THE MT VOID
03/15/24 -- Vol. 42, No. 37, Whole Number 2319
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper,
mleeper@optonline.netCo-Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 21 (INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF
DESTINY, THESE FINAL HOURS, SPACEMAN) (film reviews
by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES by Charles Stross (audio book review
by Joe Karpierz)
ALEXANDER and Alexandria (letter of comment by Hal Heydt)
This Week's Reading (MAO TSE-TUNG ON GUERRILLA WARFARE)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 21 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)
This is twenty-first batch of mini-reviews.
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023): INDIANA JONES AND THE
DIAL OF DESTINY is the fifth (and please, God, the last) in the
Indiana Jones series. It's not that it is absolutely terrible, but
between the callbacks of now-elderly stars (Karen Allen, John
Rhys-Davies) for the sake of re-creating the characters of their
youth, to re-hashing old jokes and tropes (the whip versus guns,
eels as watery snakes, a young boy "sidekick", etc.), to actually
turning into a true alternate history (in our world Indiana Jones
did not ride a horse through the New York Apollo 11 parade), this
was made more to cash in on the fan base than because anyone had a
good idea for the film. [SPOILERS] Adding time travel to the mix
just makes it into something it never was. (And the concern about
changing history seems to come a bit too late, since apparently
there was already a change.)
It is perhaps not a coincidence that this is also the first
"Indiana Jones" film not involving George Lucas as a writer or
Steven Spielberg as the director.
As I said, not absolutely terrible, but not up to the first and
third of the series. (Perhaps the less said about INDIANA JONES
AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, the better.) [-ecl]
Released theatrically 14 June 2023. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4), or
6/10.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462764/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/indiana_jones_and_the_dial_of_destiny>
THESE FINAL HOURS (2013): The end-of-the-world film THESE FINAL
HOURS is basically an Australian take on the Canadian film LAST
NIGHT. It is set in Perth rather than Toronto, and in THESE FINAL
HOURS we are told what the cause of the end of the world is. (In
LAST NIGHT, we never find out what the disaster is, although it
seems to make daylight last until midnight.)
But I suppose that LAST NIGHT in turn was based on, or at least
inspired by, ON THE BEACH, which of course was set in Australia.
What goes around comes around. (I will note I am not the only
person to see these connections.)
One way the Canadians and Australians differ is that (SPOILER) they
don't plant a nuke in the asteroid/create a virus for an alien
spaceship/plant a nuke in the Earth's core/create a giant space
ark/move into mine shafts/... This was often given as the
difference between American (U.S.) science fiction and British
science fiction: the former was basically optimistic, the latter
pessimistic. This may be less true now, and there is also a lot
more to even just Anglophone science fiction than that dichotomy.
I can't say this is anything special, but it will appeal to fans of
the apocalypse sub-genre. [-ecl]
Released theatrically in the U.S. 6 March 2015. Rating: +1 (-4 to
+4), or 6/10.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268458/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/these_final_hours>
SPACEMAN (2024): SPACEMAN is an atypical science fiction film,
where the basic plot has nothing science fictional about it.
It takes place in a spaceship, and there's a giant alien
telepathic spider, and there are a lot of dream sequences, but
the central idea seems to be that if the main character loved
his wife so much, he shouldn't have taken a job that requires
him to be away from her for a year at a time. To those of us
from military families that seems somewhat insulting. My
father had five tours of duty of a year or more each, and we
didn't have the benefit of Zoom calls or Facetime. (In the
film, the title character is somewhere out near Jupiter, but
through technobabble, he is able to talk to people on Earth
with no time lag.) [-ecl]
Released on Netflix in the U.S. 1 March 2024. Rating: +1 (-4 to
+4), or 6/10.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11097384/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spaceman_2024>
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES by Charles Stross (copyright 2010,
Recorded Books, 10 hours and 56 minutes, ASIN: B0032U8OIA, narrated
by Gideon Emery) (audio book review by Joe Karpierz)
THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES, originally published in 2004, is the first
book in the long-running Laundry Series, and contains two stories:
the short novel "The Atrocity Archive", and the winner of the Hugo
Award in 2005 for Best Novella, "The Concrete Jungle".
"The Atrocity Archive" introduces readers to the main character of
the Laundry series, Bob Howard (which is a pseudonym, since his
real name can be used against him--more on this in a minute), a
former I.T. consultant who ends up as a field agent for the
Laundry, an British agency which deals with occult threats. If you
think Lovecraftian horror, you're on the right track, although the
stories do not take place in that universe. Howard got pulled into
the Laundry because he re-discovered mathematical equations that
would allow contact with other worlds, and the Laundry did not want
that running loose in the world. As various characters discover
throughout the two stories in the volume, the Laundry quite
regularly gains new operatives when they discover people that have
some affinity for the occult or magic. The reader also learns that
magic, as the Laundry defines it, is a branch of applied
mathematics, and thus computers are used alongside spells to combat
and conquer denizens of the other (or under) world.
