Reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper

"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/24/2006]

"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King (in DIFFERENT SEASONS, ISBN 0-451-16753-8) is another story eclipsed by its film adaptation (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION). The film is very good, but it did make a lot of changes from the story. SPOILERS AHEAD: For example, the film tightened up a plot hole about one of the characters, added a revenge plot, and put Morgan Freeman in the role of the Irish narrator. (Before someone asks, yes, I've heard of the "Black Irish" but this is not what is meant.) Interestingly, another novella in this collection, "The Body" was also made into a respected film (STAND BY ME).

To order Different Seasons from amazon.com, click here.

PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS by Donald Kingsbury:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/01/2008]

When asked in what order people should read the "Foundation" series (since some later novels were prequels), the response is often, "Read the Trilogy. Then stop." I would modify that to, "Read the Trilogy. Then read PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS by Donald Kingsbury." [ISBN-13 978-0-765-34195-2, ISBN-10 0-765-34195-6] Kingsbury takes the whole premise of the "Foundation" series-- psychohistory--and shows it as a stultifying tyranny. (He was not the first; Patrouch saw psychohistory, or at least Seldon's implementation of it, as leading to just this end.)

In writing a pastiche, Kingsbury has picked up on a lot of different Asimovian touches. His character names all sound like those used by Asimov in the "Foundation" series (Eron Osa, Jars Hanis, Hahukum Konn). And his historical timeline has obvious references (the Nacreome Revolt is the Anacreon Revolt, Faraway is Terminus, Lakgan is Kalgan, and Cloun-the-Stubborn is Magnifico the Mule). He has a humorous take-off on the Three Laws of Robotics ("Robot's Ritual Rundown"), and the Heart's Well Antiquarian Bookstore (Kingsbury's editor at Tor was David Hartwell).

And these are only some of the obvious ones. How about "Ojaisun- the-Adroit, ... prior to his execution for depraved malthanatostomy"? (If I tell you that "malthan" is Russian (derogatory) slang for a black man, does that help?) This is a book that cries out for annotations.

There do seem to be some inconsistencies. On the one hand, people know about Homo erectus from Java, and Catholics and the Bible, and the caves of Lascaux; on the other, there are references to "Alfred the White Head of the North" and to "Neel Halmstrun" as the first man to walk on another planet. (The explanation that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and the first man to walk on Mars may be named Neel Halmstrun is too far- fetched to accept.)

And while Asimov uses words like "ci-divant", Kingsbury occasionally throws in a word like "cockamamie" or "kvetch".

And there is far too much about the history of measurement. This is ironic, because on page 403, one character tells another, "The brilliance of the Founder was his ability to strip away irrelevant detail. ... Here's one that you are reluctant to edit because it is very insightful; it will tell you how trading organizations form and evolve but at the same time will tell you more than you need to know to follow the evolution of length-and- weight standards. I love it, but you have to take it out. Nothing bloats a psychohistorical prediction to unmanageable size more than the cute variable that has a minor role to play." 'Nuff said.

(Another response to Asimov's "Foundation" series was Michael Flynn's IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, which I reviewed in 01/03/92 issue of the MT VOID). Both PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS and IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND won the Libertarian "Prometheus Award" for science fiction.)

To order Psychohistorical Crisis from amazon.com, click here.

KIM by Rudyard Kipling:

IS HEATHCLIFF A MURDERER by John Sutherland:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/23/2007]

KIM by Rudyard Kipling (ISBN-10 0-140-18352-3, ISBN-13 978-0-140-18352-8) was this month's discussion book. It seems to be catalogued at the library as a juvenile book, but I think that it would be a rare juvenile today who could read Kipling's elaborate prose interlaced with Hindi, Arabic, and other languages. (amazon.com says "age 9-12".)

