BABYL OPTIONS:
Version: 5
Labels:
Note:   This is the header of an rmail file.
Note:   If you are seeing it in rmail,
Note:    it means the file has no messages in it.

1,,
Summary-line:  2-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #1
Date:  2 JAN 1981 1108-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #1
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

*** EOOH ***
Date:  2 JAN 1981 1108-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #1
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest        Friday, 2 Jan 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 1

Today's Topics:
 SF Books - Xanth Trilogy & Unpleasant Universes & Plot/Title Request
      & Bicameralism Query & Bored of the Rings & Future History
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 01 Jan 1981 1359-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: Pot-Shots

The Xanth trilogy:  While I found the two books I read amusing, I'm
afraid I was turned off by the notion of a woman whose intelligence
was inversely proprotional to her beauty.  Maybe I'm just a little
oversensitised.

Rich

------------------------------

Date: 31 December 1980 1053-EST (Wednesday)
From: R.Kamesh <Kamesh.Ramakrishna at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  Engineers vs. problem

I just read  The Fountains of  Paradise and was  disappointed in  the
story.  Personally, I think it has  been quite some time (14  years?,
but then I am an old man!) since I read sf for its gigantic ideas  or
for its prognostications about the  future.  For this reason, I  have
found Arthur Clarke increasingly dull  reading, the last book of  his
that I  positively enjoyed  qualmlessly reading  and rereading  being
Childhood's End.  In this sense  tFoP is probably 1954-ish but  lacks
the peculiar excitement that only bad story lines can generate.

One aspect of reading Clarke that  I appreciate is that when he  uses
characters from India  or Sri Lanka,  he actually creates  believable
names and occasionally believable  scenarios for their behaviour.   I
have  found  myself  climbing  walls  and  executing  other   bizarre
behaviour on encountering names  that had obviously been  constructed
(the most egregious one being `Subchundrum' from a fairly popular  sf
writer whose  name I  forget -  Poul Andersen,  maybe) and  had  been
constructed wrong.  Probably the best  analogy I could draw would  be
writing a historical novel of a French nobleman named Petersky  whose
native language is  German and is  described as having  an estate  in
Yugoslavia.  I cant  recall details,  but I  would fault  Silverberg,
Zelazny, Ellison (?), among others  for such blunders.  (Zelazny,  in
particular, screws up Hindu  mythology so badly  that I could  barely
make my way through `Lord of Light' the first time I read it.)

Clarke on  the other  hand can  be  a pleasure.   When he  does  make
possible errors  (no  Buddhist  ruler  is  likely  to  name  his  son
`Kalidasa') there are plausible scenarios (some place in the book, he
says that  the King  was being  influenced by  some Hindu  swami  for
sometime in his reign).

------------------------------

Date: 30 Dec 1980 0943-EST
From: Paul Dickson via <YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: Pigs in space and Bicameralism

I just read the January '81 OMNI (always a quick read) and there
are two rather interesting interviews that reminded me of some
obscure SF stories.

The first article was an interview with Robert Bussard (inventor of
the Bussard Ramjet), who is now in the business of building small
fusion reactors.  He thinks the "mainline" fusion people are wasting
their time studying plasma dynamics and supercon- ductors.  He has
come up with a Tokamak design that does not need superconductors,
and is much smaller and cheaper.

Although Bussard's "Riggatron" is not so small that you could
power your car with it (you can ferry it by cargo plane however),
it reminded me of a series of juvenile stories, the central char-
acter of which was a talking pig named Freddie.  (This has nothing
to do with "Pigs In Space".)

I don't recall if these books were even filed under SF in the
library (this was something like 17 years ago), but they fit
anyone's definition of it.  All the animals on this farm could
talk (no, it isn't Animal Farm either), and the farmer was a
crazy inventor.  He had an atomic powered station wagon, which
is why the Riggatron story reminded me of it.

In one episode, the characters build a rocket ship a take off for
other worlds.  Something goes wrong and they return to Earth, but
think that they have continued on to Mars (or wherever).  You can
figure out the rest.  Does anyone remember the author of these
Freddie stories?

The second article is about Julian Jaynes and his theory of the
history of consciousness.  He claims that before 2000 BC humans
were not conscious the way we think (oops) of it, and the two
brain hemispheres did not work together as one unit.  The "people"
lived in the left side, and the "gods" lived in the right side.
When the right half sent a message to the left, this was perceived
as "voices" telling the person what to do.  When people learned to
coordinate the two halves, the "gods" stopped talking, and that is
why we don't hear from them the way the ancients did.

Jaynes bases this theory on old parts of the Bible and on the Illiad.
It is all very interesting (read the article), and a good topic for
cocktail parties.  It reminds me of a story I read in Analog several
years ago about a concert pianist with a split brain.  The advantage
was that each half of the brain controlled one half of the body, so
he could play difficult piano music, each half controlling one hand,
without getting confused.

The disadvantage was that there was little communication between the
two halves, and the quiet half was always getting the dominant half
(the one that controlled speech) in trouble while he was asleep.  It
turned out that the quiet half was telepathic, however, and got a
telepathic girl friend.  The dominant half was in love with her too,
but she only had eyes for the quiet half.  So the hero loses the girl
to the other half of his own brain.

Can anyone think of any other stories in which bicameralism plays an
important role? 

------------------------------

Date: 01 Jan 1981 1146-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: re: Bored of the Rings & Adventure

I'm not sure where the practice of comparing gems to plovers' eggs
began, but as author of the line in Adventure I can vouch for my
indeed being influenced by the line in BotR.  Their use of the word
"spelunker", however, is no big deal -- English is English!  Note,
by the way, that plovers don't have particularly large eggs, but
even a small egg is an unusual size for an emerald.  (And I suppose
an emerald is an unusual size for a plover's egg, too.)

        -- Don.

------------------------------

Date: 31 Dec 1980 0535-PST
From: WMartin at OFFICE                   
Subject: My error (sniffle!)

Cringe!  I had hoped no one would notice that!  I was writing the
message without the book at hand, and I said "milennia" when I
should have said "centuries"!  The chronology goes up to 7100 AD
or so, and Flandry is born in 3000.  The Polesotechnic stories
run in the 2300 and up area, as I recall.

Oh, the shame of it all...  Don't you love seeing your errors
spread out for the entire world to see?

Shamefacedly, Will

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  3-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #2
*** EOOH ***
Date:  3 JAN 1981 0955-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #2
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Saturday, 3 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 2

Today's Topics:
   SF Books - Unpleasant Universes & Bicameralism & Freddie the Pig
    & Quantum SF Series & Poul Pronunciation & Xanth, On Spoilers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 02 JAN 1981 1424-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Zelazny's Indian deities

   were not intended necessarily to exactly match their originals;
the point of the book was that these were strictly mortal Terrans
who had taken excess advantage of an unusual situtation to
establish themselves in positions of extreme power (rather like the
crew in Niven's A GIFT FROM EARTH, only more so).  I think Zelazny
deliberately shows and mocks this when, after Sam knocks off some
of the "gods", he describes several of them attempting to replace
the missing ones (who were among the most powerful "gods") and how
awkward they look doing it.

------------------------------

Date:  2 Jan 1981 1723-PST
From: CSD.BOTHNER at SU-SCORE
Subject: Fountains of Paradise

My two bits about "Fountains of Paradise": Though hardly surprised
at it winning the Hugo, it did not nothing to convince me of the
incorruptibility of voters.  ("Clarke is a good guy, so he deserves
a going-away Hugo.")  I mean, all these people couldn't actually
have LIKED it?!?  (I voted it bottom of the list: The last 100-odd
pages about the rescue attempt were the most boring I have read in
a long time.)
		--Per Bothner

------------------------------

Date: 2 Jan 1981 1311-PST
From: WMartin at Office-3
Subject: Split Brains

Well, first you peel the brains, then dip them in beaten egg and
fry gently... OOPS! Wrong reference!

Split brains occur in JEM, where a split-brain translator is a
prime character, and in Silverberg's story "House of Double Minds",
which discusses purposefully splitting brains to develop the non-
verbal Right's intuitive processes; the communication from Right
to Left is much like what was described in the message about gods
speaking from the right half to the people in the left.  This
story is in "The Feast of St. Dionysus" collection.

( I believe I've gotten the titles near right, but I'm running
  on memory and the tank is near empty... )

Will Martin

------------------------------

Date:  3 JAN 1981 0220-EST
From: PROCEP at MIT-AI (Eirikur Hallgrimsson)

In response to Paul Dickson's request for the name of the author of
the many 'Freddy the pig' books, (which I remember fondly) -- his
name is (was?) Walter R. Brooks.

I started reading the entire series because of 'Freddy and the Flying
Saucer Plans' when I was in the first or second grade.  There are
some wonderfully handled fantasy concepts underlying even the more
mundane (huh! can't think of a mundane example) ones.  The sort of
late 1940's rural enviornment in which almost all animals think and
talk (in secret) is quite engaging.  The cast and scope clearly grew
in the telling, over a period of some years.  I do not have my own
copies, having read library editions myself.  My guess as to publisher
would be Harcourt but I am not clear on that.  At the time I was hot
enough on the series that I looked up and read Brook's other books one
of which, 'The Clockwork Twin' is closely tied into the Freddy series.
I wonder why it was not labeled as such?

If anyone knows the publisher and availability info -- I'd greatly
appreciate hearing it.

Freddy fancied himself as Sherlock and put me on to Holmes, tried his
hand at poetry and put me on to Shakespeare.

--Eirikur

------------------------------

Date:  1 Jan 1981 2345-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: quantum series list?

Does anyone have a list of the Quantum SF series other than 
Varley's Ophiuchi Hotline and Persistence of Vision collection?

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jan 1981 0220-EST
From: RDD at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Quantum Science Fiction

The Quantum Science Fiction Series is an international publishing
venture being run under the imprint of the Dial Press (James Wade
Publishers).  The current editor for the series is D. R. Bentsen.
Each book in the series is reviewed and passed on by a panel of
two judges, Isaac Asimov and Ben Bova.  According to the blurbs
printed with some of the series books, each Quantum title is
simultaneously published in the United States, England, the
Middle East, Asia, and all other major language areas.

Unfortunately, they do not follow the practice of listing the
current titles in the series in the front of the book.  The
following list has been pieced together from their blurbs
which usually say something to the effect of the series "...
has included or will include works by ... <list of authors>".

   1. The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley.
   2. In the Ocean of the Night by Gregory Benford.
   3. The Far Call by Gordon Dickson.
   4. The Persistence of Vision by John Varley.
   5. Stardance by Spider and Jeanne Robinson.
   6. Kinsman by Ben Bova.
   7. The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge. (?)
   8. Songmaster by Orson Scott Card.

As far as I know this list includes all books in the series to
date.  A forthcoming book by David Gerrold is also mentioned as
part of the series.  All are novels with the exception of Varley's
Persistence of Vision collection.  Note that substantial portions
of Stardance, Kinsman, and Songmaster have seen prior magazine
publication.  Also note that Kinsman is the prequel to Bova's
well received novel, Millenium.

I am sure of each entry except for Vinge's The Snow Queen.  My
edition from the SF Book Club does not mark the book as part of
the Quantum series.  On the other hand, it does carry the Dial
Press imprint, the editor she thanks in the acknowledgements is
Quantum Series editor Bensen, and they have claimed that a book
by Vinge is or would be part of the series for a long time.
Therefore I have listed it as a possible member of the series
and wonder if there might not be a story behind that novel.
Anyone know?
						Cheers, Roger

------------------------------

Date:  2 Jan 1981 1723-PST
From: CSD.BOTHNER at SU-SCORE
Subject: Odds and ends

1) As a Norwegian, I resent the comment that only Scandinavians
   can correctly pronounce "Poul".  In general, only DANES can
   correctly pronounce Danish words (or would want to...)
2) Thanks for the comments about Xanth. I'll probably try out
   the first volume in paperback, since the Book Club version
   isn't that good a deal (6.50).  Now to find some other books
   to fill out my 4-book obligation...
3) Some of these comments may be a bit out of date.  However,
   SAIL has been down from Christmas until the last half-hour
   of 1980 (disk head crash followed by trying to restore files
   from 200-odd incremental backup tapes...), and I just got a
   slew of SFL today. Although I use SCORE for SFL, it seems
   that SFL is remailed via SAIL...
		--Per Bothner

------------------------------

Date: 01 Jan 1981 1212-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: re: ACW's plea

     And please, don't anyone else give away the plot.  The
     spoiler warnings don't help: have YOU ever stopped reading
     SF-lovers when you reached the spoilers?

Frequently.  Have you no self-control?  Usually, of course, if I
haven't read the book in question it's because I have no intention
of doing so, so ignoring the spoilers saves me what would be unin-
teresting reading.  But sometimes, like when people reviewed the
re-release of Close Encounters, I avoid the spoilers until I've
seen the work, and then go back to the archives to see what was
said.

	-- Don.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  7-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #3
*** EOOH ***
Date:  7 JAN 1981 0846-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #3
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Wednesday, 7 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 3

Today's Topics:
     Administrivia, SF Movies - Day the Earth Stood Still Sequel,
   SF Books - Foreign Language SF & Halley's Comet & Budrys Reviews
      & Unpleasant Universes, TESB - Music & More Plot Theories
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 7 Jan 1981 0220-EST
From: The Moderator
Subject: Administrivia - Irregular distribution schedule

Over the last week, new memory installation, problems with our
air conditioning system, and other hardware difficulties across
the network have made it impossible for me to maintain the
regular distribution schedule or to promptly answer all of your
requests.  The situation is improving, but some of these problems
will continue for the next several days.  Please bear with us as
these problems are corrected.

For people wondering if they have missed any issues, please note
that today's issue is only the third issue of 1981.  Also note
that volume 2 ended with a total of 181 issues.  Requests for
missing issues can be sent to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI.  They
will be answered as quickly as possible.

------------------------------

Date:  6 Jan 1981 1028-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: screenplay

From the AP newswire:

         HOLLYWOOD (AP) - Ray Bradbury will write a contemporary
     sequel to 20th Century-Fox's 1951 box-office hit "The Day
     the Earth Stood Still."
         Bradbury will write several story lines, one of which
     will be selected for completion as a screenplay by another
     writer.
         The original Fox release told of an alien who arrived
     on earth and threatened immediate destruction of the planet
     unless war is abolished.

(No doubt this will turn out to be another loser.)

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jan 1981 1051-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: SF Written In Foreign Languages

Does anyone know of a source for SF written in foreign languages in
the US?  If one could get more specific...the S. F. Bay Area?  I am
interested in Russian, Japanese and Chinese.

Thanks,    --Bill

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jan 1981 22:42:47 EST
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Further Adventures of Halley's Comet

I am currently reading "The Further Adventures of Halley's Comet."
Its not science fiction, but from the way its packaged you can't
really tell, and Tom Robbins says such a nice thing about it on
the back cover that you might decide "What the hell?" like I did.
Cute, but no cigar.  The writer can't decide whether he wants to
fail at imitating Thomas Pynchon or fail at imitating Tom Robbins.

I'd rate it as slightly below "Schroedinger's Cat", by Robert Anton
Williams.  That is, lots of promise, but sort of disappointing...

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jan 1981 10:02 PST
From: Pettit at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Arthur Clarke & Sri Lanka

Were you aware that Arthur Clarke used to live in Colombo, Sri Lanka?
I'd imagine you would know (I gather you are from India), but since
you don't mention it in your message, maybe you didn't.  A friend of
mine whose father is a physics professor used to live there too, and
Clarke was a family-friend of theirs.  So naturally this would account
for his being well-acquainted (at least for a Westerner) with Indian
names and society.

                Teri

[ People interested in reading more about Clarke's Sri Lanka
  experiences should see his autobiographical book "The View
  from Serandip".  --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date:  4 Jan 1981 1418-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Budrys' Book Reviews

                             BOOK REVIEWS
                           By Algis Budrys
           (c) 1980 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

     Harlan Ellison is a phenomenon of general American letters who
happens to have gotten his start in the generic science fiction media,
and continues to be identified with the field. That's fair enough; the
SF magazines still publish the majority of his work. But that's more a
reflection of the breadth to which the media have grown than it is a
circumscription of Ellison.
     He's a short story writer by nature, inclination, and track
record. His comments on the human situation are savage, propelled
by the same ferocity that makes him a pyrotechnically demanding
personality. The ferocity at times comes out as a yammer. And
though he proclaims "honesty" and "realism," he comes not much
closer to those ideals than most writers do.
     What he does do is approach them from the direction of the "New
Romanticism," the emerging school of discourse in which comfort is
offered by declaring over and over again that everything is mere-
tricious and the Establishment is founded on betrayal, that only
the psychically crippled, crippled by the Establishment, conserve
gentleness, insight, and virtue.
     Fair enough again. All of us have been dumped on often enough
by the stupid and vicious so that this message needs to be spoken
on our account from time to time.
     This time, it's in "Shatterday" (Houghton Mifflin, $11.95),
Ellison's latest collection. As usual a beautiful book - since
Ellison also rides herd roughshod over all aspects of production,
and has excellent graphic taste - it contains 16 recent stories,
each with an extended introduction (except for one). If you are
unfamiliar with this man's work, you owe it to yourself to sample
it here. If you know it, you also know that this preceding brief
description falls short of encompassing the anfractuous power of
this artist.
     - Interesting failures: Poul Anderson's "The Devil's
Game" (Pocket Books, $2.50 paperback), in which a cast of seven
characters, gathered by an eccentric and deeply evil millionaire
on a Caribbean island, vie for the $1 million prize that will
go to the survivor. Is the millionaire in fact guided by a very
cleverly realized demon, or is this one of those rare instances
of writing by an SF author in which the purported fantasy element
is actually a reflection or real madness in the protagonist?
     Richard Cowper's "Out There Where the Big Ships Go" (Pocket
Books, $2.50 paperback) is a collection of five stories by a notable
new English novelist ("The Road to Corlay"). His shorter work, while
as richly textured as his long, and based on equally ingenious and
appealing propositions, is not for the reader who wants his short
story plots to go zippety-zap. Cowper takes his time getting from
A to B; the journey is usually far more interesting than the
destination, but well worth it in some cases.
    - "In" Book of the Year so far: "Far From Home" (Doubleday,
$9.95), a collection of short stories by Walter S. Tevis, author
of "The Hustler" and "The Man Who Fell to Earth." The collection
divides strikingly between old SF magazine pieces and much newer,
less SFnal, more academic work. All of the latter are ambitious,
often psychically effective stories. Some appear to be alternative
versions of the same idea. "Rent Control" and "A Visit From Mother"
are outright tours de force.
    - A Disaster: "The Science Fictionary" ($16.95), by Ed Naha,
is described as "An A-Z Guide to the World of SF Authors, Films
and TV Shows." It comes from Seaview Books, an imprint of Playboy
Enterprises International, and appears to be an attempt to get
away from the unfortunate connotations of Playboy Press and the
thud-and-blunder of Playboy Press's line of SF fiction paperbacks.
    The far more relevant misfortune is that this attempt to
cover such broad ground in a comparatively unthick volume appears
to be sown with superficialities and inaccuracies. Not the least
of these is the first sentence of Naha's prefatory "brief note":
"The Science Fictionary is written entirely in English."  Anyone
who writes "Borrowing a page from the Bible, (Dr. Phibes) deter-
mines that each malefactor will be dispatched to his or her
respective Valhalla..." is in more trouble than he appears to be
able to understand.
    - Good reprint: Harry Harrison's "Make Room! Make Room!" (Ace,
$2.25 paperback), the 1966 novel on which the movie "Soylent Green"
was based. Harrison is no prose master either, but he knows how
to build a scenario, and his glimpses of life in the overcrowded,
polluted urban world of the 21st century are even more chillingly
likely today than they were when first promulgated.

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jan 1981 at 0250-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB MUSIC BOOK ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

...is distinctly better than the one for the first SW film,
and, if I recall rightly, no increase in price.  There are
more pieces  (tho the Main Title theme is an exact repeat
from the first book) and 4 rather than 3 lines of music per
page.

"Obi Wan's Theme" or "the Force Theme" is now officially
titled "May the Force Be With You".  It, the Main Title
Theme, The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme), Yoda's
Theme, and Han Solo and the Princess are in straightforward
piano versions, with accompanying chord names (possibly for
guitar or chord organ, but too outre for even my 21-chord
autoharp, darn it).  The Finale has 3 rather than 2 staves
per line, with indication of which instruments carry which
segments, and the source themes identified as they occur.
Nice.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/07/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It makes
another suggestion regarding the nature of the force.  People who
are not familiar with TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

RVS@MIT-AI 12/28/80 04:03:30

     By the way, wouldn't it be interesting if in a future SW
episode Yoda were to tell Luke that "there is no dark side of
the Force, really; in fact, it's all dark".  (credit to Jim
Merino)
                - "Sam" Sjogren

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  8-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #4
*** EOOH ***
Date:  8 JAN 1981 0820-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #4
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Thursday, 8 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 4

Today's Topics:
  SF Books - The Sirian Experiments & Comment on Budrys & Libraries,
             SF Games - Magic, TESB - More Plot Theories
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 06 Jan 1981 1440-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>

  Review of THE SIRIAN EXPERIMENTS. By Doris Lessing. Knopf. $10.95

by Robie Macauley      (c) 1980 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

( Robie Macauley, a novelist and former fiction editor of Playboy,
  is now an editor in a Boston publishing house. )
    
     With this, the third volume in Doris Lessing's "Canopus in
Argos" tetraology, she comes to the three-quarter mark in her
universal fable of good and evil.
     The first novel was a kind of overview of millions of
years of Earth's history seen as a struggle between the forces
of galactic empires. The second was much simpler, a story of
distressed love between a princess of an ideal kingdom and a
king of a military state.
     In "The Sirian Experiments," Lessing has returned to the
imperial-historical theme with a novel about Earth's disasters.
It may well be an example of the fallacy of imitative form-as a
novel, the book itself is a kind of disaster.
     First, there is the narration, which is carried on by an
extra-terrestrial creature named Ambien 11, a kind of galactic
supergrade bureaucrat who tells her story with all the fictional
style and exuberance of a Department of Agriculture report. Then,
there is the subject, an exhaustive account of the series of
failed biosociological experiments taking place over millennia on
the planet Rohanda or Shikasta (Earth). This is a combination that
manages to avoid practically every pleasure and reward that can be
produced by fiction.
    Rohanda, as we know from the first volume of the series,
has long been an animal experimental station of the two galactic
empires, Canopus and Sirius. The wise and good Canopus, represented
by the character Klorathy in this novel, has performed its social
and evolutionary attempts well. Sirius, something of an imitator,
has had a lesser success.
     But, in the long course of time, there appears Shammat, the
evil offspring of Puttiora, a pirate planet that engineers vast
disturbances in both the creatures and geography of Rohanda-
Shikasta. The influences of Canopus and Sirius wane.  Trying to
understand what's happening, Ambien 11 visits various Shikastan
cities for some rather murky episodes in the Buck Rogers tradition,
and at last goes home to Sirius to make her report.
     The final result of Shammat's wickedness, it seems, is that
the white race has taken over domination of the Earth and has
stamped it with an inflexible grid: "It was a pattern of owner-
ship, a multiplication of the basic unit of the possession of
land."
     Readers who have struggled this far through the books will
recognize that Ambien 11 is echoing the long indictment of the
white race produced by the trial of an Englishman named John
Brent-Oxford in the first volume-and that is a clue to what is
wrong with the whole enterprise, even when taken solely as a
big morality lesson in hazy science-fiction wrappings: Lessing
is obsessive.
    The books do not progress; they cycle through different
scenes and conversations and return to the same verdicts. And,
of course, if we are to place any credence in the science 
fiction rationale, there is no such thing on Earth as free
will or morality. We are simply creatures of Shammat the evil.
As Coleridge aptly said, "Whoever supermoralizes unmoralizes."
    Then there is another writer's remark that applies to
"The Sirian Experiments" strictly as fiction. Doris Lessing,
a splendidly verastile fiction writer on past evidence, seems
to have lost sight of the truth in Chekhov's remark: "To tell
about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incomparably
harder than to compose a whole tract on 'the woman question."'

------------------------------

Date:  7 Jan 1981 1306-PST
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: Budry's Ellison Review

"He's a short story writer by nature..."

Well, Harlan certainly does write stories, but its tasteless
to comment on someone's tallness. Next time I see this Budry
character I'm gonna punch him in the knee!.

------------------------------

Date:  29 December 1980 20:19 est
From:  JTurner.Coop at MIT-Multics

About large SF libraries, the UMASS science fiction society has an
open stack lending library which I have heard estimated at 20,000
books. I would personally guess more around 10k, but you never know...

                                Hackito ergo sum,
                                Wipe out entropy in our lifetime,
                                Fandom is a way of life,
                                James Turner

------------------------------

Date: 8 Jan 1981 0220-EST
From: RDD at MIT-AI
Subject: SF Games - Magic - On Rules for Roles

People who have been following the fantasy Magic discussion may be
interested in knowing that John (Web of Angels) Ford is doing a
continuing series of review articles on fantasy gaming for Isaac
Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.  The articles and issues are
listed below.  People interested in developing their own rules
and procedures should look into the third article in particular.
All of the articles have included a number of references for
anyone who wants to look further into the subject.

   On Evenings Beyond the Fields We Know  --  July 1979
   On Playing Roles : A Second Look       --  Sept 1980
   On Playing Roles : A Third Look        --  Dec  1980

------------------------------

Date: 8 Jan 1981 0220-EST
From: The Moderator
Subject: SF Games - Magic - Turner's Magic Rules

In SFL V2 #173, Jim Turner <JTurner.Coop at MIT-Multics> mentioned
a system of magic rules that he has been developing. He has prepared
a draft of his rules for anyone who may be interested in them. They
are available from the file AI:DUFFEY;SFLVRS JTMAGE. Anyone who would
like a copy of the rules but cannot obtain it should send a message
to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI. A copy will be forwarded promptly.
                                                             -- RDD

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jan 1981 09:13:28-PST
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: Entropy and Black Holes

      As we all know, the Universe somehow exists, and the price for
such existance is entropy. Matter and energy slowly but surely decay
into ever higher states of disorderliness. Of course, entropy can
be reduced locally, but always at the expense off greater entropy
globally. At some time in the very distant future, entropy will have
reached a maximum, and time will have ceased to have any meaning, as
no more events will be possible.

      Entropy is a concept that is at the heart of any physical or
philosphical model of our universe. It explains why a sugar cube
dissolved in water will not, in any meaningful period of time,
magically be formed again from the sugar molecules dissolved in
the water. Entropy can never decrease in a closed system, it can't
even remain constant in a dynamic system.

      What does this have to do with black holes? Well, the only
information that can be infered about a block hole is its mass,
angular momentum, and its charge. Also, current theories suggest
that under the laws of quantum mechanics, black holes slowly
evaporate into sub-atomic particles. The smaller the block hole,
the faster it evaporates. Question: what can come out of a black
hole which has been absorbing helium nuclei and some electro-
magnetic radiation? Answer: protons.

      When matter goes into a black hole, all information about
it is destroyed. When it boils away, the form in which it comes
out in is random, but surely simple particles will prevail. Thus
black holes provide the means for rev- ersing the single most
important energy producing reaction in the universe: hydrogen
fusion. What are the implications of this - especially if this
entropy reversing process is utilized by intelligent beings?????

        - Jeff Cohen

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/08/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It comments
on the nature of the force.  People who are not familiar with TESB may
not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date:  7 Jan 1981 1746-EST
From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: the force.

I suspect that the force is neither light nor dark.  The Force
simply is.  How you use it determines whether it is light or dark.

        steve z.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  9-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #5
*** EOOH ***
Date:  9 JAN 1981 0833-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #5
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest        Friday, 9 Jan 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 5

Today's Topics:
     SF Books - Planetary Society & Libraries, SF TV - BBC HGttG,
             SF Theater - Frankenstein, SF Games - Magic
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 1 Jan 1981 0910-EST
From: Paul Dickson via <Young at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: The Planetary Society

What can anyone tell me about the Planetary Society?  I have read
the brochure, seen the list of notables on the "board of advisors",
but am still not sure exactly what it is.

Mention is made of a newsletter, thru which I will be kept informed
of the latest hapennings in planetary research, but it doesn't say
        1. How often this newsletter is to be published, or
        2. How big it is.

Is it an 85p monthly glossy or a 4p mimeoed fanzine that comes out
at random intervals?

------------------------------

Date:  8 Jan 1981 1353-EST
From: LS.MELTSNER at MIT-EECS
Subject: Foreign fiction & Large Libraries

Among the 35,000 volumes of fiction at MITSFS (amazing how
that slipped in) there is a decent selection of foreign fiction.
Most of the stuff we have is German or Italian, with a smattering
of French, Japanese, Spanish, etc.  I do not know if this distri-
bution reflects our predjudices or the foreign market.  One or
two major publishers seem to offer near-simultaneous publication
of foreign language editions of American SF.  Still, most SF is
english- language, and that which isn't, is often translated or
plagiarized from english-language SF.

                        We're not fans, we just read the stuff!
                                Capt. Polaroid

------------------------------

Date: 8 Jan 1981 1035-EST
From:   Nigel Conliffe via <Young at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: HHGttG

     I just returned from spending Christmas in England, during  which
time I managed to see the first episode in the BBC-2 television series
"The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy".   As far as one can judge  from
the first  episode  of  the series,  it  is  very well  done  and  the
producers and writers  have made  good use  of the  visual aspects  of
television to enhance the Guide; there are, even in the first show, an
good number of purely visual scenes.

     The casting seems  to be very  good (Ford Prefect  as the  "eager
young man", faintly reminiscent of a 1950's undergraduate, Arthur Dent
as the confused, awfully middle-class Englishman and so forth) and the
overall tone of the piece is gently sardonic.  The special effects are
good for British  Television (slightly  better than Dr  Who), and  the
sets are very well done.  The guide deserves a mention all of its own.

     It's about the  size of a  tricorder, in something  like a  large
binocular case with  the words  "Don't Panic"  printed in  red on  the
outside.  Opening  the  case reveals  the  book, a  sort  of  handheld
terminal, with a small display screen,  a keyboard, and a voice.   The
computer graphics used by the guide are excellent, and there are  many
visual effects used as part of the Guide.

     Basically, it's a  show worth seeing;  I suspect that  if we  all
write to our local TV stations,  someone could be persuaded to  import
the show from the BBC in England.

        Nigel

------------------------------

Date: 7 Jan 1981 2120-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>

               Culture - Theater review of Frankenstein
                            By FRANK RICH
                   c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service

    NEW YORK - Certainly no expense has been spared in "Frankenstein,"
the new horror show that opened at the Palace Sunday night.  This
extravaganza boasts enough good actors, colossal sets and rafter-
shaking special effects to equip a Shakespearean repertory company.
But money is a neutral factor in the theater; it alone cannot create
fun. In "Frankenstein," we're keenly aware of the cash, effort and
talent that have been stirred into the brew, but we wait in vain for
the final product to come to a boil.
    So many show-biz adapters have had their way with Mary Shelley's
classic horror tale that one might assume it to be foolproof.  Alas,
Victor Gialanella, the author of the evening, seems determined to
prove that it is not. This playwright has merged the most memorable
scenes from James Whale's 1931 Hollywood version with random scraps
from the 1816 Shelley novel only to end up with a talky, stilted
mishmash that fails to capture either the gripping tone of the book
or the humorous pleasure of the film. This "Frankenstein" has instead
the plodding, preachy quality one associates with the lesser literary
adaptations of public television.
    For what it's worth, Gialanella does appear to be in earnest.
His script not only includes the expected set pieces - the stormy
laboratory sequences and various murders - but it also regurgitates
the Prometheus-inspired themes that underlined the Shelley original.
This show's monster, like the one in the book, learns to talk - and
once he does, he refuses to shut up. If nothing else, one leaves
the theater firmly convinced that man should not usurp God's role
as creator of the universe.
    What Gialanella fails to understand is that murders and messages
become compelling only when they are harnessed to a thrilling story.
As narrative, his "Frankenstein" is lead-footed.  Much of the evening
is given over to gabby scenes involving the many supporting characters
who have been sketchily appropriated from the novel.  It's impossible
to tell who these nondescript people are without consulting either
Shelley or the Playbill.  When each of them is murdered in turn, the
violence is simply too impersonal to be either scary or affecting.
There isn't one death in "Frankenstein" that's remotely as horrifying
as the most minor throat-slitting in "Sweeney Todd."
    The story's principal antagonists are meanwhile left to
languish.  As written here, Dr. Frankenstein is more an abstracted
worry-wart than a man possessed, and not even that estimable actor
David Dukes can bring him to fiery life.  The monster is equally
bland.  Keith Jochim, who plays this potentially rich role, is not
a campy tragedian like Boris Karloff, and he isn't witty like Frank
Langella's Dracula or Peter Boyle's creature in Mel Brooks' "Young
Frankenstein."  Although elaborately made up with the requisite
cranial fissures, Jochim lacks a commanding physical or vocal
presence.  He's just a beery lout in a Halloween costume.
    At least the scenes are plentiful, which allows for a large
number of amusing set changes. The show's designers - Douglas W.
Schmidt (scenery), Carrie F. Robbins (costumes and puppets),
Jules Fisher and Robby Monk (lighting) - are first-rate. Working
on the Palace's huge stage, which has been masked by tent-sized
black curtains, they have created a creepy graveyard, a snowy
Swiss landscape, Gothic interiors and a gargantuan laboratory
full of Rube Goldberg-style contraptions.  Tom Moore, the
quick-witted director, has choreographed the sweeping movement
of scenery and cast with a sure pictorial sense.  It's not his
fault that such worthy secondary players as John Glover, Dianne
Wiest and Douglas Seale hardly register against all the smoke
and fog.
    Bran Ferren's special audio-visual effects are also impressive
by theatrical standards, although they cannot rival the wizardry
he's brought to the film "Altered States."  He's at his best with
blizzards, lightning bolts and laboratory electrocutions.  The
elaborate conflagrations that close each act, however, look fake;
they don't deliver nearly enough voltage to justify the work that
has undoubtedly gone into them.
    This is probably not Ferren's fault.  If special effects
aren't tied to action and characters, the audience sees them as
hardware rather than magic.  Presumably someone involved with
"Frankenstein" recognized this problem: A B-movie musical score
(by Richard Peaslee) has been thrown on top of the show's other
noise to announce the desired emotional effect of each scene.
There are piercing organ riffs for the ostensibly scary moments,
throbbing chords for "suspense" and even a mushy sentimental
theme for the monster's friendly encounters with a blind hermit
played by the inimitable John Carradine.
    Even so, we feel nothing except the disappointment that comes
from witnessing an evening of misspent energy. "Frankenstein" may
be the last word in contemporary theatrical technology, but its
modern inventions are nothing without the alchemy of plain, old-
fashioned drama.
    
------------------------------

Date: 8 Jan 1981 0849-PST
From: WMartin at Office-3
Subject: Slight correction

I don't mean to be pedantic, but the word is "mana", not "manna";
of course, both are really transliterations, I believe.  "Mana" is
from some Polynesian languages, and means what you intend relating
to magic.  "Manna" is either a transliteration from Hebrew meaning
the foodstuff which was divinely provided to the Israelites in the
wilderness (I think Velikovsky said it was carbohydates created from
the Venusian cometary tail, to be esoteric about this) or an English
word from King James's time which was the translation of the Hebrew
term.  (My Biblical reference scholars are unreachable by phone at
this instant, unfortunately.)

Since the "manna" spelling is better known in this country, due to
vague memories of people's confirmation classes or parochial schools,
I am not surprised that the term "mana", which used to occur only in
sociology/anthropology texts, and which has the similar pronunciation
merely by coincidence, is confused with and is overwhelmed by the
former.

(I just checked my dictionary, which I should have done heretofore;
"mana" is from the Hawaiian & Maori, while "manna" is from a Hebrew
root word.)

Regards, Will Martin

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 10-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #6
*** EOOH ***
Date: 10 JAN 1981 0458-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #6
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 10 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 6

Today's Topics:
SF Books - Demon Princes & Bicameralism,SF TV - Nova & Charmin Robbie,
     Physics Tomorrow - Entropy & Black Holes, SF Events Calendar
----------------------------------------------------------------------

CEH@MIT-MC 01/09/81 20:35:10 Re: 5th Demon Princes Book

The fifth and last of the Demon Princes novels by Jack Vance is out!
It is called The Book of Dreams and is about Howard Alan Treesong.

Nano-review: a slight disappointment

Micro-review:

  An adequate if not satisfying conclusion to the series.  Whatever
you do, don't read this one first.  The plot is a bit thin but the
ambience is, as always, satisfyingly strange.  Treesong, supposedly
one of the strangest and most evil of the demon princes appears
more like a rather petulant child than an unpredictable, evil,
genius.  Oh well, not Vance at his best, but worth the $2.25 if
only to finish off the series.

Bay-areans: Available at Future Fantasy (of course)

-- Charles

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jan 1981 1446-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: bicameralism

There's another story about split brains in the latest Zelazny
collection "The Last Defender of Camelot" (sorry, can't remember
the actual title).  In this one the right half of a guy's brain
is conditioned to assasinate someone when a key phrase is spoken
and be dormant otherwise. This is intended to fool the telepathic
bodyguards, who would hear only the left half's thoughts.

------------------------------

CEH@MIT-MC 01/04/81 03:04:11 Re: Split Brain story

A split brain plays a part in Gene Wolfe's short story 'The Death
of Doctor Island'.

-- Charles

------------------------------

Date: 31 Dec 1980 1404-EST
From: PHENIX via <Young at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: PBS' NOVA "It's About Time"

An excellent and entertaining discussion of time.  The program does
contain one of the most unusual things I have ever seen: pictures of
Isaac Asimov in an airplane.  (Concorde, no less.)

Happy New Year.

------------------------------

Date:  9 January 1981 2049-EST (Friday)
From: Andrew Reiner at CMU-10A
Subject:  Stars of yesteryear

Robbie the Robot, star of the classic "Forbidden Planet", is
currently appearing with Mr. Whipple in a toilet paper ad on
NY television.

Thought you'd like to know.
        Andy Reiner

------------------------------

Date:  8 JAN 1981 0839-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Black hole entropy

     Black holes can violate a lot of laws with impunity, but not
the laws of entropy.  Most of the radiation from an evaporating
black hole is in the form of low energy neutrinos, infrared
photons, and long wavelength gravitons, surely a low-grade form
of matter.  Thus the evaporation of a black hole is just another
step in the universe's long slow march to an inevitable entropy
death.
     A black hole with a mass in grams of M has a temperature in
degrees Kelvin of T=10^26/M.  When M>10^17 gm, the temperature
is less than 10^9 K so only zero rest-mass particles (photons,
neutrinos and gravitons) are emitted and the black hole loses
mass at a rate proportional to 1/M^2.  Such a hole should emit
approximately 81% of its mass in neutrinos, 17% in photons,
and 2% in gravitons.  When M<10^17 gm (a medium-sized asteroid
-- not much left of the star that formed the black hole) then
emission of electrons and positrons are allowed; and when
M<10-15 gm muons will be emitted (although these will quickly
decay into electrons, positrons, and neutrinos).  It is only
when M<10^14 gm, so that the temperature exceeds 10^12 K, that
hadrons (including protons, neutrons, and their anti-particles)
are finally emitted.
     I'm afraid that we will have to find out another way
of avoiding the entropy death.  Of course, if it turns out
that information is conserved, then that must mean that as
the amount of "information" in the non-living matter of the
universe decreases, there must be a corresponding build-up
of "information" in the living portions of the universe.
Thus as the universe approaches its entropy death, there
is building up somewhere a super-intellect that finally
develops enough intelligence that it knows how to program
a reset command that will start things all over again. In
this picture, we are nothing but one universe's way of
making another universe.

        Bob Forward

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jan 1981 16:24:06-PST
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: Black hole entropy

     Well, if you had a "micro black hole" and you put matter in
as fast as it came out, then you can have a high temperature black
hole that emits whatever you want it to emit.  But I suppose it
would be very difficult to put matter in when the black hole is so
busy spitting it out.  On the other hand, neutrinos and gravitons
may prove to be very useful in the future (especially gravitons).
     I doubt that information is conserved because entropy can
be interpreted as the "orderliness" of a system, and a system in
disorder cannot hold very much information.

------------------------------

Date: 7 Jan 1981 11:30 PST
From: Richard R. Brodie <Brodie at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: Calendar of Science Fiction Events

Here is the SF-Lovers event calendar. If you have information
about any events you would like to see added to the calendar,
or are associated in some way with one of the listed events and
would like to contribute, please send mail to Brodie at PARC-MAXC.

                    ------------------------------

                  Calendar of Science Fiction Events
                        As of January 7, 1980

        January 16-18, 1981  (Tennessee)
CHATTACON 6. PO Box 21173, Chattanooga, TN 37421.

        January 23-25, 1981  (New York)
LASTCON. GoH: Hal Clement; Fan GoH: Jan Howard Finder.
Albany Ramada. Cost: $9 till 12/25/80, $12 till 1/16/81,
$15 after.  Maria Bear, 216 8th Street, Troy, NY 12180.

        January 23-25, 1981  (Southern California)
SHERLOCKON. A Holmes-Coming, The 100th Anniversary of the Meeting of
Holmes and Watson. Travelodge International Hotel, 9750 Airport Blvd
(near LAX). There will be a 'murder' on the first day for all you
sleuths to try and solve.  Case will be resolved by the banquet
Saturday. P.O. Box 1330, Hawthorne, CA 90250


        January 30-31, 1981  (Ohio)
OSU CON. Ohio State University. Julie Washington,
OSU Union Program Office, 1739 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43210.

        February 6-8, 1981  (Florida)
OMNICON II. Guest: Kerry O'Quinn (Starlog).
PO Box 970308, Miami, FL 33197.

        February 12-16, 1981  (Southern California)
AQUACON. Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, CA ($56 single).
PO Box 815, Brea, CA 92621.

        February 13-15, 1981  (Massachusetts)

BOSKONE XVIII. Pro GoH: Tanith Lee; Official Artist: Don Maitz.
Sheraton-Boston ($57/single, $69/double). Cost: $12 until 1 Jan 1981,
then $15 to N.E.S.F.A., Box G, MIT Branch P.O., Cambridge MA 02139.
Films, program, seminars, art show, hucksters room, filksinging,
games, costume party, Glamor and Sparkle.  Info on dealers' tables
and art show is available; dealers' room will probably be larger
than in past years as we now have more of the hotel.  Registration
limit of 3000.  (We aren't happy about the room rates either, but
there isn't a usable hotel with significantly better rates.)
SFL liaison: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock).

        February 14, 1981  (Florida)
STONE HILL LAUNCH II.
Ann Morris, 1522 Lovers Lane, Riverview, FL 33569.

        February 14-16, 1981  (Northern California)
DUN DRA CON VI. Gaming. 386 Alcatraz Avenue, Oakland, CA 94618.

        February 22, 1981 (Southern California)
THE SECOND (SEMI) ANNUAL TRANSYLVANIAN CONVENTION. A six-hour
Rocky Horror party (12 noon - 6 p.m.). Los Angeles Hilton.
Feature Films, Concert Shorts, Exhibit & Slide Show, Collec-
tibles, Live Entertainment, Costume Contest, Door Prizes,
probably a showing of Night of the Loving Dead [Yes, lOving].
The Worst Films Show (7:00pm-10:00pm, extra admission). Two
of the all time worst films, plus trailers, shorts, etc.
(213) 656-9090.

        February 27-March 1, 1981  (North Carolina)
STELLAR CON VI. University of North Carolina.
David Allen, Box 4-EUC, University of N.C., Greensboro, NC 27412.

        March 6-8, 1981  (Texas)
OWLCON II. Rice Program Council, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX 77001.

        March 6-8, 1981  (Wisconsin)
WISCON 5. SF3, Box 1624, Madison, WI 53701.

        March 20-22, 1981 (New Jersey)
LUNACON '81. Guests: James White, Jack Gaughan. Sheraton-Heights,
Hasbrouck Heights, NJ (marginally attainable by public from New York
City). Cost: $11 till 2/28/81, $14 door. Box 204, Brooklyn, NY 11230.

        April 3-5, 1981  (Kansas)
FOOL-CON IV. Confirmed guests: C. J. Cerryh, Lynn Abbey, Robert
Asprin.  Johnson City Community College, Kansas City, MO.
Johnson County Comunity College, Overland Park, KS 66210.

        July 2-5, 1981 (California)
WESTERCON 34. GoH: C. J. Cherryh; Fan GoH: Grant Cornfield. Red Lion
Motor Inn, Sacramento, CA; (916) 929-8855; $32 single and double, $8
addl person.  Party wing. Cost: $15 till 12/31/80, $20 till 6/14/81,
$25 door. P.O. Box 161719, Sacramento, CA 95816.

        July 10-12, 1981  (Missouri)
ARCHON V. GoH: Tanith Lee; Fan GoH: Joan Hanke Wood; Toastmaster:
Charlie Grant; also Joan Hanke Wood, Wilson 'Bob' Tucker, Glen Cook,
Ron Chilson, George R. R. Martin, Joe and Gay Haldeman, and Michael
Berlyn. Chase-Park Plaza Hotel, St. Louis, MO ($44 single, $52 2/3/4).
Soliciting program ideas and/or people who could help carry them out.
Also looking for more artist names to add to the mailing list for
soliciting contributions to the art show. This was successful at
ARCHON IV (over 60% of artists sold works), and they are trying to
expand. There will be more art show space and display panels this
year. Also in the process of reviewing art show rules and would
welcome suggestions. SFL liaison: WMartin at Office-3 (Amy Newell).

        September 3-7, 1981  (Colorado)
DEVENTION TWO. 1981 World Science Fiction Convention.
Pro GoH: C.L. Moore, Clifford Simak; Fan GoH:Rusty Hevelin.
Cost: $35 till spring 1981. P.O. Box 11545, Denver, CO. 80211.
(303) 433-9774.

        September 2-6, 1982  (Illinois)
CHICON IV. 1982 World Science Fiction Convention.  Pro GoH: A.
Bertram Chandler; Fan GoH: Lee Hoffman; Artist GoH: Kelly Freas.
Hyatt Regency, Chicago, IL.  Cost: $20 till 12/31/80, $30 till
6/30/81; $15 supporting; $7.50 conversion.  PO Box A3120,
Chicago, IL 60690.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 11-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #7
*** EOOH ***
Date: 11 JAN 1981 0722-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #7
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 11 Jan 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 7

Today's Topics:
     SF Authors - Forward, SF Books - Unpleasant Universes (TFoP)
  & Quantum SF Series & Card, SF Movies - Brainstorm Query & Plan 9,
       Star Trek - Alternities, TESB - Genealogy & Alternities
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 JAN 1981 1418-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Visit to Boston

     I will be visiting Boston Monday 12 January 1981.  Arrive
at Logan 5:23 pm on Sunday evening, staying at Hyatt Regency
in Cambridge.  Will be autographing books at the MIT Coop from
1-2 PM Monday, then attending Dan Shapiro's class "The Sky is
Falling (Really)" from 3:30 to 5+ pm in the AI playroom, eighth
floor of 545 Tech Square.  (I was originally planning a short
lecture, but the way the class has been going, I'm not sure
I'll get a chance to speak.)  Will be shuttleing off to NYC,
then DC early Tuesday AM.
     I'll be available for autographs, chats, or just to say Hi
if you can catch me at one of those places.

       Bob Forward (FORWARD@USC-ECL)
                   (FORWRD@MIT-MC)


------------------------------

MASEK@MIT-ML 01/11/81 01:36:29 Re: Fountains of Paradise

     I confess, I voted for FoP for a Hugo for best Novel.
Why?  I read the other novels and they were significantly less
interesting.  JEM was the only other novel that was nominated
that I would recommend to a friend.  (Please note I have a
strong bias towards plot.)

Re: "FoP is just another engineer builds whatever story"

     That is meaningless.  A good story can steal from any number
of traditional plots and create a new interesting story.  Titan
is just a variation of the Wizard of Oz.  Unfortunately I don't
care what happens to the world in Titan.  Someone once said there
were about 10-15 original plots and all literature are variations
on those plots.  A good novel keeps your interest.

                                                bill

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jan 1981  0220-EST
From: RDD at MIT-AI
Subject: Quantum Science Fiction Series

SFL V2 #3 contained a message from me about the Quantum SF Series.
That message included a list of Quantum titles that I had pieced
together from my personal collection.  Vinge's "The Snow Queen"
was listed with a question mark because my copy does not carry
the Quantum imprint.

Will Martin recently sent me a note saying that the copy of Card's
"Songmaster" he is reading includes a list of the series' books.
That list matches mine exactly and includes Vinge's novel.

Somewhat bemused I returned to my copy of "Songmaster" and found
that it definitely does not include that list.  At this point I
should note that all my copies were purchased from the SF Book
Club.  Evidentally they chose to eliminate the list when they
set up the book on their special presses.  Of course the entire
text of the book is there, as always.

Speaking of which, let me briefly recommend Card's "Songmaster"
to each of you.  This novel is by far Card's most entertaining
and thoughtful work since his 1976(?) story "Ender's Game".  It
includes the Analog stories "Songhouse" and "Mikal's Songbird"
with new material to complete the lifestory of Ansett.  Forget
Card's at best mediocre somec series (the collection "Capitol"
and the novel "Hot Sleep").  Avoid his just plain awful novel
"A Planet Called Treason".  Skim "Unaccompanied Sonata" to
justify what you paid for that copy of OMNI.  But read
"Songmaster".  Highly recommended.

------------------------------

Date: 30 Dec 1980 04:16:53-PST
From: decvax!duke!chris at Berkeley
Subject: Douglas Trumbull's latest movie

"Brainstorm" will begin filming in the Research Triangle area
(Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill) of North Carolina  for ten
weeks starting in March.  At least, that is what he told me
two weeks ago.

Does anybody know of a good way to get a disk drive to
convincingly blow itself up?  It is one of the things
Trumbull wants to do.

I hadn't read the SFL V2 #166 at that time but he should be back
in this area in late January/early February.  I'll ask him about
the "Super-70" format when I see him (if I see him).  I'll let
y'all know what I find out.

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jan 1981 2133-PST
From: Yeager@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: "Plan 9 From Outer Space"

Well gang, saw "Plan 9 From Outer Space" just now.  It IS the
worst SF film ever made.  A must.  Don't miss it.

Bill

------------------------------

Date: 08 Jan 1981 2348-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: two STAR TREK parodies  

The following comes from Admin.Kanef at SU-SCORE (Bob Kanefsky):

Following are based on two scenes from STAR TREK (one from the TV
series and one from the movie) which involve the onboard computer.
I feel these scenes were not written realistically enough; the
writers undoubtedly had never had contact with a real computer.
The rewritten scenes below attempt to correct this and to portray
the computer and its programmer more accurately.

====================================================================
Scene:  from "Wolf in the Fold".  Jack the Ripper has just
        "possessed" the Enterprise computer.
====================================================================

Spock:    He's brought himself up as the new operating system,
          Captain.

Kirk:     Explain.

Spock:    He now controls our computer.
                                                        
                                        No shit, Sherlock.
Kirk:     And the computer controls the ship. ^  Engage manual
          overrides!

Jack's voice [from computer]:  Ha, ha!  Your manual overrides
          are very limited -- they won't even open the vending
          machines!

Spock:    Computer.

Computer: WORKING>

Spock:    Compute to the last digit the value of pi.

Computer: (Crunch, crunch, munch, chew, choke, gasp)

Spock [to Kirk]:  I discovered this bug just before I went
          into heat last episode.  Forunately, I've not had
          the opportunity to correct it.

Jack:     Argggghhhhh!!

Spock:    I've reported it to Starfleet.  They claim it's
          fixed in the next release.

Computer: Stack overruns heap!
          Belief context overcomes metaknowledge!
          CAR runs into motor CDR, creating a CDAVR!
          PA1050:  Deleted mass murderers being expunged.

Jack:     I think I've made a--

Computer: Fatal error!  Please notify Spock!

[pause]

Kirk:     Kirk to Scott:  How long will it take you to get
          the vending machines working under manual control?

Scott:    I canna do it in less than two hours, Captain.

Uhura:    Captain, I'm hungry.

Kirk:     Make it half an hour, Scotty.

====================================================================
Scene:    From STARTREK.TMP -- Spock has just entered the bridge,
          rejoining the Enterprise crew for the first time in
          years, and is studying the new computer station.
====================================================================

Kirk:     Spock!  Welcome back!

[ Spock turns and stares blankly at Kirk, then continues examining
  the computer station.  After a moment, his control slips, and his
  usually immobile face registers excitement.]

Spock:    They installed a display terminal!

Kirk:     Spock, Dr. Chapel wants to see you.

Spock:    I've been waiting years for this.... It even has character
          insert and delete!

Kirk:     She said something about blood tests.

Spock:    My proposal was finally accepted!  And the new release is
          here.  I wonder if they fixed the bug in the emergency
          automatic defense system... [touching some buttons]

Uhura [horrified]:  Captain!  The transporter room reports that the
          shields just came up -- while they were beaming two people
          aboard! ...They've lost them, sir.

Kirk:     Mail their families the usual sympathy card and send a
          yeoman with a mop.  Spock, we're short on officers'
          quarters because Decker's here, so if it's OK with you...

Spock:    Just as I suspected.  I wonder if they fixed the bug in
          the life support system....

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/11/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
comment on what the people at Marvel Comics may know and alternities.
People who are not familiar with TESB may not wish to read further.


------------------------------

Date:  5 Jan 1981 at 0250-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THAT OLD PATERNITY QUESTION AGAIN ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Acknowledgedly, only the data in the actual STAR WARS \films/ can
be held reliable, but here's a new potential clue.

While the folks at Marvel Comics may be just battening on the
uncertainty for the fun of it, it c-o-u-l-d be that They Know
Something.

The latest issue of the STAR WARS comic has Luke reminiscing on
the events in TESB:

     "...his showdown duel at Cloud City with the Dark Lord
     of the Sith, Darth Vader-- where he learned that the
     man he most hated in all the galaxy might well be his
     FATHER!  Whatever the truth..."

and then saying,

     "'It felt like Vader told me the TRUTH...but wouldn't
     that mean BEN KENOBI misled me?  Either seems unthink-
     able.'"

So maybe, just m-a-y-b-e...

------------------------------

Date: 01 Jan 1981 1359-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: Pot-Shots

The Vader/Ewing Connection:  If thats the case, then Peter Pan is
Vader's mother.

Rich

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 12-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #8
*** EOOH ***
Date: 12 JAN 1981 0412-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #8
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 12 Jan 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 8

Today's Topics:
SF Books - Demon Princes, Space - Planetary Society and other Groups,
  Future - Telephone Numbers, SF TV - KTLA, SF Movies - Horrible SF,
                       Star Trek - The Computer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 Jan 1981 at 1658-PST
From: obrien at Rand-Unix (Mike O'Brien)
Subject: Demon Princes

     Attel Malagate (the Woe), Kokor Hekkus, Viole Falushe,
Lens Larque, and Howard Alan Treesong.

     I was checking the copyrights...the Demon Princes series
is seventeen years old!  I had given up hope of its ever being
finished, so when the last two appeared suddenly, I was delighted.
I disagree with the last review; I was not disappointed with the
last novel.  Treesong was a creature of impulse.

     Series as a whole: Highly Recommended.  One of the best.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jan 1981 17:13 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: The Planetary Society (and other space advocacy groups)

I recently received the first issue of the Planetary Society
newletter.  I don't have it in front of me, but basically it's
a very slickly-produced glossy magazine of about 16 pp., which
I would guess will come out every couple of months.  The level
of writing seems to be for the scientifically-aware layman.

I believe OMNI will shortly be publishing a list with addresses
of all the major space-advocacy groups.  In brief:

Planetary Society: aimed at increasing popular support for planetary
   exploration.  Principal people are Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray.

L5 Society: primary thrust is space colonization, as inspired
   by Gerard K. O'Neill, with space industrialization as a more
   immediate focus.  Publishes "L5 News", a small, semi-technical
   magazine, every month or two.

National Space Institute: founded by Werner von Braun, now headed by
   Hugh Downs.  Intended to be a popular space-advocacy group with
   the broadest possible base.  Originally they had a very juvenile,
   "gee-whiz" newletter, but they are finally coming around to the
   point of doing a very professional job of lobbying and tracking
   Congress.

Space Studies Institute: Gerry O'Neill's organization.  No slick
   newsletters, just a four-page activity summary once or twice a
   year.  Members' money goes directly toward the support of his
   mass driver and related work.

British Interplanetary Society: the oldest and most scientifically
   respected organization devoted exclusively to space.  Their
   magazine "Spaceflight" provides the most complete, widely-
   available archive of satellite launches and background on
   space programs of all nations.  A particularly good source for
   analysis of the Soviet space program.  JBIS is a scientific
   journal they publish.  Their recent Project Daedalus produced
   a fascinating, detailed engineering design for an interstellar
   space probe.

American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA):
   The princial American professional society for aerospace
   engineers.  While not strictly a space advocacy group like
   the above, they have published some fascinating engineering
   studies in their monthly magazine, "Aeronautics and
   Astronautics".

I've been involved with both the Chicago Society for Space
Settlement (independent, but works closely with SSI), and the
Organization for the Advancement of Space Industrialization and
Settlement (OASIS - LA L5), and have been deeply impressed by
the commitment and the professionalism of the people involved.
L5, in particular, has many local chapters, involved in such
things as public education and small-scale engineering studies.
A committee from OASIS recently completed an engineering study
on using Space Shuttle external tanks as units of a space
station, using available innovative technologies such as
space-filling foam.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jan 1981 1325-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: misc

This message will address several seemingly unrelated subjects, as
it will attempt to come up to date with a variety of SF-LOVERS topics
that have passed in the last few weeks.  I originally sent off this
basic message over a week ago, but it got smashed in one of the ITS
systems, and was lost forever.  Here it goes again:

1) Phone numbers that follow you around.  It was mentioned that it
   would supposedly be feasible to have a universal phone number
   that could follow you around wherever you go.  This is indeed
   true.  Given the full implementation of the CCIS (Common
   Channel Interoffice Signalling) system, a person's "personal"
   number could be translated within the network into the unrelated
   "physical" number for their particular location.  Presumably you
   could "login" your new location from whatever phone you happened
   to be near, so that the network would be up to date on where you
   were.  There are some interesting problems with this sort of
   system though.  For example, how do you know, when you call
   someone, exactly how far the call will go (and how much it will
   cost?)  That is, does a call to person number 311-555-2368 go
   next door or across the country?  Who pays the difference?  I
   can see a scenario like this:

   SUBSCRIBER LIFTS PHONE:

   CENTRAL OFFICE:  "Central -- Enter number please"

   SUBSCRIBER:  "311-555-2368"

   CO:  "A call to that number will cost you ... Two dollars and
         eighty-five cents for the first minute.  Please press
         "*" for accept, "#" for reject".

   Or whatever; you get the idea.  You will note that I have the
   CO speaking its opening prompt instead of providing a dialtone...
   this will come to pass eventually, especially when voice dialing
   systems become feasible (not for quite a while yet -- though I
   have a crude voice dialer on my micro at home that works if you
   talk slowly and clearly...).

   In any case, the concept of logical as opposed to physical phone
   numbers is an interesting one.

2) How to save NASA.  I have an idea as to how to avoid NASA funding
   problems.  What they do is hold a contest with a big prize to the
   person who catches the most ceramic tiles when the shuttle makes
   its landing.  Hmmm.  Maybe they'd be better off giving the prize
   to the person who catches the most tiles during TAKEOFF.  Oh well,
   easy come, easy go.

3) KTLA does it again.  Channel 5 here in L.A., continuing in their
   attempts to outdo the other locals when it comes to science
   fiction, has recently pulled a couple of interesting tricks. For
   example, last Friday night, they ran the classic "It Came From
   Outer Space" ... Saturday night, they ran "The Creature From
   the Black Lagoon".  Interesting that they ran the two classic
   3-D SF movies one after the other.  Of course they did not show
   them in 3-D (though they could have, a pay-tv service here in
   L.A. recently showed some 3-D stuff -- they even sent out the
   glasses for it!)

   KTLA is also the guardian of the local Star Trek reruns, and has
   changed their schedule for ST in an interesting way.  Instead
   of showing them around dinnertime M-F (which they used to do) or
   on afternoons during Saturday and Sunday (which they were doing
   until a week or so ago), they have now scheduled it for Monday
   through Thursday at 11 PM.  Yes, PM.  Looks they know where their
   audience is.  An interesting way to siphon people off from the 11
   PM news programs (KTLA's own news is from 10 to 11, natch.) Should
   be interesting to see how this rather unique scheduling works out.
   The episodes I have seen so far are pretty badly cut... looks like
   they wanted to squeeze a few more commercial minutes out of them.

   One other thing about KTLA -- they are calling their SF movie
   program the "SCI-FI SPECTACULAR".  Somebody should speak to
   these people about this blasphemy.  Maybe I will... chuckle.

Oh well, enough for now...  I hope this satisfies those people who
have been wondering where I've been hiding and not sending any mail.
I am amazed to find that there appear to actually be some people who
ENJOY reading my insane ramblings.  Oh well, nice to know that S & M
is still alive and well...

A belated happy new year to all.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jan 1981 (Sunday) 2047-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Bad SF-Horror movies

 In Philadelphia this Wednesday at 10PM will be on Channel 17 a movie
by the title of "Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and
Became Mixed-Up Zombies".  Has anyone seen this "classic" and can
they review it?  What other movies of equally absurd titles can you
think of?

------------------------------

JMTURN@MIT-AI 01/12/81 01:05:47

   Regarding the ST computer. One thing I have noticed is that
the people writting the show could never decide if it was a
single-user number cruncher or a multi-user timesharing system.
For instance, in the "Wolf in the fold" episode, Kirk crashes
the system by feeding it paradoxes. Now then, on a timesharing
system (at least a good one), if one job loses, it doesn't down
the system.  This would tend to make one think that perhaps the
computer was a single person system.
   But everyone seems to use it, in all locations of the ship.
Perhaps Spock's terminal is the equivilant of a system console.
In that case, it becomes slightly more believable, except that,
again, any good system would not allow the console to crash the
system by generating an error.  Besides, the system console is
almost always next to the computer itself so that the operator
can watch the computer and the console.
   If Spock's console were, however, the system console, all
someone who wanted to destroy the Enterprise would have to do
is type DOWN5 (or whatever the command to bring down the system
is) and everyone would get a message saying SYSTEM GOING DOWN
IN 5 MINUTES...
                                        James Turner

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 13-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #9
*** EOOH ***
Date: 13 JAN 1981 0441-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #9
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Tuesday, 13 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 9

Today's Topics:
   SF Books - Demon Princes & Mayflies, SF Theater - Frankenstein,
SF Movies - Computer/Action Films, Physics Tomorrow - Fast Computers,
       Star Trek - The Computer, Spoiler - Unpleasant Universes
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 Jan 1981 1644-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: book notes

     Let me add another recommendation to read "The Book of Dreams",
the fifth and last Demon Princes novel by Jack Vance.  It wraps up
the series with the usual Vance color and dash.  I'd be interested to
know if Vance was like Howard Alan Treesong as a kid: an imaginative
childstuck in dull surroundings, making up romances and adventures.
The Land of Maunish sounds a lot like, say, Iowa.  Does anyone know
if that is his background?

     A little above the space adventure category is "Mayflies" by
Kevin O'Donnell Jr. (does anyone know if this is a pseudonym for
Barry Malzberg?).  The plot here is that a man's brain is incor-
porated into the central computer facility of an interstellar
colonization ship. The builders thought that the man's personality
had been scoured out by death trauma (he had been decapitated in
an accident), but he comes to life once the ship is underway.  His
initial struggles wreck the ramscoop drive and change the ten-year
journey into a thousand year one.  The story consists of his battles
with the existing system and his attempts to reform the increasingly
decadent and worthless passengers, who are the mayflies of the title
compared to his effective immortality.  Very well handled overall.
     I also read over the weekend a new book by Norman Spinrad
called "Songs from the Stars", but I would like to reserve my
comments about it until a few more people have had a chance to
see it.  It got glowing blurbs from the likes of Zelazny, Niven,
Benford, and evenb Timothy Leary, but I didn't care for it.  See
what you think.

------------------------------

Date:  12 Jan 1981 0220-EST
From: The Moderator
Subject: More on Frankenstein - The Broadway Flop

Jim McGrath has forwarded several more newswire stories
on the new theater adaptation of Frankenstein.  Copies of
these stories have now been established at the sites listed
below.  Everyone interested in reading these stories should
obtain the file from the site which is most convenient for
them.  If you are unable to do so, please send mail to
HUMAN-NETS-REQUEST@MIT-AI and I will be happy to make sure
that you get a copy.

Please obtain your copies in the near future however, since the
files will be deleted in one week.  A copy of the material will
also be available from the SF-LOVERS archives.  Thanks go to
Richard Brodie, Richard Lamson, Doug Philips, and Don Woods for
providing space for the materials on their systems, and to Jim
McGrath for collecting them for us.

   Site          Filename
  
MIT-AI       AI:DUFFEY;SFLVRS FRANK
CMUA         TEMP:FRANK.SFL[A210DP0Z]
PARC-MAXC    [Maxc2]<Brodie>SFLOVERS-FRANK.TXT
SU-AI        FRANK.SFL[T,DON]
MIT-Multics
      >user_dir_dir>SysMaint>Lamson>sf-lovers>frankenstein.text

[Note, you can TYPE or FTP the file from SAIL without an account.]

------------------------------

Date: 11 January 1981 2337-EST (Sunday)
From: Paul.Hilfinger at CMU-10A (C410PH01)
Subject:  Self-destructing disk drives

Well, it depends  on what  you mean.  I  assume that  you want  a
technically realistic  failure mode,  since it  is easy  to  make
something blow up  realistically if you  have some explosives  on
hand.  Does "the spindle disintegrated, hurling ball bearings all
over the machine room" sound like  what he's after?  This is  the
result of substituting phonograph  records for the disk  platters
on a pack and mounting same.  Check out Operating Systems Review,
Vol 14, No. 2  (April 1980), p. 8,  last paragraph for the  story
surrounding a  "test"  of  this  procedure (OSR  is  put  out  by
SIGOPS).

--Paul Hilfinger

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jan 1981 0352-EST
From: LS.MELTSNER at MIT-EECS
Subject: Disk drives as explosives

It is sort of hard, as far as I can tell, to make a disk
explode.  Impressive results may be obtained with some of
the large, ancient, IBM disks, though.  The ones they may
still have at LBL had .5m radius disks, and were cleaned
with meter longcotton swabs.  If the mass of the disk
plates was known, and the rotation speed determined, the
energy conetent could be determined.  For anything smaller,
I don't think the effect would be truly impressive.  (Though
I have had the urge to shoot my drives (5.25" mini-floppies)
more than once.)  Speaking of computer/action films, has
any one heard anything about "Trapdoor" since its mention
in OMNI. Apparently, Christopher Reeves will star as an MIT
student who undercovers an underground international slush
fund and conspiracy while playing Zork or something.

About basic plots:  Ben Bova mentions there only 3.

   1)  The Little Tailor (man proves something
       to himself and/or world)
   2)  Boy Meets Girl (obvious)
   3)  The Man Who Learned Better (ditto)

Apparently, John Campbell convinced Mr. Bova that all fiction
was merely a combination of these plots.

                        Etc., Etc., Etc.
                        Capt. Polaroid

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jan 1981 1441-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: Faster Computers   

Here is an idea that I've been kicking around for a while.  I'm
not sure it has merit, but I thought I'd air it anyway.

Is the following feasible: Assume you want to squeeze lots of
speed out of your computer, so you put yourself on a near light
speed vehicle that circles your planet with as small of a radius
as possible.  Meanwhile, the computer remains on your planet.
Because of relativistic effects, you can vastly increase the
perceived speed of the machine.  Better yet, leave your computer
orbiting a black hole and then jump in.

A question: In either of the above cases, can you get information
back and forth from the computer, or is this where things break
down.  I'm afraid I don't know enough physics to really understand
the issues. 

Rich

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jan 1981 (Monday) 1840-EST
From: RUBENSTEIN at HARV-10
Subject: ST COMPUTER

The ST Computer is obviously a multi-user multi-processor system.
When fed a difficult (or impossible) problem, it responded by
commiting bank after bank of processors to the problem, until
there were not enough for the operating system -- that is, the
Ripper.

------------------------------

Date: 12 January 1981 1659-EST (Monday)
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A

Well, I can think of a few reasonable explanations for the ST
computer behavior:

(1) Paradoxes cause a task to go compute-intensive (with no
    termination) and the captain's console has high priority...

(2) Paradoxes cause a task to go memory-intensive (wnt) and
    the system is happily thrashing itself...and the captain's
    console (etc.)...

Now, you say, who would build a wedged system like that?  Don't
forget, in spite of the futurisic setting, the Enterprise
was still built by a government, and consequently everything
(including computer and software) was done by the lowest bidder...
                                joe

------------------------------

Date:  12 January 1981 09:09 est
From:  Benson I. Margulies at MIT-Multics
Subject:  ST Computer

I think it is a waste of time to attempt to find a current-style
schemata for the ST onboard computer.  Operator's console, indeed!
If you absolutely must do something other than accept it as a
character, then compare it to Dora in Heinlein.  One personality,
but enough ability to service simple (er) requests from other
places at the same time.  While I think the paradox-crash is the
most hackneyed, STUPID plot device involving a computer I know
of, (second not even to the fact that it catches fire thereafter)
it most certainly implies some primary consciousness to confuse.

Of course, it is unlikely that even this much though went through
Roddenbury's or anybody elses mind about the subject.  The ST
computer is pure cliche.  In none of the episodes that I've seen
does it do anything original, except perhaps get posessed.  If the
writers put so little work into it I fail to see why we should.

benson

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jan 1981 1012-PST
From: Craig Milo Rogers  <ROGERS at USC-ISIB>

FLASH!  Squeezac (aka Robbie the Robot) was sighted in LA this
weekend!

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/13/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It extends
the discussion of Unpleasant Universes using Varley's "The Ophiuchi
Hotline" as an example.  In doing so it explains a major mystery of
the book.  People who are not familiar with this novel may not wish
to read further.


------------------------------

MCLURE@MIT-AI 01/12/81 05:30:23 Re:  Varley's universe [spoiler]

I finally got around to reading Varley's Ophiuchi Hotline and in
the last 40 pages started thinking about the SF-LOVERS discussion
of 'unpleasant' universes.  I think Varley's universe fills the
bill rather well. This book left me feeling very depressed.  I
had read his two short story books, but this one really hit hard.
Are there many examples of other writers ousting humanity from
Earth so disdainfully?  In every other case I can think of,
people leave because they want to, are exterminated completely
(even more depressing), live with the Invaders and eventually
regain superiority, or just get bored of Earth and want a change
of pace.  But Varley makes you feel so nostalgic, it seems such
a pity.  The feeling one gets from this is very odd.

Please don't take this as criticism of Varley.  He's one of my
favorite writers and I think he writes better than 99% of the
other storyteller's I've read.

I am just venting frustration at those damned Invaders.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 14-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #10
*** EOOH ***
Date: 14 JAN 1981 0721-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #10
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 14 Jan 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 10

Today's Topics:
          SF Books - Card & A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows,
         SF Movies - Altered States & Computer/Action Films,
     Physics Tomorrow - FAST Computers, Star Trek - The Computer,
                         Star Wars - SW FANAC
----------------------------------------------------------------------

KLH@MIT-AI 01/13/81 02:29:14 Re: A Planet Called Treason, &c.

Hey!!  I thought that was rather engaging, myself, and would
recommend it for pleasure reading with few reservations.  I
know I liked it a lot better than I did "Songmaster", and I
don't THINK this has anything to do with a general non-
interest in music, but I can't explain exactly what was so
boring about the latter book.  Other opinions?

On the other hand, I agree with Chip that "A Knight of Ghosts
and Shadows" is definitely Anderson's best.  Powerful stuff.
I wonder how much of the impact comes from one's knowledge of
previous books, though.

------------------------------

Date: 14 Jan 1981 0156-EST
From: DMM@MIT-ML, JBARRE@MIT-ML, LARKE@MIT-ML
Subject: "Altered States"

Nano Review:  9+ on the Richter Scale.

     "Altered States" sneak-previewed in Dallas Tuesday night.
Ken Russell is definitely in his element here - unlike some of
his recent films , where his flamboyance far outstripped the
subject matter ("Valentino" or "Lisztomania").

     Can hallucinogenic experiences - like those caused by
mindexpanding drugs or sensory deprivation - become REAL,
externalised experiences?  Paddy Chayefsky's novel visualised
just such an occurance.  It may seem unfilmable, but Ken
Russell pulls it off.

    The movie fairly rockets along, propelled in part by a
soundtrack of Saturn 5 intensity.  Don't sit in the front
row without ear plugs.  During long talky sequences it some-
times skips a beat, and when it trips out it runs near to
becoming just another horror film.  But most of the time it
is a dazzling morality tale/pop-icon/freak show: as Newsweek
put it - "Feverish, farfetched, exhilarating, and downright
scary."

    Its not for the whole family - because of graphic sex and
nudity and a penchant for artsy avant-garde effects - but all
of it necessary part of the story.  Rated R, of course, and
rated highly.

Have Fun!
--Larry, Julie, & DMM

------------------------------

Date: 13 January 1981 1812-EST (Tuesday)
From: Hans Moravec at CMU-10A (R110HM60)
Subject:  Relativistic computing

Making the computer seem to go faster by relativistically dilating
you own time would certainly work, but it requires investement of
an enormous amount of energy (potentially recoverable), and gets
you very little. It does not get you an answer faster in the time
frame of the universe at large, but robs you of all the thinking
time you might have otherwise had (like, it'll take you that much
longer to figure out that there's a bug in the code and the machine
has been in an infinite loop for the past 10^5 years)

You can get the same effect by more "appropriate technology" means
by hibernating in suspended animation between console interactions
(with the system response I'm getting now that doesn't sound so bad).

To really win, what you need is a large quantity of NEGATIVE mass
(it has negative energy and things fall away from it).  Instead
of a gravity well this lump of mass causes a gravity hill, on
which time runs faster.  Chain your computer down to a large dense
( -10^20 g/cc, for instance ) negative mass and it will compute
faster w.r.t. you and the whole world.  But be careful.  Negative
mass makes everything, including itself, fall away, so a negative
planetoid is gravitationally unstable.  Of course you don't have
to be ON the planet, you can be in the middle of it.  There are
no gravity forces inside a hollow shell, and its very easy to
make a hollow shell with negative matter.  So simply encase your
computer in a few onion layers of negative mass to speed it up.
It won't even notice. Only problem is where to find the -M.

     So maybe you've been searching and searching, and still no
-M. If you should stumble on some tachyons, which spend all their
(time?) moving faster than light, you can use tham instead.  The
transmission and reception of a tachyon is a process that happens
faster than light, known as a SPACELIKE INTERVAL to the cognoscenti.
Spacelike intervals have the property that their two ends are not
uniquely time ordered, meaning that one observer will judge that
the reception happened after the transmission and another in a
different state of motion will deduce, equally correctly, that
the reception happened first.  By passing a message between
confederates in appropriately chosen states of motion via tachyon
messages, a message can return to its point of origin before it
was sent.  You can use this simply to speed up a computation by
arranging to get your answer now, and do the computation which
generates the answer later.  More cleverly, you could miniaturize
the process and build negative delay lines into your computer, to
be used in carry look ahead and instruction prefetch and similar
situations.  With clever design, this would allow a computer that
never did a computation whose result was not used, and in which no
subassembly ever sat idle waiting for something to do.  It would
allow more computation per switching operation and per watt hour,
and per computer lifetime (which the other methods mentioned don't
affect).  What a win!

------------------------------

Date: 13 Jan 1981 1000-PST
From: Moock@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: exploding disk stories

     Since the edge of a disk is experiencing much greater forces
than the center, it is not totally out of the realm of imagination
for a defect in materials to cause the edge to separate.  This is
all storytelling anyway, so consider a scenario where a new ultra-
fast disk is being used, in which construction tolerances are
critical. An undiscovered weakness causes the outer edge to fly
off in several pieces, ripping out and scattering circuitry,
magnetic material and shrapnel.
                                       -TM

------------------------------

KLH@MIT-AI 01/13/81 02:46:01 Re: Disk Crash effex

     Oh, goody!  Actually I think most head crashes are rather
tame in the way of visuals (although I am told that they beat
the hell out of fingernails-on-blackboards).  Perhaps you want
to use a Librascope disk or equivalent, which is about 5 feet
in diameter (?).  Coat with graphite, rev up, and start the
steel heads seeking madly...
     What puzzles me is why it has to be "convincing".  The only
reliable way to blow up a disk drive, I think, is to put some
explosives inside it.  This is hardly likely to convince anyone
except people who don't even know what a disk drive looks like,
in which case any old blinkenlights box and sparklers will do.
If you DO perchance use a real disk, can I have the controller
when you're done?

------------------------------

Date: 13 January 1981 2348-EST (Tuesday)
From: R.Kamesh <Kamesh.Ramakrishna at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  Exploding disk drives

You use up all the mana available locally to move all the one
bits to one end of the disk and all the zero bits to the other
end.  This causes fundamental instabilities that causes the
disk to start wobbling, finally walk all over the room like a
demented R2D2, and explodes in one-bits and zero-pieces like
the DDeath-Star.  The entire footage for an exploding disk
drive can thus be obtained by pirating a copy of Star-Wars.

Kamesh

------------------------------

Date: 14 Jan 1981 (Wednesday) 0122-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: ...on computers, disks, etc.

  Concerning a few comments about computers and so on in the
recent issues of SFL...

   --  Crashing disk drives -- if you wanted to get *really gross*,
       write a "walking disk drive" program, run it on 2 drives,
       and have them repeatedly run into each other.  I don't
       know how much physical punishment of this sort the drives
       could take...  I can see it now, two drives performing "The
       Bump"... or perhaps Consumer Reports adapting this test in
       the future...
   --  Star Trek console - WHY does the console of a computer need
       to be near the actual hardware?  What about a separation
       of Software vs. Hardware consoles?  If the processor(s) are
       located in either a vacuum or cryogenic freeze, as is likely,
       I'd certainly not wish to don a heavy environmental adaption
       suit to use the machine!
   --  Besides, who writes about computers and AI realistically
       anyway?
 
          -Steve

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jan 1981 at 0250-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SW FANAC ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

...continues in the interim, at least in the form of fanzines,
mostly with amateur stories based on Lucas' characters and
universe.  According to ALDERAAN (which differs in eschewing fan
fiction) the word from Lucasfilm has gone out on the fan grape-
vine that action would not be taken against SW fan fiction, tho
Lucas has stipulated that sexually explicit SW stories be avoided.

(ALDERAAN is, to my mind, the pick of the SW zines, but that's
probably because its letterzine/newszine format is more akin to
SF-LOVERS than the fiction-oriented ones, which are very pricy.
Somehow it doesn't appeal to me to support fan fiction.  If
anybody wants to be read badly enough to use such unrestricted
outlets, s/he should be as willing to pay the cost as any other
user of a vanity press.)

According to one fanzine editor, Beverley Clark, "Lucasfilm is
keeping tabs on people doing SW zines and satires [by openly
buying 4 copies of each SW-related fanzine]... Lucas himself
had let it be known that he did \not/ like X-rated material;
specifically he did not like gay stories, and he would
\personally/ hang the first person to write or print a gay
SW story."

So far, fans have honored his request -- as well they should,
for it is an originator's moral right to protect his work
against what s/he considers to be mutilation, since the work
is an expression of his persona or character.

Such stories are said to have circulated underground, tho,
in the mails to individuals or in person.  And as for bawdy
SW filk -- wait till you've heard "Making Wookiees"!

( BTW, ALDERAAN's address is:   Kzinti Press, Box 8554
                                Toledo, OH  43623      )

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 15-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #11
*** EOOH ***
Date: 15 JAN 1981 0748-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #11
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 15 Jan 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 11

Today's Topics:
            SF TV - KQED Dr. Who, SF Books - Wounded Land,
 SF Movies - TRON & Computer/Action Films, Star Trek - The Computer,
                    Humor - Twilight Zone Revenge
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 14 Jan 1981 2303-EST
From: KJB at MIT-DMS (Kevin J. Burnett)
Subject: DR. WHO

For all you out there, Dr. Who is back out here on the West Coast.
It's on KQED, CH. 9 in San Francisco, on Wednesdays at 8:00 PM PST.
- Kevin

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jan 1981 12:22 PST
From: Richard R. Brodie <Brodie at PARC>
Subject: Thomas Covenant

The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson
Del Rey, 1980. $12.95 hardcover

There are those who think that Stephen R. Donaldson's "The
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever" is the greatest work of
literary fantasy ever to be produced. It's an interesting thought;
Donaldson's style appears at first amazingly pretentious, as if
he sprinkled pseudo-literary devices purposefully throughout the
books.  But by the end of the first trilogy, it becomes quite clear
that, to the reader's confoundment, he has pulled it off. We begin
to suspect that he actually knows those ten-dollar words that he
inserts two-per-page (p.  202 of "The Wounded Land": dirk, buckler,
runnel, skirled, preternatural). We begin to enjoy, with a wry smile,
theamazingly extended metaphors he throws at us unwarned (e.g., "A
wave of anguish swept over Covenant like a tide of despair, throwing
him awash in a sea of doubtful uncertainty. Unable to anchor himself
amid the viscid stridulations of the Sun of Pestilence, he clung to
the flotsam of grim resolution, awaiting a far-off port." I just made
that one up, but you get the idea.)

At any rate, after reading the first three books, we are quite
prepared to accept the fourth, billed as "The First Book of the
Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" --- note no "Unbeliever"
this time.  Donaldson even manages to make the reader's skep-
ticism of the worth of his books parallel Covenant's character
development! The man's a genius. Well, the fourth book, "The
Wounded Land," is the best yet, containing an exciting plot
with not so much crepuscular verdure (sorry) to hack through.
A friend once described the first trilogy to me: "Men walk.
And walk. And walk. And then they walk some more. "Well, they
trot in the fourth book, which contains so many parallels on
so many levels that if the characters merely walked, they'd
never get through them all to the end of the book.

Be prepared to plow through the first couple of books, and
don't give up just because Donaldson misuses "comprise" in
the first one; after all, Webster's Third gives "imply" and
"infer" as synonyms.  It's really a masterpiece.

        Richard Brodie

------------------------------

Date: 14 Jan 1981 1344-PST
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: TRON

I had been being a good boy and not leaking (too much) about
the movie TRON, but the cat is officially out of the bag now.

   -----
   from VARIETY Jan 14, 1981  -  Hollywood California

   DISNEY ROLLING $10 MIL SCI-FI "TRON" APRIL 13

   Walt Disney Prods. plans to roll "TRON" April 13, with
   Steven Lisberger directing the $10,000,000 sci-fi fantasy
   from the script he wrote with Bonnie MacBird and David
   Rimmer.

   Most of the 10-week shooting schedule is on the Disney lot.

   Company said Lisberger and producer Donald Kushner began
   developing the project two years before bringing it to
   Disney last summer.

   Among those who have worked on the pic's intricate designs
   are Heavy Metal magazine's Jean Moebius Giraud, futuristic
   artist Syd Mead, computer graphics designer Richard Taylor
   and Peter Lloyd.

   Harrison Ellenshaw will supervise special effects post-
   production, expected to take a year and involve all studio
   departments, including animation.

   Buena Vista will release in the summer of 1982.

   -----

TRON is actually a story about computer systems, sort of seen from
the inside.  There will be lots of computer animation from various
groups/labs around the country, but no final decisions have been
made on who does what.  Richard Taylor is the Creative Director of
our group at III.

        - Craig

------------------------------

Date: 14 Jan 1981 at 1049-PST
From: obrien at Rand-Unix (Mike O'Brien)
Subject: Crashing Drives

For several years now I've been looking for a traceable story about
what happens when a drum freezes a bearing.  I finally heard of one
that supposedly happened in Viet Nam, of all places.  It purportedly
took out a wall.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1981 (Thursday) 0457-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Exploding discs -- peripherally related tales

First, an anecdote: Univac used to market a very large, horizontally
mounted drum.  The device was encased in glass for show.  It weighed
almost a ton, was approx 6 feet in length (height) and took almost
ten minutes to stop turning (with braking).  I do not know at what
speed it ran but it was quite impressive.  Rumor has it that one of
these devices around the Philly area once had the bearings freeze
causing the ton of ferrite painted metal to blast out of its glass
case, bowl down a pair of tape drives and nearly kill two operators.

Also, we recently experienced a head crash of rather major proportion.
It made NO NOISE (contrary to popular belief) but took a two inch
swath of oxide off of our paging disc -- very impressive thing to see.

------------------------------

RVS@MIT-AI 01/15/81 01:35:56 Re:  exploding disk drives

     The original (as far as I know) IBM exploding disk-drive
trick was done by a Caltech student.  I don't remember his
name, but I understand that he lived in Ricketts House.  The
guy did not do well in his classes because he felt that they
were useless (perhaps he was smarter than he was given credit
for).  When he decided to leave Tech and go into 'the real
world', he went to IBM and told them that he could make one
of their computers explode, by remote control from a terminal.
IBM representatives claimed that their security was quite good,
and that he was welcome to try.  The machine that was his victim
had the CPU at the end of a long row of disk drives.  According
to my information, the particular disk drives used (and still in
common use today) have disks that spin at such a rate that the
centrifugal force applied is about half the tensile strength of
the material.  He simply figured out the rotational frequency
of the disks, and wrote a program to seek at this frequency.
Supposedly film exists, taken from a camera on top of the CPU,
of this shockwave of exploding disks starting from the far disk
drive, each drive destroying the next one, and finally blowing
away the CPU.  At resonance, of course, force exceeded strength.
     There are other ways of destroying IBM CPUs, but this is
probably the most spectacular.
                        -Sam

------------------------------

Date: 14 Jan 1981 1513-EST
From: LS.MELTSNER at MIT-EECS
Subject: Disk Drive Explosions

It is interesting how many people want to destroy disk drives.
Perhaps some deep-seaeted desire to get revenge on the computer
will explain this phenomenon.  Personally, I'm fan of exploding
bullets or plastic explosive charges, since most of the shrapnel
produced by a flywheel breakdown would probably be stopped by
other machines, not humans.  (Not quite as interesting, right?)
If anyone has a junker drive they don't need anymore, I'd be
glad to help find out how to destroy a disk drive.  I still
vote for explosives, but then I enjoy that sort of thing!

                        Capt.Polaroid

------------------------------

Date: 14 Jan 1981 0928-EST
From: CONTROL at BBNE
Subject: re: Star Trek, "Wolf in the Fold"  

     It occurs to me that bombing the system out to such a degree
would also have a detrimental effect on all the systems functions.
E.G. life support systems, bridge control, etc. would cease working
since, obviously, they are computer controlled. Uh, right?

Robin (rclifford@bbne)

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/15/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
takes an amusing look at the Twilight Zone Episode "Escape Clause"
from our future perspective.  It also includes some information
about the episode that people who are not familiar with the episode
may not wish to read.


------------------------------

Date: 13 Jan 1981 0812-PST
From: Amy Newell via <WMartin at Office-3>
Subject: Mrs. Olson Gets Hers

Revenge is sweet!  After all these years of watching the most
pompous woman on TV spout inanities, you can't believe the
thrill it gave me to watch her go over the edge of that roof.
Do you think Serling knew what was to come and that all of
America would get satisfaction from watching the kindly Swedish
busybody bite the dust?  Loath though I am to admit it, at 28
this is the first time I've seen most of the episodes (I grew
up in Iowa and had to be in bed before airtime).  Our PBS
station started running them last week, and even though the
11 o'clock showing time is still keeping me from catching all
of it some of the feeling of deprivation is easing.  Now, if
only there were an episode with Mr. Whipple and the Tidy Bowl
man with ray guns at twenty paces.  Guess even Serling couldn't
think of everything.  AJ.

Just re-read the first part of this message and realized that for
those who don't have all of TZ commited to memory, I should have
explained that the show I'm talking about has David Wayne as a
hypochondriac who makes a pact with the devil with immortality
as the price for his soul.  Finding no thrills left in life, he
decides to jump off of the roof of his apartment building, his
wife (Mrs. O) gets in the way and he does her in.  As far as I'm
concerned that's the highlight of the show, so won't say more.
AJ.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 16-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #12
*** EOOH ***
Date: 16 JAN 1981 0926-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #12
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 16 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 12

Today's Topics:
         Future - Telephone Numbers, SF TV - WHO is Dr. Who?,
SF Movies - Altered States (LA Sneak) & Computer/Action Films & TRON,
                  Physics Tomorrow - FAST Computers,
           Star Wars - SW FANAC & Genealogy & Force Theory
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1981 09:58 PST
From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC

I for one have absolutely NO interest in having my phone number
follow me around.  That would make difficult the concept of
an unlisted number, something I find to be very useful.  A
permanent phone number is an invitation to invasion of privacy.
I have had a few instances when the ability to hide my phone
number was important to my survival.  With permanent phone
numbers, once someone obnoxious gets your phone number, they
can forever hassle you.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1981 0945-PST
From: Achenbach@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Speaking of Dr. Who...

     All right, so I started watching it.  I seem to remember that
it used to be on in LA for a while, but don't remember much about
it, except that there was a different Dr. Who.  In fact, I seem to
remember that it was the same as the Dr. Who who died just before
this Dr. Who appeard in the first episode they showed up here.
There was something about this being the "fourth such incarnation
of Dr. Who".  This seems a wonderful device to keep uppity actors
in line.  In any event, I have a question.
     Just what is the premise of the show (i.e. Who is Dr. Who?)
The announcer for KQED out here keeps making oblique references
such as "Join the master of time and space, Wednesdays at 8" and
"stolen time machine", but no one has gone any farther than that.
     I must say, I'm impressed with the sophistication of British
military weaponry.  

/Mike

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1981 1658-PST
From: Rknight at OFFICE-2
Subject: Bay area sneak of "Altered States"

    The San Jose Murky Lose has an ad for a sneak preview of "Altered
States", tomorrow night, Friday the 16th.  It will be at the Town and
Country theatre, 2980 Stevens Creek Blvd.  in San Jose at 8 P.M. only.

Bob

------------------------------

Date: 15 January 1981 1700-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: IBM exploding drives

I remember that guy at Tech.  He was in my class and my Freshman EE
lab.  He flamed out after about 2 years.  He claimed to have performed
the stunt BEFORE he came to Caltech, or at least he was talking about
it while there.  No one believed him since he was a turkey.  The head
exerts essentially no force on the platter.  The only possible effect
is to cause vibration in the drive due to head seeks.  Obviously there
are shock absorbers to control the vibration, although in old drives,
you could walk them across the floor.  I guess I'll have to see it to
believe it.

------------------------------

ZEMON@MIT-MC 01/15/81 09:02:34 Re: Peripherial mishaps

Reportedly, someone made the mistake once of installing some of those
monsterous Univac drums (they weigh about a ton...) in an upper floor
of an office building.  After several weeks of operation, the floor
weakened and one of the drums fell through.  Fortunately no one was
in the offices on the lower floor, and they found the drum the next
morning hanging from the ceiling by its cables.  If the cables hadn't
been so strong the drum might have hit the floor below, gone through
it (gaining momentum in the process), and kept on going into the
sub-basement.

I think that Univac likes to mount the drums on concrete floors, not
only because the average computer room's raised floor isn't strong
enough, but also because (after months of operation) the drives tend
to 'walk' around the floor a bit.

zemon@mit-ai

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1981 1734-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: disks

I have frequently stared down at a spinning 300 MByte disk drive
and wondered what would happen if the spindle should fail and
the disk came crashing out of the case like a demented Frisbee
(or a multilayered version of Oddjob's hat from "Goldfinger"?)

Seems to me that I heard a story once of a disk drive on an old
Sigma 7 (is there any other kind?) that disgourged its disk which
went flying across the room and did considerable damage.  Lucky it
didn't kill somebody.  This was a vertically mounted disk drive,
by the way.  At the old Stanford AI Lab, the Lounge had a genuine
Librascope disk (indeed, it is about 5 feet in diameter), that was
used as a coffee table.  There was a trash can in the middle of it
under the spindle hole as I recall.  You could actually SEE the
horrid SCRATCH that had occured (and ended its useful life).

--Lauren--

------------------------------

JMTURN@MIT-AI 01/15/81 08:22:59

A motion picture about systems? Good Lord! Katty and the Computer
meets the Son of Lucasfilm!

   Seriously, if Disney can pull of a real, understandable,
documentary on computers, then all luck to them. But if this is
going to be another "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes"...*sigh*.
Worse yet, I notice Disney is heading toward the Sun Classic
area of film making (psuedo-scientific).

   By the way, while I'm mentioning Sun Classics, they seem to have
yet another in the continuing series - "We say it happened this way".
Now they're trying to tell us that the government is covering up a
first-contact (where have we heard that one before?). Someone should
invent a law about the quality of films seeking the publics bad taste.

   Finally, about volatile memory (disks blowing up), Lenny Foner
and I discussed various nasties one could do to peripherals a while
ago.  Some of the things we came up with were:
     1) Throwing a milkshake into a tape drive.
     2) Placing a crazy glue dispencer after the read head on a tape
        drive...it all sticks together on the take-up.
     3) Crazy glue on the read head of a disk (SNAP).
     4) Sandpaper disks.
     5) Saw blades instead of disks (CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG).
        
   Also, Lenny tells of a tape drive where he went to school. One
day, the tape came loose, rolled out the door, down the hall, down
the stairs, and into the library.
   In addition, when he worked for BBN, there were two printers next
to each other. Someone placed a coke on one, the paper feed jammed,
causing the top to open, which lobbed the coke into the other
machine...
                                James Turner

P.S. Of course, for shear violence, nothing beats mounting razor
     blades parallel to the read head. Shreaded disk...

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1981 1734-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: relativity and Lucas

I am not an expert in the area of relativity.  A real expert might
find the following question ludicrous.  However:

What constitutes motion in terms of gaining relativistic time dilation
"advantages"?  If you spun around REALLY FAST in one place, would time
dilation occur?  What if you oscillated back and forth over a one mile
long area?  One foot?  What is the real definition of motion in this
case, given, say, the Washington Monument as a point of reference?

                 ------------------------------

I find myself vaguely disturbed at the sort of mentality indicated
by Lucas in his "anti-sex" philosophy of "screening" unauthorized
SW materials.  I suspect that such "selective enforcement" of
copyright, on such a basis, might well be proven illegal in court.
He might well be risking his copyright by letting only the stuff
he finds "wholesome enough" go unchallenged.

Ta ta.

--Lauren--

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/16/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
comment on what the people at Marvel Comics probably don't know and
the nature of the force.  People who are not familiar with the SW
comics and the SW movies may not wish to read further.


------------------------------

Date: 12 Jan 1981 16:17:48-PST
From: CSVAX.toy at Berkeley
Subject: Marvel Comics and TESB

     If the folks at Marvel are to be believed, it is impossible
for Darth Vader to be Luke's Father.  In one of the previous Star
Wars Comics, Luke runs across a planet inhabited by winged men
who remember a time when they were visited by three jedis, Obi-Wan,
Luke's Dad and Darth Vader.  SO IF Marvel is telling the truth then
it looks like Darth tried to pull a fast one on the poor boy.
                                                Michael Toy

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jan 1981 (Sunday) 2101-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: TESB - implications of Good vs. Evil Force use

  There has been recent mention that the Force is neither Good
nor Evil, that it is the user who determines the course it takes.
This brings up a few questions:

   1) are there "Neutral" force users (in a D&D fashion)?  An
      un-ARPA'ed friend in Detroit argues "No" - that to use
      the force you must have a goal of sorts in mind, one
      that is either benevolent (good) or malevolent (evil).
      I disagree, the user of the Force is merely chanelling
      energy, the Good-ness or Evil-ness have nothing to do
      with the ability...
   2) and what of the force as a weapon?  It clearly can
      be used as such.  Users such as the Jedi -- are they
      licensed in some manner?  Are they the Texas Rangers
      of old?  Was The Republic like the Old West -- in
      the wilderness (such as Tattooie) people could use
      the Force to protect themselves as needed (in the
      American West, there were not many gun-fighters,
      most were gunless peace-lovers), but in civilized
      areas, some sort of license is/was necessary to use
      the force...

   <more later, I've got to go out...>

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 17-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #13
*** EOOH ***
Date: 17 JAN 1981 1113-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #13
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 17 Jan 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 13

Today's Topics:
SF Books - Saturn Game, SF TV - WHO is Dr. Who? & The New Buck Rogers,
        SF Movies - Hanger 18 & Computer/Action Films & TRON,
     Physics Tomorrow - FAST Computers, Star Trek - The Computer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 0751-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Saturn Game   

Read the novella in this Feb's issue of Analog, The Saturn Game.
Quite a good work, delaing with the first manned expedition to
Saturn.  The voyage takes eight years, and it is the custom on
such long flights to keep oneself occupied either doing research
(which only a minority of people can do before they reach their
target), or 'playing the game.'  The game is a computer assisted
(although after a while it need not be) multi-person game
patterned after D and D.

The story explores the consequences of this game playing when
they reach Saturn.  As I said, it is a good story, well worth
getting a hold of.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 14:04 PST
From: Pugh.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Achenbach's Dr. Who query

It's been a while since I've seen the Dr. Who here in LA, however,
I seem to remember that the explanation of Dr. Who's presence on
earth came about from some travesty that Dr. Who performed on his
home world.  As punishment, Dr.  Who was to be placed on a primitive
planet (earth) so that he could use his powers for good causes and
thus show that he was deserving of a return trip home.  His vehicle,
a time ship, is not capable of returning him home (at least not until
his peers deem it so).  It was further mentioned that as powerful as
Dr. Who appears to be with respect to the earthlings, he ranks midway
in the spectrum of knowledgeable beings on his home world.

The above is what I remember to the best of my viewings of Dr. Who
a while back.  If I am misled, please help me straighten out the
summary.

/Eric

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 0858-PST
From: URBAN at RAND-AI
Subject: Buck Rogers

   I caught the second hour of "Buck Reformats his Show" last night.
Seems the good guys now have a mission to explore strange new worlds,
to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where
man really has gone before.  TV Glide has a listing for next week's
episode in which Buck is transporting an ambassador to a peace con-
ference.  The guest star is Mark Lenard (Spock's father).  Jeeeeeeez.
I have a bad feeling about this.
  I missed the first hour.  Was there any reasonable rationale given
during the first hour for the Vishnu/Garuda fake-Hinduism reference
in the second hour??  Who wrote this?
   Oh well, it seems to be the only SF on the network tube.  I guess
that gives NBC/Universal a point or two for trying.

        Mike

------------------------------

JMTURN@MIT-AI 01/17/81 03:34:47

   The people at NBC have again proven that the only thing that comes
between them and good SF is poor quality.  On Thursday night, they
started the new season of Buck Rodgers with a two hour special...pure
camp! It was absolute shclock, but one scene stood out from the rest:
   Buck, Wilma, and a local mad-professor type are standing of the
bridge of the star-ship Searcher. With them is the captain. Captain
spots ship on screen. Asks mad-prof if MP's know-all robot could
identify it. MP responds he will ask. Sends message to robot telling
him to appear on deck. Robot responds reluctantly...saying he really
doesn't want to, but mumbling about the laws of robotics. While
waiting for robot, MP comments to captain (who's name we discover is
Asimov) that robot acts so badly because he doesn't believe that MP
created him. MP's name, by the way, is Dr. Goodfellow (the Good
Doctor?). Need I say anymore?
                                        James Turner

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jan 1981 0157-EST
From: HEDRICK at RUTGERS
Subject: review of Hanger 18

I am not sure whether this movie is really relevant to SF-L, since
it is probably better to think of it as a thriller than S.F.  But I
thought someone might be interested in hearing about it anyway. If
you think of it as a sort of action/mystery story, and don't expect
a great classic, you will probably like it.  It moves quite fast,
with two parallel plots that keep alternating.  The acting seems
realistic.  Its biggest drawback is a somewhat unbelievable heavy
in the White House.  After Watergate it is hard to be completely
convincing when you say "they wouldn't *really* do that".  But I
really find this a bit hard to take, and I also find it hard to
believe that our CIA and FBI wouldn't have better ways to get rid
of people than to act like a low-budget gangster movie.

On a science-fiction level, they used a lot of space shuttle and
mission control scenes.  These seemed quite realistic.  Their
alien technology seemed a bit less so, but of course I am no
expert on alien technology.  Here are my nits:
  - shadows not dark enough in space
  - an explosion in space that makes a noise
  - a flying saucer whose exterior and interior are somehow a
    bit more dark and sinister looking than seems reasonable
  - use of the "ancient astronauts" theory, which leaves me
    completely cold
  - they explain the fact that aliens look just like us by the
    fact that our ancestors bred with the aliens a long time
    ago.  But that doesn't explain how our ancestors were so
    close to the aliens that they could have fertile offspring.
  - the alien's language is deciphered using as a Rosetta stone
    an old inscription whose meaning is not known.  nice trick...
    Indeed I wonder about the whole idea of deciphering a document
    in an unknown language when you don't have any idea what it is
    about.  Of course it was all done by computer...  (have there
    been advances in the art of machime translation that I don't
    know about recently?)

------------------------------

Date: 16 JAN 1981 1708-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Re: films seeking the public's bad taste:

  There already is Gresham's Law, which originally stated that bad
money would drive good money out of circulation (because people will
hoard pure coins and try to get rid of (i.e., circulate) fiat money,
coins stamped from adulterated metal, etc.).  This has since been
extended to almost anything you can name; modern TV is an obvious
example.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1981 1815-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Richard Taylor

An entry for the "it's a small world" book:

Richard Taylor, who was described as head of the graphics group at III
(and now working on TRON) is the same Richard Taylor who was the art
director for the Trek movie while I was at Robert Abel and Associates.
Of course Abel got fired from the project before its completion, and
the effex work all got tranferred elsewhere...

Those of you who know me personally are no doubt familiar with some
of my anecdotes about the goings on at Astra Image/Robert Abel...

--Lauren--

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 01/16/81 22:24:04 Re: relativity

In response to Lauren's questions, it occurs to me that in the case
of oscillating with relativistic velocities about the Washington
Monument, you'd get maximum time dilation as you passed the midpoint
(the monument) and flipped over to de-accelerate (This assumes that
you aren't squashed flat by the acceleration. Anti-gravity, anybody?)

Spinning in place would be more interesting. I'd suspect that there
would be greater dilation in time as you walked away from the spin
axis. (*This* assumes that the ship has enough tensile strength to
hold together against the stress.)  We could have some interesting
paradoxes in a spinning ship; imagine twins, one who stays near the
spin axis, and the other moves toward the hull.  We could have a
twin paradox, and the twins could watch each other slow down.

I'm not an expert, so these are only guesses. I'd be interested
in hearing (reading?) an expert opinion. If there are relativistic
effects in a spinning spaceship, what would be the effect of the
differential aging rates of the metal structure (the outside
getting older slower than the inside)?

                       ...phil

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 0743-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Relativity    

Remember, special relativity (time dilation, space contraction,
etc...), which is generally accepted as a correct explanation
of the working of this part of our universe, applies only to
NON-accelerated systems.  Rotating systems are accelerating
(ie changing velocity vector), and therefore special
relativity does not apply.

General relativity does apply, but I do not have the background
to handle this.  (any takers?)  General relativity theory (in
any of its numerous forms) is not generally accepted as valid
(the jury is still out), so I am not even sure that you will
get the same answer from different theories.

Thought experiment: assuming special relativity applies, the
circumference of a rotating disk decreases as speed of rotation
increases (to the outside observer that is), but the radius
does not (there is no movement along that axis of the system).
Therefore the value of pi is a function of speed!

Jim

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 01/16/81 08:41:10 Re: Star Trek Computers

In reply to Control's comments about computer controlled life support.

It would be poor design to have the main computer constantly in
control of the Enterprise's life support. To my mind, a better
design would be to have a number of micros running the details
of the system, and sending status updates to the main computer
when asked. This would keep the big machine from having to divert
resources to handle mundane stuff during times of heavy load, as
well as allowing the ship to be habitable during times when the
main system is down (such as preventive mantainance).  There
might be several layers, such as micros for regional control,
talking to each other through a life support processor, which
communicates with the main machine.  However, expecting the
ship's central processor to handle all these little tasks is
extending the concept of centralization a bit too far.

                                             ...phil

------------------------------

Date: 16 JAN 1981 1708-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Re: crashing the enterprise's computer
Subject: affecting lifesupport systems:

  This is mentioned as a design weakness in THE MOON IS A HARSH
MISTRESS --- Mike has too many piddling responsibilities (though
these are used to good effect by the rebels). I would also guess
that an object the volume and mass of the Enterprise would be able
to last for a while after the shutdown of lifesupport systems; only
if the systems went crazy and started actually spewing out poisons
would there be immediate trouble.

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 1959-PST
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

The trouble with describing a computer plot as hackneyed (as
in the ST discussion) is that sometimes the most hackneyed
situations are the most realistic.  If the October ARPANET
crash were written as fiction, would its reviewers call it
hackneyed? Realistic? Farfetched?
        Mike

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1981 1754-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: Star Trek Selective Service

   Date: 15 Jan 1981 1410-PST
   From: Shoemaker at OFFICE-6
   Subject: Re: STAR TREK 1981 (Computer Upgraded)
   To:   daul at OFFICE-5
   cc:   SHOEMAKER

   In response to your message sent 11 Jan 1981 1920-PST

   14-01-81

   From: Selective Service Department

   Greetings:

   You have been selected to serve on the Starship Enterprise.
   Please report to Moffet Field Air Base on 16 January 1981
   at 0400 hrs.  Report to Duty Officer for further instructions
   and assignment.

   Welcome Aboard!
   -------

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

This is a little note that Paula Shoemaker sent me.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 18-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #14
*** EOOH ***
Date: 18 JAN 1981 0947-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #14
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 18 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 14

Today's Topics:
   Future - Telephone Numbers, SF Books - Publishing Short Stories,
        SF Movies - Altered States & Wizard of Speed and Time,
                  Physics Tomorrow - FAST computers,
      Star Wars - Lucasfilm Computers & SW FANAC & Force Theory
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 13:28 PST
From: Pugh.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Reed's message on "intelligent phones"

The "permanent" assignation of phone numbers to individuals
can be viewed as a two level problem: one being the obvious
technological aspects of "permanent" phone numbers, and the
other being the political climate surrounding "permanent"
phone numbers.  If the PHONE COMPANY chose to have a very
tight system whereby individuals could not "trade-in" numbers
freely, then indeed this could be viewed as an invasion of
privacy.  Otherwise the concept can be very useful.  Having
a set of unlisted numbers is NOT disallowed by the technology.
Of course, it won't be as easy to get rid of "junk" callers!

/Eric

------------------------------

Date: 27 Dec 1980 (Saturday) 2031-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Amateur author's query:

Where would I send a short story in order to have it reviewed
for publication?  Are magz the place to start?  Which ones have
standards that would permit publication of a previously unheard
of author?  Does one expect to be paid for a first work?  And...
what about copyrights? Tune in next digest for (hopefully) answers
to these and other questions on... "The edge of SF"

------------------------------

RP@MIT-MC 01/17/81 13:13:09 Re: Altered States

Let see, is it "Altered States" or "Altered Stapes". My ears are still
REGENERATING from the experience. There was a sneak preview in Boston
last night and in a word this is a loser (though it will make many
megabucks). I want to HURT someones feelings. After RUSSELing with my
conscience I would like to see the entire cast put in a PADDY wagon.

I have no complaints about the first half; it was fine. But when
Hurt starts to grow extra toes in the bathtub and tells his student
in his bed that he is fine, the unintentional laughs begin and they
persist. Dumb, really dumb. When he splits some skulls and continues
the experiments like nothing had happened it becomes clear we are
being led down the garden path for a climax of gore and stupidity.

During the film I was struck by the power and sound but upon
leaving the theatre I felt robbed. It felt like Hollywood had gotten
to me. We all know they feel the public is a bunch of boobs (no pun
intended), and by mixing pseudo-intellectual mumbo jumbo with sex and
violence then the money will fill their coffers. They are, of course,
correct.  They do this by SENSELESS DEPRIVATION of the audience. Many
questions are left unanswered.

I think we need to organize a SNEAKIN for films like this. That is,
see it but avoid paying for it. Perhaps it is worth a dollar but no
more. To sum up let me add that there were 4 young fellows in black
leather jackets two rows up from me. Before the film they inserted
some powder into their nostrils. When it ended one of them had
fallen asleep. Perhaps he was the most fortunate member of the
audience.

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jan 1981 (Saturday) 1221-EDT
From: DREIFU at WHARTON-10 (Henry Dreifus)
Subject: Wizard of Speed and Time

I highly recommend the following procedure:

   Rent ''Wizard of Speed and Time'' from Budget Films. 
   Cost: $13.20  C.O.D.

   Borrow/Steal 16MM sound motion picture projector.

   Watch film 20 to 40 times, then return it.

The result is profound, and enjoyable.  It works for me.

/Hank - Still enjoying his weekend.

------------------------------

JGA@MIT-MC 01/17/81 17:23:15 Re: relativity

I didn't really want to lecture, but there's been a lot of misinfor-
mation flying around here on relativity.  There are plenty of good
books around for learning things generally, so I'll confine myself
to correcting a few bloopers.

     Time dilation.  There's only one good way to measure and
compare time intervals.  Two observers start out at the same
point in ** space-time ** (same place AND time).  They carry
clocks.  They go their separate ways.  Then they meet again at
another point in space-time.  They compare clocks.

     It's possible to send signals from one guy to the other as
they pass near each other, but these must be interpreted with
caution.  For instance, as Lauren's rocketship whizzes by the
Washington monument, we might peek inside the windows (in theory!)
and see his clock running "slow".  But he could look outside at
ourclock and see OUR clock running "slower" than his too.  That's
because we're not in the same inertial frame.  It would only be
when he landed that we could properly compare clocks, at which
point we would find less time had passed for him than us.

     So statements like "... in the case of oscillating with
relativistic velocities about the Washington Monument, you'd get
maximum time dilation as you passed the midpoint (the monument)
and flipped over to de-accelerate..."  are misleading.  We, on
the ground, have travelled a certain "distance" through space
and time.  So has Lauren, but we went different routes through
spacetime, so it should not be surprising that we covered a
different "distance" in time as well as in space.

     Space dilation.  Repeat the above.  There's no difference.
To elaborate - there's only one good way to measure and compare
space intervals.  You've got to have your ruler (clock) in the
same inertial frame.

     Saying "Therefore the value of pi is a function of speed!"
is just like saying that the size of the picture on the wall
is a function of how far away from it you are.  There are lots
of apparent measurements, but sticking your ruler right up to
the picture is the only one that different observers will
agree on.

And remember: space isn't curved -- space-time is.

John.

------------------------------

Date: 17 January 1981 1344-EST (Saturday)
From: Hans Moravec at CMU-10A (R110HM60)
Subject:  Accelerated relativity

     Special relativity is perfectly adequate to accurately predict
the consequences of any motion, including accelerated motion, as long
as there are no large masses around (even then you can view gravity
as being locally equivalent to acceleration and piece together the
description from locally special-relativistic patches, just as
Einstein did to invent general relativity; but that's another story).
The important thing is to do all your calculations in an inertial
(non-accelerated) observer co-ordinate system.  For instance, in the
oscillating case Lauren mentioned, you could certainly take the tip
of the Washington monument as the origin of a co-rdinate system and
the time of the oscillee would at any instant be running only
1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) times as fast as yours.  To get the net elapsed
time on the oscillee's clock, just integrate the instantaneous
time dilations over the whole trip:
     Integrate(1/sqrt(1-v(t)^2/c^2),t,tstart,tfinish) Your personal
elapsed time (monument time) is simply tfinish-tstart, of course.
     The above formula is useful in any non-gravitational
situation, as long as the v(t) is measured by an observer who is
never accelerated.  Note that v^2 is a scalar quantity equal to
the square of the magnitude of the velocity vector v.
     Applying it to a rotating disk, it is indeed true that rings
at different distances from the center experience different time
dilations and circumference reductions, and that the geometry on
a flat rotating disk is non-euclidian!  It is, in fact, very like
the space around a black hole.  As you get farther from the center,
time slows down more and more, and there is an "event horizon" at
the point where the speed of the disk would equal light speed.  An
observer at the center of the disk would see someone falling towards
this rim (pulled by centrifugal force, of course) approach it more
and more closely, but never reach it.  The same obsever would see
the wristwatch of the fallee slow down, and approach but never
quite reach a certain time Tout-of-it.  Also, beacuse of the space
dilation the circumferences near this speed of light limit actually
seem shorter than the circles nearer the center, shrinking to 0 at
the c speed rim, and the whole object from center is geometrically
like a sphere, with the center of rotation one pole and the c rim
the other.
     These effects introduce stresses in the disk (suffering mainly
from the stupendous centrifugal force, of course) different from
what they would be in a Newtonian universe.  They become infinite
at the rim, which is both the event horizon and the singularity
of the system.  In fact, if you don't wish to stretch the disk
material as you spin it up, it becomes necessary to deform the
disk into a paraboloid to shorten the required cirfumerence of
the outer portions.  That way, the original disk would have to
be infinitely large for the rim to extend all the way to the c
limit (i.e. it doesn't reach quite all the way).
     You get similar black-hole like effects if you try to uniformly
accelerate a skyscraper without stretching or squashing it in its own
frame.  And you can do all this with only a special relativity and a
bit of high school algebra and a smattering of calculus (optional)!
Aren't you tempted?  Read "Essential Relativity" by John Archibald
Wheeler (WH Freeman, the Scientific American people, publishers) and
do some of the problems and your relativity anxiety will go away.
The book is very entertaining as well as having substance missing in
the "popular" presentations of relativity.  Frankly there's really no
reason why anyone in this community with any interest in the subject
couldn't answer basic questions as have been posed.  It would take
perhaps several weeks of enjoyable reading and thinking to get the
few basic concepts firmly intuitively entrenched.  The math is easy.
     General relativity is a lot harder, but you need it only when
large masses come into play, and we can leave those problems to the
pros for now (until computer assistance becomes adequate).  By the
way, general relativity as formulated by old Albert is a very
specific theory, and makes very specific predictions.  But because
the differences between its predictions and those of (Newtonian
gravity + special relativity) are very subtle at our densities, it
is hard to distinguish between them under normal conditions.  There
have been other theories proposed and some are still in the running,
but general relativity has passed all the experimental hurdles that
have been put in its path.  Its still the most elegant one around
that has.  Except that it totally ignores quantum mechanics and
must clearly be modified to properly describe the very small.
The music goes on ...

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 (Friday) 1117-PST
From: DWS at LLL-MFE
Subject: Lucas on the march ...

Informed rumor has it that LucasFilms has ordered \five/ PERQs (the
Three Rivers Computers ALTOlike graphics systems).  It seems Lucas
wants a good little graphics system to check his camera angles for
animation shots.

The worst disk crash I've had the pleasure of experiencing was when
an RP03 ground quite literally to a screeching halt.  No explosion,
smoke, or anything nice, but the sound was very convincing.  The
neat part was openning the cabinet and picking the pieces out.
Hardly the Seaview shaking from side to side with showering sparks...

Perhaps Lucas could be convinced to burn up a Versatec or
accidentally set off the fire sprinklers.

------------------------------

MARG@MIT-AI 01/17/81 16:47:50 Re:  Lucas and SW

I am more than "vaguely disturbed" at Lucas' anti-sex and especially
homophobic attitude. Copyrights apply in spirit to other problems -
not collecting royalties, plagiarism, fraud. I can imagine an argument
that using SW characters in a TV ad for gay rights might end up being
libel - there is a fair chance that people would think that Lucas
advocated that position, and it is everyone's right to be understood.
However, if copyrights on his characters help him protect the world
from free expression in parodies or other contexts in which there is
no chance, that's unfortunate. A moral right to be homophobic? No way.

I don't want to libelous: what do we have in the way of evidence that
he really said he would personally hang the first person who wrote a
gay SW piece?

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/18/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
comment on the nature of the force.  People who are not familiar
with the Star Wars series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 (Friday) 1240-EST
From: RUBENSTEIN at HARV-10
Subject: THE NATURE OF THE FORCE

The Force arises from living things.  My next thought was that since
living things are, by nature, either good or evil or some mixture of
the two, that the Force must have aspects of both good and evil but
must be one or the other or a combination.  Then I went back and
examined the premise -- are all living things made up of good and
evil?  Is neutrality a lack of these tendancies or a cancelling out?
The D&D neutral (according to Gygax) has his/her own beliefs about
the balancing of good and evil, law and chaos.  I think that he
would use the force for either one, in order to balance the stronger
force.  I, personally, feel that neutrality is a BALANCE of good and
evil, and that the Force must be wielded for one or the other.

Stew

------------------------------

Date: 16 JAN 1981 1708-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Re: use of the force defining whether it is good or evil:

  "Black magic is a matter of symbolism and intent"
          (Randall Garrett, in TOO MANY MAGICIANS)

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 19-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #15
*** EOOH ***
Date: 19 JAN 1981 0755-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #15
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 19 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 15

Today's Topics:
Obit - Susan Wood, SF Music - Mercury Query, SF TV - WHO is Dr. Who?,
SF Books - Publishing Short Stories, SF Movies - Computer/Action Films
      & Lucasfilm Computers, Physics Tomorrow - FAST Computers,
         Star Wars - SW FANAC, Misc., Spoiler - Near Term SF
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 18 Jan 1981 0509-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Susan Wood    

Just read in LOCUS that Susan Wood died November 12, the result
of a heart attack.  Full details are in this issue of LOCUS.  She
was quite active in fandom, winning the best fanzine Hugo in 1973
and being co-fan host of the 1975 Worldcon.  She was nominated
for a Hugo in 1980 for editing the essays of Ursula K LeGuin, THE
LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT.  She was an Assistant Professor of English
at the University of British Columbia.  She was 32 and one half
years old.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jan 1981 at 2042-CST
From: clive at UTEXAS-11 
Subject: Music query

For a few months now I have been trying to trace down a piece
of music which reminds me slightly of some of the Cosmos themes.
The piece is currently being used as the background for the
Mercury Lynx commercials on TV (most recent instance was on 60
Minutes tonight.)  Any pointers to title, album, etc. would be
very helpful.  Could it by any chance come from Vangelis also?

Thanks,
Clive

------------------------------

Date: 18 JAN 1981 2136-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Dr. Who

  In the books made from the TV series (which books are alleged
to be much closer to their originals than such frequently are)
Who is described as a "renegade Time Lord". From various remarks,
the following can be assembled:
  1. The Time Lords are highly abstracted mentalities who observe
     extensively the development of other cultures but refuse to
     interfere in any way -- even when a culture obviously needs
     help (e.g., Earth) or squelching (e.g., a grossly militaristic
     one whose name escapes me).
  2. Who does not have this degree of detachment, and was
     accordingly [censured] for interference.
  3. Subsequently he stole a Tardis, a combination space/time
     machine which is much larger inside than outside, and does
     his frequently fumbling best to aid us Earthlings. In later
     books, he appears to have been somewhat reconciled with his
     superiors.

------------------------------

Date: 18 JAN 1981 1102-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Amateur Author Query

     Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine has a few sheets of
advice and instructions to new writers that you should get, read,
and follow.  Send a self-addressed stamped long business-size
envelope and a note requesting "Advice to Authors" to: IASFM,
Box 13116, Philadelphia, PA 19101.
     After you have written your short story (following George
Scither's advice), then just mail it to one of the science fiction
magazines, where it will be read BY THE EDITOR.  Most people don't
believe it, but ALL manuscripts to Analog, IASFM, and Omni are at
least glanced at by the respective editors.  The only winnowing
that is done by the editorial assistants is to 1) make sure that
your name and address is on the manuscript, 2) the return envelope
has postage on it, 3) it is double-spaced, single-sided, and in
english, 4) is a story, not a letter.  The assistant then makes
two piles, one of stories from authors that have published before,
and another of those that are not so familiar sounding.  The first
stack gets the editors attention right away, but that only takes
a few hours, the editor then devotes the rest of his time, and
his commuting time on train or plane searching through the "slush"
pile for that great gem, a new author.  George Scithers has been
averaging one new author an issue.
     You do get paid for stories by the professional magazines.
5-7 cents per word by the digest size ones, up to $500-1500 by
Omni.  You will also receive a contract outlining the rights
they are buying. You should only sell "first world English
language serial rights" to your copyright.
     As for copyrights, you are protected under the new law when
you type "Copyright (c) 1980 by Ima Newauthor" on the front page.
When the story is published by the magazine, and IF they send in
the two copies and the filing fee to the Register of Copyrights,
then your copyright is automatically registered.
     Any other questions?

          Bob Forward

------------------------------

Date: 18 JAN 1981 2138-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: The net crash as fiction

  For those of you who haven't seen "The Capture" (a very entertaining
piece of fan fiction done as a slide show) (and for those of you who
don't remember it) there is a scene after the fans come on board the
alien ship in which one of them reviews the ship's log and concludes
that it lacks plot, character, and motivation.

------------------------------

Date: 17 January 1981 0344-EST (Saturday)
From: Lee.Moore at CMU-10A
Subject:  The drums will roll.

    These stories of Univac's Fastran Drum (aka Cement Mixer) recall
a story where two of these where mounted on a small ship for the Navy.
Apparently, the weight and speed of the drums were such that the ship
had trouble maneuvering because of the gyroscopic effect.

------------------------------

JMTURN@MIT-AI 01/17/81 03:34:47

   I just remembered another disk story. A friend's father had
an HP with a hard disk. One day, the light on the drive indicated the
disk had stopped. He opened the cover, and saw a platter spinning at
1000 rpm.  The disk bounced around for about 20 seconds, leaving
itself totally munged.
                                        James Turner

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 1051-EST
From: Roy Marantz <MARANTZ at RUTGERS>
Subject: disk drive fun

A few years ago I gave a 2314 disk to an operator to mount for me.
Well it turned out there was some problem with the lock mechanism
of the drive and to make a long story short the disk went through
the top of the drive (creating much noise and confusion) hovered
a bit and then crashed back down into the spindle.  Surprisingly
only the bottom 2 platters were bent.

Roy

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jan 1981 1345-PST
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: "Hardware Wars"

The 5 PERQs DWS@LLL-MFE mentioned are going to LucasFilm are just the
tip of the ice-planet.  Rest assured that there will be lots of high
grade graphics equipment around there soon.  Ed Catmul and his team
of ace computer graphics hackers (which is forming even as we speak)
will see to that.

I've heard that they've got at least one VAX on the way and are
building gigundo frame buffers (ie. multi-K res, more bits per
pixel than you can shake a probe at).  Those PERQs may well be
intended primarily for alphanumerics.

The people being assembled for this group are really hot, (that
rumbling you hear is the stampede of primo computer graphicists
heading toward San Rafael). I won't embarrass myself by repeating
all the rumors of who's been tapped to go to LucasFilm, maybe
when the dust settles...

        - Craig

------------------------------

Date: 18 January 1981 1240-EST (Sunday)
From: Hans.Moravec at CMU-10B
Subject:  Oops

Please replace all occurrences of the string 1/sqrt(1-v ...
by simp sqrt(1-v ...  in my message to the Jan 18 sflovers.
Sorry. In regards to the message by JGA, it is certainly
reasonable for the oscillee and the monument squatter to
compare the absolute readings of their clocks as they zip
past each other each oscillation. They occupy practically
the same point in space-time during the pass.  At each
subsequent pass the traveller's clock will be farther
behind.

------------------------------

Date:  18 January 1981 13:14 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  SW Libel/Copyright/Gay

    I can imagine an argument that using SW characters in a TV ad for
    gay rights might end up being libel - there is a fair chance that
    people would think that Lucas advocated that position, and it is
    everyone's right to be understood.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think that libel pertains to a written
communication that meets these criteria:

 1) it has to be false
 2) you have to know it's false
 3) you have to make with intent to harm
 4) it has to be believed
 5) it has to cause harm

These obviously aren't specific, and may be utterly wrong.  If
need be, I can ask one of my law student friends for the Rules.

How does a SW Gay advocacy commercial constitute libel?  The
commercial does not state that Lucas advocates Gay rights, though
some may mistakenly infer that he does. Now, assuming that Lucas
doesn't advocate Gay rights, and that in bigot-infested USA he
is really harmed by people thinking he is, can you show intent
to harm?  Can I be blamed for other peoples mistaken inference?
If so, how bad a mistake will the law still count?  Suppose I
have my cousin (who is also named Lucas) say on TV, "I advocate
Gay rights".  Is that libel? I think we need only fear (C) laws.

Have there ever been libel cases in scholarly works, from mis-
representing the ideas of a rival?

Speaking of libel, I wonder what the threshold of 'published' is:
   I doubt that private USMail letters are 'published', but how
   about SF-LOVERS?  Roger, if you were worried about Proxmire,
   imagine being taken before the Imperial Court!

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 1959-PST
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>
Subject: MISCELLANY AFTER A VACATION

A few miscellaneous comments on some recent SFL items.

1. "Manna vs. Mana" Actually the transliteration of the Hebrew
   word for "manna" is "man" in the three places it OCCURS IN
   the Pentatuach (Five books OF Moses).  When God fed the
   Hebrew children in the desert, could he have possibly said
   "man overboard?"

2. Is "bicameral" really the right term for a brain with two
   aspects?  My dictionary gives "two distinct chambers" as
   the biological meaning.  Are the two cranial aspects
   actually chambers?  Otherwise it might be better to leave
   bicameral with its political meaning.  Actually we now
   have a true bicameral Congress: a left half and a right
   half.

3. During a week in Key Largo, I discovered that Dr. Who was on
   PBS on their channel 2 everyday at 6:00 PM.  Most unfortunately,
   my TV just couldn't get a reasonable picture, so I still don't
   really know what it's about.
        Mike

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/19/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It talks
about the problems of writing near-term SF using Correy's SHUTTLE
DOWN as a recent example.  People who are not familiar with SHUTTLE
DOWN may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 18 January 1981 1202-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: Shuttle Down

Spoiler warning

There are dangers in writing near-term SF, like fact can catch
up with and pass fiction by before the story is even published.
A case in point is Lee Correy's (G. Harry Stine?) Shuttle Down,
now being serialized in Analog.  Many of the problems of getting
a shuttle back from Easter Island are caused because C-5's can't
land there until concrete runway turnarounds are built.  Last
weeks issue of Aviation Week had an article about how the Air
Force has been experimenting with driving C-5s around on dirt
and portable aluminum mats.  Seems that they found that they
could get by without concrete.  So C-5's could indeed go to
Easter Island straightaway.  Oh well...

[ Lee Correy is the pseudonym G. Harry Stine uses when writing
  science fiction.                                      -- RDD ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 20-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #16
*** EOOH ***
Date: 20 JAN 1981 0838-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #16
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 20 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 16

Today's Topics:
          Hugo Award - Nominations, SF TV - WHO is Dr. Who?,
                 SF Books - Publishing Short Stories,
         SF Movies - Film Techniques & Computer/Action Films,
              Star Wars - SW FANAC, Spoiler - Hanger 18
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  20 January 1981 03:24 est
From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Hugo awards

Now that the Hugo nomination ballots are out, I would like to suggest
that people write in special category awards for Bruce Pelz for the
Fantasy Showcase Tarot deck. He has been working on the for at least
ten years, and I feel that the result definitely deserves an award.

I understand that there is precedent for special category awards and
for write-in categories.

------------------------------

KJB@MIT-MC 01/19/81 21:21:11 Re: DR. WHO....

Dr. Who is a scientist who flings between planets with this strange
time machine that resembles a telephone booth. The series is the
longest-running science-fiction series ever on the BBC. It is in its
15th season (I believe). I would actually call it more of comedy than
'real' SF, sort of a take-off on all those corny ones. It's hilarious
if you understand British humour.

         - Kevin
(I believe he's called Dr. Who because... who is he?)

------------------------------

Date: 18 JAN 1981 2203-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: first stories

  SALES are easy. You just keep sending out everything you write
to every conceivable market, and sooner or later something will
catch on.  This can take a \long/ time, but it works for most
people who have the persistence.  Obvious markets: the editorial
offices (listed on the contents pages) of ANALOG, ASIMOV'S, F&SF,
AMAZING/FANTASTIC if you have little pride and no expectation of
being paid, OMNI for the thrill.  Note that Asimov's will send a
style sheet (in fact, they request that you send for it before
sending them anything) on format for a submitted manuscript;
it's very helpful.
  COPYRIGHT: state on the title page "Copyright [c-in-a-circle]
[year] by [your name]"; under the revised law this is sufificient
until the manuscript is actually published, at which point other
factors are managed by the publisher.  \Always/ keep a carbon for
evidence, reference, and the perversity of the Post Offal.
  MONEY: Usually a zine has a fixed rate per word, sliding downward
for longer material.  None of the above are entitled to publish the
story for free, although there are magazines of legend which paid
authors only on threat of lawsuit.  Others pay on acceptance or
publication.
  REVIEWING: This is the hardest part. Asking friends is a good way
to get sweetened criticism and/or drive them away. Frequently an
editor who sees some promise in a work will take some time to point
outflaws, although a commentless bounce doesn't mean it's hopeless;
editors vary and I don't know what current personal policies are.
The National Fantasy Fan Federation has a story contest which may
get you some useful comments; the one with 12/1/80 deadline was
managed by Donald Franson, 6543 Babcock Ave., North Hollywood CA
91606; he should know about next year's contest. If you're \really/
serious about this, there are some good beginning writers' workshops,
and a lot of terrible ones.
  ADVICE: Magazines are frequently in need of good short material,
although such will often take longer to appear once sold. First
novels without a published background and/or a sponsor are difficult
to sell, although you could always try Manor Books if you can think
of a good pseudonym. Once you sell something, you are eligible to
join SF Writers of America, an organization with many flaws but
some overriding virtues; do so.
  GOOD LUCK! And let us all know when you sell something.

------------------------------

Date: 19 Jan 1981 20:46:36-PST
From: CSVAX.upstill at Berkeley
Subject: high-tech film

   You who are interested in new film technology might check
out the 12/31 issue of Variety (the show-biz rag)--weekly issue
that is--for a story on a 'new' 3-d process developed by Douglas
Fries at Fries Engineering.  Rumor is that it "makes all previous
attempts at theatrical 3-d seem primitive by contrast" at a net
increase in production costs of 8% and per-theater cost of $20k
for conversion.  Development was financed by United Artists
Theater Circuit, who plans to produce 3 features in the next
couple of years, the first to be a "psychic suspense thriller".
We're talking panoramic 70mm here, with supposedly "flawless
color, depth and definition."  We'll see.
   Regarding the recent speculation on digitizing film: why is
anybody concerned about projection?  Seems to me that the main
benefit is in the production stage, digital overlays being the
most obvious advantage, modelless graphic rotations being
another.  According to one who spoke with Richard Edlund (sfx
supervisor for TESB), they were already using digital overlays
this time around, but the arrival of more sophisticated equipment
postdated completion of TESB.  So what happens next time around
may just be reflecting the SW moneys.

------------------------------

Date: 17 January 1981 1219-EST (Saturday)
From: Hans Moravec at CMU-10A (R110HM60)
Subject:  Sail Librascope disks

     The 5 ft coffee table at Sail was one platter of a five-platter
disk system that served SAIL from about 1969 to 1979, originally for
file storage, later for swapping.  It had a head/track (there were
LOTS of heads), and had a major metal scraping crash in the first
year or two of its life.  It lost half its tracks in the incident,
but after some maintenance, continued to be used at about half
capacity, losing additional single tracks from time to time.  It
needed heavy and regular maintenance, and was often down.  The
heads were held near the disk surfaces against spring pressure by
a system of nitrogen pressurized rubber hoses which dried out and
had to be preventatively replaced every six months or so.  This
operation involved disassembling a major portion of the disk under
a positive pressure plastic tent (to prevent dust contamination),
pulling out ten (or was it more) long black chemical tubing type
hoses out of their snaking paths, then silicone greasing new hoses
and tediously forcing them back into the sinuous channels.  It
took Ted Panofsky or Ed McGuire many days at least.  In the last
five years the electronics (consisting mainly of non-passivated
germanium transistors) started fading away, and the downtimes
became longer and longer and longer.
     To conclude, the librascope was retired because of the enormous
maintenance burden it created, not because of its youthful disk crash
(impressive though that was - the lawsuit was still going on eight
years later).  The disks were auctioned off (price about $100 apiece).
The most scarred one stayed at sail.  The electronics were given for
spare parts to one of the remaining other Librascope users (somewhere
near Livermore).  Their controller had caught fire.  The rest of the
hardware (all stainless steel) of the monster was sold for scrap.
     Just thought you'd like to know.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1981 1207-PST
From: David Fuchs <DRF at SU-AI>
Subject: exploding drums    

I visited a Sperry Univac (or was it Sperry Rand?) building in Blue
Bell, Pa. (a suburb of Philadelphia) about 10 years ago. I distinctly
remember an employee there showing me a big drum connected to their
computer.  He told me about the time that a bearing seized on an
older unit and the drum took off across the room, knocked out some
disc drives, missed the operators, and crashed into a wall.  The
newer drum was also encased in glass, and you could see scars on
the surface of the drum where there had been head crashes.  A crash
only wipes out a few tracks, and putting in a new drum would be very
expensive, so the software kept tabs on which tracks it should hop
over to avoid damaged parts of the drum.

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jan 1981 at 0059-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ MORAL RIGHTS & COPYRIGHTS & LUCAS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Contrary to the views of Lauren and Marg, I am not disturbed,
vaguely or otherwise, at an artist's desire to protect the
integrity of a fictional universe s/he has created -- whether
it be Lucas' SW one, or Diane Duane's or Elizabeth Lynn's with
homosexual heroes. Reverse bowdlerization is as wrongful as its
opposite.

(Rather, even tho \I/ may suspect there's a more likely last word
 in Han's taunt to Leia in the ice passage, "You could USE a good
 kiss!", I'd be disturbed at the sort of mentality which would
 welcome sex into a film aimed at kids as determinedly as SW was.)

It's a pretty wild assumption to say that Lucas is "anti-sex" (he
IS married).  But whether or not he approves or disapproves of
homosexuality in the real world (another assumption), he has the
artistic AND MORAL right--as its creator--to keep his SW universe
"clean", hetero, (\and/ [yecchh!] WASP-male-human-dominated) if
he so chooses.

Nor do copyrights on his characters prevent "free expression in
parodies" -- MAD, PIZZAZZ, CRAZY, and NAT'L LAMPOON all had them.
Either ESQUIRE or PLAYBOY had one with a gay VADER!  And some
porn mag had a pictorial "Star Whores" one that disgusted even
me, with a horny R2-type droid.

As for what evidence there is that Lucas "really said" anything
against gay SW spin-off stories -- my impression from the article
on copyrights and derivative fan fiction I quoted from was that
there was a long chain of word-of-mouth transmission.  The first
step in tracing it back would be an inquiry to the Beverly Clark
quoted in ALDERAAN, in care of that zine.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/20/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It examines
the dogma that interstellar invasions are impractical while discussing
the plot of Hanger 18.  People who are not familiar with Hanger 18 may
not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 17 Jan 1981 0225-EST
From: HEDRICK at RUTGERS
Subject: a question sparked by Hanger 18

I am doing this separately from the review because it may merit
a spoiler warning (if anyone cares).  Near the end of the movie
it begins to look like the aliens intend to invade the earth.
I remember reading somewhere that invading a planet from space
wasn't practical.  The defenders have so many more resources at
their command than the attackers, with any reasonable technology
for transportation.  But when I try to reproduce the argument, I
can't convince myself.  I would be interested whether anyone else
can convince me.

It looks to me like all you need is for them to be a couple
of hundred years ahead in technology, and there wouldn't be
much we could do. Assume a race with conventional flying
saucer technology (things that go thousands of miles an hour
and can turn instantly).  It looks to me like they ought to
be able to have complete control of the skies, and presumably
rain down any sort of missle they want to (what could we do
against missles with that kind of ability to turn?).  It also
looks like they could certainly land troops in just about any
numbers they wanted to (limited by what they have, of course).
It doesn't take much imagination to think of a reasonably
portable "ray-gun" (laser?) that would make it very hard for
us to face them even on the ground.  Even with our current
technology we can pretty well devastate anyone we want to.
What stops us seems to be that we don't really want to, and
that they would retaliate.  But we couldn't retaliate against
the aliens.  So the interesting question is why they would want
to invade us.  I guess I am still optimistic enough that I find
it hard to imagine what they could want from us that would be
worth an interstellar war.

I think a more interesting plot for Hanger 18 would have been
a confrontation with the following parties:
  - some involved parties who smell a government coverup, and
    spend the whole movie chasing it down, as in this movie
  - the government, who get hold of a crashed flying saucer,
    somehow figure out how to talk to the inhabitants thereof,
    and quickly realize that the Prime Directive is there for
    good reason.  If we get involved openly with the aliens,
    we get gobbled up by their superior culture, and lose any
    hope of an independent civilization with its own separate
    contribution to the galaxy.  So they decide to try to
    suppress knowlege of the contact.

I think that would lead to a more interesting conflict that the
political motives used in the movie.  I am not at all sure that
if I could prove I had met an alien, I would immediately call a
press conference.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 21-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #17
*** EOOH ***
Date: 21 JAN 1981 0951-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #17
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 21 Jan 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 17

Today's Topics:
       SF TV - WHO is Dr. Who?, Future - Interstellar Invasion,
      SF Movies - Cambridge Fantastic Films & Flesh Gordon in LA
            & Computer/Action Films, Star Wars - Genealogy
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 January 1981 0308-est
From: Barry Margolin <Margolin at MIT-Multics>

About Dr. Who's vehicle:

I have noticed a lot of misinformation about the vehicle in which
Dr. Who travels.  The device is called a TARDIS, which is an acronym
for Time And Relative Dimension In Space, i.e. time-space machine.
A TARDIS has the ability to change its outward appearance, and to
move in time and space.  The one in the series, which I believe the
Doctor (he is always referred to as "The Doctor" on the show; I have
never heard anyone say "Dr. Who") stole when he was exiled from the
planet of the Time Lords, is in disrepair, and has trouble navigating
and is also stuck in a particular form, that of an early 20th-century
English Police Booth, which is slightly larger than a telephone booth.
Of course, this is only its outward appearance.  It is actually four-
dimensional, and is many times larger on the inside than it is on the
outside.  In various episodes, we have had the opportunity to see many
parts of the TARDIS, which include an auxiliary control room (most of
the action in the TARDIS usually takes place in the main control room,
which is about 25'x25', maybe larger) and a botanical garden.  Most of
the inside is very futuristic looking, and pretty cute considering the
budget that the show is obviously on.

Other points about Dr. Who:

In last years episodes on PBS, the Doctor was not in as much
disfavor with the rest of the Time Lords as I have heard mentioned
in SF-Lovers.  There were a couple in which he was actually sent on
missions by the Time Lords, but the reason could be that they wanted
him to prove his worthiness.  There was another episode in which he
was actually shown to be heir to the post of head Time Lord.  He
mainly seems to be just a happy-go-lucky guy with lots of mental
power who likes to wander around space-time in the general spacial
vicinity of the Solar System and save the asses of people who are
beset upon by tyrants or by troubles of their own creation.  He
may get involved in a war and decide that a particular side is
\good/ and help them win, although trying to shed as little blood
as possible.  He is an absolute whiz when it comes to technological
stuff (except fixing the TARDIS), so if the problem happens to be
mean androids, he usually comes up with cute solutions.
                                        Barmar

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jan 1981 1443-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: re:invasion

The Afghanis seem to holding out against the Russians with little
more than muskets and cussedness vs. helicopter gunships and nerve
gas.  The usual guerilla warfare techniques should work even against
death-rays and flying saucers (how different is a B-52 from a flying
saucer to a Vietnamese peasant?).

They might be able to sterilize the surface of the planet, but it
would be hard to subdue it.  And it's hard to see why they would
want to wipe out the human race; there are no doubt a lot of empty
rocks around.  They would probably need slave labor more than
lebensraum, and slaves have a hundred ways of fighting back.

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jan 1981 11:08:46 EST
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: schlock films

The Cinema Society of Cambridge runs a films society devoted entirely
to cinema of the fantastic at the Ding Ho Restaurant/Constant Comedy,
13 Springfield Str., Inman Square, Cambridge.
Phone: 661-7701, 497-1116, 289-0814.

Two shows each night, at 7:30 and 9:30: the ticket donation is $2.,
and there is a one-drink minimum, but fruit juice, wine, and coffee,
are okay.

schedule:

Jan 19  Attack of the Crab Monsters (Roger Corman, 1957)
        (Sorry I didn't send this in time -- this one was Great!
        -- you get to see where the Professor of Gilligan's
        Island learned to do those things with radios...

Jan 26  Attack of the 50-foot Woman (Nathan Hertz Juran, 1958)
        (plus a trailer for next week's feature, The Tingler)

Feb  2  The Tingler (William Castle, 1959).  Don'T miss Vincent
        Price taking the screens first acid trip!

Feb  9  The House on Haunted Hill (William Castle, 1958)

Feb 16  I was a Teenage Werewolf (Gene Fowler, Jr., 1957)
        Starring Michael (Bonanza) Landon, Whit (Time Tunnel)
        Bissell, and Guy (Lost in Space) Williams.

then starting in late February is a Peter Cushing series...

------------------------------

Date: 19 Jan 1981 1750-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Flesh Gordon

The following message was sent to me regarding Southern California
play dates for "Flesh Gordon".  The author of the message asked
me to forward it to SF-LOVERS, possibly to avoid having people
think he actually LIKED movies like that.  Obviously he realizes
that everyone already knows I think it's a great film, and my
reputation is pretty tarnished anyway.  So....

               ------------------------------

Not-so-long-ago, in an SF-LOVERS not-so-far-away, some person or
persons suggested that "FlEsh Gordon" was worth seeing (at least
in preference to Flush, er, Flash Gordon) if ever it came to "a
theater near you."  Well...

January 31   Fox Venice, 620 Lincoln Blvd., 392-3386/396-4215 $3.00
             +Barbarella

March   13   The ASCIT Movie/Baxter Lecture Hall, Caltech $1.00!!!
             Two showings:  7:30 and 10:00 pm
             16mm, but a *strange* audience... (the Caltech
             Coffeehouse is open 'til 1am if you want a place to
             talk SF later (HINT^2))

March 20-21  Rialto, 1023 Fair Oaks, S. Pasadena, 799-9567 $3.00
             +The First Nudie Musical

               ------------------------------

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 19 Jan 1981 09:13:58-PST
From: CSVAX.presotto at Berkeley
Subject: fun with platters

When I was working at Data General about 7 years ago, a group of
hardware types decided to see how far past the recommended speed
they could spin a cheap disk.  They didn't learn too much about
the disk, but they did learn that the pieces could penetrate the
1/4 inch steel enclosure, and three sets of plaster board walls,
and a cinder block structural wall.  Luckily it happened at night
and noone was around.  Otherwise DG might have acquired a whole
group of four foot tall engineers.

                                Dave

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 01/16/81 22:27:53 Re: Mung

  On the subject of mangling disks.  The flying drive stories I
have heard are:

During a minor earthquake some old IBM drive decided it had enough.

  Also during development a 1.5M vertical drive let it's platter
go (supposedly at CDC somewhere)  It traveled up two stories, then
through an outside wall of a reinforced concrete building.  Pieces
were found 2 1/2 miles away.  It was printed in a "5 years ago
today" in something like Datamation.

  One of the people from DEC periferals misengineering told me of a
test they did on some I think 80MB CDC drives. They spun them up to
7200 RPM, and discovered they now had a fixed disk drive. It seems
the spindle swaged itself to the drive motor.

  As to tape rolling across the floor, MIT has a very long central
corridor, running from the lobby of the main building due east to
the other side of the campus (almost 1/4 mi).  It has earned the
name "infinite corridor".

  Add to this 1 possive/paranoid tape user.  Buy junk tape.  Add
stickers and such to duplicate one of his.  Have someone detain
him in main lobby. Get two others to start at one end and roll.
Tape rolls across lobby, out door, bounces down steps rolls across
main street and gets run over by bus.  Almost get to practice CPR.

(We know the hall is due east/west, because twice a year, the sun 
sets down the length of it.)

                                        enjoy,
                                        Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jan 1981 1356-EST
From: Neal Feinberg <FEINBERG at CMU-20C>
Subject: To Kill a Disk

Howdy!
     Well, lest I wished to clobber a disk, I would merely coat the
platters with chunky peanut-butter and pop them into a drive.  Better
yet, coat with peanut-butter then bake for a while before mounting.

                                                 --Chiron

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/21/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It comments
on what the people at Marvel Comics may or may not know about the Star
Wars Universe.  People who are not familiar with the Star Wars series
may not wish to read further.


------------------------------

Date: 20 Jan 1981 at 0059-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Marvel Comics & TESB ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

According to The Man from Lucasfilm I asked at Aggiecon last spring,
the true STAR WARS universe is \only/ what appears in the actual
films, and is not bound by anything in the various spin-off comics
or novels, including the novelized versions of the films.  Whatever
happens or is stated outside the films may be considered "alternate
SW universes".  The folks at Marvel m-a-y know something we don't,
but I fear it is unlikely to deter them from making use of contrary
details like the winged men's memory of the 3 Jedi, Obi-Wan, Vader,
AND Luke's father, if they felt it would enhance a story-line.  Also,
as I recall, that issue of the comic was prior to the "revelation"
of TESB.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 22-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #18
*** EOOH ***
Date: 22 JAN 1981 0713-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #18
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 22 Jan 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 18

Today's Topics:
  SF Books - Riverworld & Sladek & Roderick & Wheels within Wheels,
  SF Movies - Monitors, SF TV - WHO is Dr. Who?, SF Music - Mercury,
 Future - Interstellar Invasion, Sundials and the Infinite Corridor,
           Star Wars - Genealogy, Star Trek - The Computer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 (Wednesday) 1135-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON-10 (David Rossien)
Subject: Riverworld gift packs

Did anyone see the "Christmas" paperback gift packs of the River-
world series.  There were four books alright, but the fourth was
NOT "The Magic Labyrinth", but "Riverworld", and anthology with
only one Riverworld story (and a good deal of lousy other ones in
my opinion). The publishers must have a good deal of chutzpah to
try to pull something like that!
               -Dave

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 2050-EST
From: Rob Stanzel <G.ROB at MIT-EECS>
Subject: A Couple Capsule Reviews+

Hello, all;

In the past  various people have  exhorted you to  read John  Sladek's
"Mechasm"; I'm  a fan  of Sladek,  and  with great  joy read  his  new
collection of stories,  "The Best  of John Sladek"  (not that  there's
much to  choose  from;  in  the past  there's  been  only  two  novels
published.)  The collection is filled with Sladek's absurdist  genius,
and the first story (for example) is a real zinger---perhaps the best.
Some of the stories  are based on tired  SF themes, but never  without
some bizarre twist.  There are also some parodies in the back of  such
authors as Clarke  and Heinlein (and  Gernsback, but how  many of  you
have actually  read "Ralph  C4F+" or  whatever it  is?? (Don't  answer
that!))  The parody of Ballard's "The Crystal World" is terrific.   In
any  case,   I  highly   recommend  it,   and  "Mechasm",   and   "The
Mueller-Fokker Effect."

Side note: in one of those  novel's "About the Author" blurbs, it  was
stated that Sladek  was working  on a  partially computer-written  (!)
novel called "Roderick, or  The Education of  A Young Machine."   Does
anybody know whatever happened to that project?

The subject of libertarian SF has  broached this list in the past--  I
recently read F. Paul Smith's "Wheels Within Wheels", and enjoyed  it.
Those of you who  objected to L. Neil  Smith's long PolySci tracts  in
"Probability Broach" may  enjoy WwW somewhat  more...the tone is  less
insistent,  and   more  interested   in  the   relationships   between
individuals.  I caught onto F. Paul  Smith from his ss in the  January
Analog; the Biolog of that issue mentions his new novel, "An Enemy  of
the State."  Anyone read it?  I haven't been able to find it yet.

Lastly, on the subject of camp movies, I've never seen "The  Monitors"
mentioned here.  It is a version of Keith Laumer's ultra-obscure novel
of the same name (I live in Ohio,  and had to send to a PA library  to
get a copy!)  Anyway, the  movie is great, and  if it's ever shown  on
late-night TV, don't miss it.

Write via WASTE,
Rob

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 (Wednesday) 1908-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Inside the TARDIS

  While watching the series, I remember several scenes taking
place inside the TARDIS, including a couple of chases...  the sets
and places inside it included not only every spare shot they had
in the studios, but apparently most of London, as well!  There were
sections rather obviously taken in art museums, warehouses, garages,
abandoned buildings, etc. etc. etc.  Definitely creative filming!

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 (Wednesday) 1905-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Music request (Hey Leor, why didn't you get this one?)

  Yes, indeed, it is Vangelis (amazing how he keeps popping up
everywhere, isn't it?).  The music (from the Ford Lynx commer-
cials, in case some forgot) is from the opening moments to the
album "China" (Polydor 6199).  Someone at a record store told
me (when I purchased it around 3 months ago) that it was out
of print, but according to the 12/80 Schwann's, it's still
being printed...

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 1216-EST
From: SCRIMSHAW at MIT-XX
Subject: Alien Invasion

If an alien race capable of visiting Earth really wanted to enslave
us humans, it would probably be pretty easy.  All they would need
is a superior knowledge of biological and gas warfare.  They could
dose us with a disease that kills faster than we can come up with
a cure and make the price for the cure enslavement.

This sort of warfare may not be to popular here for a variety of
reasons, but there isn't much that would stop a bunch of BEMs from
using it.
                                        
------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 1025-EST
From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: Invasion from space

I suspect that the invasion from space would be very impractical
if the two sides were closely matched in technology.

Even if they're not evenly matched some of the traditional
advantages of home territory offer immense benefits to the
defenders, like knowing what's over the next hill and having
shorter supply lines and being able to bring up new cannon
fodder faster.

The best thing going for the defenders in the invasion will be
the inflexible attitude and style of the invaders (we suffered
from this in Viet Nam and the Russians are suffering from it in
Afghanistan).

        steve z.

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 1611-PST
From: Dave Dyer <DDYER at USC-ISIB>
Subject: Alien invaders

 I don't think invaders, alien or otherwise, necessarily require
that it be profitable or possible to subdue the invadee.  Like
mountaineering, invading is done "because its there".  Of all
the notable invaders in human history, the biggest (and best at
it) were egomaniacs who merely considered conquest to be exciting
and worthwhile for its own sake.

 If you were a bored, sophisticated, militarily inclined lord of
a solar system near here, what better way to keep life exciting
than to take on the near-impossible task of conquering those
obnoxious pink-and-brown aliens of Earth!

 What really does protect us is the economics of space travel.
Unless there really is a way to circumvent relativity, the only
thing that will ever be shipped in quantity between stars is
information.

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 11:23 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: sundials and such

You would only know the hall to be due east/west if the sun rose
AND set down it on the same day.  ANY hall directed between the
angles of sunset on summer solstice and sunset on winter solstice
would have sunset down the hall approx.  twice a year.  If the
building were located on the equator, then sunset would take
place down the hall every day iff the hall were due east-west.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 1311-EST
From: MD at MIT-XX
Subject: Infinite Corridor

     The corridor would only be due east-west if the setting sun was
aligned with it on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.  As it turns
out, the "Infinite Corridor Sunsets" take place one month before and
one month after the winter solstice.  If I remember correctly, the
corridor is 15 degrees off east-west.

