THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/02/21 -- Vol. 40, No. 1, Whole Number 2178

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Romper-Noir (by Mark R. Leeper)
MIDWAY (2019) (film review by Mark R. Leeper
and Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE FATED SKY by Mary Robinette Kowal (audio book review
by Joe Karpierz)
THE HUMAN COSMOS: CIVILIZATION AND THE STARS by Jo Marchant
(book review by Gregory Frederick)
SONG OF FREEDOM (letter of comment by Kevin R)
This Week's Reading (Hugo Award Dramatic presentation,
Long Form, finalists) (film and book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: Romper-Noir (by Mark R. Leeper)

All around the mulberry bush,
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey thought it was all in fun,
But he was DEAD wrong.

[-mrl]

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

TOPIC: MIDWAY (2019) (film review by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn
C. Leeper)

This is a 2019 re-creation of the Battle of Midway, currently best
known from the 1976 film MIDWAY. The special effects seem a grade
below those of Michael Bey's 2001 PEARL HARBOR, and the script
drops a lot of names to tie this film to that one. In fact, the
first half of this film is about the attack on Pearl Harbor and the
subsequent Doolittle raid on Tokyo. It is an hour into the film
before Midway is more than just a passing name.

But the name-dropping is also because, unlike the earlier 1976 film
MIDWAY, or PEARL HARBOR (which also covers the Doolittle Raid),
this film does not add fictional characters or a fictional love
interest. (Another film set in this period that sticks to real
people is TORA! TORA! TORA!) So all the names are real and hence
sound a little like name-dropping. Even when names aren't
mentioned, there are glimpses of the best-known people from Pearl
Harbor. For example, at the awards ceremony shown about an hour in
(and which took place shortly before the Battle of Midway on the
deck of an aircraft carrier), we see from behind an African-
American seaman in the row of recipients; that would be Doris
Miller, who was awarded the Navy Cross on May 27 on the deck of the
USS Enterprise.

(Many films have featured highly fictionalized accounts of the
attack on Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, or both. This may be
the first reasonably accurate depiction of those events.)

One problem in war movies is balancing the chaos of battle with the
need to let the audience follow what is going on. MIDWAY leans
more toward the former than the latter.

Another problem with the film is that it may be too accurate. We
are introduced to a lot of actors with unfamiliar faces who are
much less familiar than those in, say, the earlier MIDWAY, making
it harder to keep the characters straight. This makes it harder to
follow the events.

The script also takes the story from 1937 to 1942, chops it in
pieces, and although it shows them in chronological order, the
script jumps a few months or years with only minimal warning.

Mark summarizes: "I never actually followed a historic battle for
accuracy. This one I did. The Battle of Midway is one of the most

amazing stories in military history and I was very pleased to see a
new film featuring that story."

This is the rare war film that gets more points for historic
accuracy than for entertainment.

Rating: low +3 (-4 to +4) [-mrl/ecl]

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

TOPIC: THE FATED SKY by Mary Robinette Kowal (copyright 2018, Tor,
$15.99, trade paperback, 384pp, ISBN 978-0-7653-9894-9; copyright
2018, Audible Studios, ASIN B07G8KZRST, 10 hours and 14 minutes,
narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal) (audio book review by Joe
Karpierz)

THE FATED SKY is the second book of the Lady Astronaut of Mars
series, the sequel to the Hugo winning THE CALCULATING STARS and
the predecessor to this year's Hugo finalist, THE RELENTLESS MOON
(I have seen that there is a fourth book in the works, THE
DERIVATIVE BASE, but the only thing I know about it is that it is
continues the story from THE FATED SKY), although the word
predecessor may be the wrong word. There are a lot of cases where
the second book in a series tends to be weak; not so with THE FATED
SKY, although I don't think it lives up to the standards of THE
CALCULATING STARS. In fact, in my review of that novel I wrote,
"THE CALCULATING STARS is a terrific novel, and a worthy Hugo
finalist. I look forward to reading its sequel, THE FATED SKY".
Still, this novel is a good one.

