THE MT VOID
06/06/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 49, Whole Number 2383
Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
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Topics:
All the Old-Timers Are Back (comment by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Mini Reviews, Part 14 (THE TUNNEL, THE DYBBUK, THE SEVENTH
VICTIM) (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE MINISTRY OF TIME by Kaliane Bradley (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
eReaderIQ and StandardEbooks (ebook service reviews
by Paul S. R. Chisholm)
The Essential Terry Pratchett (link)
BRIGHT LEAF, Gary Cooper, and Smoking (letters of comment
by Taras Wolansky and Norman Salt)
PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE, and David Suchet (letter
of comment by Taras Wolansky)
AURORA (letter of comment by Dale Skran)
Robot Boxing (letter of comment by Scott Dorsey)
This Week's Reading (MAGNA CARTA)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: All the Old-Timers Are Back (comment by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Well, maybe not all, but there has been a sudden resurgence of
letters and reviews from people who used to contribute regularly
but haven't for a long time (in some cases, decades). So welcome
back to Paul, Rob, Dale, Susan, Peter, Taras, and anyone else I've
missed, as well as thanks to all who have been contributing
regularly. Your reviews and comments help keep the MT VOID alive.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 14 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Three more from Mark's list of neglected gems:
THE TUNNEL (THE TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL) (1935): This is the fourth
film based on DER TUNNEL by Bernhard Kellerman. It was preceded
by a German silent film, and a German and a French sound film. It
is old enough that the credits reference the Irish Free State.
Richard McAllen is an engineer who another character says built
the Channel Tunnel in 1940, which firmly sets even the beginning
of the film in its future, and the film seems to cover somewhere
between fifteen and twenty years.
There are no direct references to WWII (which loomed on the
horizon) or even to the Great Depression (which was already in
full force when the film was made). But the film was apparently
made to demonstrate/build US-UK friendship in expectation of the
coming war. Sort of like the Chunnel with the UK and the
continent tied them closer together ... oh, wait.
The film itself is part family drama, part anti-capitalist
polemic, part techno-thriller. McAllen has to contend not just
with technical problems (such as an underwater volcano), but
people conspiring to take control of his project, and his wife's
reaction to his being away all the time.
(If I recall correctly, we paired it with THE DAM BUSTERS in a
"Engineer's Double Feature".)
Released theatrically 25 October 1935.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027131/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/transatlantic_tunnel>
THE DYBBUK (1937): This is one of the classics of Yiddish film.
(If I were asked to list the classics of Yiddish film, they would
be this, YIDL MITN FIDL, and TEVYA. Or maybe they are just the
most accessible to a general audience.)
The emphasis on counting money in a couple of scenes seems to
reinforce a stereotype, which I'm sure was not the author's
intention.
There are elements of the Faust legend here, at least to the
extent of someone calling on Satan to help him get the woman he
wants.
As with PARACELSUS (reviewed in the 05/23/25 issue of the MT
VOID), there is a weird dance sequence where the bride dances
first with all the poor people, and then with the figure of Death,
and then the poor people have a wild dance contrasted with the
sedate dance of the rich bride's and groom's families. Is there
some Eastern European fixation on weird dances?
One of the copies used for this restoration had Hebrew subtitles
burned in, so the final restoration covered them with solid blocks
of black, white, or gray, depending on the background, and then
placed it own (English) subtitles over the black. (Presumably a
non-English-subtitled restored copy was kept.)
Released theatrically 27 January 1938.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030092/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dybbuk>
THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943): The posters, and the DVD case and menu
say "The 7th Victim", but the actual film says "The Seventh
Victim".
One thing that never made any sense to me was why Esther (who
owned a cosmetics company) was so upset that her employee Frances
was talking about the company's logo. It was the symbol of the
Palladists, but if it was so secret, why did Esther put it on all
their products?
Released theatrically 21 August 1943.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036341/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/seventh_victim>
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE MINISTRY OF TIME by Kaliane Bradley (copyright 2024,
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, ISBN-10:
1668045141, ISBN-13: 978-1668045145) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
To paraphrase Gary K. Wolfe, one half of the Coode Street Podcast,
"the time travel trope has become part of mainstream fiction,
swiped from science fiction by mainstream writers so they can use
it to tell their own kinds of stories". The idea didn't surprise
me, but I'd never encountered a book like that, mostly because I
don't read mainstream fiction as a rule (and because there isn't
enough time--see what I did there?--in the world to get around to
reading it). Every once in a while a mainstream novel makes its
way to the Hugo finalist list (Michael Chabon's THE YIDDISH
POLICEMAN'S UNION comes immediately to mind) and so I *do* have to
read one (well, I guess I don't really have to read one, but in
the interests of fair voting I should). And thus we come to the
debut novel from Kaliane Bradley, THE MINISTRY OF TIME.
