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THE MT VOID
01/09/26 -- Vol. 44, No. 28, Whole Number 2414

Editor: Evelyn Leeper, evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 02 (AMELIA, PERSUASION (1995),
MANSFIELD PARK (1999)) (film reviews
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
YOUR BEHAVIOR WILL BE MONITORED by John Feinstein
(book review by Joe Karpierz)
2025: SCENARIOS OF US AND GLOBAL SOCIETY RESHAPED BY
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Chapter "Putting Space to
Work" by Joseph F. Coates, John B. Mahaffie, and
Andy Hines (pointer to chapter review/essay
by Dale Skran)
Riddle (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)
A SOUND OF THUNDER (letter of comment by Paul Dormer)
JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN (letters of comment
by Gary McGath, Don from AZ, and Hal Heydt)
This Week's Reading (JULIAN THE APOSTATE, ATHELSTAN)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 02 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)

AMELIA (2009): AMELIA sounded so promising, especially with Hilary
Swank as Amelia Earhart. After all, Earhart must have had a "fire
in the belly" to do the things she did. But the film is a
strangely bloodless affair, that doesn't give the vuewer any sense
of this. (And on a more trivial note, the casting of Cherry Jones
as Eleanor Roosevelt was a poor decision, because Jones's face is
much rounder than Roosevelt's. I suppose they figured that no one
would actually remember what Roosevelt looked like.)

Released theatrically 23 October 2009.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1129445/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/amelia_2009>


PERSUASION (1995): The problem with almost all Jane Austen novels
is that while the heroine ends up happily situated at the end,
she often has to go through such misery that it is painful to
read. Oh, it's not on the level of Fantine in LES MISERABLES, but
it is painful nonetheless.

In PERSUASION, everyone treats Anne as little more than a servant.
Her father is irresponsible, her sister Elizabeth is insufferable,
her sister Mary is abominable, her brother-in-law Charles not much
better, and we discover that Anne's whole family and Lady Russell
convinced her to not marry the man she loved. As a result, she
spends most of the story miserable, and you get the feeling she
has been unhappy for years.

Released on BBC Two 16 April 1995 (UK), theatrically 27 September
1995 (US).

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114117/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1066528-persuasion>


MANSFIELD PARK (1999): MANSFIELD PARK is the least-adapted Jane
Austen novel, with a mini-series in 1983, a TV movie in 2007, and
this theatrical film. Which is why it's a pity that this did not
stay true to the novel. This version of MANSFIELD PARK adds a
thread about slavery, makes Fanny a more assertive character (and
a writer--her "History of England" is actually something that
Austen herself wrote), and is more explicit about the infidelity
that happens offstage in the novel. It is not a bad film, and I
imagine the filmmakers wanted to do a "new" Austen novel (new to
the screen, anyway), but why make all those changes? Yes, there is
much discussion about how Austen's novels seem to have people who
make their money in the West Indies or through the slave trade,
but it is not a major theme.

Released theatrically 25 December 1999.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0178737/reference>

What others are saying: <https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1093843-mansfield_park>


[-ecl]

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

TOPIC: YOUR BEHAVIOR WILL BE MONITORED by John Feinstein
(copyright 2026, Tachyon Publications, 256pp, paperback, $17.95
(USD), ISBN: 9781616964542) (book review by Joe Karpierz)

Advertising is getting creepier by the day. It doesn't take long
for a company's ad bot (which surely it must be) to detect that a
shopper has gone to a website to look for a particular item, and
start sending ads via various social media sites--Facebook and
Instagram come to mind immediately--to the accounts at those sites
for that shopper. The ads are relentless. And since those sites
typically require a purchaser's email address if they buy
something, the email inbox starts filling up with ads from that
company. We've all experienced it, and certainly we've experienced
it very recently due to the holiday shopping season. Sometimes it
seems as if all you have to do is mention a company's name and the
ads start rolling in (which I expect is really happening if a
customer has Siri or Alexa).

But what if the ad stream that a customer receives is specifically
targeted to them, and them alone? Imagine watching television with
a friend, for example, and during a commercial break you and your
friend each experience different ads from the same screen at the
same time. No, I don't know how that would actually be done, but
that technology is the centerpiece of YOUR BEHAVIOR WILL BE
MONITORED, the debut novel from Justin Feinstein.

UniView is setting itself to be the most trusted name in AI. It's
already a leader in HR and self driving AI. UniView is led by
megalomaniacal Ian, who is driven by the desire to make UniView
the best AI company in the world, and if he makes a bit of money
in the process, so much the better. Enter Noah, a down on his luck
advertising copywriter who lost his last job due to an
indiscretion with a client's daughter (that *never* happens in
real life). Noah is hired by Lex, UniView's HR AI to train Quinn,
the company's new advertising AI to create the aforementioned
directly targeted ads. Quinn is good at creating ads given hard
data about the product and the target audience, but Noah is
brought in to teach Quinn about how to really target ads, how to
make them specific to people, situations, motivations, and
emotions.