So, the human race has colonized the moon, and trips to and from
the Earth are commonplace enough. Elma York is a pilot on those
runs, and she makes periodic visits to her husband back on Earth,
Nathaniel York. One of those runs back to Earth results in a
terrorist attack of the shuttle by a group that thinks the space
program is a waste, and that the money should be better spent here
on Earth (now where have we heard that before). There is also some
sentiment that space travel is for the privileged few, and that it
will never be truly opened to every one on the planet. Remember,
the opening scene of THE CALCULATING STARS has an asteroid crash on
Earth, destroying Washington D.C., and the space program
development is accelerated in response to that disaster. There is a
point, we can admit, to wanting the money spent on the planet to
rebuild instead of looking to get off this rock. It's an
interesting angle that really isn't explored in this novel.

Elma is still the face of the space program; she is still the Lady
Astronaut. She is not only a pilot, but a computer. Since
mechanical computers are still primitive and can't do the
calculations necessary for space travel, human beings still do it
better. The fact that she is the Lady Astronaut and a computer
plays heavily into the story. A mission to Mars is revving up, and
training is underway. As much as Elma would like to go--and she
really would like to go--she is satisfied to stay with her job as a
pilot shuttle as it allows her to see Nathaniel on a periodic
basis. Out of the blue, long after training has started, she is
reassigned to the Mars mission, and discovers that she has been
tabbed to take the place of one of the other computers. Why? Not
because she is any better than the other person, but because she is
the Lady Astronaut. The space program needs positive attention
which leads to continued funding, and what better way than to
assign the Lady Astronaut to the project. This causes strained
relationships between Elma and the rest of the mission team, and is
the first of many events which causes conflict within the team.
And so THE FATED SKY is the story of the flight to Mars, complete
with technical issues, emotional problems, racial conflicts, and a
host of other problems that contribute to the tension of the novel.
And all the human issues are relevant to the time period. It is the
early 1960s; racism and sexism are rampant not only in society on
Earth, but within the mission team. The women are the ones
assigned the laundry duty. The Blacks are assigned clean-up duty,
and as a rule don't get assignments within their fields of
expertise. The messy situation is made worse by the presence of a
racist South African on the mission team.

And yet, even with all the problems, it is a human story, as people
band together in times of difficulty to do their best to make the
mission succeed. And speaking of it being a human story, there is
something on the back cover of the book that I find a bit lacking.
In describing Elma, there is the description "Mathematician,
Computer, Astronaut". What is missing in that description is
"Wife". That may sound sexist, but given that Elma has given up a
good number of years of her life with her husband--a decision that
agonizes Elma throughout the novel--as well as the family they
wanted to have, I believe it is a term that should be included.
Still, I supposed that's a nit pick, as it really has nothing to do
with this terrific novel.

Kowal is the perfect person to narrate this novel. She knows the
characters well, she knows how she wants them to sound, and she
knows how she wants them to act. Her narration is, in my mind,
flawless, as one would expect. After hearing her read this story,
I can't imagine anyone else narrating a Lady Astronaut book.
[-jak]

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

On 7/4/21 10:33 AM, eleeper@optonline.net wrote:

> TOPIC: Romper-Noir (by Mark R. Leeper)
>
> All around the mulberry bush,
> The monkey chased the weasel
> The monkey thought it was all in fun,
> But he was DEAD wrong.
>

That had me wondering if the monkey was chasing the wrong weasel. I'd
always heard it as "All around the cobbler's bench." A quick check,
though, shows that both versions have been around for a long time.