THE MINISTRY OF TIME is not just a time travel story. It's a
romance, thriller, spy, climate change, and a whole bunch of other
stories all rolled into one. And it works. The title of the book
may lead the reader to believe it's a time travel story, but time
travel just allows Bradley to set up the rest what she wants to do.
The novel's narrator, unnamed throughout the entire book, takes a
job with the brand new governmental agency called The Ministry of
Time. She is assigned the role of "bridge", a person who helps a
time traveller from the past deal with the physical, mental, and
emotional shock of being lifted out of their time and brought to
the 21st century. The "expats", as they are called, are selected
to be brought forward because they had died before their time and
wouldn't be missed. The purpose of the program is to determine
how time travel not only affects the people brought forward, but
how the act of bringing those people forward affects the very
fabric of time itself.
The narrator is a bridge for Graham Gore, a ship commander who
would have perished in Franklin's lost expedition to the explore
the Antarctic. An interesting side note here is that many readers
may know that Franklin's lost expedition is real. The expedition
began in 1845 and Graham Gore was a commander in that expedition.
In a sense, you can add alternate history, then, to the list of
types of novel this is. In her notes after the novel, Bradley
says she became fascinated by Gore and wanted to use him in a
story. So here we are.
Each bridge/expat pair live in their own housing unit, with expat
trying to get used to life in the 21st century, and the bridge
monitoring the expat, making notes and reports, and generally
trying to help the expat through the experience. But, as these
things go, Gore and his bridge become romantically involved.
While she is trying to help his assimilation into the present day
by teaching him about Spotify, bicycles, cars, and other
technologies, against her better judgement and the rules she is
supposed to follow, she falls into a physical and emotional
relationship with Gore. And while that indeed muddies the waters
with regard to her doing her job impartially, that is nothing
compared to the revelation of spies within the organization,
killings of members of the Ministry, and attempts on the lives of
the expats and their bridges.
Bradley does a terrific job of telling a reasonable
straightforward romantic story while weaving in everything else I
mentioned earlier, plus a few other things. The novel includes
climate change and British colonialism among its varied topics, as
well as modern fashion, dating, and social mores. One of the more
interesting scenes deals with the narrator mentioning Auschwitz
instead of 9/11 (which was one of the things she was supposed to
talk to Gore about), and seeing Gore's reaction to the atrocities
that people inflicted upon other people after he did some online
research into the subject.
And did you really think that the purpose of the program was to
investigate the affects of time travel on the travellers and time
itself? You knew there had to be something more to it than that.
The revelations involved with that wrinkle are fun to discover as
Bradley drops hints along the way and finally reveals what else is
going on.
THE MINISTRY OF TIME is an excellent novel. How much does time
travel actually enter into the story? Not much. Bradley needs it
to set up the story that she's looking to tell, but if you're
looking for an explanation of how time travel works, how how time
travelling affects the time line, this isn't it. In fact, the
book avoids the issue of going backward in time and performing
some act that changes the future. Almost all (that's a slight
spoiler, but there it is) the time travel is of people going
forward in time, not backward. So, yeah, the concept of time
travel is used to set up the story, but basically abandoned after
that. And that's okay. I do recommend THE MINISTRY OF TIME.
It's not a book I would have picked up to read on my own, but I'm
glad I read it. Hugo winner? No. Worthy finalist? Yes. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: eReaderIQ and StandardEbooks (ebook service reviews by Paul
S. R. Chisholm)
I bought my first Kindle a day before Superstorm Sandy hit New
Jersey. Since then, the only paper books I've bought are gifts
and coffee table books. One ebook downside: I could see how much
their prices fluctuated, especially in the Kindle store. I
worried I'd buy a book just before a price drop.
Enter eReaderIQ. This is a service that lets you track books (and
authors) and lets you know about price drops. You can set a price
for a book and find out when it costs less than that. For
example, I wanted SAYS WHO? by Ann Cuzan (known from the NPR show
"That's What They Say") and Kate Andersen Brower's THE RESIDENCE
(the non-fiction book that inspired the Netflix show of the same
name). They were $12.99 and $13.99 when I started tracking them.
I bought them for $4.99 and $1.99.
(Is this ripping off authors? In my opinion, no more so than
waiting for a book to come out in paperback.)
I don't always track books. When I bought the Curzan book, Amazon
recommended DRYER'S ENGLISH. The price had been as low as $1.99,
but I bought it for $4.99 without waiting for a lower price. (It
had been $7.99 for a long time. It's now $9.99.)
