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THE MT VOID
01/02/26 -- Vol. 44, No. 27, Whole Number 2413
Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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Topics:
Correction to "Why Hard SF May Be Losing Its Audience"
(article by Dale Skran; correction
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Middletown (NJ) Public Library Science Fiction Discussion
Group *CHANGE*
Mini Reviews, Part 01 (A SOUND OF THUNDER, THE ATOMIC MAN,
JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN) (film reviews
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
How Iceland Celebrates Christmas (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE SHATTERING PEACE by John Scalzi (audio book review
by Joe Karpierz)
AVALON (letter of comment by Susan de Guardiola)
This Week's Reading (ORWELL'S ESSAYS: "Bookselling",
"In Defense of the Novel") (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Correction to "Why Hard SF May Be Losing Its Audience"
(article by Dale Skran; correction by Evelyn C. Leeper)
In the PDF version of the 12/26/25 issue of the MT VOID, a
trailing ">" was dropped, and a short paragraph missing. Here is
the pertinent section; what was missing was the explanation of
what the list was:
[BEGIN CORRECTED SECTION]
To buttress this line of thought, I would like to share with you
some recent Wall Street Journal headlines:
Dec. 11, page B1: "Bezos, Musk Pursue AI Hubs in Space"
Dec. 11, page B1: "U.S. investors Flock to Chinese AI"
Dec. 11, page B4: "Photoshop, 2 Other Apps To Be Added to ChatGPT"
Dec. 11, page B7: "Social-Media Ban Leaves Australian Teens
at a Loss"
Dec. 11, page A15: "AI Is a Gift to Human Creativity"
Dec. 11, page A1: "Kyiv Innovates With Daring Drone Operations"
Dec. 12, page A1: "Disney Set to Invest $1 Billion in OpenAI"
Dec. 12, page A1: "In Bots vs. Hackers, AI is Close to Winning"
Dec. 12, page A6: "Order Takes Aim at State AI Laws
Dec. 12, page A12: "A Family Drama of the AI Future"
Dec. 12, page B1: "AI Demand Lifts Broadcom's Sales"
Dec. 12, page B1: "Estate Sues ChatGPT for Wrongful Death
in Murder-Suicide"
Dec. 12, page B2: "Rivian Expands Hands-Free Driving"
[END CORRECTED SECTION]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Middletown (NJ) Public Library Science Fiction Discussion
Group *CHANGE*
New January movie to honor Rob Reiner:
Jan 8, 2026: THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987), directed by Rob Reiner
book: "The Princess Bride" (1973) novel by William Goldman
<
https://www.hoopladigital.com/ebook/
the-princess-bride-william-goldman/14816683>
<
https://archive.org/details/princessbride0000will/mode/1up>
Feb 5, 2026 HEART OF A DOG (1988) & novella by Mikhail Bulgakov
<
https://www.hoopladigital.com/ebook/
a-dogs-heart-michael-bulgaria/13640560>
[Yes, I know the author's name is misspelled. Apparently enough
people have autocorrected change it to this that Hoopla has
decided to have a redirect from it. The correct spelling also
works:
<
https://www.hoopladigital.com/ebook/
a-dogs-heart-mikhail-bulgakov/13640560>
-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 01 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)
[And with a new year, the part number of these mini-reviews
resets.]
A SOUND OF THUNDER (2005): A SOUND OF THUNDER is a feature-length
film based on Ray Bradbury's story of the same name, which is
fourteen pages long. And therein is the problem: the story was a
nice compact tale, and did not have enough to sustain a
feature-length film, quite the reverse of the usual problem of
condensing a novel into a film.
Yes, they added a lot of special effects to show you a future
Chicago, and a prehistoric one. But the rear-projection of the
future Chicago is not convincing, and the prehistoric past has
been overshadowed by modern CGI.
The "time waves" are an invention for the movie, as a way to pad
out the story; Bradbury has the change take effect immediately.
And it's not clear why there are changes from the past that
impinge upon the then-present, but there are no other changes to
the then-present, such as different buildings. I'm also not sure
that a change in evolution is going to have sauropods evolving
into something with a primate-like face, convergent evolution
notwithstanding.