John Sutherland is a professor of literature who writes short pieces on "puzzlements" in literature. For example, can Jane Eyre be happy? Henry V, war criminal? Is Heathcliff a murderer? Where was Rebecca shot? Who betrays Elizabeth Bennett? (Indeed, these are the titles of the various collections of his essays.) And one of his essays in IS HEATHCLIFF A MURDERER? (ISBN-10 0-192-83468-1, ISBN-13 978-0-192-83468-3) is "How Old Is Kim?" The only problem is that it is pretty clear how old Kim is, and even Sutherland basically admits this. At the beginning, Kim is thirteen; at the end, seventeen. The confusion Sutherland addresses is more that Kipling has Kim a specific age, and then ignores that whenever he feels like it. In specific, Kim's behavior at the start of the novel is too childish for a thirteen-year-old, particularly one who has been living on his own in India for years.

And in one of those instances of synchronicity that are becoming more and more common ("Year of the Jackpot", anyone?), the day before the meeting, Fred Lerner's fanzine LOFGEORNOST arrived in the mail. (This was actually doubly synchronicitous, because we had just watched BEOWULF & GRENDEL two days ago.) And the lead article was "The Tragedy of Rudyard Kipling", which Lerner sums up as "Rudyard Kipling came to discard the liberal sentiments that informed his youthful vision of empire. He became a reactionary and a racist an a vicious antisemite...." Lerner notes that the Kipling who wrote KIM was someone who appreciated the diversity of India, and respects the many cultures. But at some point, Kipling became a misanthrope, hating just about every group. Luckily, we are able to read his earlier work in all its glory without his later personality intruding.

However, while I enjoyed KIM, the rest of the group gave it a "thumbs-down": language too convoluted, too much use of words in the vernacular, and so on. People were unhappy with the use of non-English words which were not translated, but also with non- English words which were used (and translated) once, then never used again.

To order Kim from amazon.com, click here.

To order Is Heathcliff a Murderer? from amazon.com, click here.

KIPLING'S POCKET HISTORY OF ENGLAND by C. R. L. Fletcher & Rudyard Kipling:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/10/2003]

C. R. L. Fletcher & Rudyard Kipling's KIPLING'S POCKET HISTORY OF ENGLAND is an odd duck. The preface by the authors says, "This book is written for all boys and girls who are interested in Great Britain and her Empire," and it is clearly intended for a young audience. The writing is straightforward, the vocabulary relatively limited (compared to most histories), and facts are somewhat cleaned up. All gruesome details are omitted and anything that England or Britain did that might have been considered negative was either toned down or left out entirely. (For example, Edward I's expulsion of the Jews is omitted, and the only mention of Jews is how they were finally given the vote in 1853.)

And the prose is interspersed by poems about the various events, undoubtedly Kipling's contribution. One verse from "The Reeds of Runnymede" goes:

     At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
        Oh hear the reeds at Runnymede:
     "You mustn't sell, delay, deny,
        A freedman's right or liberty,
     It wakes the stubborn Englishry,
        We saw 'em roused at Runnymede!

But if the whole is somewhat sanitized, the last chapter's discussion of the Empire can only be called at best raging jingoism, and at worst outright racism. For example, they say, "In Canada we had really little difficulty in making good friends with our new French subjects, for they hated and feared the pushing Americans.... In Australia, we had nothing but a few miserable blacks, who could hardly use bows and arrows in fight." Referring to Africa, they say, "The natives everywhere welcome the mercy and justice of our rule...." And most egregious is their description of the Caribbean: "The population is mainly black, descended from slaves imported in previous centuries, of mixed black and white race; lazy, vicious and incapable of any serious improvement, or of work except under compulsion. In such a climate a few bananas will sustain the life of a negro quite sufficiently; why should he work to get more that this? He is quite happy and quite useless, and spends any extra wages which he may earn upon finery."

Well, what can I say? Clearly this history isn't suitable for children these days, and not useful as a history for anyone else. But as an example of cultural attitudes of its time (1911), it perhaps has something to say to us.

To order Kipling's Pocket History of England from amazon.com, click here.

