 4 (MTPL), 5:30PM: Halloween Horror: NIGHT OF THE DEMON,
short story "Casting the Runes" by M. R. James
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9629>
November 18 (**NOTE DATE SHIFT**) (OBPL), 7:00PM: EXHALATION
by Ted Chiang: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate",
"Exhalation", and "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom"
<http://tinyurl.com/alchemists-gate-pdf>
<http://tinyurl.com/dizziness-of-freedom>
December 2 (MTPL), 5:30PM: Stanislaw Lem Centennial: PILOT PIRX'S
INQUEST (1979), short story "The Inquest" by Stanislaw Lem
<https://tinyurl.com/Pirx-More-Tales>

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

TOPIC: NIGHT OF THE DEMON (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Of the next Middletown film and fiction discussion(*), I have this
to say:

In NIGHT OF THE DEMON Dana Andrews plays an American skeptic who
goes to Britain to investigate the death of a fellow skeptic. This
draws him into a life or death conflict and sets him against a
powerful wizard. A slightly different version of this film goes
under the title CURSE OF THE DEMON. It is an adaptation of the
short story "Casting the Runes" by M. R. James. The film features
an excellent performance from Niall McGinnis as the wizard Julian
Karswell.

(*) "Film and fiction" rather than "film and book" because the film
is based on a short story contained in the book GHOST STORIES OF AN
ANTIQUARY 2.

[-mrl]

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

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

I have gotten myself in trouble before when I recommended the film
WATERSHIP DOWN, first as a film and later as a book. "Well, you
see, it is an animated film about a colony of rabbits uprooted from
their home and looking for a safe place to live. Well, they have
human-sized minds and interesting minds. If I remember Hazel is in
charge the security of the warren, but it is really led by Fiver, a
rabbit with psychic abilities." Richard Adams wrote the book and
shopped it around to twelve publishers before one was willing to
publish it. After that it remained at the top of the bestseller
list for eight months.

[WATERSHIP DOWN (1978), November 19, 6:15PM]

Evelyn notes there are also several "mini-fests" of interest:

Silent Euro SF/Horror:
11/01/2021 01:00 AM Metropolis (1926)
11/01/2021 03:45 AM Vampyr (1932)
11/01/2021 05:15 AM Haxan (1922)

Fairy Tales:
11/19/2021 06:00 AM The Glass Slipper (1955)
11/19/2021 07:45 AM Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)
11/19/2021 09:15 AM Beauty and the Beast (1946)
11/19/2021 11:00 AM tom thumb (1958)
11/19/2021 12:45 PM Gulliver's Travels (1939)
11/19/2021 02:15 PM The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)
11/19/2021 03:45 PM The Wonderful World of the Brothers
Grimm (1962)
11/19/2021 06:15 PM Watership Down (1978)

Horror Marathon:
11/23/2021 06:15 AM Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)
11/23/2021 08:00 AM The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
11/23/2021 10:00 AM The Tell-Tale Heart (1941)
11/23/2021 10:30 AM The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
11/23/2021 12:30 PM The Woman in White (1948)
11/23/2021 04:45 PM The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
11/23/2021 06:30 PM Dracula (1931)

And in the non-SF area, there is TCM's Veterans Day tribute
marathon:
11/10/2021 11:45 PM Malaya (1950)
11/11/2021 01:30 AM Background to Danger (1943)
11/11/2021 01:45 AM Malaya (1950)
11/11/2021 03:00 AM Manpower (1941)
11/11/2021 03:30 AM Background to Danger (1943)
11/11/2021 06:00 AM The Rack (1956)
11/11/2021 08:00 AM Action in the North Atlantic (1943)
11/11/2021 10:15 AM Bombardier (1943)
11/11/2021 12:00 PM Torpedo Run (1958)
11/11/2021 01:45 PM Fighter Squadron (1948)
11/11/2021 03:30 PM The Dirty Dozen (1967)
11/11/2021 06:15 PM Paths of Glory (1958)
11/11/2021 08:00 PM The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
11/11/2021 11:00 PM G.I. Blues (1960)
11/12/2021 01:00 AM Sergeant York (1941)
11/12/2021 03:30 AM Mister Roberts (1955)

[-mrl]

