THE MT VOID
12/27/24 -- Vol. 43, No. 26, Whole Number 2360
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper,
mleeper@optonline.netCo-Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
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Topics:
Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in January
(comments by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
The MT VOID (letters of comment by Guy Lillian III)
THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS edited by Harlan Ellison
(book review by Joe Karpierz)
Hannah Arendt (letter of comment by Wesley Brodsky)
This Week's Reading (THE EVERYMAN CHESTERTON)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
January 2, 2025: MILLENNIUM (1989); short story: "Air Raid" (1977)
by John Varley
<
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781625791542/9781625791542___3.htm>
novel: "Millennium" (1983) by John Varley
<
https://www.you-books.com/book/J-Varley/Millennium>
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in January (comments
by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
Okay, this is almost redundant, but how about a recommendation for
THE WIZARD OF OZ? It is certainly not a hidden hem, but it is not
over-exposed either. This is ironic, of course. Back when I was
a child, before home video, THE WIZARD OF OZ played once a year on
television, and if you missed it, you had to wait another year.
It was an event. (I can remember in college, I missed it for the
first time I could remember because of a field trip.)
Then it became available, first on VHS, and then on DVD, and now
on Bluray. And you could watch it any time you wanted, the result
being you did not watch it every year. It might be two years or
more between viewings. We have watched it only six times in the
last twenty-four years. (By comparison, we have watched
GETTYSBURG seventeen times.
Anyway, now that TCM is running THE WIZARD OF OZ, recover your
childhood (if you can remember when it was an event), or just
re-discover this classic. [-ecl]
[THE WIZARD OF OZ, Friday, January 10, 8:00PM]
In honor of the 90th anniversary of Elvis Presley's birth, on
January 8, TCM is running a twenty-four-hour Elvis Presley
marathon:
WEDNESDAY, January 8
6:00 AM Live a Little, Love a Little (1968)
8:00 AM The Trouble with Girls (1969)
10:00 AM Double Trouble (1967)
12:00 PM This Is Elvis (1981)
2:00 PM Speedway (1968)
4:00 PM Kissin' Cousins (1964)
6:00 PM It Happened at the World's Fair (1963)
8:00 PM Jailhouse Rock (1957)
9:45 PM Viva Las Vegas (1964)
11:15 PM Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970)
THURSDAY, January 9
1:00 AM Girl Happy (1965)
2:45 AM Spinout (1966)
4:30 AM Elvis on Tour (1972)
Other films of interest:
TUESDAY, January 7
2:45 AM Tickle Me (1965)
FRIDAY, January 3
3:30 AM A Clockwork Orange (1971)
8:00 PM Spellbound (1945)
10:00 PM The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
SATURDAY, January 4
12:15 AM Nightmare (1956)
MONDAY, January 6
8:00 PM Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
TUESDAY, January 7
8:00 AM Seven Keys to Baldpate (1947)
1:00 PM The Seventh Victim (1943)
THURSDAY, January 9
8:00 PM Young Frankenstein (1974)
10:00 PM Oh, God! (1977)
FRIDAY, January 10
8:00 PM The Wizard of Oz (1939)
10:00 PM The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)
11:45 PM Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)
SATURDAY, January 11
10:15 AM Tarzan Triumphs (1943)
3:30 PM Ice Station Zebra (1968)
SUNDAY, January 12
11:45 AM The Red Shoes (1948)
2:15 PM From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
(1973)
WEDNESDAY, January 15
4:15 AM The Yellow Cab Man (1950)
7:15 AM Baby Doll (1956)
9:15 AM Period of Adjustment (1962)
11:15 AM The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)
1:15 PM The Night of the Iguana (1964)
3:45 PM A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
6:00 PM Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
FRIDAY, January 17
3:15 AM Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
6:00 AM The Sea Hawk (1924)
8:15 AM Captain Blood (1935)
10:15 AM The Spanish Main (1945)
12:15 PM The Three Musketeers (1948)
2:30 PM The Flame and the Arrow (1950)
4:00 PM Scaramouche (1952)
6:00 PM The Prisoner of Zenda (1952)
SUNDAY, January 19
6:30 AM Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)
8:00 AM Tom Thumb (1958)
6:00 PM Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
TUESDAY, January 21