LIVERPOOL FANTASY by Larry Kirwan:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/19/2004]

A standard alternate history is Larry Kirwan's LIVERPOOL FANTASY, in which the Beatles broke up in 1962 and went their separate ways and the National Front is now in control of Britain. If I cared more about the Beatles, I might have enjoyed it more. (I think part of it depended on recognizing the names of the Beatles' various girlfriends, offspring, and so on.) It has been well received by others more knowledgeable about the whole "Fab Four" scene than I am.

To order Liverpool Fantasy from amazon.com, click here.

"Five Guys Named Moe" by Sam Klein:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/12/2005]

Sean Klein, "Five Guys Named Moe" (scifi.com, Feb 23): A band consisting of five guys each named Moe is sent on a secret mission to Cuba by President Joseph McCarthy. I started it several times and eventually managed to finish it, but it never "worked" for me. (Obviously others disagreed, or it would not have made the short list.)

THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES by Arthur Conan Doyle with annotations by Leslie S. Klinger:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/02/2005]

Mark got for me the three-volume THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES by Arthur Conan Doyle with annotations by Leslie S. Klinger (ISBNs 0-393-05916-2 and 0-393-05800-X), so I'll be tied up reading that for quite a while (interspersed with other books, of course). It is published by the same publisher as THE ANNOTATED HUCKLEBERRY FINN, which I reviewed in the 09/23/05 issue, but has avoided what I considered the major problem with that: the placement of the annotations. In THE ANNOTATED HUCKLEBERRY FINN, when the text itself gets ahead of the annotations, the annotations do not "catch up" until the end of the chapter. In THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, when the text gets ahead of the annotations, there will be a page (or two) where both columns are annotations, just so they can get into sync again. Klinger's notes are very informative, certainly more interesting than those of the Oxford annotated version, but not as quirky or charming as William Baring-Gould's. Still, if you have re-read Baring-Gould's a half dozen times, this is certainly worth switching to for a different view. It is, however pricey: list price for the three volumes is $145. (Luckily, it is often discounted.)

To order The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Short Stories from amazon.com, click here.

To order The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Novels from amazon.com, click here.

SIMPLEXITY: WHY SIMPLE THINGS BECOME COMPLEX AND HOW COMPLEX THINGS CAN BE MADE SIMPLE by Jeffrey Kluger:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/18/2008]

SIMPLEXITY: WHY SIMPLE THINGS BECOME COMPLEX AND HOW COMPLEX THINGS CAN BE MADE SIMPLE by Jeffrey Kluger (ISBN-13 978-1-4013- 0301-3, ISBN-10 1-4013-0301-3) has such chapters as "Why is it so hard to leave a burning building or an endangered city?", "How does a single bullet start a world war?", "Why is a baby the best linguist in the room?", and "Why are your cell phones and cameras so absurdly complicated?" But while Kluger generally covers these topics, he often leaves out key information, while at the same time adding digressions. For example, in the chapter on leaving burning buildings, he talks about how difficult to was to evacuate the World Trade Center towers, not just because of psychological reasons, but because the four of the stairways were 44 inches wide, and two were 56 inches wide, designed in 1970 for two people to walk abreast. The problem is that people in 2001 were much wider than those in 1970, and this disrupted the flow. Interesting and important, certainly, but not a question of simplicity versus complexity. And in his chapter on "How does a single bullet start a world war?", he never actually says what he is referring to. (I assume it is the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip that started World War I.) Even with these flaws, the book is thought-provoking. And perhaps complexity can best be summed up by this paragraph of Kluger's:

"The act of buying nearly any electronic product has gone from the straightforward plug-and-play experience it used to be to a laborious, joy-killing exercise in unpacking, reading, puzzling out, configuring out, testing, cursing, reconfiguring, stopping altogether to call the customer support line, then calling again an hour or two later, until you finally get whatever it is you've bought operating in some tentative configuration that more or less does all the things you want it to do--at least until some error message causes the whole precarious assembly to crash and you have to start all over again. You accept, as you always do, that there are some functions that sounded vaguely interesting when you were in the store that you'll never learn to use, not to mention dozens of buttons on the front panel or remote control that you'll never touch--and you'll feel some vague sense of technophobic shame over this."