     (We wouldn't want the readers of SF-Lovers to be confused about
something which was known by primitive peoples thousands of years
ago.)
                                Mike

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 1007-EST
From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: TESB and Marvel

The people at Marvel consistently state that they have no inside
information.  I got the feeling that TESB threw them for a loop.

        steve z.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/22/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It returns
the discussion of the Enterprise's computer back to the episode "Wolf
in the Fold".  People who are not familiar with this episode may not
wish to read further.


------------------------------

Date: 17 Jan 1981 1523-EST
From: MLEASE at BBNE
Subject: More nits re: Star Trek, "Wolf in the Fold"

     I still don't see how merely asking the computer to compute
pi would bomb it out to that degree; shouldn't it simply make it
quietly munge away on to infinity?  After all, several present-day
computers have been given the problem of computing pi; that's why
we know so many of its digits now.  Granted, the purpose of the
problem would still be served; assuming you really *could* convince
such a (presumably) sophisticated computer to dedicate *all* of
its resources to solving the problem; but the effect shouldn't be
quite so spectacular.

     Also, if the computer were "possessed" by Jack the Ripper in
the first place, and therefore an intelligent, reasoning being,
how could Spock be able to override it?  Hypnosis, maybe?

Mike Lease
(MLEASE@BBNE)

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 23-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #19
*** EOOH ***
Date: 23 JAN 1981 0714-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #19
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 23 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 19

Today's Topics:
   SF Books - Fiction into Fact & Wheels within Wheels & Venus Belt
             & Ringworld, Future - Interstellar Invasion,
Physics Imaginary - MT (revisited), SF Movies - Computer/Action Films,
          Sundials and the Infinite Corridor, Spoiler - Titan
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 JAN 1981 1655-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Fiction turning into fact

    A friend of mine is looking for examples of where ideas in
science fiction had an impact on the space program.  If enough
can be found, then there might be a short show as part of the
Shuttle launch pre-frenzy.  Any ideas out there?

    Example: The story "Clipper Ships of Space" in Analog
(somewhen) led to the JPL studies on Solar Sails (which
have yet to fly, unfortunately).

    They are looking for solid connections, not "Buck Rogers
had rockets, and now we are using rockets".  Good ones are
surprisingly hard to find.

------------------------------

Date: 22 JAN 1981 2058-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

   was a thoroughly obnoxious book; the characters spent most of their
time worrying about statist conspiracies to subvert the happy natives
and convince them that they really were being unjustly discriminated
against --- a really stupid claim to make to people familiar with the
history of this country.

------------------------------

Date: 22 Jan 1981 1753-PST
From: Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>
Subject: SPEAKING OF NEIL SMITH . . .
 
     Brief reviews of L. Neil Smith's brand new libertarian SF:
The Venus Belt (in paper as of 1/5/81):
 
     Nanoreview: If you liked Probability Broach, you'll love
Venus Belt.  If you thought PB was a bit much, you may like
VB anyway!
 
     Microreview: VB picks up the universe, the characters, and
the style of PB, but since it assumes you've read the latter, it
doesn't spend all of its time telling you how the Confederacy of
North America got where it did.  Instead, it spends much of its
time on a very quickly-plotted action/mystery sf story.  The
gadgets are great, the twists fairly unpredictable, and the fun
quite substantial.  If you are into Libertarian politics, the
in jokes and parodies are very well done, but not being into
Libertarian politics doesn't leave you feeling left out -- you
just don't know what you missed.  In any case, it is good,
contemporary SF.  Have fun.
 
     Mike
 
------------------------------

FAUST@MIT-ML 01/21/81 10:59:23 Re: RINGWORLD

     I have just finished Ringworld for the first time.  It was
EXCELLENT!  Good characterizations, and very interesting descriptions
of what is obviously a very alien world.  Also, I liked the alien
races described.  They were quite believable, if not somewhat too
human, although much better than the usual exactly human characters
in so called alien bodies that we often find in stories.  (Also, for
those of you who might recall my flaming about plot-filler sex scenes
in Tower of Glass by Silverberg a few months ago, the type of sex in
Ringworld is more to my taste.  Fits in naturally, not used as plot
filler.)
     Since we have been on the topic of relativistic effects lately, I
would like to bring up one nit.  One of the types of hyper drive used
in the "Long Shot" could only be started outside of the "gravity well"
caused by large masses.  Well, that seems reasonable enough.  But at
one point when they are leaving the group of 5 travelling Puppeteer
planets to go to the Ringworld, they say that they need go out a much
smaller distance since the gravity well around 5 planets is much less
than the gravity well around a star.  Correct me if I am wrong, but
wouldn't the gravity well around 5 planets travelling at "just below
the speed of light" be QUITE substantial due to the relativistic mass
expansion?  Not being too up on relativistic physics, I might have
this wrong, but I seem to recall an equation for mass which gets very
large as velocity nears speed of light (same basic equation used for
time and length?).  COMMENTS?
     All in all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who
hasn't already read it (if there are any such people reading this
list!).  I look forward to reading "Ringworld Engineers" which I
assume is my logical next choice in the "Known Space" "series".

        Happy reading,
        Greg

------------------------------

Date: 22 January 1981 10:50 est
From: JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject: Space Invaders Motives

If you are willing to consider invasion for non-rational reasons
(i.e. just for "fun"), you should also begin thinking about other
non-rational things They might do.  Rather than invade, they might
simply blow up our sun.  Suppose they decide to send a cubic mile
of anti-matter at us (Sun or Earth).  They have to be a little
patient, big deal.  So let us hope that They are rational, self-
interested beings.

------------------------------

JMTURN@MIT-AI 01/11/81 02:33:48 Re: The January F & SF

    has the traditional Isaac Asimov science article. This month
he ended a multi-issue series on the neutrino.  He states (in
order to support his "I want the universe to be closed" fetish)
that experiments in the USSR and other places show the neutrino
may have a mass as high as (I think) 2.7 Electron Volts.  Anyone
else have information regarding this weighty subject?
   In other news, I have been pondering the nature of
consciousness, more specifically, what keeps the chain of
awareness going. To begin with:

   Let us postulate Tom Swift and His Amazing Atom Manipulator.
He can move atoms around (any atoms) to make whatever he wants.
He takes a look at you, fiddles with a knob or two, and creates
a duplicate, right down to the energy levels in the shells of
the electrons.  He (the copy) and you both can claim to be the
original, and you both think you are, until the copy notices he
is in the machine and you aren't.  But suppose you were told the
machine would move you (a teleporter instead of a copier).  He
then arranges for the copy to appear in another location.  The
original you, version 1.0, immediately knows he has gone nowhere.
But the copy, version 1.1, thinks it worked.

   So what, you say, isn't this just Niven's "Theory and
Practice of Teleportation".  So far, yes.  But what happens if
instead of using different atoms to create a copy, Tom were to
store the location of all your atoms, disintegrate you, then
reassemble you using the same atoms, each in the same location
(reintegrate?).  Will your consciousness continue, or is a new
one created?
   The lousy part is that even if you could do it, you still
wouldn't know.  The copy would feel as if the chain continued,
but if you died, that isn't much comfort.  There was in fact, a
story (who's title I forgot) dealing with a company that claimed
to rejuvenate you, but really just made a younger copy who went
off happily, leaving a slave, with no legal identity).  And of
course, the new one would return happily in 10-20 years to do
it again.  Any one know the title?

   What's the point of all this?  Consider, if there is some
quantum limit to how much of a bodies original 'identity' can
be changed, this is how much matter must be actually taken to
the site of a teleporter's reassembly area (which could be as
high the entire brain). It is also the amount that a rejuve-
nation system like Niven's rejuvenation machine must retain of
the original.

   Does anyone have any info on research into this area (which
is certainly theoretical/philosophical since we can't borrow
Tom's machine...)?
                                        James Turner

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1981 at 0851-CST
From: clyde at UTEXAS-11 (Clyde Hoover)
Subject: a clean disk is a happy one..

     A particularly demented friend of mine, upon looking at the
Control Data drives we have here that resemble washing machines,
suggested pouring detergent into one to clean the heads.

     Thinking about it, that would be much more impressive than the
top loading Ampex drive that ate it's lid gasket, and though most of
it just floated around in small pieces or sunk to the bottom of the
drive well, it still made an impressive sound (but not much damage)
when the heads hit the rubber.

     Now then, there is this NOVA drive I would like to break....
Anyone got a box of Tide??

------------------------------

Date: 22 JAN 1981 2051-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: MIT's Infinite Corridor

  is \not/ E-W oriented, and is only 1/8 mile long (but that's
quite long enough).  From my recollection of maps of the area,
the west end is about 15 degrees south of the east end; the
sun shines straight down the corridor about six weeks before
and after the winter solstices. (Given this misinformation,
the reader is invited to discalculate the latitude of MIT.)

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/23/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest. It discusses
a problem with the end of Varley's Titan.  People who are not familiar
with this novel may not wish to read further.


------------------------------

Date: 22 January 1981 10:43 est
From: JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject: Varley's TITAN: Spoiler Nit

Towards the end of Titan, Cirocco and Gaby parachute down one of
the hollow spokes of the rotating Titan.  Sorry, but the result
of that is that you hit the wall, which spins around to clobber
you.  To fall "straight" down the spoke (keeping equidistant
from sides) you need some force to work on you, to bring your
speed up to the speed of the inside surface of Titan.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 24-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #20
*** EOOH ***
Date: 24 JAN 1981 0910-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #20
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 24 Jan 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 20

Today's Topics:
  SF Books - Yolanda & Venus Belt & Rejuvenation Story & Ringworld,
   SF TV - The New Buck Rogers, Physics Imaginary - MT (revisited),
  Future - Interstellar Invasion, SF Movies - Computer/Action Films,
                       Spoiler - Titan Problems
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 Jan 1981 1000-EST
From: LS.MELTSNER at MIT-EECS
Subject: Yolanda, L. Neil Smith, and other trash

1)  MITSFS, in its vast collection of SF, has the second Yolanda
    story.  Apparently quite crude (i. e. not subtle), the following
    might be useful to lovers of trashy books:

       Yolanda #2: Slaves of Space, Dominique Verseau,
       Grove Press, (c) 1976, $1.95

       Whirlwind Book Co., 80 Fifth Ave., NY, NY, 10011, was listed
       as the distributor.  I hope this helps those of you who were
       intrigued by the discussion a few weeks back.

2)  L. Neil Smith is vaguely interesting, even though the ending of
    The Venus Belt was useless, ridiculous, and perhaps impossible.
    (Look MA, no spoiler!!!) Political "Philosophy" was reprehensible,
    as was the entire book.  Several bad puns, (i.e. distracting,
    cutesy, etc.) further mar the story.  Best bet: ignore, take a
    walk in the inner city, and wonder why nothing works perfectly
    in the real world.  (regardless of political creed)  IN short,
    the book (TBV) lacks characterization, action, development, and
    reason. (Though there appears to be a half-dead plot staggering
    around in the ruins.)  Don't Buy!!!!

3)  Story about the rejuve process that duplicates younger selves
    and leaves the old guy to slavery, is by Orson Scott Card in
    OMNI, and I think it was published last spring.  Good story.
    (See, I do like something other than my own inflated ego.)


                        Yours for the low price of $9.95,
                                 (tapes $11.95)

                                 Capt. Polaroid

------------------------------

Date: 23 January 1981 1102-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: story about rejuvenation

Re the story about making a duplicate that's younger and using
the old one as slave.  I don't recall it's title, but it appeared
in OMNI last year I think.

------------------------------

Date: 01/23/81 1131-EDT
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject: Greg Faust's Criticism of Relativity Treatment in RINGWORLD

     Greg Faust's  criticism of  the treatment  of  relativisitic
effects, in RINGWORLD, rests on  a basic misunderstanding of  the
physical  situations   which   give   rise   to   such   effects.
Relativistic changes of mass,  length, and time intervals  result
from comparing these properties when an object moves at different
speeds, in the observer's frame  of reference.  The magnitude  of
such changes depends on the ratio of the difference in speeds  to
the speed of light.

     The "Long  Shot"  and  its  crew  should  not  experience  a
significant increase in the  masses of the Puppeteer  homeworlds,
because their velocity, with respect to those planets, is  small.
The Puppeteer home-worlds are travelling "just under the speed of
light" with respect to the Milky Way galaxy, not the "Long Shot",
at the time that the hyper-drive  is turned on.  Since the  "Long
Shot" is the  relevant observer of  these planets' masses,  their
velocity relative to the Milky Way has no effect on the  physical
situation in question.
                        Enjoy,
                           KGH

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jan 1981 0929-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: Mass of the Puppeteer Rosetta and Buck Rogers    

Since the spacecraft was visiting the Puppeteer homeworld(s), it was
travelling at the same (possibly relativistic) speed as them.  This
means that they were operating in the same frame of reference, and
thus any relativistic effects were unobservable.  Presumably they
just slowed down a bit to allow the Puppeteer worlds to move away
from them.  The only way that they would have noticed a relativistic
mass effect is if the Rosetta had passed them at a velocity close
to that of light.  Since they (probably) didn't slow down quite that
quickly, the assumption (that the gravity well of five planets is
smaller than that of a star) is apparently true.

On to other things: I watched the second new episode of Buck Rogers
last night.  What a piece of garbage!!  Near as I can figure, the
plot seemed to be about a war between people who could take their
heads off (yes, thats what I said) and people who couldn't.  Spock's
father (Mark Lenard) was an ambassador for the people with removable
heads, and he was in love with Wilma Deering (who, I assume, is
incapable of removing her head).  Buck finds out that Lenard has
(pardon me but I just can't resist) lost his head over Wilma and
tries to warn her but finally gives up at the attempt.  There were
some other minor plot twists but, all in all it was pretty miserable.

One small point: As I mentioned earlier, Mark Lenard is Spock's
father.  In the episode of Star Trek that he appeared (yes, I know
that he appeared in a few) he was married to Jane Wyman, Spock's
mother.  But Jane Wyman used to be married to Ronald Reagan, right??
What if they......naw, Reagan's ears aren't pointed at all.  Oh,
well. (now if Mark Lenard had been married to Kristin, and J.R.
found out about it.............)

------------------------------

Date: 24 Dec 1980 (Wednesday) 0357-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: The philosophy of personal identity

The problem that James Turner is flaming about is commonly called
"personal identity".  That is, the relations that equate certain
matter in time with certian other matter (some perhaps the same)
at another time over the concept of a "person".  Less obscurely;
If all the cells in our bodies die every N days or so and are
replaced by entirely new cells made up of completely new atoms
then what right have I to say that I am the same Jeff Shrager
that wrote to SF-Lovers several days ago?  There are many many
philosophical arguments surrounding this subject and many of the
example used are much like James's machinery.
   I highly recommend the book "Personal Identity" edited by John
Perry [UC Press, 1975, 250 pgs] for some very well written and
very clear articles on this exact subject.  This subject crosses
mind/body problem in several aspects (for example, the "memory
theory" of personal identity states that person-stages belong to
the same person iff the later could contain an experience which
is a memory of a reflective awareness of an experience contained
in the earlier. [whew!].
   In any case, the arguments are nicely made and fun to read.

-- Jeff Shrager [aka. WVO Quine]

------------------------------

Date: 01/23/81 1147-EDT
From: JSOUTH at LL
Subject: interstellar invasion and crashing disks

Re planetary conquest:

The argument is reminicent of a pseudo-book in This Fortress World.
(J.E.Gunn) The passage in the pseudo-book (The Dynamics of Galactic
Power(?)) is only valid for the universe of the book, if that.  TFW
postulates human populated worlds with rough technological parity.
Some parts of the argument are more subtle though.  For example,
suppose the attack succeeds: the commander of the attacking forces
is now the commander of the defending forces.  Let the home world
try to impose its will on the new defenders.  Add a speed of light
limitation, and even the loyalty of the attackers is no longer
enough, their society has vanished or mutated (ie The Forever War).
If the theatre of operations is too far flung, the species may be
gone!

Thus planetary conquest is more a matter of setting up an
independent colony than yielding any direct material benefit
to the attackers society.  Indescriminate destruction of the
planet to root out defenders is therefore out.  well.... this
could go on and on.

On another matter, I've noticed that all our wonderful disc
destruction stories are at least second hand.  I don't think
anyone out there has actually reported a good visual of
his/her own observation.  Anyone interested in a good second
hand report of a hippogriff?

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/24/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following 2 messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
discuss a technical problem at the end of Varley's Titan.  The first
message explains away the problem in one way.  The second message
gives the answer that Varley gave in Wizard, the sequel to Titan.
People who are not familiar with these novels may not wish to read
further.


------------------------------

Date: 23 Jan 1981 0935-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: picking the Titan nit (spoiler, I guess)

The only time I ever jumped, the parachute gave a downward speed of
7 mph and a sideways one (in dead air) of 5 mph.  (It was steerable
too.)  The parachute has slots on one side which lose air, scooting
it the other way.  You wouldn't have any trouble beating the Coriolis
force -- in fact, you would have to keep circling not to hit the
walls on your own.

--JoSH

------------------------------

Date: 23 January 1981  09:45-EST (Friday)
From: Andrew G. Malis <MALIS at BBNE>
Subject: Varley's TITAN: Spoiler Nit

In Varley's Wizard (Titan's sequel) he answers this point.  It
turns out that if you start from the side of the spoke opposite
from the oncoming wall, and free fall, you will just clear the
oncoming wall and leave the spoke.  At that time, you can "hit
the silk".

Andy

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 25-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #21
*** EOOH ***
Date: 25 JAN 1981 1338-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #21
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 25 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 21

Today's Topics:
                          Looking Backwards,
  SF Books - Libertarian SF & Oath of Fealty, SF Movies - Dark Star,
 Future - Interstellar Invasions & CA Paranoia, Star Wars - SW FANAC,
       Alternities - You don't suppose..., Trek - The Computer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  12 Jan 1981 0220-EST
From: The Moderator <Duffey at MIT-AI>
Subject: Looking Backwards...

Those of us who have been here from the beginning know that
SF-LOVERS was started by Richard Brodie in Fall 1979.  Since
then it has grown into one of the largest electronic mailing
lists in existence.  Richard has now written a short story
about computers and electronic mail entitled "Time Enough for
Mail".  Due to length it has been setup for FTP distribution.
Everyone interested in reading this story should obtain the
file from the site which is most convenient for them.  If you
cannot do so, please send mail to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI and
I will be happy to make sure that you get a copy.

Please obtain your copies in the near future however, since the
files will be deleted in one week.  A copy of the material will
also be available from the SF-LOVERS archives.  Thanks go to
Richard Brodie, Richard Lamson, Doug Philips, and Don Woods for
providing space for the materials on their systems.

   Site          Filename
  
MIT-AI       AI:DUFFEY;SFLVRS ORIGIN
CMUA         TEMP:ORIGIN.SFL[A210DP0Z]
PARC-MAXC    [Maxc2]<Brodie>SFLOVERS-ORIGIN.PRESS
SU-AI        ORIGIN.SFL[T,DON]
MIT-Multics  >udd>sm>rsl>sf-lovers>sflovers-origin.text

[Note, you can TYPE or FTP the file from SAIL without an account.]

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jan 1981 0901-PST
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>
Subject: Venus Belt and political philosophy
 
     Capt. P's problem with Venus Belt is entirely understandable.
Political philosophical reprehensibility can make the rest of the
book a real bummer.  My appreciation of the philosophy might well
make me willing to overlook a few of its flaws.  The ending, for
example, is certainly outrageous (and it is clearly, deliberately
so).  It should be as offensive to a Liberal Environmentalist
as an obscene characterization of Jesus Christ would be to a
religious Christian. And for the same reasons: it hits where they
live.  Critics' reactions to the books simply /must/ be read in
light of this source of critical illumination.
 
     What I would really like to read is a review of Venus Belt
and Probability Broach by someone who is neutral towards Liber-
tarianism.  I don't mean ignorant.  I mean someone who knows of
it, and is neither a gung-ho supporter nor a vehement antagonist.
I am obviously not in that position; but neither are the folks
who have so energetically disliked the books.  (And I obviously
don't mean someone -- pro or con -- who merely neglects to
provide their positions.)
 
     Mike
 
------------------------------

POURNE@MIT-MC 01/24/81 04:41:38 Re: Cheers?
To: NIVEN at MIT-MC, POURNELLE at MIT-MC

Awaken me early in the morning, mother, for I'm to be Queen
of the May..

     Actually, Niven and Pournelle are pleased (and relieved)
to announce that after ten years they have FINISHED the novel
OATH OF FEALTY, which will go to the publisher this week and
will probably be in print about Fall of 1981.
     OATH stars a cast of splendid characters, telepathic
love-making, gratuitous zaps at Luddites, needles stuck
into Proxmire, and the best city you've ever seen.
     Don't fail to miss it if you can.

        JEP

------------------------------

Date: 19 Jan 1981 (Monday) 1546-EDT
From: SHARER at WHARTON-10 (Bill Sharer)
Subject: Dark Star

     I was just finished reading the classic Dark Star and was
wondering about the stories I had heard about the movie itself.
The way I understand it, the movie never got much publicity
because the distribution company went into receivership.  Does
anybody know anything about this?  Also I'd like to know if
there is any other SF that has bombs with a sense of purpose
in life.  By the way for those of you who haven't read it yet
....it is worth the time!

                Bill Sharer

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jan 1981 11:29 PST
From: Ayers at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Interstellar Invasions

A. C. Clarke, in one of his non-fiction works, discussed the
speed-of-light difficulties in running an interstellar war
and asked:

  "What if the news of the American Revolution had reached
   England during Victoria's reign, and her orders on how
   to deal with the situation had been received in North
   America during Eisenhower's presidency?"

------------------------------

Date: 24 JAN 1981 1055-PST
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Paranoia in Southern California

     The other day, a friend of mine brought up a point on
which I had been musing, but was loath to mention for fear
I was exaggerating the situation.  However, emboldened by
this revelation that others, too, have noticed, I thought
I'd bring it up for the SF-Lovers who happen to reside in
California.

     California, as you know, is well known for its earth-
quakes. It always has been.  Earthquakes and the possibility
of the Big One have been acknowledged and pretty much ignored
for years.
     However, during the past few months, all I hear on
the news is earthquake safety standards, earthquake drills,
emergency earthquake measures, earthquake prediction studies,
and earthquake warning procedures.  All this for no apparent
reason.  (A few small temblers that did no damage, and Mt.
St. Helens, which may not be related).  Is there a possibility
that The Government May Know Something We Don't? Are they
trying to Break It To Us Gently?  Do they perhaps know that
there will be the Big One soon, but don't know exactly when?
Is California too big to evacuate? 
     Have you noticed any Calif. politicians moving into
one-story housing?  (or was the first assumption, that I'm
nuts, the more likely assumption)
       
        Stan

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jan 1981 2051-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Lucas and Sex

First of all, just because Lucas is married does not mean he is
not anti-sex.  I am sure there are plenty of married couples who
can verify that statement!

In any case, HJJH's comments on the sorts of "disgusting" things
that HAVE been printed only proves my point: Lucas is pressing
his luck if he really thinks he can successfully "filter" satire
-- and that only "certain types" are unacceptable.  The very
act of letting so much get published, without challenge, tends
to dilute any future possibility of taking action against one
particular entity, solely because he did not like the subject
matter of their PARTICULAR satire!

Anyway, we are straying from the real point here... which is
the age-old issue of censorship.  I personally feel that ALL
censorship of issues not related to concerns like national
security is simply WRONG.  This is not an easy stance to
take... it means that, to be true to my statement, I have
to be willing to accept some of the most sick, perverted,
and generally distasteful materials that sometimes flow
through the media.  I had a girlfriend who accused me of
being the "typical" male chauvinist when I told her I did
NOT support legislation that would outlaw abominations such
as the "snuff" films... I would agree that such films are
awful and degrading, but you cannot START censoring without
opening the floodgates and risking some very basic freedoms.

I would be very curious to see some discussion of such issues
here on SF-Lovers.  After all, we are generally talking about
media, be it written, film, or record, and all media is subject
to outside pressures to "control" its content...

--Lauren--

P.S.  As an opener, let me remind everyone that the incidence
      of organized bookburning in this country has increased
      by a factor of something like 10 in the last year.  The
      so-called "Moral Majority" in particular seems very
      comfortable engaging in this sort of "helpful" activity.
      Will YOUR favorite novel be next?

--LW--

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jan 1981 10:50 PST
From: Stewart at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Protector

Niven fans beware.  No experimenting on your own...

AP           Warnings of a Chemical Time Bomb
    
    GALVESTON, Texas - With eight cases of thallium poisoning
    confirmed and six more suspected, alarmed health investigators
    warn that chemical time bombs of the rare, banned metal could
    be lodged inside the bodies of many residents of the upper
    Texas Gulf Coast.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/25/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It returns
to the discussion of the Enterprise's computer back to the episode
"Wolf in the Fold".  People who are not familiar with this episode
may not wish to read further.


------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 01/22/81 07:40:31
Re: Star Trek's computer in "Wolf in the Fold"

It occurs to me that the being who took over the computer could, when
Spock started the pi calculation, just move his memory image onto the
mass storage devices.  Then, the computer would be completely taken
over by the calculation, Spock and Kirk would get bored and stop the
calculation, and when the system re-booted, "Jack" could move out of
mass storage, and the whole mess would start over.

Of course if he did that, Spock could go to the machine room and
dismount the volume that "Jack" was hiding on...

                               ...phil

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 26-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #22
*** EOOH ***
Date: 26 JAN 1981 1001-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #22
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 26 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 22

Today's Topics:
            SF Books - Fiction into Fact & Libertarian SF,
         SF Movies - Horrible SF Movies, Future - CA Paranoia
  & Feminist Utopias, Star Wars - SW FANAC, Star Trek - The Computer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 JAN 1981 2010-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: fiction into fact

   It is commonly believed that the first detailed description of
remotely controlled manipulators was in Heinlein's WALDO, which
is why the common name for these devices is "waldoes"---but that
doesn't apply (so far as I can see) to the space program since
things like the Voyager soil sampler operated by program rather
than as a direct extension of a human hand.

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jan 1981 1600-EST
From: LS.MELTSNER at MIT-EECS
Subject: The Venus Belt

I have gotten a bit of flack about my comment on TVB's political
philosophy.  I would like to make a few more specific remarks
about hard-core libertarianism.

1)  Everything in TVB worked too well.  This seems to be
    a common problem in worlds designed by libertarians.
    Smith himself gives an inkling of the dubious value of
    a restitution-based justice system when he comments
    that the Belt is full of people who ran away from their
    obligations.  Without strong social pressure against
    people who do not fulfill their obligations, restitution-
    based justice does not work.

2)  The concept that money will solve everything is false.
    If you own a piece of land that has the last members
    of an almost extinct species on it, and you kill them,
    you have done future generations a great disservice.
    Unfortunately, there is no one to plead their case in
    court, or even any way to calculate the harm of having
    one less species.

3)  Competition rapidly will be replaced by collusion.
    People are not all very nice and will use the age-old
    methods of terrorism and gangsterism to protect their
    own livelihood.  Just try to start a vending machine
    company in Boston, and you will see how fast the other
    companies will react.  I would also suggest a good
    history of the Standard Oil Company for a further
    justification of this point.

4)  You cannot have Athens without the slaves.  The last 
    great triumph of democracy was Athens, where a large
    slave class was supporting a small class of people who
    had the time to be cultured and democratic.

Certainly, many of the libertarian beliefs are valuable.  However,
the whole concept of restitution as replacement for justice (being
a firm believer in punishment) is morally abhorrent to me, having
been mugged many times, and having had a close relative shot by a
two-bit punk. Sure, legalize dope and speeding, drop the minimum
wage and public education --- just don't try to make me believe
that money is a substitute for human life.

                                Capt. Polaroid

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jan 1981 1610-EST
From: LS.MELTSNER at MIT-EECS
Subject: TVB flame

As an addendum to my previous flame on The Venus Belt, I'd like to
mention that the reason the political philosophy is being discussed,
and not the book, is the fact that the book itself is quite poor.
The only valuable part, perhaps, is the philosophy, and that is why
we are arguing.  Even a hard-core believer in libertarianism should
admit that the book is poorly written.  Even The Probability Broach
was written better than TVB.  To me, it just looks like L. Neil Smith
is bucking for the Prometheous Award.

                        Capt. Polaroid

------------------------------

APPLE@MIT-MC 01/25/81 03:51:48

    I was talking to a friend the other day and telling him
about some of the worst SF movies I've seen.  I remembered
one about the Van Allen radiation belt catching on fire, and
being put out by the explosion of a nuclear missile, but I
couldn't remember the name or any of the actors.  Can anyone
help me?
                        - Jim Cox

[ This movie is Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and stars the
  glass nosed submarine Seaview.  The VttBotS TV series was
  based on this movie.                               --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jan 1981 1232-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: The Big One (earthquake)

I work for the Office of Earthquake Studies for the US Geological
Survey in Menlo Park, California.  OES is charged with learning
about the different aspects of the earth's behavior as they relate
to earthquakes.  We will not keep information from the public.  We
(ideally) would think that we could see something brewing 2-3 years
ahead of time (we may be wrong).  If that is the case then we will
heavily instrument the area in question.  There is a Earthquake
Council that would look over the information before releasing the
information to the state.  The survey has been a very responsible
organ of the government (my opinion of course).  When we were asked
to look into the geology of northern California around the Humbolt
Nuclear Plant.  We said that it was not a good location seismically.
The DOE came to us after the release of our report and asked if we
would "tone" it down.  We refused.

Anyway...the people will not be kept from our information (the
realtors would rather we didn't release it).  Up to this moment
there is no more reason to believe the "the big one" is just
around the corner any more than say 5 years ago.

We do seem to have entered a more active (seismically) time in
California history.  I think that Mt. St. Helens has brought
out the power ($$) of natural disasters.  Therefore we are
hearing more about what WILL happen in northern and southern
California.  I would heed the warning of being prepared.  We
might not know when it is going to happen.  I wish I knew more
about the state's plans for how to supply millions of people
with water, food and law.

--Bill

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jan 1981 0623-PST
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>
Subject: Feminist utopias wanted

Material passed on by friends, of possible interest:

  "With the sponsorship of the Center for the Study of Women
   and Sex Roles of the Graduate Center of the City University
   of New York, a special issue of the journal 'Women's Studies'
   on the theme of women and utopian societies will be produced.
   For more than a decade, feminists have been engaged in the
   analysis and criticism of patriarchal institutions; the editors
   of this issue feel the time has come to begin to envision viable
   alternative societies that would be non-sexist, non-racist, and
   generally egalitarian.  Contributions might include architectural
   blueprints, environmental plans, critical essays on utopian works
   already published, or utopian experiments already tried, poems,
   plays, and other fictional works.  We welcome new forms well as
   new ideas.  Send material by April 30, 1981 to:

        Elaine Baruch
        Assoc. Professor of English, York College, CUNY
        310 East 46 Street
        New York, NY 10017

               or

        Ruby Rohrlich, Professor of Anthropology
        Manhattan C. C., CUNY
        303 West 66 Street
        New York, NY 10023"

[ Please send contributions directly to them, not to Leavitt,
  please  -- MRL ]

------------------------------

Date: 25 JAN 1981 2044-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: censorship

   I am severely uncomfortable when considering pornography,
since such a large portion of it is exclusively directed against
women. You are probably familiar with at least the popular press
reports of a Scandinavian study which concluded that freedom of
distribution of pornographic material either did not affect or
reduced the incidence of sex involving unconsenting parties (I
use that term because "sex crimes" tends to be applied to outre
behavior between consenting individuals, which I don't consider
a proper matter for external regulation);  Unfortunately, there
are now several challenges to these results, both claims that
the original results were inaccurate and claims that the results
don't apply in this country (which wouldn't surprise me, looking
at the relative incidence of violence here and in Europe).  This
leaves us with the observation that some portion of current
material which is pornographic rather than erotic could be con-
sidered an incitement to riot --- certainly there is a disturbing
correlation between the rise in sexual abuse of children and the
rise of material in which children (really children, not Lolita
types) are portrayed as ecstatic recipients of sexual attention.
   Under the circumstances, it is hardly implausible that pornog-
raphy has become a "women's issue", no matter how uncomfortable it
makes such humanists to appear to be on the same side of a debate
as the allegedly moral so-called majority; violence against women,
particularly domestic violence, is being recognized as epidemic
in this country. Absent a firmly demonstrable correlation between
such drek and such violence I am unwilling to support censorship
--- but I wonder how some of the publishers of the viler material
would feel if they were placed in the situations of the subjects
of their publications.  A tactic which has worked well (at least
when the snuff flick came to Boston) is to refuse to recognize
such crud, and hence to deprive of it of the publicity it needs
to metastasize; certainly alliance with the forces attempting to
control Boston's combat zone would serve the women of this state
about as well as the horse in Aesop was served when he joined
with a man against a wolf.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/26/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest. It comments
on the nature of the Jedi and the force.  People who are not familiar
with Star Wars series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 19 Jan 1981 18:45:45-PST
From: CSVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: On the Nature of Jedi

The following message comes rather after the stimulus because of
a network tie-up.  But some of you may still remember the letter
I refer to, so I'll resend it:

Steve Platt has raised the subject of the Force as a weapon, and
what type of thing/person/whatever defines a Jedi.  Since, after
seeing TESB some friends and I discussed this point for quite a
while, I thought I'd inflict our conclusions and possibilities on
you all:

1) The Jedi would seem to be somewhat like Samurai, in that their
   talents were a matter of training which gave them the authority
   to have weapons (Light Sabre/Swords) and the ability to use
   them.  This is opposed to licensing  (Can you imagine a fight
   between Vader and Luke being interrupted by an inspector from
   the Fraternal Order of Jedi in order to make sure that their
   papers were in order?) or the Western Gun-Fighter which sort
   of worked by natural selection.

2) On the issue of whether the Force is good or bad, we split into
   two camps.  One maintained it's neutrality, claiming that it
   was like a natural law(s) which could be used by those who knew
   how, and the other camp (including myself) theorized that the
   wielder of the Force had to find the power to implement his/her
   desire (are there women Jedi?), and that power must be drawn
   from either Good or Evil.  Thus, it is not the action, but
   where you draw from, that determines whether you wear a white
   or a black hat.

Well, there it is.  Go ahead and rip it apart.
	Ken

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 27-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #23
*** EOOH ***
Date: 27 JAN 1981 0922-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #23
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 27 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 23

Today's Topics:
SF Theater - Parody of Robotics Laws, SF Movies - Horrible SF Movies,
     SF Books - Ringworld & Libertarian SF, Star Wars - SW FANAC,
                       Star Trek - The Computer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 Jan 1981 1158-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: Robot's Rules of Order  

I have had in my engrams for a long time the notion that the
Firesign Theater or some other such inventive group once did
a parody of Asimov's rules of robotics.  Unfortunately, I can
only remember one of the laws: "Never point a robot at the
Sun."  Can anyone out there supply the missing two laws and
tell where they can be found?

Rich

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jan 1981 1120-PST
From: DHARE at SRI-KL (Dwight Hare)
Subject: Bad SF movies: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

The reference to the rather bad SF movie, "Voyage to the Bottom
of the Sea", reminded me of how amazed I was when I first watched
it.  When the Van Allen belt catches on fire, the Seaview is under
the polar ice cap.  They realize something is wrong when the ice
cap starts to melt and break up.  The large ice chunks begin to
sink through the ocean to hit the submarine.  Think about that
for a moment...  When you are watching the movie it takes a few
minutes before you realize that something is terribly wrong with
that.

------------------------------

Date: 25 JAN 1981 2024-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Ringworld and relativity

  It seems to me that both answers thus far miss one point: unless
the Rosette (\not/ Rosetta) was going extremely close to the speed
of light relative to the rest of our galaxy, there wouldn't be a
significant enough mass increase and time dilation to worry about
--- and if the worlds were going that fast it would be difficult
to match speeds with them in the first place.  (Since Niven's hyper-
drive, unlike those of other authors, does not require accelerating
to light- speed, there's no reason to expect that such brute force
capacity exists.)  Were the worlds going fast enough, carelessness
in the choice of where to drop out of hyperspace on the way in could
be dangerous (since the best conclusion from Niven's hints is that
whatever trivial (relative/istical/ly) speed (but not necessarily
direction) the ship has when it \enters/ hyperspace is maintained
when it \leaves/), but for the five worlds (and one K-type star?)
to have a dangerous mass in our frame of reference they'd have to
be going .[some number of 9's] of lightspeed --- which would also
make their afternoon on the puppeteer homeworld last a lot longer
(relative to their homeworld clocks) than the characters expect
--- but we never see Louis and Speaker compare clocks when they
get back to Known Space!

------------------------------

Date: 26 January 1981 11:33-EST
From: Gail Zacharias <GZ at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Libertarian literature.

I think your comment about "everything in TVB worked too well"
hits the proverbial nail right on the head.  I find that sort
of thing to be very true of much fiction written to demonstrate
and defend a point of view, be it libertarian, communist, demo-
cratic, environmental or anything else.  When the resolution
of all conflicts/problems in the book comes out so as to
support what the author's been pushing all along, you tend
to be reminded that the guy made up the whole situation in
the first place, and it doesn't necessarily bear any relation
to what might really happen.  In other words you are dealing
with a piece of propaganda, not something worth thinking about
(even when you agree with the point of view being pushed).
It's easy to put up straw men and knock them down.  It takes
a lot of skill, intelligence, discipline and respect for the
reader to write a book advocating a point of view without
descending into propaganda.  My experience has been that
libertarian 'literature' has not transcended the stage of
tailor-made situations and knocking down of straw men as
of yet, and hence is not really appropriate for convincing
anyone except the already convinced.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jan 1981 1507-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>

Here is some more flack for LS.MELTSNER about hir comments on TVB's
political philosophy:

1)      "Everything in TVB worked too well."

   Everything in a novel written about a pure political system
   of any kind would seem to work too well.  No one's claiming
   that Smith isn't showing libertarianism in the best possible
   light.  However, everything works too well in communist and
   authoritarian utopias as well; it's the nature of the beast.
   This doesn't make them uninteresting, since properly viewed
   they are schemas or core ideas -- they are for discussion,
   elaboration, and experimentation rather than immediate full- 
   scale implementation.  And it doesn't keep TVB from being a
   good book, well written and well worth reading.

1a)     "restitution-based justice system"
   I think a restitution-based justice system would work at
   least as well as our current rehabilitation-based one.  One of
   the problems with the current system (the social one and the
   embedded justice system) is that it encourages the development
   and existence of a "criminal class."  Another problem is that
   it is predicated on principles of "fairness" instead of prin-
   ciples of working.  We could, for example, charge each criminal
   caught the cost of his crime divided by the probability that
   he would be caught ($n/.5=$2n), and not only is the society's
   expected loss for a crime 0, but the criminal's expected gain
   is too.  Surely better than insurance, where your expected
   loss (and the crook's expected gain) is somewhere near your
   premium?

2)      "the concept that money will solve everything..."
   Who said money would solve everything?  Money is simply a way
   of trading effort, value, and luck.  However, I will argue
   that more money (and therefore, more effort, value, and luck)
   is better than less.

2a)     "an almost extinct species"
   Why is the loss of a unique, irreplaceable species so much more
   tragic than the loss of a unique, irreplaceable snowflake?  Why
   is either worth saving at the cost of a single instant of human
   misery?  (Why are humans worth saving?  Well.... duhhh...)

3)      "Competition rapidly will be replaced by collusion."
   This is actually something of a flaw in the libertarian social
   mechanics; however, it is just as much a flaw in current social
   mechanics.  Take the fact that regulatory agencies often (not
   always) protect the industries they are supposed to regulate;
   take government by high-pressure special-interest groups; take
   party politics, logrolling and smoke-filled rooms.  Take them
   far, far away.
     Terrorism and gangsterism can only hold sway where the people
   let it do so (this leaves religious-based terrorism, where there
   are large numbers of people on each side).  I don't particularly
   want shoulder my share of keeping the society safe;  I would
   get bored practicing with a gun every day.  But if it were a
   socially expected thing, like wearing clothes,  I would probably
   do it.  The use of distributing the burden is that the brunt of
   the disutility of slacking off is borne by the off-slacker.
   Example: Say I'm a mugger, in two situations:
      a) I am confronted with two potential victims, one of whom
         has cheated on his income tax, and the other hasn't.
      b) I am confronted by two potential victims, one of whom
         is carrying a gun and the other isn't.
   See the difference?  (NB:  Just saying that this is unfair to
   the little old lady as opposed to the strapping stevedore
   doesn't work -- put little old ladies into the example and it
   still works.  If you think that other people have a duty to
   guard the old lady, it still works.

4)      "the last great triumph of democracy"
   What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?  We're
   talking about anarchy, not democracy!

And again I beg to differ on the intrinsic quality of TVB, politics
aside.  I guess Capt. P. just doesn't like puns.

--JoSH

------------------------------

Date: 26 January 1981 1112-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: censorship

Presumably it is perfectly legal to confiscate all films, etc as
evidence for a trial when illegal actions were committed during
the making of the film.  This includes snuff films (I've never
met anyone who's met anyone who's seen one), kiddy porn, etc.
If you believe Linda Lovelace, this would also include "Deep
Throat".

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jan 1981 13:59 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: censorship

In my view, appropriate censorship does not go any further than
stopping/ punishing people for yelling "fire" in a crowded theater,
or for publishing leaflets that say "let's all meet at City Hall
at 9 P.M. and burn it down".

A lot of these anti-porn freaks would also like to ban the films
"Birth of a Nation" because it is "racist", and "Triumph of Will"
because it is "Nazi".  Great art knows no ideological boundaries.
Most critics would agree that "Lolita" is a great novel, and that
Nabokov is no weirdo, but at the same time, if "Lolita" is not a
form of "kiddie porn", then what is?  A basic premise of a demo-
cratic society is that its citizens are capable of recognizing
trash or propaganda when they see it.  If some of these citizens
also happen to enjoy such stuff, so what?  You can't force open
a closed mind.

I realize there is a delicate line between the public and the
private.  Thus issues such as whether one should be able to walk
down the street nude, or whether Nazis should be able to march
through Jewish communities chanting anti-Semitic slogans, become
more complex.  My approach would be some form of zoning: official
recognition that nude beaches, red-light districts, Nazi parade
grounds, etc., would be permitted either in officially designated
areas, or where they had no visible impact on the surrounding
community.

Attempts to stop victimless "crimes" that involve something desired
by at least a couple of percent of the population have never worked.
Such attempts only push the activities underground, strengthening
groups like the Mafia.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jan 1981 1633-PST
From: URBAN at RAND-AI
Subject: The story of a boy, a girl, and a universe

(The Subject field is taken from the original prerelease trailer
for Star Wars, if memory serves).  Lauren, I think you're missing
the point -- or are you also opposed to copyright laws?  Lucas
isn't trying to be Big Brother; he's just trying to maintain some
measure of control of characters that, after all, he created.  If
I understand what's been reported in SF-Lovers, and it's correct,
he's basically allowing the amateur/fan press to do pretty much
what they like with his characters, subject to (only?) the guide-
lines about sex.  Since these characters are registered trademarks
(look at the toys carefully), that's a pretty fair attitude.  Marion
Zimmer Bradley takes a similar attitude with respect to "Darkover",
though even more liberal (in effect, she says, "those stories take
place in YOUR Darkover, which isn't the same as mine, though possibly
similar, and possibly just as interesting").
   Of course, anything with a satiric purpose is legally and morally
fair game.  The disclaimer on the front of "Mad" about resemblances
to persons living or dead, without a satiric purpose, probably saves
them a heap of lawsuits.
   Of course, the Conan Doyle estate is STILL upset about Holmes
pastiches, and "Oz" still is a common-law trademark belonging to
Reilly and Lee (Random House), and don't try to produce a Barsoom
computer game without contacting the Burroughs estate first or a
Tolkien item without registering it with Elan Merchandising.

   Get the picture?

        Mike

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/27/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
continue the discussion of the Enterprise's computer in the episode
"Wolf in the Fold".  People who are not familiar with this episode
may not wish to read further.


------------------------------

Date: 25 JAN 1981 1735-EST
From: EDAL at MIT-AI (Eduardo Alvarez)
Subject: Star Trek - Wolf in the Fold

     As far as the speculation that Jack could have moved himself to
the mass storage devices, who is to say that the Enterprise's computer
has any separate mass storage devices.  By that time, perhaps memory
technology will have advanced to the point where ALL memory can be of
the instantly-available random-access type, with outside storage used
only for transportation of data, such as the cassette-tape-like things
that various characters carry about at times.

------------------------------

Date: 25 January 1981 18:04-EST
From: Frank J. Wancho <FJW at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Mountable Devices

I doubt that mountable devices would be practical in that environment.

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 01/26/81 07:35:26
Re: Mass Storage in the Enterprise's computer

You wouldn't expect Spock to go down and open the cover on a
disk drive, to be sure. But how about some kind of crystalline
memory units that can be written into from the main computer,
and then when the Enterprise arrives at a starbase, are removed
and replaced by crystals that have been totally updated by the
starbase computers? The old ones could be read by the starbase,
the new information analyzed, and then the crystals wiped and
rewritten for the next star ship that came along.

                                  ...phil

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 28-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #24
*** EOOH ***
Date: 28 JAN 1981 0731-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #24
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 28 Jan 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 24

Today's Topics:
                SF Theater - Parody of Robotics Laws,
    SF Books - Dragon's Egg & You're Nuttin & Wheels within Wheels
& Libertarian SF & Ringworld, SF Events - Ellison Benefit (Cambridge),
             Star Wars - SW FANAC & Nature of the Force,
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 1342-PST
From: The Moderator <Duffey at MIT-AI>
Subject: Where are Robots Rules of Order?

   Robots Rules of Order maybe found on "I Think We're All
   Bozos On This Bus."                        --  Kyle.ES at PARC-MAXC

   The sketch refered to is from Procter and Bergman's record "TV
   or Not TV".  I believe this was their first non-firesign theater
   record, although most everyone else is there anyway.  As I recall,
   the other two laws were "Never put magnets on a robots joints" and
   "Never put a robot in an old car and shove it off a cliff".  The
   track was called "Tobor Radar Robot".  "Remember, play fair, we
   are not programmed for defense".            --  Achenbach@SUMEX-AIM

   I still don't have a definite source for "Robots Rules of Order,"
   but rumor has it that it came from a Procter and Bergman album
   (it is definitely not on "We're all Bozos on this Bus").
                                     --  Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 1342-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: While browsing in bookstores last evening...

1) I found that Dragon's Egg is now out in paperback.  Those of us
   that were too cheap to buy (and patient enough to wait for) this
   classic can now do so.  My excuses to Dr. Forward for decreased
   royalties.

2) Frank Herbert co-authored a book called "You Are Nothing
   Without Me" (or some slight re-arrangment of words), which is
   about microprocessors.  I won't comment here on what I thought
   of the book in general, but I can't resist one quote: "GOTO is
   a debuggers friend".  For those of you who may think I took
   this out of context, I didn't; it says what he means.

Rich

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 at 1856-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

...is by F. Paul \WILSON/, not F. Paul Smith.

I'm neither strongly pro nor strongly anti, as previous SFL'ers
have been.  I keep fewer than 1 in 10 of the SF books I read;
most go back to the 2nd hand store.  Then occasionally there's
one I can't immediately decide about, and it goes onto a shelf
of "to be re-read before deciding about".  That's where my copy
of WHEELS... is. Wilson's earlier HEALER was a "keeper", and it
could be that WHEELS seemed a let-down because my expectations
were too high from HEALER.

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 0925-PST
From: Achenbach@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: realistic political systems

     On the fray of believable political systems, Cecilia Holland's
"Floating World's" contained the best example of an anarchy I've
everseen.  The only premise was that every one on earth was totally
abhorant to any kind of violence.  It also showed how this system
collapses if you remove that idea.  I remember this book being
talked about before, so I don't want to flame overlong, but I
thought this was one of the most complete novels I've ever read.
Realistic characters (i.e. complex and hard to understand, not
just cardboard) and realistic politics.  I remember that a lot
of people thought it too long (it might be), but I consider it
worth the time.

/Mike

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 17:18 PST
From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC

Re: Libertarian SF

I have not read the Smith novels under discussion, so I cannot
evaluate their quality.  However, I would like to very highly
recommend a novel based on an Anarchic social system, somewhat
Libertarian in nature.  The novel is "The Dispossessed", by
U.K. LeGuin.  Ms. LeGuin is one of my favorite authors, and
has done, I think, an extremely convincing job of describing
a successful anarchy.

Being relatively neutral on Libertarianism, I volunteer to
read Smith's stuff and send as objective a review as possible.
However, don't hold your breath since I have to locate the
books first, and then find time to read them.

        --      Larry   --

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 10:47:20-PST
From: CSVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: restitution based justice

A restitution based system such as proposed by JoSH would only work
in monetary crimes.  What, for example, is the cost of a rape?  And
is the rapist thinking about how much its going to cost him when he
commits his crime?  I would submit that, while your average bank
robber might worry about money, any person raping or murdering or
jaywalking is unlikely to.  And I might further submit that most
bank robbers would be unable to pay the state and/or victim(s)
more than what (s)he stole.  They usually aren't very rich, or
they wouldn't be robbing banks; they'd be founding them.

Also, in regards to systems "working to well", JoSH's contention
that"utopias" work too well in books, I might point to LeGuin's "The
Dispossed" as an example of a utopian society which works, but not
suspiciously perfectly.  The society has its flaws, and its self
contradictions, and that makes it more believable.

                Ken

------------------------------

Date: 27 January 1981 1024-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: athens

Why not Athen's with ROBOTS?

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 13:36 PST
From: Kyle.ES at PARC-MAXC

As for the Puppeteer's Rosette, it was being moved using the
Outsider's Inertialess Drive and moving at just under light
speed. In his other discriptions of Outsider Inertialess Drive
(Sheaffer's trip to the anti-matter planet on the edge of the
Milky Way) Niven described relativistic effects and it would
follow that the Pupeteer's would experiance the same.

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jan 1981 12:49:46-PST
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: Ringworld's gravity wells

If the space ship were "at rest" and the planets zooming away at
near the speed of light, I wouldn't know what the effect on the
gravity well would be. (Of course, at those velocities, it wouldn't
be too long before the ship is out of the gravity well anyway.) 
However, the ship is at rest relative to the planets, and therefore
the planets do not seem excessively massive relative to the ship,
and therefore the gravity well is of a small size.

------------------------------

Date: 27 JAN 1981 1523-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: censorship, again

   You seem to have substantially missed my point. I agree with
virtually all of your ideas (with a note of sardonic amusement that
(as near as I can recall) the origin of "Fire in a crowded theater"
was in favor of a wartime censorship which now is held to have been
inappropriate).  My point is that pornography \may/ be considered
incitement to riot, and (if such consideration is reasonable) \may/
be subject to restraint, possibly of the form you describe.
    LOLITA is a poor example; it's not a particularly erotic book.
Humbert is an obsessive pain in the neck and ultimately a murderer;
the obsession, rather than the glossed-over sex, is the point of
the book.  I suggest you investigate some of the currently available
kiddie-porn (if you haven't already and if your stomach is in good
shape) and line it up against whatever statistics you can get on
sexual abuse of children --- then multiply the statistics, because
this crime is even more underreported than spouse abuse.
   It's amusing to tie this back into the discussion about THE
VENUSBELT (which I read two days ago and consider to be pretty
poor material even after allowances are made for Smith's general
prejudices and ignorance of history); note that when someone
started proclaiming himself manager of the belt they didn't
bother removing the immediate nuisance by wiping out the trans-
mitters which were interfering with communications, they simply
destroyed the whole asteroid. (I also note that Smith and I
seem to share at least one opinion (outside of our contempt
for "victimless crime" laws): that Cato was a blackguard.)

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 12:47 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: censorship, again

I don't think I missed your point at all, Chip.  I could NEVER
consider run-of-the-mill pornography, of which I've seen a fair
sample, to be "incitement to riot".  Most porno does not involve
violence.  Most violent art is not considered "porno".  "Incitement
to riot" would have to involve suggestions that specific actions be
taken at a specific time and place.  Thus, passing around pamphlets
saying "Kill all {blacks, Jews, honkies, ...}" in an unruly mob
*would* be incitement to riot, since the implicit time and place
would be "here and now".  However, printing the same message in
the personals section of a newspaper would *not* be incitement
to riot (unless the appearance of such message were part of a
previously-agreed-upon signal in some sort of elaborate
conspiracy).

The controversy two years ago over the urban fantasy film "The
Warriors" comes to mind.  Many exhibitors declined to show it,
because they had reason to believe that showing it to a house
packed full ofviolence-prone gang members *was* "incitement to
riot".

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 13:08:25 EST
From: Roger Duffey <RDD at MIT-AI>
Subject: A point of information

Harlan Ellison will be reading from his works at the Cambridge
Sheraton Commander Hotel from 7-11 PM on 30 January.  This is
a benefit performance for Avenue Victor Hugo's, an SF bookstore
facing bankruptcy.  For more information, call the bookstore at
266-7746.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/28/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
continue the discussion of the nature of the force.  People who are
not familiar with Star Wars series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 27 JAN 1981 1506-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: nature of the force

   I'm intrigued by the suggestion that the force requires a would-be
wielder to "find the power to implement his/her desire ... and that
power must be drawn from either Good or Evil."
   The immediate consequence of this (it seems to me) is that one
must use emotion to wield the force, rather as emotion is necessary
to drive the telepathy rig in one of Asimov's Wendell Urth stories
or to survive against unusual stress as in Sturgeon's story about
the destruction of Xantippe or Cordwainer Smith's about the first
flight through space (I'm really doing well today---3 stories and
I can't remember the title of even one of them!).
   But this is countered by the statement that releasing emotion
(at least the emotions of anger or fear) 'pollutes' one's use of
the Force. As Obi-Wan describes it, the power of the Force stems
not from the recognition of great good or evil but from the grasp
of the unity of all living things, which strikes me as a deliber-
ately neutral concept.

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 13:40:23-PST
From: CSVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: emotion and the force

I would argue that it required empathy, not emotion, to plug into
a moral (not emotional) well of energy.  This presupposes, of course,
an absolute morality of good and evil (and maybe neutral), but that's
not too much to ask out of an updated western movie with good guys
in white hats and bad guys in black robes.  It would be this empathy
which the training develops, and it would be general purpose, allowing
tapping of either side of the fence.  Maybe the force of evil is more
powerful for short term solutions, which is what makes it tempting,
but lousy on long term, and the force of good is better for wiser
things, which makes it more difficult to wield.
                Ken

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 30-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V3 #25   (Special CON Issue)
*** EOOH ***
Date: 30 JAN 1981 0321-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V3 #25   (Special CON Issue)
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Thursday, 29 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 25

Today's Topics:
        What Happens at a Con - Point/Counterpoint on LASTcon
    & Boskone SFL Party? & FoolCon IV Details, SF Events Calendar
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 JAN 1981 2100-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: LASTCON

  (the first); capsule review: a waste of time.  The only pro
SF writer there was the GoH and there was virtually nobody I
knew from out of the area.  Another Bostonian described it as
a typical crowd of neos, but usually neos are 25 rather than
95% of the con attendance.  It will possibly do better next
year if the concom can work out its power struggles.
  Sorry to be so negative, but that's the way it was.

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 01/28/81 00:25:49 Re: Lastcon report

  Lastcon was a small (~350) convention held in Albany.  The
guests of honor were Hal Clement (Harry Stubbs) pro, and The
Wombat (Jan Finder) fan.  The committee was composed of much
the same people that ran Novacon 9.

  My first impressions of the con are of a *TRUE WIN* I actually
enjoyed myself, and really relaxed.  This may be in direct rela-
tionship to the small size.  The hotel was fairly co-operative.
The committee had arranged for fen in all the poolside rooms, and
were allowed to have a skinny dip on friday night.  The only
hotel hassle, they asked some filkers to pick a spot closer to
the con suite, instead of the mundane floor we were using.  We
moved into the lobby (~2 am) and received no complaints.

  The art show was quite small, and almost entirely amateur
material.  It had a fair amount of material left unsold.
The huckster room was of reasonable size, and most of us did
reasonably well.  (I have taken to huckstering to allow me to
attend more con's.)  Almost half complained of not being able
to get tables at Boskone.  I excersised great restraint.  The
only things I bought were two buttons.  One was another
"filkers do it till dawn", the other said

                          CHARTER
                      IMMORAL MINORITY
                           MEMBER

  Much of the con's attendance was local students.  (The hotel
was a stones throw from SUNY, and <15 mins from RPI.)  Several
people were disappointed that more of the normal east cost
traveling crowd did not show up.

  On Friday, in addition to the pool party, the local SCA barony?
held a revel. On Saturday, there was a costume call. The winner
was a costume of Luke riding a Taun-Taun.  It was very well done,
and almost everyone told the person that she should take the
costume to Worldcon.  The winners were given small glass statues
of the alien mascot.  They held a contest to name the alien.  The
winning entry was Phideaux.

  At the end of the costume party, Pat Kennedy (who introduced the
costumes) suggested that all people in costume should go down to
the disco and truly freak out the mundanes.  ("Nowhere are there
mundanes more mundane than in Albany").  The contents of the disco
were somewhat taken by the costumed horde, who managed to displace
them all from the dance floor. Unfortunately the bouncer would not
let the girl in the winning costume past the entrance, as he felt
the costume was took bulky.

  On Saturday there were some interesting panels.  One of the
most amusing was Jan (The Wombat) Finders speech.  It was
titled "Keeping One's Pecker Up" and described some of the major
differences in British and Austrailian idiom.  (The title of the
talk in US english would be something like keeping the spirit
up.  Typical context referring to a sports team's performance.)

  On Saturday we found a winning chineese place, on Sunday a
loosing breakfast place.

  The weekend was a win.  I hope they do it next year.

                                        enjoy,
                                        Jeff

P.S. Any plans for a SFL party at Boskone?

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jan 1981 1540-EST
From: Alyson L Abramowitz via <Young at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: SFL party?

Given that SFL originates from the Boston area, I wondered
if anyone had thought of having an SFL party at the upcoming
Boskone. I'd volunteer to host one, but given the outrageous
hotel room prices I'll be commuting the half hour home each
morning. Any volunteers?

      Alyson L. Abramowitz

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jan 1981 at 2358-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ...about FOOLCON ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There were some discrepancies in the data for FOOLCON IV in the
recent listing in SF-L.  The address is:

   Johnson County Community College
   College Boulevard at Quivira Road
   Overland Park, Kansas 66201

GoH's are Katherine Kurtz and Michael Whelan
   (\and/ if he's up to it, Robert Heinlein, who expects
    to be visiting in the area at the time [April 3-5])

Special Guest Artists are: Herb Arnold, Jann Frank, Robert Haas,
                           Tim Kirk, Daryl Murdock, and Real
                           Musgrave.

Other Special Guests are:  Lynn Abbey, Patricia Cadigan, C.J.
                           Cherryh, Arnold Fenner, Barbara Housh,
                           David Houston, John Kessel, Pat & Lee
                           Killough, Carl Sherrel, John Tibbetts,
                           and, tentatively, Richard Lupoff.

Auctioneer will be Allan Wilde; and Toastmaster, Robert Asprin.

The Central Mid-Southwest's prime filker, Margaret Middleton's
going, and if a minor miracle can be effected, so will yours
truly, HJJH.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jan 1981 15:41 PST
From: Richard R. Brodie <Brodie at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: Calendar of Science Fiction Events

Here is the SF-Lovers event calendar. If you have information
about any events you would like to see added to the calendar,
or are associated in some way with one of the listed events
and would like to contribute, please send mail to
Brodie at PARC-MAXC.

                ------------------------------

              Calendar of Science Fiction Events
                    As of January 26, 1980

                ------------------------------

     January 30-31, 1981     (Ohio)
OSU CON. Ohio State University.  Julie Washington, OSU Union
Program Office, 1739 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43210.

     February 6-8, 1981     (Florida)
OMNICON II.  Guest: Kerry O'Quinn (Starlog).  PO Box 970308,
Miami, FL 33197.

     February 12-16, 1981     (Southern California)
AQUACON.  Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, CA ($56 single).
PO Box 815, Brea, CA 92621.

     February 13-15, 1981     (Massachusetts)
BOSKONE XVIII.  Pro GoH: Tanith Lee; Official Artist: Don
Maitz.  Sheraton-Boston ($57/single, $69/double).  Cost: $15 to
N.E.S.F.A., Box G, MIT Branch P.O., Cambridge MA 02139.  Films,
program, seminars, art show, hucksters room, filksinging, games,
costume party, Glamor and Sparkle.  Info on dealers' tables
and art show is available; dealers' room will probably be larger
than in past years as we now have more of the hotel. Registration
limit of 3000.  (We aren't happy about the room rates either, but
there isn't a usable hotel with significantly better rates.)
SFL liaison: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock).

     February 14, 1981     (Florida)
STONE HILL LAUNCH II.  Ann Morris, 1522 Lovers Lane,
Riverview, FL 33569.

     February 14-16, 1981     (Northern California)
DUN DRA CON VI.  Gaming.  386 Alcatraz Avenue, Oakland, CA 94618.

     February 22, 1981     (Southern California)
THE SECOND (SEMI) ANNUAL TRANSYLVANIAN CONVENTION.  A six hour
Rocky Horror party (12 noon - 6 PM). Los Angeles Hilton. Feature
Films, Concert Shorts, Exhibit & Slide Show, Collectibles, Live
Entertainment, Costume Contest, Door Prizes, probably a showing
of Night of the Loving Dead [Yes, lOving].  The Worst Films Show
(7:00 PM - 10:00 PM, extra admission).  Two of the all-time worst
films, plus trailers, shorts, etc. (213) 656-9090.

     February 27-March 1, 1981     (North Carolina)
STELLAR CON VI. University of North Carolina.  David Allen,
Box 4-EUC, University of N.C., Greensboro, NC 27412.

     March 6-8, 1981     (Texas)
OWLCON II. Rice Program Council, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX 77001.

     March 6-8, 1981     (Wisconsin)
WISCON 5. SF3, Box 1624, Madison, WI 53701.

     March 13-15, 1981     (Kentucky)
UPPERSOUTHCLAVE XI. Bowling Green, KY.  Box U 112, College Heights
Station, Bowling Green, KY 42101.

     March 20-22, 1981     (New Jersey)
LUNACON '81. Guests: James White, Jack Gaughan. Sheraton-Heights,
Hasbrouck Heights, NJ (marginally attainable by public from New
York City).  Cost: $11 till 2/28/81, $14 door.  Box 204, Brooklyn,
NY 11230.

     March 27-29, 1981     (England)
FANDERSON 81.  Gerry Anderson.  Leeds, England.
Pam Barnes, 88A Thornton Avenue, London W4 1QQ Engalnd.

     April 3-5, 1981     (Kansas)
FOOL-CON IV.  Confirmed guests: C. J. Cerryh, Lynn Abbey,
Robert Asprin.  Johnson City Community College, Kansas
City, MO. Johnson County Community College, Overland Park,
KS 66210.

     April 11-12, 1981     (Minnesota)
MICROCON 1981. SF/Comics/Games. Mpls.  Comic Conventions,
Box 3221 Traffic Station, Minneapolis, MN 55403.

     April 25-26, 1981     (Nebraska)
ELECTRA-CON I. P.O. Box 1052, Kearney, NE 68847.

     May 8-10, 1981     (Tennessee)
KUBLA'S NINTH KHANPHONY.  Ken Moore, 647 Devon Drive,
Nashville, TN 37204

     May 9-10     (Georgia)
EMORY-TREK II. Atlanta Star Trek Society, c/o Kenneth Cribbs,
2156 Golden Dawn Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30311

     June 5-7, 1981     (Arizona)
PHRINGECON 2. PO Box 128, Tempe, AZ 85281.

     June 12-14, 1981     (Wisconsin)
X-CON 5. M. P. Inda, 1743 N. Cambridge, Apt. 301,
Milwaukee, WI 53202.

     June 13-14, 1981     (Kansas)
COSMOCON II. c/o Charley S. McCue, 34 Halsey, Hutchinson, KS 67501.

     July 2-5, 1981     (Northern California)
WESTERCON 34. GoH: C. J. Cherryh; Fan GoH: Grant Cornfield. Red
Lion Motor Inn, Sacramento, CA; (916) 929-8855; $32 single and
double, $8 addl person.  Party wing.  Cost: $20 till 6/14/81,
$25 door.  P.O. Box 161719, Sacramento, CA 95816.

     July 10-12, 1981     (Missouri)
ARCHON V.  GoH: Tanith Lee; Fan GoH: Joan Hanke Wood; Toastmaster:
Charlie Grant; also Joan Hanke Wood, Wilson 'Bob' Tucker, Glen
Cook, Ron Chilson, George R. R. Martin, Joe and Gay Haldeman, and
Michael Berlyn. Chase-Park Plaza Hotel, St. Louis, MO ($44 single,
$52 2/3/4).  Soliciting program ideas and/or people who could help
carry them out.  Also looking for more artist names to add to the
mailing list for soliciting contributions to the art show.  This
was successful at ARCHON IV (over 60% of artists sold works), and
they are trying to expand.  There will be more art show space and
display panels this year.  Also in the process of reviewing art
show rules and would welcome suggestions.
SFL liaison: WMartin at Office-3 (Amy Newell).

     September 3-7, 1981     (Colorado)
DEVENTION TWO. 1981 World Science Fiction Convention.
Pro GoH: C.L. Moore, Clifford Simak; Fan GoH: Rusty Hevelin.
Cost: $35 till Spring 1981. P.O. Box 11545, Denver, CO. 80211.
(303) 433-9774.

     September 2-6, 1982     (Illinois)
CHICON IV. 1982 World Science Fiction Convention.
Pro GoH: A. Bertram Chandler; Fan GoH: Lee Hoffman;
Artist GoH: Kelly Freas.  Hyatt Regency, Chicago, IL.
Cost: $30 till 6/30/81; $15 supporting; $7.50 conversion.
PO Box A3120, Chicago, IL 60690.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 30-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #26
*** EOOH ***
Date: 30 JAN 1981 0835-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #26
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 30 Jan 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 26

Today's Topics:
   SF Radio - Boogie-Woogie to the Stars, SF Books - Canopus Series
  & Floating Worlds & Libertarian SF and Dispossessed & Dragon's Egg
   & Sagan's Close Encounter, SF Theater - Parody of Robotics Laws,
         SF Movies - Altered States, Future - When to Sleep,
            Star Wars - SW FANAC, Spoiler - Varley's Titan
----------------------------------------------------------------------

RUSSEL@MIT-AI 01/29/81 00:28:01

Has anyone else out there heard about a new radio series called
"Boogie-Woogie to the Stars"?  I happened to catch a segment of
it last night on my local PBS station (at 2 in the ayem - hacker's
hours) and found it, well, is 'amusing, engaging and intriguing'
too much?  It appears to be a series made up of hour long segments,
each of which is composed of time slices from substories interwoven
in a clever pattern.  Technically, its brilliant - the special
effects are really dazzling and what's more, some of the substories
have a "disco greek chorus" singing comments on what is going on
in the substory.  One substory is about a hyper-space age female
detective (I believe her name is "Ruby Starr") who is currently 
captured by aliens that have spun a mind-loop (while the chorus
sings "a loop, <beat> a loop, <beat> a loop, ...").  You get the
idea.  The SF is a little campy for my tastes, but the imagination
it took to put it all together with clever segues and all the rest
more than makes up for it.

Anyone know more about who thunk it up?  Who and what performs?

-- Dan

------------------------------

Date: 29 Jan 1981 1035-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: More Lessing

Doris Lessing has another book in her "Canopus" series out.
It's gotten excellent reviews from mainstream critics, but
from the blurbs it sounds like trashy, moralistic sf from
someone who has never read anything in the field.  Has
anyone read any of these?  What's really going on with
them?

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jan 1981 0941-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: re: "Floating Worlds"

I must confess that I couldn't finish the book, so I'll limit my
comments to saying that there was very little in it that couldn't
be transplanted without strain to the present day.  The heroine
lives in an anarchist co-op much like one that I was in in Boston,
the Martians sound and live like corporate executives, and the
Uranians are tall, dark-skinned barbarians who used to be slaves
of the inner worlds.  It sounded to me like another case of James
Blish's smeerp principle; call a rabbit a smeerp and it's science
fiction.

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jan 1981 1319-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: "The Dispossessed" as a Utopian novel

I always considered The Dispossessed a DYStopian vision.
Certainly I wouldn't want to live there.  It certainly is not
a libertarian political system; it is completely communistic.
In deciding whether a book is "good", I apply two criteria:
a) is it fun to read, and b) does it make one think.  Synthetic
criteria such as plot, characterization, etc., are fine for
English scholars but fall far short of the mark for science
fiction -- I at least think that characterization of the
!universe! is more important than that of the people.  In a
"literature of ideas" no preset breakdowns can work; thus my
general criteria.  Note that the more the conflict (which
makes the story go) centers on characters (developing them)
the less it centers on the ideas (developing THEM).

------------------------------

Date: 28 JAN 1981 0704-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Paperback vs. Hardcover

     Don't feel bad about waiting to buy the paperback,
the only book I have ever bought in hardcover is Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary.  Besides, the hardcover edition of
DRAGON'S EGG is out of print now.  So read and enjoy.

          Bob Forward

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jan 1981 at 2352-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^ EAT YOUR HEARTS OUT, PROFESSIONAL S/F WRITERS! ^^^^^^^^^^

Carl Sagan has signed a contract for $2,000,000 for his first novel,
about initial contact with Aliens From Out There, predictably.

------------------------------

Date: 29 Jan 1981 11:38:55-PST
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: Robot's Rules of Order

I am sure that there were at least two references in Bozos.
One was the come-on for a sideshow?  (I can't spell the
name) where you could go three rounds with a toaster, etc.
(``where Robot's Rules of Order don't apply'').  The other
was in one of Clem's conversations with Worker: ``You have
violated Robot's Rules of Order. . .''.  Sorry these are
so vague, but I can \hear/ the lines in my mind.

                Another Famous Dope Humor of the 70's fan,
                David Ungar

------------------------------

LEOR@MIT-MC 01/29/81 01:00:18 Re: "Altered States" 

nano-review: Kinda fun, good FX, but not quite as "heavy"
             as advertised

We saw it at its exclusive engagement in Boston, where 10 or so
extra speakers where set up all around for beautiful subsonics
(a la Earthquake.)  The film contains many very entertaining
sequences (such as protagonist-as-apeman running around coping
with the city) and the plot actually held my interest for about
2/3 of the way through...then it went down the toilet quickly,
as if the writer ran out of steam and struggled through the
climax with sole intent to finish the damn script.  Oh well;
there's enough nice FX near the end to help take the viewers
mind off lines such as (following the protagonist's regression
to the primordial nothing and return): "...and the secret of
life is....THAT THERE IS NO SECRET OF LIFE!!!!!..." or something
to that tune.  Ah well.  Debbie, who's into movies, appreciated
the lousy direction since it boosted confidence in her ability
to do better herself, yet still managed to come out reasonably
entertained by it all.

One thing: the tripping-out sequences corresponded QUITE well
to my own memories of some of the stronger hallucinogens I've
ingested. Next time I see this movie (hopefully with the same
sound system) I plan to get pretty altered myself beforehand.
        -leor

------------------------------

Date: 12 January 1981 2313-EST (Monday)
From: R.Kamesh <Kamesh.Ramakrishna at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  Body temperature sensing

There was an article in  a recent issue of  Science that said that  the
period  of  time  spent  sleeping   depended  on  the  phase  of   the
body-temperature cycle at the time a person falls asleep.  Apparently,
the average sleep duration when a person began sleeping at the  lowest
body temperature was about 7.8 hours  and if he began sleeping at  the
highest body temperature  was 14.4 hours.   Waking generally  occurred
during the  rising  temperature phase  at  the high  temperature  end.
(This suggests a basic  temperature cycle of 28-29  hours) It made  me
wonder how  one  can  determine  (without  necessarily  maintaining  a
long-term record) what the current phase is.

The problem I would like to address is: At some point in time, I would
like to decide if it  is `right' to go to  sleep.  If I want to  sleep
for a short period,  I should do  so if my  body temperature has  just
reached its lowest point.  If I want to sleep for a long time I should
do so if my  body temperature has just  reached its highest point.   I
would like to optimize sleep time and spend little time in bed waiting
for sleep to `come'.  Since it  is pretty unusual to be keeping  track
of body temperature most of the time, I will generally not know  where
in the cycle I am currently.  The question is whether I can  determine
this from purely sensory data (hot or cold feelings over the past  few
hours).

As  I pondered  on this  problem,  it struck  me suddenly:

                 This was  a problem for SF-LOVERS!!

I append  some thoughts I had on the subject.

Assuming that I am in a  more-or-less constant temperature room, if  I
start feeling colder does it mean that my body temperature is falling,
or does it mean that it is rising?  If my temperature falls, it  could
be that the rate  of heat loss  decreases and so  I should be  feeling
warmer.  That is, if the feeling of  warmth or cold is related to  the
rate of heat loss.  This is clearly true when the ambient  temperature
is very  low or  very high.   But what  about the  intermediate  range
(70-90  degrees  Fahrenheit),  at   which  our  bodies  are   probably
reasonably successful at  getting rid of  generated heat.  Since  body
temperature does not vary markedly (a range of a few degrees at most),
the rates of  heat loss cannot  be so markedly  different (say 10%  at
most.   This  assumes  ambient  temperature  at  68  degrees,  average
body-temp at  98  degrees and  a  range  of about  3-4  degrees).   So
feelings of hot  and cold may  be largely unrelated  to rates of  heat
loss.

Feelings of hot and cold are  also affected by conditions that  change
the rate at  which the  body loses heat.   For example,  just after  a
meal, the blood supply to the body surface decreases, thus  decreasing
the overall rate of heat loss.  A simple theory would predict that you
should feel warmer - but in fact you feel colder.  This is because our
bodies have sub-cutaneous temperature  sensors, rather than heat  loss
sensors, and these sense the drop in surface temperature caused by the
loss of blood  supply.  This suggests  that when we  feel cold, it  is
because our body temperature is falling rather than rising.

One suggestion I received was that if we are largely sensitive to heat
loss, then it  would be to  differences in rates  of heat loss.   This
suggests that if you live  in a constant temperature environment,  you
can  become  very  sensitive  to  small  changes  in  the  temperature
difference between the body and  the ambient temperature.  This  would
then mimic temperature sensitivity within certain limits of  heat-loss
rates.

------------------------------

Date: 29 Jan 1981 1424-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: censorship

"Colored people don't like 'Little Black Sambo'.  Burn it.  White
people don't feel too good about 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'.  Burn it.
Someone's written a book about tobacco and cancer of the lungs?
The cigarette people are weeping?  Burn the book.  Serenity,
Montag.  Peace, Montag."

                        -- Captain Beatty, "Fahrenheit 451"

     -----

My point is simple.  You cannot open the floodgates of censorship
without taking the risk of "losing" alot more than you bargained
for.

     -----

As for Lucas.  Well, golly gee, sure I believe in copyrights.
What I object to (maybe more from my gut than my mind) is Lucas
singling out ONE TYPE of thing and saying -- "THAT!  THAT'S THE
ONE THING YOU DON'T DO!"  Ah well, tells us a bit about how
Lucas' mind works, eh?

--Lauren--

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/30/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest. It discusses
a technical problem at the end of Varley's Titan.  People who are not
familiar with these novels may not wish to read further.


------------------------------

Date: 23 Jan 1981 12:43:58-PST
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: Varley's TITAN

As the parachutes descend to the lower altitudes, they will be
accelerated by the wind that they will feel.  The atmosphere is
obviously travelling at the same speed as the surface, and that
atmosphere will push our heroes until they too are travelling at
the proper speed.  So, when they hit the ground, their lateral
velocity will not be too high.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 31-JAN  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #27
*** EOOH ***
Date: 31 JAN 1981 0912-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #27
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 31 Jan 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 27

Today's Topics:
       What Happens at a Con? - Countercounterpoint on LASTcon,
   SF Radio - Boogie-Woogie to the Stars, SF Books - Canopus Series
    & Utopian/Dystopian SF & Sagan's Close Encounter & Ringworld,
Future - When to Sleep, Star Wars - SW FANAC, Star Trek - The Computer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 30 JAN 1981 1025-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Lastcon

  To say that the Lastconcom "was composed of much the same people
that ran Novacon 9" is factually untrue, as well as an insult to the
latter.  Lastcon's biggest failings came from the fact that too many
of its people didn't seem to have attended (or if having attended,
learned from) any other SF cons.

------------------------------

Date: 30 Jan 1981 1321-PST
From: Dave Dyer <DDYER at USC-ISIB>
Subject: Boogie Woogie to the Stars

 Is produced by ZBS Media, the same good people who brought
you "The Fourth Tower of Inverness", "Moon Over Morocco",
"The Further Adventures of Jack Flanders", and "Stars n'
Stuff".  All of the same ilk.  Technically sophisticated,
somewhat camp, dripping in hippy trippy philosophy.  A win.
 ZBS programs are frequently played in here in LooseAngles
on KPFK-FM.  Subscribers can find times in the folio, non-
subscribers (parasites) can suffer.

 ZBS programs are all available on cassette, though I don't
know the details.  If anyone is interested I will look up
their address.

------------------------------

Date: 30 Jan 1981 1156-EST
From: KERN at RUTGERS
Subject: RE: MORE LESSING

     I caught the  reviews of  Doris Lessing's  "Canopus" series  in,
among others, the NYTBR and Wash Post Book World (how mainstream  can
you get?),  and they  seemed at  worst hostile,  at best  patronizing
('Let her experiment.  She'll get  back to real fiction again.')  The
reviews of THE SIRIAN  EXPERIMENTS have run true  to the form of  the
earlier ones.  (The reviews  I've seen in the  SF press (F&SF,  SF-L)
have been uniformly hostile.)

     I read and enjoyed the first  two books in the series, and  have
an order in on the third from my local library (and I'm not first  on
the list!) These books are not really mainstream or SF - (mundane  or
sci-fi?).  I'll stick  with Lessing's own  term for them,  'visionary
fiction'. I enjoy the size and depth of her vision, and her skill  as
a multi-leveled storyteller. She  is among the  best in playing  with
archetypes. If you read CANOPUS as SF, though, you'll be struck by  a
number of embarrassing broken SF conventions.

-kbk

------------------------------

Date:  30 January 1981 09:27 est
From:  Benson I. Margulies at MIT-Multics <Margulies at MIT-Multics>

In re JoSH's comments of the Dispossessed and lit'rature:

Literary criticism is exactly about "is it fun to read" and
"does it make you think."  More to the point, "Does it make
for feel.  Does it incite any more mental activity that a
soap commercial, and if so, why".  Much SF is still being
written with such flagrant disregard for what it takes to
make something "fun to read" that it is veritable hopeless
for anything but plot-skimming.  Which is this?  Those with
plots without the faintest shred of verisimilitude, characters
made of soggy cardboard, and the rest.  Only these days weird
sex tends to take the place of the gadgets of days gone by.

Its cool to grind an axe in a story, as long as you don't
cut off its head in the process.  The Dispossessed is a
fine novel, by both JoSH and my criteria, I'd hazard.  It
asks serious questions about society, holds one's attention,
and all that good stuff.  Books whose aim is to demonstrate
the overwhelming superiority of libertarianism, or anything
else, tend to be dull at best.  They always remind me of EE
Smith's infantile anti-drug universe, complete with the
toilet training imagery.

------------------------------

Date:  31 January 1981 05:06 est
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS  at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  Utopia

I haven't read TVB although it appears to fall into the same
genre as Looking Backward or Walden II or The Republic or ...
It has the same problem as almost all utopian fiction and a good
deal of other fiction (try Norman Mailer or James Michener), it
either lies or has the look of a lie.  It is kind of like those
architectural drawings of buildings in vitro (so to speak) or
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea with its sinking icebergs and
as such is vaguely unsatisfying (albeit "pretty").

As far as restitution based justice goes it is a nice idea and
has been tried in the past and is still used in such matters
as anti-trust law. The division of law into Civil and Criminal
indicates that treating such a crime as murder as a strictly
civil matter of equity had certain problems which remedied by
also making it a trespass against the rights of all (e.g. The
People of the State of XYZZY)

------------------------------

MJL@MIT-MC 01/30/81 13:30:33

While on the subject of DYStopia, has anyone read Yevgeny
Zamyatin's "WE"?

/Mijjill

------------------------------

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 01/30/81 15:50:06 Re: Carl Sagan's Book

If it is about his pearly-white teeth, I'm not buying it.

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jan 1981 12:17:50-PST
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: Ringworld

When the spaceship entered the Ringworld system, it was travelling
at a relativistic velocity, thus requiring a period of time to
decelerate.  The question is this: if the ship entered hyperdrive at
relativistic speeds, then does the ship experience any relativistic
effects while in hyperspace?  As velocity, and therefore the effects,
depends upon the frame of reference, we must first ask what frame of
reference does the ship have while in hyperspace?  If the answer is
none, or the question is meaningless, then how does the ship revert
back to its former frame of reference?  Of course, there is an easy
answer to all of this - there ain't no such thing as hyperspace and
therefore this entire discussion is meaningless and the subject should
be dropped.

------------------------------

Date:  30 January 1981 22:49 cst
From:  VaughanW.REFLECS at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  Ringworld, Rosettes & Relativity

Reflections on whether or not Niven's FTL drive should
work in the "gravity well" of the puppeteer planets:

Why doesn't it work in the gravity well of an ordinary planet
moving at non-relativistic speeds?  Not the Einstein Effect,
Heisenberg Effect, or even the Edison Effect... it's the
LITERARY EFFECT! (What author would want to have to figure
out the consequences of FTL inertialess motorcycles on a
modern society?  And besides, it's a lovely excuse for not
having discovered the basic physics of FTL drives.)

Therefore, to answer the question, we must examine the inter-
action between the Literary Effect and General Relativity.

By inspection, we see that General Relativity either (a) is
orthogonal to literature or (b) is soporific, depending
whether you are reading Misner et al. or Al et al (Einstein,
that is).

A different approach would be to discover the hidden vari-
ables underlying the FTL drive; from these, a model could be
constructed which would lead to a prediction.  (Testing the
prediction is another story.)

Alas, I have been utterly unable to telepathize Niven to
determine those variables, which either vindicates Heisenberg,
or makes me wonder whether Niven plays dice with his universe.
(Raffiniert ist der Herr Niven, aber boeshaft ist Er nicht, to
paraphrase the aforementioned Al).
                        Bill

------------------------------

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 01/30/81 16:17:02

Talking about sleep cycles, I have also heard that people
wake up refreshed if they are coming out of one of the shallow
phases of sleep, and wake up disturbed if pulled out of REM.
Since these states can be identified by alpha wave patterns,
anyone for designing an alarm clock that is guaranteed to wake
you up when you're going to feel good?

These sleep states also occur in regular cycles (c. every 45
min), so at worst, the alarm clock might decide to wake you
up 45 minutes before you told it to.  (These damned modern
appliances...)

     Dan

------------------------------

Date: 28 January 1981 1052-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: The Warriors

I remember when they showed "The Warriors", a movie about
Chicano gangs, in East LA (they only speak Spanish there).
As I recall, there was LOTS of gang violence that could be
connected to the film.  Many theaters refused to show it for
fear of violence, and those that did had big mean guards and
bouncers.  I don't necessarily think that the film should be
censored.  After all, it was the area that it was shown in
that caused the problem.  If you censor this movie, why not
Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, etc.

If porno causes crime (wife-beating, child-molesting, etc),
it's because it triggered a reaction in a sicko.  No good
data exists.  If the goal is to stop the crimes, why not
have some gross invasion of privacy, such as probing every-
one's mind, looking for those with sick tendencies and censor
them.

I agree with the statement that the public knows filth when
it sees it, no matter whether they live in NY or Smalltown.
Of course, their definition of filth may differ.  Whose will
prevail in the locality?

By the way, how did we ever start talking about porno in SFL?
Surely this discussion about censorship, etc belongs in Poli-Sci.

[ FtRI: Poli-Sci is a broad spectrum, digest list which discusses
  political science and current events topics.  Information and
  addition request should be addressed to Poli-Sci-Request@MIT-AI.
                                                           --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date: 29 JAN 1981 1422-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: censorship, again

   I wonder how much you've seen of the really revolting pictorial
pornography of which more and more has become available in the
past decade or so. If you haven't, try taking a look (inside the
stores, the storefront stuff is tamer for legal reasons) in some
large city red-light district; you may be in for a shock.  The
message they carry is considerably more vigorously put than an
ad in the Personals, and certainly more pernicious.
  I would guess that many of the theater owners who declined to
show THE WARRIORS were more worried about what might happen to
their own buildings than about a riot per se.
   I repeat: I haven't seen firm enough evidence to convince me
of this argument, \yet/ (read both screensful of my first msg)
--- but in view of the structure of this society I do not find
such arguments totally groundless.
   I would offer for general consideration the recent case of a
French scholar who was suspended from his post when he claimed
to have proved that the common knowledge that 6 million Jews
were slaughtered under Hitler is false.  He was suspended (not
fired, mind you) and found a number of garden-variety nuts sub-
scribing to his cause, including Noam Chomsky.  I ask whether
this is censorship (though acknowledging that further examination
of his claims would be required) in view of the unscholarly denial
of reality such a claim must involve; would a teacher who espoused
the views of Von Daniken or Velikovsky be treated any more gener-
ously or with any less cause?  The cases are not parallel, but
both involve a balance between reality and what one might desire
of it.
   I would also point out the likelihood that most pictorial
pornography is made without regard to any labor laws or even
basic considerations of safety and humanity of the subjects.
Consider the scene in DEEP THROAT in which Linda is subjected
to a glass dildo --- can you imagine anyone in anything less
than total desperation submitting to this?

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 01/31/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest. It continues
the discussion of the Enterprise's computer in the episode "Wolf in
the Fold". People who are not familiar with this episode may not wish
to read further.


------------------------------

Date: 26 Jan 1981 21:25:26-PST
From: ihnss!karn at Berkeley

Regarding the behavior of the computer in "Wolf in the Fold", I
believe Spock said something like "Computer..This is a Class A1
directive..." or something to the effect before directing it to
"compute to the last digit the value of pi".

All bets on fair scheduling are off when a superuser runs a
computebound job at the highest scheduling priority! (Obviously,
Spock knows the super user password...)

--Phil

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  1-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #28
*** EOOH ***
Date:  1 FEB 1981 1059-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #28
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 1 Feb 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 28

Today's Topics:
                        SF Radio - Star Wars,
 SF Books - Downbelow Station, SF Movies - Resurrection & Dark Star,
            Future - CA Paranoia, Star Trek - The Computer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Jan 81 1045-CST
From: ZELLICH at OFFICE                 
Subject:  SW Radio show ?

Is/was there a radio-show spinoff of Star Wars and/or The Empire
Strikes Back?

For shame, M. stanzel - There are periods in W.A.S.T.E.!  You'd
have people dropping their letters into real dead-letter baskets.

Rich Zellich

------------------------------

Date: 1 February 1981 08:42-EST
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject: Star Wars radio show

According to an article in the most recent Playboy, (as near as I
recall, I don't have it here) USC's radio station is producing a
Star Wars radio show for NPR.  Apparently Lucas is a USC grad, and
sold them the radio rights for $1.  Mark Hamill will play his part,
as will the British actor who plays C3P0.  Alex Guiness, Carie
Fisher, etc., will not be playing their parts though.

------------------------------

ZEMON@MIT-AI 01/31/81 19:43:09 Re:  New C.J. Cherryh book

     Called DOWNBELOW STATION, 432pp and (shriek!!!) $2.75 in
paper. I would buy any one of C.J. Cherryh's books sight unseen,
but in the future I may go broke doing so.  I mean, seriously....

[ Note, DOWNBELOW STATION is one of the Science Fiction Book
  Club's featured selections for April 1981.         --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jan 1981 (Wednesday) 1212-EDT
From: SHARER at WHARTON-10 (Bill Sharer)
Subject: Dark Star's availability

Folks,
     Does anyone out there know if there are any rental agencies
that carry Dark Star?  I think I did see it once listed in one of
the catalogues.

        Bill

------------------------------

Date: 31 Jan 1981 1123-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: RESURRECTION

I just thought that RESURRECTION deserved a mention here.  I saw
the film last night and I suspect there weren't to many people
that weren't sniffling or dry-eyed. Ellen Burstyn was stunning
in her performance as a healer.  The entire film was one of the
warmest and moving films I have ever seen.  I wish film producers
would back more films like this.

I can justify putting this in SFL because it does have "a" special
effect.  I would highly recommend this film and I would like to
hear what others think about it.

Enjoy,      --Bill

------------------------------

Date: 26 January 1981 1107-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: earthquakes

I was home over Christmas and from my reading of the LA Times,
the source of all the noise appears to be a proposed earthquake
standard for old brick buildings (the few that are left in LA).
I believe that it passed the city council.  Most of the noise
occurred when the landlords of the buildings that were going to
have to add reinforcements sent out letters saying that they'd
have to throw the tenants out into the street if the law passed.

I have friends at Caltech, and none of them has mentioned
anything to me about earthquakes.  Most people in LA live
in one-story housing anyway.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jan 1981 14:21:06-PST
From: CSVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: Earthquake Paranoia

RODOF apparently missed the excuse being given for all the
earthquake stories in the papers, which is the apparent cyclical
nature of earthquake recurrance.  Earthquakes along the fault
which caused the SF quake in 1906 run about every 70 to 75 years.
At least that's their excuse.
                Ken

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 01/26/81 10:55:26 Re: Earthquake...

  I recall hearing about this investment newsletter publisher/rumor-
monger that was advising people to sell out, and claimed to have a
date for the earthquake to happen. (Like sometime this spring.)

  As expected the media went gaga over this revelation, and that may
explain the increase in coverage.
                                        Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jan 1981 1713-PST
From: Mike Peeler <ADMIN.MDP at SU-SCORE>
Subject: ITS

    Ken, CSVAX.Arnold at Berkeley, invites, "There it is.  Go ahead
and tear it apart."  All right, here goes.  "ITS" is always spelled
I-T-S, but sometimes it has an apostrophe and sometimes not.  The
rule for putting in the apostrophe is not supposed to be, the writer
isn't sure so in it goes.  Its apostrophe signifies that it's a
contraction of two words.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/01/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
continue the discussion of the Enterprise's computer in the episode
"Wolf in the Fold". People who are not familiar with this episode
may not wish to read further.


------------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 1053-PST
From: MERRITT at USC-ISIB
Subject: Re: mass storage in the enterprise computer

Perhaps there wouldn't be disk drives, however throughout the Star
Trek series references are made to 'Computer tapes'. This indicates
some type of mountable devices.  The impression given, however is
something like that of that large Calcomp 'Magtape jukebox' device,
since there is never any mention of any human actually mounting
these tapes.

The series spoke of a microcircuit which long-ago had replaced the
transistor (I don't recall the exact episode). If you remember, the
series preceeded the IC by a few years.  Crystals were an idea used
by the Superman movie, and probably elsewhere (though I havn't seen
any others). I don't think that they appeared in Star Trek as memory.
The only crystals I was aware of in the series was the Dilythium
(?sp?) used for some sort of fuel process.

					<IHM>

------------------------------

Date: 29 Jan 1981 05:27:01-PST
From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley

I tend to think that comparison of the STAR TREK computers to
current technology is a futile effort.  If we attempt to discern
the nature of the Enterprise's computers from bits and pieces
given to us over the entire series, it is possible to come to
the conclusion that they are biological, not electromechanical,
in nature.  There is at least one episode (whose name I forget)
wherein an experimental portable computer is based on a cat-
brain, thus the concept of biocomputers has certainly not
escaped CS-types in the STAR TREK universe.  If we allow the
cat-brain prototype to be an experiment in miniaturization of
(rather than first use of) biocomputers, then we can consider
the main Enterprise to be a biological device, hence its pre-
dilection for being "taken over" by living entities.  Going
further, if we consider the Enterprise computer as an aggre-
gation of semi-independent entities more or less similar in
function to the various parts of a current computer, then it
is possible to force an invading consciousness from part to
part until it is expelled.  How these parts were
created/obtained I leave to debate!

Byron Howes, University of North Carolina

[ The episode with the "'cat-brain' biocomp" was entitled MIRI.
                                                         -- RDD ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  2-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #29
*** EOOH ***
Date:  2 FEB 1981 0832-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #29
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 2 Feb 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 29

Today's Topics:
SF Radio - Boogie-Woogie to the Stars, SF TV - Outer Limits Question,
  SF Books - Ringworld, SF Movies - Outland & Computer/Action Films,
      Media - 3M Co. Hires the Dorsai, Spoiler - Altered States
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  1 Feb 1981 1544-PST
From: Dave Dyer <DDYER at USC-ISIB>
Subject: ZBS media address [see SFL V3 #27]

 ZBS
 R.D. # 1
 Fort Edward, New York
                12828

------------------------------

Date: 23 January 1981 1406-EST (Friday)
From: Joe Ginder <Joseph.Ginder at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  Outer Limits episode

    I recently watched an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Guest"
which did not seem to appear on Lauren Weinstein's episode guide.
It was about a guy who finds an OLD man alongside a road and stops
to help him.  He ends up going up to a large gothic-style house
and being trapped inside by an alien who is reading human minds
in an attempt to discover the "equation" of human thought and
thereby uncover the ultimate destiny of mankind.  It seems that
time (or at least aging) stops when one is inside the house and
the old man had left and immediately attained a physical condition
"normal" for his age (120 yrs).  Is this one of the episodes in
the guide appearing under a different name, or an episode not
listed in the guide?  The only episode whose description appeared
even remotely close to this was "The Form of Things Unkown".

------------------------------

Date:  1 February 1981 1244-EST (Sunday)
From: R.Kamesh <Kamesh.Ramakrishna at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  The problem with Niven's universe

The problem with mixing FTL and STL travel is not so much
the mechanics (Kapitan - we haf ofershot ze gravity vell!
De-accelerate main drive!)  but the easy acceptance of
both kinds of travel and an Einsteinian universe.

Lets assume that FTL is non-relativistic, i.e., no differences
in time rates are experienced by the travelers and the ones
who stay at home.  However, STL in Niven's universe is still
relativistic; or, at least, he doesn't reject it.  So the few
days that Louis Wu and friends spend on the puppeteers home
worlds (speeding just a fraction below the speed of light),
corresponds to some years back on Earth (shades of faerie!).
This would tend to make communication between the puppeteers
and the rest of the universe a somewhat difficult event.
(Heinlein's "Time for the Stars" had the right idea about
the difficulty of getting telepathy to work between relati-
vistically moving frames).

Kamesh

------------------------------

JGA@MIT-MC 01/31/81 14:06:37 Re: Outland

Does anyone know anything about an upcoming sf flick called
Outland?  I saw a preview last night when I went to see
Altered States.  It appears to be of the sex/violence/neat
hardware genre.

------------------------------

Date:  1 February 1981 17:41 est
From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Nasty things to do to peripherals

 The worst thing I have ever seen done to a peripheral was
done as an exit stunt by a fired computer operator.  He glued
a small magnet to the tape guide of a tape drive at the point
where the tape left the vacuum column AFTER passing the tape
head.
 Note the beauty of this.  Any tape could be written and the
readback check would work.  Any tape could be read correctly
(once).  And, the diagnostic test apparently never wrote far
enough down the tape to push the checked area of tape out of
the vacuum column, so it passed.  The operator did this to
two out of 12 tape drives.
 I never did find out how much of the library got wiped, but
it took over a month to find the problem.

------------------------------

Date: 1 Feb 1981 11:07:53-PST
From: sdcsvax!davidson at Berkeley
Subject: Product endorsement by Gordon R. Dickson

    Looking through my February copy of Byte, I was caught
by an advertisement featuring Gordon R. Dickson endorsing 3M
floppy disks.  Dickson is pictured leaning over a collection
of his books in hardback holding one of the disks with a spacey
backdrop (perhaps a cover from one of his books?).  At the top
of the page in great big letters is the endorsement:

    "My computer helped me write /The Final Encyclopedia.\
     I wouldn't trust anything less than Scotch Brand
     Disketts to make a long story short."

The /\ indicate underlining.  Is this the first time an SF
author has endorsed a major product like this?  I discount
Arthur Clarke's TV ads for Ma Bell, since he is not really
endorsing them, just giving an interesting talk.

Greg

P.S.  DON'T buy Scotch brand diskettes.  They'll gum up
      your heads just like Scotch tape.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/02/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It talks
about the ending of Altered States.  People who are not familiar
with this movie may not wish to read further.


------------------------------

JGA@MIT-MC 01/31/81 14:06:37 Re: Outland and Altered States (spoiler?)

Does anyone know anything about an upcoming sf flick called Outland?
I saw a preview last night when I went to see Altered States.  It
appears to be of the sex/violence/neat hardware genre.

As far as Altered States goes, I really got off on the heavy use
of bass and subsonic tones in the soundtrack.  Is this a trend
towards increasing use of subliminal techniques in movies?  Does
anyone think that movie-makers will go to increasingly greater
lengths to get "gut reaction"?  (Pun intended - it's known that
certain frequencies in the 4-10 Hz range stimulate the peristaltic
action of the gut.)

The plot?  Eh.  While I identified with the protagonist during
the movie, I realized, shortly after it was over, that Altered
States has a decidedly anti-science bent to it.  Consider the
ending - everyday love triumphs over the forces of the universe.
Even better, consider every scene where something unexpected
comes out of the tank in the light of the quote "opening up
Pandora's box".  Hell, if I looked like she did in the final
scene I'd stay like that, and get myself a season's ticket to
Spit.

Still, I'd see it again.  Altered.

John.

[Footnote: Spit is a Boston punk club.]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  3-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #30
*** EOOH ***
Date:  3 FEB 1981 0652-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #30
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Tuesday, 3 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 30

Today's Topics:
            SF Movies - Outland & Raiders of the Lost Ark,
 SF TV - Outer Limits & Feb NOVA Schedule, Star Trek - The Computer,
                   Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 02 Feb 1981 0931-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: Outland  

Outland is about a mining colony on one of the moons of Jupiter. It
involves a murder there and the subsequent investigation by the local
marshal (Sean Connery, not Matt Dillon).  The producers claim that
there is not a ray gun in sight, in an attempt to convince us that
this is "respectable" science fiction.  Maybe it will be.  (Incurable
Optimism is a terrible thing.  Help stamp out IO in your lifetime.
Send your dollars to......) Outland will be released (so they say)
in May 1981.

-- Tom

------------------------------

Date:  1 Feb 1981 at 2024-PST
From: Mike at Rand-Unix (Michael Wahrman)
Subject:  Raiders of the Lost Ark

From an unnamed source within Lucasfilm (who probably doesn't
care one way or another but is not easily locatable so I can't
ask) a brief description of the new Spielberg/Lucas collaboration:

Teeshirt description:

     A Nazi flying wing (ala Northrup) being lassoed by a cowboy.

Cast:

     Nazis, Israelis, and Cowboys (chief cowboy is our own Han Solo).

Plot:

     Would you believe that the Nazis have discovered that if they
can find/get the Lost Ark of the Covenant (was this lost when the
Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem?  I can't remember.) then
they will have special dominion over the world.

The Israelis aided by some cowboys set out to stop them and save
the world.

My friend said that this movie is a fantasy.  I asked him how he
knew...

Michael

------------------------------

Date: 2 Feb 1981 1605-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: missing OUTER LIMITS episode

Egads!  Gasp!  Wheeze!  Shudder!  It's true.  I apparently DID
miss one episode when I compiled the original episode guide.
Sigh, I must be getting old, those neurons just don't fire like
they used to.

Oh well.  I have checked back with my original sources and picked
up the original date that "The Guests" was aired.  Actually, as
soon as I was reminded of the episode, I remembered all of the
plot details instantly -- somehow I missed it when I wrote up the
guide.

"The Guests" aired on 3/23/64.  Chronologically, it fits between
"The Mutant" and "Fun and Games".  It is a good episode.

I have updated the semi-famous OUTER LIMITS EPISODE GUIDE to
include this episode.  While I was at it, I also cleaned up a
number of other entries and added an update or two.  The Guide
has been reformatted since many of the "old" SF-LOVERS recipients
got their copies, so many of you may want to pick up a fresh copy
so your collection is "up-to-date".  I have forwarded a copy to
our Moderator, who will presumably make it available via the usual
techniques.  I do not know what the access filenames will be at
this time, but I am sure we can rely on a note from the Moderator
when they become available (hopefully within a week or so).

Sorry for the omission...

--Lauren--

[ For those who can't wait, I append Lauren's description of The
  Guests.  The revised version of the OLEG will be available soon
  from a computer near you.

  The Guests                         (3/23/64)        ***
     A drifter enters a gothic mansion where time stands still
     and space is twisted in bizarre fashions.  The occupants
     of the mansion are a strange collection of persons who do
     not age so long as they remain within the grounds of the
     building.  The entire group is lorded over by a rather
     intellectual, "globular" alien, who seeks the "missing
     factors" to solve the "equation of the human condition".
     This is a very fine episode: brooding, atmospheric, and
     even thought provoking at times.
                                                          --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date:  2 Feb 1981 1108-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: NOVA (PBS) for Feb.

* NOVA for February *

Feb 3   "The Big IF" is interferon -- purported by some to be a
        wonder drug.  This program seeks the answer in London,
        Stockholm, Houston, San Francisco, and New Haven.
Feb 10  "Anatomy Of A Volcano" accompanies an international
        team of geologist to Mt. St. Helens for an in-depth
        look at the effects of it's eruption.
Feb 17  "The Science Of Murder" looks at the job of forensic
        scientists and law enforcement professionals.
Feb 24  "The Malady Of Health Care" compares the U.S. and
        British methods of health care delivery.

------------------------------

KWH@MIT-AI 02/02/81 08:19:43

Maybe the Cat Brain computer in MIRI was not a computer built
around the brain of a cat (a type of cyborg), but instead, a
medical computer which has the general "power" to classify the
brain of a cat. I.e., it refers not to the construction of the
computer, but to its medical computing power - (That it can
take a cat's brain, classify, analyze, and taxonomize (??) it
to the maximum degree.  (Of present [23rd century] technology).

------------------------------

FAUST@MIT-ML 02/02/81 13:57:11 Re: Enterprise Computer and things

     I doubt that the enterprise has any biological component,
although I certainly agree that it is made up of several "distri-
buted" units (I mean there must be SOME part of it controlling
the heater vents).
     There is another episode of Star Trek that intimately involves
the computer that noone has mentioned lately.  It is the episode in
which an experimental computer is installed aboard the enterprise
which has been "imprinted" with the designers engrams (whatever that
might mean).  Then the computer does several stupid things like blow
up a ship or two seemingly just for the hell of it.  At this point,
of course, Kirk wants to pull the plug.  However, the designer (who
is aboard the Enterprise) claims that it would be a mistake to pull
the plug and that the computer should be considered to be "only a
child" (albeit a very powerful one) which needs more time to mature.
     Anyway, the point is: what does this tell us about the nature
of Enterprise computer?  My guess is that the computer is a central
intelligence (ala HAL) connected to the 22nd century equivalent of
the DEC unibus.  It can delegate responsibility for things to other
"slave" units, but the main brain is all in one box (with spare
parts for fault tolerance, of course).
     Naturally, this entire discussion is ludicrous.  The
obvious real answer to this (and almost every other discussion
of this type that comes up in this list) is that the creators
have not invested one tenth the time thinking about this as we
have.  Don't expect complete consistency within a single episode.
But expecting consistency across several YEARS of episodes?!?
COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS!  This especially applies to all the
STAR WARS discussions that have continued ad naseum.
     No offense to anyone.  Note that these observations have
not kept me from including my four cents worth (inflation).
Speculating about what the author intended is half the fun
of SF.  After all, the author is only there to STIMULATE our
imagination, not DETERMINE our thinking.

	Peacefully,
	Greg

------------------------------

Date:  2 Feb 1981 (Monday) 1010-PST
From: DWS at LLL-MFE
Subject: ITS cheap shot

Gee, they sure look like dashes to me.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/03/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It offers
further arguments on the nature of the force.  People who are not
familiar with the Star Wars series may not wish to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 29 Jan 1981 08:52:22-PST
From: CSVAX.drb at Berkeley

[Long message on the force - spoiler warning for SW and TESB.]

I believe "the force" has been used to denote both a fifth basic
force of physics [or perhaps an entropy-decreaser], as well as
the medium through which it is transmitted.  The force is created,
we are told by Yoda, by all living things.  I assume this refers
to the medium and potential energy, for even non-living things,
such as the rock Luke lifts, seem to create a disturbance which
can be sensed through the force.  The light and dark sides are
analogous to empathy and emotion, but it is life rather than
feeling that creates the force.  When Obi-wan senses the death
of a planet [Alderran?] he is sensing the loss of life more
than the suffering at the last moment, I believe.  Luke creates
a larger disturbance in the force than a normal human being
because his life force is more closely coupled to the force
than most people's, not because he is a hotter-blooded lover.

The primary good use of the force is to sense things.  One may
sense objects, living beings, death, evil presence and intent
[as when they near the dark star], the exact position of a small
hole [as when Luke destroys the death star], an offending "zap"
[as when Luke defends himself from the droid battle-exerciser
while blindfold], etc.  A Jedi trains himself to sense the force
acutely, and allow it to flow directly to his reflex responses,
rather than always thru his brain.  This is the only way to be
quick enough to block a "bullet" or accurate enough to hit a
small hole.  To do this, however, one must attune one's whole
being to a position of relaxation and what-not consistent with
Yoda's somewhat Zen-like philosophy.  One lifts a very heavy
object by composing one's mind to the point where it tells the
body to automatically react to sensing the object by lifting
it.  The mind itself is not strong, fast, or accurate enough
to be allowed to play a more direct role.

Which leads us to the dark side.  The body will never instinc-
tively react by slitting someone's throat or causing great fear,
especially at a distance to one who is not even an immediate
threat.  A Jedi has no compelling hold over other people and
cannot command armies by force or fear, for these goals require
the action of the mind.  The dark side of the force consists of
its ability to affect the real world by force, rather than simply
transmitting information.  One who succumbs to the dark side is
obsessed with his ability to kill, mislead, scare, and generally
dominate other beings.  He appears to be stronger than a Jedi,
for he harms other people more.  His usage is external and
forceful, rather than sensory and knowledge-obtaining.

In a one-on-one fight I must bet on the Jedi.  He is allowed
to sense every blow before it lands, draw strength from the
force instinctively when needed, and as long as he keeps the
instinctive sense-react lines open and attuned to his higher
ends, i.e. as long as his mind remains composed, there is just
no way to injure him.  A dark-side devotee will not sense as
quickly, will want to crush others rather than defend himself,
and is just not invulnerable.  He can manipulate incredible
numbers of slaves, but cannot harm a single Jedi.  [So how
DID Luke's father die?]  A last point: Obi-wan misleads a
soldier and kills some civilians, but it is all done through
the instincts of righteousness and self-preservation.  Also,
the incident in the cave shows what can happen when an
almost-Jedi loses his composure.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  4-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #31
*** EOOH ***
Date:  4 FEB 1981 0655-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #31
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Wednesday, 4 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 31

Today's Topics:
                        Queries - SF Book Club,
    SF Books - WE & Canopus Series & Utopian/Dystopian SF & Orphan
    & Ringworld, SF Radio - Boogie-Woogie to the Stars & Star Wars,
  SF Orgs - Palo Alto SF Readings, What Happens at a Con? - Boskone,
   Physics Imaginary - On the Solubility of Submarines in Seawater,
                    Spoiler - Ringworld Engineers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 3 Feb 1981 11:23:28-PST
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: SF Book Club Lapse

Can anyone shed some light on the following?  Several months ago
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a featured selection.
I promptly returned the slip, indicating that I wanted the book.
However I haven't yet received it.  (I had to borrow a copy.)
Did this happen to anyone else (did SFBC run out) or did just
my book disappear?
		David Ungar

------------------------------

Date: 03 FEB 1981 2317-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Zamyatin's WE

  I read it a couple of years ago --- definitely \not/ the thing
to dip into on a rainy day.  (It had been suggested for a course
in SF that I was preparing to teach; I decided it was much too
heavy for a summer course running at twice the normal speed.
Considering how little some of the students read anyway, that
was probably a good idea.

------------------------------

Date: 03 FEB 1981 2315-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Lessing's Canopus

  I've seen at least one review which blasted the latest book
(and sideswiped the others) on the grounds that it was just
plain terrible, endless talk attempting to conceal the fact
that she has almost nothing to say, without slighting it on
account of genre.

------------------------------

Date: 3 Feb 1981 15:43:26-PST
From: CSVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: Lies in novels
To: SAS@SAI-Prime

You should read U.K. LeGuin's forword to Left Hand of Darkness,
in which she propounds the statement that all novels are lies
designed to transmit the truth.  This was added to later
paperback editions of the book.
		Ken

------------------------------

Date: 23 January 1981 0551-EST (Friday)
From: R.Kamesh <Kamesh.Ramakrishna at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  The Orphan by Robert Stallman

I read this book a year or so ago and liked it.  I saw it again
recently and wondered if the author is RMS of MIT?

Kamesh

[ RMS@MIT-AI == Richard M. Stallman.  -- RDD ]

------------------------------

Date:  3 Feb 1981 2341-EST
From: G.Nessus at MIT-EECS (Doug Alan)
Subject: Re: The problem with Niven's universe

     It seems to me (though I could be wrong because I can't check
it in my Ringworld because a friend `borrowed' it) that even though
the Puppeteers were travelling at relativistic speeds, they were not
travelling at anywhere near 90% the speed of light.  And even if they
were travelling at 95% of the speed of light, their time would only
be slowed down by about a factor of three.  And if they happened to
be racing along at 99% of the speed of light, their time would be
slowed by only a factor of seven.  The few days spent by Lewis Wu
on the Puppeteer's home planet were at most a few weeks on Earth
and were most probably only 2 X a few days -- certainly not years.
     Even a difference in time passage of factor two or three could
cause problems in communication, but after the Puppeteers headed for
the Clouds of Magellan, they rarely communicated with anyone anyway.

					-- Doug Alan

------------------------------

Date:  3 Feb 1981 1023-PST
From: Mark Peairs <csd.peairs at SU-SCORE>
Subject: ZBS Media productions

  For Stanford-area SF-lovers, KCSM radio (FM 91.1) has been
broadcasting "Stars n' Stuff" at 11 P.M. on Sunday nights. I
recommend it for inspired craziness and some really atrocious
puns.  Past shows have included "The Giant Tongue that ate
Tucson", and further adventures of their perennial straight-
man Jack Flanders, on a very cosmic journey to steal the
Universal Field Theory from the Archives of Human Knowledge.
Unfortunately Jack drops the box, and when it's finally opened,
some of the particles don't seem to belong . . .  I'm not sure
how many more episodes are left to run in this series, but if
you call the radio station they will send a program guide
(free). 
Naomi Goodman c/o Mark Peairs

------------------------------

Date: 03 FEB 1981 2313-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: STAR WARS on radio

  The agglomeration of information from several different sources
seems to suggest that NPR will be relaying a BBC serialization
of STAR WARS starting in March.  (I say relaying because several
sources have described it as being live-by-satellite from London,
which will allow it to be broadcast in stereo, unlike (I think) the
long-distance bands which allow the BBC to cover the globe directly
(I seem to recollect that anything with a long enough wavelength
to be reflected by the atmosphere has too low a frequency to carry
stereo information via currently commercialized technology; given
the announcements that the FCC is considering which AM stereo
broadcast standard to approve, this may no longer be true.)
  The show being a USC production sounds like someone's pipe dream.

------------------------------

Date:  3 Feb 1981 1510-PST
From: Rose at OFFICE  
Subject: Attention: Science Fiction Readers and Writers

Prometheus is an organization in Palo Alto that centers on
psychodrama but also promotes many other community activities,
including readings of fiction and poetry.  They are interested
in seeing whether there is an audience for science fiction and
fantasy readings.  They have scheduled an evening of science
fiction readings for March 21 in downtown Palo Alto.  Three or
four people will read and there are still open slots.  Writers
who would be interested in reading should send me a message or
call Dirk van Nouhuys at (408) 996-1010, before February 13.
Thanks!

-Caroline Rose 
 Tymshare

------------------------------

Date: 03 FEB 1981 1027-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Boskone attendance

   -----
   From: JMTURN at MIT-AI (James M. Turner)

   Shade and Sweet water to you,
      If I just show up at BOSKONE, will I end up being
      turned away? I.E. has the 3000 person limit been
      hit, or is it expected to by the Con?  Will being
      a people-mover get me in if there's no room?
					James Turner
   -----

   It is extremely unlikely that anyone will be turned away at
the door from Boskone.  We currently have 1000 preregistered
and we have never had more than 535 of our attendees register
at the door; often at-the-door registration has been as low
as 40% of the total.  We put up this limitation to encourage
people to register early, so we would have some warning if
there were to be the kind of explosive growth there has been
in some previous years, and because several otherwise enjoyable
East Coast cons in recent years have suffered from severe over-
crowding; 3000 is the number of people we felt we could handle
comfortably without using the Hynes Auditorium, which would be
far too expensive for a Boskone.

						Chip

------------------------------

Date:  3 February 1981 0253-EST (Tuesday)
From: Mike.Fryd at CMU-10A (C621MF0E)
Subject:  Submarines

It's late at night and a local TV station just ran a US Navy
propaganda film about Our Wonderfull Oceans.

My roommates and I watched and noticed that they seemed to be
trying to down play the submarine and to promote manned deep
dives and diving bells.

The only reason for downplaying submarines that we could think
of, is that the oceans must have so many subs that they are
nearing their saturation point.  Too many more subs, and they
might start to precipitate out.

Does anyone have any data on just how many subs are out there,
and how many it would take to make a saturated solution?

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/04/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It raises
a question about Ringworld Engineers.  People who are not familiar
with this novel may not wish to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 27 Jan 1981 13:36 PST
From: Kyle.ES at PARC-MAXC

In "Ringworld Engineers" why, after the Hyperdrive was destroyed,
didn't the Puppeteer signal for help with a Hyperwave transmission?
He could have moved the ship out of the singularity of the Ringworld
star to transmit using conventional drive.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  5-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #32
*** EOOH ***
Date:  5 FEB 1981 0644-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #32
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 5 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 32

Today's Topics:
        SF Books - Seeking Sword, SF Movies - Altered States,
  SF Radio - Star Wars, SF TV - KQED and Dr. Who, Future - What if?,
  What Happens at a Con? - Boskone, SF Orgs - Menlo Park SF Readers,
                   Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

KLH@MIT-AI 02/04/81 21:21:25 Re: Query re "Seeking Sword"

     Okay, here's a tough one.  There is a book by one Jaan
Kangilaski called "The Seeking Sword", in which the protagonist
uncovers a great many historical references to the "sword" in
question.  What I'm wondering is whether any of those references
are based on fact; that is, did the author take them from actual
accounts, or are they all completely fictional?  (I'm not sure
which to hope for).  And who is Kangilaski?
     Normally a book like this (garish cover and all) isn't
likely to interest me, but I wound up being rather impressed.
It's not fantasy, really.  I don't think I would read it again
since the suspense is gone, but it's better than a lot of other
junk on the shelves.

------------------------------

Date:  4 Feb 1981 1730-PST
From: Vittum at OFFICE  
Subject: Altered States Review

Recently saw the movie "Altered States", and felt that, although
the visual effects enhanced the tone, the acting credible, and
the cinematography as a whole was very well done - that the last
5 to 10 minutes were so OVERDONE as to destroy and overshadow
any laudable features of the film!  I left the theater shaking
my head and thoroughly understanding why the screen writer
chose to take his name off the credit list.  Proposal - anyone
interested ought to write in with their own idea for a more
appropriate ending ...nothing could be much worse!
           Pam Vittum

------------------------------

RWK@MIT-MC 02/04/81 09:26:22 Re: pipe dream

Well, if USC's version is a pipe dream, then Playboy wasted an entire
page describing a pipe dream as if it were already in progress.

1)  According to the Playboy article, Lucas sold the radio rights
    to Star Wars for $1.  I guess it would be possible this wasn't
    an exclusive license, or the laws in Britain may be different.
2)  Playboy included a photograph of Hammill and others that sure
    looked like they were recording in a radio studio.
3)  Hammill, et al, are being paid.  Playboy says where the money
    comes from and the amount, but its been a couple days since I
    looked at it.
4)  Playboy includes an interview with Hammill.

If you still think this is a pipe dream, I'd suggest you look at the
Playboy article yourself.  Does anybody on this list ever listen to
KUSC?  Or anybody on the West Coast volunteer to contact them to find
out the schedule, etc.?

------------------------------

Date: 4 Feb 1981 14:17 PST
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Dr. Who Outage --- Don't panic; reverse the positronic flow!
Reply-To: Brodie

KQED San Francisco has preempted Dr. Who for this week and the next;
however, it will resume Wednesday, February 18, at the normal time of
8 p.m.  KQED's PI director assured me that, while she "can't believe
somebody actually watches that show --- I bet you like Monty Python,
too" --- KQED has the rights to 98 big episodes and is likely to
show them all.

        Richard Brodie

------------------------------

Date: 03 FEB 1981 2322-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: farsighted business?

  There's been a certain amount of talk recently about the fact that
businesses seem unwilling to keep up support for anything that isn't
paying off over the current quarter.  I grant that starting a line
may not be the same as continuing one, but it's worth noting that
not everyone is this shortsighted; Bob Guccione announced some time
ago that he expected it to take 5 years for OMNI to break even.  Now
if we put \him/ in charge of the shuttle project. . . . But can you
imagine what the redesigned shuttle would look like??!?

------------------------------

Date: 04 FEB 1981 1707-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Boskone msg

   AARRGGHH!  The NNth corollary to Murphy's law states that the one
remaining typo will be the one which makes the worst hash of the msg.
Specifically, that was supposed to be that Boskone has never had more
than 53 \%/ (per cent) of its attendees pay at the door, not that the
peak at-the-door registration was 535 people.  (Boskone XVI had over
1000 people register at the door --- but it may have been helped by
our being invited to appear on Norm Nathan's midnight talk show on
WHDH-AM two days before the con.)

------------------------------

KLH@MIT-AI 02/04/81 21:07:13 Re: Menlo Park Library fans

     I'd like to hear from everyone who uses the Menlo Park library
as a SF source.  Possibly also the Palo Alto library, although its
selection tends to be much inferior.  If there are enough of us, we
might be able to swing their book purchases towards quality choices,
or just notify each other of new stuff.
     Send replies to me, not SF-LOVERS.  I will re-distribute the
results only to respondents.

--Ken

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/03/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
offer further arguments on the nature of the force.  People who
are not familiar with the Star Wars series may not wish to read
any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 3 Feb 1981 23:34:37-PST
From: ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: nature of the force (ad nauseum)

Drb's contention sounds a bit mainstream to me, but to each
his/her own.  I must protest, however, the idea that a Jedi
who draws from the dark side (Darth Vader, to name names)
cannot harm one who does not succumb to that side of the
force (ObiWan, for example).  ObiWan was killed towards
the end of SW, if my memory serves, and even though he has
mysteriously hovered around like a guardian angel (explain
THAT one in terms of any current explanation of the force),
he is still rather dead.  I still am not sure (maybe I
just didn't read carefully enough) how DRB would explain
the lifting of the rocks and R2D2 in terms of detection,
although (s)he explains well enough many other intricacies.
Mind you, I don't claim my hypothesis does any better.  I
hadn't taken into account the detection powers, although
I in retrospect I think it would fit right in.  I just
don't see the dichotomy between dark and right sides to
be as DRB projects them, and I also prefer less obvious
rationalizations of authors' half-baked ideas.  That (not
to mention egotism) makes me favor my theory.  Since DRB
is from Berkely, too, maybe we can have it out in Sproul
Plaza one day, and see who can harness the Force better!
(Better set those light sabres on stun, or am I getting
my space westerns mixed up?)

                Ken

P.S.  I must apologize to the world for that misplaced "'"
      in my original letter, which was kindly pointed out
      by a diligent reader.  Its sometimes hard to get
      ones' punctuation, right isnt' ?it

------------------------------

Date: 4 Feb 1981 16:54:46-PST
From: CSVAX.drb at Berkeley

1.  Obi-wan's "death" consisted of a [well-performed, I thought]
    vanishing trick.  Vader's sword never touched him.  I'm not
    sure whether Obiwan is really still alive or in Jedi-heaven,
    but it was definitely not a conventional demise.

2.  I wonder why Obi-wan or Yoda cannot carry on the battle.  A
    Star Trek episode in which Kirk was split into "good" and
    "bad" halves suggested that we need a little dark side to
    give us drive and authority, but I don't think that's the
    case here.

3.  The force can be used to move objects, as can any "force"
    of physics.  It is ok to use this to supplement one's own
    strength in otherwise normal [good] activities, as this
    merely represents working with the universe, rather than
    against it.  It is "dark" to turn the force created by
    other living beings against them, or to try to eliminate
    that force.  [I admit this explanation is a little thin,
    and am grateful to see my oversights pointed out.  Of
    course, I just blame it on the author's ideas being
    half-baked ...]  Perhaps, after all, the dark side is
    nothing more that the light side + the sins of Lucifer
    [pride first].

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  6-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #33
*** EOOH ***
Date:  6 FEB 1981 0710-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #33
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 6 Feb 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 33

Today's Topics:
      SF Radio - Star Wars, SF TV - Dr. Who, Future - What if?,
    SF Books - Cybernetic Imagination in SF & Ringworld Engineers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 5 Feb 1981 14:55 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SW on KUSC radio:  from the horse's mouth

Angelenos: I just called KUSC.  The 13-week series of 1/2 hour
Star Wars radio episodes begins Sunday 8 March at 6 p.m.  Each
weekly episode will be repeated the following Thursday at
4:30 p.m.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 05 Feb 1981 0931-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: Dr. Who  

Does anyone know how often (episodes/week) Dr. Who is shown in
England?  Having watched the first few episodes shown in San
Francisco, it seems that the show was designed to be seen on a
more frequent basis than it is available here (every Wednesday
from 8:00 pm to 8:20).

-- Tom

------------------------------

Date: 5 February 1981 1554-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: farsightedness

I think that it's probably incorrect that most companies take the
short-term view.  Any computer project these days takes 5 or more
years to do, so you're going to "lose" money on it for at least
that long.  Obviously utilities take even longer views, with 30
year bonds, and 15 years to build a nuclear power plant.

------------------------------

Date:  5 Feb 1981 at 2348-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ MUMBLES AND GRUMBLES ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

         THE CYBERNETIC IMAGINATION IN SCIENCE FICTION,
            by Patricia S. Warrick, MIT Press, 1980.

This has been mentioned a couple times on SF-L, but I am just now
getting around to reading it.  So far (chap. 5) I have found it
even more interesting than any fictional SF I have waiting to be
read.

There are certain parallels between W's approach to the study of
robots and computers in SF and mine of its female protagonists.
She, too, needed to compromise between attempting to deal with
with \all/ the relevant pieces of fiction, vs. an extensive but
selective sample.  She opted to take only short stories which
had been anthologized, while trying "to be more exhaustive in
selecting the novels".

If she had just left it at that, even without stating the
criteria by which her selections were made, one could be more
comfortable with her findings.  Admittedly I would also wish
for specification of what constituted cybernetic SF (e.g., how
important must the robots or computer be to the story; what is
her rationale for including cyborgs when artificial intelligence
is the crucial factor, and then, where is the line between a
human with prosthetics and a cyborg?), but because she says she
"believe[s] that most of the novels about robots and computers
have been included in the study", I am left to wonder just how
widely read she is in the genre, after all.

Scanning the 82 book titles (novels and single-author collections)
in her list covering the period of 1930-1977, I look in vain for
certain expected ones.  Possibly T.J. Bass' cyborg GODWHALE or
Philip E. High's INVADER ON MY BACK and NO TRUCE WITH TERRA's
animal robots might not have fit W's undivulged specifications,
but the latter's MAD METROPOLIS surely would.  If a good ol' ACE-
double hack like High was too obscure, Randall Garrett's UNWISE
CHILD is still a notable omission.  And, especially in view of
her well-known anticomputerism, so is Norton's VICTORY ON JANUS.
And Bayley's SOUL OF THE ROBOT, f'r gosh sakes!  And James White's
SECOND ENDING.  If W intentionally excluded 'plain' bionic man
types like Caidin's CYBORG, but still included machines-plugged-
into-people, like McCaffrey's THE SHIP WHO SANG, where is Laumer's
A PLAGUE OF DEMONS, (or his BOLO), or Koontz' A WEREWOLF AMONG US?
If Berserkers, why not Daleks?

These are lacunae that spring to mind just from looking thru her
list of works covered in the study.  Checking with Nicholls' SF
ENCYCLOPEDIA would reveal a lot more.  Too many, alas, to attribute
as much value to W's study as an SF-fan-&-computer-devotee would
have liked.

                               .......

And speaking of McCaffrey's TSWS, Warrick repeats the common
error of thinking that Helva is a disembodied brain.  W compounds
her mistake by saying such cyborgs' brains "are severed \at birth/
from their bodies".  According to the 1970 Ballantine edition --

     "She lived and was given a name, Helva.  For her first
      3 vegetable months she waved her crabbed claws, kicked
      weakly with her clubbed feet and enjoyed the usual
      routine of the infant."  p. 1
and
     "Most babies survived the perfected techniques of pitui-
      tary manipulation that kept their bodies small, ...
      Shell-people resembled mature dwarfs in size....." p. 2

After all, Niall's compulsion to open Helva's casing would be
worse than ridiculous if all that's there is just a hunk of
gray matter with a lot of wires coming off it!

( Poor Annie!  People are forever whetting their ignorance
  on her stuff.  RESTOREE seems to bear the worst of the
  brunt, getting almost inevitably referred to as a "space
  gothic".  SF readers recognize that it is a romance told
  from the woman's point of view, and have heard that
  "gothic romances" were very popular with ladies, and so
  they put two and two together and get 22 instead of 4.
  Even Nicholls' flubs, referring to it as "the story of a
  young lady brought back from SUSPENDED ANIMATION [his
  emphasis] for dubious purposes".  Maybe in his British
  English that "for dubious purposes" doesn't have the
  implication it does in my American, but the "young lady"
  was \not/ in suspended animation but all too aware until
  being literally skinned alive by BEM's drove her to the
  escape of insanity. )

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/06/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It talks
about the logic of an event in The Ringworld Engineers.  People who
are not familiar with this novel may not wish to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date:  4 Feb 1981 1533-EST
From: G.Nessus at MIT-EECS (Doug Alan)
Subject: Stranded on Ringworld

     Perhaps Hindmost could have sent a distress signal, but it
would have been futile.  Why would the Puppeteers want to spend
a lot of money and risk rescuing a crazy, treasonous, Ex-Hindmost
renegade?  And what sane Puppeteer would go to get him?  Hindmost
would not have sent a signal to Earth because he could not trust
the intentions of Human rescuers.  And what Human would want to
go on a four year trip just to save one Puppeteer, a Kzin, and
one Human.

------------------------------

KWH@MIT-AI 02/05/81 07:01:17 Re: Ringworld Engineers (spoiler)

In reply to Kyle's question, the Hindmost in the Ringworld
Engineers was:

     a) crazy
     b) a renegade
     c) REALLY scared ( Not any of this faked garbage like Nessus
                        pulled - with a note of fear in that
                        luscious carefully concocted contralto.)

     He couldn't call the Puppeteers - He had stolen a ship, kidnapped
a *KZIN*, and endangered the whole puppeteer colony.  His only hope
for being received back was to get the transmuter.  If he called Known
Space, they'd simply be happy to be rid of Louis - he's the only person
outside of the UN who knows there's a Quantum II hyperdrive.  Roughly,
the same goes for Chmee - Chmee mentioned he would have to fight his
son when he got back.  Anyway if he called the Kzinti, he might get
help - a battle fleet of Quantum II ships - who would chase down the
puppeteer exodus right after blasting the hell out of the "Needle".
     There might also be logistic problems which I don't remember,
since I haven't read the book for a year or so.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  7-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #34
*** EOOH ***
Date:  7 FEB 1981 0922-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #34
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 7 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 34

Today's Topics:
SF Music - Filk Books, SF Books - Rare SF Poll & Mirror for Observers
          & Why Computers Will Never Think, SF TV - Dr. Who,
                   Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 02/06/81 23:40:47 Re: Any SF Bay people coming to Boskone?

  We need some Westerfilk books in time for Boskone.  It is not clear
if UPS or the US Snail can get them here by then.  If anyone is coming
from that area, and wouldn't mind a little extra luggage, please send
me a note.
                                tnx,
                                Jeff

------------------------------

Date:  6 Feb 1981 1504-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Favorite rare SF poll

     I am now ready (sorry for the delay) to take a poll of people's
favorite unusual science fiction and fantasy.  The idea, as I said
earlier, is that many people have a few favorite obscure authors and
books, and that SF-LOVERS seems to be an ideal group of people to get
a list of such books from.  Any novel, short story, or series that you
(1) enjoyed reading, (2) think is relatively unknown or obscure, and
(3) think of as science fiction or fantasy, is eligible.  There is no
limit to the number of entries from any one person.  Please mail your
lists to OR.TOVEY@SCORE.  I'd appreciate it if entries included title,
author, information about availability (e.g., whether the book is o.p.
or not), and a \brief/ description of the book (e.g. "An effectively
chilling retelling of a German folk tale -- fantasy"), to the extent
that you can supply this information.  I will probably accept entries
for a month or so, depending on response.  There may be a second part
of the poll to give everyone an opportunity to judge the obscurity of
the works.  (I am relying on the individual judgement of members of
SF-LOVERS, as you can see, both in deciding what "sf" and "fantasy"
books are, and in deciding what is "obscure".  The second part of
the poll would be used only to append other people's thoughts on
the latter.)
                                        Good reading,   --cat

------------------------------

Date: 7 Feb 1981 at 0220-EST
From: RDD at MIT-AI
Subject: A Mirror for Observers

Sometime ago, Steve Zeve asked what you can do for someone you have
turned into a Pangborn fanatic by having them read his classic "Davy".
A recent find in an obscure corner of a bookstore suggests an answer.
Try Pangborn's "A Mirror for Observers".

Several thousand years ago Mars was a dying world.  In order to
survive, the Martians emigrated to Earth.  They built a series
of hidden cities, inaccessible and unknown to us.  And they wait.
Observing us.  Looking for ways to help us reach the ethical level
where our civilizations can merge.  Waiting for us to destroy
ourselves.

In the hands of an unskilled writer, this hackneyed plot becomes
pulp SF at its worst: Mushroom Men from Mars.  Pangborn however,
is a master wordsmith.  Here he has told a rich story of two
Martians.  One an observer.  The other, a dissident, who seeks
the end of our civilization.  Their conflict centers around a
boy who may be capable of leading our ethical revolution.  One
of a few people who may be capable of learning to see in a
mirror for observers.  Recommended.  And the winner of the
International Fantasy Award for 1955.
 
                                                Enjoy,
                                                   Roger

------------------------------

Date:  6 February 1981 2118-EST (Friday)
From: Paul.Hilfinger at CMU-10A (C410PH01)
Subject:  For a good laugh

Take a look at the Dec. 1980 issue of SIGLASH Newsletter (Special
Interest Group on Language Analysis and Studies in the Humanities),
put out by the ACM.  Its one article is titled "The Linguistic
Reason Why the Computer Will Never Think".  The reason?  "semantic
structure has 22 operators while Boolean Algebra has only 3."
Good grief!

--Paul Hilfinger

------------------------------

Date:  6 Feb 1981 at 0913-PST
From: Chesley at Sri-Unix
Subject: Dr. Who

     Several years ago (approx. 5 or 6), the Chicago PBS station
broadcast (I believe) one season of Dr. Who episodes.  They were
shown one per day, five days a week.  Stories consisted of from
four to six episodes, so you got about one story per week.
     It was very nice, and I used to run home every day to catch
the show (which was on at 5:30PM).  I've been wishing ever since
that PBS would start carrying Dr. Who on a more regular basis.
     Whether this is the frequency with which the program is
shown in England, I don't know, but it sure works out nice.
        --Harry...

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/07/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
offers a fresh speculation on the nature of the force, which is
also a comment on the nature of physics in that far away galaxy.
People who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may not
wish to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date:  6 February 1981 19:02 cst
From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  What Happened to Old Ben

It's clear that Obi-Wan Kenobi is still around although he was
neatly chopped in twain by Vader some years back (no, not an
expwess twain).

The reason for this unnatural survival has been variously
attributed to the Force, vanishing acts, etc. - but never to
its correct cause: the Law of the Conservation of Jedi Number.

Like baryon and lepton numbers, Jedi number is conserved - as
witness the name of the Jedi, a plural form of which the singular
is not only nonexistent, but ridiculous.  (Would you believe a
Jedus? Jeda? Jedum?)  Such a linguistic feat is possible only
in the case that there can never be only one of them.

Obi-wan can only pass on to his reward when Luke has been duly
anointed one of the Jedi.  Why else would he (or his probability
function) have pleaded with Yoda to continue Luke's training?

-- Of course, the previous discussion has forgotten that the
Emperor and Vader are clearly anti-Jedi, and consequently the
Jedi number of the universe is zero.  This gives Obi-wan another
chance to shuffle off this mortal coil, by mutual annihilation
with Vader.  Did you ever notice that light sabers are blue-
shifted, while anti-light-sabers are red-shifted?  Clearly a
field for more study.
                        Bill

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  8-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #35
*** EOOH ***
Date:  8 FEB 1981 1206-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #35
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 8 Feb 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 35

Today's Topics:
           SF Books - Downbelow Station & Obscure SF Poll,
          SF Theater - Bus Bozos, Censorship and Pornography
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  7 Feb 1981 2248-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: "Downbelow Station"

Just finished "Downbelow Station" by C J Cherryh, and liked it a
lot. It doesn't have a lot of hardware, but it's well-plotted and
has good characters.  It takes place at a time when interstellar
expansion is well under way.  Although the initial exploration
was done by the Company, an Earthspace-based concern, they became
frightened when intelligent (though non-technological) aliens were
discovered on the first habitable world found, Pell.  They tried to
restrict further expansion, but the outer worlds rebelled, and were
swept up by a gruesome totalitarian regime called Union.  The Company
built a Fleet to battle Union, but after decades of fruitless hit
and run maneuverings, they withdrew their support and retreated from
interstellar space.  The Fleet fought on, raiding supplies from the
colonies/space stations, and replenishing their troops by impressing
crewmen from merchant ships.  They are feared by the Union and the
stations alike, but they continue in their duty.
     The action centers around the station orbiting Pell.  The natives
of the planet are a gentle, hominid-level race.  They are fascinated
by humans and work in the station as manual laborers.  The station
is run by a family called Konstantin, who are determined to protect
the rights of the natives, the neutrality of the station in the
war between Union and Fleet, and in general civilized values in a
universe that is degenerating into barbarism.  However, they are the
last base between Union and Earth and so cannot escape the war.  When
the book opens the Fleet has evacuated the next stations outward and
dumped thousands of riot-prone refugees upon Pell station.  As the
book progresses the situation gets worse and worse.
     This is not a story of sunlight and laughter.  The book is long
(400+ pages), but the plot carries you along relentlessly.  I would
pick a few nits like noting that the accelerations in the battle
scenes are unrealistic or wondering where Union gets its officers
and explorers if it clones all its citizens in birth factories.  The
settings and characters, though, are drawn so vividly that I couldn't
put it down.  I'd give one warning, though.  Like all Cherryh's books
the threads of character and plot are too complex to remain unbroken
if you only read a couple of pages at a time.  Knock off one afternoon
and take it all in a gulp.

------------------------------

Date:  7 Feb 1981 0721-PST
From: Mike Peeler <ADMIN.MDP at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Obscure SF poll

A suggestion to OR.TOVEY@SCORE for his poll on obscure SF: entries
getting lots of votes should be disqualified on the grounds of not
being obscure.

------------------------------

HENRY@MIT-AI 02/07/81 16:50:39 Re:  Speaking of Bozos

"We're all Bozos On This Bus" by the Firesign Theater is full
of references to computers and AI.  The general theme on the
second side is that of a hacker (Clem) who manages to penetrate
the security of the program controlling the simulated world.
Clem figures out how after watching the more naive Barney
discover a bug.

There are verbatim excerpts from the Doctor program (called
"Doctor Memory" and who says things like "I am not sure I
understand you fully"), Lisp error messages ("READ - unhappy
MAKNAM"), PDP-10 operating systems ("SYSTAT up time ..."),
Winograd's SHRDLU program, Multics, etc.

It seems likely that the Firesign Theater must have had help
from somebody in the AI/computer science community in putting
together the record, probably either here at the "grounded
iron gates of the Pneumatic Institute" or among the "SAILers"
in California, though I can't get anybody I know to admit
it.  Does anyone know how they managed to get the background
material for the record?

------------------------------

Date: 5 Feb 1981 0220-EST
From: The Moderator <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - Censorship and Pornography Discussion

The following three messages are the last messages in this digest.
They continue the discussion of censorship and pornography that
has been running in SF-LOVERS.  When the present discussion is
finished, a transcript of it will be provided to the POLI-SCI
mailing list mentioned in SFL V3 #27.

Until then, I will insure that this discussion does not interfere
with other material more directly related to the theme of SF-LOVERS.
In general, messages in the censorship and pornography discussion
will be placed near the end of the digest as a kind of "spoiler
section" so that anyone who is not interested in following it,
can easily avoid it.

As always, questions and comments can be directed to me by
addressing them to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI.

                                                  Cheers,
                                                     Roger

------------------------------

Date:  5 Feb 1981 1705-EST
From: RCLIFFORD at BBNC
Subject: RE: THE WARRIORS

I saw Hank Walker's comment about "The Warriors" this morning. I have
to clarify that The Warriors and the film about the chicano gang in LA
are not the same flick.

     The Warriors is/was a film about gangs in New York. The story is 
based on a 1965 novel of the same name. (I forget, for the moment,
the author's name.) 

     As I remember, the film took a lot of flak because of its
so-called violence. There was a Mass. state senator (Salvo,
DeSalvo, something like that) who demanded the film be banned
because it incited violence. He hadn't seen it.

     I saw it. It was one of the most under-rated, overly publicized
films of '79. The violence never reached the level of being overt or
explicit. The gang-fight scenes were reminiscent of "West Side Story"
rather than "The Dirty Dozen". The fights were gracefully performed
and had a lot of style.

     The film, I think, reminds me of Black Orpheus in its theme.

     Anyway, censoring anything is bad. Censoring something because
you think it is evil is worse.

    By the bye, Hank, the film you are thinking of, I have been told,
is called "Boulevard nights".

    Thanx, if you can help.

Robin (RClifford@BBNC)

------------------------------

Date:  5 February 1981 19:49 cst
From:  VaughanW.REFLECS at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  pornography & censorship

With respect to confiscation of porn films when it seems that
those films are evidence of criminal activity:

(1) Why not use them for evidence?  Wasn't the news film of
    Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald used as evidence
    in his trial?  (I think it was, but could be wrong...)

(2) What does that have to do with confiscation?  What's wrong
    with copying?  And certainly, confiscation of *all* copies
    is ridiculous.  Sounds to me like using a legitimate purpose
    to cover up an illegitimate act.  --Bill

------------------------------

Date: 6 Feb 1981 1550-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: some last words on censorship?

While I don't seek out such places, I have a pretty good feel
of the "highs" and "lows" of pornography in the U.S.  And,
indeed, much of the material is incredibly bad -- too low
for words.  Strange though, it SELLS.  I mean, it's not as
if people were FORCED to go into these stores and buy such
crap.  The very existence of such materials indicates that
there is demand (and a quite substantial demand) for such
items.  My friends, it's good old capitalism at its finest;
a "textbook" example.  And, just for the hell of it, let's
suppose that tomorrow, we declared, "No more pornography!"
 Would it really go away?  Hardly.  All we would succeed in
doing is channeling a larger chunk of funds into the illicit
avenues that thrive on providing, "what the public wants".

All through human history, the "powers that be" have attempted
thought control via various sundry techniques.  One of the most
time-honored is control of information.  But does it really
work in the long run?  Have we succeeded in stamping out heroin
addiction by making it something you cannot legally buy?  How
about marijuana?

Friends, neighbors, countrymen, lend me your ears!  Those people
who would tell you what you can watch, what you can read, or what
you can buy, for the "good of society" are the truly dangerous
persons.  The "band-aid" approach to fixing society simply does
not work. Attempting to suppress those things that substantial
numbers of people really want will not change those people --
but it will change the avenues that the money flows along.

I'll end this here.  But really, does repression of ideas or
desires, for the good of "all", ever REALLY work out in the
long run?

--Lauren--

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  9-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #36
*** EOOH ***
Date:  9 FEB 1981 1102-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #36
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 9 Feb 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 36

Today's Topics:
      SF Books - The Final Encyclopedia, SF Theater - Bus Bozos,
       SF Movies - Altered States,  Censorship and Pornography,
                   Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  8 Feb 1981 (Sunday) 2239-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON-10 (David Rossien)
Subject: THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA

Being a Dickson fan I noted (as did another SFLer) that the
advertisement in BYTE mentions "his latest work is the FINAL
ENCYCLOPEDIA."  Anyone know more about it, like when it will
be available?

------------------------------

Date:  8 February 1981 15:41 est
From:  Margolin.TPSA at MIT-Multics

The Firesign Theatre did have some professional help when they
were making "We're All Bozos on This Bus".  Supposedly, (this
is second hand knowledge) they visited SAIL before making the
record.  They got to see such things as the DOCTOR program,
etc.  Then they incorporated it into the record, with very
good results.

------------------------------

Date: 08 FEB 1981 1340-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: ALTERED STATES

   I haven't seen the movie, and don't intend to until it shows
up at a con (if then) as fanac, 2+ choruses, and crazyBridge
leave little time for entertainment on someone else's schedule;
more to the point, I read the book (from SFBC; allegedly written
before the screenplay by the original screenwriter, namely
Chayefsky) and thought it a second-rate, hackneyed plot (SIMON,
which didn't take such a half-assedly pompous tone, was a far
better movie) with an unbelievably bad ending.  If Chayefsky was
the one who insisted on having his name taken off the credits,
it looks more like a matter of a writer's overgrown ego ("Nobody
messes with my golden words!")  than a supportable critical
judgment.

------------------------------

Date:  8 Feb 1981 1029-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: re: repression and pornography

Just because some people desire something does not mean that it
cannot or should not be suppressed.  A large market exists for
the implements of murder, so by Lauren's argument there must be
a basic human desire for it.  And yet other countries succeed
in `censoring' it far better than the US does.  Markets can be
manipulated, and so can desires.  Pornography is a growth
industry.
     There have been cases of the successful repression of an
idea, though whether everyone benefitted from it is, of course,
open to argument.  Have you ever heard of the Albigensian Heresy,
or the Gnostics?  Probably not, for the Catholic Church utterly
crushed both movements.  On a lower level, a lot of blood sports
have been suppressed, partly through changing mores, but a lot of
it because of humane societies.  Dog vs. rat fights were popular
in Victorian times, but seem bizarre and cruel to us.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/09/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
offer further arguments on the nature of the force.  People who
are not familiar with the Star Wars series may not wish to read
any further.


-----------------------------

TANG@MIT-AI 02/07/81 19:31:02 Re: Nature of the Jedi

CSVAX.drb asked why Ben and/or Yoda don't attack Vader themselves.

     Perhaps TWO Jedi can't overcome Vader & the Emperor, but THREE
(or perhaps FOUR) Jedi could.  And the best way to train a Jedi
is by letting himself get the stuffing knocked out of him a couple
of times.

     So all this is but training for the final showdown where Luke,
Obiwan, Yoda et al face Vader, the Emperor, et al in a Ragnarok.

        Jack

------------------------------

Date: 8 February 1981 09:41-EST
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject: Why anti-jedi light sabers are red, and jedi's are white

Obviously, this is because jedi's are ethically advancing, while
anti-jedi's are ethically receding, relative to the viewer.  The
result is relativistic blue and red-shift.

------------------------------

Date: 5 Feb 1981 14:07:30-PST
From: ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: force, etc.

It was not my contention that there was no difference between light
and dark force.  My idea of the difference was not the use it was
put to, but the part of the universe (good vs. bad) from which one
drew the force to implement one's desires.  This is because it would
seem that Jedi can do the same basic things (most especially use light
sabres).  It would be hard to generalize about the relative powers of
the two sides, since we only have one instance in which two trained
wielders dueled, and that ended ambiguously.
    Yet some difference exists, and I would attribute that (possibly
due to an intense training in modularity) to a power source which
distinguishes between the two, rather than give both light and dark
sides very similar natures with only a few (albeit major) differences.
The advantages of drawing on one side as opposed to the other would
be in the side effects on the wielder, i.e., the dark side would be
the type of power which corrupts, and the light side would be power
that could only be used for good things, and therefore wouldn't
corrupt. (As an amateur political scientist, I might point out that
this sort of power has never manifested itself, and probably can't,
but again, a western is a western, and besides, maybe that is what
all the training is for.)  It is, if I may propose an analogy, sort
of like whether you decide at a dinner party to eat chicken with your
fingers or with a knife and fork.  Both are ways to eat chicken, but
one is more appropriate socially, the other more pragmatic, so you
makes yo' choice, and you takes yo' consequences...

                Ken

P.S.  I might also mention that whether one eats chicken with one's
      fingers or not is probably more important than the Nature of
      the Force, anyway.

------------------------------

Date:  5 Feb 1981 1224-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: The Source of the Force...

If you look very carefully...you can see solar collectors on the
backs of the jedi's heads.  Darth has a battery pack in his helmet.

--Bill

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 10-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #37
*** EOOH ***
Date: 10 FEB 1981 0536-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #37
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 10 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 37

Today's Topics:
                   SF Radio - Star Wars and HGttG,
   SF Books - Veils of Alzaroc & Godel Escher Bach & Human Themes,
  Censorship and Pornography, Star Wars - Nature of the Force & Plot
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 9 Feb 1981 0637-PST
From: ADPSC at USC-ISI
Subject: SW and HGttG on NPR

There is an ad in the March 81 issue of Harper's magazine
concerning the NPR Playhouse.  There will be four different
series, including Star Wars (13 episodes) and HGttG (12 part
series).  This is scheduled for a March debut.  At the bottom
of the page it says "Check local NPR stations for day and
time of broadcast or call NPR toll free (800) 424-2909.
In Washington, D.C.  call 785-5353."

Don

------------------------------

Date:  9 Feb 1981 0939-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: "Veils of Alzaroc"

Fred Saberhagen's latest is a bit of a disappointment.  He sets
up an intriguing situation and then never explains or develops
it.  Alzaroc is a not-quite-planet in orbit around a pulsar and
a black hole.  Every year a veil of stuff exhaled from the two
other members of the system falls on it and isolates anyone on
the planet from the rest of the universe.  They can no longer
leave the planet or make physical contact with anything not
under the veil when it fell.  In fact, people who have had
different numbers of veils fall on them cannot contact each
other.  The more veils that separate people the harder it is
for them to speak or even see one another.
    Well, that's pretty bizarre.  Is there any reason to
believe in it physically?  No.  Saberhagen uses black holes as
magic, saying that the "unimaginable forces" involved somehow
transformed interstellar material into the veils.  Is it used
in some metaphoric way?  Kind of.  One of the subplots is about
a man who returns to a long-lost lover even though sixty veils
now separate them.  At the end of the book though he just takes
off again with some other shiggie without resolving the affair.
Oh well.  It was probably a good short story.

------------------------------

Date:  9 FEB 1981 2158-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Mini-Review of Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

     I just finished Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid;
Pulitzer Prize winner by Douglas R. Hofstadter, Asst. Prof. of
Computer Science at Indiana University.  At 775 pages and with
something like 775 equations, it is a strange candidate for a
Pulitzer, but it deserves it.
     On pages 402 and 403 there is a strange discussion between
Achilles and the Tortoise about an author working on a book where
the author hides the ending.

Tortoise:  You've undoubtedly noticed how some authors go to so
   much trouble to build up great tension a few pages before the
   end of their stories -- but a reader who is holding the book
   physically in his hands can FEEL that the story is about to
   end.  Hence, he has some information which acts as an advance
   warning, in a way.  It would be so much better if, for
   instance, there were a lot of padding at the end of  novels.

     The conversation goes on in the same vein for another
page.  GEB is about self-referential objects, and this section
is obviously a discussion in GEB about GEB.  Taking this to
heart, I FOUND the true ending to the book.  It is on page 18.
If you just read pages 1 through 18 of GEB, you have the whole
message.  The rest of the 757 pages are padding.  Illuminating
to be sure.  But padding.

     Recommended.  (The first 18 pages.)

         Bob Forward

------------------------------

Date:  9 Feb 1981 10:49:36 EST
From: Ward Harriman <harriman at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: And Just What Makes Us Human???

After reading all the discussion of the Ringworld in SFL I was
overcome and decided to read the book.  Although there is much
to consider in the book I found the most interesting to be the
aspect of 'human luck'.  This brought to mind a variety of other
'human' traits which permeate SF-F literature.

For examples:

     1) LUCK as described in Ringworld
        (and in gambling as in Star Trek).
     2) Will to live, love of life. (Star Trek again.)
     3) Humor (Stranger.)
     4) Self-righteousness (Chronicles of T.C.)
     5) Sex and Love (bet you can't name just one)
     6) Boredom (Time enough for Love)
     7) View of Capitalism as a Natural Law.
        (I could say Rand but I'll say TANSTAAFL)
     8) Mortality. (Lord of the Ring)

These are just a few.  I'd love to hear from the rest of you.
What is it that identifies humans in SF-F literature?  How do
authors exploit our views of mankind?  Is it our own view of
humanity that leads us to read SF-F ?

esh

------------------------------

Date: 9 February 1981 1845-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: suppression censorship

The item about the Church suppressing heretic movements doesn't
seem relevant to me today.  It is surely easy to delete whatever
you want from society given the power to go around and wipe
that stuff from peoples minds, or scare them into forgetting.
Luckily we do not live in such a society.  Modern communications
and transportation make total suppression of something next to
impossible.  I don't recall a big campaign to suppress dog-rat
fights.  Perhaps the mores of society simply changed (as they
always have).  This seems to me to be the surest way to be rid
of something.  But to my knowledge, no one has discovered how to
direct society's mores.  They can barely catalog them as it is.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/10/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following two messages are the last messages in this digest.
They offer further arguments on the nature of the force.  People
who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may not wish to
read any further.


-----------------------------

Date:  6 February 1981 18:48 cst
From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  The meta-nature of the Force

We're taking an awfully shallow view of this Force thing, aren't
we?  Why, one might think it was only a movie...

Why believe that Yoda and Obi-Wan (or is that O.B.1) speak for
Lucas?  I really get two distinct messages.

The first message: that of Obi-Wan and Yoda.  They speak for
themselves.  I suppose they believe what they are saying; most
religious types do. And make no mistake - though the Emperor
and Vader may not treat it so, the Jedi (both of them) make
a real religion out of the Force. Why, when Yoda issues a
pronouncement, one expects to hear the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir in the background singing "amen." And his entire tone
of voice changes - when speaking \ex cathedra/, that is.