And why do they think if they fix the problem, they won't know any
of it has happened? People--time travelers or not--certainly
noticed the first changes.
(I won't even ask why a particle accelerator and a time machine
are interchangeable.)
It also has one (or perhaps two) of the common, but offensive
tropes (rot13'd): gur oynpx thl qvrf svefg, naq gur oynpx thl
fnpevsvprf uvzfrys sbe gur juvgr punenpgref.
The moral: When people ask which of your favorite stories or
novels you'd like to see made into a movie, the correct answer is
"Please, God, none of them!"
Released theatrically 02 September 2005; currently streaming on
Hoopla.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318081/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sound_of_thunder>
THE ATOMIC MAN (a.k.a. TIMESLIP) (1956): In THE ATOMIC MAN the
gimmick is that someone has somehow been shifted seven seconds
forward in time, so he answers questions before they are asked.
(There's a whole MacGuffin about the transmutation of elements and
industrial espionage, but no one watches the film for that.)
One can quibble about what answering questions before they are
asked implies that there is no such thing as free will--what if
you just didn't ask the question the person just answered. In
fact, this problem arises with almost all sorts of time travel
into the past.
And this is not the first use of this idea: Isaac Asimov used it
in "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline".
Released theatrically 04 March 1956; currently streaming on Mometu.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048964/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/atomic_man>
JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN (1969): JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE
OF THE SUN supposiedly takes place in 2069, but the clothing
styles and hairdos are strictly 1969: mini-skirts and go-go boots.
And the all-male security committee seems very anachronistic
(though is probably more likely than mini-skirts and go-go boots).
Needless to say, the science is totally bogus on many levels. The
idea that a planet the same size as Earth could remain undetected
just because it was on the far side of the sun is ludicrous--the
gravitational effects alone would reveal it. And the idea that it
would be an exact duplicate, down to the people inhabiting it, and
their actions, and their thoughts, is even more ridiculous.
If all this was in service of something, that would be one thing,
but there is no purpose. The ship flies around the sun and lands,
the survivor is at first confused by various reversals, but then
realizes the truth. And then it goes nowhere.
Also, they claim the far side of the sun (meaning its surface) is
not totally hidden from us. But unlike the moon, the sun does not
rotate in sync with us--we do see all sides of the sun.
They do the best to keep the reveal hidden: the hairstyles have no
parts, and the men wear turtlenecks. But they don't have slip-ups,
because after they filmed the part on "counter-earth" they flopped
the film. But there are character slips: the main character
doesn't notice the righthand drive in the car, or the fact that
his pants zipper is reversed. And although some tests shown the
organs reversed in his body, they attribute it to errors in the
equipment; don't they ever put a stethoscope to him and notice his
heart is on the wrong side?
There is also the question of whether organic molecules should be
reversed, and therefore taste and act differently.
And there seems to be gravity most of the time on the ship when it
is in space.
The film uses psychedelic effects to represent the passing from
one realm to the other. What the state of the universe is at that
point is totally unclear. They did say the polarity of electricity
did not change, because if it did one would have to ask exactly
where that happened.
Released theatrically 28 August 1969.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064519/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/
journey_to_the_far_side_of_the_sun>
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: How Iceland Celebrates Christmas (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
According to Wikipedia:
"The Christmas book flood or Yule book flood (Icelandic:
J||lab||kafl|||#i|#) is a term used in Iceland for the annual release
of new books occurring in the months before Christmas. These books
are then purchased as presents to be gifted on Christmas Eve. This
tradition makes books the most popular Christmas gift in the
country. The tradition extends into the night, when Icelanders
will often read their new books and drink hot chocolate."
We missed 2025, but can we adopt that here for 2026? [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE SHATTERING PEACE by John Scalzi (copyright 2025,
Audible Studios, 9 hours and 44 minutes, ASIN: B0DT7H3TYJ,
narrated by Tavia Gilbert) (audio book review by Joe Karpierz)
In preparation for this review, I took a look at John Scalzi's
bibliography. I'd had this feeling scratching the back of my brain
that for the most part, anything that Scalzi releases into the
universe strikes gold. A closer examination reveals that the
statement is not quite correct. Any *novel* that Scalzi publishes
strikes gold. That's not to say that his shorter fiction is not
good. I particularly liked 2009's "The God Engines" as well as his
Dispatcher series of novellas. But the novel is the form where he
shines, as evidenced by the boatload of awards and award
nominations that he's piled up over the years.