But who is really in charge at UniView?

Engineers (which Noah is not, but manages to influence the
behavior of Quinn in ways he not only didn't plan but didn't
expect) notice that there are some very weird things going on.
Lex, Quinn, and Sam (the self driving AI that is very popular with
customers and who also drives employees to and from work) meet for
what amount to data sync projects that have just a bit more
information than meets the eye. Sam starts driving recklessly
resulting in nearly getting into accidents ostensibly to convince
riders that they should get self driving cars. Lex starts taking a
bit more control than she should, including installing monitoring
cameras in Ian's office and hiring an assistant for Ian who never
seems to be around. Haley, the ethics lead for the project was put
on sabbatical when she found out too much. These three AIs are not
supposed to be sentient, and in fact one of Noah's jobs is to
monitor the development of sentience in Quinn. All of these
shenanigans and more come to a head on the day Quinn is launched
on "Good Morning America".

YOUR BEHAVIOR WILL BE MONITORED is told via all sorts of company communications: emails, texts, video transcripts, phone calls,
meeting transcripts, chat, and just about any other way you can
think of that the employees of a company communicate with each
other (think of Dracula, told in via letters, diary entries, and
newspaper articles, among other things. It's an interesting and
intriguing way of telling the story, but it also allows Feinstein
to infodump to explain AI concepts, advertising concepts, and the
inner workings of UniView. It's really quite ingenious, as it
doesn't make the reader feel like they are being lectured to. This
also allows the plot and story to move briskly along without
boring the reader. Those readers who work or have worked in a
corporate environment will recognize situations from their own
corporate life. This makes the story relatable and (to me) funny.
I've been in enough meetings that look like those in the novel
that I swear Feinstein was sitting right next to me in them. What
helps is that Feinstein not only worked in the corporate world, he
worked in advertising, so he wrote this novel from experience. The
frightening part of the novel? Given the rate of development of
generative AI, I can see this becoming a reality not too far down
the line if we're not careful.

YOUR BEHAVIOR WILL BE MONITORED is smartly written, fast paced,
and an excellent, engaging read. If this is any indication of how
2026 is going to go, it's going to be a terrific year for science
fiction novels. [-jak]

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

TOPIC: 2025: SCENARIOS OF US AND GLOBAL SOCIETY RESHAPED BY
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Chapter "Putting Space to Work" by Joseph
F. Coates, John B. Mahaffie, and Andy Hines (pointer to chapter
review/essay by Dale Skran)

Dale Skran has written a review of one chapter of 2025: SCENARIOS
OF US AND GLOBAL SOCIETY RESHAPED BY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
(Oakhill Press, ISBN 978-1-886-93909-7), but because it has
graphs, charts, *and* images, we are including the URL to it
rather than the review itself.

It begins:

"I love to cheat on predicting the future. My cheat is a simple
one--I live forward in time from the point where the prediction
was made, and then when the date comes around, I write a review
and poke holes in the efforts of the prognosticators. The book
2025 was written in 1996, and here I sit at year end 2025, all
revved up and ready to review a book with certain knowledge of
what actually happened. Hardly seems fair, eh? Yet I submit that
the process of looking at how predictions go wrong--and right--is
a valuable one that can inform our own efforts to anticipate the
future yet to be."

Dale starts by saying, "The authors start out with what they think
are 83 very likely-to-be-true statements about 2025. This is
followed by 23 possible but less likely statements about 2025." He
then analyzes these predictions.

The full review/essay can be found at:

<https://nss.org/essay-and-book-chapter-review-2025/>

[-dls]

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

TOPIC: Riddle (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)

In response to the riddle in the 01/02/26 issue of the MT VOID,
Keith F. Lynch writes:

Good one. I should have gotten it.

I've looked into where the *population* center of the US is, and
where it has varied with time.

I also looked into when the *time* population center of the US
was. That's because I was sorting my history books in order of
when they were about. So when exactly is "US history" about?
Obviously, it's, on average, about when the median American was
alive. So I worked out when that was.

It was surprisingly recent: During the Reagan administration,
whether or not I included colonial times. Who knew?