1:45 PM The Great Dictator (1940)
WEDNESDAY, January 22
2:15 AM Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
8:00 PM The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
9:30 PM The 39 Steps (1935)
11:00 PM Sabotage (1936)
THURSDAY, January 23
12:30 AM Young and Innocent (1937)
2:00 AM The Lady Vanishes (1938)
3:45 AM Becoming Hitchcock - The Legacy of Blackmail (2024)
5:00 AM Foreign Correspondent (1940)
12:15 PM The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
SATURDAY, January 25
12:30 AM The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945)
3:30 AM I Married an Angel (1942)
5:00 AM Turn Back the Clock (1933)
MONDAY, January 27
4:15 AM Loves of a Blonde (1966)
TUESDAY, January 28
6:15 AM One Million B.C. (1940)
7:45 AM Forever, Darling (1956)
9:30 AM A Guy Named Joe (1943)
11:45 AM Turnabout (1940)
1:15 PM Topper (1937)
3:00 PM It Happened Tomorrow (1944)
4:30 PM I Married a Witch (1942)
6:00 PM Time After Time (1979)
FRIDAY, January 31
8:00 PM 8 1/2 (1963)
SATURDAY, February 1
12:15 AM Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
2:15 AM The Last Wave (1977)
4:15 AM Eraserhead (1977)
===================================================================
TOPIC: The MT VOID (letters of comment by Guy Lillian III)
In response to several issues of the MT VOID, Guy Lillian III
writes in THE ZINE DUMP #59:
Amidst the commentary, reviews and whatnot and after Mark's
detailed suggestions for Turner Classic Movies, Evelyn provides a
slew of links relating to the Hugo controversy--I knew I could
count on the Leepers and their weekly journal. Other contributors
chime in with Evelyn and Mark. Well-written and well-reasoned,
refreshingly free of fandom's frequent strife, the Void is well
worth one’s time. [-ghliii]
And again in THE ZINE DUMP #60:
Every week my inbox is visited by an MT Void, and with it the love
of SF which brought us to this "thing of ours." In recent numbers
Evelyn and Mark review strange films, mention the passing of Earl
Holliman, compare the ancient story "The Brick Moon" to Japan's
recent wooden satellite ... sharing their fannishness generously.
A subscription to MT is a great way to keep one's interest in the
field rolling, week to week. [-ghliii]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS edited by Harlan Ellison
(copyright 2024, Blackstone Publishing, $27.99, hardcover, 433pp,
ISBN 979-8-212-18379-6) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
Anticipation. Expectations. Hype. We generally apply these
words when looking forward to events, whether it be sports (the
Super Bowl of American football), movies (a new "Star Wars"
installment), television shows (a new season of STAR TREK: STRANGE
NEW WORLDS), or books. Ah books. We all look forward to the
publication of a new book from a favorite author. But whatever
the thing is that we're looking forward to, it can either bring
elation and joy, or disappointment, or even a vast sense of "meh".
THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS is one of those books that pretty much
nobody expected would see the light of day. Harlan Ellison was
working on it back in the 1970s, but never pulled the trigger on.
He bought hundreds of stories for the book. It grew to three
volumes at one point (it should be noted that AGAIN, DANGEROUS
VISIONS, the follow up to the original DANGEROUS VISIONS, clocks
in at 1141 pages with 46 stories). It never got published. The
science fiction community resigned itself to never seeing the
book. The reasons why it never saw the light of day were unknown.
And the anticipation was high. Given the success of the first
two books, the stories and authors they contained, and the awards
that resulted from those two books, who wouldn't want to see THE
LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS?
Then Harlan Ellison passed away, and that was that.
The story is fairly well known in science fiction circles.
J. Michael Straczynski became the executor of the Ellison estate,
and he set his sights on publishing THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS.
Selecting the stories was a daunting task. He had a ton of
stories that Harlan had bought back in the day and still had the
rights to (the rights to some of the stories had been sold back to
either the writers themselves or their estates). Straczynski
wanted to include present-day authors, and he wanted to include
new authors, since Ellison was a champion for new writers.