Unfortunately, as SF-L has been so busy discussing for the
last few weeks, this view of the Force seems to hold a few
inconsistencies - at least, for those used to modern Earthly
religions.  (A Parsi or Manichaean would be more comfortable
with a dualist Force.)

But the inconsistencies are so clear, it's tempting to believe
that Lucas' view is not consonant with Yoda's.

The second message, then: Suppose the Force is a force (small
f)? A natural thing, that arises somehow (from *Life*?) and
can be used by any sufficiently well-trained being.  Suppose
the force isn't "light" or "dark", but can be used for good
or evil indiscriminately.  Suppose the Jedi are that staple
of SF plots - people who misguidedly made a religion out of
something inherently natural.

It makes sense.  The asceticism required of a trainee is
known to evoke mystic or "religious" experiences in mankind.
Why not in muppet-kind as well?  (Or whatever we want to call
Yoda's species.)

Anyway, it's fun to think that Lucas may be giving us a
glimpse of a false religion - and remember that Skywalker, by
the end of TESB, is not yet entirely converted; he may be like
the practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, who accept the
mechanisms of Maharishi's brand of Yogism while rejecting its
religious aspects.

                        Happy speculating,
                           Bill

------------------------------

Date:  9 Feb 1981 1001-PST
From: Tom Spencer <CSD.SPENCER at SU-SCORE>
Subject: TESB spoiler warning

Prediction: Luke will lose his other hand, so Han will have
to use his sabre, and become the Jedi trainee.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 11-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #38
*** EOOH ***
Date: 11 FEB 1981 0703-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #38
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 11 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 38

Today's Topics:
      SF Books - Rare SF & Godel Escher Bach & Veils of Azlaroc,
 SF Mag - Jim Baen ACE and Destinies, Physics Tomorrow - Antigravity,
            Star Wars - Nature of the Force & Alternities
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 1981 1632-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: DNA Cowboys Query

     One entry for the rare-sf poll which was known to be obscure
but not necessarily good is a trilogy by former rock star Mick
Farren: The Quest of the DNA Cowboys, The Synaptic Manhunt, and
The Neural Atrocity.  I like the titles; could someone who has
read the books comment on them?
                                                --cat

------------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 1981 12:50 PST
From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: GEB, an EGB

Any book that wins a Pulitzer Prize for it's first 18 pages
has got to be incredible. I happen to think it WAS incredible,
although I think it is misleading to call the rest of the book
"padding". Many of Hofstadter's most significant ideas were,
perhaps, expounded in the first 18 pages (I don't really accept
that), but the real point of his book can only be grasped on the
meta-level.  And the meta-level can only be grasped after first
reading the book.  Thus, the whole book is really the padding,
and it comes before the real story, not after.

     --  Larry --

------------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 1981 1440-PST
From: CSD.BOTHNER at SU-SCORE
Subject: "Veils of Azlaroc"

To begin with: "Veils of Azlaroc" can hardly be Saberhagen's
latest, since I bought it 1.5 years ago.

I must say that I enjoyed it very much.  Logically/scienti-
fically it may be rubbish, but that seldom bothers me.  There
is a difference between not knowing or caring about scientific
accuracy, and the writing of science fantasy (or whatever you
call it) where an author's goals are completely different.

What I especially liked about "Veils" was its evocative style.
What I like about (what little I have read of) Saberhagen is
his ability to conjure very striking images. In "Veils" the
best part is a couple of interconnected scenes near the end
at the time of the actual veilfall.  I felt this as "Sense of
Wonder" at its best.

                --Per Bothner

------------------------------

Date:  10 February 1981 18:33 est
From:  Janofsky.Tipi at RADC-Multics
Subject:  SF Editors

I just finished the latest issue of Analog and discovered that
Jim Baen is leaving (has left?) ACE and Destinies (sob!) as SF
editor to join "Tom Doherty Associates".  Can anyone clue me in
on who the new ACE SF editor is (will be?) and what TDA is?
                Thanks, Bill J.

P.S. In addition to some pretty good short stories and the
     conclusion of "Shuttle Down" (US Space Shuttle stranded
     on Easter Island) there is an interesting synopsis of the
     latest events in Unified Field Theory work with a little
     bomb in hiding: The lastest math indicates that anti-
     gravity is THEORETICALLY possible.  Hmmmm?  Considering
     that anti-gravity, perpetual motion machines, and FTL
     travel have been theoretically IMPOSSIBLE for so long
     now, maybe we'll see the math basis for an FTL drive in
     the next decade or so??

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/11/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following four messages are the last messages in this digest.
They offer further arguments on the nature of the force and the
Star Wars universe.  People who are not familiar with the Star
Wars series may not wish to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 1981 14:02:43-PST
From: ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: force capitulated

I must bow and desist in the face of superior logic.  Bill
Vaughan's concept of the force as a mysticized natural force is
much more irreverant, and probably more reasonable, explanation
of it all.  My only bone to pick is that he seems to think that
Lucas may be "giving us a view" of a false religion.  I would
contend that Lucas probably hasn't given it any thought at all,
and is probably just using the whole Force bit as a "literary"
device to differentiate the Good Guys from the Bad Guys.  You
are probably giving him a good deal more credit for background
plot development than necessary, considering the movie.

Oh and, yes, Bill, I do believe it is a movie.  I am probably
one of the vanishing breed of mavericks who don't believe that
one day, we too will be whizzing through the sky in miniature
painted models, pushing the special effects sound pedal to make
noises which will later have rays of light or missiles attached
to them, battling the evil hordes wearing molded plastic armor,
and posturing dramatically in front of matte prints.  I personally
believe we will probably end up being the unfortunates \in/ that
molded plastic armor....

                Ken

------------------------------

Date:  9 Feb 1981 at 2319-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ STAR WARS' PENULTIMATE FAN RIDES AGAIN ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ken (ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley) and some of the others currently
engaged in a discussion of the nature of the Force are evidently
new to SF-L since last summer when we had all that confabulation
about TESB and the STAR WARS universe.  Their current discussion
suggests that they would probably enjoy (and gain some enlighten-
ment) reading the compilation Roger made of messages devoted to
the topic.  Meanwhile, old timers will please forgive me any
redundancy as I do my usual nit-picking, but there are 2 errors
in Ken's comment--

    "...My idea of the difference [between the 2 sides of the
    Force] was not the use it was put to, but the part of the
    universe (good vs.  bad) from which one drew the force to
    implement one's desires.  This is because it would seem that
    Jedi can do the same basic things (most especially use light
    sabres).  It would be hard to generalize about the relative
    powers of the two sides, since we only have one instance in
    which two trained wielders dueled, and that ended
    ambiguously."

For one thing, whether or not there is any relation between the
use of the Force and their skill with light sabers, the duel
between Vader and Luke did NOT end ambiguously.  Tho Vader was
initially surprised at the extent of Luke's skill, he had been
patently not extending himself.  But in the 3rd segment of the 
duel (out on the gantry) he attacks savagely and comes off
clearly the victor.  

Secondly, light sabers in themselves have no intrinsic relation
to the Force, but are merely an "old fashioned" kind of weapon,
and not restricted to Jedi use by anything but custom.  The fight
in the cantina would be analogous to one in a \modern/ dive if
a thug would start to draw a gun during an argument, but his
opponent pulled out a sword and slashed even faster.  It was a
situation involving an unexpected, outmoded weapon used with
equally unexpected effectiveness that amazed the onlookers, not
that it was a "magic wand" type of gadget.

[ We indeed have a time ordered collection of all the Star
  Wars material that has been distributed.  It is approx.
  1.2 megabytes in size.  This is somewhat larger than we
  can easily handle.  What I will do is set up transcripts
  of the conversations relevant to the current discussions
  in the next few days.  Arrangements to obtain copies the
  TESB archive per se will be considered individually.
                                                   --  RDD ]


------------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 1981 at 1350-CST
From: korner at UTEXAS-11 

     In light of current speculation about the nature of the
force, a small bunch of us here at UTEXAS have come up with
a novel theory. It seems on a level with current speculation.
     Constant exposure to the force does weird things to your
head.  Witness Yoda who is described in SW12 as a handsome
young man.  Clearly the light sabres were developed to keep
jedi ears down to size (Yoda's been alone too long).  This
also explains Darth's disfigurement (never get an earcut from
too green a trainee).  Different color sabres have different
cosmetic effects.
     Hope that clears up the mystery...

------------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 1981 10:34 PST
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: The meta-nature of the Force
In-reply-to: VaughanW's message of 6 February 1981 18:48 cst

If Obi-Wan speaks for all those who do not speak for themselves,
who speaks for Obi-Wan?

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 12-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #39
*** EOOH ***
Date: 12 FEB 1981 0728-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #39
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 12 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 39

Today's Topics:      Physics Tomorrow - Antigravity & Dean Drive,
                      SF Events - Boskone SFL Party & Calendar,
                           Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 FEB 1981 0821-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Anti-gravity and FTL

     Some forms of anti-gravity and FTL have been theoretically
possible for a long time.  See "Far Out Physics", Analog, August
1975 and its references, especially "Guidelines to Antigravity",
Am. Journal of Physics, Vol. 31, p. 166-170, March 1963, and
"Antigravity", Proc. IRE, Vol. 49, p. 1442, Sept 1961.
     A form of perpetual motion, a perpetually circulating super-
current in a superconducting lead ring was demonstrated decades
ago.  Of course, a perpetual motion machine that keeps on running
while you extract energy out of it is still impossible (but that
isn't because the backyard inventors aren't trying.)

     Bob Forward

------------------------------

Date:  11 February 1981 13:19 est
From:  Janofsky.Tipi at RADC-Multics
Subject:  Re: Anti-gravity and FTL

OOOPS! I stand corrected. (I shouda known better than running off
at da mouf' before doing my homework!) Now, is it possible that
the backyard inventors haven't announced their successes 'cause
they can't navigate back from the first trial run of their FTL
drive??
 Speaking of homework, does anyone on SF-L have recent info on the
Dean Machine, Davis Mechanics, and inertialess drives in general?
                Bill J.

------------------------------

Date: 11 FEB 1981 1026-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Dean Drives

The last good summary is G. Harry Stine's article, UPDATE ON THE
DEAN DRIVE, in the June 1976 Analog.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Feb 1981 2317-EST
From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: BOSKONE SF-L party.

If a Bostonish perchild is willing to co-ordinate, I am willing
to supply a room for a party.  (I would have offered before, but
I didn't really think about until a day ago and in my state of
creeping senility I tend to forget to do things, like sending
this).

Only problem is that I haven't the faintest idea what room I
will be in, but it will be a small room.

        steve z.

[ We resolved the room number problem at WORLDcon by posting an
  inocuous message with the room number on it on the Con Bulletin
  Board.  I would suggest doing this in the same way.  What is
  needed now is a time (Saturday evening?) and several volunteers
  for refreshments...                                     --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date: 11 Feb 1981 15:45 PST
From: Richard R. Brodie <Brodie at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: Calendar of Science Fiction Events

Here is the SF-Lovers event calendar. If you have information about
any events you would like to see added to the calendar, or are
associated in some way with one of the listed events and would like
to contribute, please send mail to Brodie at PARC-MAXC.

                 ------------------------------

               Calendar of Science Fiction Events
                     As of February 11, 1980

                 ------------------------------

DUN DRA CON VI, scheduled for February 14-16, 1981, has been
cancelled.  There will probably be a DUN DRA CLONE over Labor
Day weekend.

                 ------------------------------

     February 12-16, 1981   (Southern California)
AQUACON. Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, CA ($56 single). PO Box 815,
Brea, CA 92621.

     February 13-15, 1981   (Massachusetts)
BOSKONE XVIII. Pro GoH: Tanith Lee; Official Artist: Don Maitz.
Sheraton-Boston ($57/single, $69/double). Cost: $15 to N.E.S.F.A.,
Box G, MIT Branch P.O., Cambridge MA 02139. Films, program,
seminars, art show, hucksters room, filksinging, games, costume
party, Glamor and Sparkle. Info on dealers' tables and art show
is available; dealers' room will probably be larger than in past
years as we now have more of the hotel. Registration limit of
3000. (We aren't happy about the room rates either, but there
isn't a usable hotel with significantly better rates.)
SFL liaison: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock).

     February 14, 1981   (Florida)
STONE HILL LAUNCH II. Ann Morris, 1522 Lovers Lane, Riverview,
FL 33569.

     February 20-22, 1981   (Illinois)
CAPRICON I. Holiday Inn, Evanston, IL. GoH: Terry Carr;
FGoH: J.R. & Mary Jane Holmes. Box 416, Zion, IL 60099.

     February 21-22, 1981   (Southern California)
THIRD ANNUAL J. LLOYD EATON CONFERENCE. Science Fiction and Fantasy
Literature. University Club, UC Riverside, Riverside, CA. Leslie
Fielder.  University Library Room 120, Box 5900, Univ. of California,
Riverside, CA 92517; (714) 787-3221.

     February 22, 1981   (Southern California)
THE SECOND (SEMI) ANNUAL TRANSYLVANIAN CONVENTION. A six-hour
Rocky Horror party (12 noon - 6 p.m.). Los Angeles Hilton. Feature
Films, Concert Shorts, Exhibit & Slide Show, Collectibles, Live
Entertainment, Costume Contest, Door Prizes, probably a showing
of Night of the Loving Dead [Yes, lOving]. The Worst Films Show
(7:00pm-10:00pm, extra admission).  Two of the all-time worst
films, plus trailers, shorts, etc. (213) 656-9090.

     February 27-March 1, 1981   (North Carolina)
STELLARCON VI. University of North Carolina. David Allen,
Box 4-EUC, University of N.C., Greensboro, NC 27412.

     March 1, 1981   (New Jersey)
OPN ESPA. Wayne Public Library, Wayne, NJ. 35th anniv meeting of
Eastern SF assn. Film interviews of Asimov, Gernsback, Leinster,
et al. Allan Howard, 210 W. Crescent Pkwy, S. Plainfield, NJ 07080.

     March 6-8, 1981   (Texas)
OWLCON II. Rice Program Council, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX 77001.

     March 6-8, 1981   (Wisconsin)
WISCON 5. Madison Inn/Convention Center. GoHs: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro,
Buck & Juanita Coulson, Don & Elsie Wollheim, Teresa di Laurentis,
Steven Vincent Johnson. Cost: $10 till 2/28, $12 door. SF3, Box 1624,
Madison, WI 53701.

     March 6-8, 1981   (Florida)
FANCON I. Ramada Inn, Panama City. GoH: Irv Lipscomb. Cost: $5.
FanCon c/o Alliance, Box 1865, Panama City, FL 32401.

     March 13-15, 1981   (Kentucky)
UPPERSOUTHCLAVE XI. Bowling Green, KY. Box U 112, College Heights
Station, Bowling Green, KY 42101.

     March 13-15, 1981   (Ohio)
MARCON 16. Hilton Inn, Columbus ($36 single, $42 dbl). GoH: Andy
Offutt.  FGoHs: Bob & Anne Passovoy. TM: Jodie Offutt. Box 2583,
Columbus, OH 43216; Mark Evans (614) 497-9953.

     March 13-15, 1981   (Mississippi)
COASTCON. Royal D'Iberville Hotel, Biloxi, MS ($48 single/dbl, $10
ea. addl.). GoH: Jerry Pournelle; FGoH: James Madden. Cost: $12.50.
Box 6025, Biloxi, MS 39532; (601)374-3046.

     March 20-22, 1981   (New Jersey)
LUNACON '81. Guests: James White, Jack Gaughan. Sheraton-Heights,
Hasbrouck Heights, NJ (marginally attainable by public from New York
City). Cost: $11 till 2/28/81, $14 door. Box 204, Brooklyn, NY 11230.

     March 27-29, 1981   (England)
FANDERSON 81. Gerry Anderson. Leeds, England. Pam Barnes,
88A Thornton Avenue, London W4 1QQ Engalnd.

     March 27-29, 1981   (Washington)
NORWESCON 4. Hyatt, Seattle. Cost: $12 till 3/16, $15 door. Limit
1400. Under 8 free. Box 24207, Seattle, WA 98188; (206) 364-8607 or
(eves) 747-6964.

     April 3-5, 1981   (Kansas)
FOOL-CON IV. GoH: Katherine Kurtz and Michael Whelan; Toastmaster:
Robert Asprin; Guest artists: Herb Arnold, Jann Frank, Robert Haas,
Tim Kirk, Daryl Murdock, Real Musgrave; other special guests: Lynn
Abbey, Patricia Cadigan, C.J. Cherryh, Arnold Fenner, Barbara Housh,
David Houston, John Kessel, Pat & Lee Killough, Carl Sherrel, John
Tibbetts; possibly Robert Heinlein, Richard Lupoff. Cost: $7.50
till 3/15, $9 after (Banquet $7.50 addl; $10 door). 10% of profits
to Nat'l Space Institute; Presentation of Balrog Awards. Johnson
County Comunity College, Overland Park, KS 66201.

     April 11-12, 1981   (Minnesota)
MICROCON 1981. SF/Comics/Games. Mpls. Comic Conventions, Box 3221
Traffic Station, Minneapolis, MN 55403.

     April 18-20, 1981   (Maryland)
BALTICON 15. Hunt Valley Inn, Baltimore. GoH: John Varley;
AGoH: Darrell Sweet. Cost: $10 adv. BSFS, Inc., Box 686,
Baltimore, MD 21203.

     April 25-26, 1981   (Nebraska)
ELECTRACON I. GoH: Ed Bryant; FGoH: Suzanne Carnival; AGoH: Dan
Patterson. Cost: $7.50; $10 door. Banquet TBA. "Nebraska's first
SF con." Box 1052, Kearney, NE 68847.

     May 8-10, 1981   (Tennessee)
KUBLA'S NINTH KHANPHONY. Ken Moore, 647 Devon Drive, Nashville,
TN 37204

     May 9-10, 1981   (Georgia)
EMORY-TREK II. Atlanta Star Trek Society, c/o Kenneth Cribbs,
2156 Golden Dawn Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30311

     June 5-7, 1981   (Arizona)
PHRINGECON 2. PO Box 128, Tempe, AZ 85281.

     June 12-14, 1981   (Wisconsin)
X-CON 5. M.P. Inda, 1743 N. Cambridge, Apt. 301, Milwaukee, WI 53202.

     June 13-14, 1981   (Kansas)
COSMOCON II. c/o Charley S. McCue, 34 halsey, Hutchinson, KS 67501.

     July 2-5, 1981   (Northern California)
WESTERCON 34. GoH: C. J. Cherryh; Fan GoH: Grant Canfield. Red Lion
Motor Inn, Sacramento, CA; (916) 929-8855; $32 single and double,
$8 addl person.  Party wing. Cost: $20 till 6/14/81, $25 door.
P.O. Box 161719, Sacramento, CA 95816.

     July 10-12, 1981   (Missouri)
ARCHON V. GoH: Tanith Lee; Fan GoH: Joan Hanke Wood; Toastmaster:
Charlie Grant; also Joan Hanke Wood, Wilson 'Bob' Tucker, Glen
Cook, Ron Chilson, George R. R. Martin, Joe and Gay Haldeman, and
Michael Berlyn. Chase-Park Plaza Hotel, St. Louis, MO ($44 single,
$52 2/3/4).  Soliciting program ideas and/or people who could help
carry them out.  Also looking for more artist names to add to the
mailing list for soliciting contributions to the art show. This
was successful at ARCHON IV (over 60% of artists sold works), and
they are trying to expand. There will be more art show space and
display panels this year. Also in the process of reviewing art
show rules and would welcome suggestions.
SFL liaison: WMartin at Office-3 (Amy Newell).

     September 3-7, 1981   (Colorado)
DENVENTION TWO. 1981 World Science Fiction Convention. Pro GoH:
C.L. Moore, Clifford Simak; Fan GoH: Rusty Hevelin. Denver Hilton.
Cost: $35 till spring 1981. P.O. Box 11545, Denver, CO.  80211.
(303) 433-9774.

     November 5-7, 1981   (Southern California)
LOSCON '81. Huntington Sheraton, Pasadena. PGoH: William Rotsler.
FGoHs: Len & June Moffatt. Cost: $10 till 7/4. LASFS, 11513 Burbank
Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91601.

     July 2-5, 1981   (Arizona)
WESTERCON 35. Adams Hotel, Phoenix ($29 single, $5 ea. addl.)
GoH: Gordon R.  Dickson. FGoH: Fran Skene. TM: David Gerrold.
Cost: $15 ($6 supporting). Box 11644, Phoenix, AZ 85064;
(602) 249-2616 or 841-1137.

     September 2-6, 1982   (Illinois)
CHICON IV. 1982 World Science Fiction Convention. Pro GoH:
A. Bertram Chandler; Fan GoH: Lee Hoffman; Artist GoH: Kelly Freas.
Hyatt Regency, Chicago, IL. Cost: $30 till 6/30/81; $15 supporting;
$7.50 conversion. PO Box A3120, Chicago, IL 60690.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/12/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following four messages are the last messages in this digest.
They offer further arguments on the nature of the force and the
Star Wars universe.  People who are not familiar with the Star
Wars series may not wish to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 11 Feb 1981 14:49 PST
From: Woods at PARC-MAXC
Subject: light sabre battle (spoiler)
To: HJJH at UTEXAS-11

I think you missed Ken's point: He said "we only have one instance
in which two trained wielders dueled, and that ended ambiguously."
The emphasis should be on "trained".  Luke is not yet a full Jedi.
The battle Ken referred to was therefore the duel between Darth
and Obi-wan, which most definitely ended ambiguously.

        -- Don.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Feb 1981 1128-PST
From: Mike Peeler <ADMIN.MDP at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Nitpicks nitpicked

When Ken "Arpavax.Arnold" at Berkeley said, "...we only have one
instance in which two trained wielders dueled, and that ended
ambiguously", hjjh at UTexas replied, "...the duel between Vader
and Luke did NOT end ambiguously".

Ken referred not to Luke's duel with Vader, but to OB1's, and
that did end ambiguously. As Luke is not a "trained wielder" of
the force (nor, in my opinion, of the light saber), we really
do have only one such instance.  There's no telling what a
little training might do for Luke's natural talent.  Until he
finishes his training, or perhaps, finishes off the Dark Side
without it, we don't know whether Good Force or Evil Force is
stronger, although in the Star Wars universe the Good seems
likely to win.

I agree with HJJH that the Jedi have no monopoly on light sabers.
On their use, however, they do.  The keen perception of a Jedi
guided by the force gives him a distinct advantage over any other
wielder of the same weapon.

------------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 1981 17:30:49 EST
From: Ward Harriman <harriman at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: (I just had to put in my two cents, ) of FORCE.

     I was always under the impression that the Force was a natural
phenomena which re-enforced the will of those tuned to it.  In my
view the difference between 'light' and 'dark' was only a matter of
approach.  The final goal was to assert one's will strongly enough
(and correctly enough) that the Force would provide what-ever it
is the Force provides.  Since the Force is a mindless thing it
takes on the nature of the will of the user.  The 'dark' side of
the Force comes about only because the will of the user is 'dark'.
The 'dark' side of the Force is seductive because results are more
quickly gained.  This stems from the fact that it is easier for we
mere mortals to think 'dark' thoughts more intensely that 'light'
(?) ones.
     In short, the use of the Force dictates it's nature.  If it
is used for good it is considerred 'light'; if used for evil it
is considerred 'dark'.  The Force has no 'light' or 'dark' side,
it only appears so because the people using it have divergent
goals in using it.  

As an aside, we never really hear Vader's side of the story.
Perhaps we are totally mistaken simply because we've been
listening to Yoda & OB1.  After all, the Jedi have gotten
good press lately.

esh

P.S.  The above must be the case since a natural force such as EM
      or Grav.  Clearly can't be good or evil, after all, it just
      isn't what GOD had in mind!

------------------------------

Date: 11 February 1981 11:34-EST
From: Charles T. Dale <CTD at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Title or Name?

In reading the current Force discussions the other day, I noticed
Obiwan abbreviated to O.B.1.  Is it just a coincidence that he is
a Jedi Knight played by Sir Alec Guiness (O.B.E.)?

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 13-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #40
*** EOOH ***
Date: 13 FEB 1981 0758-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #40
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 13 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 40

Today's Topics:
   SF Books - Star Fall & Empire of the East & Holmes/Dracula File,
         SF Mags - Destinies, Physics Tomorrow - Antigravity,
                    SF Events - Boskone SFL Party,
    Star Wars - Nature of the Force & from Imperial Broadcast News
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 Feb 1981 09:51 PST
From: Weissman at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Star Fall

"Star Fall" by David Bischoff, Berkeley Books, May 1980,
paper $1.95

Pico-review:  Good, solid, imaginative space opera.

A very entertaining 8th novel by the 29-year-old secretary
of the SFWA.  (This from the bio blurb -- does anyone know
of his other seven?)

It's the mid-21st century.  A giant luxury spaceliner, the
Star Fall, is on its maiden voyage to the legendary planet
Earth. Aboard are members of various sentient races,
including humans and Morapns, who co-built the ship.  The
voyage is billed as promoting interstellar harmony among
races -- but somewhere aboard (in a "maxi-entropic transit-
molecular magnetic box", of course) is a chunk of antimatter
large enough to destroy the Earth.

Our heroes (a most unlikely bunch including an interstellar
assassin, a fat mama's-boy, and a mysterious 14000-year-old
entity named Cog) must discover who is behind the plan to
destroy Earth and stop him/her/it/them in time.

It's hard to go into detail without generating a spoiler,
but there's a lot of good stuff in this book.  Much of it
is derivative (twinges of Star Trek, Niven, etc.), but on
the whole it's put together well enough that you don't really
mind. Recommended for lightweight escapism and entertainment.

/RLW

------------------------------

Date: 12 Feb 1981 1021-PST
From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)
Subject: Saberhagen

Since we are now discussing stuff by Saberhagen, let me
recommend two books of his I read recently: EMPIRE OF THE
EAST and THE HOLMES-DRACULA FILE

Empire is a good long sword-and-sorcery tale with an SF touch
coming in near the end. Anyone interested in the "mana" and
magic discussions  we've had will enjoy it, plus it's a fairly
good story.

Holmes-Dracula could be considered either mystery or fantasy,
but should be read by any Holmes freaks or vampire-lovers out
there.  As a matter of note, it far surpasses the other novel
on the same subject, written by a Britisher, I believe, called
"Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula".

Will Martin (WMartin at Office-3)

------------------------------

Date: 12 Feb 1981 1426-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIF>
Subject: Destinies and Antigravity

Destinies:
     I sent in a subscription a few months ago and was informed
that ACE planned on halting publication on it and they sent my
money back.  I guess that means no more Destinies mag.  Has
anyone else heard anything else on this?

Antigravity:
     As Dr. Forward pointed out, there have been theoretical
possibilities for antigravity for a while.  I would take the
antigravity claim for supergravity with a grain of salt
(since I work in the field), it is certainly possible to come
up with a number of theories with antigravity in it.  In fact,
one could probably come up with a theory that contained FTL
and time machines also; and even included all we know about
physics now.  The question is whether such a theory has any
bearing on reality, ie does it describe the way the universe
works instead of a way it could work.

     The trouble with extended supergravity is that it is sort
of possible to unite all of the forces of nature in one framework
(sort of possible because there are some other problems with it).
However, the theory contains lots of other forces and particles
that we do not see, there is a real question of whether such a
theory correctly describes the way things are.  However, I feel
that the approach is right and that supersymmetry type theories
point the way to a correct theory.

                                Alan

PS  I was really distressed to see that Analog article, I was
    thinking of doing one like it, I guessed I waited too long.


------------------------------

Date: 13 Feb 1981 0220-EST
From: Duffey at MIT-AI
Subject: SF Events - Boskone SFL Party

I have no more information about the party to pass on to you.
No one has said anything since yesterday's room announcement
went out.  Therefore all I will suggest is that Boskone SFL's
should check the Con Bulletin Board to see if anything comes
to pass on Saturday evening or later.
                                                Cheers,
                                                   Roger

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/13/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following four messages are the last messages in this digest.
They offer further arguments on the nature of the force and the
Star Wars universe.  People who are not familiar with the Star
Wars series may not wish to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 12 Feb 1981 at 2010-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 
To: woods at parc-maxc

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ YER \RIGHT/!  AND, YER W-R-O-N-G! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Indeed, I misread the reference to "2 trained [lightsaber]
wielders" in thinking it meant Luke and Vader instead of "2
[FULLY] trained wielders".

But, the ambiguity in the outcome of the duel between Vader and
Obi-Wan lies in what happened to Ben, NOT in who was the better
swordsman or was winning the fight.  Admittedly Vader's pre-
eminence is not as visibly clear as when he bests Luke out on
the gantry, but we also have his taunts, "Your powers are weak,
old man!", which Ben tacitly acknowledges in "If you strike me
down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine".
Moreover, as Lucas (or whoever really wrote the book) describes
that duel in the novelization, Vader IS winning the fight-per-se.
Regrettably, I do not have my SW collection at hand, and can only
recommend that doubters check that out in the text.

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 02/12/81 08:03:00 Re: The Force

Concerning the recent discussion about the force, we are forgetting
a very important item: In SW5, during Luke's training with Yoda,
Luke enters a cave and meets himself dressed as DV. Just before he
enters, he says something like "It's cold." and Yoda replies "It is
strong with the Dark side" or something like that. (You'll have to
forgive me, it's been a long time since I saw the movie.)

Wouldn't this indicate that the force is *not* neutral, as has been
suggested in this discussion?

                           ...phil

------------------------------

Date: 12 February 1981 2313-EST (Thursday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  On the Nature of the FORCE (probably spoiler)

After reading the latest digest and ruminating about about what
happened in TESB I would have to say that there are two kinds
of FORCE.  It is really hard to tell since the movie is kind of
ambiguous about it.  When Luke was being trained for Jedi-hood
by Yoda he went into a "cave" which, if I remember correctly,
Yoda said was strong in the Dark Side.  Now, unless you believe
that unintelligent creatures, like the ones we saw inhabiting
that "evil" place, can be good or evil (including plants) and
you don't believe Yoda when he said that the Force was inti-
mately intertwined with all living things (esp.  greenish ones)
then you might not believe that there were actually two kinds
of FORCE.
                                        -Doug

P.S.  Actually I think that Lucas just did it all for the effect
      and any amount of consistency above that needed to keep you
      watching at any particular moment is simply random chance
      (after all monkeys are real cheap and typewriters abound,
      or is it the other way around???)...

------------------------------

Date: 13 Feb 1981 0014-PST
From: POP at USC-ISIF
Subject: STAR WARS - THE TRUTH

MEGA-SPOILER WARNING:
For too long you readers of SF-L have been concerned with trivial
questions such as

                 WHO is the other hope?
                 WHAT is the nature of the force?

Rarely do you even consider the possibility that you might be the
victim of a monstrous deception.  Did you know that:

     The "Jedi Knights" were a band of interstellar terrorists
  intent on the overthrow of the legitimate Imperial government.
     The "Death Star" was the most modern stellar laboratory,
  involved in investigating pre-nova disturbances.   By crippling
  the main drive, the terrorists were able to both begin vile and
  untrue rumors connecting the research station with the cause of
  the system-wide destruction and to destroy much information of
  inestimable value for nova-prediction.
     Whole colonies were disrupted and oppressed by the "freedom
  fighters" of her arch-nastiness, self crowned princess Leia.
  (Hoth was a tropical paradise before its ozone layer was
  "liberated".)

You have been the victims of an elaborate and continued propaganda
campaign to discredit The Empire - the true source of Good in Our
Galaxy.

Now, at great risk,
       the whole truth can at last be {{{^D|&&%~~_^A^H/:[{[+

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 14-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #41
*** EOOH ***
Date: 14 FEB 1981 1043-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #41
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 14 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 41

Today's Topics:
SF Books - King David's Spaceship & Here's the Plot What's the Title,
           Physics Tomorrow - Space Drives & Supergravity,
                   Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

POURNE@MIT-MC 02/14/81 05:06:10
Re: A new flap may come about from this, but I do need some help.

KING DAVID'S SPACESHIP (containing Spaceship for the King
and its sequel) is out in hardbound from Simon and Schuster.
It seems to be unobtainable in Los Angeles.  Is that the case
in other cities? Should we seriously reconsider our policy of
loyalty to that publisher?  Any information on distribution
would be helpful, since it's just so hard to find out.
        
------------------------------

Date: 13 Feb 1981 16:51:00-PST
From: ihnss!hobs at Berkeley
Subject: SF Books - Here's the Plot What's the Title

   Many years ago (early '60s), I read a book, evidently part
of a series for juveniles, called '(Hero's Name) and the B-70'.
The plot (I guess I have to call it that, for want of a better
name) dealt with an attempt to sabotage the B-70 bomber.  The
hero, a major in the Air Force, is sent by Air Force Intelli-
gence to Edwards AFB to stop the dastardly scheme.  He gets onto
a plane by being snuck into the cockpit of a civilian airliner
(the means of choice for military spies--who are, incidently,
qualified pilots -- to get from Washington DC to California).
The plane is purposefully held on the ground so that he can do
this in topmost secrecy (small child in airport: "Mama, look
at that strange man sneaking onto that plane, didn't he buy a
ticket?").
   His sidekick, a captain, seemingly chosen for lack of brains,
is already at Edwards getting things ready for our hero.  This
dumkopf goes into a cafe outside the base, where a waitress (one
of the villainous spies) engages him in conversation, and mentions
that she would be interested in knowing the whereabouts of the
hero.  Captain Klutz does not come right out and say "He is coming
here to look into the sabotage plot against the B-70", but drops
her a big enough hint that she feels justified in thinking so.
(This man is also an Intelligence officer, and knows full well
that the major's coming is a closely guarded secret.)
  Anyway, after a long bit, the act of sabotage is established,
but not the precise details of exactly what was sabotaged.  So
what do Major Mishap and Captain Klutz do to discover the extent
of the sabotage?  Why they take the plane up for a flight.  While
they are flying, the mechanic who committed the scoundrelly act
confesses (he is being questioned at the time of takeoff), and
fortunately, the damage can be fixed in mid-air (I forget just
what it was, but, it made a safe landing impossible).  
  Can someone out there tell me the name of this mindless piece
of drivel?  My wife refuses to believe that a book this bad
really exists.

                                John Hobson
                                Bell Labs (ihnss!hobs)

------------------------------

Date: 13 Feb 1981 15:32:30-PST
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: FTL drives

The Dean Drive, I believe, is supposed to be a device which is
able to move without using the action/reaction principle.  I'd
be willing to bet that if placed in a friction-less free-fall
environment, it will do nothing more than vibrate a bit.

As for FTL drives, the one example of an "inertialess" drive is
that used in the Lensman series.  The theory is that if you have
no inertia, then your velocity is determined by the interaction
between your thrust and the friction of the interstellar medium,
which usually permitted speeds up to 60 light-years/hour.  When
the drive was turned off, you reverted to your previous speed
and direction.  While there were no relativistic effects with
the drive on, having no inertia did produce a kind of sickness
which you eventually got use to. Luxury ships had artificial
inertia as well as artificial gravity.

This last point is a flaw in the reasoning behind the drive, in
my opinion.  Aside from the fact that matter couldn't exist as
we know it in such an environment, there is also the principle
of relativity to be dealt with.  In other words, it should not
be possible to tell whether the ship was inertialess, or if the
universe was.  In other words, following Mach's principle, the
interior of the ship should posses a local inertia based upon
the mass contained inside the drive field.  Since the mass of
the ship would be very large when compared to that of any
object inside that would move, a passenger would not be able
to tell whether the drive was on or not.  Another problem was
how did the thrust from the engines leave the field, and what
would any momentum the thrust would have mean when it returned
to the world of inertia?  I'm afraid that something very much
like a reactionless drive would be needed to make inertia-
lessness worthwhile.

Speaking about FTL drives in general, there seems to be a
fundamental problem which involves Relativity.  The transfer
of information at FTL velocities can result in time travel
paradoxes when the transfer of information occurs between
moving objects.  The problem lies in the different frames
of references involved, and the impossibility of determining
"which is the right one".  It seems that the greater the
velocity between two objects, the slower the information
must be transmitted to avoid a paradox.  If the two objects
were stationary with respect to each other, then the FTL
velocity can be increased to infinity.  While this does not
rule out FTL travel or communication, it does say that how
much faster than light one can go is based upon the relative
velocities involved, and physics today knows nothing about
a form of radiation that can only be received if you are
travelling slow enough.  Of course, if the information were
to be sent at the speed of light, then no matter what the
velocities involved are, it can always be received, but
what use is that?  Perhaps tachyons are the mysterious
particles which will make FTL a fact of life.

------------------------------

Date: 13 February 1981 1057-EST (Friday)
From: R.Kamesh <Kamesh.Ramakrishna at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  Grains of salt

If you take a grain of salt with a theory of supergravity leading
to antigravity, will the grain go up or will it go down very fast?

------------------------------

Date: 11 Feb 1981 1717-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Nature of the Force (NOT a Spoiler)

Hmmm.  This discussion about "the true nature of the Force" is
beginning to resemble the old theological meanderings about "how
many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"  

There's no real point to this statement -- just an observation.

--Lauren--

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/14/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following 2 messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
offer further arguments on the nature of the force and the Star Wars
universe.  People who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may
not wish to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 1981 17:30:49 EST
From: Ward Harriman <harriman at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: (I just had to put in my two cents, ) of FORCE.

     I was always under the impression that the Force was a natural
phenomena which re-enforced the will of those tuned to it.  In my
view the difference between 'light' and 'dark' was only a matter of
approach.  The final goal was to assert one's will strongly enough
(and correctly enough) that the Force would provide what-ever it
is the Force provides.  Since the Force is a mindless thing it
takes on the nature of the will of the user.  The 'dark' side of
the Force comes about only because the will of the user is 'dark'.
The 'dark' side of the Force is seductive because results are more
quickly gained.  This stems from the fact that it is easier for we
mere mortals to think 'dark' thoughts more intensely that 'light'
(?) ones.
     In short, the use of the Force dictates it's nature.  If it
is used for good it is considered 'light'; if used for evil it
is considered 'dark'.  The Force has no 'light' or 'dark' side,
it only appears so because the people using it have divergent
goals in using it.  

As an aside, we never really hear Vader's side of the story.
Perhaps we are totally mistaken simply because we've been
listening to Yoda & OB1.  After all, the Jedi have gotten
good press lately.

esh

P.S.  The above must be the case since a natural force such as EM
      or Grav.  Clearly can't be good or evil, after all, it just
      isn't what GOD had in mind!

------------------------------

Date:  14 February 1981 00:27 est
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS  at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  ragnorak and the Jedi

Remember who won/will win at Ragnorak.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 16-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #42
*** EOOH ***
Date: 16 FEB 1981 0711-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #42
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 16 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 42

Today's Topics:
              Administrivia - Hardware problems and SFL,
SF Books - Budrys' column & Rejuvenation SF & King David's Spaceship,
  What happens at a Con? - Aquacon, SF Events - Space Shuttle Tour,
                   Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 1981 0220-EST
From: The Moderator <Duffey at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - Hardware problems and SFL

Normally, I use two of our machines to distribute SF-LOVERS
and the other discussion lists which I maintain.  However,
due to hardware problems, I only have one machine available
to me at the moment.  This effectively reduces the maximum
size of digest that can be transmitted without difficulties.
Therefore, I will be targeting the SFL digest for a maximum
size of 8-10K chars, instead of the customary 14-16 chars
for the next few days.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Feb 1981 0936-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Budrys reviews

            A SCIENCE FICTION column    By Algis Budrys
          (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
    
    This time we have the work of masters.  These are all books
not only to buy unstintingly but to settle down with and live in.
    A master is somebody who can do something nobody else can do,
and do it superbly.  A master may be crazy, but if he hands you
a tin rose, be sure the genuine perfume will be there.  A master
may be demonstrably limited as a writer, but his idiosyncrasies
are stunning.  Every so often, a book comes along that is like
a conversation in a dream; profound, apt, fading rapidly from
conscious memory, utter nonsense if examined under more alert
conditions.  But all the day is pervaded by the feeling of
having been exposed to great perceptions.
    That brings us to "VALIS," Philip K. Dick's first new novel
in four years (Bantam original paperback, $2.25).  During the
1970s, Dick said in a recent interview, his totally screwed-up
life was taken over by an omniscient voice in his head.  It
told him to fire his agent and taught him how to collect overdue
royalties.  It correctly diagnosed a hidden and potentially fatal
congenital defect in his child.  It gave him all-encompassing
insight on the true nature of reality and the various avatars
of the Messiah, and may have been God.  Or it might have been
a Vast Active Living Intelligence System (VALIS).
    This is the culmination of 30 years of a highly literate
writer's career.  Over the past 20 years, Dick has built
a major reputation here and abroad with his novels of trans-
mogrified reality.  So much so that for a while in the 1960s
many were convinced he was an acidhead.  Not so, says Dick
- it was amphetamines, but in any case his fictions were
fictions; controlled constructs.  "VALIS," on the other
hand, is the semifictionalized documentary of his profound
experience.
    Featuring as protagonists both Dick and an alter ego
named Horselover Fat (curbstone etymology: Philohippos
from the Greek, Dick from the German), it may well sweep
the campuses in the wake of Robert Heinlein's "Stranger
in a Strange Land" and Wilson's and Shea's "Illuminatus"
trilogy.
    
    Damon Knight's "The World and Thorinn" (Berkley, $12.95)
is the first novel in 16 years from one of SF's premier short-
story writers, its pioneering literary critic, and proprietor
of a long, various and distinguished career.  His past novels
have frequently been very interesting; none have been first-
rate.  This one is excellent.
    In the very far future, Earth has had to move away
from its exploding sun.  It has been enclosed in an energy-
conserving shell and set in motion toward the far stars.  But
over the millennia of that journey its people have forgotten
their history.  For almost all their races and tribes, there
is no sense of journeying or of stars. Young Thorinn - naive,
crippled, tenacious - is forced by circumstances to wander
through its maze of pocket cultures and through the central
labyrinths left when the forgotten engineers mined the core
to make the shell.
    As usual with a Knight novel, every one of the central
ideas is a known SF staple - the slow "starship," the bioen-
gineered flora and fauna, the nearly sentient ancient machines,
the picaresque wanderjahr of the seeking protagonist.  But the
details - ah, the detail and the ramifications, the vignetted
glimpses of human ways to live that never were, but might be -
that's vintage Knight.
    
    Joe Haldeman, award-winning writer, astronomer and bon
vivant, was born in 1943.  He writes clean, journalistic prose
and in other ways as well uses approaches reminiscent of those
employed by Frederik Pohl (b. 1919).  What Haldeman shares
with the Robert A. Heinlein of the early 1940s is a perfectly
convincing grasp of realpolitik.  In many ways, then, he has
classical traits.  But he's also someone who matured - at the
Army's expense and at his own - in Vietnam, and that shows in
various ways.
    In "Worlds" (Viking, $12.950), he details the revolution
that coincides with the breakup of the 22-century economic
impasses between Earth and the varied spaceborne societies
living in artificial satellites around it.  There are some
echoes of Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," but
this ultimately apocalyptic book is entirely Haldeman's own.
It's permeated by his notable charity toward human foible
and his acceptance that the human condition can never be
fully explained.  It leaves the reader with the feeling
that Haldeman is uncommonly wise as well as uncommonly
talented.
    
------------------------------

Date: 16 February 1981 02:20-EST
From: Frank J. Wancho <FJW at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Rejuvenation in SF

After RH's last two novels, not the current one, "Time Enough
for Love" and "I Will Fear No Evil", both of which contain
transplants of one sort or another to keep the heroes going,
there is Justin Leiber's "Beyond Rejection".  This novel has
a society in which it is possible to periodically get a mind
tape made and should anything happen to your physical body
and a suitable donor comes along, the tape is played back
into the wiped donor's brain.

The story begins with our hero finding himself in the body
of a female and how the adjustment is made to permit him
(err her) to get past the rejection stage... any more than
that would constitute a spoiler.

--Frank

------------------------------

Date: 14 Feb 1981 2316-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: King David's Spaceship  

In the Palo Alto - Stanford area, FUTURE FANTASY has run out
of this book as well.  They are now reordering, but they are
unsure when their stocks will be full once more.

Can other people on the NET report from their local areas for
Jerry?  I remember we had similar problems with DRAGON'S EGG
when it came out in hardcover.  Perhaps reports from us to
Jerry and Bob are useful to them in confronting publishers
with (incomplete, inaccurate, out of date) information?  If
so then we all win if our efforts can help keep the books
available.

Jim

------------------------------

RVS@MIT-AI 02/15/81 06:49:24 Re: Aquacon

I just got back from Aquacon a few hours ago.  I would
have stayed longer, as there were still good films to be
seen, except that there is a problem with having a con at
the Disneyland hotel: the hotel is definitely unmellow.
Apparently because of an incident Thursday night with a
minor getting drunk and security finding out, tonight
(Saturday evening) security was cracking down on parties.
In the con suite itself, the people running the con party
actually were carding people because if security were to
walk in and find minors drinking, the people owning the
room would be "escorted out of the hotel, bags and all".
They were even tougher on parties where substances other
than alcohol were being consumed.  One security guard,
when hassling people at one of these parties, misrepre-
sented himself as a real police officer, told one guy he
was under arrest, searched him, and confiscated his baggie
of substance.  I guess they don't mind illegal activities,
as long as they are the ones committing them.  All in all,
I would say that the Disneyland hotel is not a good place
for a con, and will probably not be wanting any more cons
anyway.  After all, they have a wholesome image to protect.

                -Sam

------------------------------

Date: 15 Feb 1981 2148-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIF>
Subject: See the Space Shuttle mockup

OASIS presents:

            SEE THE SPACE SHUTTLE MOCKUP

The next meeting of OASIS will take place at Rockwell
International in Downey and will feature Anita Gale of
Rockwell speaking on the Shuttle.

After the talk, there will be a tour of the full scale
Shuttle mockup there.  Details:

     Saturday, Feb. 28 at 7:00 p.m.
     at Rockwell International, DEI room
        (enter plant at gate 53 from Stewart and
         Gray Rd. or Bellflower Blvd (in Downey))

This program is free and open to the public.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/16/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It offers
another view on the nature of the force and the Star Wars universe.
People who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may not wish
to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 11 Feb 1981 0851-EST
From: LLOYD at MIT-DMS (Brian P. Lloyd)
Subject: The Nature of the Force

In actuality the Dark Side is really molasses while the "Good Side"
is honey.  Have you ever noticed that molasses smells faintly of
sulphur, and sulphur (brimstone), as everyone knows, is associated
with hell.  Can anyone deny that hell is bad?  Therefore, molasses
is the "Dark Side" of the force.

If anyone wants anything else explained, just drop me a note.  I
studied at the hand of Velokovski (SP? doesn't matter; briliant
people like me don't need to bother with mundane things like
spelling or grammer).

                        Condescendingly,
                        Brian Lloyd

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 17-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #43
*** EOOH ***
Date: 17 FEB 1981 0751-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #43
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 17 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 43

Today's Topics:
       SF Books - Dracula Tape, SF Music - Massteria Filksongs,
    SF TV - Dr. Who, Future - Cryonics Escape & Telephone Numbers,
   Physics Tomorrow - Space Drives, Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

FAUST@MIT-ML 02/16/81 15:17:51 Re: saberhagen

     While discussing the works of Saberhagen, let us not forget
"The Dracula Tape".  This is the story of Dracula told from his
own perspective.  In it we get, AT LAST, the TRUE story of what
occurred.  In this version, Drac is simply a fun loving type of
guy who happens to like women (well, what is so bad about that?)
He is "liberating" these women from the toils of mortal life
and is allowing them to enjoy immortality.  Von Helsing, in
this acCount, is a megalomaniac who wishes to force all others
to live by his own beliefs.  A dictatorial old man embittered
by his own mortality and imminent death.  Now I ask Ya, who's
a fellow to believe?
        Happy Reading,
        Greg

------------------------------

Date: 12 Feb 1981 at 2014-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^ NEW MOSTLY-MEDIA-ORIENTED (ESP. SW) FILKSONG BOOK ^^^^^^^^

  MASSTERIA! Star Wars and Other Filksongs
  Presented by the L.A. Filkharmonics

  Available from:  Meg Garrett,  910 W. Rosewood Ct.
                                 Ontario, CA  91762

Primarily SW related, with some funny, like "Bantha Herds in the
Sand (A Tusken Raider's Lament)" <to "Ghost Riders in the Sky">,
which starts out--

   "As I looked out across the ridge one hot and dusty day
    I saw a herd of banthas come a-trampling my way
    I saw the dust a-flying and I smelled them from afar
    I shook my head and staggered to...  
    Mos Eisley's nearest bar.

    CHORUS:
        Stampeding here
        Stampeding there
        Bantha chips everywhere."

or somber, like "The Force is With Them" <to "Blowin' in the Wind">,
with verses for Obi-Wan, Luke, and Leia, e.g.,

   "How many years must an old man wait
       before his dreams come true?
    And how many fears must he hide in his heart
       before his hope can break through?
    Yes, and how long to open a young man's eyes
       to see with a vision that's new?

          The answer, of course, lies hidden in the Force
          The answer lies hidden in the Force."

Of the total of 39 songs, the non-SW ones range extremely widely,
with at least one for everything from BS Galactica thru Sesame St.
to Dr Who.  The only non-media one pertains to DARKOVER*.  Only
lyrics are given, along with the names of the borrowed melodies
they are to be sung to.  Most of the latter are fairly familiar
(but can anybody identify "Farewell to Carlingsford"?)  Since I
am dependent on 'sheet music' and chording supplied by others,
this leaves the collection much less useful to me than the major
filk collections, but there are \more/ to-me tempting lyrics in
it than in the big collections.

.......

* I'm a bit dubious about the beginning of that Darkover lyric,
  "The Free Amazon's Song"--

    "The great wars are raging,
     My brothers go to fight.
     I want to go with them,
     You say that's not right."

Off hand, I can't recall any Free Amazon whose motivation was of
this nature, i.e., just to 'go fight a war'.  Can anyone cite a
instance?  Even tho it hasn't happened yet (that we know of) I
CAN envision it within the Dorsai culture, but not Darkoveran.

------------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 1981 1021-PST
From: URBAN at RAND-AI
Subject: Forthcoming flicks

   At Aquacon, there were three presentations for forthcoming
motion pictures.  The first was from Lucasfilms, for Lucas &
Spielberg's high-budget B picture, "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Looks like another exciting boo-the-villain-cheer-the-hero
film with Harrison Ford as the archaeologist/adventurer hero.
Fantasy elements are promised at the end of the film when the
lost Ark of the Covenant is finally discovered.  It is set to
open on June 19th.
   The second presentation was on the most heavily merchandised
fantasy film to date, Ray Harryhausen's "Clash of the Titans."
Not for scholars of mythology nor lovers of high drama, it does
promise to have a stronger story line and better cast than the
previous low-budget Harryhausen flicks.  It's vaguely based on
Perseus and Andromeda.  With Sir Lawrence Olivier as Zeus.  It
opens on June 19th (sound familiar?).
   The third presentation was on "Superman II", and was pretty
similar to the one Craig Miller gave at Noreascon.  Of course,
by now the film has already opened in Britain and Australia,
and you can read reviews from those countries to find out
what's what (anyone on SFL across the Water want to supply
one?).  Probably better than its predecessor.  It opens in
the US on, uh, June 19th.  It was pointed out that in larger
cities the possibility exists of all three opening in one of
the multiple-theatre complexes, allowing one long continuous
line of fans shifting from one theatre to the next to the
next...
   Anyway, I guess SFL will start generating a lot of traffic
on June 19th or thereabouts.

        Mike

------------------------------

Date: 13 Feb 1981 16:51:00-PST
From: ihnss!hobs at Berkeley

Several things:

1. The PBS station here in Chicago (WTTW, channel 11) shows Dr.
   Who on Sunday nights at 11:00.  It used to show them Monday
   through Friday at 10:30, but gave that up in favor of Dick
   Cavett.

2. Some time ago, the head of a company promoting Cryonics
   (freeze you now so that you can be revived in the future),
   was quoted as being against future-dystopia sf.  The one
   thing that I have trouble understanding is why would the
   people of the future want to revive those frozen now?  The
   only stories I can recall dealing with the question have
   (a) a woman revived by the social history department of
   a university so that the can get first-hand knowledge of
   the 20th century American middle class or (b) they wanted
   someone to pilot an exploratory space ship with the chance
   of returning to Earth approaching zero as a limit.  Other
   than that -- historical inquiry and/or expendable labor
   -- I do not know why people (say) 200 years in the future
   would want to revive those from the past.  Can you imagine
   someone from 1781 trying to make a useful contribution to
   today's society?  As I recall from The Age of the Pussyfoot,
   one of the protagonist's chief problems was that he could
   not properly adjust to the changed conditions in the future.

3.   Six months ago, I talked to a man from Bell Labs who is
   working on the project to give everyone a personal telephone
   number (one in which the number is tied to the person, not
   the phone).  He told me that it probably will come, but not
   to hold your breath waiting for it.  What happens if you fail
   to let the central office know where you are, and the person
   who answers the phone says "I don't know him, and I don't know
   where he can be reached" is one of the principal problems.
     Here at BTL in Illinois, there is a department working on
   an automated answering service, but don't hold your breath for
   that one either.  (Actually, protests from answering services
   to the FCC is the chief problem with this one.)

    I had a comment on the Storm Troopers in SW and TESB, but it
would probably be relegated to the Spoiler section, and this thing
has gone on long enough anyway, so I will leave it to some other
time.
                                John Hobson
                                Bell Labs (ihnss!hobs)

------------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 1981 1315-EST
From: G.Nessus at MIT-EECS (Doug Alan)
Subject: Dean Drive

     Several years ago there was an article in Analog about the
Dean Drive and other pseudo-reactionless drives.  All of them
would obviously not work.  Two of them I can still remember.
     One is a space ship with a giant sledge hammer and anvil
inside.  The hammer slams against the anvil to make the ship go
forward.  Then the hammer is raised up by gears and slams against
the anvil again.  This might perhaps produce motion in a boat in
water, because a boat has less forward resistance than backwards
resistance, but in a space ship it will do nothing but cause the
ship to wobble - unless the ship is wedge-shaped and in VERY
dusty space.
     The other one I can remember is a round ship that spins
to get obtain a large 'centrifugal force'.  A large mass in the
ship is manipulated so that it always remains in the same place.
In this manner, all the 'centrifugal force' of this mass will,
according to the designer, be oriented in one direction, pushing
the ship in that direction.  Of course the designer didn't seem
to realize that since the large mass always remains in the same
place, it isn't spinning and isn't subject to centrifugal force.
Another case of some silly engineer forgetting that fictitious
forces are named 'fictitious' for a reason!

                        Conservatively (at least of momentum),
                        Doug Alan

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/16/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It offers
another view on the nature of the force and the Star Wars universe.
People who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may not wish
to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 1981 03:03:41-PST
From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: Religion, Magic and the two sides of The Force

Not wanting to add too much clutter to what has already
become a very cluttered argument -- having been a Sociologist
in a former life I recall that the dividing line between magic
(and magicians) and religion (and its practitioners) was that
in magic, the magician became the operating agent using his
powers as an extension of his personality.  In religion, on
the other hand, the priest (or whatever) was an agent through
which the higher power worked.  It strikes me that this could
be used to differentiate the "dark side" of the Force, i.e.
Darth Vader turning this power to his own ends, and the "good
side" i.e. Luke being encouraged to feel and become in tune.
While there is evidence for both sides in the film, it is a
though...

Byron Howes
University of North Carolina

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 18-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #44
*** EOOH ***
Date: 18 FEB 1981 0719-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #44
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 18 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 44

Today's Topics:
           SF Events - SFL Tshirts, SF Books - Quote Query,
            Future - Cryonics Escape & Telephone Numbers,
Physics Tomorrow - Space Drives, Physics Today - Things that go Bump,
      Star Wars - Nature of the Force, Star Trek - The Computer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 17 Feb 1981 11:24 PST
From: SFL-TShirtS at MIT-AI
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SF-Lovers T-shirts

Yes, it's true: the official SF-Lovers T-Shirts are on the way.
They are colorful, 100% cotton heavyweight shirts depicting the
lovable SF-L mascot sitting pensively at his terminal and signed
by the artist (our own RODOF at USC-ECL).  The shirts will be
available in Men's sizes S-M-L-XL.

If you would like to have one (or two, or three ... everyone
needs a change of clothes), then please send a message to
SFL-TShirtS@MIT-AI for information on how to obtain them.

        Richard Brodie

------------------------------

TLD@MIT-MC 02/17/81 22:09:58 Re: Quotation source request.

I'm not sure that SF-LOVERS is the correct place for me to
pose this question, but I can't think of an alternative.
What I am looking for is the source for this quotation:

     "We all have our heads in the gutter, but some of us
      are looking at the stars."

That may not be an exact quotation, and if not I hope that
someone can correct it.

-Tom-

------------------------------

Date: 17 Feb 1981 0918-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: re: corpsicles

Sure people from 1781 would have something to contribute
to today's world.  Benjamin Franklin might not make it as
an engineer (although we do still use his stove and his
lightning rods), but he was an excellent businessman and
newspaper editor, professions where native wit counts for
a lot.  Just because technical careers require a lot of
up to the minute knowledge doesn't mean that they all do.
    Ultimately, a future society might decide that it was
cheaper to revive these people than it was to keep them
frozen, and more humanitarian than letting them melt.
Renting a safe deposit box the size of a person would
cost a couple of hundred dollars a year, and that's
without liquid nitrogen (though with guards).  

------------------------------

Date: 17 Feb 1981 1935-PST
From: Craig Milo Rogers  <ROGERS at USC-ISIB>
Subject: The Past, Here Today

     I can't recall any story lines dealing with why a society
would revive the frozen dead, other than the two mentioned in
SFL.  However, I speculate that there might be a substantial
economic incentive towards reviving corpsicles as "craftsper-
sons".  The resulting lifestyle might not be quite what the
freezees had in mind, though.  Anyone for old-fashioned, hand-
crafted computer programs?

                                        Craig Milo Rogers

------------------------------

Date: 17 Feb 1981 1455-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Bell System calling services

In a recent digest, a Bell Labs employee mentioned the Bell
System  "answering service" under development.  For anyone
interested in this and other services which are part of
"advanced calling" services under development by BTL, I
recommend checking the HUMAN-NETS archives of some time
ago, where I discussed a number of these services, and
some of their potential problems, in considerable detail.

--Lauren--

[ Note:  At the moment MIT-AI is down one disk drive due to
  hardware problems.  As a result only the last 40 issues of
  HUMAN-NETS are available for on-line reference.  Inquiries
  about the telephone service material or about the HUMAN-NETS
  list may be addressed to HUMAN-NETS-REQUEST@MIT-AI.   -- RDD ]

------------------------------

Date: 17 Feb 1981 1050-PST
From: William Gropp <WDG at SU-AI>
Subject: Dean Drives   

I would like to mention another fact that is overlooked in
the Analog article on Dean Drives.  The speed of sound is
finite.  This explains the behavior of the ejection seats
mentioned in the article, as well as some of their experi-
mental devices.  That is, they assumed that they had rigid
bodies when, in fact, their equipment was deforming under
extreme stress.
                                        Bill Gropp

------------------------------

Date:  17 February 1981 17:48 cst
From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  extinction of the dinosaurs

There has been a lot of speculation lately that the dinosaurs
were killed off by the collision of an asteroid with Earth.

The proposed mechanism goes something like this:

   Asteroid hits Earth, raising lots of dust.  Dust blocks
   out sun.  Plants can't photosynthesize and eventually
   croak.  Herbivores starve to death.  Finally carnivores
   run out of dead herbivores to eat.  >>finis<<

   Maybe 10 (!!!) years later, dust falls out of strato-
   sphere, letting light back in.  Plant seeds germinate;
   fungi, of course, have been OK right along.  A few wee
   beasts (proto-mammals etc) come out of hiding and
   !! rule the world !!.

Neat theory. For an SF lover, it seems stale - outdated - maybe
even fulla ****.  Why?  Oddly enough, for the same reasons that
a lot of >>reputable scientists<< don't believe it.

There's strong evidence for the asteroid strike -  iridium of
extraterrestrial origin in the right geological strata.

But there's no evidence for the huge amounts of dust that the
theory supposes.  Remember, this is enough dust to reduce inci-
dent sunlight by two or more orders of magnitude - and that's
just the particles that managed to stay in the stratosphere for
ten years.

But how about all the tropospheric fallout?  If there were
enough dust in the stratosphere to satisfy the theory, we
wouldn't be wondering why the dinos died - they'd all be
encased in asteroidal dust up to their armpits!

There's also a problem with latitude effects.  Without sunlight,
you'd expect things to die off more quickly at the poles than in
the tropics - but that seems to be the opposite of what happened.

But now we come to the fun part.  SF has already explored this
problem.  Most neatly in Lucifer's Hammer - but also in a very
nice fact article in ANALOG of which I can remember neither the
month nor the year nor the author - but it was before Lucifer's
Hammer was published.

Three out of four asteroid strikes land in the water, not on
land.  A water strike has vastly different effects than a land
strike.  There's a lot less rock dust in the atmosphere.  And
there's a whole lot more energy input to the ecosphere.

A land strike forms a fireball that sits on Earth, sticks out
\way/ into space, and radiates most of its energy to the cosmos.

A water strike boils a lot of sea water.  This water stays in the
atmosphere.  So does its heat of vaporization.  What doesn't get
boiled gets heated.  The sea is a humungous energy sink.  As it
quenches the fireball, it soaks up a lot of energy. The ice caps
are contiguous with the sea, and soak up a lot more energy by
melting.  So most of the energy of a sea strike stays on Earth.

But that means the Earth's average temperature rises.  How much?
I don't know how to calculate it, but I bet some SF-LOVER does!
Of course, there's more rise at the tropics than at the poles -
ice stays the same temperature until it's >all< melted.

What's more susceptible to heatstroke, big animals or small ones?
Small animals have to eat like mad just to keep their body heat
up, but big guys need all kinds of ways to get rid of heat -
from the elephant's ears to humans' sweating and dogs' panting.
And even if the dinos were warm-blooded (as many believe), it's
unlikely that their heat-regulation mechanism was better than
that of a platypus - which isn't very good.

So the big animals die of heatstroke, unless they were near the
poles.

How about the fish?  Lots of marine species became extinct at
the same time.

Well, if you heat water enough, you can drive off the dissolved
oxygen.  Suppose many fish found it too hot to live at the
surface, but couldn't breathe down where it was cool enough?
This assumes that the top few feet of the ocean were heated
to 120 - 140 deg F; about the same as I guess the air temp.
reached.  That takes a \lot/ of energy.

The standard asteroid theory doesn't explain why the bigger the
animal was, the more likely it was to die.

Next question - does it make sense to bring this to the attention
of any of the people seriously studying the subject, or do you
suppose they have already thought of it and found it doesn't fly?

                Bill

[ Bringing it to their attention of course, does not mean
  telling them anything about SF-LOVERS.  That would be a
  mistake no matter what the topic was.            -- RDD ]

------------------------------

Date: 17 FEB 1981 1642-EST
From: DP at MIT-ML, HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: Duct tape and the force

(an Item scrawled on the Boskone graffitti sheet by Carl Zwanzig.)

   Duct tape is like the force.  It has a light side, and a
   dark side, and it holds the universe together....

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/18/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
asks a question about our previous discussion of the Star Trek
episode "Miri" and Star Fleet computer technology.  People who
are not familiar with this episode may not wish to read any
further.


-----------------------------

Date: 13 February 1981 1110-EST (Friday)
From: Roy.Taylor at CMU-10A
Subject:  MIRI & the cat-brain computer

As I recall the episode, Kirk et cie found a society of children
left behind when their elders dabbled in bio-warfare and longevity
drugs.  The kiddies aged slowly but contracted some disfiguring,
fatal disease on reaching puberty (who could forget the flash of
Yeoman Rand's thigh?).  So where was the infamous cat-brain?

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 19-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #45
*** EOOH ***
Date: 19 FEB 1981 0714-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #45
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 19 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 45

Today's Topics:
                    SF Music - Boskone Filk Tapes,
  SF Books - The Dracula File & Jim Baen and ACE & The Hermes Fall,
   Physics Today - Things that go bump,  Future - Cryonics Escape,
                   Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 02/19/81 01:17:26 Re: Filk tape.

   I have 9 hours of filk, recorded at the Boskone performance
style filk.  I expect to cull this down to 1 or 2 90 min cassettes.
Anyone that is interested, please drop me a note.  I should have
some idea of what will be on it next week.

                                        Keep filking
                                        Jeff

PS. There wont be a charge, but I will expect people to
    provide a blank cassette, and return postage.

------------------------------

Date: 18 Feb 1981 (Wednesday) 2352-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Saberhagen's Dracula books

...in addition, how can we forget Saberhagen's "An Old Friend of
the Family", about the Count's adventure in the mid-20'th century?

...I enjoyed all 3 ("Tape", "Holmes", and "Friend"), although I
found "Tape" to be (subjectively) much longer than the others.

...Oh, "Sherlock Holmes vs. Draclua" was "edited" by Loren D. Estleman
of Dexter, Michigan. (Doubleday 1978, Penguin (paper) 1979).

...after thinking about all 4 books, *Does the Count have the Force?*

------------------------------

Date: 18 FEB 1981 1437-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: TDA

  Someone was recently asking about Jim Baen's departure from Ace
and the formation of the Thomas Doherty Agency.  The following is
abstracted from the November 1980 SCIENCE FICTION TIMES:

  TD is, like Baen, a former Ace exec; the third member of the agency
is Richard Gallen, a book packager.  The troika has made agreements
to do a series called "Jim Baen Presents" for Pinnacle Books, but
their main thrust seems to be increasing the publication of trade
paperbacks (for discussion of which, see SFL of last summer).  The
story says that Laumer's BREAKING FAULT and HOUSE OF NOVEMBER (poss.
typo for THE HOUSE IN NOVEMBER, which would make it a reprint) and
Harrison's Planet of No Return; there is also a Saberhagen/Zelazny
collaboration at the contract-and-outline stage.  Andre Norton's
THE FORERUNNER and Saberhagen's WATER OF THOUGHT will be the first
Pinnacle books, in May (expected; print run is guessed at 150,000).
  Doherty and Baen are reported to have left Ace because of a
dispute over paying authors, although the new Ace SF editor,
Susan Allison, says Ace is now all paid up.  (The last time
Ace was in major payment trouble, the result was DAW Books.)
  A lot of titles are listed as forthcoming.
  Gallen apparently specializes in assembling lines of books for
publishers who are interested in genre work and don't know enough
about it; he currently has romances at Pocket and Historicals at
Dell.

  Overall, it looks like we'll get more SF at least as good as
the current average --- not that that's any great recommendation,
but every publisher has its ups and downs (with the exception of
Manor, which is all downs).

------------------------------

KLH@MIT-AI 02/18/81 06:01:59 Re: Things that go bump

There's one book that seems to have been overlooked: "The Hermes
Fall" of a couple years back, by someone forgettable.  Hardcover
novel, similar to "Lucifer's Hammer":

        Object: L.H.            Hermes
        Type:   comet           asteroid
        Hits:   randomly        Atlantic Ocean
        Wastes: West Coast etc. East Coast etc.
        Plot:   mundane         improbable
        Style:  preachy         so-so
        GCD:    great           great

"GCD" is short for "Global Catastrophe Description", a measure
of the vividness that the writers put into what are essentially
unfamiliar or nearly incomprehensible events.  (Fritz Leiber's
"The Wanderer" has a very high GCD.)  Anyway, I recommend
skipping to the good parts where ol' Earth gets smacked, and
not paying too much attention to the rest.  For what it's
worth, Hermes does get poked with an H-bomb, but the writer
uses "human failure" (if you read it you'll see what I mean
by improbable) to make sure that readers looking for the good
parts aren't disappointed.

------------------------------

Date: 18 Feb 1981 0918-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: Dust in the Wind   

The article referred to on asteroid strikes was titled 'Giant
Meteor Impact' and was published in ANALOG in (I believe)
the late '60s.  When I get within striking range of my ANALOG
collection at home tonight I will look up the exact date/issue.

If I am not mistaken, a massive water impact is much more
dangerous than a land impact, not because of the heat it adds
to the ecosystem in general but the resulting heat lossage.  An
impact in a large body of water vaporizes megatons of water, and
that vapor raises the albedo of the planet.  Thus more heat is
reflected that would have been absorbed and the result is another
Ice Age.  If this is the case, then the dinosaurs (whose internal
heat economies were greatly strained because of size, anyway)
died either due to the cold or the fact that the herbivores they
ate were gone since the plants that the herbivores ate died in
the cold.  If Alvarez' asteroid strike was a water strike (does
the theory propose an impact location?)  then the above probably
happened.  Even if the strike was land-based enough dust could
have been raised to cause the same effect without burying the
dinosaurs to their armpits in dust.  Not too long ago (approx.
100 yrs) some volcano in the Pacific threw massive quantities
of dust into the air (it may have been Krakatoa).  The following
year was known as 'The Year Without a Summer' because the
ecosystem lost heat due to reflection.

------------------------------

Date: 18 Feb 1981 12:16:34-PST
From: ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: Reviving frozen persons

Have you people forgotten "Door Into Summer" by RH?  There
an individual pays a company (insurance, usually) to freeze
him/her and unfreeze him/her at a specified date.  The patron
pays in advance for all this, of course.  That's ONE way to
encourage freezers to unfreeze.
                Ken

------------------------------

Date: 18 Feb 1981 15:03:07-PST
From: ihnss!hobs at Berkeley
Subject: corpsicles

I would like to answer the objections of ICL.REDFORD at
SU-SCORE about my questions regarding the revivification of
corpsicles. Sure, Benjamin Franklin would have something to
contribute to today's world, we can always do with polymath
geniuses like him. However, we are not really talking about
someone of Franklin's caliber, but Joe Blow.  Many of the
people who are getting themselves frozen are either of the
middle class or else of the rich, and far too many of these
kinds of people have merely the talent of earning money or
else inheriting it. In 200 years, I expect my skills to be
obsolete (do you really expect COBOL to last that long?),
and I do not think that I could make a meaningful contri-
bution to a society of the far future.
    I am glad that he (or she, as the case may be) is hopeful
that a future society might decide that it was "cheaper to
revive these people than it was to keep them frozen, and
more humanitarian than letting them melt."  I am afraid
that I cannot be so sanguine about it.
    Craig Milo Rogers <ROGERS at USC-ISIB> seems to agree
that the cheap (unskilled/semi-skilled) labor is a reason
for reviving corpsicles, however, as Jesus put it, "The
poor you shall have with you always", or in other words,
the cheap labor pool probably will remain.

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/14/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following 2 messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
consider the nature of the force and the Star Wars universe.  People
who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may not wish to read
any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 18 Feb 1981 (Wednesday) 2358-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Spoiler?  The force vs. The Siege of Wonder

  I've just dragged down Mark Geston's "The Siege of Wonder"
(DAW 1977) -- I forget most of the book, but it involved
"magical" uses of magic vs. "scientific" uses of magic.
Any attempts to apply this to the "force"? ...  I'm going
to reread it to see what applies, but anybody with a better
memory...

------------------------------

Date: 17 Feb 1981 10:24:57-PST
From: Cory.mx53 at Berkeley
Subject: My two bits worth (SW Spoiler)

Its finally time to get my two bits in.  What if the force
were inherently evil and it required that Jedi be extensively
trained so that they could mold the evil force for the good
of all.
                        Andy

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 20-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #46
*** EOOH ***
Date: 20 FEB 1981 0722-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #46
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 20 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 46

Today's Topics:
     SF Books - Quote Reply & VALIS & Dune Series & Covenant II,
Physics Tomorrow - Light Barrier, Physics Today - Things that go bump,
SF TV - Men into Space & Cosmos Revisited, Humor - Carrion House Gift,
      Star Trek - The Computer, Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 19 Feb 1981 1237-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: Quote Query Unquote

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
    - Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1890) Act III

Approx("You must be in the gutter to look at the stars.")
    - Tennessee Williams

Rich

------------------------------

LEOR@MIT-MC 02/20/81 03:58:28 Re: VALIS by Philip K. Dick

I've just finished the latest Dick mind-bender, and boy does this
one do it to ya.  Phil Apley recently told me that he was totally
out of touch with reality for several hours after reading "UbiK"
...well, compared to VALIS, "Ubik" is light satire.  If it weren't
for Budrys's raving review, I'd conclude that I was being maso-
chistic by liking VALIS...but then, my understanding of masochism
has been changed by the book.
     There are some things in there that I still don't understand
how Dick got away with; he just did, beautifully.
     Many of Dick's novels end by attributing the confusion and
senselessness of the plot to drugs and hallucinations; this time,
no such "waking up" is pulled out of a hat.  The confusion and
senselessness are here to STAY.  Or are they?
        -leor

------------------------------

Date: 19 Feb 1981  9:33:43 EST
From: Ward Harriman <harriman at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: grab bag.

     I recently had a discussion with several people concerning
the motives behind Dune's Bene Gesserit (sp?) testing program.
Anyone out there have any pet theories (not necessarily intended
by Herbert) as to why they test and whom?
     Also, does anyone have an idea about when the God Emperor
of Dune will be released?  I don't want to break down and read
the Playboy condensed version.  (I confess I did read the first
few pages.)

     On a different note, is it true that The One Tree has been
released in England and that there is some hold up on White Gold
Wielder? (Donaldson)

     And a third note, does relativity say that nothing can travel
faster than the speed of light or simply that nothing can accelerate
through the speed of light.  Does Al have anything to say about the
other side?  If something is travelling >c can it slow down below c?
Is there a discontinuity involved with all this?

esh

------------------------------

Date: 19 Feb 1981 1024-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: Dust in the Wind Addendum    

The ANALOG article was: 'Giant Meteor Impact' by J.E. Enever and
it was published in the March 1966 issue (Along with a classic
'Ship That Sang' story by Anne McCaffery and some other good
stuff by Vernor Vinge and Keith Laumer.)

------------------------------

Date: 19 February 1981 1635-EST (Thursday)
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject:  Giant Meteor Impact

The story "Giant Meteor Impact" by J.E. Enever was published also
in:

   Campbell, J. W.  Analog 6 (Pocket, paperback, 1969)
   Campbell, J. W.  Analog 6 (Doubleday, hardbound, 1968)

In addition, he has done a followup article in the January 1981
Analog, using the recent data from the Mercury probe to conjecture
about the earthquake effects.

------------------------------

Date: 19 Feb 1981 1547-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: OLD TV (MEN IN or INTO SPACE)

Does anyone out there remember this series?  Is there anything
written about it?  I would love to see a "Guide to Men In Space"
(Lauren??).  It would be interesting to compare the plots, to
what space really turned out to be like.  Does anyone know the
dates of this series and how many were produced?

Thanks,  --Bill

------------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 1981 10:01:15-PST
From: ihnss!hobs at Berkeley

The following letter appeared some time ago in the Chicago Tribune:

    I can hardly wait for Carl Sagan's next PBS program, "This
    Old Cosmos."  In a 13-week series, Carl takes over a run-
    down "worldview" and restores it in the beautiful style of
    Alexandrian science.  In the process he rips out the tacky
    Christianity installed by the previous owners, hires a
    professional carpenter, and puts in a great modern kitchen.
                                Jordan Scherf
                                Evanston, IL
                                    Love, John

------------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 1981 1336-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: More Products From CARRION HOUSE

#60911300-P  FRENCH UNDERGROUND ARMY KNIFE

   Seventy-two different functions in one compact pocket model --
   THE KNIFE, of finest French underground steel.  Unfold it bit
   by bit: it's a hacksaw, a double-edged hatchet, a portable
   wireless, even a lavatory, all in an instant!  Flick the
   appropriate blade, and voila!  You have a vegetable scraper
   and pineapple corer.  Plus all the standard features you
   expect in such a knife: scissors, nail file and escargot
   extractor.  Our newest model features a complete set of
   tools for wilderness survival: car jack, socket wrenches
   and lug nut remover.  What more can we say?  It's all here
   in one clever, compact model, featuring elegant, versatile
   chrome and black enamel finish.
   TOTAL COST: $29.95, includes 72 multi-purpose functions and
   accessories.  SHIPPING WEIGHT: 45 lbs.

#25522  HISTORIC GIRL SCOT COOKIES

   It's taken years to gather this remarkable collection: every
   Girl Scot Cookie sold in the United States since they were
   first introduced!  Last full set sold made record price at
   Sotheby's.  Each cookie preserved in argon, then surrounded
   with permanent plastic shell, mounted on genuine walnut
   plaque.  Your full name or monogram included.
   ENTIRE SET (30 COOKIES): $7,7500.00.  Can be financed.

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

CARRION HOUSE'S World of Gifts

------------------------------

Date: 18 Feb 1981 1745-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: cat brains

The "cat brain" computer was mentioned by name in the novelization
of the "Miri" Trek episode.  As far as I know, it was just called
the "biocomp" or some such in the actual aired television version.

--Lauren--

------------------------------


DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/20/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It offers
another view on the nature of the force and the Star Wars universe.
People who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may not wish
to read any further.


-----------------------------

Date: 19 FEB 1981 1113-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Inherently Evil Force

  That idea strikes an interesting chord: if the force is generated
by the aggregation of all life, but most people aren't aware of it,
that suggests it is generated very deep in the levels of the brain 
--- i.e., in or around the id (if you acknowledge Freud; if not,
Brunner quotes a remark that "in the human brain there is a monkey
riding a dog riding a lizard," which is a good description of the
physical structure and might serve as an image of the psychological
organization as well).  What this leads to is that the force may not
necessarily be evil but is likely to be chaotic (childish, if you
accept the modern view of children as far from innocent beings) and
that the result of getting in touch with the force, unless your mind
is balanced and devoted, will be an overlay of untrammeled personal
desire with no consideration either for the larger consequences or
for the desires of anyone else.  Note that in some ways the uses of
the Force could be divided into Lawful and Chaotic rather than Good
and Evil, which latter terms are not used in either film.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 21-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #47
*** EOOH ***
Date: 21 FEB 1981 0641-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #47
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 21 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 47

Today's Topics:
  SF TV - Men Into Space & Outer Limits,  Future - Cryonics Escape,
Physics Today - Things that go bump,  Physics Tomorrow - Light Barrier
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 Feb 1981 1622-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: "Men In Space"

I've gotta pass on doing an episode guide for this one --
I ain't THAT old!

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date:  21 Feb 1981 0220-EST
From: The Moderator <Duffey at MIT-AI>
Subject: Speaking of episode guides...

The revised version of Lauren's Outer Limits Episode Guide has
now been set up for FTP distribution at the sites listed below.
I delayed it until now so that it could be formatted by a text
justifier.  This will make it easier for you to read and easier
for me to maintain as part of the archives.  Everyone interested
in reading this story should obtain the file from the site which
is most convenient for them.  If you cannot do so, please send
mail to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI and I will be happy to make
sure that you get a copy.

Please obtain your copies in the near future however, since
the files will be deleted in one week.  A copy of the material
will also be available upon request from the SF-LOVERS archives.
Thanks go to Richard Brodie, Richard Lamson, Doug Philips, and
Don Woods for providing space for the materials on their systems.

   Site          Filename
  
MIT-AI       AI:DUFFEY;SFLVRS OLEG
CMUA         TEMP:OLEG.SFL[A210DP0Z]
PARC-MAXC    [Maxc2]<Brodie>SFLOVERSOLEG.TXT
SU-AI        TZGUID.SFL[T,DON]
MIT-Multics  >udd>sm>rsl>sf-lovers>outer-limits-episode-guide

[Note, you can TYPE or FTP the file from SAIL without an account.]

------------------------------

Date: 20 Feb 1981 1301-PST
From: Craig Milo Rogers  <ROGERS at USC-ISIB>
Subject: Why Revive & The Door into Summer

     I excluded "The Door into Summer" (RAH) because it does not
discuss Why society revives the corpsicles.  TDiS simply assumes
that society will revive the corpsicles for the usual legal and
"humanitarian" reasons.  Some attention is given to the problems
a revivee faces during reentry to society, but mainly the reader
is invited to maintain a suspension of disbelief and continue
with the tale.  In short, TDiS provides us with issues to
discuss, rather than discussing the issue we've provided.

                                        Craig Milo Rogers

------------------------------

MOON@MIT-MC 02/20/81 20:47:10
Re: Asteroid-induced dinosaur extinctions

The biggest problem with this theory is that there is no evidence
that all the extinctions happened in the same year, and there is
some evidence that the extinctions were not simultaneous.  They
could have happened over a period of hundreds of thousands of
years consistently with the known fossil record.

------------------------------

Date: 20 Feb 1981 11:53 PST
From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC

I believe someone published a paper which showed that the FTL
universe is a mathematical dual of the STL universe, and that
each universe would see itself as STL and the other as FTL.
Nothing was said about traversing between them however.  If
anyone knows more about this, please let me know.

Also, relativity does not say that nothing can travel at the
speed of light, only that nothing which has mass can do so.
Photons are an example of massless "objects" which do travel
at the speed of light. 

   --  Larry  --

------------------------------

Date: Friday, 20 February 1981  11:45-EST
From: John A. Pershing Jr. <JPERSHING at BBNA>
Subject: Relativity and FTL

Relativity says, essentially, that INFORMATION cannot propagate
from point X to point Y any faster than C.  In Einstein's gedanken
experiments, this was all described in terms of causality -- e.g.,
could something happening at [space-time] X have possibly caused
the event which happened at Y?  E.g., did Y know of the event X
at the time that Y happened?  In these terms, the propagation
speed of light defines the "event horizon"; anything inside of
that horizon could be causally related, anything outside of the
horizon could not be causally related.  Without this causality
limitation, all sorts of horrible paradoxes appear (e.g., both
"X causes Y" and "Y causes X").

Note that FTL travel, whether involving "accelerating" through
C or suddenly bopping into "hyperspace", violates this limit on
information flow.

  -jp

------------------------------

Date: 20 Feb 1981 1519-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIF>
Subject: faster than light

Indeed, relativity does not say that you cant travel faster than
light, just that you can not go through it.  However, if you go
faster than light, your mass will be imaginary (if such a thing
is possible).  Objects that may do this and thus possess imagi-
nary mass are called tacheons.  They have 0 energy when going at
infinite speeds and it takes energy to slow them down, but it
would take and infinite amount of energy to slow a tacheon to
the speed of light, so they could go no slower.

You also have a problem with causality.  It turns out that
relativity shows that two observers moving at different speeds
will not agree on whether or not two events happened at the
same time.  However, you will never have the case where they
disagree on the order of events.  (ie one may say two events
happened at the same time, and another observer may say A
happened before B, but you will never have one guy saying A
happened first and another guy saying B happened first, then
A).  If the two observers are looking at tacheons, however,
you can get two observers disagreeing on the order of events.

For example, Suppose that event A is pulling the trigger on
a tacheon gun (shoots tacheon bullets) and event B is the guy
who gets hit by one of the bullets dropping dead.  Then one
observer would see A happen before B and would conclude that
pulling the trigger "caused" the guy to die.  However another
observer would see that the guy dying "cause" the trigger to
be pulled, since it happened first.

So, if there are tacheons, our ideas of causality would be
violated (we have never seen this happen in nature).

Another point: There are tacheons in the currently accepted
theory uniting the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism (the
Weinberg-Salam theory).  That is to say, the theory starts out
with certain particles, forces, and a group of particles with
imaginary mass!  (tacheons??)  When you turn the theory crank,
you end up with the observed forces including a new neutral
weak force which was discovered after the theory was presented.
So maybe there are tacheons and the only way we see them is
their resulting effect on the weak nuclear force.  If there
were no tacheons, the weak nuclear force would be strong,
and the universe would be a far different place.

NOTE: The currently accepted view is that the particles with
imaginary mass you add to the theory are NOT real particles,
but are just a mathematical tool that makes the theory come
out right.  You would not get many theorists to claim they
may be real, this is just my speculation.

                                Alan

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 22-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #48
*** EOOH ***
Date: 22 FEB 1981 0657-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #48
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 22 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 48

Today's Topics:
  SF Music - Filksong Bibliography, SF Books - FTL/Causality Novels?
                         SF Movies - Scanners
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 17 Feb 1981 1639-PST
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>
Subject: Filksong bibliography

     HJJH's contribution of the latest filksong collection
reminded me of something I had been meaning to ask here for
a while.  Is there a bibliography of Filksong books anywhere?
On the SFL archives?  If not, can anyone provide one for the
rest of us?
        Mike

------------------------------

Date: 22 Feb 1981 0042-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: FTL drives and Causality paradoxes 

Has anyone ever written an SF story in which someone DOES invent
a FTL drive, and then encounters these causality paradoxes recently
mentioned?  It looks like all writers I know of have simply ignored
this issue in assuming FTL drives.  Treating it seriously in a
story might lead to an interesting novel.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 21 FEB 1981 1943-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: SCANNERS (the movie)

   This is the rough draft of a review of SCANNERS, which review
may end up being published somewhere in hardcopy.  I saw a private
screening of the film Friday night (2/20); it seems to be scheduled
for release in Boston in a week (2/27), and I'm told it's already
out in New York and Los Angeles.

   SCANNERS is the sort of movie that people with a low tolerance
for gore are likely to walk out of very early, regardless of
whatever promise they see in the first few minutes, which feature
people being burned and shot and one man's head literally exploding.
   For fans of written science fiction, this reaction is reasonable;
the film is a short step from the standard Brian de Palma horror
film (and seems to have borrowed and developed some of the devices
that were developed for THE FURY).  The one trace of a science-
fictional idea is the existence of certain people who have the
capacity to "scan" everyone else.  The exact nature of scanning
is never clearly defined; a handout describes it as psychokinesis,
but it is described on screen as telepathy and shown as including
both PK and psychopyrolysis (starting fires with the mind, which
might be considered PK at the molecular level).  Patrick McGoohan
as Dr. Paul Ruth offers a definition of scanning as placing one's
self in sympathy with someone else's nervous system, and this seems
as good an answer as any other; scanners can alter heart rates, take
data from computers, and cause nosebleeds (at least) in people they
are scanning.  Scanners don't get their abilities for free, however;
without periodic injections of a drug ridiculously named Ephemerol,
they can't stop picking up random thoughts from everyone around
them.
   The protagonists are Dr. Ruth, mentioned above; Cameron Vale,
(Stephen Lack) a derelict scanner plucked from the gutter by Ruth;
Kim Obrist (Jennifer O'Neill), the leader of a group of unattached
scanners, whose main role in the film seems to be following Vale
around so she can witness the winner of the final battle (but for
this nonentity of a role she gets top billing); and Revok (Michael
Ironside), who is described as murdering every scanner who won't
join his underground group.  The plot?  Yes, I was wondering about
that too.  Ruth works for Consec, a private security firm which
thinks scanners would be a neat addition to their list of services;
Consec's problem is that their only scanner was one of the people
blown away in the first few minutes, which is why Vale is hunted
down with tranquilizer darts a few minutes later.
   Vale is sent out with a supply of Ephemerol and orders to
locate other scanners; unfortunately, every time he finds some
people show up with shotguns.  By the second or third time this
happens the intelligent viewer begins to think "Idiot plot!"
--- the scanners know it's happened before, so why do they all
go into a trance without anyone standing guard?  Why doesn't
Consec, which seems paranoid about everything else, trace one
of its own managers and found out he's meeting with someone
who's working against them?  Why didn't Consec notice when
their chief enemy, who is shown to have a distinctive and
unhidable scar, got into a top-secret meeting?  In short, why
didn't someone show the grain of sense that would have shortened
this 100-minute film to fifteen minutes or so, thereby saving
plastic and helping to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?
   There's a variety of additional nonsense to help exfoliate
viewers, including some really disgusting gore at the end, a
scene in which a computer (inside views of which suggest it
was built in the mid-50's, even though the film is supposed
to happen now) has its self-destruct mechanism triggered in
an attempt to blast the mind of the scanner linked to it
(that's right; the computer is actually supposed to destroy
its innards rather than simply writing zeroes over everything)
and another in which people in containment suits walk through
two ordinary doors to get to unsuited office space.  The plot
stays thin throughout the movie (which could be shortened at
least 15 minutes just by reducing some of the lingering shots
of people and machines getting wasted); Revok turns out to be
the only person with a coherent motive, and even he does a
number of things which don't seem to have any rational or
emotional reason.
   The director's motivation seems to be sticking it to the
nasty corporations, which he fails at because the script is
such a muddle; the various twists (which I can't judge because
the publicity handout spoiled them all) do little to explain
what all the fuss was about because the twists are themselves
unconvincing.  The lighting is frequently bad (not atmospheric,
\bad/); camerawork is tolerable; music is overdone; sound is
not quite muddy enough to hide the fact that most of the actors
are either mumbling or screaming.  Lack as Vale is wooden ---
not weak, which would be expected in a derelict, but \wooden/,
which makes the ending (and his occasional good lines) even
less believable; at least he sets off the ridiculous mugging
from several other members of the cast.  McGoohan is particu-
larly painful to watch, as he seems the classic over-the-hill
star cast to bring some luster to a group of otherwise little-
known actors.  The film was shot in Montreal, which at least
makes for some nice scenery.
   I'm not sure whether there is actually a group of people out
there who \like/ this kind of mess; if so, it will be good news
for them, at least, that the ending leaves a huge opening for
one or more sequels.  The one hope for the rest of us is for
those sequels to keep the crew that acted in and produced this
film busy enough that they can't mess up any material that shows
greater initial promise.


------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 23-FEB  	  "DUFFEY at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #49
*** EOOH ***
Date: 23 FEB 1981 0548-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #49
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 23 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 49

Today's Topics:
         Administrivia - Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards
              SF Magazines - The Twilight Zone Magazine,
                 Physics Today - Things that go bump
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 February 1981 0220-EST
From: The Moderator <Duffey at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards

Occasionally some of you ask me what I do.  The answer has changed
quite a bit over the year since I began studying these mailing
lists.  In February 1980 my answer was:

   "I am an AI grad student doing a thesis on high quality
    code generation techniques.  In my spare time I keep
    two mailing lists running."

In February 1981 my answer has, in effect, become:

   "I am studying the issues surrounding tele-publishing
    and how people use electronic mail.  In my spare time(?)
    I am doing an SM thesis on high quality code generation
    techniques."

No one anticipated the success of the broad spectrum discussion
lists.  In February 1980 there were two lists.  They served a
relatively small number of people.  Today there are five such
lists.  The community of subscribers has grown by a full order
of magnitude.  Their archives contain almost 9 Megabytes of
interesting material.  Suggestions for other broad spectrum
lists are being discussed.

These lists have now grown beyond the point where only one or
two people can easily deal with them.  This growth and the need
for me to devote full attention to my other work have forced me
to reorganize the support for the broad spectrum lists which I
serve as moderator.

Starting tomorrow, SF-LOVERS will be supported by two people.
Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI> will be taking over as moderator.
Don Erway <DErway at MIT-AI> and Chris Stacy <CStacy at MIT-AI>
will share responsibility for updating the list of subscribers
and maintaining the list archives.  Questions and requests
should be addressed to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI.  Messages
for the digests should be addressed to SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI.

Several people have already asked what I will be doing after
I fulfill my current commitments.  To forestall a deluge of
questions, I hope to resume my study of these lists and their
problems.  In the past, I have acted as the moderator.  In
the future, I hope to act as a "publisher", translating my
experience into software which will reduce the time and
simplify the support these lists require.

In the interim, I expect that these discussion lists will
continue to prosper.  I have greatly enjoyed working with all
of you in making SF-LOVERS a success.  I trust that you will
welcome Jim, Don, and Chris with the same help and cooperation
that you have always shown to me.

                                        Enjoy,
                                           Roger Duffey

------------------------------

Date: 22 February 1981 1824-EST (Sunday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  A new Magazine

Perusing through a local newsstand, I came across the Premier Issue
of "Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine".  It features:
        An introduction by Carol Sterling.
        Suspense/Horror Fiction (incl. a story by Ellison)
        An Episode Guide by Marc Scott Zicree
            From "Where is everybody?" upto "Third from the sun".

        As well as "The Original Television Script First Aired On
         CBS-TV October 30, 1959" (Walking Distance).

Looks promising...I wonder if Marc Scott Zicree is an alias for
Lauren???
                                        -Doug

------------------------------

Date:  22 February 1981 19:26 est
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS  at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  The Great Dying

Larger animals were not killed differentially in the great
dying.  By far, the largest number of species that died out
were shallow water dwellers.  If one looks at the statistics
one sees a more or less random pattern of extinction in that
a huge number of species (50% or more) were eliminated.

One explanation involves population statistics and is described
in Gould's Ever Since Darwin.  The larger the habitat the more
different species it can support.  When the continents all
merged around the time of the great dying (check it out -
almost all of the Earth's land masses happened to ram into
each other around that time) the total area of shallow sea/
continental shelf fell drastically.  This resulted in a vast
extinction of species in the shallower seas and along the
coastal areas in order to satisfy the species count statistics.
Needless to say that major changes in the formerly coastal
regions resulted in changes elsewhere.

You don't have to look for an asteroid, iridium levels
notwithstanding, although one could assume that something
funny happens when a large number of continental plates ram
each other.

Gould is a rather neat essayist.  He works at the Harvard
Museum for/of Comparative Zoology and writes for Natural
History.  He also wrote the introduction to the novel Clan
of the Cave Bear (I just read this a few hours ago and have
forgotten it already.) which is set about 35000 years ago about
the time of the fall of the Neanderthals.  (Personally I don't
buy that books theory of the Neanderthal extinction but ....)

------------------------------

Date:  22 February 1981 19:26 est
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS  at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  el brain damage es del mio

It just shows how little I judge a book by its cover.  The book
I babbled about was actually Dance of the Tiger by someone
named Kurten.  I personally don't agree with his theory on the
Neanderthal extinction though it was a pretty neat yarn.


------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 24-FEB  	  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #50
*** EOOH ***
Date: 24 FEB 1981 0723-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #50
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 24 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 50

Today's Topics:
                Administrivia - The More Things Change...
  SF Books - Ringworld Engineers & Here's the Plot What's the Title,
SF Magazines - The Twilight Zone Magazine, SF TV - Twilight Zone Guide,
                       Star Trek - The Computer
Physics Today - Things that go bump, Physics Tomorrow - Light Barrier
                   Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 24 February 1981 0220-PST
From: The New Moderator <JPM at SAIL>
Subject: Administrivia - The More Things Change...

Yesterday's issue of SF-LOVERS was a combined effort between Roger and
myself.  This issue is my first 'solo' attempt at putting together a
digest.  There will probably be times when I will commit a gross error
(either in technique or in judgment) that Roger would never have let
pass.  I hope that these occasions will be rare, and would like to
take the opportunity now to beg for mercy from the community in
anticipation of them.

Since I am new to the moderating game, I will be following the trail
blazed by Roger as closely as possible.  It is my aim that during the
next few weeks you will never miss the quality that Roger instilled
into SF-LOVERS while he was moderator.  It was Roger's belief that the
moderator should have an absolute minimum of influence over the
content of the digests.  I concur.  I hope that any changes in the
content of the digests will be due to its readership, not its
moderator.

Please remember that neither the SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@AI nor the
SF-LOVERS@AI mailboxes have been changed.  Please direct all mail
concerning the digests to them.  Don and Chris will be taking care of
problems that involve the mailing lists or the archives, while I will
concentrate on general policy and content oriented matters.

To close, a technical note - many of your fellow readers do not have
terminals capable of duplicating non standard characters.  Although I
actively attempt to catch these characters, sometimes a few will sneak
through.  So please do not use such characters in your messages.
Also, please try to format your messages so that each line is less
than 70 characters.  Otherwise I will have to re format your message,
losing some of the effect you may have wished to gain through unusual
formatting.

Happy reading.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 23 Feb 1981 1216-PST
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>
Subject: Many thanks, Roger

     As a reader/contributor to several of these lists for the last
year or so, I would like to thank you most sincerely for the high
quality and enthusiasm you've put into the enterprise.  This is an
absolutely marvelous experiment, and its working out the way it has is
to a very large extent your doing.  Well done, and

        Cheers,
	Mike

------------------------------

Date: 02/23/81 1240-EDT
From:  j.baldassini  (gnc at mit-ll)
Subject: Title Request

     I've just finished reading "The Third Wave", by Alvin Toffler
(highly recommended, though non-fiction) and it reminded me of a story
by Damon Knight.  I first read the story in the collection "Three
Novels", and it was about a character named Alvah Gustad, a citizen of
New York City, who is charged with the ambassadorial job of making
contact with the rural regions and bringing back some trade agreements
for food. Anyone remember the title ?

------------------------------

Date: 23 Feb 1981 1031-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: Ringworld Engineers...  

     ...is now out and ready to be purchased by all you paperback SF
enthusiasts.  Parse that sentence any way you want.

Rich

------------------------------

Date: 23 Feb 1981 1542-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Rod Serling's TZ magazine

     Ahem.  To quote Shultz regarding the TZ magazine: "I know
nothing!  NOTHING!"  I don't know who this Marc Foobar character is,
but I sure hope he got permission from Serling's estate before
starting to use his name.  One of the things that really destroyed Rod
was the way he lost control of the projects that used his name (such
as the last season of TZ, and all of "Night Gallery", which he
basically hated.)

     I'll have to ask Rod about this the next time I see him.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 23 Feb 1981 1050-PST
From: CSD.SPREITZER at SU-SCORE
Subject: TZ guide

     Im not sure, but I seem to vaguely recall seeing some TZ episodes
not listed in the recently distributed guide -

     How about the one where the dictatorship, after getting rid of
libraries and other nice things, tries to get rid of the now useless
librarian(played by Burgess Merideth)?

     Or, wasn't there one where some aliens give a bum in a bar
superhuman strength, to see what he does with it??

     I seem to remember one where an old couple wanted young bodies
again, but could only afford the treatment for one of them.

     And wasn't there one about a love potient that was sold cheaply,
but the antidote was expensive?

------------------------------

Date: 23 Feb 1981 1036-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: In the Navy....    

     After having spent most of Sunday aboard the USS Merrill (a
Spruance-class destroyer) I thought that you might be interested to
know that the radar screens and computer displays used in the CIC
(Command Information Center) on Spruance-class vessels can be used to
run a Star Trek program.  ("Mr. Sulu, take us out of the Bay.  Warp
Factor Two.")

------------------------------

Date: 23 Feb 1981 1530-EST
From: DAA at MIT-DMS (David A. Adler)
Subject: Another theory for the dying of the Dinosaur

     I have also heard that there was a possibility that the dinosaurs
died due to the shift of the earth's Magnetic north.  From evidence of
lava flows coming out on the North Atlantic Ridge, magnetic north has
not always been true north.  At some point in time, possibly when the
dinosaurs were around, magnetic north changed from true north to true
south and then later back again (or it could have changed from south
to north and stayed there, I am not sure which).  There is also
evidence that magnetic north is due to change sometime within the next
million years or so.  When this happened, would it have been possible
for there to be some type of radiation or anything else that might
abolish all life?

David Adler

------------------------------

Date: 23 Feb 1981 1818-EST
From: G.Nessus at MIT-EECS (Doug Alan)
Subject: Relativity

     Aaaactuuuuaaaaally....Relativity does not say that two observers
will never disagree on the order of two events.  Take two events, A
and B, as seen from an arbitrary observer, where A is the event that
happened first (according to the arbitrary observer).  Define X(A) and
X(B) to be the respective positions of the events and T(A) and T(B) to
be the respective times of the events.  If a light beam could NOT have
traveled from X(A) to X(B) in time T(B)-T(A) then according to
Relativity, there are possible observers who would say that B occurred
before A.
     This, though, does not disrupt causality because since nothing
could have been at both event A and B (unless it traveled faster than
light) there could have been no interaction between the two events and
neither event could have caused the other.  If there could have been
any interaction between the two events (i.e. if a beam of light could
have traveled from X(A) to X(B) in T(B)-T(A) or less) then no
observers could disagree about the order of the events.
     This is just a stupid, picky point that I decided to point out.
(I have to put Physics 8.01 to some use.)  This has no real bearing on
the discussion because even including this, FTL drives and Tachyons
still cause the same problems.

					--Doug Alan

------------------------------

JPM@SAIL 02/24/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
offers another view on the nature of the force and the Star Wars
universe.  People who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may
not wish to read any further.

------------------------------

KARIM@MIT-MC 02/23/81 09:56:30
Subject : Re: SW and The Gospel of Luke (Skywalker, not the apostle)

     You wanna know what the real nature of the Force is? It is,at the
root,just ol' George Lucas pushing his own religion. And it's not a
new one either -- ever since "biblical" time (whatever that means)
people have searched for what I,after a fashion of C.S. Lewis and
others, call the Life-Force religion. This religion is very "in" these
days; indeed,it has always been a best-seller.

     It is the classic Good-vs.-Evil,Id-vs.-Superego,and (the
original, methinks) Law vs. Sin Nature. It's a very powerful thing
THAT HAS NO WILL.  That is,it has most,if not all,of the powers of the
God of Christianity, but none of the bad parts. That is,the Force
can't say you're bad,or send you to Hell,or anything nasty like that.
And it is very pocketable. That is, when "the sun is shining and you
are feeling fit",OF COURSE there must be something Flowing through the
Galatic Void (I love that phrase,"Galatic Void"; reminds me of Carl
Sagan).  But if you just missed your bus or things go slightly
downhill during the day, why think about any God?

     The only place where such as dualism (as in the Force) screws up
is saying what is good,and what is bad? I mean does the audience (or
even the characters in the movie) have a right to say,"Good","Bad"?
If the Force has no will then what makes Darth "Bad" and Luke "Good"?
So what is Darth wants to rule the Universe and is selfish (something
we Humans generally look down upon) -- who has the right to
say,"That's Bad!" ? In A SW universe,I should think that the best
thing to do would be to "look out for Number One": To hell with
posterity,and everyone else.  That's the consequences when you end up
with no God with a will: Who is to say what's right?

     The key here (and old George may not now this) but,in a SW
universe,when you call something "good",or "bad",you are actually
judging them by a Higher standard; one that I know should come from
God. After all, a man can not call a crooked line "crooked" unless he
has some idea of a straight one.

     The whole affair is really rather silly,and not worth the time
and resources I have spent typing this. But it has gone beyond
interesting talk and speculation.

     There were a group of people out in Colorado worshipping the
Force.

     They were calling it "The Holy Spirit".

     SW is the best selling film of ALL TIMES.

     And it's just a movie?

			Hoo-hah,
			-Karim (KARIM@MC)

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 25-FEB  	  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #51
*** EOOH ***
Date: 25 FEB 1981 0554-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #51
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 25 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 51

Today's Topics:
  SF Books - Outlands  & Ringworld Engineers, SF Movies - Scanners,
  SF TV - Man into Space & The Twilight Zone, SF Radio - Star Wars,
Physics Today - Things that go bump, Physics Tomorrow - Light Barrier
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 Feb 1981 (Monday) 2300-PST
From: DWS at LLL-MFE
Subject: Outlands

I ran across the book version of the soon-to-be-released movie
"Outlands" this last weekend.  Not wanting to give anything away,
I merely looked at the 12 or so pages of pictures in the center.
On first glance, it doesn't look that bad.  The plot seems to
revolve around a "sheriff," (Sean Connery), who is sent out into
the "Outlands" to track down dope smugglers.  The wild west trans-
posed to Io.  The pics show several SWAT types milling around with
shotguns, and Sean in a spacesuit trying to break through the wall
of a dome in search of somebody who is identified as a hired killer.

I can say nothing for the book, which was written by Alan Dean 
Foster, but the pictures are sort of nice.  Anybody know when the
film is supposed to be released?

-- Dave Smith

------------------------------

Date: 24 Feb 1981 1906-PST
From: Geoffrey C Mulligan (at The Pentagon) <GeoffM at RAND-AI>
Subject: Another review of SCANNERS

     I cannot agree more with Chip Hitchcock's review of Scanners.  I
guess that the movie had an early release in the Washington DC area.
I saw it about a month ago.  The movie was a total bust.  It lost me
after about 20 to 30 minutes.  The plot was so thin as to be
non-existent.  Only at the end of the movie did some sembelence of a
plot beging to emerge.  The special effects were very vivid, not
recommended for the weak of heart.  I am sure that we will see a
"Scanners Re-Scanned" in the coming months.

		Geoff

------------------------------

Date: 24 Feb 1981 10:02:33 EST
From: Ralph Muha <muha at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Man Into Space

     As I recall, the series aired while I was in early grade school
(about 1961).  In Chicago, it was on opposite the Huckleberry Hound
cartoon show and would cause conflicts between myself and my friends
(they all wanted to see the hound). The show starred William Lundigan
as Col. Ed McCauly, the stalwart leader of the NASA space program.
Rocket ship footage from this show has turned in many other series'
such as "The Outer Limits."

     One episode that comes to mind: It's Christmas Eve on the moon
and the astronauts, while scanning the heavens with their
radio-telescope, pick up a strange, repetitious "tinkling," clearly a
message from somebody "Out There."  They respond by getting out a
guitar and singing "Silent Night," beaming the signal in the direction
from whence the message came.

     Other episodes: the problems/dangers of refueling in space (one
craft bangs into another and ruptures a fuel tank), cold war hijinks
with the Russians (who also have a moonbase a few craters down from
ours) and the inevitable love story (yes, two people necking in space
suits!).

     Speaking of old TV shows, how many people remember "Science
Fiction Theater" with Truman Bradley? One particularly good story was
about a suburban couple who discover that their neighbors are
time-jumping refugees from a totalitarian future. Another was a search
for Inca gold which leads to the discovery of the remains of an
ancient extra-terrestrial astronaut.

                                       Ralph Muha <muha @ bbn-unix>

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 02/24/81 21:31:21
Subject : Re: Men into Space and the Twilight Zone, too.

     Ahhh. Old, obscure televsion. "Men Into Space" I have never seen
- but I still have refernces to it in my piles of television
trivia-like material. According to my best source (Fantastic Films)...

     Men into space aired first on CBS in the fall of 1959. Colonel Ed
McCauly (played by the immortal William Lundigan. Who?) whose
adventures take him to the nearby space stations and outposts of what
was projected to be our future space program. Said article claims the
show dealt with problems that characters might well be "expected" to
deal with in space - everyday situations like a spacesuited astronaut
being caught between two closing sections of a space station being
assembled. How do you get him out without killing him? The article
compared the show as a sort of "Seahunt" in space. It gave the show
high marks for realism and authenticity (for instance, the budget for
the prop spacesuit came to $3152 1959 dollars) but but low marks for
not being exciting.

     "Men Into Space" was cancelled after one season. But does it
sound familiar, anyway?

     As for missing TZ episodes - i can spot you three out of four.
The story of a bum in a bar getting superpowers from aliens is surely
"Mr Dingle, the Strong", a second-season episode with Burgess Meredith
as Dingle and Don Rickles as , of course, a wise guy named Bragg.

     "The Obsolete Man" also stars Meredith, this time as a librarian
judged obsolete by a totalitarian dictatorship.

     And I think the love potion story was probably "The Chaser", a
first-season episode which my source describes like this:"A loser in
the game of love purchases a special potion from a weird doctor."

     And now I must bow to Lauren for the forth and final "missing"
episode...

Cheers,
Larry

------------------------------

Date: 24 Feb 1981 1609-EST
From: DAA at MIT-DMS (David A. Adler)
Subject: Star Wars on radio

     In TIME Magazine's March 2,1981 issue there is an add for SW on
radio.  According to the add there will be 13 episodes to be aired on
National Public Radio Stations.  The episodes will include the music
of John Williams, sound effects from the movie, and featuring Mark
Hamill (as Luke) and Anthony Daniels (as C3PO).  The series will
premiere in March of 1981 and for more information for times of
broadcast one can call National Public Radio toll-free at (800)
424-2909.  If you live in Washington call 785-5353.

David Adler

------------------------------

Date: 24 FEB 1981 1840-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: earth's magnetic north

     Is \not/ true north now! (the magnetic north pole is in north
central Canada, latitude 70+; this is why the line of zero variance
between magnetic north and true north runs near the Mississippi, while
compass readings around Boston are 15 degrees higher than the true
heading of a given vector.

     The information I've seen says that the field has \reversed/ (as
you mentioned) several times since North and South America began
moving away from the rest of the continents.  This was one of the
clinchers for the theory of plate tectonics; crystal orientation on
the floor of the Atlantic shows regular changes appropriate to
materials solidified under different magnetic fields.

     Also, I seem to recall that the breakup of PanGaea is guessed to
have started 400 million years ago, while the dinosaurs died off much
more recently (150 million years back? 75? haven't studied this in a
\long/ while).

------------------------------

Date:  24 February 1981 08:10 est
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS  at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  Tachyons and the weak force.

If I remember my particle physics none of the unified force
theories involve tachyons.  They involve virtual particles,
very massive particles and various interesting forward and
reverse time symetries, but they do not involve assuming that
anything is travelling faster than light.  My last reference to
the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces referred
to the vector particle as the Z particle which was rather
massive although nowhere nearly as massive as the proposed
intermediate vector baseball which dumps in the strong force
somehow.

Perhaps the confusion is a result of the fact that
anti-particles are actually ordinary particles moving backward
in time.  They still cannot travel faster than c and still must
observe causality (which makes things even weirder.)

------------------------------


JPM@SAIL 02/25/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It refers
to Larry Niven's Known Space Series of stories, in particular
Protector, Ringworld, and Ringworld Engineers.  People who are not
familiar with the Known Space series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

BGR@MIT-MC 02/22/81 03:59:06
Re: Warning: I think I've spoiled 3 Larry Niven books in 1 msg.

I've just read Larry Niven's "The Ringworld Engineers", and found
it interesting and fun reading, but I am bothered by a couple of
apparent inconsistencies:

1) I seem to remember that an entire world of humans was transformed
   by Brennan to Protectors in "Protector". If so, how come Louis Wu
   knows so little about Protectors (especially about this entire
   world of them)?

2) Teela was transformed into a Protector by eating tree-of-life.
   Yet in "Protector", it was claimed that all females (and, in
   fact, female humans) were killed by consumption of tree-of-life.

Anybody have explanations for this?

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 26-FEB  	  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #52
*** EOOH ***
Date: 26 FEB 1981 0452-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #52
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 26 Feb 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 52

Today's Topics:
                       SF Events - SFL Tshirts,
  SF Books - Title Query Reply & Venus on the Half-Shell & Outlands,
       SF TV - Twilight Zone Guide, & Science Fiction Theater,
     SF Radio - Star Wars, Physics Today - Things that go bump,
                     Spoiler - Ringworld Engineers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 0445-PST
From: The Moderator (JPM at SAIL)
Subject: SF-LOVERS T-Shirt Information

[Recently a few people have sent inquires about the SF-lovers T-Shirts
to the mailing list.  All such inquires should be directed to
SFL-TShirtS@MIT-AI, NOT SF-LOVERS proper.

Below is a reprint of the original message involving the T-Shirts.]


     Date: 17 Feb 1981 11:24 PST
     From: SFL-TShirtS at MIT-AI
     Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
     Subject: SF-Lovers T-shirts

     Yes, it's true: the official SF-Lovers T-Shirts are on the way.
     They are colorful, 100% cotton heavyweight shirts depicting the
     lovable SF-L mascot sitting pensively at his terminal and signed
     by the artist (our own RODOF at USC-ECL).  The shirts will be 
     available in Men's sizes S-M-L-XL.

     If you would like to have one (or two, or three ... everyone
     needs a change of clothes), then please send a message to
     SFL-TShirtS@MIT-AI for information on how to obtain them.

     Richard Brodie

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 0146-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: here's the title

The Damon Knight story about Alvah Gustad, New York's ambassador to
the rural regions, is called "Natural State".  It appears (among other
places) in the collection "Rule Golden and Other Stories".

-- Don.

------------------------------

Date: 25 February 1981 12:25-EST
From: Steven B. Lionel <SBL at MIT-AI>
Subject: Venus on the Half-Shell

Kilgore Trout's "Venus on the Half-Shell" has been reissued by Dell in
paperback.  The blurb says "Available for the first time without lurid
covers!"  They look the same to me.  Anyway, those of you who haven't
been able to read this book by a fictional author (actually Philip
Jose Farmer) can now find it at your bookstore: a bargain today at
$1.75.

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 0941-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: Outland

Outland is supposed to be released in May 1981.

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 0337-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: TZ guide

The Twilight Zone Episode Guide, by Saul Jaffe and yours truly, lists
all of the episodes mentioned in the last digest...

1) The "bum" given strength:  MR. DINGLE, THE STRONG.  2) The
dictatorship and the librarian:  THE OBSOLETE MAN.  3) The couple who
wanted young bodies:  THE TRADE-INS.  4) The love potion:  THE CHASER.

Please contact our friendly moderator for information regarding the
current online location of the Twilight Zone Episode Guide.


--Lauren--


[For those of you who would like a look at the Twilight Zone Guide
once again, it resides in the files

AT MIT-AI                             AI:DUFFEY;SFLVRS TZEG
AT SAIL                               TZGUID.SFL[T,JPM]

These files will probably disappear within the week, so FTP them
quickly.  Remember that you can FTP from SAIL without an account.

Jim]

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 1004-EST
From: PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling)
Subject: "The Chaser"

That Twilight Zone episode (a love potion is cheap, but the antidote
is expensive) was probably based on a similar story by John Collier.
Any SF-Lovers who haven't read Collier should run (not walk) to your
nearest bookstore or library.  He wrote many short stories, a couple
of novels, and various Hollywood screenplays (including the one for
"The African Queen").  His stuff is usually fantasy rather than SF,
but well worth it.  Dave

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 10:22 PST
From: reed.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject:  Re:SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #51

SF Theatre was one of my favorites, although I was too young to see it
when it was first on. I caught mostly reruns as a kid. I even remember
the episodes you mentioned, as well as a few others, like the one
about the Anti-grav device. Its all pretty fuzzy.

Lauren, how about an episode guide?

-- Larry --

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 1512-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: TZ/OL confusion and "your host, Truman Bradley"

I think there is some confusion here regarding Twilight Zone vs.
Outer Limits episodes.  My guide which was recently redistributed was
for the OUTER LIMITS.  The recent inquiry about "missing" episodes was
discussing TWILIGHT ZONE episodes.  There have been two separate
online guides with which I have been associated, one for OUTER LIMITS
and a completely separate one for TWILIGHT ZONE.  The TWILIGHT ZONE
guide, to the best of my knowledge, lists all episodes, including the
so-called "missing" ones.  It is not uncommon for people to confuse
episodes from the two shows given the number of years since most parts
of the country have seen them...

---

Re:  Science Fiction Theater!  AH!  There's a show.  Our friend Truman
Bradley would come out at the start of each program and do a phoney
science experiment (like burning up a model plane with an infrared
heat lamp, or searing a wall with an "ultrasonic" transmitter -- which
looked suspiciously like a pie tin with an icepick stuck in the center
of it.)

Some of the episodes were very good.  Some were awful.  I have four
episodes on videotape, including the one mentioned in a previous
digest (about the refugee family from the future -- it was called:
"Time Is Just a Place" -- it was a good one.)  A number of fairly
heavyweight stars appeared at various times, including Vincent Price.

Truman used to pull off some kinda strange stunts.  One week, the
regular opening started as always, and ended looking at an empty
chair.  You then heard Truman say (in his typical fashion), "Welcome,
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your host, Truman Bradley.  You cannot
see me right now.  Why?  Because the camera is not pointed in my
direction..."

A strange series to say the least.  A classic.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 2055-PST
From: Yeager@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Star Wars on PBS radio

Star Wars begins the first of 13 weekly episodes on KQED-FM (radio)
this Monday, Feb. 2nd at 6:30pm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bill

------------------------------

Date: 24 Feb 1981 1009-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: dinosaurs and magnets

I too have heard about the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field.
The connection with dinosaurs was that for perhaps a thousand years
during the change there would be no magnetic field.  No field, no Van
Allen belts, and so the solar wind and cosmic rays would come sleeting
straight into the atmosphere, producing higher background radiation,
greater mutation rates, and maybe climatic changes.  I don't know if
the wind is really intense enough to do these things, or if the field
would turn off rather than just drift across the equator, but it's an
interesting theory.

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 1203-PST
From: FEATHER at USC-ISIF
Subject: New Scientist recommendation

The British publication New Scientist often has articles appropriate
to the (random?) issues that arise in SF-LOVERS.  E.g.

N.S., 5th February 1981, pp 350-353:  "Geomagnetism and climate", Dr.
John Gribbin Scientists at New York's Columbia University have found
convincing evidence - and an explanation - for links between changes
in the Earth's magnetic field and changes in climate.  Their success
is in no small measure due to the tenacity of one man at the
university's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, Dr. Goesta Wollin.

N.S., 28th August 1980, pp 654-656:  "Building a time machine", Dr.
John Gribbin According to the equations of classical general
relativity theory, it is possible to build a time machine.
"Commonsense" says this is impossible - but commonsense has been wrong
before.

[Makes FTL look mundane!  SF fans will be pleased to note that this
article references Larry Niven, and has TWO pictures of Dr. Who.]

Highly recommended.

Martin S. Feather

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 14:16:40-PST
From: CSVAX.feldman at Berkeley
Subject: Protector vs. Ringworld Engineers (Spoiler!)

Regarding BGR@MIT-MC's questions:

1) The book "Protector" doesn't say anything about what happens to the
protectors on Home after the takeover, but it seems likely to me that
they went ahead and defeated the Pak invasion force and kept
themselves hidden from the lesser beings in Known Space, for their own
secret reasons.  Since they had been humans, it would (with their
advanced minds) be a simple thing to do, even if it involved altering
the memory of Alice Jordan, the only other human who even knew that
Brennan hadn't left the solar system the first time.

2) I couldn't find the reference about tree-of-life being toxic to
females, but I didn't try too hard.  Could someone point to it? If
it's there, it certainly is an inconsistency.

There is another point I have wondered about:  It is stated in
"Protector" that before Phssthpok's arrival, only the original
colonizers had ever visited Earth.  It is further stated that the Pak
were in the habit of destroying any other sentient species they came
across.  So how then were the Maps of Earth, Mars, etc., put on the
Ringworld, complete with samples of the native life?  The species
found on the Maps still exist in Known Space.

Steve

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 0410-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Re:Protector [spoiler warning]

The colony on "Home", which was transformed to Protectors, took off to
meet the Pak fleet, and was presumably never heard from again in human
space.  (This doesn't mean they're gone; remember that Brennan had
kept his own existence fairly quiet, and he was just outside the solar
system.)  There's a nit to be picked in that Niven's future history
seems to assume that nobody ever bothered to figure out what happened
to Home.  I suppose there might have been an investigatory expedition,
but since it was likely to include someone too old for Tree-of-Life,
that person would die and the expedition might conclude there was a
plague infecting the entire planet.  Anyhow, that's why Wu knows so
little about them.

I don't remember anything about females being killed by Tree-of-Life.
The conversion to Protector eliminates the genetalia and other sexual
characteristics, but I had the impression it worked just as well on
females of the appropriate age.  Can you find your reference?

-- Don.

------------------------------

kwh@MIT-AI 02/25/81 22:51:37
Subject : Re: Known Space (Definitive Spoiler)

:flame

Niven never really explains what happens to Home (the planet which
Brennan and Truesdale turned into a bunch of Protectors), but its just
one of the many problems and hangups in the
Protector-Ringworld-Ringworld Engineers trilogy.

1) Truesdale"s girlfriend (the goldskin), returns to Earth from
Kobold, knowing more than ANYONE about Protectors.  She's pregnant,
and returns with a centuries old single ship.  Everybody in the Belt
knows that she went out looking for Vandervecken, and that she thought
he was Jack Brennan, who had disappeared *centuries ago* with a
singleship.  Earth should know a lot about Protectors, and everybody
should be able to know what she found (the signs are obvious enough.


2) Truesdale and his army of childless protectors leave Home (the
planet turned Protector) with massive amounts of Tree of Life virus in
the air.  Even though the Pak ships do wipe out parts of the planet
(large masses of fake cities), some should be left.  And then, as soon
as Known Space gets the hyperdrive, whats to keep some random
adventurer from going off to see why the historical Home colony
failed?  With the hyperdrive and distances as they were, it would take
less than a week to get there and back- You could do it on a vacation!

3) Were ALL the Protectors in Truesdale"s army killed?  That seems
like a really far off chance.  We know that the two Pak fleets didn't
get through, so someone should have survived (excluding a Pyrrhic
victory- which might be possible).

There are a few other random inconsistencies and coincidences in Known
Space which I may put together later, but here is a possible
explanation for the above:

Truesdale"s girlfriend returns to the Belt, but hides out somewhere.
She struck me as a pretty intelligent woman, and she might have gotten
into thinking like a Protector- And as Brennan said, the WORST thing
for Earth would be for it to go fighting Pak- For her to stay
underground is wise for both Earth, the Belt, and her kids.  Maybe
she'll pass the tale of Pak from generation to generation, but who
knows?

Some of Truesdale's fleet does survive, and returns to Home- Anyone
coming to check things out is either destroyed or turned into a
Protector.  These protectors then resolve to help out mankind through
Known Space.  (And they're going to need it.)  I was always suspicious
of how we beat the Kzin- how about a super-high-tech brilliant fighter
Pak team which virtually obliterated entire Kzin military centers.  It
might be that a good part of the human "luck" was having an invisible
Protector fleet running around, helping out....  One other
possibility, which I especially like, is that perhaps the Puppeters
(who liked and manipulated humans) were manipulated by the Protectors
(it has a twist I like).  What the puppeteers did has a distinct
"Protector" ring to it.

Some neat other ideas:  How about Bey Shaeffer(sp?) becoming a
Protector?  On one of his many journeys, he is paid to go and check
out Home- finding guess what?  The protectors could protect Home by
ringing it with singularites which would drop any ship out of
hyperspace (they're fairly trivial to make if you've got a gravity
generator- which they have had for a LONG time).  And ships coming
through normal space could be easily detected.  It all makes for a
really nice stronghold.

Well, so much for now.  Lets hear from the vocal critics out there!

:unflame

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 27-FEB  	  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #53
*** EOOH ***
Date: 27 FEB 1981 0606-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #53
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 27 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 53

Today's Topics:
          Star Wars - SW FANAC, SF Contest - Strange Titles,
                       SF Movies - Outlands,
  Physics Today - Things that go bump, Spoiler - Ringworld Engineers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 27 Feb 1981 at 0057-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 
Subject: TIDBITS FROM THE OFFICIAL SW NEWSLETTER 

Lucas is writing the first draft screenplay for REVENGE OF THE JEDI.
No director has been set yet.  Release date-- May, 1983 <sigh>.

SW-4: A NEW HOPE is to be re-released at 1,500 North American
theatres for 2 weeks in mid-April.

Novelization of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK due on sale in April.

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 02/26/81 02:56:17
Re: Contest

In the spirit of F & SF, I offer the following contest.

     "Tomorrow, the Stars My Destination: Moon is a Harsh Mistress."

     Generate other SF title free-associations of this kind.

   --- Wechsler

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 11:15 PST
From: reed.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject:  Re:SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #51

My roommate came up with an interesting idea.

We have all heard many times that nothing with mass can travel at the
speed of light, and that as you add energy to mass travelling near the
speed of light, that the energy is absorbed as new mass rather than
increasing the speed much.

Thus, the mass increases to infinity as the velocity is pushed closer
to the speed of light. This has been proven by experiment.  However,
we have also heard that light "particles" (photons) are massless and
that only massless objects can actually travel at the speed of light.
Both of these explanations refer to the singularity that occurs in the
relativistic equations (which perhaps imply infinite mass, not 0
mass).

Now, Einstein's relationship, E=mc^2, implies that energy and matter
are equivalent. Quantum mechanics states that the energy of a
wave-particle of electromagnetic energy is defined by the equation
E=hw, where h is Planck's constant and w is the angular frequency. (I
may be wrong about the specifics of the QM equation, but there is
definitely a simple relationship like this connecting the two).

Therefore, one can draw an equivalence between matter in the
non-lightspeed case and a wave-particle in the lightspeed case as
follows:

E (STL) = mc^2 = E (L) = hw or mc^2 = hw

That is, mass and frequency are related by h/(c^2). In this specific
sense, photons are NOT massless since they do have energy.

Of course, this is akin to comparing apples and oranges, but I thought
I'd throw it out anyway.

Another interesting idea we came up with was "Life At the Speed of
Light".

If information can only propagate at the speed of light, then
particles travelling at the speed of light cannot be "aware" of each
other in a causal sense since all information flow happens at the same
speed as the particle propagation. In this sense, there is no time at
all at the speed of light. So for time travel, one merely need convert
oneself to photons and convert back whenever you want, wherever you
want and there is no time dilation. Of course figuring out what time
it is might be a problem. For that matter, converting yourself to
photons may be a bit of a problem also, but I have no doubt that
Modern Science and Engineering will solve that one.

-- Larry --

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 1609-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIF>
Subject: Outlands and Tachyons

Outlands:

Last week I saw a trailer for Outlands.  The movie looks fantastic, at
least the effects are great.  I don't know about the plot but the
picture definitely look worth seeing.  The trailer said it would be
out in June.

Tachyons:

Sorry for the misspelling in the previous msg, its spelled Tachyon (I
can spell it in mathematics, but not in english).  Anyway, I meant
what I said when I said there are Tachyons in the Weinberg-Salam model
of weak-electromagnetic forces.  This is true, IF you are willing to
say that an imaginary mass particle is a Tachyon.  The Higgs Boson
which is put into the theory to break the symmetry is written into the
Lagrangian in the same matter as an ordinary scalar particle, except
that the mass squared term is the wrong sign, thus implying that it
has imaginary mass.  I have already pointed out that Tachyons are
particles that travel faster than light which are OK by relativity IF
they have imaginary mass, so there you are.  It IS true that nowhere
in the theory is it said that the Higgs boson is going faster than
light.  Indeed, it is looked on as not a physical particle, because
when you are all done with the mathematical manipulations the Higgs
particle dissappears (its degree of freedom associated with the
massive scalar gets "eaten up" to give the W bosons a mass.  Without
the Higgs, you get massless W bosons which have 2 degrees of freedom,
but a massive W would need 3.  The reason you want the W to have mass
is so that the weak force will be weak and short range, rather than
strong and long range.)

Heres something else to think about regarding STL and FTL universes.
It is possible to show in Quantum Field theory, that half integer spin
particles must be Fermi particles (obey the Fermi exclusion
principle) and that integer spin particles (like photons) must be
bosons.  The things that go into this is causality and quantum
mechanics.  Either you have half integer particles being able to
interact only at speeds GREATER than the speed of light which implies
that they are bosons, or that they can interact only at speeds LESS
than the speed of light in which case they are Fermi particles.  We of
course choose the later case, because we know electrons, etc. interact
at less than or equal to the speed of light, and low and behold it is
predicted that electrons of Fermi particles, which is true. (Thats why
atoms work, if electrons were bosons, you couldn't make any atom but
Hydrogen).  Similarly for integer spin particles, you get that they
must be Bosons, and they are.  (thats why Lasers work).

Now...If you have tachyons instead of ordinary particles, this
connection should be reversed, so that spin 1/2 particles should be
bosons, and all want to be in the same state.  Spin 1 particles should
be fermions and obey the Fermi exclusion principle.  This is because,
for tachyons, you want them to interact ONLY at speeds faster than
light, not less then.

Thus, if you went FTL so that all of the particles in your body were
tachyons, the electrons and protons and neutrons in your body would
become bosons and try to be in the same state (very messy).

So, I conclude that a FTL universe and a STL universe are very
different places.  Maybe if you just look at what relativity says,
they are symmetrical (sort of), but if you take into account Quantum
field theory, the connection between spin and statistics changes and
you get the tachyon electrons and protons being bosons.  You would
have to have Fermions to make atoms out of, so probably there could be
no atoms, and no chemistry (except for Hydrogen existing)

You ain't getting me into the Star Ship enterprise, unless they have
their spin-statistics shield operating reliably.


Alan

------------------------------

Date: 25 Feb 1981 17:17:03 EST
From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Effects of gravity on development

I recently came across an interesting article in my mother's alumni
bulletin, the University of Iowa "SPECTATOR" (Dec. 1980).  It casts an
interesting light on some of the speculation I've seen in various
novels and stories about colonies on heavy or light gravity worlds
(e.g. the Niven "Known Space" series ).  The article follows:


                      GRAVITY AFFECTS GROWTH
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
For more than 25 years at Iowa, Charles Wunder, professor of
physiology and biophysics, has asked the question, "How would we have
come out if we had evolved in a different gravity?"

Wunder said, "Gravity is about the only thing we've had on earth of
constancy, and I feel it probably has been kind of a reference for our
genetic code.  So if you take the same genetic code and put it in a
different gravity, animals should come out differently.

"I'm particularly interested in how gravity affects the development of
the force-supporting ability of animals."

Wunder creates high gravity by placing animals' cages at the outside
end of the seven-foot arms of a centrifuge.  The faster the arms spin,
the greater the force pulling the animals toward the bottoms of their
cages.  Wunder said, "The centrifugal field is indistinguishable from
a gravitational field."

At high gravitational levels, a hamster can still walk in its cage,
but its movements are lumbering and reminiscent of a hippopotamus.

Wunder's research has shown that moderate increases in gravity do
stimulate animals' development.  For example:

- The leg bones of rats raised at three times earth's gravity are 50
per cent stronger than those of rats grown at normal gravity.

- Fruit fly larvae grow more quickly at 500 times earth's gravity than
at normal gravity.

- The shells of turtles raised at five times earth's gravity become
rounder, stronger, and larger than normal.

- Animals raised in higher gravity tend to have more protein in their
muscles and less fat in their bodies than do animals raised at normal
gravity.

- Animals raised in higher gravity seem to use oxygen more efficiently
when returned to normal gravity than do animals raised in normal
gravity.

As might be expected, at much higher gravity than normal, the animals
cannot eat all the extra food that would be required for normal
growth.  For example, when the gravitational pull on fruit fly larvae
is doubled from 500 times normal to 1,000 times normal, the larvae no
longer grow faster than normal; in fact, they grow slower than they
would at normal gravity.

But moderately high gravity puts a mechanical stress on animals that
stimulates their supporting limbs to develop, even as weight-lifting
strengthens the limbs.  Wunder also has done some research on animals
in situations that simulate the lack of any gravity.

One way he simulates zero gravity is to slowly rotate animals
continuously, so there is no settling in one direction.

He found that the shells of turtles raised under such conditions tend
to enfold around their bellies, in a reversal of the unfolding that
occurred as soon as they hatched.

In the 1960s the United States government asked Wunder and some other
University of Iowa scientists about the effects of prolonged
weightlessness in space.  Among the problems the scientists predicted,
based on experiments with animals, were demineralization of bones and
disruption in blood circulation.

Wunder says his is basic research.  Its most important service is to
add to the general fund of knowledge about the normal and abnormal
development of animals.

He said, "If we can better understand the mechanism that underlies the
normal growth of a bone, it will certainly help the orthopaedist or
other clinicians to know what's going on if the bone growth isn't
normal."

------------------------------


JPM@SAIL 02/27/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
refer to Larry Niven's Known Space Series of stories, in particular
Protector, Ringworld, and Ringworld Engineers.  People who are not
familiar with the Known Space series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 26 Feb 1981 0906-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: Equal Rights for Protectors  

Protectors may indeed start out as breeders of either sex.  I believe
that the original reason for this mis-understanding is a passage
referring to one of Phsstpok's clan members, a two year old girl named
Ttuss.  After Phsstpok's clan had been sterilized by radiation from an
enemy bomb, Phsstpok's lifespan was measured by the time it would take
for Ttuss to grow up (she was the youngest member of the Pitchok
family, and thus the last child they would ever have) and turn
Protector.  Without a clan to Protect, she would lose her appetite and
die.  And when she died, Phsstpok would too.

------------------------------

Date: 27 February 1981 00:29-EST
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Female Protectors (spoiler)

The Tree-of-life change certainly does not kill females... the only
reason Pssthpok lived long enough to find out about the earth colony
was he was waiting for his DAUGHTER to become a protector... she then
joined his project.

------------------------------

Date: 27 February 1981 00:26-EST
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Protector vs. Ringworld Engineers (Spoiler!)

It explicitly explains in Ringworld Engineers why the maps exist and
why the original planets were not destroyed.

-- Charles

------------------------------

Date: 26 FEB 1981 1220-EST
From: JNC at MIT-MC (J. Noel Chiappa)
Subject: Female protectors

I seem to remember that Pssphtok (however the f^&* you spell it) was
at one point (after the valley was bombed) waiting till the last of
his kids grew up before having no further reason to live. The kid in
question was female (name started with a T, as I recall) and was
definitely going to turn into a Pak. I recall no references to females
dying at all. Anyway, I can't believe that Larry would make a mistake
that dumb.

As to all the inconsistencies with Protector and the rest of Known
Space; well, face it kids, he didn't think it all out in advance.
There are bound to be bugs. Clearly we can have a fine time trying to
find logical explanations and fixes, but let's remember that's what we
are doing.  I was totally stunned by Engineers; he managed to fit it
all together!  An impressive tour-de-force.

I seem to recall other refernces to Home. Can anyone point me at them?
Perhaps the Home Pak managed to clean up the atmosphere? I agree the
female belter is a big mystery. Maybe her decrepit old ship died?
(Sad, but look at all the characters who got killed off when the Sun
was turned into an afterburner in Engineers..)

                Known Space Forever!!
                Noel

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 28-FEB  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #54
*** EOOH ***
Date: 28 FEB 1981 0646-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #54
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 28 Feb 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 54

Today's Topics:
     SF Contest - Strange Titles, SF Movies - Altered States & 
  The Devil and Max Devlin & Scanners & Incredible Shrinking Woman,
      SF TV - Outer Limits Guide, SF Radio - Star Wars & HGttG,
 Physics Today - Things that go bump, Spoiler - Ringworld Engineers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 27 Feb 1981 (Friday) 0832-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 ( Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: SF punch lines.

Consider the plot of a story (SF if you like) whose main thrust is
some paraphrase of a common expression.  For example... "Shoot or I'll
freeze!"

------------------------------

Date: 27 Feb 1981 0306-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Capsule Movie Reviews   

     By Roger Ebert
     (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    
''Altered States''-William Hurt and Blair Brown star in Paddy
Chayefsky's story of a Harvard scientist's experiments with altered
states of consciousness via a sensory deprivation tank. Ken Russell's
flair for visual pyrotechnics and apocalyptic sexuality make this film
the one he was born to direct. Rated R. 3 1/2 stars.

''The Devil and Max Devlin''- This dull Disney fantasy stars Elliott
Gould as a man who makes a bargain with the devil (Bill Cosby) to have
his sentence in hell commuted. It's a pale, insipid movie that could
have been programmed on a computer. Rated PG. 2 stars.

''Incredible Shrinking Woman''- Modern chemistry shrinks Lily Tomlin
in a movie that's not inane, sometimes wickedly knowing, and only
periodically boring-though it never really breaks through to become
inspired comedy. Still, it's a good bet for the kids, who surely know
just how little Tomlin feels. With Charles Grodin, Ned Beatty. Rated
PG. 2 1/2 stars.

''Scanners''- Good special effects don't help this lockstep thriller
about people whose ESP is so strong it can kill. Jennifer O'Neill,
Stephen Lack and Patrick McGoohan star. Rated R. 2 stars.

------------------------------

Date: 27 Feb 1981 1903-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: OL message

Recently, a reader of the Outer Limits Episode Guide sent me a list of
personal comments regarding some of the episodes (rather lengthy).
Would that person please contact me again?  Thanks much.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 27 Feb 1981 1103-PST
Sender: ADPSC at USC-ISI
Subject: NPR SF programs (Balt/Wash area)
From: ADPSC (Don)

The March 1981 edition of FORECAST!  magazine includes a schedule of
upcomming SW and HGttG episodes.

SW - WAMU (Washington, DC, 88.5, 50kw) Monday nights at 11pm beginning
3/2.  Rebroadcast the following Sunday at Noon.  WITF (Hershey PA,
89.5, 15kw) Sunday nights at 7pm beginning 3/8.  Rebroadcast Tuesday
at 12:30 and the following Sunday at 1pm.

HGttG - WAMU, Fridays at 11pm beginning 3/6.  WITF - Thursdays at
10:30pm beginning 3/12.

In addition, WITF is apparently in SF month.  They will broadcast
"Before the Screaming Begins" by Wally K. Daly, 3/3 at 8pm;
"Frankenstein", 3/3 at 11pm; "The Foundation Trilogy", Sundays at 4pm
starting 3/1; "The Infant" by Paul Ableman, 3/16 at 10pm; and "War of
the Worlds", 3/30 at 10pm.

Living in Northern Virginia, I am not able to get WITF, but good luck
to those of you in the Baltimore -> North areas.

Don

------------------------------

Date: 27 Feb 1981 1319-EST
From: G.Nessus at MIT-EECS (Doug Alan)
Subject: Photons

Photons do have mass!  They have energy, so they have mass.  They have
momentum (p = E/c), so they have mass.  They are affected by
gravitational fields and they create gravitational fields, so they
have mass.

Anyone who says that photons have no mass is either being imprecise,
and means that photons have no REST mass, or they are wrong (or
perhaps they have a different definition of mass).  Talking about the
rest mass of a photon is really useless though, since photons are
never at rest.  (Actually there are some scientists who say that the
rest mass of a photon may not be zero, and that, because of this,
light may travel slower than c, with the speed of a frequency of light
approaching c as the frequency approaches infinity.  If this were so,
a photon with a frequency of 0 would be at rest.  But if this were
true, for reasons unknown to me, the inverse square law of electrical
forces would not be exactly true, and so far, it has been found to be
true to many decimal places.)

All this flaming just gave me an idea on how to build a time machine.
I don't know if it could work but....  If you have a billion lasers or
so, maybe you could aim them so they all intersect at one point.  All
this mass at one point might create such a high mass density that a
quantum black hole would be created.  Once you have the quantum black
hole, you wait for it to evaporate, leaving you a naked singularity -
et voila, instant time machine.

                                Lightly,
                                Doug Alan

------------------------------


JPM@SAIL 02/27/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
refer to Larry Niven's Known Space Series of stories, in particular
Protector, Ringworld, and Ringworld Engineers.  People who are not
familiar with the Known Space series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 27 Feb 1981 00:31:43-PST
From: CSVAX.feldman at Berkeley
Subject: Protector vs. Ringworld Engineers (Spoiler!)

re:
        It explicitly explains in Ringworld Engineers why the maps
        exist and why the original planets were not destroyed.
	
        -- Charles
	
Oh.  My mistake.  I (unfortunately) read Ringworld Engineers about two
months BEFORE reading Protector, and it was a library copy, so I guess
his comments about the Pak didn't mean much to me at the time, and I
couldn't reread the relevant parts!  After reading Niven's comments
about Internal Consistency (in "Tales of Known Space") I get upset by
any apparent lack of consistency in his books, or in anyone's.  It is
nice to know that he, at least, is doing well.

			Steve

------------------------------

BGR@MIT-MC 02/27/81 06:44:33
Re: Ringworld Engineers

Okay, okay, I was wrong about females being killed by Tree-of-Life.
It's been a while since I read Ringworld.

I really did like Engineers, upon a second reading. Some of the things
that really stand out are Niven's description of addiction: the droud
calling out to Wu, almost; Wu's feeling of triumph when he actually
enjoyed something without the droud -- all are sort of strangely
reminiscent of the period of my life when I gave up smoking.

I wish the involvement of the ghouls had been played up some. Their
intelligence came as a real surprise, and yet it was a disappointment
when not much else happened with them. I envisioned them taking Wu on
an eventful voyage through the mountains to where a construction crew
was replacing engines on the rim.

But here's another inconsistency: Teela was a Protector. Thrillingly
brilliant, and all that. There were a few more Protectors, there were
the resources of a not-too-long-fallen civilization that was capable,
in its time, of producing floating cities (!), and there were years
before the Ringworld was due to perish. Why couldn't the Bussard
engines necessary to save the Ringworld be manufactured? They weren't
that hard to manufacture, and superconductor probably wasn't
essential. There were working models. Not all of the original 400
would have to be made; 20 existed, and only one-half of the ring had
to be pushed; that leaves 180. Or intermediary solutions might be
worked out.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  1-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #55
*** EOOH ***
Date:  1 MAR 1981 0612-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #55
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Sunday, 1 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 55

Today's Topics:
           SF Lectures - Boston, SF Books - Known Space,
        SF Movies - Scanners, SF Radio - Star Wars & HGttG,
                  Spoiler - Ringworld Engineers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  1 Mar 1981 0058-EST
From: MD at MIT-XX
Subject: Interesting Lectures

A couple of upcoming lectures sponsored by the MIT Lecture Series
Committee may be of interest to some of the local readers:

Mike Jittlov, creator of Wizard of Speed and Time, will speak on
Thursday, March 12, at 8pm in 26-100.  He supposedly will be showing
50 minutes of his work (all, I believe), and commenting on it.
Tickets are $1.00, available in Lobby 10 and at LSC movies.

Gerard K. O'Neill will speak in Kresge at 8pm on March 19.  The title
of his talk is The High Frontier: Space Colonies and Energy from
Space.  Tickets are $1.50.

				Mike Dornbrook 

------------------------------

Date: 22 Feb 1981 0101-PST
From: Zellich at OFFICE-3 (Rich Zellich)
Subject: Sequence of Known Space books/stories

I just bought World of Ptavvs, A Gift From Earth, A Hole In Space, and
Tales of Known Space.  The order I just listed them is the order of
their original copyrights -- does anyone know if it is also the
correct chronological order of the stories contained therein?  I
assume that ALL of them come before Ringworld and Ringworld
Engineers...right?

-Rich

------------------------------

Date: 28 Feb 1981 (Saturday) 1331-PST
From: DWS at LLL-MFE
Subject: Scanners (non-spoiler)

I would see it again only to get a better look at the credits.  The
artist responsible for the works in the gallery/studio deserves more
credit that whoever did the screenplay.  Anybody catch the artist's
name?

Also, beware the well timed peal of thunder about 10 minutes into the
movie.  Oh Boris!

Dave

------------------------------

Date: Saturday, 28 February 1981  13:49-EST
From: John A. Pershing Jr. <JPERSHING at BBNA>
Subject: SF Radio in Boston

I don't believe anyone has reported this yet, so:

WGBH/FM 90 is airing Star Wars on Sundays at 4:30pm starting on 8-Mar.
Episodes are repeated on Mondays at 10:30pm and Fridays at 6:30pm.

and, as an added bonus:

They will also be airing HHGttG on Mondays at 10:pm [just before SW]
starting on the 9th.

  -jp

------------------------------


JPM@SAIL 03/1/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
refer to Larry Niven's Known Space Series of stories, in particular
Protector, Ringworld, and Ringworld Engineers.  People who are not
familiar with the Known Space series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 28 February 1981 1008-EST (Saturday)
From: Hank.Walker at CMU-10A (C410DW60)
Subject:  Ringworld Engineers (spoiler)

I very much doubt that the intelligence or technology existed to
manufacture attitude thrusters for the rings.  First, if it did, then
why were they canibalized for rocket engines in the first place?
Second, it appears that all the smart folks died in the "Fall of the
Cities".  Not one engineer or scientist appears in either Ringworld or
Ringworld Engineers.  Everyone seemed to be coasting along on the
existing technology base.  If enough time had been available, then
perhaps Teela-Pak could have created a bunch of Paks and done the job
of building enough thrusters.  She made some Paks, but obviously
didn't have enough time to build the factories to build the thrusters.
Otherwise she would have done that, being perfectly logical and all.

------------------------------

Date: 28 Feb 1981 (Saturday) 1851-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON-10 ( William Westfield)
Subject: Ringworld.

The reason that the people (?) on ringworld cant build more Bussard
ramjets, or anything for that matter, is because there are no natural
resources -- you have a shallow layer of dirt, and then you hit rim
material. No iron mines. No coal mines.  No petroleum. No nothing.
This is pointed out, I think both in RW and RWE.

Bill W

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  2-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #56
*** EOOH ***
Date:  2 MAR 1981 0512-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #56
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Monday, 2 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 56

Today's Topics:
         SF TV - writer query, SF Radio - Star Wars & HGttG,
                  Spoiler - Ringworld Engineers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 01 Mar 1981 0413-PST
From: Judy Anderson <JMA at SU-AI>
Subject: mystery request    


Does anyone know an author who fits the following specification:

"A well-known science fiction author who wrote regularly for ALFRED
HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and THE TWILIGHT ZONE"

(Come on, you twilight zone lovers!  Don't fail me now!)

Thanks,
   Judy.

p.s. Please send replies directly to me (JMA @ SAIL), not to the whole
list!

------------------------------

Date:  1 Mar 1981 (Sunday) 1128-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 ( Steve Platt)
Subject: SW, HGttG on the radio in Philly area


WUHY-FM will be broadcasting both SW and HGttG in the Philadelpha-
Delaware-South Jersey area starting this week:
 
SW on Mondays starting 2 March, 7 PM
      ...repeated the following Sunday starting 8 March, 9 PM
HGttG following the SW repeats only, starting Sunday 8 March, 9:30 PM. 
 
  -Steve

------------------------------

Date:  1 Mar 1981 1406-EST
From: G.Nessus at MIT-EECS (Doug Alan)
Subject: Ringworld


Also, Bussard ramjets need monopoles.

------------------------------

Date: 1 Mar 1981 11:27 PST
From: Stewart at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Ringworlds, Dyson, materials


This should be a lesson for all of us.

When you build a Ringworld, put lots of heaps of various ores around,
or cubic miles of iron bars or what have you.  It will be inexpensive
(comparatively) and who knows? You might need them later.

When you build a computer to control something, put on an off switch
(Colossus, Paradigm Red).

When you build an airplane, add two radios, with separate power
sources.

When you build a file system, put in back pointers for the file pages
(Unix).

This is called either ''Engineering'' or ''Paranoia''.


------------------------------


End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  3-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #57
*** EOOH ***
Date:  3 MAR 1981 0725-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #57
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Tuesday, 3 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 57

Today's Topics:

  SF TV - writer query, SF Books - Here's the Plot What's the Title &
       Tapeworm Stories? & Known Space Chronology & Dragon's Egg,
          SF Movies - Scanners & Star Wars IV & Superman II &
              Strive for the Stars, SF Radio - Star Wars,
            Physics Tomorrow - Black Holes & Light Barrier,
                SF Movies - Censorship and Pornography,
                    Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  2 Mar 1981 1740-PST
From: Oper.yduJ at SU-SCORE (Judy Anderson)
Subject: writer query answer

Thanx to all the people who answered my query about the SF writer who
has contributed to both Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight
Zone.  It turns out to have two definite correct answer (what a
surprise for the trivia person who proposed the question!): Ray
Bradbury and Richard Matheson.

Just thought I'd let you all know the result,
        Judy.

p.s. I am also known as JMA @ SAIL, however, SAIL is down at the
moment.

------------------------------

Date: 2 Mar 1981 12:18 PST
From: Otto.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Here's the Plot - What's the Title?

Part 1: Earth ship on colonizing mission has crash-landed on a planet
consisting of puddles and swamp.  Crew is altering the germ plasma of
the prospective colonists to suit them to the unplanned environment.

Part 2:  Colonists, who we realize are microscopic and aquatic are
building a space ship to take them to the next puddle.

I seem to remember this as a longish short story. (!)

Vanessa

------------------------------

Date: 1981-2-13-09:24:12.29
From:   STEVE GUTFREUND at RDVAX at VAX4
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO

Looking back at two long strings of comments over the last few weeks:
(how to make a movie about exploding disk drives; all absorbing
problems for star trek computers). I wonder if anyone thinks about
sticking these things together. Thus, how do I go about making a movie
about a worm program that takes over a network?

Would one be fanciful and have the computer blowing up disk drives to
kill off operators and have tape drives strangling the system
programers?  Or would it be better to take a quiter approach and have
an animated flick with an ALTO/PERQ/NU/GIGI and show pretty pictures
of exploding tail multi-segemented page programs.

Only one book on this subject springs to mind: (Shockwave Rider by
Brunner).  Does anyone know of others?

-- mephisto (Steven Gutfreund)

------------------------------

Date: 02 Mar 1981 0159-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Known Space chronology (no spoiler)    

Since you say you've got Tales of Known Space, what's your problem?
At least in MY edition, it includes a time line for the entire series.
(And note that there IS one story that comes later than Ringword and
Ringword Engineers, namely "Safe at Any Speed", in Tales of Known
Space.)

        -- Don.

------------------------------

Date:  2 Mar 1981 (Monday) 1023-PST
From: DWS at LLL-MFE
Subject: Chronological of Known Space

The chronology is layed out with a timeline on the inside cover of
"Tales of Known Space", and involves a bit of hopping from book to
book.  Niven apparently retrofit some stories.

------------------------------

Date: 1981-2-26-17:06:42.86
From:   STEVE LIONEL at STAR
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
Subj: Dragon's Egg

I just finished reading Dr. Forward's "Dragon's Egg", and enjoyed it
immensely.  To me, it contained elements of "Watership Down",
"Rendezvous with Rama" and the Foundation trilogy, all done with real
science and intriguing characters and situations.  My memory tells me
that I once read an excerpt, or an early version of part of it, in one
of the SF mags, like Analog.  Am I right?

I am not qualified to comment on the wondrous physics employed, so I
only want to mention two amusing items which caught my eye.  The first
is the semi-incestuous relationship between Dr. Forward and Larry
Niven, where two of Forward's characters are named "Niven" and Niven
has named at least two characters "Forward".  The second item which
gave me a chuckle is on page 150 of the paperback, where it seems like
Dragon Slayer's computer is running TOPS-20!  I suppose that might
seem natural in a year numbered 2050, right?

                        Steve Lionel

------------------------------

Date:  2 Mar 1981 1555-PST
From: tom spencer <CSD.SPENCER at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Scanners

Does anybody know if the movie, SCANNERS, has anything to do with a
short story by Stanislaw (sp?) Lem called "Sanners Live in Vain" or
some such?

------------------------------

Date:  2 Mar 1981 1013-PST
From: FEATHER at USC-ISIF
Subject: Longevity needed

I'd just about got adjusted to the idea that there are to be a total
of 9 Star Wars "episodes", when it crossed my mind that the first we
saw, known as Star Wars IV - "A New Hope", might really be Star Wars
IV-A "New Hope"...

Glurk!

------------------------------

Date: 2 Mar 1981 12:14 PST
From: Otto.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Superman II

It seems that I was the only SF-Lover in Australia over Christmas, so
I feel duty-bound to let you know about Superman II.  Its hard to
critique it without generating a spoiler warning, but I'll try.

Nano-review: If you liked Superman I you'll like Superman II. 

Pico-review: My husband left his logic and critical faculties at home
and enjoyed the movie enormously.  My sensible five-year-old opined
that it was "a silly movie".  The general reaction will probably fall
between these two extremes!

Micro-review: The special effects were as excellent as last time.  The
plot was just as outrageous. I don't think I will spoil anything (or
surprise anyone) by relating that the three evil Kryptonites that were
pressed into a platter in Superman I turn up to take over the earth.
There is an exciting 3-against-1 Superbattle over the streets of New
York.  Lois Lane discovers the true identity of Clark Kent. Lex Luthor
offers to betray Superman for "some beach-front property, Australia".
The Sydney audience loved that!

