Aucbvax.1697
fa.sf-lovers
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-AI
Sat Jun 13 06:10:13 1981
SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #149
SF-LOVERS AM Digest Saturday, 13 Jun 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 149
Today's Topics:
SF Fandom - APAs, SF Books - Budrys Book Column
(God Emperor of Dune and Wandor's Flight and
Donald A. Wollheim Presents the 1981 Annual World's Best SF and
An Infinite Summer and First Voyages and
Creating Short Fiction and the Clarion SF Writing Workshop),
SF Movies - Clash of the Titans,
SF Topics - Science in Science Fiction
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 12 Jun 1981 at 0454-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Computer APA ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
There was a "computer APA" called something like 'Capaciousness'
advertised in a couple recent issues of LOCUS ("The Newspaper of the
Science Fiction Field"). 'Twasn't clear whether it was for computers-
and/in-SF or just (probably home-) computers. I've sent the SASE, as
directed, to get its rules. When they arrive, I'll report back to
SF-L if no one on the net has told us about it in the meantime.
------------------------------
Date: 07 Jun 1981 1741-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM SU-AI AT>
Subject: Science Fiction Column
By Algis Budrys
(c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
If you can't sing good, sing loud. If you can't write good, write
long. ''God Emperor of Dune'' (Putnam's, $12.95 hardcover) is Frank
Herbert's bloated codicil to the already overextended ''Dune''
Trilogy, whose climactic statement is that the human race will go on
forever and ever, populating universe after universe, thanks to the
intricate machinations of the proliferated cast of characters.
There's reason to believe that when Herbert began all this, many
years ago, his intention was simply to tell the large but still
manageable tale of the planet Arrakis, its relationship to the
Galactic Empire, and the charismatic Atreides family.
But now the tale is wagging the dog. There is so much genealogy
and accumulated history that talking about it, not acting on it,
dominates this volume. Furthermore, you can't start here. There's no
way to understand half the references in this new book without reading
the three old ones first. That's an exercise many have found
enjoyable. Others have reported it's a little like hitting yourself
repeatedly with a hammer to see if it feels good when the pain stops;
they go on because it always seems that Herbert is going to tie it all
together in the next chapter, or the next.
Herbert can be a very good writer. But he appears to have become
captive to his own creation, and to have proceeded not to a conclusion
but to an infinite diffusion. Nevertheless, you will find this book
high on the best-seller list - not the SF best-seller list, THE
best-seller list. So I must be wrong.
Chicago's Roland Green, with his Wandor series, is also a
practitioner of the popular epic form. ''Wandor's Flight'' (Avon,
$2.75 paperback), however, does equip the reader to understand this
fourth book as readily as the previous three.
Green is clearly in love with classical narrative forms, from the
work of Homer on up through C.S. Forester, and there are glossaries
and prologues aplenty, plus a chronology. With that under your belt,
you're ready to plunge into the world of Wandor of the Duelists, his
consort, Gwynna, his foe Cragor, and the sweeping political
contentions of Chonga, Benzos, et al.
Green has a gift for the creaking iron-age machinery of barbarian
cultures and the smell of wet armor. If he also has a weakness for the
very large cast of characters not named Sam or Joe or Alice, he at
least has the forethought to provide all those charts.
''Donald A. Wollheim Presents the 1981 Annual World's Best SF''
(DAW Books, $2.50) hardly needs much explanation after that title.
Together with old SF timer Wollheim's sometimes acerb commentary on
the present SF scene, there are 10 shorter examples here of good
recent science fiction (from 1980, actually), including George R.R.
Martin's ''Nightflyers,'' Howard Waldrop's ''The Ugly Chickens''
-which is about the near survival of the dodo in Tennessee - and Bob
Leman's ''Window,'' which will scare you. Good stuff from a good, not
great, year.
''An Infinite Summer'' (Dell, $2.75) collects five long stories
by Christopher Priest, whom some consider England's best new SF
writer. He may be; he is uncommonly ingenious, talented in prose, and
has an original touch with a story. For one, try ''Palely Loitering,''
about a young man who falls desperately in love with a young woman
who, unfortunately, is always at some other place in a park where time
runs differently in different places.
So you would like to be a science fiction writer? Fine. Here is
the three-step Royal Road to Best Sellerdom:
Get ''First Voyages,'' (Avon, $2.95), edited by Damon Knight,
Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander. This collects the
first-published stories of 20 SF giants and near-giants...well, I'm in
there, too...DeCamp, del Rey, van Vogt, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Clement,
Clarke, Anderson, Merril, Cordwainer Smith, Harness, MacLean,
Pangborn, Zenna Henderson, Dick, Davidson, Aldiss, Ballard, Le Guin,
and that other fellow.