I'm going to say it up front, before I get into the details. For
me, the book brought on a vast sense of "meh".
There are a few reasons for that. What was considered "dangerous"
back in the 1970s is fairly tame and commonplace today. Stories
that were edgy back then are not edgy today. From what I've
gathered from podcasts and reading things about the time LDV (LAST
DANGEROUS VISIONS, in case it wasn't obvious) was to be published,
authors were getting skittish about publishing things that were on
the cutting edge, that were considered "dangerous". And, quite
frankly, not only do the stories that Straczynski included not
hold up over time, they are fairly uninteresting.
If I were to pick a "best" story from what would have been the
original LDV, I'd pick Ed Bryant's "War Stories", although "The
Final Pogrom", from Dan Simmons, stands out as well (it's hard to
believe that Simmons is still out there producing work after all
these years, although to be fair it's been awhile since he's
published anything). The astounding (see what I did there) thing
is that most of the stories that Strasczynski chose were from
authors that I really haven't heard of. Sure, there are a few,
like A.E. Van Vogt ("The Time of the Skin"), Robert Sheckley
("Primordial Follies"), and P.C. Hodgell ("Dark Threshold), but
for the most part none of the stories from back in the day were
from authors that made it big (unlike those that were already big
when they had stories published in the first two "Dangerous
Visions" volumes).
The modern day writers that are included here *did* have stories
that were at the least very good, if not terrific. The best of
the bunch was James S.A. Corey's "Judas Iscariot Didn't Kill
Himself: A Story In Fragments", followed closely by Adrian
Tchaikovsky's "First Sight" and Corey Doctorow's "The Weight of a
Feather (The Weight of a Heart)". The Corey will be a story that
I nominate on my Hugo ballot in 2025.
Maybe it's not fair to compare this volume to prior installments.
I've elsewhere reviewed the original DANGEROUS VISIONS (and listed
the authors that came out of that book with awards and award
nominations), but as I look at the Table of Contents of AGAIN,
DANGEROUS VISIONS (which I have yet to read but now feel like I
need to sooner rather than later), I see Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene
Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kate Wilhelm, Joanna Russ, Kurt Vonnegut,
David Gerrold, Greg Benford, and a host of other huge names in the
field. I don't see any names that ended up being huge out of the
stories that made it to LDV from that era (yes, you could argue
Van Vogt, but even that story wasn't that good).
The two pieces that were interesting to me were "Ellison
Exegesis", in which Straczynski tells the story of just why
Ellison couldn't get LDV published (which some people have stated
is an invasion of Ellison's privacy--I'll leave that up to the
reader), and the afterword, entitled "Tetelestai! Compiling THE
LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS", which as you might guess is a look at how
Straczynski put the book together.
I don't often reread books these days. I just have too much on my
to-be-read list and not enough time to read what is there. While
I may go back some day and reread DANGEROUS VISIONS, and I have
yet to read AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS, I most likely won't go back
and reread THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS. And that makes me sad.
I also want to issue a formal apology to Blackstone Publishing,
which was kind enough to allow me to read an eARC of THE LAST
DANGEROUS VISIONS. Life got in the way, and I'd bitten off more
than I could chew in requesting eARCs from NetGalley. This review
is two and a half months past the publication date of LDV, and it
is unconscionable that this review is this late. I'm grateful
that the Blackstone gave permission for me to read the book in
advance of the publication, and sorry that I didn't get it done in
time. [-jak]
Evelyn asked for clarification:
I would think it should more accurately be called "THE LAST
DANGEROUS VISIONS edited by Harlan Ellison and J. Michael
Straczynski". [-ecl]
And Joe replied:
Good question. The title page of the book only shows Ellison.