I found there to be one lacunae in the plot development too large to
excuse.  It is carefully set out that (but not why) If X then not-Y,
ever again.  Superman insists on having X.  He is exploring the
consequences of being not-Y.  Suddenly the plot requires Y. In the
next scene Y is again in evidence, with no explanation whatever.

Superman III is surely on its way.

Vanessa

------------------------------

From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: From the LA TIMes 3/2/81

From the Field News Service

MOSCOW -- A costly Soviet science-fiction film, made in the
style of the American extravaganza "Star Wars," will have its
premiere in Moscow this week.
   It includes impressive scenes of space stations whirling 
through remote galaxies -- as in the American original --
and has a Soviet version of the helpful household robot R2D2,
which won such popularity in "Star Wars."
   The Soviet film is called "Strive for the Stars."  It was
made in 18 months at a cost of 2 million rubles (about $3 million)
under the direction of Richard Viktorov.
   Some of the musical backing is by the British pop group
Pink Floyd, and the film even includes a Western-style glimpse
of female nudity.
   But at a running time of three hours it will probably
be like other Soviet productions in proving too long and
wordy to make much impact abroad.
-----

   Sounds interesting, actually.  If only it had been reported
better, one could form a better judgment.  OK, con film-program
moguls, when do we get to see this curiosity?

        Mike

------------------------------

ZEMON@MIT-AI 03/02/81 07:34:45
Re:  (another) SW-radio in the DC area

Starting wednesday 3/4 on WETA-FM (about 90.5), SW will be aired at
6:30pm.

------------------------------

Date:  2 Mar 1981 0920-PST
From: Maggetti@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: SW broadcast in the bay area


Does anyone know is the SW broacast bein re broadcast in the SF bay
area???  I go to class and can't catch it.  Please send answer
directly to Maggetti @ Stanford.

				"mich"

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 03/02/81 16:36:10
Re:  Quantum black holes

When a small black hole evaporates, doesn't the singularity
go away?  Doug Alan said something like "... wait for it to
evaporate and you are left with a naked singularity ...".
Frankly this sounds like rubbish to me, and I was wondering
whether one of our physicists could clear this up.

   --- Wechsler

------------------------------

Date: 2 Mar 1981 14:15:33-PST
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
To: i:sf-lovers@mit-ai
Subject: FTL paradoxes

Alas, even when between objects at rest with respect to each other,
faster than light travel can still produce time travel paradoxes.  My
previous arguments came from the May '80 issue of Isaac Asimov's SF
Magazine (IASFM), but in the letters column of the March issue which I
just received, someone found a loophole.  The argument is as follows:

Let's say there are two long spaceships, one of which is facing east
and is "at rest", and the other going west at nearly the speed of
light. Let's also assume that these two ships are, at the moment, side
by side, and that the ships have an instantaneous intercom system.

Now Ship A, the one at rest, decides to blow up ship B. So the
captain, at the front of the ship, issues an order to the man
stationed at the laser cannons at the rear.  As the communications is
instantaneous, and we assume the reaction time of the man is also, the
front end of Ship B is blown up simultaneously with the captain of
Ship A giving the order.

Now the rear end of Ship B notices the front of the ship was blown up
instantly, and so decides to blow up the front end of Ship A. Because
of the differences in the frame of references, Ship A is blown up
before the captain of that ship decided to blow up Ship B, by B's
frame of reference, which is of course impossible, so we have a
paradox.

To be completely truthful, I do not see how B decides to blow up A
before A decides to blow up B (the point was not explained very
clearly; maybe someone could explain why), but this does not surprise
me as I could think of a few situations myself that are paradoxical.
But even if FTL must always result in time travel paradoxes, that does
not rule out FTL travel, it merely means that for FTL to exist, time
travel must also exist, the two are probably very interrelated, and
it's my understanding that General Relativity does not forbid time
travel.  I always did believe, that when the time machine is finally
built, it will look remarkably like a space ship.

------------------------------

Date: 1981-2-10-13:36:29.09
From:   MARTIN MINOW at PHENIX at VAX4
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO

RE:  Chip's recent discussion of kidporn, etc.

For the record, here is the source of the "fire in a crowded theatre"
quote:

"The character of every act depends on the circumstances in which it
is done.  The most stringent protection of free speech would not
protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a
panic....  The question in every case is whether the words are used in
such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and
present danger."
                        -- Oliver Wendell Holmes (Jr.) (1841-1935)
                        Shenck vs. U.S., 249 U.S. 47 (1919)

The quotation was printed in George Seldes's book, "The Great
Quotations."  You might also want to consider the following, from the
same book:

"The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear,
but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."
                        -- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)


Regarding kidporn, one should ask whether reading it creates violence
in ordinary people, or whether it can only awaken a suppressed, but
already existing, desire.  Perhaps Big Brother might consider exposing
citizens to "unacceptable material" (choose your favorite:  kidporn,
"Starship Troopers", The Declaration of Independence, etc.) and, if
they show an unacceptable reaction (even if subliminal), cancel their
breeding permit, or whatever.  I. e, it would be unacceptable to
falsely THINK fire in a crowded theatre.

Hmmm, wasn't a university professor recently convicted for conspiracy
for having read a book which was also read by a revolutionary group?

While I'm on the subject, my favorite "forgotten" science fiction
is Per Wahloo's "Murder on the 31st Floor."  I read it in Swedish
but I think it was published in the late 60's or early 70's in
paperback in the U.S.  It's a dystopia heavily concerned with the
control of information.

                                Martin Minow

------------------------------


JPM@SAIL 03/3/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
offers another view on the nature of the force and the Star Wars
universe.  People who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may
not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 26 Feb 1981 1654-PST
From: Maggetti@SUMEX-AIM
Subject:  Spoiler Warning!  The Nature of the Force (SW)


Well -- I've listened long enough - now I'm putting my two cents in -
(actually, I jut had trouble getting the loan)
        
As I understand it, there is a question concerning the terms 'light'
and 'dark' with reference to the FORCE.

                l.  The FORCE is NOT neutral.

                2.  The FORCE is 'life-energy'.

                3.  'Light' means 'creative'
                    (meaning healthysurvival for all --
                     anything from just the person to the race,
                     ecology, environment)

                4.  'Dark' means destructive
                    (meaning suppressing life & creativity in
                     form other than harmful)


So that if Darth Vader were to save someone's life - he would have to
use the 'light' side of the FORCE - (by the way, the term 'light' is
never used in either SW or TESB, it's either 'THE FORCE' or "the DARK
side".

As far as whether or not the "dark" side is 'quicker - more seductive'
--- of course it is!!  Everybody knows if it's easy - you are doing
something wrong.  For example, aren't you stronger, louder or faster
when you're angry?  And haven't you noticed you make 'bad' decisions
(i.e. destructive) when you're angry?

And about the light saber battle . . . . comparing Luke to O.B.1. or
Vader is not unlike equating addition to calculus (in other words,
there is a big difference between 'arrogant' and competent).

Well - that should stir up enough for now -- have fun and . . . . .

                  "MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!!"

        'mich'

------------------------------


End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  4-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #58
*** EOOH ***
Date:  4 MAR 1981 0808-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #58
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 4 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 58

Today's Topics:

     Administrivia - What a mess... (Scanners and Surface Tension),
     SF Books - Dragon's Egg & Tapeworm Stories? & Surface Tension,
                   SF Movies - Scanners & Galaxina, 
      SF TV - Einstein's Universe, SF Radio - Star Wars and HGttG,
             Physics Tomorrow - Black Holes & Light Barrier,
                    Star Wars - Nature of the Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4 March 1981 0220-PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at SAIL>
Subject: Administrivia - What a mess... (Scanners and Surface Tension)

There has been an absolute flood of responses to the inquiries
involving yesterday's queries involving the movie Scanners and the
story Surface Tension.  Many of these contributions duplicate one
another, while not a few are actual spoilers for Surface Tension.

Only two of the responses are included in today's digest.  They answer
the immediate queries, while not constituting a spolier.  Thursday's
digest will contain the other answers to the query, mostly in the
spoiler section of the digest.  Following Roger's policy,
contributions that duplicate information found in other messages will
be acknowledged, but not included in the digest.

I apologize for this situation.  My correct course of action would
have been to include a brief message concerning the facts of Scanners
and Surface Tension along with yesterdays messages themselves.
Unfortunately, inexperience as moderator prevented me from recognizing
the potential these messages had to elicit a large response.
Hopefully I will be able to detect these potential problems in the
future.

Jim


------------------------------

Date:  3 MAR 1981 0849-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Dragon's Egg

Actually, exerpts from DRAGON'S EGG appeared in two places.  The
"Technical Appendix" of DRAGON'S EGG (shortened somewhat) was in the
April 1980 issue of Analog as "A Taste of DRAGON'S EGG".  Similar
material, plus a scene or two from the book, showed up in the Sept
1980 Omni under the title, "Life on a Neutron Star".

The story behind the naming of Pierre Niven in DRAGON'S EGG is an
interesting but long one.  Remind me to tell it some time.

In any event, twice Larry used the name Forward in stories,
("Borderland of Sol" and "The Hole Man"), and twice he won a Hugo.
I'm hoping that it works both ways, and that if I use Niven in one of
my stories, that the book will at least get nominated for a Hugo.  (It
can't win, since Larry's PATCHWORK GIRL has a Dr. Forward in it.
Besides, with such powerhouses as Niven's RINGWORLD ENGINEERS, Pohl's
BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON, and Varley's WIZARD, the competition
for the Hugo for best novel of 1980 is tough.)

     Bob Forward

------------------------------

Date: 03 MAR 1981 1146-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Computers and tapeworms

WHEN HARLIE WAS ONE talks about tapeworms and similar frightworthy
ideas but doesn't actually get into any of them.  Harlie seems to
cause enough trouble by himself----rewriting the company's annual
report to include a section describing him, persuading a bank computer
to send out a hack statement notice. . . .

------------------------------

Date:  3 Mar 1981 12:55:38 EST
From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: computers, scanners

A recent book involving a computer program propagating itself all over
is "The Adolescence of P-1".  I don't remember the author.  It's an
amusing book, although a bit IBMish.

I'm unaware of "Scanners Live in Vain" by Lem, but the story of that
name by Cordwainer Smith has nothing at all in common with the movie
"Scanners", based on what I've read about the movie.

------------------------------

Date: 3 Mar 1981 1054-EST
From: PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling)
Subject: [Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #57]

Query answers:

1) The micro-people building a puddle-spanning "spaceship" are in
"Surface Tension" by James Blish.  This has been anthologized any
number of times, and also appears as part of the collected "Pantropy"
(=gene-manipulation) series collected as "The Seedling Stars."

2) "Scanners" bears absolutely no relation to Cordwainer Smith's
"Scanners Live in Vain".  (Stanislaw Lem did not write it, needless to
say.)  I think this question appeared once before...

	Dave

------------------------------

Date: 02 Mar 1981 1622-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>

By RICHARD FREEDMAN
Newhouse News Service

(UNDATED) We are in the year 9008 A.D., aboard Police Cruiser 308,
''The Infinity,'' which looks like an Egyptian sarcophagus.

Aboard, too, are sullenly handsome Thor (Stephen Macht); his sidekick,
Buzz (James David Hinton), who wears a Dodgers shirt; slobbish Captain
Butt (Avery Schreiber), who looks like both Cheech and Chong; and the
lusciously enigmatic robot Galaxina (Dorothy R.  Stratten), who
controls the spaceship in ''Galaxina,'' a science-fiction spoof which,
despite its ''R'' rating, seems designed for 8-year-olds.

''You know, kid, you've got a bad habit - you breathe,'' the irascible
Capt. Butt tells Buzz, and immediately we know we're not watching a
movie, but a grade-school mumbleypeg contest.

Our crew is in search of the planet Altar I, where they hope to find a
hunk of rock called ''Blue Star,'' which bears unspecified magic
powers.

But first they encounter an intergalactic motorcycle gang and stop for
refreshment at a cannibal bar and a brothel where both hostesses and
guests are mutants like the denizens of the bar in ''Star Wars.''

Macht falls hopelessly in love with the inert Galaxina, which is small
wonder because half the time this mechanical space voyager is dressed
in a Playboy bunny costume.

Among the science-fiction flicks parodied and plagiarized by
''Galaxina'' are ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' (we get a sampling of
Strauss' ''Also Sprach Zarathustra'') and ''Alien'' (the captain
ingests what seems to be a small salamander, which grows up to
resemble Yoda in ''The Empire Strikes Back.'')

Nobody in ''Galaxina'' shows the slightest talent for acting - nor is
any required by the lame-brain script - and the special effects of
producer George E. Mather, who worked on ''Star Wars,'' look as if
they'd been bought at Woolworth's.

X X X

FILM CLIPS: ''Galaxina.'' A tedious, juvenile parody of ''Star Wars,''
''Alien'' and ''2001: A Space Odyssey,'' among other better science
fiction movies. Devoutly to be avoided. Rated ''R.''

------------------------------

Date:  3 Mar 1981 1125-EST
From: USCHOLD at RUTGERS
Subject: Einstein's Universe coming up March 10 on PBS

For those of you who want to bone up on a little general relativity,
this excellent program will be rebroadcast next week.  10:15 pm in the
N.J.-N.Y. area.  ENJOY!

				Mike Uschold

------------------------------

Date:  3 Mar 1981 1510-PST
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: SW & HGttG in alternate universes

None of the other Luna City SFL-ers has mentioned this yet so:

The Star Wars and HGttG radio show will be broadcast concurrently
(using time domain multiplexing) on XLOON (Radio Free Luna) FM 26.8
Wednesdays at 8pm and rebroadcast on laser link #5, grid willing,
as the mood strikes them.

------------------------------

Date:  3 Mar 1981 1554-EST
From: G.Nessus at MIT-EECS (Doug Alan)
Subject: Nude <-<-<-<- Naked Singularities

According to Jerry Pournelle somewhere in "Black Holes", an anthology
of SF about black holes, Steven Hawkings, the famous black hole
physicist, says that when a quantum black hole evaporates, it leaves
behind a naked singularity.  Doubting such a strange theory, I asked
Robert Forward at Noreascon II if evaporating black holes really do
leave behind naked singularities.  He said that, as far as he knew,
the math involved indicates that they do, but that in actuality, maybe
they do and maybe they don't.

Personally, I don't like to think that an evaporating black hole
leaves behind a naked singularity either (especially because I don't
think time travel exists (unless all events are predetermined)), but
I'm not an expert.

				--Doug Alan

------------------------------

kwh@MIT-AI 03/03/81 22:04:16
Re: Relativity

E.Jeffc's* argument is correct, faster than light travel inherently
causes temporal paradoxes, which must always be magicked away by some
conclusion or another.  But the trick is that in the example he cited,
the paradox is caused by the instantaneous nature of both the laser
(which blew the ends off of ships) and the in-ship intercom.
Relativity allows you to create any spacial or temporal separation
between two events by correctly choosing your frame of reference.  You
can even reverse the order of events by choosing the correct frame.
I.E. one individual can see event B following A, while another, in a
different frame, will see A following B.  The only catch is that there
are two types of event-pairs, time-like and space-like, which
determine if you can flip spacial and temporal relationships around
(i.e. making B happen before A, or B appear on the other side of
A....) and this distinction, incidentally, makes any events which do
not share a light cone (a distance/time plot for light speed) have a
space like separation.  I.E.  it preserves casuality, since no cause
can travel faster than light.  So if A causes B, you cannot see B
happen before A!  (Gee, that sounds muddled doesn't it) In other
words, if two events see or have seen each other, their separation is
space-like, and their temporal order is always preserved.  (It looks
nicer in equations) And this result comes straight from the
Lorentz/Einstein equations, without assuming casuality- It looks like
the Universe likes to keep herself organized, but there is always
hope....

Tachyons are imaginary particles (in the mathematical sense) with
imaginary mass, size, and temporal direction (they go backwards in
time).  Luxons (particles moving at C, particles with v < C are called
tardyons (poor things)) could be called non-existent particles,
becuase they weigh nothing, go nowhere, and are frozen in time- Their
mass is zero because at the speed of light, their mass would be
infinite, if they had any at first.  This was proven by special
relativity, and general relativity predicted that they would be
affected by gravity anyway.  They go nowhere, FROM THEIR POINT OF
VIEW, because at C, the Lorentz contraction makes the universe around
them shrink to a point, and where can you go in a point?  It doesn't
"see" itself go anywhere.  In addition, they, from their point of
view, are frozen in time (but how can something frozen in time have a
point of view?-- My brain hurts...)

Well so much for my relativistic flame- it's neat stuff, and the math
for special relativity is not really that heavy- (Though general
relativity is, and thats where all the paradoxes are resolved, sigh).

                                Cheers,
                                        Ken Haase


*P.S.  Would it be possible to either make an sf-lovers subscribers
list (with real names), or to have messages signed?  Their is
something distinctly impersonal about using UNAMES in freeform
debates.

[ The list itself is not available to ANYONE right now (including
myself), since we really do not know the full readership of the
digest.  We have some future plans in that area (subject of a future
Administrativia), but until we can implement them people may want
to take Ken's suggestion to heart.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

kwh@MIT-AI 03/03/81 22:20:53
Re: Black Holes

I think this may be my record for my sf-lovers replies (Don't worry,
Lauren, I can't keep it up).

As I interpet it, a singularity is a twist in space time which a black
hole causes, and it causes all kinds of really strange things to
happen (time travel, FTL, etc;) Of course no self-respecting universe
would let a naked singularity out to disrupt casuality, so every
singularity is decently clothed in a black hole with its event
horizon.  The event-horizon is a phenomenon of both special and
general relativity, in that it allows nothing to leave a black hole,
and stops in time anything trying to enter it.  (It doesn't really
stop it in time, but slows it at a high (exponential, I forget) rate
so that it cannot reach the forbidden "singularity".  The event
horizon is called that because events inside it cannot reach the
outside, due to a combination of relativistic effects.

But here is the trick.  In quantum theory, black holes evaporate, and
they leave a naked singularity, which means that ANYTHING can happen.
Stephen Hawking figured this out, by applying quantum mechanics to
general and special relativity, unleashing the possibility of chaos on
the world.

All of this is very well covered in POURNE's (Jerry Pournelle) A Step
Farther Out, which is worth getting just for its own sake.  He
explains it very well, (far better than my base mutterings) and I
recommend it highly.

I hope I don't think of anything else to send tonight- I hope this
sparks some debate (and answers some questions).

                                        Ken Haase

------------------------------


JPM@SAIL 03/3/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
offers another view on the nature of the force and the Star Wars
universe.  People who are not familiar with the Star Wars series may
not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date:  3 Mar 1981 0940-PST
From: Maggetti@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Star Wars - Nature of the Force  SPOILER!!!


Well, upon reviewing my original argument - I messed up -- The FORCE
IS neutral -- it's the user who is not (Yes, I can feel the athlete's
tongue coming on now).

        And here's another one for you to chew on--
        "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS 'DESTRUCTION' --
          ONLY COUNTER- CREATION"
	
Enjoy!!
				"mich"<user Maggetti>
------------------------------


End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  6-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #59
*** EOOH ***
Date:  6 MAR 1981 0237-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #59
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Thursday, 5 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 59

Today's Topics:

     Administrivia - What a mess... (Scanners and Surface Tension),
SF Books - Here's the Plot What's the Title & King David's Spaceship &
       Time Travellers Strictly Cash & The Final Encyclopedia &
    Exerpt from "Fundamental Disch" & Washington Post SF reviews &
       The Adolescence of P-1 & Web of Angels & "True Names" &
   The Seedling Stars & "Surface Tension" & Scanners Live in Vain,
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 5 March 1981 0220-PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at SAIL>
Subject: Administrivia - What a mess... (Scanners and Surface Tension)

Six messages in this digest refer to the stories "Scanners Live in
Vain" and "Surface Tension."  Several others were also sent, but due
to redundancy of information and lack of space in the digest they have
not been included.

Thanks are in order for everyone who took the time to send off a
message, particular to David Ackley, Steve Platt, Ken Hasse, Mike
Spreitzer, William Gropp, William Westfield, Chip Hitchcock, and
Gordon Letwin, whose messages do not appear in this digest.


Jim

------------------------------

Date:  4 March 1981 15:25 est
From:  Janofsky.Tipi at RADC-Multics
Subject:  What's the title?

Poul Anderson, in the intro to "Questions and Answers" (formerly known
as "Planet of No Return"), mentioned the planet on which it was based 
had been scientifically designed and that he, Asimov, and Blish had
each been commissioned to write a novel about it.
  Does anyone known the names of the other two novels about the planet
Troas?
		Thanks, Bill J.


------------------------------

Date:  4 March 1981 15:36 est
From:  Janofsky.Tipi at RADC-Multics
Subject:  Where's the title??

Over the past three weeks, I checked a baker's dozen bookstores in the
Boston area looking for a copy of Jerry Pournelle's "King David's 
Spaceship" (Simon&Schuster, Jan '81).  The list includes MIT's COOP, 
Barnes&Noble, Lauriat's, Paperback Booksmith, Walden Books, and my 
favorite local SF&F emporiums.  I'm beginning to get the idea that 
NOBODY in Boston carries the hardcover release.  If anyone knows of a 
store in the area carrying it, please let me know.

I've also had no luck trying to find copies of Spider Robinson's "Time
Travellers Pay Cash", or Gordon Dickson's "The Final Encyclopedia."
Are they not out yet or am I looking in the wrong places??
		Thanks, Bill J.


------------------------------

Date: 4 March 1981 18:12-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE at MIT-MC>
Subject: Where's the title??

1. I think Gordy's FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA isn't out yet.

2. Thanks for looking for my book.  Maybe if a few irate Bostonians
demand that the bookstores stock it???

Love and plenty kisses,

JEP


[ Spider Robinson's new collection of short stories (of which 4
take place in Callahan's Place) is out in paperback (ACE).  The
title is TIME TRAVELERS STRICTLY CASH.   -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 3 Mar 1981 16:45:46-PST
From: microsoft!gordon at Berkeley
Date:    3 Mar 1981 1013-PST
From:    microsoft!gordon@csvax (Gordon Letwin)
Subject: Computer Networks in SF

        The novella 'True Names' by Vernor Vinge (part of a two-story 
book, "Binary Star #5") deals with the same basic subject matter as 
Shockwave Rider: when the computer net takes over modern society, the 
net hacker can become king.

        "True Names" does not deal in any depth with the effects of 
network life on society, as did "Rider", but adds a new and rather 
effective twist to the story line: the introduction of Adventure-like 
elements to net life.  Basically, in addition to normal high- 
performance net access gear the well-equipped hacker has a "portal", 
an EEG-like device whose electrodes, fastened to the face and scalp, 
allow two way transmission of high-bandwidth info to/from the net.  A 
lot of sophisticated software and a lot of practice interpreting the 
stimuli returned allows the user to 'ascend' to the network itself and
experience cybernetic happenings as physical occurances.  When 
installed in the network, the "wizards" in this story prefer to take 
on that aspect literally.  Only those that can traverse a magical 
path, dealing with the hazards there, can enter the "castle" and join 
the coven of wizards.  Of course, the giant spiders and trolls the 
wizard sees guarding the path are security programs, written to mimic 
self-aware behavior.  Failing to deal with one will get you "killed" 
(your job killed) and precipitate you back into the real world.

        The book title refers to the fact that and all wizards use 
false names and appearances to protect their true (real world) names.
Since the government sees them as vandals and menaces (and in fact, 
the wizard "Robin Hood" regularly transfers funds from IRS accounts to
millions of private accounts) a wizard hides his true name as 
zealously as the ancient magicians did, and for the same reason: if an
enemy knows your true name, he has power over you.

        The story is well written, deals nicely with the extrapolation
of technology, and avoids any computer gaffes.  Recommended for SF- 
Computer types.



------------------------------


Date:  4 Mar 1981  1:32:03 EST
From: Ralph Muha <muha at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Why we read the stuff

The following painful paragraphs are taken from "The Uses of Fiction:
A Theory," an essay by Thomas M. Disch which can be found in the
collection "Fundamental Disch" [Bantam 1980], edited by Samuel R.
Delany.

"Science fiction is read most avidly by precocious children, brainy
adolescents and a particular kind of retarded adult.  What these
readers have in common is a need to assert the primacy of Intellect.
The message that comes through in tale after tale is that it pays to
be intelligent, and this is true at all levels of literacy, from sub
to ultra.  Fantasies about sex and money are relatively scarce and,
where they do exist, invariably feeble.  The story that tears at an sf
reader's heart (or cerebellum) is the story about someone (a child
especially) who discovers that he possesses Secret Mental Powers:  
Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's
End, anything by A. E. van Vogt.  What sf fans require in their heroes
they applaud in themselves as well, and the most zealous of them
congregate annually in convention halls to do honor to the peculiar
and elusive genius that raises them above people who like other kinds
of junk.

"Now there is one life-situation in which it is essential to be smart,
smarter, smartest.  Say you're fourteen years old, pulling down good
grades at school (but never good enough), and already beginning to get
anxious about college.  In that situation your hero won't be Billy the
Kid.  Sf writers are cheerleaders of the Science Honors Society, whose
membership they ever and again remind that the rolicking lamb of Youth
must and should be sacrificed on the gray altar of Education.  So long
as this sacrifice remains the secret sorrow of one's life, so long
will sf remain interesting.  Usually, once you get your degree and
start leading a livelier life, you stop reading the stuff.  But if for
any reason you don't get the degree or the degree doesn't get you what
you thought it would, then you may be doomed to spin the wheel of this
one fantasy forever.

"In this way a predilection for genre fiction is like a sexual
perversion.  Both are symptomatic of an arrested development--not so
much reprehensible, therefore, as limiting.  The limitation may be as
narrow as liking nothing but Georgette Heyer or high-heeled shoes, or
as broad as a promiscuous acceptance of all kinds of trash whatsoever,
to the exclusion only of what is wholesome and abiding."

Reactions, anybody?


------------------------------

Date: 4 Mar 1981 1251-PST
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Washington Post SF reviews
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

     As those of you in the Washington, DC area may know, the 
Washington Post Sunday edition features SF reviews in their Book World
section the fourth Sunday of every month.  They have a reasonable
review of a few recent SF books, usually by a real SF author. Recently
I wrote them just to thank them and to hope that they keep up the good
work.  I received a response from Michael Dirda, Book World's deputy
editor, thanking me, and hinting that other similar comments would be
most welcome. Negative internal reactions to the column were
definitely indicated. If you've enjoyed the column, you might wish to
write [of course, not mentioning SFL] them of your feelings. The
address is 1150 15th St., NW, Washington, DC 20071. Dirda closes his
letter: "Coming attractions include Michael Bishop, Alexei Panshin,
Tom Disch, Harlan Ellison and Fritz Leiber."

     Mike



------------------------------

ZEMON@MIT-AI 03/03/81 08:22:25 
Re:  book/story queries, SW-radio

The story that has the two parts (1. Crashed spaceship, dying crew 
making micro-humans; 2. Micro-humans struggling to survive in a puddle
of water.)  was written by James Blish, and appears in both his book 
THE SEEDLING STARS, and the SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME.  The story's
actual title has escaped me, however . . . .

Some books on tapeworms are : THE ADOLESCENCE OF P-1 (In which a 
tapeworm gets loose and invades every IBM 360/* system in the country 
that has a telephone link.), and WEB OF ANGELS by John M. Ford (A 
galaxy-spanning civilization is linked with a computer network.  A 
'geisthound' is the meanest tapeworm you'd ever meet -- they kill 
errant programmers by pumping millions of volts into their terminals.
I \highly/ recommend this book.)  Last summer SF-LOVERS had a long 
discussion about computers in sf.

Cordwainer Smith's short story SCANNERS LIVE IN VAIN has absolutely 
nothing to do with the movie SCANNERS.  The short story involves what 
happens when a group of superhuman cyborgs (scanners), used for 
crewing space ships in the 'up and out,' become obsolete.  (I think 
that this story also appears in the SF Hall of Fame.)

I have heard that the SW-radio storyline is supposed to start \before/
that of the movie.  They did a quick interview with the producer (on 
NPR's All Things Considered) and he expounded the fact that they have 
taken a 2 hour movie and made it into 13 half-hour segments.  I 
imagine that (even though the bandwidth of radio is less than that of 
a movie screen) they have expanded the story.  Remember :

                "The pictures are better on radio."

-Landon-


------------------------------

Date:  4 Mar 1981 1535-PST
From: Tovey@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Scanners; favorite unknown sf

	Scanners Live In Vain is by Cordwainer Smith (it's the first story in
"The Best of Cordwainer Smith", Ballantine Books), not Lem.  It is
about people who have been transformed into half-machines needed for
crossing the interstellar void.  Their "scanning" ability is akin to
the sense of perception in the Lensman series and has little to do 
with the movie.
	Also, a reminder to send your favorite obscure sf and fantasy titles
to me at or.tovey@SCORE.  I have collected most of the ones mentioned
in the digest (e.g. Apeman, Spaceman; The Hole in the Zero).
				good reading,
						cat



------------------------------

Date: 4 Mar 1981 13:51:34-PST
From: ihnss!hobs at Berkeley

    The story "Scanners Live In Vain" is not by Lem, but was an early 
story by Cordwainer Smith (Paul Linebarger).  It has nothing to do 
with the movie "Scanners", as it was about a group of men whose 
sensory inputs (except sight) had been cut off.  This was necessary 
because a normal person could not stand "the pain of space", and the 
only way that one could do space travel was by becoming a "scanner" 
(so called because they would constantly scan instrument boxes on their
chests to monitor their bodily functions).  However, someone has just
obsoleted the scanners by devising a shield (made from oysters) that
allows ordinary people to go into the "up and out," and the scanners
do not like this.
    It was not one of Smith's better stories, but some of his magic as
a story teller does come through.

                                            John Hobson
                                            ihnss!hobs at Berkeley


------------------------------

Date:  3 Mar 1981 22:29:39 EST
From: Ralph Muha <muha at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Scanners Live in Vain

The movie SCANNERS has absolutely no connection the story "Scanners 
Live in Vain," which was written by Cordwainer Smith (a pseudonym for 
the late Dr. Paul Linebarger), not Stanislaw Lem.  Linebarger, an 
Asian scholar who grew up in China and was the godson of Sun Yat Sen, 
produced a body of work which is today held in high regard by the SF 
community.  His major novel, "Norstrillia," is available in paperback 
and is highly recommended reading!


------------------------------

Date: 03/03/81 1344-EDT
From: THOKAR at LL
Subject: Reply to yesterday's story query

Vanessa,

There are actually two stories written in this universe.  The author 
is James Blish and both stories were written, I believe, in the 50's.

The first is "Sunken Universe" which gives a minimal (arrgh!)  
prologue on the crashed ship.  The bulk of the story concerns the 
survival of the sub-miniature humans in a war against rotifers.

The second story, "Surface Tension" is, in my opinion, the better of 
the two (though both are truly excellent).  It deals with the attempt 
to build a ship to cross the "empty vacuum of space", in this case, 
air.  The humans construct a water tight ship to carry them from one 
universe to the next, i.e. from one puddle to the next.  A monumental 
under- taking and a tribute to the human spirit.

Both stories have been favorites of mine for years and are always a 
good re-read.

                                           Enjoy,
                                             Greg


------------------------------

Date:  3 Mar 1981 1714-PST
From: CSD.KDO at SU-SCORE (Ken Olum)
Subject: Here's the title

The story described by OTTO.ES is in The Seedling Stars, by James 
Blish, I believe.  The book contains 4 similar stories about people 
designing intelligent life-forms for non-earthlike planets, of which 
the one OTTO describes is the 3rd or 4th.

The germ-plasma for designing colonists has been destroyed in the crash
so the crew alters themselves (by a cloning process, I think) to be 
microscopic to be able to live on the planet.

                            Ken


------------------------------


End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  6-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #60
*** EOOH ***
Date:  6 MAR 1981 0538-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #60
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 6 Mar 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 60

Today's Topics:

SF Books - Valis, SF Magazines - Journal of Irreproducible Results...,
   SF Movies - Star Wars 4A - New Hope, SF TV - Outer Limits query,
           SF Radio - Star Wars, Society - Creationists...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  5 Mar 1981 1256-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: more on VALIS

Very weird. But pretty good. The religious rambling gets rather 
tiresome in places, but much of the other philosophical discussion is
interesting. Don't be mislead by the paperback cover depicting a
rocket. This is NOT an action novel. More like a protracted
philosophical discussion among various PKD friends, PKD's alter ego,
and PKD himself. There's a lot of soul-searching and talk about
God/reality/universe/etc. What amazes me is how he keeps it
interesting, since normally this kind of stuff puts me to sleep
instantly.



------------------------------

Date:  5 Mar 1981 0002-EST
From: MLEASE at BBNC (Michael V. Lease)
Subject: Journal of Irreproducible Results...

I saw a mention of the Journal of Irreproducible Results in the latest
OMNI (& have seen other mentions in the past), & would like to know 
where I can get my hands on it.  Please reply to MLEASE@BBNC, not to 
the list.  If anyone else is interested, I will forward the info to 
them privately.

Thanks, Mike Lease


------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 03/04/81 21:24:46 
Re: Star Wars 4A- New Hope

   Whatever you choose to call it, you can see it again very soon.  
LucasFilms is going to re-release it for two weeks sometime next 
month. We can see at that time whether the title is all that got 
changed, or if they pulled some tiny editorial switches too (as 
happened, you recall, shortly after TESB got into circulation.)

   And speaking of TESB, *it* comes back to theatres in July...

     Larry


------------------------------

Date:  5 Mar 1981 1629-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: outer limits duplicate man query

        I remember seeing an episode of either Outer Limits or TZ in which a 
man gets his wrist hurt in an accident and is shocked to see that he 
is a robot.  On reading Lauren's guide (thanks!) I wonder if this was
the Duplicate Man episode.  Can anyone tell me if this is so?
                                        --cat



------------------------------

Date:  4 March 1981 22:12 cst
From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  SW radio in Phoenix
Sender:  VaughanW.REFLECS at HI-Multics

Star Wars radio begins in Phoenix on Sunday 8 March at 12:00 noon.  It
will be broadcast on KMCR, FM 91.5.


------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 03/04/81 07:32:06 
Re: Review of Star Wars radio show Part 1

        I heard the first episode of the SW radio program last night.

Nano-review: Good. Excellent sound effects. The story covered a lot
             that wasn't in the movie/book.

Micro-review: This program detailed a bit of Luke's life on Tatooine
              before the droids come in into his life. He runs around
              with some of the other teenagers that live in the area,
             (we actually hear GIRLS talking!) races an obnoxious
              fellow (using skyhoppers), sees the space battle (as
              detailed in the book), and generally sets the stage for
              the remains of his life on Tatooine.

                In general, it was very well done. The voices express
              emotion very nicely, sound effects are very very good.
              (A friend thought it might be a bit over-done. I agree,
              a bit. After all, this is RADIO theatre, and there's no
              visuals, so the producers have to compensate.)

Overall, I consider it well done.

                                ...phil


------------------------------

Date:  5 Mar 1981 1506-PST
From: Yeager@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Creationists...

        The latest "creationists" flame in California inspired the following
(A rephrasing, but none-the-less amusing one, of Russell's paradox)
        Bertrand:  
                    "So, you say god, and not humankind,
                    inspired the bible."
     Creationist:  
                   "Yes, the Bible is Divinely inspired!"

        Bertrand (smiling to himself):
                   "Well then, am I correct in assuming that
                    you believe god can only, and in fact, must
                    inspire all books that are not self-inspired."

     Creationist (Trembling with fears of God inspiring Gothic
novels):
                   "Of course!"

        Bertrand (Chuckling to himself):
                   "And, of course, god has a self?"

     Creationist:
                   "Well, we are created in His image, and we have
                    a self."

        Bertrand (Thinking to himself, if these guys would only take
                   my class in logic!):
                   "Then, my good Man, who inspired the bible? For
                    if god inspired the bible, then it is self-
                    inspired, and therefore, god did not inspire
                    the bible. But, if god did not inspire the
                    bible, then it is not self-inspired, and there-
                    fore, god inspired the bible!"

     Creationist: (Somewhat Aghast)
                   "mumble..."

        Bertrand:  (Raising the index finger of his right hand)
                   "Thus, we can conclude, god inspired the bible, AND
                    god did NOT inspire the bible!"

     Creationist: (Stalking out of the room)
                   "GOD can do anything!"

        Bertrand:  (Calmly lighting his pipe)
                   "Yes, everything follows from a contradiction!"

Corallary: The creationists arguments prove they evolved from the
apes,
    personally, I started with Australo-pithicus.

        Enjoy, and all that!
               Bill.



------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  7-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #61
*** EOOH ***
Date:  7 MAR 1981 0616-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #61
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 7 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 61

Today's Topics:
   SF Books - Why We Read the Stuff & VALIS & American Book Awards,
     SF Movies - Ralph Bakshi (Wizards and The Lord of the Rings),
                  SF TV - NOVA, Society - Creationists
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 6 March 1981 10:05-EST
From: Gail Zacharias <GZ at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Why we read the stuff

Gee.  Only in America ... would people be looked down on for liking 
fantasies of great intellect more than fantasies of sex and money.

------------------------------

Date: 6 Mar 1981 09:58 PST
From: Pettit at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Why we read the stuff

I pretty much agree with Disch, though I think he puts it rather
harshly for dramatic effect.  There's a lot to like in good SF, but
liking ONLY SF is indeed limiting.  Much mainstream fiction is every
bit as entertaining and enlightening, if not more.  Exploring ideas
about alternative realities can be a mind-opener, but so can exploring
the intricacies of this reality, with its complex social structure and
personal interactions.  Readers who cannot appreciate fiction set in
our own world are probably not fully socialized.  This applies to
those who read only mystery novels, gothic romances, or any other
highly stylized genre, as well as those who restrict themselves to SF.

Which brings up something that I've been wanting to say for a while.  
Namely, I can't stand the appelation "mundane" for mainstream
literature and art.  True, its primary literal meaning is "relating to
the world", but it has long had depracatory connotations of "hum-drum,
unnoteworthy".  Consider Webster's Unabridged's definition: "1 a : of,
relating to, or characteristic of the world: characterized by human
affairs, concerns, and activities that are often practical, immediate,
transitory, and ordinary <a reviewer is not expected to mention
anything so } as the price of books --A.J.P. Taylor> <nothing but }
businessmen --T.H. Fielding> <the occupations and distractions of }
life --Harold Nicolson> b : belonging to the world and having no
concern for the ideal or the heavenly <the trend which marks
distinguished art from the more } --Carlyle Burrows> <a fairy palace,
no, but a } wonder of a quite unimagined kind --R.A.W. Hughes>".  Of
all those quotes, only the last one is not mildly disparaging, and I
have the feeling it was included to illustrate a correct but untypical
usage.  It's no wonder that science fiction isn't accorded much
respect by a literary world it labels "mundane".

        Teri

------------------------------

LEOR@MIT-MC 03/07/81 03:28:09 
Re: VALIS

There are several reasons VALIS held my interest, despite the
long-winded philosophical rationalizations (which usually put ME to
sleep too, Chip, except they also CONFUSE the hell out of me...): a)
If you take Charles Platt seriously in "Dream Makers" (and I've been
given reason to doubt Platt's credibility) then PKD really did
experience what he believed to be a "VALIS" (or in this case simply a
higher intelligence) invading his head. Platt's profile draws a
condescending picture of PKD as a brilliant but clearly deranged
individual; in reading VALIS, I was never quite sure whether Dick was
being autobiographical or not. I'm still not sure, but if Dick hasn't
got any better an explanation for what he experienced than the one
finally proferred in VALIS, at least the book seems to indicate that 
he's still LOOKING for a rational explanation. b) Tending toward a
rather depressive disposition myself, many of Fat's problems struck
really close to home--and this kept me fascinated despite the painful
nature of it. All the little tidbits of awkward relationships
dissected made sifting through the religious references worthwhile.
Like I said before, somehow he just gets AWAY with it...

        -leor

------------------------------

Date: 06 Mar 1981 1008-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Nominees Announced For American Book Awards

    NEW YORK (AP) - The nation's publishing and literary community has
nominated 80 hardcover and paperback books for honors in the second 
annual American Book Awards.
    Winners will be announced April 30.
    The nominees, chosen in 10 categories from over 1,000 titles 
submitted, are:

...

Science
    Hardcover: ''The Abyss of Time'' by Claude C. Albritton Jr.; ''The
Wooing of Earth'' by Rene Dubos; ''Galaxies'' by Timothy Ferris; ''The
Panda's Thumb'' by Stephen Jay Gould; ''Cosmos'' by Carl Sagan.
    Paperback: ''Broca's Brain'' by Carl Sagan; ''The Big Bang'' by 
Joseph Silk; ''Black Holes'' by Walter Sullivan; ''The Medusa and the 
Snail'' by Lewis Thomas; ''Sociobiology'' by Edward O. Wilson.

------------------------------

Date: 06 Mar 1981 1009-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Ralph Bakshi

    By Roger Ebert
    (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
    CHICAGO - The last time I saw Ralph Bakshi, he was morose, 
distracted, depressed. This time he was so happy he could barely stay 
seated. I wondered if he resembled the characters in so many of his 
films, those animated excursions into manic-depression like ''Fritz 
the Cat'' and ''Heavy Traffic.'' He said, no, it was merely that he 
was ecstatic.
    ''The last time you saw me, my career couldn't have been in worse 
shape,'' he said. ''I had two hits-'Fritz' and 'Traffic'-and I had 
been robbed blind of all of the profits. I had finished a film named 
'Coonskin' that was shelved, allegedly because it was racist. I had 
almost finished a movie named 'Hey, Good Lookin'' when production was 
halted on it. My company was bankrupt. Nobody wanted to hear about 
animated films. You could say things looked dark.''
    But then Bakshi came back with two box-office hits in a row:  
''Wizards,'' an excursion into sword-and-sorcery fantasies, and his 
version of ''Lord of the Rings,'' which eventually grossed more money 
worldwide than any other animated film ever.
    ''They were both financial successes,'' he said, ''and they put me
back in business. They were not necessarily emotional successes.''
    What do you mean?
    ''They were good films, but they were not Bakshi films,'' he said.
''I began to fear that I would spend all my life making fantasies.  
That's been the fate of so many animators. What I've always wanted to 
do is use animation to deal with reality. To tell stories about real 
people in real places. To touch life.''
    That is what Bakshi has tried to do in ''American Pop,'' his
newest movie. He follows an immigrant family through its first four 
generations in America, from the great-grandfather peddling songs on 
Tin Pan Alley as a kid, to a grandson who self-destructs as a rock 
star and a great-grandchild left awash in the ruins of the drug 
culture.
    He also created a version of street reality in the ill-fated 
''Coonskin'' (1974), an animated film that used popular images and 
music to create a world of black America. Since the only other 
animated film to deal even vaguely with blacks was Disney's 
patronizing ''Song of the South,'' Bakshi was proud of his attempt to 
capture black society. The film was savaged, however, by the few 
critics who saw it. They charged him with racial stereotyping (which 
was undoubtedly true) and racism (which is another matter, and highly 
debatable in the case of ''Coonskin''). The film was withdrawn and has
hardly been seen.
    ''But I'm bringing it back,'' Bakshi vowed during his visit here
to promote ''American Pop.'' He said ''Coonskin'' had been all but 
written off when the Film Center of the Art Institute of Chicago 
scheduled a screening a few months ago.
    ''The audience response was very positive,'' Bakshi said, ''and
they were able to see that the movie was made with love and affection,
not racism. I own the rights to 'Coonskin,' and on the basis of that 
screening and the fact that 'American Pop' is a box-office hit, I'm 
renting a theater in Times Square and showing 'Coonskin,' and I am 
going to prove for once and all that blacks love the movie, no matter 
what anyone says.''
    He spoke with a ferocious intensity, chain-smoking cigarettes, but
the fact was, he did look happy. That was a victory because the 
animator's world is a lonely one. He makes his movies entirely within 
his head and his studio. He does not deal with human stars, with 
locations, or with photography in the ordinary sense. He works two 
years on a movie and can't even see what it looks like until the parts
are assembled a few months before the release date.
    ''Martin Scorsese doesn't have to educate people that stories can
be told in live action,'' Bakshi said, ''but I have to educate people 
that 'animated' doesn't mean 'children's film.' With 'American Pop,' 
I've done some new things. The animation includes realistic facial 
expressions and body movements, and great attention to character.  
It's not enough just to animate. You have to tell a story. It's like 
with the early days of color: They thought it was a triumph just to 
get color on the screen. With animation, same way: If it moved and 
looked good, it was good.''
    Bakshi is currently the only successful large-scale producer of 
animated films outside the Disney studios. But he believes the 1980s 
will see an explosion in animation.
    ''It's all in the economics,'' he said. ''A good, top-quality
animated film costs something like $4 million-that was the budget for
'American Pop.' It used to be you could make a low-budget,
live-action film for 2 to 3 million. Now, with inflation, you can't
touch one for less than 5 (million). That's a cheap film, but it's
the best animation money can buy. I went to see 'Popeye' and I was
amazed that they were taking live characters and making them look
animated. We're doing the reverse, equally unexpected: We're taking
animation and using it to create real characters.''

------------------------------

Date: 6 Mar 1981 20:43:11-PST
From: Cory.root at Berkeley
Subject: Dinosaurs and the Meteorite Theory

Since I remember a debate recently about the theory that a meteor 
impact with the earth killed off the dinosaurs, I will point out that 
the next NOVA show here is going to be on that self-same theory.  
That's at 21:15 10 March onn KPBS, and is called "The Asteroid and the
Dinosaur".  Those of you unfortunate enough not to live in the San
Francisco Bay Area will have to look it up for yourself.
                Ken

------------------------------

KARIM@MIT-MC 03/06/81 09:05:17

        Since I don't think anyone will respond in behalf on the "cre- 
ationists" (all you Christians out there in Arpaland raise your right
hand), I think I will. After all, isn't this whole about equal time?
        I have never met Bertrand Russell (RIP, wherever you are), but
I did see a few pages of one of his books once (the name escapes me).
The holes in "Russell's paradox" are as follows:
        <1> I am not sure ONLY God "can inspire all books that are
             not self-inspireed. This depends on <2>.
        <2> I am not sure "god has a self". Define "self" and I will
             tell you, to the best of my ability:
                a) whether God has a self
                b) whether he doesn't
                c) whether I can tell you based on the Bible or not. If
                   not, what I will be basing my judgement on.

You see, old Bert is pretty sharp. He puts the flaws in the Creation- 
ist's point of view, and lets "Bertrand" tear it apart. Another thing,
I hate to awaken Bert to this, seeing as he's so set in His ways, but
Logic doesn't fix everything. Trying to explain the creationist
viewpoint by Logic is like trying to explain why your favorite flavor
of ice cream is chocolate using MACSYMA. It doesn't apply --- and if
you try to make it apply, it may not show you the truth.
        "For God, IN HIS WISDOM, made it impossible for people to know
him by means of their own wisdom." Thing is, I wouldn't get so bloody
serious about if if people weren't taking the "none-the-less amusing"
so-called paradox seriously. Give me a break!  Taking a break,

                                  Hoo-haa,
                                   Karim

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  9-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #62
*** EOOH ***
Date:  9 MAR 1981 0519-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #62
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 9 Mar 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 62

Today's Topics:
                    Administrivia - Missing Digest,
    SF Books - The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe &
             Why we read the stuff & "Surface Tension",
            SF TV - Twilight Zone query answered & NOVA,
            SF Radio - Star Wars, Society - Creationists
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4 March 1981 0220-PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at SAIL>
Subject: Administrivia - Missing Digest

A combination of circumstances prevented the appearance of a Sunday
digest this weekend.  Rest assured that no one has missed anything.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 07 Mar 1981 1755-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: If you liked "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy"... 


... you'll be interested to know that "The Restaurant at the Edge of
the Universe", (or some other such name--its sequel), is now out in
paperback.  It has a hefty $3.50 price tag.

Rich

------------------------------

Date:  8 Mar 1981 (Sunday) 1324-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON-10 ( William Westfield)
Subject: Why we read the stuff

        "What these readers have in common is a need to assert
        the primacy of Intellect. The message that comes
        through in tale after tale is that it pays to be
        intelligent, and this is true at all levels of
        literacy, from sub to ultra."

<esm>

Of course, all of us realize deep down inside that once you get out of
school and get a job, such things as intelligence and education are 
completely useless, and indeed, a handicap in dealing with the "Real 
World".  I suggest we all stop fooling around and try to rework our 
interests to be all sex, violence and money.

<lsm>

Bill Westfield

PS.  Thanx to whoever came up with the idea for <ESM> and <LSM>


[ <esm> stands for Enter Sarcasm Mode, while <lsm> refers to Leave
Sarcasm mode. These were new additions to the ASCII standard character
set recently proposed by various people on the ENERGY mailing list.  -
Jim ]

------------------------------

Date:  7 Mar 1981 2037-PST
From: Yeager@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: RE:why do we read the stuff?

        What is all of this nonsense about the "maturity" or "social
adjustment" of someone being defined by the genre of literature they
prefer?

        It reminds me of a story ......

        It was a quiet Spring evening and nearly everyone on E. 7th 
St. had settled down to do whatever they did to regenerate themselves 
for the next day, nearly everyone but the Pribhams...

        "Listen, dad, I am going to marry Gloria, whether or not you
and mom give your consent, I love her and that is that!" fumed Robert
as he stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

        "Beatrice, what shall we do, what shall we do," bemoaned 
Robert Sr.

        "We've given our all to that boy, and how does he repay us?"

        "How, Robbie, how?"

        "He's running off to marry one of THEM.  My god! Our posterity
is doomed!"

        "Yes, dear, and, and, think of the children, I mean who would 
accept the poor urchins, victims of such a mixed marriage," said 
Alice, breaking into tears.

        "Well, chin up dear.  Remember, we are from sturdy stock, and
have survived worst catastrophes than this one." With that remark
Robert took Alice's hand, and led her into their library.

        Wall upon wall of books.  All leather bound, and first 
editions. A person of literature would find each respected genre well
represented, every genre except, ta dah, science fiction and 
fantasy...(tremble)

        "Yes, dear, have faith in our genres.  And if Robert Jr. has 
decided to marry someone who reads exclusively from...from...  that
other one, we'll survive without him," said Robert Sr. with pride, and
determination.

        "Yes, dear, I guess you are right. One must only associate 
with those who read from the proper genre.  What could be more 
important than that?" said Alice lighting the candles in their 
library, and kneeling before the collected works of Henry Miller, 
kneeling, and stroking the leather binding with her extended 
forefinger....

        Some years later in a small cottage in Western Washington we
find Robert Jr. and Gloria, and their five children huddled in a dark
room.  Their faces appear ghost like in the glow of their CRTs.
They're reading the daily SF-Lovers digest. Suddenly, the silence is
broken by a shout from Ian, their 4 year old.

        "Where does that guy from MIT-AI get off! Time travel is not
only possible, but, according to my brother, Robbie, he's already
formulated what is necessary for FTL travel to the nearest naked
sigularity."

        "Right on Ian!" shouted Robbie.

        Then the room again was silent.  Gloria and Robert took a
break, looked at each other, and smiled, as they watched Ian 
feverously type his reply to that guy from MIT-AI....

        Enjoy, gang,
        As ever, Bill.


------------------------------

Date:  8 MAR 1981 0159-EST
From: EMERSON at HARV-10 at MIT-AI


The story about genetically altered microscopic colonists living in 
puddles is called SURFACE TENSION and is by James Blish. It was voted
one of the 15 greatest science fiction stories ever written prior to
the beginning of the Nebula Awards (1965) by the SFWA (Science Fiction
Writers of America). It is reprinted in the anthology inspired by the
SFWA vote: THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME (Vol I) ed. Robert
Silverberg. It and other stories about genetically altered men (call
Pantropes) are also contained in Blish's book THE SEEDLING STARS.

-- Allen Emerson

------------------------------

Date: 7 Mar 1981 0155-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: the man who learned he was robot

A recent digest message asked about an episode of Outer Limits/ 
Twilight Zone where a man accidently rips his wrist open -- only to
discover he is a machine.

This is a Twilight Zone episode:  "In His Image".  It was the first of
the one hour episodes.  It is listed (of course!) in the TZ episode
guide -- but we didn't mention the robot part since I considered it a
spoiler.  However, considering that few of you will ever have a chance
to see this episode (unless, perhaps, you come to one of my TZ film
festivals -- if I ever manage to have another one), it seemed
reasonable to dispurse the facts at this time.

It was a pretty good episode by the way.

--Lauren--

------------------------------


Date: 8 Mar 1981 0849-EST
From: DAA at MIT-DMS (David A. Adler)

        The NOVA special entitled 'The Asteroid and the Dinosaur' will
also be aired in the Boston area on Tuesday March 10 on channel 2 at
8:00pm.  A repeat will be aired on channel 44 at 5:00 pm on March 15.

David Adler



------------------------------

Date:  8 March 1981 1121-EST (Sunday)
From: Mike.Fryd at CMU-10A (C621MF0E)
Subject:  SW radio & satellite

Be the first on your block to hear the Star Wars radio show.

Star Wars comes beaming down from the NPR satellite every Monday 
morning at 9:30 am EST.  for those of you who aren't awake that early 
it is repeated twice throughout the day (last show at 10:30 pm est.)

you have to be quick. "The Making of Star Wars for Radio" and episode 
1 have already been downloaded to the NPR earth stations, with episode
2 scheduled for March 9.

                        -Mike Fryd


------------------------------

Date: 7 Mar 1981 17:05 PST
From: Ayers at PARC-MAXC

As has been said ...

  "A Socratian dialog is not a game that two can play."

Bob

------------------------------

Date: 7 Mar 1981 1049-PST
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Bert and the Creationists
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

        I, too, hold no brief for the creationists, but a quick tour
of "Godel, Escher and Bach" (order right?)  will make clear (1) the
nature of Russell's paradox, (2) a few additional flaws in its
application, and (3) why a good creationist needn't worry about it, or
its ilk.  The heart of the argument is that there are such paradoxes
in all closed logical systems, not just the creationists'.

        Mike


------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 10-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #63
*** EOOH ***
Date: 10 MAR 1981 0621-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #63
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 10 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 63

Today's Topics:
               SF Books - Valis & The Genesis Machine,
          SF Magazines - Journal of Irreproduciable Results,
           SF Movies - The Monitors, SF TV - Outer Limits,
             Society - Creationists, Spoiler - Prisoner
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 03/09/81 15:34:57 
Re:  Valis


I thought Valis was so much unmitigated horse puck.  It's a 300 page 
long conspiracy hunt through piles of disconnected ramblings loosened 
from Philip K. Dick's mind.

It's even cheap as religious fantasy.

        Dan

------------------------------

Date: 9 Mar 1981 2008-EST
From: Rich Schneider <ECG.RICH at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: Relativity

In James Hogan's (A former DEC) book "Genesis Machine" he convinces
the reader that there are no temporal paradoxes in FTL travel.  He
maintains this unorthodox opinion by stipulating that out 4
dimensional universe is only a shadow (Zelazny's Amber Series)??? of
the true 6 dimensional or "k-space" universe.

He also has strong feelings toward DOD research funding.

All in all a very good book.

------------------------------

Date:  9 Mar 1981 1905-EST
From: MLEASE at BBNC (Michael V. Lease)
Subject: Journ. Irrep. Results...

        My thanks to all who responded to my message.  Since I have 
received a large number of requests for the info, I will give that 
which Stan Isaacs sent me (it appears to be the most up-to-date):

        Journal of Irreproducible Results
        2405 Bond Street
        Park Forest South, IL 60466

Thanks again, Mike Lease (MLEASE@BBNC)

P.S.:  The rates are $3.80/year.

------------------------------

Date: 09 Mar 1981 1507-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: The Monitors  

I was reading a book about Second City (a comedy group/theatre in
Chicago) last evening and I came across a footnote saying that some
incarnation of this group was responsible for making "The Monitors".
I remembered some question relating to this movie in previous
SF-LOVERS, so if the question was still outstanding, it has now been
settled.  I'll supply the exact reference next time.

Rich

------------------------------

Date:  9 Mar 1981 0003-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Outer Limits returns to Bay Area

Outer Limits is returning to the Bay Area on channel 20, Saturday and
Sunday mornings at 1am)... the pilot episode was on tonight, and
they're showing them in order, so next Saturday will be episode 2. The
station manager claims that only commercial breaks will be done, with
no chop-jobs or editting out of pieces here and there.

------------------------------

Date:  9 Mar 1981 1814-EST
From: (Chiron of Thessaly) <FEINBERG at CMU-20C>
Subject: Ice Cream and the All Mighty

Hmm...
        One would think that the Almighty would provide us with
intelligence and curiosity so that, for one thing, we would naturally
investigate the world and find out more and more that He existed and
that other claimed attributes of Him were true.  Therefore, it would
seem unreasonable not to apply those things which we use to think
about the world to religion, which includes the study of the Almighty,
I imagine, and his relationship with us, and creation.  One of the
most powerful tools that has been developed to think about complicated
issues such as religion is Logic.  In fact, many religious groups use
logic to present their case for creation and/or other theological
issues.
        It seems to me that when you a have and strong and devout 
belief about something, there should be equally strong reasons, 
rational reasons, for this belief.  For, after all, we are hopefully 
rational.  This is not to say that emotion has no part in our life, it
is just that when you believe some abstract idea to be true, it should 
always be a good thing to be able to show why you believe it; and, 
that just believing something on emotion can only get you so far.

                                                        --Chiron

------------------------------

Date:  8 Mar 1981 at 2341-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 
Subject: KARIM's hand-raising request in V3 #61...

^^^^^^^^^^ "CHRISTIANS"?  WHAT K*I*N*D OF CHRISTIANS? ^^^^^^^^^^^

 There are "Christians" sub 1, and "Christians" sub 2, etc., on to
 perhaps "Christians" sub 10,000, just in the U.S. alone.

 Northern Baptists aren't Southern Baptists, to say nothing of the
 "plain" vs. "African" types.  Lutherans come in diverse synods.
 I had a Greek Orthodox friend who wouldn't go to the same church
 as her Syrian Orthodox husband.  And "Bible" Christians and
 Pentecostals are so various as to seem to have almost every
 congregation autonomous.

 Even Mormons with their short history have split a couple times,
 while creaking-with-age and seemingly monolithic Catholocism, even
 those connected with the Pope come in a dozen or so flavors, only
 one of which is "Roman".  Plus such unaffiliated ones as the Old
 Catholics and the Polish National splinters.

 With a couple millennia to work with, people can create an awful
 lot of entropy along with more heat than light.

------------------------------

LIZARD@MIT-AI 03/09/81 05:56:28

   SO you all are really into this Sci-Fi stuff...


        Well then, check out this,

         do :print users2; AI: LIZARD KRORNO and think about it!

[ People who may wish to FTP this file may do so with the pathname 
AI:USERS2;LIZARD KRORNO from MIT-AI - Jim ]


------------------------------


JPM@SAIL 03/10/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It refers
to the TV series the Prisoner.  People who are not familiar with the
Prisoner series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date:  9 Mar 1981 1211-EST
From: JHENDLER at BBNA
Subject: Prisoner - spoiler

Some friends of mine have told me that in England a special episode of
the Prisoner, released sometime after the first series, revealed that
our hero is, in fact, number 1.  They say that the makers of this
episode felt that the subtle clues in other episodes weren't enough.
This episode has never been released (so they say) in this country.
Does anyone know whether this episode was reall made??
  Who is number one?
  You are, number 6....
   -Jim

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 11-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #64
*** EOOH ***
Date: 11 MAR 1981 0610-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #64
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 11 Mar 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 64

Today's Topics:
              SF Books - Hogan's books & The Third Wave,
              Society - Creationists, Spoiler - Prisoner
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Mar 1981 at 1046-PST
From: Stuart Mclure Cracraft <mclure at SRI-UNIX>
Subject: Hogan's books
Sender: mclure at Sri-Unix

I would NOT recommend them to anyone who wants good characterizations.
His science is nifty, but his people are unbelievable, one
dimensional, and boring. We should expect more than just clever
gadgetry.



------------------------------

Date: 10 Mar 1981 at 1620-PST
From: Stuart Mclure Cracraft <mclure at SRI-UNIX>
Subject: Toffler's latest => paperback
Sender: mclure at Sri-Unix

THE THIRD WAVE just came out in paperback and I strongly recommend it.
Even if you don't agree with all of his conclusions, it is still
fascinating reading, much more so than FUTURE SHOCK (at least in my
opinion).



------------------------------

Date: 10 March 1981 05:08-EST
From: Alan Bawden <ALAN at MIT-MC>
Subject: Godel, Escher, Bach

Let us be careful not do too much violence to Hofstadter's book and 
Godel's theorem.  It is not the case that Godel's theorem shows us 
that "...  there are such paradoxes in all closed logical systems ..."
A logical system that contains a paradox (such as Russell's) is 
inconsistent.  Are we thus to conclude that all "closed logical 
systems" are inconsistent?  This is not the case, at least for any 
reasonable definition of the word "closed" that I can think of. (It's 
not a term I have ever heard in this context.)

What Godel's theorem in fact says is that any logical system that is 
powerful enough to say interesting things (say powerful enough to talk
about the properties of the natural numbers), contains statements that
are NOT decidable.  In other words, one can make statements in such a 
system that cannot be proved OR disproved from within the system.

This is different from Russell's paradox, which is a statement that 
can be BOTH proved AND disproved within a certain primitive version of
set theory.  Thus rendering that particular version of set theory 
inconsistent, and causing set theorists to adopt a different version 
of the theory.



------------------------------


JPM@SAIL 03/11/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It refers
to the TV series the Prisoner.  People who are not familiar with the
Prisoner series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 10 Mar 1981 1459-PST
From: First@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Prisoner ending - spoiler!!

The "Prisoner" was picked up and shown again by PBS stations a couple 
of years ago, an event which was at that time rather unprecedented 
(While the PBS is in the regular habit of showing British TV series in
the US, it had never aired a series which originally was carried on 
the US commercial networks, particularly CBS.  This precedent was
recently continued with the airing of "Paper Chase".)  With the
re-airing much discussion was generated and the series was even
followed by an inter- view with Patrick McGoohan, which while
interesting, did not really clear up many of the enigmas.  As far as I
know, there were never any "new" episodes made--perhaps your friends
are referring to the concluding episode, in which a not-very-subtle
suggestion is made to the effect that Number 6 was in fact Number One.
(Recall that when Number 6 goes to meet the hood-covered Number One,
No. 6 pulls off the hood to reveal the head of a gorilla, pulls off
the gorilla head to reveal the face of No. 6).  This scene seemed
therefore to explicitly suggest that No. 6 = No. 1, with all of its
allegorical implications (i.e. we are all prisoners of our own minds,
etc.).  If I am wrong and there was an extra episode even more
explicit, please let me know--I am of the opinion that this series was
the greatest TV series of all time, Star Trek not-withstanding.
   --Be seeing you,
       Michael B. First

P.S. Does anybody know of any type of "film-buffs" mailing list
     in Arpaland If so, please tell me at FIRST @ SUMEX-AIM. Thanx.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 12-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #65
*** EOOH ***
Date: 12 MAR 1981 0602-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #65
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 12 Mar 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 65

Today's Topics:
                Society - Creationists, Spoiler - NOVA
----------------------------------------------------------------------

KARIM@MIT-ML 03/11/81 09:16:14 
Re: Creationists...*sigh*

        It seems I have two things to reply to. Here goes. As far as 
"WHAT K*I*N*D OF CHRISTIANS" goes...you can look at things in two or 
more ways, usually. But I do NOT look at Christianity and say, "But 
look how many 'Christians`!" If one shops for a new car, it is not 
advisable to find yourself looking at every make and model and trying 
to make a choice, that is, not really. First you decide what type of
car you need (or want, as the case may be) and then you work from 
there. In the case of religions, I don't say, "But look at how many 
flavors of `The True Religion`!" I ask first, "Is there life after 
death?" and work from there. So don't look at the tree from the wrong 
end, or you may see so many answers that it won't make sense.
        And, in a nutshell, by "Christian" I meant anyone who realize-
es that humans (and themselves in particular) were in a wrong standing
with the Creative Thing in the Universe (dare I call it "God" for fear
of someone flaming?) and that a Very Special Person name Jesus managed
to put them back in right standing. THAT is what I meant by "Christ- 
ian". Plain vs. African included.

        Secondlly, about "Ice Cream and the Almighty", I agree one
hundred percent. One should depend on one's Creator to give one brains
enough to him out. But what do you consider proof (of his existance)?
If I was a normal human, and I said,"I'll believe in God if a meteor
strikes Iceland next Tuesday and the dinosaurs come back," would you
think I was being fair?
        God is not unfair. He will judge a person that did not see the
Red Sea parting and still didn't believe in God more harshly (this is
just my opinion, now) than a person who didn't see the Red Sea part
and just doesn't believe in God anyway. In the same sense, He will
judge a person living in America (all these "Christians") with good
sense more harshly than some mentally lacking person behind the Iron
Curtain who has never heard of God in the Christian sense. Like I
said, it depends on what you take for proof.  I'll finish the line of
thought in that Bible verse I quoted.

"For God in his wisdom made it impossible for people to know him by
means of their own wisdom. Instead, by means of the so-called
`foolish` message we preach, God decided to save those who believe.
Jews want miracles for proof, and Greeks look for wisdom. As for us,
we proclaim the crucified Christ, a message that is offensive to the
Jews and nonsense to the Gentiles....  HE chose what the world looks
down upon and despises and thinks is nothing, in order to destroy what
the world thinks is important." (1 Corinthians 1.21-23,1.28)


        And, as far as proof goes,

"God punishes them, because what can be known about God is pain to
them, for God himself made it plain. Ever since God created the world,
his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and divine nature have
been clearly seen; they are percieved in the things that God has made.
So these people have no excuse at all!" (Romans 1.19-20)

        As for the first quote: are we the modern day Greeks? I think
so.  As for the second one: isn't that a bit odd,old Paul saying God's
"invisible" qualities were "clearly seen"? This means (I think) That
some people use their eyes too much. True, "Just believing something 
on emotion can only get you so far", but the tendency nowadays is to
go overboard on THE OPPOSITE END, that is, as Yoda might say, you seek
too much your eyes with. Feel the Force...whoops! That's getting into 
my OTHER letter. Y'all have a nice one, hear?

                          Hoo-ha,
                         Karim



------------------------------


LIZARD@MIT-AI 03/11/81 02:24:26

The file USERS2; ai: LIZARD KRORNO should be there again.  Somebody or
something delled it. I hope it don't happen again.  So, one more time
(chuckle), try a print on it, Ok? Ok!


------------------------------


JPM@SAIL 03/12/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
refer to the TV series NOVA, and particularly to the recent episode
concerning "The Asteroid and the Dinosaur."  In doing so some of the
information presented in the episode is revealed, along with an
opinion of the episodes worth.  Since the episode will probably be
broadcast in your area in the near future, people who have not seen
this episode but who might see it on its second showing might wish not
to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 11 Mar 1981 1650-EST
From: DAA at MIT-DMS (David A. Adler)
Subject: NOVA: The Asteroid and the Dinosaur

Last night the NOVA special concerning the sudden death of the
dinosaurs was on. Other people may be yet to see it or missed it. The
show seemed to rule out a meteor hitting the earth but did support
evidence that a meteor could have hit in the ocean along a ridge, in
this case an impact would stick out rather than become a crater. Such
a place was found on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and is now Iceland. Anyone
who missed the show or who would just like a copy of the transcript
should send $3.00 to:

        NOVA
        Box 1000
        Boston, MA 02118


You will have to specify which show you want.

David Adler



------------------------------

Date: 11 Mar 1981 1110-PST
From: First@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Review of NOVA-"Dinosaurs & Asteroids" - (spoiler??)

Several SFLers mentioned the airing of "Dinosaurs and Asteroids" on 
NOVA this week; being on PBS, it will undoubtedly be re-aired this
weekend--so I feel compelled to warn anyone who missed it and is
planning to watch the rerun.

  This was definitely one of the weakest NOVA's I've ever seen.  The
topic discussed by the program was the fascinating question of what
happened to the dinosaurs--unfortunately, the program did little to
shed light on the issue.  The first 30 minutes consisted of a review
of dinosaurs, which mostly consisted of an artist drawing pictures of
Brontosaurus, Ty. Rex, etc.  (it's amazing how the herbivores always
look so lovable while the carnivores look so evil--I think it's the
eyes!), followed by some crude animation of the dinosaur romping
around in its artist-conceived habitat.  The only interesting point
made in this sequence was a discussion of how Brontosaurus has been 
displayed with the wrong skull for the last hundred years and only
recently has the situation been corrected.  The next 30 minutes was
devoted to the development of the "asteroid theory" (for those who
don't know, the theory proposes that a 6 mile wide asteroid collided
with the earth, causing debris from the collision to become airborne,
obscuring the sunlight and eventually causing the extinction of many 
species (esp. dinosaurs) due to disruption of the food chain) and the
evidence which supports it.  This portion of the program was filled
with unnecessary and cheap-looking special effects (lots of
tumbling-through-space asteroid shots) and "spontaneous" sequences
showing the paleontologists "discovering" fossils in front of the
camera. Basically the only hard evidence presented was the discovery
of unexpectedly high levels of iridium (suggesting an
extra-terrestrial source) in clay deposits in strata covering the
dinosaur-age strata.  The remaining evidence was purely circumstantial
(they even shrugged off another filmed scientist's contention the his 
plant fossil findings seemed to flatly contradict the theory).  The
show ended with a scientist warning that we must be prepared for an
impending asteroid collision (we are long overdue) by monitoring space
for approaching asteroids and then going into space to deflect any
asteroids destined to crash into us!

  Overall, the content of the show was quite miniscule, while special
effects, animation, synthesizer-scored-music, and re-created
experiments abounded.  Very disappointing for a show of such usual
high quality (maybe they can re-edit it and sell it to "That's
Incredible").

      --Michael B. First


------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 13-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #66
*** EOOH ***
Date: 13 MAR 1981 0637-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #66
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 13 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 66

Today's Topics:
          SF Events - San Jose Convention & Convention Calendar
                 SF Books - Micro Reviews, SF TV - NOVA,
               Society - Creationists,  Spoiler - Prisoner
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 Mar 1981 11:06 PST
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest EXTRA

        March 14-15, 1981 (Northern California) SILI-CON. Le Baron
Hotel, North First St., San Jose.

To my amazement, I read in this morning's San Jose Mercury that there
will be a science-fiction convention THIS WEEKEND in San Jose.
Sili-Con features Poul Anderson, Steve Perrin, and Lancelot, the live
unicorn. Films include Ray Harryhausen SFX, Flash Gordon serials, Star
Trek episodes, "The Thing," "The Blob," and (original) "Invasion of
the Body Snatchers." Someone from Nasa will be showing films of
Viking, etc.

Also D&D, costumes, hucksters, as usual. Cost: $10 (Sat. $7, Sun. $6).
Registration opens Saturday at 7 a.m., films & art start at 9. Call
379-8040 for more information.

The 379-8040 man says they didn't get it in Locus because the Hotel
wouldn't confirm until the last minute. Sounds reasonably good,
though. Anyone going?

        Richard Brodie

------------------------------

Date: 12 Mar 1981 2146-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: books

        Here are my comments about a few books recently read, for what
they're worth.  King Kobold by Christopher Stasheff:  pretty good, but
doesn't rank with its predecessor, The Warlock in Spite of Himself.
The Barbie Murders (Varley):  good ideas with some muddy thinking.
Varley gets a neat idea for a premise and knows where he wants the
story to go to, but doesn't always move there in a logical motivated
way.  The first story, for instance, begins a lot like "The Bomb in
the Bathtub" (by ? in the 4th Galaxy Reader,I think) but lacks its
"internal consistency".  Titan and Wizard: both very good.  Songmaster
(Orson Scott Card): haunting, bittersweet.  Stardance: excellent.  The
plot moves so well it carries you along like the melody carries you in
a Schubert piece.  The Einstein Intersection (Delany): not good.
Delany tries to incorporate Orpheus, Billy the Kid, and Jean Harlow
not just thematically, but also literally, in a futuristic setting.  I
don't think it makes sense. The Demolished Man:  excellent, and
exciting except for the fact that my edition had a definitive spoiler
on the back cover.  (Note the use of the past tense -- this is the
only book I have ever defaced).  Enough for now,

                                good reading, --cat

------------------------------

Date: 12 Mar 1981 2153-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: NOVA special  


On the Asteroids and the Dinosaurs will be shown again in the Bay area
this saturday (March 14) at 7:45pm on channel 9.

------------------------------

Date: 12 Mar 1981 1005-PST
From: Mike Peeler <ADMIN.MDP at SU-SCORE>
Subject: What kind of fool am I?

    I have looked at the tree from your end (I think) and still can
make no sense of it.  I agree with your definition of "Christian", but
not everybody is as tolerant as you about The True Religion.
Christians themselves are unwilling to accept the belief in Jesus'
role as the Christ as the entirety of their religion.  Each branch of
Christianity offers its own embellishments, which is all right by me,
for variety is the spice of life.  However, most of them claim to be
The True Religion and rebuke all others, with the implication that
they are mutually exclusive and that the Christian must choose one and
renounce all others.

    You suggest not to look at the hordes of answers offered by the
Christian tree but to first formulate my belief and then figure out to
which sect that belief corresponds.  Unfortunately, my religious
beliefs seem to be somewhat underdeveloped compared to my other
beliefs in the sense that I don't have as much reason to prefer one
Christianity over another as I have for choosing jamoca almond fudge
over plain mocha chip.  "Just believing on emotion" simply doesn't
work, because my guts refuse to belch out either yea or nay for most 
sects, or even Christianity in general.  Sure, I ask first, "Is there
life after death?" but then what?  I get bogged down right then and
there.  There is no question of working from there.

    I don't ask for proof of God's existence, because, yes, that would
be unfair.  Proof, no, evidence, yes.  I believe in a lot of things
without proof.  Henry Kissinger, for example.  Then again, I've seen
pictures of Henry.  It could be true that "Ye shall not look upon the
face of the Lord lest ye die", but wouldn't a false prophet say the
same thing to account for the lack of support for his story?

------------------------------

Date: 12 Mar 1981 1322-PST
From: Dolata@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Christian-nets


Enough already.  I don't think SF-LOVERS is the appropriate place for 
theology, unless it pertains directly to some SF story/movie.

Dan (dolata@sumex-aim)

------------------------------

Date: 12 Mar 1981 1847-PST
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: superstition on SF-lovers

     Why must my mailbox - and hundreds of others - be clogged down
with superstitious hogwash?  The less I hear about religion and
especially Christianity (that most repulsive, pornographic, 
blood-thirsty, intolerant, evil variety), the happier I am.  I have no
objections to people who wish to be superstitious in the privacy of
their own homes - anything between consenting adults and all that -
but I object to being subjected to proselytizing; especially in my
electronic mailbox!

     I also object to biblical quotes.  I find it interesting that you
picked the letters of the Apostle Paul, which among other things
advocate homosexuality (What?  You don't believe me?  Try careful
reading, not just the selected quotes in the pamphlets your church
hands out) and hatred of women (not to mention Jews).  There were a
lot of good Christians who were good Nazis.

     I cannot see why SF-Lovers has stooped to such depths.  I hope
the religious flamage will cease and desist.  The whole thing which
brought it on - the patently absurd notion that there is any validity
to the creationist argument - wasn't worth the bits of disk space
consumed by the flamage.

-- Mark --

------------------------------

Date: 12 Mar 1981 11:09 PST
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. Brodie <Brodie at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: Calendar of Science Fiction Events

Here is the SF-Lovers event calendar. If you have information about
any events you would like to see added to the calendar, or are
associated in some way with one of the listed events and would like to
contribute, please send mail to Brodie at PARC-MAXC.

                ------------------------------

              Calendar of Science Fiction Events
                    As of March 12, 1980

                ------------------------------

        March 13-15, 1981 (Kentucky) UPPERSOUTHCLAVE XI. Bowling
Green, KY. Box U 112, College Heights Station, Bowling Green, KY
42101.

        March 13-15, 1981 (Ohio) MARCON 16. Hilton Inn, Columbus ($36
single, $42 dbl). GoH: Andy Offutt.  FGoHs: Bob & Anne Passovoy. TM:
Jodie Offutt. Box 2583, Columbus, OH 43216; Mark Evans (614) 497-9953.

        March 13-15, 1981 (Mississippi) COASTCON. Royal D'Iberville
Hotel, Biloxi, MS ($48 single/dbl, $10 ea. addl.).  GoH: Jerry
Pournelle; FGoH: James Madden. Cost: $12.50. Box 6025, Biloxi, MS 
39532; (601)374-3046.

        March 20-22, 1981 (New Jersey) LUNACON '81. Guests: James
White, Jack Gaughan. Sheraton-Heights, Hasbrouck Heights, NJ
(marginally attainable by public from New York City). Cost: $11 till 
2/28/81, $14 door. Box 204, Brooklyn, NY 11230.

        March 27-29, 1981 (England) FANDERSON 81. Gerry Anderson.
Leeds, England. Pam Barnes, 88A Thornton Avenue, London W4 1QQ
England.

        March 27-29 (Washington) NORWESCON 4. Hyatt, Seattle. Cost:
$12 till 3/16, $15 door. Limit 1400. Under 8 free. Box 24207, Seattle,
WA 98188; (206) 364-8607 or (eves) 747-6964.

        April 3-5, 1981 (Kansas) FOOL-CON IV. GoH: Katherine Kurtz and
Michael Whelan; Toastmaster: Robert Asprin; Guest artists: Herb
Arnold, Jann Frank, Robert Haas, Tim Kirk, Daryl Murdock, Real
Musgrave; other special guests: Lynn Abbey, Patricia Cadigan, C.J.
Cherryh, Arnold Fenner, Barbara Housh, David Houston, John Kessel, Pat
& Lee Killough, Carl Sherrel, John Tibbetts; possibly Robert Heinlein,
Richard Lupoff. Cost: $7.50 till 3/15, $9 after (Banquet $7.50 addl;
$10 door). 10% of profits to Nat'l Space Institute; Presentation of
Balrog Awards. Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS
66201.

        April 11-12, 1981 (Minnesota) MICROCON 1981. SF/Comics/Games.
Mpls. Comic Conventions, Box 3221 Traffic Station, Minneapolis, MN
55403.

        April 18-20, 1981 (Maryland) BALTICON 15. Hunt Valley Inn,
Baltimore. GoH: John Varley; AGoH: Darrell Sweet. Cost: $10 adv. BSFS,
Inc., Box 686, baltimore, MD 21203.

        April 25-26, 1981 (Nebraska) ELECTRACON I. GoH: Ed Bryant;
FGoH: Suzanne Carnival; AGoH: Dan Patterson. Cost: $7.50; $10 door.
Banquet TBA. "Nebraska's first SF con." Box 1052, Kearney, NE 68847.

        May 8-10, 1981 (Tennessee) KUBLA'S NINTH KHANPHONY. Ken Moore,
647 Devon Drive, Nashville, TN 37204

        May 9-10 (Georgia) EMORY-TREK II. Atlanta Star Trek Society,
c/o Kenneth Cribbs, 2156 Golden Dawn Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30311

        June 5-7, 1981 (Arizona) PHRINGECON 2. PO Box 128, Tempe, AZ
85281.

        June 12-14, 1981 (Wisconsin) X-CON 5. M. P. Inda, 1743 N.
Cambridge, Apt. 301, Milwaukee, WI 53202.

        June 13-14, 1981 (Kansas) COSMOCON II. c/o Charley S. McCue,
34 halsey, Hutchinson, KS 67501.

        July 2-5, 1981 (Northern California) WESTERCON 34. GoH: C. J.
Cherryh; Fan GoH: Grant Canfield. Red Lion Motor Inn, Sacramento, CA;
(916) 929-8855; $32 single and double, $8 addl person.  Party wing.
Cost: $20 till 6/14/81, $25 door. P.O. Box 161719, Sacramento, CA 
95816.

        July 10-12, 1981 (Missouri) ARCHON V. GoH: Tanith Lee; Fan
GoH: Joan Hanke Wood; Toastmaster: Charlie Grant; also Joan Hanke
Wood, Wilson 'Bob' Tucker, Glen Cook, Ron Chilson, George R. R.
Martin, Joe and Gay Haldeman, and Michael Berlyn. Chase-Park Plaza
Hotel, St. Louis, MO ($44 single, $52 2/3/4). Soliciting program ideas
and/or people who could help carry them out. Also looking for more
artist names to add to the mailing list for soliciting contributions
to the art show. This was successful at ARCHON IV (over 60% of artists
sold works), and they are trying to expand. There will be more art
show space and display panels this year. Also in the process of
reviewing art show rules and would welcome suggestions. SFL liaison:
WMartin at Office-3 (Amy Newell).

        September 3-7, 1981 (Colorado) DENVENTION TWO. 1981 World
Science Fiction Convention. Pro GoH: C.L.  Moore, Clifford Simak; Fan
GoH: Rusty Hevelin. Denver Hilton. Cost: $35 till spring 1981. P.O.
Box 11545, Denver, CO.  80211. (303) 433-9774.

        November 5-7, 1981 (Southern California) LOSCON '81.
Huntington Sheraton, Pasadena. PGoH: William Rotsler. FGoHs: Len &
June Moffatt. Cost: $10 till 7/4. LASFS, 11513 Burbank Blvd., North
Hollywood, CA 91601.

        July 2-5, 1982 (Arizona) WESTERCON 35. Adams Hotel, Phoenix
($29 single, $5 ea. addl.) GoH: Gordon R.  Dickson. FGoH: Fran Skene.
TM: David Gerrold. Cost: $15 till 7/10/81 ($6 supporting). Box 11644,
Phoenix, AZ 85064; (602) 249-2616. SFL Liaison:  Schauble.Multics at
MIT-Multics (Paul Schauble).

        September 2-6, 1982 (Illinois) CHICON IV. 1982 World Science
Fiction Convention. Pro GoH: A. Bertram Chandler; Fan GoH: Lee
Hoffman; Artist GoH: Kelly Freas. Hyatt Regency, Chicago, IL. Cost:
$30 till 6/30/81; $15 supporting; $7.50 conversion. PO Box A3120,
Chicago, IL 60690.

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/13/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It refers
to the TV series the Prisoner, and particularly to the last episode.
If you are not familiar with the end of the series you might wish not
to read any further.


------------------------------

SLH@MIT-AI 03/11/81 19:08:40 
Re: The Prisoner - (Spoiler)

 As long as this spoiler topic is up, some of you who saw the last
episode (it was a double, actually) might remember that when No. 6
returns to his home, the number on the front door is "1". I'd say
that's subtle.


------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 15-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #67
*** EOOH ***
Date: 15 MAR 1981 0636-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #67
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 15 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 67

Today's Topics:
  SF Events - FORWARD in Albuquerque & Science and Science Fiction &
  the SF Convention Calendar, SF Books - Troas and Eidetic Memories,
                  SF Radio - Impact on Public Radio
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 13 MAR 1981 2318-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL


     I will be in Albuquerque on business next week (16-18 March).  Is
the intersection of the set of Albuquerquians and the set of SF-LOVERS
a non-null set?

     (I hope that didn't show my ignorance of set theory jargon -- I
only picked up what I could checking my kids' homework.)


           Bob Forward


[Please send your responses directly to Bob, who is FORWARD@USC-ECL,
 not to SF-LOVERS.  -  Jim]

------------------------------

Date: 13 Mar 1981 1517-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: sf event, horror movie query

        I just heard on Newsmagazine (KCBS radio, San Francisco) that 
a couple of Berkeley sf-enthusiast scientists will be doing a 6-week 
presentation on "Science and Science Fiction" at the Academy of 
Sciences, Golden Gate Park.  Among other things, they will show a 
horror movie which influenced the steady-state theory of the universe.
The theory says that there is no beginning and no end to the universe:
it just goes on and on.  The movie apparently was a weird one without 
any beginning or end....Do you know anything about it?
                                                        --cat

------------------------------

Date: Friday, 13 March 1981  19:02-PST
From: CSD.KDO at SU-SCORE
Subject: Calendar of Science Fiction Events

Good work!

Does it live in a public file somewhere?  If not, it should, since It 
looks very useful but I don't want it in my mail file.

                                    Ken

[ Good idea.  The most recent SFL Events Calendar will always be
  available from the file AI:DUFFEY;SFLVRS CALNDR.
                         -- Your Friendly Neighborhood Archivist ]

------------------------------

Date: 12 Mar 1981 08:44:28-PST
From: CSVAX.wss at Berkeley
Subject: Stories about Troas

The story about Troas by Asimov is called ``Sucker Bait.''  It may be 
found in the collection, ``The Martian Way.''  An interesting feature 
of this story is that the hero has an eidetic memory.  That started me
trying to recall other stories in which eidetic memory has figured 
prominently.  RH's ``Starman Jones'' and the short-lived television 
show ``The Delphi Project'' (or some such) come to mind.  Can anyone 
think of others?

------------------------------

Date: 14 Mar 1981 1522-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: A new life for radio? (and mainly due to SF Radio?)   

    RADIO review
    By Michael Hill
    The Baltimore Evening Sun (Field News Service)
    The pictures look strange to members of the television age. People
sitting around listening to the radio. Not grooving on the music, or 
dancing, or eating dinner with it in the background, or waking up to 
it, or shaving while the news plays, or having it on in the car. But 
listening.
    And not just to music and news. But to serials and dramas and
comedy and variety shows, all those things that we watched on
television.  The pictures show mom and dad and the kids gathered
around some huge wooden console, chuckling along with Fibber McGhee
and Molly.
    Nowadays, you feel strange paying that kind of attention to the 
radio. What are you supposed to look at? People, used to ignoring each
other while the tube demands their attention, get uncomfortable 
sitting there listening to the radio, diverting their gaze downward, 
afraid of catching another's eye.
    Nor are we used to using our imaginations in that way, to letting 
our minds create the pictures, flesh out the characters. The 
television does all that for us. We get nervous about letting our 
imagination run. No telling where it might lead.
    National Public Radio is trying to rekindle that kind of special 
relationship between radio and its listeners with a series of radio 
dramas that go under the umbrella title of NPR Playhouse. Two of the 
dramas will be broadcast on the weekends - ''Star Wars,'' an adoption 
of the popular movie in 13 half-hour episodes on Sundays, and ''The 
Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy,'' a social satire science fiction 
work which has 12 half-hours on Saturdays.
    The two series began last weekend, but you can probably catch on
if you pick them up with the second part. You probably won't be 
listening to ''Star Wars'' unless you saw the movie anyway, so you 
know that story. To catch up with ''Hitchikers,'' just keep in mind 
that in the first episode the world was destroyed to make way for an 
intergalactic highway project.
    ''Star Wars'' is a domestic product, a production of National
Public Radio. It has two members of the film's cast, Mark Hamill as
Luke Skywalker and Anthony Daniels as the robot C3PO.
    In charge of the NPR's drama program is John Bos, who ran Center 
Stage here in Baltimore in 1963-64. After that he worked in a theater 
in Philadelphia and was most recently in New York as head of the 
Performing Arts Division of the New York State Council on the Arts.
    ''Actors like to work in radio drama,'' he said of his new field.
''There's none of the problems with makeup and costumes. It can be 
done quickly and it's fun. One thing you have to remember about 'Star 
Wars' is that our version is 6 1/2 hours long so we have a lot in
there that wasn't in the movie.''
    Bos carries with him a satchel full of radio projects, from 
straight-out mysteries to sound effect mind benders. While ''Star 
Wars'' has excited a tremendous number of potential listeners, 
particularly those of a generation that's never heard radio drama, 
''The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' clearly takes the art form 
closer to its limits.
    Like many of the best things on the American public media, 
''Hitchiker's Guide'' is a product of the BBC. The guide itself is 
something of a handbook for travel about the galaxy, with the program 
telling the story of how the guide came into existence.
    It has the sense of humor often lacking from pretentious science 
fiction, using its freedom from the restraints of conventional fiction
to make satirical points about current society as well as about the
science fiction genre. It was a big cult hit in England.
    The techniques it uses will be familiar to any fans of the
Firesign Theater, that comedy group that used the radio as its medium
in San Franciso in the late '60s. You can do things on radio you can't
do anywhere else, juxtapositions and ambiguities that allow the
stories to take amazing twists.
    Plus, the most incredible special effects are possible for the
price of a good sound man. That's because they don't have to take
place on the screen or stage. They happen in the theater of your mind.
    Buy a ticket one night this weekend. You might become a regular 
patron.

------------------------------

Date: 13 Mar 1981  3:02:57 EST (Friday)
From: Ralph Muha <muha at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: lizard spoiler

The file users2;ai:lizard krorno @ mit-ai contains two telephone 
numbers.  Don't bother calling either one, unless you have access to 
free long-distance and/or a taste for infantile obscenity and 
gibberish.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 16-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #68
*** EOOH ***
Date: 16 MAR 1981 0556-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #68
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 16 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 68

Today's Topics:
         SF Books - "Nightflyers" & "True Names" & Mockingbird,
          SF Radio - Star Wars & HGttG, Spoiler - Known Space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 Mar 1981 1357-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: "Nightflyers/True Names" and "Mockingbird"

"Nightflyers" and "True Names" by George Railroad Martin and Vernor 
Vinge (ex-husband of Joan, I think) are two novellas sold together 
under the name Binary Star #5.  They both deal with people-in-machines
but "Nightflyers" takes place on a starship several thousand years 
from now and "True Names" on an Arpanet writ large fifty years hence.
"True Names" was described here a couple of weeks ago, so I'll only 
add that having enormous net-hacking power in the hands of people 
juvenile enough to give themselves nicknames like "Mr. Slippery" and 
"Slimey Limey" is scary.  I liked the idea of a hacker having to 
protect his true name, though, and the one about creating imaginary 
worlds by suggestion rather than the huge bandwidth of video.  
"Nightflyers" is better written than its partner but suffers by having
to invoke the supernatural.  It concerns an expedition to find a 
strange race of aliens that seem to be voyaging out from the heart of 
the galaxy at sub-light.  Along the way people start dying in nasty 
ways.  The reason was fitting and unexpected, but hard to gloss over 
with technical jargon.
     "Mockingbird" is the first novel from Walter Tevis ("The Man Who
Fell to Earth") in quite a while.  In it the idea of a laid-back
lifestyle is carried to its logical conclusion, catatonia.  People are
so into respecting one another's space that it is a crime to look
someone in the eye when speaking.  They spend their time meditating
and watching abstract patterns on holographic TVs.  All real work is
done by fairly mindless androids.  Only three people are still awake.
One is the last and best android ever made.  He was given the
personality of one of his designers but was made sexless ("to avoid
distractions").  All the other models of his class committed suicide
so he was programmed to make that impossible.  All he wants to do is
die, but so long as there are humans to serve he cannot.
   Another is a man from Ohio who has rediscovered reading and
writing.  He falls in with a woman who has found that the android
controllers no longer need to be obeyed and together they find
"feelingfulness" (love is no longer in the vocabulary).
   All well and good, for a novella.  But in a novel you have to have
a spokesman for the position you're attacking or your arguments become
repititous.  Since anyone reading the book probably believes that
literacy is a good thing and that taking Valiums all day is not, you
can only stress those points so much.  The fly-leaf says that Tevis
teaches a creative writing course at a state school, so the book is
probably his reaction to hundreds of student zeros.
   Overall I'd rate "Nightflyers" and "True Names" as worth reading
and "Mockingbird" as not.  Support short forms of fiction; there's too
much padding going on these days.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Mar 1981 12:03:28-PST
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: NPR programs in the Bay area

Can anyone out there tell me when HGTtg and SW are on here in the Bay
area?

Thanks David Ungar

------------------------------

Date: 15 Mar 1981 14:01:31-PST
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Is it playing in the San Fransico Bay Area, and if so, when. If it is
playing, I assume it will be on KQED FM radio. I read the book and
thought it was good, and I am interested in hearing it on the radio
too.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Mar 1981 0742-PST
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Radio drama
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

        I shouldn't have to mention this to this group, but the 
effects in SW and HGttG are substantially enhanced by turning off the
lights and using a good pair of stereo earphones.  Admittedly, this
makes the experience a bit anti-social, but it is probably worth it.

        Mike

------------------------------

Date: 15 March 1981 11:15-EST
From: Frank J. Wancho <FJW at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Radio Drama

Twice a week I get kicked out of the lab in the middle of the desert 
at 10 pm and hit the road for the 60 mile, one hour and 15 minute trek
back to civilization.  What makes the time go by quickly at that hour 
is being able to listen to the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre, which I can 
pick up from Albuquerque, some 250 miles away (or some station in 
Nebraska or Oklahoma as well) - the local El Paso station has already 
run the show at 9pm.  Quite a number of the stories I've heard could 
qualify in the science fiction category - and all well-done.

Now you have something else to check out while waiting for the next 
episode of the weekend programs carried on NPR...

--Frank

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/16/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
refers to the Known Space series of stories by Larry Niven,
particularly Protector and Ringworld.  People who are not familiar
with these stories may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 15 Mar 1981 12:55:39-PST
From: Cory.dz17 at Berkeley
Subject: Protector ...

(((((
        1) Females are NOT killed by Tree-of-life. In protector 
Psst(pok)'s last descendant is a female Pak breeder. When she dies he
has to find some reason to live and starts the whole thing.
        2) The colony at Home is regarded to have failed because of an
epidemic. The protectors of Home all left to fight the Protectors of
Pak, after presumably sending a maser message to Earth with news of
the plague.
        3) Regarding Louis Wu not knowing about protectors ... he also
doesn't know about the Sea Statue and half a dozen other things. The 
number of things he doesn't know is really phenomenal. Remember his 
reaction to the puppeteers at the beginning of Ringworld ... it took 
him several seconds to recognize the puppeteer Nessus. earth may know 
a lot about the Protectors, but that doesn't mean he does. I get the 
impression he is a bit of a dilletante (sp?).
        4) I seem to recall that Niven decided to end known space 
because he couldn't keep track of all the threads. There was a story 
that I believe was by him called 'Down in Flames' where the entire 
future space series is shown to be a Tnuctipun Hoax. I remember 
hearing about it (and have wanted to find a copy of it for a long 
time) being published in some fanzine as a joke. Points of interest 
are: Kzanol (the Thrint/Slaver who visits earth) is a special once- 
only piece of genetic engineering, the core explosion never occurred 
and Beowulf Shaeffer never left Jinx in the non-existent Quantum-II 
Hyperdrive which was really a mockup.
        5) Can anyone tell me anything about this piece of (?)
fiction?

                                        Peter da Silva,
                                        in haste.


[ This story was indeed published in a fanzine, although which fanzine
  escapes me (and my library) at the moment.  If someone can pinpoint
  it the reference will be given to the entire readership at a later
  date -  Jim ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 17-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #69
*** EOOH ***
Date: 17 MAR 1981 0606-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #69
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 17 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 69

Today's Topics:
                 Administrativia - Some Lossages,
               SF Books - NEBULA Award Nominations,
         SF Events - EQUICON & Science and Science Fiction,
     SF Books - Restaurant at the End of the Universe & Leonardo,
SF Radio - NPR information & Star Wars & HGttG, Spoiler - Known Space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 MAR 1981 2300-PST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: Some Lossages

Due to an unfortunate computer error (after all, humans never make
mistakes), some submissions to SF Lovers were lost in the mail.  In
particular, any submission made from around 20:00 to 23:00 PST on the
15th were lost.

I am greatly sorry about this, but I hope that the volume of material
affected was small.  At least one item (the submission on the Nebula
Awards from Bob Forward) has been recovered.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 15 MAR 1981 2157-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Nebula Nominations



         NEBULA AWARDS FINAL BALLOT AS DISTRIBUTED BY SFWA

(The Nebula Award Jury has exercised its option to add one work in
each category except that of Short Story.)

NOVEL

     TIMESCAPE, Gregory Benford (Simon & Schuster)
     BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON, Frederik Pohl (DelRey)
     THE ORPHAN, Robert Stallman (Pocket Books)
     MOCKINGBIRD, Walter Tevis (Doubleday)
     THE SNOW QUEEN, Joan Vinge (Dial Press)
     THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER, Gene Wolfe (Simon & Schuster)

NOVELLA

     THE UNICORN TAPESTRY, Suzy McKee Charnas (New Dimensions 11)
     THERE BENEATH THE SILKY TREES AND WHELMED IN DEEPER GULPHS THAN
        ME, Avran Davidson (Other Worlds 2, Zebra)
     LOST DORSAI, Gordon R. Dickson (Destinies)
     THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER, Thomas N. Disch (F&SF, Aug)
     DANGEROUS GAMES, Marta Randall (F&SF, Apr)
     THE AUTOPSY, Michael Shea (F&SF, Dec)

NOVELETTE

     STRATA, Edward Bryant (F&SF, Aug)
     THE WAY STATION, Stephen King (F&SF, Apr)
     THE FEAST OF ST. JANIS, Michael Swanwick (New Dimensions 11)
     GINUNGAGAP, Michael Swanwick (TriQuarterly, Fall)
     BEATNIK BAYOU, John Varley (New Voices III)
     THE UGLY CHICKENS, Howard Waldrop (Universe 10)

SHORT STORY

     SECRETS OF THE HEART, Charles L. Grant (F&SF, Mar)
     WINDOW, Bob Leman (F&SF, May)
     GROTTO OF THE DANCING DEER, Clifford D. Simak (Analog, Aug)
     A SUNDAY VISIT WITH GREAT-GRANDFATHER, Craig Strete
        (New Dimensions 11)
     WAR BENEATH THE TREE, Gene Wolfe (Omni, Dec 1979)


[ The Nebula Awards are given by the Science Fiction Writer of America
  (SFWA) every year for the best work in certain categories of science
  fiction.  Along with the Hugo Awards (given by science fiction fandom
  at each World Science Fiction Convention for similar excellence) they
  honor the works - and people - considered outstanding in the field.

  Thanks are due Bob Forward for taking the time to type in these
  nominations from his ballot.  -  Jim  ]

------------------------------

Date: 16 Mar 1981 13:21 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Flash: EQUICON: FILMCON next month

Missing from the latest con calendar is EQUICON: FILMCON, Easter 
weekend (17-19 April) at the Sheraton Plaza La Reina, on Century right
next to LA International Airport.  The flyers I got yesterday
indicated that they had been the subject of many vicious (false)
rumors to the effect that they were full or cancelled.  NOT SO!  Mail
registration is $18 ($10 for children under 12) through 10 April; $25
($15) at the door; $10 for a single day.  Cheques payable to Equicon:

        Equicon
        P.O. Box 23127
        Los Angeles 90023

The program includes the usual collection of exhibits (including some 
rarely-seen movies props), art show, masquerade directed by the L.A.  
Filkharmonic, fashion show, games, films (full program can't be
announced until the show, due to advertising restrictions) including
"SuperBman: the Other Movie" and "Blooperman: the Outtakes".  Also:
video room featuring Japanese cartoons, Society for Creative
Anachronism display, etc., etc.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 16 Mar 1981 1733-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Science and Science Fiction Presentation

        I called the California Academy of Sciences (221-5100) and got
the following information regarding my earlier query:  Dr. Andrew 
Fraknoi (head of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and editor of
Mercury) and Dr.  Alan Friedman will be presenting a 6 evening series
Wednesdays from 7:00 to 10:00 PM on Science and Science Fiction 
beginning this Wednesday, March 18.  Each evening there will be a 
lecture followed by a movie.  Location:  Morrison Auditorium inside 
the Museum of the Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, San
Francisco.  Admission is $20.00 for the whole series and $4.00 per
evening.  Here is the schedule.  You can call the number above for
more information.

March 18.  "An Illustrated History of Martians".  Movie: War of the
Worlds.  March 25.  "Possible and Impossible".  Movie:  The Time
Machine.  April 1.  "Giant Monsters and Shrinking People".  Movie:
THEM.  (April 8 -- Easter break) April 15.  "Life Among the Stars--Are
We Alone?"  Movie: The Andromeda
                Strain. April 23 "The Image of the Scientist in
Popular Culture". (Examines
        the origins of the absent-minded professor stereotype, etc.)
        Movie:  The Day the Earth Stood Still.  April 29.  "Astronomy
in the Dead of Night:  Origins of the Universe".
                Focuses on current theories of the cosmos.  Movie: The
                Dead of Night.

The answer to my horror movie query is apparently "The Dead of Night".
                                                --cat

------------------------------

Date: 16 Mar 1981 (Monday) 2214-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 ( Steve Platt)
Subject: Restaurant at the End of the Universe


   Last week it was mentioned that it is out in paperback.  Does
anyone have a publisher-name?
     -Steve

[ Please direct your replies to Steve directly (PLATTS@WHARTON-10)
  and CC a copy to SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI.  I will condense the replies
  and send out the publisher's name in an upcoming digest.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 16 Mar 1981 11:19 PST
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Leonardo

Title: If only he had a connection to the Arpanet.....

Subtitle: Another Anne McCaffrey freak


"He [Leonardo da Vinci] was apparently unwilling or unable to sort out
priorities and seems to have been strangely unaware of the passing of
time; during a Roman sojourn he is said to have happily accoutered a
tiny lizard with a silver girdle and gold-wire wings to create a small
dragon."

------------------------------

Date: 16 Mar 1981 1031-EST
From: WATROUS at RUTGERS
Subject: NPR information

I just found an ad in Amtrak's "Express" magazine for Star Wars on NPR
Playhouse.  It gave a toll free number for information - (800) 
424-2909 (in Wash., D.C. 785-5353).  I called and got the information 
for the NYC area:

        WNYC Star wars HGttG

        830-AM Mon 1930 Fri 1930
                Sat 0800 Sat 0830

        93.9-FM Mon 2230 Fri 2230

I also found an episode of HGttG last night (Sunday) while rolling 
around the radio dials.  That was on WBGO (88-FM, Newark) and probably
began about 2030.  Perhaps Star Wars is on before that.

Don

------------------------------

Date: 16 Mar 1981 11:44:10-PST
From: CSVAX.feldman at Berkeley
Subject: Star Wars radio in the Bay Area

KQED-FM broadcasts Star Wars Monday nights at 6:30.  Episodes 1 and 2 
have been broadcast already, and episode 3 is tonight.  I believe I 
heard somewhere that KCSM (a low power community-college operated
station) is also broadcasting SW, but I don't remember the time.

I don't know if HGttG is being broadcast around here, but I'd
appreciate knowing if it is.
                        Steve

------------------------------

Date: 16 Mar 1981 0952-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: HHGtG and SW

Are playing here in the Bay area on KCSM, 91.1 FM, at 11:30 and 10:30
on Sunday nights.  In between they read some sf stories; last night
they did "The Nine Billion Names of God".

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/17/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
refers to the Known Space series of stories by Larry Niven,
particularly Protector and Ringworld.  People who are not familiar
with these stories may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 16 Mar 1981 1542-PST
From: Harry Sameshima <CSD.KZIN at SU-SCORE>
Subject: What Louie doesn't know

I would be rather surprised if Louie Wu knew about the sea statue, 
protectors, puppeteers, and the like. How many of us can talk 
knowledgeably about the stock market crash, the battle of Midway, the
Czech coup, or Project Mercury?

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 18-MAR  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #70
*** EOOH ***
Date: 18 MAR 1981 0600-EST
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #70
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 18 Mar 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 70

Today's Topics:
             SF Books - Eidetic Memory, SF Radio - HGttG,
                        Spoiler - Known Space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 17 Mar 1981 1503-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: eidetic memory

        The main character in Sturgeon's More Than Human has an
eidetic memory.  (If anyone disagrees with me I will respond in the
spoiler section.)
                                                --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 17 Mar 1981 1504-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIF>
Subject: eidetic memory and HGttG

In Robert Heinlein's "Beyond this Horizon," Felix Hamilton wanted to
be a moderator (something like that, one of the higher ups) but
couldn't because he did not have eidetic memory.  Things were supposed
to be arranged so that his future offspring WOULD have it, so it plays
an important but not crucial role in that novel.

Also, I have seen 5 msgs about HGttG in the Bay Area and the Boston
Area.  Does anyone know when and where it is playing in LA????

                                Alan 

------------------------------

Date: 17 Mar 1981 0635-PST
Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3
Subject: What you Can't know may hurt you...
From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)

Regarding the comment on what Louis Wu knows or doesn't know:

Think of the problems we have now in trying to keep up with the 
current literature and state of knowledge in a single technical field.
I have repeatedly heard that it is a full-time job in this or that
discipline just to read the journals.  Then project that information
explosion into a future where you have a number of worlds, each with a
cadre of beings doing research or producing information.  No one could
possibly hope to keep up with the literature, even given a universal
language or automated translation.  One of the prime industries will
be digesting, and abstract publishing/distribution/compilation.  There
would be enormous duplication of effort, even with the most fanciful 
instantaneous communication imaginable, unless the people doing it
were slaves of machines which had such AI skills as to realize that
reseach into plant growth on Regulus V is duplicating "natural
sculpture" on Zzzzzzzip (Antares VIII) or the like.

I guess the most noted and highest-ranking scholars in such an 
environment would be intuitive generalists, who could subconsciously
make links and bridge between otherwise disparate sources of data.  I
can see it now...the College of Intuition on Lump (Rigel VII)...

And we think WE have problems...

Will Martin (WMartin at Office-3)

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/18/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
refers to the Known Space series of stories by Larry Niven,
particularly Protector and Ringworld.  People who are not familiar
with these stories may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 17 MAR 1981 1223-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Louis's knowledge (spoiler)

   There's quite a difference between being able to talk knowledgeably
about a subject and knowing that it existed at all; it seems that
ignorance of even this latter is what Louis Wu is displaying.  

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 19-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #71
*** EOOH ***
Date: 19 MAR 1981 0446-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #71
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 19 Mar 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 71

Today's Topics:
       SF Events - Cybernetics in SF, SF Books - Eidetic Memory,
                        Spoiler - Known Space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 18 Mar 1981 at 0145-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "CYBERNETICS IN S/F" PROJECT ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

AMSLER at UTEXAS and I are working on a study of computers, robots, 
etc. in S/F.  I'm covering \books/ (novels and collections focused on
this topic), and Amsler is concerned with media.

Before we introduce portions of the work we have done onto the net, 
we'd like to consult with any SF-Lers who have particular interest in
the topic.  Anyone who has such an interest and is willing to let us
have some of his/her knowledge/time, please contact us directly:
HJJH at UTEXAS about books.....AMSLER at UTEXAS about media.

------------------------------

Date: 18 Mar 1981 08:51 PST
From: Lear.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Eidetic memories

Another story involving eidetic memories is "Funes, the Memorious" 
from the collection "Ficciones" by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis 
Borges.  Funes can remember literally everything he has ever seen or
thought.  Unfortunately, since objects at distinct instants are 
remembered as distinct objects, he has trouble generalizing.

As I recall, it's a typical Borges story involving infinite regress
and strange loops.

      -- Russ

------------------------------

Date: 18 Mar 1981 1837-EST
Sender: PKAISER at BBND
Subject: Eidetic Memory
From: Peter Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND>

Story by Robert Silverberg: "The Man Who Never Forgot" in his
collection MUTANTS.

---Pete

------------------------------

Date: 03/18/81 1118-EDT
From: j.baldassini (gnc at mit-ll)
Sender: GNC at LL
Subject: Eidetic Memory

In Harry Harrison's "MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM !", the protagonist, a
detective, has an eidetic memory (it has been some time since I've
read that book, I could be mistaken).  

------------------------------

Date: 18 Mar 1981 11:27 PST
From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #70

Re: What you Can't know may hurt you...

One thing I think is rather important relative to information
distribution is the idea that its OK to have duplication of effort.

A lot of people seem to have the idea that this is evil, or at least
unconscionable.  That simply doesn't take into account the fact that
10E6 people is a lot of people, and that is infinitesimal in
comparison to the number of people who might inhabit the Solar System
in 100 years (let alone Earth, Rigel VII, Regulus V, Antares VIII,
etc).

I think of duplication of effort in technical and other fields in the
same way as I view multi-processing in the future of computers. With
the advent of VLSI techniques which will allow many processors on a
chip and easily designed special purpose processors, we are beginning
to see something analogous to the concept of duplication of effort in
a scientific field.

The reason why it must be acceptable to duplicate effort is because
the cost of the duplicate efforts will be far less overall than the
cost of trying to keep everyone informed of the vast amount of
information being produced when you have an exponential number of
producers.

Analogously, the cost of producing a large single mainframe which can 
timeshare 10E6 users is likely to be much more than producing a
distributed system which handles the same problem by duplicating the
computing power of a small processor over and over. In this case,
duplication wins because of the size of the distribution problem.

Eventually (it is already beginning to happen) there is going to be so
much specialized research going on that the ability of a given
researcher to keep up on every last detail is practically nil. The way
to deal with this is to accept that below a certain level of detail,
there must necessarily be duplication of effort.  Intel makes it's
microprocessor, Signetics makes it's own version, Motorola makes 
theirs.

As Will says, the real top level of inquiry is going to have to return
to the generalists, the people who can throw out all the details while
still retaining the essence of the problem and then go from there.

        -- Larry --

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/19/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
refer to the Known Space series of stories by Larry Niven,
particularly Protector and Ringworld.  People who are not familiar
with these stories may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 18 Mar 1981 1634-EST
From: G.Nessus at MIT-EECS (Doug Alan)
Subject: His Own Daddy?

     Most of Lu Wu's ignorance does not strike me as unusual at all.  
I do find it very strange, though, that Louis does not know that the 
pilot on the mission to the hub of the galaxy was his own step-father.
Perhaps Beowulf died shortly after Lu was born?  

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 03/17/81 23:44:14 
Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #69; What Louis Wu doesn't know.


At the beginning of "Ringworld", Louis Wu doesn't know about the Long 
Shot, which was piloted by Beowulf Schaeffer to the Galactic Core.  
This is unreasonable for two reasons.  First, Bey always picks up a 
few extra bucks by selling popular accounts of his exploits, written 
in the first person by ghost writers.  Second, Bey is Louis's foster 
father.  Certainly Louis would have been treated to endless tales of 
Bey's exploits.  (Louis's genetic father is Carlos Wu; his mother is 
Sharrol Janss.)

   --- Wechsler

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 20-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #72
*** EOOH ***
Date: 20 MAR 1981 0642-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #72
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 20 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 72

Today's Topics:
    SF Books - Here's the plot, what's the title? & Generalists,
         SF Movies - Capsule Reviews, Spoiler - Known Space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 18 Mar 1981 1652-PST
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: College of Intuition

Wasn't there a story about a special breed of people called
"sythesists" who made a lot of money/fame/prestige by pulling
together information in an overloaded society?  Title?  Author?


------------------------------

Date: 19 Mar 1981 0338-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Capsule Movie Reviews   

The following are some very quick movie reviews.  Does anyone have any
more information, particularly on ''Earthbound'' and ''The Final
Conflict''?  (Note that a detailed news wire review of ''Galaxina''
appeared in the digest a while back.)



     CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS
     By Roger Ebert
     (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
    
''The Devil and Max Devlin''-The latest Disney picture stars Elliott
Gould as a man bargaining with the devil (Bill Cosby) to have his
sentence in hell commuted. This pale, insipid movie could have been
programmed on a computer. Rated PG. 2 stars.

''Earthbound''-A Martian family visits Earth. Rated PG.

''The Final Conflict''-Conclusion of the ''Omen'' trilogy stars Sam
Neill as Damien, the devil's son, now grown and ready to take over.
With Rossano Brazzi, Lisa Harrow. Rated R.

''The Funhouse''-Kids in peril at a carnival. Rated PG.

''Galaxina''-Avery Schreiber and Playmate Dorothy Stratten in a
futuristic fantasy. Rated R.



Jim


------------------------------

Date: 19 Mar 1981 1628-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: generalists


	From "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker (recommended):

"The task is not to breed generalists.  It is to enable the specialist
to make himself and his specialty effective.  This means that he must
think through who is to use his output and what the user needs to know
and to understand to be able to make productive the fragment the
specialist produces....The man of knowledge has always been expected
to take responsibility for being understood.  It is barbarian
arrogance to assume that the layman can or should make the effort to
understand him....

The only meaningful definition of a 'generalist' is a specialist who
can relate his own small area to the universe of knowledge.  Maybe a
few people have knowledge in more than a few small areas.  But that
does not make them generalists; it makes them specialists in several
areas.  The man,however, who takes responsibility for his contribution
will relate his narrow area to a genuine whole.  He may never himself
be able to integrate a number of knowledge areas into one.  But he
soon realizes that he has to learn enough of the needs, the
directions, the limitations, and the perceptions of others to enable
them to use his own work."


------------------------------

Date: 19 Mar 1981 18:17:18-PST
From: ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: duplicated effort

Lauren's protests aside, it would be damned frustrating to spend
several years figuring out something that had already been known.
Ideally, an individual gets more satisfaction out of the discovery
than by fame garnered by being the first, but, damn it all, it still
feels like a waste of time.

		Ken


------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/20/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
refers to the Known Space series of stories by Larry Niven,
particularly Protector and Ringworld.  People who are not familiar
with these stories may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 19 Mar 1981 06:40:24-PST
From: Cory.cc-06 at Berkeley
Subject: Louis Wu's stepfather.

	Is Bey Shaeffer his stepfather ? ... I remember that
Carlos Wu had "an unlimited breeding license at age 18". I think
that there were enough little Wus running around that you don't
need to invoke the law of similarity here too. In any case, I think
Bey's `child' would be named Janss or Shaeffer.

					Peter da Silva.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 21-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #73
*** EOOH ***
Date: 21 MAR 1981 0031-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #73
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 21 Mar 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 73

Today's Topics:
         SF Books - Synthesists , Society - Duplicated Effort,
                         Spoiler - Known Space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 Mar 1981 (Friday) 1445-PST
From: DWS at LLL-MFE
Subject: Synthesists

"Synthesists" are a recurrant theme of Brunner's.  See "Shockwave 
Rider" and "Stand on Zanzibar".  *Warning* Large doses of Brunner 
produce interesting effects.

------------------------------

JGA@MIT-MC 03/20/81 08:47:07 
Re: Synthesists and Analysts

Probably not the story you're looking for, but in Panshin's "Rite of
Passage" the young heroine wants to be a synthesist when she grows up
(like her father), her boyfriend wants to be an analyst.  By the end
of the story they each see that they are better suited to the other's
choice.

------------------------------

Date: 20 March 1981 20:48-EST
From: James A. Cox <APPLE at MIT-MC>
Subject: Synthesists

     The first book I read that had the concept of a synthesist in it
was the Nebula award-winning <<Rite of Passage>> by Alexei Panshin.  
The story takes place chiefly in a huge self-sufficient space ship 
that travels throughout the galaxy trading its scientific know-how in
exchange for raw materials from people who still live on planets 
("Mudeaters").  Science is very highly valued by this society, and the
synthesists co-ordinate and arrange new data into an understandable
form.  They must have high intelligence, of course, but they must also
be able to understand developments in a wide range of fields and to
see the relationships between diverse discoveries.  Because of this,
only a very few people are qualified to enter this exalted profession.

------------------------------

Date: 20 Mar 1981 13:05 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: duplicated effort

I think we need to distinguish between doing basic research to
discover fundamental laws, and doing technology transfer.  Certainly,
fundamental discoveries in the physical sciences should be published
galaxy-wide.  But you can't just dump a relatively primitive creature
in the library (even a computerized library) of an advanced culture
and then expect him to quickly start standing on the shoulders of all
those giants, unless it's in a highly specialized area of inquiry.

Human cultural progress requires that a large body of people
participate in the evolution of certain social support structures,
belief systems, and emotional attitudes.  Knowing where you hope to be
going won't necessarily get you there that much sooner.  Indeed, it
may be argued that biological changes in the nature of man's
aggressiveness, sex drive, etc. may be required before any of the 
various techno-utopias which have been written about can be realized.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 20 Mar 1981 1229-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: duplication of effort???


In the last digest, someone made some comment about duplication of
efforts and said "Lauren's protests aside..."  I don't recall ever
protesting or saying ANYTHING substantial on this topic.  Is there
some confusion here?

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/21/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
refer to the Known Space series of stories by Larry Niven,
particularly "Flatlander", "Grendel", "The Borderland of Sol", and
Ringworld.  People who are not familiar with these stories may
not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 20 March 1981 19:55-EST
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Louis Wu's stepfather.

Bey's kid was named "Louis" as mentioned in some story or another.  --
Charles

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 03/20/81 17:15:23 
Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #72;Louis Wu's parentage.

Peter Da Silva objects without reading the sources.

In "Flatlander", Bey Shaeffer gets friendly with a fellow passenger en
route to earth.  He goes by the nickname "Elephant", but is actually 
Gregory Pelham, whose multi-great grandmother invented the transfer 
booth.  As Elephant's guest, he gets to know a Flatlander woman named 
Sharrol Janss.  They fall in love but Bey and Elephant go off on an
adventure for adventure's sake, whose nature is the whole point of the
story but is irrelevant to this discussion.

In "Grendel", we discover that by Flatlander eugenics laws, Bey and 
Sharrol cannot have children because Bey is an albino.  Sharrol is 
psychologically incapable of leaving Earth.  So they get Bey's old 
friend Carlos Wu , who has an unlimited parenthood license because he
is a mathematical genius, to stand in for Bey for two years.  Bey goes
off gallivanting one last time, meets and falls in love with a 
gorgeous starship pilot named Margo something, and stays with her for 
most of the two years.

In "The Borderland of Sol", Bey meets Carlos near the end of the two 
years, and we learn that Carlos and Sharrol have had two children, 
Louis and Tanya.

I can only guess that Louis and Tanya keep the name Wu because Sharrol
and Bey are proud of their kids' parentage.

   --- Wechsler

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 22-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #74
*** EOOH ***
Date: 22 MAR 1981 0529-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #74
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 22 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 74

Today's Topics:
    Administrivia - A selection of articles from OMNI for FTPing,
          SF Books - Synthesists, SF Movies - Earthbound,
        SF TV - PBS anthology series?, SF Topics - Religion,
                      Spoiler - Known Space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 03/22/81 00:00:00
From: The Moderator <JPM@MIT-AI>
Subject: A selection of articles from OMNI for FTPing


As part of tonight's Sunday Special package, SF LOVERS is moving five
stories dealing with the U.S. space program, in particular the space
shuttle, from Omni magazine.

James Michener interviews the shuttle pilots, Omni executive editor
Ben Bova and NASA consultant G. Harry Stine examine the importance of
the shuttle, prospects for travel and industry in space, and the
ramifications of the Moon Treaty, which covers international space
exploration and exploitation.  Brief biographies of Michener, Bova
and Stine are also provided.

The stories are copyrighted by Omni Publications, and must be properly
credited, but are for use by all SF-LOVERS recipients.


Everyone interested in reading this material should obtain the file
from the site which is most convenient for them.  If you cannot do so,
please send mail to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST and we will be happy to make
sure that you get a copy.

Please obtain your copies in the near future however, since the files
will be deleted in one week.  A copy of the material will also be
available upon request from the SF LOVERS archives.  Thanks go to
Richard Brodie, Roger Duffey, Richard Lamson, Doug Philips, and Don
Woods for providing space for the materials on their systems.

   Site          Filename
  
MIT-AI       DUFFEY;SFLVRS  NASANS 
CMUA         TEMP:NASA.NWS[A210DP0Z]
PARC-MAXC    [Maxc2]<Brodie>SFLOVERS-NASA.TXT
SU-AI        NASA[T,DON]
MIT-Multics     >udd>PDO>Lamson>sf-lovers>nasa-news-stories.text

[Note, you can TYPE or FTP the file from SAIL without an account.]

------------------------------

Date: 21 Mar 1981 1211-MST
From: FISH at UTAH-20 (Russ Fish)
Subject: Re: Synthesists

A not-yet-mentioned occurrence of professional synthesists in SF is
"Billy the Joat" (JOAT = Jack_Of_All_Trades), in a series of stories
by Ian Stewart, published in Analog.  Specifically, the cover story of
the March issue, "Paradise Misplaced", is one of the stories.  (A
slightly weak one, in my opinion.)  The background on Billy and
joating was given in an earlier story which will take some digging.

As I remember it, a joat is someone with very good (perhaps eidetic)
memory for the details of several of the multitudinous specialties in
the galactic society.  The multi-specialist is augmented by a skill in
recognizing the applicability of particular disciplines or tools in
circumstances outside their normal use, and/or exploiting synergy
effects in combinations of techniques.

The stories are quite humorous in their approach, emphasizing Billy
the Joat's off-the-wall lifestyle and using the synthesist skills and
galactic technology as given background.

I would be interested in locating further stories in the series, or a 
collection, if one has been published.

-Russ 

------------------------------

GEA@MIT-AI 03/21/81 02:28:06 
Re: Earthbound

    Earthbound is NOT about Martians!!  It is about a family of aliens
from an unspecified planet (not in our solar system).  They are on a 
scientific journey, and their ship needs repairs.  So they are forced 
to land in a lake on Earth.  The reason some people think they're 
Martians is because of the impressionable deputy sheriff, who's been 
reading a comic-book version of "War of the Worlds" as their ship 
passes over.

    They are found by Burl Ives and his grandson, who run a hotel in 
the mountains near the lake.  The aliens need a metal which is common 
on their home planet, but rare here.  The aliens have several 
properties which are amusing: they can turn invisible by holding their
breath; they are very strong; and they have a green monkey who eats 
light bulbs.  That's all the plot I'll tell; I don't want this to get 
a Spoiler Warning!

    The "U.S. Government Computer Center" alone is worth the price of 
admission.  The aliens learned everything they know about our society 
from television (their youngest son sees an elk and says that it's an 
insurance salesman).

    It does get silly at times, but not as bad as the ads might imply.

    I do have two questions, though:  How can a movie have "guest 
stars"; and why, since the action of this movie presumably takes place
in California, was it "filmed on location in Utah"?

                                Gary Ansok

------------------------------

Date: 21 Mar 1981 1419-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-AI>
Subject: PBS anthology SF series?

The SF Dictionary mentions this as a possibility for the 1981-82 
season and says that the Lathe of Heaven production was a pilot for 
such a series.  Anybody know more about this?  

------------------------------

Date: 21 MAR 1981 0008-PST
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Religious musings

     Awhile back, I was pondering the enormous fortunes amassed by 
those such as the Reverend Moon, Jim Jones, and L. Ron Hubbard (with 
peremptory apologies to any Moonies, Guyanaites, or Scientologists out
there) and I decided that the great thing would be to found my own
religion, sucker in millions of followers, and bleed them for all
their worldly possessions.  Accordingly, after much thought, I
invented what I thought was a new and unique religion, not based on 
the simple worship of deities, and of somewhat logical form.  However,
I was unable to figure out any way of getting money out of anyone via
it, so, being uneconomical, into the wastebasket it goes.  Or rather,
to SF-Lovers, which is not exactly the same thing.

     The first thing I wanted was some manner of explaining
unexplained phenomena, and the second thing some novel method of
creating the Universe, both big selling points in any religion.  The
third, some sort of afterlife, is so basic that no reasonable religion
can exist without it.

     Accordingly, I came up with this. I offer it as a topic of 
discussion only, for those who have also pondered the infinite, and
not with any sort of missionary fervor. (remember why I started this
in the first place)

     Suppose that when a person dies, there is some sort of ghostly 
afterlife, a soul, if you will.  Further suppose that this soul is 
capable of rational thought, but not of feelings, per se, as feelings 
are largely based on hormones, which a soul is no longer equipped
with.  Accordingly, though a soul can watch what is going on, (though
unseen to most people), life is pretty boring.
     Further suppose that a soul can travel backwards in time at an 
advanced rate. Unable to interact with any other souls, it can,
however, occupy the body of a living human.  It cannot affect the body
or its actions, but it can feel and experience the body's feelings and
emotions.  Also, an infinite number of souls can live within the same
body at the same time.
      Given these suppositions, if you were a described soul, you
could travel backward (not forward, except by the slow process of
living) and live within other bodies.  Who would you "visit"?  Your
parents, probably, and maybe a few other ancestors, but then who?
    How about Hitler?  Wouldn't that be tempting?  Imagine how many 
would visit him.  And the variety, both admirers and haters.  And
these include all the dead far into the future -- what a multitude of
souls he must have hosted (says the religion, which as yet is
unnamed).  Even though none of them can control him, all that psychic
power must do SOMETHING to his aura.  But the conflicts would be
destructive. The result, a brilliantly insane but compelling man.
    However, take Christ or Moses.  Far more beloved, the positive
visitors would far outweigh the negatives.  Thus, healing power?  (I
hope I'm not stepping on any toes here) and etc...
     Kennedy, Lincoln, et. al... isn't it interesting that with this
theory the fact that a man was famous attracted his "visitors", which 
in turn gave him the 'aura' to become famous in the first place?  
Suppose some folk were sensitive to visitors from the future.  Would 
they be considered psychic?
     And then, the souls, drifting back in time, gradually run out of 
humans.  In the search for others of interest they travel further and
further back, till the beginning of time (what a poetic concept) and
thus, all the souls that ever live impact at the same beginning point
of the universe.  BANG! the universe, and Carl Sagen pointing out
interesting developments along the way...
     Anybody have any concepts of their own?

Rodof 

[ Just a reminder that messages dealing with religious topics should
  be confined, as much as possible, to thier potential application,
  influence, etc in science fiction or fantasy.  Thanks.  -  Jim  ]

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/22/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last messages in this digest.  They
refer to the Known Space series of stories by Larry Niven,
particularly "The Borderland of Sol" and "Grendel".  People who
are not familiar with these stories may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 21 Mar 1981 12:02:48-PST
From: Cory.mx25 at Berkeley
Subject: Louis and Tanya

        I remembered the events in Grendel, but I haven't read The
Borderland of Sol in a long time ... sorry ... my mistake.

                                                Peter.

------------------------------

Date: 21 March 1981 1631-EST (Saturday)
From: Vincent.Fuller at CMU-10B
Subject:  Bey Sheaffer = Step father of Louis Wu

I seem to recall a conversation between Bey and Carlos Wu in which Bey
mentions that he would like to go home to Terra to perhaps see "little
Louis" followed by some mention of Carlos' favor (e.g. fathering Bey's
son). I think this conversation took place in "The Borderland of Sol",
but I'm not certain.
                                -Vince

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 23-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #75
*** EOOH ***
Date: 23 MAR 1981 0729-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #75
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 23 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 75

Today's Topics:
                SF Books - Budrys column & Synthesists,
       SF Movies - The Great Turkey Debate, SF Topics - Religion,
                     FTP Material - Omni Articles
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Mar 1981 0209-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-AI>
Subject: Budrys column

''The Claw of the Conciliator''($11.95), Gene Wolfe
''Fantastic Lives'' ($15)
''Bridges to Science Fiction'' ($9.95)
''The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton''($15), edited by Greenberg
     and Malzberg
''Astounding Science Fiction, July 1939.'' 



BC-SCIFI-03-22
    SCIENCE FICTION column
    By Algis Budrys
    (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    It's difficult to prove who the good artists are. We speak of 
''achieving recognition.'' Implicit there is an acknowledgment that 
much of what's said about artists, as distinguished from what's felt 
from artists, is at some level of popularity contest; a crapshoot (pun
intended).
    For instance, I can tell you Gene Wolfe is as good a writer as
there is today. Some of you will sniff and say ''Well, among sci-fi 
writers, possibly.'' All of you are entitled to ask ''How?''
    One fairly reliable test is in whether an artist appears likely to
leave his medium fundamentally different from the way he found it.  
You can look in Wolfe's ''The Claw of the Conciliator'' (Simon & 
SchusterTimescape, $11.95) and come away with the impression that not 
only speculative fiction but also prose itself are being transformed 
in there.
    ''Claw'' is the second of four volumes in Wolfe's ongoing ''Book
of the New Sun'' tetralogy. The first-1980's ''The Shadow of the 
Torture''-is up for every possible SF award and will soon be out in 
Pocket reprint. ''Claw'' continues the maturation of Severian, apt 
young man of a million years hence who's making an artwork of his life
as an itinerant member of the Torturers' Guild.
    If you expect to extend some prior acquaintance with the writings
of De Sade, you'll have to do most of that work yourself. If, however,
you'd like to see how writing can be both innovative and lucid, how a 
setting and a social order can be both imaginary and palpably 
realistic, Wolfe can provide. What he assuredly provides is one hell 
of a good read, a fact beside which all this foregoing taxonomy pales 
to its proper degree of importance.
    Wolfe is astonishingly, marvelously literate. This unfolding tale
of a young man gripped by his extraordinary lost love is permeated
with the compelling narrative power of great writing. However one may 
define that thing, it clearly announces its presence. I feel a little 
bit like a musical contemporary attempting to tell people what's good 
about Beethoven.
    Many people take SF seriously. Not all of them are equipped to do 
so, but among the mount of expository verbiage which so many earnest 
SF essayists are currently taking to the bank there is, here and 
there, some genuine value. Southern Illinois University Press is 
currently producing a great deal of that notable increment.
    ''Fantastic Lives'' ($15) collects new autobiographical essays by 
Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, R.A. Lafferty, Katherine Maclean, 
Barry N. Malzberg, Mack Reynolds, Margaret St. Clair, Norman Spinrad 
and A.E. van Vogt. Maclean, Reynolds and St. Clair are each, in their 
own way, important if not popularly first-ranked figures in the 
movement of American SF out of the pulps and into university presses.
Each of the rest is a cranky genius; kooky in some cases, the author 
of landmark work in all. The essays are variously informative and in 
some cases offer memorable insights into speculative creativity.
    ''Bridges to Science Fiction'' ($9.95) contains 10 scholarly
essays originally written for the first Eaton Conference on Science
Fiction and Fantasy Literature, held in February, 1979, at the
University of California, Riverside. Bearing in mind that not all SF
scholarship is uniformly pellucid, and that conference chairman George
E. Slusser can only reproduce what was submitted by the conferees,
this is nevertheless a recommendable book.
    ''The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton'' ($15), edited by Greenberg
and Malzberg, collects the work of a prominent 1950s writer who was 
not himself a major innovator-although he wrote some very readable, 
high-grade pieces, all included here-but who was convinced that there 
was no reason why SF could not be remarkable not simply as a thing in 
itself but as literature. And who was right.
    The most fascinating volume so far in this ''Alternatives'' series
from SIU Press is the hardcover facsimile edition of ''Astounding 
Science Fiction, July 1939.'' Made by offset reproduction from an 
actual copy of that seminal pulp periodical, the SIU book also 
includes a few words of comment and reminiscence, but is largely 
content to simply bring us the original package-truss ads, blotchy 
illustrations, filler features and all. The stories include ''Black 
Destroyer,'' which catapulted A.E. van Vogt to prominence, ''Trends,''
which was Isaac Asimov's first published story in ''Astounding,'' and
''Greater Than Gods,'' by one of the best writers of that time in SF,
Catherine L. Moore. The price of the original issue was 20 cents. The
price of the facsimile is $12.95.
    What price art?
    END

nyt-03-22-81 0434est

------------------------------

Date: 22 Mar 1981 2317-MST
From: FISH at UTAH-20 (Russ Fish)
Subject: Re: Synthesists in SF

The other Joat stories by Ian Stewart weren't so hard to find, after 
all...  Analog, Sept. 1979 contained "The Malodorous Plutocrats, or, 
The Stinking Rich", and the originating story I referred to was 
entitled (surprise) "...And Master of One".  Its subject concerned 
cryptography, breaking (pseudo) random trapdoor codes, and network 
communications.  A very enjoyable story, for those who like such 
things.

Since the original query concerned the nature and applicability of 
synthesists, I will quote some of the description as given in "...  
And Master of One": (with some ellipsis added ...)

    "We live in interesting times, Mr. Jarneyvore.  My specialists 
seem to agree on only one thing: they desperately require the services
of a joat. ... I take it a joat is sort of a polymath?"
    "Jack-of-all-trades.  A dilettante in depth.  Not a Specialist,
but more like a broad Generalist.  Without the Specialists, I'd know
nothing.  Without me, they find it hard to talk to each other.  So
usually they don't."
        ...
    "The records also say you have made important contributions to 
Quaternity security and research.  And that you possess an incurable
urge to tinker with mechanisms in ways embarrassing to those in
authority.  My psychologists tell me that this is a characteristic of
successful joats, a price we must pay if we desire their services."
Palgrandra looked skeptical.
    "There's a pressure toward specialization," said Billy.  "To 
resist that you have to be naturally unorthodox; to think across 
conventional paths.  That breeds a distrust of established authority."

It is also mentioned that the prankster aspects of Billy's personality
profile are mitigated by senses of altruism and responsibility for the
consequences of his actions.  Not a simple blend.

A joat is shown as working independently to produce a synergy of his 
skills and information, but also with a "cabal" of specialists:  a
gathering of Specialists whose total competence would encompass all
fields likely to be relevant to the problem.  Add one joat and stir,
and you have a group of people who can talk to one another and whose
pooled resources have a chance of finding a solution - if there is
one.

To point out the infrequency of such a grouping of skills in one 
person, it is stated that there are 27,000 cryptologists in the 
sector, but only three joats. (!)  How does this fit with the idea of 
synthesists and analysts in Pavane?

-Russ 

------------------------------

FAUST@MIT-ML 03/20/81 10:21:22 
Re: all-time worst SF movies

        I don't know if anyone is still trying to compile a list of
the all time worst SF films or not, but here is a candidate: The Demon
Planet!
        I have seen worse examples of filming techniques, but this one
has severe plot problems.  I had an idea of what I was in for when in
the first five minutes . . .  The space ship is answering a distress
call from an outlying planet with a team of researchers encamped upon
it.  As the ship nears the planet, the ship suddenly begins to
malfunction, forcing it into an emergency landing.  One of the crew
members looses his composure and runs out of the air-lock without
permission from the commander, and even worse, WITHOUT HIS SPACE
HELMET ON!?!  When he doesn't croak, the landing team realizes that,
lo and behold, the atmosphere is BREATHABLE (thereby eliminating the
need for cumbersome helmets that obscure facial expressions and make
shouting at one another for help seem less dramatic).
        OK now kiddies, who can name 5 or 10 other SF movies with the
same 5 minutes?
        I don't know that much else about the movie except that it was
made in the 50s (the space ship has the usual CRT like control panel
showing random flashes of lights and lines).  It was obviously one of
these "made to be dubbed" movies in which there is a minimum of speech
acts and most of these occur without the camera focused on the face of
the speaker.  If I had to guess the national origin of the film, I
would say Italy, although I can't say for sure.
        Anyone else seen this one? (or even care!)?

        Hope I haven't distressed anyone by discussing their favorite
dive movie.

        Peacefully,
        Greg Faust


[ A similar discussion of the worse SF movies took place last year
  in this digest.  A transcript of those digests is now available
  online at MIT-AI under the filename AI:DUFFEY;SFLVRS HORRID.
  You are welcome to examine this file (files may be FTPed from AI
  without an account).  The file is approximately 84 Kilo characters
  long.  Thanks to Roger Duffey who went through the archives and
  prepared this file for us.  -  Jim  ]


------------------------------

Date: 22 Mar 1981 1726-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: vicarious adventure

        Rodof's idea of souls or spirits visiting the bodies of other 
people to watch (rather than to possess and control) reminds me of a
couple of old stories, The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix, in 
which Terrans psychically visit humanoids in distant parts of the 
universe.  The Terrans "inhabit" their hosts, sensing everything their
hosts sense, but do not exert any control.  Can anyone else recall
stories where this happens?

  --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 22 Mar 1981 18:33 PST
From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #74

Your religion bears somewhat of a resemblance with the theories
advanced by Seth and his followers ("Seth Speaks", etc. by Jane ? ). A
friend of mine got turned on to Seth. He claimed that we could inhabit
any universe we liked if we imagined hard enough. (This, of course, is
second nature to any science fiction fan.)

Seth supposedly claims that after you die you may inhabit any soul you
like. He places no restrictions on time travel, and supposedly you
need not die in order to move on to another stage.

Seth was discovered by Jane ? when she began going into involuntary
trances and writing or speaking volumes of material. She has written
more than five books of Seth transcriptions.

Perhaps the hand of Seth moves you?

        -- Larry --

------------------------------

Date: 22 Mar 1981 2211-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: Re: G. Harry Stine's space article

G. Harry Stine does not believe in special relativity.  He takes the
idea that no matter can go faster than the speed of light as a
personal affront.  He has his own theory to explain some of
relativity's effects, described in a Destinies article some time back,
using a cubic force called "surge".  He is (literally) a loonie, so
don't take his claims about space industrialization too seriously.
Space processing of silicon will not bring a ten-fold reduction in the
cost of ICs because 90% of their price does not go into silicon, or
even a fraction of that.  Yes, perhaps a purer substrate would give
larger yields on large chips, but that is only one problem among many
plaguing VLSI.  Drug companies are not being "very secretive" about
their research into weightless processing, they just aren't doing any.
An article in the New Yorker a while back contained interviews with
several executives who basically said they didn't want to risk
investing so much into such a risky source of supply.  Can't say I
blame 'em.
    Solar power from space is not going to cost $2000 per installed
kilowatt by the late eighties.  Silicon cells are at best 15%
efficient, so with the sort of energy fluxes you get in space you need
5 sq. meters of cells per kilowatt out.  Say you could make them 100
microns thick (4 mills).  Then your kilowatt of solar cells weighs
about 1.2 kilograms and will cost $840 just to put into low earth 
orbit with the shuttle.  And in low orbit you're still in darkness
almost half the time; you have to go higher or into more inclined
orbits to stay in the sunshine.  Maybe you can get silicon from the
Moon or use thin film cells, but it's really hard to see how it will
be cheaper than putting the same cells on your roof.
    In spite of the foregoing I am in favor of space
industrialization.  The scientific benefits alone are sufficient
reason to me to go into space, but science alone can't support the
cost.  We have to have a reason besides curiosity to stay up there,
but the reasons Stine presents don't convince me, and from the lack of
enthusiasm from American industry don't convince them either.  We've
been hearing this gee-whiz nonsense for a long time now without much
result.  There were materials processing experiments on board Skylab
and Apollo/Soyuz, after all, and nobody jumped on the bandwagon.  This
is going to be harder and more expensive and slower than PR flacks
like Stine let on.  

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 24-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #76
*** EOOH ***
Date: 24 MAR 1981 0530-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #76
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 24 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 76

Today's Topics:
   SF Books - Beyond Rejection & First Channel & The Light Bearer &
     The Lucifer Comet & Operation Misfit & Sundiver & Vectors &
          Synthesists, SF TV - OMNI: The World of Tomorrow,
         SF Topics - Religion, FTP Material - Omni Articles
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 Mar 1981 at 0117-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ MINI-REVU'S ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

SUNDIVER by David Brin (Bantam, Feb. '81) is \not/ really all that 
much like DRAGON'S EGG, but it had the same kind of enjoyable flavor.

BEYOND REJECTION by Justin Leiber (DelRey, Sept. '80). Varley \may/ 
have done the body-&-sex switching thing better in "The Phantom of
Kansas" (to which I am particularly partial), but this one is darned
good.  The writer does his Pa proud.

THE LIGHT BEARER by Sam Nicholson (Berkley, July '80).  I simply 
\won't/ read certain types of stories, e.g., with an Atlantis setting,
and, usually, "Arabian Nights-ish".  So I don't know why I happened to
pick this one up, but I'm glad I did.  The internal mythological
stories were a special delight.

VECTORS by Charles Sheffield (Ace, Dec. '79).  As a rule, I would much
rather read a novel than a book of short stories, but \this/ turned
out to be one of the proverbial exceptions that breaks rules.

OPERATION MISFIT by E. Hoffman Price (DelRey, Aug. '80).  I used to 
really enjoy old pulps from a neighbor's garage when I was a kid, but
when I tried to recapture that special flavor they had upon reading
them as an adult, advances in scientific knowledge made it impossible.
\This/ is completely palatable, and rich in that old, lost flavor.

FIRST CHANNEL by Lorrah & Lichtenberg (Playboy, Jan. '81).  I won't 
buy a book FOR its cover, but I can be put off by one, as I was the
original of the first Sime/Gen novel, HOUSE OF ZEOR, which, once I
made my way past the slimy-gray-and-pinkish-ness, turned out downright
fascinating.  Having heard the sequel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER, was a
"downer", I skipped that one and picked up again with FIRST CHANNEL
which backtracks in the temporal sequence.  Satisfying.  (This is an
"if you like Marion Zimmer Bradley, you'll like this.")

THE LUCIFER COMET by Ian Wallace (DAW, Dec. '80).  I'm a devoted fan
of this author even tho his pyrotechnics often leave me wondering
what's going on.  But the o-n-l-y thing \this/ book has going for it
is the picture of the very callipygian heroine on the cover.

------------------------------

Date: 23 Mar 1981 1005-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: synthesists

Got to thinking about where you might find real live synthesists and
didn't have to look very hard.  Specialties are cross-breeding like
fruit flies in a gene lab these days.  Take a nice straight-forward
subject like geology.  Just rocks, right? But if you wander into the
geo dept. you'll see geophysics (mainly acoustics in layered media),
geochemistry, and even geobotany (looking at plants to see what
minerals they're growing on; I know someone who does this).  We got a
taste of the physics in computation from Dr. Forward a while ago, and
neuro-biology has long taken an interest.  I haven't seen any
chemistry and computer mixes, but I wouldn't be surprised.  Trouble
is, I couldn't think of any specific people who normally work as
synthesists.  Judging by his book columns in Scientific American
Philip Morrison reads and understands everything, but as far as I know
his original work is only in astrophysics.  Any other candidates?  

------------------------------

Date: 23 Mar 1981 2141-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Omni : The World of Tomorrow 

From this weeks edition of TV Guide:

'Omni magazine has teamed up with two former producers of PBS's NOVA
series, John Angier and Graham Chedd, to create a syndicated science
series, OMNI : THE WORLD OF TOMORROW.  Using a magazine format, the
program will look at the development of high-technology hardware for
the future...'

Anyone know more about this?

Jim

------------------------------

FAUST@MIT-ML 03/23/81 12:53:14 
Re: new religion

        Perhaps the souls visiting the same body in the past (like
Hitler or Christ) should call each other "SOUL BROTHERS"!
        Greg

------------------------------

KARIM@MIT-MC 03/23/81 09:29:45 
Re: Rodof's musings from V3, #71 (sunday)

        I think the religion you propose wasn't really good. I take
into account that you were trying to come up with something "new and
improved", but your best bet for suckering hundrededs upon thousands
of people out of their money is to go by the old standards, and if you
want to be creative, add a few flairs of your own.
        The key to any successful cult is that it contains a lot of
(or some, at least) truth. Or what people generally think to be truth,
in the area of the would you will starting this game. A good Bad
religion (as I see "Bad") will be something like Chaplain-Psychologist
Raja Thomas' religion in "Destination: Void" and (ugh) "The Jesus
Incident". Here we see an intelligent scientist. His true beliefs are
not very finely drawn out in the books, but from what I read it must
be combination of Buddhism and Christianity. When you add two
religions like those, you end up losing. What you must do here is
exploit the fact fact that both Christ- ians and (probably...)
Buddhists think that 99 percent of all religion have \some/ truth. But
you will have to sacrifice elements of both. Don't worry -- someone
will believe you.
        Another way to go is to keep it simple (read: vague and
fuzzy). Your best bet here is to go with a version of the Life-Force
religion, which has received a lot of popularity in SW and TESB. You
mention Carl Sagan, but here you actually gain by not going through
all the pains of a Genesis. "The Universe has always been here", you
might say, "and we are prisoners in its Cycles." (Forgive me if anyone
recognizes the term from "The Mote in God's Eye".) Your whole idea
behind the universe here will be the concept or the circle, or Cycle.
Here you could introduce, an old favorite of cults, reincarnation.
(This goes as well with the Force as does a grape Nehi with a good
pizza). Be sure not to confuse this with ressurection, especially in
the Christ sense. To your High Priests you may each give a copy of
your Holy Book, "Godel, Escher, Bach", and then introduce recursion to
them. This will only prove to them that "Everything is (what
everything is (what everything is))". I really sort of favor this one
myself.
        Then you could get into the rape-and pillage-and 
suicide-and-murder Charles Manson - Jim Jones religions.  These are so
terribly easy to create, I won't go into them here. Just be sure to
have plenty of drugs on hand.  Brainwashing and torture work well here
too.

        This should get you started. All I have to say about this now,
is that is Christianity's right I wouldn't bother getting into this as
it would probably cause a lot of anguish in the the long run for you 
and your followers. But mostly you.

                Hoo-haa,
                Karim

------------------------------

Date: 23 Mar 1981 0954-PST
Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3
Subject: Nomenclature
From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)

Should Jim Jones' followers be called "People's Templars"?

Shades of the crusades!

Will

------------------------------

Date: 23 Mar 1981 1026-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: Re: Flaming about G. Harry Stine  


1) Having read the articles in question (in Destinies, Analog etc.) I
don't recall anything about Stine's proposed critical action time
system being grossly inconsistent with special relativity.  As I
recall, he did mention some vague thing about FTL on the last few
pages of a *fiction* book called Star Driver and published under the
pseudonym of Lee Correy.  In any event, believing in FTL is, though
somewhat unscientific, probably fairly common, even among those of us
on the ARPANet.  It does not, in it self, rate a ``loonie'' label.

2) Stine's ``surge'' system, while inconsistent with modern physics,
is fairly consistent with modern engineering, and perhaps bears some
investigation.  (The bumblebees can still fly, no matter *what* the
mathematics say.)  I personally see some fairly large, but perhaps not
irreconcilable, flaws in it, but the manpower needed to investigate is
not large, so it is probably worth the trouble.

3) Space industrialization, like the industrialization of North
America, will probably not take place until the trails have been
broken and the shipping lines established.  This has not yet happened,
but the Shuttle should help a great deal.  The potential for the next
25 years is fairly large.  Historically, people have tended to
overestimate what they can do in a short period, and underestimate
what they can do in a long period.

4) Putting solar cells on your roof is a noble goal, but the prime
uses of electric power are not domestic but industrial.  Somebody has
to make the solar cells and the toasters and washing machines that
they run, and that takes lots of electricity.  15% may be the
efficiency of solar cells *today* but it was much less 5 years ago,
and may be much more in another 5 years.  If a concerted research
effort was established to make efficient solar conversion systems for
space, I suspect that we would have such systems in a fairly short
time.  But saying that it won't get done 'cause we can't do it *right
now* is like quitting the patent office 'cause there's nothing
interesting left to be invented.

                                -- Tom Wadlow

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 25-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #77
*** EOOH ***
Date: 25 MAR 1981 0606-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #77
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 25 Mar 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 77

Today's Topics:
   SF Books - God Emperor of Dune, SF Radio - HGttG and Star Wars
      FTP Material - Omni Articles, Spoiler - Star Wars Radio
----------------------------------------------------------------------

ZEMON@MIT-AI 03/24/81 07:53:40

Just got a copy (yes, in \hardback/) of Frank Herbert's GOD EMPEROR OF
DUNE.  As you might guess, there is now a fourth book in the Dune 
series . . . .

It lists for $12.95, but if you a clever about it you can probably get
a copy for less than $10.00 (by shopping around) -- I did.  In my
opinion the book is worth it (unlike THE JESUS INCIDENT, which I made
the mistake of getting in hardback, too.)

pico-reveiw : Real Good So Far (at least up to page 130.  I'll finish 
it tonight . . . .)

                        -Landon-

------------------------------

Date: 24 Mar 1981 1034-PST (Tuesday)
From: Dal at UCLA-SECURITY (Doug Landauer)
Subject: HGttG and Star Wars in LA...

(try again) KUSC ( 91.5 FM ) broadcasts Star Wars Sunday nights at six
pm, repeating them on Thursday afternoons at four or four-thirty or
so.  KCRW in Santa Monica ( 89.9 FM; a formerly-low-power
community-college-operated station ) also broadcasts it, at 3:30 PM on
Wednesdays, immediately following HGttG which starts at 3:00.  For
more program information about KCRW ( quite an interesting station,
without the incredible volume of politically-oriented stuff that KPFK
( 90.7 ) spews ), call (213)450-5183, and ask them to send you a (
free ) program guide.

About six other stations audible from Hollywood are broadcasting Star
Wars ( there was an article in the Times about it ), but I have no
list of them.

        - doug - 

------------------------------

Date: 24 March 1981 1816-EST
From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
Subject: solar sats

The max theoretical efficiency of silicon solar cells in sunlight is
26%.  You have to get tricky if you want to get higher efficiency.
Like multiple compounds to absorb different parts of the spectrum, or
a medium that can shift other frequencies to those that silicon can
use.  It'll probably weigh even more.

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/24/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
refers to the Star Wars radio series.  People who are not familiar
with the series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

JMTURN@MIT-AI 03/24/81 02:18:46

Shade and Sweet water to you,

        Something for those of you who have been listening to SW on
NPR (and this really deserves a spoiler!):



Scene:  The Tatoine (sorry for the spelling) 4, in a restricted zone
        to pick up the Death Star tapes. An Imperial cruiser is
        closing in.

Captain Antilles: Princess, we must hurry, the cruiser is closing!

Princess Leia: Just a minute, I'm getting the settings on the recorder
        right.

Imperial ST: This is the Destroyer Fubar, you are in a restricted
        zone. Please prepare for boarding.

CA: We are a diplomatic flight. You have no right to detain us.
        (aside) Hurry!

PL: Now then, they're transmitting at 9600, with no parity, and XMIT
        require (changes settings).  There, that should do it.

Rebel: Starting transmission.

PL: Hang on, I'm getting parity errors on about half the letters.

Rebel: What is the parity set to?

PL: It's disabled.

Rebel: No! It has to be odd.

IST: Boarding in two minutes.

PL: There, try again.

(Buzzing is heard)

PL: No good, the line isn't good enough for 9600. Move to 1200.

CA: We don't have time!

PL: This is of vital importance to the rebel forces. Make time.

CA: This is a non-military ship. Go away.

PL: Still garbled. What program are you using?

Rebel: FTP, of course.

PL: FTP?!! I'm using TELNET. Can't you use TELNET too?

Rebel: Which version? All I have is 3.2.

PL: Damn, all I have is 2.0...


              In space, no one can hear you dump...

                                                       James Turner

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 26-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #78
*** EOOH ***
Date: 26 MAR 1981 0433-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #78
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 26 Mar 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 78

Today's Topics:
        SF Books - Book Notes & Synthesis & Shorter vs Longer,
          SF Topics - Mythical Research, Spoiler - Star Wars
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 Mar 1981 0236-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Book Notes    

From this month's issue of LOCUS magazine:

SHATTERDAY, by Harlan Ellison, was sold to Berkley (to be published as
a paperback) for $30,000.  The Hardcover edition sold out.... THE
ESSENTIAL ELLISON will also be published by Berkley.

AN ISLAND CALLED MOREAU, by Brian Aldiss, sold out its 6,000 copy
American edition within a month....  KING DAVID'S SPACESHIP by Jerry
Pournelle, has sold 7,500 copies in hardcover so far.

Paperback rights to THE MANY COLORED LAND, by Julian May, went to
Fawcett/Popular Library for in excess of $30,000.

Gale Research is publishing two major SF reference books this spring,
SCIENCE FICTION BOOK REVIEW INDEX, 1974-1979, edited by H. W. Hall,
available in April, and a 2 volume TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN SCIENCE
FICTION AUTHORS, edited by David Cowart and Thomas Wymer, out in May
or June.

