THE MT VOID
09/09/22 -- Vol. 41, No. 11, Whole Number 2240

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Topics:
Excerpt from "Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil Travelog"
(Part 2) (travelogue by Mark Leeper)
A MASTER OF DJINN by P. Djeli Clark (audio book review
by Joe Karpierz)
TEN PATTERNS THAT EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE by Brian Clegg
(book review by Gregory Frederick)
Hugo Award Winners
Herodotus (letter of comment by Joseph T. Major)
This Week's Reading (THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM
OF NANTUCKET, PYM) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)

==================================================================
TOPIC: Excerpt from "Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil Travelog"
(Part 2) (travelogue by Mark Leeper)

[continued from last week]

There is a road around the base of the plateau. The jungle ends
as you get near the plateau and then it is sandy up to the rock.
There is a road around the base of the plateau. None of this is
paved, you understand, but it is marginally easier to drive on
than to go straight across country. We got on the road and
drove around. I got a better look at the Summerlee column.
Somehow from a distance I could not get a good picture because
the jungle was in the way. Now if I take a picture, I cannot
get enough in the frame to make it look interesting. We pass a
marker for James Colver Point. I don't know what it is or why
they labeled it. Nobody is telling us about it, but somebody
thought it was worth labeling. Evelyn says Colver doesn't sound
like a Portuguese or Indian name.

As we drove around the base we start to see a little camp.
Actually it looks like one tent and one shack. And there is a
wooden structure that is the base of the cable car. The jeeps
go around to the wooden structure. The drivers get out and talk
to someone from the shack. Evelyn, Jim and I get out to stretch
our legs. Jim goes over to talk to Ellen. The two Toms seem to
have come through the trip OK. Now the six of us are standing
around talking. I am writing some notes into my palmtop. OK,
now I am caught up to where we are. It is now just a minute
after 11.

Okay, it is now almost 9PM. We are back at Roxton Camp. So
what was it like?

The guy who runs the cable car came over to us and told us to go
ahead to the cable structure. A car takes four people and we
can split up any way we want over two cars. The two Toms come
with Evelyn and me. Ellen and Jim got the other car to
themselves. We got in. We talked and watched the ground drop
away under us. I suppose I am a little afraid of heights.
Particularly when you just have that cable holding you up and
the ground is so far beneath. If you fall you just hit the side
of the plateau a long way down. We talked to the Toms about
Broadway plays of all things. Here we are in Brazil about to
see dinosaurs and we are talking about Peter Schaffer and Bob
Fosse and The Phantom of the Opera.

It seemed like a long time we were going up, but it probably
wasn't more than 25 minutes. As long as we were talking I could
keep my mind off of how high we really were. When the wind came
up the car swung a little and I could feel it in my stomach.
Anyway we got to the top. There are three men up at the top.
If there were more I didn't see them. All of the people running
the lift were Brazilian. I mean Portuguese-Brazilian. I was
expecting to see some of the aborigines still working in this
area, but I have seen none. I think all of them, or what is
left of them, are in Rio. Maybe we will see some when we get
there. We get there in about eight days.

We had to wait around at the top for about 15 minutes before the
guide could take us around. While we waited I talked to Tom
Harris about where we had seen and where the two Toms had been.
They said we would like Italy when we get there. I told them we
are going to wait until we are old and tired before we see too
many places with plumbing. Actually we are getting old and
tired already.

The guide came to take us around. Some guide. She looked to be
18. Maybe 19. But she spoke English. A sort of English, I
guess. We were going to walk around on the path and see
dinosaurs. We were supposed to stay on the path. We were not
supposed to keep an eye on the jungle because some things do
come out. I wish. She was selling caramel corn, of all things.
Before we set out she wanted to know if any of us wanted to buy
some. Somehow selling caramel corn seems a little strange when
you are in dinosaur territory. It smelled good, or maybe a
little cloying, but it was not what we would have wanted.

We followed the path and our first stop was the pterodactyl
rookery. We saw it at a distance ahead. It looked almost like
a tent made of chain-link fence. There was a sort of double
door we went through to get inside. The smell was overpowering
and had been since we could first see the rookery. I don't know
if that is the smell of the animals themselves or excreta, but
it really smelled bad. The biggest pterodactyls were pretty
big. Maybe it was as big as a man and a wingspan maybe three
times as long as a man. They didn't look very happy. The wings
had slits cut in them, which must be a lot like clipping a
bird's wings. There were smaller ones and several chicks. I
would have expected the young ones to be a little cuter. I
guess they are a little too thin and boney to be cute. They
seemed a bit lethargic. I suppose they could have been drugged.
To me they just looked depressed. One does not ask a
pterodactyl why the long face? They are just born with long
faces.

[to be concluded next week]

[-mrl]

==================================================================
TOPIC: A MASTER OF DJINN by P. Djeli Clark (copyright 2021,
Macmillan Audio, 15 hours and 37 minutes, narrated by Suehy la
El-Attar, ASIN B08JD2THTX) (audio book review by Joe Karpierz)

A MASTER OF DJINN takes place in the same universe as the 2019 Hugo
Award Novella finalist "The Haunting of Tram Car 015" as well as
its predecessor "A Dead Djinn in Cairo" (neither of which I have
read, I confess). The setting of DJINN is an alternate Cairo of
the year 1912, where djinn and other magical creatures live freely
with and alongside humanity as contributing members of society.
How the djinn came to live among humans is the doing of al-Jahiz, a
man who, forty years prior to the beginning of the novel, opened up
the barrier between the magical and non-magical realms. That act
allowed the djinn and other creatures to enter the normal
world--which I suppose renders it not normal anymore--and also
allowed al-Jahiz to disappear.