I've bought--(search email, be astonished at the result)--over
thirteen hundred ebooks from Amazon since 2012. Some of them were
professional books my then-employer paid for. I've bought
non-Amazon books from other publishers, but not nearly so many.
The site was funded via the Amazon affiliate program until Amazon
canceled its account. It now accepts donations via Patreon (how I
contribute) and Paypal.
That's for books from the past century. For everything else,
there's Standard Ebooks.
There are many places to get electronic versions of public domain
books. You can buy some of them for a dollar at Amazon. Many,
many more are at Project Gutenberg. In my experience, the best
source is Standard Ebooks.
Standard Ebooks has "beautiful, free, and unrestricted editions of
literature for the digital age." They describe themselves as "a
volunteer-driven effort to produce a collection of high quality,
carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public
domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially
produced ebooks." They look much better than other editions I've
read. (Example: "The Adventure of the Dancing Men," from THE
RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, has messages in the form of rows of
stick figures. They're clear and crisp in the Standard Ebooks
version, blurry in Project Gutenberg, and shown simply as
"[Graphic]" in an Amazon book.)
What's in the public domain? I was surprised at how much. THE
GREAT GATSBY, THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, and THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE
DAMNED by F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as a collection of short
fiction. Ernest Hemingway is represented by his own collection of
short fiction, plus A FAREWELL TO ARMS and THE SUN ALSO RISES.
Early works by Agatha Christie, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and E. E.
"Doc" Smith. And of course all the classics from the 19th century
or before.
A major omission, and it's a deliberate one, is the absence of any
religious texts from modern world religions. You'll find many
books about religion, but not the Hebrew Bible, the Christian
Bible (any version), or the Koran.
Standard Ebooks supports Kindles, iPads, Nooks, Kobo devices and
software, and anything that can process HTML or plain text files.
Recommended. [-psrc]
Evelyn adds:
Standard Ebooks apparently works with both older and newer
Kindles. (Amazon made some change which made the newer MOBI
format not compatible with older Kindles.)
"[A]ll the classics from the 19th century or before" may be
over-stating it a bit. Certainly most of what most people want
will be here. And I grant that some of Project Gutenberg's works
have various errors from scanning or otherwise. (If I recall
correctly, Amazon was even worse, but that was years ago.) But
(to take one example) Standard Ebooks has no works by William
Gladstone, while Project Gutenberg has eleven, including his three
volumes of STUDIES ON HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. Standard Ebooks
is probably a good first stop, but if what you're looking for is
not there, try Project Gutenberg. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Essential Terry Pratchett (link)
The Essential Terry Pratchett
"The prolific fantasy author, best known for his Discworld series,
infused his writing with empathy and humor. Here’s where to start."
Paywalled:
<
https://www.nytimes.com/article/terry-pratchett-best-books.html?smid=nytcore-android-share>
Free, but expires after a month:
<
https://www.nytimes.com/article/terry-pratchett-best-books.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LU8.20Q5.Y664g2Id_MpP&smid=url-share>
===================================================================
TOPIC: BRIGHT LEAF, Gary Cooper, and Smoking (letters of comment
by Taras Wolansky and Norman Salt)
In response to Evelyn's comments on BRIGHT LEAF and Gary Cooper in
the 05/30/25 issue of the MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes:
Thanks for the latest VOID.
Review of BRIGHT LEAF (1950): "In films people who fight disease
are played by Edward G. Robinson types. People who sell disease
to the public for good money are played by the Gary Coopers." To
be fair, Coop did play a healer in THE STORY OF DR. WASSELL (1944).
Seeing a movie made in 1950 reminds us that "the past is a
different country". A movie made today but set in the past is
bound to introduce anachronism and, perhaps, political
correctness. For example, the authenticity of THE INTERNS (1962)
is proven by the fact that--all the doctors are smoking like
chimneys! Twenty years later, when the film was parodied as YOUNG
DOCTORS IN LOVE, nobody is smoking.
Then there's the vampire melodrama, SINNERS (2025), set in the
South in the early Thirties. A Chicago gangster (played by the
great Michael B. Jordan) asserts conditions for blacks up North
are just as bad. Which would make fools of the millions of
Southern blacks who moved North--where, among other things, they
were allowed to vote. [-tw]
Norman Salt also notes:
Heavy smoking in 20th Century movies is not a coincidence. The
movie industry paid to have stars smoke. In the 1950s the highest
rate of smoking by men was a little above 50%. The industry
wanted to normalize it to an even higher percentage. The rate is
now below 18%. [-ns]
===================================================================
TOPIC: PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE, and David Suchet (letter of
comment by Taras Wolansky)
In response to Dale Skran's review of PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE in
the 05/30/25 issue of the MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes:
The review of Michio Kaku's PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE underlines
something I've noticed on panels at science fiction conventions.