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

TOPIC: NO TIME TO DIE (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

The writers of the James Bond films have (tiresomely) played the
same April-Fools joke on the audience going back to THUNDERBALL.
In that film a crypt bore the initials "JB." But Death is ever-
present in Bond films as after he has passed his use-by date. It
is rather fantastic to keep expecting him to dodge all those
bullets fired intentionally and/or randomly, The stories were
becoming too familiar, too simple. Bond is thinking about the
irony that his former friends may become his current enemies and
vice versa. "Well," he concludes, "ya live long enough." That is
a sentiment very applicable to this film. Bond finds himself
facing down some of his old enemies to a musical score
incorporating old songs to the strains of "We have all the time in
the world." He is not rushing to the inevitable restage of "All
the Time in the World." There are lots of call-backs to call-out
souvenirs of previous films of the series, with enough time to
bring back familiar and popular touches from the progenitors of the
series.

This is just my opinion: Daniel Craig is the best James Bond. But
I have to say he is the ugliest actor to play James Bond. He has a
face like a prizefighter who has lost more than once. There are
times the script calls for him to be attractive. Maybe part of the
reason he is interesting playing Bond is that he is different from
the pack. It is like the case for Jean-Paul Belmondo. Ever
notice? [-mrl]

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

TOPIC: "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

Continuing my occasional comments on Sherlock Holmes stories:

1) I am certainly not the first to observe that no matter how
exalted the person, presenting a *public* possession as security
for what is evidently a private loan is not ethical.

2) He says, "Any injury to it would be almost as serious as its
complete loss," yet later when it is recovered in a damaged state,
no one seems overly concerned (although the concern seems to be
replacing any lost beryls, and the beryls are recovered).

3) That the banker thinks carrying the coronet with him an keeping
it in a drawer of a wooden dresser is safer than keeping it in the
bank's safe indicates that he doesn't think his bank is very secure
at all.

4) And when he has made the coronet insecure, he then tells his son
and his niece all about it.

5) Offering a reward makes the whole affair public, which will
certainly put the exalted personage in a very awkward spot for
having used the coronet as collateral.

6) It costs the banker 4000 ponds to recover the beryls, with
Holmes apparently claiming the 1000-pound reward as his fee.

[-ecl]

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

TOPIC: WOLFGANG (film review by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn
C. Leeper)

WOLFGANG is a basically a biography of celebrity chef Wolfgang
Puck, as well as a look at how he transformed the restaurant
industry. (This is also another film of food porn.) Some of what
is said seems to contradict what had been his story up to now. For
example, his abusive stepfather had been described as his mother's
second husband; in fact, she was unmarried when Wolfgang was born
and the stepfather was her first husband.

In the 1970s, being a chef was a blue-collar job. The owner of a
restaurant might be known, but not the chef. Food in the United
States was fairly terrible (think TV dinners). Puck changed that.
For example, he apparently invented the Asian chicken salad. He
also started the whole celebrity chef/food show culture. As he
laments early in the film over a small watermelon, the world is
speeding up for him.

How did he do this? After being a chef in France, Puck came to Los
Angeles to Ma Maison, which had a terrible reputation. He worked
to get fresher and higher ingredients, and also looked for new ways
to prepare them. The film reveals more of the stress between Puck
and Ma Maison owner Patrick Terrail (who claims Ma Maison's rise to
success was his doing, rather than Pucks).

Puck left Ma Maison over this conflict and opened Spago's in Los
Angeles. Spago's was the first serious restaurant to have an open
kitchen. Spago's customers were notable people in the film
industry, and Spago's also seated them based on status. After
Spago's in Los Angeles came media appearances, more restaurants,
packaged food, and so on. It is almost a cliche that he wants to
spend more time with his family, but that seems to turn into more
time teaching his son Byron to be a chef. (What about his other
sons? This seems more predicated on spending time with his family professionally than as family.)

The film ends with a bunch of platitudes: follow your dreams, do
what you love, etc. Puck says that success in the restaurant
business is just, "You start with the best product and then you
don't screw it up." And rather than people who said he wanted to
change jobs because the grass is greener on the other side of the
fence, he observes, "The grass is greener where you water it the
most."

Released 06/25/21 on Disney+. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4), or 6/10.