The cover only shows Ellison. If you scan the barcode (I just
downloaded an app that will scan barcodes and put them in an
online library for you), both are listed, as are "various
authors". [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hannah Arendt (letter of comment by Wesley Brodsky)
In response to the quote by Hannah Arendt at the end of the
12/20/24 issue of the MT VOID, Wesley Brodsky writes:
Hooray for Hannah Arendt! I read her excellent book THE ORIGINS
OF TOTALITARIANISM [published 1973] and wrote a review of it for
Amazon September 2023. The title of the review was "URGENT: U.S.
citizens should read this book immediately, before the presidential
elections continue!" I did not go into my own preferences for
political candidates. I merely urged U.S. citizens to read this
book before making their own decisions. [-wb]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE EVERYMAN CHESTERTON by G. K. Chesterton (Everyman's Library,
ISBN 978-0-307-59497-6) is a collection of Chesterton's works, but
not the better-known ones. In the Introduction, Ian Ker says this
is intentional: works such as "The Ballad of the White Horse", THE
MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, and THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL are so well
known and easy to find that it would be redundant to include them.
I was reminded of the first book the New England Science Fiction
Association published that was not a small volume as a souvenir
book for a Guest of Honor at Boskone: THE BEST OF JAMES
E. SCHMITZ. Afterwards, people told them they should have
included A, or B, or V. But NESFA realized they had painted
themselves into a corner, because they could hardly publish a book
titled "The Second Best of James E. Schmitz".
(Actually, there are authors who could have such a book
published, because they are known are quirky people who love a
good joke. But *they* have to make that decision.)
NESFA never made that mistake again. All of their future author
collections were the complete works (or at least the complete
short fiction), even if it took multiple volumes.
All this was to point out that, effectively, the editor is saying
that this book is "The Second Best of Chesterton". So, back to
Chesterton.
The section on Dickens was written just a hundred years ago.
Chesterton claims that in Dickens's era only Dickens created
characters that would be instantly recognizable by name. (The
only exception he acknowledges is Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.) And
he does a comparison with another popular of the time, Rudyard
Kipling. Who would recognize Learoyd or Mrs. Hawksbee? But then
he lists Dickens's characters: Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp, Smauke, Sam
Weller, and Podsnap. And I would claim that these are now equally
unrecognizable. (Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes keeps chugging along.)
Chesterton chose characters from THE PICKWICK PAPERS. Without
choosing title characters, I would say that there might be a few
recognizable characters from Dickens's later novels: Barkis,
Micawber, and of course Fagin (whose name has fallen into common
use as someone who exploits children). Still, what this goes to
show is that it is hard to judge literary immortality too close to
the work itself. (People at the turn of the century thought James
Fenimore Cooper was going to be the literary author best
remembered and read in a hundred years, and Arthur Conan Doyle was
just a writer of popular fiction.)
Chesterton also seems to not understand how the word "sensibility"
was used in Jane Austen's time. Chesterton writes that sense and
sensibility are not "in a kind of opposition to each other. "...
not only are they not opposite word: they are actually the same
word. They both mean receptiveness or approachability by the
facts outside us." Maybe now, but in Jane Austen's time,
"sensibility" referred to being particularly susceptible to
emotions and feelings, which are hardly "facts outside us".
Marianne's problem in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is not the facts, but
her emotions. When she has to leave Norland, she sobs that she
could never love a place as much as Norland, then when she is away
from Barton, she misses it terribly, and then she adores Delaford.
She is reacting to external facts (having to move, etc.), but in
a dar more emotional way than Elinor, who looks at the estates
with a more practical and factual eye (i.e., their size, cost, and
so on).
And once again I have drifted far afield, not just from Chesteron,
but from his topic, Charles Dickens.
Strangely, Chesterton has little to say about Dickens's best-known
books: DAVID COPPERFIELD, OLIVER TWIST, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, A TALE
OF TWO CITIES. He is, rather, enamored of THE PICKWICK PAPERS,
and of Dickens's other early works.
And in describing Dickens's work, Chesterton writes (in CHARLES
DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY, 1911), "Nature is as free as air; art
is forced to look probable." He doesn't credit Mark Twain, who
wrote in 1897 in FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, "Truth is stranger than
fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to
possibilities. Truth is."
Because THE EVERYMAN CHESTERTON is so long, and includes many
different works, I will end these comments here, and (probably)
write another column or two on some of the other sections. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net Recipe: a series of step-by-step instructions for
preparing ingredients you forgot to buy, in utensils
you don't own, to make a dish the dog won't eat.
--Unknown
MT VOID, 12/27/24 -- Vol. 43, No. 26, Whole Number 2360