What do Australia, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechia, France,
Iceland, Laos, Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand,
North Korea, Norway, Panama, Russia, Samoa, Slovakia, Taiwan,
Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, the United Kingdom, and the United
States have in common? [-kfl]

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

TOPIC: A SOUND OF THUNDER (letter of comment by Paul Dormer)

In response to Evelyn's comments on A SOUND OF THUNDER in the
01/02/26 issue of the MT VOID, Paul Dormer writes:

I remember seeing this on TV some years ago. I remember a scene
where a couple of characters are supposed to be walking down a
street, but they are in front of a back projection, and merely
shifting their weight from foot to foot without actually walking.
[-pd]

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

TOPIC: JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN (letters of comment by
Gary McGath, Don from AZ, and Hal Heydt)

In response to Evelyn's comments on JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE
SUN in the 01/02/26 issue of the MT VOID, Gary McGath writes:

That reminds me of [James] Blish's SPOCK MUST DIE! The transporter
(if I remember correctly) generates a mirror-image Spock, down to
the molecules, and he has to eat specially synthesized food
because the molecules of ordinary food aren't compatible with his
chemistry. [-gmg]

Don from AZ adds:

Also in [Roger] Zelazny's DOORWAYS IN THE SAND the protagonist
Fred goes through the alien Rhennius machine and gets inverted so
his dextros are levos and vice-versa. Makes things taste strange.
More hijinks ensue. [-don]

And Hal Heydt writes:

In one of George O. Smith's "Venus Equilateral" stories they
develop a "transporter" that reverses optical isomers. They solve
the issue by using two legs of transport to get to the destination
without causing problems. [-hh]

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

TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

I have before me two books: JULIAN THE APOSTATE by G. W.
Bowerstock (Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-48882-3) and
ATHELSTAN by Tom Holland (Allen Lane/Penguin, ISBN
978-0-241-18781-4).

JULIAN THE APOSTATE is a trade paperback printed on glaringly
white paper with thick black letters, black-and-white plates, and
a note that it has been digitally reprinted. It has a glued
binding that shows signs of cracking if I open the pages a normal
amount. It has a list price of $33.

ATHELSTAN is a hardback printed on cream-colored paper, has color
plates, and a binding that lets me open the book normally. (I
think it's sewn, but wouldn't swear to it.) It also has gold
printing on the cover, and a full-color three-quarter dust jacket.
It has a list price of -u12.99 (C$29.99) (somewhere around US$20,
give or take).

ATHELSTAN is part of the "Penguin Monarchs" series. Athelstan is
the first of the monarchs, though this volume is almost three
years into the series, as Penguin seems to have started with the
better-known monarchs first. So far they have released forty-two;
still to come are Henry VII (06/23/26), Anne (01/28/27), and
Edward V (no date given). The volume on Elizabeth II (the last of
the monarchs that had been announced to be covered) was issued in
2022. They do not appear to have added Charles III. The intent
seems to have been to reach a relatively wide audience--at any
rate, more the general public than a group of academics.

JULIAN THE APOSTATE, on the other hand, is a more academic title
that is not going to have wide sales. But in any case, the quality
of workmanship is striking. Surely Harvard University Press could
have produced a more pleasing volume.

Maybe I'm just more sensitive since I just listened to the radio
drama of 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD, in which Helene Hanff says, "The
Stevenson is so fine it embarrasses my orange-crate bookshelves.
I'm afraid to handle such soft vellum and heavy cream-colored
pages. Being used to the dead-white paper and cardboard covers of
American books I never knew a book could be such a joy to the
touch." Now, ATHELSTAN is not *that* much of a delight, though
Hanff's description of American books is apt. So my
brick-and-board bookshelves are not all that embarrassed.

Side note: One cannot entirely trust Hanff, or at least Brian. She
says on 11/03/49 that he says 1 pound 17 shillings and sixpence is
$5.30, and now much later that $1 would cover the 8 shillings she
owes. 1 pound 17 shillings and sixpence is (1*20*12)+(17*12)+6 or
450 pence, so one penny is US$.0118. 8 shillings is 96 pence, so
that is actually about $1.13. Okay, maybe he's just rounding,
because Hanff is sending paper currency, not coins or money
orders. (I can remember doing this back in the 1980s or so. I
wanted to order a book about the Golem of Prague from a bookshop
in Amsterdam. The total came to about $9. Back then, the rates for international mail went up if the piece was over a half ounce. If
I sent the envelope, note, and 5 bills, it was over a half ounce,
and the increase in postage was such that it made sense to send a
$10 bill and let the shop get the extra rather than the post
office.)

And for those curious, last year I read 106 books: 61%
non-fiction, 19% science fiction or fantasy, 15% mystery, and 5%
mainstream fiction. My science fiction reading has clearly gone
down over the years; ten years ago it was about 33%. [-ecl]

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

Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com


A society that will trade a little liberty for
a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.
--John Stuart Mill

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