Ask SF writers with English degrees whether FTL travel is
physically impossible, and nothing more than a literary trope,
they will say yes. Ask SF writers with physics degrees, they will
come back with workarounds which break no scientific laws.
Dr. Kaku, a physicist, puts FTL in his Category 2, "technologies
that ... If they are possible at all, 'they might be realized on a
scale of millennia to millions of years'".
While I recognize that banning FTL would make a lot of SF
difficult to write, I do think it tends to trivialize the
immensity of space. If in your story you can travel a lightyear
in an hour, for example, then a lightyear isn't very far. I have
a soft spot in my heart for stories like Poul Anderson's WORLD
WITHOUT STARS (1966, 1975), in which humans have become
effectively immortal (which violates no scientific law) and don't
mind spending what would have been lifetimes traveling the galaxy
at sub-light speeds.
In response to Evelyn's comments on POIROT AND ME in the same
issue, Taras writes:
On the subject of David Suchet's post-Poirot activities, let me
also recommend the Britbox series, TRAVELS WITH AGATHA CHRISTIE &
SIR DAVID SUCHET. Sir David follows in the footsteps of the
Christies as they toured the Empire in 1922, just as Agatha was
beginning to establish a reputation. [-tw]
===================================================================
TOPIC: AURORA (letter of comment by Dale Skran)
In response to comments on AURORA in the 05/21/25 and 05/28/25
issues of the MT VOID, Dale Skran writes:
You may wish to put a link in the next MT VOID to my review of
Aurora:
<
https://nss.org/aurora-re-envisioned-an-essay-book-review/>
[-dls]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Robot Boxing (letter of comment by Scott Dorsey)
In response to Evelyn's comments on robot boxing and THE TWILIGHT
ZONE's "Steel" in the 05/30/25 issue of the MT VOID, Scott Dorsey
writes:
I have nothing to add here; I just like saying "Roboxing" and "el
pugilismo mecanico." [-sd]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The Classical Guys often refer to Dan Jones as a source for some
of their podcasts, so I decided I should give him a try. I
figured I'd start with what was in my own public library before I
went into inter-library loans, or actually (gasp!) bought the
books. (As I think I have mentioned, I'm trying to downsize, not
because I plan on moving, but because I have too much stuff.)
Anyway, I started with MAGNA CARTA: THE BIRTH OF LIBERTY by Dan
Jones (Viking, ISBN 978-0-52542829-9). For one thing, it's quite
topical; Harvard just discovered that a copy of the Magna Carta
they had was not a copy, but an original. (Well, sort of. More
on that later.)
My first impression is that Dan Jones is very readable, unlike
some of the more academically oriented history books I've read
recently.
But he also has an approach that some historians find off-putting.
He doesn't just report events, but attempts to guess what the
various people were thinking, or guess what might have happened.
"It is likely that many of these would have displayed the arms of
the chief baronial rebels..." "John might well have displayed the
royal banners he had ordered in the spring..." "John's private
thoughts at the time are lost to us. It is unlikely that he was
thrilled at having to deal civilly with me who had only recently
been plotting to have him murdered, but he did not have much
choice." "It would not have taken much imagination to have seen
Philip Augustus licking his lips in France, enjoying every second
of his enemy's discomfort."
But Jones's main point seems to be that our current perspective of
Magna Carta, and our idolization of it, is based on very shaky
ground. Almost all of Magna Carta dealt with issues that have no
relevance today (whether peasants can let their pigs forage in the
forests, for example). And Magna Carta itself was almost
immediately ignored by King John, with the Pope's approval (who
declared it null and void). It was followed almost immediately by
the civil war it was intended to prevent. Various clauses from it
did appear in future charters, but it effectively disappeared
from public discourse for four hundred years. (Thomas More cites
it in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, but whether he did in actuality is
not clear, and in any case, he was a lawyer.) It started to
re-appear in the sixteenth century, and figured heavily in the
American Revolution.
One might claim, I suppose, that it is often cited in the same way
as the Bible--by people who take pieces out of context and are
unfamiliar with the entirety.
As for the Harvard document, it is said to be an "original".
However, it is not an original from King John in 1215, but rather
of King Edward I's re-affirmation around 1300. It's still rare
(there were only seven known up to this point, all in England),
but there are only four "true" originals (IMHO), and they are all
in England (two in the British Library, one in Salisbury
Cathedral, and one in Lincoln Castle). Of the King Edward I
re-affirmation, there are now eight. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by
institutions on the point of collapse.
--C. Northcote Parkinson
MT VOID, 06/06/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 49, Whole Number 2383
Re: MT VOID, 06/06/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 49, Whole Number 2383