[-mrl/ecl]

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

TOPIC: LICENCE TO KILL (letters of comment by Gary McGath and
Keith F. Lynch)

In response to Mark's comments on LICENCE TO KILL in the 10/22/21
issue of the MT VOID, Gary McGath writes:

[Mark writes:]
Got a licence to kill (to kill)
And you know I'm going straight for your heart
(Got a licence to kill)
Got a licence to kill (to kill)
Anyone who tries to tear us apart
(Got a licence to kill)
Licence to kill
Gotta hold onto your loving
Licence to kill
Ooohooo!
Kill
{This is why we need stricter gun control. Ooohooo, Kill}
[-mrl]

These days, a license to kill is called qualified immunity in the
US. I don't know about UK law. [-gmg]

Keith F. Lynch replies:

Nitpick: Qualified immunity means that you can't successfully sue a
cop who had a warrant for a different address who bursts into your
home at midnight and murders your wife and children and cripples
you. It doesn't mean that he can't be arrested and convicted of
murder. It's true he won't be charged with that or any other
crime, but not because of qualified immunity, but because the
prosecutors are part of the same gang as him. [-kfl]

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

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

HINT FICTION edited by Robert Swartwood (Norton, ISBN 978-0-393-
33846-1) contains 125 stories of "hint fiction". But what is hint
fiction?

Well, there is the "six-word story", attributed to Ernest Hemingway
("For sale: baby shoes, never worn."), the dribble (the story of
precisely 50 words), and the drabble (precisely 100 words). Then
there is micro fiction, flash fiction, and sudden fiction, followed
by the more traditional short story, novelette, novella, and novel,
not to mention the multi-volume (and often never-ending) series.
Swartwood doesn't mention the latter, not does he comment on the
221B, which is a Sherlockian story of 221 words in which the final
word begins with a 'B'. (I will mention here that I have
contributed to the latter category; see <http://leepers.us/mtvoid/2017/VOID1020.htm#221b>.
To these categories, Swartwood has added hint fiction, which he
defines as "a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger,
more complex story." However, some of these don't quite qualify,
because they depend on their titles to make sense, and that puts
them over 25 words. For example, "The Newton Boys' Last
Photograph" by Blake Crouch is 25 words, but makes no sense as a
story without the five words of the title.

Even more, "Not Waving" by Hannah Craig is not very meaningful
unless not only is the title included (pushing it up to 27 words),
but also that the reader is familiar with the Stevie Smith poem.

And Will Panzo is really pushing it with "The Man of Tomorrow or
Maybe You've Already Heard This One Before, But You've Never Heard
It Like This"--the title is more than three-quarters as long as the
actual story.

THINKING IN NUMBERS: ON LIFE, LOVE, MEANING, AND MATH by Aniel
Tammet (Back Bay Books, ISBN 978-0-316-18736-7) is a collection of
essays. It's cataloged as math, but there is not a lot of math,
and at least one statement that I am pretty sure is flat-out wrong.
Tammet says that the digits in pi "follow no periodic or
predictable pattern," and then says, "Circles, perfect circles,
thus enumerated, consist of every possible run of digits." That
may be true, but it does not immediately follow from the non-
periodic, unpredictability.

THE SCIENCE OF CAN AND CAN'T: A PHYSICIST'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE
LAND OF COUNTERFACTUALS by Chiara Marletto (Viking, ISBN 978-0-525-
52192-1) sounded so promising. Counterfactuals--like "what if the
speed of light were slower?" or "what if the Earth had no moon?"
But no, it was more like "when I use a word it means just what I
choose it to mean, neither more nor less." In other words,
Marletto is channeling Humpty Dumpty from THROUGH THE LOOKING
GLASS. She never really defines "counterfactual", but she says,
"... counterfactual explanations ... are explanations about what
physical events could or could not be made to happen." Sorry,
there is already an accepted definition for "counterfactual", which
is a situation contrary to fact, whether or not it is possible.
Both "Napoleon won at Waterloo" and "Napoleon is now living on the
moon" are both counterfactuals, even though one is something that
*might* have happened, and the other is not. [-ecl]

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

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net


Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan.
We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the
cradle of an infant.
--Edmund Burke

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