THE MT VOID
07/14/23 -- Vol. 42, No. 2, Whole Number 2284

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Topics:
The "Quatermass" Series (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Hugo Award Finalists *Finally* Announced
ROADSIDE PICNIC by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
THE BIGGEST IDEAS IN THE UNIVERSE: SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION
by Sean Carroll (book review by Gregory Frederick)
The History of the MT VOID (letters of comment
by Glen Taylor and David Leeper)
Proof-Reading (letter of comment by Hal Heydt)
This Week's Reading (KRAKATOA, EXPECT ME TOMORROW)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: The "Quatermass" Series (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Next Tuesday, July 18, 2023, marks the 70th anniversary of the
first broadcast of the first episode of the first BBC "Quatermass"
play, all of which were written by British screenwriter Nigel
Kneale.

This was "The Quatermass Experiment", to be followed by "Quatermass
II", and "Quatermass and the Pit". "The Quatermass Experiment" was
unexpectedly a huge media event. It virtually emptied the streets
of London as people were all home watching the play. "The
Quatermass Experiment" was the United Kingdom's first science
fiction serial, and Quatermass was the first British television
hero. (Alas, only a single chapter remains, since no one at the
time bothered to film or save live broadcasts.) As two more plays
were made each was more successful than its predecessor was, until
churches started rescheduling services so that congregations and
clergy would not miss the plays.

Each play was adapted into a film by Hammer Films of Britain, a
studio that incidentally built their great success on horror and
science fiction after having success in the field with the first
two "Quatermass" films. The third film was not made until the late
1960s. The titles of the films were the same as the BBC plays but
"Experiment" was intentionally misspelled "Xperiment" to emphasize
the "X"-certificate in Britain (more the equivalent of the US "R",
rather than the US "X"). These films each got a modest release in
the United States with the terrible respective names THE CREEPING
UNKNOWN, ENEMY FROM SPACE, and FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH. In
1980 a final Quatermass story was made for television, called
simply "Quatermass". It was never re-adapted into a film,
but a feature film (THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION) was made by editing
down the television movie. In 2005 the BBC again produced a
television version of "The Quatermass Experiment", doing it as a
live play, the first in several years. The original "Quatermass"
plays were the inspiration for the "Doctor Who" series. Kneale was
asked to write for "Doctor Who", but he did not like the series,
thinking it was too scary for a children's series. [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Hugo Award Finalists *Finally* Announced

We are not going to include the entire list here (it is almost 200
lines long--and that is the version with only the Roman alphabet
representations). It can be found at
<https://file770.com/2023-hugo-finalists-2/>.

We will list the two "major" categories, and will actually include
all the info for them, rather than just the titles and authors:

Best Novel:

- THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)
- THE KAIJU PRESERVATION SOCIETY, by John Scalzi (Tor Books)
- LEGENDS & LATTES, by Travis Baldree (Tor Books)
- NONA THE NINTH, by Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom)
- NETTLE & BONE, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books)
- THE SPARE MAN, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form:

- AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, screenplay by James Cameron,
Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver, directed by James Cameron
(Lightstorm Entertainment / TSG Entertainment II)
- BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER, screenplay by Ryan Coogler and
Joe Robert Cole, directed by Ryan Coogler (Marvel Studios)
- EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, screenplay by Daniel Kwan
and Daniel Scheinert, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Sheinert
(IAC Films / Gozie AGBO)
- NOPE, written by Jordan Peele, directed by Jordan Peele
(Universal Pictures / Monkeypaw Productions)
- SEVERANCE (Season 1), written by Dan Erickson, Anna Ouyang Moench
et al., directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle (Red Hour
Productions / Fifth Season)
- TURNING RED, screenplay by Julia Cho and Domee Shi, directed by
Domee Shi (Walt Disney Studios / Pixar Animation Studios)

Some of the delay was due to the difficulty of determining official
word counts for the Chinese language nominees, and also in
contacting the finalists (due to a bigger-than-usual problem with
spam filters discarding email from China).

If/when there is a website showing where some of the short fiction
works can be accessed free on-line, we will provide that URL.
However, it is not even clear whether all the works will be
available in English. [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: ROADSIDE PICNIC by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (original
copyright 1972; language translation copyright 2012; translated by
Olena Bormashenko; Chicago Review Press, Incorporated; 209pp;
$15.95; ISBN 978-1-61374-341-6) (book review by Joe Karpierz)

One of the interesting things about reviewing an old book, a book
that is considered a classic, a book that is over fifty years old,
is finding out if the book--in the opinion of the reviewer--is
really as good as its reputation makes it out to be. Does it stand
the test of time? If it was written today, would it not only be
published, but would it be any good?

Not long ago I read and reviewed William Gibson's NEUROMANCER.
Basically, I said it didn't do too much for me and fell flat. I
think that part of that feeling was that cyberpunk and all its
descendants are so commonplace these days that the book didn't
stand out for me at all. This is not the case with ROADSIDE
PICNIC. The book is considered one of the greatest science fiction
novels of all time (although I'm not sure who made that
pronouncement), and while it may or may not live up to that lofty
title, it is still a terrific book, more than fifty years after its
first publication in Russia.

The other issue with reviewing a book like this is that a great
number of long time SF readers have probably read the book decades
ago. So the challenge is reviewing it with those readers in mind,
while still aiming to get younger, newer readers of sf interested
in reading a book from more than fifty years ago.

The story is set in an English-speaking town called Harmont, and
takes place after an event called the Visitation in which
extraterrestrials stopped by to visit the planet for a couple of
days. Harmont is the location of one of six Zones where the aliens
landed. The aliens were pretty good about hiding themselves; no
aliens were ever seen, nor was their arrival or departure ever
seen, and this fact is true of all six Zones. What they did leave
behind was an abundance of strange objects and technology in the
Zones. The Zones also exhibit weird phenomena, much of which is
dangerous to humans.

But where there are weird unknown objects, there is an opportunity
for profit. Young people, known as stalkers, venture into the
Zones (in spite of the dangers) to retrieve artifacts that are
valuable on the black market. The novel follows Red Schuhart, one
of these stalkers, who lives for entering the Zone and retrieving
artifacts to sell. Of course, this fact in and of itself would
make this a boring novel. Early in the novel, one of his trips
inevitably goes wrong, and the events of the novel proceed from
there.

While the novel deals with science fictional concepts, it is a less
of a straightforward novel with conflicts and clear cut endings,
and more of a philosophical story about the effect the visitation
has on the characters in the book and humanity in general. Take,
for example, the title of the novel. Doctor Valentine Pilman
compares the Visitation to a picnic held by humans in a meadow off
a country road. After a day and evening, the people continue on
the journey they were on the day before, but in the process leave
lots of junk behind. The local wildlife comes out of hiding to
find all the stuff that is there, stuff they know nothing about or
do not understand. He states that the Visitation was simply a
roadside picnic. The aliens were traveling from one place to
another, and stopped to rest for a couple of days. When they
resumed their journey, they left a bunch of incomprehensible stuff
behind. Humanity is the wildlife, coming out of the shadows to
discover all junk left behind.