Good stuff. GOOD stuff, most of it. And just enough crudity and
obfuscation in it to encourage the novice. If you can't sing good,
sing young - or sing SOVETIME; you never know.
Then get ''Creating Short Fiction,'' by Damon Knight (Writers
Digest Books, $11.95). What Knight doesn't know about writing the
short story cannot be put into expository prose anyway. And you can
always string a bunch of shorts together into an Odyssey.
And finally, sign up for the Clarion SF Writing Workshop, the
famous six-week total-immersion course held each summer at Michigan
State University. It starts June 29, and this year's instructors are
Robin Scott Wilson, Elizabeth A. Lynn, Joe Haldeman, Kate Wilhelm,
Damon Knight and myself. With room and board, it costs about $1,000
for non-residents of Michigan and at that price you'd better be
serious about it.
Write immediately to Prof. Tess Tavormina, Lyman Briggs College,
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich. 48824. Enclose a short
story, because you have to compete to get in. Try not to enclose the
first chapter of a planned four-volume epic.
[ Thanks also to Stuart McLure Cracraft <MCLURE AT SRI-AI> and Don
Woods <DON SU-AI AT> for sending in a copy of this column. -- Jim ]
------------------------------
Date: 12 Jun 1981 1717-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM SU-AI AT>
By Roger Ebert
(c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
CLASH OF THE TITANS, starring Harry Hamlin, Judi Bowker, Burgess
Meredity, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith and Neil McCarthy, directed
by Desmond Davis. 3 1/2 stars.
''Clash of the Titans'' is the kind of movie they aren't supposed
to be making anymore: a grand and glorious romantic adventure, filled
with brave heroes, beautiful heroines, fearsome monsters and
awe-inspiring duels to the death. It is a lot of fun. It was quite
possibly intended as a sort of Greek mythological retread of ''Star
Wars'' (it has a wise little mechanical owl in it who's a third cousin
of R2-D2), but it's also part of an older Hollywood tradition of
special-effects fantasies, and its visual wonderments are astonishing.
The story, on the other hand, is robust and straightforward.
Perseus (Harry Hamlin) is locked into a coffin with his mother and
cast into the sea, after she has angered the gods. But Zeus (Laurence
Olivier) takes pity and sees that the coffin washes ashore on a
deserted island, where Perseus grows to manhood and learns of his
mission in life.
The mission, in a nutshell, is to return to Joppa and rescue
Andromeda (Judi Bowker) from a fate worse than death: marriage to the
hideously ugly Calibos, who was promised her hand in marriage before
he was turned into a monster by the wrath of the gods. Calibos lives
in a swamp and dispatches a gigantic, scrawny bird every night to
fetch him e spirit of the sleeping Andromeda in a gilded cage.
If Perseus is to marry Andromeda, he must defeat Calibos in combat
and also answer a riddle posed by Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother.
Those who answer the riddle incorrectly are condemned to die. Love was
more complicated in the old days.
There are, of course, other tests. To follow the bird back to the
lair of Calibos, the resourceful Perseus must capture and tame
Pegasus, the last of the great winged horses. He must also enter the
lair of Medusa, who turns men to stone with one glance, and behead her
so that he can use her dead eyes to petrify the gargantuan monster
Kraken, who is unchained from his cage on the ocean floor so that he
can ravish Joppa in general and Andromeda in particular.
All of this is gloriously silly, and there's a lot of laughter in
the theater, but it's good-hearted laughter because this movie so
obviously is in love with its fantastic images. Because the movie
respects its material, it even succeeds in halfway selling us this
story; movies that look like ''Clash of the Titans'' have a tendency
to seem ridiculous, but this film has the courage of its convictions.
It is also blessed with a cast that somehow finds its way past all
the monsters and through all the heroic dialogue and gets us involved
in the characters.
Harry Hamlin is a completely satisfactory Perseus, handsome and
solemn and charged with his own mission. Judi Bowker is a beautiful
princess and a great screamer, especially in the scene where she's
chained to the rock and Kraken is slobbering all over her. Burgess
Meredith has a nice little supporting role as Ammon, an old playwright
who thinks he may be able to turn all of this into a quick epic. And
Laurence Olivier is just as I have always imagined Zeus: petulant,
but with a soft spot for a pretty face.
The real star of the movie, however, is Ray Harryhausen, who has
been working toward this movie during more than 40 years as a creator
of special effects. He uses combinations of animation, miniatures,
optical tricks and multiple images to put humans into the same movie
frames as the most fantastical creatures of legend, and more often
than not, they look pretty convincing; when Perseus tames Pegasus, it
sure looks like he's dealing with a real horse (except for the wings,
of course).