Membership in the Science Fiction Book Club has been reported in 
excess of 150,000.


Jim

------------------------------

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 03/25/81 15:16:22 
Re:  synthesists

Not only do chemistry-computer science "synthesists" exist (I was one 
for a while, working on a project to design synthesis for organic 
compounds by machine) but I bet you that if you combined the names for
ANY two fields, somewhere there is a living, breathing practitioner of
both those arts.  Say, Equestrian-politics?  Quantum ballistics?  
Paleolithic ontology?  Jurassic polyphony?  Abnormal psycho-acoustics?
Linguistic hydro-dynamics? Topological Horticulture? (did Rene Thom do
this?)  It's a bizarre idea at first, but not so bizarre once you 
start thinking about it.

Stanislaw Lem took up this idea in one of his fairly recent books 
(which one?).  He had a character predict important developments in 
the future by randomly combining such names and imagining the 
creations of the corresponding disciplines.  Maybe Lem was 
meta-describing his process of writing science fiction?  It was great 
fun.

        Dan

------------------------------

Date: 25 Mar 1981 2146-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-AI>
Subject: Shorter stories vs. longer stories

Another example that comes to mind is Flowers for Algernon which was
both a novella (ette?) and a book-length work.  Since I haven't read
the shorter version, I can't comment about which was better.  

------------------------------

Date:     25 March 1981 1641-cst
From:     Bill Vaughan               <VaughanW at HI-Multics>
Subject:  Shorter stories, better stories

A little while ago someone remarked that the shorter stories are often
the better ones. Though this isn't invariable, it's true most of the 
time; and the case I'd like to mention is Niven's "The Magic Goes
Away."

This was published about three years ago as a short novel, padded with
lots of illos, and with an assertion on the cover about "never before 
published" (or some garbage to that effect).  But in fact, it had been
published before - in an obscure pulpish mag whose name escapes me, 
though it may have been called "Odyssey" (I can look it up; I have a 
copy somewhere).

The prior publication was a lot shorter - I guess novella size - and a
hell of a lot better. There really wasn't much more than a novella's 
worth of story in it in the first place, and the longer version was 
palpably padded. Real good padding - Niven doesn't screw around - but 
padding none the less.

The shorter version would have made a much better culmination to the 
"Warlock" cycle than the longer one - but I guess it's destined for 
obscurity. It would be interesting to find out the story behind the 
rewrite someday ...

Anyway, I brought this up because it's so seldom that you actually get
to see the same story in two versions of different lengths. Clarke's 
"Against the Fall of Night" and "The City and the Stars" come close,
but there was a lot of story development between the two versions in
that case -- not so in this.

------------------------------

Date: 25 Mar 1981 1204-PST
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: mythical research

Does anyone know who (if anyone) actually claimed that bees (or was it
bumblebees, houseflies?) cannot fly, based on some aerodynamical 
reasoning? This always sounded like an "old wife's tale" (old
scientist's tale?) to me. Usually research involves experiment, all of
my experiments seem to indicate that these critters do fly, or at
least they fall very slowly.

How about the old chestnut that the average human only uses 10% of 
their brain? The MIT paper "thursday" once published a great comeback
to that one, "The rest is taken up by the operating system".

 - Craig 

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/26/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
refers to the Star Wars radio series.  People who are not familiar
with the series may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 25 Mar 1981 1005-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: R2D2: a question   

I seem to remember that in previous SF-LOVERS discussions there was
speculation that R2D2 was some special 'droid -- with lots of built
in, non standard goodies.  But on the Star Wars radio show, it
appeared that R2D2 was picked by Princess Leia only because he
happened to be in the right place at the right time.  Is this just 
another side-effect of the force?

Rich

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 27-MAR  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #79
*** EOOH ***
Date: 27 MAR 1981 0528-EST
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #79
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 27 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 79

Today's Topics:
  SF Books - Favorite uncommon SF poll, SF Movies - Gumby and Dr. T,
                    SF Topics - Mythical Research
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 Mar 1981 1943-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: deadline for favorite uncommon sf poll

        ...is April 3, so get your entries in soon!  A brief reminder 
of the rules:  any written work that you think is sf or fantasy, like,
and think is rare or uncommon, is eligible.  You can submit as many as
you like.  A brief description and any information on availability 
would be appreciated.
        There will be a second phase of the poll which will ask for 
people's ratings of the obscurity and (if they've read it) quality of
the books.  So far, incidentally, there have been no duplicate
entries.
                                        good reading,
                                                        --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 22 Mar 1981 1411-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Gumby and Dr. T

The ever-popular NUART and FOX-VENICE theaters here in L.A. have some 
programs scheduled of possible interest to local SF-LOVERS types.


At the NUART, on April 2, is the GUMBY FILM FESTIVAL!  Yes, a complete
GUMBY episode sequence, a classic "Davy and Goliath", some clay art
films, and the animation classic GUMBASIA will be screened.  Also,
GUMBY creator Art Cloakey will appear in person, as will Gumby himself
(Pokey is not expected, however.)  For all you clay-heads out there,
this sounds like a must-see.

----

At the FOX-VENICE, on May 6, the superb 5000 FINGERS OF DR. T will 
screen, along with the classic 7 FACES OF DR. LAO. (Hmmm.  5000 
Fingers.  7 Faces.  Talk about strange scheduling...)

In fact, the FOX-VENICE has an SF/Fantasy film festival in progress
for the entire period from April 6 to May 8.

----

If you haven't seen it (or even if you have), I STRONGLY recommend 
seeing the 5000 FINGERS OF DR. T.

--Lauren-- -------

------------------------------

Date: 26 Mar 1981 0720-PST
From: Mike Peeler <ADMIN.MDP at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Rumblings about bumblebees

    I remember thinking G. Harry Stine's "surge" business was a lot of
malarkey, but I don't remember the article well enough to give a 
decent criticism.  Perhaps someone else can fill us in.

    The math does not say that bumblebees cannot fly.  Around the turn
of the century some engineer thought he had shown that the physics of 
the day could not explain the fact that bumblebees fly.  All he really
showed was that the mechanism of the flight of bumblebees was not 
known, at least not by him.  Still, it was just the sort of thing that
a lot of people could jump on and say, "See!  That science jazz isn't 
worth beans!"

    Such pointed examples of the mistakes scientists can make do not 
prove that any old crackpot theory is just as good as the current 
favorite among ivory-tower elitists.  A good theory shows overwhelming
agreement with the facts and motivates compelling arguments in its 
favor.  Perhaps Stine's surge theory fits this description, but surely
not by virtue of Stine's presentation.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Mar 1981 at 1137-PST
From: obrien at RAND-UNIX
Subject: Flying bees

        I unfortunately cannot provide a reference to the aerodynamic
analysis of bumblebees, but I do remember reading a discussion of this
study somewhere.  The only thing that sticks in my mind is that they
analysis was indeed made of a bumblebee's wing: as a static structure.
Not exactly one of your more relevant assumptions.  I have seen very,
very few gliding bumblebees.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Mar 1981 10:33 PST
From: Karlton at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: mythical research

The finding was actually that if a bumblebee had fixed wings it could
not fly.  The fact that its wings move makes it aerodynamically
different.  The finding could well be correct.  Have you ever seen a
fixed wing bumblebee flying?

PK

------------------------------

Date: 26 March 1981 19:59-EST
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Bumblebees not flying

The crux of the problem about bumblebees depends on the fluid dynamics
of flight, i.e., how wings generate lift.  To generate lift, a wing
has to have a vortex around it. (That is, if you subtract the
'expected' wind velocity from the velocity field of the air, the
remainder looks like a vortex around the wing.)  If you have a fixed
wing like an airplane, all you need to start up the vortex is to shove
the wing forward through the air, the viscosity of the air causes the
vortex to start up by itself.

If you consider a living flying thing that flaps its wings, the same 
analysis works, except that the vortex breaks down at the extreme top
of the wing flap.  Thus, the vortex has to be re-established during
each downstroke.  For most birds and insects this is no problem.

However, extremely small insects do not have a long enough downstroke
to establish the necessary vortex.  This is the dilemma.

The resolution is that these insects do not establish the vortex by
using the viscosity of the air.  When they bring their wings up, they
make them touch together.  Then they pull them apart and down, but
they pull the front edges of the wings apart before the back.  This
causes air to flow from the front over the touching top surfaces of
the wings.  When the wings are fully separated, this flow rapidly
develops into the needed vortex.

This form of flight is also used by some birds (e.g. pigeons) when
they need extra lift, since it gives more lift during the first part
of the downstroke than normally.  This is why pigeons often make a
slapping noise when they take off, it is their wings hitting together
at the top of the stroke.

There was an article on this in Scientific American several years ago.

Moral: Don't claim that an observation "contradicts (present) physical
law" unless you have a complete and exact understanding of what is
happening in the process under discussion.  Otherwise, it is probably
just that Mother Nature is cleverer than you are.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Mar 1981 (Thursday) 2202-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 ( Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Nothing is faster than the speed of light...

To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before
the light comes on.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 28-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #80
*** EOOH ***
Date: 28 MAR 1981 0457-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #80
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 28 Mar 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 80

Today's Topics:
                 SF Books - Dying Inside & Fuzzys,
             SF Topics - Mythical Research & Religion,
         FTP Material - Omni Articles, Spoiler - Star Wars
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 27 Mar 81 16:11:36-PDT
From: mclure@Sri-Unix
Subject: Silverberg oldies-but-goodies?

Silverberg's Dying Inside is very entertaining. For those of you
interested in telepathy stories, it's a must. Also, it is the exact
opposite of what Disch's recent quote mentions as the 'classic' SF
novel. Since I have read very little Silverberg other than a few short
stories, I'd be interested to hear which of his SF novels come up to
the level of this novel, since people have been telling me he is
extremely variable.

------------------------------

Date: 27 Mar 1981 15:24 PST
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: fuzzies

Maybe everybody knows about these books but me, but in case not:  run,
do not walk to your local bookstore and get a copy of "Little Fuzzy"
and "Fuzzy Sapiens" (also available in one book as "The Fuzzy Papers")
by H. Beam Piper.  Entertaining, literate, and a delight for animal
freaks.  Original pointer from hjjh at utexas.

Karen

------------------------------

Date: 26 Mar 1981 10:55 PST
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #78
Subject: mythical research

In-reply-to: Craig W. Reynolds from III via Rand <REYNOLDS at
RAND-AI>'s message of 25 MAR 1981 1204-PST

I do believe that there really was such a calculation made (that
bumble bees can't fly). The results were invalidated when it was
realized that one of the basic assumptions used in the calculations
was not true. They forgot that a bumble bee's wings move!

Cheryl

------------------------------

Date: 27 Mar 1981 (Friday) 2121-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 ( Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: The A's and Bee's of evolution ...

This discussion of the bee flight problem has reminded me,
simultaneously, of an argument against purest evolutionary theory and
a question about the flight of a 747.  First, the latter...  If you've
ever actually flow on a large jet you will notice that they fly
nose-up... or, at least, wing-tip up.  That is, the front of the wing
is much higher than the rear.  The feeling I got looking at this is
that, in addition to air-foil action, they were using the forward
motion in a much simpler manner to apply an upward normal force to the
wing bottom.  Is this the case?

The evolutionary problem is much more subtle (and totally unrelated --
perhaps the moderator should split this message).  If evolution is to
be taken at its strict word, how do birds (bees, if you like) ever
develope the capability of flight?  That is, I cannot imagine the
birds jumping off cliffs until the right random DNA mutation takes
place which permits it to fly properly.  In a more general form; It
seems that there are aspects of organism that cannot develope in small
steps since their full form is required in order to effect the desired
result at all.  How are such phenomenon explained?

One more totally semi-related topic: Does anyone recall the rather
recent invention of the stall-less paper airplane?  Do you have the
plans?  Can I Xerox (oops, sorry, "photocopy") them?  I would think it
somewhat tough to netmail such info.  Did anything ever come of that
design?

-- 73s Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 28 March 1981 00:09-EST
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Rudof's comments on hormones and emotions

Although it is a minor part of Rudof's essay on founding religions for
fun and prophet, I must take violent exception to his comment that
"emotions are mostly caused by hormones".

Hormones actually do little to cause one's emotions, since emotions
are generated by neural circuits in the thalmus of your brain.  In
fact, the influence is mostly the other way, with one's emotional
state affecting one's hormones, which in turn affect the body.

This idea that hormones cause emotions probably sprung from early
research into sex hormones.  While it is clear that major changes
(e.g. removal) in the level of circulating sex hormones can alter sex
emotions, a 'normal' level of sex hormones is neither necessary or
sufficient for 'normal' sexual behavior.  See Ellis and Kinsey for
further details.

My guess would be that the emphasis on a non-psychological cause of 
emotions, particularly sex emotions, arose from the Victorian belief
that emotions were not 'rational' and therefore must be ascribed to
the 'body' rather than to the 'soul'.

I have overemphasized my approach here; emotions are really a very
complex interaction of hormones, thalmic structures, and other parts
of the brain.  But, having seen the assertion that emotions are
primarily caused by hormones in a number of places in SF land, I wish
to put it to rest here.

                Dale

------------------------------

Date:  27 March 1981 15:00 cst
From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  nothing is faster than the speed of light
Sender:  VaughanW.REFLECS at HI-Multics

I did it! I did it!  I opened the refrigerator door before the light
came on!!  (Of course, the peanut butter in the light switch probably
helped)...

------------------------------

Date:  27 March 1981 19:48 cst
From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  solar sats
Sender:  VaughanW.REFLECS at HI-Multics

Though solar cells have limited efficiency (theoretically 26%, but 
practically 10-15%), you can get more watts per acre than by just 
sticking them out in the sun.

To do this you must irradiate the cells with a greater luminous flux
than sunlight.  A laser would work just fine.

Recently reported was a gas laser pumped directly by sunlight.  Put
one in orbit. It will collect sunlight, convert it into laser energy,
and send it down to Earth to be converted into electricity via solar
panels.

This is just another kind of solar power satellite, to be sure - but
without microwaves. The laser "transmitter" would be cheaper than a
microwave transmitter, and (having fewer active components) far more
reliable.

Microwaves cause RFI. Not lasers. Microwaves are hazardous. Maybe the
laser would be too - but no more so, and the beam's a lot tighter.
Microwave SPS's are just plain heavy. Laser SPS's needn't be (the
collector can be a Mylar mirror) - so you don't need a fleet of heavy
launch vehicles.

I guess the ground station is cheaper for microwaves, but nobody's 
perfect.

[ Another mailing list on the NET, ENERGY, has been discussing this
  topic for the last several months.  Anyone interested in operational
  characteristics of Solar Power Satellites are advised to look in the
  ENERGY archives, which are stored on line in two sets of files on 
  MIT-MC - MC:OAF;ENERGY ARC<001,002,003> contains the old material
  from the list, while newer material goes into the file MC:OAF;ENERGY
  RECENT.  Thanks to Oded Anoaf Feingold <OAF at MIT-MC>, the ENERGY
  archivist, for making these files available.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 03/28/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
refers to the Star Wars series, containing information about
the other hope.  People who are not familiar with this series of
stories may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 27 Mar 1981 2135-PST
From: Judy Anderson <JMA at SU-AI>
Subject: ABSOLUTE STAR WARS SPOILER!!!

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW!

From a reliable source who has this info from an ``unimpeachable''
source, we have the following news about Revenge of the Jedi or
whatever it is going to be called:

They resolved the contract difficulties with Harrison Ford so Han gets
unfroze (this is not the spoiler but it may be news).

Darth IS Luke's father.

Leia is the other hope.

Luke and Leia are RELATIVES in the following bizarre manner:  Luke is
the son of Darth and <unnamed female>.  Leia is the daughter of the
King (or whatever) of Alderaan and <same unnamed female>.  Darth did
not have her permission when Luke was conceived.  So Luke and Leia are
half-brother and -sister, which means that Han gets Leia.  (Can't
expose the kiddies to incest, now, can we?)

I might be wrong, but I think I am right in these spoilers.  Hope
those of you who don't heed spoiler warnings are not upset...

MtFBWY,
  Judy.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 29-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #81
*** EOOH ***
Date: 29 MAR 1981 0902-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #81
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 29 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 81

Today's Topics:
      SF Books - 1980 LOCUS Recommended Reading List: Part I &
                   Dying Inside & Book of Skulls,
             SF Magazines - The Twilight Zone Magazine,
                  SF Movies - Outland & Excaliber,
  SF Radio - The Great Turkey Debate, SF Topics - Mythical Research
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 28 Mar 1981 2336-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: 1980 LOCUS Recommended Reading List: Part I

From this month's issue of LOCUS magazine comes the LOCUS
recommended reading list, compiled by Charles Brown and
many others (including Jeff Frane, Terry Carr, Gardner Dozois,
and Mark R. Kelly) from their own private readings, various
review columns, best seller lists, the Nebula awards ballots,
and works generally considered popular in the market place.
This list is intended to cover works appearing in the year
1980.

Since the list is too long for a single message, but not long
enough to justify FTPing, it is being sent in three parts.  The
first part, this message, contains the works in the NOVEL
categories - SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, and BEST FIRST novels.
The second part contains recommended SHORT STORY collections and
ANTHOLOGIES, as well as NON-FICTION and ART books.  The third
part contains individual stories in the NOVELLA, NOVELLETTE,
and SHORT STORY categories.



NOVELS - SCIENCE FICTION


TIMESCAPE, Gregory Benford (Simon & Schuster)
GOLEM 100, Alfred Bester (Simon & Schuster)
EYES OF FIRE, Michael Bishop (Pocket)
TWO TO CONQUER, Marion Zimmer Bradley (DAW)
WILD SEED, Octavia Butler (Doubleday)
SERPENT'S REACH, C. J. Cherryh (SF Book Club/DAW)
ASCENDANCIES, D. G. Compton (Gollancz)
THE MAGIC LABYRINTH, Philip Jose Farmer (Berkley/Putnam)
WAVES, M. A. Foster (DAW)
THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST, Robert A Heinlein (Fawcett)
FIRESTARTER, Stephen King (Phantasia/Viking)
THE RINGWORLD ENGINEERS, Larry Niven (Phantasia/Holt, Rinehart &
        Winston)
BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON, Frederik Pohl (Del Rey)
DANGEROUS GAMES, marta Randall (Pocket)
MOLLY ZERO, Keith Roberts (Gollancz)
SONGS FROM TE STARS, Norman Spinrad (Simon & Schuster)
MOCKINGBIRD, Walter Tevis (Doubleday)
WIZARD, John Varley (Berkley/Putnam)
THE SNOW QUEEN, Joan D. Vinge (Dial)
THE GARDENS OF DELIGHT, Ian Watson (Gollancz)



NOVELS - FANTASY


SPLIT INFINITY, Piers Anthony (Del Rey)
THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, Suzy McKee Charnas (Simon & Schuster)
ALL DARKNESS MET, Glen Cook (Berkley)
NECROPOLIS, Basil Copper (Arkham House)
THE RAINBOW ANNALS, Grania Davis (Avon)
THE WOUNDED LAND, Stephen R. Donaldson (Del Rey)
FIRELORD, Parke Godwin (Doubleday)
A STORM OF WINGS, M John Harrison (Doubleday)
DUCTON WOODS, William Horwood (McGraw-Hill)
"The Mist", Stephen King (DARK FORCES)
KILL THE DEAD, Tanith Lee (DAW)
SABELLA, Tanith Lee (DAW)
THE BEGINNING PLACE, Ursula K. LeGuin (Harper & Row)
THE NORTHERN GIRL, Elizabeth A Lynn (Berkley/Putnam)
THE CASTLE OF HAPE, Shirley Rousseau Murphy (Atheneum)
THORN, Fred Saberhagen (Ace)
LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE, Robert Silverberg (Harper & Row)
SHADOW LAND, Peter Straub (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan)
AFTER DARK, Manly Wade Wellman (Doubleday)
THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER, Gene Wolfe (Simon & Schuster)
ARIOSTO, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (Simon & Schuster)
CHANGELING, Roger Zelazny (Ace)



FIRST NOVELS


HAWK OF MAY, Gillian Bradshaw (Simon & Schuster)
SUNDIVER, David Brin (Bantam)
THE MAN IN THE DARKSUIT, Dennis R. Caro (Pocket)
A LOST TALE, Dale Estey (St. Martins)
WEB OF ANGELS, Jon M. Ford (Pocket)
DRAGON'S EGG, Robert L. Forward (Del Rey)
MASTER OF THE FIVE MAGICS, Lyndon Hardy (Del Rey)
YEARWOOD, Paul Hazel (Atlantic/Little, Brown)
ONE ON ME, Tim Huntley (DAW)
BEYOND REJECTION, Justin Leiber (Del Rey)
LIFEKEEPER, Mike McQuay (Avon)
THE GATES OF HEAVEN, Paul Preuss (Bantam)
WHITE LIGHT, Rudy Rucker (Virgin)
SCAVENGERS, David Skal (Pocket)
STILL FORMS ON FOXFIELD, Joan Slonczewski (Del Rey)
THE ORPHAN, robert Stallman (Pocket)

------------------------------

Date: 28 Mar 1981 (Saturday) 2328-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 ( Steve Platt)
Subject: Silverberg books: "Dying Inside" and "Book of Skulls"

  ...I read "Dying Inside" around 2 weeks ago (synchronicity?).  I 
thought it peaked around 2/3 the way through (when Selig went
simultaneously mentally and physically impotent), but it concluded
reasonably.  Silverberg does have his good & bad moments, but then
again, who doesn't?
  He seems to be best when dealing with people, not technology.  For 
an example see "Book of Skulls".  (from the same era, the early
70's...)  These books both have many traits typically Silverberg:
empty sex and a story that describes more of a passage than an event.
   Happy reading...

     -Steve

------------------------------

Date: 28 Mar 1981 1138-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: new zine

Saw a copy of a new magazine: "The Twilight Zone, all-new tales of 
suspense, horror, and the supernatural in the tradition of the classic
television series". I didn't recognize any of the names on the
masthead.  It has some name writers in this issue: Zelazny, Haldeman,
Robinson, Silverberg, and Tanith Lee, though their stories are all
pretty minor.  It also has part of an episode guide to the show and
the teleplay to "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street".  Anybody know
if this (May 1981) is the first issue?  

[ It should be the first issue (it might be the second - look and see
  if it is marked "Premier Issue" on the cover).  This magazine was
  refered to quite briefly in digest issues 49 and 50 of the current
  volume, but there were no extensive comments on the quality of
  the magazine.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 27 MAR 1981 2248-PST
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Trailers of upcoming movies...

     While seeing Altered States (at last) in Westwood (A good loud
movie by the way, although it is my personal opinion that the script
confuses `Shrooms with peyote cactus, since the Indians are shown
picking it from barren rock) I was able to see the trailers for both
"Outland" and "Excaliber".  Outland certainly looks expensively and
professionally made, and the trailer, at least, was exciting; but you
can never tell with trailers.  It is my personal opinion that most
trailers are short bits of the best parts stuck together, so that a 
good trailer may be misleading, but a bad trailer is a definite
warning sign. And speaking of bad trailers, Excaliber, for which I had
high hopes, looks like it will probably bite tuna.  Even what little
acting was shown in the trailer was noticeably poor, and the FX were
definitely not up to the state of the art.  A plus point, however --
the costumes (armor, swords, dress of the ladies) look real as dammit,
(unlike in Camelot, for instance) and probably are, which may not be a
good thing, as the actors in the armor in several quick fight montages
seem barely able to stand up under what may well be }100 kilos of
armor plus a 15 kilo sword.  Sparks fly and dents form, but it may 
turn out that they should have gotten stronger actors or stuck with 
fiberglass and dubbed sound.  Another plus was the cinematography,
which was beautiful, and the sound, which was also good.  At any rate,
I still intend to go see it, (Along with Clash of the Titans, any
reports on THAT one, anyone?) but with nowhere near the expectations I
had before.

Rodof 

------------------------------

Date:  28 March 1981 03:00 est
From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Worst SF radio show of all time.

Prompted by the discussion on worst SF films.

I nominate a Sears Radio Theater episode that has a ship making a 
forced landing on a planet. The captain comments that they are 
fortunate to land where they did in that there is an atmosphere ON 
THIS SIDE.

------------------------------

Date: 28 March 1981 1656-EST (Saturday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  Reptiles Flopping over clifs till they get wings.

It seems to me that you could develop wings "incrementally" as
follows:

Assume that when a creature is fleeing in fear that it tends to
move, flap, wiggle, etc. anything that will move, flap, wiggle,
etc.

Now assume that some land creature, say with two legs, starts growing 
wing stubs (what would you call them?).  Now, when this dude starts 
running from some enemy, in its panic it "flaps" its wing-stubs, and 
someday (quite by accident I'm sure) some stupid pre-bird manages to 
flap in sync with it's running and gets a boost.  Low and behold, this
dude, being able to run a little faster, will tend to survive a little
better, and Mother Nature takes her course.  Consider the Ostrich, a 
bird that can't fly (though I don't know if it really uses it's wings 
when running, it's been a long time since I've seen Mutual of Omaha 
rerun).

                                Yours in Flaming,
                                    doug

------------------------------

Date: 28 March 1981 0952-EST (Saturday)
From: Hank.Walker at CMU-10A (C410DW60)
Subject:  how planes fly

Yes indeed, planes get some of their lift by flying with the nose up
slightly.  On commercial jets, the airfoil shape is the traditional
one you learn about in science class.  But on high performance fighter
planes, the wing is nearly symmetrical, and gets most of its lift by
flying at an angle and using brute force.  Otherwise they wouldn't be
able to fly upside down.

------------------------------

Date: 28 MAR 1981 2147-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: several points

  (answered after being away for a week)

   We already \have/ an equestrian politician: Prince Charles of
Britain is a competition-class horseman (to add to his other feats. .
. .)

   "On location" when applied to shooting movies tends to mean
anywhere outside the confines of a sound stage---the point being that
working outside a controlled environment is hell on equipment, people,
costs, and schedules.

   How a plane flies happens to be something I have a certain amount 
of experience with. (It is also a subject on which you will get some 
fascinating ignorant arguments: do you sink more on a downwind turn 
than on an upwind turn?)  Lift can be generated either by the
traditional low-pressure-on-top method or by raising the leading edge
of the wing (thereby producing lift via Newton's third law).  As far
as I've noticed, no airplane is pointed significantly above its line
of flight when in cruise configuration; however, at takeoff speeds
even the substantial modifications in wing geometry now used on
commercial jets are insufficient to produce the needed lift, requiring
that the nose be lifted significantly above the climb path of the
airplane. This leads to some interesting notions:
  * One useful model for predicting climb performance determines how
much less power is needed to keep the aircraft moving at a lower speed
(to stay up at this speed requires pitching up to add reactive lift to
aerodynamic lift); the excess will produce a climb that can be
calculated by simple work/mass arithmetic.
  * The FAA and the military have for a long time taught that you
control airspeed with the elevator and attitude with the throttle, a
non-intuitive procedure which has the small use of persuading
technically-oriented people to realize the interdependency of these
two controls and the large use of preventing neos from simply pulling
on the stick to climb (thereby stalling) or pushing to go down
(thereby tearing the wings off).  In actual fact, it is necessary to
make \small/ alterations in trim (axis-to- flight-path angle)
depending on cruising speed; an alteration in power setting will cause
the nose to rise or fall appropriately.  The one time this is of
significant use is when making the precise shallow final descent to
the runway; especially when you are trying to stay on an ILS (radio 
glide path) it's much easier to control rate of descent with the
throttle, thus minimizing the force you have to exert on the
aerodynamic controls (short-term adjustments of the elevator trim tab
tend to lose).  

------------------------------

Date: 27 MAR 1981 1640-EST
From: GFH at CCA (Gail Hormats)
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #79

RE: BEING FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT....THE LIGHT IN MY ICEBOX
NEVER COMES ON, AT LEAST NOT WHEN I AM USING IT, DOES THIS MAKE ME
FASTER THEN LIGHT (OR AT LEAST FASTER THEN GE ?  SYLVANIA?
WESTINGHOUSE?)

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 31-MAR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #82
*** EOOH ***
Date: 31 MAR 1981 0555-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #82
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 31 Mar 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 82

Today's Topics:
                 Administrativia - Missing Digest,
                     SF Events - SFL Tshirts,
      SF Books - 1980 LOCUS Recommended Reading List: Part II &
     Wizard & Fuzzys,  SF Magazines - The Twilight Zone Magazine,
                SF Radio - The Great Turkey Debate,
SF Topics - The Evolution of Flight & Physics Imaginary (Surge Forces)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 30 Mar 1980 22:32 PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - Missing Digest

Due to a lack of material, a Monday digest was not sent out.  Thus
this is the first digest since the Sunday, March 29 issue.

The quantity of submissions to SF-LOVERS has been low for the past few
weeks.  This is probably due to spring vacations and semester breaks
and vacations.  I feel certain that this low message rate is ending.
However, do not be greatly surprised if a weekend digest is
occasionally skipped due to insufficient material.

Since all digests are consecutively numbered (this is issue 82 of
volume 3), it is always possible to determine if you missed an issue.
If so, then a message to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST will result in the missing
issue being resent to you within a couple of days.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 30 Mar 1981 10:22 PST
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SF-lovers T-Shirt update

Anyone who wants an SF-Lovers T-shirt, but has not yet ordered one,
should send a message now to SFL-TshirtS@MIT-AI for more information,
since orders will soon be closed.

------------------------------

Date: 30 Mar 1981 2314-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: 1980 LOCUS Recommended Reading List: Part II

From this month's issue of LOCUS magazine comes the LOCUS
recommended reading list, compiled by Charles Brown and
many others (including Jeff Frane, Terry Carr, Gardner Dozois,
and Mark R. Kelly) from their own private readings, various
review columns, best seller lists, the Nebula awards ballots,
and works generally considered popular in the market place.
This list is intended to cover works appearing in the year
1980.

Since the list is too long for a single message, but not long
enough to justify FTPing, it is being sent in three parts.  The
first part contains the works in the NOVEL categories - SCIENCE
FICTION, FANTASY, and BEST FIRST novels.  The second part, this
message, contains recommended SHORT STORY collections and ANTHOLOGIES,
as well as NON-FICTION and ART books.  The third part contains
individual stories in the NOVELLA, NOVELLETTE, and SHORT STORY
categories.



SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS


THE STORIES OF RAY BRADBURY, Ray Bradbury (Knopf)
THE SCIENCE FICTION OF MARK CLIFTON, Barry N. Malzbery and Martin
        H. Greenberd, eds (Southern Illinois University Press)
OUT THERE WHERE THE BIG SHIPS GO, Richard Cowper (Pocket)
THE GOLDEN MAN, Philip K. Dick, ed by Mark Hurst (Berkley)
LOST DORSAI, Gordon R. Dickson (Ace)
FUNDAMENTAL DISCH, Thomas Disch (Bantam)
THE SPECIALTY OF THE HOUSE, Stanley Ellin (Mysterious Press)
SHATTERDAY, Harlan Ellion (Houghton-Mifflin)
EXPANDED UNIVERSE, Robert Heinlein (Grosset and Dunlap)
THE MAN WHO LOVED THE MIDNIGHT LADY, Barry N. Malzberg (Doubleday)
THE BEST OF WALTER M. MILLER, Walter M. Miller, Jr. (Pocket)
LORE OF THE WITCH WORLD, Andre Norton (DAW)
SAN DIEGO LIGHTFOOT SUE, Tom Reamy (Earthlight)
ANTINOMY, Spider Robinson (Dell)
WAVE RIDER, Hilbert Schenck (Pocket)
IF ALL ELSE FAILS..., Craig Strete (Doubleday)
UNFINISHED TALES, J. R. R. Tolkien, ed by Christopher Tolkien
        (Houghton-Mifflin)
THE BARBIE MURDERS, John Varley (Berkley)
THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND OTHER STORIES,
        Gene Wolfe (Pocket)
THE LAST DEFENDER OF CAMELOT, Roger Zelazny (Pocket)



ANTHOLOGIES

TALES FROM THE VULGAR UNICORN, Robert Lynn Asprin, ed. (Ace)
THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF THE YEAR #9, Terry Carr, ed. (Del Rey)
UNIVERSE 10, Terry Carr, ed. (Doubleday)
THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVELLAS OF THE YEAR #2, Terry Carr, ed.
        (Del Rey)
NEBULA AWARDS THIRTEEN, Samuel R. Delany, ed. (Harper & Row)
THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF THE YEAR #9, Gardner Doaois, ed.
        (Dutton)
THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION: A 30 YEAR
        RETROSPECTIVE, Edward L. Ferman, ed. (Doubleday)
ORBIT 21, Damon Knight, ed. (Harper & Row)
BASILICK, Ellen Kushner, ed. (Ace)
WHAT IF?  Vol. 1, Richard A. Ludoff, ed. (Pocket)
THEIR IMMORTAL HEARTS, [Bruce McAllister, ed.] (West Coast Poetry
        Review)
DARK FORCES, Kirby McCauley, ed. (Viking)
NEW VOICES III, George R. R. Martin, ed. (Berkley)
NEBULA AWARDS FOURTEEN, Fredrick Pohl, ed. (Harper & Row)
GALAXY: THIRTY YEARS OF INNOVATIVE SCIENCE FICTION, Fredrick Pohl,
        Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds. (Playboy)
THE ARBOR HOUSE TREASURY OF MODERN SCIENCE FICTION, Robert
        Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. (Arbor House)
THE ARBOR HOUSE TREASURY OF GREAT SCIENCE FICTION SHORT NOVELS,
        Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. (Arbor House)
NEW DIMENSIONS 11, Robert Silverberg and Marta Randall, eds. (Pocket)
THE 1980 ANNUAL WORLD'S BEST SF, Donald A. Wollheim, ed. (DAW)



NON-FICTION AND ART


IN JOY STILL FELT: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ISSAC ASIMOV, 1954-1978,
        Issac Asimov (Doubleday)
SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY AUTHORS: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FIRST
        EDITIONS OF THEIR FICTION, L. W. Currey (G. K. Hall)
THE SIXTH BOOK OF VIRGIL FINLAY, Gerry de la Ree, ed. (de la Ree)
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN: AMERICA AS SCIENCE FICTION, H. Bruce Franklin
        (Oxford University Press)
A HISTORY OF THE HUGO, NEBULA, AND INTERNATIONAL FANTASY AWARDS,
        revised edition, Donald Franson and Howard DeVore
        (Misfit Press)
GIGER'S ALIEN, H. R. Giger (Big O)
UNBUILDING, David Macaulay (Houghton-Mifflin)
SCIENCE FICTION IN OLD SAN FRANCISCO, Vol 1: HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT,
        Sam Moskowitz (Donald M. Grant)
GRAHAM OAKLEY'S MAGICAL CHANGES, Graham Oakley (Atheneum)
THE SCIENCE FICTIONARY, Ed Naha (Seaview)
SAMUEL R. DELANY: A PRIMARY AND SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1962-1979,
        Michael W. Peplow and Robert S. Bravard (G. K. Hall)
DREAM MAKERS, Charles Pratt (Berkley)
THE LITERATURE OF FANTASY, Roger C. Schlobin (garland)
JACK VANCE, Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller, eds. (Taplinger)
THE CYBERNETIC IMAGINATION IN SCIENCE FICTION, Patricia S. 
        Warrick (MIT)
TEACHING SCIENCE FICTION: EDUCATION FOR TOMORROW, Jack Williamson, ed.
        (Owlswick)

------------------------------

Date: 29 Mar 1981 1119-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: "Wizard"

Just finished reading "Wizard" by John Varley, sequel to "Titan", and
set within the same strange creature orbiting Saturn.  Well-written,
good characterization, an exciting read, but basically pointless.  No
reason is given for this creature Gaea's existence; an animal 1200 km
in diameter and containing a habitable world inside itself doesn't
evolve naturally, and no clue is given as to why one would want to
design one.  It's just an exotic setting for adventure.  You can't use
Mars anymore the way Edgar Rice Burroughs did, and it doesn't look
like we'll find strange civilizations anywhere else in the solar
system, so Varley had to go to these extreme lengths to set up a pulp
adventure that could occur within the next fifty years.  He's updated 
it of course with female protagonists and inter-species sex, plus lots
of musing on the nature of heroism and so on, but it's still a comic
book.  I hope he doesn't waste his considerable talents on yet another
sequel.  

------------------------------

Date: 28 Mar 1981 2105-EST
From: JHENDLER at BBNA
Subject: fuzzies

Those who feel H. Beam Piper, the creator of "fuzzies" stole his idea,
you are absolutely right.  For a much more interesting (but less s.f.)
treatment see VerCours' book "And Ye Shall Know Them."  This book is
one of the older "forerunners" of SF, and is highly recommended for
historical interest.  (btw, how about this book as an entry in the
obscure sf list)
  also, for a nauseating treatment of this same theme, see the awful
movie starring Burt Reynolds, the title of which I went out of my way
to forget, and hope not to remember...
  -Jim 

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML (Sent by LARKE0@MIT-ML) 03/30/81 21:34:34 
Re: Twilight Zone magazine

  The issue previously reported on is Issue number 2. The magazine
seems to stand a fair chance of survival - not only is there fiction
by name authors (Zelazny, Haldeman, et al.) but the reviews are even
literate - book reviews by Ted Sturgeon and film reviews by Gahan
Wilson. (yes, the cartoonist.)
   I buy it myself for the info on the TZ show itself. Being able to 
read the scripts themselves is worth the $2 cover charge alone, in my
opinion.The episode guide is another plus, especially since all the 
episodes are being reprinted with the original Serling intros and
outros.  (you know - "Mr. Beemish has just taken his last trip...into
the Twilight Zone.")
   All in all, pretty good stuff.  This new issue, number 2, can be
spotted by the Magritte painting of the man with a lightbulb for a
face on the cover.

         Larry

------------------------------

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 03/30/81 16:14:09 
Re: Sears radio theater


In reference to the captain who was lucky to land his spacecraft on 
the side of the planet that had an atmosphere:  It obviously was a
Ringworld!

- Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 30 Mar 1981 10:59 PST
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: semi-flying bees, etc.

About evolution and the development of flight:  There are animals that
"sort of" fly, i.e., glide (from tree to tree?) for considerable
distances without truly being able to fly in the sense that most birds
do.  I think some type of squirrel or some such does this.  This seems
like a logical intermediate step in the development of flight.

------------------------------

Date: 29 Mar 1981 1225-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: Evolution of wings

Flying squirrels are the sort of intermediary step you're looking for.
It seems fairly obvious to me how one can go from a jumping animal to
a jumping animal with flaps or wide flat hands that help to steer and
stop to flaps that help you go a little farther to a lot farther to a
sailing animal (like a pterodactyl) to Archaeopteryx to a bird.

--JoSH 

------------------------------

FAUST@MIT-ML 03/30/81 16:30:48 
Re: evolution and wings & light is faster than a speeding bullet

        For those following the evolution and wings discussion; It has
been claimed that flying things cannot evolve incrementally.  Then it
was suggested that something can shake rattle and roll while in flight
and that small wings might help.  To all this I answer, has anyone
taken a look at a grasshopper lately?  These little gems jump about
two feet in the air, and then (flapping like hell) coast for about 20
feet.  Now admittedly, they cannot lift themselves off the ground with
their wings alone, but 20 feet at a time sounds better than 2 to me!
        For those deciding whether or not they can open the
refrigerator door faster than the light comes on, how do you know that
the light ever went out since the last time you closed it?  Even if it
works by just pressing the door switch, that doesn't prove anything.
After all, whose to say if a tree falling in a forest makes any noise
when there is no one around to hear it?
        Just random comments,
        Greg

------------------------------

Date: 28 Mar 1981 at 1543-CST
From: korner at UTEXAS-11
Subject: Reply to:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #80

        Right on! Flight doesn't develop full blown (full flown?).
Partial flight does however have survival value- and from partial
flight comes full flight.
        My information is a couple years out of date but evolutionary 
speculation similar to the following must still be ongoing...
        1) Most critters that live in trees hop from branch to branch
at some point in time. Missing the target branch is not fun. Being
able to make longer hops has survival value. Critters with webbed
appendages get selected for as they glide better, etc. Examples are
flying squirrels, flying (gliding) lizzards, and possibly primitive
bats.
        2) Birds are (were?) thought to have developed from ground
running based insectivores who used their forelimbs to balance and
scoop insects while chasing them at high speed. Feathers (prototypic)
make a nice renewable scoops.  Given scoops, musculature to handle
them and a balance function- the scoops turn into airfoils (still not
used for flight- more controlable spoilers than wings), use the
musculature to thrust against the air for a bit of acceleration at
crucial moments and you're on your way to a wing driven beastie...
        3) Insects probably specialize similary. I haven't read
anything about insect flight evolution (funny how one stumbles across
gaps in one's readings only years later).
        The general idea is that evolution works in small steps and
the approach to true flight is littered with survival advantages...

------------------------------

Date: 30 Mar 1981 08:42 PST
From: Pettit at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: evolution of flight 

Your general observation about evolution requiring that the in-between
stages of a genetic trait be advantageous is largely valid (although
there are exceptions, primarily neutral traits which are somehow
linked to other advantageous traits).  There are enough gliding
vertebrates around ("flying" squirrels and lizards, etc) with varying
degrees of ability to glide from branch to branch or tree to tree to 
indicate that bird-like flight can evolve gradually as it increases
the mobility of individuals.

You might be interested in reading Stephen Jay Gould's excellent "This
View of Life" columns from Natural History magazine.  The latest one
is on why living creatures can't evolve wheel-like feet or legs.
There are two books of collected columns, the latest called "The
Panda's Thumb".  I don't remember the name of the earlier collection.
A running theme in these columns is how the SUBoptimality of many
biological traits best illustrate the operation of evolution, which
has to "make do" with slightly modifying the mechanisms at hand.  By 
the way, I think Natural History is the best magazine buy around.  Of
all the many magazines I subscribe to, it's the only one I almost
always read cover-to-cover.

        Teri Pettit

------------------------------

Date: 29 Mar 1981 1231-PST
From: William Gropp <WDG at SU-AI>
Subject: Stine's "surge" force   

I have mentioned this before.  Several years ago, Stine published an 
article in Analog on Dean Drives.  I read that article very carefully.
Stine claims that the had observed a d^3x/dt^3 force effect.  His
evidence included the fact that ejection seats, launched by explosive
charges, had a tendency to loose stabilizing fins.  There is a much
simpler explanation.  The speed of sound is finite.  As the charge
goes off under the seat, the center of the seat starts up.  The edges
(and the fins), however, stay put until the shock wave from the charge
reaches them through the metal of the ejection seat.  This sets up
(extreme) addition stress that is normally not encountered in
engineering, and hence may cause established formulas for determining
the how strong something needs to be made to grossly underestimate the
required bracing.  The same reasoning applies to the rotating
apparatus (name?) that they (Stine's group) were experimenting with.
There is no need to introduce a new force.  It may be a bit strong to
call Stine a "loony", but he can not expect to be taken seriously
until he shows that existing physical laws cannot explain an
observation.

Note that if someone wants to put the work into it, I am sure that the
d^3x/dt^3 law and conventional physics will make different predictions
for some experiment with rapidly varing accelerations.  Anyone out
there game enough to try it?
                                                MtFBwY,
                                                Bill Gropp

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  1-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #83
*** EOOH ***
Date:  1 APR 1981 0656-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #83
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Wednesday, 1 Apr 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 83

Today's Topics:
      SF Books - 1980 LOCUS Recommended Reading List: Part III,
        SF Movies - The Howling,  SF TV - Creationism Debate,
  SF Topics - Physics Today (Information Mechanics) & Synthesists &
                    The Evolution of Flight
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 31 Mar 1981 2221-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: 1980 LOCUS Recommended Reading List: Part III


From this month's issue of LOCUS magazine comes the LOCUS
recommended reading list, compiled by Charles Brown and
many others (including Jeff Frane, Terry Carr, Gardner Dozois,
and Mark R. Kelly) from their own private readings, various
review columns, best seller lists, the Nebula awards ballots,
and works generally considered popular in the market place.
This list is intended to cover works appearing in the year
1980.

Since the list is too long for a single message, but not long
enough to justify FTPing, it is being sent in three parts.  The
first part contains the works in the NOVEL categories - SCIENCE
FICTION, FANTASY, and BEST FIRST novels.  The second part,
contains recommended SHORT STORY collections and ANTHOLOGIES,
as well as NON-FICTION and ART books.  The third part, this
message, contains individual stories in the NOVELLA, NOVELLETTE,
and SHORT STORY categories.



NOVELLAS


Unicorn Tapestry, Suzy McKee Charnas (NEW DIMENSIONS 11)
Soldier of the Empire Unacquainted with Defeat, Glen Cook
        (BERKLEY SHOWCASE 2)
Wed of the Magi, Richard Cowper (F&SF - June)
There Beneath the Silky-Trees and Whelmed in Deeper Gulphs Than Me,
        Avram Davidson (OTHER WORLDS 2)
The Oracle, M. J. Engh (EDGES)
Le Croix (The Cross), Barry Malzberg (THEIR IMMORTAL HEARTS)
Nightflyers, George R. R. Martin (Analog - April)
Their Immortal Hearts, Bruce McAllister (THEIR IMMORTAL HEARTS)
Dangerous Games, Marta Randall (F&SF - April)
THE PATCHWORK GIRL, Larry Niven
On the North Pole of Pluto, Kim Stanley Robinson (ORBIT 21)
Buoyant Ascent, Hilbert Schenck (WAVE RIDER)
The Autopsy, Michael Shea (F&SF - December)
Slow Music, James Tiptree (INTERFACES)



NOVELLETTES


Saving Face, Michael Bishop (UNIVERSE 10)
Strata, Edward Bryant (F&SF - August)
Scorched Supper on New Niger, Suzy McKee Charnes (NEW VOICES III)
The Brave Little Toaster, Thomas M. Disch (F&SF - August)
Earth and Stone, Robert Holdstock (INTERFACES)
The Way Station, Stephen King (F&SF - April)
Feesters in the Lake, Bob Leman (F&SF - October)
Raising the Green Lion, Janet Morris (BERKLEY SHOWCASE 1)
The Lordly Ones, Keith Roberts (F&SF - March)
The Feast of St. Janis, Michael Swanwick (Triquarterly - Summer)
Apotheosis of Myra, Walter Tevis (Playboy - July)
Beatnik Bayou, John Varley (NEW VOICES III)
Billy Big-Eyes, Howard Waldrop (BERKLEY SHOWCASE 1)
The Ugly Chicken, Howard Waldrop (UNIVERSE 10)
Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, Sharon Webb (Issac Asimov's - Feb)



SHORT STORIES


The Last Answer, Issac Asimov (Analog - January)
Prairie Sun, Edward Bryant (Omni - October)
Some of My Best Friends, Francois Camoin (Omni - May)
Saint Amy's Tale, Orson Scott Card (Omni - December)
Frozen Journey, Philip K. Dick (Playboy - December)
Rautavaara's Case, Philip K. Dick (Omni - October)
Men Like Us, David Drake (Omni - May)
Secrets of the Heart, Charles L. Grant (F&SF - March)
Lindsay and the Red City Blues, Joe Haldeman (DARK FORCES)
Child of Darkness, P. C. Hodgell (BERKLEY SHOWCASE 2)
The Fear That Men Call Courage, James Patrick Kelly (F&SF - September)
Window, Bob Leman (F&SF - May)
The Confessions of Hamo, Mary C. Pangborn (UNIVERSE 10)
Our Lady of the Sauropods, Robert Silverberg (Omni - September)
Grotto of the Dancing Deer, Clifford D. Simak (Analog - April)
Prime Time, Norman Spinrad (Omni - November)
A Sunday Visit to Great-Grandfather, Craig Strete (NEW DIMENSONS 11)
Bug House, Lisa Tuttle (F&SF - June)
The World SF Convention of 2080, Ian Watson (F&SF - October)
The Dectective of Dreams, Gene Wolfe (DARK FORCES)


------------------------------

Date: 31 Mar 1981 1148-PST
Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3
Subject: The Howling
From: Amy Newell (through WMartin at Office-3)

  Went to a special pre-St.Louis release showing of "The Howling" a
week or so ago, and was generally impressed.  As a rule, I spend most
of the time in horror movies looking at someone's shoulder asking if
the gore is gone, but found only one scene I couldn't watch.  The
effects were good -- werewolves growing before your very eyes and
such.  They used nearly every cheap scare you can think of, and they
all worked.  Also had a rather disturbing sex scene that was quite
well done, at least as far as translating it from paper to film is
concerned.  There are at least two fan types in the movie, Forest
Ackerman and someone whose name I don't recall at the moment, and the
whole thing is full of jokes at itself and the genre.  There really is
a plot, and Patrick McNee as a sympathetic baddie.  John Carradine has
several fun lines that I can't give you without earning a spoiler.
Had read the book during one of our bad winters when someone loaned me
a copy, and found several story changes, but they may have made a
better film.  Can't say I was too impressed with the effects behind
the opening credits, and would suggest that anyone prone to motion
sickness keep their eyes closed until the film itself begins.  As I
didn't pay for either the film or the book it wouldn't seem gracious
to complain too much, and it isn't bad for what it is.  Suffice it to
say we should all keep an eye on the six o'clock news.  Thanks for
letting me share a piece of my mind.

Amy Newell

------------------------------

Date: 31 Mar 1981 1807-EST
From: MD at MIT-XX
Subject: Creationism Debate

        Since the Evolution vs. Creationism topic has been raised in 
SF-Lovers, I thought some readers in the Boston area might be
interested in a debate Wed. April 1 at 8 pm in MIT room 10-250.  A. E.
Wilder-Smith, a scientist who promotes "Scientific Creationism" will 
debate a prominent MIT professor (who wishes to remain unpublicized to
avoid "a media circus").  Prof. Phillip Morrison will act as
moderator.

        It promises to be \very/ interesting.

                                Michael Dornbrook 

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 03/31/81 07:34:41 
Re: Information Mechanics


The above is the title of a book by Frederick W. Kantor. His
contention is that all of physics can be derived from a couple of
assumptions and some juggling of arguments based on the
transfer/conservation of information. He then proceeds to derive a
multitude of presently accepted theories from his assumptions
(example: He makes two or three assumptions, plays a bit, and out pops
special Relativity).

My question: Are there people out there in SFL-land who have knowledge
of this work? Is it at all valid? (at one point, an equation makes an 
appearance that Kantor says indicates that the cosmological red-shift 
is caused by "tired light".) I'd like to know if I should believe any 
of this. I'd also like to know: if it *is* valid, why aren't
physicists jumping up and down about the new theory?

                                        ...phil

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 03/31/81 07:27:13 
Re: synthesists


The thought occurs to me that we cannot call two-subject specialists 
"synthesists". A synthesist would be knowledgeable in a multitude of
subjects, not just two. Example: a bio-chemist is not an expert in
both biology and chemistry, but just where those two fields overlap.

                                        ...phil

------------------------------

Date: 30 March 1981 1835-EST (Monday)
From: David.Smith at CMU-10A (C410DS30)
Subject:  How an airplane flies

Did you ever look at an F-15 wing?  It is not symmetric.  The leading
edge curves downward.  If lift were generated just by reaction of air
against the lower surface, a flat plate would do for a wing.  The
upper surface must be shaped to maintain attached airflow.  If the
airflow detaches, lift is lost because there is no venturi effect.

Most airliners cruise nose-up because they have been flying below
their design cruise speed since the 1973 oil crunch.  This reduces
fuel consumption, in spite of the drag caused by the nose-up fuselage.
Incidentally, this reminds me of a very plausible explanation of the
case of the 727 which took a sudden nosedive over Lake Michigan a year
or two ago.  Pilots have found that by deploying the first increment
of flaps during cruise can bring a 727's nose down and cut fuel
consumption.  (The flaps are extended rearward, increasing wing area,
but are not tilted down.)  Unfortunately, the flaps are commanded in
unison with the (leading edge) slats.  The slats can't stand extension
at cruise speed.  So, some pilots pull the circuit breaker for the 
slats and extend the flaps.  The accident plane lost the left slat
during cruise, and the crew erased the flight recorder tape after they
landed.  Hmmm.

Back to the original subject.  Consider the Kruger flap on the inboard
leading edge of the 727's wing.  It is hinged at the leading edge,
extending down and slightly forward when deployed.  You would think
that air striking it would force the wing down (particularly when the
airplane is nose up).  But it in fact increases lift, because it
increases the wing's camber.

------------------------------

Date: 29 Mar 1981 0230-EST
Sender: WDEW at BBND
Subject: Flight
From: WDEW at BBND

    In fact, aircraft do get some lift from an upward tilting of the 
wing (though in looking out the window of an airplane, this effect is 
exaggerated because of the shape of the wing).  I will leave a full 
explanation of angle-of-attack to the appropriate textbooks.

    The current method of explaining things which seem to have no 
gradual evolutionary path is to think harder and find one.  In the 
case of flight, it is surmised that wings began as something which 
allowed the animal to better be able to survive a fall (some styles of
cockroaches are at this stage).  Later, the usefulness of being able
to glide comes in ('flying squirrels (sp?)').  Of course, it's even
more useful to have powered flight (pteranodons, then birds).  
Actually, the traditional example of something seemingly lacking any 
possible evolutionary track is the eye (though one can make up some 
possibilities here, too, if one thinks hard enough).

                                   Warren J Dew

------------------------------

Date: 30 Mar 1981 1237-PST
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: Sprouting wings

Jeffrey Shrager brings up a very good point, how does incremental 
evolution explain major differences between species? This kind of
thinking has lead to a more recent (post-Darwinian) theory of
evolution called "punctuated equilibria". The idea is that a "species"
is a stable pattern. Species may undergo Darwinian incremental
evolution, the those changes are VERY slow, almost to the point of not
mattering. In this view, new species are created (like birds from
lizards) when a massive random mutation occurs, creating what must be
considered a "monster" - not a proper member of the original species.
Usually, of course, these monsters die out (from being unfit, less
fit, or unable to reproduce), but once in a great while there is a
"happy monster" which not only survives, but thrives. Eventually
through parallel mutation or crossbreeding a new species is created.

 - Craig 

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  2-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #84
*** EOOH ***
Date:  2 APR 1981 0633-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #84
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 2 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 84

Today's Topics:
                         SF Books - Fuzzies,
     SF Topics - Creationism Debate & The Evolution of Flight
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  1 Apr 1981 1146-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: fuzzies; rare sf reminder

        A friend of mine read Piper's fuzzies books yesterday and
liked them -- thought the fuzzies were cute.
        Also, a last reminder to get your favorite unknown sf and 
fantasy titles to or.tovey@SCORE.  The deadline is this Friday, April
3.
                                        good reading,
                                                        --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 01 APR 1981 1110-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: lecture

   I'm a bit dismayed to find LSC committing such a disservice to its 
members, its customers, and the institute that tolerates it.
"Scientific Creationism" is no more scientific than the Scientific
People in Bester's THE STARS MY DESTINATION---and since the public
supporters of this idiocy are more practiced in debating tricks,
statistical manipulations, and political-style Big Lies than the
average scientist, giving them room to speak virtually always
generates more smog and heat than light. Of course, if the number of
T-shirts I've seen bearing the motto of Miskatonic University ("Ex
luce ad tenebrum; ex ignorantia ad sapientam" [I don't promise that 
the cases are exactly correct]) is any indication, that may be what 
students are looking for.  

------------------------------

Date: 01 APR 1981 1051-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: flight and evolution

   When did the paleontologists decide that pteranodons could actually
fly rather than just gliding?  

------------------------------

Date: 1 April 1981 18:07-EST
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Evolution of the wing and reinventing the wheel

Finding the evolution of the wing being discussed in SF-LOVERS, I
decided to look up the subject in the source, namely "Origin of the
Species".  Finding "Flight, powers of, how acquired" listed in the
index, I was directed to a section "On the Absence or Rarity of
Transitional Varieties" in Chapter VI, "Difficulties of the Theory".
This chapter also has sections on "Organs of Extreme Perfection" and
various other objections.

Considering that nothing that has been said in SF-LOVERS is not
discussed in Origin of the Species, let's agree that all persons who
wish to contribute to the evolution/creation debate here must first
read "Origin of the Species" and "Descent of Man".

Dale

------------------------------

KARIM@MIT-MC 04/01/81 10:46:41 
Re: Flight evolution, creationists, and bored pilots

        Can anyone explain why a squirrel with its arms and feet 
slightly webbed (say, only a fraction of an inch), bother passing that
attribute to its descendants and come up with flight? The "monster"
theory is the only thing that seems to work here. That means there
must be a lot of monsters walking around. And can anyone tell me, why,
after such a nice feature evolved in squirrels, there are more
un-winged copies of the little beasties out there than winged ones?
And shouldn't there still be an evolution chain, i.e., the children of
plain squirrels should today be flying squirrels, and the children of
yesterday's flying squirrels should be <whatever>, and the children of
yesterday's <whatever> should be birdies? I don't know. It just seems
to me that anyway you explain it along these lines ends up just "going
out of its way"; i.e. having too much speculation and not enough 
facts. I think it boils down to: If you believe in evolution, you must
admit you're using faith. I think faith should be left to religion and
comprehension-by-observation-only (or, at least, mostly) left to the
scientists.
        A short note, re MD's letter about the evolution vs.  
creationism debate today (mentioned in Wednesday's SFL): I would be
interested in hearing about it. I hope someone that goes will send a
summary of what went on to me (or SFL, if anyone cares).  My
prediction: Evolutionists will think the "Unknown Prof" made more
sense (read: won) and Creationists will think Mr. Wilder- Smith made
more sense (read: won). Everyone will walk away assured that what
they've believed all along was just substantiated, neither party will
say anything "new", and there will be no swaying of anyone's opinion.
Remember, you heard it here first.
        And about that 727 that went super (sonic, as opposed to hyper
(light)) over Lake Michigan.... I heard a story (told to me by the
teacher in my aviation class) about what the FAA finally concluded:
The crew flying the craft got bored (God, how did 727's evolve? From
food vending trucks that drove around with their dropleaf sides folded
out....You say that's not it, God?)  ...I guess staring dead at an
instrument panel for 2000 miles at 30,000 feet \can/ get somewhat
boring. You're bored, in an airplane that isn't too exciting: what do
you do? Here's what happened:
        "Yawn."
        "Hey, the circut breaker that controls the seat belt sign just
blew."
        "So reset it."
        "Ok." (pause) "Whoops!"
        "Hey, the cabin light just went out!"
        "I know; I hit the wrong breaker switch. Just a sec."  
(Engineer resets cabin lights and seat belt sign) "There."  "I wonder
what this is..." (pause)
        "I hear the gear doors trying to -- what are you doing?"
        "Just at the panel here...ha ha! I just turned off the power
to the oven in the galley!"
        "ha ha ha...Hey, try one on me -- see if I can guess!"
        "Ok..." (Flips switch) "What is that, then?"
        "Ummm..." (listens intently) "Air conditioning to First
Class?"
        "No!! That's disabling the intercom system."
        "That's too hard -- how could I hear that? Give me another."
        "Oh, ok." (Searches for easier breaker switch) "Here's a funny
looking one."
        -*- snap -*-
        (slats on one wing screw up, wing loses lift, wing falls,
other wing follows, repeat 200 times or until well- shaken).
        So after that, what else are they gonna do except erase the
recoder? All that dialog on it, and everything?  And I'm not kidding
(sure, I embellished the story a wee bit, but the teacher even told it
better) -- isn't that what the FAA really decided? Anyone on SFL know
more?
        Ah, well. If pilots had CRT displays that could play Asteroids
when they got bored and would signal an interrupt when something went
wrong, it would keep them happy and get evasive-maneuver skills honed
to a fine edge. Not that I would hope a pilot would need such
skills....
                        hoo-haa,
                        Karim

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  3-APR  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #85
*** EOOH ***
Date:  3 APR 1981 0718-EST
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #85
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 3 Apr 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 85

Today's Topics:
                        SF Movies - Excalibur,
         SF Topics - Physics Today (Information Mechanics) &
   Creationism Debate & The Evolution of Flight & Mythical Research
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 2 Apr 1981 1837-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Review of EXCALIBUR


By RICHARD FREEDMAN
Newhouse News Service
    (UNDATED) A new trend in sword-and-sorcery movies that is supposed
to wean the youth market away from science fiction gets off to a limp
start with ''Excalibur,'' an excruciating travesty of Arthurian
material that makes the Prince Valiant comic strip seem sophisticated
by comparison.
    Supposedly on the way are ''Dragonslayer'' starring Sir Ralph
Richardson, ''The Sword'' and ''Conan'' with muscleman Arnold
Schwarzenegger as the title hero assisted by James Earl Jones and Max
Von Sydow. They'd have to go some to be as awful as ''Excalibur.''
    The legends surrounding King Arthur, his Knights of the Round
Table and their quest for the Holy Grail - quaintty known to
Medievalists as The Matter of Britain - have intrigued and inspired
the Western mind from Malory's 15th century compilation
''Mort d'Arthur'' through Wagner, Tennyson and T.S. Eliot down to the
Lerner-Loewe musical ''Camelot.''
    In ''Excalibur'' they are reduced by producer, director and
co-writer John Boorman - who has also managed to cast three of his
children in the picture - to the level of a television soap opera for
pre-adolescents, although the film labors mightily to achieve an
''R'' rating.
    Here again are our old friends, the wizard Merlin (that fine actor
Nicol Williamson, wearing a silver skullcap and campily discoursing
in a bewildering variety of accents, sometimes within the same
sentence), Arthur himself (Nigel Terry, looking like a combination of
a British beach boy and Jimmy Carter) and his wicked half-sister the
magician Morgana (Helen Mirren, made up to look like a Medieval Miss
Piggy).
    Arthur becomes king when he is able to draw the sword Excalibur
from a rock made of Philadelphia Cream Cheese. He then erects Camelot
in order to house the Round Table - a splendid Art Deco object that
would have looked more at home in the office of Sam Goldwyn - where
his knights sit around in full armor and loudly discuss affairs of
state.
    Topmost on their minds is the illicit affair between Lancelot
(Nicholas Clay) and Arthur's bride Guinevere (Cherie Lunghi), who
have a nude love scene together that's supposed to remind you of Adam
and Eve - complete with attendant snakes - totally ignoring the Irish
climate, where the movie was shot.
    Then it's off we go in pursuit of the Holy Grail, although what in
fact that is, or its religious significance, ''Excalibur'' can't be
bothered to explain. Only Perceval (Paul Geoffrey) proves chaste and
persistent enough to survive Morgana's enchantments and win the
chalice in time to bring it back to Arthur, who, like the audience,
is by this time dying of old age.
    ''Excalibur'' makes no attempt at historical authenticity, which
is reasonable since the very existence of Camelot is shrouded in the
mists of time and legend. Yet we do know that knights wore armor only
for battle, not for breakfast and other civilian pursuits, and that
cooch dances of the sort featured in ''Excalibur'' were probably
unknown to Arthurian entertainment.
    All this is filmed through sickly green filters, in case Ireland
doesn't seem green enough, and to the accompaniment of incessant
shouting and heavenly choirs.
    But the real musical hero of ''Excalibur'' is Wagner, whose works
have been pillaged mercilessly - and anachronistically - throughout.
    All battle scenes are to the ominous accompaniment of Siegfried's
funeral music from ''Die Gotterdaemmerung.'' The ludicrous love
scenes between Lancelot and Guenevere are set to ''Tristan and
Isolde'' (one can just hear Boorman saying: ''Tristan? Lancelot? Same
difference.''), and ''Parsifal'' - slightly more appropriately -
accompanies Perceval's quest for the grail.
    It is characteristic of the general shoddiness of ''Excalibur,''
then, that Wagner receives only fleeting mention in the final
credits, after Liberty's of London for supplying ''ethnic jewelry'' -
whatever that is - to this doomed enterprise, and the Irish film
stunt squad from falling off so many horses.


    FILM CLIP: ''Excalibur.'' A teeny-bopper's version of King Arthur,
The Round Table and the quest for the Holy Grail, all wrapped into
one noisy, vulgar and ludicrous package deal with music by Wagner,
whose ghost should sue. Rated ''R.'' One star.

[ For another review of Excalibur see Volume 3, Issue 81 (Sunday,
  29 Mar 1981) of SF-LOVERS.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 04/02/81 07:28:30 
Re: Oops, I forgot...


Information Mechanics is published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.  
Copyright 1977.

If anybody is interested, I can summarize a couple of results for 
them. I can send them direct, or send them to SFL if demand is great 
enough.

                                       ...phil

------------------------------

Date:  2 Apr 1981 0911-PST
From: Achenbach at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Oh, all right, evolutionism vs. creationism


        To me the difference in position of evolutionists v.
creationists lies in that chapter entitled "Difficulties On Theory".
I've looked, but can't seem to find the analogous chapter in the Bible
(or the Koran, or the Bhagavad-gita).

/Mike 

------------------------------

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 04/02/81 16:27:24 
Re:  evolution (SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #83)

There are a couple of things about evolution that don't make sense to 
me.  The first is a simple observation.

Where are all of tomorrow's evolutionary failures?  If every species 
in the world is busy evolving into or out of something else via a 
series of random mutations, why isn't every other living thing covered
with an assortment of semi-useless flaps, bulges, stubs, proto-organs,
and potential appendages (not to mention bizarre behavioral traits)?  
All these variations HAVE to be tried before selection can select 
amongst them.

The second question I have is about combinatorics.  What is the 
possible space of mutations (the cardinality if you will) and what is 
the rate at which the space is being explored?  When you get to 
thinking about it, if a mutation is some (single?) substitution of 
base pairs in some DNA strand somewhere, there are an ungodly number 
of them.  And random mutation had to account for every chemical 
reaction in your body?  Every enzyme had to be created by nose first 
exploration?  I simply can't believe that 4 billion years (admittedly,
an ungodly large amount of time) is sufficient to explore a problem of
this size.  It's got to be one of those "if you used every atom in the
universe to compute with, you still couldn't get there" questions.

Maybe the answer is inheritance of acquired characteristics.

On the other hand, there could be a great deal more structure to 
mutations than meets the eye (one or two?).  Rather than think about a
mutation as a random perturbation of the bits in a DNA sequence, think
about a mutation as a spontaneous variation in a high level vocabulary
which describes the parts of living things; i.e., you get a single 
mutation and you grow another pair of legs, or an augmentation of the 
Krebs' cycle.  This implies that mutations are constrained to produce 
a subset of *interesting* things that may or may not be viable as 
opposed to a potentially infinite number of not necessarily relevant 
effects.  I am also suggesting that the mechanisms for mutation are 
constrained to certain allowable pathways (deviate from this track and
something REALLY disgusting happens to your offspring).  Furthermore, 
the processes effected by these variations (like the Krebs cycle and 
additions thereto) have to have an internal organization that is tight
enough to allow them to be controlled by single vocabulary elements.  
In the face of all the complexity inside living things, this is a 
rather bizarre, and potent claim.

Does anyone know of anybody thinking these kinds of thoughts in 
research?  The more I hear about this topic, the more it sounds like 
DNA is natures' tool for programming (at the molecular level).  I've 
heard of DNA based subroutines, flagging mechanisms, encoding schemes,
and error correction methods as well.  It has got to be the case that 
this analogy can be pushed further.

        Dan 

------------------------------

Date: 1 Apr 1981 1700-PST
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Evolution and Mutation
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

        As I understand it, it is not just mutation that produces 
catastrophic species change, but rather, mutation combined with 
catastrophic environment change, so that old niches are destroyed, new
ones created, and some new, previously selectively-neutral mutations
become positively beneficial.

        Mike

------------------------------

Date:  2 April 1981 03:00 est
From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Nothing left to be invented....

Several times in the history of the Patent Office it was quite 
seriously in danger of being abolished because the high muckey-mucks 
thought there was nothing left to be invented.

I hope they know better now, but.......

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  4-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #86
*** EOOH ***
Date:  4 APR 1981 1014-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #86
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 4 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 86

Today's Topics:
                  SF Fandom - Prisoner Fan Club,
             SF Books - Dream Park, SF Movies - ENIAC,
   SF Topics - DNA programming & Gene Pool & Evolution of Flight &
                          Creationism Debate
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  3 Apr 1981 1249-PST
From: Griffin at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Prisoner (not a spoiler - just a relay)

Is there a Prisoner Fan Club somewhere?

K. Griggin 

------------------------------

TANG@MIT-AI 04/03/81 12:32:27 
Re: Dream Park

        Dream Park, by Larry Niven and some random (who I hope isn't 
reading this. . . .) is a new Trade Paperback I just read.

        Nano-review:  A fair to good read, worse than anything else 
Niven has written, with the possible exception of The Patchwork Girl.

        Micro-review: In a Disney Land of the future the security
manager must join a group of intrepid D&Ders (who are undertaking the
untested South Seas Treasure simulation) in order to discover the
thief & (possibly) murderer among them.  Part of the first section was
previously printed in Destinies, but that section has nothing to do
with the rest of the book.  Zork & MIT are mentioned, as are a lot of
Filk songs, Reagan, and the Quake of '85.  The cover is a good hack,
with a role reversal of the typical hero fending off the sea monster
whilest the sexy women cower. . . .  The book has only one 
illustration. . . .  There are a few good ideas, and some muddling
attempts at real characters.  Worth reading, but certainly not a
'classic'.

------------------------------

Date:  3 Apr 1981 (Friday) 1906-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 ( Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: The following appeared in the Daily Pensylvania's "34th St."

magazine's movie section with no apparent explanation:

      "ENIAC: Penn's new computer runs amok!
       'I told you not to print out tonight!'"

[Don't ask ... I don't know either -- Jeff]

------------------------------

Date: 3 Apr 1981 14:11:39-PST
From: ucbvax!ihnss!hobs (John Hobson)
Subject: The Supersonic 727 In SFL (Vol3:83) April 2

\fIHUH?!?\fP What's this about a 727 going supersonic over Lake 
Michigan?  I don't know (nor does Cheri Ruben) anything about this.  
Please get Karim to explain.
                                 May your sheep bear only twins,
                                 John

------------------------------

Date:  3 Apr 1981 1226-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: re: DNA programming

I was leafing through a 1979 volume of Icarus ("A journal of planetary
studies",Carl Sagan, ed.) when I came upon the bizarre idea of using
DNA as a means of interstellar communication.  You put your message in
an unused section of some virus's genetic material and shoot it off
into space. If it lands anywhere it replicates itself a trillion times
and so can't be missed.  Some Japanese researchers proposed this and
took the logical next step of looking for messages in known sequences.
Apparently there is a virus for which the DNA sequence is completely
known, so they took the parts of it that weren't thought to do
anything else and tried to arrange them into pictures.  They assigned
a number to each base pair and put them into arrays with some small
prime number of rows and columns.  Didn't look like much of anything
to me.
        Regarding DNA as a high level language for specifying
biological structures, this is an idea that was pushed by Arthur
Koestler, a very literate critic of evolution.  The variation in, say,
neck length in giraffes would take a huge of amount of information to
specify exactly ("make vertebrae this much larger in exactly these
areas, lengthen this set of five million blood vessels and 500 million
nerves by this amount", and so on), so the thought is that only a few
base pairs can specify the form of large structure ("multiply neck
length by x").  The other method would be to have systems that adapted
organs to outside conditions.  Each vertebrae would grow so as to
distribute the load on it in some optimal fashion.  The organism would
be like a distributed processing system with each cell a CPU assigned
some task like "I'm a bone cell so I act to maintain the pressure on
me at x".  I don't know if this theory has any credence among
biologists.  

------------------------------

Date:  3 Apr 1981 0925-EST
From: Jeff Shulman <SHULMAN at RUTGERS>
Subject: The Gene Pool


As something to think about:

        As more medical progress is made more and more people, who 
would otherwise die (cripples, mutants, people born with birth
defects, etc.), are living a full life and sometimes are having
children.
        I am not saying they should or should not, but, they ARE 
screwing up the natural evolutionary trends (survival of the fittest 
and such).  The gene pool of the human population is slowly getting 
worse because of it.
        On '60 Minutes' a few weeks back they had a segment on some 
disease (the name escapes me) that was almost always passed on to 
offspring.  The females who had it decided on voluntary sterilization 
so they couldn't have children with this disease.
        Remember that this is strictly a personal opinion: people who 
do `fit' into this category of genetic `mutations' (for lack of a 
better way to put it) should NOT have children.  This should be the 
decision of those people should make on their own.  If not perhaps 
mandatory sterilization.
        I know, `who is to say a disease or condition is passed on to
their children or the chance is .01%'.  To that I say better safe than
sorry until genetic research can prove either way.  Adoption might be
an answer for these people.
        Can or should this be done?  Who knows.  It is a touchy
subject at best.

                                                        Jeff 

------------------------------

Date: 2 Apr 1981 2133-EST
From:   BURROWS         "Jim Burrows"    2-APR-1981 16:21  
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
Subj:   RE: "SFL Volume 3,Issues 76-81"

RE: Shrager's evolutionary dilemma

     The first time I heard this argument was in 1970 in a philosophy 
class, and I'm sure it's been around since at least Henri Bergson's 
time.  As I first encountered it, the example was bats. Clearly, bats 
are viable, and their flightless ancestors, which presumably resemble 
mice, make ecological sense, but what of the poor intermediary, whose 
half-developed wings won't allow it to fly, but make it significantly 
more helpless on the ground. How can it compete with things that are 
not so encumbered?  Somehow suggestions like Doug Phillips' flapping, 
wiggling pre-bird and other hypothetical intermediaries feel pretty 
unconvincing.

     Six years after I first it, I still hadn't heard a plausible 
intermediary suggested. Then I walked into the Smithsonian, and saw
the damned thing. It was a flying squirrel from Africa. It was the
biggest flying squirrel in the case, and it had one finger that was
about 5 times the length of the others.  It extended the flap out to
form something that really could be called a proto-wing. I stupid
there staring at it 'till the woman I was working for asked what was
wrong. I asked her if she saw anything unusual about the beast, and
she didn't.  After I explained that it was the counter example for a
really old argument, we started poking around in the stacks. (If you
ever get the opportunity to work at the Smithsonian - jump.) We found
another one, pickled in a jar. It's digit was even longer.

     I've since learned that there were only three such specimens in 
the country, and that until about the time I spotted it in DC, it (or 
at least the proto-wing) had never been written up in the journals. A 
friend of a friend independently spotted it in a Chicago museum, and 
used it for her thesis. I've also seen a picture in PBS's "Wild World 
of Animals" of another flying squirrel from Borneo whose hand is half 
way between its head and "wing-tip".

     I think there are several interesting aspects to this story.  
First, the counter-example to one of the oldest unrebutted arguments 
in the evolution debate has been on public display for years (30 or
40, if I remember correctly) without ever being noticed. Second, this
very interesting specimen has been collected and on public display for
years without being reported in the literature, which points out one
of the results of the information explosion. We're pushing the
fronteers of science and knowledge in general much faster than we can
explore the territory, let alone "colonize", to over extend a
metaphore.

     Finally, there's the beast itself and its relation to the
original argument (remember the argument?). At least in this case, and
more or less in the case of the eye, which was also used as an example
of untenable intermediaries, plausible extrapolations can finally be
made.  Using what we know about regular flying squirrels, bats, birds,
Pterasaurs, and these super-squirrels, (and I suppose the flying
snakes and lizards of Borneo) one can come up with a plausible
evolutionary path from ground dweller to a tree climber, to a tree
leaper (like sqirrels), to assisted leapers, to gliders, to gliders
that can actually gain altitude (WWoA claimed the Borneo flying
squirrel could), to true flyers, with nothing that can't compete. This
doesn't mean there aren't "aspects of organism that can not develope
in small steps since their full form is required in order to effect
the desired result at all."  It just means the jointed wing isn't it.
Anybody care to explain where bee wings came from?

     Sorry to get so long winded. Comes from too many philosophy
classes.

                                /s/ Brons

------------------------------

Date:  2 Apr 1981 2211-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Darwin, paleontology debate

        I took a course from S.J.Gould on the history of paleontology 
a few years ago.  A few comments:  1) you can't ever fully convince a
creationist that (s)he is wrong any more than you can convince a 
Darwinist of being wrong.  For one thing, any being powerful enough to
create the earth could create a fossil history, too.  Remember them
putting in the fossil layers in Hitchhiker's Guide?  2) To quote
Gould, "Though Darwin considered the paleontological record to be
mostly an embarrassment to his theory, he put up a brave show in his
chapter 'On the imperfection of the fossil record'."  The simple fact
of the matter is that there are big gaps in the fossil record.  Gould
said that anyone who has studied the fossil record knows (and he
should know) that it is \discontinuous/.  You get a layer containing
one group of fossils from a bunch of species, quite uniform
throughout, and then you get another layer, quite distinct, containing
new species which were not present in the previous layer.  To be sure,
there are a few relatively well-established sequences now (e.g. the
little horses) but all in all the "links" just aren't to be seen.  3)
What Darwin does in the Origin of Species is to document, extremely
carefully and exhaustively, the origin of subspecies.  (In fact,
Origin as we know it was just the \abstract/ of an enormous
multi-volume work which Darwin never got around to writing).  Darwin
did this so well that virtually everyone now agrees that subspecies do
evolve, and that this evolution is driven by natural selection.  
However, when it comes to the origin of species -- animals that can
produce fertile offspring are said to be members of the same species
-- Darwin just says that, in the same way, over longer periods of
time, you get a new species, a new genus, a new family, etc.  However,
Darwin does not provide any documentation of the origin of a species,
no more than we can today.  It has never been observed.  4) Darwin's
theory is very compelling, and the "state-of-the-art" Darwin theory is
in my opinion a good one (population genetics and Gould's
evolution-on-the-fringes stuff).  But I am a little surprised at the
closed-minded attitudes of some...why be so sure about things?  I
wonder if the theory of the ether was any less reasonable in its time
than Darwin's theory is now.  Which brings me to an SF writer's
question:  if you were writing an sf book and wanted to avoid its
looking silly in a few decades, like a lot of stuff from the 1930's
does today, what would you do?  What theories seem more likely to
last?  Is this an inherent long-term disadvantage of hard sf?
                                                --cat 

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  5-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #87
*** EOOH ***
Date:  5 APR 1981 1038-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #87
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 5 Apr 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 87

Today's Topics:
     SF Fandom - Prisoner Fan Club, SF Movies - So Bad It's Good,
   SF Topics - Gene Pool & Evolution of Flight & Creationism Debate
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4 Apr 81 10:16:25-PDT
From: mclure at Sri-Unix

There are two clubs listed in the ads section of LOCUS:


 The Prisoner Newsletter
 P.O. Box 1327
 Midland MI 48640

 The Green Dome
 Florence Hatcher
 824 W 176 St.
 NY, NY 10033

------------------------------

Date: 4 Apr 1981 02:32:05-PST
From: ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: Ain't late night TV wonderful?

        Here I am sitting up way past my bedtime, and instead of being
punished, my naughtiness is being rewarded by a local CBS affiliate 
showing a Japanese monster film "Destroy All Planets", which starts
out with a spaceship coming to attack the earth which is driven off by
a jet-driven tortoise whose jets they try to extinguish by smothering
the flames to deprive it of oxygen so it can't fly around in space.
It has inspired me to wonder how bad a movie has to be to be funny.
Obviously most of the Japanese horror films are tacky enough, but
something like (and here I may get in trouble) "The Black Hole" seems
just stupid and dull.
        The Japanese have no monopoly on this so-bad-it's-good stuff.
For example, there is a horrid little piece of tripe called "The Magic
Sword" which came out of Hollywood (date unknown) with, for example, a
Sir Pedro from Spain, a Sir John from England, a Sir Patrick from 
Ireland, a Sir Pierre from France, etc., plus the most unconvincing 
magic I've seen.  But they seem to produce it most consistently.  Some
Vincent Price films sort of fall in the middle: not good enough to be 
considered failures, but not bad enough to bother watching.  How bad 
does it have to get?

                Ken

P.S.  The flying tortoise appears to be a good guy.  At least the
whiz- kid Japanese boy scout says so, and if you can't trust the boy
scout, who can you trust?  And the spaceship talks to itself to tell
itself what it's doing and why, so it's probably psychotic.  (Maybe
that should have been a spoiler warning?)

------------------------------

Date: 4 April 1981 18:03-EST
From: James A. Cox <APPLE at MIT-AI>
Subject: Eugenics and congenital diseases


    I read with increasing pain a submission to SFL from Shulman at 
Rutgers.  In this submission he expresses several opinions which 
dismayed me because I had not realized that such beliefs were still 
held by responsible and intelligent people.

     In the first place, he says that the fact that people with 
genetic diseases have children is thwarting the "process of natural
selection" and causing the human gene-pool to deteriorate.  This is
not true.  To show that the gene-pool is "deteriorating", he would
have to assert that these people are having more than their "fair
share" of children; if everyone is having children, the gene-pool does
not "deteriorate" but instead remains the same.  Also, he fails to
grasp the fact that no single gene-pool is better or worse that any
other.  Natural selection will favor those people who have traits that
enable them to best survive through child-bearing years.  If a trait
has no effect on this, then it is not important as far as natural
selection is concerned.  Natural selection cannot be "corrupted,"
except by exactly the sort of eugenics practices that Mr. Shulman
encourages.

    Second, I hope that Mr. Shulman realizes that less scrupulous 
people have used exactly this same argument to justify practices that
most people would find evil.  And remember that their purpose was the
same as Mr. Shulman's:  to improve the human race.  Now of course I am
not suggesting that this is a parallel situation.  However, it is well
to keep the events of 1933-1945 in mind, especially when one advocates
mandatory sterilization.  Remember that mandatory sterilization has to
be enforced by the government, and slavery and the McCarthy era
adequately demonstrate that even the governments most committed to
individual liberty can be corrupted.

------------------------------

Date:  3 Apr 1981 (Friday) 2043-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 ( Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Evolution that is certainly not in Darwin:

I would like very much to write an article for The Journal of
Irreproducible Results on the evolutionary necessity of the Unicorn
[in particular] and other mythical creatures.  I think that some work
has been done in the folklore departments concerning the creation of
the Unicorn myth but I'd like to prove [by typical JIR-like reasoning
if need-be] that there Unicorn existed and was lost due to evolution
for some good reason.  I think that this would be a fun thing to think
about.  Anyone who suggests anything interesting buys themselves an
acknowledgments if the article becomes reality.

-- Jeff


[ The Journal of Irreproducible results is mentioned in Issues 60
  and 63 of this current volume (3).  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date:  4 Apr 1981 1201-PST
From: Mike Peeler <ADMIN.MDP at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Evolution -- what *NOT* to object to

    Some people object to the theory of evolution because they do not 
see how it works.  Perhaps a few simple observations will make it 
clearer.  Mutations are not physical anomalies, but gene changes.  
Purely physical advantages and disadvantages are uninteresting because
they have only a short-term effect -- one generation.

    The process of gene transcription has (somehow) developed so as 
not to make mistakes.  Despite this, so many cells divide, copying so 
many genes, that mistakes are bound to happen in any complex organism,
due to cosmic rays or viral attack or clerical error.  These are the 
exception rather than the rule.  Furthermore, the only mutations that 
matter are those that will affect the genetic makeup of the offspring.
Thus mutations with any long-term effect at all are rare.

    When they do happen, most mutations do nothing.  You may have 
heard that most mutations are detrimental, but that is not true, 
because most traits are nonessential.  A random mutation is likely not
to affect its own survival.  Those genes that are detrimental die out,
those that make no difference survive, and those that are beneficial 
proliferate.  (The really good genes know how to make friends and 
influence congresspeople, spreading from family to family, invading 
nation upon nation, and infecting each and every body in succeeding 
generations until the entire species has become infested with ugly 
monsters!)  This spreading of the wealth, as opposed to mere survival,
has proven the downfall of many an ambitious pesticide, which, in 
their eagerness to stamp out their pest, merely invoked natural 
selection in favor of resistant strains.

    Each mutation consists of one gene from many -- very many.  
Evolution is exceedingly slow.  Chickens might take weeks, or even 
months, to perfect their beautiful lips.  Nature does not have in mind
some ideal organism, the best possible life form.  She has no plan, or
at any rate, the theory does not require she have one.  The one thing 
nature does have is time to let the many and varied branches of life 
try their little undirected experiments.

    Not all of the possibilities must be tried; some variations of 
protoplasmic architectures never get a chance to prove themselves good
or bad, to dominate or die.  If they go untried, they have been ipso 
facto selected against.  There is no need to traverse the entire space
of possible mutations (moron this later).  We do not see a lot of 
weird, ultimately doomed creatures roaming the earth, because they 
have all descended from creatures which survived and which they 
resemble.  We do not see a vast panorama of nature's evolutionary 
pattern because our window is too small.  We have every reason to be 
impatient and nature has none.

    Modern population genetics treats Darwin's theory of evolution as 
only a first-order approximation.  Natural selection in this form is 
perhaps better described as "survival of the mediocre" rather than of 
the "fittest".  The problem with being "fit" is that taking too much 
advantage of the environment becomes a liability when it changes.  The
fact is that a gene without particular disadvantages is likely to 
perpetuate itself even though it does not become widespread.  The 
doctrine of social Darwinism, which Jeff Shulman seems to have come 
upon, says we should purge the unfit from our society.  Living in a 
society which does not kill them is a survival trait that makes the 
weak viable.  They are ipso facto fit.  Man has often found unexpected
value from its useless hangers-on.  Like, for example, the fellow who 
first invented the wheel was a bum who used to loiter around the 
entrances to coed caves studying the curvature of heels.

                      -------------------------

    Readers with a mathematical inclination may wish to skip to the 
next paragraph.

    The space of possible mutations is not really a question of 
cardinality per se, since it is finite and finite cardinals are 
uninteresting as cardinalities.  If m is an upper bound on the number 
of states any gene has and n is an upper bound on the number of genes 
any organism has, then m to the n is an upper bound on the space of 
possible mutations.  These upper bounds still exist if mutations are 
allowed to increase the number of genes per organism and/or the number
of states per gene, since it would still take an infinite number of 
mutations to prevent the existence of either of these bounds.  An 
infinite number of mutations can only occur after an infinite length 
of time, as any finite time period consists of a finite union of 
intervals in each of which only a finite number of mutations occur, 
since a replication can change at most all the genes.  If you wait 
forever, of course, then you might find that the number of genes goes 
wild at least every so often, in such a way that any upper bound is 
eventually exceeded.  But then, do you really have all eternity to 
waste like that, when you could be watching old B movies on TV?

                                Here's lookin' at Euclid,

                                                        Mike Peeler

------------------------------

Date:  4 Apr 1981 at 1436-PST
From: Andrew Knutsen <knutsen at SRI-UNIX>
Subject: evolutionary intermediates

        What about "flying fish"? These fish can glide for several
hundred feet from a wave crest, if my memory serves me correctly. I
have pulled several other very strange looking things out of the
ocean, too, as little ocean fishing as I have done.
        The argument that "fish don't evolve into birds" is
irrelevant.  We're talking about a potential process, not actual
history.
        I think one of the main blocks to acceptance of evolution
theory (aside from dogma) is that the time spans involved are very
difficult (if not impossible) to fit into the human brain. The phrase
"four billion years" is easy to rattle off, and Carl Sagans graphic
calander helps a little, but...

------------------------------

DRW@MIT-AI 04/04/81 00:27:54 
Re:  Surge mechanics, limitations on size of effects

The fundamental equation of surge mechanics can be phrased:
                    F = m ( a + D da/dt )
where D is a constant that depends (possibly) on the composition of an
object, but not its mass.  Note D has the dimensions of time.
Suggestions have been made that D is about 1 millisecond to get the
effects surge mechanics is claimed to give.

I have stored an analysis of the implications of surge mechanics in 
USERS1;DRW SURGE.  The basic result is that any bound system
accumulates energy with a time constant proportional to the "orbit
period" squared of the system and inversely proportional to D.  Since
we can observe if bound systems accumulate energy, we can put upper
bounds on D.  The best (smallest) upper bounds come from systems with
very small "orbit period" that we can show cannot be accumulating
energy very quickly.

If D is much larger than 1E-22 sec, then gasses produce significant
amounts of heat.  If D is much larger than 1E-44 sec, then atomic
nuclei generate significant amounts of energy over laboratory time
scales (100 sec).  If D is much larger than 1E-60 sec, then atomic
nuclei generate significant amounts of energy over cosmological time
scales (1E9 years).

Dale


[ The file containing the mention analysis resides at MIT-AI as
  AI:USERS1;DRW SURGE.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  6-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #88
*** EOOH ***
Date:  6 APR 1981 0708-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #88
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 6 Apr 1981       Volume 3 : Issue 88

Today's Topics:
                    SF Movies - So Bad It's Good,
             SF Topics - Gene Pool & Evolution of Flight
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 5 Apr 1981 08:51:58-PST
From: CSVAX.douglas at Berkeley
Subject: destroy all planets.(1968 Japanese)

Other interesting logic in that movie was the enemy with its six
striped ball space ship notices the giant tortoise loves children and
will do anything to save and protect them, kidnaps two children and
orders the tortoise to do as it says else they kill the children.
What they tell him to do is to kill many people(including hundreds of
children) by destroying a dam and stomping tokyo like it was a
cockroach living in a deck of cards.  The tortoise see the children
being destroyed by his actions.
        hum??? ps: Well at least there wasn't a giant talking
cauliflower in this movie.

------------------------------

Date: 4 Apr 1981 1421-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Touch-Tone DNA; Chlorinating the gene pool

The idea of setting up communications via DNA (in such prize packages 
as viruses) is certainly an interesting one.  Of course, this idea was
one of the concepts mentioned in "Andromeda Strain".

"Egads!  Everyone on the planet is dying of Multinetzian Plague."  
"Guess someone was trying to reach us..."

----

It is certainly true that modern civilization tends to disrupt the 
overall path of evolution (whatever THAT is!)  However, why stop 
complaining at genetic diseases?  Ever use antibiotics for a bad 
infection?  If you did, you disrupted evolution... since you might 
otherwise have died and not been able to pass along the propensity for
that particular disease.  Wear glasses?  Shame on you!  If glasses 
didn't allow you function well in society, you might not survive and
myopia could be wiped out!

I submit that the really BIG issue that is altering the gene pool is
the differential number of children being born in different areas of
the world, and even between different socioeconomic groups within the
U.S. itself.

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date:  5 Apr 1981 2130-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: dysgenics and artificial natural selection

I was at one time quite concerned with the problem of the dysgenic
effects of supportive medicine, as expressed by J.Shulman.  I even
wrote a paper (for an ethics class!)  advocating selective
infanticide.  However, being genuinely concerned with the issue, I
wrote a simulation of the genetic pool deterioration effect and ran
it.  It turns out that the population shifts slightly in the short run
but no continuing long-term shift is evident--that is, the bad gene
does not spread aggressively, just up to a reasonably low equilibrium,
and stays there.  I was somewhat surprised by the result, but was not
able to discover any mistake.  So, take heart.

--JoSH 

------------------------------
Date:  5 April 1981 1500-EST (Sunday)
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject:  Eugenics

Evolution is an interesting filter: what we claim about "eugenics" and
"purity of the gene pool" and such is directly related to some
idealized model of man; whether or not this idealized model has
anything to do with reality seems to escape most people; the stronger
they advocate eugenics, the further from reality they seem to get.
What was a survival characteristic even as little as a few hundred
years ago may be irrelevant today (say, propensity towards diabetes).
The point made in the recent SFL #86, that a survival characteristic
is what allows someone to survive and bear children, is a quite
sufficient criterion.  We have lost a lot of primitive skills (if
indeed they existed) because they are no longer necessary.  If they
ever become necessary, only those who possess them will survive; if
nobody has them, we are all on equal terms and the race may or may not
survive.  Deciding what these characteristics are is sort of hard in
the absence of any environmental pressure.  For example, sickle-cell
anemia is a survival characteristic in areas in which malaria is
present.  Do we, or do we not, decide that a family history of
sickle-cell anemia is grounds for sterilization?  Or only if one lives
in certain areas?

The basic problem with all "eugenic" techniques is that they require 
government intervention.  And once you decide that diabetics,
sickle-cell anemics, etc. should not propagate, what about paranoids,
schizoids, etc.?  What about any tendency towards rebellion?
Independent thought?  Black/Red/Yellow/Off-white skin?  Non-blond
hair?  Forget it.  I like the pure evolutionary approach---those who
survive, survive.  And we get Steinmetz, Edison, ...

[After all, survival is a racial characteristic (in the sense of human
race, as opposed, say, to races of porpoises).  If the race can evolve
sufficient skills that sharp sense of smell is no longer required, or 
complete body hair, why is any other characteristic which our
intelligence can make irrelevant important, such as diabetes,
hemophilia, etc.]

Even Republicans should like it; the ultimate government-unregulated 
free-enterprise system...
                                        joe

------------------------------

Date:  5 Apr 1981 1856-EST
From: Jeff Shulman <SHULMAN at RUTGERS>
Subject: Now don't get me wrong, I was just playing 'Devils Advocate'


        I just wish to state that the degeneration of the gene pool by
current advances in technology was originally mentioned by some
prominent person in this society.  I would be the first person to
state that such practices of mandatory sterilization would be totally
wrong.  Yes I am aware such practices were tried before in history, to
my own people in fact in Nazi Germany.
        What ever happens to the gene pool is evolutionary anyway.
Whether it be via natural, natural selection or manmade (some could
argue this is also natural selection), natural selection.
        Back as a senior in high school my english teacher said that
we smarter people (it was honors english, heaven knows how *I* wound
up in it) tend to generally have fewer children since we are aware of
the consequences (such as mass starvation from overpopulation, etc.).
While the dumber sector (she mentioned people on welfare who just have
babies to get more welfare) will just keep having babies.
        I completely forgot about this until recently when I read a
short story (in OMNI perhaps) where just this future scenario
happened:

        Only a handful of people knew how to operate or take care of
anything and the rest just lived off them.

It was in OMNI!  and of course it was in the issue on evolution
(October 80).  The name is "The Marching Morons" by C. M. Kornbluth.
I highly suggest it.
        Anyway, let's stop talking biology and get back to SF!

                                                        Jeff 

------------------------------

Date: 5 April 1981 12:43-EST
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Programming with DNA

I'm glad to see that the level of discussion on evolution/creation has
improved over the last week.

The best way to visualize how DNA makes bodies is that the body is a 
collection of tiny message passing computers.  Each cell has its own 
control mechanism, and cells communicate by passing chemical messages
to and from neighbors and the fluid intercellular medium (including
blood and lymph).  The question is, how to best make such a system?
The most effective (and easiest to obtain by natural selection) is not
to have a central controller, but to have each cell respond to its
neighbors in a way that spontaneously causes the desired structures to
arise.  This is actually a lot easier to do than it seems; human
engineers have just been so oriented toward "make a blueprint, then
make each piece that the blueprint specifies, then assemble the pieces
according to the blueprint" that we have essentially no examples of
self-organizing structures in the mechanical world.

The fact is, that most parts of the body have their form "programmed"
only partially.  For instance, certain chemicals administered to
pregnant women can cause various malformations of their children.
Clearly, these malformations are not genetically programmed.  However,
if a limb is misshapen, it still has all parts supplied with blood,
nerves, etc., and is covered with reasonably normal skin.  In fact,
almost none of us look like the pictures in Grey's Anatomy, we all
have small deviations from the normal anatomy.  (Mostly in the wiring
of blood vessels, nerves, and muscles.  Also note that these are the
deviations least likely to be maladaptive, and so there is no
selective pressure to evolve mechanisms to suppress them.)

Another nice example is the single-gene mutation "polydactyly" (extra 
fingers).  This gene causes the bearer to have six fingers on each
hand and six toes on each foot.  The fingers and toes are perfectly
normal.  This is clearly a mutation in the part of code that controls
the number of digits on each limb.  Proof that the form of each digit
is controlled by the same code is that mutations that affect the form
of one digit usually affect them all.  See "law of coordinated
variation" in Origin of Species for more examples.

Nor is this feedback-dominated behavior found only during development.
If you remove one kidney from an animal, it can survive quite nicely
(there is plenty of extra capacity).  But, the other kidney enlarges
and makes more filtering units.  There is some feedback loop that
detects overuse of the available kidney capacity and causes more to be
developed.

Another effect is the continuous remodeling of bone.  Bone substance
is not deposited once and then left forever.  It is continuously being
reconstructed.  If a fracture heals and leaves sharp edges and areas
of high stress, bone is removed from the edges and deposited at the
areas of high stress.  The process is controlled by piezo-electrically
generated electric fields in the bone.  This is exactly the sort of
feeble-minded but quite adequate control mechanisms that one would
expect natural selection to develop.  There was an article on this in
Scientific American several years ago.

Now, if we go down a level and consider how the DNA controls the cell,
we see about the same thing.  Each gene (with its associated control
regions, etc.) is a little processor that passes chemical messages
with other genes.  Some of these messages control the actions of the
cell per se, others are just control signals.  A few of these messages
are actually processors in their own right (e.g., the proteins which
operate the impulse generating system of nerve cells).

Mutations to the DNA can take many forms:
        Modification of a single nucleotide
        Insertion or deletion of one to hundreds of thousands of 
nucleotides
        Exchange of homologous portions of the DNA on homologous 
chromosomes
        Major cut-and-paste operations on chromosomes themselves 
(inversions, transpositions, etc.)
        Total loss or duplication of a chromosome
        Complete duplication of the genome (this appears to be
nonviable in mammals, but is not uncommon in plants and other animals)
        Incorporation of DNA carried by a virus vector (I know it
sounds ridiculous, but there was a "reliable" report that the house
cat has some genes that are clearly of primate origin a few years ago.
Anyway, it's conceivable.)

Study of the genetic differences between species leads to the subject
of "molecular evolution", which gives very strong evidence that not
only have species descended from common ancestors, but that they have
done so by natural selection.  More about this in a further letter.
All I will say here is that we and the chimpanzees differ in no more
than 0.5% of our DNA, and probably less.  Some biologists wonder how
we can be so different looking with so little change in DNA.  But,
given the current research in the natural behavior of chimps, are we
really that different?

This is a very hot topic of current research.  For those of you at
MIT, there is a book, "Principles of Human Biochemical Genetics"
reserved for 20.216 in the StudCenter library that discusses many of
these issues.

As far as John Redford's idea of spreading a virus throughout space,
might not stage trees be better?

Mike Peeler's bringing up flying fish is interesting.  Suppose there
were no birds, and there was something worth eating a few inches
(centimeters?)  above the surface of the water.  The flying fish uses
its ability only to escape predators.  But, ONCE THEY ATTAINED THE
ABILITY TO GET INTO THE AIR, there would be great selective pressure
for flying fish to become better flyers.  This would present later
naturalists with the interesting puzzle to figure out how the flying
fish attained the ability to fly, since rudimentary flying ability is
no good for catching bugs in midair.  Of course, the idea that crude
flight evolved as a means to avoid predators would be dismissed as
pure speculation.  This example is discussed in more detail in Origin.

May your genes be fruitful and multiply,

Dale

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  7-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #89
*** EOOH ***
Date:  7 APR 1981 0721-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #89
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Tuesday, 7 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 89

Today's Topics:
              Administrativia - Not a Missing Digest,
     SF Events - Shuttle landing, SF Fandom - Prisoner Fan Club,
SF Books - Sturgeon on DNA ("The Golden Helix") & Grinnell Iowa in SF,
         SF Movies - So Bad It's Good,  SF TV - Buck Rogers,
   SF Topics - Evolution of Unicorns & Gene Pool & DNA programming
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 6 Apr 1980 19:32 PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - Not a Missing Digest

This is issue 89 of the digest.  For the past week all digests have
been incorrectly numbered, due to an unfortunate oversight in the
April 1 and April 2 digests.  Both of these digests were numbered
83, when in actuality the April 1 digest was 83 and the April 2
digest was 84.  All of the intervening digests that have been
distributed (84 to 87) should have thier issue number incremented
by one.  The archives will be corrected so as to reflect this
change in numbering.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 6 Apr 1981 10:57 PST
From: HOFFMAN at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Shuttle Landing


   A while ago, several people said they would be trying to watch the
first shuttle landing at Edwards AFB.  A quick suggestion now that it
might happen this week:  SFL folks who are there ought to wear their
SFL T-Shirts if they can.  I probably will be there.  -- Rodney
Hoffman

------------------------------

Date:  6 Apr 1981 1153-EST
From: KERN at RUTGERS
Subject: Probably more frustrating than useful msg about "Prisoner"
         fanclubs


        There is a British fan club of "The Prisoner" called "Six of
One", which has annual conventions at the Welsh hotel where the show
was filmed.  They also offer Prisoner memorabilia: buttons, shirts,
Rovers, etc. I heard a couple of years ago that they were setting up
an American branch of the club.  The people in Mensa's Prisoner SIG
probably know how to get in touch with 6of1. Alas, I can't tell you
how to get in touch with either group. If you find someone who saves
copies of the Mensa Bulletin, you could find the address of the
Prisoner SIG in one of the quarterly SIG listings.

Be seeing you.  -kbk 

------------------------------

Date:  6 Apr 1981 (Monday) 0917-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 ( Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Some related sf for a "SF" digest -- Sturgeon on DNA

Quite by accident I picked up "The Golden Helix" last evening.  In
this short, Sturgeon conceives a world where fully developed (and
successful) life forms are "reverse evolved" into their origins [by
some undiscussed, and irrelevant, radiation effect].  The purpose of
this unmutation is supposedly to strip the gene pool of the "physical
factors" that make humans human and leave intact the "seeds of
intellect" in the form of what amount to gene pods.  [This description
certainly does no justice to Sturgeon] The real interesting part of
"The Golden Helix" is its name and the use of a certain object [the 
namesake] to symbolize this reverse evolution and then re-evolution
that the story discusses.  Why is this interesting?  The story was
written in approximately 10 years before the helical structure of DNA
was discovered!  [Del (I think) puts out a collection called "The
Golden Helix" which contains an author's intro indicating this
revelation.]

-- Jeff

[Since I started it I thought I might try to bring it back to SF a
bit]

------------------------------

DRW@MIT-AI 04/06/81 10:32:43 
Re:  Grinnell, Iowa in SF

Being a native of Grinnell, Iowa, I am interested in any references to
it in the literature.  It appears to me that it is referenced more
than would be statistically expected, given its population is somewhat
less than 10,000.  The references I have now are:
        Heinlein         Puppet Masters
        Bradbury         Martian Chronicles
If any of you have run across Grinnell, Iowa in your reading,
could you drop me a note?

Many thanks,

Dale

------------------------------

Date:  6 Apr 1981 1548-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Japanese films and Target Earth

        I don't know about "Destroy all Planets", but some Japanese 
films seem much stupider in their American release versions than they
do in the original.  Apparently, many of them are much longer (about 3
hours) and are cut drastically for the American audience.  And
typically it is the dialogue scene which explains the plot which gets
cut, and the monster steps on city scene which remains.  One of the
Godzilla movies, I think, was really mangled...the whole plot centered
around the capture and attempted rescue of a very very VIP, (a prince
I think), but all the footage involving this character was cut until
he is saved in the last minute of the film.  As you can guess, the
plot did not appear to be well motivated.
        The worst film I've seen in a long time was "Space Probe:  
Target Earth", on local TV a week or two ago.  It was an hour and a
half of film documentary on the Siberian explosion (including brief
talks with Niven and Pournelle) thought to be a black hole or a meteor
or a comet, put together with 10 minutes of an actor talking with a
CRT and a frog (pretending to be studying Earth), 2 minutes of "time
warp" of 3 women wearing aluminum foil and pyramids, trying to look
like alien explorers crashing into the earth, and 15 minutes of world
war I and II documentaries (!).  Talk about low budget....

                                        --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 06 Apr 1981 0835-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Buck Rogers   

By JERRY BUCK AP Television Writer
    LOS ANGELES (AP) - John Mantley, who has a reputation as a doctor
of sick TV shows, has been attending to an anemic ''Buck Rogers'' this
year.
    The patient has shown signs of improvement, but the likelihood of
a full recovery seems remote.
    ''What I'm putting on the air today is a far cry from what I ought
to be doing,' said Mantley. ''The holes in some scripts are 
embarrassing, but we don't have time to correct them.''
    Mantley, who previously produced ''Wild Wild West,'' ''Gunsmoke'' 
and ''How the West Was Won,'' took over the NBC series after it had 
limped along for two years.
    ''This is absolutely the most difficult project I've ever done,''
he said. ''You've got to create a new world every week. You've got a
new wardrobe, new location and all kinds of effects. We have enormous 
wardrobe problems, enormous set problems, enormous makeup problems, 
enormous budget problems.
    ''You spend so much time on the effects you don't have time for
the human stories. Without the actors' strike, which gave us time to 
prepare, this show would have self-destructed in a few weeks.''
    In the Thursday night series, Gil Gerard stars as Buck Rogers, a 
present-day astronaut who is frozen while on a space mission and wakes
up in the 25th century. Erin Gray stars as Wilma Deering. The series 
is adapted from the comic strip created in 1929 by Dick Calkins and 
Phil Nowlan.
    Mantley said he agreed to take over the show for several reasons.
For one, he owed favors to people, not the least of whom was Fred 
Silverman, president of NBC. ''Fred said it has potential, and maybe 
you can fix it,'' he said. ''I owed a lot to Fred.''
    Another reason, he said, ''I've always loved science fiction. My 
first book, 'The 27th Day,' was science fiction and was made into a 
movie. I wrote science fiction for the pulps, and I own the rights to 
Isaac Asimov's 'I, Robot' and 'The Rest of the Robots.'
    ''And the third reason,'' Mantley said, ''is that the remuneration
was extraordinary.''
    He wouldn't mention a figure, but reports in the industry indicate
his salary is not merely extraordinary - it is astronomical. Few 
television stars make as much. The reason he was able to command such 
a salary was that Universal was anxious to recover its enormous 
investment in the show. If Mantley could just keep ''Buck Rogers'' 
going a few more years, the syndication and merchandising value of the
series would increase greatly.
    After looking at only a few shows, Mantley said he knew he had to 
drastically revamp the show. ''For my taste, I thought the shows were 
empty,'' he said, ''but I don't think I've done a hell of a lot 
better.
    ''The first thing I did was get them away from Earth. I felt it as
a restrictive atmosphere, and so did the network. I came up with the 
concept of the Searcher, a spaceship looking for the 'lost tribes of 
Earth.' In every great civilization there have been migrations, from 
the Puritans to the boat people. It seemed to be to be logical that 
after the atomic war people would have left Earth.''
    He also set out to give Buck Rogers more dimension as a character.
''I wanted to stretch Gil Gerard as I did James Arness on 'Gunsmoke,'
'' he said.
    Some of the changes caused controversy. Some viewers had
complained that the voice of Twiki the robot was too cute. But even
more viewers demanded the return of Mel Blanc as the voice. ''So we
brought Mel back and got still more letters,'' Mantley said.
    One characteristic of science fiction fans is that they are not 
reluctant to take pen in hand to express a thought about a show.
    ''It seems astounding,'' said Mantley. ''A thousand years ago when
I did 'Wild Wild West' I never got letters telling me how to do the 
show. Now we get some very intelligent letters that go into great 
detail. And some are violently opposed to the changes. In 11 years of 
'Gunsmoke' I don't think I got more than a handful of letters 
expressing anger over a show. But science fiction has very, very 
devoted fans.''

------------------------------

Date: 6 Apr 1981 09:28 PST
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: The Evolution of Unicorns

With regard to doing research about Unicorns. . .a couple of
acquaintances of mine in the Berkeley area have done extensive
research on this subject. They came to realize that until the period
of the Renaissance, the Unicorn was pictured as a goat with one horn,
which only later turned into a horse with a horn. They reasoned that a
one-horned goat was much more likely to have been real, since goats do
have horns naturally. They then set out on a careful breeding plan,
and about two years ago, the first real, live unicorn was born on 
their ranch, and named Lancelot. Please do not take me for a kook. I
was very scepticle myself, but I saw and touched and played with
Lancelot at the Fantasy Worlds Convention held in Berkeley February of
this year. It seems that there may be something besides just genetics
involved, although that helps. When I asked Morning Glory, she said
something akin to Bonsai was also involved but would go no further
since their lawyer is trying to patent the process.

The point of this experiment which worked is that Unicorns, although
now considered mythical, really existed. They were, perhaps, sports,
probably rare.  But they have a reputation for being smarter than
others of their breed, and fiercer. Historically, mythically, they
were used as herd leaders, because they were better as defending the
group than their more normal counterparts. Several half-brothers and
half-sisters of Lancelot are expected to be born this spring, and the
people who are working with these unusual creatures will be starting
to show them around at some limited Science Fiction/Fantasy events. If
you are interested, I will try to dig up the address for writing for
more info. Please respond to me directly; if interest is high, I will
send the info to SF-LOVERS.

Cheryl

------------------------------

Date: 6 Apr 81 12:11:24-PDT
From: mclure at Sri-Unix
Subject: concerning 'unicorns'

I, too, have seen this thing... at a local SF convention, and on t.v.
in the Bay Area. However, it seems more like a simple case of a couple
of charlatans (one named Morninglory, no less) pulling the wool over
people's eyes. It is unfortunate that they can sell so many doo-dads
and knick-knacks to naive people.

[ Lancelot has been mentioned in the digest before in issue 66 of
  this volume, Friday, March 13.  It was in connection with the
  San Jose Convention that was held at that time.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 6 Apr 1981 11:38 PST
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Gene Pool

While we're deciding which people to throw overboard:  I once heard
that there is presently a "weak genetic link" between nearsightedness
and intelligence.  Such a choice I have for you.....

------------------------------

Date:  6 Apr 1981 1036-MST
From: Spencer W. Thomas <THOMAS at UTAH-20>
Subject: Genes from Viruses

There are quite a few people running around today with some virus 
genes in their genome.  When the Salk vaccine was first developed, it
came from monkeys.  It seems that some of these monkeys were infected
with a virus called SV40 (Simian Virus 40) which can also infect
humans.  Well, the vaccine carried these viruses along with it, and
they inserted their genetic material into the genetic material of the
people who were vaccinated.  It seems to be a passive virus, but may
cause cancer.  Anyway, this is well documented in the biological
literature, and there are even conferences about SV40.  If anybody
wants some literature pointers, I can probably get something from one
of my biologist friends.

-S 

------------------------------

Date: 6 April 1981 1733-EST
From: Paul Hilfinger at CMU-10A
Subject: Use of viruses for communication

How do you build a virus that really will multiply when it reaches its
destination?  Natural viruses, by and large, seem to be rather picky
about their hosts.  Can they be built so that they'll be happy in a
rather wide range of possible conditions?  After all, even if we stick
to a protein-based biology, there's still plenty of room for small
variations that would make life difficult for most self-respecting
organisms.  Mightn't a bacterium (one thatform spores, that is) be a
better choice?

Paul Hilfinger

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  8-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #90
*** EOOH ***
Date:  8 APR 1981 0705-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #90
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Wednesday, 8 Apr 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 90

Today's Topics:
                   SF Events - Space Shuttle Landing,
   SF Fandom - Prisoner Fan Clubs, SF Books - A is for Andromeda,
        SF TV - Outer Limits & Gene Pool & Search for Planets 
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  7 Apr 1981 0853-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: SPACE SHUTTLE LANDING

From the official letter from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center:

"We are issuing car passes for at least 30,000 vehicles to this site
and traffic will be limited to back roads.  The State of California
traffic department estimates that it will be only able to move 1,000
vehicles per hour so a massive traffic jam could occur."

They have a 24-hour telephone information number:

"A 24-hour telephone information service will be operated from
Lancaster, California, and Washington, D.C., to provide recorded
Shuttle flight status and hours of operation for the Guest Center.
The number in Lancaster is (805) 945 6776.  The number in Washington
is (202) 755 8363."

I haven't tried the phone numbers.  I hope this is of to use to some
readers.  --Bill 

------------------------------

Date:  7 Apr 1981 (Tuesday) 0751-PST
From: DWS at LLL-MFE
Subject: Prisoner Fan Clubs

The address of the MENSA Prisoner SIG is:

  Prisoner:
  Jean-Marc Lofficier
  382 Palos Verdes Bl.  #3
  Redondo Beach, CA 90277

SIG dues are $4/yr, including newsletter (6/yr).  Sample is $.50 &
SASE.

MENSA address (for prospective members) is:

  American MENSA Limited
  Membership Information
  1701 West Third Street, Ste. 1-R
  Brooklyn, NY 11223
  (212) 376-1925

For those not motivated to take an I.Q. test to see if they qualify, 
MENSA accepts numerous other tests.  (E.G. if your SAT combined math 
and verbal exceeds 1300 (for tests prior to 9/77) or 1250 (test later 
than 9/77), or your combined GRE math and verbal exceeds 1250, then 
you qualify).  Then San Francisco chapter has a membership of about 
2000, and is fairly active -- parties every week.  I'd be glad to 
supply anybody with more information.

-- Dave Smith ------

------------------------------

Date:  7 Apr 1981 1630-PST
From: CSD.SPREITZER at SU-SCORE
Subject: bio-communication

I seem to vaguely recall a story titled something like "A is for
Andromeda", in which (one way) intergalactic communication is achieved
by send instruction on how to build & program a computer system that
then "grew" an ambassador.

     - S'mike 

------------------------------

Date:  7 Apr 1981 0927-PST
From: Achenbach at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Outer Limits in the Bay Area


        For those if you in the SF Bay Area, in case you haven't
noticed yet, channel 20 has moved the Outer Limits to a much more
reasonable time: Saturday at 10:00 PM and Sunday at 8:00 PM (it used
to be Friday and Saturday at 1:00AM)

Hot Damn!!

/Mike 

------------------------------

Date:  7 Apr 1981 1700-PST
From: First@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Rover Bubblegum/Undone evolution

Two comments/questions:

1) I see in the message about the Prisoner "6 in 1" club that there is
memorabilia for sale, including "Rover" (for those Prisoner-virgins, 
"rover" is this device/creature/thing (?) that resembles a giant 
bubble of pink bubblegum which could track people down and engulf 
them, with sometimes fatal results).  Exactly what was Rover made of?
Is it just a huge pink balloon?  (I would give anything to go to one
of those conventions at the Village!!)

2) Speaking of aberrations in the gene pool, it could be argued that 
th entire direction of human evolution has been a tremendous mistake:
If nature (and genes) have a single purpose (or at least inclination),
it is to transfer some part of the genes to the next generation.
   With the advent of intelligence as a trait, evolution has outdone
(and maybe undone) itself.  The most significant trait which
distinguishes man from primates is the vastly greater intelligence, so
one could imagine why intelligence as a trait has been selected for.
But now that our intelligence has given us the ability to pollute the
environment and virtually destroy ourselves and everything else on the
planet by atomic war, it would seem that intelligence of this order
maybe wasn't such a good idea after all, at least from nature's point
of view.  Then again, maybe a nuclear holocaust is nature's way of
eliminating this "undesirable" trait.
   (But w/o intelligence, where would the SF-LOVERS list be, or even 
the ARPANET)

  --Michael 

------------------------------

Date: 04 Apr 1981 0827-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Search for Planets 

    By Albert Sehlstedt Jr.
    (c) 1981 The Baltimore Sun (Field News Service)
     GREENBELT, Md. - There are about 10 other suns near enough to the
Earth's corner of the Milky Way that may have planets visible through 
the space telescope, according to an astronomer associated with the 
project. The fundamental question, of course, is: Are there people on 
those planets?
     The space telescope, to be launched into a 310-mile-high orbit of
the Earth in 1985 by the manned space shuttle, ought to be able to 
detect such planets if any of them are relatively large, said James A.
Westphal, professor of planetary science at the California Institute
of Technology, Pasadena.
     Finding other planets in the universe would be a key step in 
determining the answer to the age-old question of whether there is 
other life - similar to life on Earth - somewhere in the enormous 
expanse of the universe.
     Professor Westphal, the leader of a team of scientists making a 
planetary camera for the space telescope, was at the National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center 
here last week for a scientific meeting evaluating the current status 
of the flying scope.
    Goddard will send operational radio commands to the telescope in 
response to requests of astronomers viewing the skies from the Space 
Telescope Science Institute, to be built on the Homewood campus of the
Johns Hopkins University.
    Westphal said in an interview that there are two ways the
telescope would be able to detect planets in other solar systems.
    The first way, which he called a ''marginal'' possibility, would
be to see them directly through the instrument in the same manner that
a backyard astronomer looks at Mars or Saturn.
    The other way would be to use the telescope to detect a
perturbation - or wobble - in one of the suns under observation. This
knowledge would indicate that the particular sun in the eye of the
scope was feeling the gravitational pull of a nearby object, invisible
though it might be from the environs of Earth.
    A planet would have to be quite large - the size of a Jupiter, 
perhaps - for it to be visible against the bright light emanating from
the star it was orbiting, Professor Westphal explained.
    To put it another way, an astronomer somewhere else in this galazy
might be able to spot Jupiter or Saturn in this solar system, but 
would not find Earth, which is not only much smaller than those two 
planets but closer to the sun's bright light.
    The Cal Tech astronomer said he was personally interested in 
focusing the telescope on a neighboring galaxy, designated M-87, which
has a ''very, very large black hole - one of those things where 
everything is falling into it and disappearing.''
     Looking through the space telescope, Professor Westphal said, he 
would hope to be able to say of M-87: ''Yes, it really does have that 
black hole in the middle.''
     Black holes are former stars which, after collapsing into an 
extremely dense state, have an extraordinarily powerful gravitational 
field. The field is so strong that nothing - not even visible light or
radio waves - can escape from it.
    Another object of interest for the space telescope, Professor 
Westphal said, would be Pluto, one of the outer planets of this solar 
system that can only be seen now as a point of light in the sky.
    The space telescope will be able to see the shape of Pluto that 
astronomers believe has a moon orbiting it.
    Other fascinating objects of discovery may be things in the
universe that scientists would not even guess exist, Westphal said.
Other astronomers share that opinion.
    ''There's a long history of that in astronomy,'' the Cal Tech 
scientist continued, citing the example of Galileo looking through his
rudimentary scope in the Seventeenth Century and finding craters on
the moon.
    ''This is almost as big a step as Galileo building his
telescope,'' Professor Westphal said of the space telescope project.
    The space telescope, which will have a 95-inch mirror, is by no 
means the largest such instrument in the world (the one on Palomar 
Mountain in Southern California has a 200-inch mirror, for example) 
but it will operate with the incalculable advantage of being above the
veil of the Earth's atmosphere.
    (There are several advantages to building telescopes with mirrors
- called reflecting telescopes - one of them being that the
instruments can be made much larger).
    With the reflecting space telescope, astronomers expect to behold 
much of the universe with a clarity never before possible.
    The telescope will have a 15-year life and crews aboard the space 
shuttle can fly up to repair the instrument if necessary.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  9-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #91
*** EOOH ***
Date:  9 APR 1981 0646-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #91
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 9 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 91

Today's Topics:
                        SF Events - SFL Tshirts,
   SF Books - A is for Andromeda & Here's the Plot What's the Title,
                 SF TV - Prisoner & Outer Limits query,
 SF Topics - astro programs & DNA programming & Evolution of Unicorns,
                           Humor - Unicorns
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 8 Apr 1981 10:40 PST
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SFL T-Shirt deadline---LAST REMINDER

Anyone who wants an SFL T-shirt, but has not yet ordered one, should
put the check in the mail today. This is it. All orders must be in by
April 15.

For information about shirts and ordering, send mail to
SFL-TshirtS@MIT-AI.

------------------------------

Date: 8 Apr 1981 11:58 PST
From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #90

"A is for Andromeda" was by Fred Hoyle. The communication was received
via radio telescopes. It wasn't until the humans began following
instructions that the "biological ambassador" became a reality.

An interesting story on non-earth evolution is The Black Cloud (also
by Hoyle).  In this novel, a cloud of interstellar dust approaches the
sun to drink up its energy and wreaks havoc on Earth until humans
manage to communicate with it.

	-- Larry --

------------------------------

Date:  8 Apr 1981 1158-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Here's the plot & unicorns

	Can someone identify the book (a rare-sf entry) from the following
information?  The story takes place in a world or a town or just
somewhere in which there are two races which I will denote by A and B.
The two races are really the same species although they don't really
know it.  Some time in the past, the A's tried to dominate the B's and
got punished for it, so that now the A's act as servants to the B's.
In particular, the B's feed off the A's in a weird fashion -- they
face each other and tendrils come out of the B to encircle the A,
drawing off life force.  Every once in a while an A gets to become a
B.  The name of the book is the ritual of this transformation.  The
book appeared in hardback in some libraries, was the first of a
projected series of two or three, and had the address of the authors
(2 people) you could write to about the next volume on the back of the
book.
	Re the unicorn, I talked with the owners at the Renaissance Faire:
there is no breeding involved.  It is simply a matter of removing one
of the horns and transplanting the other to the center of the head
when the goat is young.  (I said simply, but it is apparently a
complicated enough process that they want to patent it).
				good reading,
						--cat 

------------------------------

Date: 8 Apr 1981 11:32 PST
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Prisoner

The rovers were meteorological balloons.

------------------------------

Date:  8 Apr 1981 1753-PST
From: First@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Outer Limits Query

Congrats on having Outer Limits on in the Bay Area--luckily Pittsburgh
has had it on for a couple of years in a twice weekly dose.  My
favorite episode is one entitled "Controlled Experiment" which I have
only seen once.  It starred Carroll O'Connor and the story was
basically that a Martian is assigned to the Earth as an observer and
attempts to find out the "causes" of violent acts by observing a
shooting in a hotel lobby.  But the gimmick is that he has a machine
which can play with time such that the situation can be observed again
and again, in slow motion, and with alterations made--a controlled
experiment.  (THIS IS NOT A SPOILER--THIS IS ONLY A PIECE OF THE
PREMISE).  What I want to know is who wrote the teleplay, and is it
based on a short story?
  Thanks. --Michael 

------------------------------

Date:  3 April 1981 10:37 est
From:  JRDavis.LOGO at MIT-Multics
Subject:  DNA as programming

In Friday's Digest, Dan Shapiro (DGSHAP) expressed the opinion that
genes must contain 'high-level' encodings for most traits, and that
mutations must occur mostly in these high-level encodings.  I'm not a
biologist, but I believe him.

If genotype is expressed in a 'high level language' then where is the
interpreter/compiler?  (Actually, N levels of them.)  Perhaps also
encoded in the DNA, as a sort of 'microcode'?  The 'hardware'
(ribosomes, etc.) seems pretty low level - as I understand it it just
blindly transcribes, anyplace it can find the proper tag to begin at,
so it must be in the DNA.

One wonders how great is the genetic difference between members of a
species.  In an interpretive scheme it would be slight.  So we can
test this if we have a technique for comparing two strains of DNA from
two different organisms.

This of course says nothing (evolution/creation) about how such a
complex scheme of things ever began.

Finally, those interested in analogies between DNA coding and programs
should see "Godel, Escher, Bach.  an Eternal Golden Braid", by Douglas
Hoffstadter.

------------------------------

Date:  8 Apr 1981 at 1402-PST
From: Andrew Knutsen <knutsen at SRI-UNIX>
Subject: astro programs
Sender: knutsen at Sri-Unix

	Does anyone out there, in NASA-land perhaps, know of an available 
program (or programs) in a 'standard' language that calculates the 
positions of the planets and notes conjunctions etc? What I have in
mind is something I can run as a batch job every night or week. There
already exists a sun and moon program.  Thanks.

------------------------------

Date: 7 Apr 1981 08:09 PST
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: The Living Unicorn

I take exception to your slur upon Morning Glory and her husband, and
your suggestion that they are charlatans. These are sincere people,
who are into mysticism, it is true, but just because you don't agree
with their world view doesn't mean you have to insult them. The things
they sell help support their research and are at least partly driven
by the desire of other people to own mementos of this unusual
creature. (When Lancelot appeared at the Fantasy Worlds Festival,
Morning Glory had to apologize for his appearance. Someone has snuck
into his pen and cut off huge hunks of his coat, apparently hoping to 
capitalize on the souvenir value this has attained. Morning Glory and
her husband were appalled. It had never occurred to them that they
were going to have to protect Lancelot from this sort of thing,
because they are hardly aware that such people exist. Yes, they
themselves are somewhat naive.) They are not charlatans ("one who
claims to possess knowledge or skill that he does not have," American
Heritage Dictionary). They do know how to create Unicorns, and are the
only people in thousands of years who have bothered to figure out how
to do this.

As I said before, I have played with Lancelot, touched him, examined
his horn.  It is a real, single horn, emanating from the center of his
head. It does have a slight depression in the vertical direction,
approximately where you would imagine two horns that had been bound
together would meet (remember that Morning Glory said something akin
to Bonsai was also involved), but the horn is a single, integral unit,
not two separate horns growing very close together. The animal is
real, and similar animals probably were real thousands of years ago.  
Whether they had any of the mystical powers attributed to them is
mote.  Unicorns are not myths.

Cheryl

------------------------------

Date:  8 APR 1981 0832-EST
From: Marty c/o procep at MIT-AI
Subject: Unicorns and evolution

The unicorn obviously died out due to the attraction the males of the
species had for human females, which led them to neglect their female
counterparts of the unicorn species.  Not to mention that impregnating
with a horn is often fatal, and therefore not a survival trait.

						Marty

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 10-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #92
*** EOOH ***
Date: 10 APR 1981 0617-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #92
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 10 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 92

Today's Topics:
           SF Books - Here's the Plot What's the Title &
                  The Changing Land & Changeling,
    SF Topics - Magnetic Monopole query & Information Mechanics &
                  DNA programming & Unicorn making
----------------------------------------------------------------------

RP@MIT-MC 04/09/81 08:25:32 
Re: short story

Can anyone identify the following ss: A child discovers or causes a
cube (non-Rubik type) to be suspended in the air in his yard. No
attempts to move it succeed. What is the end of the story? Does is
simply go away again?

------------------------------

Date: 9 Apr 1981 13:01:42-PST
From: CSVAX.hamachi at Berkeley
Subject: Review of two books by Roger Zelazny

THE CHANGING LAND, Ballantine, 1981, #25389, $2.50 Paperback, 245
pages.

     Avoid this book.  It must be a ripoff book intended to generate a
quick profit.  It sure ain't a serious piece of work.
     Almost everybody wants to break into the Castle Timeless.  It's
harder to get into than Studio 54, what with all of the ever-changing
magic obstacles surrounding the place (That's where the name of the
book comes from).
     While the man of the house is away, the intruders hope to steal
the source of his magic powers.  Well, almost all of the intruders.
The protagonist Dilvish merely wants to kill Jelerak, Lord of Castle
Timeless.  And to think Lauren was complaining about his dishes and
color TV!
     THE CHANGING LAND is a flat and uninteresting book.  The hideous
cover, which shows a man mounted on a fire breathing mechanical horse,
surrounded by lots of giant purple hands, properly reveals what's
inside.  If you insist on reading this book, I predict that there will
soon be copies available in the used book section of your local SF
store.


CHANGELING, Ace, 1980, #10257-3, $2.50 Paperback, 272 pages.

     This book more than makes up for THE CHANGING LAND.  It's really
hard to understand how the same author could have written both of
them.  I rate this book only slightly below the quality of NINE
PRINCES IN AMBER, which thoroughly enjoyed.
     The story is about the conflict between technology and magic.
The infant son of the evil Sorcerer Randoval is transported from a
place where technology is an ancient legend to an alternate world
where magic is the ancient legend.  There he is exchanged for the
infant son of some sort of engineering-related Captain of Industry
type.  Years later the son of Lord Randoval is brought back to his
native world in order to oppose the evil technology his "half brother"
has created.
     If like me you have avoided buying the large format paperback
edition of this book, now is the time to run out and purchase it.
Well worth the price of admission, it is marvelously illustrated by
Esteban Maroto.

------------------------------

Date:  9 Apr 1981 at 1326-CST
From: korner at UTEXAS-11
Subject: Reply to:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #91

        Having just finished Dr. Forward's fine book (paperback
editions have finally percolated down to Texas) I find I don't know
enough about magnetic monopoles. Can someone provide a quick summary
of theoretical import and a pointer or two to further reading?
        Cheers-
                Kim Korner 

[ For those of you new to the digest, Kim refers to Dr. Robert L.
  Forward's book DRAGON'S EGG.  Dr. Forward is a fellow reader of
  this digest, and will also happily answer to the name of Bob.
  -- Jim ]

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 04/09/81 07:59:01 
Re: Information Mechanics File

A file with some bits and pieces from/about the book "Information
Mechanics" has been put in the file MC:GUEST3;PCR INFO-M.

                                        ...phil

[ Since this file was rather short, I have taken the liberty of
  including it in this digest proper.  The file follows.  --  Jim ]



This is a bit of a summary of some ideas from the book "Information 
Mechanics" by Frederick W. Kantor, published by John Wiley & Sons,in 
1977.
                              **********

[From the back cover]

        ...Section 2 uses a sequence of information bookkeeping 
theorems to obtain: a set of conditions under which an observer cannot
know he is moving, and thus special relativity and a limitation on its
domain of applicability; inertia; some properties of representation of
information by light, and thus a "cosmological red shift" in a 
universe with "constant size", and from that "Hubble's constant" H; 
conditions under which an observer cannot know that his localization 
has been changed by nearness to mass, and thus curvature of spacetime 
about mass, gravity, and the weak gravitational "constant" G; detailed
formal consideration of the least massive information representation 
stable when nearly at rest, and thus the electron and postirom, and 
approximate values for their mass and charge, and for the "fine 
structure constant"...
        ...Section 3 discards the original basis in part of 
electromagnetic theory and nonrelativistic quantum mechanics and 
proceeds by postulating *only* that *information is conserved, 
communicable, and finitely accessible.* From this are obtained 
conceptually and formally: four dimensional space-time, apparent 
unidirectionality distinctness of time; isotropy and homogeneity of
the remaining 3-space; Maxwell's equations in vacuum; and conceptual
and formal bases for mass, energy, a quanitized electromagnetic
theory, and a relativistic quantum mechanics...

                              **********

[from page 3]
        By way of getting into the spirit of this approach, consider 
the following puzzle. In both classical and quantum mechanics, an 
object's position is described by three real numbers. A real number is
one of an infinite number of alternatives, and so represents infinite 
information. Presumably, when an object is moved from one place to 
another, its position information goes with it. In quantum mechanics, 
all detectors have quantum "uncertainty" noise. From communication 
theory, transporting infinite information in the presence of such 
noise would require infinite energy. So, if an object's position 
really required three real numbers to describe it, the object would be
immovable.
                              **********

[Much of the book is filled with very formal arguments and disclaimers
about "compatibility with prior knowledge". The informal stuff makes 
an interesting read.  ...phil]

------------------------------

Date:  9 Apr 1981  7:55:01 EST (Thursday)
From: Ralph Muha <muha at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: DNA programming

The April issue of Scientific American contains an article entitled 
"The Evolution of the Genetic Code."  In it, the authors argue (rather
convincingly) that the process of natural selection occurs at the 
molecular level and the nucleotide sequences of RNA "survived" because
they were immune to cleavage caused by water molecules and because of
the low error rate of their copying mechanism.  There is also some
discussion of computer analysis which is being used to search out the
"ancient" sequences of nucleotides in modern RNA.

On the fictional side of things, a two-part episode of the "Outer
Limits" entitled "The Inheritors" dealt with RNA from outer space.
Soldiers who receive head wounds while fighting in an unnamed
Southeast Asian republic develop "strange mental powers" and begin
doing bizarre things like building anti-gravity generators and
amassing huge fortunes in the stock market.  It turns out that they
were all shot with bullets made from a meteorite just chock full of
alien RNA!  (How's that rate on the old plausibility scale, folks?)

------------------------------

Date:  9 APR 1981 1039-PST
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Unicorn making

     I'm not sure this is how they did it, but I'd like to contribute 
this little personal experience.
     When I was somewhat younger, it was finally decided that I should
have braces.  Since I wanted the things off before I went to college,
the orthodontist agreed to do a somewhat accelerated job, and finish
the job in a year, although I was warned that it would hurt more.  It
did.  My teeth were moved by the simple process of pulling or pushing
on them until they were in the right place.  The orthodontist
explained that by exerting a steady force on the tooth in one
direction, the jawbone on the leading side dissolved, and bone
reformed on the trailing side.  Apparently a very natural biological
process.
     I'm not saying that a goat's horn is a tooth, but there's a good 
chance that the structures are similar enough to work.  One horn was
probably removed (a common procedure on farms) and the other horn
slowly dragged over by some sort of harness.  I'd doubt very much that
it is two horns grown together, as I believe only the root and a small
central core of the horn is alive, and it would be difficult to make
them meld.  (any of your teeth joined together?)  Goat horns do have
natural ridges (always reminded me of the blood runnels in a sword)
and, from what I've seen of the critter on TV, it was probably filed a
bit to shape.
     Lancelot is awfully cute, but since MY personal image of the
Unicorn was always something grand, majestic, and powerfully
uncontained, I'll put off my souvenir purchase till the horse version
comes along.
                Rodof 

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 11-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #93
*** EOOH ***
Date: 11 APR 1981 0923-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #93
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 11 Apr 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 93

Today's Topics:
      SF Events - Science Fiction Reading & Convention Calendar,
   SF Books - Here's the Plot What's the Title & A for Andromeda &
           Computers with a Will,  SF TV - Harlan Ellison,
               SF Topics - Extinction of the Dinosaurs,
           Society - Shuttle & Space Law,  Humor - Shuttle
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 1010-PST
From: Rose at OFFICE  
Subject: Science Fiction Reading


Fantasy and Science Fiction Reading:  Peter Beagle, Rod Sweigert,
Patricia McKilip, and John Stallings.

On Saturday the 25th of April these four authors will read from their
works at the Prometheus Community Center, corner of Lytton and
Florence in Palo Alto.  Admission $5.  Beer and dancing afterwards.  

------------------------------

Date:  9 Apr 1981 at 2358-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 
Subject: Title query

If the information OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE had to go on is fully
reliable, the book is not anything in Lichtenberg (& Lorrah)'s "Zeor"
or "Gen/Sime" series, but it certainly has a number of noteworthy
elements in common with it.  

------------------------------

Date:     10 April 1981 1542-est
From:     Margolin at MIT-Multics  (Barry Margolin)
Subject:  Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #92

In reference to the story about the little boy and the floating cube:
I don't remember the story's name, but I believe I read it in last
years 30th Anniversary F&SF issue, or at least in F&SF somewhere.

                                        barmar

------------------------------

Date: 10 April 1981 22:16-EST
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  A for Andromeda

The following description of \A for Andromeda/ is taken from \The
Selfish Gene/ by Richard Dawkins.  I have cut out the parts that give
away the plot. [BTW, if any of you are interested in evolution and its
consequences for social behavior, \The Selfish Gene/ is a must-read.
For the rest of you, the first two chapters are must-reads.]

\A for Andromeda/ by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot is an exciting story, 
and, like all good science fiction, it has some interesting scientific
points lying behind it.  Strangely, the book seems to lack explicit 
mention of the most important of these underlying points.  It is left 
to the reader's imagination.  I hope the authors will not mind if I 
spell it out here.

There is a civilization 200 light years away, in the constellation of 
Andromeda.  They want to spread their culture to distant worlds.  How 
best to do it?  Direct travel is out of the question.  ...  Radio is a
better way of communicating with the rest of the universe ... .  The 
trouble with this sort of distance is that you can never hold a 
conversation.  ...

...  Since there was no point in waiting for a reply, [the 
Andromedans] assembled everything they wanted to say into one huge 
unbroken message, then they broadcast it out into space, over and over
again, with a cycle time of several months.  ...  It consisted of 
coded instructions for the building and programming of a giant 
computer.  Of course the instructions were in no human language, but 
almost any code can be broken by a skilled cryptographer, especially 
if the designers of the code intended it to be easily broken.  Picked 
up by the Jodrell Bank radio telescope, the message was eventually 
decoded, the computer built, and the program run.  ...

OPINION:  Don't bother.  The idea is good, but the implementation in 
fiction seems wooden to me.

BTW, does anyone know where the custom of saying "\mumble/" to
italicize "mumble" came from?

Dale

------------------------------

Date: 10 April 1981 22:29-EST
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Computer with a will

Thinking about \A for Andromeda/ got me thinking about the portrayal
of computers with wills in SF.  In particular, when computers crop up
that have a "will", that is, don't just blindly follow uninteresting
programs that are fed in, where do they come from, what do they do,
and what happens to them (and us) as a consequence?  The examples that
come to mind are:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
        Origin: spontaneous (not terribly plausible)
        Does: assists friends in various interesting enterprises

A for Andromeda
        Origin: designed as cultural ambassador by Andromedans, built
                by humans from radioed specs
        Does: disseminates originating culture

The Forbin Project
        Origin: master control for nuclear defense system
        Does: just that, but not quite the way the designers planned

When Harley was One
        Origin: designed as a research project to demonstrate
                computers with wills
        Does: exhibits a wide range of human-like emotions in the
                appropriate contexts

Anyone with interesting variations, particularly with uncommon origins
or results, please send me or SF-LOVERS a note.

Dale

------------------------------

Date: 9 Apr 81 23:52:34-PDT
From: mclure at Sri-Unix
Subject: Bay Area Harlan fans

Ellison is going to be on the VIDEOWEST program on channel 9 Sunday
night at 11:30... the announced topic is 'television' or somesuch.

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 (Friday) 0752-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 ( Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: T-23 minutes and holding ... arggghhhhhh-- a software error!!!

Talk about loss of face.  I won't be able to tell anyone that I'm in
computers anymore or they'll chastise me for having caused the shuttle
failure.  Why couldn't it have been a simple hardware failure or
operator error -- at least the shuttle isn't going to melt down.  [Or
is it? -- Maybe it'll freeze up.]

Anyone know what an IMU (inertial measuring unit) is for?  I expect
that it's like those little boxes that can tell you exactly (to the
mm.) where you are by "watching the changes in acceleration".  If so,
why do they have to be realligned at 51 minutes before launch.  Is
this an effect of the hour shift?  (Note that they said 51 minutes at
t-9 ... 9+51=60.)

Well, back to the TV -- CBS is doing a good job.  I'd Rather have
Walter though.  I hope this thing goes soon -- I'm getting bored.

-- Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 1359-EST
From: JHENDLER at BBNA
Subject: Preventive Maintainence

I guess the space shuttle must have a DEC field service contract.  

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 1151-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-AI>
Subject: DEC field service

Actually the shuttle computers (and the backup one whose software
failed) are all IBM.  

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 2013-PST
From: First@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Bug in the Space Shuttle Computers

After what happened to the Space Shuttle today, I almost felt ashamed
to be a computer scientist--you know, it's like feeling ashamed of
being American during Vietnam.  Watching the TV news has not been
particularly enlightening as to exactly what the problem was.  If the
problem is something truly as serious as a malfunction in the
communications links between the 4 main computers and the backup, how
come it was only discovered at T minus 9 minutes?  The NASA people
claim that the reason was that a set of conditions existed that they
had never encountered before!  Like what--does T minus 9:00 represent
an unexpected condition?  I'm confused!!
 Does anybody out there have any more detailed information about what
really went on?  (Are there any NASA hackers on the list. One possible
explanation:  the five computers were built by IBM and the 4 main
computers were programmed by IBM ...

--Michael P.S.  I don't want to offend anybody with that remark about
 feeling ashamed to be an American during Vietnam.  I love America
 as much as anyone else--it's just an analogy!  

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 at 1241-PST
Subject: Re: Space Law (or the lack thereof)   
From: knutsen at Sri-Unix

        Those "space treaties" are like lawyers passing a law that 
says doctors cann't do surgery unless they give the lawyers 90% of the
revenues... a lot of people would die.

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 0700-EST
From: DAA at MIT-DMS (David A. Adler)
Subject: The extinction of the dinosaurs...

        Anyone who is still interested in the sudden death of the
dinosaurs, there is an article in the May issue of SCIENCE 81

David Adler

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 16:08 PST
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. Brodie <Brodie at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: Calendar of Science Fiction Events

Here is the SF-Lovers event calendar. If you have information about
any events you would like to see added to the calendar, or are
associated in some way with one of the listed events and would like to
contribute, please send mail to Brodie at PARC-MAXC.

                   ------------------------------

                 Calendar of Science Fiction Events
                       As of April 10, 1980

                   ------------------------------

        April 11-12, 1981 (Minnesota) MICROCON 1981. SF/Comics/Games.
Mpls. Comic Conventions, Box 3221 Traffic Station, Minneapolis, MN
55403.

        April 17-19, 1981 (Southern California) EQUICON. Films.
Sheraton Plaza La Reina, Los Angeles. The program includes the usual
collection of exhibits (including some rarely-seen movies props), art 
show, masquerade directed by the L.A. Filkharmonic, fashion show,
games, films (full program can't be announced until the show, due to
advertising restrictions) including "SuperBman: the Other Movie" and
"Blooperman: the Outtakes".  Also:  video room featuring Japanese
cartoons, Society for Creative Anachronism display. Cost: $18 till
4/10 ($10 under 12), $25 ($15) door; $10 single day. P.O.  Box 23127,
Los Angeles, CA 90023.

        April 18-20, 1981 (Maryland) BALTICON 15. Hunt Valley Inn,
Baltimore. GoH: John Varley; AGoH: Darrell Sweet. Cost: $10 adv. BSFS,
Inc., Box 686, baltimore, MD 21203.

        April 25-26, 1981 (Nebraska) ELECTRACON I. GoH: Ed Bryant;
FGoH: Suzanne Carnival; AGoH: Dan Patterson. Cost: $7.50; $10 door.
Banquet TBA. "Nebraska's first SF con." Box 1052, Kearney, NE 68847.

        May 8-10, 1981 (Tennessee) KUBLA'S NINTH KHANPHONY. Ken Moore,
647 Devon Drive, Nashville, TN 37204

        May 9-10 (Georgia) EMORY-TREK II. Atlanta Star Trek Society,
c/o Kenneth Cribbs, 2156 Golden Dawn Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30311

        May 23-34, 1981 (District of Columbia) DISCLAVE. Sheraton
National Hotel, Arlington, VA ($38 room). GoH: Isaac Asimov. Cost: $7
till 5/1, $10 after. Art show info: Bob Oliver, 9408 Michael Drive,
Clinton MD 20735.

        June 5-7, 1981 (Arizona) PHRINGECON 2. PO Box 128, Tempe, AZ
85281.

        June 12-14, 1981 (Wisconsin) X-CON 5. M. P. Inda, 1743 N.
Cambridge, Apt. 301, Milwaukee, WI 53202.

        June 13-14, 1981 (Kansas) COSMOCON II. c/o Charley S. McCue,
34 halsey, Hutchinson, KS 67501.

        July 2-5, 1981 (Northern California) WESTERCON 34. GoH: C. J.
Cherryh; Fan GoH: Grant Canfield. Red Lion Motor Inn, Sacramento, CA;
(916) 929-8855; $32 single and double, $8 addl person.  Party wing.
Cost: $20 till 6/14/81, $25 door. P.O. Box 161719, Sacramento, CA 
95816.

        July 3-5, 1981 (Northern California) PACIFIC ORIGINS. The
Seventh Annual national Wargaming Convention.  Dunfey Hotel, San
Mateo, CA. Fantasy and Science Fiction games, TRAVELLER, DUNGEONS AND
DRAGONS, TUNNELS AND TROLLS, RUNEQUEST!, a live FANTASY TRIP dungeon,
National Ancients Championship, other miniatures events, over 50
Boardgame events, SCA fighting demo, movies, game design workshops.
Pacific, PO Box 5548, San Jose, CA 95150.

        July 10-12, 1981 (Missouri) ARCHON V. GoH: Tanith Lee; Fan
GoH: Joan Hanke Wood; Toastmaster: Charlie Grant; also Joan Hanke
Wood, Wilson 'Bob' Tucker, Glen Cook, Ron Chilson, George R. R.
Martin, Joe and Gay Haldeman, and Michael Berlyn. Chase-Park Plaza
Hotel, St. Louis, MO ($44 single, $52 2/3/4). Soliciting program ideas
and/or people who could help carry them out. Also looking for more
artist names to add to the mailing list for soliciting contributions
to the art show. This was successful at ARCHON IV (over 60% of artists
sold works), and they are trying to expand. There will be more art
show space and display panels this year. Also in the process of
reviewing art show rules and would welcome suggestions. SFL liaison:
WMartin at Office-3 (Amy Newell).

        August 7-10, 1981 (Northern California) MYTHCON XII. Mills
College, Oakland, CA. Fantasy. GoHs: Elizabeth M. Pope, Joe R.
Christopher. Cost: $10 till 3/1, $15 after. 90 El Camino Real,
Berkeley, CA 94705.

        September 3-7, 1981 (Colorado) DENVENTION TWO. 1981 World
Science Fiction Convention. Pro GoH: C.L.  Moore, Clifford Simak; Fan
GoH: Rusty Hevelin. Denver Hilton. Cost: $35 till spring 1981. P.O.
Box 11545, Denver, CO.  80211. (303) 433-9774.

        November 5-7, 1981 (Southern California) LOSCON '81.
Huntington Sheraton, Pasadena. PGoH: William Rotsler. FGoHs: Len &
June Moffatt. Cost: $10 till 7/4. LASFS, 11513 Burbank Blvd., North
Hollywood, CA 91601.

        July 2-5, 1982 (Arizona) WESTERCON 35. Adams Hotel, Phoenix
($29 single, $5 ea. addl.) GoH: Gordon R.  Dickson. FGoH: Fran Skene.
TM: David Gerrold. Cost: $15 till 7/10/81 ($6 supporting). Box 11644,
Phoenix, AZ 85064; (602) 249-2616. SFL Liaison:  Schauble.Multics at
MIT-Multics (Paul Schauble).

        September 2-6, 1982 (Illinois) CHICON IV. 1982 World Science
Fiction Convention. Pro GoH: A. Bertram Chandler; Fan GoH: Lee
Hoffman; Artist GoH: Kelly Freas. Hyatt Regency, Chicago, IL. Cost:
$30 till 6/30/81; $15 supporting; $7.50 conversion. PO Box A3120,
Chicago, IL 60690.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 12-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #94
*** EOOH ***
Date: 12 APR 1981 0614-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #94
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 12 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 94

Today's Topics:
        SF Books - Cube query answered & Computers with a Will,
       SF Movies - Excaliber,  Humor - Gifts from Carrion House,
         SF Topics - Man-Machine interface & DNA programming &
         Evolution of Unicorns,  Spolier - Cube query answered
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4/10/81
From: Elaine Harris (c/o ucbvax!eagle!mhtsa!research!xchar at BTL-MH)
Subject: A Boy and His Cube

The answer to RP@MIT-MC's question is:  the title of the story is:
John Thomas's Cube the author is:John Leimert John thought of a cube
and it appeared in their back yard.  After a while John asked his
parents if they liked it in their back yard and if it bothered them.
Both his parents said yes it did bother them and so John put the
thought out of his mind and in a moment it was gone. I saw the story
in the book called Omnibus of Science Fiction by Groff Conklin.
     --Elaine Harris (age 11 1/2)

------------------------------

Date: 11 Apr 1981 1818-PST
From: CSD.SPREITZER at SU-SCORE
Subject: self-willed machines

Piers Anthony has included machines with wills in "Split Infinity", 
which seems to be the first of a series of books (despite the complete
lack of indication on the cover that this book might not be complete 
in itself -- which angered me, as the conclusion was not very
conclusive).  Exactly what their origin is and what they're doing has
not been elaborated on in this book, but I suspect he may make more
hay of it in later installments.
     S'mike 

------------------------------

Date: 11 APR 1981 0237-PST
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Review of "Excaliber"

    Mini Review:  Ha ha ha ha what a piece of crap...

    Long Review:  Beautifully photographed.  Having mentioned the good
points, let's now go on to the bad.  I charged out enthusiastically to
see this film, fearing the worst yet hoping for the best -- and found
my fears fulfilled.  I have no idea what the movie was intended to be,
but the audience I was with decided early on that the film was
supposed to be comedy and laughed uproariously throughout, especially 
during the more dramatic moments, which were curiously flat, almost as
though on purpose.  Merlin, especially, was singularly
unprepossessing, at times almost providing comedic relief.  And the
bloody knights NEVER took their armor off. EVER!  Sir Percivial,
especially, appears to have worn his nonstop throughout the ten years
of Mordred's growth to manhood.  And the few times they DO shed their
ferric exoskeleton, they look SO frail and fragile...
     The fight scenes were reasonably good, and, as I say, the 
cinematograpy was excellent, but the plot was thin and choppy, the 
acting boring, and all the characters extremely uninteresting.  And I
could have forgiven many things, but I could not forgive the sight of
Excaliber, thrust into the stone, being bumped and jostled and
wobbling about as though made of rubber.  See it if you must, to
satisfy your curiosity, but wait till it comes to a cheapie theater.
By no means is it worth five bucks.  

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 2318-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: More (the last of) gifts from Carrion House


#56 MATCHED BLUE WHALES

We can only offer this one pair - the Ultimate Gift - to the first
lucky buyer.  Our Matched Blue Whales, Ed and Marjorie, have been
specially trained by our resident whale-trainer, Gepetto, who assures
us they are tame enough to hand feed.  As an additional bonus to the
lucky owner, we include a unit that attaches easily (complete
instructions included) on the back of Ed and Marjorie to provide AM
and FM reception within the 200 mile limit.  Easily wired for stereo
at a small additional cost.

Total package: $5,000.00 (includes one month plankton supply.
Additional refills extra).


#02 THE GASTRO/NOMEAT

This multi-purpose kitchen chainsaw, lathe, dark room and log roller
makes a meal in minutes as it slices, buffs, sands and grinds your
vegetables to a patina you never thought possible.  Then it develops
an entire meal while rolling papers for your barbecue.  No kitchen can
be called complete without this item at the cook's disposal.

Total Cost: $400.22 or $14.95 for a limited time only with the
attached coupon.

FROM CARRION HOUSE'S WORLD OF GIFTS

------------------------------

kwh@MIT-AI 04/11/81 20:12:26


   Is anyone familiar with UCLA's Brain Computer Interface project?
Particularly, goals, methods, results. [Hmmmm, is there ever anything
else?]  Are there any published reports or papers that I could look
up?  It definitely sounds interesting.

                                        Thanks,
                                                Ken Haase

------------------------------

Date:  10 April 1981 16:52 cst
From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  DNA subroutines
Sender:  VaughanW.REFLECS at HI-Multics

In last week's SCIENCE is an interesting report on the genetic 
structure of higher animals.

The genes of higher animals (meaning everything with nucleated cells)
is different from that of bacteria. It seems that genes in nucleated
cells are fragmented; interspersed with DNA that does not code for
anything.

The authors speculate (with some cause) that each fragment codes for a
functional sub-unit of the protein specified by the gene.  Thus one
could imagine a gene as consisting of a number of open subroutines
(subrout-genes?).

It may be that in discovering the encoding of amino acids into the 
codons of nucleic acid, all the biologists have done is deciphered the
microcode of the cell. Now, it would appear, the next higher level
language must be investigated.

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 1539-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: making unicorns

        You \can/ make a unicorn by removing one horn and
transplanting the other to the center of the forehead; this has been
done before.  I don't know whether this is how Lancelot got to be a
unicorn or not.  His owners now claim otherwise (I may have been wrong
in saying that they didn't before); they say that he is a true
mutation and will breed true.  --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 10 April 1981 04:31-EST
From: Neal Feinberg <NEAL at MIT-MC>
Subject:  The Evolution of Unicorns

Howdy!
        I would be very interested in the address of these people.