To order Simplexity from amazon.com, click here.

WHAT ROUGH BEAST by H. R. Knight

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/07/2006]

WHAT ROUGH BEAST by H. R. Knight (ISBN 0-8439-5456-6) is a mystery-cum-horror novel featuring Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle as characters. There have been other such novels already, including THE ARCANUM by Thomas Wheeler (reviewed in the 10/07/05 issue) and NEVERMORE by William Hjortsberg. This is not too surprising, since Conan Doyle and Houdini were at one time friends--before they fell out over spiritualism. The character of Houdini seems drawn a little too broadly, and for that matter that of Conan Doyle may be as well. If you don't mind some supernatural elements mixed in with your mystery, you might enjoy this, but I suspect that there are better Victorian supernatural horror novels that do not have to work Houdini and Conan Doyle into them.

To order What Rough Beast from amazon.com, click here.

REALITYLAND: TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD by David Koenig:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/14/2008]

REALITYLAND: TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD by David Koenig (ISBN-13 978-0-964060-52-4, ISBN-10 0-964060-52-3) is what appears to be a reasonably honest look at the rise (and to some extent fall) of Walt Disney World, the Florida mega-complex. Koenig does a good job conveying the obsessive nature of everything at Walt Disney World. For example, at the beginning employees at the hotels could not accept tips (this soon changed), security was handled by Disney staff, who decided whether or not to call local law enforcement (this also soon changed), calling every dissatisfied guest to try to placate them (ditto), and so on. In fact, the book can be summed up as a long recitation of Disney decisions that seemed like good ideas at the time, but turned out to be mistakes. So far as I can tell, the management of Walt Disney World (post-Walt) always thought that they knew better than the entire industry what should be done--and were usually wrong. One more example: when Space Mountain opened, no one was allowed to refer to it as a roller coaster. The result was that people expected a placid ride past space vistas and were often not happy with the results, which included bumps, bruises, wrenched backs, lost items, etc.

Of course, the public had its flaws as well. While real injuries were sometimes sustained, there were also attempts at scams. "Sometimes, the accusations were pure fiction, just someone trying to make a quick buck off the big corporation. One guest claimed she was injured by a brick that fell from Cinderella Castle. Impossible, Disney easily illustrated, since the castle has no bricks; it's a fiberglass facade. Another woman claimed the Hydrolator chambers at EPCOT Center's Living Seas pavilion descended so fast, they damaged her eardrums. Disney merely demonstrated that the pseudo-elevators only give the illusion of descending and actually let the guests off at the same elevation as when they entered." [page 142]

REALITYLAND is definitely worth reading if you are interested in the whole tourist mega-industry in the Orlando area. However, fans of Walt Disney World may find themselves somewhat disillusioned by all the backstage information.

To order Realityland from amazon.com, click here.

WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?: 23 QUESTIONS FROM THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS by Leszek Kolakowski (translated by Agnieszka Kolakowska):

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/08/2008]

WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?: 23 QUESTIONS FROM THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS by Leszek Kolakowski (translated by Agnieszka Kolakowska) (ISBN-13 978-0-465-00499-7, ISBN-10 0-465- 00499-7) has a very long title for such a small book (223 pages, 4.25 inches by 6.25 inches, and 1 inch thick). The original Polish had seven additional essays, which would made it ideal for reading one a day for a month. The essays are Kolakowski's own interpretations of and thoughts on the great philosophers, such as "Truth and Good: Why do we do evil? [Socrates]" or "What There Is: Do ideas exist? [William of Ockham]"

One essay is "The Nature of God: Do we have free will? [Spinoza]" In this essay, Kolakowski asked, "But can we then (someone might ask), punish people for their misdeeds, if everything is entirely determined and no one freely chooses what he does, but is governed by implacable necessity? Kolakowski answers, "Spinoza says: yes, we can. Just as we kill venomous snakes without asking if they have free will, so, in the name of the common good, we must punish offenders." But it seems to me that either Spinoza or Kolakowski is missing the point: if there is no free will, then asking how we can punish people for their misdeeds (or, phrased another way, whether we should punish people for their misdeeds) misses the point: our punishing them is as much a product of "implacable necessity" as their misdeeds and asking "whether we should do it" is meaningless. It is like asking whether the apple should fall when you let go of it.