Harryhausen's credits include ''Mighty Joe Young,'' ''Jason and
the Argonauts'' and ''The Golden Voyage of Sinbad,'' but ''Clash of
the Titans'' is his masterwork.
Among Harryhausen's inspired set-pieces: the battle in Medusa's
lair, with her hair writhing with snakes; the flying horse scenes; the
gigantic prehistoric bird; the two-headed wolf-dog, Dioskilos; the
Stygian witches; and, of course, Kraken, who rears up from the sea and
causes tidal waves that do a lot of very convincing damage to a Greek
city that exists only in Harryhausen's art.
The most lovable special-effects creation in the movie is little
Bubo, a golden owl sent by the gods to help Perseus in his trials.
Bubo whistles and rotates his head something like R2-D2 in ''Star
Wars,'' and he has a similar personality, too, especially at the
hilarious moment when he enters the film for the first time.
''Clash of the Titans'' is just about perfect as summer
entertainment. It's a family film (there's nothing in it that would
disturb any but the most impressionable children), and yet it's not by
any means innocuous: It's got blood and thunder and lots of gory
details, all presented with enormous gusto and style. It has faith in
a story-telling tradition that sometimes seems almost forgotten, a
tradition depending upon legends and myths, magical swords, enchanted
shields, invisibility helmets, and the overwhelming power of a kiss.
I had a great time.
------------------------------
Date: 12 June 1981 17:32-EDT
From: Steve Strassmann <STRAZ AT MIT-AI>
Subject: Clash of the Titans
A recent mention of the soon-to-be released Clash of the Titans
reminded me to type a review. It's not easy to write a spoiler for a
movie based on a Greek myth, but this is very close to one:
ClotT is as good a name as any for this flick. It was shown in a sneak
preview on the MIT campus a month or so ago, but the most I can
remember is the disappointment at the whole kaboodle. The animation
was acceptable, but varied greatly in quality. A few scenes (Perseus &
the Gorgon) for example, had very imaginative tricks (like the men
getting stoned). However, some of the visible marionette strings &
ragged matte lines around the Greek temples (What's the Acropolis
doing in the Grand Canyon, anyway?) took away a lot of the magic.
The mutilation of the Perseus myth was a crime in itself. Perseus
himself is portrayed as the dingbat he never was, and the Olympian
gods as the petty, jealous, bickering pack of children they always
were. There are obvious discrepancies, such as Perseus' flinging the
Medusa's head, and watching its trajectory carefully, and the
introduction of a "mechanical guide" which is a clone of R2-D2 right
down to the whistles & spinning head. As a matter of fact, a good
deal of the time, heros walk off without their weapons only to find
them in their hands in the next combat scene. (Of course, Perseus does
manage to lose an awful lot of stuff that he never lost in the
original legend.)
Don't see ClotT to learn about Perseus, to see new special effects, or
even for Laurence Olivier's Zeus (Lately, he's been confused between
his roles as Jews or Nazis. He's a Nazi here.); see it if you will
because it's an O.K. hero/faithful sidekick story with more (if not
better) special effects than, say, Ordinary People.
------------------------------
Date: 12 June 1981 02:00-EDT
From: Stuart M. Cracraft <MCLURE AT MIT-AI>
Subject: H.G. Wells encouraging anti-scientific thought
That's a somewhat dubious claim. You might as well say the same thing
about Crichton's Westworld, Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man. Carrying
cynicism of this kind too far could invalidate 99% of SF produced by
so-called hard-science writers like Clarke, Niven, Haldeman. About
the only writer I can think of who used truly scientific endings was
Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes stories and some of those were pretty
far-fetched too.
First and foremost, Wells was a failed social architect, not an
environmentalist. I imagine that if Wells had adhered to a strict
policy of scientifically resolving his tales, his work might have
faded into obscurity, considering the possibly ludicrous "resolutions"
he might have resorted to. Instead, we're left with situations which
place Man in a whirlwind of change, both technological and social. I
don't feel that they encourage anti-scientific thought at all. They
merely show Wells's discontent with the paths of social change as he
had perceived them. In my opinion, Wells was one of the best writers
at dealing with fantastically implausible technology in ordinary
situations.
THE TIME MACHINE was not written to demonstrate superior technology
winning out; rather, Wells wrote it to extrapolate the dichotomy in
English society of the 1890's as he envisioned it.
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS has an outside force of superior technology, but
the entire conflict is probably staged just to show how Man might
react to a supposedly invincible enemy (another good example of this
is Varley's OPHIUCHI HOTLINE).
Wells was concerned with social change. His scientific devices were
used purely as a means for accomplishing that change rapidly and
allowed him to quickly start examining the effect on people.
------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************
-----------------------------------------------------------------
gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <
[email protected]>
of
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/
This Usenet Oldnews Archive
article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:
1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.
2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:
The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996
Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.