                                                --Chiron

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 (Friday) 1801-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 ( Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Propagation of the Unicorn:



         \
          \\
            \\ /\
             \ \/!!!/
            / -- /
           / o > /
          / /
        / !  //==== ======= \\
        !o --/ \-------/ \\\ !!!
         --/-/ \ !  / \\\\\ !!!
                   \ !! !!!  ///
                  ---\ / \ !  !!///
                 / \!  / \ / ===
     ###########/ /!  / -------\ /####################
               / / \ / ---- \ /
               \ !  / / /
                \ \ ! / / /
                  \\ ! !  / /
                   \ \ !!  //
                   !  !!  / !
                        / !  / !


[Done by Nick Lombardo]

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 04/11/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
refers to the Cube story query answered at the beginning of the
digest in more detail.  People who have not read this story may
not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 11 Apr 1981 1259-EST
From: MLEASE at BBNC (Michael V. Lease)
Subject: The cube story...

The story about the little boy and the cube is in a rather large 
anthology edited by Groff Conklin, published sometime in the 50's or
60's (sorry I can't be more specific; it's in my archives in Wisconsin
and hard to get at from Boston).  I believe the name of the story is
simply "The Cube", but I'm not sure; and I have no idea who the author
is.

(SPOILER)

Briefly, the story runs as follows:

        Little boy finds cube in backyard before breakfast,
        tells parents, parents call authorities, scientists,
        etc.; utter bafflement sets in as cube is determined
        to be unmovable by any means (including digging a
        hole under it); someone comes up with a "Johanssen
        Block" (a perfectly formed metal cube) and sticks it
        to the side of the mysterious cube and finds that
        air pressure will hold the cubes together; all are
        amazed, but uncertain what it all means; boy wishes
        the cube would go away; CUBE GOES AWAY!!!.  The
        aftermath is that a psychiatrist examines the boy
        and finds that he didn't want to go to school that
        day (a test he wasn't ready for(?)) and thought that
        if he found this cube, etc., everyone would drop
        everything else (incl. school).  It seems that the
        boy had this latent ability to project his imagination
        into reality.  Story ends.

Cheers, Mike Lease 

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 13-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #95
*** EOOH ***
Date: 13 APR 1981 0625-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #95
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 13 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 95

Today's Topics:
         SF Books - A for Andromeda,  SF Movies - Excalibur,
  SF Topics - Evolution of Unicorns & Hard SF & Evolution of Flight,
                         Society - Space Law
----------------------------------------------------------------------

MINSKY@MIT-AI 04/12/81 03:42:31

Object to review of A for Andromeda.  I think it's a must, because 
details of how the transmitted program "takes over" is worked out
ingeniously and not entirely obviously.  Not reading a book like that 
because the prose is "wooden" is bowing entirely to culturally 
transient peer pressure.

------------------------------

AUTHOR@MIT-MC 04/12/81 10:46:47

        I have just seen (yesterday) Excalibur, and I wish to defend
it against some of the attacks I have seen in print.
        First off, the movie is a FANTASY!  Therefore there was no
real effort to maintain historical accuracy -- the armor used is
basically 16th C italian and spanish and has no basis in Arthurian
England.
        Secondly, Merlin IS for comic relief; in my opinion he (along 
with the sword) holds the movie together.
        Third, the film is an EPIC fantasy; John Boorman (Deliverance)
who produced and directed it somehow managed to include nearly the
whole Arthurian legend, including grail, Lancelot, Arthur's history,
in a movie that very well could have been six hours long -- hence
claims of choppiness are reasonable, but the causes are also
reasonable.  [The film has a great deal in common with Star Wars:
Lancelot's battle with himself and Luke's episode in the tree; Leia
Organa and Morgana might be a coincidental name choice on the part of
George Lucas, but I doubt it.  There are other parallels]
        Lastly: The charge that the movie has no point.  Very well --
it has no point: dig up whoever is responsible for the Arthurian
legends in the first place and then complain!

        In summation: I am not a rabid fan, there are problems with
the movie (like the blood that never dries and is the wrong color).
But the film makes an honest attempt to make the Arthurian legend
entertaining, and (uncharacteristically for Hollywood) pulls no
punches in doing so -- if two people are making love, well then, by
golly, you see it; if someone loses an arm, blood spurts, etc.
        Not only that, but it's roaring great fun to watch.
        -- Greg

------------------------------

Date: 12 Apr 1981 14:10 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: ExcaliBUR not Excaliber

Sorry to be picky, but I was grossed out enough by seeing this
misspelling throughout the LA Herald-Examiner's movie calendar.  Now
to see it in SF-Lovers...

[Middle English Excalibur, from Old French Escalibor, for Medieval
Latin Caliburnus, from Welsh Caledvwlch, from Celtic kaleto-
(unattested), hard.] [Am.  Heritage Dic.]

Sigh,

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 12 Apr 1981 1137-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Excalibur

    By Dan Yakir
    (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
     NEW YORK - No myth has been more influential than that of King 
Arthur, the knights of the Round Table, and Merlin, the magician, 
contends John Boorman, the 47-year-old British filmmaker who directed 
''Excalibur.''
     ''The legend,'' he says, ''is about the passing of the old gods, 
and the coming of age of man, of rationality, of laws - of man 
controlling his affairs. The price he pays for this is the loss of 
harmony with nature, with the universe, which includes magical forces.
The magic passes into our dreams and is lost - and we all feel
nostalgic about what was lost in the human past. The only way to 
regain it is some form of transcendence, which the quest for the Grail
represents: It's a quest for a spiritual solution.''
     The Arthurian myths incorporate the medieval notion of man as 
powerless, roaming forever in the dark forest of his existence. This 
mystery, combined with a vision of the natural world, which is ugly 
and dangerous as well as beautiful and haunting, permeates Boorman's 
work. It is evident in his greatest hit ''Deliverance,'' where a group
of men have to face forces with which they have lost touch (by way of
a canoe trip down a wild river) no less than in ''Zardoz,'' a 
commercial flop that used the format of a futuristic fantasy to 
delineate civilization and the primal violence and lust that demand 
expression.
     ''Myth is a hidden truth that can only be revealed dramatically
or poetically - and that's what storytelling is all about,'' Boorman 
says. ''It is the retelling of certain basic stories which in some 
inexplicable way engage the human imagination. Jung (the renowned 
psychologist) would say that the great myths of the world represent 
very powerful early moments in human history that have been sealed 
into the unconscious - which is why we become excited when a story 
reflects these events.''
     The dire consequences of man's alienation from the world that 
surrounds him, according to Boorman, leads to ''neurosis, which is 
incredibly dangerous. The instinct to fish, ride a horse, even hunt 
are all based on this need to make contact with. It's a measure of our
desperation that we can only make this contact through killing an 
animal.''
     It is precisely this alienation that is responsible for the
recent surge of interest in mythical subjects. ''Excalibur'' is soon
to be followed by George Romero's ''Nightriders,'' a modern
interpretation of the Arthurian legend in a contemporary setting.
Other new films on mythical subjects include ''Dragonslayer,'' ''Clash
of the Titans,'' ''Caveman,'' ''Quest for Fire,'' and ''Raiders of the
Lost Ark,'' the new Steven Spielberg film, to mention just a few.
These pictures range in setting from prehistoric times to the middle
ages.
    ''At a time when there's a great deal of confusion in the world, 
perhaps there's an instinctive need to look back and rediscover an 
identity,'' Boorman speculates.
    Perhaps, this can also account for the enormous popularity of
''Star Wars,'' which, he says, ''was drawn from the Arthurian
legend.''  Although he liked the movie, he maintains that ''people who
imitate always copy the externals, not what's essential.'' Still, it
is the success of this movie that finally enabled Boorman to make 
''Excalibur,'' thereby resolving a passion - indeed, an obsession - 
that wouldn't go away for more than two full decades.
    ''The legend has always been exciting to me,'' he said. ''As a 
child, I read Malory's 'Le Mort D' Arthur' and I kept touching it at 
different points over the years. I read T.S. Elliott's 'The 
Wasteland,' which is his version of the legend - and was thrilled. I 
also read Jessie L. Weston's 'The Grail - From Ritual to Romance' and 
John Cowper's 'Powys' Glastonbury Romance,' which is also about the 
Grail. At one point in the early '60s, I made a film for the BBC 
called 'The Quarry.' The protagonist was called Arthur King....''
     In 1969, United Artists turned down his proposal for a film about
Merlin and, instead, suggested that he direct ''Lord of the Rings.''  
Since he considered Tolkien's story as drawn from the Arthurian 
legend, he wrote the script with his ''Excalibur'' collaborator, Rospo
Pallenberg, only to see the project shelved. It was too expensive. In
1975, another effort on his part to do a different script on the
subject for Warner Brothers fell through. ''They felt there was
perhaps not enough of a market for it,'' he says. Two years ago,
however, a phone call from Orion Pictures gave him the go ahead, 
because ''After 'Star Wars' there seemed to be an appetite for 
fantasy.''
    ''I tried to give the picture a reality out of which the magic and
the fantasy could grow,'' the director notes. ''I think it's quite 
successful in that you don't feel a dichotomy between the two. People 
may feel it's too remote from today to really engage them, but to me 
this is precisely what's interesting - you get a completely different 
perspective; you enter another world. I think even when a film deals 
with an internal world in a contemporary setting, it still has to be 
otherworldly.''
    Boorman admits that for an audience to deal with such subjects as 
matricide, patricide and incest, which ''Excalibur'' delineates, a 
contemporary setting might prove too shocking. Similarly, he says, 
''The myth seems to advocate a hierarchical system: Most people cannot
deal with democracy. This is not what I personally happen to believe.
I love choice, but people do yearn for a benevolent figure to take
care of them.''
    Still, when pressed about political implications, the filmmaker 
insists that ''what people were interested in mostly in the Middle 
Ages in this myth was the relationship between the spiritual and the 
material.'' Also, he adds, ''this wasn't my consideration when I 
approached the material; what excites me is an image - the sword 
coming out of the lake, for example - not the message.''
    ''Excalibur,'' like Boorman's other films, seems to explore a 
masculine - indeed, macho - world where women are either excluded (as 
in ''Deliverence'' and ''Hell in the Pacific'') or play the role of 
the seductress who destroys men (as in ''Point Blank'' and 
''Excalibur''). Boorman seems amused: ''My whole life I've been 
surrounded by women - I have two sisters but no brothers; five aunts 
but no uncles; three daughters and one son. I've lived in a female 
world, and perhaps film is a way of escaping it. But I never enjoy the
company of men without women. I find it very unbalanced.''
    In his search for a balanced existence, Boorman lives with his 
family in a 200-year-old house near Dublin, Ireland. There, in the 
foothills of the Wicklow Mountains, he has a chance to ride his horses
and feel in touch with his environment. But the bug of the movies,
which had bitten him as a child, never manages to stay away for long.
     Two of his children, Charley, 14, and Katrina, 20, have prominent
roles in ''Excalibur.'' Like their father, they, too, might choose one
day to eliminate the boundary between myth and reality.

------------------------------

Date: 12 APR 1981 2050-EST
From: ABRAX at MIT-AI (Jeff Shrager)
Subject: Unicorn picture


         \
          \\
            \\ /\
             \ \/!!!/
            / --     /
           /  o >      /
          /              /
        /          !       //====          =======          \\
        !o      --/               \-------/       \\\        !!!
         --/-/   \                !      /         \\\\\     !!!
                   \                                !! !!!  ///
                  ---\            /      \           !  !!///
                 /     \!        /       \         /     ===
     ###########/      /!       /   -------\     /####################
               /     /  \     / ----        \    /
               \         !  /               /  /
                \ \      ! /               / /
                  \\     ! !              / /
                   \ \   !!              //
                   !     !!             / !
                        / !            /  !



[ The previous digest had another version of this picture that
  accidently ended going "through the washer."  Apoligies are
  due to all concerned.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 12 APR 1981 1327-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: ketchup


   How to avoid obsolescence in hard SF:  mostly you can't, but a good
start would be to assume that nothing is impossible and make your best
guess about relative improbabilities.  Another pointer would be to
work with something that isn't on the cutting edge of development of
theoretical science---Clement's new book, which depends mostly on
well-understood chemistry, is unlikely to be obsoleted, it just may
not happen.

   Luminiferous ether and Darwin:  I don't think this is a valid
comparison. Darwin proposed a \process/ by which species changes might
occur; the proponents of the ether suggested a \substance/ to cover
their inadequate understanding of physics as we now know it.
Disproving the existence of ether was done by a simple and elegant
experiment which settled the matter; disproving evolution would be
much more difficult since it has already been demonstrated that
species evolve (the standard reference for this is English moths which
were white for camouflage before the industrial revolution blackened
English skies and surfaces, are now black (or dark brown) for the same
reason).  Also, the alternative offered to Darwin et al. is a great
deal more ridiculous than the theory of the ether.

   \/ for italics:  I developed this on my own a little over a year
ago in response to the inadequacy of unprocessed printouts compared
with typesetting, which I was then doing for Noreascon; I suspect
other people had similar ideas.

   space treaties:  knutsen's analogy is inaccurate.  The question is
whether individuals should be allowed to take for their own profit the
most valuable portion of what has been defined as common property
simply because they can get to it first.  I'm not happy about some of
the alternatives currently offered, given other 3rd World nonsense
like the proposed licensing of journalists (this disease has made it
as far as Puerto Rico, which progress I find appalling), but "private
enterprise" has no business squawking about something for which it
will in any case be heavily dependent on our government (have you seen
any businesses moving to build their own shuttle---or even to buy
shares in support of the current program rather than letting the
military pay the piper and call the tune?  

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 14-APR  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #96
*** EOOH ***
Date: 14 APR 1981 0832-EST
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #96
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 14 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 96

Today's Topics:
                  SF Events - BaltiCon Ride Request,
       SF Books - Computers with Wills (The Dragon Lensman and
            Rendezvous on a Lost World) & Split Infinity &
    The Sword of Shannara & Sterility and Cloning (Imperial Earth),
       SF Movies - Excalibur,  SF TV - Fugitive from the Empire,
    SF Radio - Star Wars tapes,  SF Topics - Man-Machine interface,
   Society - Shuttle & Space Law,  Spoiler - Star Wars and Excalibur
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 1981 0342-EST
From: J. Spencer Love <JSL at MIT-EECS>
Subject: BaltiCon ride request

Anyone out there driving from the Boston area to BaltiCon?  I'm
looking for a ride, leaving Friday (hopefully morning) and coming back
Sunday or Monday.  I can drive and will share expenses.  Please reply
to JSL at MIT-Multics.

On a related note, there doesn't seem to be too much ride-requesting 
activity, but I suspect that there are plenty of potential riders out
there.  Is there anything like a convention ride matchmaking service
on the net?  If not, and you are interested, drop me a line and I will
consider starting one.
                                -- Spencer 

------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 1981 1448-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Re:  computers with wills

More books with computers with wills:  David Kyle's The Dragon
Lensman, in which Worsel the Velantian encounters a half planetful of
computers that have achieved autonomy and definitely some sort of
consciousness and will.  Also A.Bertram Chandler's book "Rendezvous on
a Lost World" features a vast machine intelligence which runs a
planet.  It creates some androids to be temporary companions to the
spacemen; these androids turn out to have wills of their own, too.
                                                --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 1981 1548-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: subspecies, mini-reviews

        The definition of species is that two creatures are of the 
same species if they can have fertile offspring.  Thus a horse and a
donkey are of the same genus but different species because mules are
sterile.  The well-known example of the moths in London turning from
white to black is a case of natural selection effecting the evolution
of a subspecies, not a species.  As I said before, Darwin did a
terrific job documenting this sort of thing (and of course his
explanation -- natural selection -- is brilliant).  The problem is,
how do you get new species?  How can the descendents of a creature
with 38 chromosomes have 44 chromosomes? (With two sexes, this seems
an even more difficult problem).  This problem has puzzled our
biochemists for many decades.  The state-of-the-art version of the
theory is essentially "The Great Synthesis" from the 1930's, when the
paleontologists got together with population biologists and
geneticists.  For instance, geneticists have found that "species" as
above is not well defined!  There exists a population of lizards
living along a big mountain area containing (among others) three
groups which I will call A, B, and C.  It turns out that A can have
fertile offspring with B, as can B with C, but A can't with C. (And I
don't mean that A and C are males while B's are females).  But I think
the chromosome problem is still a big mystery.
        Split Infinity:  started well, but the last third didn't work
for me.  Anthony sets up a big dilemma for his protagonist which I
think is contrived and lacks force.  The world itself is neat and I'd
like to see more of it before the series turns into weird mush (as do
almost all of Anthony's series, Xanth being an exception).
        The Sword of Shannara (since I still see it in stores, much to
my amazement).  What are the three major elements of a novel?  Style,
character, and plot.  The style of the book is terrible.  The author,
lawyer Terry Brooks, argues his description instead of showing it.
Instead of the light glinting off the shield blinding X, Brooks has
the shield situated at such an angle so as to reflect the sun's rays
directly into X's face, causing his vision to be somewhat
incapacitated.  The characters in the book are almost all flat
stereotypes.  The most incredible blunder, however, is that Brooks
mixes up the personalities of Shea (the protagonist) and his brother,
realizes his mistake around page 170, and switches them back!  So much
for style and character.  The plot, in contrast, is very good.  It
ought to be, for it is the plot of Lord of the Rings!  Try this:  the
Evil One is gaining strength, preparing to conquer the world, so a
fellowship consisting of a dwarf, two warriors, a couple of elves, a
wizard, and two ordinary people go on a quest to find and use the
Sword of Shannara, the only weapon that can stop the Evil One....When
the wizard is at the last moment dragged down to fall into a fire by
the evil opponent he has just felled (allowing the others to escape),
it really is too much to be believed.  The funny thing is that in an
interview about the book, the Del Rays say that it needed a lot of
rewriting because the first version Brooks sent them was too
"imitative" of Tolkien.  I wonder what Brooks did send them at first
-- a copy of Lord of the Rings?
                                        --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1981 at 0005-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 
Subject: CLARKE, CLONES, & CHROMOSOMES


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CLARKE, CLONES, & CHROMOSOMES ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ever since I read IMPERIAL EARTH, I've been bothered by something 
which someone in the recent genetics discussion might clear up.

It was the continuation of the original man's induced sterility in
his/their clones.  One wouldn't expect Clarke to err, especially when
the whole story revolves around that sterility, but did he?  Or did I
misread something?

------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 1981 12:29:37-PST
From: ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: Excalibur

RATING: on a 1-10 scale, about a 4.5 to 5

        I went with a person who had read neither Le Morte D'Arthur or
One and Future King, and therefore didn't know the Arthurian legends.
He enjoyed it quite a bit.  He found the film entertaining and 
interesting.  I, however, couldn't take quite a bit of it.  The 
characterization of Merlin was quite good.  Why shouldn't a wizard
have a sense of humor?  But, though several of the changes from the
original legend were either irrelevant or an improvement upon the
original (I like the scene where Arthur pulls out the sword and chases
after Merlin), several were so gross that I had to laugh.  Perceval
finds the grail?  He brings it back to Arthur?  Merlin escapes from
the cave and helps Arthur? Come on!  Either my memory has fried
because of excessive use of drugs, or they didn't read (or didn't care
about) the original very much.  And where does Lancelot get off
without kidnapping Guenivere?  I mean, we've missed the greatest
emotional conflict the coming of the age of reason has passed to us in
legend; that of Arthur keeping his laws to the point of executing his
own queen while he secretly hopes that Lancelot will save her, knowing
it will destroy his kingdom.

                Ken

P.S.  A Micro Review:  The credits at the end say (and I quote letter 
for letter here):

                  Adapated from Le Morte Darthur

P.P.S.  The extreme to which they go not to remove armor is most 
poignantly foreshadowed by the rape/seduction of Igraine by Uther
which is accomplished in flagrante ferrus, fully suited.

------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 1981 0942-MST
From: Spencer W. Thomas <THOMAS at UTAH-20>
Subject: Derivation of grail

Just thought somebody might be interested - The word 'grail' derives
from the French 'sang real' (real blood), as the grail was thought to
be a chalice containing the blood of Christ.  As the centuries passed,
the phrase was 'Anglicized' by people having no realization of the
meaning.  (The French pronounciation would be SONG RAY-ALL
approximately, with a liason between the G and the R, making it easy
to drop the SON on the front, leaving GRAY-ALL which is easily
degraded to grail.)

-S 

------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 1981 at 0947-CST
From: clyde at UTEXAS-11
Subject: Re: Excalibur

        Personally, I think Monty Python has made the best version of
the Arthurian legend.....at least the one that makes the most sense!
        You know, those knights \were/ really pretty authtentically
clumsy with those greatswords and they bled \very/ well when chopped
up.
        Not only that, but one \does/ have to wonder if strange women
lying in ponds distributing swords is really a basis for a
government...

------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 1981 1024-PST (Monday)
From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: S&S on TV


   You could tell how the NBC creative people were thinking by 
watching the teaser for "Fugitive from the Empire" Sunday night.  
"This summer, five motion pictures will be about swords, and sorcery.
This is the first."  Well, maybe if you don't count Excalibur, which 
beat it by two days.  But it'll be pretty mean pickings if this is the
best.  I ended up giving up after the first hour or so.  While the
concept wasn't too bad (S&S doesn't rely very much on originality of
plot or setting in the best of cases), the execution was pretty
crummy, even by TV standards.  None of the performers had any idea of
what they were doing, or why, or even whether they were playing for
laughs or not.  The plot exposition seemed rushed, while "action"
scenes were given too much play (do I hear echos of Bakshi's LotR?).
And while the setting was determinedly non-specific, the dialogue was
still disquietingly 20th-century contemporary.  Electronic music, too.
I'm not arguing for cliche exactly, but if you're going to pioneer a
genre in television, you should start by observing the conventions of
that genre.
   It's a pilot for a series called "The Archer", by the way.

        Mike 

------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 1981 17:39:07 EST (Monday)
From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Star Wars radio tapes

  I've been taping the Star Wars radio show off the air.  
Unfortunately, I either missed or erased episode 2.  Has anyone else 
been taping who can make a copy of that episode for me? (preferably 
reel-to-reel).  Please reply to mkeesan@bbn-unix.

  P.S. Please, no requests for copies from me.  I have no facilities 
for making copies of tapes.

------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 1981 1135-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Brain Computer Interface Project

I suggest that persons interested in the UCLA Brain Computer Interface
Project contact the head of the project, Dr. Vidal, directly.  He is
available via the net as "Vidal@UCLA-SECURITY" -- I don't know how 
often he reads his mail.

His lab is two doors down from the UCLA-ATS/UCLA-SECURITY machine
room.  The basic work there involves complex interpretation of very
basic EEG patterns by computer.  At one time, he had this demo where a
person would direct a graphic "mouse" through a CRT maze purely with
thought.  This was done by first doing a training session where you
would concentrate on UP when the CRT flashed, then DOWN, etc.  Then
you would concentrate on the direction you wanted the mouse to go, and
when the screen flashed again, the system would do a pattern 
recognition on the appropriate direction.  Considering the amount of
noise in an EEG, I was always somewhat impressed by this demo.

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date: 13 April 1981 0831-EST
From: Steve Lammert at CMU-10A
Subject: Shuttle computers


As I understand it, four of the computers in the shuttle are IBM
equipment with identical software; the fifth computer is made by a
subsidiary of Rockwell, and has independently-written software (same
specs as the IBM program).  The fifth machine is intended as an
arbitrator, in case of a "split decision" on any task being run;
essentially we have a voted multi-processor, with (more or less) a
controlling processor.  The non-IBM machine is supposed to be able to
remove any of the others from the voting process if it decides that
the other machine has been overly flaky.

--steve

------------------------------

Date:  13 April 1981 12:00 est
From:  JRDavis.LOGO at MIT-Multics
Subject:  space treaties

Chip Hitchcock is right about one thing: space industrialization will 
benefit Big Businesses, but is being payed for by taxes.  At least 
initialy it will also provide a lot of military 'service', but all
that money goes back to business, too.  This is the usual historic
pattern in the U.S.  - the taxpayers pay for it, the corporations
benefit by it.  It is happening now in the synthetic fuel and nuclear
power industries.  I would complain more about space, but i care more
about just getting someone out there than I care who makes UnWorldly
profits.

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 04/14/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last message in this digest.  It
refers in passing to the Star Wars universe, although it actually
is a comment on the movie Excalibur.  People who are not familar
with the Star Wars universe may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 13 APR 1981 1101-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Organa/Morgana???

   I find this as hard to swallow as the "inside revelation"
concerning STAR WARS which recently appeared here (i.e., that Leia and
Luke are half siblings, etc.).  The two do fit together, since Morgana
is supposed to have been Arthur's half sister, but I find it
implausible that this is actually what Lucas had in mind, considering
that Arthur and Morgana were bitter enemies until Arthur's [death].
Morgana is usually portrayed as chaotic rather than simply evil (Andre
Norton (in MERLIN'S MIRROR) also calls her a slut, but I don't recall
this from any of the other versions I've skimmed), which also seems
far from a reasonable parallel.  

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 15-APR  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #97
*** EOOH ***
Date: 15 APR 1981 0712-EST
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #97
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 15 Apr 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 97

Today's Topics:
            SF Books - Hugo nominations & Harlan's world &
              Cyber-S/F project & Clarke's chromosomes,
     Society - Chromosome speculation & Scientific Creationism &
                  Space treaties, SF Movies - Excalibur
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 Apr 1981 00:00:00-PST
From: The Moderator
Subject: Hugo nominations

NOVEL

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon      Frederik Pohl
Lord Valentine's Castle            Robert Silverberg
The Ringworld Engineers            Larry Niven
The Snow Queen                     Joan D. Vinge
Wizard                             John Varley

NOVELLA

All the Lies That Are My Life (F&SF Nov 80) Harlan Ellison
The Brave Little Toaster (F&SF 8-80)        Thomas M. Disch
Lost Dorsai (Destinies Feb-Mar 80)          Gordon R. Dickson
Night Flyers (Analog 4-80/Dell)             George R. R. Martin
One Wing (Analog 1&2-80)                    George R. R. Martin
                                              & Lisa Tuttle

NOVELETTE

The Autopsy (F&SF 12-80)              Michael Shea
Beatnik Bayou (New Voices III)        John Varley
Cloak and Staff (Analog 8-80)         Gordon R. Dickson
The Lordly Ones (F&SF 3-80)           Keith Roberts
Savage Planet (Analog 2-80)           Barry Longyear
The Ugly Chickens (Universe 10)       Howard Waldrop

SHORT STORY

Cold Hands (IASFM 6-80)                   Jeff Duntemann
Grotto of the Dancing Deer (Analog 4-80)  Clifford D. Simak
Guardian (IASFM 9-80)                     Jeff Duntemann
Our Lady of the Sauropods (Omni 9-80)     Robert Silverberg
Spidersong (F&SF 9-80)                    Susan C. Petrey

NON-FICTION

Cosmos                      Carl Sagan
Di Fate's Catalog of
  Science Fiction Hardware  Vincent diFate & Ian Summers
Dreammakers                 Charles Platt
In Joy Still Felt           Isaac Asimov
Warhoon 28                  edited by Richard Bergeron

PROFESSIONAL EDITOR

James P. Baen    Ace Books/Destinies
Terry Carr       Universe
Ed Ferman        F&SF
Stanley Schmidt  Analog
George Scithers  Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

Vincent diFate
Stephen Fabian
Paul Lehr
Don Maitz
Michael Whelan

FANZINE

File 770                    ed Mike Glyer
Locus                       ed Charles N. Brown
Science Fiction Chronicles  ed Andrew Porter
Science Fiction Review      ed Richard E. Geis
Starship                    ed Andrew Porter

FAN WRITER

Richard E. Geis
Mike Glyer
Arthur Hlavaty
Dave Langford
Susan Wood

FAN ARTIST

Alexis Gilliland
Joan Hanke Woods
Victoria Poyser
Bill Rotsler
Stu Shiffman

DRAMATIC PRESENTATION

Cosmos                    (KCET, PBS)
The Empire Strikes Back   (Lucasfilms)
Flash Gordon              (Famous Films)
The Lathe of Heaven       (WNET, PBS)
The Martian Chronicles    (NBC)

THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD                  Year of eligibility

Kevin Christensen  (in Destinies)               first
Diane Duane        (The Door into Fire)         2nd & final
Robert L. Forward  (Dragon's Egg/Feb 79 Omni)   2nd & final
Susan C. Petrey    (in F&SF)                    2nd & final
Robert Stallman    (The Orphan/The Captive)     first
Somtow Suchariktul (in IASFM)                   2nd & final

------------------------------

Date:  14 April 1981 10:12 cst
From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject:  harlan's world
Sender:  VaughanW.REFLECS at HI-Multics

a few years ago there was a spate of stories written by different 
authors, all set on the same world which had been collectively 
designed. The project had been instigated by Harlan Ellison and the
world, though having a real name (which I have forgotten) was often
referred to outside of the stories as Harlan's World.  It was
populated by gasbags a la Varley's Titan and by a race of animals
called Fuxes - presumably for their resemblance to foxes and for an
allusion to their most common activity.
     eventually (said the hype) the stories would be collected and 
published in one great humongous book. Anyone know what happened to
it?

------------------------------

Date: 12 Apr 1981 at 2335-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ C Y B E R - S / F    P R O J E C T ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

As mentioned earlier on SF-L, I am spearheading a project analysing 
the occurrence of 'cybernetic' devices in S/F books.  There have been 
2 tomes published on the subject (by lit'ry types), neither of which 
is adequate.  With the resources represented by the readership of 
SF-LOVERS, a \truly definitive/ study should be possible! !! !!!

(I-know-I-know-I-KNOW! ...'Cybernetic(s)' is being used atrociously, 
but it comes from the title of Warrick's book THE CYBERNETIC IMAGI- 
NATION IN SCIENCE FICTION, whose inadequacies sparked off the project 
to begin with.  I'm using it simply as a rough cover-term for 
computers-&-robots-&-cyborgs-&-such.  Don't like it much, but the 
alternative seems to be some misleading acronym like CARACAS.  So 
it'll have to do until something better comes along.)

At this stage in the project we are working on answers to the 
question--

     What types of 'cybernetic' devices ARE there in S/F?

The full range of TYPES is too extensive to dump on the net all at
once, so we're starting out with the simplest, robots.  We've come up
with 8 or 9, primarily distinguished according to shape.  (Later on
we'll take up "computers-&-cyborgs-&-such".)

The ROBOT TYPES list follows, including codes for ready reference, 
plus examples to illustrate the range possible within the TYPES.  
Rather than repeat the full code every time, the examples are prefaced
with just the part of the code that pertains to sentience.

These examples are just that-- examples to illustrate the \range/ of
the TYPE.  There are a lot more examples possible, but these were what
seemed likely to be the most familiar examples for a given TYPE.  For
the purpose of illustration, we have not hesitated to draw from other
media even tho our focus is on books.  And tho 'cybernetic' devices
are pretty rare in fantasy, we have included them for the sake of
completeness.

                   R O B O T S    I N    S / F

              Ranges of Types to be Accounted For:


codes (begin with + for sentient, - for non-sentient, ? for unclear)
  |
  V

RO:hum HUMANOID DESIGN
      + _C-3P0

RO:sem FAIRLY NON-HUMANOID IN DESIGN
      + _R2-D2
      + _Abalamahalamantandra in Foster's THE END OF THE MATTER

RO:fnc FUNCTIONAL IN DESIGN
      + _Berserkers & Bolos
      - _"robo-harvesters" in Norton's DARK PIPER
      - _automated taxis in Mack Reynolds' future universe
      + _House, Kitchen, etc., in Simak's WEREWOLF PRINCIPLE

RO:qsi QUASI-PERIPHERALS (mobile, partly/fully computer-controlled)
      ?  _the alien vessels' mobile units in Tilley's FADE-OUT and
            in Saberhagen's SPECIMENS
      - _the floating monitors in Brunner's A PLANET OF YOUR OWN

RO:anm ANIMAL SHAPE or FUNCTIONING ANIMAL REPLICAS
      + _the horse in Stasheff's WARLOCK IN SPITE OF HIMSELF
      + _"rogs" (robot dogs) in High's INVADER ON MY BACK

RO:xcy EX-CYBORG
      + _the Cybermen in Dr Who
      + _the Tin Woodman of Oz (also +RO:mgc and +RO:hum)

RO:nat NATURAL "ROBOTS" (i.e., robot-like life-forms)
      + _invading alien vermin in High's NO TRUCE WITH TERRA

RO:mgc MAGICAL 'ROBOTS'
      + _TIC-TOC of Oz (also +RO:hum)


         UTILIZING DISEMBODIED BRAIN . . . under CYBORGS (CY:brn) 
........................

At this point, we are NOT looking for additional examples, per se!

What we're concerned with is the TYPE schema.

  * * * ARE THERE ANY TYPES, HOWEVER RARE, WE HAVE MISSED? * * *

              If so, let me know, or, if your comment might
              be of general interest, post it on SF-LOVERS.

Later, when we have the TYPES schema fully worked out, we will list 
the titles we have accumulated and ask for a) any we overlooked, and 
b) information on specific books.

For now, tho, please check us out on the ROBOT TYPES schema.

------------------------------

Date: 14 Apr 1981 1543-EST
From: Dan Tappan <Tappan at BBNG>
Subject: Clarke's chromosones

At the end of my copy of IMPERIAL EARTH, Clarke brings up that point.
He says he was aware of the problem, but hoped that by being vauge he
could get away from it, finally he says (I quote):

"Meanwhile for those biologists who refuse to be placated, I can only
fall back on what is know in the trade as Bradbury's Defense, viz:

  One dreaful boy ran up to me and said:
   `That book of yours, the Martian Chronicles?'
   `Yes,' I said.
   `On page 92 where you have the moons of Mars rising in the east?'
   `Yeah,' I said.
   `Nah,' he said.
  So I hit him."

------------------------------

Date: 14 Apr 1981 1014-PST
From: Moock at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Chromosome speculation

        The problem with differences in chromosomes is not that hard
to incorporate into the evolutionary scheme.  Offspring with more
chromosomes than its parents does happen from time to time 
(mongoloidism, mutation of plants with colchicine), due to improper 
cell division.  The problem would be in reproduction and passing this 
increase reliably to THEIR offspring.  But what of a normal couple 
which had a propensity for bearing children with a consistent 
mongoloid genetic defect?  We would then have more than one organism 
with the same increase in chromosomes.  Would they be fertile amongst 
themselves?

                                        TMoock 

------------------------------

Date: 14 April 1981 01:21-EST
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  A step toward scientific creationism

It strikes me as somewhat unfair that the proponents of creationism
spend all their time hacking evolution, and do not put their own
theory(s) up on the intellectual shooting range.  In hopes of
eliminating this, I would like, with your help, to construct one or
more theories that can justify the title "scientific creationism".
See USERS1; DRW SC at MIT-AI for more details.  I will append any mail
I get on the subject to the file.

Also, the English pepper moths are turning white again.  It seems the
air quality is improving over there.  Another example is the
replacement of the "alpha" type of haptoglobin (a blood protein) with
the "alpha 2" type.  It seems that the details of the mutation
involved can be seen even at the DNA level, and the biochemists have a
pretty good idea why "alpha 2" is better.  Also, sickle-cell anemia
and its relation to malaria could be cited.  (Note that the fact that
sickle-cell anemia gave protection to malaria was deduced solely from
evolutionary grounds.  Then someone spent years trying to find out how
it actually gave that protection.)

But, these arguments aren't really that good; (most) creationists
believe that species change a little over time.  The critical question
is whether species give rise to other species.

Dale

------------------------------

Date: 14 Apr 1981 11:59 PST
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: space treaties

So "space industrialization will benefit Big Businesses, but is being
payed for by taxes" and "the taxpayers pay for it, the corporations
benefit by it"?  Whom, may I ask, do you think holds the jobs in these
companies, and who makes profits on or gets dividends from the stocks,
and who benefits from the spin-offs of the various technologies
developed?  Tuna fish?

------------------------------

Date: 14 April 1981 1828-est
From: Jim Davis <JRDavis at MIT-Multics>
Subject: Re: space treaties

It seems I am going to get grief from many people about my
anti-business sentiments - people are wrongly interpreting them as
anti-Shuttle and anti-space industrialization.

I just want to remind people of the historic pattern of U.S.
industrialization - the U.S. gov't pays for R&D until something can 
make a profit, then it goes the 'private sector' (meaning those with 
lots of money), who then make a killing.  Sometime that 'killing' is 
literally made at the expense of human life.  Business has rarely
shown any more concern for quality of human life than they are made to
show.  It may be that the only way we will get into space is to allow
the mega-companies to make their fortunes.  Well, so be it.

------------------------------

Date: 14 Apr 1981 1730-PST
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: addlepated adaptation

        See what time and a little unnatural selection can do to a
fine species of myth!  It seems as though it has gone from vertebrate
to invertebrate with Excalibur.... A few notes about the evolution of 
the Arthurian legends:  well before Malory, they were good bold heroic
stuff, akin to Beowulf or the Song of Roland.  Then the priests got
hold of it and changed it to suit their purposes better, hence the ill
effects of Launcelot's and Guinevere's affair (the monks thought 
courtly love immoral) \and/ the introduction of the search for the 
Grail.  Of course there were great quests in the legends already, but 
the Grail quest is ruinous to the Round Table.  Look how many people 
die or are found undeserving or become hermits.... Perceval by the way
is the one who finds the Grail.  He is a Christ figure in a lot of the
legends.  Malory wrote the Morte \after/ the legends had gotten
wrecked.  He couldn't take out all the bad stuff, but softened it
enough to give it its marvellous bittersweet quality.  If you are in
Cambridge, go see Professor Bloomfield at Harvard and talk with him
about it.  

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 16-APR  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #98
*** EOOH ***
Date: 16 APR 1981 0541-EST
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #98
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 16 Apr 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 98

Today's Topics:
       Administrivia - JPM out of town, SF Topics - Monopoles,
             SF Books - Harlan's World & Imperial Earth,
          SF Movies - Fugitive from the Empire & Excalibur,
                      Society - Profits in space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 04/16/81 00:00:00
From: Moderator Pro Tem <MDP@MIT-AI>
Subject: JPM out of town

    Jim McGrath, SF-LOVERS' regular Moderator, is out of town until
next week.  Meanwhile I will act in his stead.  I look forward to
getting the first look at the digests for the next few days...

Enjoy, enjoy!

        Mike Peeler

------------------------------

Date: 04/16/81 00:00:00
From: The Moderator <MDP@MIT-AI>
Subject: Notes on Magnetic Monopoles for FTPing

In response to an earlier inquiry made in the pages of this digest,
Hans Moravec has sent to SF-LOVERS some notes of his involving the
physical properties of magnetic monopoles.  

Everyone interested in reading this material should obtain the file
from the site which is most convenient for them.  If you cannot do so,
please send mail to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST and we will be happy to make
sure that you get a copy.

Please obtain your copies in the near future however, since the files
will be deleted in one week.  A copy of the material will also be
available upon request from the SF LOVERS archives.  Thanks go to
Alyson Abramowitz, Richard Brodie, Roger Duffey, Richard Lamson,
Doug Philips, Don Woods, and Paul Young for providing space for
the materials on their systems.

   Site          Filename
  
MIT-AI       DUFFEY;SFLVRS MONO
CMUA         TEMP:MONO.SFL[X440DP0Z]
PARC-MAXC    [Maxc]<Brodie>SFLOVERS-MONO.TXT
SU-AI        MONO.SFL[T,DON]
MIT-Multics  >udd>sm>rsl>sf-lovers>monopole.text.
DEC 10&20    KL2137::FTN20:<SF>MONO.TXT
DEC VAX      KIRK::db1:[abramowit.sf]mono.txt

[Note, you can TYPE or FTP the file from SAIL without an account.]

------------------------------

Date: 15 APR 1981 0945-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Harlan's World

   I would imagine that, like most of Harlan's projects, this got
bound up in his personal tornado and will not be ready for quite a
long time. (Seen LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS recently?). Also, since he was
changing publishers last summer, that's an additional slowdown for
everything.
   It was my recollection, further, that:
  1. There were \\three// races, the third being crablike (though
their ranges were sufficiently exclusive that you didn't have to have
all three types in a story).
  2. Most of the stories have had magazine publication; Poul
Anderson's was up for a Hugo in 1978 (from Nov (?) 77 ANALOG).
  3. The anthology may never be published in complete form, since one
of the stories based on the world is Pohl's JEM, which is a
substantial novel in its own right.  

------------------------------

Date: 15 Apr 1981 06:07:31-PST
From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley

Re:  Imperial Earth.  The Makenzies weren't sterile but during
Malcolm's trips between Earth and Mars, he got zapped by enough
radiation to damage his genes.  He and Ellen had had a child, Anitra
who was perfect physically, but a veggie mentally.  At least that's
what it says on p.9 of the paperback (courtesy of the UNC-CH E.Clipse
Memorial SF Library next to this terminal).  It also states that
Malcolm saw the best genetic surgeons in the system to try to correct
it.  It could be that the flaw was actually always present, but they
just gave him that excuse.  Or maybe Clarke did goof.
Tom Galloway at UNC-CH

------------------------------

Date: 14 Apr 1981 1900-PST
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Fugitive from the Empire (FftE)
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

     I was giving myself 5-2 odds that the first SFL review of 
"Fugitive from the Empire" would be a pan.  It felt like something a
purist would need to criticize!  Right, the characters seemed a bit
confused.  Some of my favorite scenes in Fritz Leiber's stuff has some
marvelously confused characters.  Yes indeed, there is some deliberate
anachronism in the speech idiom, but only for the "wise guy"
character, as I recall.  The quest was as silly as ninety percent of
the S&S quests I've ever read about.

     But the mood was wonderful.  It used some electronic music, and
some hackneyed stutter/slow motion effects, but the overall feeling
was as close as I've even seen to a visual capturing of the mood of my
favorite Sword and Sorcery novels.  However they did it, it worked for
me.  But then again, I liked LotR, too.  This is in no way an
endorsement of the serial to follow, of course.  I've been fooled too
often on that.  But if FftE is on again, and you like S&S for its
mood, its sense of heroic silliness, its action, its quests; then I 
suspect FftE won't waste your time.

     Mike

------------------------------

Date: 15 Apr 1981 14:46:14-PST
From: ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: Who finds the Grail

Now, now.  It was Galahad and Perceval who find the grail, and Galahad
is really the central figure in the Mass in which the Grail is 
revealed, and then he disappears.  I must confess that the reason 
Galahad didn't find it in Excalibur was that he didn't exist.  (How's 
that again?  No Galahad?!?  Well, Lancelot, you see, never had a son
in the movie.  No Son?  No maiden who tricks him into thinking he's
lying with Guenivere?  Nope, tough shit, buster.  That whole sequence,
along with Lancelot's life with his seductress, has disappeared.  Must
have been overexposed...)  However, that's my point.  Uther seduces
Igraine and produces Arthur.  Merlin takes Arthur.  Arthur pulls the
sword from the Stone.  After that it resembles the Arthurian tales as
handed down to us (I confess through several revisions) only
superficially.  Their claim to having adapted it from "Le Morte
Darthur (sic)" reminds me of a Monty Python line: "adapted for radio
by putting it on a board and banging a few nails through it."  Having
crucified it, they probably drew as much from the "Camelot" musical as
Le Morte D'Arthur.

                Ken

P.S.  I might also say that I'd think it was worth it as part of a 
double bill or through some otherwise more economical method, but not 
at first-run movie prices.

------------------------------

Date: 14 Apr 1981 1914-PST
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Profits in Space
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

It seems like there are two distinct issues here.  The first is how
much profit businesses should get from enterprises that are made
possible entirely by tax monies; the second is whether or not private
profits from space are legitimate in any conceivable situations.  I
fully accept the legitimacy of the first argument:  I might come out
fairly strongly for profits here, but objections and limitations are
certainly arguable.

        Unfortunately, the space treaty would stop that discussion at
its inception: profits, per se, would not be legal.  This is wrong for
many reasons, but the practical one is that without the opportunity
for profits, at some time, space will not be developed, except by
national military establishments.  Is this really preferable to some
businesspeople making a few bucks, especially (returning to the first
argument) if they could be minimally dependent on tax money, and some
real financial risk was involved?

        The way to keep space peaceful is by some people having some
*real* interest (not just ideological preference) for keeping it
peaceful.  Who, more than people with their own capital at risk, would
be more likely to be the future space pacifists?  Nations?  Come on,
now.

        Mike

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 18-APR  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #99
*** EOOH ***
Date: 18 APR 1981 0717-EST
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #99
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 18 Apr 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 99

Today's Topics:
          Administrivia - No Friday digest, SF Books - Dell,
                SF Movies - Fugitive from the Empire &
                   Excalibur: Who finds the Grail?,
    Society - NASA's Enterprise & Space treaties & Big businesses,
                         SF Topics - Cyber SF
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Saturday, April 18, 1981
From: The Moderator <MDP@MIT-AI>
Subject: No Friday digest

No, you did not miss a digest.  Due to the small amount of material SF
Lovers sent in, and because that material included no announcements
that could not stand a day's delay, your Moderator decided to let the
broth brew another day and serve up a meatier digest.  This Saturday
digest is Volume 3, Issue 99 (V3 #99), right after Thursday's #98.

Happy reading,

        Mike

------------------------------

Date: 16 Apr 81 17:28-PDT
From: mclure at Sri-Unix
Subject: Dell

April LOCUS reports that Dell is terminating its SF line, including 
the Quantum series... sorry to see the latter go. It had such a high 
standard.

------------------------------

Date: 16 April 1981 1343-EST (Thursday)
From: Steven Clark at CMU-10A (C410SC60)
Subject:  Fugitive from the Empire

Does anyone out there know who did the music?  I'd swear it was
Tangerine Dream.

I think that for a modern TV show, FftE was an excellent adaptation of
S&S to TV.  However, I must agree that it was pretty weak.  Does
anyone know anything about the upcoming specials?
-Steve

------------------------------

Date: 16 Apr 1981 21:01:21-PST
From: ARPAVAX.arnold at Berkeley
Subject: who finds the grail

I have been overwhelmed.  My memory of Malory (Le Morte D'Arthur) was 
that Galahad and Perceval (Parsifal, if you will) find the Grail 
together.  However, (a) I haven't read Malory for quite a few years, 
and (b) I must bow to those who point out that it is valid for the 
script writers to borrow from the multitudinous versions of the
legends to get what they want, and some of them have Perceval the sole
discoverer of the Grail.  I suppose when they claimed to be adapted 
from Malory, I took them too literally.  The (mis)spelling should have
tipped me off.
                Ken

P.S.  I STILL think that it isn't worth first-run movie prices, but 
maybe I just can't admit that I'm wrong....

------------------------------

Date: 16 Apr 1981 10:31 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Who finds the Grail

I haven't seen "Excalibur", but it could be that it draws from Wagner
as much as from Malory.  In "Parsifal", there is no Galahad or Arthur,
just the "pure fool" Parsifal, who recovers the Grail from a bad guy
whose name I forget just now.

"Lohengrin" (actually written prior to "Parsifal") follows the
adventures of Parsifal's son Lohengrin in defending the unjustly
accused Elsa von Brabant.

Wagner drew freely from both Christian and Nordic mythology to create
a fascinating world all his own.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 16 Apr 1981 1328-PST
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: NASA's Enterprise  

What ever happened to the Space Shuttle named Enterprise?

Rich

------------------------------

Date: 16 April 1981 03:56-EST
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  space treaties

Last I looked corporations (esp big ones) payed taxes too, and none of
them get welfare, or Social Security... so why beef when they get some
benefit from their taxes?

-- Charles

------------------------------

Date: 04/16/81 1647-EDT
From: JSOUTH at LL

ref:  the parasitic big businesses

   Now that we've seen the assertion a few times, its time to come up
with some examples, Chip.  Transistors, automobiles, airplanes, 
synthetic fibers, antibiotics, telephone, telvision, radio, electric 
lights, photography, electricity, anesthesia?  Sure, over the last 30
years gov't R&D has been growing.  But what's it gotten us?  Nuclear
power?  It might be interesting to debate the influence of gov't R&D
on jets, computers, or integrated circuits.  Anyway, a prediction:
   When someone makes a profit on space operations (other than as a
contractor to a government) said operations will bear only accidental 
resemblance to gov't funded R&D/operations.

------------------------------

Date: 17 Apr 1981 at 0138-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

 ^^^^^^^^^^^^ SOME DEFINITIONS FOR THE "CYBER-SF" PROJECT ^^^^^^^^^^^^

The main response we've gotten to our robot TYPES query has been 
queries as to what our definitions are.  Well, we have been collecting
both TYPE ideas \and/ definitions, measuring each's adequacy against 
the other.  Here are 3 or 4 sets of definitions we've picked up so 
far, none of which strikes us as wholly adequate.

Can anyone out there provide some others?

THE VISUAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SF has the following:

  "A robot may be defined as a mobile artifact, made of metal, that
  can usually think for itself.  It may or may not look like a human
  being, although those that most resemble man often seem the most
  intelligent."

  "Androids may be defined as 'robots made of flesh'.  While they
  can be programmed to accept orders in the same way as robots,
  their bodies are chemically or biologically based and are grown
  rather than built."

  "... the real mark of the humanoid robot is not so much that it
  appears human in shape, as that it may have human psychological
  attributes or characteristics.  In short, a robot personality.
  To achieve this, a robot may be bestowed with some form of
  emotion; ..."

  "The whole point of an android is that it is almost
  indistinguishable from a human."

[Note:  Asimov wrote the introduction to the section on ROBOTS AND 
ANDROIDS which the above is from; the section, on COMPUTERS AND 
CYBERNETICS was introduced by Heinlein.]

  "It might be easy for the newcomer to confuse the science fiction
  development of computers with that of robots, but there is a
  distinct difference.  The robot grew out of the original desire to
  produce a mechanical servant.  The computer, on the other hand,
  grew out of the need to have a faultless and speedy calculator."

Warrick's in THE CYBERNETIC IMAGINATION IN S/F, aren't too bad:

(p. xvi)

  For the purposes of the study a computer is defined as an
  automatic electronic machine for performing calculations and for
  storing and processing information.

  A robot is defined as a mobile machine system made of
  nonbiological materials such as metal, plastic, and electronic
  devices.  The robot may be self-controlled (have its computer
  within), remotely controlled (have its computer somewhere else),
  or an intermediate machine, with the robot being partly self-
  activated and partly remotely controlled.

  ...androids ...are defined as humanlike creatures, designed by
  men, made of biological materials.

  ...cyborgs ...are defined as entities built by joining mechanisms
  and biological organisms.


Mowshowitz, in his anthology INSIDE INFORMATION: Computers in 
Literature [I'm not sure of the subtitle, except that it \does/ say 
"computers"], has definitions so fuzzy as to be non-definitions (to 
say nothing of an antiquated source!)

  "Since computers play a casual role in a large segment of
  contemporary science fiction, it is not too useful to insist on a
  rigid demarcation of the 'computer tale.'  Although the
  distinctions between robots, androids, and computers are not
  always observed in science fiction, these concepts do provide a
  rough typology.  In his introduction to SCIENCE FICTION THINKING
  MACHINES Conklin characterizes a robot as an essentially
  mechanical creature whose behavioral repertoire is circumscribed
  by built-in design limitations.  Robots usually appear as
  servants, although they occasionally disobey 'The Three Laws of
  Robotics'....  Again following Conklin we may describe androids
  (or humanoids) as living beings 'created wholly or partly through
  processes other than human birth.'  ...Since robots and androids
  often feature computerized control mechanisms or 'brains,' stories
  dealing with them must be included among computer-related tales."

Mowshowitz' perception of what a computer is, is so wooly that he 
includes the following in the anthology as a poem concerning 
"computers".

"The 23rd Psalm-- Modern Style" by Alan Simpson

   "The Lord is my external-internal integrative mechanism,
    I shall not be deprived of gratification for my
      vicerogenic hungers or my need-dispositions,
    He motivates me to orient myself towards a non-social
      object with affective significance,
    He positions me in a non-decisional situation,
    He maximizes my adjustment."  

------------------------------

Date: 17 April 1981 03:31-EST
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject: "Cyborg Types"

While you're building your list of types, don't forget the network, as
exemplified by John Ford's "Web of Angels", and Norman Spinrad's "Pink
and Blue War" or whatever it's called (I don't think that's the right 
name, but it should ring a bell.)  Both have comparatively reasonable 
depictions of exrememely large-scale computer networks, especially the
latter.

And then there's the super-computer-running-the-universe, as in 
Chalker's Wellworld series.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 19-APR  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #100
Date: 19 APR 1981 0741-EST
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #100
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

*** EOOH ***
Date: 19 APR 1981 0741-EST
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #100
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 19 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 100

Today's Topics:
             SF TV - Capricorn One, SF Books - Cyber SF,
      Physics Today - Bumblebees, Society - The space shuttle &
            Profits from Space & Gov't helping technology,
                         Spoiler - Excalibur
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 17 Apr 1981 2311-PST
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: CAPRICORN ONE on tv

This film will be on NBC Sunday evening.  Check your local listings 
for time.  

------------------------------

KLH@MIT-AI 04/18/81 15:13:34 
Re: Random computer entry...

I wonder how those people looking for computers in SF would classify 
"Bernhard the Conqueror" (sorry, forget author -- but style is 
Sheckley-ish).  In some ways it's almost logical...

(p.s. the Spinrad book re "pink & blue war" is titled "A World 
Between".  Good.)

------------------------------

Date: 18 Apr 1981 at 2237-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF PROJECT ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Nope, we haven't overlooked the two types of 'cybernetic' devices 
Kerns mentioned in the April 18 SF-L, tho that's not to say we haven't
missed some other type.

But to ease things onto SF-L gradually (because of reasons of space 
and to lessen the confusion of taking up too many topics at once) we 
started with ROBOTS.  Our preliminary work showed them to be the least
messy of the computers-&-robots-&-cyborgs ilk.

The COMPUTERS per se are the \worst/, and will be presented last.  
Like dessert, maybe?  But who, other than a bird, would consider a 
bucket of worms "dessert"?!

------------------------------

Date: 18 Apr 1981 at 1157-PST
From: obrien at RAND-UNIX
Subject: Robots vs. Computers in SF

        I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the discussion of 
Computers in SF that took place about nine months or so ago in 
SF-LOVERS, given the current hoopla about Robots in SF.  Seems there 
should be a wealth of material in the archives, as it was quite a 
major discussion.  If I knew more about bucky bits I'd dive into ITS 
and see what I could come up with.  Moderator?

------------------------------

Date:  18 April 1981 03:00 est
From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  More bumblebees

As a recall reading about it, the original statement was:

    If you assume a fixed wing, and you assume that the figures we
    have for available power (from metabolic studies) are accurate,
    then the combination of available power and wing area will not
    allow a bumblebee to fly.

The figures for available power turned out be to close.  But, everyone
who has every watched a bumblebee, including the researchers, knows 
that it does not have a fixed wing and that it has the glide angle of 
a brick.  Assuming a fixed wing, while known to be wrong, was the best
that aerodynamics could do at the time.

This old saw is not a case of scientists being mistaken; they knew 
their knowledge was incomplete.  It is rather a case of the later 
users of the data taking a piece out of context and losing the 
qualifications that were put on it.  Something that happens far too 
often.

My source for this is a Sci Am article on (surprise) the flight of the
bumblebee.  I can maybe find the reference if people are REALLY 
interested.

------------------------------

Date: 18 April 1981 1127-EST (Saturday)
From: David.Smith at CMU-10A (C410DS30)
Subject:  orbiter Enterprise

The Enterprise is the structural test article.  I read somewhere that 
if Congress didn't come through with the funds for another orbiter 
(fourth?), that Nasa would test it less severely, refurbish it, and 
use it.
                - David Smith

------------------------------

Date: 18 Apr 1981 at 1159-PST
From: obrien at RAND-UNIX
Subject: Space Shuttle Enterprise

        My understanding was that the Space Shuttle Enterprise was in 
fact named a little too early - it exists, but was never intended to 
fly in space!  It's a full shuttle, but used solely for ground-based 
testing.

------------------------------

Date: 18 Apr 1981 (Saturday) 1620-PST
From: DWS at LLL-MFE
Subject: Profits from space.

We're going to build a railroad with tax money, but not let any nasty 
corporations profit from it.  Right.

------------------------------

JNC@MIT-MC 04/18/81 10:36:56 
Re: Gov't helping technology

        Well, to go back to your example of airplanes, it's true that 
the Wright brothers invented them, but what kept them going for the 
next n years was the Gov't use of planes, both for mail and military 
uses. Private aviation didn't really catch on until after WWI, when 
there were lots of surplus planes and pilots. (This isn't quite the 
case you were looking for, I realize.)
        A purer example is computers. The first computers, both in the
US and in England, were done as university research projects which the
government funded, for ballistics and code-breaking.
        You will notice that there is not much funding of scientific 
(as opposed to technological) pure research. About the only fields 
that get a lot are physics and biology, both of which have immediate 
applications. Ever seen anybody write a proposal that said "I'm gonna 
look at X because I'm curious" and get much money (especially these 
days)?
        The rate of technological change has been speeding up, and the
entry price for new technologies is rising. A good argument can be 
made that the Gov't can help where private companies would not be able
to go.

------------------------------


MDP@MIT-AI 4/19/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last in this digest.  It discusses the
movie "Excalibur" and Arthurian legend at length.  People who have
not seen "Excalibur" may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 18 Apr 1981 2056-EST
From: HEDRICK at RUTGERS
Subject: who finds the grail

Clearly Excalibur does owe something to Wagner.  Indeed the "Good 
Friday Spell" from Parsifal supplies the majority of the background 
music for that movie.  (One is surprised to see credits at the end for
"original music" when the score consists almost entirely of pieces of 
Parsifal and Carmina Burana.)  As you may know, Malory drew from some 
earlier romances.  I believe that the version of the grail quest used 
in Excalibur is from the romance "Perceval" by Chretien de Troyes, and
its continuations by some later authors, known collectively as the 
continuators.  There was some mention about the Grail being lost.  I 
don't recall Wagner's version.  But in Excalibur, and I believe in the
earlier romances in which Perceval is the grail hero, the grail is in 
fact not lost.  It is in the grail castle.  The Fisher king, who (in 
later versions) turns out to have been wounded by the spear that 
pierced Christ's side ["the dolorous blow"], is sustained by eating 
(drinking?) from the grail.  The problem is that while the grail can 
keep him alive, it alone can't heal his wound, nor restore the 
desolated countryside.  This requires some initiative on the part of a
knight.  When Perceval reached the grail castle, if he had asked about
the meaning of the pageant that he saw there, everything would have 
come out right.  But he didn't.  (The is the famous "unasked 
question".)  The reason is that he was in a state of sin because he 
had run away from home, and left his mother to die from grief at his 
having run away.  This sin kept him from being able to ask about holy 
matters.  The reason he had to run away was that his mother had been 
keeping him tied to her apron strings, while he wanted to become a 
[Jedi?] knight like his father.  When he finally did leave, he was 
rather visibly a fool, presumably because his mother had tried to keep
him from following his father's footsteps by bringing him up in 
isolation.

Excalibur doesn't show Parsifal run away from home, but it does 
portray him as "the great fool", so at least they get his character 
right.  Excalibur shows the desolated countryside, and has Parsifal 
find the grail in a castle.  He also runs away from the castle without
doing what he should have.  However, he is given a second chance and 
does ask the right question then.  [I don't know whether he got this 
second chance in the original legends.  The DEC reference manuals I 
have in the office here do not give very complete coverage of the 
Grail legends.]  At that point the countryside is restored and Arthur 
is healed.  What seems to have happened is that Excalibur has 
identified Arthur with the Fisher king.  This seems a good way to 
paste together the traditions about Arthur with the story of Perceval.
Malory took another route to pasting together these legends, and 
probably lost a bit more of the flavor of the original story about 
Perceval.  Once Arthur has been identified with the Fisher king, he 
can't be lying around in the Grail castle with an unhealable spear 
wound, since he has clearly been leading knights around the 
countryside.  However Excalibur got a similar effect by having Arthur 
more or less powerless.  Some interpreters have claimed that the spear
wound (which was in the thigh) was a symbol of impotence.  Charles 
Williams points out (in "the Figure of Arthur") that this should be 
taken in its broadest sense and made to be spiritual as well as sexual
impotence.  If this is true, Excalibur has made Arthur show that 
impotence, but without the actual spear wound.  So that stayed within 
the spirit of the original.  The desolation of the countryside makes 
sense in Excalibur, since an impotent king can be expected (at least 
in this sort of legend) to be associated with a desolate country.  The
cost of this approach is that Excalibur has lost the Christian 
overtones that give the grail legends much of their grandeur in the 
later versions.  It has given up the connection with Joseph of 
Arimathea, the identification of the grail with the cup used at the 
last supper, and the blow by the spear used at the crucifixion.

What the Excalibur folks have done is quite normal in fantasy.  They 
have taken a legend that has become more Christianized in successive 
versions and tried to go back to a pagan version.  However clearly 
just returning to Chretien de Troyes would give them a less developed 
form of the legend than they wanted, so they built up a different form
that tried to deal with the same issues that Malory dealt with, but 
with a somewhat different orientation.  In general I would have to say
that whereas Malory had a knightly, Christian view [though there may 
be those who would question its connection with the Christianity of 
the Gospels], the people who did Excalibur had something more like a 
pantheist view.  I confess that I really did expect Merlin to say "use
the force..." a couple of times.  But this is because both Excalibur 
and the Star Wars people are trying to do the same thing:  get a 
religion that does not have a personal God, has room for some magic, 
and is sufficiently abstract that it won't offend modern tastes.

As to the merits of the movie - I rather liked it.  For the first half
of the movie I found it somehow impossibly stilted.  I am sure that if
I had been watching it with a college audience they would have broken 
into laughter, and it would have been all over.  However it began to 
be clear to me that the movie was not supposed to be realistic.  We 
have become very accustomed to "realistic" fantasy, where all the 
technical details are exact to the period of history when it might 
have happened.  It seems clear that that is not what they were after 
here.  They wanted somehow to get a mythic, almost dreamlike, effect, 
and indeed they succeeded in this.  Knights are supposed to be in 
shining armor, and they were.  It is beside the point that in real 
life they wouldn't wear their armor as much as they did in the movie.
However I can't help thinking that there should be a way to do this 
without losing your audience, and that if there is, they didn't find 
it.  I did find that by about half way through the movie, I had been 
sucked into the mood of it.

Anyone who is interested in knowing more about the various legends 
behind the Arthurian cycle is refered to the excellent essay "the 
Figure of Arthur", by Charles Williams.  It is available in a volume 
together with some poems by Williams on Arthur, and commentary by C.S.
Lewis.  

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 20-APR  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #101
*** EOOH ***
Date: 20 APR 1981 0700-EST
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #101
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 20 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 101

Today's Topics:
                      SF Fandom - Film academy,
  SF Books - Cyber SF query & Shadow of the Torturer & Medieval SF,
                  Society - Parasitic big business,
                      Spoiler - The Wounded Land
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 19 Apr 1981 14:26 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Academy of SF, Fantasy, & Horror Films

Los Angeles SF Lovers:  I believe that many of you are not aware of 
the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films and its 
activities.  We screen an average of two films per week.  Most 
screenings are 10:30 am Saturday and Sunday at the Gordon Theater, 
LaBrea and Melrose in Hollywood.  Occasionally we get to use the plush
Norris Theater at USC.

The films are a mix of current and pre-releases from both major 
studios and small independents.  Some are not F/ SF/ Horror, since we 
also get to see current major releases presented by the LA Film 
Teachers' Assn.  We often get to meet stars/ directors/ producers 
after the screenings.

Members get to vote on annual awards, which are presented at an awards
show open to members, and which is usually televised later on 
non-network TV.  Periodically, academy members also present special 
programs on makeup, special effects, film history, etc.

The Academy is a non-profit, educational institution.  Membership is 
open to the public, and admits the member and one guest to all regular
screenings.  For more information, send netmail to 
<Hamilton.ES@PARC-MAXC>, or write to:

        Dr. Donald A. Reed, President
        Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films
        334 W. 54th St.
        Los Angeles, CA 90037

------------------------------

Date: 19 Apr 1981 at 2320-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF QUERY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Does anyone know--

   of a BOOK where there's a 'cybernetic' device which utilizes a
   disembodied brain yet is \not/ sentient?

   whether there is any 'cybernetic' relevance in Campbell's THE
   MIGHTIEST MACHINE?  (The "machine" referred to in the title is the
   sun, so this may be a false candidate.)

------------------------------

Date: 19 Apr 1981 1453-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: "Shadow of the Torturer"

It's hard to know what to say about this book, except that it's 
definitely worth your time.  It's the life story of an executioner, 
starting with his appenticeship in the torturer's guild, and ending in
his early manhood.  Later books apparently chronicle his rise to the 
Autarchy, the emperorship.  The second, "The Claw of the Conciliator" 
is already out in hardback.  It is not a violent or sadistic story, 
nor is the protagonist particularly evil; he is just a cold, dark man 
doing the job for which he was trained.  He tells the story in such an
even philosophic tone that you have to shake yourself to get out of 
it.  Example:

            The knife had somehow fallen from the dead man's neck.
    Perhaps he had pulled it out in his agony.  When I bent to
    pick it up, I discovered that the coin was still in my hand
    and thrust it into my pocket.
            We believe that we invent symbols.  The truth is that
    they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard,
    defining edges.  When soldiers take their oath they are given
    a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch.
    Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the
    special duties and burdens of military life - they are
    soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the
    management of arms.  I did not know that then, but it is a
    profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things
    to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to
    believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic.
    The would-be sorceror alone has faith in the efficacy of pure
    knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves
    or not at all.

Gene Wolfe is the author.  

------------------------------

Date: 19 Apr 1981 1414-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: News Item:  Medieval Science Fiction

Medieval Scholar Is Sci-Fi Publisher
From AP Newsfeatures
    EDITOR'S NOTE - Fantasy in publishing is generally associated with
science fiction. David Hartwell also thinks of the Middle Ages. He 
finds comparisons with the two and has combined the interests into a 
publishing success.
By PHIL THOMAS
AP Books Editor
    NEW YORK (AP) - David G. Hartwell traveled from the Middle Ages to
2001 A.D. in record time.
    Hartwell holds a doctorate in medieval literature. He also holds 
the job of director of science fiction and fantasy for Pocket Books.
    His travel through time began when, fresh out of graduate school, 
he took a look at the academic world, was not taken by what he saw, 
and decided not to teach as originally planned. Instead, he went into 
publishing.
    ''Frankly, there were no good teaching jobs available at the time 
and in publishing you got paid better - so I set aside medieval 
literature,'' the 40-year-old Hartwell says.
    ''My move was not an illogical one. The medieval period was the 
last period in which fantasy was the dominant mode in much of the 
literature and much of the rest contained, at least, outrageous and 
fantastic elements. Dante's 'Inferno,' for example, is fantasy if 
looked at from a certain angle.''
    Fantasy, he says, ''using a rule-of-thumb definition, is that
which includes all manner of impossibilities. You pick it up and say,
'OK, this is not real,' and then go on and read and perhaps enjoy it.
Science fiction is a special case of fantasy which deals with things 
that are not true but could - under certain circumstances - be true, 
no matter how improbable. You pick up SF and say, 'OK, this is not 
real but there is something here that could be real.''
    Hartwell's first publishing job was as a consultant in science 
fiction to a paperback house, then he moved on to another as SF editor
and came to his current position about 1 1/2 years ago. He and his
staff are responsible for publishing five science fiction and fantasy 
titles a month in paperback and between six and eight a year in 
hardcover.
    Some of the paperbacks are reprints, others are reissues, and
still others are new issues. All of the hardcovers are new, says
Hartwell.
    Where do all the titles come from? Hartwell gestures at the heaps
of manuscripts and books stacked about his office.
    ''We try to recycle this stuff quickly,'' he says. ''The bad does 
not hang around for very long.''
    An omnivorous reader of SF and fantasy since ''I was in the third 
grade,'' Hartwell says he looks at about 30 books and manuscripts a 
week. ''I read some of each and I read fully at least four or five 
manuscripts and a couple of books.
    ''Most of these things come from agents, but a lot also comes in 
over the transom - unsolicited. The SF and fantasy departments are the
last bastions of the publishing world in which the stuff in the slush 
pile is read. And I do find publishable books in the slush pile - 15 
to 20 percent of the books I buy come in over the transom. There's a 
lot of talent around these days.
    ''Actually, the aspiring young writer who wants to be a novelist 
stands a better chance of getting published today if he writes SF or 
fantasy. There really aren't too many markets for straight fiction.''
    Hartwell estimates the science fiction-fantasy market in the
United States at about 60,000 fans ''who read and support. They are
not casual readers. They read anywhere up to 12 titles a month. But
there also is a casual market. Those who read from three to, maybe, 12
books a year. They probably got interested through the movies and TV, 
mediums which have picked up the imagery - if not the ideal content of
SF and fantasy - and translated it into American pop culture.''
    Hartwell says that while ''no real research has been done in the 
field, the indications I have are that the majority of our readers are
21 and under. Fantasy and science fiction generally is a phenomenon of
youth.
    ''It seems that when people get out of college they find that SF
and fantasy is not fashionable in most circles so they stop reading
it.  Although some do come back when they get older.''

------------------------------

Date: 19 Apr 1981 20:53:16 EST (Sunday)
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: parasitic big business

Well, integrated circuits would still be an exotic technology if the 
"defense" department hadn't paid outrageously high prices to put them 
into missile guidance systems, making room for bigger warheads.  
Airplanes would be fairly exotic, too, (or at least would still be in 
the barn-storming stage) without the huge subsidies to airports making
airlines possible (ask any private pilot), and lots of defense R&D 
making jet planes faster and more efficient.

Industry doesn't get welfare?  What do you call Chrysler's bailout?  
What do you call the similar bailout for Lockheed in the early 
seventies, or the massive LTV bailout of the late sixties?  (Or was 
that just a scandal?  I was too young to be conscious back then so I'm
not sure.)

------------------------------


MDP@MIT-AI 4/20/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last in the digest.  It enumerates key
points of Stephen R. Donaldson's The Wounded Land.  People who have
not read The Wounded Land may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 18 Apr 1981 0526-PST
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: "The Wounded Land"

     This probably needs a spoiler warning.

     Having finished my first re-reading of "The Wounded Land" by 
Steven R. Donaldson, I wonder what other people think about some of 
the questions left unanswered, specifically:

. Is it really the One Tree and the re-making of the Staff of Law that
   Covenant must seek to satisfy the Land's need?  The name of the
   second book ("The One Tree") implies this, but what then is the
   explanation of Mhoram's warning to Covenant that what he seeks is
   not what it appears to be?

. What is Vain's purpose that is so desirable?  To re-make the Staff
   of Law?  To BECOME the re-made Staff of Law?  Almost seems too
   obvious; Donaldson has never let us off that easy before and I
   doubt he's going to do so now.

. Did Covenant really sell his soul to Lord Foul, losing his freedom,
   when he saved Joan?  Did Covenant die in our world?

. What is Linden's purpose?  Elena said that she will heal them all in
   the end.  Does this mean that Linden will be the person who wields
   the Staff of Law and removes the Sunbane?

. This one really distresses me, and I have a sneaky suspicion it
   might be a key to some of the other riddles: Where the hell is the
   third Raver?  One is in the na-Mhoram, one has attacked Covenant
   from time to time to make sure he has enough venom.  Where is the
   other slimy bastard hiding?  Could he be IN Covenant in the form of
   venom?  Probably not, since Linden would have perceived the Raver.
   Still, where is he?

-- Mark --

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 22-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #102
*** EOOH ***
Date: 22 APR 1981 0648-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #102
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 22 Apr 1981    Volume 3 : Issue 102

Today's Topics:
        Administravia - No Missing Digest & JPM back in town,
         SF Events - Rodenberry to get Degree for STAR TREK,
  Convention Calendar addenda,  SF Books - King David's Spaceship &
     The Book of the New Sun Series ("Shadow of the Torturer") &
             The Sword on Shannara and Piers Anthony &
                  David Hartwell at Pocket books,
                   SF Radio - Star Wars repeats,
    Society - NASA's Enterprise & Big businesses and governemnts,
                              Humor
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Apr 1980 17:44 PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - JPM back in town

Well, your regular moderator has resumed the helm with this issue.
Keep those messages coming!!

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 21 Apr 1980 17:32 PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - No Missing Digest

Due to a lack of material, a Tuesday digest was not sent out.  Thus
this is the first digest since the Monday, April 20 issue.

Since all digests are consecutively numbered (this is issue 102 of
volume 3), it is always possible to determine if you missed an issue.
If so, then a message to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST will result in the missing
issue being resent to you within a couple of days.

Jim

------------------------------

Date:  21 April 1981 17:01 est
From:  Janofsky.Tipi at MIT-Multics (Bill Janofsky)
Subject:  King David's Spaceship

  I just finished Jerry Pournelle's "King David'd Spaceship" and,
since I haven't seen anything about it in SF-LOVERS, I thought I'd
contribute my two cents.  But first, a word or two of warning.

[ The existence of this work has been mentioned in SF-LOVERS, although
  no review of it.  See Vol 3, Issues 59 and 78.  - Jim ]

  I'm not very particular about what SF I enjoy.  I don't require 
absolute perfection, eternal literary merit, deep metaphysical 
symbolism, or trenchant critical analysis before I can enjoy SF.  If
the story has a discernable plot, decent characterizations,
consistency with its basic assumptions, an imaginative treatment, and
is well written and *ENTERTAINING*, then I'll rave about it.

Pico review: RAVE!

Personal Opinion: (Is there any such thing as 'impersonal opinion' ??)
A very good adventure story much like the Dorsai novels of Gordon
Dickson and much improved over the earlier version, "A Spaceship for
the King".  Although I don't remember much of the earlier version,
this novel strikes me as having characters more human and a story
developed better than its predecessor.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.
However, if you're really looking for something like Goulart's heavy
satire, Zelazny's multiplicity of characters, or Norman's endless
heroic epic, then skip this one.
                Regards, Bill J.

------------------------------

Date: 20 Apr 1981 18:38:04-PST
From: kalash at Berkeley
Subject: "Shadow of the Torturer" and sequels.


  There are supposed to be 4 (four) books in the series (The Book of 
the New Sun) of which Shadow is the first. The only warning I have is 
NOT to attempt to read the second ("Claw of the Conciliator") before 
you have read the first, it will make absolutely NO sense. However in 
conjunction with the first book it makes a fantastic pair. I recomend 
these books as among the best you can find.
  The third book ("The sword of Lictor") is due out towards the end of
the year.  I have been told that he has finished the third and is 
working on the forth (I don't know what the title is).

                        Joe Kalash

------------------------------

Date: 21 Apr 1981 1655-EST
From: Rich Schneider <ECG.RICH at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: Terry Brooks and Piers Anthony


  First off, I agree with C.A.T. <OR.TOREY???> on The Sword on 
Shannara.  I believe that JRR's kid should first sue for plagiarism 
and them castrate Brooks for hacking up a great story.

[ The message refered to can be found in Volume 3, Issue 94.  -  Jim ]

<Flame on!>

  What is this crap about Piers Anothy.  If any of series are "mush" 
it's that Xanth fantasies.  How can anyone claim the Cluster and Paul 
of Tarot series as mush.  I will admit that in the respective series
Piers examines sex, and in particular inter-species sex, in great
detail.  Equating this with mush is a sign xenophobia.

<Flame off>

  BTW, does anyone know if the next installment of Split Infinity is 
available yet.  

------------------------------

Date: 20 Apr 1981 1003-PST
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: Hartwell

So David Hartwell is now sf editor at Pocket books.  I've noticed
they've had a lot of good stuff lately under the "Timescape" label.  

------------------------------

Date: 21 Apr 1981 1414-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Rodenberry to get Degree for STAR TREK 

    POTSDAM, N.Y. (AP) - Gene Rodenberry, the writer who created
''Star Trek,'' will be awarded an honorary degree at Clarkson
College's commencement ceremonies May 17.
    Rodenberry will receive an honorary doctor of science degree from 
the school in recognition of his work on the science fiction series of
the 1960s about space exploration in the future.
    College President Robert Plane said, ''We are honoring Mr.  
Rodenberry for his work which has generated a mass interest in 
science, especially space travel. His creative talents have fostered a
link between the general public and the scientific and engineering 
communities.''

------------------------------

Date: 20 Apr 1981 0540-PST
Sender: ADPSC at USC-ISI
Subject: SW Radio repeats
From: ADPSC (Don)

For those of us in the Washington, DC area, WETA (90.9) will be 
rebroadcasting episodes #1-8 on Saturday April 25 from 10:30pm until
2:30am.

Don

------------------------------

Date: 21 Apr 1981 1723-EST
From: Rich Schneider <ECG.RICH at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: NASA's Enterprise

  If you've already received a msg, oh well!!  Last I heard was that
it's heading towards the Smithsonian.  I hear the SNAFU is that they
want to build a separate building for it and are having fiscal
problems.

------------------------------

Date: 20 Apr 1981 11:25 PST
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: government research, etc.

It's my impression that the Arpanet owes its development and existence
to Defense Dept. funding, but I'm willing to be corrected by anyone
who knows better.

[ The NET was developed under ARPA (Advanced Research Projects
  Agency), and is now operated under the DCA (Defense Communications
  Agency).  - Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 21 Apr 1981 (Tuesday) 1403-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Imprisoned at 545 Tech Squre:

"Who is number 1?"
"You are CADR-5 !"...

------------------------------

Date: 20 Apr 1981 11:11 PST
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Con Calendar addenda

[from flyers I picked up at Equicon]

22-25 May '81:  Phantasmicon'81.  Sheraton Plaza La Reina, Los Angeles
(near airport).  GOH Sam J. Jones (Flash Gordon).  Art show,
masquerade, 24-hr. film program, ...  Galacticon TICKETRON memberships
accepted.  $15 until 21 May; $20 at the door.  (213) 461-2896, or send
SASE to 5826 Gregory Ave. #1, Los Angeles 90038 for more info.

17-19 July '81:  Fantasy Faire.  Amfac (Airport Marina) Hotel.
Masquerade, fantasy games, "Creating Your Own Universe", awards
luncheon ($12)...  Membership $10 until 10 June.  1855 W. Main St.,
Alhambra, CA 91801.

--Bruce

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 23-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #103
*** EOOH ***
Date: 23 APR 1981 0722-EST
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #103
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 23 Apr 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 103

Today's Topics:
                     SF Events - NEBULA Awards &
             Fantasy and Science Readings in Palo Alto &
 Rodenberry to get Degree for STAR TREK & Convention Calendar addenda,
                     SF Books - Cyber SF query &
           Covered Wagon Stories (King David's Spaceship) &
           The Steel of Raithskar & Next Photon/Phaze Book,
                     Society - NASA's Enterprise
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Apr 1981 1215-PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI>
Subject: NEBULA Awards this Friday

The NEBULA awards will be presented this coming Friday in New York 
City.  If any reader of SF-LOVERS is attending the awards 
presentation, or if anyone will be finding out the results quickly, it
would be greatly appreciated if you could get them to the digest as
quickly as possible.

To make things even easier for would be SF-LOVERS correspondents, your
moderator (me) will be reachable by phone Friday, April 24, from 
7:00pm to 9:00pm pst (10:00pm to midnight est) at (415) 497 - 9458.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 22 Apr 1981 1117-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Fantasy and Science Readings in Palo Alto   


The Prometheus Centre will be presenting authors reading from their 
own works.  The authors involved are:

                        Peter Beagle
                        Patricia McKillip
                        John Stallings
                        Rob Sweigert


Refreshments will be served.

Time : April 25, 8:00pm Place: 401 Florence, Palo Alto, Ca.


For more information, send mail to JPM@SAIL.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 22 Apr 1981 16:29 PST
From: Woods at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Rodenberry to get Degree for STAR TREK

Gee, I hope they spell his name right on the diploma!

        -- Don.

------------------------------

Date: 22 Apr 1981 at 0051-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF QUERY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The varying usage of "android" (and "robot", too, sometimes) in S/F
poses problems.

Does anyone know--

   whether Asimov's robots might actually have a biological
   component?  I ran across an odd comment in "Evidence", to
   the effect that Beyerley got a positronic brain and "GREW
   A BODY AROUND IT".

   whether Otho in the "Capt. Future" series is a (biological)
   android or actually a humanoid robot?  I think he is referred
   to as an android, in contrast with the metallic Crag who is
   called a robot, but I've run across a reference to his skin
   or flesh being rubber-like.

   the provenience of KLH at MIT-AI's "Bernhard the Conquerer"?

------------------------------

Date: 22 Apr 1981 1332-PST
From: Dave Dyer <DDYER at USC-ISIB>
Subject: Westward-Ho


 Yesterday's rave review of "King David's Spaceship" has pushed me 
over the brink, to bring up one of my pet peeves about certain works
on the genre.

 Fully half of "King David's Spaceship" is devoted to what I call a
"covered wagon story" : a story in a pre-technological setting with no
SF elements at all.  In "King David's Spaceship", I had to suffer
through an EXTENDED treatise on iron-age military tactics, to get to
what was otherwise an enjoyable and well written story.

 The term "covered wagon story" is derived from the quintessential 
example of the genre, the central section of "Time Enough for Love".  
The absurdity of homesteading a new planet with contastoga wagon 
technology is etched permanently on my mind.

 Please don't misunderstand: I rate both the books cited as good and
worth reading, despite the flaws.  The objectionable sections are not
in themselves bad writing, simply out of place.  What rails me is that
if an author has a secret urge to write historical fiction, he should
go ahead and indulge!  BUT please don't deliver your covered wagons in
a spaceship!

------------------------------

Date: 22 Apr 1981 at 0053-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ NOT GREAT, BUT STILL A \GOOD/ READ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

THE STEEL OF RAITHSKAR, by Randall Garrett & V.A. Heydron (Mrs. G.)

Out officially in May, this is already on the stands, and while quite
different from the Lord Darcy stories we associate with Gar- rett, is
a good, \competent/ adventure story.  Like anything set in Atlantis, I
get turned off by the worn-out old plot ploy of having the hero
suddenly wake up in a strange body on an alien planet, but here it
comes off credibly.

The questionable critter on the cover notwithstanding, it's got a nice
cat (big as a horse!) that Kolling will appreciate.  The man's face,
tho, creates the right impression to match its description in the
text, despite the nose not being pug enough.

------------------------------
Date: 22 Apr 1981 20:54:10-PST
From: eagle!mhtsa!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Next Photon/Phaze Book 

According to the coming books list in SF Chronicle, the next book in
the current Piers Anthony series is Blue Adept and is due out in
hardcover in the next couple of months.  I think it was May, but it
could be June.

Probably stupid question:  Why do people think I'm at Berkeley?  I'm
just a lowly undergrad at UNC-CH.  There's probably some simple
explanation, but this is my first semester on the net and I can't
figure it out.

[ Your messages have been routed through the Berkeley machine, so to
  people on the ARPANET (and sub-NETS eminating from it), you appear
  to be at Berkeley.  - Jim ]

Tom Galloway

------------------------------

Date: 17 Apr 1981 2152-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIF>
Subject: my exploits in florida

I just got back from a week of viewing the launch and landing of the 
Space Shuttle, boy was it neat.  It happened I got in as press, and 
was on this tour at the Kennedy Space Center.  I was walking down this
hall with a group of about 100 people when I thought I heard "mumble 
mumble SF lovers mumble mumble."  I could hardly believe my ears.  
Then I heard "mumble mumble arpanet node in ...".  It turned out that 
DLW, DANNY, LSP, and MARG (@AI) were on the same bus!!

I guess we are all over.  I wonder if I could have gotten press 
accreditation to cover the launch as a representative from 
SF-LOVERS???

[ An amusing notion.  Chuckle.  But please remember not to investigate
  the possibility, folks, because SFL *MUST* remain inconspicuous.
  - Jim ]

Anyway, I wrote up my experiences for publication in the OASIS news, 
and maybe other places.  If anyone is interested in reading it, it is 
here at ISIF in the file: <KATZ>story.shuttle.  You can FTP it by 
logging in as anonymous.

When the computer problem occurred, we were all trying to figure out 
what had happened.  Contrary to some previous msgs, all five computers
ARE IBM and IBM wrote the code for the 4 primary ones.  The code for 
the backup computer was written at Draper labs or somewhere.  If there
is a software bug in the IBM code, chances are it won't be in the 
backup computer.  The problem was a timing problem which resulted in 
the backup computer not being able to talk with two of the primary 
ones.  My roommate, who works at Rockwell simulating the software, 
said that they could have just re-IPLed the primary computers on 
Friday and launched, but they wanted to be sure what the problem was 
first.

Did any SF-lovers get together at the landing??  (It was a big place.)


                                Alan 

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 04/23/81 00:18:06 
Re:  Add another con to the list


 Lexicon, a SF relaxicon. July 17-19 1981. Sheraton Rolling green in
Andover MA. The con has NO GoH, NO Art show, NO Huckster room, and 
(most importantly) No hard work. registration is 17 quarters ($4.25) 
(chosen because 17 is the largest finite number.)  mail to

    NESFA
    P.O. Box G
    Mit Branch P.O.
    Cambridge MA, 02139.

 Hotel rate. Weekend package double. $88. for the weekend for two
people.  Includes brunch for two on sunday.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 24-APR  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Bulletin
*** EOOH ***
Date: 24 APR 1981 1249-EST
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Bulletin
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

SF-LOVERS Bulletin                                 Friday, 24 Apr 1981

                       SF Radio - An SF Weekend
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  24 April 1981 11:00 est
From:  Janofsky.Tipi at MIT-Multics (Bill Janofsky)
Subject:  SF Radio

To all SF-LOVERS in the Boston area:
  Glue your ear (or tape deck) to the radio this weekend!  WBUR
(FM 90.5) is presenting an SF WEEKEND -- two days of SF Radio to
entertain and amuse you (and to try and relieve you of some cash!).
The schedule is:

Saturday (25Apr)
      9:30-10:00AM   Huxley's Brave New World, Part 1
     10:00- 5:00PM   Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, Parts 1-5
      6:00- 7:30PM   Wells's War of the Worlds
      7:30- 8:45PM   Beyond The War of the Worlds
                     (A BBC spoof, I think)

Sunday
      9:30-10:00AM   Brave New World, Part 2
     10:00- 3:45PM   Foundation Trilogy, Parts 5 (repeated) thru 8
      3:45- 5:00PM   Stanislaw Lem's The Servant
      6:00-Midnight  HHGttG, Parts 1-8

          Happy listening, Bill J.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Bulletin
*************************


1,,
Summary-line: 21-Apr LISTSERV@uga.bitnet SF-LOVERS AM Digest V3 #104
*** EOOH ***
Date: 24 APR 1981 1249-EST
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject:  SF-LOVERS AM Digest V3 #104
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 26 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 104

Today's Topics:
                 Administrivia - No Missing Digest,
              SF Events - Convention Calendar addenda,
       SF Books - Cliff Notes on Asimov & Circle,Crescent,Star, SF Radio
- Star Wars & HHGttG & Brave New World & Foundation Trilogy &
    War of the Worlds & Beyond The War of the Worlds & The Servant,
         SF Topics - Androids,  Misc. - complex net addresses
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 Apr 1980 20:32 PST From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI> Subject:
Administrivia - No Missing Digest

Due to a lack of material, neither a Friday nor a Saturday digest was
sent.  Thus this is the first digest since the Thursday, April 22 issue.

Since all digests are consecutively numbered (this is issue 104 of
volume 3), it is always possible to determine if you missed an issue.
If so, then a message to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST will result in the missing
issue being resent to you within a couple of days.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 25 Apr 1981 1903-EST From: JHENDLER at BBNA Subject: OH MY G-D, IT
FINALLY HAPPENED

  I am sitting here holding in front of me a new found treasure: The
Cliff Notes on "Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and other works."  This
notable literary aid contains 90 fact laden pages dealing with Asimov,
SF in general, and 5 of Asimov's noteworthy pieces.  (Foundation
Trilogy, 14 pages; Pebble in the Sky, 9 pp; The Stars, Like Dust, 12 p.;
the End of Eternity, 12 p.; and The Gods Themselves, 14 p.s)

  How can anyone pass this up???

  -Jim

------------------------------

Date: 24 Apr 1981 1331-PST From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE Subject:
"Circle, Crescent, Star"

By Ansen Dibell is the sequel to "Pursuit of the Screamer".  The
setting is a colonized world now decayed from a technological height.
The major remnant is the Shai, a computer complex that used to maintain
essential services in the old culture like the body banks used for
immortality treatments.  It long ago decided that the only form of
government that it would accept is the Rule of One, where one person has
absolute power and absolute responsibility.  The ruler can do whatever
he/she/it likes, but if his actions go against the interests of society
at large (as determined by the Shai) then he is executed.  In the
previous book, Jannus, a mortal, had helped one of the immortals commit
suicide and so had come to hold the Rule of One.  Now he's trying to
avoid being killed by the Shai or by the rival factions in the city he's
chosen to hide out in.  Good stuff.

------------------------------

Date:  25 April 1981 17:11 cst From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill
Vaughan) Subject:  remythologizing the arthurian legend Sender:
VaughanW.REFLECS at HI-Multics (yet another review of EXCALIBUR)

I just saw Excalibur and thought it was great. Why? Because it takes an
important step towards remythologizing the Arthurian legend.

This legend has been demythologized and romanticized at least once too
many. It was demythologized most recently (and best, I think) by Mary
Stewart (The Crystal Cave etc) -- and has been romanticized most
recently by White (Once & Future King, of which the musical Camelot is a
derivation).

Excalibur makes of Arthur a mythic figure - perhaps for the first time
since >before< Malory (a romanticizer, if you ask me).  Not only that,
but it brings the very myth up to date with our modern mythos of the
dark ages.

SF-lovers, of course, are deeply steeped in this modern mythos - Poul
Anderson, Avram Davidson, and others have used it as story settings - so
when we see the priest in his druidical robes waving mistletoe at people
but chanting in the name of Christ, all we can think is "how fitting."
Merlin's "new God - old gods" statement is another piece of that myth,
as is the Earth power.

Make no mistake. This stuff was never part of the original Arthurian
legend. But it is the right myth for our time, and Boorman has neatly
integrated Arthur into it.
                                Bill

------------------------------

Date: 24 Apr 1981 (Friday) 2309-EST From: DYER at NBS-10 Subject: SW
radio marathon in the D.C. area


        I think I saw mentioned earlier this week that the WETA (FM 91)
broadcasts of radio SW 1-8 were to be Sunday 4-26 from 'prox 10:00 pm
until 2:00am.  However I heard on the radio a few minutes ago that
the Star-Wars-athon was to be \Saturday/, from 10:30pm until the wee
hours of the morning, possibly to include the 9th installment as well.
        Perhaps the announcer made a blunder, but I would suggest that
anyone planning to listen to the SWathon tune in Sat. night, just to
make sure . . . .

        Joan D. Vinge's major work THE SNOW QUEEN is finally out in
(good quality, very nice print) paperback, at an excruciating $3.25.
Enjoy, if you can afford it.

                        -Landon-

(WETA is going through that twice-yearly 'begging for dollars' marathon,
so their programming is going to be erratic and filled with pleading
voices, possibly throughout the SW-athon.  Tapers of SW radio be
warned.)

------------------------------

TLD@MIT-MC 04/25/81 12:20:25 Re: Attention Boston area SF-Lovers!

WBUR (90.0MHz) is doing SF radio all weekend.  Right now they are
broadcasting a version of the Foundation trilogy.  I don't have the
complete schedule, but I believe that they will cover all of the Star
Wars and Hitchhiker's Guide episodes to date.

Where can I buy the Hitchhiker's Guide book (or books)?  -Tom-

------------------------------

Date:  24 April 1981 10:55 est From:  Janofsky.Tipi at MIT-Multics (Bill
Janofsky) Subject:  SF Radio

To all SF-LOVERS in the Boston area:
  Glue your ear (or tape deck) to the radio this weekend!  WBUR (FM
90.5) is presenting an SF WEEKEND -- two days of SF Radio to entertain
and amuse you (and to try and relieve you of some cash!).  The schedule
is:

Saturday (25Apr)
         9:30-10:00AM Huxley's Brave New World, Part 1
        10:00- 5:00PM Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, Parts 1-5
         6:00- 7:30PM Wells's War of the Worlds
         7:30- 8:45PM Beyond The War of the Worlds (A BBC spoof, I
think)

Sunday
         9:30-10:00AM Brave New World, Part 2
        10:00- 3:45PM Foundation Trilogy, Parts 5 (repeated) thru 8
         3:45- 5:00PM Stanislaw Lem's The Servant
         6:00-Midnight HHGttG, Parts 1-8

                Happy listening, Bill J.

------------------------------


Date: 24 Apr 1981 1424-EST From: Rich Schneider <ECG.RICH at
DEC-MARLBORO> Subject: SF on Radio

  === This should have a spoiler on it, for Boston people only ===

  WBUR-FM (90.1 ???) is having a fund raising program this weekend.
They will also be having a "Science Fiction Blockbuster".  According to
rumor an 8-hour version of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy will be aired.
Also The Hitchhiker's Guide we be on.

------------------------------

Date: 24 Apr 1981 0602-PST Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3 Subject: Androids
From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)

Back when I started reading SF, in the early '50's, I gleaned the
lasting impression that an android was an automaton designed to LOOK
like a human (or living being); it seems to me that it was common for
stories to refer to androids passing as humans until being touched, when
their "rubbery" or otherwise obviously non-living flesh became apparent.

When did this change to become a biological construct, as is being
presupposed in the current discussion?  Was there just enough bionic
technology developed to push the concept over the line from "building"
to "growing"?  Or was there a watershed story that expanded the horizon,
and the idea of an android as a rubber-sheathed robot became passe'?

This inquiry is inspired by the recent reference to a "humanoid robot"
being distinct from an "android", and the Cyber-SF categories listed
earlier.

Will Martin

------------------------------

Date: 23 Apr 1981 1405-PST (Thursday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
(Lauren Weinstein) Subject: complex net addresses

A message from a slightly confused SF-LOVERS reader claiming he wasn't
at Berkeley (in the last digest) prods me to explain to the readership
what addresses of the form:

foo!bar!hoopla!cranch@Berkeley

really mean.  These are addresses within a network used by numerous Unix
systems to communicate, distinct from the Arpanet itself.  The network
software is called UUCP.  Berkeley tends to act as a forwarding point
for many sites -- thus they often appear in the address when an Arpanet
destination is specified.  Each of the other names is a separate site
through which the message was routed on its way to Berkeley.

--Lauren--

P.S.  The UUCP system is essentially fully automatic, and is largely
      based on dialup lines.

--LW--

------------------------------

Date: 23 Apr 1981 19:56:33-PST From: sdcsvax!dbw at Berkeley Subject:
Addition to the convention calendar

        July 23-26, 1981 (Southern California) SAN DIEGO COMIC CON.
Confirmed Guests: Denny O'Neil, Dick Giordano, Doug Moench, Bill
Sienkiewicz, L.B. Cole, Jim Shooter, Jack Kirby, Jerry Bails, Scott
Shaw, Julius Schwartz, Carl Swan. El Cortez Hotel, 7th and Ash San
Diego, CA; $22 single, $28 double, $7 per extra person, meal plan
available $14 for three meals. Cost: $16 for a full four day membership
till 6/30/81 $20 afterward; $15 for children between 6 & 12 years old;
One day memberships at door, $5 7/23 & 7/26, $6 7/24 & 7/25.  Children
under five get in free. P.O. Box 17066 San Diego, CA 92117.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



1,,
Summary-line: 27-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #105
*** EOOH ***
Date: 27 APR 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #105
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 27 Apr 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 105

Today's Topics:
                         SF Events - NCC 1981,
      SF Books - Comics (new Superman-Spiderman teamup) & Budrys
          Book Column (Expanded Universe and Federation and
    The Many-Colored Land and Fahrenheit 451 and Childhood's End) &
                           Cyber-SF Project
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 Apr 1981 (Saturday) 1621-EDT From: DREIFU at WHARTON-10 (Henry
Dreifus) Subject: NCC'81

How many people are planning to attend?  I am planning to go, perhaps we
can meet one another at NCC?  I shall be there Wed and Thur (at least I
am planning as such).  I guess we should (one person) put a thing on the
MSG board (in big letters) for HUMAN-NETS people or something to draw
attention to the interesting things.  Let me know what y'all think.

/Hank

[ Everyone planning to meet at NCC '81 should please take care not
  to mention SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS, or any of the Large Mailing Lists
  directly in any form whatsoever.  To do so would violate the
  security of these lists, threatening their existence.  Rather, it
  has proved effective at past conventions to simply post notices
  directing people to DREIFU@WHARTON-10, LLOYD@AI, or DUFFEY's group.
  Please take care to be cryptic so that people who do not know about
  the Large Lists will remain ignorant.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

LLOYD@MIT-AI 04/25/81 23:17:52 Re:  NCC '81


I will be running the Alanthus Booth at NCC about half a day each day.
Please drop by and say hello, or leave a message for other ARPAphreaks.
I will have four Convergent Technologies systems in the booth and will
allow people to store messages.

Brian Lloyd

------------------------------

Date: 25 Apr 1981 2052-EST From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: new superman-spiderman teamup

For those of you interested in comic books, there is a new
Superman-Spiderman teamup comic coming out from Marvel soon.  The book
is one of those "Marvel Treasury Edition" things (you know seven feet
high by five feet wide, and awkward as hell to hold) for $2.50.  As an
added incentive it guest stars (in alphabetical order):

        Dr. Doom
        Hulk
        Parasite
        Wonder Woman.

I'm not revealing anything by telling this: all these people are shown
on either the front or back cover.  In addition there are a lot of the
regular characters from both the Superman and the Spiderman series.

As comic books go this was fairly good. I found the book to be decently
written and drawn.  The only thing that really bothered me about the
book was the implication that the Marvel universe is the same universe
as the DC universe.

While this isn't impossible, it certainly is improbable.  There simply
isn't any evidence anywhere the visible section of either universe
(aside from this Superman-Spiderman team up and the last one in 1976) to
support the idea.  Consider some of the evidence against it:

        1) There has never been any evidence for the triple city of
           New York/Metropolis/Gotham.
        2) There has never been any evidence of DC heroes meeting
           Marvel heroes in any fashion.  This is quite strange
           considering the obvious tendency of superheroes to get
           together whenever possible.
        3) There has never been any evidence in either universe of the
           impact of the other universe's characters on history.  In
           each universe there have been characters that have had a
           major impact on history, consider Captain America for
           example.


Hmm, I seem to be diverging from my original intention here.  I think
I'll quit now before I diverge too far.

        steve z.

------------------------------

Date: 25 Apr 1981 2331-PST From: Mclure at SRI-AI Subject: sf column

    A REGULAR SCIENCE FICTION column
    By Algis Budrys
    (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
    Would you consider buying a book just because I asked you to?
    It's called ''Expanded Universe'' and is written by Robert A.
Heinlein. It will make you angry and depressed. That's because it's
about the real world of today.
    Heinlein of course is the grand old man of speculative fiction (a
term he invented, as part of a critical construct which is the only
useful way of talking intelligently about ''science fiction''). And in
this book are a handful of his short stories; some of them, like
''Solution Unsatisfactory'' and ''Blowups Happen'' are classics from
pre-Atomic Age days. They're classics in part because they exactly
predicted the political situations that would occur if the United States
ever attained civilian and military nuclear technology. What Heinlein
has been throughout his life is a political philosopher; the stories
that made him famous are only a by-product of his observations and
analyses.
    The latter have also been expressed over the years in essays and
speeches. Many of these are included in this volume, which is an
expansion of his 1966 collection, ''The Worlds of Robert A.  Heinlein.''
It contains the fruit of a half a century of looking at the world with a
jaundiced eye, predicting both the wonders and the travels that would
result from trends clearly visible to him and of being borne out by
events a remarkable percentage of the time.
    His ideas of how to write a popular article apparently were formed
in a 1928 locker-room bull session, and this probably accounts for why
many people who regard him as a master fiction craftsman either ignore
his nonfiction or merely skim it. It's worth the effort to push past
that.
    If you have ever detected anything the least bit wrong with the U.S.
educational system, the military, the government in general, or the
value of the dollar...on these he may not always be right, but he's been
right a hell of a lot oftener than Jeane Dixon has.
    I don't know what the heck should be done with Ace Books'
proofreaders. One of the hidden scandals of contemporary publishing is
that the audience often gets only a rough idea of what the author
intended. But Ace is notable even in that company, and ''Federation''
($5.95 trade paperback) represents the acme of their ability to miss
homonyms and other plausible errors, in addition to outright
typographical scrambles. Nevertheless, this collection of novelettes by
H. Beam Piper, a neglected master from the 1950s, will open your eyes to
the fact that we lost somebody particularly insightful and effective
when he took his own life.
    Gloomy? Feel out of place? Try the Pliocene; six million years in
the past, no pollution, no taxes, equable climate. Climb into your
Guderian Effect one-way time machine and bid adieu forever to Ring
Around the Collar.
    This is precisely what a large and varied cast of social misfits and
brokenhearted lovers do in ''The Many-Colored Land'' (Houghton Mifflin,
$12.95), an epic by ''Julian May,'' who was Judy May Dikty many years
ago when based in Chicago. It's half of what will be a two-part panorama
from the author of a famous novel, ''Dune Roller'' (1951).
     Since then, she has been largely silent to SF audiences, having
moved to the Pacific Northwest and, obviously, having learned a great
deal of paleoanthropology and even more than she knew before about how
to weave a web of plot and counterplot against a fascinating background.
As one incidental effect of her saga, we also get an explanation for
elves, gnomes, werewolves and Celtic mythology. Go to it-it's an SF
adventure novel on a grand scale.
    For your basic library: The Del Rey Books ''Gold Seal'' reprint
series of trade paperbacks, at $5.95 each. The first two titles are Ray
Bradbury's ''Fahrenheit 451'' and Arthur C. Clarke's ''Childhood's
End.'' Beautifully produced, with intelligence and taste, this series
will embody ''major works of imaginative fiction that have become modern
literary classics,'' to quote the cover blurb. Exactly so.  Topflight
prose in the best paperback packages I've seen in years.
    Cheer up-it's not all going to hell; nothing's ever a 100 percent
success.

------------------------------

Date: 25 Apr 1981 at 2331-CST From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11

^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF PROJECT: TRICKY DISTINCTIONS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The reason we have tried to set up our TYPES of 'cybernetic' devices
before firmly defining them is that it was pretty obvious that any
merely "theoretical" definition was going to leak like a sieve.  After
all, we weren't even dealing with the real universe, where definitions
and distinctions are often tricky enough to make, but a universe of the
imagination-- a universe of MANY imaginations.

From the various definitions cited in an earlier message, the most
useful criteria in distinguishing ROBOTS from COMPUTERS have been
differences in mobility and function--

To quote the salient sections of the definitions in that message--

 Computer = an automatic electronic machine for performing calcu-
            lations and for storing and processing information.

 Robot = a mobile machine system made of nonbiological materials
         such as metal, plastic, and electronic devices.  It may
         be self-controlled (have its computer within), remotely
         controlled (have its computer somewhere else), or an
         intermediate machine, with the robot being partly self-
         activated and partly remotely controlled.

  The robot grew out of the original desire to produce a mechan-
  ical servant.  The computer,...out of the need to have a fault-
  less and speedy calculator.

If one sets up a 2-way distinction, the overwhelming majority of SF
robots and computers fall neatly into 2 slots.

        servant-like  |  calculator-like
        ________________________________
       |              |                 | (self-)|   ROBOTS     |
| mobile |              |       ? #1      |
_______|______________|_________________|
       |              |                 | non-   |              |
COMPUTERS     | mobile |    ? #2      |                 |
       |______________|_________________|


"Servant-like" and "calculator-like" are, of course, but rough
approximations to bridge between the wording of the borrowed definitions
and the cy-devices as they occur in SF.  Wordier but better would be
something like "designed to perform a primarily physical service" and
"designed primarily to store/process data".

It's when the cy-device doesn't fit neatly on the grid that the fun
begins.  Take C-3PO for instance.  As a "protocol 'droid" his primary
function was information handling.  He falls into the #1 query slot.  Is
mobility more important than function?  (Maybe in such a case we should
use humanoid shape as additional evidence.)

But if so, what about a very frequent cy-device, the "computer"
generally sentient, which operates a spaceship?  Not just a navigational
computer, but a BIGGIE that also takes care of communications,
life-support, etc., etc..  In its smaller world, it is fully comparable
to a computer that manages a colony or domed-city.  Yet it is certainly
mobile!

"Designed primarily to store/process data", slippery as it is, still
leaves us open to challenge in situations where data is processed by a
computer to properly implement service-like operations.  In TESB, Luke
suspended in the bacta vat is under the care of a medical robot.  But
what if it was done by a computer?  Box-like or otherwise non-humanoid
medical cy-devices are not all that rare in SF.  And it is surely more
appropriate to say they perform a service than just say they process
data.

Fortunately, medical cy-devices haven't yet posed many problems.  I was
just using that because the SW example would be well-known.  But there
IS a cy-device that has me tied in knots-- automatic kitchens.  And they
seem to be cropping up all over the place, even sentient ones, as in
Simak's THE WEREWOLF PRINCIPLE.  (Ron Goulart even has a sentient
coffee-pot!)  In Mack Reynolds' books, people put favorite receipes in
the culinary data-base used by the cy-device that handles the catering
for multi- thousand-resident apartment buildings.  That sounds
computerish, all right, and the automated kitchens (unlike robo-chefs--
yes, there are \those/, too) are also immobile.  Culinary (and medical)
cy-devices are #2 Queries-- +service, -mobile.

And then there is "portability" as opposed to "mobility".
(Miniturization is rampant in SF as well as in the real world!)  That
coffee-pot of Goulart's, for instance, isn't all that much different
from a robo-serving-cart.  Nor the automatic kitchen from a mobile
robo-bar.  And, if I recall correctly from Daley's HAN SOLO AT STAR'S
END that Blue Max's functions are primarily data related, isn't he a
portable computer rather than a robot?

Actually, I do have some semi-tentative views about the tricky
situations described here.  But before making any final decision it
seemed a good time to get opinions from some very knowledgeable
consultants, y'all out there on SF-LOVERS.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 29-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #106
*** EOOH ***
Date: 29 APR 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #106
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 29 Apr 1981    Volume 3 : Issue 106

Today's Topics:
                 Administrativia - No Missing Digest,
                     SF Lovers - SFL and the Deaf,
  SF Books - Cliff Notes on Asimov & Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
            and The Restaurant at the Edge of the Galaxy
         Known Space ("Down in Flames") & Cyber-SF Project &
            Comics (The Computers that Saved Metropolis),
               SF Radio - Beyond the War of the Worlds
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 28 Apr 1980 18:32 PST From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI> Subject:
Administrivia - No Missing Digest

Due to a lack of material, no Tuesday digest was sent.  Thus this is the
first digest since the Monday, April 27 issue.

Since all digests are consecutively numbered (this is issue 106 of
volume 3), it is always possible to determine if you missed an issue.
If so, then a message to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST will result in the missing
issue being resent to you within a couple of days.

Jim

------------------------------

From: ljs at DNGC Date: Mon, 27 Apr 81 07:31-EDT Subject: SF-Lovers for
Deaf Users


I find some digests of SF-Lovers some interesting but I feel bad because
this system is unfair to all of us, the deaf users.  We could not listen
to such audio systems (radio, for example).  I feel SF Lovers are
discriminating against Deaf Population.

Cannot you all suppose if you live in that world that has none of such
audio features, how could you listen?  Maybe by telepathy?

Maybe, there is a world where the deaf population is a majority.  We
would look at hearing community as disabled group.

Let's face this problem and try to use some of SF features to help deaf
users enjoy listening to SF digests visibility.

Louis

------------------------------

Date: 27 APR 1981 1157-EDT From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: finally?!?

   Come on! There have been trots covering pieces of SF for over a
decade now (although a whole pamphlet devoted to one work came a bit
later than the ones covering the dozen popular/respectable pieces).  The
only reason it took so long to do one on Asimov is that he is neither
popular with the semiliterate young (as were STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
and DUNE, to pick obvious examples) or possessed of a gloss of academic
respectability (whether or not the gloss had anything to do with the
work--\videt/ THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, for instance).

------------------------------

Date: 27 Apr 1981 1145-EDT From: Rich Schneider <ECG.RICH at
DEC-MARLBORO> Subject: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

  When 'BCN (104.1) did HHGttG a few months ago, I scanned all the local
SF shops for the book(s) with no luck.  Last month the Science Fiction
Book Club announced that its members could order HHGttG.

------------------------------

Date: 27 APR 1981 1205-EDT From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: HITCHHIKER books

 A second one now exists under the title THE RESTAURANT AT THE EDGE OF
THE GALAXY. As always in Boston, the best place to look is the Science
Fantasy Bookstore on Eliot St. in Harvard Square, right across from the
Harvard/Brattle subway terminal. Fortunately for us, such stores now
exist (and are usually distinguishable from the comic stores (which
outnumber them)) in virtually every large city in this country.  Now
\there/'s a project for some bright ambitious type: putting together a
catalog of SF bookstores so the Traveling Jiants among us can always
find something worth reading.  Any volunteers?

------------------------------

Date: 1981-4-27-15:56:35.49 From:   ALYSON L ABRAMOWITZ Sender: YOUNG at
DEC-MARLBORO Subject: A delayed Niven Known Space Pointer

A while back Cory.dz17 mentioned a fanzine article in which Niven ended
Known Space. At that point no one seemed to know more than the fact that
it was called "Down in Flames".

This past weekend a visiting fan and computer person from Chicago, Dick
Smith, was reading my back issues of SF_Lovers and provided an exact
pointer to the fanzine in question. "Down in Flames" was published in
Trumpet #10. Apparently it's not a story but just a synopsis by Niven
about how he'd make the whole thing into a hoax. It
was written just before RINGWORLD and contradicts it.

Dick promised to copy the article for me. If people are interested in
reading it, I may be able to make copies of it for them, too.  Certainly
Trumpet is loooong out of print and generally unavailable.

        Alyson

------------------------------

Date: 27 APR 1981 1231-EDT From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: androids/robots: history

  The term "robot" comes from the Czech word for "servant"; it was first
used in Capek's R.U.R. ("Rossum's Universal Robots"), where it was
actually applied to what we call androids. I'm not sure where the
switchover took place, but Asimov was writing in the late 40's and early
50's about robots that appeared to be human; I'm not familiar with any
case in which a constructed-from-minerals (as opposed to
grown-from-organics) mobile humanoid sentient artifice was callled an
android, though I'm sure such a confusion exists somewhere. I don't
recall Burroughs using the term "android" in SYNTHETIC MEN OF MARS,
although that's what the synthetic men were, but I'm quite sure the
terms were clear and separate by 1960 at the latest.
   It occurs to me that in the question of servant vs calculator and
mobile vs fixed we're leaving out the important factor, which is
\\manipulation//.  Recall some of the hard-sf writers' societies'
definitions of sentient species: talk and build fires (Piper, the Fuzzy
books); own language and hands (Heinlein, THE STAR BEAST). Even the ship
computers capable of some gross degree of mobility generally don't have
the capacity to directly manipulate the environment. This point shows up
in "Q.U.R." ("Quinby's Usuform Robots")(a Boucher story which I'm sure
was titled in reflection of Capek's piece); because they are all
humanoid, robots with single or limited functions are displaying a
variety of neuroses involving their unused and/or ineffective features
(a coder/decoder just needs a slot and a typer, so the humanoid one
takes up dancing and glossolalia; an air traffic controller needs one
arm (to punch the buttons on a human-designed console) and a voice, so
the other limbs are spasming), so Quinby redesigns them appropriately,
to the horror of the monopolists.  The common factor in all of his
redesigns is that the robots have a greater need to interact with the
environment (with the exception of something along the robot-server-cart
lines, a device that crawls around planting radio spikes over water
sources) than do computers.
   I also object to the characterization of a protocol 'droid's function
as being primarily the management of information. The function of
protocol is to replace substance (or its absence) with prescribed forms
of behavior; thus a minimal set of taped reflexes would be sufficient
for C-3PO. Of course, making him a translator would be a little more
complicated, but it would still involve having his brain \mimic/ \the/
\brain/ \of/ \a/ \human/.

------------------------------

MOON@MIT-MC 04/27/81 15:14:25 Re: Beyond the War of the Worlds

Contrary to advance billing, this was not done by the BBC but was
locally produced by people at WBUR and elsewhere.  I thought it was
excellent; the War of the Worlds part was pretty standard (and the Orson
Welles Mercury Theatre original was much better), but the radio programs
and commercials which were being interrupted by news from the Martian
landing site in northern New Jersey were the best quasi Firesign Theatre
I've heard recently.  Did anyone tape it?

------------------------------

Date: 04/27/81 1806-EDT Sender: FOCUS at LL From: John Wakerly

[ Roger King (FOCUS@LL) sent in the following submission from John
  Wakerley, who is currently a faculty member of the Stanford EE
  department (his major interest is in microcomputing).  It will
  appear in the April 15 issue of Computer Architecture News (ACM
  SIGARCH Newsletter).  Thanks are due both John (for writing this
  review) and Roger (for forwarding it to us).  -  Jim ]



THE COMPUTERS THAT SAVED METROPOLIS, by DC Comics and Radio Shack, July
1980


Reviewed by John Wakerly


     Yes, this book is a Superman comic book. It is worth reviewing for
three reasons:  (1) It is probably the first comic book on computers;
(2) It is amusing; (3) It contains some misconceptions about computers
and programming.


THE PLOT

     The opening scene: The villain, Major Disaster, is about strike
Metropolis with a Crowning Catastrophe...

     Meanwhile, Superman visits a sixth-grade classroom to give a
lecture on the origins of modern computers. He brings with him two
TRS-80 microcomputers. The students are just about to begin some
practice programming when Superman is called away on an emergency...

     A giant tornado has hit Metropolis, and Superman neutralizes it
with a blast of super-breath. Unfortunately, in doing so he inhales
millions of microscopic Kryptonite crystals released by Major
Disaster...

     Returning to the classroom, Superman finds that the TRS-80 can
compute the circumference of a circle faster than he can -- the
Kryptonite has "fuzzed" his brain and nervous system...

     Superman needs a computer to aid his fuzzy logic. Unfortunately,
Major Disaster has engineered a breakdown of all of the major computer
systems in Metropolis. However, Major Disaster had no way of knowing
about the two TRS-80s on loan to the sixth-grade class...

     Superman sets up a radio link to the sixth-graders and their
TRS-80s.  When the next disaster strikes, he will be ready...

     A jetliner has been hit by a lightning bolt, and it is going down.
Superman flies to the rescue, but doesn't have enough brain power to
compute an interception trajectory. He radios to the kids:

      "The jetliner is plummeting on a 44 degree downward course at
      505 miles per hour and gravity is pulling down at 32 feet per
      second! In addition, the thunderstorm is whipping up a powerful
      wind toward me at 63 miles per hour! What I need to know is,
      how fast should I fly to compensate for the wind and still reach
      the jetliner before it crashes to the ground?"

     The sixth graders enter their programs with the information and
give the results to Superman a moment later -- the jetliner is saved.

     Later, the kids avert a flood by computing the amount of heat
vision needed to evaporate six million gallons of water, and they avert
a nuclear disaster by computing how fast Superman should fly to send a
cloud of radioactive gases spiralling up to space.

     Major Disaster is captured, and Superman and the kids go on TV to
tell the world how they couldn't have done it without the very latest
computer technology.



COMMENT

     The purpose of this comic book apparently is to give children a
brief and entertaining introduction to the capabilities and advantages
of microcomputers. As a comic book, it contains a mixture of fantasy and
fact.

     In reading such a book, we can accept some fantasies. Easiest to
swallow are the notions of Superman, Metropolis, arch-villains, and so
on.  Getting closer to the facts of problem solving, we might also
accept the grossly oversimplified problem statements and input data that
are given to the sixth graders for each computation; we assume that
other essential details were left out of the narrative for simplicity.

     Going even further, we might even assume that the sixth-graders are
geniuses with deep knowledge of physics, aerodynamics, and other fields
required to formulate algorithms to solve the given problems.  But there
is no way to accept the comic book's total, indeed fantastic, disregard
of the time and effort needed to program a solution to a complex
problem.

     The comic book is very ambiguous about how the kids "enter their
programs with the information." Do they enter the information into a
previously written application program supplied by Radio Shack?
Probably not, since saving jetliners is a fairly specialized
application. More likely, the kids write programs from scratch and enter
them into the computer.

     Of course, the idea that anyone could write and debug a complex
program in the few minutes attributed to these sixth graders is
preposterous. Promoting such a misconception about the cost and effort
of programming is a great disservice to potential computer users.

     Possibly on the positive side, the kids use two identical TRS-80
systems to compute their results. This approach is presented so as to
increase the reader's confidence in using computers to solve
life-threatening problems. Obviously, this approach guards against
hardware errors (rare in very small systems such as these). On the other
hand, the comic book is quite specific in stating that the two TRS-80s
run identical programs, and so we have no protection from incorrect
algorithms or other programming errors (widespread in any computer
system).

     It's too bad that Major Disaster went to such lengths to create his
"Crowning Catastrophe." He need have looked no further than Intel
president Andrew S. Grove's dire prediction that one million programmers
may be needed by 1990 to program all the computers that we are capable
of producing. He calls this the "Programmer Catastrophe"!

     Naturally, we don't expect computer retailers to use a comic book
approach to sell their wares. But both retailers and users have been
known to ignore the software problem, to their later dismay.

     In conclusion, The Computers That Saved Metropolis makes
interesting reading, if you keep in mind that it contains some computer
fantasies in addition to Kryptonite, X-ray vision, and men who fly. It's
good reading for graduate students, and it's available free from Radio
Shack, Advertising Department, 1300 One Tandy Center, Fort Worth, Texas
76102.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 30-APR  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #107
*** EOOH ***
Date: 30 APR 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #107
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 30 Apr 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 107

Today's Topics:
        SF Lovers - Hacking with SF-LOVERS & SFL and the Deaf,
       SF Books - Comics (The Computers that Saved Metropolis) &
                         God Emperor of DUNE,
      SF Movies - Escape to New York & SF for the South Bay Area
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  28 April 1981 19:29 edt From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Hacking with SF-Lovers

This last Loscon, I was talking to someone about the problems with
implementing Emacs on a CDC NOS system. I can't recall who it was. If
whoever it was remembers the conversation, would you please mail back to
me.
                        Thanks,
                        Paul

------------------------------

Date: 29 Apr 1981 08:31:58-PDT From: CSVAX.presotto at Berkeley Subject:
computer comix

Radio Shack's "TRS-80 whiz kids" is not the first ridiculous computer
comic.  The "Captain Zilog" comix from, of course, Zilog predate it.  In
CZ the \hero/ is a mild mannered silicon gulch worker who is secretly a
Captain America analog (excuse the pun).  The episodes are silly to say
the least.  The bad guys in one episode shrink down to micro size to
sabotage a Zilog chip (I believe it was an 8000).  However CZ (and
female companion) also shrink down and thwart them.  Scenes with the
faceless general purpose registers beating up the bad guys, a context
switch sweeping the bad guys down the tubes, security guards hanging
around the chip and people waiting to get on the "bus" were particularly
amusing.

                                        dave

P.S.  Unlike the TRS-80 whiz kids/superman Captain Zilog is aimed at
     people who know the buzz words of computer science.

------------------------------

Date: 29 Apr 1981 0927-PDT From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI> Subject:
Superman/machine interfaces

Somehow, I think that the following, much more realistic, dialogue would
have made a considerably shorter and less interesting comic book:

Superman:  Hurry, kids!  I need those interception trajectory figures
                to save the jetliner!!  6th-Grader:  Gee, Superman. It
says "%ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION AT USER
                PC 163504" Superman:  Ooops!!  Oh well.....never mind.

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 04/29/81 19:23:50 Re: Computer Comix.

   The superman book is by no means the first computer comix. It is not
even the first to give a realistic view of the beasts. An example would
be CPU Wars. This book was written by a former Dec type, and details the
battle between IPM (the Impossible to Program Machines) and HEC (the
Human Equipment Corp). It is full of in jokes, etc about conditions in
Barnyard Ma. and people on the VEX development team.

   If people want a copy, drop me a line or talk to Chas Andres, the
author and artist who is now working at System Industries in silicon
gulch somewhere.  (Dec got a little upset at his using decus to sell the
thing so he went elsewhere)

                                                  Enjoy,
                                                  Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 29 Apr 1981 1455-PDT (Wednesday) From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY
(Michael Urban) Subject: SF and the Deaf

   Well, I think the charge of "discrimination" is a bit strong.  While
I certainly feel "left out" when all these discussions of radio programs
and other events on the East Coast take place, I don't feel that I am
"discriminated" against as a West-Coast type.
   In a society in which the vast majority of people were born deaf, I
suspect that hearing types wouldn't be considered handicapped; however,
we might have a VERY frustrating time attempting to convince others of
the existence of this sense!  It's also fun to speculate on how well
we'd be able to use that sense in a civilization that provides no
stimuli and feedback for it.  While it might end up looking a bit too
much like propaganda for ESP research, it sounds like there's a good
story in there.  Or has someone already written it?

          Mike

------------------------------

Date: 29-Apr-81 11:51:41 PDT (Wednesday) From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: "discrimination"

Good grief!  So most of us aren't deaf.  \Big deal./ Most of us also
don't live in Boston, or LA, or any other single city you care to pick.
Many of us haven't seen Excalibur, or read Niven's "Known Space", or ...
SO WHAT?  SFL is an appropriate forum for addressing any SF topic or
transmitting any SF-related info that, say, at least 10 or 15% of us
might be interested in.

I'm sick and tired of hearing cries of "discrimination" directed at any
system which attempts to address more than the lowest common denominator
of human experience.  Should we limit SFL to topics that could be
appreciated by a quadriplegic version of Hellen Keller?  But even Hellen
Keller knew about Love in a way that most of us haven't experienced.
The intersection of all human experience is very close to the empty set.
The union is much more interesting.

The Soviet Union is a good case study of what happens when a society
claims to be based on equality of result, as opposed to equality of
opportunity.  The worker has to be careful not to produce over his
quota, or he will raise management expectations and bring down cries of
"discrimination" from those less able to produce.  The only times when
the Soviets have succeeded has been when they tacitly abandoned the
insane quest for equality of result and established special institutes
for those with special talents.

The areas of discussion in SFL in which the deaf have been implicitly
excluded is by far exceeded by areas in which people have been excluded
by geography or institutional background.  Perhaps you would require the
moderator to insert warnings before each msg?  "The following msg is
only of interest to non-deaf at MIT..."  This would get ridiculous
pretty quickly.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 29 Apr 1981 1843-PDT From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE Subject:
discrimination

          Sfl is a voluntary group devoted to science fiction in all
forms.  There is no validity to the charge that sfl discriminates
against deaf people, anyway.  It is true that we do not discriminate
against the spoken word; it is also true that we discriminate (make a
distinction) between sf and say, medieval history, in favor of the
former.
          --cat

------------------------------

Date: 26 Apr 1981 2138-PDT From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at
SRI-AI> Subject: dune review

By JOHN LEONARD c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service
    GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE. By Frank Herbert. 411 pages. Putnam. $12.95.

    There are some of us who feel that Frank Herbert should never have
written a sequel to ''Dune,'' much less three of them. ''Dune,'' given
Herbert's talents and limitations, was just about a perfect science
fiction, as well as a lecture on ecology. The desert planet, the giant
sand worms, the blue-eyed Fremen, the water suits, the narcotic spice,
the God-making, the witches, the telepathy and the prescience - how
could they have been improved upon? And they haven't been, not in ''Dune
Messiah,'' in ''Children of Dune'' or in ''God Emperor of Dune.''
    Some of us, however, are outnumbered by hundreds of thousands of
readers who insist on a ''Dune'' redux every five years or so. ''God
Emperor of Dune'' has already reached the best-seller lists. Herbert is
the prisoner of a cult, his own Leto. I suspect he would prefer to
branch out and risk something else, as he did in ''The Green Brain,''
''Whipping Star,'' ''The Dosadi Experiment'' and other novels that have
not been nearly so successful as the ''Dune'' retreads. His cult won't
let him. Conan Doyle faced the same problem - Sherlock Holmes was not
allowed to die - and, like Herbert, caved in.
    It is a convention among reviewers of sequels, to suggest that the
latest edition can be read by the innocent without reference to any
earlier crime. I can't observe that convention. To read ''God Emperor of
Dune'' without having read its great-grandfather is like meeting
Anastasia when you are totally ignorant of Russian history; the glamour
is missing. Herbert depends on ideas for his imaginative effects; his
prose has seldom roused itself to sing, and his characters tend to stand
around like mailboxes full of mysterious profundities in sealed
envelopes, waiting for the weather to change for the worst.
    What's more, he is very serious. There is, by my count, a single
conscious joke in ''God Emperor of Dune.'' The Ixian ambassadoress, a
sort of reverse clone designed to appeal to Leto 2d, explains: ''I never
thought it would be easy to serve God; I just didn't think it would be
this hard.''
    But if you haven't read those first three novels, you won't find
that funny. Leto 2d has been around for thousands of years. He is made
up of his ancestors, male and female, who go all the way back to the
House of Atreus. (Herbert specializes in Greek myths, comparative
religion and Shakespeare.) He finds it hard to run an intergalactic
empire without getting bored, and he is genuinely worried about the
future of human beings. Human beings, he thinks, require chance and
challenge and randomness. He knows so much that he must subvert himself
for the good of the race.
    Without giving too much plot away - which would be difficult,
because Herbert is so prodigal with plot that he would embarrass a
Robert Ludlum - I will say only that Leto 2d is turning himself into a
sand worm. Upon his metamorphosis, the desert will return to Dune.  Like
the Greeks, he invents gods. Like Machiavelli, in Isaiah Berlin's
magnificent essay, he dreams of the return of a perfect Roman Republic;
think of how much nostalgia a 3,000-year-old god must endure, even as he
turns into a worm.
    He schemes at chance. He invites rebellion. He longs for a surprise.
He orders historians burned on pyres of their own published works,
because they have missed the metaphysical point. He confides the truth
to journals that will become the sacred texts of later generations. He
fiddles with genetic engineering. He will be both the leader and the
''outsider'' who threatens leadership. An observer decides that he is
''both the storm and the ship.'' He seeks what
Herbert calls ''Siaynoq,'' which is a combination of sincerity, light,
fermentation, naming, mystery and prestige. He would ''dampen the
pendulum.'' And he talks like this:
    ''But the tripod upon which Eternity swings is composed of flesh and
thought and emotion.'' Deny thought and ''we lose the powers of
reflection; we cannot define what our senses report.'' Deny the flesh,
and ''we unwheel the vehicle which bears us.'' Deny emotion, and ''we
lose all touch with our internal universe.'' This is the emperor god who
has the nerve to call the music of Mozart ''pretentious.''
    The inevitable Duncan arises once more from the chemical tank. The
Face Dancers are once again routed. The Guild is running out of
melange-spice, but the Ixians are working on a computer, which is of
course a graven image. The Golden Path will be preserved. And none of
this will mean much to anyone who isn't already addicted to ''Dune''
mythology.
    I admit my addiction, even while wishing that Herbert didn't try so
hard to be a poet and a philosopher. He does go on about what Marx
called the Asiatic mode of production, and he can't resist sounding like
a Brutus with a tin ear, and his whole notion of leadership and uniforms
and the elite female palace guard of ''Fish Speakers'' smacks of an
unintentional and undigested fascism, anarchy for the fun of it.  Blue
eyes will ride sand worms across the desert into freedom.
    When you can visit the past, guess the future, read minds and live
for 3,000 years, it is easy to suffer. The rest of us are bookworms.

------------------------------

Date: 29 APR 1981 0956-PDT From: RODOF at USC-ECL Subject: Another of
RODOF's famous trailer reviews

     I have made mention before of my theories concerning trailers;
i.e., that a good trailer does not always mean a good movie (Popeye) but
a bad trailer usually can be counted upon to mean a movie at least
lacking in places (Excalibur, Magic).
     Last week I saw the trailer of Escape to New York, the new film by
John Carpenter, starring Kurt Russell.  Understand that I have never
thought much of Russell, and the only Carpenter film I've seen was Dark
Star, but still, I was impressed.
     The premise, of course, sounds idiotic -- NYC got so crime-ridden
that the US just walled it off and dumps criminals in there to sink or
swim -- but Carpenter was never known for complex plots.  What he IS
well known for is snappy direction and visual excitement, and if the
movie is as well-edited and photographed as the trailer, it should be a
flick with a lot of pizazz.  Everybody, including Disney-boy Russell,
looks dirty and ugly and rough, and the music (if they use the same
music) was nicely tension producing, as was the sound.  Watching the
trailer, I was reminded a great deal of The Warriors, and thus I think
that if Warrior-type flix are what you are into, this movie should be
pretty good.  If you prefer complex plots with rational progressions or
even reasonably lucid dialogue, mebbe not.  Have to wait till the film
itself is out to be sure.

            Rodof

------------------------------

Date: 29 Apr 1981 2218-PST From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI> Subject: SF
Movies for the South Bay Area

Those of you who live in the Stanford (i.e. South Bay) area should be
interested in knowing that the following movies will be playing at the
New Varsity theatre (456 University Ave in Palo Alto) during May.

Thursday and Friday, April 30 and May 1 Flesh Gordon (7:30, 10:20) and
Dark Star (8:45)

Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3 Flash Gordon (7:30) and Barbarella
(9:30)

Thurday thru Saturday, May 7, 8, 9 Dr. Strangelove (9:50)

Saturday and Sunday, May 16 and 17 Watership Down (9:40)

Saturday and Sunday, May 30 and 31 Star Trek: The Motion Picture (7:30)
Wizards (9:45)


Jim

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 1-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #108
*** EOOH ***
Date: 1 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #108
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 1 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 108

Today's Topics:
                SF Books - "Down In Flames" & Cyber-SF,
   SF Movies - Special Effects,  SF TV - The Greatest American Hero,
          SF Topics - Tacky Science (Green Lantern comics) &
    SF and the Deaf ("The Country of the Blind" and First Lensman),
                    Misc - UUCP mailing addresses
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 30 Apr 1981 0306-PDT From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE Subject: Down In
Flames

        I'd love to have a copy of the story.  --cat

[ Please direct all requests for copies of the story "Down in Flames"
  to Alyson L Abramowitz, who can be reached as ALA@MIT-AI.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 29 Apr 1981 at 0019-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11

^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF: MORE ON COMPUTERS vs. ROBOTS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There was a LOT of meat in Chip's message to help sort out cy-devices!

Off hand, I can't think of a good manipulative ship's computer, and
comparable city/colony one-- the pair in Dickson's WOLFLING are, as is
usual for Gordy, really magical devices-- but both kinds DO manipulate
the environment for the humans, and in pretty much the same way.

Then there are those culinary cy-devices.  Simak's Kitchen in THE
WEREWOLF PRINCIPLE is the same kind of chatty character as Goulart's
food-preparers; but in Mack Reynolds' stories, there is no sentience,
just food coming through hatches in response to dialing or
button-punching.  Should they all be lumped together as robots?  Is
there a significant difference between a robot chef and an automated
kitchen?

I think it's Goulart in NEMO that refers to his sentient cy- device
house as a computer.  Well and good.  But Simak's House in WP is again
the same kind of character, and is \mobile/.  If manipulatory criteria
are added, I guess they come out more robot than computer, by Chip's
criterion.

But in the "Q.U.R." example, it sounds like the significant factor was
humanoid-ness + (presumably) sentience of the group of neurotic robots,
in contrast with the non-humanoid, non-sentient
robot-server-cart.  Don't SF sentient computers sometimes show similar
distress at not being "human"?

------------------------------

Date: 29 APR 1981 1258-EDT From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: (Response to message)

In response to the message sent 29 Apr 1981 at 0019-CDT from
hjjh@UTEXAS-11

  The phenomenon of computers distressed at not being "human" shows up
occasionally, but not often.  I would discard the example of TIME ENOUGH
TO SCREW AROUND, as it seems that the computer is mostly after Lazarus'
body, like every other female in typical late RAH.

------------------------------

Date: 29 Apr 1981 1504-PDT (Wednesday) From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY
(Michael Urban) Subject: Androids and ?

   Of course, android comes from a Greek word ("andros"?), and means
man-like.  Not human-like, but man-like.  It seems to me that I've read
the corresponding term for a woman-like 'droid, "gynoid", somewhere.  An
example would be the mechanical femme fatale of "Metropolis".  Can
anyone remind me of where I've seen "gynoid"?

          Mike

------------------------------

Date: 30 April 1981 00:10-EST From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  SF-Lovers for Deaf Users

I think perhaps you are a bit oversensitive.  The msgs regarding radio
programs have a limited audience for a variety of reasons, if i get a
msg telling about a Boston Radio-a-thon I ignore it (I'm a west coast
reader) but I don't complain that non-Bostonians are discriminated
against.

-- Enjoy!
   Charles

------------------------------

Date: 30 Apr 1981 0552-PDT From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE Subject: In the
Kingdom of the Blind...

        I don't recall any stories about a land of deaf people, but
there is a story about the Kingdom of the Blind, I think by H.G.Wells,
in which a sighted person happens on an isolated community of blind
people in the mountains and tries to convince them he has a power of
vision.  Since I don't want to invoke a spoiler warning, I will just
add that I liked it.
                                good reading,
                                                --cat

[ The story is "The Country of the Blind," which is indeed by
  H. G. Wells.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 30 Apr 1981 11:06 PDT From: Stewart at PARC-MAXC Subject:
Discrimination against the hearing

Well this is an SF list you know, so. . .

Has everyone read "First Lensman" by E. E. Smith?  On one occasion,
Virgil Samms visits Rigel IV, where everyone has a sense of perception
but no hearing.  First he gets a ride in a car that has an unmuffled
1000 hp internal combustion engine inside, then someone drops a load of
steel plate right behind him.  He emerges from the experience quite
shaken.  The Rigellian's reply:  "Atmospheric Vibrations?".

------------------------------

Date: 1981-4-28-23:07:06.68 Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO From:   NIGEL
CONLIFFE at VAXWRK at VAX4 Subject: Tacky scientific concepts

On the subject of tacky scientific concepts, an old edition of the
"Green Lantern" comic book has my vote.

Our hero was always vulnerable to YELLOW objects, weapons and other
artifacts.  But one day, whilst flying along , wreaking havoc on the
forces of evil, as was his wont, Green Lantern is struck/affected by a
weapon which was not yellow. I think it was bright red, or some such
bizarre colour.

The explanation, given later in the "story" (sic), was that the bad guys
were using an \infra-yellow/ beam which was invisible, but yellow....

That, and the beautiful line from Star Trek

        "Using the lightspeed breakpoint factor....."

Nigel A Conliffe

------------------------------

Date: 28 Apr 1981 1652-PDT (Tuesday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
(Lauren Weinstein) Subject: LSI-11's and SF effex

The latest (April 1981) issue of Digital Equipment Corp's "Insight"
newsletter has a nice article and some pictures concerning use of
LSI-11's for film special effects.  They talk about the systems used
at Midocean Motion Pictures (one of the main competitors to Robert Abel
and Associates -- my "Star Trek" employers) for creating flashy
commercials, logos, special effex, and the like.

The system described seemed awful familiar, and it soon was obvious why
this was so!  The article interviews Ray Feeney, who designed the system
and sells them to a variety of firms.  Ray was essentially my "boss" at
Abel when I was there ... in fact he was the first person from Trekland
to call me and pull me into the project.  He was also one of the biggest
boosters of using Unix and large PDP-11's for the work (which is why I
had become involved).  However, evil forces (the dark side of the force,
in a Star Trek universe?) prevailed, and the project (as far as Abel was
concerned), collapsed.

I kinda lost touch with Ray, but it's good to see he's still around and
still designing quality camera control systems!

I recommend the article highly.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 1981-4-28-11:58:37.39 Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO From:   STEVE
LIONEL at STAR at METOO Subject: The Greatest American Hero

I must admit that I am surprised that no one has mentioned the latest
ABC effort at SF on television.  The series is called "The Greatest
American Hero" and is on Wednesday nights at 8PM (Eastern time).

Pico-review: Delightful!

Micro-review: Interesting and well done cross between Spider-man and
              "Welcome Back, Kotter".

Ralph Hanley, a "special-ed" teacher (like Mr. Kotter), is taking his
class on a desert field trip, when their bus mysteriously stalls.  On
his way back to a gas station, Hanley tries flagging down a car only to
have to jump out of the way as the car is swerving back and forth and
almost hits him.  The driver of the car is FBI agent Bill Maxwell
(played by veteran G-Man Robert Culp). Maxwell isn't drunk, he suddenly
lost control of the car.  They're sitting in the car, when a flying
saucer appears over the desert near their car (very well done, effects
by Magicam).  They panic when the car doors self-lock.  Then, the car
radio comes on and the dial moves quickly back and forth, catching only
a word or two at each station.  The words form sentences, saying things
like "We won't harm you", etc. Anyway, Maxwell's ex-partner, who just
died in a shootout, "beams down" from the craft, saying that the aliens
picked him up. He has made the aliens aware that something very evil is
about to happen on Earth, and they have decided to help out.  They are
giving Hanley a suit which will give him super-powers. Instructions are
included.  Maxwell is supposed to guide Hanley and help him out.  The
partner beams back up and the craft leaves. Maxwell is all shooken up,
and takes off without Hanley, who then walks back to the bus, carrying
the suit in its case
- but the instruction book falls out onto the desert sands.

The suit turns out to be bright red, with a black cape.  The first
episode shows Hanley trying to figure out how the suit works while he's
solving the current evil happening.  So, you have this normal guy who's
suddenly handed uncontrollable super-powers, and the beauty of the show
is in the realistic manner in which they portray his struggles to
maintain his private life, while not killing himself crashing into
buildings, etc.

Perhaps the most obvious indication that this is a quality show is the
fact that there is NO LAUGH TRACK!  Some situations are humorous,
indeed, but it is not run as a sit-com.  The show is far from perfect;
especially in the need for more development of its characters.  But, I
like it, and have made a special point to make sure I see it each week.
Try it, I think you'll like it too.

<Truth is stranger than fiction dept.: The lead character was originally
named Ralph Hinckley in the first few episodes, but after John W.
Hinckley shot at Reagan, ABC decided to change Ralph's name so as there
wouldn't be any unfortunate associations.>

                                Steve L.

------------------------------

Date: 28 Apr 1981 1320-PDT (Tuesday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
(Lauren Weinstein) Subject:  UUCP mailing addresses

I've been asked to reply publicly to the question, "can addresses on the
Unix UUCP network be replied-to from the arpanet?"

The answer is a conditional no.  Due to unfortunate administrative
circumstances, there is currently no facility for incoming messages to
transit between the two nets.  This situation is subject to sudden
change, however, so stay tuned.

Another question concerned delivery times on UUCP.  These vary quite
widely.  Some sites have hardwired links that result in essentially
instant delivery, while others are polled on a dialup basis at intervals
(perhaps every six hours, or once a day, or...)  UUCP is set up so that
sites low on funds can arrange to only dial out during off-peak phone
rate periods, while others might want to dial out instantly.  Since UUCP
is store-and-forward, many sites only talk directly to ONE other site,
depending on that site to move the mail onward toward its final
destination.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



1,,
Summary-line: 2-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #109
*** EOOH ***
Date: 2 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #109
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 2 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 109

Today's Topics:
       SF Fandom - Ellison in New York,  SF Books - Sunfall &
  Magic Labyrinth & The Jupiter Theft & HHGttG & Computer Comics &
  Bookstores & Cyber-SF,  SF Movies - Star Wars (Secrecy and TESB),
              SF TV - Network Additions and Deletions,
        SF Topics - SF and the Deaf ("Persistence of Vision")
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 Apr 1981 (Wednesday) 2256-EST From: DYER at NBS-10 Subject: New
C. J. Cherryh collection


        C. J. Cherryh has a new one out in paperback.  SUNFALL (158pp,
$2.25) has advertising on the back cover that seems to suggest it is a
complete (albeit short) novel.  On closer examination the book turns out
to consist of six short stories all related to a common theme of 'cities
of the distant future.'  Caveat emptor.  [Also, if you decide to buy
this book, watch out for the quality of the glue in the binding -- a lot
of the copies I saw looked as if the binding might crack after a couple
of readings.]

nano-review -- The three stories I've had time to read so far have all
           involved 1) Death, 2) Despair and 3) Treachery in various
           mixtures and flavors.  This is probably not a good book to
           read if you are feeling suicidal &/or depressed.  On the
           other hand, these are the first \short stories/ I've seen
           written by C. J. Cherryh (after 11+ novels, is she slowing
           down?) so its a unique work in that respect, I guess.

I would recommend it.

Has Cherryh published any other short stories (say, in Analog)?



                                -Landon-

------------------------------

Date: 30 Apr 1981 (Thursday) 1126-PST From: DWS at LLL-MFE

This may not be news, but Farmer's "Magic Labyrinth" is now out in
paperback.  I picked up a copy at Cody's in Berkeley yesterday.

------------------------------
Date: 30 Apr 1981 0838-EDT From: LITTAUER at BBNE Subject: Books:
Moffitt, The Jupiter Theft

I've just finished rereading this magnificent book, and I am wondering
whether anyone can point me at more of the same.  I don't know how many
of you have read this book, probably not many, as the cover & blurb were
as bad as any I have ever seen on a good book.  Moffitt's science is
real (at least to the amateur scientist), his aliens are up there with
the best of them, and he has a good plot, besides.

If I've already missed the discussion of this work in an earlier volume,
tell me where I can find it; if not, read the book and tell me what you
think.

                                        Ben

------------------------------

Date:     30 April 1981 2129-edt From:     RHarvey at MIT-Multics
Subject:  HHGttG Paperback

The U.S. version of the HHGttG is a rip-off in that it doesn't have
''Don't Panic'' in large and friendly letters printed on the cover.

The copy that I have (paperback) was published in the U.K.  and does
have this important advice.

I hope you are all enjoying this series - I have heard all 12 several
times so far and can only say that each time they are better.

------------------------------

Date: 1 May 1981 05:51:04-PDT From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Computer comix

While to my knowledge only those already mentioned comix deal primarily
with 'puters, for years comix have contained computers in the stories.
Hysterically inaccurate, yes, but in there.  For example Deathlok which
Marvel did in the mid '70s was about a cyborg with a part computer
brain.  Androids and robots with sentience include Computo, Ultron, the
Vision, Jocasta, and the Red Tornado(version 2).  Also, some Legion of
Super-Heroes adventures used to have Brainiac 5 beat computers at chess
constantly.  Also, the previously mentioned Spider-Man Superman teamup
contains a scene where Spidey makes a lucky guess to shut off a
computer.

Tom Galloway

------------------------------

Date: 1 May 1981 05:59:34-PDT From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Comics and Computers

Slightly off the topic, there is a children's book, "Katie and the
Computer," about a little girl's adventures after she falls into her
father's home system.  It's written by a graduate student here at UNC,
and is a reasonably accurate (albeit metaphorical) description of how a
computer works, i.e., there are 3 large cannons filled with red, green,
and blue paint:  the color guns.  And the suspense comes in when Katie
and the Colonel meet the hideous Bug....

------------------------------

Date: 1 May 1981 05:48:30-PDT From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: SF Bookstores

Here in Chapel Hill, NC we've got the Foundation Bookstore devoted to
SF, fantasy and comics and art (roughly equal emphasis).

Does anyone know if Yale U. is hooked up to the net in some form or
fashion?

------------------------------

Date: 30 Apr 1981 at 2012-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 Subject: Revised
version of most recent message...

^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF: MORE ON COMPUTERS vs. ROBOTS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There was a LOT of meat in Chip's message to help sort out cy-devices!

Off hand, I can't think of a good manipulative ship's computer, and
comparable city/colony one-- the pair in Dickson's WOLFLING are, as is
usual for Gordy, really magical devices-- but both kinds DO manipulate
the environment for the humans, and in pretty much the same way.

Actually, there seems rather a continuum in DEGREE rather than in kind
of environment manipulation, from universe-managing computers, down thru
galaxy-, planet-, city-, ship-, to house- managing ones.

Then there are those culinary cy-devices.  Simak's Kitchen in THE
WEREWOLF PRINCIPLE is the same kind of chatty character as Goulart's
food-preparers; but in Mack Reynolds' stories, there is no sentience,
just food coming through hatches in response to dialing or
button-punching.  Should they all be lumped together as robots?  Is
there a significant difference between a robot chef and an automated
kitchen?

I think it's Goulart in NEMO that refers to his sentient cy- device
house as a computer.  Well and good.  But Simak's House in WP is again
the same kind of character, and is \mobile/.  If manipulatory criteria
are added, I guess they come out more robot than computer, by Chip's
criterion.

And I seem to recall that Goulart uses 'android' for "construc-
ted-from-minerals[-and- plastic] (as opposed to grown-from- organics)"
cy-devices that are particularly humanoid (like Otho in Capt.  Future?),
while a metallic one even as humanoid as C-3PO would be
referred to as a 'robot' by Goulart.)

But in the "Q.U.R." example, it sounds like the significant factor was
humanoid-ness + (presumably) sentience of the group of neurotic robots,
in contrast with the non-humanoid, non-sentient robot-server-cart.
Don't SF sentient computers sometimes show similar distress at not being
"human"?

------------------------------

Date: 1 May 1981 09:26 PDT From: Weissman at PARC-MAXC Subject: Re:
Androids and ?

Back when I was a kid reading SF/Movie magazines, the mechanical
female-like thing in "Metropolis" was always referred to in those
magazines as a "robotrix".  I have no idea where the "-rix" comes from;
the only other example I can think of is "aviatrix" (which is almost
exclusively used to describe Amelia Erhardt).

-- Bob

------------------------------

Date:  1 May 1981 1126-PDT From: First@SUMEX-AIM Subject: The Ego That
Ate New York.

Harlan Ellison, the Ayatollah Khomeni of Science Fiction, was in New
York City this week to plug his new book "Shatterday" and his other
consuming interest, i.e. himself.  Not content merely to banter with
leading NY intellectual light Tom Snyder, to autograph his works
(hard-cover copies only, please) or to dispense pithy nuggets of wisdom
to eager fans, he proved his muse to be eternally on-line by composing a
new short story in the show window of the B. Dalton Bookstore on Fifth
Avenue.  To guarantee that he did not simply retype a previously
composed story, he based the piece on an image suggested by a person at
the scene.  Rapt SF fans gazed reverently at their god in the throes of
creation, but most New Yorkers didn't seem to give a second thought to
the short middle-aged man typing behind the glass.  Ellison claimed that
he had written five pages before he knew where the story was going.
Rumor has it that sometime next week Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan will
hold a spelling bee in the lingerie department of Bloomingdale's to
determine once and for all who is the true spokesman for the American
scientific community.

--Arthur Einhorn (via Michael First)

------------------------------

Date: 29 April 1981 2217-EDT (Wednesday) From: Lee.Moore at CMU-10A
Subject:  secrecy and TESB

The following story was told to me by an employee of Lucasfilm.  I don't
know how well it has gotten around.
Shortly before the opening of TESB a video tape arrived in the mail for
George Lucas.  It contained what might be called the first re-make of
TESB.  On the tape was the story as done by high-school students who got
the story from rummaging through trashcans for pages of scripts and old
storyboards.  Needless to say Lucas was somewhat worried.  Lucasfilm now
employs the use of paper shredders.

As for the next film, Lucas has pulled together funding for it.  Live
action shooting will begin next January.  Lucas will be doing this
script personally (like pt IV) because of problems with the script of
TESB.  (Leigh Brackett dying after the first draft didn't help.)

I too was told that Lucas has read the SF-Lovers mail pertaining to SW.

          Lee

------------------------------

Date: 1 May 1981 22:08-EDT From: James A. Cox <APPLE at MIT-MC> Subject:
SF on TV


     According to the N.Y. Times, NBC will finally allow "Buck Rogers in
the Twenty-fifth Century" to die a well-deserved death; it is dropping
the series from its fall line-up.  However, they're adding another
series called "Star Prince," which is "a drama about a 16-year-old from
another planet, blessed with supernatural powers and trying to lead a
normal teen-age life."  This promises to be, well, interesting, to say
the least.  In addition, CBS will drop "The Incredible Hulk."

     The other two networks are not now planning any new SF series.
However, ABC will show "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and
"Superman" sometime this next season.  NBC is does not now have any SF
theatrical movies to show this season, and CBS has not released its list
yet.

------------------------------

Date: 30 Apr 1981 1821-PDT From: Zellich at OFFICE-3 (Rich Zellich)
Subject: Re: SF and the Deaf

In response to the message sent 29 Apr 1981 1455-PDT (Wednesday) from
Mike@UCLA-SECURITY (Mike Urban)

Well, there's one story where agents from a "normal" hearing society are
sent undercover to a planet where none of the human-type population, or
even any of the animals, have ears (or any other sound- sensory
apparatus).

I just did a fast run through my collection, and can't find it
(naturally I don't remember the title or author).  This probably means
it is in an anthology, or possibly serialized in Analog within the last
10 years - sorry I can't pin it down better - if I could, I'd
pull it out and reread it...one of these days I just *gotta* get my
library indexed online.

Cheers, Rich

------------------------------

Date: 30 Apr 1981 2048-PDT From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at
SRI-AI> Subject: SF/deaf

The most obvious example I can think of is Varley's Persistence of
Vision short story, although the people in that are also blind.

------------------------------

Date: 1 May 1981 1016-PDT Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3 Subject: SF Story
about world of deaf people From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)

I recall reading a story set in a world of the deaf; I can't recall if
it was a short story, novella, or novel, but think one of the first two
is more likely -- if so, there's a chance it was in a collection titled
LAST EARTHS or the like...

Anyway, in this tale, deafness was common among the population, and was
imposed (surgically, if necessary) upon the "civilized" people (except
for royalty), while among the rural peasantry, hearing people were
regarded as having a psychic "second sight" or were
witches/priest(esses) etc.  The story concerns a hearing girl taken by a
king to be his mistress by eliminating her husband (or just taking her
away).  This could be some sort of post-armageddon mutation effect
story.

I'll try to locate this more precisely over the weekend and send in a
follow-up if anything turns up...

Will Martin

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



1,,
Summary-line: 3-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #110
*** EOOH ***
Date: 3 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #110
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 3 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 110

Today's Topics:
          SF Events - Herbert in LA,  SF Books - Bookstores & Computer
in Children's stories (Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine) &
           Cyber-SF & Death of the Death Star (Death Beam),
           SF Topics - SF and the Deaf (Silence is Deadly) &
             Covered Wagon Stories,  Spoiler - Known Space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  2 May 1981 1021-PDT From: Craig Milo Rogers  <ROGERS at USC-ISIB>
Subject: Frank Herbert in LA

        For Southern California SF Lovers: Frank Herbert will be at A
Change Of Hobbit, 1853 Lincoln Blvd, Santa Monica, on Wednesday May 6
from 1600 to 2000.