Another essay, "God's Necessity: Could God not exist? [St. Anselm]", asks why, "If God is just, how can He save some sinners while condemning other, the former by His mercy, the latter according to justice, if the evil done by both is similar?" And for that matter, if God is immutable, He has no emotions, so what does "mercy" mean in this context?

To order Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? from amazon.com, click here.

THE HISTORIAN by Elizabeth Kostova:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/10/2006]

THE HISTORIAN by Elizabeth Kostova (ISBN 0-316-01177-0) has gotten a lot of good reviews, but I gave up after a hundred pages. It seems to have been written to be of the same genre as THE DA VINCI CODE, with people tracking a mystery across Europe through old books and documents, but it reads very flatly. In the part I read there are three viewpoint characters (narrators) --a young girl, her father, and his mentor. Three diffeerent types, three different generations, yet they all sound alike. In addition, it was so slow-moving that it began to feel very padded.

To order The Historian from amazon.com, click here.

FROM TOKYO TO JERUSALEM by Abraham Kotsuji:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/21/2008]

FROM TOKYO TO JERUSALEM by Abraham Kotsuji (no ISBN, amazon.com ASIN B000J0SFXU) is the autobiography of a descendent of generations of Shinto priests who eventually converted to Judaism (with an intermediate period as a Presbyterian minister!). Written in 1964, it is a fairly simple book, covering the basics of Kotsuji's childhood (much of which he tells in the third person before switching to the more standard first person when he progresses past primary school). His discovery of Judaism came when he found a Bible in an old bookstore. Although he found the Old Testament much more "attractive", his options in Japan were pretty much restricted by the fact that in the 1920s there were many more Christians (and Christian missionaries) than Jews. So in spite of his reservations, he converted to Christianity, went to a Christian college, and eventually became a minister. But he always felt more connected to the Old Testament, and as he had more and more contact with Jewish refugees during the war, he came to the conclusion that these were his people, and eventually converted.

And while the book is good as Kotsuji's own record of his life, he did not check all the statements about things he has only heard second-hand. For example, he talks about Jews getting visas in Kovna (Kaunas), Lithuania, from the Japanese consul, Chiune Sugihara, and then says that Sugihara had been killed by the Nazis. Actually, Sugihara returned to Japan in disgrace for having violated his orders, ended up as a light bulb salesman, and was still alive when Kotsuji was writing this book. (In fact, he was invited to Israel in 1965 and lived until 1986.) Ironically, a few pages later Kotsuji says that one of the refugees who wrote an autobiography said that Kotsuji had been killed during the war by the Japanese secret service!

To order From Tokyo to Jerusalem from amazon.com, click here.

THE COMPANY OF THE DEAD by David Kowalski:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/09/2007]

THE COMPANY OF THE DEAD by David Kowalski (ISBN-13 978-1-405-03804-1, ISBN-10 1-405-03804-7) starts out very promising, with a time traveler going back to the Titanic to try to save it. What happens, and what happens because of that, occupies the first hundred pages or so. By that point, we know what the protagonists are trying to do, but then the book goes in circles for the next several hundred pages, only really resuming the plot at the very end of the book. This middle section does not advance the plot, or give us more interesting background. Instead, it is standard espionage/stealth operations stuff. This book would have been much better at half its 750- page length.

To order The Company of the Dead from amazon.com, click here.

BEYOND STAR TREK: PHYSICS FROM ALIEN INVASION TO THE END OF TIME by Laurence M. Krauss:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/05/2008]

BEYOND STAR TREK: PHYSICS FROM ALIEN INVASION TO THE END OF TIME by Lawrence M. Krauss (ISBN-13 978-0-7522-2464-0, ISBN-10 0-7522-2464-6) is not entirely beyond "Star Trek", as Krauss uses several examples from that series. But he also discusses "The X-Files", 12 MONKEYS, INDEPENDENCE DAY, and so on. For example, the first chapter is Krauss's analysis of why the invaders in INDEPENDENCE DAY really did not need to fire anything at us to defeat us.