Anyway, Howard is charged with finding and protecting one Professor
Mo O'Brien (her name is longer than that, but we don't need to get
into that here), as the Laundry has taken interest in her work for
the usual reasons. As part of his mission--and this is by no means
all of what happens, but I certainly find it the most
interesting--the two of them get a chance to tour the Atrocity
Archive, a classified record of the efforts made and items used by
the Germans in World War II. It is one of the most interesting and
disturbing collection of curiosities that I've ever read about in a
book. We also learn that the Wannsee Conference (the historians
and World War II enthusiasts reading this will recognize the
Conference as something very real) planned to harness the occult
using the mass human sacrifice of the Holocaust (and now we know
what the members of the Conference were really talking about). In
any event, the upshot of the story is that Mo is captured by a
group of terrorists and sent via a wormhole to an alternate
universe where the Nazis succeeded. Bob and other members of the
Laundry team infiltrate the alternate universe to rescue Mo, but
not without cost.
"The Concrete Jungle" starts off with the discovery that there are
too many concrete cows in Milton Keynes. The whole thing started
because a CCTV network that had artificially emulated gorgons
installed in them to fend off a potential attack by the Old Ones (a
direct reference to Lovecraft, of course) was used to turn a cow to
stone. Of course, an unauthorized use of the gorgon-capable CCTV
network (I'm not sure I believe I actually typed that phrase) could
place the entire country in danger. The whole affair ends up being
weirdly convoluted but extremely typical of inter-office politics.
It's really kind of tough to delve much deeper into the story
without giving much more away, but rest assured that many of you
will end up nodding your heads at the office squabbles going on
within the Laundry.
I've been wanting to read THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES for a long time--it
seems like it's been sitting on my shelf for a nearly a couple of
decades, so when it showed up free with my Audible account I
snatched it up. These first couple of stories are a terrific
mixture of science fiction, humorous workplace interactions, spy
adventures, and Lovecraftian horror. I really enjoyed them. They
combine terrific story telling with snarky humor and dark horror.
Stross always has been a good writer, and these 20 year old stories
are an indicator of how his career would take off going forward.
He's still writing Laundry as well as other novels. He's slowed
down a bit, but the quality output is still there. I will
definitely be reading (or listening to) more Laundry novels in the
future.
Honestly, I don't remember much about Gideon Emery's narration, and
that could be both a good and bad thing. It certainly didn't throw
me out of the story, so that's a good sign, but his narration
didn't do anything to distinguish itself from the ordinary, which I
guess is okay too. Again, my lack of ability and technique in
reviewing a narrator is showing through. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: ALEXANDER and Alexandria (letter of comment by Hal Heydt)
In response to Evelyn's comments on ALEXANDER--THE MAKING OF A GOD
in the 03/08/24 issue of the MT VOID, Hal Heydt writes:
[Evelyn writes,] 'My major complaint with the dramatizations is
that the scriptwriter has decided to use Western-style nicknames:
"Alex" for Alexander, "Ptol" for Ptolomy, and so on. I just don't
believe that anyone called Ptolomy "Ptol".' [-ecl]
My father who had been there when sailing on commercial ships and
possibly when he was in the Navy, usually referred to Alexandria,
Egypt as "Alex".
We know that he was there because after the older of my two sisters
died, in the accumulated papers we fund a document permitting him
shore leave there from a ship on which he was part of the crew.
One half is signed by the ship's captain and is in English. The
other half was signed by the local Chief of Police and written in
Arabic. [-hh]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
MAO TSE-TUNG ON GUERRILLA WARFARE by Mao Tse-Tung (translated by
Brig. Gen. Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Ret.)) (Praeger, no ISBN) was
recommended to me somewhere, but I can't remember where.
Griffith's introduction summarizes what Mao says about guerrilla
warfare, but he also has his own observations. One particular
prescient one (written in 1961) was, "The position of active third
parties in a revolutionary guerrilla war and the timing, nature,
and scope of the assistance given to one side or the other has
become of great importance. ... Any assistance given should,
however, stop short of participation. The role of a third party
should be restricted to advice, materials, and technical training."
Many yers after the Vietnam War ended, an American general and a
Vietnamese general met at some social function. The American
general said, "You know, we never lost a single battle." The
Vietnamese general agreed that was true, but also pointed out that
it didn't matter, because the (North) Vietnamese had won the war.
In 1961, Griffith wrote, "There is in guerrilla warfare no such
thing as a decisive battle; there is nothing comparable to the
fixed, passive defense that characterizes orthodox war." The
American general was apparently unfamiliar with this notion.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net For the last 300 or so years, the exact sciences have
been dominated by what is really a good idea, which is
the idea that one can describe the natural world using
mathematical equations.
--Stephen Wolfram
MT VOID, 03/15/24 -- Vol. 42, No. 37, Whole Number 2319