The mulberry version makes me think of T.S. Eliot's:

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

In article <sbt05v$b5l$1@dont-email.me>,
Gary McGath <garym@REMOVEmcgathREMOVE.com> wrote:
>On 7/4/21 10:33 AM, eleeper@optonline.net wrote:
>
>> TOPIC: Romper-Noir (by Mark R. Leeper)
>>
>> All around the mulberry bush,
>> The monkey chased the weasel
>> The monkey thought it was all in fun,
>> But he was DEAD wrong.
>>
>
>That had me wondering if the monkey was chasing the wrong weasel. I'd
>always heard it as "All around the cobbler's bench." A quick check,
>though, shows that both versions have been around for a long time.

I remember reading that both a "monkey" and a "weasel" are
technical terms for cobbler's tools. And the second strain reads

"A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle;
That's the way my money goes:
Pop goes the weasel."

In other words, the cobbler isn't bringing in enough cash to
cover his expenses, and when Saturday comes he hasn't enough cash
to buy enough cheap gin to get him drunk enough to forget his
troubles. (Gin was sold at the rates of "drunk for a penny, dead
drunk for tuppence.") So he goes out and pops (pawns) his weasel
till Monday morning, assuming he has something to redeem it with.
>

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

On Sunday, July 4, 2021 at 10:33:57 AM UTC-4, eleeper@optonline.net wrote:

[snip]

> Jo Marchant shows many examples of how in the past humans used the
> awe and wonder from viewing the heavens to create art, religion,
> and science. One example mentioned occurs during the summer
> solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at New Grange in England. In the
> book, we visit medieval monks coming up with methods to measure
> time separate from nature and Tahitian sailors navigating by the
> stars in tune with nature. We learn how experimenters examined
> light to reveal the chemical composition of the sun. We see how
> Einstein worked out that space and time are one and the same. This
> book puts a different perspective on our history and warns us not
> to be too separated from the natural world. [-gf]

I know the English once stole the whole flippin' island,
but Newgrange is in Ireland, unless there's a second one
to the east.

https://www.newgrange.com/

--
Kevin R

In article <qvqoBu.2y7@kithrup.com>, djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:

>
> I remember reading that both a "monkey" and a "weasel" are
> technical terms for cobbler's tools. And the second strain reads
>
> "A penny for a spool of thread,
> A penny for a needle;
> That's the way my money goes:
> Pop goes the weasel."

The version usually appearing in the UK is:

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That's the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel

Every night when I go out,
The monkey's on the table,
Take a stick and knock it off,
Pop! goes the weasel

Up and down the City road,
In and out the Eagle,
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel

The City Road in is just north of the City in London, the Eagle is a pub.

On 7/4/21 5:14 PM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> I remember reading that both a "monkey" and a "weasel" are
> technical terms for cobbler's tools. And the second strain reads
>
> "A penny for a spool of thread,
> A penny for a needle;
> That's the way my money goes:
> Pop goes the weasel."
>
> In other words, the cobbler isn't bringing in enough cash to
> cover his expenses, and when Saturday comes he hasn't enough cash
> to buy enough cheap gin to get him drunk enough to forget his
> troubles. (Gin was sold at the rates of "drunk for a penny, dead
> drunk for tuppence.") So he goes out and pops (pawns) his weasel
> till Monday morning, assuming he has something to redeem it with.

The account I've seem more often is mostly different. A spinner's weasel
(also used by cobblers) was a device that measured out a certain amount
of thread and then popped when the spool was full.

Concluding anything about the cobbler's drinking habits is a stretch,
but The Straight Dope mentions a 19th century version that has "Up and
down the City Road / In and out the Eagle." That one sounds more like
visiting too many taverns. Some sources confirm that "pop" is or was a
Cockney word for "pawn."

Old rhymes have gone through multiple versions and perhaps multiple
meanings. "Ring Around the Rosy" is often claimed to be a plague song,
but there's no written record of it until the 19th century, and many
variants are even harder to connect to a plague. Who knows what it's
really about, if anything.

And then there's Tolkien's reconstruction of the "original" version of
"Hi Diddle Diddle." :)

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com