On the whole, the book is yet another attempt to write a science book for the layperson, though the use of "Star Trek" and other popular television shows and movies to initiate ideas and illustrate examples will probably do a lot to make this rise above the rest of the genre. While some may object to this approach, I figure that anything that gets people (especially teenagers) interested in reading about science) is all for the best.

Krauss does make the occasional error. For example, on page 92 he talks about Joseph Banks Rhine and telepathic communication and says, "[Rhine's] popularizations, combined with the interest of the publisher of the pulp magazine 'Astounding Science Fiction', helped fuel public interest...." It was the editor of the magazine--John W. Campbell, Jr.--not the publisher, who latched on to telepathy. And when, in talking about time travel and changing events, he says, "[If] you go back in time to try to kill Hitler before he became Fuhrer--when he fact he survived until shortly before the end of the Second World War--you will trip at the crucial moment, or the gun will misfire," I'd like to think that the "aside" regarding real history is stylistic rather than added because Krauss thought his readers wouldn't know what happened to the real Hitler.

To order Beyond Star Trek from amazon.com, click here.

THE PHYSICS OF STAR TREK by Lawrence M. Krauss:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/22/2006]

There seem to be a lot of books out these days titled "The [some branch of science] of [some popular TV show or film]": "The Biology of The X-Files", "The Paleontology of King Kong", "The Algebraic Topology of Buffy", that sort of thing. Most seem fairly undistinguished, but THE PHYSICS OF STAR TREK by Lawrence M. Krauss (ISBN 0-465-00559-4) is a notch above the others. Krauss looks at the various inventions and assumptions of "Star Trek", from transporters and wormholes, to the holodeck to parallel universes, and analyzes them in the light of current knowledge of physics. Krauss has a very thorough knowledge of the episodes of the many "Star Trek" series, and will cite them by name as the one in which the lack of Federation cloaking devices was explained, or what the various mechanisms were in each time travel episode. In addition, even if you are particularly knowledgeable about "Star Trek", Krauss's explanation of modern physics does not depend on it, and all his references give enough description to make it comprehensible to all. Recommended for fans, and even for dabblers. (Krauss was featured in the 1998 documentary "The Sci-Fi Files".)

To order The Physics of Star Trek from amazon.com, click here.

"The Fountain of Age" by Nancy Kress:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2008]

While it has a definite science fictional idea, "The Fountain of Age" by Nancy Kress (ASIMOV'S Jul) seems more like a story about the Rom (a.k.a."gypsies") and their philosophy and customs, than a science fiction story. The premise (having to do with stopping the ageing process--and more than that would be telling) is an intriguing one, but seems to get pushed into the background for a lot of the story.

MY SHERLOCK HOLMES edited by Michael Kurland:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/26/2004]

As I noted a few weeks ago, trying to come up with ways to distinguish new Sherlock Holmes anthologies from all those that have come before is getting harder, and new twists are getting more convoluted. Michael Kurland's MY SHERLOCK HOLMES takes the approach of having the stories told by different viewpoint characters: Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft Holmes, Moriarty, Billy the Page Boy, .... My problem with this is that it is not just the plot of the Holmes stories that I like, it is the characters, the atmosphere, and the style. When you have a different narrator, all of these change. (There are whole web sites devoted to retelling "The Lord of the Rings", for example, in different author's styles. The Raymond Chandler version is very different from the Dr. Seuss version. See http://www.teemings.com/extras/lotr/ for lots more.) So Billy the Page Boy writes in a different style from Watson, sees the characters differently, and certainly see Victorian London differently than a retired Army surgeon, and very little Holmsian is left.

