From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom
THE MT VOID
07/10/26 -- Vol. 45, No. 2, Whole Number 2440
Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 20 (THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD, DRACULA
(1931), HAMNET) (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Humble Bundle / John Scalzi Charity Fundraiser (comments
by Paul S. R. Chisholm)
The World Cup and Classic Science Fiction (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
How AI Is Changing Language (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 20 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD (2009): This is a quirky film that played in
only 55 theaters, and grossed under a million dollars worldwide,
yet it has a certain charm. It also has a killer cast: John
Malkovich, Colin Hanks, Emily Blunt, and Ricky Jay, with George
Takei, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and Tom Hanks in cameo roles.
Malkovich plays the eponymous character, a mentalist who was once
a regular on "The Tonight Show" ("with Johnny Carson", as he
insists on including), but is now reduced to playing to partly
filled auditoriums in places like Bakersfield, Wausau, and
Willamette. Then suddenly things change--but is this a good thing?
I highly recommend this movie.
DRACULA (1931): I watched this with the Steve Haberman commentary
on the 75th Anniversary Edition, and I have to say I disagree with
him a lot, not just in his constant denigration of the George
Melford Spanish-language version, but in his inexplicable claim
that the roughly torn piece of cardboard stuck to a lamp in a
scene in Mina's bedroom was "set-dressing", even as he admitted it
was to shield her face from light from the lamp. Is he claiming
that Mina decided to leave the lamp on, but ripped off a piece of
cardboard to block the light?
My opinion of Haberman is not improved by his repeated use of the
term "Chinaman" to refer to a character in a (different) movie.
I also watched the "Monster Tracks" bonus feature--or tried to.
This consists of text commentary in green lettering over the
bottom of the picture. It is hard to read because it doesn't show
up well against the picture itself; in fact, it was so unreadable
at times that I gave up.
HAMNET (2025): I'm a fan of Shakespeare's plays in variations from
traditional to re-imagined (e.g., the 1995 RICHARD III or Akira
Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD). And I even like films about
Shakespeare (e.g., SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE). But this just fell flat
with me. I don't understand what Chloe Zao was trying to do. And
when in the commentary she talked about how she had the cast
attend a tantric polarity workshop, I concluded I never would
understand it.
One interesting bit of trivia: the actor playing Hamlet in the
play within the movie is the older brother of the actor playing
Shakespeare's young son Hamnet.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Humble Bundle / John Scalzi Charity Sale (comments by Paul
S. R. Chisholm)
Humble Bundle has a deal on 22 of John Scalzi's ebooks for $18.
The deal runs through July 24, and includes:
- the first six (of seven) novels in his Old Man's War series
(nominated for a Hugo this year) and a novella in that same
universe,
- the three novels in the Interdependency series,
- the three novels in the Lock In series,
- six standalone novels with comedic initial premises: AGENT TO
THE STARS, THE ANDROID'S DREAM, FUZZY NATION, REDSHIRTS, THE
KAIJU PRESERVATION SOCIETY, STARTER VILLAIN
- two short stories: "The President's Brain is Missing" and "The
Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City:
Prologue"
- YOUR HATE MAIL WILL BE GRADED (entries from Mr. Scalzi's blog)
The minimum payment is $18. That includes a small contribution to
a charity, in this case World Central Kitchen. If you spend more,
sliders let you adjust how much goes to the charity, the
publisher, and Humble.
This deal may only be available in the U.S.
Find the deal at:
<
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/john-scalzi-collection-old-mans -war-more-tor-books-books>
Find all Humble Bundle book deals at:
<
https://www.humblebundle.com/books>
[-psrc]
Evelyn adds:
Humble Bundle sells collections of books (and games) with a
minimum price and with a portion of the price going towards
charity and the rest split among the creators. As Paul noted, you
get to juggle the percentages.
The formats supported are:
EPUB Widely supported by most e-readers, including Nook and
iPad. It allows for flexible text display.
PDF A universal format that can be viewed on almost any device,
though it lacks some adjustable features.
CBZ A comic book archive format designed for sequential viewing
of images, ideal for comic books.
Note that MOBI is not supported! Most Humble Bundle books are
DRM-free so you can probably convert them to MOBI from EPUB using
Calibre or some such.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The World Cup and Classic Science Fiction (comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
As reported by GBN <
https://www.gbnews.com/sport/football/england- vs-mexico-ben-leo-mexico-city-fireworks-england-team-hotel>:
"Watch the extraordinary moment GB News star Ben Leo confronted a
group of rowdy Mexican fans trying to keep the England team awake
at night outside their hotel.
Shortly after midnight in Mexico City, unsportsmanlike supporters
began launching fireworks, beating drums and chanting opposite the
Three Lions' digs.