Arguably his most famous novel is OLD MAN'S WAR (although some
folks might present RED SHIRTS as being more famous, both for its
subject matter and its Hugo Award win for Best Novel), which
kicked off the series of the same name. Between 2005 and 2015 he
published six Old Man's War books, the last one being titled THE
END OF ALL THINGS. And while I think I remember him stating
somewhere that THE END OF ALL THINGS would be the last of the OLD
MAN'S WAR novels, I don't remember that as an absolute fact.
In 1982, Isaac Asimov returned to his Foundation universe with the
novel FOUNDATION'S EDGE, some 30 years after the publication of
SECOND FOUNDATION. There were two reasons why Asimov wrote
FOUNDATION'S EDGE: clamoring from fans, and, in Asimov's words
(although I'm paraphrasing, you'll get the idea), "Doubleday threw
wheelbarrows full of money at me to write the book." (I heard this
from him at a panel discussion at the Baltimore Worldcon in 1983,
where the book won the Best Novel Hugo.). While it's only been 10
years and not 30 since the publication of THE END OF ALL THINGS, I
do know that fans have been clamoring for a new Old Man's War
book, and well, it's a public and documented fact that Tor is
sending a lot of money Scalzi's way.
So the question then becomes "Just because you can do a thing,
should you actually do that thing?" Hang on, we'll get to the
answer.
There has been peace in the galaxy for (oddly enough) 10 years,
due to an agreement between the Colonial Union, Earth, and the
Conclave. There is a secret colony called Unity, hidden inside an
asteroid formerly occupied by the Obin, a species uplifted to
intelligence by the Consu. The colony is populated by various
species, and is an experiment to determine if they can coexist
peacefully. The problem is that the colony has disappeared. Since
the colony is secret, so is the mission to find out what happed to
Unity. A minor character from the last couple of novels, Gretchen
Trujillo, and her Obin assistant and friend Ran, are dispatched on
the secret mission. When they get to the location of the asteroid,
sure enough, Unity is gone, but what they do find is a singular
Consu, which Gretchen dubs "Kitty" (because it won't reveal its
name to her). Kitty agrees to tell Gretchen what happened to the
colony if she completes a special task for him. And thus, the
story and the plot is shoved forward. When more Consu arrive on
the scene, we find out a lot more about them, why Kitty was there
on its own, what secret Kitty has, and just what's going on with
internal Consu politics. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the
only other named Consu--well, named by Gretchen anyway. Gretchen
dubs the second Consu "Bacon" (because, once again, it won't tell
her its name), and I'd be willing to bet a lunch or dinner date
with someone that these names are a reference to a picture that
Scalzi took years ago of his cat with a piece of bacon on it (Go
ahead, look it up. I'll wait.). And oh yes, we find out what
happened to the colony. It's right there, only it isn't right
*there* (sorry, you'll have to read the book to get the answer to
that one.
Back to that question about whether you should do a thing just
because you can do a thing. Should Scalzi have written THE
SHATTERING PEACE? Well, yes, he does have a contract with Tor
which pays him a lot of money to write books. Ah, the question is,
did he need to write another book in the Old Man's War series, and
if the answer is yes, should it have been this one? The answers
are "no", and "I'm not so sure". Much like Mary Robinette Kowal's
THE MARTIAN CONTINGENCY, THE SHATTERING PEACE is missing
something; it doesn't feel quite right. It doesn't have, for lack
of better terms, the strength and pizzazz of the earlier Old Man's
War books. Fans of Scalzi's works, and fans of the Old Man's War
series will most likely enjoy THE SHATTERING PEACE. It's written
in the style we're used to from Scalzi. It's witty with a lot of
snappy dialogue, and it moves quickly. If there's one thing that
Scalzi does well (there are many things that Scalzi does well),
there is no padding in this book. It's not too long, and there
aren't unnecessary tangents and plot points. It's a tight book.
