Word: herbert
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Zaire-from the Belgian mineral firm Societe Generale des Minerals. Asmara Chemie had no previous record of buying uranium at all -let alone $3.7 million worth-but on March 29, 1968, Asmara signed a contract to buy 200 tons of uranium oxide. Today the founder of Asmara, Herbert G. Scharf, denies any knowledge of the deal, and one former employee of the firm says, "I assume that somebody must have used our name...
...moralism that many real science fiction fans may not buy, and in sci-fi terms Star Wars is strictly softcore. Lucas, a fan himself, has evoked images from some of the best-known writers in the field. Tatooine, for example, is much like the arid planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert's famed Dune trilogy; that resemblance carries even to the skeleton of one of Herbert's giant sand snakes in the background of a Tatooine scene. The barroom sequence, with its remarkable array of extraterrestrial freaks, is reminiscent of scenes written by Robert Heinlein and Samuel Delaney...
Mayer teases his reader in a subtler, more ambiguous way as well. Sandwiched between jibes at Yiddish, first love and Herbert Hoover is an apparently serious statement about American politics, values and mores. But the reader is never quite sure when Mayer crosses the line between humor and conviction. The angels in Heaven bustle about designing portable restrooms, and manna and nectar refreshment concessions for the up-coming gala bimillenium. ("We're expecting millions of tourists," Mary tells Brinkley.) The bumbling corruption of Soviet-American disarmament negotiators and the CIA's school for assassins are cleverly ridiculed, but the caricatures...
...cell is that he plans to learn advanced auto mechanics while behind bars. Then suddenly Smitty becomes a sensitive, loyal friend to Mona. And finally he turns, despite himself, into a hardened bastard concerned only with salvaging his own hide. Prisoners do have to learn the ropes fast, but Herbert's script and Elliot's interpretation turn the tables much too fast...
...depressing impact, for a subject this unsettling at times begs for a technical slip-up to relieve the tension. Here the gay jokes supply the only possible relief: you can either laugh at them or scoff at them, deciding that they undermine the play's deeper solemnity. But Herbert still means above all to lay bare the barbarous code that prisoners live under--and what it means for men of sensibility to succumb, or not to succumb, to that code. And if you let it, this production brings home that statement with poignancy...