But with England already facing an uphill battle to progress some
2,200 metres above sea level, Ben took matters into his own hands
to ask why they needed to resort to this..." [-GBN]
ObSF: "A Slight Case of Sunstroke" by Arthur C. Clarke,
anthologized in TALES OF TEN WORLDS and THE COLLECTED STORIES OF
ARTHUR C. CLARKE. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: How AI Is Changing Language (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
In the 06/19/26 issue of the MT VOID, I wrote about AI detection.
This is a follow-up.)
In an essay in The Guardian, "How AI is changing language", writes
about the inherent problems of AI detection, and some of it is
what I have been saying, but he also notes a different problem.
He cites Claire Hardaker, a professor of forensic linguistics, as
saying "her respondents tend to rely on a few quick rules of thumb
to identify AI language, including the presence of cliches and the
use of dashes. The rCLrule of threerCY, where words or phrases are
arranged in a satisfying trio, is also thought to be a giveaway."
Before I even read this, I had noted in a comment to File 770 on
AI writing (<
https://file770.com/ pixel-scroll-7-1-26-alas-poor-pixel/#comments>), "I suspect if
Edward GibbonrCOs work were run through an AI detector, it would
decide his triads made it AI-written."
As Shariatmadari goes on to say, "all these 'tells' are also
characteristic of human writing, which, after all, the large
language models (LLMs) that produce them were trained on. 'You
could go back to Charles Dickens and say he had AI, because he
used the em dash too.' And orators have known about the rule of
three ever since Julius Caesar said Veni, vidi, vici."
But the different problem?
"The problem is that not only does AI train on human writing, but
humans are stylistically influenced by AI, the interplay creating
a kind of linguistic hall of mirrors."
In other words, if you read enough AI-generated writing, you will
start to copy it.
The entire (fascinating) article is at:
<
https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/jul/04/ future-of-fiction-next-great-novel-ai-language-chat-gpt>
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Our book-and-movie group read/watched the second and third
episodes of THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES. (We had done the first episode
a few months ago.) The first thing to note is that Bradbury set
his stories on what is now called in science fiction circles "Old
Mars", a term coined by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin in
the anthology of the same name. Bradbury wrote these stories
before the Mariner and Viking missions told us that Mars's
atmosphere was too thin to support humans, or that there would not
be liquid water on the surface (and certainly not in the
quantities shown in the film, which looked more like rivers than
small trickles), or that there would not be clouds in a blue sky
(shades of TOTAL RECALL here).
And even though we knew that Mars's gravity was well below that of
Terra's long before Bradbury, he seemed to assume it was close to
Terra's. (As did the film THE LAST DAYS ON MARS and THE MARTIAN.
Well, they're filming on Terra.)
Some of it seemed familiar. Sam and Elma's hot dog stand (in "The
Off Season") is not that different in concept from the diner near
the air base in SEVEN DAYS IN MAY. Both sets of owners thought
they had picked an ideal location; both were wrong (for different
reasons).
And speaking of the hot dog stand, where did Sam get the hot dogs
and hamburgers we was going to serve thousands of customers? For
that matter, where did any of the food come from? We see no
farming, and one cannot transport enough food from Terra to Mars
to support the population shown.
And while the outside of the buildings looks modular and spartan,
the bedroom we see has wallpaper, a fancy padded headboard for the
bed, two very decorative (and breakable) lamps, and a whole host
of other things unlikely to be found in a colony founded only a
couple of decades earlier.
Another familiar story was "The Long Years", which reminded me
very much of the "Twilight Zone" episode "The Lonely", and also of
FORBIDDEN PLANET, both having sort of average guys single-handedly
building advanced androids/robots (primarily for its language and
expressed attitudes, common in 1950, but racist in 1997).
The mini-series dropped some of the book's episodes: "There Will
Come Soft Rains" and "Usher II", neither of which really have
anything to do with Mars, and "Way in the Middle of the Air",
which was dropped from the 1997 edition of THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES
as well. The re-issue of the book in 1997 changed the dates of the
various stories and bridging comments from 1999-2026 to 2001-2057.
It is of course now out of date again. One (well, this one,
anyway) hopes that the next publication will restore the original
dates.
Conversely, the mini-series included episodes not in the first
publications of THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, such as "The Fire
Balloons", which did not appear in a regular edition of THE
MARTIAN CHRONICLES until the 1997 edition. (It was written after
the first publication of THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES in 1950.) This
explains why, when I watched the mini-series, that section looked
entirely unfamiliar--I had read a 1967 printing of the 1950
edition.
There was also a personal moment for me. In the episode "The
Silent Towns", Bernadette Peters uses a lip pencil (a.k.a. lip
liner) to touch up her make-up. I immediately thought of my
mother, who also used a lip pencil (as she called it). When we
lived in Rantoul, Illinois, in the early 1960s, she needed a new
one, but apparently such an exotic item wasn't available in the
somewhat rural town, so she ended up asking a friend in New York
City to buy her a couple and mail them to her. Why this memory
remains to me after sixty years is a mystery. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
I do not try to dance better than anyone else.
I only try to dance better than myself.
--Mikhail Baryshnikov
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