I'm going to say this out loud right here. THE SHATTERING PEACE is
a good, solid, Scalzi book. But I think his book that was
published earlier this year, WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE, was a
much better novel. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: AVALON (letter of comment by Susan de Guardiola)
In response to Evelyn's comments on AVALON in the 12/26/25 issue
of the MT VOID, Susan de Guardiola writes:
[Evelyn writes,] "He arrived on July 4th and he is telling the
story before dinner on Thanksgiving, and the film returns to those
two American holidays throughout, making it one of the few
'holiday' films that doesn't focus on a religious holiday." [-ecl]
How is Thanksgiving not a religious holiday when it is literally
about thanking a deity? Or is it just that the film doesn't
"focus" on it? [-smg]
Evelyn responds:
I was perhaps overly general in saying it was not a religious
holiday, though for many people, even religious people, it is a
more a day for a family get-together where one possibly thinks
about all the things they have to appreciate, even if there is no
being to be thanked for them. Even as a religious holiday, it is
in some sense multi-religious, and so far as I know, it is not
part of any religion's schedule of holidays the way Easter or
Passover or Ramadan or Vesak or Diwali is. (Some religions do have
a version of Thanksgiving, such as Sukkot or Mabon.) In any case,
what AVALON does is avoid focusing on any overtly Jewish holiday,
but rather on distinctly American ones. (Note that while Canada
has a Thanksgiving, it is on a different day.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I have started ORWELL'S ESSAYS by George Orwell (Everyman, ISBN 978-0-375-41503-6), and since it is 1416 pages long, I will be
commenting on individual essays as I go, rather than saving it up
for one ridiculously long column.
My first observation is from "Bookshop Memories" (Fortnightly,
November 1936). Orwell writes "[Bookselling] is a humane trade
which is not capable of being vulgarized beyond a certain point.
The combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller
out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman."
One cannot help but be reminded of similar claims. When European
settlers first saw bison, they were sure it would never go
extinct. Then in 1851 Herman Melville had written, "Speculating on
the possible extinction of whales, Melville says: "Though so short
a period ago--not a good lifetime--the census of the buffalo in
Illinois exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at
the present day not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that
region; and though the cause of this wondrous extermination was
the spear of man; yet the far different nature of the whale-hunt
peremptorily forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty
men in one ship hunting the Sperm Whales for forty-eight months
think they have done extremely well, and thank God, if at last
they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the days of the
old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the West, when the
far west (in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and a
virgin, the same number of moccasined men, for the same number of
months, mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have
slain not forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact
that, if need were, could be statistically stated." In other
words, it was impossible that whales would become extinct.
All this shows that predicting the future on the basis of the
present is fraught with peril. Which in turn is the most important
assumption of much science--uniformitarianism, that the physical
laws and properties will continue in the future as they have in
the past. But that's a different rabbit-hole.
In "In Defense of the Novel" (New English Weekly, 12 and 19
November 1936) , Orwell writes, "Question any thinking person as
to why he 'never reads novels,' and you will usually find that, at
bottom, it is because of the disgusting tripe that is written by
the blurb-reviewers. ... Here is just one specimen, from last
week's 'Sunday Times': 'If you can read this book and not shriek
with delight, your soul is dead.'"
Orwell goes on to say that "there can be no such thing as good
novel-criticism as long as it is assumed that *every novel is
worth reviewing*." Reviewers cannot write, "This book is tripe"
for the majority of books they receive for review; no one will pay
them to do that, and publishers will stop sending them books that
they can resell. (The latter effect is Orwell's observation, not
mine). And newspapers and magazines that rely on publishers'
advertisements cannot afford to stop reviewing their books.
I would like to think, therefore, that Orwell would be heartened
by Simon & Schuster's decision earlier this year to stop requiring
authors to obtain blurbs for their books. Alas, they are not going
so far as to say they will not *print* blurbs, but at least
authors don't have to go around begging their famous friends to
blurb their book. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
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