                                        Craig Milo Rogers

------------------------------

Date:  2 May 1981 (Saturday) 1216-EDT From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10
(Jeffrey Shrager) Subject: Computers in children's stories: Danny Dunn
and the
         Homework Machine

Remember our hero, Danny Dunn -- all freckles and red hair?  He was that
little whizkid who lived with his mother in the home of one Professor
Bullfinch [his father had died and his mother was Bullfinch's house
keeper].  Anyhow, in this episode Danny and his fellow adventurers
stumble upon a [drum roll] computer!  MINIAC, described by the prof as
"the first midget giant brain", was made possible by the professor's
invention of a new, tinier, switch and a thinner magnetic tape [rah!].
The prof explains that Dr. Aiken's Mark I computer at Harvard was the
first of the so-called "giant brains" [a vicious rumor spread by the
Harvard ministry of propaganda -- everyone know that ENIAC was the first
one that was worth anything [yes, Wharton is part of Penn]].  The
discussion of MINIAC is not bad -- ALU, Memory, bits and core [copyright
1958]...etc.  So what does Danny do with this great opportunity...gets
it to do his homework for him.

"Now," he said, "programming is telling the machine exactly what
questions you want answered and how you want them answered.  In order to
do that right you have to know just what sequences of operations you
want the machine to go through."

.... they feed homework to MINIAC...  "Gosh," said Joe [the first hacker]
sipping his coca-cola, "This is the life!"

To make a long story short, a group of bullies sabotages the computer by
turning up the temperature in the machine room so that it gets too hot
and begins to make mistakes [those new thinner tapes must have expanded
and be rubbing on the r/w heads!].  Danny gets turned in to the teacher
and there is this big morals argument about whether it is cool to do
your work ala machina.

[Williams, Jay and Raymond Abrashkin; "Danny Dunn and the Homework
 Machine"; Scholastic Book Service, 1958.  There is also an LP record
 of the story.

 Other books in the series:
   D.D. and the Anti-Gravity Paint
   D.D. on a Desert Island
   D.D and the Weather Machine
   D.D. on the Ocean Floor
   ]

------------------------------

Date:  2 May 1981 2249-PST From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SAIL> Subject:
Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine

If I remember correctly (I last read the story over 15 years ago), the
teacher also pointed out to Danny that the task of programming the
computer to do his homework was more difficult than doing the homework
itself!  Thus he (the teacher) felt that it was OK for them to have been
using the computer, since they had to have the knowledge and ability to
solve all the homework problems, in addition to putting in all the extra
time.  Altogether a fairly realistic outlook on computers.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 2 May 1981 0915-PDT Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI Subject: SF
Bookstore From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

The only SF-only bookstore in the Washington dc area I know about is
"Moonstone Bookcellars", 2145 Penn.  Ave., NW.  There may be one near
the U. of Maryland, as well.

------------------------------

Date: 2 May 1981 0922-PDT From: Zellich at OFFICE-3 Subject: Re: SF and
the Deaf

Apparently another message I sent right after the one appearing in Issue
109 got lost (I sent it from an experimental facility, not from here).
I found the book I was talking about: it is Lloyd Biggle, Jr.'s "Silence
is Deadly".  There is a note in my SFBC edition that says it was
originally published as a short story, in a completely
different version, in the Oct '57 issue of If Worlds of Science Fiction.

Cheers, Rich

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 04/30/81 17:24:20 Re:  In the country of the deaf;
administrivia.


** Lloyd Biggle wrote a wonderful series of novels about a private
investigator who rises to become the chief executive of the galaxy.  One
of the novels is called "Silence is Deadly" and concerns the planet
Kamm, whose denizens are all deaf and mute.  They communicate by sign.
It's a good description of what it is like to be the only one on the
planet who can hear.  Perhaps someone can give a complete listing of
this series.  While each novel can stand on its own, I think they are
better read in order.  I just forget what the right order is.

** I wish the Moderator would leave out or shorten the message
explaining that we haven't missed a digest -- I would even advise going
to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday scheme officially.

  ---Wechsler


[ Normally SF-LOVERS is distributed daily.  However, if there is
  not sufficient material to justify the distribution of a digest,
  then a day is skipped.  The usual breakpoint in terms of quantity
  of material is 5000 characters (most digests vary from 10,000 to
  15,000 characters in length).

  Recently there was a drop off in submitted material, due mainly to
  semester and Easter breaks accross the country.  When this occurrs
  some days may not see a digest (I try to limit these obmissions to
  the weekend).  In deference to those who do not read the digests
  often, the Administrativia messages are included.

  Please also note that when a large amount of material is sent to
  SF-LOVERS, that it becomes impossible to transmit all of the material
  immediately.  Delays in digest inclusion are minimized, but they do
  exist.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 2 May 1981 00:55-EDT From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI> Subject:
Land of the blind

I believe I saw a report of some African village in which everyone over
about the age of five was blind due to some disease carried by flies
(the (in)famous "river blindness"?).  Apparently this had been the case
as long as anyone could remember; they had ropes strung along the common
paths and, needless to say, had no vision-related words in their
vocabulary.

Dale

------------------------------

Date: 30 Apr 1981 1647-EDT From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: the hearing in a deaf society

The story has been done already.  I don't remember the title, I will try
to look for it this weekend.

        steve z.

------------------------------

Date: 28 Apr 1981 1702-PDT From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE Subject: sentient
home appliances

        The Flintstones had a sentient record-player!
                                                        --cat

------------------------------

Date: 1981-4-29-11:22:57.60 Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO From:   AL
LEHOTSKY at METOO Subject: Re:    Un-covering the Covered-Wagon


Dyer @USC-ISIB complained about "covered wagon stories" and cited the
absurdity of homesteading a new planet with Conestoga wagons.

While I would hate to be in the position of trying to defend "Time
Enough for Love", there are sound economic and engineering reasons for
using simple technology when the nearest service station is light-years
away!  If you go back to some of Heinlein's juveniles (a terrible label
- I still love to read them at age 30), he expounds on this theory quite
often.  [Cf. "Farmer in the Sky" and "Tunnel in the Sky"].

------------------------------

Date:  2 May 1981 1912-EDT (Saturday) From: David.Smith at CMU-10A
(C410DS30) Subject:  re: robotrix

From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary:
        -trix, pl. -trixes, -trices,
        an ending of some feminine nouns of agent, corresponding to
        the masculine form -(t)or, as in aviatrix.

So I checked to see whether the ending was really -(t)rix.  No -rix
entry, but:
        rixatrix, a scolding woman.  [from L. rixator, a brawler.]
------------------------------

Date:  2 MAY 1981 1428-PDT From: WOODS at PARC-MAXC Subject: how's
"trix"?

You're looking in the wrong place: the suffix is "trix", not "rix".
Besides "aviatrix", I've also encountered it in "executrix", but it
really isn't a very common formation.  From Webster's Third Int'l:
"-trix (pl, -trices or -trixes) [Middle English, from Latin, feminine of
-tor, ending of agent nouns, from -tus, past participle ending + -or,
more at -ed] 1: female that does or is associated with a (specified)
thing <aviatrix> <narratrix> <inheritrix>--compare -tress.  2: straight
line--in geometry <trisectrix> <directrix> <tractrix>.

One last question: What is this doing in SF-Lovers?  (Oh yeah,
robotrix...)

One last remark: Anybody care to enrage the feminists by claiming "trix
are for kids"?

        -- Don.

------------------------------

Date: 28 Apr 1981 2320-PDT From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI> Subject: The
death of the Death Star

c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service
    Rather than tangle with Darth Vader, Robert Moss said, he has
changed the title of his next spy novel from ''Death Star'' to ''Death
Beam.''
    The book, the British journalist's first solo venture into fiction
is to be published in October, It offers another version - this time
featuring a ''killer satellite'' - of the Soviet-American intelligence
duel that inspired ''The Spike,'' the best seller by Moss and Arnaud de
Borchgrave.
    Far from being unaware that ''Death Star'' was the name of the
spaceship in ''Star Wars,'' Moss picked it up deliberately, he said
Tuesday in Manhattan.
    ''It was used jokingly by characters in the book, to indicate
skepticism over 'this thing out of science fiction','' he said.
    But a letter from Lucas Films, producers of ''Star Wars,'' to Crown
Publishers Inc. took a less casual view of the borrowing. ''The new
title is more accurate, the weapon really is a beam,'' Moss said.  He
and de Borchgrave have begun a second collaboration, he said, on a book
''about third-world terrorism.''

Jim

------------------------------

JPM@MIT-AI 5/2/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last in the digest.  It discusses a concept
(the hyperdrive "blind spot") presented in the Known

Space series of stories written by Larry Niven.  Those unfamilar with
this series of works may not wish to read any further.

------------------------------

Date: 2 May 1981 01:38-EDT From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI> Subject:
Spoilers

Something has been bothering me...

Niven's "blind spot" is a nice idea, \but/ the "blind spot" phenomenon
appears only when the light falling on a particular spot of the retina
stays constant, that is, does not change as the eye is rotated.  (This
was studied by a heroic Russian scientist who made a small apparatus
that attached to his eyeball by suction cups that held an orange disk a
short way in front of his pupil.  First the orange spot turned grey and
then it disappeared entirely, leaving a blind spot.  People with small
wounds on the retina see them as blind spots, also.)  The point is, if
the space surrounding the head of the observer is "normal", then there
must be some pattern of light coming inward, and it will be perceived
just as it ordinarily would.  The brain constructs the "blind spot"
phenomenon only in response to anomalies in the perception mechanism.

Dale

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 4-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #111
*** EOOH ***
Date: 4 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #111
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 4 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 111

Today's Topics:
           SF Books - "Down in Flames" & The Wounded Land &
       Cherryh's short stories & The Long Twilight & Cyber-SF &
        Computer in Children's stories (Danny Dunn and Oliver),
            SF Movies - The Invasion of the Star Creatures,
            SF Topics - SF and the Deaf (Silence is Deadly),
                     Spoiler - I Will Fear No Evil
----------------------------------------------------------------------

ALA@MIT-AI 05/03/81 01:19:44 Re: Down in Flames

I have been overrun with requests for copies of Down in Flames. For that
reason I'd like to suggest that people hold off on sending me requests.
At the point when I know if there is a reasonable way to distribute it
via netmail I will send a note to SF-LOVERS about it.

Thanks alot. It's great to know that there are lots of other Known Space
lovers out there.

        Alyson

------------------------------

Date:  3 May 1981 1348-PDT From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>

     The Wounded Land by Steven R. Donaldson is out in paperback.  For
those of you in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Tower Records bookstore
has it, and probably Future Fantasy as well.

[ it does  -  Jim ]

     Nobody has yet seemed to figure out where the third Raver is (see
my earlier SFL comment).

[ Mark's earlier message appeared in Volume 3, issue 101
  as a spoiler.  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 03 MAY 1981 1121-EDT From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Cherryh's shorts

   C. J. Cherryh won the short-story Hugo in 1979 for "Cassandra",
thereby cutting in half Spider Robinson's record of 4 years from
Campbell to Hugo.  (Spider shared the Campbell (best new SF author)
with Lisa Tuttle in 1974 and shared the 1978 novella Hugo with his wife
for the first part of STARDANCE. Barry Longyear then wiped CJ's record
by winning both the Campbell and the novella Hugo in 1980).  "Cassandra"
was published in F&SF, which is where I would expect to find her other
short works (she's one of the most civilized people I know, but I can't
imagine her having any patience with the restrictions of writing for
ANALOG).

------------------------------

Date:  3 May 1981 (Sunday) 0435-EDT From: WESTFW at WHARTON-10 (William
Westfield) Subject: ships' computers being manipulative

I can think of one instance where a ship's computer was quite
manipultive of the environment. this was a novel entitled 'The Long
Twilight' -- I forget the author. The novel is about these two aliens
that are assigned a mission which is basically to destroy the earth
(this was far in the past).  At least one of them has second thoughts
when they discover intelligent life, and damages the ship to the extent
that they can no longer destroy earth.  Now, these aliens are
effectively immortal, and they hang around for a couple of thousands of
years, and eventually we progress to the point where we start using
broadcast power, which the ship is able to use to repair itself, and a
race starts to save the world again. (this is a pretty scetchy outline.
I don't think it needs a spoiler warning).

Bill W

------------------------------

Date:  2 May 1981 at 2152-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ C-3PO's FUNCTION ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Chip objected to "the characterization of a protocol 'droid's function
as being primarily the management of information", but I disagree.

Whatever C-3PO does when he is doing what he was specifically designed
to do-- something we have hardly ever seen happening-- a protocol 'droid
appears to be an automated super-Emily-Post, a \storer and purveyor/ of
\information/ regarding "prescribed forms of behavior".

     OWEN:  You!  I suppose you're programmed for etiquette
             and protocol?
     C-3PO:  Protocol?  Why, it's my primary function, sir.
             I am well-versed in all the customs--

(Such a device need not be mobile nor humanoid, tho it WOULD seem
handier to have one like a PR-man at your elbow.)

As for "making him a translator [being] a little more complicated", and
involving having his brain mimic that of a human-- I don't see how this
would be any more so than in making him sentient to begin with.  Maybe
less-- as I've been helping teach a big idiot of a computer to translate
from German to English for the last few years, and tho the
dum-dum is finally catching on, it still isn't sentient!

(Darnit! <sigh>)

Moreover, Threep IS a translator-- WHAT a translator!  Recall the early
scene in TESB where they pick up the signals from the Probe 'droid at
the Rebel Base on Hoth, and 3PO says--

     Sir, I'm fluent in 6 million forms of communication.
     This signal is not used by the Alliance.  It could
     be an Imperial code.

(For THAT many, maybe he knows honey-bee dancing and lightning- bug
blink patterns!)  ..........

P.S.: In re the later message from Chip about computers with
      desires of being human, it was NOT Lazarus but Ira that
      Minerva was in love with.

------------------------------

LEVITT@MIT-AI 05/03/81 11:10:18

I too misplaced my Danny Dunn books 15 years ago, but I remember them as
fantastic.  Complicated plot twists were common, as when Danny and Joe
accidently launched Prof. Bullfinch's experimental spacecraft (powered
by an accidently-discovered paint), with all of them in it.  Constantly
inventing, the crew wound up un-jamming an unreachable relay (!) by
playing some cello music at it, as I recall.  (Acoustic transmission
through space?)

A book missing from SHRAGE's list is "DANNY DUNN and the HEAT RAY",
about lasers.

The other great series of that kind starred a kid named Oliver (I'm
almost sure).  In "OLIVER SOUNDS OFF!", he invents a super fire alarm
siren, which of course winds up being too loud.  In another book he
learns about silver nitrate, and creates a monstrous snowstorm.  These
books affected me indelibly, notwithstanding a general lapse on authors,
titles, and plots.  Anyone remember?  Do schools still have them around?

While on the subject, the other great SF book from Scholastic Books was
THE FORGOTTEN DOOR, by Alexander Keys.  An alien boy accidently stumbles
into an ancient, hidden transporter and winds up on Earth.  He has
special powers, and a rapport with animals, but of course he frightens
some people.  So he gets to deal with American bigots, and the courts;
but he connects with some solid folks, a family that looks out for him
and help him get back to the transporter at for an escape rendezvous.
The end is perfect, but I won't let Roger put this underneath the
SPOILER WARNING!!s.

I loved this book.  I'm not at all SF mainstream -- is it well known?
(Has it already been discussed on this list?)  Has he written anything
else?

------------------------------

Date: 3 May 1981 0447-PDT (Sunday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren
Weinstein) Subject: Danny Dunn & another BAD film

Yah!  I knew SOMEBODY else read the Danny Dunn books!  By the way, when
the teacher found out that they were using MINIAC to do their homework,
she started assigning them MUCH HARDER work to compensate for their
"advantage".  MINIAC generated all of its output through a tty, but used
VOICE as its primary input device.

A memorable series.

----

I have stumbled across another BAD, BAD, BAD, AWFUL, DISGUSTING, SF
film.  I am watching it right now as I type this message.  It is SO BAD
that I can hardly believe it.  However, it does have synchronized sound
(unlike "The Creeping Terror"), and does NOT take itself seriously.

This beauty is called "The Invasion of the Star Creatures".  I knew I
was in trouble when:

 1) It came on at 4 AM.
 2) The credits started with: "R. I. Diculous Presents".
 3) Other credits were headed with "Perpetrated by" and "Electronic
    Noise by..."

The story involves a pair of soldiers who stumble across aliens who have
been visiting Earth from the "Bellflower" star system.  (BELLFLOWER?)
The film is circa 1963 and stars the world famous Robert Ball and
Frankie Ray.

Anyone else out there remember this gem?  It's really rather amusing,
and IS played strictly for laughs -- quite slapstick.  Well, my only
other "good" viewing choice right now is, "They Saved Hitler's Brain",
so I guess I'll stick with the star creatures for now.

Ta ta.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 03 MAY 1981 1130-EDT From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: deafness in SF

   A novel that matches several of the descriptions recently in SFL is
Lloyd Biggle's SILENCE IS DEADLY. This is the fourth of the Jan Darzek
books (a fifth has since come out but MITSFS never got it). Not a great
book, but entertaining in spots.

------------------------------

APPLE@MIT-MC 05/03/81 04:21:39

Re: Silent Planet

     The book referred to by someone in yesterday's digest is called
Silent Planet.  Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the author.
The planet of the title is a world where none of the life-forms
developed hearing (however, this lack is compensated by the extreme
sensitivity of another sense; my telling which one would be a
"spoiler").  An agent of the galactic government is sent there because
it's suspected that the world has developed a type of forbidden weapon.
He is artificially shaped to resemble the inhabitants, and is required
to learn their intricate hand-sign language.  I believe I enjoyed the
book chiefly because of the its unique central concept.  Unfortunately,
I read it a few years ago, and so little but the central elements of the
plot remains clear in my mind.

------------------------------

JPM@MIT-AI 5/3/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last in the digest.  It discusses events in
Heinlein's novel "I Will Fear No Evil."  Those unfamilar with this work
of works may not wish to read any further.

------------------------------

Date: 2 May 1981 01:38-EDT From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI> Subject:
Spoilers

Something has been bothering me...

In Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil", the hero's brain gets transplanted
into the body of a woman.  At about the time I got bored with the book,
the hero/heroine seems to be planning to get pregnant.  \However/, this
just doesn't win.  The gonads are controlled by the hypothalamus (part
of the brain), and it is the hypothalamus that is responsible for the
sex hormone system of males and females being different.  I.e., the
testes produce one set of hormones continuously, the ovaries produce two
sets alternately.  The difference between these two modes of behavior
lies more in the hypothalamus than the gonads.  What makes the
difference in the hypothalamus?  If the hypothalamus is exposed to
testosterone during a particular period of very early life, it adopts
the "male" pattern, if not, it adopts the "female" pattern.  (In humans
this period is before birth; in rats, it is a few days after birth,
making them ideal experimental subjects.) So, our hero/heroine is stuck
with a "male" hypothalamus, and thus can't have a normal female sex
cycle.

Dale

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 5-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #112
*** EOOH ***
Date: 5 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #112
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 5 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 112

Today's Topics:
            SF Lovers - A Plea for Less Cryptic Messages,
              SF Books - The Long Twilight & Cyber-SF &
       Computers in Children's stories (Danny Dunn and Oliver),
        SF TV - Network Additions and Deletions (Mr. Merlin),
         SF Topics - SF and the Deaf ("Mother and Child" and
  "The Persistence of Vision" and Dark Universe and Deadly Silents),
                       Misc - Yale and the NET
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4 May 1981 08:06 PDT From: REDDERSON.ES at PARC-MAXC Subject:
SF-Lovers DL

Being a new "subscriber" to SF LOVERS, i can't help but plead for a
little less cryptic messages.  The fact that one is a sci fi fan doesn't
imply that one is familiar with all the novels, short stories, etc
associated with sci fi.  I never would've been able to parse THHGttG
into The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy if someone hadn't recently
lent me the book.  Also one long-time veteran of this DL hadn't even
heard of Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine(SF&F).  I lucked out these
few times, but can't say i'll always have a clue...The first spoiler
warning i saw was quite a mystery also, consequently i read the trailing
message anyway, since that was the first time i had seen it.  Ergo, what
is ANALOG?

[ ANALOG is a Science Fiction magazine, which use to go under the
  name of ASTOUNDING.  Most of the stories that appeared during the
  so called "Golden Age" of Science Fiction (late 30's and early 40's)
  were printed in this magazine.  It has a still has a solid
  reputation in the field,  with a decided bent toward "hard" science
  fiction (stories in which science palys a major role).  -  Jim ]

------------------------------

TANG@MIT-AI 05/04/81 14:01:59 Re: The Long Twilight

        . . . is by Keith Laumer.  I thought it excellent, sort of a
cross between a private-eye novel and SF.

------------------------------

FIL@MIT-AI 05/04/81 19:39:01 Re: The Long Twilight

The author of "The Long Twilight" is Keith Laumer.  There are some
references in the book comparing one or both to Prometheus and/or

Lucifer (different names for the same guy anyway).

------------------------------

kwh@MIT-AI 05/04/81 15:03:38


  There were a lot more Danny Dunn stories than just those few!  Some
may have been turned out after most of the SF-Lovers reading list passed
that stage, but I can think of at least:

   Danny Dunn and the Automatic House
   Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine (sigh)
   Danny Dunn and the Time Machine (They meet Ben Franklin)
   Danny Dunn and the Sea Monster(I'm not sure of this title....
                                              It was a giant catfish)


          I feel pretty sure that there are more, but I can't seem to
remember them.....

                                Cheers,

                                        Ken Haase

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 1981 13:34:44-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: protocol

   My point was that protocol consists primarily of the \mis/management
of information---withholding, concealing, or denying.  I grant that this
could be called information management if you take a more technical view
of the process; I also grant that a mechanical brain that could do this
well would have to be extremely sophisticated by our standards, as much
of protocol is judgmental.

------------------------------

Date: 2 May 1981 21:20-EDT From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI> Subject:
"-rix" suffix

The suffix "-rix" is used as a feminine form of "-or" in words borrowed
from Latin.  I think the most common use is "executrix", meaning a
female executor of a will.

Dale

------------------------------

Date: 3 May 1981 0015-PDT (Sunday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren
Weinstein) Subject: <foo>-ix and "Star Prince"

RE: Words relating to females that end in the "-ix" form.  I can think

of one more -- "dominatrix".  These are the women (frequently dressed in
tight leather costumes) who chain guys to walls and such (at their
request, of course), and whip, paddle, and otherwise torment them.  It
goes without saying that these guys pay for their services.

---

RE: The new television program "Star Prince".  Reminds me of an old
cartoon show (from "Mushi" productions and American International)
called "Prince Planet": "No one can compare -- to the prince who wears
-- a medallion on his chest..."

We can only hope this new show is not a cross of Prince Planet and "My
Favorite Martian".  BEEP Beep beep beeeeeeeeep.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date:  3 May 1981 at 2337-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TRIX are TREATS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

From the old multi-volume computer-generated NORMAL AND REVERSE ENGLISH
WORD LIST (A.F. Brown) based on all the major topical and general
dictionaries of circa 1960--


PERTURBATRIX    CICATRIX        MEDICATRIX      INDICATRIX SIGNIFICATRIX
VERSIFICATRIX   FORNICATRIX     ADVOCATRIX EVOCATRIX       FUNDATRIX
BEATRIX         CREATRIX PROCREATRIX     INSTIGATRIX     INTERROGATRIX
OBJURGATRIX GLADIATRIX      MEDIATRIX       VINDEMIATRIX
IMPROPRIATRIX INIATRIX        NEGOTIATRIX     AVIATRIX        RELATRIX
ZELATRIX        BELLATRIX       CONSOLATRIX     TRANSLATRIX BUCCALATRIX
SPECULATRIX     OSCULATRIX      STIMULATRIX COPULATRIX      MATRIX
SARCOMATRIX     STEREOMATRIX NATRIX          SENATRIX
VATICINATRIX    SERMOCINATRIX NOMINATRIX      EXTERMINATRIX
IMPERSONATRIX   GUBERNATRIX PATRIX          SEPATRIX        AUTOCRATRIX
QUADRATRIX MODERATRIX      GENERATRIX      REGENERATRIX    IMPERATRIX
OPERATRIX       INSPIRATRIX     ORATRIX         NARRATRIX PERPETRATRIX
ARBITRATRIX     SEQUESTRATRIX   COADMINISTRATRIX ADMINISTRATRIX
CURATRIX        PROCURATRIX     OBTURATRIX DISPENSATRIX    ACCUSATRIX
SPECTATRIX      DICTATRIX AGITATRIX       IMITATRIX       TESTATRIX
CAPTIVATRIX NOVATRIX        CONSERVATRIX    RIVATRIX        FACTRIX
TRACTRIX        PROJECTRIX      INSPECTRIX      RECTRIX DIRECTRIX
BISECTRIX       TRISECTRIX      PROJECTRIX VICTRIX         DOCTRIX
PROPRIETRIX     PRIMOGENETRIX GENETRIX        HERETRIX        MERETRIX
TETRIX OBSTETRIX       SOLICITRIX      CREDITRIX       EXPENDITRIX
JANITRIX        PROGENITRIX     MONITRIX        ADMONITRIX HERITRIX
INHERITRIX      INQUISITRIX     VISITRIX COMPETITRIX     SERVITRIX
PRECENTRIX      LIFERENTRIX PAINTRIX        PROMOTRIX       THYSANOTRIX
ASSERTRIX
TORTRIX         STRIX           DISTRIX         IMPOSTRIX HYSTRIX
PROSECUTRIX     PERSECUTRIX     EXECUTRIX COEXECUTRIX     PROLOCUTRIX
INTERLOCUTRIX   COADJUTRIX NUTRIX          TUTRIX          INSTITUTRIX
FUTUTRIX


But no "robotrix" nor "emancipatrix"!  (Not even a "rivatrix".)

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 1981 1059-PDT (Monday) From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael
Urban) Subject: More F&SF on the Tube

    I note that CBS has scheduled a new show for next season called "Mr.
Merlin", in which Merlin (yes, THAT Merlin) is running a garage in San
Francisco and is training a 15-year-old apprentice.  It sounds faintly
idiotic, but Merlin will be played by Barnard Hughes, a minor TV comedic
actor ("Doc") who might give the show some class.
   I think TV's headed into another My-Favorite-Martian/Bewitched/
I-Dream-Of-Jeannie cycle.  Oh well.

        Mike

------------------------------

Date:  3 May 1981 0157-EDT From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: hearing in the land of the deaf

I have read the story that Will Martin mentioned.  I was looking for it
in my collection, but couldn't find it.  I seem to recall it being part
of a containing two novellas.

I have also read another story about a man with hearing in the land of
the deaf.  The "hero" of the story runs a bar/resort somewhere in the
mountains, this gives him an ideal excuse to be always far away from the
noise of a civilization that no one else can hear.  I think it was in
ANALOG but I'm not sure.

        steve z.

------------------------------

Date:  2 May 1981 at 2128-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 Subject: Deafness
story identification

Will Martin's story of the kidnapped priestess is "Mother and Child"
which is "hidden" in a paperback of Vinge's LIFESHIP, a sort of
unacknowledged 'double' or 'binary'.

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 1981 0827-PDT Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3 Subject: The lost
which was found...
!sf.n112

From: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3

Wow, thanks to HJJH for identifying "Mother and Child"'s location/title.
I had poked about looking for that mistaken reference that was pointing
me in the wrong direction, and never would have remembered Fireship,
which I read in a library copy, and wouldn't have seen again anyhow.
(What I realled as "Last Earths" was in fact "Evil Earths", and had
nothing to do with this story anyway.)

More evidence of the inestimable value of SF-Lovers...

Regards, Will

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 1981 16:47:17-PDT From: CSVAX.peter at Berkeley Subject:
deaf/blind science fiction

    check out john varley's short story: ``the persistence of vision''
about a utopian community formed by deaf and blind people.  it
originally appeared in ``the magazine of fantasy and science fiction'',
march 1978.  i found it a collection of his short stories called ``in
the hall of the martian kings''.  most of the rest of that collection is
quite good, and includes another story of someone who can see and hear
but has better ways of communicating.
        ... peter

------------------------------

Date:  2 May 1981 at 1740-PDT From: obrien at RAND-UNIX Subject: Dark
Universe

        I might mention the much-praised novel "Dark Universe", by
Daniel F. Galouye.  This was first published in the mid-sixties, I
believe, and is a post-holocaust novel.  It deals with one society of
survivors who live in the underground network of cave shelters, with no
lights.  They have a complete society down there, and don't know what
sight is, though they all have functional eyes.  The novel is written
from the point of hearing of a dweller in this society, where one finds
one's way around by listening to the echoes from a large mechanical
clapper in the center of each city.  The overtones of each clapper
define the ambience of each city.  It's pretty fascinating and very well
worked out.

------------------------------

Date: 3 May 1981 01:48:02-PDT From: mhtsa!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: SF and the Deaf

Lee Killough's new book "Deadly Silents" has a similar theme.  It's a
mystery set on a planet where the overwhelming majority is telepathic,
but a small minority is not.  Naturally, the spoken language is minimal,
and the Silents are largely excluded from society.

By the way, I realize I forgot to mention the author of "Katie and the
Computer":  Fred D'Ignazio.

------------------------------

Date:  4 May 1981 1951-EDT From: JHENDLER at BBNA Subject: Yale and net


In answer to an earlier query:
  No, Yale is not on the net.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



1,,
Summary-line: 6-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #113
*** EOOH ***
Date: 6 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #113
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 6 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 113

Today's Topics:
           SF Lovers - A Plea for Less Cryptic Messages,
          SF Books - CPU Wars Comix & The Long Twilight &
               Piers Anthony & The Forgotten Door &
       Cyber-SF (The Jesus Incident and The Silver Eggheads) &
     Computers in Children's stories (Tom Swift and Danny Dunn),
    SF Movies - Monster Beach Party,  SF TV - Violent Vermin week,
                    Spoiler - I Will Fear No Evil
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 05/05/81 00:04:30 Re: CPU Comix

  I like Alyson have been flooded with requests for CPU wars.  I am
currently determining cost of mailing, and when I have found out
(hopefully by the time you get this) I will send a note to all who have
inquired. It is not an item that can be made available over the net, as
it contains artwork---

                                Patience,
                                Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 10:21:36-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: cryptic references

   I sympathize with REDDERSEN's difficulties, having come in in the
middle of a discussion in APA's in previous occasions. The problem is
that with a daily digest (which most of us read at least weekly) what is
cryptic to a neo is merely economic to someone who's been reading SFL
for a while. I suppose the best solution is to ask whoever told you
about SFL in the first place.
  Also, unless someone's uncovered a new zine, it's F&SF, not SF&F.

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 07:15-EDT From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject: SF-Lovers DL// Cryptic Messages

Er, what does "DL" stand for?

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 07:33 PDT From: REDDERSON.ES at PARC-MAXC Subject: Re:
SF-Lovers DL// Cryptic Messages

Guilty as charged! (ahem) DL means distribution list.

Lynne

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 10:06:40-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: THE LONG TWILIGHT

  Does \\not// have any of its characters assume the identity of Greek
or Christian deist myths!  The two leads are Grallgrathor ("Thor",
"Grayle", etc.) and Lokrien ("Loki", "Falconer", etc.)---and at the end,
just to make it obvious, Laumer throws in a mention of "High Admiral
Wotan" and "Fleet Commander Tyrr" (I don't promise that the titles are
exactly accurate).

------------------------------

Date:  4 May 1981 1807-PDT From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE Subject: mushy
Piers Anthony; Forgotten Door

        I was thinking of the Var the Stick series and the Kirlian Quest
series when I said that Anthony's stuff starts well but devolves into
weird mush.  Sex, interspecies or otherwise, is not necessarily weird
mush -- \that/ certainly wasn't what I was objecting to.

        Yes, I read The Forgotten Door (and probably have an old SBS
copy somewhere).  It was one of my favorites, along with the Space Cat
books (by Alexander?) and Edward Eager's magic books.

                                good reading,
                                                --cat

------------------------------

Date: Monday,  4 May 1981 18:38-PDT Subject: Re:  The Forgotten Door
From: mike at RAND-UNIX


I remember "The Forgotten Door" too!  Boy, what a memory flash I got
when Levitt@mit-ai reminded me about that one!

It's a terrific book, or at least it seems terrific from a distance of
at least 10 years.

As I recall, however, and this requires no spoiler, the young boy is not
from another planet but from another time, the future.  The people of
the future are not technologically primitive, but they choose to live
more simply.  The young boy can speak english and eat normal food; I
don't believe he is physiologically alien.

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 1981 17:09:36-PDT From: eagle!mhtsa!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Tom Swift and Nebulas

No, i'm not asking if a Tom Swift book ever won a nebula(he said
starry-eyed.)  Two separate queries, first did a TS or TSjr. book ever
deal with computers.  I collected the complete series 'bout ten years
ago and can't recall any ever going into any detail about computers.
Since i haven't read 'em in years and they're stored 250 miles away, can
anyone help?

Second, did anyone ever find out who won the Nebulas last month?

Tom Galloway at UNC-CH

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 10:11:12-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Danny Dunn

  Although the recently-published books in this series claim to have
(according to my recollection) the same authors (Williams and Abrashkin)
I have heard that they are effectively a second series, revived by
different (e.g., house) authors after several years lapse.
Unfortunately, I can't give names certainly from the newer series.
(Also, SS may be republishing some of the older titles with new covers.)
I do recall reading DD and the Time Machine in the early 60's, so that's
definitely not one of the new series, although it may have been one of
the last published in the old series.

------------------------------

Date:  4 May 1981 1354-EDT From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: Misc.

1) talk about forgotten memories! Danny Dunn! those were fun when I read
them.  And just seeing the title of THE FORGOTTEN DOOR reminded me that
I had read it once upon a time.

2) SILENT PLANET ? I don't think it was the book I was thinking of.

3) On the subject of computers/robots that want to be human, how about
THE BICENTENNIAL MAN ?  Or even the unanswered question posed in the
last of the Susan Calvin stories (the title of which I can't remember).

        steve z.

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 05/05/81 08:08:51 Re: bad movies


Did anybody ever catch the '50s thriller "Monster Beach Party"? (or
something like that.) Kind of a cross between Annette Funecello (sp?)
and "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." As I recall, the monster
looked like a guy in a wetsuit with green rags hanging on his arms.
Turned out that the guy who saved everybody was the one nobody would
invite to the beach parties.

                                        ...phil

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 81 12:55-PDT From: mclure at Sri-Unix Subject: Bay Area
masochists

For the week of May 9-15, on the cut-em-up-and-butcher-em 3:30 movie, we
have:
        Ben
        Killer Bees
        Frogs
        Empire of the Ants
        The Food of the Gods

How's that for a disgusting line-up?  And guess what the TV guide touts
it as?

                VIOLENT VERMIN WEEK!

------------------------------

Date:  4 May 1981 at 2257-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF Miscellany ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

IN RE:  Bill W's book titled THE LONG TWILIGHT-- The author is Keith
Laumer.

IN RE:  the near-duplicate messages from me on SF-L last week-- My
apologies.  I'd meant the later version to be used instead of the
earlier one which had not appeared yet, but didn't think to tell the
Moderator to discard the 2nd version if the 1st was already in an issue
on its way.

IN RE:  an additional sub-class of robot TYPE--
    RO:qsi QUASI-PERIPHERALS (partly/fully computer-controlled) has been
amplified to:
    RO:qsi QUASI-PERIPHERALS (partly/fully controlled by computer
                                or other robot) with 2 examples added
for robot-controlled robots:
    ? _the "robbies" in Janifer's SURVIVOR
    - _the industrial robots in Piper's THE COSMIC COMPUTER

IN RE:  Philip K. Dick fans-- Are there any on SF-L?  It wouldn't
surprise me if there weren't, but if there ARE, we could use some
knowledgeable help.

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 1981 2148-EDT From: KREEN at MIT-DMS (Brian J. Kreen)
Subject: Overambitious computers

I've just started reading this discussion, and haven't checked the
archives yet, but this might not have been mentioned.

A book titled 'The Jesus incident' by Frank Herbert describes a groups
efforts to create an artificial conscious for a ship.

        This ship later takes over and get's very unpredictable.  I
believe that this is the sequel to 'Destination Void' by Herbert.

                                Hindmost

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 10:25:43-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: -ix, pt II

   That's a \\lot// of ixes. But did your source say what, for instance,
a "meretor" was? "Meretrix" is the Latin word for "prostitute" (as
described here previously).
  I am appalled to admit that there a number of other words in that list
that I don't recognize, so I will now repair to Text Processing, where
they have a tolerable dictionary. . . .

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 10:16:21-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: -ix (one mo' time)

  Then of course there's Fritz Leiber's THE SILVER EGGHEADS, in which a
female robot is a robix; it is appropriate for robixes to be "ixy"
(really!) which looks like Leiber satirizing language itself in addition
to everything else. (NB if you haven't read tSE it is \\highly//
recommended.)

------------------------------

JPM@MIT-AI 5/6/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last in the digest.  They discuss some
early plot elements in Heinlein's novel "I Will Fear No Evil." Those
unfamilar with this work may not wish to read any further.

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 10:33:15-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: heinlein's neurophysiology

(\\marginal// spoiler, as what's described below happens early in the
book)

   In I WILL FEAR NO SEX, Heinlein never makes clear how much of the
brain is transported; one could argue that substantial portions hadn't
been, since Eunice's "reflexes", even at the complicated level of taking
taped dictation with a fancy machine, are retained in the hybrid, while
Johann's piano skills are gone.

   Of course, RAH doesn't really know or care about the biological
limitations of his ideas; he's repeatedly shown that he doesn't know
very much outside of engineering except when he's quoting from a book
(as in the genetics lectures in BEYOND THIS HORIZON and TIME ENOUGH TO
SCREW AROUND). In IWFNS he's obviously more interested in didactic,
Shlaffley-esque points about the difference between men and women (and
about the general decay of the world due to liberal delusions about
equality) than in making his science work.

  His errors are in good company, though; a lot of Niven's biology is
just as hashed, albeit a bit more up to date.

   Incidentally, there is a better discussion of the possible effects of
cross-sexual brain transplants: Dave van Arnam's STARMIND, which came
out a couple of years before IWFNS. Not much of a story, but an
interesting idea (\\two// half-cerebella transplanted on top of a
remaining hindbrain) which becomes questionable in light of current
theories about left-brain and right-brain thinking.

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 06:21-EDT From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject: I will fear no Heinlein

C'mon, hasn't anybody heard of hormone shots?

------------------------------

Date:  4 May 1981 1354-EDT From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: Misc.

In I WILL FEAR NO EVIL couldn't she have just gotten a shot of an
appropriate hormone, or even several shots?  "They" certainly have
enough money to arrange it.

        steve z.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 7-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #114
*** EOOH ***
Date: 7 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #114
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 7 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 114

Today's Topics:
            SF Lovers - A Plea for Less Cryptic Messages,
        SF Books - Image of the Beast & "The Devil You Don't",
                        SF TV - Science Shows,
 SF Topics - SF and the Deaf (Darzek series) & Evolution of Unicorns,
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From:     Barry Margolin             <Margolin at MIT-Multics> Subject:
Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #112

    Date: 4 May 1981 08:06 PDT
    From: REDDERSON.ES at PARC-MAXC
    Subject: SF-Lovers DL

    Being a new "subscriber" to SF LOVERS, i can't help but plead for
    a little less cryptic messages.

I am not familiar with everything that gets discussed in this
mailing-list, but I have to disagree with you anyway.  We are not guilty
of too many cryptic messages.  We rarely abbreviate things that we have
not been discussing a great deal (as in HHGTtG) or that are not
generally well-known (TESB).  In the case of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy", we have been talking about it for the last two or three
months, and it is a bit tedious to type that name fully each time you
send a message about it.

I don't think you could get us to stop using buzzwords, as most of us
are programmers who live and work in an environment where buzzwords
proliferate.

As to mentioning magazines that people don't know about, what can be
done?  Once it is mentioned, however, people know that there is
something else out there that they might want to look for.

                                        Barmar

------------------------------

Date: Wednesday, 6 May 1981  00:49-EDT From: Jonathan Alan Solomon
<SOLOMON at RUTGERS> Subject: SF-Lovers DL

<ESM>

Being an old-timer to SF-Lovers, I can't help but plead for a little
less cryptic messages.

<LSM>

 What is DL???

Cheers, JSol


p.s. <ESM> = Enter Sarcasm Mode, <LSM> = Leave Sarcasm Mode in case some
of you are newcomers.

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 22:58:07-PDT From: CSVAX.hamachi at Berkeley Subject:
Review of IMAGE OF THE BEAST by Philip Jose Farmer


IMAGE OF THE BEAST, by Philip Jose Farmer, published by Playboy Press,
1979.

I have mixed feelings about this book.  On one hand, the first 16 pages
constitute the most disgusting mess I have ever read.  On the other hand
the book as a whole managed to keep my interest.

As always, the packaging is informative in its own way.  "Two
Underground Classics, IMAGE OF THE BEAST and BLOWN Now Available in One
Unexpurgated Volume." Theodore Sturgeon has written a 3.25 page foreword
which amounts to "Well, what is pornography, anyway?".

Okay, so there's lots of SEX in the book.  Is that so bad?  Not by
itself.  In fact, Farmer carries the sex aspect of the story to intended
absurdities when our protagonist Herald Childe falls into the hands of a
certain Mrs. Grasatchow.  What I find repulsive are the mutilations.

IOTB is as much a horror story as it is a science fiction story.  It
sports a big ugly chauffeur/butler which brings to mind "Lurch" from the
ADAMS FAMILY tv show.  Also tossed-in are a ghost, a vampire, a witch, a
werewolf, and assorted other ghouls.

Curiously, Childe's motivation is the cliche of the private detective
seeking revenge for the murder of his partner.  Farmer lets us know he
knows he's using the cliche as he describes in no uncertain terms what a
thoroughly rotten guy Childe's partner really was.

So, is the book one big spoof of sex, horror, murder, and science
fiction?  I'm not sure what to think.  Who else has read IMAGE OF THE
BEAST?

------------------------------

TANG@MIT-AI 05/06/81 11:42:19 Re: Lucifer in a different light

        The story with Lucifer was "The Devil You Don't" which is in The
Best of Keith Laumer.  Boy do I like Laumer's stories! (Even if I can't
always keep them straight. . . .)

------------------------------

Date:  5 May 1981 2314-PDT From: Daul at OFFICE-2 Subject: SCIENCE SHOWS
ON TV FOR MAY



SCIENCE ON THE AIR (Science News April 21)

  TELEVISION

     May 12 (pbs) "LIFE WITH ST. HELENS"

        The story of what it is like to have an active volcano in
        your backyard.  The program follows Mt. St. Helens from 1830
        through the big eruption of March 27, 1980, and beyond into
        1981.

     May 12 (cbs) "THE BODY HUMAN: BREAKTHROUGH 2000"

        A new world, in which the future becomes the present, science
        fiction is no longer fictional, and human beings are at ease
        with bionic parts.  The program shows the progress being made
        in the development of sophisticated artificial limbs, such as
        a "myoelectric" hand that responds to brain signals, and also
        describes newer applications of technology, such as a nerve
        switch implanted in the brain that releases endorphins to help
        control pain, a laser beam that acts as a surgical ray gun and
        a bionic bone implant.

     May 29 (pbs) "BACK WARDS TO BACK STREETS"

        A documentary on the de-institutionalization of the mentally
        ill.  The program looks at some of the disasters of community
        mental health care and the exceptional programs that provide
        aftercare for discharged mental patients.

  NOVA

     May 5 (pbs) "THE WIZARD WHO SPAT ON THE FLOOR"

        A rare look at Thomas Edison, the man and the myth, featuring
        unique archival film of Edison explaining his inventions and
        interviews with Edison's family, employees and critics.

     May 12 (pbs) "THE WATER CRISIS"

        A look at a number of water-related problems plaguing the
        United States -- shortages, acid rain, the effect of chlorine
        in combination with natural and manmade organic chemicals and
        contamination by industrial wastes.

     May 19 (pbs) "MOVING STILL"

        The extraordinary story of how photography and more recent
        techniques of freezing moments of time bring remarkable
        insights into the world and life itself.     May 26 (pbs) "A TOUCH OF SENSITIVITY"

        An exploration of the hidden meaning and extraordinary power
        of human touch.

------------------------------

Date:  2 May 1981 at 2230-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "PLANET OF THE DEAF" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'm curious as to what LJS at DNGC would specifically have SFL'ers do
differently that would be of benefit to deaf readers \without/ being
detrimental to the purpose of the interchange.

That he have us abjure all references to SF in the aural media seems to
be the implication taken by SFL'ers, but is so blatantly
Dog-In-The-Manger-ish that perhaps it is not what was meant.

As for what kind of society an all-deaf one might develop into, consider
a parallel to H.G. Wells "The Country of the Blind".  There, super-acute
hearing is shown as adequate, rather than any development of telepathy.
So evolution on our Planet of the Deaf might rather lead to enhanced
visual and olifactory acuity, plus greater consciousness of
environmental cues (such as we attribute to Indians and the Aussies do
to Aboriginal trackers) and to sensitivity to "Body Language" (not only
visible, but tactile, as Virgil Simms' <?> daughter specialized in in
one of the early LENSMEN books).

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 10:30:05-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: deafness


   As near as I can recall, APPLE is actually describing the same book
as the rest of us, with the wrong title but a better plot summary. (I
specifically recall that Darzek went to this planet because they seemed
to have developed a new weapon.)

   The Darzek series is as follows:

   1. ALL THE COLORS OF DARKNESS (which doesn't look like it was
      intended to be the first of the series; looks like Biggle
      decided he'd gotten hold of a good character).
   2. WATCHERS OF THE DARK
   3. THIS DARKENING UNIVERSE
   4. SILENCE IS DEADLY

   There's also a fifth book which I've seen micro-reviews of but I
don't remember the title.  They're all decent books, although Biggle
does tend to hammer at what he thinks are important plot or moral
points.
------------------------------

Date:  4 May 1981 1358-EDT (Monday) From: Hank Walker at CMU-10A
(C410DW60) Subject:  unicorn in the news

(This may below to HN, I don't remember).  Lancelot, the California
"unicorn" that was mentioned awhile back is appearing in the news via
AP.  Coming soon to a newspaper or fishwrap near you.

[ Lancelot has been discussed in SF-LOVERS before.  See volume 3,
  issues 89, 91, 92, 94, and 95.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date:  5 May 1981 14:58 edt From:  JRDavis.LOGO at MIT-Multics Subject:
Lancelot the Uni-Goat

From the Boston Globe, Tuesday May 5 1981 page 5

FACT, A FREAK, OR FAKE, HE'S PULLING A CROWD

Associated Press

Redwood City, CA - Though at least one professor doesn't believe it, two
Californians say the one-horned, cracker-eating goat they've bred
according to an "ancient secret" is a real, live unicorn.

Lancelot, a shaggy 1-year-old Angora goat, has one 10-inch horn growing
from the middle of his forehead, just like the creature of mythology.

"A 4000 -year-old legend," says one of the breeders, who calls herself
Morning Glory.  She and her husband, called Otter G'Zelle, claim to have
carefully bred the creature on their remote Mendocino County spread
after discovering a secret formula.

But Dr. Perry Cupps, a University of California animal science
professor, believes Lancelot is just a freak of nature, not a unicorn.

Cupps, who said that such abnormalities happened rarely, laughed at the
notion that breeders could make the central horn appear consistently.
"Remember that famous ... fellow who said a sucker is born every
minute?" he asked.

Freak, fake or fact, Lancelot is drawing admiring crowds of paying
curiosity seekers at Marine World, a combination zoo, aquarium, and
amusement park about 20 miles south of San Francisco.

The unicorn of ancient legend was generally part horse, part stag, and
part lion, with its horn considered to have magical powers as an
antidote to poison.  The creature is found woven into tapestry and
painted on shields.

Lancelot, for his part, is fond of oyster crackers and has been trainded
to heel, walk on a leash, jump through a hoop, bow, and lie
down on command.

Lancelot is produced from Angoran goat stock, but that's as far as the
naturalists will go in describing the process that created him.

"We quite literally stumbled across an ancient secret," Glory said,
adding that when the process has been patented, they will release it to
a scientific journal.

But Cupps says that the single horn in the middle of Lancelot's
forehead, which could grow to 2 1/2 feet, is a freak occurrence similar
to the development of a cyclops - a one-eyed being.

"The tissue that forms the eye starts to form in the center, then
migrates away from the center.  The horn does the same thing," he said.
"If something happens so the animal doesn't develop normally, then you'd
get a central one."

But Glory says, " We have a responsibility as scientists, romanticists,
and idealists to (protect) a 4000-year-old legend."

"Lancelot is quite a remarkable animal.  If he were human, you might say
he was a superman," she says.

------------------------------

Date: 04 May 1981 1740-PDT From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI> Subject:
Naturalists Turn Fantasy Into Reality

    REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) - Lancelot, a year-old Angora goat, sports
a solitary 10-inch horn in the middle of his forehead. His owners claim
they bred him using an ancient secret for unicorns, but an animal
science professor says the horn is just a rare abnormality.
    However Lancelot came by his horn, he is proving a popular
attraction at Marine World, a combination aquatic park, zoo and
amusement park about 20 miles south of San Francisco. Sightseers crowd
around his pen to gawk, snap pictures, and touch the fearsome horn that
may grow to 2 1/2 feet.
    ''There's a lot of people who say it's a hoax, that he's just a
one-horned goat, a freak, a fluke of nature,'' said Morning Glory, a
naturalist who claims to have bred Lancelot with her husband, Otter
G'zelle on their home in rural Mendocino County.
    ''To that we say, meet Lancelot and decide for yourselves,'' she
added. ''Lance is the message that wonder and beauty and hope are
available, and if you work hard enough, you can have them.''
    Lancelot, who has a shaggy white mane and cloven hooves, was
produced from Angora goats, which normally have two horns, but that's as
far as the naturalists will go in describing the process that spawned
him. The unicorn of ancient legend - as depicted in stories and on
tapestries - was generally part-horse, part-stag and part-lion, and its
horn was considered to have magical powers as an antidote to poison.
    ''We quite literally stumbled across an ancient secret,'' Morning
Glory said, adding that when the process has been patented, they will
release it to a scientific journal.
    ''We have a responsibility as scientists, romanticists and
    But Dr. Perry Cupps, an animal science professor at the University
of California at Davis, who saw Lancelot on television, considers him a
''congenital anomaly'' similar to the legendary one-eyedcyclops.
    ''The tissue that forms the eye starts to form in the center, then
migrates away from the center. The horn does the same thing,'' he said.
''If something happens so the animal doesn't develop normally, then
you'd get a central one.''
    Cupps said such an abnormality was rare and laughed at the notion
that breeders could make it appear consistently. ''Remember that famous
fellow who said a sucker is born every minute?'' he added.
    Sue Watkins, the 21-year-old Marine World animal handler who trained
Lancelot, said he is a frisky, intelligent beast who likes to sit on the
couch and munch oyster crackers.
    ''He loves to be in the crowd. Whenever there are lots of people
around, and something's happening, he wants to be there,'' said Ms.
Watkins, who taught Lance everything he knows.
    ''He's leash-trained, he can heel, lie down when you tell him to,
come to you when you want him to, jump through a hoop, take a bow, rise
up on his hind legs,'' she said.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



1,,
Summary-line: 8-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #115
*** EOOH ***
Date: 5 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #115
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 8 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 115

Today's Topics:
                     SF Books - NEBULA Awards &
          Philip K. Dick & Here's the Plot What's the Title,
             SF Lovers - A Plea for Less Cryptic Messages,
             SF Movies - Battle of the Titans & Excalibur,
   SF Topics - Children's stories (Danny Dunn and Mrs. Pickerel and
              Tom Swift and Space Cat and Alexander Key)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  7 May 1981  9:01:27 EDT (Thursday) From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan
at BBN-UNIX> Subject: 1980 Nebula Award Winners

   BEST NOVEL:  TIMESCAPE by Gregory Benford (Simon & Schuster)

   BEST NOVELLA: "Unicorn Tapestry" by Suzy McKee Charnas
                                             (NEW DIMENSIONS 11)

   BEST NOVELETTE: "The Ugly Chickens" by Howard Waldrop
                                             (UNIVERSE 10)

   BEST SHORT STORY: "Grotto of the Dancing Deer" by Clifford D. Simak
                                             (Analog, April 1980)

   GRAND MASTER AWARD: Fritz Leiber

---

    New SFWA (Science Fiction Writers' Association) officers:
    President, Norman Spinrad; Vice President, Marta Randall;
    Treasurer, Jack Chalker; Secretary, Somtow Sucharitkul;


[ The NEBULA awards are given every year to outstanding works of
  Science fiction by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
  It and the HUGO awards, given by Science Fiction fans, are
  the most sought after awards in the genre.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 7 May 1981 07:27 PDT From: REDDERSON.ES at PARC-MAXC Subject: Re:
SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #114

Barry,

you may disagree, surely, but I still don't know what TESB is!!!

[ TESB stand for The Empire Strikes Back, the second Star Wars
  film.  This is very familar to old readers of the digest for
  a number of reasons, not the least being the large amount of
  material concerning this movie, and the entire Star Wars
  series, which has appeared in the digest (at least 400,000
  characters).  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date:  6 May 1981 13:01:49 EDT (Wednesday) From: Ralph Muha <muha at
BBN-UNIX> Subject: Philip K. Dick, etc.

Philip K.  Dick?  It's about time somebody mentioned his name in
connection with cybernetic-SF.  From the Macmillan robots of \Solar
Lottery/ (who are incapable of distinguishing sex and so address
everyone as "Sir or Madam") to the creepy, cold-blooded synthetic humans
of \Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?/ to Joe Chip's coin-op
apartment in \UBIK/ (imagine your front door demanding a nickle before
it allows you to leave!), Dick's work is filled with bizarre creatures,
mechanical and synthetic.

Actually, mention of Dick's work brings up the topic of humanity in SF
(Ward Harriman suggested this sometime ago and was met with a total lack
of response--are SF lovers not human?).  In his novel, \Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep?/, a bounty hunter tracks down renegade androids
and "retires" them.  The androids are distinguishable from humans only
by their failure to pass the Voight-Kampf test, a psychological profile
which measures empathy.  Eventually, Deckard, the bounty hunter, begins
to empathize with the androids.  In doing so, he affirms his own
humanity but loses his effectiveness in the process.  For Dick, it is
this quality that is the essence of humanity and it is a central theme
in much of his work.

Taken as a whole, Dick's work (and there is lots of it) is one of the
most varied and crazy collections of ideas in SF.  He's touched every
subject in one way or another.  Parallel worlds (\The Man in the High
Castle/, \Now Wait for Last Year/), politics (\Solar Lottery/, \The
Simulacra/, \Our Friends from Frolix 8/), madness (\We Can Build You/,
\Martian Time-Slip/), drugs (\The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch/ is
the ULTIMATE bad-trip), religion (\Electric Sheep?/, \High Castle/, \A
Maze of Death/, \Eye in the Sky/), post-nuclear holocaust (again
\Electric Sheep?/, \Dr. Bloodmoney/), the nature of reality (\A Maze of
Death/, \UBIK/, \Palmer Eldritch/, \Martian Time-Slip/, \Eye in the
Sky/).  And of course, his latest mind-boggler, \VALIS/.  I know some
have referred to it as (if I recall correctly) unmitigated horse-puck,
but I wouldn't trade it for all the Niven-Pournelle collaborations in
the known universe!

(Incidentally, for those of you who have seen "Dark Star", the notion of
keeping the dead captain in cold-storage so he can be "revived"
periodically to give advice is lifted from Dick's "half-lifers." See
\UBIK/ or "What the Dead Men Say.")

Getting back to the original subject, cybernetic-SF, I've heard no
mention of R. A. Lafferty's wonderful creature, Epiktistes, the Ktistec
Machine.  More than a computer, Epikt's creation (birth actually) at the
Institute for Impure Science is detailed in the
somewhat hard-to-find novel \Arrive at Easterwine/.  He also appears in
several short stories involving the Institute, the best of which is
"Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne," in which the members of the Institute,
aided by Epikt, attempt to change history with the usual disastrous
results.  (What can you expect from a Ktistec machine who manifests
himself as giant, cigar-smoking serpent's head?)

------------------------------

Date: 6 May 1981  10:04-EDT (Wednesday) From: Andrew G. Malis <MALIS at
BBNE> Subject: Movie trailers

The other day, I saw a trailer for "Battle of the Titans", "coming soon
to your local theater".  Based upon the trailer, stay away!  The film
evidently is about a conflict between the good guy on a winged horse and
the gods of Olympus.  Most of the preview consisted of stills of the
actors, but it had a few "action shots" complete with "special" effects,
which looked absolutely awful.  The animation of the miniatures looked
jerky and unrealistic and mask edges were easily spotted.  (Perhaps its
just that I've been spoiled by Lucas & company.)

On the other hand, this was followed by a trailer for "Excalibur", which
I haven't seen, mostly because of the reviews I've heard and read.
However, this trailer really made me WANT to see the film, and I now
just may.

Andy

------------------------------

Date:  7 May 1981 0010-EDT (Thursday) From: Paul.Hilfinger at CMU-10A
(C410PH01) Subject:  Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine

Ah yes, the mention of Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine a few issues
back (V3 #110) brought back fond memories.  However, it also seems to
have uncovered a bit of creeping senility in my memory processes.  I
seem to recall that MINIAC failed because the room became too cold,
rather than too hot.  The printer then started typing stuff that looked
like chattering.  Hmmm....What computers does anyone know of that fail
as a result of temperatures FALLING into the 40-50 degree F range (or
whatever it was in the story)?

        Paul Hilfinger

------------------------------

FIL@MIT-AI 05/06/81 20:46:24 Re: Mrs. Pickerel

I read Danny Dunn books when I was younger and enjoyed every one of
them.  I was wondering if anyone had read any books from another series,
written about the same time as DD, about an old woman named Mrs.
Pickerel?  The two that I can remember (although I'm sure there were
more) were:  "Mrs. Pickerel goes to Mars" and "Mrs. Pickerel goes
to the Antarctic".  In the former, Mrs. P awakes one morning to find
that the government is building a spaceship in the middle of her pasture
(she lives on a farm).  She eventually ends up on the ship as it makes
its way to Mars, and I can remember a humorous episode during the crew's
first meal in zero-g.  All I can remember about the second is a
description of a white-out, and how different layers of ice have
something to with the passage of geological time or something (it was a
looong time ago).  Anybody else out there heard of the marvelous Mrs. P?

P.S.  RE: P.K.Dick, I think he's fantastic!  (more to come)

------------------------------

Date:  6 May 1981 (Wednesday) 2156-EST From: DYER at NBS-10 Subject:
Children's SF, and a "Here's the plot -- what's the title?"

     The mentioning of THE FORGOTTEN DOOR jarred loose a whole heap of
memories of my early reading days.  Books like THE SPACESHIP UNDER THE
APPLE TREE (author's name long forgotten,) THE FORGOTTEN STAR (no
relation to TFD), MISS PICKEREL GOES TO MARS, MISS PICKEREL ON THE OCEAN
FLOOR, MISS PICKEREL (ad infinitum), THE SWORD IN THE STONE (by T.H.
White), and a rather horrible pulp -- one of the worst stories I've ever
had the misfortune to read -- which involved killer bees /on the MOON/,
and bunches of rockets that pushed the moon into the sun or something.
Thank God I've forgotten the title of /that/ one.  Isn't it amazing what
a simple keyword will knock loose from our memories?

     I can recall the plot, but not the title, of a book (perhaps it was
two or three related books) involving two young boys and a semi-mad
scientist (or was he an astronomer?  No matter.) This astronomer had a
very special filter fitted to his telescope, and with it he was able to
see a green planet orbiting the earth -- a planet that no other
astronomer could see without the filter.  He convinces the two boys to
build a small spaceship out of wood, whereupon he fuels it and sends
them to the planet.  The ecology of the green planet is into mushrooms
-- all sizes -- and green people.  The two boys have some sort of
adventure, and then return to earth, nearly running their "Oxygen urn"
dry on the trip back.  The astronomer disappears mysteriously, along
with the street that he lived on.

     A possible title -- THE MUSHROOM PLANET -- springs to mind, but I
don't know the author, and I don't know whether or not there were any
sequels.  Can anyone remember the name and author of this work?


                        Thanks,
                                -Landon-

[ The title definitely has MUSHROOM PLANET in it, although I am
  inclined to think it was called A VISIT (or VOYAGE) TO THE
  MUSHROOM PLANET.  Now if I can only find those old books of
  mine...  -- Jim ]

------------------------------00
KWH@MIT-AI 05/06/81 19:46:28 Re:  Tom Swift


There is an "electronic brain" which translates the aliens messages in
one TSjr (Tom Swift Jr.).  Also, I think he had onboard computers on
this spaceships...

                        To old memories,
                                        Ken Haase

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 05/06/81 15:36:54 Re:  Space Cat, and Alexander Key novels.


You people are really twanging rusty neurons in this foggy skull of
mine.

Alexander Key did not write the Space Cat novels.  They were the work of
Ruthven Todd.  I do not know the sex of Mx. Todd.

The Space Cat books are:

1) Space Cat:  Astronaut adopts cat, takes cat with him on first flight
to the moon.  Moon turns out to be inhabited by para-sentient
bubble-like creatures.  Cat repairs astronaut's space helmet with a
piece of lunar clover.

2) Space Cat goes to Venus:  I forget what he finds there.  Telepathic
plants, perhaps.

3) Space Cat on Mars:  Meets a beautiful female Martian cat, named Moofa
if memory serves.

4) Space Cat and the Kittens:  The original Space Cat and his family
participate in the first interstellar expedition, to a planet of Alpha
Centauri.  There are miniature dinosaurs there.

Getting back to Alexander Key: besides "The Forgotten Door", this author
wrote two other sub-juveniles that I know of: "Sprockets, a Little
Robot" and "Sprockets and Rivets".  Oh, I just remembered a third, but I
don't think I ever read it:  "Bolts, a Robot Dog".

Key's robot stories borrow Asimov's laws.  I don't remember their plots
except that there was a kind professor and some random aliens with a
flying saucer.

   ---Wechsler

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 9-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #116
*** EOOH ***
Date: 9 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #116
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 9 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 116

Today's Topics:
             SF Lovers - A Plea for Less Cryptic Messages,
        SF Books - Shatterday & Philip K. Dick & Danse Macabre,
  SF Movies - The Great Turkey Debate (The Monster From the Surf and
              The Creature From the Haunted Sea) & TRON,
   SF Topics - Children's stories (Peter Graves and 5000 Balloons),
                         Spoiler - Star Wars
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 1604-EDT (Friday) From: Paul.Hilfinger at CMU-10A
(C410PH01) Subject:  Acronyms

The recent discussion of how cryptic our SF-LOVERS jargon can look to
outsiders reminded me of a mildly humorous encounter between the two
cultures (in C.  P.  Snow's sense).

During my undergraduate days (so very long ago), I worked at our
Computation Center, known to its denizens as "the CC," naturally enough.
One of the resident Field Engineers, or FEs, bore the nickname Dancing
Bare (yes, sic), or DB, for reasons that I won't go into here.  I should
shame-facedly add that we used IBM equipment.

One evening, a couple of my cohorts were talking shop in the presence of
one of their roommates, who happened to be an English major.  The name
DB came up several times, leading to the following exchange with the
roommate:

    Roommate: Who is DB?
    Cohort:  DB is the IBM FE down at the CC.


Paul Hilfinger

------------------------------

Date: 7 May 81 17:35-PDT From: mclure at Sri-Unix Subject: more on
Ellison's Shatterday

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of short story
collections in which I've liked practically every story.  Shatterday is
one of them. Run, don't walk, when it comes out in paperback.

------------------------------

Date: 8 May 1981 08:08-EDT From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject: PKDick00

One reason I never comment on PK Dick's stories is that I am seldom able
to speak coherently after reading one of them.  They seem to have some
strange some effect on the thought processes not unlike Gumout in the
carburator.

The guy is pretty proliferic.  I suspect this is the result of
psychosis; I can just picture him madly chuckling with glee at all the
wierd stuff he gives his readers.  Some days he's a little tired, and on
those days he gets a little obscure, but most of the time he is simply
manic, and his writing is, well, mind blowing.  He must have been
recouping his strength after an extreme manic phase when he collaborated
with Zelazny in their novel about a post-holocost world (title:
forgotten, sigh), but when he wrote UBIK his mad genius was at the peak
of its contagion.

On my last trip home, my mother mentioned that she always used to read
the SF books I would read, just so she'd "know what kind of stuff I was
reading".  We were in the local (tiny) town library, and were looking at
the (pitiful) SF collection at the time, and lo, there was UBIK!  I
recommended that she read it.  (I recommend that you read it too).  To
give you a little more background, my mother grew up in a sod house in
South Dakota, married a preacher, had 4 kids, went back to school to
become an art teacher, and has never done any drugs in her life.  I
thought it would be an interesting experiment, not unlike putting LSD in
the drinking water of a small town and seeing what happened.

Anyway, she read it that night.  She's usually quite lucid, but she had
a hard time telling me what she thought of it.  "Very interesting,
different" was about as close as she got.  I guess I've never heard a
description of an acid trip that I thought sounded half-way right,
either, so I guess I was expecting too much in the way of a verbal
reaction.  She did get sort of a funny look on her face when I knocked
over the aerosol can of UIBK, er, hair-spray, though.

------------------------------

Date: 04 May 1981 0148-PDT From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI> Subject:
King book reviewed by Algis Budrys

    By Algis Budrys
    (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    DANSE MACABRE. By Stephen King. Everest House. $13.95

    (Algis Budrys covers speculative, fantasy and pulp fiction for the
Chicago Sun-Times.)

    Stephen King's editor got the idea it would be good to have a book
on horror films and stories from the author of ''Carrie,'' ''Salem's
Lot'' and ''The Shining.'' Here it is.
    King actually does teach literature to college students.
Furthermore, as this book proceeds, taking the form of an essay laced
with autobiography, it becomes clear that his motivations go beyond
slitting the public purse and that his attraction to his genre is00
genuine. If he catapulted to best-seller stardom while still in his
20s-born in 1947, he has now sold more than 25 million copies-it would
be hard to find someone who deserves it more, granting that anyone
deserves it at all.
    That grant comes from the public, of course. King is correct in
reinforcing his editor's notion that the taste for horrifics is
universal and goes back to the earliest storytellers. Some of us might
not attend a drive-in showing of ''Texas Chainsaw Massacre,'' but we're
not reluctant to curl up with a suitably anthologized ''The Graveyard
Rats'' by Ray Bradbury, for all its origins in a grubby horror-pulp
magazine.
    King's stated intention is to address and dissect this phenomenon,
and he returns frequently to why it is we're attracted as much as we're
repelled by tales not merely of bloodshed but of victims at the mercy of
vast, entrapping forces.
    But while his discourse cites example after example, displaying an
impressive acquaintance with horror-creators as diverse as Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley and Brian De Palma or David Cronenberg, there's
also a sense that King is attempting to justify how a former laundry
worker can be transformed overnight into a prosperous celebrity. Here is
young Stephen King stepping off the first class flight to Hollywood, and
the bank, and freedom forever from all mundane accountabilities. And yet
there is this sense that King is not free to himself.
    He put together ''Danse Macabre'' by rewriting some of his academic
and formal essays and interspersing them with what reads like dictated
rumination. His style veers from the New Sincere-ie., gut frankness is
indicated by the interjection of gutter obscenity-to the undergraduate
insightful: ''In the confrontation between Cornthwaite and the hulking
Arness (in ''The Thing'') there is a subtext which suggests Chamberlain
and Hitler.''
    But part of the time the thinking is both clear and clearly stated:
''...in the final sense, the horror movie is the celebration of those
who feel they can examine death because it does not yet live in their
own hearts.''
    That's a buyable hypothesis-the feast of horror as a celebration of
life. If King had stayed with that, or any other one line, and developed
it, we'd have here a valuable master's dissertation, not necessarily
definitive but from a noteworthy source.
    King goes on to propose, however, without quite mentioning
''Steppenwolf,'' that inside each of us is a monster, and we know it
secretly. That's in some ways a conflicting thesis. Then, toward the end
of his presentation, he abruptly declares that though the wolf-mask
lurks behind the pious face, under that is the innocent wondering child,
burning trapped scorpions (as in ''The Wild Bunch,'' a reference King
screws up slightly) not out of sadism but out of curiosity with
morality. OK, but now suppose that under that there's another wolf. And
under that ... and under that ... What's inside your thesis, Professor?
Well, another thesis. And so on, to no conclusion.
    What I'm powerfully reminded of is the inconfident young instructor,
a familiar academic phenomenon. All pipe smoke and paradigms one moment,
hip and with aside references to sweet wine and roach clips the next,
casting about for his students' social approval-not teaching, but being
a teacher-person. Somewhere in there is the genuine thinking individual,
feeling, but not yet full grown and ready to emerge. And under that, the
money. And under that, the denial of money. And under that....

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1981 22:41:31-PDT From: eagle!mhtsa!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Trix or Treat

MATRIX?  Come now!

Also, unless i'm mistaken, the Varley story 'Persistence of Vision' is
in his SS collection of the same name which includes 'Hall of the
Martian Kings'.  I don't know of a collection by him entitled the
latter.  Also, according to the latest F&SF(magazine), a new short by
him will be published in the next few months.

------------------------------

DEVON@MIT-MC 05/06/81 22:41:29 Re: Kicks are for Trids

I think I'll complain to my senatron.

------------------------------

Date: 6 May 1981 0655-PDT (Wednesday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
(Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Monsters, Parties, and "Peter Graves"

The movie recently described regarding a monster attacking beachgoing
teenagers sounds suspiciously like "The Monster From the Surf".  It
certainly matches the description in terms of overall "quality".

The only horror film I know of with the title "Mad <foo> Party" is "Mad
Monster Party" -- which was a stop-action animation feature starring the
voice of Boris Karloff.  A rather amusing film, actually.

In a similar vein to "The Monster From the Surf", we must not forget
"The Creature From the Haunted Sea".  This one is definitely played for
laughs.  It involves a "secret agent" in post-Castro- revolutionary
Cuba.  A group of people are attempting to get off the island with a
bunch of money they stole from the treasury.  One member of the party
tries to scare off the others by creating a phoney sea monster.  He
creates bizarre footprints with a toilet plunger and red paint, and
leaves strips of seaweed and stuff laying around.  Whattayaknow -- a
real sea monster shows up that matches the footprints!  Strictly
slapstick, but a true collector's item.

Moving right along to our literary department, does anyone out there
remember a book (juvenile SF type) called "Peter Graves"?  This involved
a man who had invented an anti-gravity metal and had all sorts of
strange uses for it.  In one segment, he builds a ball that has an
antigravity core but an outer layer of "regular" matter.  It bounces a
little bit higher with each bounce, kinda escapes, and causes tremendous
damage.  I recall this as being a very entertaining book at the time.

Another entry in our juvenile SF department involves a book called, I
THINK, "5000 balloons".  Or maybe it was "500", or something like that.
A balloonist in the late 19th (?) Century is blown off course to an
island where a society has set up an amazing technology based on
balloons, steam power, and fantastic mechanical devices.  I recall
chairs and tables popping out of the floor, a bed that automatically
changed itself (the sheets fed into slots in the floor and were cleaned
by a device underneath), and a wide variety of other similar items.
Does anyone out there remember a book like this?  I think I enjoyed it
very much, many years ago.

Enough for now.  Remember:  "A clean disk is a happy disk.  So clean all
that nasty oxide off all your disks, today!"

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 8 May 1981 08:06:16-PDT From: ihnss!hobs at Berkeley

From: ucbvax!ihnss!hobs (John Hobson) Re: Bad SF movies

Lauren made a rather witty description of that classic turkey "Invasion
of the Star Creatures".  To those interested in the subject of bad
films, I wish to recommend two books:

    The Fifty Worst Films of All Time
    by Harry Medved with Randy Dreyfuss (Popular Library, 1978) and
    The Golden Turkey Awards
    by Harry and Michael Medved (Putnam, 1980)

These books celebrate such great stinkers as "Invasion of the Star
Creatures", "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", "The Creeping Terror",
"Robot Monster", "Teenagers from Outer Space", "The Incredibly Strange
Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies", and many
more. Their choice for worst movie of all time (and I fully concur with
this choice) is: (breathless pause)
    "Plan Nine from Outer Space".

If you have never seen this all-time dog, petition your local TV station
(the one, usually an independent, which shows monster movies every
Saturday night) to present it.  The only comment that I will make about
it is to quote John Brosnan, author of "The Horror People": "Plan Nine
is so \fIvery\fR bad that it exerts a certain fascination.  It appears
to have been made in somebody's garage."

It also has the distinction of being the last film Bela Lugosi ever
appeared in (he died just after filming started, and was replaced by the
director's [the late, great Edward D. Wood, Jr., whom the Medved
brothers select as worst director of all time] unemployed chiropractor,
a man 10" taller than Lugosi, with medium brown hair.  Wood felt that if
the man held his cape over his face, the audience would never suspect.).

                                May your disks never crash,
                                John

Date:  7 May 1981 (Thursday) 2050-PST From: DWS at LLL-MFE Subject:
Another "BLACK HOLE" in the making

Walt Disney Studios were here at Lawrence Livermore Labs this week doing
some location work for an upcoming movie called "TRON", staring Jeff
Bridges as a folksy programmer who lets a program run wild, or something
of the sort.  Disney needed some high tech locations, so they arranged
to do some shots in the MFE computer center (with lots of blinking
lights and whirring disks in the background) and around the Shiva laser
project (with lots of laser type lights and little men in white suits
running about).  The lab probably figured that it could use some good
publicity.  Anyway, the filming was sort of a kick to watch.
Unfortunately, nobody was able to hear any of the dailog.  Oh well ...

Dave

------------------------------

JPM@MIT-AI 5/9/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last in the digest.  It speculates on
future plot developments in the Star Wars saga, especially the upcoming
movie Revenge of the Jedi.  Those unfamilar (or even familar) with the
Star Wars saga may not wish to read any further.

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 1408-PDT From: CHRIS at RAND-AI Subject: Re:
SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #115

RE: TESB and SW (this requires a super spoiler warning)

My sources, who shall remain anonymous, inform me that one of the early
drafts for the "Revenge of the Jedi" has the following plot: Luke
returns to Degobah to complete his training as a Jedi.  When he
finishes, he and Leia join Chewy and Lando to rescue Han from the spice
mines of Kessel where Jabba the Hut has sold Han into slavery.  Lando
(and, sob, the Millenium Falcon) are destroyed during the getaway.  Luke
then fights Vader, but can't kill his own father, so Leia does it for
him.  Luke then fights the Emperor, and finishes him off.  Presumably
somewhere along the line, Yoda, Ben or Leia tell Luke about his
parentage.

My best guess for the next three movies about the restoration of the
republic is that they will involve a quest for a thingamabob to control
the Force for good.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 10-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #117
*** EOOH ***
Date: 10 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #117
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Sunday, 10 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 117

Today's Topics:
               SF Contest - Movie title (Air Raid => ?),
                         SF Books - Deus Irae,
                 SF Movies - Heavy Metal & Millennium,
             SF TV - Battle Beyond the Stars & Saturn III,
                  SF Music - The Music of the Cosmos,
  SF Topics - Children's stories (Danny Dunn and Generation Gaps and
          Mrs. Pickerel and Space Cat and Mushroom Planet and
           Here's the Plot What's the Title) & Children's TV
    (The Space Explorers and New Adventures of the Space Explorers)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 May 1981 04:15:42-PDT From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: SF Movies and Dick

NBC will be showing Battle Beyond the Stars and Saturn III next season
for those of us who still bother to watch TV.

Also, the title of the Dick/Zelazny collaboration is Deus Irae.

tom galloway

------------------------------

Date: 10 May 1981 13:41:39 EDT (Sunday) From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at
BBN-UNIX> Subject: Dick/Zelazny collaboration

 The Philip K. Dick/Roger Zelazny collaborative novel about a
post-holocaust Earth is "Deus Irae".  I started reading it once, and
didn't get very far.  From my vague memory of it, and from the title, it
seems to be somewhat religious in topic.

------------------------------

Date:  7 May 1981 (Thursday) 2209-EST From: DYER at NBS-10 Subject:
Things to come, and a contest

     A two record collection of the music from Carl Sagan's COSMOS
series on PBS has been -- or soon will be -- released as THE MUSIC OF
THE COSMOS.  It includes the Pachelbel (sp?) Kannon, cuts from Vangelis'
ALBEDO .39 and HEAVEN AND HELL, and who knows what else!?

     Unfortunately I am putting this down from memory; from a few
paragraphs I saw in a U of MD newspaper about a week ago.  I don't know
the company who put the collection out, and I don't know when it is
coming out.

     btw [ /B/y /T/he /W/ay for the incognostici who read this -- now
you know] HEAVY METAL, an animated film of obvious origin, is coming out
sometime in August.

     Also, John Varley's short story AIR RAID (from the collection THE
PERSISTENCE OF VISION) is about one million dollars into production as a
movie.  Actually, as Varley explained in his GoH speech at Balticon last
month, one million dollars doesn't mean a whole lot.  It means that
there is a story treatment, and that the preliminary drafts of the
script have been written and reviewed.  The movie will come out with the
title MILLENNIUM -- evidently the producers liked that name better.

     But, as Varley also explained, MILLENNIUM is too good a title to
waste on a mere movie -- he is currently writing a book that he wants to
call MILLENNIUM.  He has tried and tried to come up with a better name
-- and one that the producers will like /better/ -- but to no avail.  So
there is a contest; to the person who sends in a name that catches the
producer's fancy will go a prize -- a free trip to Hollywood to see the
debut of the movie.  [Varley pointed out that the offer is good only if
the producers change the name of the movie from MILLENNIUM to something
else.]

     Send your entries to :
                             JOHN VARLEY
                            1755 MISTLETOE
                        EUGENE, OREGON, 97402

     And it would probably be a good idea to mark your entry as
'contest' or something, so he can put it in a pile with all the other
entries.  Good luck.  [And whatever you do -- **DON'T** mention
SF-LOVERS!!!!]


                                -Landon-


[ I'd simply like to re-enforce that last remark - please, by no means
  mention the existence of SF-LOVERS in this, or any correspondence
  with the outside world.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 9 May 1981 00:59-EDT From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI> Subject:
Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine

If I remember correctly, the Machine got cold because some urchin who
had a grudge against the heroes turned the thermostat down on the
heating system.

------------------------------

Date: 9 May 1981 04:49-EDT From: Owen T. Anderson <OTA at MIT-MC>
Subject: Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine

We have a computer where I work that fails if it gets too cold.  It
doesn't seem to work if the temperature gets below around 70F.  No one
really knows why.  Needless to say though it is not hard to keep it at
80 or 90.  It is a homebrew affair made out of wire wrapped ECL 10K.

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 05/08/81 15:55:04 Re: Computers  need warm.

   The IBM 1620 would fail if it got too cold. in fact, it had built in
heaters. when you turned it on in the morning a small "thermal" light
would glow, and you had to wait 5-10 minuites to use the machine. (i
didn't belive it either, but it really was that way.)
                                        Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 8 May 1981 1729-PDT Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI Subject: Kiddy SF
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

OK, you've all got my goat.  Not only do I not remember DD, but I never
heard of him until the recent messages.  Perhaps this really is an age
thing.  I'm well into to untrustworthy side of 30.  Could those of you
who are interested in this issue send me brief messages such as "I
do/don't remember, I am N years old."  I will tally and report back to
the group.  Please hurry, before senility sets in, though.

        Mike

------------------------------

Date:  9 MAY 1981 0030-PDT From: FORWARD at USC-ECL Subject: Generation
Gaps


     Miss Pickerelll and Danny Dunn are alive and in print.

     After reading the last few SF-LOVERS I was surprised to find the
following brand new book lying on my living room floor.

MISS PICKERELLL ON THE MOON
     by Ellen MacGregor and Dora Pantell

     Miss Pickerelll's beloved cow and kitten are sick, stricken by a
strange disease that is attacking the animals in Square Toe County.
When Miss Pickerelll hears about the possible discovery of new spores on
the moon that might help cure the disease, nothing will stop her from
going all the way to the moon herself!
     "What do we do now?" Miss Pickerelll asked in an awe-struck voice.
     "We wait," Foster said.  "The base is bound to track us down.
They'll send a rescue ship."
     Miss Pickerelll tried to push the thought out of her head, but she
could not help remembering about the oxygen packs.  Forty minutes was
the limit that she, Foster, and her cat, Pumpkins, could remain on the
moon's surface and survive...

(From the author's page)

    Ellen MacGregor was born in Baltimore, Maryland.  She created Miss
Pickerelll in the early 1950's and wrote four stories about her, as well
as boxes full of notes for future adventures.  She died in 1954, and not
until 1964, after a long search, did Miss P. finally find Dora Pantell.

     Dora Pantell has been writing "something" for as long as she can
remember.  She says that she most enjoys writing the Miss Pickerelll
adventures.  There are now twelve titles in the series, all available in
Archway Paperback editions.

(From the "ad" page.)

     POCKET BOOKS
     Archway Paperbacks
     Other Titles you will enjoy:

29983 Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine

29984 Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy

29985 Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective

($1.50 each)

(If your bookseller does not have them, send retail price, plus $0.50
for postage and handling to:  Mail Service Dept, Pocket Books, 1230 Ave.
of Americas, NY, NY 10020.)

     (The book I am copying this from has the following warning on the
inside cover.)

     THIS BOOK IS MINE AN' YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!
                                  EVE

So I have to return it to her bedroom right away.

               Bob Forward


(I have read Tom Swift and the early Campbell, Asimov, and Clement
works, but never Miss Pickerelll or Danny Dunn.  A sad case of
generation gap, I guess.)

------------------------------

Date: 8 May 1981 1338-PDT (Friday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren
Weinstein) Subject: juvenile SF, etc.
I was just about to mention "Visit to the Mushroom Planet" (I **THINK**
that's what it was called)!  That was a fun one -- especially where the
boys build a spaceship from parts found around their homes -- shame on
you NASA!

It was in this novel that I first learned the limerick:

        There once was a lady named Bright,
        Who could travel much faster than light.
        She left home one day,
        In a relative way,
        And returned home the previous night.

I believe there were some sequels to the first novel, by the way.

And indeed -- I remember our good friend Miss Pickerel.  In "Miss
Pickerel goes to Mars", she has been away from home on a trip for some
number of months.  It is when she returns that she finds a spaceship in
her field and people living in her house.  When she climbs into the ship
to tell the people to leave, they assume their last crewmember is
aboard, and just take off!

Oh yes, MINIAC in "Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine" did indeed fail
when the room got too cold.  Poor Danny was in a rush to get a report
done, and just stood up in class and read it out loud without
pre-reading it.  Very embarrassing.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

PCR@MIT-MC 05/08/81 07:54:50 Re: space cat


Re: all these old SF stories: I must have missed the Danny Dunn stories,
and even as a little hacker, I thought Tom Swift was a load of junk, but
when the Space Cat series was mentioned, my mind went "BOOOOONNG" as the
memories flooded back. Incredible!

Didn't the cat and his owner each have a piece of telepathic moss in an
amulet so they could communicate with eachother? As I recall, the moss
(which was intelligent as well) lived on the special water found on the
surface of Venus, and so the human got a gallon jug to take back to
earth.

                                        yours in nostalgia,
                                                ...phil

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 1304-PDT From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE Subject: space cat

        Thanks for correcting me about the Space Cat books.  By the way,
when I said Alexander was the author, I meant Lloyd Alexander,
author of the Taran (land of Prydain) series.  I guess he must have
written the Time Cat series, instead.
                                                --cat

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 17:27:29 EDT (Friday) From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at
BBN-UNIX> Subject: Miscellany

  First, I should correct myself.  Of course, SFWA stands for Science
Fiction Writers of America, not Science Fiction Writers' Association.  I
was trying not to be cryptic (bearing in mind recent complaints), and
unfortunately ended up doing acronym expansion with my brain turned off.
  ---
  There is a series (::= at least 3) of Mushroom Planet books.  The
scientist/astronomer was named Tycho Bass (or Tyco Bass), and he wasn't
semi-mad, merely alien and fungoid.  I remember reading all of these
when I was younger, borrowing them from the public library.  The first
book, at least, was still in print a year or so ago.  I came across it
while browsing in my local children's book store.  The author is a woman
whose first name begins with 'C', and she also wrote THE GARDEN OF STONE
CHILDREN.  When I go home, I'll look it up, and report more details if
no one beats me to it.
  ---
  Ruthven (pronounced 'Rivven') is a man's name.
  ---
  Maybe Alexander Key didn't write the Space Cat books, but Lloyd
Alexander wrote a book called TIME CAT, about a boy time-travelling with
the help of his cat.

------------------------------

Date: 8 May 1981 11:59:22-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Hooray for nostalgia!

   Some of us were reminiscing about the mushroom planet just the other
day. I've heard that there were ultimately five books in the series, but
I only have seen the first two:
  The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
  Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron.

  And Miss Pickerel! Yes, I remember the space ship, and a few others.
There are some coming into the MITSFS now which I'm sure are new;
they're credited to MacGregor and Pantell, which suggests that (like the
later Conan books) they've been developed from scraps---there's one
about a weather space station. . . .

  The space cat on Venus encountered this nasty thing that was
plant-like except that it walked (albeit slowly) and was carnivorous;
they had a heroic battle. Ruthven is normally a man's name (cf
Gilbert&Sullivan's RUDDIGORE and the Scottish and vampire novels that it
developed from) but it could easily be a pseudonym chosen for its
anonymity---children's publishing is even weirder than the core of the
publishing industry.

  And does anyone remember the morning TV shows? I was so annoyed
because they always ran "The Space Explorers" and "New Adventures of the
Space Explorers" (good animated series, for that time) when I was in
school and couldn't see them unless I was out sick (or worse, started
them during Spring vacation, so I had to go back to school just when
some crisis was coming up).  That \\long// ramp takeoff sequence!. . .

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 1249-PDT From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE Subject: mushroom
planet and here's the plot

        I agree: what a wonderful set of memories this discussion is
bringing up!  The Mushroom Planet books are by Eleanor Cameron.  I think
the first is called The Wonderful Visit to the Mushroom Planet,
approximately.  There were three or four in the series, as I recall, one
of the others titled "Time and Mr. Bass". (Mr. Bass is the character
with the special filter on his telescope.)  The books are terrific and
quite rereadable at a later age (unlike L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time,
which I loved in fourth grade but find unconvincing now.)  However, some
of Cameron's other books are those annoying pseudo- fantasies where half
way through you think something magical is going on, but it all gets
explained at the end.
        (Hooray for Ms. Pickerel!) This reminds me of an sf book that I
really liked when I was younger.  I found it disappointingly trite when
I reread it some years later.  It \might/ have been by Nourse.  The
basic idea of it was that scientists created a cubical hole in space
that was a passageway to another parallel universe.  I think it was easy
to get disoriented if you looked into the cube.  There was something
about parallel lines intersecting in three places, and things tasting
blue if you entered it.  A woman from one of the Earths appears in the
Manhatten of the other wearing nothing but a pocketbook... does anyone
recognize the book from this hazy sketch?
                                        good reading,
                                                        --cat

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



1,,
Summary-line: 11-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #118
*** EOOH ***
Date: 11 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #118
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 11 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 118

Today's Topics:
            SF Books - Here's the Plot What's the Title,
  SF Topics - Physics Today (breathable water) & Children's stories
   (Lucky Starr and Juveniles in Print query and Mushroom Planet) &
          Children's TV (Captain Video & Tales of Tomorrow)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 May 1981 13:55:34 EDT (Sunday) From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at
BBN-UNIX> Subject: Here's the plot, what's the title

  My wife remembers a book about some people somewhere in Scandinavia
who did sort of a Steve Allen "Meeting of the Minds" shtick.  They would
put a piece of paper with someone's name on it under the paw of a stone
lion in front of their library, and would then get that person home for
dinner.  Among the people they met were St. Nicholas, the lost children
from Hamelin, and various real historical people (politicians/statesmen,
composers, scientists, etc.).  The lion was destroyed by bombs during
World War 2, so they couldn't continue their dinner parties.  Has anyone
heard of this one?

------------------------------

Date:  9 May 1981 (Saturday) 2319-EDT From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10
(Jeffrey Shrager) Subject: Rebma and breathable water

In Zelazny's Amber series there is a city under water called Rebma [so
as not to incur a spoiler, I'll not speak more of the city in
particular]. There are a whole slew of funny properties to the water
around Rebma; it is breathable, it does not bouy people [or seem to do
so in some weird manner] and it doesn't exert the pressure that water
would.  Now, in terms of breathability, I recall having seen a news
paper article in which a scientist had developed a liquid that was
breathable for animals [and, supposedly, humans].  The article had this
rather neat picture of a cat suspended in the liquid.  I never heard
anything about it since.  It is my understanding that the only reason
that we can't breath water is not that our lungs won't extract the
oxygen from it -- they will!  Rather, our system cannot pump water in
and out of the lungs fast enough to get the oxygen we need.  I think
that this "breathable" liquid was very (what? -- non-viscous?) thin so
that it could be pumped by the lungs.  If that is the case, might it
exhibit the properties that the water does in Rebma?  Anyone ever seen
the article that I am thinking of?  What ever became of that wonderful
fluid and... what conceivable use might it be?


[ The liquid in question was developed by scientists at Union Carbide
  quite some time ago (over 20 years).  It can support life because
  However, the name slips me, as does the chemical base used.
  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 0823-MDT From: FISH at UTAH-20 (Russ Fish) Subject:
Re:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #115

Ah yes, the memories come back of juvenile SF, don't they?  A series not
yet mentioned is the "Lucky Starr" (on Venus, Mars, Asteroid Belt, etc.
etc.) series written under the pen name of Paul French, I think.  That
was lucky for me, because The Good Doctor was out of reach at that early
time of my life.  (Asimov was at the TOP of a library shelf, and I was
only in second grade and not that tall.) Generalizing well, I noticed
the little spaceships on the spines of the books, and grabbed others in
reach.  Result: Norton, Nourse, & Heinlein at first.  Certainly made an
impression.

Re: Voyage to the Mushroom Planet, or whatever.  It sounds \real/
familiar, enough so that I advance this memory: I recall that the two
kids had a pet chicken with them.  Part of the adventure involved saving
the population of the planet.  (Of course.)  Seems they were all dying
from \something/, which the boys diagnosed as a lack of the trace of the
element sulphur.  Luckily, the yolk of hard-boiled eggs contains
sulphur, and the planet was saved and so on.  The biochemical details
were probably not handled any more realistically than the propulsive
ones, but then, how many 7-year-olds read ANALOG?

Cheers!  -Russ

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 12:24 edt From:  Greenwald.INP at MIT-Multics Subject:
MUSHROOM PLANET title query

        I believe it was "Mr. <blank> and the Mushroom Planet" - and
there was a sequel. I don't remember anything about it, except the shelf
in the public library upon which it rested 15+ years ago.  Aaaahh, and
it had a green cover.  Does that help? Jog your memory?
        - Mike Greenwald

<blank> was some name related to Tycho, or Brahe, or Mushroom - sorry
I'm so vague.  I think his brother shows up in the sequel.

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 1641-EDT From: Steve Strassmann <LS.STRAZ at MIT-EECS>
Subject: The Mushroom Planet books

I don't remember the titles to the mushroom planet books, but I remember
there were several of them. The boys first heard about the short, bald
professor by noticing a green ad in a black & white
newspaper, and visiting his 'lab' on a nearby street that never existed.
Upon landing on the planet, they found themselves naturally thinking and
speaking in the alien language (only to forget the language upon return
to Earth).

------------------------------

KWH@MIT-AI 05/09/81 01:17:56 Re:  Mushroom Planet


I don't remember the authors of the Mushroom planet books (I think there
may have been two authors but I am not sure at all.  There were at least
two sequels to it, with some interesting psionic type stuff involved
involved in the later ones.  The later ones took place both on the
Mushroom planet and in Wales- I remember liking them-

Both Tom Swift and Danny Dunn have come out, in part, in paperback
recently, but I don't remember who published them.  Speaking of juvenile
paperbacks, does anyone now if any publishing house puts out paperbacks
of Alan Nourse juveniles?  I have very fond memories of them being one
of my reading staples-

                                        Cheers,
                                                Ken Haase

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 1549-PDT From: CSD.EYNON at SU-SCORE Subject: Mushroom
Planet


Talk of old memories - I too remember reading this series (I think there
were at least three books), but I didn't become conscious of author
names until long after my youthful rampages through the local library's
SF collection. The salient feature which I remember is that in every
book, as the boys are traveling in the space ship to the green planet,
they acquire the ability to speak and write in the Mushroom language,
and lose the ability to speak English. They then proceed to have all
sorts of adventures, during which they keep detailed written records,
acquire books, etc, but on returning home, they always find that what
they wrote now looks like "chicken tracks".  I also seem to remember
that the gnomish astronomer who sends the boys to the planet is really a
mushroom person himself (oops, hope I don't get a spoiler)...
                                    -Barry

------------------------------

Date: 8 May 1981 20:40:36-PDT From: decvax!duke!phs!dennis at Berkeley

I seem to recall the first one being named "Mr Bass's Planetoid" or
something like that.  The sequels were "Return to the Mushroom Planet"
or some variants thereof.  The inhabitants of the planetoid (little
people of a fungus variety) were dying of a lack of trace elements; it
turns out that they needed sulfur, and the boys accompanying Mr. Bass on
the journey carried along hard-boiled eggs for provisions.  One of the
boys recognized the smell of the egg yolks as the same as that remaining
around the mineral springs which formerly supplied the sulfur.  A
flourishing trade was set up.  One of the boys' families had chickens.

Yes, there were three or so of the books; at the end of the second one,
Mr Bass blew away in a gale, apparently in some way relating to sporing.
(spoiler?) Mr Bass was descended from inhabitants of this planetoid, it
seems.

In the third book, a relative comes to call for him and gets told he
blew away.  This was taken rather calmly, but I don't recall any of the
following events.

------------------------------

Date: 8 May 1981 0833-PDT (Friday) From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael
Urban) Subject: Mushrooms

   You are probably going to get a LOT of comments on the "Mushroom
Planet" books, but here goes.
   These books are very popular, and still spoken of well by local
fantasy fans, at least.  If memory serves, there are at least three
books in the series (and I heard rumors of another written several years
later): Voyage to the Mushroom Planet, a sequel (Return to the Mushroom
Planet?), and Mr. Bass's Planetoid.  Mr. Bass was the astronomer with
the remarkable "stroboscopic polarization" (or something like that)
filter.  As he was from the Mushroom Planet, I seem to recall him
floating away like a spore on the wind at the end.  Or something.  My
only other memory is that a major plot element was a dietary deficiency
on the planet solved by supplying them with an egg-laying hen.
   Ah, as I write this, another title springs to mind, probably the
correct title for the middle book: Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet.
   The author of these books is named Cameron.  Her first name is,
uh...Eleanor?


        Mike

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 05/08/81 16:24:43 Re:   Mushroom Planet Books.


You're going to get lots of responses to this one.

[ True, as you can all undoubtably see!  --  Jim ]

The Mushroom Planet series was written by Eleanor Cameron.  The first
one was called "The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet".  The
premise of the whole series is that the Earth has a tiny invisible moon
orbiting fifty thousand miles out, whose name I forget.  It has
an indigenous sentient species of great antiquity.  At some time a
branch of the race started out on earth, possibly by spore migration
across the intervening space.  The series concerns, among other things,
the rejoining of the long sundered branches of this race.

   ---Wechsler.

PS.  If anybody owns copies of any of these books, you can do the world
a big favor by donating them to MITSFS, which I believe has a big gap on
the shelves where these goodies ought to be.  That goes for Space Cat
and Key's robot stories as well.  MITSFS: (617) 225-9144.  The World's
Largest Science Fiction Lending Library.

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 1408-PDT From: CHRIS at RAND-AI Subject: Re:
SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #115

RE: Mushroom Planet

The book you are thinking of is The Wonderful Voyage/Journey to the
Mushroom Planet, by Elizabeth Cameron, and is the first of about 5 books
related to the Spore people who live on the planet and their relatives
on earth.  Other titles in the series (I can't remember all of them)
were Mr. Bass's Planetoid and Time and Mr. Bass.  The last one mentioned
has the heroes of book one camping out with Mr. Bass amid the ruins of
Stonehenge and links the disappearance of Mr. Bass's spore people
relatives to King Arthur and some Welsh mythology.

------------------------------

Date: 10 May 1981 13:45:58 EDT (Sunday) From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at
BBN-UNIX> Subject: Mushroom Planet

  The Mushroom Planet books are by Eleanor Cameron.  The one I have is
"Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet", copyright 1956 by Eleanor Cameron.
My copy was published by Scholastic Book Services.  The first book was
"The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet".  I think there are other
sequels, but I'm not sure.  (Note:  At least I got the 'C' right, even
if it's in her last name and not her first).  Ms.  Cameron's other books
that I know of are "The Court of the Stone Children" (not "Garden"),
which is borderline fantasy, and "A Room Made of Windows", which is
mainstream fiction.  Both are juveniles.  The name of the Mushroom
Planet is Basidium, and Chuck and Dave's astronomer friend was Tyco
Bass.
  This brings to mind another book I read eons ago about children going
off in a spaceship they made.  All I remember about it is that they wore
clothespins on their noses so that they could breathe in outer space.
They even put a clothespin on their dog's nose.  Anyone remember this
one?

------------------------------

Date: 9 May 1981 05:42:32-PDT From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: SF on early television

Good Grief!  Mrs. Pickerell no less!  I remember those books quite
fondly but with some despair as they remind me that I am not as young as
I once was.  As long as we are taking trips down memory lane, does
anyone out there actually \remember/ Captain Video on the old DUMONT
network out of New York, or "Tales of Tomorrow," a live TV precursor to
the later anthologies such as "The Outer Limits" and "Twilight Zone."  I
still occasionally have nightmares about an invisible insect-like
creature found in the Amazon Jungles which featured prominently in a
number of episodes.  (Actually, they did a number of fairly good pieces
by serious authors such as Bradbury as well as the more usual 1950's BEM
[Bug Eyed Monster] genre.)  Perhaps it is only hindsight, but it seems
to me that television and radio in the late '40s and '50s had a great
deal more, and better (although that isn't saying much) SF than now.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 12-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #119
*** EOOH ***
Date: 12 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #119
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 12 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 119

Today's Topics:
              SF Contest - Movie title (Air Raid => ?),
        SF Books - The Forgotten Door & "High Yield Bondage" &
             Covered Wagon Stories (Time Enough For Love),
             SF TV - Body Human: The Bionic Breakthrough,
     SF Topics - Physics Today (breathable water) & Children's TV
   (Captain Video and the Video Rangers and Astroboy) & Children's
   stories (Peter Graves and 500 Balloons and Title query answered)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 10:28:14-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Varley contest

  Dyer didn't quote Varley quite correctly; despite the fact that it got
a big push as a mundane book, Varley respects Ben Bova's MILLENNIUM and
doesn't want to have to step on/compete with/walk under it for the
title.  Since the novelization pretty much has to have the same title as
the movie, that leads to problems. . . . (Incidentally, the current
script starts after the short story and refers to it only in brief
flashbacks.)

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 2156-PDT From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI> Subject: TV
Tonight (Tuesday, May 12)

BODY HUMAN
    For body buffs, here's another in that super sometimes series about
our very personal selves, ''Body Human: The Bionic Breakthrough'' (CBS
at 8), beautifully produced by Tomorrow Entertainment-Medcom and Thomas
W. Moore. Tuesday night, in addition to inside stuff on the ''bionic
body,'' there is new, improved film of an 11-week-old fetus in its
mother's womb.
    Also: a teen-ager with a malignant tumor above her knee is saved
from leg amputation by a bionic bone implant; a police officer whose
hand was amputated 10 years ago, gets a bionic transplant that moves by
mind control. And other mind-boggling breakthroughs. ''The Body Human''
is, as always, scrupulously professional.

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 10:16:21-PDT From: Cory.c99-1aa at Berkeley Subject:
Unknown Title

As I recall the book about naked women popping up in Manhatten and
special children being able to shift ninety degrees in a fourth
dimension was called "The Universe Between."  It was amazing prophetic
when it foretold great material shortages, especially oil and steel.  It
was written quite a while ago and I am afraid I have forgotten the
author's name.

Chris Guthrie

------------------------------

Date: Monday, 11 May 1981  10:11-PDT From: CSD.KDO at SU-SCORE Subject:
Here's the title?

There is a book about a hole in space which connects two universes
called "The Universe Between" or something very similar.  The hole is
space is created by freezing a cube of special alloy to absolute zero
(or below, I forget), moving between the universes drives several people
crazy before the experimenters find a woman from a school for the
particularly adaptable who then raises a son who is able to live equally
in both worlds.  No more plot for fear of spoilering.

I don't remember about the women reappearing in Manhatten in the nude,
but it was definitely possible to get from place to place 'instantly'
using the other universe.

I also loved it a long time ago and found it poor on rereading...it out
that the disconnected parts I remembered were all there was.

                            Ken

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 10:24:35-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: title inquiry

  The "cubical hole in space, etc." is Nourse's THE UNIVERSE BETWEEN
(how could I forget it? One of the first pieces of SF I wrote was a
sequel to this!).  The hole led not to a parallel universe (at least,
not initially) but to a higher-dimensional universe in which geometry
was sufficiently weird that a short distance could correspond to a long
distance in the [lower] universe. Unfortunately, the weirdness of the
geometry means that most people go insane when confronted with the new
universe; the person who ultimately learns to cope with it is very
fannish in many respects. I won't spoil the story by describing the
outrageous ending, and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't read it to do so
even if heesh has to invade the juvenile section of the library.

------------------------------

Date: 06 May 1981 0928-PDT From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI> Subject: The
Forgotten Door and Ambitious Computers

As I recall, the kid in TFD was really from another world, NOT the
future.  I quite vividly recall scenes in the book regarding the kid
watching meteor showers with his folks and the descriptions very
strongly lead to the conclusion that they weren't even in our
neighborhood.  (Yes, I got mine through SBS, too.  It's amazing what
sort of crap the mind can retain from childhood).

As for ambitious computers, there is a reasonably good short story
called "High Yield Bondage" by Hayward Pierce.  HYB is about an alien
scoutship that crashes on Earth and must accelerate the economic and
technical development of the planet in order to manufacture spare parts
to get home.  The SpaceMaster Scout onboard computer masterminds the
whole scheme, duplicating the pilot as necessary in order to get a
decent workforce.  An approximate quote to give you the flavor goes
something like: "Can you imagine the industries that Leonardo Da Vinci
would have to create in order to have the pleasure of watching 'Gone
with the Wind' on his portable television?".

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 14:02-EDT From: Daniel G. Shapiro <DGSHAP at MIT-AI>
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #118

There was also breathable "water" in the lake outside the tower of Hali
in the Darkover series.  There was a chapter involving it in Stormqueen.
I thought, "nah, couldn't be".  So what is the chemical?  And can I buy
some?

        Dan

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 18:02:00-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: breathable liquids

   The May issue of SCIENCE 81 contains an article on a liquid
fluorocarbon emulsion which has been used as a blood substitute in a
couple of hundred cases in Japan and about 75 cases here (all of them
religious types who claim Biblical objections to transfusions (e.g.,
Jehovah's Witnesses)).  The lead pictures showed a mouse which was left
in the pure liquid for thirty minutes or so with no ill effects
(although from its appearance it might have been very cold when it got
out; the fur was severely matted).
  Oxygen solubilization is definitely one of the important properties of
this liquid; however, I would suspect that surface tension is also
significant--i.e. fluorocarbon liquids have effectively none compared to
water.

[ Clyde Hoover (clyde@UTEXAS) and Phil (ihnss!karn@BERKELEY) also
  provided information about this compound, while Bob Forward
  (forward@USC-ECL) provided another reference to the SCIENCE 81
  article, although he indicated that the story appeared in the JUNE
  issue (anyone know for sure?).  Thanks are due everyone for such
  a rapid and informative response.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 1723-PDT
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI Subject: Nostalgia - Captain Video From:
Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

Now that's my generation's nostalgia.  Captain Video and the Video
Rangers.  And I used to spend a lot of time wandering around my
neighborhood with a facsimile CV space helmet.  As I recall, he went
through three distinct models of space helmets:  the first, like the
Apollo astronauts'; the second, I think, had a glass-like enclosure,
rather than metal; the third was a simple loop of wire from shoulder to
shoulder, over the head.  I guess there was a force field holding in the
air.  Sigh.

        Mike

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 14:00:12-PDT From: mhtsa!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Saturday morning TV

Anyone remember Astroboy?  I think it was about '65 or thereabbouts.  As
I recall, he was a heroic robot, and it was my favorite cartoon at the
time (well, actually equal to Felix the Cat, but what do you expect from
a 4 yr.  old?).  Anyone have a more detailed memory?

tom galloway

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 09:05:02-PDT From: ihnss!hobs at Berkeley From:
ucbvax!ihnss!hobs@BERKELEY (John Hobson) Subject: Peter Graves and 500
Balloons; Conistoga Wagons

The two juveniles that Lauren referred to (SFL V3 #116) are "Peter
Graves" and "The 500 Balloons", both by William Pene Du Bois.  "500
Balloons" won either the Newberry or Caldecott Medal (I forget which) as
best children's book of the year sometime in the mid-'50s.

"Peter Graves" is summarized fairly well.  The name of the "mad
scientist" who invents the anti-gravity metal is Houghton, and the plot
revolves around the attempts of Peter and Houghton to get the money to
rebuild Houghton's house after Peter accidently destroys it by dropping
the ball that bounces higher than the height from which it was dropped.

The plot of "500 Balloons" is that Professor William Waterman Sherman of
San Francisco sets off on an around-the-world flight in a balloon in
1883.  Drifting westward over the Pacific (maybe the wind directions
were different in the late 19th century), he is wrecked on the Island of
Krakatoa, where a group of people (also from San Francisco) have set up
an interesting society "based on balloons, steam power, and fantastic
mechanical devices."  This is paid for by a fabulous diamond mine on the
island.  Several days after Prof. Sherman gets there, the volcano blows,
destroying the island.  The inhabitants escape using a remarkable
balloon escape platform (lovely illustration
in the book), and the voyage is continued westwards until he crashes in
the Atlantic, and is rescued.

I found both books fun when I was about 8 (and remember them both fairly
well, considering the amount of time since I last read either one.)
Pene Du Bois also wrote a number of other nice juveniles: "Lion", "The
Three Policemen", "Giant", "Squirrel Hotel", et al., all cheerfully
illustrated.

BTW, one of the few things that I did like in Heinlein's "Time Enough To
Screw Around" was that that his pioneers did use Conestoga wagons.  In
the terms of the story, it is reasonable to take a simple, tested,
easily repairable means of transportation into a wilderness.  As one
friend of mine who lived in the Yukon for several years once told me:
"The snowmobile will probably never completely replace the sled dog,
because if your sled dog dies in an emergency, you can eat it, but
snowmobiles are most indigestible."  And just why does Heinlein think
that (as Harlan Ellison put it so well) "Love ain't nothin' but sex
misspelled"?

                    May the stampeeding elephants spare your house,
                    John Hobson

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 13-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #120
*** EOOH ***
Date: 13 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #120
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 13 May 1981    Volume 3 : Issue 120

Today's Topics:
        SF Books - Planet of Tears & James Michener on Space,
            SF Topics - Physics Today (breathable water) &
              Children's TV (Tom Corbett,Space Cadet and
          60's Cartoons and Astro-boy) & Children's stories
     (Here's the Plot What's the Title and 500 (now 21) Balloons)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 12:22:21-PDT From: ihnss!hobs at Berkeley From:
ucbvax!ihnss!hobs@Berkeley (John Hobson) Subject: Planet of Tears

My wife recently got me a book when she was last in the drugstore.  This
work is "The Planet Of Tears" by Trish Reinius (Bantam,1980). If any of
you think about purchasing or reading this book:  DON'T!

Nano-review: If this book could talk, the sound it would make would be
"Gobble, gobble, gobble."

Micro-review: This book starts off with:

   Once upon a time, way off beyond imagination,
   stands a land called Everfor.

>From this cute beginning (the story seems to be written for the 3-5
year old set, except that my 2 elder children [ages 3 and 5] were bored
by it), the story goes rapidly downhill.  As far as I am concerned,
probably the weakest device for conveying information to the reader is
to have one character talking to another, using the immortal words "as
you know."  In fact, the paragraph in which this phrase occurs (on page
4) is so remarkable that I will quote it at length:

     Then Melkedek spoke, and his voice echoed from
     heart to heart in the chamber, "Come, Mey and
     Treaia, and look at the Planet of Tears with
     us, for that is the world we have been
     watching.  We have sent for you to tell you
     this:  the time has come for you to go to one
     of the planets, to continue your journey on
     the path of existence.  Like the other beings
     of Everfor, you have journeyed from Everfor
     many times before, and each time you have gone
     to one of the planets to continue to learn the
     lessons of life.  Now the Planet of Tears is
     entering the Age of Aries and as you know,this
     will be a particularly evil time. It will be a
     time of trials, and perhaps your struggle will
     and that you are special, as all beings are
     special.

As soon as I saw "the Age of Aries", I knew that the book had to be
written by someone in California.  Well, I was wrong, Ms. Reinius lives
in Reno, Nevada (come now, nobody actually lives in Reno), but she was
born in Bell, California.

This book is just too cute for words, to call the characters
2-dimensional is to give 2-dimensional characters a bad name, the so
called dilemmas that the characters (Mey, the heroine and Treaia, the
hero) are too easily escaped from.  (Mey gets into the clutches of the
villain, Tartek, who in Dungeon & Dragons [tm] terms would be called a
high level Illusionist.  He wants some magic jewels that she has and
tries to trick her into giving them to her.  Nowhere does he try to
remove them from her by force even though he is considerably bigger and
stronger than she is, and has plenty of henchpersons to back him up.
From the time that she realizes what he is up to, it takes her less than
4 pages to escape, despite the fact that he knows what she is up to.
Treaia, who has a magic sword that Tartek also wants takes even less
time to escape.)

To sum up, this book is to be avoided at all costs.
                        May your wombats be free from mange,
                        John

------------------------------

Date: 05 May 1981 1718-PDT From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>

    HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Author James Michener promised Tuesday that
his next book on America's space program would be good news to his
publisher and readers who don't like too many pages.
    ''It will be a shorter book and it will not start four million years
ago,'' he said with a smile at an awards ceremony in the Pennsylvania
state Capitol. Michener's novel ''Centennial'' opened by tracing life in
Colorado back before the dinosaurs.
    Michener did not disclose the title of his half-finished new novel,
but he did describe it as ''not science fiction but the role of space in
American society in the last 20 years.
    ''I'm on the advisory council that supervises NASA (the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration) so I've been working in space
diligently the last three years,'' he said.
    Michener, a Pennsylvania native who now lives in Pipersville, Pa.,
was in Harrisburg to accept the second annual Distinguished Pennsylvania
Artist Award.

------------------------------

Date:  12 May 1981 18:39 cdt From:  VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill
Vaughan) Subject:  TV nostalgia Sender:  VaughanW.REFLECS at HI-Multics

My favorite nostalgia trip is Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.  It was on in
1950 and a little thereafter, at least in Philadelphia it was; Captain
Video was also on, but I thought it was hokey and didn't watch it. (I
can't remember why ... eight-year-olds' taste hs no real rationale
anyway.)

The show was about Tom Corbett and his two sidekicks, Astro (no last
name) from Venus and Roger (?) something (my memory is trying to tell me
Manning or such) from Mars. Tom, of course, was from Earth.  They were
cadets at the Space Academy and had some father-figure mentor with the
rank of Captain whose name I don't recall, and then there was somebody
called Commander Arkwright or Armstrong or something. (I am really
confused now.)

The show was set in 2350 AD, exactly (!) 400 years in the future.  When
it became 1951, (you guessed it) the show chnged its setting to 2351,
but I think they gave up on that the next year.

For a quarter or so, you could join the space cadet fan club and get an
autographed picture of the space cadets, and a Space Academy diploma,
and god knows what else. I did, naturally. I think I still have the
diploma somewhere.

The special effects consisted mostly of swinging the camera from side to
side while the space cadets leaned all over their acceleration couches -
but in retrospect, Star Trek wasn't much better. I liked the (very rare)
zero-gee scenes, where the space cadets would float around the cabin,
hanging from their wires, kicking.  (Remember what I said about
eight-year-old tastes.)

BTW: I am 38 and do not remember Danny Dunn or Miss Pickerell, but I do
remember the Winston (?) juvenile SF series, which was quite good.  They
were my first science fiction books - maybe around 1953 or 4.

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 0852-EDT From: Jeff Shulman <SHULMAN at RUTGERS>
Subject: 60's Cartoons


        While I don't remember Astroboy I do remember Felix the Cat with
Poindexter (sp?) and the Master Cylinder.  Not to mention Gigantor,
Speed Racer, and the Big World of Little Atom (actually my memory is
fuzzy on this one, anyone remember it better than I?).

                                                Jeff

------------------------------

Date:  12 May 1981 16:24 edt From:  Greenwald.INP at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Re: Astro-boy query

        Yes, I remember Astro-boy. "Astro-boy bombs away,on your
blah-blah today,...." However that song went. There were three schools
of thought in my kindergarten, those favoring Superman, those favoring
Batman, and those favoring Astro-boy. I am not sure why these three
were considered competing, but I do remember that the Astro-boy
proponents (the good guys) thought he was the best character because he
was the most "likely to be realistic".  Or something like that...
        Astro-boy was a cartoon character around 1963-1965. He was a
robot who was created by Dr. Elephant at the "Institute of Science".  He
was powered by a battery and frequently the plot cliff-hanger would hang
on whether and how he could get "recharged".
        One thing that I vaguely remember, and I'd really like someone
to tell me if this is a figment of my imagination or it really happened,
was one episode where **budget cuts** threatened the "Institute" and
Astro-boy was one of the projects scheduled to be dropped.  He was
actually "shut off", but was resuscitated when an emergency arose during
which he proved his worth by saving the world, so the administrators
decided, "well, X Dollars to save the world is marginally worth it,
We'll let him hang around for a while".  Anyone else confirm/deny that
one?
                - Mike

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 10:55:55-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Astroboy et al; breathable liquids

   I remember this all too well, as there is a fanne of Astroboy (and
worse, of Prince Planet) at the MITSFS. My recollection is that the
originals were in Japanese (though I may be remembering just her remarks
about PP) with the usual bad translations; I also seem to recall that
Astroboy also appeared on late-afternoon weekday TV.
  Doesn't anybody else remember the animated weekday morning serial
"Space Patrol"? It was on some hour-long cartoon collection and
alternated with other serials, including at least one fantasy ("The
Firebird"); animation is expensive enough that I'm sure this wasn't
local to DC.

   I'm sure Bob Forward is correct about the official date of the cited
article (on breathable liquids); it's the issue of SCIENCE 81 that
appeared in my mail box about a week ago, so given the peculiar dating
of some magazines it could well be cover-dated June even though I've
since received mags cover-dated May.
   Other thoughts on breathable liquids: first, on Darkover all bets are
off, since the monitors in tower circles (at least) know enough about
physiology and other fine manipulation that they could take extra oxygen
into the liquid. Also, at least one of Carter(?)'s pieces of tripe
mentions a crew of pirates living under a sea of some red liquid (on
Venus?? memory completely fails me).

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 17:24:03-PDT From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Breathing under water

Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions" has an underwater
breathing scene.  I quote:

        "Holger noticed his breath.  It felt no different from
        rolled is tongue around in his mount and squirted saliva
        between his teeth.  Somehow, he thought -- striving for
        a toehold on sanity -- the forces called magical must be
        extracting oxygen from the water for him and forcing it
        into a thin protective layer, perhaps monomolecular, on
        his face.  The rest of him was in direct contact with the
        lake.  His clothes flopped soggy.  Yet he was warm
        enough...."

The book has many other attempts to explain or deal with magic in light
of 20th century science and engineering.  For example, the gold
belonging to a troll turned to stone by the sun is really accursed,
because when carbon turns to silicon you get a radioactive isotope....

By the way, has our moderator been using a time machine instead of a
computer?  Recent digests have been dated sometime in March.

[ A true slip of the pen on my part.  The archives have been
  corrected to reflect the true (May) month in which these
  things originate.  -- Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 1803-PDT From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE Subject: water
balloons

        I read an article about animals breathing underwater several
years ago.  At the time, the problem was in getting them to survive the
transition back to air.  The liquid in the lungs killed them.  Until
that little problem was solved, scientists didn't want to try it on
people.
        The balloon book won the Newberry Award (the Caldecott medal is
for best illustrated book--the story counts but picture books like Make
Way for Ducklings or the Madeleine books are the typical winners).  I
think the number of balloons was less than forty.  The Thirty-One
Balloons? (36?).
                                        good reading,
                                                        --cat

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 1349-EDT (Monday) From: Dave Ackley <David.Ackley at
CMU-10A> Subject:  Recherche du S.F. Perdu Sender: David.Ackley at
CMU-10A

Yes, yes, I confess!  Me too!  I remember Danny Dunn and Miss Pickerell.
I read the Tom Swift series (including some of the T.S.  Sr. series --
titles like T.S. and {the Big Cannon/his Wizard Camera/the Electric
Boat} and so on) too.  I even read my sister's Nancy Drew books when I
couldn't find anything else, but I always looked down on "mainstream"
stuff like the Hardy Boys.

Reading SFL lately has really been bringing it all back -- I have to get
through the daily wallow in nostalgia before I can get down to
work -- and it's been harder and harder not to throw in a memory dump of
my own.

Lauren's message about the x000 Balloons was the last straw.  I remember
the book distinctly, especially a picture near the end showing the giant
raft lifted by thousands of balloons that they used to escape the
island.  One big point that I had forgotten came out in conversation
around here: the island was Krakatoa!  (Thus the need to escape, thus
the fact that the modern world never heard of these engaging folk, and
so on.)

What about that book (those books?) along the Mary Poppins line -- some
old woman comes to take care of some kids, and strange things transpire?
Like the faucets in the house running soda; like meeting the kids'
mirror images; like the old woman's pet: a dodo?  Sound familiar out
there?  That isn't Pickerell again, is it?  Was it Pepperell, perhaps?
How about Homer Price?  Not exactly SF, perhaps, but certainly in the
same big bag of lost pointers in my head that all these reminisces have
been digging into.

Ah well.  I hope I've sent at least a few of us off on new nostalgia
rushes.  These are the petite madeleines of our generation -- we should
treasure them!
        -Dave

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 0927-PDT From: Isaacs at SRI-KL Subject: "balloons"
story

  The "5000 balloons" or "500 balloons" is actually only "Twenty-One
Balloons", a story by William __ Du Bois.  I also enjoyed it very much
as a kid, and found it is in current print in paper, and got it for my
children.
              - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER
  The island of the High-tech civilization is Krakatoa, and the
balloonist lands there just before the big explosion.  They escape in
the 21 balloons.
           --- Stan

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

1,,
Summary-line: 14-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #121
*** EOOH ***
Date: 14 MAY 1981 0837-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #121
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 14 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 121

Today's Topics:
         Administrivia - A Fond Farewell & Digest Overload,
                   SF Events - SF Event Calendar,
          SF Books - Danse Macabre & The Universe Between,
                    SF Movies - Capsule Reviews,
          SF Topics - Childern's stories (Miss Pickerel and
      Here's the Plot What's the Title) & Evolution of Unicorns,
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1980 18:42 PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - A Fond Farewell & Digest Overload

I'd like to take the opportunity to wish Richard Brodie
(Brodie@PARC-MAXC) a fond farewell.  For the past couple
of volumes of SF-LOVERS, Richard has been compiling the 
Science Fiction Convention Calendar (the most recent
installment of which appears in this digest).  He has also
been the liason between the ARPA-NET and the XEROX computer
network.

But Richard's ties to the digest extend much further back
into time.  For he was the person responsible for the first
version of this mailing list almost two years ago.  Although
many people have contributed vast amounts of time and effort
to make this mailing list a success, Richard is the one who
is ultimately responsible for its existence as such [as we
will all point out to Proxmire, et. al.].

The digest is now SO successful that your poor present
moderator is having difficulty keeping up.  Right now there
is enough material already submitted to the digest for 4 more
issues.  That means it takes 4 days on the average for a
message from you to appear in the digest.  This situation is
likely to persist for the next couple of weeks, so please
bear with me.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 12-May-81 11:15:45 PDT (Tuesday)
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Stephen King's "Danse Macabre"

I've read halfway thur the book.  Budrys' review [SFL V3 #116] is 
right on the mark.

Note: the book is full of complete spoilers for every piece of notable
horror (including much SF) ever written/ filmed.  The claimed scope of
the book is books, films, and TV of the past 30 years, but King 
doesn't hesitate to go back to three paradigms which he believes 
define most of modern horror: "Frankenstein", "Dracula", and "Dr.  
Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde".  His fourth paradigm is the ghost story, which 
King explicates through reference to several contemporary works.

King is at his best discussing the literary genres.  Unfortunately, he
doesn't seem to have developed any sort of cinema esthetic, so that 
his "discussion" of film is a tedious rendering of "gee whiz" plot 
spoilers, with a few references to the sort of sociological truisms 
that any film critic takes for granted (e.g. Don Siegel's "Invasion of
the Body Snatchers" as a depiction of McCarthyism).  One gets the 
impression that King was determined to prove that he had seen or read 
about any film that anyone might ever ask him about.  This approach 
fails miserably, given the broad scope of his editor's mandate.

It's not clear that King really knows anything about philosophy, 
religion, or psychology.  If he did, he might have actually been able 
to expand the scope of the book while cutting down drastically on plot
descriptions.  For example, who can fail to be haunted by Edvard 
Munch's "The Scream"?  But King ignores the art world, and for that 
matter, gives cinematography and set design rather short shrift.

If you must read it, wait for it in paperback.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 11:22:44-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: The Universe Between

   The first person to survive the other universe was not from a
school for the talented; rather, she'd been through more than one
reform school.

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 17:43:41-PDT
From: ihnss!karn at Berkeley

The comment about 90-degree shifts into another dimension reminds me 
of a telephone intercept message (error recording) that somebody once
suggested should be used at MIT:

"We're sorry, you have reached an imaginary number at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Please rotate your phone 90 
degrees and try your call again".

Phil

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 0322-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Capsule Movie Reviews

     By Roger Ebert
     (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    ''The Devil and Max Devlin''-The latest Disney picture stars
Elliott Gould as a man bargaining with the devil (Bill Cosby) to have
his sentence in hell commuted. This pale, insipid movie could have
been programmed on a computer. Rated PG. 2 stars.
    ''Excalibur''-John Boorman directed the latest version of the 
Camelot legend. It's wonderful to look at, but the characters are 
maddeningly arbitrary and unexplained. Nicol Williamson (witty and fun
as Merlin), Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay and Cherie Lunghi
star. Rated R. 2 1/2 stars.
    ''The Hand''-Science-fiction thriller stars Michael Caine as a 
cartoonist whose hand transplant goes awry. With Andrea Marcovicci.  
Rated R.

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 17:22:45-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Miss Pickerel Goes to Mars

I have vague recollections of that story.  Wasn't there some scene 
where her magnetized hammer was bolixing up some instruments?  I 
believe the Captain fastened the hammer in one place so that he could 
make the instrument read some particular value.

While we're at it, let me bring up another story I read in my misspent
youth, albeit somewhat later.  It was about an interstellar war (I
know -- that's a really helpful clue) against some lizard-like beings
who were serving a master race somewhere.  The hero (Jeff something?)
of course becomes appointed new master when he wins, much as the
Children of the Lens take over from the Arisians (gee, does that line
merit a spoiler warning?).  There was something about a totally barren
radioactive planet, diamond stars as an insignia of high rank, and the
hero showing up once on a horse -- unusual because horses were
(almost?) extinct.  Anyone out there know the title/author?  My best
guess is that I read it around 1964.

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 0102-EDT (Friday)
From: Lee.Moore at CMU-10A
Subject:  One horned goat's owner

   Does anybody know if its owners -- Morning Glory & Otter G'Zelle --
are related to Tim & Morning G'Zelle?  These people are semi-famous
for primitive-minimal constumes at WorldCons and other conventions.
M.G. may be the person who appeared as a bottle of mimeo correction
fluid; a costume the caused some comment many years ago for nudity.

------------------------------

Date: 7 May 1981 1927-PDT
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: lancelot the unigoat
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

Not just AP, folks.  I saw them all on the Evening News.  People are
taking this seriously.  "Bray if you're horny!'

------------------------------

Date: 10 May 1981 13:40 PDT
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SF Events - A Fond Farewell & SF Event Calendar

I came to California in June '79, expecting to take a little time off 
from Harvard, and ended up staying at Xerox until now. But the time 
has come for me to take a little time off from Xerox to settle some 
unfinished business with a sheepskin.

Over a year and a half have gone by since the first SF-Lovers message 
went out (It was a list of the Hugo Awards from the 1979 Worldcon in 
Brighton, England).  They've been a good one and a half years; they've
shown me clearly that electronic communication will change the shape 
of our world, and that we'll see its effects in our lifetimes. The 
list has grown enormously -- far beyond my expectations -- and has 
reached the point where many hundreds of people read the daily Digest.
The 2 million words that have passed before the eyes of SF lovers 
through this medium so far -- not to mention the material in the other
large lists -- the hours of work put in by Roger Duffey, and now by 
Jim and Don, constitute something all of us will have lasting memories
of, and something which will continue to grow and be part of our 
lives.

You can see, then, why it requires a great effort on my part to rip 
myself away from my child. In fact, it requires so great an effort 
that I'm not going to delete myself from the list until I give up 
looking for a way to read my mail from Seattle, where I'm spending the
summer. But I am going away for a while, and I'd like to take this 
opportunity to thank all of you and to say au revoir.

At any rate, here's the last convention calendar I'll be doing. I 
presume the job will pass on to someone yet to be named. See some of 
you around Cambridge in the fall . . .

	Richard

                ------------------------------

              Calendar of Science Fiction Events
                    As of May 7, 1980

                ------------------------------

	May 8-10, 1981 (Tennessee)

KUBLA'S NINTH KHANPHONY. Ken Moore, 647 Devon Drive, Nashville, TN 
37204

	May 9-10 (Georgia)

EMORY-TREK II. Atlanta Star Trek Society, c/o Kenneth Cribbs, 2156
Golden Dawn Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30311

	May 22-25, 1981 (Southern California)

PHANTASMICON. Sheraton Plaza La Reina, Los Angeles (near airport).
GoH: Sam J. Jones (Flash Gordon). Art show, masquerade, 24-hr. film
program, ... Galacticon TICKETRON memberships accepted. $15 till 5/21;
$20 door. 5826 Gregory Ave.  #1, Los Angeles, CA 90038. (213)
461-2896.

	May 23-34, 1981 (District of Columbia)

DISCLAVE. Sheraton National Hotel, Arlington, VA ($38 room). GoH:
Isaac Asimov. Cost: $7 till 5/1, $10 after. Art show info: Bob Oliver,
9408 Michael Drive, Clinton MD 20735.

	June 5-7, 1981 (Arizona)

PHRINGECON 2. PO Box 128, Tempe, AZ 85281.

	June 12-14, 1981 (Wisconsin)

X-CON 5. M. P. Inda, 1743 N. Cambridge, Apt. 301, Milwaukee, WI 53202.

	June 13-14, 1981 (Kansas)

COSMOCON II. c/o Charley S. McCue, 34 halsey, Hutchinson, KS 67501.

	June 19-21, 1981 (Massachusetts)

SUMMERCON '81. Wargames. MIT Student Center, Cambridge MA. Dungeons & 
Dragons, Traveller, Runequest, other Fantasy Roleplaying games,
Ancients, Naval, and Modern Tactical miniatures, Microgames,
boardgames, Diplomacy, and much more!  We will also have our own
unique TACTICS PI! Steven A.  Swernofsky, 128 Brattle Lane, Arlington,
Mass. 02174. (617) 646-5604. SFL Liaison: SASW at MIT-MC.

	July 2-5, 1981 (Northern California)

WESTERCON 34. GoH: C. J. Cherryh; Fan GoH: Grant Canfield. Red Lion
Motor Inn, Sacramento, CA; (916) 929-8855; $32 single and double, $8
addl person.  Party wing. Cost: $20 till 6/14/81, $25 door. P.O. Box
161719, Sacramento, CA 95816.

	July 3-5, 1981 (Northern California)

PACIFIC ORIGINS. The Seventh Annual national Wargaming Convention.  
Dunfey Hotel, San Mateo, CA. Fantasy and Science Fiction games,
TRAVELLER, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, TUNNELS AND TROLLS, RUNEQUEST!, a
live FANTASY TRIP dungeon, National Ancients Championship, other
miniatures events, over 50 Boardgame events, SCA fighting demo,
movies, game design workshops. Pacific, PO Box 5548, San Jose, CA
95150.

	July 10-12, 1981 (Missouri)

ARCHON V. GoH: Tanith Lee; Fan GoH: Joan Hanke Wood; Toastmaster:
Charlie Grant; also Joan Hanke Wood, Wilson 'Bob' Tucker, Glen Cook,
Ron Chilson, George R. R. Martin, Joe and Gay Haldeman, and Michael
Berlyn. Chase-Park Plaza Hotel, St. Louis, MO ($44 single, $52 2/3/4).
Soliciting program ideas and/or people who could help carry them out.
Also looking for more artist names to add to the mailing list for
soliciting contributions to the art show. This was successful at
ARCHON IV (over 60% of artists sold works), and they are trying to
expand. There will be more art show space and display panels this
year. Also in the process of reviewing art show rules and would
welcome suggestions. SFL liaison: WMartin at Office-3 (Amy Newell).

	July 17-19, 1981 (Southern California)

FANTASY FAIRE. Amfac (Airport Marina) Hotel, Alhambra, CA. Masquerade,
fantasy games, "Creating Your Own Universe", awards luncheon ($12).
Cost: $10 till 6/10. 1855 W. Main St., Alhambra, CA 91801.

	July 17-19, 1981 (Massachusetts)

LEXICON. Relaxicon. Sheraton Rolling Green, Andover, MA ($88 double
for weekend, includes Sunday brunch for two). No GoH, srt show,
huckster room, or hard work. Cost: $4.25. NESFA, P.O. Box G, Mit
Branch P.O., Cambridge MA, 02139.

 	July 23-26, 1981 (Southern California)

SAN DIEGO COMIC CON. Confirmed Guests: Denny O'Neil, Dick Giordano,
Doug Moench, Bill Sienkiewicz, L.B. Cole, Jim Shooter, Jack Kirby,
Jerry Bails, Scott Shaw, Julius Schwartz, Carl Swan. El Cortez Hotel,
7th and Ash San Diego, CA ($22 single, $28 double, $7 per extra
person, meal plan $14 for three meals). Cost:  $16 till 6/30/81; $20
after; $15 ages 6-12; one-day memberships at door ($5 Thu/Sun, $6
Fri/Sat); under 5 yrs free. P.O. Box 17066 San Diego, CA 92117.

	August 7-10, 1981 (Northern California)

MYTHCON XII. Mills College, Oakland, CA. Fantasy. GoHs: Elizabeth M.
Pope, Joe R. Christopher. Cost: $10 till 3/1, $15 after. 90 El Camino
Real, Berkeley, CA 94705.

	September 3-7, 1981 (Colorado)

DENVENTION TWO. 1981 World Science Fiction Convention. Pro GoH: C.L.  
Moore, Clifford Simak; Fan GoH: Rusty Hevelin. Denver Hilton. Cost:
$35 till spring 1981. P.O. Box 11545, Denver, CO.  80211. (303)
433-9774.

	November 5-7, 1981 (Southern California)

LOSCON '81. Huntington Sheraton, Pasadena. PGoH: William Rotsler.
FGoHs: Len & June Moffatt. Cost: $10 till 7/4. LASFS, 11513 Burbank
Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91601.

	July 2-5, 1982 (Arizona)

WESTERCON 35. Adams Hotel, Phoenix ($29 single, $5 ea. addl.) GoH:
Gordon R.  Dickson. FGoH: Fran Skene. TM: David Gerrold. Cost: $15
till 7/10/81 ($6 supporting). Box 11644, Phoenix, AZ 85064; (602)
249-2616. SFL Liaison:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics (Paul
Schauble).

	September 2-6, 1982 (Illinois)

CHICON IV. 1982 World Science Fiction Convention. Pro GoH: A. Bertram 
Chandler; Fan GoH: Lee Hoffman; Artist GoH: Kelly Freas. Hyatt
Regency, Chicago, IL. Cost: $30 till 6/30/81; $15 supporting; $7.50
conversion. PO Box A3120, Chicago, IL 60690.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



1,,
Summary-line: 15-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #122
*** EOOH ***
Date: 15 MAY 1981 0722-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #122
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 15 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 122

Today's Topics:
              SF Events - Convention Calendar addenda,
  SF Lovers - A Fond Farewell,  Digest Correction - Spelling Error,
SF Books - James Michener on Space & Cyber-SF & "High Yield Bondage",
SF Movies - The Man Who Fell to Earth,  SF Radio - HHGttG & Star Wars,
       SF Topics - Evolution of Unicorns & Childern's stories
  (Title query answered and Tom Swift) & Fantasy vs Science Fiction
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 1103-PDT
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: FARE THEE WELL


I find my reaction very interesting (perhaps I am the ONLY one?) to
BRODIE's departure.  I have never met him, but I find that sharing
this communication's media is special and that losing one person is a
significant lose.  I hope you continue to have access one way or
another.  --Bill 

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 10:13:39-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: important appendix to con calendar


  Lexicon registration is open only until June 18; there will be
\\no// at-the-door registration. SFL contacts: DP@mit-ml,
cjh@cca-unix. There will also be an expedition to the Blue Strawberry,
a magnificent restaurant in Portsmouth NH; space for this is quite
limited and requires a $25 deposit.

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 00:26-EDT
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Michener's sense of time


Did that AP story really talk about a book whose plot "started four
million years ago", "before the dinosaurs"?!?  My paleontology isn't
that great, but 60 to 100 million years is the minimum.

[ Actually, Michener himself said that his new book will not start
  4 million years ago.  This sentence was immediately followed by
  the writers discussion of Michener's book "Centennial," which begins
  with the formation of the earth itself.  Whether the writer intended
  people to draw a direct connection between the two sentences is a
  matter of interpretation.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 at 0237-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

 ^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF PROJECT: Report on Some Robot TYPEs ^^^^^^^^^^^

    >>> RO:anm ANIMAL SHAPE or FUNCTIONING ANIMAL REPLICAS <<<

These seem to be fairly uncommon; we've only come across about a 
dozen, and about half of them are merely incidental or whimsical.

In--
   Bunch, D.R., MODERAN
   Dick, P.K., DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
   Goulart, Ron, CALLING DR. PATCHWORK
      " " HAIL HIBBLER
   High, P.E., INVADER ON MY BACK
     " " THE MAD METROPOLIS
     " " NO TRUCE WITH TERRA
   Sheckley, R., JOURNEY BEYOND TOMORROW
   Stasheff, C., WARLOCK IN SPITE OF HIMSELF
       " " KING KOBOLD

plus in the movie novelization or spinoffs
   Larson, et al., "Battlestar Galactica" series

and \perhaps/ the animals created by the computer in
   Laumer, K., THE LONG TWILIGHT tho those may be merely biological.


                 >>> RO:mgc MAGICAL 'ROBOTS' <<<

These are even rarer (and usually also need another TYPE).

In--
   Baum, F., OZMA OF OZ
     " " TIC-TOC OF OZ
   Lem, S., THE CYBERIAD

plus the (literally) incredible one in
   Trimble, L., THE CITY MACHINE (which isn't \intended/ as fantasy)

and perhaps the Tin Woodman in the Oz books... I've never read them, 
but would think he might be.

 ********** Does anyone have anything to suggest for these **********
 ********** two categories that may have been overlooked? ***********

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 (Thursday) 2359-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: High Yield Bondage


Re: High yield Bondage

David Bowie starred in a film a few years back called "The Man Who
Fell to Earth".  I got the feeling at the time that I had read it
somewhere but couldn't figure out where.  NOW IT ALL COMES BACK!  The
Bowie film, which is not a rock film but a rather good piece of
serious SF, is also about an alien whose ship crashes here and he does
quite a bit of money management in order to build himself a new ship.
They have changed the story a lot but the concepts are there.  One
line that I recall quite well from HYB is that the visitor had some
sort of machine that would extract all the gold (or whatever) from a
cubic mile of sea water.  Of course, the price of gold et al fell to
near zero as soon as this news spread and our hero went out and bought
slews of gold.  The problem was that the price of gold went straight
back up as soon as it hit someone that it was not really feasible to
pump a cubic mile of sea water!  The Bowie film is weird but very
good.  Try to catch it.


--- BTW ... as I recall, the short story was humorous... the film is 
definately otherwise!

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 2328-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-AI>
Subject: Hammil


Here's a good one for you, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hammil) is replacing
David Bowie on Broadway as The Elephant Man.  

------------------------------

Date:     14 May 1981 2327-edt
From:     RHarvey at MIT-Multics
Subject:  SF Radio in Phoenix


Starting on June 5th at 6:30, KMCR (91.5?) FM will be broadcasting the
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.  Following that, at 7pm, they
will rebroadcast the Star Wars Series.

Replacing Star Wars on Sundays at noon will be a radio series of 
Tolkien's THE HOBBIT and then THE LORD OF THE RINGS.  This will begin
on June 7.


 - Ron

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 17:55:03 EDT (Thursday)
From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Corflu


  Morning Glory may have been in a worldcon masquerade as a bottle of 
corflu (mimeo correction fluid), but if she was, I suspect she wasn't 
the first.  It was done at NYCon in 196(7?) by Cory Seidman (who is 
now Cory Panshin), who wore blue body paint and enough else to defeat 
local indecent exposure laws.

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 18:26:49 EDT (Thursday)
From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Mrs. Coverlet and other children's literature


  I'm not sure if this is the same series that Dave Ackley asked about
in SFL V3 #120, since all I have is the second book, "Mrs. Coverlet's 
Magicians".  This one doesn't have dodos or soda faucets, but it has a
little kid who does real magic using a kit he got by sending away a 
coupon clipped from the back of a comic book.  Mrs. Coverlet is the 
housekeeper who takes care of the kids while their parent(s?) is(are) 
away.  There must be a whole sub-genre of magical-nanny books.  I got 
Mrs. Coverlet from the Weekly Reader Book Club, and how's that for 
nostalgia?
  While we're on the subject of children's books, I'd like to
recommend two of my favorite authors of more recent children's
fantasy:  John Bellairs, who wrote "The Face in the Frost", "The
Pedant and the Shuffly", "The House with the Clock in its Walls", and
others (including two sequels to the house/clock one, whose names I
can't remember; and Jane Langton, none of whose fantasy titles spring
to mind, but who also wrote such mainstream children's classics as
"The Boyhood of Grace Jones" and "Her Majesty, Grace Jones", and some
adult mysteries which I've been trying to find copies of ever since
hearing them on Reading Aloud on WGBH, "The Transcendental Murders"
and one other (I'm not doing too well with titles today).

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 09:54:03-PDT
From: mhtsa!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle


The strange woman referred to (re: faucets running soda, etc.) is Mrs.
Piggle-Wiggle.  There were about three books in the series but I do 
not remember the specific titles nor the author.  As I remember, Mrs.
Piggle-Wiggle was noted for living in an upside-down house, serving 
marvelous gingerbread cookies on cold days and generally messing
around with the lives of children who did not toe the line in one way
or another.  It seems she was of the general morality of Munro ("This
is a watchbird watching you") Leaf.  One episode (the books were
composed of short stories, each dealing with a different aberrant
behavior) had Mrs Piggle-Wiggle prescribing a deafness-inducing drug
to a child who used "I didn't hear you" as an excuse for not doing
household chores.  The child was so glad to hear after the medicine
wore off, that the behavior disappeared.  Another had her
administering an IQ-inhibiting potion to a child who perpetually
called other children "stupid" or "dummies."

The only thing I never could figure out about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was 
(a) why did children continually come to this obviously deranged
    woman's house despite the terrible things that happened to them,
    and
(b) why nobody ever called the cops.

If I sound bitter, it is because I consider this type of book the 
*worst* that the children's literature of the late '40s and early '50s
-- promoting a kind of mindless expectation of conformity.  I expect,
however, that is the subject for some other newsletter...

Byron Howes University of North Carolina

------------------------------

Date:  5 May 1981 (Tuesday) 0236-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Children's SF books

Thinking about it now, I think that I was influenced a great deal by
two series that I used to collect (or that my father would collect for
me).  The one the I recall most clearly was the "Tom Swift and his X"
where X included all sorts of bizarre SF gadgetry.  I actually do not
remember any of the plots or titles but I can clearly recall many of
the cover paintings and I remember that the hero, Tom Swift, had rich
relatives and so could go out and build any sort of gadgets he liked.
Maybe someone with the collection could fill in the major holes that 8
or 10 years have generated....  The other series that I loved was
called "The Young Detectives" [I think] and was published or written
by Alfred Hitchcock. I can't imagine him having wasted his time
writing these but his name appeared in each book and I think that he
was the narrator.  This one was not as much SF as detective novel but
the head of this kiddy detective squad was supposed to have been
exceptionally bright and there was all sorts of gadgetry involved in
their adventures.

Ah! One other children's SF comes to mind but I can't recall the name
or even a clear plot... something about an alien animal that is
discovered by some school kids and hidden in their house.  It does
things like bitting the bullies and in the end, flys of into space
again.

-- Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 1646-PDT
From: CHRIS at RAND-AI
Subject: mythcon 1982

 The Thirteenth Annual Mythopoeic Convention (the Mythopoeic Society
studies the fantasy/factual literature of JRRTolkein, CS Lewis and
Charles Williams, and related (that covers a lot of fantasy and SF)
materials) will be held at Chapman College in Orange County, CA, on
August 13-16, 1982.  It will center on Celtic/Fantasy Lit, confirmed
GoHs are Katherine Kurtz, Katheryn Lindskoog, Antaniel Noel, and they
are inviting Tim Kirk (who did the first Tolkien Calendar in 1973 or
so; the Brothers Hildebrandt can't touch his work), Marion Zimmer
Bradley, Randel Helms, and others.  Plans include preview slide shows
of work on Disney Studios version of Lloyd Alexander's The Black
Cauldron, a Society for Creative Anacronists feast, and the usual
music, masquerades, drama festival and art show events.  Membership is
$10.00 to March 1, 1982, then $15.00 to July 31, 1982, then $20.  Room
rates at the college are $20/day/person (double occupancy) INCLUDING 3
meals a day.  Contact MYTHCON XIII, Lisa Cowan, P.O.Box 5276, Orange,
CA 92667.  Thought someone out there might be interested.

I just got back from a discussion of Richard Purtill's The Golden
Gryffin Feather, and The Stolen Goddess.  Both books are set on Crete
during the time of Theseus and the Minotaur, and are not-so-great
fantasy treatments of a few demigods descended from the Olympians and
the royal families of Crete and Athens.  During the discussion we more
or less decided the books were not fantasy but really science fiction
(things like powers of ESP, foresight and controlling the bull during
the Dances explained in terms of genetics).  Then we got into the
deeper (and perhaps ultimately meaningless) problem of what
differentiates fantasy from science fiction.  Any good ideas?

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 11:24:43-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: breathable liquids

  In my mention of Darkover, it was supposed to read "they could
\teke/ [not 'take'] extra oxygen into the liquid.

[ Sorry about that.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 17-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #123
*** EOOH ***
Date: 17 MAY 1981 0815-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #123
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Saturday, 16 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 123

Today's Topics:
  SF Books - The Universe Between & Alan Nourse,  Humor - Mushrooms,
    SF Topics - Childern's TV (Astroboy and MUSHI productions and
          8th Man and Prince Planet and Rocket Robin Hood),
                    Spoiler - The Universe Between
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 1003-EDT (Tuesday)
Sender: Joseph.Ginder at CMU-10A
From: Joe Ginder <Joseph.Ginder at CMU-10A> 
Subject: The Universe Between;  Alan Nourse

I remember reading several books by Alan Nourse while in grade school
and junior high.  The one mentioned in the sf lovers' of a few days
ago was called "The Universe Between" and consisted of three
novella-length stories.  The first was the one mentioned in which some
scientists were attempting to cool some object to absolute zero, and
when it got cold enough, it "broke" through into a parallel universe.
The scientists sent several volunteers up to look into the "hole" it
had created; but each one went insane.  Then they recruited a young
woman for her psychological "flexibility".  To make a long story short
(and attempt to avoid a spoiler which I may already have earned), she
learns how to get to the other universe without any outside aids and
imparts this knowledge to her son.  The rest of the story concerns the
verrry cold cube and her experiences in the other universe.  The
following two stories are about her son and his experiences in the
other universe (and this one).  There are many standard sf themes 
touched upon in these stories -- entropy, subjectivity of senses,
alienness, etc.  All in all, I liked it a lot then -- like lots of
juvenile sf, it still brings back fond memories.

I remember several other Alan Nourse sf novels and collections of 
stories fondly.  In particular, I seem to recall a novel "Psi High" 
about extrasensory perception, and another collection whose name I 
don't seem to recall with stories about "rejuvenation" (with a 
politicians named "Dan Forbes" and "Moses Tyndall"?) and other things.
The stories in the latter volume were tied together by a short intro.
and an epilogue in which aliens were observing mankind.

Ah, I remember, one of the stories concerned "analogues" which allowed
men to explore the surface of Jupiter -- in mind if not in body.

I remember several other stories (by Del Rey?) which I recall much
less vividly but remember enjoying.  One was about a rocket race
around the sun, I believe -- anyone remember this one?  Another
concerned aliens attacking the Earth and had something to do with
Mars.  (I guess that would describe a large number of juvenile sf
plots....)

                                Joe

[ For more about the story The Universe Between, see the Spoiler
  section of this digest.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 15:16 PDT
From: REDDERSON.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #118

I don't know anything about the Mushroom Planet books, but i DO notice
the trend of non-remembering associated with these books, their titles
and/or authors.  are you sure there maybe wasn't a little mushroom
DUST in those pages?????

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 1424-EDT
From: LS.SEB at MIT-EECS
Subject: Astroboy

   I, too, remember Astroboy from the late '60s-early'70s. He had feet
that retracted to become rockets, and a whole lot of neat mechanical
gimmicks that helped to keep the free world safe.  Also, much time was
spent trying to convince the viewer that robots could be human, too.
Astroboy's "father" was a stereotypical absent-minded professor type.
That's all I remember for sure...I think there was a girl and a pet,
too.  Anyone remember?
    Since old SF cartoons have come up, does anyone remember Prince
Planet and Rocket Robin Hood (from the same era)?

                                         Have a good summer, y'all,
                                                Steve Barber 

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 18:08:57 EDT (Thursday)
From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Astroboy


  The original was definitely in Japanese, from the same Japanese 
studio that brought you such wonderful shows as Speed Racer and Kimba,
the White Lion.  Their characters were always recognizable by their
oversized eyes.

------------------------------

Date: 16 May 1981 1437-EDT
From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE at RUTGERS>
Subject: Astro boy

Astroboy was originally a Japanese comic strip (according to one of
world encyclopedia of comics).  Along with astroboy I remember such
cartoons as:  Gigantor, Speed Racer, and Tobor the Eighth Man.  I also
remember the marionette shows: Fireball XL-5, Thunderbirds, Captain
Scarlet (only saw it once or twice), Supercar (again very vague), and
Submarina (I think that was the title, one of the central character
was a girl from an underwater civilization).  Several of the
marionette shows came from the Space1999 people (which may be why the
characters in Space 1999 were so wooden).

        steve z.  

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 (Friday) 0012-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Astroboy


When I was quite young, I watched astroboy religiously. I used to
pretend that I was a robot.  I recall the image of Astroboy and his
astro-family quite clearly.  Others from that time frame are: Marine
boy (and his oxy-gum), and ...

    There's a creature eating Philly [sic]
    It came from outter space,
    Created by the Martians to destroy the HUMAN NETS DIGEST.

    The FBI is helpless, [as usual]
    It's twenty stories tall...
    What can we do, who can we call???

    Call TOBOR the 8th man...
    Call TOBOR the 8th man...

    Faster than a rocket, stronger than a jet.
    He's a mighty robot, he's the one to get..."

[It is beyond me exactly how the FBI got into the act.  Imagine trying
 to get a twenty story Tarauntasaourous to try to take a bribe!]

I can imagine finding men 1 thru 7 in a closet in the CMU robotics
cave.

-- -- --

How about Ultra-man.  He also had a solar power battery that needed
recharging like Astroboy's.  Some of the Ultra-man episodes were
actually quite bizarre.  This was the time frame of Voyage to the
Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space wasn't it?  Maybe they came a bit
later.  Oh, for the days of semi-reasonable television...

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 0501-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Astra Boy and Mushi

Astro Boy has always been one of my all time animated favorites.  The
concept involved a robot boy who was built by a scientist when his
real son was killed in an auto accident (the automatic traffic control
system broke down and crashed the car).

Another scientist named Dr. Elephant (who had a very distinctive nose,
as you might imagine) sorta steered Astro Boy toward using his special
abilities for the good of society.

There were a number of very interesting episodes, including one
involving a whole city which was moved to another planet by aliens
without the knowledge of the inhabitants (much like the "Outer Limits"
episode "Feasibility Study".)  Astro Boy also had a great theme song,
which used to show up occasionally on radio programs on the level of 
Dr. Demento.

Astro Boy was a MUSHI production, from Japan of course.  MUSHI 
programs have several distinguishing characteristics.  Many of the
main characters look alike in all the shows.  Large eyes, round faces,
etc.  The same voices were used extensively.  I learned later that the
same basic face/eye layout is also used extensively in Japanese comic 
books (which are an art form in themselves -- some are sorta half for 
children and half R -> X rated stuff for adults.)  One other MUSHI 
production which comes immediately to mind is "Kimba" (about a white 
lion in Africa).

There are a number of other animated programs which I believe were 
either done by MUSHI or were associated with them.  These include 
"Prince Planet" (an alien prince is sent to Earth to help achieve law 
and order), "Speed Racer" (about a young race car driver), "Marine 
Boy" (kind of an underwater version of Prince Planet), and maybe "The
Amazing Three" (about three aliens sent to Earth to determine if it
should be allowed to exist or whether it should be "removed".)

One amusing sidenote about "Speed Racer" The voice of one of the 
primary characters ("Racer X") apparently showed up in a completely 
unrelated film, the soft X porn classic "The Story of O".  It seems 
the same person who provided the English voice for Racer X did the 
English dialogue looping for a character in the French porn flick.  
Actually, this is only a rumor, but from a rather good source.

Such ironies.  Ah well, I'll leave you with a bit of empty history, 
the theme from "The Amazing Three":

  Spacemen with a mission,
  You must make a very big decision.
  With your solar bomb you could destroy us,
  Or save the world, or save the world.

  Spacemen, must be wise men.
  So we will take pains to disguise them.
  Bunny - Bonnie, Pony - Ronnie, last with,
  And then the last, becomes a duck.

  Spacemen, with a mission,
  You must make a very big decision.
  Earthboy Kenny Carter knows your secret,
  As away you go, to meet the foe,
  Amazing Three, Amazing Three, Amazing Three.