In 1912, a cult has developed around al-Jahiz, and in Cairo a
secret brotherhood--"The Hermeitc Brotherhood of al-Jahiz"--is led
by an elderly prominent businessman. It appears that the
Brotherhood's main purpose is to find artifacts and relics that
were used by and associated with al-Jahiz. The novel opens at a
meeting of the Brotherhood, wherein a sword that used by al-Jahiz
is being delivered to the cult. During the meeting a mysterious
man appears and murders the lot of them.

Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha'arawi of the Ministry of Alchemy,
Enchantments and Supernatural Entities is called in to investigate.
She is young but not inexperienced, and has risen to the top of the
list of investigators who are called upon when odd things occur.
Fatma works alone, but as with any story like this, no one really
does. She is assigned a partner, Agent Hadia Abdel Hafez, who is
young and inexperienced but brings new ways of looking at things.
Fatma doesn't want her, wants nothing to do with her, but
grudgingly accepts that she has no choice but to take Hadia as her
partner. And to add to the party, Fatma's supernatural (although
we don't know just how supernatural she is) lover Siti joins the
party, and the three of them link up to try to find the man who
killed every last member of the Brotherhood. That murderer claims
to be al-Jahiz himself, returned from where ever he had
disappeared to, to right the wrongs of what society has become,
and while he's at it he plans to disrupt the impending World Peace
Summit. And so, the chase is on to find the imposter, as he is
called (because no one actually believes that he is al-Jahiz),
before he can wreak more damage in Cairo.

On 9/11/2022 8:33 AM, eleeper@optonline.net wrote:
> There is a road around the base of the plateau. The jungle ends
> as you get near the plateau and then it is sandy up to the rock.
> There is a road around the base of the plateau. None of this is
> paved, you understand, but it is marginally easier to drive on
> than to go straight across country. We got on the road and
> drove around. I got a better look at the Summerlee column.
> Somehow from a distance I could not get a good picture because
> the jungle was in the way. Now if I take a picture, I cannot
> get enough in the frame to make it look interesting. We pass a
> marker for James Colver Point. I don't know what it is or why
> they labeled it. Nobody is telling us about it, but somebody
> thought it was worth labeling. Evelyn says Colver doesn't sound
> like a Portuguese or Indian name.

Perhaps someone's having a little fun with the tourists?

"As to the man's identity," said Professor Challenger, "I have no
doubt whatever upon that point. As I made my way up the river
before I reached you at the fazenda I instituted very particular
inquiries about Maple White. At Para they knew nothing.
Fortunately, I had a definite clew, for there was a particular
picture in his sketch-book which showed him taking lunch with a
certain ecclesiastic at Rosario. This priest I was able to find,
and though he proved a very argumentative fellow, who took it
absurdly amiss that I should point out to him the corrosive
effect which modern science must have upon his beliefs, he none
the less gave me some positive information. Maple White passed
Rosario four years ago, or two years before I saw his dead body.
He was not alone at the time, but there was a friend, an American
named James Colver, who remained in the boat and did not meet
this ecclesiastic. I think, therefore, that there can be no doubt
that we are now looking upon the remains of this James Colver."

_The Lost World_
by Arthur Conan Doyle

On 9/11/2022 1:01 PM, Jay E. Morris wrote:
>
> On 9/11/2022 8:33 AM, eleeper@optonline.net wrote:
>> There is a road around the base of the plateau.  The jungle ends
>> as you get near the plateau and then it is sandy up to the rock.
>> There is a road around the base of the plateau.  None of this is
>> paved, you understand, but it is marginally easier to drive on
>> than to go straight across country.  We got on the road and
>> drove around.  I got a better look at the Summerlee column.
>> Somehow from a distance I could not get a good picture because
>> the jungle was in the way.  Now if I take a picture, I cannot
>> get enough in the frame to make it look interesting.  We pass a
>> marker for James Colver Point.  I don't know what it is or why
>> they labeled it.  Nobody is telling us about it, but somebody
>> thought it was worth labeling.  Evelyn says Colver doesn't sound
>> like a Portuguese or Indian name.
>

Oh, just fsking ignore me. I'd totally forgotten what you'd wrote last
week and just jumped in at this point.

> Perhaps someone's having a little fun with the tourists?
>
> "As to the man's identity," said Professor Challenger, "I have no
> doubt whatever upon that point. As I made my way up the river
> before I reached you at the fazenda I instituted very particular
> inquiries about Maple White. At Para they knew nothing.
> Fortunately, I had a definite clew, for there was a particular
> picture in his sketch-book which showed him taking lunch with a
> certain ecclesiastic at Rosario. This priest I was able to find,
> and though he proved a very argumentative fellow, who took it
> absurdly amiss that I should point out to him the corrosive
> effect which modern science must have upon his beliefs, he none
> the less gave me some positive information. Maple White passed
> Rosario four years ago, or two years before I saw his dead body.
> He was not alone at the time, but there was a friend, an American
> named James Colver, who remained in the boat and did not meet
> this ecclesiastic. I think, therefore, that there can be no doubt
> that we are now looking upon the remains of this James Colver."
>
> _The Lost World_
> by Arthur Conan Doyle