To order My Sherlock Holmes from amazon.com, click here.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE HIDDEN YEARS edited by Michael Kurland:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/23/2007]

SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE HIDDEN YEARS edited by Michael Kurland (ISBN-10 0-312-31513-9, ISBN-13 978-0-312-31513-9) is a collection of eleven stories set during the years when Sherlock Holmes was presumed dead, that is, between the events at Reichenbach Falls ("The Final Problem", 1891) and those of "The Adventure of the Empty House" (1894). In the latter, Holmes gives a brief account of his travels during that time, and several of the authors here have used that as a basis for their stories. For example, Michael Mallory's "The Beast of Guangming Peak" is rooted in the notion of Sigerson, the Norwegian explorer in the Himalayas. Carolyn Wheat's "Water from the Moon" has him in Siam, and while Peter Beagle's "Mr. Sigerson" puts him in Europe and Linda Robertson's "The Mystery of Dr. Thorvald Sigerson" in Alaska, Holmes is still Sigerson. (No one can seem to agree on his alter ego's first name, of course.) Other authors move him to locations not mentioned in the Canon: Bill Pronzini's "The Bughouse Caper" puts him is San Francisco and Carole Bugge's "The Strange Case of the Voodoo Priestess" in New Orleans. A couple of them (Wheat's story and Rhys Bowen's "The Case of the Lugubrious Manservant") use the trick of Holmes having (temporarily) lost his memory. Michael Collins's "Cross of Gold" delves into politics. But all of these have a similar problem--the basic appeal of the original stories is that of Watson chronicling Holmes's cases. (The two stories not narrated by Watson--"The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" and "His Last Bow") are generally considered among the weakest of the Canon.) But since these stories occur during the period that Watson presumes Holmes to be dead, they are of necessity narrated either by an omniscient third-person voice, or by another character in the case, who usually focuses on his own role rather than that of Holmes.

A few avoid this snare. Michael Kurland's "Reichenbach" manages to use the constraints in an ingenious way into the basis of the plot. Gary Lovisi's "The Adventure of the Missing Detective" is an alternate history. Richard Lupoff's "God of the Naked Unicorn" is so far out I cannot begin to categorize it.

To order Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years from amazon.com, click here.

RAN by Akira Kurosawa:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/17/2006]

I recently watched Akira Kurosawa's RAN again. There is a book connection--it is based on Shakespeare's "King Lear" (just as Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD is based on "Macbeth"). For that matter, there is a fair amount of Lady Macbeth in one of the characters in RAN as well. But my comment is that whoever did the subtitles did an excellent job of capturing a Shakespearean feel; for example, near the beginning of the film, Hidetora (the Lear character) says: "I hoisted my colours over the main castle. I spent more years fighting lance to lance with these two gentlemen. Now the moment has come to stable the steeds of war and give free rein to peace. But old Hidetora is seventy years old."

To order Ran from amazon.com, click here.

SHADOW DIVERS by Robert Kurson:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/29/2006]

SHADOW DIVERS by Robert Kurson (ISBN 0-375-50858-9) is the story of the discovery and exploration of a previously unsuspected U-boat off the shores of New Jersey. It is understandably popular here in New Jersey, but is also popular across the country. The "Nova" episode about this discovery was reportedly the highest-rated ever in that series. Kurson covers all aspects of the discovery--not just how it was discovered and explored, but also the biology, physics, and chemistry of the ocean and of diving, the history of U-boats in general and this one in particular, and the psychology and sociology of divers. Kurson loves a catchy phrase ("Shipwrecks are where the food chain poses for a snapshot"), but also makes the science of diving understandable to everyone. And of course a lot of the exploration parts will appeal to science fiction fans, because it is just like exploring an alien planet.

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"Dr, Cyclops" by Henry Kuttner:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/15/2006]

Henry Kuttner's novelette "Dr, Cyclops" was made into a film of the same name, which sticks fairly closely to the story. However, Kuttner is a bit sloppy with his arithmetic. First, the people see Thorkel as being thirty feet high, indicating they are about one-fifth size, or a little over a foot tall. The cellar door is described as being as big as a two-story house--assuming an attic, etc., that is probably consistent. Later, though, he says, "Human beings--scarcely more than half a foot tall!"

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