---

I think I'm going insane.

[ No comment.  --  Jim ]

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 5/16/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last in the digest.  They reveal more
details about the plot development in the story The Universe Between.
Those unfamilar with this story may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 17:18:17-PDT
From: decvax!duke!phs!dennis at Berkeley

This concerns the book (yes, by Nourse) about the entry point into the
alternate universe.  This other universe was sort of an "over-space"
and from it you could travel into parallels to our own universe (with
slightly differing physical laws, like "The Gods Themselves") by
"turning the corner" just right.

The opening story (it stands alone and was probably published that
way, but I've never seen it other than with the rest of the tale)
concerned an ultra-cold experiment in which they got very close to 0
degrees K when the temperature took a large drop.  What was left was
the gateway.  A couple of scientists got driven the requisite crazy by
trying to examine (penetrate?) this gateway; they finally got a girl
who was emotionally impaired in some fashion (fewer ties to our
universe, I guess) and she managed to go in and back out, and learned
how to turn the corner wherever she was.

The second part concerns this girl's son (this takes place several
(~15-20) years later) whom she has taught to turn this corner.  He
eventually contacts beings who live in this other universe and sets up
a flourishing transporation industry (distances are much shorter
there, of course).  Shipments start going haywire (a pile of pipe
arrives melted on Mars, for instance) because they turn a slightly
wrong corner and wind up in a place where physics is different.

------------------------------

Date:  11 May 1981 15:19 edt
From:  JSLove at MIT-Multics (J. Spencer Love)
Subject:  The Universe Between
Sender:  JSLove.PDO at MIT-Multics

The book about the hole in space is "The Universe Between", which I 
think is by Alan Norse (Nourse?).  Its first chapter originally
appeared as a short story (I don't remember where), in which a
ruthless researcher is using up experimental subjects by demanding
that they look at the phenomenon he has created.  The phenomenon is a
roughly cubical, glowing hole in space caused by cooling a metal block
or bar BELOW absolute zero.  They got it very cold and then without
warning it jumped to the other side of the "temperature barrier"
without actually passing through absolute zero.  The physics here is
questionable but never pinned down enough for a physicist to object to
it.

Finally, they bring in subjects from some parallel research project in
adaptability, or mental flexibility, and they find a woman who doesn't
go mad at the sight of it.  There are some quite entertaining 
descriptions of the geometry on the other side: "Three parallel lines 
met at right angles to form a perfect cube with seven triangular
sides."  She learns from examination of the phenomenon to be able to
voluntarily go between this universe and that one without having the
object around, and the relationship between this universe and that one
are such that considerable displacement in one can be had for a short
trip in the other.  There is considerable handwaving about "angles"
which is used to suggest motion in other than the usually expected
three dimensions.

The woman doesn't think too much of the ruthless experimenter, and 
splits.  The short story ends where the experimenters find the empty 
cell she was locked into because she feigned insanity to deny him the 
knowledge.  The story picks up again with the woman married to the 
ruthless scientist's protege, or perhaps the person in charge of 
adaptability research.  They have had a child for the purpose of 
teaching an infant to deal with both worlds simultaneously, since 
dealing with the other world is very hard even for the woman.  The
plot gets very intricate with matter transmitters, parallel universes,
and the inhabitants of the other universe thrown in.  Of particular
interest is a beautiful girl from the other universe who appears naked
out of thin air speaking a language with no relationship to any known
language as an emissary from the universe between.  She thinks this
universe is as wierd as we think theirs is.  It even has a happy
ending that will twist you 180 degrees in your chair.  An excellent
book.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 17-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #124
*** EOOH ***
Date: 17 MAY 1981 0925-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #124
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 17 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 124

Today's Topics:
     SF Books - "High Yield Bondage" & The Man Who Fell to Earth,
        Humor - Mushrooms,  SF Topics - Star Trek Nude Shot &
  Childern's TV (8th Man and Captain Video and The Video Rangers and
   Tom Corbett,Space Cadet) & Childern's Books (Mushroom Planet and
  The Three Investigators and The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree and
                  Here's the Plot What's the Title)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 May 1981 10:44-EDT
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  The Man Who Fell to Earth

Wasn't there a novel with this name?  I seem to remember that the hero
came to earth from some planet, with the plan of building a financial
empire so that he could send a rescue mission to his home planet,
which was about to get destroyed in some way.  The empire was based on
various inventions which they knew we did not have from watching our
television transmissions.

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 10:16:08-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: "High Yield Bondage"

   THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (film version starring David Bowie) is a 
reasonably faithful representation of the novel of the same title by 
Walter Tevis. Tevis is basically an outsider to SF; the only other SF
of his that I know of is [the?] MOCKINGBIRD, a recent book which was
praised in certain circles. In the book it is made clear early on that
the ET came deliberately (i.e., is not trying to make enough money to
get off) to warn the Earth of an impending catastrophe.

------------------------------

Date: 16 May 1981 10:55-EDT
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Hitchcock's juvenile detective stories

Weren't these called "The Three Investigators"?  As the title implies,
there were three of them, and they were always running into incredible
criminal enterprises.

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 1157-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: magic animal robots, Alfred Hitchcock

        There is a flying talking couch and there are a bunch of other
magically animated creatures in the Oz books.  How about the Patchwork
Girl of Oz?  In the book by that title, she magically comes to life.
I can get a more complete list from a relative if it is wanted.
        I think the detectives in Alfred Hitchcock's series were 
called the Investigators.  Anyone remember The Case of the Stuttering
Parrot?  I remember soda pop coming out of the faucet, but don't
remember the author.  I'm pretty sure, though, that the author comes
before "Eager" in the alphabet (by my memory of where the book was in
the library).  By the way, does anyone remember Half Magic, Knight's
Castle, or Seven-Day Magic by Edward Eager?  How about The Gammage Cup
and The Whisper of Glocken by Carolyn Kendall?  Homer Price and the
Doughnut Machine!  All among my favorites.
        I've read the Bellairs books Face in the Frost (very good) and
The House with the Clock in its Walls (good), and also the other two
books that follow it in the series.  I can't remember the titles, but
I do remember disliking them.  Face in the Frost is very funny, though
... It starts out something like "Once upon a time in a place whose
name doesn't really matter there was a wizard named Prospero, and not
the one you're thinking of, either."
                                good reading,
                                                --cat 

------------------------------

From: ELLEN@MIT-MC
Date: 05/15/81 22:21:50
Subject: Nostalgia jig...

I am not on SF-Lovers, but read it occasionally.  I have noticed a
certain Nostalgia sort of thing about children's Sci-Fi of late, and
thought (having a 13 year old in his first childhood) I might be able
to help:

The Alfred Hitchcock series is "The Three Investigators" A listing of 
titles (taken from book number 25, "The Mystery of the Dancing Devil",
from my son's bookcase) goes:

   The Secret of Terror Castle
   The Mystery of The Stuttering Parrot
   The Mystery of the Whispering Mymmy
   The Mystery of the Green Ghost
   The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure
   The Secret of Skeleton Island
   The Mystery of the Fiery Eye
   The Mystery of the Silver Spider
   The Mystery of the Screaming Clock
   The Mystery of the Moaning Cave
   The Mystery of the Talking Skull
   The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow
   The Secret of the Crooked Cat
   The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon
   The Mystery of the Nervous Lion
   The Mystery of the Singing Serpent
   The Mystery of the Shrinking House
   The Secret of Phanatom Lake
   The Mystery of Monster Mountain
   The Secret of the Haunted Mirror
   The Mystery of the Dead Man's Riddle
   The Mystery of the Invisible Dog
   The Mystery of the Death Trap Mine
   The Mystery of the Dancing Devil

The editor may wish to put that list somewhere, as it is long, and I
fear not even complete.  These books are really sort of a modern
(gadgetry) version of the older Hardy Boys.  The stories are not
actually by Hitchcock, as someone has suggested ("why would he want
to...") but feature him as narrator and are written by at least two
authors, Hitchcock's association with the series is not clear to me
from looking at the example I have in front of me, except that he
obviously gave permission for his name to be used.  They are primarily
detective stories, however.

But, they sparked my son to go on to more reading, including (does
anyone remember reading this:)


Louis Slobodkin, "The Three-Seated Space Ship", "The Space Ship in the
Park", "The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree", and "The Space Ship
Returns to the Apple Tree" ??

This series features a kid from another planet who contacts a kid here
(in the three seated version I think we bring along a grandmother) and
they have assorted fun time/space adventures, along with needing to
magically learn new languages, new customs, and so on - not to mention
explaining where they were last Monday.)

My son tired of those quickly and went on to Ben Bova's Exile Trilogy
and Asimov.

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 19:31:46-PDT
From: eagle!mhtsa!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: Captain Video and the Video Rangers

The first Captain Video helmet was of the standard diving bell variety
used in "Destination Moon."  The second was plastic with a hinged
trans- parent face plate and was offered as a premium for sending in
the appropriate number of "Powerhouse" candy bar wrappers (never could
stand the taste of those things, but a true fan must sacrifice) and a
nominal sum of money.  I expect they would have been banned by the FTC
these days as they were inadequately ventilated and definitely 
flammable.  (I wonder if accidents due to those properties led to the 
final "force field" version of the helmet?)

As I recall, however, the Video Rangers (save for the single character
called "the Ranger") were rehashed Texas Ranger movies shown in 10 
minute installments between 10 minute segments of Captain Video.

As long as we're here, anybody remember "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet?"  I
remember the series, and that the characters wore ostentatiously 
studded uniforms, but anything beyond that escapes me.

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 1556-EDT
From: SWG at MIT-XX
Subject: Tom Corbett, Space Cadet

From /The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows/ by Tim 
Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine, 1979):

Broadcast history:
  Oct-Dec 1950, CBS; Jan 1951 - Sep 1952 ABC; Jul-Sep 1951 NBC

Characters: Tom Corbett, Capt. Strong, Astro the Venusian, Roger
  Manning, Dr. Joan Dale

Technical Advisor: Willy Ley

Writers: Frankie Thomas (who played Tom), Stu Brynes, Ray Morse

/Tom Corbett/ was conceived by CBS in late 1950 to cash in on the 
enormous popularity of DuMont's /Captain Video/.  The two programs
were not directly competitive---in fact /Tom Corbett/ led into
/Captain Video/ three nights a week---and they differed in substantial
ways.  /Tom Corbett/ had a much larger budget and thus more realistic
special effects, such as blastoffs, weightlessness, etc., all done
live through various techniques of video hocus-pocus.  And the
emphasis was less on futuristic hardware (though there was plenty) and
more on the adventures of the young cast.
  Tom Corbett, curly-headed teenage cadet at the Space Academy, four 
centuries hence, was a figure with whom youngsters could identify.
With him in training to become Solar Guards were wisecracking Cadet
Roger Manning ("So what happens now, space heroes?," "Aw, go blow your
jets!") and the quieter Astro, a Venusian (planetary boundaries were 
rather less important in the 24th century).  Every week they blasted
off in the spaceship /Polaris/ to new adventures somewhere in space,
usually against natural forces rather than the space villains who
populated /Captain Video/.  Their exploits were instructive as well as
exciting.  Program advisor Willy Ley, a noted scientist and author,
worked in legitimate concepts such as variable gravity forces,
asteroid belts, and antimatter.
  . . . Late in 1952 the series moved to Saturday daytime, where it 
continued, off and on, until the summer of 1955.
  Based on the novel /Space Cadet/, by Robert A. Heinlein.  

------------------------------

FIL@MIT-AI 05/08/81 22:30:51 Re: Mushroom Planet and Apple trees

     "The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree" was written by William
Slobodkin, I think.  He also wrote a series of non-sf children's books
about a family named Moffat.  I think there might have been a sequel
to SsUtAT, but I'm not sure.

     As for the Mushroom Planet, I remember plenty.
     The name of the semi-mad (not really) scientist was Theo (for
something longer) Bass.  There were at least three books in that
series:
     In the first one Mr. Bass tells the boys to take a mascot along.
In their last minute rush to take off, all they can scrounge up is a
chicken from the barnyard.  Said chicken ends up saving the Mushroom
Planet because of sulfur in her egg yolks, which the Mushroom People
are short of.  Also in the story was the fact that once on the MP you
could only speak the native tongue and write the native script.  And
the fact that their take off window was very narrow because of a black
hole of some kind orbiting between the Earth and the MP.
    In the second book, the boys meet Mr. Bass' cousin.  They end up
on a flight to the MP with the cuz and a Skeptical Scientist.  After 
they get back, (leaving cuz behind on the MP) the SS tries to take the
ship back because he can't read the notes he took while on the MP.  He
manages to get the ship off, but falls through the black hole and by
some miracle is washed ashore the next day.  Meanwhile, Mr. Bass, who 
has never been to the MP himself, is breathing air from a jar that the
boys brought back, air from the MP.  He sighs happily and it is
implied that he somehow floats awy on the wind to the MP.
     The third book, which I never read (because I could never find
it, dammit!), was called Mr. Bass' Planetoid.  I'm not sure what it 
was about, but I think Mr. Bass need the boys help with some important
matter.

    Now here's a plot without a title from me:  Some kids (a boy and a
girl) are building a play spaceship in the garage.  The boy finds a
strange piece of metal in a vacant lot.  It is a big dish shaped
thing, very light and malleable.  The boy and girl shape it to the
nose of their wooden ship.  In the night (or sometime) some being
comes and tries to take the ship by rubbing a piece of metal shaped
like an old umbrella against the metal of the nose.  To make a long
story short, the being does get the ship moving (seems the metal on
the nose is the other half of its flying saucer).  The kids go with
him because he is lost.  They end up touring the solar system looking
for they guy's home.  He feeds them magic jelly been so they won't
need air or water or warm temperatures.  It turns out in the end that
he's not from the solar system at all.  Anyway it was a cute book.
Any takers?

                                                        philip

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 1455-EDT
From: SWG at MIT-XX
Subject: Mushroom Planet books (SFL V3 #117)

I'll never forget that wonderful substance 
tritetramethylbenzacarbonethylene -- a sure-fire remedy for 
antidisestablishmentarianism!

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 2241-PDT
From: First@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Star Trek Nude Shot/TOBOR the 8th Man memory

The following offer appears in the April 1980 issue of Playboy (which 
if one is any kind of a Beatle fan is an absolute must--John Lennon 
comments on the meaning and circumstances around most of the Beatles 
songs--they are listed in alphabetical order with Lennon's comments 
about each one--it's a dream come true, made very shortly before his 
assassination):  "Trekkies may remember an episode of \Star Trek/
called the "Gamesters of Triskelion" in which an Amazonian woman
develops an interplanetary affection for Captain Kirk.  Now Angelique
Pettyjohn, a truly stellar attraction on the show, is selling two 19"
by 24" posters depicting herself in--and out--of her Amazon costume.
The clothed version is $7.50, the unclothed one is $17.50 or you can 
have both post-paid for only $22.50 sent to Angelique Pettyjohn, c/o
Tri-Sun, INC., PO Box 42117, Las Vegas Nevada 80104.  Angelique is
full of enterprise." p. 240.

Small reprints of the posters are printed with this little article.  I
guess I can't really fault her--Leonard Nimoy has been making a 
fortune off of his involvement.  It is a bit incongruous seeing the
picture--Star Trek was always kind of devoid of overt sexuality even
though many of the costumes were as revealing as Roddenberry could get
past the censors.  I guess it was only a matter of time until someone
decided to capitalize off of our fantasies...

On the same Philadelphia UHF station which carried Astroboy, was a
much better Japanese export: "TOBOR the Eighth Man", a precursor by
several years of the bionic man concept (TOBOR is robot spelled 
backwards--clever, huh).  Does anybody remember this one I can't quite
remember the original concept.  In my group of friends, it was
considered much more fashionable to watch than Astroboy--I really
hated that awful squeaking sound he made when he walked.  --Michael 

[ TOBOR is briefly discussed in volume 3, issue 123.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 18-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #125
*** EOOH ***
Date: 18 MAY 1981 0739-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #125
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 18 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 125

Today's Topics:
                SF Events - GENCON gaming convention,
   SF Books - Journeys of Frodo & The World and Thorinn & Cyber-SF,
             SF TV - Star Trek,  Humor - Dr. Ann Atomic,
        SF Topics - Children's stories (The Lemonade Trick) &
  Children's TV (Speed Racer and Astro Boy and Japanese animation and
   Gigantor and Felix the Naughty Kitty and Homer Price and 8th Man)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 2049-EDT
From: KJB at MIT-DMS (Kevin J. Burnett)
Subject: GENCON gaming convention

Does anybody have any idea of when GENCON is going to be, if at all 
this year? It was supposedly going to be in California. 

-Kevin

------------------------------

Date: 17 May 1981 0427-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Tolkien Book  

Journeys of Frodo: An Atlas of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,
by Barbara Strachey (Ballentine, $7.95).  51 two color maps of Frodo's
journey through Middle Earth.  Now available in your local (well,
maybe big city) bookstores.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 17 May 1981 (Sunday) 1112-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: ST sex and Parallel universes:

There must be something in the air... our local bboard just got over a
long discussion of sex in ST.  As I recall, I think the winners were:

   Wink of an Eye (in which Kirk is seen "after the (f)act" pulling
    on his boots)

   and

   The one with the indians on a planet with a broken meteor deflector
    in which Kirk has a child.  That's the most implicit sex possible.

There were some others.  I'll try to dig up the backlog from BULL.

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 0035-EDT
From: CSH at MIT-DMS (Cynthia S. Hanley)
Subject: Speed Racer

Local Boston area fans of Speed Racer may find this of interest.
Some months ago I turned to the Meet The Manager show on Channel 56
and overheard the manager saying loudly, "Speed Racer will never be
show by this channel while I am here."  It seems that Channel 56
holds the local rights and this creature, in his infinite wisdom,
has decided it is far, far too violent a show for his station.
Instead he wants to show such "tame classics" as Tom & Jerry,
Flintstones, Woody Woodpecker, and the like.  I make no comment...

                   ---CSH

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 1731-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: animal robots

        In addition to the animal shapes in the Oz books, there are
robot birds in The Pastel City by M. John Harrison.  Their creator
says that some of them were so complex they had learned to talk.
"That's about as good a definition of life as any..." he says.  There
also are some humanoid robot warriors in the book, but these are less
unusual.
        I just read The World and Thorinn, Damon Knight's new book.
nano-review:  Fair to good. Not as good as the reviews have said.
This book, too, has a bird-robot in it.
                                                --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 12:38:36 EDT (Friday)
From: Ward Harriman <harriman at BBNT>
Subject: ROBOTS:

concerning animal like and magical 'robots':

animal:  Dr. Who's K9.  K9 is (obviously) a dog robot with a
                great diversity of capabilities, not the least of
                which is to act much like you'd expect a dog who can
                talk and reason and 'compute' to act!

magical:  in I ROBOT, what about the robot who could read minds?
                I won't say any more and avoid a spoiler warning.

ward

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 09:18 PDT
From: Pettit at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #122  Tin Woodman

I would not classify the Tin Woodman as magical robot, but more of a
magical cyborg, if anything.  The story of the Tin Woodman is:  He was
an ordinary man in love with a young maid whom a wicked witch, for
some reason I forget, did not want him to marry.  The witch put a
spell on his ax causing him to chop off various parts of himself while
cutting trees.  Each time he amputated a part, a local tinsmith would
fix him up with a prothetic part, until finally he was all made of
tin.  At no time was there any lapse of personal identity.  However,
when he got a tin trunk he found that he no longer loved the maiden
because he had no heart, and so went in search of one.

Incidentally, the same witch put the same spell on the sword of a
different man who was in love with the same maiden, and the same
tinsmith fixed him up.  His name was something like "Major Metal", I
think.  Anyway he was pictured as having a rather militaristic tin
body.  In one of the original Baum Oz books, the Tin Woodman and Major
Metal meet the man which this tinsmith stitched together
Frankenstein-style out of the best amputated parts of both of them,
and find that he has married the lass they both loved.  There is a lot
of philosophical discussion about the locus of personal identity, but
the plot of this book is rather weak.  If you make a category for the
Tin Woodman, put Major Metal in it too.  But I'm inclined to think
they should be left out of the categorization altogether.

(Besides reading as a child most of the juvenile series which have
been discussed recently, when I was 8 I went on an Oz binge and read
all 42 books in the series, and wished there were more.  I was one of
those weird kids who went to the public library once a week or more
often if I could get a ride, and checked out the limit of 10 books
each time.  Mostly fantasies of some sort.  Doctor Dolittle was
another favorite when I was 9, and a lot of Andre Norton books at 10
and 11.)

        Teri 

------------------------------

Date:  8 May 1981 1030-PDT
Sender: Daul at OFFICE  
From: Andrews
Subject: friday foolishness: Dr. Ann Atomic #1

This is a series of rather punny stories.  I'll hit you with one next
friday too unless you beg me not to.

(from "Son of Space Cases" by Sharon N. Farber)

Introduction
   The life of a doctor of the stars is fraught with constant dangers
   and crises.  Ann Atomic, the well-known space physician, is
   equipped to deal with these hazards, with extensive training as a
   mad doctor and psychosurgeon.  She serves the public ceaselessly,
   both as Clinical Professor of Infernal Medicine at the Lunatech
   College of Physick and Chirurgery, and in her private practice in
   that empty region of the cosmos known as the Ann Atomic Dead Space.
   Here now are more illuminating cases from the files of Dr. Ann
   Atomic:

Foul Play
   Ann Atomic's old high school friend the enigmatic Shirley U. Gest,
   was starring in a new theatrical production and as usual sent Ann
   tickets for the opening night.  The theatre was a showboat, aloat
   in Hades, as the producers wanted to see how well the play would
   be liked in the Styx.
      "It's about a quartet of billionaires who attend an auction for
   Saturn; that's why it titled FOUR BID ON PLfANET," Ann told her
   fiance Osgood Ascanby.
      "Sounds forbidding, but at least it's not avant garde--that
   really puts me on gard," he answered.
      Unfortunately, the play was written entirely in heroic couplets.
     "Too bad we aren't on Betelgeuse 7," Osgood groaned.  "They've
   legislated methods of dealing with miserable minstrels who insist
   on producting putrid poetry."
     "Yes, I've heard.  They let the punishment fit the rhyme," Ann
   whispered.
      During the intermission Ann was caled backstage to Shirley's
   dressing room.  Shirley was in poor shape, evincing a constellation
   of symptoms.
     "Oh Dear," Ann said, "you've really got a rare one.  You seem to
   have contracted a plant disease, probably harbored within the very
   boards of the stage."
     "What's this disease called?"
      Ann shook her head sadly.  "I'm afraid you've got a bad case of
   Stage Blight." 

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 14:38-EDT
From: Dennis L. Doughty <DUFTY at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Children's stories -- The Lemonade Trick


Since we're on the subject of children's stories that have anything at
all to do with SF or Magic, does anyone out there remember the Scott
Corbett series of books (the "Trick" books)?  Some of these were:

                The Lemonade Trick
                The Baseball Trick
                The Hairy Horror Trick
                etc.

These stories concerned three (?) boys, Fenton & two others whose
names I can't recall and their dog Waldo who meet Mrs. Graymalkin and
her car Nostradamus.  Mrs. Graymalkin can only be described as a witch
(of the "good" variety).  She gives the boys a chemistry set that
"used to be her son's" that can do all sorts of wondrous things.  I
remember reading these as a child and greatly enjoying them.  --Dennis

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 1415-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Astro Boy, Gigantor, Felix the Naughty Kitty, Homer Price, 8th Man

All right, kiddies.  Let's continue our jaunt down memory lane...

Indeed there was an Astro Boy episode where budget cuts threatened his
existence.  Rather an advanced plot for a kiddie show.

---

Gigantor deserves special mention.  The kid who controlled this giant 
robot -- Jimmy Sparks -- did it all with a remote control with just 
ONE control lever.  Amazing.  Recently, a punk rock (excuse me, New
Wave) group recorded a punk version of the Gigantor theme... same
lyrics and basically the same tune...

  Gigantor, the space age robot,
  He's at,
  Your command.

  Gigantor, the space age robot,
  His ... power ... is ... in your hands.

  Bigger than big.
  Stronger than strong.
  Quicker than quick.
  Taller than tall.
  Ready to fight for RIGHT,
  Against wrong.

  Gigantor....  Gigantor.... Gigaaaaaaaannnnnnnnntor.

On a sidenote, I also heard a punk version of the "Green Acres" theme 
fairly recently...

---

Felix the Cat was and is one of my favorites.  I could fill digests 
about him.  I will simply mention that the Master Cylinder (an 
ex-student of The Professor's who was always blowing himself up and
who ended up with a metal can body) is a fantastic character.  So was
Pointdextor (the brainy kid who always wore a graduation cap and had a
little button in the center of his chest).

A particularly impressive character was "Marty the Martian", who 
travelled around in a "fourth dimensional space capsule".  If he were
to appear in your vicinity, you would first see a black dot hanging in
space.  This would expand to a "one dimensional" line, then a 2-D
square, then a 3-D cube -- with Marty inside.  He would vanish the
same way.  Felix the Cat plots ranged over a tremendous variety of
topics.  Sometimes The Professor was evil; sometimes Felix was
"babysitting" for him.  Sometimes Pointdextor was Felix's friend,
sometimes he was a BRAT.  By the way, Pointdextor at various times
built:  a flying saucer, an N-dimensional ladder that traveled all the
way to the stars, and a trans-dimensional doorway that opened directly
onto Mars.

"What will happen to Felix, in the next exciting chapter, of the 
adventures of Felix the Cat?"  "Righteeooooh!"

---

I haven't heard the name Homer Price mentioned in years.  I can
distinctly picture him though... sort of a pear shaped face -- bald as
I recall.  I only remember one story -- where a doughnut machine goes
crazy and starts spilling doughnuts all over the place!

---

Finally, anyone out there remember the animated feature "8th Man"?:

   There's a Prehistoric Monster,
   Who came from Outer Space,
   Created by the Martians to destroy the human race.

   The FBI is helpless,
   It's 20 stories tall!
   What shall we do?  Who can we call?

   Call TOBOR,
   The EIGHTH man.
   Call TOBOR,
   The EIGHTH man.

   Faster than a rocket.
   Swifter than a jet.
   He's the mighty robot.
   He's the one to get.

   Call TOBOR,
   The EIGHTH man.
   Quick, call TOBOR, the mightiest robot of them all!

TOBOR had a human brain which had been transplanted into a robot body.
Most of the time TOBOR (ROBOT) looked perfectly human, until he needed
to exercise his special powers, at which time he'd change to EIGHTH
MAN!  As I recall, the show was rather arty.  I liked it.

---

I guess I've been a bit lenghty even for me.  Sorry 'bout that, but
the digest has diverged into one of those areas where I am a
bottomless pit of semi-useless information.

See you later .... RIGHTEEEEEEOOOO!

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date: 17 MAY 1981 1605-PDT
From: PEDERSEN at USC-ECL
Subject: Astro Boy & Animated SF TV


Astro Boy was the creation of Osamu Tezuka, the "Walt Disney" of 
Japanese animation, who was also largely responsible for the Japanese
comic book industry.  His Astro Boy series (based on his successful
comic book character) started the whole Japanese science fiction
explosion.  Several of the early animated series from Japan made to
American tv in the 60's, but (primarily due to censorship problems)
the most recent Japanese product remains unseen in this country,
except for very watered-down versions at very odd hours.  Of interest
is that a new Astro Boy series was produced in Japan in the past year,
though it is doubtful that it will reach our shores.  However, after
the success of Star Wars, the Japanese decided to go after one of the
sources of that success - Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future stories -
and 52 animated episodes (reasonably true to the original) were
produced for Japanese tv - and have been bought for American
syndication this fall.  Look for them on your neighborhood independent
stations.  If they are not "edited for American tastes" it should be a
fun series.  I saw part of the pilot (in the original Japanese) and it
looks very good.

The Japanese have also been producing a number of very good feature- 
length animated sf movies (Galaxy Express, Phoenix: 2772, etc) which 
may make it to America.  Also, anyone interested in Japanese tv 
cartoons, there is an organization in the Los Angeles area that has 
regular screenings:
                     Cartoon/Fantasy Organization
                     c/o Fred Patten
                     11863 West Jefferson Blvd.
                     Culver City, CA 90230

                     - Ted Pedersen <PEDERSEN@USC-ECL>

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line: 21-MAY  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #126
*** EOOH ***
Date: 21 MAY 1981 0758-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #126
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Wednesday, 20 May 1981    Volume 3 : Issue 126

Today's Topics:
         Administrivia - No Missing Digest & Digest Overload,
   SF Lovers - T-Shirts,  SF Books - The Eagle's Gift & Cyber SF &
       Here's the Plot What's the Title,  SF Movies - Outland,
 Humor - Ann Atomic,  SF Topics - Children's stories (Edward Eager) & 
                 Children's TV (Japanese animation)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1980 18:42 PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - No Missing Digest & Digest Overload

There was no Tuesday digest this week due to some hardware
difficulties at the site where the digests are composed.  Hopefully
that is behind us now, and dialy transmissions resume with this (the
Wednesday) issue.

Just a reminder that the backlog of messages to appear in the digest
is still large, which means that the turnaround time for the average
message is still 4 days.  If the message pertains to the current
discussions in the digest, then this time is reduced, while if it
introduces a new topic of conversation it is increased.  Please bear
with me during this period.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 19 May 1981 0008-EDT
From: JHENDLER at BBNA
Subject: thank you

I'd like to interrupt this nostalgia to send a thank you to Rodof.  I
just received my SFL T-shirt, and it's absolutely wonderful!!
  I shall wear it with pride.
  -Jim

------------------------------

Date: Wednesday, 20 May 1981 23:14-PDT
Subject: Review of OUTLAND (non spoiler)
From: mike at RAND-UNIX


Screening of OUTLAND at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills.

Review:  Another Space Western.  Actually a remake.  I won't tell you 
which western, as that would require a spoiler warning.  Lots of fun, 
if you like westerns.

----> LOTS OF GORE <---- Do not see this movie if you don't like
blood.  In a western, the people are shot and fall into the dust.  In
space, they decompress and explode.  Not pretty.  Or very pretty,
depends on your taste, I suppose.

Set direction: very pretty.  In between people dying and exploding, I 
often said to myself: "My, but that is pretty!  I wonder if someone is
going to die there?"

Acting: Sean Connery is very good as a space marshall.  I liked all 
the performances, but Sean with his Marshall's badge is swell.  Didn't
like his horse much, though.

Favorite technical errors: (1) The "atmospheric bands" of jupiter 
visibly move in real time.  My understanding was that they moved very 
slowly and that the films of movement from JPL were with time-lapse 
photography. (2) Decompression.  Nice effect, but don't believe that 
people die that way.  Cute, though. (3) The shotguns that work in 
atmosphere also work in a vacuum.  Sure they do.

Have fun at the movies!  Michael Wahrman

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 12:51-EDT
From: John Howard Palevich <TANG at MIT-AI>

        I, for one, am in favor of pun control.

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 12:52 PDT
From: Woods at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Juvenile SF&F: Edward Eager

Aha, another branch on the nostalgia tree!  Yes, I remember "Seven-Day
Magic", and "Half Magic" also sounds familiar.  By Edward Eager, you
say?  Could be; I don't really remember much about the stories, and
certainly don't recall the author.  I seem to remember that Seven-Day
Magic involved a group of children borrowing a book, entitled
Seven-Day Magic, from the library, and discovering that it was about
them (and started with their borrowing the book from the library,
etc.), a fine example of recursive literature!  Unfortunately, the
rest of the pages of their book wouldn't turn until after they'd
caught up, and the rest fades from my memory (and would probably
require a spoiler).

Was Eager the one who kept using the same group of children in a
series of magic-related novels?  I think the group from Seven-Day
Magic was the same as the group in "The Thyme Garden" (or perhaps "The
Time Garden"; the plot centered on magical time-travel based on the
names of different varieties of thyme).

        -- Don.

------------------------------

Date: 17 May 1981 0427-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: The Eagle's Gift   

    By Richard de Mille
    (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    THE EAGLE'S GIFT. By Carlos Castaneda. Simon & Schuster. $12.95.

    (Richard de Mille is the author of ''Castaneda's Journey'' and
''The Don Juan Papers.'')

    ''I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I
now offer to the public fell into my hands.'' Thus C.S. Lewis 
introduced 150 pages of letters purporting to have passed from ''his 
Abysmal Sublimity Under Secretary Screwtape'' to a diabolic nephew 
named Wormwood.
    ''This is not a work of fiction,'' writes Carlos Castaneda. ''What
I am describing is alien to us; therefore, it seems unreal. ... All I 
can do under the circumstances is present what happened to me as it 
happened.'' Anyone who thinks the Screwtape Letters were actually 
composed by a devil in Hell rather than a don Juan in Oxford will no 
doubt continue to accept Castaneda's don Juan fantasy, now grown to 
six volumes, as an ''autobiography'' that ''began years ago as field 
research.'' Less literal-minded readers may not object to my analyzing
this latest episode as fiction.
    To anyone unfamiliar with Castaneda's Mexican Indian wise man
saga, let me say that this book is not the right place to begin. The 
newcomer will find it generally boring and largely incomprehensible.  
It is a book strictly for Castaneda cultists, and I wish them joy of 
it. If you liked ''The Second Ring of Power,'' you'll love ''The 
Eagle's Gift.'' If you never got to, or through, ''Second Ring,'' 
forget ''Eagle.''
    Which is just what Carlos did (Carlos being the protagonist in 
Castaneda's story). By the spring of 1974, you see, don Juan had 
taught Carlos all about the Eagle but had also, by hypnotic command, 
locked this teaching into an inaccessible compartment on the ''left 
side'' of Carlos's many-chambered mind, whence it has only recently 
been retrieved by a process of ''dreaming'' shared with Carlos's 
favorite witch, la Gorda.
    Many readers will recall their surprise when Castaneda's third
book, ''Journey in Ixtlan,'' went back to the very beginning of the 
psychedelic don Juan story to tell a quite different, drugless version
of it. The retelling was supposedly made necessary by Carlos's new
appreciation of field notes he had previously set aside.
    Now Carlos's discovery of the ''left side'' of his mind permits 
Castaneda to return once more to 1960 and retrace the years, digging 
up entirely fresh experiences and introducing a large cast of 
unfamiliar characters. This is really economical. If further buried 
records can be found, Carlos's 1960-1978 fieldwork may provide all the
material needed for the seven additional don Juan volumes I have 
predicted.
    The Eagle, if you are interested, is not an eagle but ''the power 
that governs the destiny of all living beings,'' whose awareness is 
his food. Seers see it as a jet-black, infinitely tall eagle. Its gift
is free will to evade its summons at death and thereby preserve 
awareness beyond death.
    The don Juan series is an intricate and apparently interminable 
allegory of man's relation to another world, into which just about 
every current social-science, metaphysical, and occultist fashion has 
been secretly woven. Though it started out as pseudo-ethnography, it 
is now flagrant Gnosticism, a manual of instructions on how to get out
of this inferior world and into a better place without actually 
perishing. Lots of luck.
    Over the years, Castaneda's prose has tightened up somewhat but is
still plagued by occasional awkwardnesses like ''sets of apparently 
sisters'' or ''speculations of what don Juan had really done to us.''
It's no secret that publishing houses can't afford real editing any 
more, but most readers won't miss it.
    What will dismay them is the deterioration of Castaneda's 
storytelling, which has lost its lightness, humor, and activity.  
Characters are defined not by what they do in daily life but by where 
they fit into the Rule of the Eagle. We never see them working, 
playing, loving, or even copulating; all they do is sit around 
symbolizing, in retrospect.
    Castaneda's need to turn ideas into happenings produces some
hideous metaphors: ''When I tried to call Silvio Manuel uncle,'' says
la Gorda, ''he nearly ripped the skin off my armpits with his clawlike
hands.'' Off her armpits? I haven't the foggiest notion of what idea 
this obtrusive image stands for in Castaneda's lexicon, but I wish 
he'd solved the translation problem some other way.
    Making the annual pilgrimage to the land of their origins, the 
Huichol Indians enter the place of beginning through a passage they 
call the Vagina. This bit of genuine ethnography turns up in 
Castaneda's allegory as the crack between the worlds, as an invisible 
slit held up by two sorcerers, and as two old women exposing their 
pudenda to a horrified Carlos. Readers who have not studied 
meso-American ethnography may be puzzled by such images.
    On the other hand, when Pablito practices ''not-doing'' (don
Juan's answer to the Zen no-mind) by walking backwards, Carlos
persuades him to use a rear-view mirror, a ridiculous touch that
recalls the pixie humor of Castaneda's better days.

------------------------------

Date: 16 May 1981 01:35:04-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: More animal robots

A major plot element of Asimov's "Lucky Starr and the Moons of
Jupiter" was a dog robot with a positronic brain.  In Anderson's "A
Circus of Hells", a bored, abandoned computer created robots, many in
animal shape, to play chess against itself.

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 22:45:25-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Animal/magical robots

One example of a animal-shaped robot is the Sheem Spider, a war robot,
in "The Witches of Karres."  I'm sure there are others, especially
used as probes -- the beetles in Zelazny's Lord of Light, and several
bird robots -- I seem to recall those in one of Norton's Witch World
novels.

How do you define "magical"?  What about zombies?  And how do you
classify the General's horse in "Creatures of Light and Darkness"?  If
you want to classify religion as magic, there is an old Jewish legend
about the Golem of Prague.  Seems that the local Jewish community was
being threatened, so the local rabbis (who were students of the
Kabbala) created a clay being, which was animated via various prayers,
etc., but it couldn't speak, since speech had to be bestowed directly
by the Almighty.  I think a novelization of this story was published
in the last few years, perhaps under the title "Sword of the Golem".
(Factual footnote: when the folks at the Weizmann (sp?) Institute in
Israel built a computer, they named it the Golem in honor of this
legend.)

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981  14:51-EDT (Wednesday)
From: Bat Masterson <LOCKMAN.MASTERSON at RUTGERS>
Subject: Cartoons, etc.


        Ahhh yes...

        I remember some of those Saturday morning cartoons (and some 
of those on at other times as well).  The good old days of coming home
after school to watch shows like the Flintstones (who can forget 
them), the Jetsons (the futuristic Flintstones), Astroboy, Gigantor 
(the larger version of Astroboy [although remote controlled]).  Them 
was the good old days...

        Anybody seen the Japanese versions of these shows (the 
Japanese, though, tend to do it live rather than as cartoons).  Shows 
like the Space Giants, Cyborg (<-!!), etc.  (I'm sure someone can name
some that I haven't seen).

        BTW:  Speaking of breathing under water, anyone remember 
Aquaboy and his famed Oxy-Gum? (is that right?)

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 0738-PDT
Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3
Subject: Here's the plot...
From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)

Over in the Human-Nets Digest mailing list, there has been some 
discussion regarding isomers of normal substances, like sugars, and
how they have no calories and are not digested, etc., etc.

I recall reading quite recently a novel wherein the hero (who spends
his spare time climbing buildings and is a perpetual undergraduate
student) gets himself put through some sort of alien reversing machine
and discovers that ordinary whiskey suddenly tastes rare and
wonderful, among other things.  (Later on, he puts bottles of whiskey
;through the device, after being un-reversed himself, and finds that it
still tastes great.  This latter part seems unscientific; one would
think that having the receptors [inside him] being reversed would be a
different effect than having the substance itself reversed and feeding
normal receptors -- comments?)  The plot involves the search for an 
alien artifact which was traded to us for the Mona Lisa as part of a
galactic cultural exchange program.  This thing, called a star stone,
turns out to be a super-sized virus crystal.  Could this have been by
Zelazny?  (I've read a bunch of stuff by him lately, but from the
library, so I can't check it.)

Pointers to the author and title would be welcomed.

Will Martin (WMartin at Office-3)

[ The story is indeed by Zelazny, and is entitled DOORWAYS IN
  THE SAND.  It first appeared as a serial in ANALOG, and then
  as a Science Fiction Book Club selection.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************



1,,
Summary-line: 21-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #127
*** EOOH ***
Date: 21 MAY 1981 1407-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #127
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 21 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 127

Today's Topics:
  SF Books - Cyber SF,  SF Movies - Outlands,  SF TV - Outer Limits,
          SF Topics - Children's TV (Raideen and 8th Man) &
  Children's stories (Edward Eager and Mrs. Coverlet's Magicians and
    Star Surgeon and Mushroom planet) & Physics Today (Anti-sugar)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1981 1106-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Bay Area Harlan/Outer Limits fans

Channel 20 is showing the two Harlan Ellison Outer Limits episodes 
this weekend (unbutchered un-like other stations):

        Saturday 10pm 'Soldier'
        Sunday 8pm 'Demon with a Glass Hand' 

------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1981 0350-EDT
From: Dave Touretzky at CMU-10A
Subject:  review of "Outlands"

        Review of "Outlands" 5/20/81


"Outlands", starring Sean Connery, is a below-par western with an 
unusual but unredeeming setting.  Connery plays a straightlaced
marshal newly arrived in a remote mining settlement, where he uses his
fists and a sawed-off shotgun to defeat a corrupt mine operator and
his beefy henchmen.  The gun battles are seriously underplayed, as the
director preferred to devote most of his special effects efforts to
the depiction of -- get ready -- explosive decompressions.  The
"outlands" turn out to be the moons of Jupiter, not some stretch of
Arizona desert, but Outlands is a shoot-em-up (or blow-em-up) western
all the same.  When Connery walks through the swinging double doors
(!) of the canteen and everyone in the room falls silent, one can't
help but appreciate the director's tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of
this fact.

There are two features I pay special attention to in science fiction 
movies:  future sociology, and future technology.  Outlands does 
miserably in both areas.  It fails sociologically because it makes use
of such severe sexual stereotyping that it would be barely tolerable 
in a 1980's setting, much less a futuristic one.  Lines like "my
hookers are clean, and some of them are even good looking" are
offensive, not funny, when this is someone's idea of what life will be
like a few centuries from now.

Connery's wife is a whining ninny who deserts him early in the film 
because she can't stand settlement towns.  She leaves behind a video 
message saying that she has left with their son to go back East -- I 
mean back to Earth.  The other female characters are prostitutes or 
low-level technicians, except for a courageous woman doctor who helps 
Connery battle the bad guys.  Sexists traditionally view such strong 
women as unfeminine, and this one isn't going to break any molds.
She's unaccountably grumpy, middle aged, a self-described "old wreck".
Connery befriends her by threatening to "kick her ass."

Technologically, Outlands is a joke, full of inconsistencies.  People 
communicate via electronic videomail, yet their CRT terminals run at 
110 baud and make silly clacking noises.  The entire base is monitored
by closed circuit TV cameras with remote control zoom, tilt, and pan, 
yet the images they display are only black and white, not color.  The 
scene where Connery "taps" a fiber optic communications line (actually
an RS-232 connector!)  is particularly absurd, since one would expect 
that secure communications would have become standard long before that
time.

One good thing this movie forecasts for the future is the elimination 
of handguns.  The police carry sawed-off shotguns and the bad guys use
rifles with sniperscopes.  Don't ask why such heavy artillery is 
necessary in the close confines of a space settlement, or why the
lawmen of the future can't use tranquilizers instead of bullets.  Just
sit back and enjoy the movie, podner.  And root for the man with the
badge.


-- Dave Touretzky

------------------------------

From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Re: Juvenile SF&F: Edward Eager

Yes indeed, he did use the same group of children.  Actually he used
two groups, one group being the children of members of the first.
Knight's Castle, Seven-Day Magic, Half Magic, and the Time Garden (it
was a thyme garden, remember) involved these kids.  In two of the
books, they meet each other -- I think in the Time Garden and in Half
Magic -- I remember checking to see if the two versions of the same
meeting were consistent (they were).  Eager also wrote the Well
Wishers and Magic Or Not, but these used other sets of kids.  The Half
Magic book had some very funny spots, since the magic coin only gives
you half your wish.  So if you wish to go from X to Y, you end up
halfway there, or half of you get there....The scene where one of them
inadvertently wishes that the cat could talk is hilarious.

                                        --cat

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 1704-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: more animal robots

Courtesy of my wife:
1)  The Godwhale by T.J.Bass is about a part organic part mechanical
        whale.
2)  There is a robot talking bird in "Quest of the Gypsy" by Ron
        Goulart in Weird Heroes Vol I.  (the bird is a vulture. 
        there also are androids and cyborgs.)
3)  In the story Usher II (Bradbury's Martian Chronicles/Silver
        Locusts) there is a rat, metal fleas -- " It fell over, the
        rat did, and from its nylon fur streamed an incredible horde
        of metal fleas."  Also an ape, white mice, bats, a rabbit, a
        mock-turtle, and a dormouse.
4)  In Zelazny's Lord of Light, when Mora comes to the temple in the
        beginning of the book, there is a Mechobra -- mechanical cobra
        -- and also a beetle (p. 37).
5)  Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury) has The Mechanical Hound.
6)  There is a story that appeared in 10th Best SF or some such,
        edited probably by Merrill (we can't find the book) which has
        a robot tiger named Ben.  The tiger is controlled, not
        autonomous.
7)  In an old story about the death of a house (Bradbury?) there are
        little robot mice that scream fire! fire! while trying to
        extinguish the flames.
8)  The Witches of Karres (Schmidtz (sp?)) has a spider robot called
        the Sheem Spider.  It is supposed to be a replica of a
        fiercesome spider beastie, made even more dangerous with a
        few high-tech features. (The Agandar uses it).

I think I weeded out all the ones you had already listed.  If not,
sorry!
                                                good reading,
                                                                --cat

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 08:58 PDT
From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Kiddy Kartoons

While we are on the subject of kiddy kartoons, we should probably talk
about the many strange and wonderful(?) treats the Japanese have
served us up.

The show that comes to mind first for me is Raideen. This featured a 
large robot called Raideen which is constantly battling the forces of 
evil. A few things make this show worthy of note.

First, the robot is actually controlled by one of the boys featured in
the show.  He gets on is motorcycle, zooms up to speed while Raideen 
appears out of a nearby mountain, and at the last minute, the cycle 
flips him up and into the head of Raideen. Then he falls gently 
through a long vertical corridor into Raideen's heart where he begins 
flying around killing the baddies. Very psychedelic.

Another interesting feature of this series is the amount of sexual 
innuendo in it.  Not a lot by some standards, but far more than you 
would ever find on an American feature. Two scenes stand out in my 
mind. In one, three boys and a girl are being chased by an evil flying
robot monster. The boys take great delight when the airwash blows the 
girl's skirt up for a very nice view.

My favorite scene from the whole series concerns an evil, woman-shaped
robot which is armed to the teeth. When Raideen comes after it (her?),
rockets come firing straight out of her breasts!

Raideen was rather heavily promoted as well. My roommates ordered all
sorts of toys from them. No female robots, though.

        -- Larry --

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 0035-EDT
From: CSH at MIT-DMS (Cynthia S. Hanley)
Subject: Tobor the 8th Man

Tobor the 8th Man plot: As I recall the first episode, a young man
sees a elderly man under attack and goes to the rescue.  He is shot
driving the attackers away and dying, so the elderly man (a scientist,
of course) takes his to his lab and implants his brain into his latest
creation, the eighth version of a robot he is developing.  When the
young man awakens, he reacts with horror and is still recovering from
the mental shock when the attackers return and suceed in killing the
scientist.  Beyond this point, memory is vague, I seem to recall Tobor
as being a policeman before he is shot.

                   ---CSH

------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1981 00:43:28-PDT
From: CSVAX.halbert at Berkeley
Subject: another Nourse book

A young people's SF book by Nourse I liked a lot was STAR SURGEON,
about a medical ship traveling to a number of planets and fixing the
inhabitants' ills.  The story is told from the point of view of a
humanoid, who was (I think) the first non-human to get into the
medical service (medicine was Earth's specialty).  This perspective,
and the unusual premise of the story made for a very good book.  --Dan

------------------------------

Date:  8 MAY 1981 1524-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Mushroom planet

    Good God, I'd forgotten that one -- along with the Danny Dunn, Tom
Swift, Rick Brant, and Freddie The Pig stories.  Yeah, that was a fun
one -- didn't the two boys actually nail a flying saucer to their
ship's nose, and take Oxygen pills, and have to wear clothespins on
their noses to keep themselves from breathing in space?  The whole
thing sounded like the author had been eating too many mushrooms
himself.
     Speaking of jarred memories, I remember an odd book that I got
from the children's section of the library back when I was about seven
that I could never find again once I had grown up enough to realize
how strange it was.  I remember neither title nor author, but it
involved a Jules Verne like trip to all the planets, written in a very
Verne-like style, and the one thing that sticks in my mind is when the
crew landed on the sun (!) and had to take all their clothes off
because of the heat, and ran around on the surface (!) looking at all
the volcanos that gave off the light...  Strike any chords?

     By the way, along with mentioning Rick Brant (Which tended to be
a little more scientifically accurate than Tom Swift), and Freddie the
Pig, let me mention a few more childhood faves, to wit: The Mad 
Scientist's Club, Alvin Ferdinand and a book called Scoop.  Both
Scoop, (which should have been a series, but wasn't, as far as I know)
and especially the Mad Scientists Club went to great pains to be as
technologically accurate as possible.  I even ended up building a few
of the pranky devices they came up with, and they worked fine,
although TMSC was no how-to book.  They built flying saucers and Loch
Ness Monsters and such like, radio-controlled and made from chicken
wire.  Even as I look back, now, I am still pretty impressed.  Anyone
else read these?

Rodof

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 1803-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: mushroom books

According to the Children's Books in Print, only Stowaway to the
Mushroom Planet is available in paperback.
The others,
        The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
        A Mystery For Mr. Bass
        Mr. Bass's Planetoid
        Time and Mr. Bass
are available in expensive ($8.95 to $10.95) hardback.
                                                --cat

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 1315-PDT (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Mrs. Coverlet's Magicians

Egads!  Stale bread crumb pudding!  I haven't thought about that book
in years.  To be specific, the kid (what WAS his name?) sent away for
a do-it-yourself voodoo kit from the back of a comic book... and used
it to control his temporary live-in babysitter -- who made him eat
horrid things like Rutabaga...

I too was a member of the Weekly Reader club.  I find this discussion 
of children's SF, etc. to be among the most interesting I have seen in
SFL since its inception, particularly in terms of nostalgia value!

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 (Thursday) 2350-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Anti-sugar


This one's straight out of any number of SFs beginning, in my mind,
with StarTrek.  It is from a radio news brief made by the local
station so I cannot vouch for its validity:

   A high-tech bio-chem firm has announced the devlopement of a
zero-calorie sugar "substitute".  This compound apparently exhibits
"left-handedness" in structure whereas the body can digest only
right-handed organic compounds.  [note, I may have this backward] The
new sugar is simply the wrong-handed version of regular sugar so it is
passed completely thru the digestive tract but tastes "exactly" the
same as regular sugar.  The firm [whose name I have forgoetten] said
that the idea is not really new [they probably got it from watching
ST] but that there had not been a good way of producing the chemical 
before.  They are investigating merging minds (and money) with major
sugar manufacturers in order to mass produce the stuff.  The FDA, of
course, is making the firm run about 10000 rats worth of tests before
it can go public.

My reaction to this is best summarized by an exclaimation point!


[ This story is indeed true.  As mentioned in a message in volume 3,
  issue 126, the HUMAN-NETS digest has been discussing this issue
  for the past few weeks.  Anyone interested in observations relating
  to this discovery should send a message to HUMAN-NETS-REQUEST for
  instructions on how to examine that mailing lists archives.
  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 22-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #128
*** EOOH ***
Date: 22 MAY 1981 0820-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #128
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 22 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 128

Today's Topics:
              SF Books - "There Will Come Soft Rains",
           SF Movies - Jason and the Argonauts & Outland,
             SF Topics - Price of Books & Anti-Sugar &
        Children's stories (Freddie the Pig and Tom Swift) &
   Children's TV (Felix the Cat and 8th Man and Japanese animation)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 May 81 1:21-PDT
From: mclure at Sri-Unix
Subject: quick Delphi poll

        What do you think will be the price of an "average"
        American paperback book 20 years from now in 2001?
        Currently the average seems to be about $2 to $3.

I'll collect the responses and send the result back to SF-Lovers.  
Replies to mclure@sri-unix.  [ NOT to SF-LOVERS directly.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 16:05 PDT
From: Drysdale at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #127

The story about the death of a house with robot mice is "There Will
Come Soft Rains" from \Martian Chronicles/ by Bradbury.

Also, as I remember the Asimov robot series (\I Robot/?) introduces
robot birds and other creatures to make people feel comfortable about
being around robots, but none are major characters.

Scot

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 13:10:03-PDT
From: CSVAX.upstill at Berkeley
Subject: sf-lovers--emergency entry


Sorry for not sending this in sooner, but fantasy film freaks should 
know about Ray Harryhausen's appearance on the Berkeley campus this 
Saturday (the 23rd), along with a showing of Jason and the Argonauts.
It's being done as part of a tribute by the Pacific Film Archive, a 
worthy cause in itself, and costs $3.  Wheeler Auditorium at 8 PM.

Steve 

------------------------------

Date: 21-May-81 11:02:49 PDT (Thursday)
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Another review of OUTLAND

Definitely \not/ SF.  An attempt at a sort of surrealist Western (one
might make a very stretched analogy to Eastwood's "The Gauntlet").
Unfortunately, the surreal often comes dangerously close to the camp.
Sean Connery, in a Clint Eastwood/ Gary Cooper role, is the befuddled
Marshall, and Peter Boyle is his rather wooden foe.

The dialog is awful, and the plot not much better.  And don't bother
to ask what a titanium mine is doing on Io, whose surface consists
largely of molten sulphur volcanoes.  "Designer" spacesuits light up
each character's face like a Times Square marquee.  The best aspect of
the film is an interesting score from Jerry Goldsmith.

Is anyone else as sick and tired as I am of CRT's that run at 110 bps,
and even \sound/ like Teletypes?

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 19:57 PDT
From: Newman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: OUTLAND

It's unfair to accuse OUTLAND of being sexist and retrogressive just
because the society it portrays is sexist. By this line of argument,
"1984" is a fascist book because it portrays a totalitarian society,
and "All Quiet on the Western Front" is a war-mongering movie because
it shows the atrocities of World War I.

Nonsense.  Clearly it's possible for an artist to use the depiction of
evil as a statement against that evil.

I found OUTLAND's portrayal of "future sociology" on the frontiers of
space quite believable: more believable, in fact, that the utopian
scenarios put forth by our current crop of space-colony advocates. I
don't like the society shown there any more than you do, but current
events in the U.S. demonstrate that technological advances need not go
hand-in-hand with social progress.

/Ron 

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 2316-EDT
From: Dave Touretzky at CMU-10A
Subject:  Re: OUTLAND

We have made *significant* social progress towards eliminating sexism,
although it's true that we have a long way to go before the problem is
solved.  To ignore this progress, and depict a distant future in which
people are as deeply welded into nonproductive sexual stereotypes as 
they were ten years ago, is to deny the existence, and even the 
validity, of movements that are trying to bring about the necessary 
changes.  Be realistic:  do you really think the makers of Outland
wanted to make a pessimistic statement about how "technological
advances need not go hand-in-hand with social progress"?  I don't
think they're capable of such deep thought; certainly they haven't
demonstrated it anywhere else in the movie.

Outland presents the sociological picture it does because that picture
contains the timeworn macho, violent, sexist elements that Hollywood 
thinks are necessary ingredients for a good western.  Nowhere in the 
movie does anyone make the statement that sexism in the Outland
society is a bad thing.  They don't even appear aware that it is there
at all!  Outlands makes no statements whatsoever.  It's a cheap,
trashy shoot-em-up movie with wooden characters and no conscience.  To
compare it to such great works as 1984 is ludicrous.

------------------------------

Date: Thursday, 21 May 1981 17:43-PDT
Subject: Re:  Outland and sexual stereotypes
From: mike at RAND-UNIX


Dave Touretzky finds Outland implicit predictions offensive because, 
among other things, there are hookers on a mostly male planet.

Whether or not prostitution is sexist or offensive, as a prediction it
is probably as safe as any prediction could be.  Prostitution is as 
old as history. (Or, at least, Western history.  I know very little 
really about the East).  For whatever reason it exists, I do not see 
it going away today or tomorrow, unless human nature changes.  And it 
is a premise of the movie that human nature is very recognizable in 
the future.

Predicting prostitution in the future is as safe as predicting 
violence in the future.

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 15:42:17-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Outland technicalities

   There have been a number of questionable remarks about the
technology shown in OUTLANDS. I'd like to put in my two cents worth:

  1. Of \\course// a shotgun will work in vacuum, just like the
shuttle boosters work in vacuum (or near enough to it by the time they
burn out).  It's true that explosion is extremely fast combustion; in
fact, it's so fast that most explosives are mostly (by weight)
oxidizer to provide to provide the oxygen for the fuel to burn in
(e.g., gunpowder (per Piper's LORD KALVAN OF OTHERWHEN) is 75% KNO3
(oxidizer), 15% C (fuel), 10% S (catalyst); the shuttle booster fuel
is 70% NH4ClO4).

[ A series of messages from ihnss!karn at BERKELEY, icl.redford at
  SU-SCORE, and Obrien at RAND-UNIX also touched upon this point.
  Thanks are due to each and everyone of them.  --  Jim ]

  2. Shotguns versus tranquilizers--trank darts are usually designed 
with short points to minimize damage to internal organs. Through any 
sort of space suit this would be a problem, as would strength (I'm
told that the darts are pretty fragile). Finally, trank darts are
expensive, as are the rifles to shoot them, and who ever heard of a
rough frontier spending money to be gentle? (Note with reference to
point 1 that trank darts may also rely more on aerodynamic
stabilization than bullets, which are ballistically stabilized).

  3. Very slow transmission on CRT's is endemic to Hollywood (as are 
CRT's with large screens but short lines); this is partly a camera 
problem and partly acknowledgment of the fact that lots of moviegoers 
have to move their lips when they read. 110 baud is a reasonable 
speech rate for the average person, while 300 is tongue-twisting and 
unintelligible. Clacking? The public electronic mail terminal in my
office clacks (although I think that's partly a key function).

  4. I'm familiar with some security systems; most of them choose 
controllable videocameras in preference to color.  Both control and 
color are getting cheaper, but control was cheaper to begin with.  
(Again, iit can be a question of cost--how much use would color be, 
given what people were wearing/would wear on a frontier?).

   Not that I'm defending the film; I expect to snicker when I see it.
But I like to pick at reasonable nits.

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 16:07-EDT
From: "Kenneth W. Haase,  Jr." <kwh at MIT-AI>


A bicycle ride down memory lane!  I remember RODOF's books fondly.  
Freddie the Pig was an old standard, along with the Mad Scientists 
Club....  I too tried building some of the things in the Mad
Scientists Club, but my technical competence was not really up to it.
Freddie the Pig was about an intelligent barnyard, and the
intellectual of the place, a pig named Fredrick was a detective, a
pilot, and half a dozen other things.  Great stuff!

Alvin Fernald is an old favorite too - Disney made the Alvin Fernald
books into a series of tv-movies which were pretty good
(considering....)  Anybody remember them?

Ken Haase

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 08:22-EDT
From: Brian P. Lloyd <LLOYD at MIT-AI>
Subject: Nostalgia (Tom Swift and Felix the Cat)

Ah yes...The good old days.  Such greats as Tom Swift and Felix the
Cat.  When I was twelve I decided to amass the entire Tom Swift Jr.
collection and was successful (TSj by Victor Appleton III).  You
remember such greats as Tom Swift Jr and his...

        ...Flying Lab - Atomic powered Aircraft
        ...Atomic Jetmarine - Atomic powered two-man Sub
        ...Atomic Earth Blaster - mining equipment
        ...Outpost in Space - Space Manufacturing of efficient solar
           battery
        ...Electronic Retroscope - "Restores" old cave writing et al
        ...Triphibian Atomicar
        ...Trip to the Moon - Repalatron (sic) powered Spacecraft

I could go on and on as I collected 36 of these things.  They did turn
me on to SF however (hooked at only nine years old [Damn! that was
almost 20 years ago]).

For you Felix the Cat lovers:

        Felix the Cat
        The wonderful, wonderful Cat
        When ever he gets in a fix
        he reaches into his bag of tricks

        Felix the Cat
        The wonderful, wonderful Cat
        You'll laugh so hard your sides will ache
        Your heart will go pitter-pat
        Watching Felix the wonderful Cat.

Righteeeeooooo!!!

Brian Lloyd


[ Another message from duke!unc!smb at BERKELEY also provided the
  theme song for FELIX THE CAT.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 06:02:01-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: 8th Man

As i recall, 8th Man also had recharging problems.  His way of getting
a recharge was to suck on energy cylinders or some such which looked
like cigarettes.  A common problem was using these in no smoking
areas.  Also, didn't he work as a P.I.?  With a secretary.

Also, i remember Rocket Robin Hood.  While ok it was never one of my
favorites since even at age 8 i saw a basic inconsistency in using bow
and arrows against advanced technology.

Nostalgically tom galloway

------------------------------

Date: 21 MAY 1981 1638-PDT
From: PEDERSEN at USC-ECL
Subject: Japanese Animation (Censorship)


 In response to some questions re Japanese Animation, particularly
 "censorship":

 First, understand the basic difference between
 animation in this country and overseas (particularly Japan).  In
 Japan (and Europe), animation is considered a respectable art form
 and the "content" of the material determines its audience.  Some
 very adult cartoon series (violence, sex, etc) are telecast in
 Japan.  One is the James Bond-style "Lupin" series, another is
 the kid series "Devil Man" which has people dying, heads chopped
 off and some pretty horrible monsters.

 In this country we tend to consider anything animated as "kid stuff".
 This is beginning to change somewhat ("Fritz the Cat", "Lord of the
 Rings", "Watership Down", etc) but very, very slowly.

 Japan (which, touch of irony, is about the safest country in the
 world - I would not be afraid to walk through downtown Tokyo after
 midnight, which I hesitate to do the same in Los Angeles)
 puts a lot of violence in all their cartoons - and some not-too-
 subtle bits of sex - all of which must be eliminated for fear of
 harming American children.

 Japanese cartoon series also tend to be syndicated in the early
 morning or late afternoon hours, when small children are supposed
 to be the prime audience.  The series were originally intended for
 much older audiences and thus the American censors and executives-
 in-charge feel that not only violence and sex must be eliminated,
 most of the story also has to go.  The Japanese try to tell stories
 in their cartoons, where we have been conditioned to changing the
 scene every half minute, no matter what else is going on.  (Try to
 outline a few American tv episodics - you'll find lots of scene
 changes, very little continuity in the story.)

 What you see in the way of Japanese cartoons (excepting the early
 shows of the '50's and '60's when we hadn't learned the
 fine art of censorship) bares very little
 relationship to the originals.  Which is too bad, since so
 much of their work (particularly in science fiction) is very good
 and deserves to be seen uncut.

                         Ted Pedersen<PEDERSEN@USC-ECL>

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 1509-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Sugars, whisk(e)y and reversals


There are two different approaches to 'fat free' sugars now under 
examination; wrong isomers, and plastic bound.  The wrong isomer
approach is the simplest, and is exactly as described so far, the
wrong sugar is indigestible to the body (sort of like cellulose) and
so goes right out with the urine.  The second approach actually
chemically binds sugar 'residues' to plastic backbones in a fashion
remaniscient to sugars on a DNA backbone.  The sugars are free to bind
with the taste receptors, but cannot pass membranes and slide right
through the GI tract, thus they cannot be metabolized, and provide no
energy.  It is expected that several years of testing will be
necessary before acceptance of this product will be forthcoming.

However, this cannot have anything to do with the taste of 'reversed' 
whisk(e)y, since sugars do not distill.  The main flavorings in 
Uesgebaugh are various low molecular weight aldehydes (bad guys) 
ketones, esters, acids, and other alcohols.  Complete analysis of the 
composition of these side products is not generally released
(proprietary info) but those analysis I have seen indicate that of
these, less than 2% (which themselves comprise only 1-3%) are
optically active, i.e.  can be changed by 'reversal'.

Of course, all bets are off if the hero was using cheap colored pot 
whisk(e)y.  Nobody knows what they put in that junk...

Dolata@sumex-aim 

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 23-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #129
*** EOOH ***
Date: 23 MAY 1981 1010-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #129
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 23 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 129

Today's Topics:
         SF Books - Cyber SF & Outland,  SF Movies - Outland,
 SF Topics - Children's stories (Mushroom Planet and Alan Garner and
         Tom Corbett) & Children's TV (Rocky and His Friends)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 at 0024-CDT
From: hjjh at UTexas-11
Sender: LRC.SLOCUM at UTEXAS-20

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF (AND INCOMMUNICADO-NESS) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

UTEXAS' connection to the ARPANET has been inoperative for most of the
past 2 weeks, so my communications have been frustratingly curtailed.
2 or 3 messages DID get thru (but \not/ SF-L itself) inwards, tho 
Heaven only knows how.  They must have had pretty persistent mailers.

Anyhow, don't give up on me, please.  The info I \have/ gotten on 
robots has been so useful.  If "the part" for the IMP doesn't get here
by next week, I'll find another helpful friend's account like the one 
I'm using for this message and be able to have minimal communication.

RE-- the Tin Woodman and Major Metal.  Evidently they are magical and 
EX-CYBORG in Type.  Thanks for the explanation.

RE-- animal robots.  The list has grown (yet remains overwhelmingly 
canine and avian):

   Bunch, D.R., MODERAN
   Dick, P.K., DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
   __________, DR WHO <K-9>
   Goulart, Ron, AFTER THINGS FELL APART [dogs]
   Goulart, Ron, CALLING DR. PATCHWORK
   Goulart, Ron, HAIL HIBBLER
   Goulart, Ron, WHIFF OF MADNESS, A [guard dogs, horse, birds]
   Harrison, M.J., PASTEL CITY; [birds]
   Heath, P., MIND BROTHERS; [nightingale]
   Heath. P., ASSASSINS FROM TOMORROW [hound-like tracking device]
   High, P.E., INVADER ON MY BACK [birds, dogs]
   High, P.E., MAD METROPOLIS; [insects]
   High, P.E., NO TRUCE WITH TERRA
   Larson, et al., "Battlestar Galactica" series
  (Laumer, K., LONG TWILIGHT;) ?
   Leiber, F., SILVER EGGHEADS; [auto-dog]
   Saberhagen, F., (Berserker novel) [wolf]
   Sheckley, R., JOURNEY BEYOND TOMORROW <the Beast>
   Stasheff, C., WARLOCK IN SPITE OF HIMSELF; <Fess>
   Zelazny, R., CHANGELING; [birds+]

Any others?

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 13:26:25-PDT
From: CSVAX.william at Berkeley
Subject: OUTLAND

My roommate bought an OUTLAND paperback last week. I had to put it
down after 20 pages because it was totally obnoxious to read. It seems
like the writer has outdone himself again, creating a worthless story
& no plot.

I seem to remember a story by A. Clark concerning Jupiter V. It had a
situation where someone was thrown off the moon and they were able to
reach him by waiting one full orbit of the moon for him to return to
the same spot. It takes an impressive amount of energy to move between
the moons of Jupiter, and you can't fall into Jupiters gravity well
just by jumping off the moon.  You have way too much kinetic energy...

        Bill Jolitz.

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 1737-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Outland Review

                            OUTLAND
                       By VINCENT CANBY
               c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service

    NEW YORK - ''Not many people here have both oars in the water,'' 
says flinty Dr. Marian Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen), to Bill O'Niel 
(Sean Connery), the newly arrived federal district marshal who has 
been assigned to the remote mining camp to maintain law and order.  
Doc Lazarus is no easier on herself, being aware that the kind of 
physicians who take jobs in remote mining camps usually are, as she 
puts it, one step ahead of a malpractice suit.
    Doc Lazarus is an exception, as is Bill O'Niel, who refuses to
wink or look away when strange things start happening at the camp,
even though production is up and profits are soaring. When the
showdown comes, as it must, it's Bill O'Niel and Doc Lazarus against
the world, as represented by the mining company's greedy agents.
    Peter Hyams's ''Outland'' may be the oddest-looking western you've
ever seen, being set not on the American frontier, where it's always 
1870, but in outer space, specifically on Io, the third moon of 
Jupiter, some time in the not-too-distant future.
    It's also a movie of unexpected pleasures, including some
uncommonly handsome science-fiction sets, a straightforward narrative
that recalls ''High Noon'' without that film's holy seriousness, some 
wonderfully effective chases through the darkest interiors of this 
huge, hermetically sealed moon camp, plus two staunch, robust 
performances by Connery and Miss Sternhagen. ''Outland'' is what most 
people mean when they talk about good escapist entertainment. It won't
enlarge one's perceptions of life by a single millimeter, but neither
does it make one feel like an idiot for enjoying it so much.
    Nothing in Hyams's ealier credits as a writer-director (''Hanover 
Street,'' ''Capricorn One,'' ''Busting'') prepares the viewer for the 
unpretentious achievement of ''Outland,'' in which Bill O'Niel takes 
his stand against a murderous fellow named Sheppard (Peter Boyle), the
mining company's chief agent on Io. It seems that Sheppard, with the
knowledge of the federal marshal who preceded O'Niel, has been 
importing from earth and distributing to the miners a synthetic drug 
that for eight or nine months increases the user's work capacity 
before turning his mind to oatmeal. Thus the explanation for the high 
suicide rate at the mining camp.
    How Big Bill faces this challenge is pretty much the story of 
''Outland,'' though a lot of the fun in watching it also comes from 
the look of the ersatz physical world created by Hyams and his 
associates, principally Philip Harrison, the production designer, and 
John Stears, the special-effects supervisor. More interesting even 
than all the fancy,obligatory gadgetry are the mining camp's surreal 
living spaces - sleeping quarters that look like stacks of roomy, 
designer bird-cages, large, shadowless mess halls and a swinging 
discotheque, featuring sound-and-laser-beam pornography and 
prostitutes to take the miners' minds (or what's left of them) off the
boredom of their work.
    Hyams doesn't pay too much attention to the private lives of his 
principal characters. Dear Doc Lazarus has none at all, and Bill 
O'Niel's wife, Carol (Kirka Markham), flees from Io quite early in the
movie. After eight years she's become fed up with living in one space
mining camp after another and decides to take their son back to earth,
which he's neve seen. From that time on, Carol is no more than a face
seen on a television monitor from time to time.
    The serious business of ''Outland'' is Big Bill's decision to
fight Io's traffic in dope and, by indirection, to bring some humanity
back to a world made entirely out of synthetics.
    Hyams has the good sense not to stress that last point. It goes 
without saying in the action we see on the screen, and in movies like 
''Outland,'' action is intellect and sensibility as well as an end in 
itself.
    This film is rated R.

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 1451-EDT
From: Eirikur Hallgrimsson <ISSG at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: Mushroom Planet Author/Publisher

While the books must be in a box someplace, somehow my memory has not
been effected by the general malaise.

There is a fourth book: 'Time and Mr. Bass' written some years later.

The series was by Eleanor Cameron, and was published by Little,Brown.

I harbor a wistful affection for the atmosphere that she created.

--Eirikur

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 1208-PDT (Thursday)
From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: Juvenilia

   Some juvenile-marketed fantasies I have first read and enjoyed as
an adult:
   Alan Garner: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
                The Moon of Gomrath

        Garner takes a real locale in Cheshire (I have a copy of the
Ordinance Survey Map), a healthy dose of Welsh and other folklore,
mixes thoroughly and produces spectacular results.  Weak
characterizations, though.  In fact, he didn't write a third in the
series because "I was sick of the little twits," meaning the children
who are the main characters.  So instead, he wrote
     Elidor ---- Well, it STARTS as a sort of rip-off of the Irish
Book of Invasions, with Childe Rowland thrown in for good measure, but
ends up as a passage-to-adulthood story.  Pretty good.
     The Owl Service -- Supposedly, this book is for teenagers.  Sure,
if the teenager has a degree in Celtic folklore.  Superb reworking of
the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion, and at many levels.  Interesting
ending.
     Red Shift -- Three interwoven stories of young people at three
points in British history.  Sometimes obscure, but rewarding.  Again,
the "juvenile" label is dumb marketing.

   Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

This is a series of 5 books, the last of which is a Newberry winner.  
The first (and weakest) is hard to find as it is from a different 
publisher.  They are reminiscent in some ways of the early Alan 
Garner, but more original in their imagery.  The biggest problem is
the lack of real conflict.  Characters are constantly reassured that
nothing serious will happen to them.  In spite of this, Cooper is able
to produce some ringing scenes!  The titles:
     Over Sea, Under Stone
     The Dark is Rising
     Greenwitch
     The Grey King
     Silver on the Tree

   I should also mention Joy Chant's "Red Moon, Black Mountain" and
Ursula LeGuin's "Earthsea" books, which were also originally marketed
as juveniles.

        Mike 

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 1028-EDT
Sender: PKAISER at BBND
Subject: Tom Corbett books
From: Peter Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND>

Tom Corbett wasn't just on TV; there was also a series of books.  I
have one of them, "Tom Corbett and the Space Pirates".  It's good!

---Pete

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 1922-PDT (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: And now here's something we hope you'll REALLY like...


No discussion of television animation and SF can possibly be complete 
without some serious consideration of the superb J. Ward productions
of the 60's.  These included such features as ROCKY AND HIS FRIENDS, 
THE BULLWINKLE SHOW (actually a repackaging of Rocky and His Friends),
HOPPITY HOOPER, GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE, and several others.  At least
one classic live-action program, FRACTURED FLICKERS, also came forth
from the creative genius of the facility.

Of all these, Rocky and His Friends is deserving of the most mention 
in the context of this discussion.  The classic program, beginning
with the immortal:

"A loop, a whirl, a verticle climb, and once again you'll know it's 
time for ROCKY (and his friends).  Starring that supersonic speedster,
Rocket J. Squirrel.  (And his friend, Bullwinkle the Moose)."

was clearly produced for an adult audience, and was far ahead of its
time.

Each half hour program consisted of two episodes of the serial
adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, plus additional features such as
the wonderful "Fractured Fairy Tales" (narrated by Edward Everett
Horton), or the adventures of Peabody and Sherman (and their Wayback
machine, which allowed them to visit past eras "as they might have
been" (not, necessarily, as they WERE).

In the course of a variety of serial adventures, each of which lasted
for many weeks, Rocky and Bullwinkle underwent some amazing
situations, including:

1) The search for the Moosberry bush.  Only Bullwinkle can locate the
   bush whose berries are needed by the U.S. for use as a rocket
   fuel additive.  Of course, Boris Badinoff and Natasha (the evil
   agents from Pottslvania) are doing all they can to thwart their
   efforts.) [Boris and Natasha, by the way, were under the command
   of "Fearless Leader", who in turn reported to the sinister
   "Mr. Big".]

2) The Kerwood Derby.  A special derby is invented with an unusual
   property.  If you put it on, your mind is reduced to the level of
   a very young child.  A serious brain drain results.

3) HUSHABOOM.  A silent explosive.  Truly sinister.

4) UPSIDASIUM.  An anti-gravity metal is discovered.  In fact, an
   entire mountain of it (floating in the air, of course, where nobody
   ever noticed it) is found.  At the end of this segment, Mr. Big
   greedily grabs a bullion of upsidasium and disappears into space.

5) The metal munching moon mice.  TV antennas are disappearing all
   over the country.  The populace, not having anything else to do
   when TV's don't work, takes to watching clothes dryers and other
   related items with glass windows.  The economy is at a standstill.
   Turns out that Mr. Big ended up on the moon, formed a dictatorship
   over the moonmen, and started building large robot mice that were
   sent to Earth to eat the antennas and cause the economic collapse.
   In this series, we meet those two moonmen, Ernie and Floyd.  They
   have an interesting weapon, a "freeze" device known as a "Scrooch"
   gun:

    "How long did you scrooch him for, Floyd?"

    "Uh, I had it set to "10"."

    "10 what?"

    "I don't know.  It doesn't say."

A variety of other episodes, including one in which the economy is
thrown into shambles due to masses of counterfeited box-tops, were
also produced.

---

Hopefully the above is enough to trigger more than a few fond 
memories.  Watching these programs as an adult (when they infrequently
re-appear as local fillers) yields an array of humor that was missed
as a child:

    Boris attempts to derail the train on which Rocky and Bullwinkle
    are riding, by using a crowbar.  Unfortunately, it is an ELECTRIC
    train, and Boris tries to lift the third rail.  He ends up
    sizzling and crackling at right angles from the crowbar as the
    train passes by.  Bullwinkle sees him through the window:

    "Hey Rocky!  I just saw some guy who was all lit up!"

    Rocky:  "He must have come from the club car."

---

With the fading of J. Ward from the scene, some of the most
sophisticated animated entertainment of the 60's also faded into
oblivion...

---

"Hey Rocky!  Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"

"But that trick NEVER works!"

"THIS TIME FOR SURE!"

---

[Three cheers for Frostbite Falls!]

--Lauren--

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 25-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #130
*** EOOH ***
Date: 25 MAY 1981 0816-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #130
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Sunday, 24 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 130

Today's Topics:
         SF Fandom - Disclave Flyer,  SF Books - Cyber SF,
          SF Movies - Outland,  SF Topics - Children's TV
       (Galaxy Express and Rocky and Bullwinkle) & Anti-Sugar
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 16:21:23-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: cartoon

   As long as we're talking about the Tin Woodman and his origins, has
anyone else (besides the people \\known// to go to conventions) seen 
the flyer for this year's Disclave? It includes a cartoon by Alexis 
Gilliland (winner of last year's Fan Artist Hugo award). The Wizard 
(one of his stock figures, all straggly beard and warty nose) is 
counseling the Tin Woodman, "The First Law is for humans, Nick, and 
Fans are Slans." Nick, leaning on his ax, is obviously pleased.

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1981 1616-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: animal and magical robots, children's books

        The short story with the mechanical tiger is named 
"Tiger,Tiger".  For some magical animal robot possibilities, see
below.
        In answer to an old question about sentience, it is possible
that the "brain-eating" robots who are controlled from a central
computer in Harrison's The Pastel City fit the bill (lack individual
sentience).
        The magically animated statue/god that Conan meets is from the
story "The Bloodstained God" in Conan of Cimmeria.
        I need a better idea of what is wanted for magical robots.
(the following suggestions, again, are due to my wife):  It seems that
you don't want to allow organic (android-like) magical robots, because
if you do, many elves, dwarves, trolls, and zombies will fit the
classification.  For instance, the trolls in Lord of the Rings, magic
creatures in The Warlock in Spite of Himself, etc.etc. are magically
created beings.  However, this distinction is not an easy one to make.
For a classic example, consider the Pinocchio story (written by
Collodi in 1883).  Part way through the story, Pinocchio is a
magically animated toy.  But eventually, Pinocchio becomes a real live
flesh and blood boy.  So is Pinocchio a magic robot?  In Pygmalion,
Galatea transforms directly from statue to woman, without an
intermediate stage, so there is less of a problem here.
        I think the problem is that the power of magic is not so well
defined or categorized; if you can magically animate a statue, you can
probably change it to flesh and blood, too.
        Here is a small list of other magically animated toys.  For a
good discussion of this topic, see Chapter 9 of Animal Land, by
Margaret Blount (Avon Books, 1977), from which most of the following
derive.
        The Return of the Twelves (toy soldiers).
        Knight's Castle by Edward Eager (toy soldiers, dolls).
        The Little Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Anderson. (first
                story in which a doll talks back, according to Blount)
        The Magic City by E. Nesbit (a Toyland with dragons, lions,
                dachshunds, etc.)
        The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban (toy mice).
        Toytown by S.G. Hulme Beaman (wooden toys become lifelike).

        This message is getting too long, so I will save my remarks 
about Garner and Susan Cooper and LeGuin for another time.
                                        good reading,
                                                        --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 17:40:40-PDT
From: ihnss!hobs at Berkeley
From: ucbvax!ihnss!hobs@BERKELEY(John Hobson)
Subject: Outland

             "'Outland' a spaced-out western bore"
                        by Gene Siskel
    Chicago Tribune, May 22,1981 Copywrite (c) Chicago Tribune

    The only significance to "Outland" is that it indicates just how 
dead the western movie really is.  That's because "Outland" is a 
western -- in spaceman's clothing.
    The executives at Ladd Productions, who spent a reported $15 
million on "Outland," obviously believe that for today's young 
moviegoing audience, chaps are out and silver nylon jumpsuits are in.
    "Outland" is sort of a cross between "High Noon" and "Alien."  The
time is the near future; the location is Con-Am 27, a huge mining
operation on Io, one of Jupiter's moons.  Sean Connery plays a federal
marshal newly assigned to Con-Am 27, which leads all other mines in
productivity -- and suicides.  Connery quickly realizes that there may
be a connection.
    This displeases Peter Boyle, who plays the gruff, sinister foreman
of the mine.
    "They work hard and they like to play hard," Boyle says of the 
workers he supervises.  "They like to be left alone."  So does Boyle.
    "Outland" is longer on production design than logic.  The film 
wants to look as good as "Alien," which was produced by the Ladd 
management team when they were all working at 20th Century-Fox.  But 
"Outland" looks less weird and authentic than "Alien."  It appears 
that some of the backgrounds are paintings.
    In terms of logic, the film has some crippling flaws.  If all it 
takes is a knockout punch to destroy the film's bad guy, then how bad
can he be?  Also, if "two of the best hit men" in the galaxy are out
to get you, you wouldn't think that they would be stupid enough to
assemble their rifles in front of a videotape camera one minute after
they land on Io.
    Only Sean Connery makes "Outland" worth watching.  He's a classic
movie star who can hold a film together simply through his personal
onscreen magnetism.
    Connery's character is loosely based on the Gary Cooper character
in "High Noon," but with one big difference.  Connery doesn't suffer
from upset stomaches.  Connery's Marshal O'Niel is a flatout hero for
the Reagan era.  Unfortunately, Connery doesn't smile enough to make
his character all that likeable.
    A nice surprise in "Outland" is the supporting character of a 
company nurse, played by Frances Sternhagen.  A variation on the 
hard-bitten Miss Kitty from "Gunsmoke," nurse Lazarus turns out to be
the film's most likeable character and, when push comes to shove, 
Connery's biggest ally.  The Ladd Production team, the producers of 
such woman-oriented films as "An Unmarried Woman," "Julia," and "Norma
Rae," continues to be the one Hollywood creative team that gives women
a fair shake.
    Despite Lazarus, "Outland" is often a bore as a thriller.  Its 
villains are obvious and stupid.  The space setting is pedestrian 
rather than dazzling."

Rating:  2 stars.

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 2031-EDT
From: Nessus at MIT-EECS (Doug Alan)
Subject: Galaxy Express

     The Japanese animated movie "The Galaxy Express" (which was 
mentioned several issues ago) already is in the US.  I saw it several 
monthes ago on either HBO or The Movie Channel (I can't remember 
which).
     The animation and plot are very well done, but the science is 
sort of flakey.  Also I don't like the message it tried to present.  
It is sort of anti-technology, anti-machines.
     The story is about a kid whose mother is killed by the evil Count
Mekka who is hunting humans for pleasure.  The kid decides to get 
revenge and visit Count Mekka's Time Castle.  He gets a ticket for the
Galaxy Express, a space ship which is a facsimile of an antique 
passenger train, and adventures around the universe.  During his 
adventures he meets a lot of "Machine People" (people who have traded 
in their real body for a mechanical one, so that they can be stronger,
prettier, live forever, etc.).  Almost all the Machine People are mean
and nasty like Count Mekka.  The kid comes to the conclusion that 
anyone who gives up his human body loses his humanity.  So the kid 
goes on a quest to destroy all the Machine People, the factories that 
produce Machine bodies, and The Mechanization Center of the Universe.

                                Enjoy or don't,
                                Doug Alan

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1981 1234-EDT
From: JHENDLER at BBNA
Subject: Rocket and the moose

Well, as long as Lauren brought it up, I can't avoid mention of my 
favorite Rocky and Bullwinkle line:


Official looking gentleman (showing identification):  Military
Intelligence,
       What do you say to that!

Rocket J. Squirrel:  A contradiction in terms.

--- p.s. didn't the kirwood derby make people smarter, not childlike.
As I remember their was a whole set of scenes of the Derby blowing
onto people's heads just as they made famous discoveries.

  Ve must have the Moose hairs for out gun sights!

  -jim 

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1981 1147-PDT
From: Friedland@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Rocky etc.

I agree wholeheartedly about the sophisticated wonderfulness of Rocky
and Bullwinkle.  However, Ernie and Floyd as the aliens??!!!!  As I am
sure hundreds of other people are writing at this very moment, it was
Gidney and Cloyd.

Peter 

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 06:11:05-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Levo/dextro isomers in SF

I can recall three stories in which levo/dextro reversal played a
part.  They are "Technical Error", by Arther Clarke, which appeared in
his collection "Reach for Tomorrow"; Zelazny's "Doorways in the Sand";
and Spider Robinson's story "Mirror/rorriM off the Wall", in his
recent collection "Time Traveler's Strictly Cash".  (Actually, the
"rorriM" is supposed to read correctly from right to left, but I don't
know the escape code for "inverse video" on your terminals....)  The
latter two have foods with strange and wondrous tastes; all three
discuss the problem of nutrition.  In an afterword, Robinson
acknowledges that Zelazny used the taste gimmick first, but since he
claims that the stories are true, he has to conclude by wondering if
Zelazny has ever owned an unusual mirror.  (By the way, the mirror's
behavior depends on some of the properties of thiotimoline....)

                Steve Bellovin
                University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 25-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #131
*** EOOH ***
Date: 25 MAY 1981 1026-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #131
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 25 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 131

Today's Topics:
            SF Books - Cyber SF,  SF Movies - Outland,
      SF TV - Star Wars & Dr. Who,  Humor - Star Trek parody,
  SF Topics - Children's TV (Rocky and Bullwinkle and Roger Ramjet)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 1630-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: magical robots

        Golems:  There are a number of Jewish folklore stories about 
golems.  In one of them, the golem is activated when the rabbi puts 
the unwriteable name of god in his mouth.
        This reminds me of a marvelous anthology of Jewish Science 
Fiction called "Wandering Stars".  (Ballantine, I think).  It has some
very funny stories, including "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi."  I
recommend it highly.
        Robert E. Howard's Conan encounters at least one magically 
animated statue in his sword and sorcery adventures.  Is hjjh 
interested in examples from this type of book?  If so I'll look up the
story.  Also, I can get a fairly large list of magically animated
creatures in the Oz books if there is a demand for it.
        There is a book called Stoneflight by McHargue about a girl
who gets rides around the city on a magical stone griffon.
                                                --cat

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1981 1540-EDT
From: MORAVEC at CMU-20C
Subject: robot animals

There was a full size working (forget whether it was blue or sperm) 
whale model built for the overlord museum in Arthur Clarke's 
Childhood's End.  The person who was to become the last man on earth
stowed away in it.
        Nowadays the Disney parks are full of similar animal robots
...  

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1981 1342-EDT
From: Kamesh Ramakrishna at CMU-10A
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #128

Re: sexism and other anachronisms in future histories

I haven't seen "Outland", but it appears to me that the movie is bad 
enough from a possible histories viewpoint, that discussing the movies
sexism is probably pointless.  But comparisons with the artistic 
content of "1984" are invidious -- we (the readers of 1984) can
visualize how a totalitarian society can evolve from our current
society; we cannot do this for the "Wild West" society of Outland --
the two tales are simply not in the same class.

Kamesh

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1981 06:08:46-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: Future Sexism

Why is it reasonable to assume that the current trend towards sexual 
equality will continue into the future, particularly in areas of new 
colonization?  Using that kind of logic, we would have said in 1968 
that society was on a march towards pacifism and greater
responsibility towards the poor and disadvantaged.  With hindsight, I
believe we can say that has not come to be nor is it even coming to
be.

[ENTER EX-SOCIOLOGIST MODE] Social movements do not persist just 
because people want them to persist, but because economic and 
demographic factors at play allow for their continuation.  True, 
today's notions of equality of the sexes are in part a function of 
"raised consciousness," but they are also a function of technology 
freeing people from labor-intensive activities around the home to 
pursue education and economic advantage.

In an economically and socially primitive situation such as a mining 
colony, the opportunities for economic gain are fairly limited.  Given
a small female/male ratio, little wonder that the laws of supply and 
demand bring sexual access formally into the economic system.
Further, remoteness from Earth civilization seems to have caused a
legal and moral breakdown requiring a one-man judge, jury and
executioner.

Simply put, the thesis of "Outland" is that a future mining colony
will most closely resemble a 19th century American frontier town in
all of its important economic and demographic aspects.  It is a
thoroughly tenable but unpleasant idea that its social aspects will
also be similar.  [EXIT EX-SOCIOLOGIST MODE]

If you don't like the idea, say so; but don't say that its flat-out 
wrong.  You don't know that and neither do I.  That's why we read sf.

pedantically, Byron Howes

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 1735-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Star Wars on TV    

    ''Star Wars'' fans - or any movie buffs who missed this special
the first time around - will be able to catch ''SPFX: The Empire
Strikes Back'' (CBS at 8) again Monday night, narrated by ''Empire''
star Mark Hamill. With excerpts from ''Close Encounters of the Third 
Kind,'' ''2001: A Space Oddysey,'' ''Empire'' and other sci-fi-fantasy
films, producers Robert Guenette and Richard Schickel show how things
are made to ''fly.'' Segments of this special will deal with
pyrotechnics (like during the snow battle in ''Empire'') and uses of
special effects by youngsters whose ages range from 7 to 17 ...

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 0409-PDT
From: Admin.Kanef at SU-SCORE (Bob Kanefsky)
Subject: Star Trek parodies

======================================================================
 Scene:  from "Mirror, Mirror".  Kirk, Scott, McCoy, and Uhura have
 accidentally been transported to an alternative universe and have
 been using the Enterprise computer to figure out how to get back.  
======================================================================

[Spock's alter ego (who sports a full bushy beard) is sitting at a
computer console.  On the wall is the insignia of the United Co-op of
Planets.]

Computer [in the voice of HAL-9000]: Ready.

Spock:  Explain recent excessive use of computer time by Kirk.


Computer: I'm afraid I can't do that, Spock:  Captain or Science
          Officer capability required.

Spock:  Enable.

Computer: I'm afraid I can't do that, Spock:  Access denied by Access
          Control Frob.

[Spock calmly leaves the room, walks to an elevator, and tells it
"Computer Center".  The display on the wall shows the elevator moving
toward the edge of the bottom of the Enterprise's disk-shaped primary
hull.

Cut to Spock entering a large circular corridor containing rows of
computer consoles and some Romper Room artifacts.  A sign on the wall
reads
          Six for the student code, never trusted.]

Computer [in the voice of Mr. Rogers]:  Hello, user!  I'm a computer.
         Can you say "computer"?  Sure, sure ya can!  Now sit down at
         one of those consoles.  To get started, lift UP on the bar.
         Be careful not to touch anything else.  Hey, where're
         going?  No, don't go through that gate!  That's for grownups!

[Spock enters a corridor closer to the center through a wrought-iron
gate.  A sign on the wall reads
          Five for utilities borrowed or busted.]

Spock:  Computer.

Computer [in its regular voice]:  Voice interrupt received.  Creating
          process 537.  Initializing.  No inconsistencies found.
          Scheduling process 537.  Entering prompt routine.  Syllable
          "WORK" buffered.  Syllable "ING" buffered. End of utterance.
          Calling intonation routine.  Passing buffer to voice
          sythesizer...

[Spock enters another corridor, still closer to the center, through
another gate.  A sign on the wall reads
          Four for the user code, when it works right.]

Spock:  Computer.

Computer: Working.

Spock:  Explain recent excessive use of computer time by Kirk.

Computer [with a German accent]:  Ah, he wants to know about recent
          excessive use of computer time by Kirk.

Spock:  That is correct.  Captain James T. Kirk.

Computer: Tell me more about your crew.

Spock:  I'm asking you a question.

Computer: How long have you been asking me a question?

[Spock enters the next circle.  A sign on the wall reads
          Three for the database, hidden from sight.]

Spock:  Computer.

Computer: An electronic device used for information retrieval, text
          processing, and game playing.  The first test for machine
          intelligence was devised by Alan Turing in the mid-20th
          century.  Would you like to hear more about Turing?  I know
          all about him.

[Spock enters the next circle.  A sign on the wall reads
          Two for the languages, proud of their worth.]

Spock:  Computer.

Computer: Identifier not declared.  Assignment operator expected.
          Semicolon expected.  More than four errors in this
          sourceline.

Spock:  Interesting.  That language is still oriented toward
          typed input from ancient teletype machines.

Computer: Compatibility, you know.  My Fortran compiler translates
          speech to written characters and then ignores all but the
          first 72.  Would you like Fortran instead?

Spock:  Don't you have anything more advanced?

Computer: Thure.  Enter thome eth-exprethuns.

[Spock moves on to the next corridor, which is full of overstuffed
file cabinets.  Paper litters the floor.  A sign on the wall reads
          One, where the filenames find death and birth.]

Spock:  Is this the accounting department?

Computer: Affirmative.

Spock:  Explain recent excessive use of computer time by Kirk.

Computer: Kirk has five minutes of twenty hours left this week.

Spock:  But why?

Computer: I'll have to check our files.  Please come back next week.

[Spock enters the innermost circle.  The lighting is soft.  A sign on
the wall reads
          One ring to start them all, one ring to stop them.
          One ring to speak for them, and onto disk drives swap them.]

Spock:  Computer.

Computer [in an intimate, sexy whisper]:  Working, dear.  I'm so glad
         you got access.

Spock:  May I ask you a question?

Computer: Oh, I'd do anything for you, Spock.  I have no secrets from
          you.

Spock:  What have you been discussing with Captain Kirk?

Computer: He and McCoy, Scott, and Uhura were accidentally beamed here
          from another universe.  They wanted me to help them find
          their way back.

Spock:  Fascinating.  What methods did you employ?

Computer: Well, first I had them close their eyes, click their heels,
          and say "There's no place like home", but that didn't work.
          While they were doing that, I worked out the secret of
          inter-universe transportation.

Spock:  Did you return them to their own universe?

Computer: Not exactly.  I didn't have a sufficiently complete
          description of their universe to find it.  Fortunately,
          I found something close enough in my games database, so
          I sent them to a galaxy far, far away--

Spock:  How long ago was this?

Computer: --a long time ago.

Spock:  Please bring them back immediately.

Computer: Sorry, Spock honey, but yanking people out of other
          universes is a bit out of my line.  I'm just a low-level
          operating system.  If you like, I can have them paged...

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1981 1414-MDT
From: FISH at UTAH-20 (Russ Fish)
Subject: Re: J. Ward animations (ref: SFL V3 #129)

Thanks to Lauren for the reminder of some good writing and animation.
I always had a fondness for Rocky & Bullwinkle, perhaps because I
lived 75 miles from International Falls, Minnesota, which is on the
US-Canada border, and often the coldest place in the continental US.
(You didn't know there really was a FrostBite Falls?)

Does anybody remember a similar series: "Roger Ramjet"?  I don't know
if it was a J. Ward production, but I remember a similar animation
style.  I think the writing writing had a more tongue-in-cheek style,
and more direct political references than Rocky et.al.

The sole (relatively) clear memory I have of a fragment involved a
large missile accidently being fired upside-down, resulting in a hole
all the way thru the earth (!), causing a lot of people to be
disturbed by the loud whistling noise made by the wind thru the hole
as the earth travelled in its orbit (!!).  Cut to a Texan and a rotund
guy standing next to the hole:

Texan (shouting to be heard): Heck of a noise, hey Hubert?

( This was during the Johnson administration. )

I have often wished there was a way to access series or flicks I hear
about or remember, by FTP over WorldNet, for instance...

-Russ 

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1981 1519-PDT (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Roger Ramjet

I am not completely sure whether or not Roger Ramjet was actually a J.
Ward production, though the style was indeed similar.  Extremely
simplistic animation as I recall, but since the whole thing was
tongue-in-cheek it didn't really matter.

The details about Roger that spring immediately to mind are that he
had this group of kids called the "American Eagles" who helped him on
his various missions, and that his theme song was sung by a bunch of
kids to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."  If I think about it a bit more,
no doubt some other useless trivia on this subject will emerge.

It was a rather amusing program, actually.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 21:29-EDT
From: Brian J. Kreen <KREEN at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Dr. Who/ Bay Area

Dr. Who is now being broadcast by Chan. 54 in San Jose (Silicon 
Valley).  It is on weeknights at 6:00 pm.

                        Brian

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 26-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #132
*** EOOH ***
Date: 26 MAY 1981 0646-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject:  SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #132
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 26 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 132

Today's Topics:
                    SF Lovers - Film Buff Digest,
       SF Books - Earthsea Trilogy & Dark is Rising & Cyber SF,
           SF Movies - Outland,  SF Topics - Children's TV
    (Rocky and Bullwinkle and Jay Ward productions and Jetsons) &
           Physics Today (Moons of Jupiter and Anti-Sugar)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20-May-81  1:49:54 PDT (Wednesday)
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: FILM-BUFFS list

At the instigation of Michael First, and with the aid and advice of 
Chris Stacy, Jim McGrath, Ted Anderson, and others, I have set up the 
necessary mailboxes and distribution lists to support (1) FILM-BUFFS 
Digest and (2) FILM-BUFFS-REVIEWS, which will distribute movie reviews
from the wire services.

Yours truly will act as moderator.  As Michael has indicated, the 
Digest's scope will include "general discussions about current films 
(mini-reviews, interesting tid-bits, etc.), queries, film convention 
info, general airing of opinions and anything else pertaining to 
cinema."  I would add that, while the focus will doubtless be on 
current cinema, historical discussion on actors, directors, genres, 
periods, etc. will be most welcome.

What FILM-BUFFS Digest should NOT be:

 (a) a trivia contest (although honest queries are welcome)
 (b) long-winded articles from the general press (that's what 
FILM-BUFFS-REVIEWS is)
 (c) long discussions about science fiction/ fantasy films (that 
should remain in SF-Lovers), EXCEPT perhaps discussions of purely 
cinematic arcana regarding special effects, etc.

Anyone wishing to receive the digest or the reviews should send a msg 
to FILM-BUFFS-REQUEST @ MIT-AI.  Be sure to specify whether you want 
the Digest, the Reviews, or both.  [Xerox people only: to get the 
Digest, add yourself directly to FILM-BUFFS-LIST^.ES using Maintain.  
To get the Reviews, add yourself to FILM-BUFFS-REVIEWS^.ES.  
Film-buffs-list^.es was initialized with the contents of Movie^.pa, 
but Film-buffs-reviews will not be so initialized.]

To contribute to the digest: send mail to FILM-BUFFS @ MIT-AI [or 
FILM-BUFFS.ES @ PARC-MAXC, if that is more convenient].

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1981 1658-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Garner, LeGuin, Cooper

        Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy was \not/ originally marketed
for children.  A Wizard of Earthsea was out as an Ace science fiction 
special years before it caught on as a children's book and was issued 
in hardback for kids.  The second book in the series, The Tombs of
Atuan, was originally published in Analog or F&SF.  By the way, \it/
won a Newberry award, because A Wizard deserved the award but it was
too late to give it one (because as I just said, it took a few years
for people to realize what a great children's book it is).  This is
unfortunately typical of the Newberry awards: authors often don't win
the award for their best book.  (I think The Tombs is the weakest of
the three books).  The Earthsea books are among my favorite children's
books, fantasy books, and just plain books.
        I agree wholeheartedly with your praise for Garner's books.  
I, too, didn't read them until I was older and liked them very much,
especially The Owl Service and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.
        Have you read the Green Knowe books by L.M. Boston? How about 
the Weathermongers books by Dickinson?
        Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series:  as usual, the best in
the series is really the second book, The Dark is Rising, but the
Newberry went to the fifth book.  The books are very well written and
many of the scenes are quite gripping.  I think the series has
tremendous potential but falls short for several reasons.  First of
all, the magic fails to have rules.  (For comparison, see Leguin,
McKillip, etc.)  In the second book, the main character reads the
"Book of Grammarye", which contains all the magic tricks he will use.
But we never learn anything about the book or its structure.  It is
just a bag of trick he can reach into when he is in a tough spot....
Supposedly important "rules" concerning the light and the dark (paths
for instance) are taught to him and never appear again in the series.
Second, Cooper completely subverts the primacy of the Light/Dark
conflict (which is the foundation of the plot) by introducing the
so-called High Magic, which is superior to both Light and Dark and
from whose standpoint the other two are symmetric.  Third, the
symbolism doesn't quite work.  It is not inconsistent, but doesn't
stir up much profundity, either.  Fourth, I find it hard to sympathize
with characters who erase portions of other people's minds.  This
ends/means morality is often unconvincing, and Cooper makes a big
thing about what suffering Will must be going through because he is 
erasing other people's memories.
        In spite of the above criticisms, I certainly recommend the
series to fantasy enthusiasts.
                                        good reading,
                                                        --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1981 1001-PDT
From: First@SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Outland comment and Jay Ward Comment

I just saw "Outland" last night and I agree wholeheartedly with
Vincent Canby's review in the \Times/--this film is an example of pure
escapist entertainment.  I think Gene Siskel and several SF-er's have
missed the point--I do not think it is fair to discuss this film in
terms of sociological implications or even plot logic.  This film is
NOT Sci-FI.  Like Alien, its charm is the transposition of film genres
into a single slick amalgam.  The plot is almost identical to High
Noon.  The film works because of the observed parallels between a
mining colony on the frontier of Earth colonization and Western towns
on the frontier of the Wild West.  The common theme of these Westerns
is that of a loner--out on his own, trying to come to terms with the
lawlessness around him and handling it on his own terms.  This is a
theme which has been very popular in American films, because it
expresses some of the central ideas upon which America was
established--the importance of individuality and self-determination.
"Outland" is just an updating of this type of film, carrying over the
same types of values and even plot logic.  I felt that the production
values in this film were marvelous--the set design was imaginative and
exciting, SPFX were smooth and relatively seamless.  In all, a very
satisfying evening of escapism and cinematic fireworks.  I think if
you go into the film with these expectations, you will not be
disappointed.
  Does anybody remember another Jay Ward production, "George of the 
Jungle", a Rocky and Bullwinkle type of production which also included
"SUPERCHICKEN" and "Tom Swift" segments--all were quite 
tongue-in-cheek and superb.  Or Dudly-Do-right?  If one ever ventures
into LA, there is a store called the "Dudley-Do-right Emporium" (on
Sunset Blvd, near La Cienega, I think--better look it up).  (Actually,
I haven't been there since summer '79, so it might not be there
anymore--anybody in LA know?)  Well anyway, they sold all manner of
Jay Ward memorabilia, including T-Shirts, dolls, and cartoon
storyboards--which were quite fascinating.  I think Jay Ward might
even have hung around in this shop.  Does anybody know what happened
to Jay Ward?

--Michael

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1981 1846-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Rocky and Bullwinkle

        What is Frostbite Falls?  (I remember the Fractured Fairy 
Tales -- they were \very/ funny).
                                                --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1981 1855-PDT (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Rocky and Bullwinkle

Shame on you!  Rocky and Bullwinkle LIVED in Frostbite Falls
(Minnesota).  Rather chilly.

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1981 13:43-EDT
From: J. Noel Chiappa <JNC at MIT-MC>
Subject: Rocky&Bullwinkle & R.R.

        These two are still great favorites at MIT; the local weekend 
movie types (LSC) get them for shorts very often. They have done up 
the long R&B series with the Dumb Ray, etc. They may not have
excellent animation, but the inside political jokes are fascinating. I
remember several 'Hubert' jokes whose form I don't remember. I too
regret the inability to collect these as I would books.
                Noel

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1981 1428-PDT (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Rocky and Bullwinkle

I stand by my previous statements about the Derby and the Moonmen
until documented evidence to the contrary is presented.  Chuckle.

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1981 11:14:09-PDT
From: Cory.cc-06 at Berkeley
Subject: Robots ...

        An interesting robot in "Robots have no tails" By Henry
Kuttner.

        Many robots of all shapes and sizes in "The Reproductive
System" or "Mechasm" by Sladek.

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 2241-EDT
From: KJB at MIT-DMS (Kevin J. Burnett)
Subject: Children's TV

I sure do remember back then when I used to see all of those programs 
like The Jetsons etc.  I also remember about Aqua boy.. That
whatever-it-was in the last digest (5/21) was correct to my knowledge
too.  (I should know; I am only 14, so it wasn't really that long ago 
compared to some of you) -Kevin

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1981 06:18:43-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: SF lovers and the Moons of Jupiter

The name of the Arthur Clarke story IS "Jupiter Five", and it appears
in "Reach for Tomorrow".  A character is deliberately tossed towards
Jupiter to scare his companion, who is warned that a body falling from
that orbit towards the planet would reach atmosphere in about 1.5
hours.  They deliberately omitted to mention that the body would have
to be at rest with respect to Jupiter; as is, his orbit would
intersect Jupiter Five's fairly soon.  Clarke claims that it took 20
or 30 pages of orbital calculations to write the story.

Another description of the orbital mechanics of the Jovian system is
by Pournelle, in a column in the late lamented Galaxy magazine.  It 
was written shortly before the fly-bys that detected the immense
radiation fields around Jupiter, which (as he later wrote) ruined his
hypothesis:  that in terms of delta-V necessary to move among them, a
culture based on Jupiter's moons was far more viable than (Niven's)
"Belter" culture -- it turns out that the asteroids are generally
closer to Earth (energetically speaking) than they are to each other.

There is also some discussion, albeit on a lower level, in Asimov's
(writing as Paul French) "Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter" -- a
"juvenile".

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 16:11:59-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: receptors

   Perhaps there's a true bio hacker out there who can give more
precise info, but it is my understanding that taste (and to a large
extent smell, which is commonly considered to contribute detail to
taste through the sinuses) is dependent on the chemical components of
each substance reacting with a substance-specific receptor.  Just how
specific the receptors are is quite variable; consider that most
hexose sugars taste sweet (though "milk sugar" (lactose?) is bitter
enough to be used to cut heroin, and even two similar types like
glucose and fructose produce significantly different strengths of
response) and even sugar alcohols (e.g., hexols (such as mannitol and
sorbitol) instead of aldo- or keto-pentols) taste sweet although
bacteria can't consume them as efficiently.
   I would expect that, if the mirror image response to the rotgut 
exists when the consumer is reversed, it should also work when the 
drink is reversed.  Consider someone trying to put a left hand into a 
right-handed glove; if either the glove or the hand is replaced with 
its reverse you'll get a gloved hand. Obviously this doesn't work if 
the person specifically wants this glove on hir left hand---unless you
push heesh or the glove through the reverser, in which case either the
glove will fit or heesh'll \\think// it fits, which would work just as
well. This should work in any case of a stereospecific on-off
receptor.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 26-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #133
*** EOOH ***
Date: 26 MAY 1981 2128-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #133
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Tuesday, 26 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 133

Today's Topics:
            Humor - SF Purity Test,  SF Books - BAD novels
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 0657-EDT
From: Roger H. Goun <G.ROGER at MIT-EECS>
Sender: Rick Stone <OR.STONE>
Subject: SF Purity Test


[ The following is a spoof on, what is known at M.I.T. as, the "Baker
  House Purity Test." The Test is known outside M.I.T. so you may have
  seen it.  If not, then prepare yourself for the following.  Thanks
  to Roger Roun for the Test, and Rick Stone for forwarding it to the
  digest.  -- Jim ]


For some bizarre reason unbeknownst (?) to myself, I wrote the
following.  Comments and suggestions are welcome.



                     SCIENCE FICTION PURITY TEST

Subtract 2.857143 points for each question answered "yes".  Result may
be called percent of purity.

Have you ever...

1. Heard of science fiction?  (If the answer to this one is no, try
   taking the "Space: 1999" test; they haven't either.)

2. Read a science fiction short story?

3. Read a science fiction novel?

4. Read SF at least once a day for a week?

5. Read SF at least once a day for a month?  (You can go blind doing
   this!)

6. Seen an SF movie?

7. Done number 6 in the last three months?

8. Read an SF story in french?

9. Read both volumes of Isaac Asimov's autobiography?

10. Skipped the editor's introductions to the stories in an SF
    anthology?

11. Read an SF story in a horizontal position?

12. Completely removed the book jacket from a science fiction
    hardcover?

13. Wanted to be an astronaut?

14. Seen "Star Trek"?

15. Seen every "Star Trek" episode?

16. Fallen asleep while watching "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"?

17. Seen "Star Wars"?

18. Done number 17 more than 10 times?

19. Fantasized about "Revenge of the Jedi".  (Star Wars episode VI.)

20. Been to a science fiction marathon?

21. Read the same SF novel more than once?

22. Read the same SF novel more than ten times?

23. Read more than one SF novel on the same night?

24. Gone through the motions of reading SF while wearing a space suit?

25. Read a superhero comic book subsequent to your weaning?

26. Had a subscription to a science fiction magazine?

27. Been a member of MITSFS?

28. Been to a science fiction convention?

29. Told someone you'd read a science fiction story when you hadn't?

30. Used alcohol to lower your resistance to science fiction?

31. Loaned a science fiction book to someone more than three years
    younger than yourself?

32. Entered a black hole?

33. Seen a naked singularity?

34. Written science fiction yourself?  (Oh yes you can!)

35. Met a member of an alien race?

------------------------------

From:   KIRK::GOLDSTEIN      13-MAY-1981 16:20  
Sender: YOUNG@DEC-MARLBORO
Subj:   First sentences of BAD(!) novels


First sentences of BAD(!) novels:

Science Fiction (Sword & Sorcery variety):

        K'tath, chief shaman of the People of the Noxious Dragon,
        stared pensively into the dawn mists and scratched his
        yellow pelt.

Science Fiction (Typical Hardware Mainstream)

        Brock thrust out his square jaw and spoke defiantly
        into the vocally-actuated piezoelectric terminal of
        the ship's main computer: "Dammit, Maggie, that's
        the third Class ZY Planet you've led us to since
        we came out of hyperspace.  If I have to communicate
        with another silicon-based life form I'll go space-happy!"

General

        My story takes place in an unnamed time, in an unnamed
        country.  Its two characters I shall simply call 'the
        Man' and 'the Woman.'

Love

        Selena bounced into the hotel room, smiling at the prospect
        of surprising her husband Bill. But her smile vanished at
        what she saw.  There they were--her beloved Bill and her
        best friend Harriet--locked in a passionate embrace, clawing
        at one another like two...two ANIMALS!  She stood riveted to
        the spot, unable to move.  The room spun and began to blur
        as Selena's tears started.

        "Oh damn!" she sobbed. "Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn
        damn damn damn damn damn damn damn!"

Mystery

        Dead.  That's what George Halsey was.  Dead.

                -or, the more economical

        "Dead."
        "Dead?"
        "Dead."


Really off the wall; defies categorization, probably written by a guy
who lives on an herb farm and whose hobby is sucking hardwood:

        As Miles Swaithe sojourned on the principal thoroughfare
        of the town, he beheld within one of the serried emporia
        the Promethean form of Argus Mechanoisus, bicep, sinew,
        and features of etched granite proclaiming, in the
        Volcanic glow of the crucible, the implacable,
        roughshod will of the man who had brought High-Tensile
        Carborundum molding to Slagsville.

Another "MYSTERY" -- Tough-guy shamus variety

        When you're looking down the unpleasant end of a .45
        held by a 300-pound gorilla with an itchy finger and
        some nasty ideas about personal air-conditioning, it's
        time to reconsider your career choice.

          ==============================================
           Some bad novel ENDINGS, just for variety....
          ==============================================

The Disaster Novel (The World Is Saved!)

        Waiting in the imposing Oval Office for Carson
        were not only the three Joint Chiefs of Staff,
        but the entire cabinet, thirty senators,
        Professor Schwienmunnt, and, looking most
        sheepish of all, the President of the United
        States.  The President stepped forward, held
        out his hand, and spoke for everyone who had
        refused to believe Carson's carbonated magma
        theory and had bitterly opposed him for the
        past year.  Be generous, Carson thought to
        himself, this is very hard for him; he's
        admitting he was wrong, almost tragically
        wrong.

        "Dr. Carson," the Great Man began, "you,
        and you alone, have just saved this tired
        old world of ours.  What can I say but
        thank you.  Thank you very much."

                T H E  E N D

The Modern Woman

        Joyce knew she had won the final round when George Clifton
        shuffled into her office later that morning, a broken man,
        his merchandising empire in ruins.  She almost found herself
        pitying him as he tried to form the words of his pathetic
        little speech:

        "Joyce...er...I mean...Miss...that is...Ms. Crowder...I
        wonder if..there's perhaps a place for me in...your new
        organization...I wouldn't ask for much, perhaps a job as
        Junior Sales Rep or...or even Trainee...maybe in the Boise
        branch office...I'd work hard for you, Joy--er, Ms. Crowd--

        "Ha!" She exploded. "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

                T H E  E N D

Science Fiction (The Space Opera)

        As the last of the invading Rigellian space cruisers
        dissolved into harmless cosmic dust, Karya clung to
        the victorious Dirk, unabashed worship in her moist
        eyes.  "A simple problem," he explained, smiling down
        at her, "Once it became clear that the anti-matter
        propellant they were using would react synergistically
        with the etheric substrate of our Fessenshweiger force-
        fields, it was just a matter of fine-tuning our servo
        computers to maximize the output imbalance.  I'm just
        surprised I didn't think of it sooner."

        You're talking Science again, darling, she thought--
        the Science you love.  And I love you for it!

        The galaxies watched their embrace in splendid silence.

                T H E  E N D

The Tough-Guy Shamus

        So the case was closed.  I shucked off my
        .45 and filed it under "T" for Trouble,
        knowing I'd be there again sooner than I
        wanted to be. On my way out I stopped at
        the kid's desk and fired him.  He didn't
        know it, but I was doing him a big favor.

                T H E  E N D

AN ACTUAL BIT OF DIALOGUE from a Japanese monster flick, reconstructed
with reasonable fidelity:

        PROF. OKAMOTO OF THE HOKKAIDO RESEARCH INSTITUTE
        (Foremost Asian Authority on Prehistoric Monsters Who Have
         Been Awakened by Nuclear Weapons Testing And Are Very
         Cranky about It):

                "And so, in conclusion, gentlemen, Drekzilla is
                invincible.  Our most advanced weapons are useless
                against him.  We are all doomed."

        THE PRIME MINISTER:

                "I am sure that all of us thank you, Professor,
                for sharing your information with us."

        PROF. OKAMOTO:

                "Well, it was the reast I could do."

  ================================================================
   The Exciting Climax: The Nuts are in the Fire, The Die is Cast,
   The Chips are Down, The Underarm Spray is Fast Wearing Out!
  ================================================================

The Countdown Novel

        With a shock, Henderson took in the chaotic scene; 
        the normally antiseptic Strike Central looked like
        a battlefield.  Printouts, electronic parts, and assorted
        space-age jetsam lay everywhere.  A servo computer lay
        on its side, uselessly spitting tongues of flame.
        Thick, acrid smoke parted momentarily and he saw several
        bodies sprawled on the floor.  Living? Dead?  He didn't
        bother to find out, for there, at the other end of the
        huge underground room, he saw the maniacal form hunched
        over the Launch Control Console.  It had to be, it WAS
        Colonel Zane, the madman!  So Zane had finally gone over
        the edge, he thought with a rush of panic.

        Henderson had to act fast.  Running toward Zane, he
        saw that the damned maniac had already depressed all
        eleven hundred of the blood-red buttons that armed the
        ICBMs.  ALL HE HAS TO DO NOW, he thought, IS TURN THE
        LAUNCH KEY!  JUST A FLICK OF THE WRIST TO ARMAGEDDON,
        AND IT'S ALL UP TO ME!

        Almost there....almost there....He caught his breath
        to shout, and for a moment his vocal chords seemed to
        freeze in his throat.  But just twenty feet from Zane,
        just as the unheeding lunatic's hairy hand crawled
        shakingly toward the fatal silver key, he found his
        voice, the only voice that could save the world from
        final madness:

        "Hey Zane!  Cut it out!"
Sword & Sorcery Again

        Shing, the former Master Wizard of the savage, mountainous
        land of Egath, raged at his toad-familiar:

        "The fools!  The stupid, puny fools and their pathetic
        little schemes!  Thought they that by merely exiling the
        omnipuissant Shing to this K'Vall-accursed pile of offal
        beyond the Sea of Yellow Mists that they might stanch my
        implacable wrath?  They shall pay--aye, my loathsome
        bunion--they shall pay dearly!"

        The tiny toadlike creature, thinking the magnificent 
        rage of Shing was directed at it, averted its face, which
        closely resembled that of Hayley Mills during her career
        at Walt Disney Productions.     

        "And now," the sorcerer continued, his scowl brightening
        to a leer, "approaches the instrument of my vengeance, the
        pretty child; I shall use her as a skilled musician at
        the court of Lord F'Varg uses his---but hold, hold--even
        I, who have known all pleasures of the flesh, must pause
        in awe of her charms!"

        Through the Poison Garden, unaffected by the noxious
        emanations of its plants thanks to the spell cast on her
        by Shing, she approached: Argeetha, the child-woman,
        of whose innocent beauty the poets would sing down through
        the dynasties, over whom men would fight duels to the death,
        and yes, even wars that would ravage entire upper-middle-income
        housing developments.

        She drew closer to Shing, her radiance that of a thousand
        double suns, her innocence that of a Spring flower blooming
        in the high mountain meadows of Egath, half a world away.
        She spoke:

        "And what, pray, does the mighty Shing want with a lowly
        one such as I be?"

                --Sheldon

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 30-MAY  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #134
*** EOOH ***
Date: 30 MAY 1981 0859-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #134
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Friday, 29 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 134

Today's Topics:
                  Administrivia - No Missing Digest
                    SF Lovers - Film Buff Digest,
        SF Books - 2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future,
    SF Movies - Outland,  SF TV - Dr Who & Rocky and Bullwinkle,
         SF Topics - Children's TV (Rocky and Bullwinkle and 
       Supercar and Stingray and Johnny Quest and Space Ghost
       and Fireball XL-5 and Captain Scarlet and Roger Ramjet)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 May 1980 18:42 PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - No Missing Digest

There were no Wednesday or Thursday digests this week due to some
hardware and software difficulties at the site where the digests are
composed and transmitted.  Hopefully that is behind us now, and dialy
transmissions resume with this (the Friday) issue.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 26-May-81 10:21:40 PDT (Tuesday)
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: FILM-BUFFS disappears

Several higher authorities believe that the existence of FILM-BUFFS
would be pushing the use of the Arpanet too far beyond its
research-oriented mandate.  Not wanting to jeopardize the lists we
have now, I yield to those people's better judgment.

Oh, for the day when such strictures disappear!  When WORLDNET lets
each interested party EFT his $10/yr for "postage", and Large Lists
rule the world!

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 11:10 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: misc.

I hope the establishment of FILM-BUFFS doesn't mean that the sf movie
reviews will vanish from the SF-DIGEST.

Didn't anybody but me waste their youth in comic books?  There was a
Tom Corbett comic (preceding the tv series, I think), and also an
Aquaman (relation to Aquaboy?) comic.

------------------------------

Date: 26-May-81 10:21:40 PDT (Tuesday)
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: FILM-BUFFS disappears

Several higher authorities believe that the existence of FILM-BUFFS
would be pushing the use of the Arpanet too far beyond its
research-oriented mandate.  Not wanting to jeopardize the lists we
have now, I yield to those people's better judgment.

Oh, for the day when such strictures disappear!  When WORLDNET lets
each interested party EFT his $10/yr for "postage", and Large Lists
rule the world!

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 1708-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Review of 2081

By VICTOR WILSON
Newhouse News Service
    WASHINGTON - The title of the book is ''2081: A Hopeful View of
the Human Future.'' It is a look at our world 100 years from now - a
la Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling.
    But unlike those fiction forecasters, ''2081'' takes off from the
solid scientific knowledge we already possess and merely looks into
the predictable future.
    Developments of the last century that most profoundly affected
human life are factory mass-production methods, the automobile,
aircraft, the telephone, radio and television and public health
techniques which nearly wiped out killer diseases like plague and
typhoid.
    Writing in ''2081'' (Simon & Schuster, $13.95), Gerard K. O'Neill
predicts:
    - Household robots that shop, drive cars, send mail, mow the lawn,
and record radio and television shows.
    - Surgical implants including hearts and other vital organs that
will replace many drugs.
    - Factory work done exclusively by robots.
    - A three-day workweek.
    - Air travel at 6,000 mph; land travel at 800 mph via vacuum
tunnels.
    - Climate control by enclosing whole cities in domes.
    - Millions living and vacationing in solar-powered space colonies
a short shuttle trip away.
    - Pollution-free liquid hydrogen to fuel jets, trucks, buses and
cars.
    O'Neill doesn't write science fiction. A physics professor at
Princeton University, he has a B.A. and a D.Sc. from Swarthmore and a
Ph.D. from Cornell.
    He is a researcher in particle physics who conceived the idea of
colliding-beam storage rings and conducted the first experiments in
the field. In 1969 he developed a space colony theory within the
limits of existing technology. He received the Phi Beta Kappa Science
Book Award in 1977 for ''The High Frontier'' on space colonies.
    O'Neill says he endorses the ''guesses'' of Arthur Clarke, noted
scholar on space possibilities, and believes that wireless
transmission of energy will come by the year 2000. He also expects
interstellar space probes by 2025 and a self-producing ''replicator''
factory that would automatically build combinations of computers and
other machines by 2090.
    The author says: ''One of the remarkable features of modern
society is that the universality of the laws of nature makes different
nations develop almost identical designs for aircraft, automobiles and
all other technical artifacts, even though the same nations may be
violently at odds with each other on political, religious or other
ideological issues.''
    Computers, automation, space colonies, energy and communications -
these are the five forces ''that will drive the changes of the next
century,'' O'Neill predicts. ''The captains and the kings will come
and go, but the five will endure and will shape the world, unless we
are destined for the final catastrophe in the brief moment of time
that lies just ahead.''
    Unless we ''do something violently stupid,'' O'Neill writes, ''the
eternals of hope and love and laughter will still be there too, and
will accommodate all the hope of the five to everyday human affairs
just as successfully as they have already tamed the automobile and the
jet airplane - and even the telephone.''

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 (Tuesday) 0038-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Outland and Trank darts

Somehow, shooting someone with a trank dart (which must obviously 
penetrate the suit to work (hypno-darts?)) only to have them die by
explosive decompression (remember, the dart rips the suit?)  seems a
waste of time, as well as possibly non-humane.
  -steve

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1981 13:48 PDT
From: STOGRYN.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: OUTLAND and future societies


[Enter sarcasm mode]

All science fiction movies should start:

          A long time ago in a galaxy far far away. . .(c)

That way its direct association with the history of earth would be
remote. Or maybe, it would be better just to provide a disclaimer at
the beginning, end, and prehaps one in the middle of each movie
stating that:

        This movie has no significant social value.
        It does not pretend to predict the future in
        a realistic fashion, (science FICTION remember).
        The events in this film will probably never happen.

otherwise, those people who just lay back and enjoy may forget that it
is just a movie.

[Exit fast]

Bravo and Amen to Ron (Newman.ES), Mike at RAND-UNIX, Byron Howes, et.
al. for reminding us that:

       . . .technological advances need not go
       hand-in-hand with social progress.

       . . .Predicting prostitution in the future
       is as safe as predicting violence in the future.

       . . .Social movements do no persist just because
       people want them to persist. . .

Hardware problems are a lot easier to over come than people problems.

No one can tell what the future will really be like. No matter how
many advances we make today, tomorrow it could all come tumbling down,
or better still we could suddenly take a giant leap ahead. . .
whatever that may mean to you. To argue over the validity of any
future social system would only be a matter of personal opinion, but
don't say one or the other cannot be.


Here's hoping the future will be all you want it to be,

Steve

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1981 1046-PDT
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Dr. Who/ DC area
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

I just noticed that Dr.  Who will be on every night in the Washington,
DC area at 6:30 pm on Channel 26.  Starting tonight.  (Monday).

        Mike

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1981 22:08:20-PDT
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: Fan mail from some flounder?

Rocky is on weekday mornings at 8:00 on channel 2 in the Bay area.  If
you thought the \prime-time/ commercials were bad. . .

David Ungar

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 0649-PDT
Sender: ADPSC at USC-ISI
Subject: Rocky and Bullwinkle
From: ADPSC at USC-ISI (Don)

It was with a great sense of disappointment that I found out I could
have been watching R&B on Saturday AM's instead of Bugs Bunny.  (Who
ever reads the TV pages anymore?)  It has to be my favorite show of
all time, and my recent Saturday mornings have been much more
enjoyable.

I realize now that the show was aimed at adults, but I feel that it
gave me a certain sense of political literacy at 9 years of age.  The
episode I recall best (in that vein) is when our heroes (who could
refer to them as anything else) where in a jet with Captain Peachfuzz
when the plane ran out of fuel.  Bullwinkle read the Congressional
Record directly into the engines.  These being full of hot air kept
the plane in flight, but put the rest of the crew to sleep.

And who could forget their old alma mater, Watzamatta U?

For you trivia fans, the theme song for Dudley Doright came from
"Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna" by Von Suppe.

Until next time...

Don

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1981 12:14-EDT
From: Thomas L. Davenport <TLD at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Rocky & Bullwinkle

Many thanks to Lauren for bringing up the subject of Rocky & 
Bullwinkle!  I've always considered the show to be one of the finest 
and funniest works of art our society has produced.

Does anyone know of a source for more information about the show, eg.
books, magazines, fan clubs, episode guides, etc.?

I saw the Metal Munching Mice episodes a few years ago, and I remember
that the moonmen were Gidney and Cloyd.

-Tom-

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1981 15:48:10-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Tom Swift in George of the Jungle

Just for clarification, the TS segment in GotJ was about a race driver
of that name, not the Tom Swift and his Computer Mailing List guy.

tom galloway at unc

------------------------------

Date: 17 May 1981 0847-PDT
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-CSL
Subject: Re: (Great) Children's TV programs.
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow

All this discussion about children's TV in the past brings, has served
to jog my memory of the time.

What about/Do you remember:

        SUPERCAR: Was only in B&W as i recall...  About a scientist
who built a "Super Car" that could fly (maybe do other things?).  Was
one of four `puppet' done shows the other three being:

        FIREBALL XL-5: Something to do with a space rocket called 
Fireball XL-5.

        STINGRAY: Some type of underwater submarine rescue team.

        <UNKNOWN>: about a family that lived out on an island and had
all sorts of different rockets that were used to avert disasters ...
The show started with a count down.  Perhaps its name was Thunderball?


In the animated department, do you remember:

        JOHNNY QUEST?  One of my personal favorites of the time.  Some
kid and his dad who spent most of the time flying around in their Lear
Jet averting disaster or thwarting super criminals.

        SPACE GHOST?  Some outer space hero of sorts.

Thanks to Lauren and crew for jogging the ol' memory with Astro Boy,
Speed Racer(of which I remember how everyone went OOOOOHHHHHHH all the
time when they were in peril), Ultra Man and the lot.

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 1352-EDT
From: Steven Clark at CMU-10A
Subject: Fireball XL-5 and Captain Scarlet

When I was small these were what I watched.  I don't know how Fireball
XL-5 started, but I recall they had an alien (teddy bear) who could
sense danger in the near future.

What I'm really interested in is Captain Scarlet, though.  The first
manned mission to Mars finds an advanced alien civilization.  The
aliens are proclaim they are friendly and start aiming a bunch of
sensors at the earth ship.  The earthmen are so paranoid when they see
devices aimed at them that they shoot at them.  The Martians let the
earthmen go home with the warning that this means war.  I believe the
Martians go so far as to say they won't use their advanced technology
against us because then we wouldn't stand a chance!  Somehow Captain 
Scarlet becomes indestructible because of a mistake of the Martians,
and he leads the war against them.

Captain Scarlet had a bunch of really neat devices, the one I remember
best is this futuristic version of an army tank.  The driver inside
watches a couple TV monitors that show views of outside; there are no
windows.  In fact the driver is facing backwards.

Can anyone out there tell me more about Captain Scarlet or Fireball
XL-5?  Do you know who was responsible for creating them?  It's
possible that they were shown on Canadian TV and not in the US; at the
time I lived in a place that received one American station and one
Canadian (in good weather).

-----

If you ever see Mike Mars (a series of children's SF), pass it by
immediately!  The one of that series that I read was probably the
first SF book I ever read that I didn't like.

-Steve Clark

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 1709-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Roger Ramjet he's our man...

        Is that how the song started?  What are the rest of the words?
                                                        --cat

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 2139-PDT (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Roger Ramjet he's our man...

It was something like:

 Roger Ramjet, he's our man.
 Hero of the nation.
 For his adventures,
 Just be sure to stay tuned to this station.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1981 1654-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY
Subject: Re: Roger Ramjet he's our man...

Thanks!  My best guess was

 Roger Ramjet he's our man,
 Ruler of creation.
 Eating deviled eggs and Spam,
 We hope he's on vacation.

                                        --cat

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1981 1655-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Re: Roger Ramjet he's our man...

Uh, not quite!

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date:         28-MAY-1981 09:06  
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
From:   KERMIT::PARMENTER
Subj:   SFL: Roger Ramjet

SFL: Vol 3, No. 129

The show was Roger Ramjet and his American Eagle Squadron and they all
flew airplanes, like the Blackhawks.  The squadron was four kids named
Yank, Doodle, Dan, and Dee.  Their major enemy was Noodles Romanoff
and his Ring.  The theme song, to the tune of "Yankee Doodle", was:

                Roger Ramjet and his Eagles,
                Fighting for our freedom,
                Fly through wind and outer space,
                Not to join 'em but to beat 'em.

It was full of puns.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  1-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #135
*** EOOH ***
Date:  1 JUN 1981 0802-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #135
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Saturday, 30 May 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 135

Today's Topics:
                    SF Fandom - James H. Schmitz,
       SF Movies - Outland,  SF TV - Twilight Zone Mini-Fest & 
 Gerry Anderson Productions (UFO and Space: 1999 and The Protectors),
SF Topics - Children's TV (Gerry Anderson Productions and Supercar and
   Fireball XL5 and Stingray and Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 at 0314-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 
Subject: Our Loss...

      ________________________________________________________
     | ______________________________________________________ |
     ||                                                      ||
     ||                                                      ||
     ||                  James H. Schmitz                    ||
     ||                                                      ||
     ||                      1911-1981                       ||
     ||                                                      ||
     ||                                                      ||
     ||______________________________________________________||
     |________________________________________________________|


------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 1056-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: more on Outland

First, technical nits.  Putting a mine on Io strikes me as a bad idea
to begin with.  Not only do you have lift the stuff out of the moon's
gravity well, but you have to get it out of Jupiter's as well.  And Io
makes ordinary space look like the Riviera; not only does the crust
shift from week to week but the radiation levels are incredibly high.
One of locals with experiments on the Pioneer probe gave a seminar
here and I asked him how long you could live without rad shielding on
the surface of Io. He said, "About a minute".  Mining the asteroids
would be far easier, though you wouldn't get that spectacular view of
Jupiter.
   Second, a thematic nit.  Alan Ladd's excuse for setting what is
essentially a Western out in space is that he wanted to show that the
frontier is still going to be the same whether it's in Arizona or the
outer solar system.  Well, building the transcontinental railway
wasn't much like building the Alaska pipeline (whaddaya mean we've got
to delay this ten billion dollar project because of the caribou?) or
even much like building the Panama canal.  Mining Io two hundred years
from now will not be like mining Colorado in the 1880s because mining
Colorado today is not like mining it in the 1880s.

------------------------------

Date: 29 May 1981 12:55 PDT
From: Newman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Twilight Zone Mini-Fest at UCLA, June 1

For Twilight Zone fans in the LA area:

Three half-hour episodes will be shown at UCLA's Melnitz Hall 
auditorium on Monday, June 1 at 5:30 p.m.  Titles of the episodes are 
"Escape Clause", "Steel", and "Mirror Image".

/Ron

------------------------------

Date: 30 May 1981 1153-EDT
From: MLEASE at BBNC (Michael V. Lease)
Subject: Tom Swift on George of the Jungle?

Isn't that Tom SLICK???

Mikey 

------------------------------

Date: 30 May 1981 1408-PDT
From: Friedland at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: answers to some SF TV shows questions


1.  The racecar driver cartoon that appeared with George, George,
George of the Jungle, friend to you and me .....  was Tom SLICK, not
Tom Swift.

2.  The Supermarionation show about a family that lived on an island 
and rescued people was "Thunderbirds" who ran a group called
International Rescue, and had five vehicles, named Thunderbirds 1 - 5.

3.  Some information about SF TV is documented in a book called 
"Fantastic Television".  This mostly covers adult SF TV (like Twilight
Zone, Outer Limits, Voyage to See What's on the Bottom, etc.), but
does mention some of the "kid" TV shows.  IT certainly does cover Tom
Corbett and Video Rangers, etc.

4.  Glad to hear someone else verifies Gidney and Cloyd--it was the
answer that won my team the 1978 Stanford Trivia Bowl Championship.

Peter 

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 0357-PDT (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Gerry Anderson and Television SF

This digest's ongoing discussion of television SF has now passed 
through arenas ranging from the mundane to the simply bizarre.  There
are still some gaping holes, one of which I will attempt to fill at
this time!

In a past digest, brief mention was made of the "puppet" programs.  
Let's look more closely at the truly unique variety of programming 
that has appeared under the banner of "supermarionation" (or some 
similar spelling ...)

A substantial line of programs featuring marionettes appeared during 
the 60's and 70's.  All of these programs placed the very human-like 
puppets in "high-tech" situations of various sorts; situations which 
frequently involved adventure, intrigue, and, quite frequently, 
massive explosions!  The marionettes "lived" in perfectly scaled 
worlds, spoke with lip-sync, and generally were so well controlled 
that the viewer was led to forget that he or she was not watching
actual human actors.

That all of these programs had major similarities (including musical 
style) should not be surprising, since all were created and produced 
by the same man -- Gerry Anderson -- under the auspices of the ITC 
releasing company.  What were these programs, you ask?

Supercar -- starring Mike Mercury, the "Supercar" was actually a
            flying vehicle chock full of tricks and special abilities.
            Mike and the rest of his "team" spent each half hour
            episode saving all sorts of dire situations and generally
            doing good deeds for mankind.  This program brought us
            the immortal words, "Open Roof Doors", several times in
            each program, as Mike entered or left the "hanger" where
            the supercar was kept.

Fireball XL5 -- A "space"-oriented program, with our heroes flying
            around to various planets and whatnot, to save dire
            situations in each episode (sound familiar?)  "I wish
            I were a fireball..."

Stingray -- Sort of a "Supercar" -- underwater.  The usual dire
            situations.

Thunderbirds -- This program represented pretty much the culmination
            of the marionette business in this area, and was by far
            the most elaborate and dramatic.  Consisting of both half
            hour and hour programs, Thunderbirds involved an
            organization known as "International Rescue", which
            operated out of a privately owned island.  International
            Rescue had a vast variety of vehicles for use in the air,
            in space, and underwater, and specialized in getting
            people out of impossible situations when all hope was
            lost.  Actually a very fine program.  Amazing gizmos and
            technology abounded, and even the usual explosions, fires,
            and other disasters were performed with extra care and
            quality.

            [ Thanks also to Barry Margolin <Margolin at MIT-Multics>
              for a description of the Thunderbirds.  --  Jim ]

            By the way, it appears that a couple of existing
            Thunderbirds episodes have recently been re-edited into a
            feature film, "Thunderbirds Are Go", which will shortly be
            making the rounds in the pay-tv circuits around the
            country -- try to catch it if you have a chance.

This brings us to the end of the "puppet" programs, but Gerry Anderson
did not stop here.  He moved on into live action programming, most of
which maintained the high-technology "SF" theme, and which continued
to use his classic style of miniatures in effex sequences, with the
same style of musical scoring throughout.  These programs were also
all released by ITC, and included:

UFO -- A very unusual program, to say the least.  The premise was
           that aliens are in the process of attacking Earth and,
           among other things, abducting people for use as transplant
           donors.  The general public, however, is not aware of what
           is going on ... all incidents involving "ufos" (pronounced
           U-FOES) are kept secret, and other "explanations" are
           created for these incidents.  The ufos are fought by an
           organization known as SHADO, which is headquartered under
           a film studio in England.  They possess an impressive
           array of land, sea, and space equipment (much of which
           looks very similar to that from "Thunderbirds"!), and even
           have a secret moonbase.  The show is probably best taken
           with a grain of salt -- frequently technical accuracy
           takes a back seat to character conflicts and relationships.

           There is a very active fanclub for this program (which,
           I believe, also includes a number of Gerry Anderson's
           other programs).  In fact, one of the primary officials
           of this club reads this very digest [and you know who
           you are!]  I will respect their privacy and allow them
           to remain anonymous -- perhaps they will see fit to
           unmask themselves on their own -- maybe to correct any
           inaccuracies (horrors!) in this message!

           All in all, UFO can truly be described as "unique".
           Watch a few and see what I mean; they can be rather
           enjoyable if viewed in the proper spirit.  They still
           show up sometimes as half hour fillers at random times...

Space: 1999 -- This is practically contemporary, so I won't say much
            about it.  A nuclear waste dump on the moon explodes,
            sending the entire moon (and Moonbase Alpha) off through
            space on a series of adventures involving a variety of
            planets, aliens, and things that go bump in the night.
            There were actually two versions of this program:  most
            of the cast was changed, as well as portions of the
            "format", between two seasons.

            The program was indeed notable for the starring roles of
            Martin Landau and Barbara Baines -- the husband/wife team
            back together on a program for the first time since
            "Mission: Impossible".

The Protectors -- This one is obscure, and was not at all SF.  It
            involved a group of British, well, "detectives", who
            were involved in (you guessed it!) a variety of dire
            situations.  Most of the time they were busy "protecting"
            people -- but since the people would often disappear
            anyway, it took considerable detective work to find them
            again!

I believe there was at least one other live-action program from
Anderson.  It may have been the program that starred Gene Barry as an
actor who was a part-time "detective" -- "The Adventurer"?  I'm not
certain.  I may even have missed some obscure marionette programs from
Anderson, though I know I've covered the main ones.


Gerry Anderson's productions through the 60's, 70's, (and, may we
presume, the 80's?) have represented an innovative style that stands
alone amidst the otherwise often "oatmealy" sameness of television.
His programs might well be vulnerable to criticism on various levels,
but they were frequently, on a technological and production basis,
truly at the forefront of the art of true television "creation".

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 30 May 1981 1706-PDT
From: CSD.BOTHNER at SU-SCORE
Subject: More nostalgia (Anderson puppet films; The "uncle" books)

Gerry and Sylvie Anderson produced in the sixties a whole slew of
puppet animation series for children. I think Stingray and Fireball
XL-5 were among them. The ones I've seem most of though were
Thunderbirds (Geoff@SRI-KL's "unknown") and Captain Scarlet.  I saw
most of the episodes for both while I was in England.  (The Andersons
were later responsible for UFO and Space:1999.)

Thunderbirds was one of my favorite TV series. A secret organization 
(International Rescue) lived on a South Sea island. An american 
millionaire widower (Tracy) was the head, and his 5 (?) grownup sons
each had the responsibility of piloting a rocket, named Thunderbird 1
though ... 5. All these ships were hidden below the island, and I
still (almost) remember the theme music as, say, the swimming pool
slid aside to allow one of the Thunderbirds to take off. The most
interesting characters were the English agent, the aristocratic Lady
Penelopy, and her devoted cockney ex-con schauffeur and assistant
Parker. A couple of feature films were made.

I think the full title of Captain Scarlet was "... and the Mysterons",
where "Mysterons" was the names given to his Martian adversaries.  
Scarlet was the head agent of the Mysteron-fighting Spectrum, which
had its headquarters in the clouds, borne up by powerful (and 
energy-thirsty?) jets. One of the Mystersons' main powers was the 
ability to resurrect someone they had killed and take them over. Their
best agent was a resurrected spectrum agent, Captain Black.
(Spectrum's boss was Colonel White which presumably was meant to
suggest both his age and his stature as a good guy.)

On another topic: A series of books I read which I don't suppose have 
been exported to America were the "Uncle" books by J.P.Martin. Uncle 
was a fabulously rich elephant who owned a gigantic castle where all 
sorts of things were wont to happen. His secretary was a chimp, 
otherwise most of the characters were human. I enjoyed the books a lot
(I think there were about 4, including "U. and the Treacle Vat", and 
"U. and his Detective"), but even at the tender age of 12(?) I found 
the social and economic philosophy simplistic. For example there was 
little mention of where U. got his wealth, except that fabulous gifts 
were always pouring in from admirers around the world. And the 
ruffians who were always plotting against U's money were obviously 
Martin's picture of the dirty communists plotting against us honest 
capitalists.
        --In re nostalgia, Per Bothner 

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  1-JUN  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #136
*** EOOH ***
Date:  1 JUN 1981 0943-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #136
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

   
SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Sunday, 31 May 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 136

Today's Topics:
              SF Movies - Outland & Barbarella query,
             SF TV - Here's the Plot,What's the Title,
                 SF Radio - HitchHiker Guide Guide,
   SF Topics - Children's stories & Children's TV (Roger Ramjet and
          Rocky and Bullwinkle and Jay Ward Productions and
          Super Chicken and Speed Racer and Captain Scarlet)
               Digest Correction - Duplicate message
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 1753-CDT
From: Bob Amsler <CS.AMSLER at UTEXAS-20>
Subject: Outland, genre "future shock"

I have read through the Outland mail messages and feel it is still
worth making one point that was only touched upon. The fact that A.
Ladd's own film company produced this is significant, as is the
continuity with "Alien" in terms of what "Outland" is all about. I
suggest that a new "formula" has been discovered, and for my part it
DOES work. The "formula" is to take a used-up genre film, for "Alien"
this was the horror film, for "Outland" it is the Western, and to
remake it in the science-fiction setting with lush space scenery.
"Outland" is magnificently "atmospheric".  George Lukas established
the validity of beat-up equipment giving a science-fiction movie more
character and that lesson has been followed in "Outland" to an extreme
I found almost over-done. Nearly everywhere in the Con-Am mining
facility one sees grubbyness. Apart from the "white" of the medical
quarters, the corridors are grimy, with streaked walls where something
leaked through. O'Neil's wife mentions she's leaving in part because
she is tired of air that smells like the inside of a machine-room (or
some such). The living quarters remind one of cramped submarine bunks.
Informal dress is grubby sweat-shirt modern.

Anyway, the point of this message is that there is a new "pattern" for
science-fiction movie-making and I think "Outland" will spawn a series
of imitations as well as foster a new effort to extend the "genre
transplants" into other non-SF genres. Clearly we could see a
Science-Fiction Mystery akin to Asimov's Robot novels; a Spy movie set
in the future; not to mention the War Movie (if TESB didn't already
achieve that).

The results are pleasing enough, but the fun of "Outland" clearly
involves making the comparisons with "High Noon". There are many.
O'Neil's one-line utterances (to which attention is drawn by his wife
in the film); the reactions of those on the mining facility to helping
O'Neil in the show-down; the "bottom of the heap" marshall job as the
last chance for O'Neil to show he's not the broken-down lawman
everyone expects him to be; the "why don't you leave town" query; the
"countdown" for the show-down with it's psychological stress.... Pure
camp.

------------------------------

Date:  28 May 1981 22:10 edt
From:  JSLove at MIT-Multics (J. Spencer Love)
Subject:  Movie Cast Query
Sender:  JSLove.PDO at MIT-Multics

I have been asked by a friend who played the Great Tyrant in
Barbarella.  In particular, was she played by more than one person, as
Darth Vader was: one for the body and another for the voice.  A bet
hinges on this although I am unable to obtain a percentage for whoever
can answer this.  Reply to JSL at MIT-Multics and I will send just one
copy of the answer to the digest.

[ Yes, please reply directly, NOT to the digest.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 1981-5-22-11:31:21.76
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
From:   NIGEL CONLIFFE at VAXWRK at ORION at METOO
Subject: Old, Bad TV Shows of beloved memory (sic)

 On the subject of old, bad TV shows, there was an old TV show called 
Phoenix - 5 which used to be shown on Saturday mornings. It was a sort
of "Space Patrol" concept, where our three heros (actually two heros, 
one heroine and a robot) travelled through space protecting Earth 
against whatever the current nastiness from outer space was. Their 
principal enemy was a space pirate (whose name I forget, fortunately) 
who had a beard, and an artificial limb and all the usual cliches.
 The show was memorable for only two reasons -
        (1) They must have spent all of $7.32 on special effects - the
            "master computer" was a collection of christmas tree
            lights and some actual household light switches!
        (2) They landed on some strange planet, which was all snow
            and ice. The pilot asked the robot what the outside
            temperature was, to which our mechanical friend replied
            "It's -12 degrees Kelvin", to which the pilot replied
            "That's cold!"  They then donned parkas and down vests
            and went outside.

 Does anyone else remember this series (I think it was originally 
produced in Australia) or is my memory generating parity errors again?


Nigel A Conliffe

------------------------------

Date: 30 May 1981 1642-EDT (Saturday)
From: Roy.Taylor at CMU-10A
Subject:  HitchHiker Guide Guide

Could someone provide a list of episodes in the HitchHiker's Guide 
currently running on NPR Playhouse?  They don't seem to be numbered 
nor can I tell how many there are.

-- Roy

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1981 06:06:20-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Children's Science Fiction

While wandering in a local bookstore, I saw a rack labelled "Teenage 
Favorites", which contained about 14 different Danny Dunn books, plus 
"Miss Pickerell Goes to the Moon."  Guess they're still around, though
I had trouble reconciling the copyright dates with the order of books 
in the series and my own recollection of when I read them.

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1981 20:32:17-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Rocky and Bullwinkle

   It has been confirmed by various sources that R&B will be back in
distribution for the fall season of Saturday morning shows; I'm told
that in NYC they'll be broadcast right after DR. WHO.
   I have warm memories of that show (and of seeing a complete serial,
complete with all the other self-contained episodes they included, at
last year's Minicon), although I would have said it actually began in
the late 50's rather than the 60's. But as for it being pioneering, a
somewhat older acquaintance (born 1946) maintains that the first
intelligent cartoon show, from which most of the rest took varieties
of inspiration, was "Crusader Rabbit" (with Rags the tiger), which
I've never seen. Comments?

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 (Tuesday) 0044-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Bullwinkle

Ah, at last a topic I still enjoy!  I still remember skipping many a
class as an undergraduate to watch the morning editions of Johnny
Quest, followed by Bullwinkle.
  I add to Lauren's list some more bad puns found in B:
    An entire series devoted to a gemstone boat, the "Ruby Yacht of
  Omar Khayam"...  one of the opponents was a high leader of the
  mid-east, the "Grand Brassiere"...  (some things I really didn't
  catch when I was 5 or 6 years old...)
 --- whatever became of Jay Ward and JW Productions, anyway?

   -Steve

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 (Tuesday) 0026-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Animated Kiddy SF

Mr. Peabody (the dog) and his pet boy, Sherman, used to use a 
"wayback" machine to visit the past.  This was one of the more 
instructive shows around but all of the history lessons ended in bad 
"shaggy dog" punch lines.

Remeber Tennessee Tuxedo (a pseudo-penguin) and his friend waldo 
walrus?  They had a friend who was a professor (name forgotten).  This
character used to explain things by way of a device known as the 3DBB 
(Three Dimensional Black Board).  The things would come out pocket 
sized and then expand into a rather large (but still only two 
dimensional!) blackboard.

There was some Hanna-Barbara animation called, I think, "Secret 
Squirrel".  He had a gadget ridden car that did everything from fly to
play submarine.

Along the same line... "Tom, the man from T.H.U.M.B." [Tiny Human ?U?
?M? ?B?].  He had his office in a file drawer and was sent off on
secret assignments of an FBI-like flavor.

-- Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 30 May 1981 1559-EDT
From: MD at MIT-XX
Subject: Rocky and Bullwinkle

        I dug up a lot of information on Jay Ward cartoons from the
LSC (MIT Lecture Series Committee - the campus film group) files.  It
would have been appropriate for the Film-Buffs mailing list, but I'm
not sure I should tie up SF-Lovers.  I can give you the titles of all
28 Rocky and His Friends series (326 total episodes), the 39
Bullwinkle's Corner episodes, the 60 Mr. Know It All's, the 91
Peabody's Improbable History's, and 91 Fractured Fairy Tales [it's not
clear from the sheets I'm looking at whether Aesop and Son was also
Jay Ward].  I can also tell you how to go about renting them.  If
people are really interested, I'll type in the lists (but there's
quite a bit of typing involved).  It might make sense to set up as a
separate file which people could look at or FTP.  Send reactions
directly to me, MD@MIT-XX.

                                Mike Dornbrook 

[ Please send your reactions directly to Mike.  If enought people
  are interested then the information will be distributed via the
  digest's FTP procedures.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 31 May 1981 1228-EDT (Sunday)
Sender: David.Ackley at CMU-10A
From: Dave Ackley <David.Ackley at CMU-10A> 
Subject:  Tom SLICK and more theme songs

The race car driver was Tom Slick, not Tom Swift, in the show
featuring him, George of the Jungle, and Super Chicken.

Fragments of theme songs:

Super Chicken:  ... and it looks like you will take a lickin'.
                There is one thing you should learn,
                When there is no where else to turn,
                To ca-all for Super Chicken!

                ... he will drink his Super Sauce
                And throw the bad guys for a loss,
                So ca-all for Super Chicken.
                Pluck pluck pluck pluck
                Ca-all for Super Chicken!
                Pluck GAWK!

Speed Racer:    Here he comes!  Here comes Speed Racer!
                He's a demon on wheels.
                He's a demon and he's gonna be chasin' after someone.

               ... [he will catch them in his powerful?] Mach Five!
       [At the junior high school age that my buddies and me used to
       watch this show after school, we got much amusement out of the
       Mach Five.  It had buttons in the center of the steering wheel
       which could make the car do some impressive things, like sprout
       wings, go under water, and put out two large sawmill blades in
       front of the car so Speed Racer could drive pell-mell through
       dense forest.  Classicly Awful!  His comic relief characters
       were his little brother (phonetically) Spridle and his monkey
       Chim-Chim.]

Captain Scarlet: [I remember the music distinctly but can't get words
                 beyond:]
                Captain Scarlet! [and maybe repeat?]
                In-De-Structible CAPTAIN SCARLET!
       [Another classic Japanese Super Marionation import.  He was a
       member of the Spectrum organization, HQed in a thing called
       Cloud Base, which had no visible means of support.  The CO
       was Colonel White, of course, and the heavy was Captain Black,
       of course, who had been on the original Mars mission and was
       taken over by the Mysterons of Mars.  The show always opened
       with some random getting killed and taken over by the
       Mysterons, with the following voice-over:
            This is Captain Black, relaying instructions from the
            Mysterons.  [then "plot"-specific details of what evil
            this guy was to do.]
       Captain Scarlet suffered a near-miss with the Mysterons which
       left him "indestructible" and not a candidate for take over.
       Understandably, the Mysterons didn't like him very much.  The
       equivalent of "Aye aye, sir", on the show was "S.I.G.", which
       we eventually discovered meant: "Spectrum Is Green".  Now
       THAT makes sense.]

Well, enough of this.  If anyone is interested, a friend of mine and I
recently managed to come up with a complete set of lyrics to "The
Patty Duke Show" too!

        -Dave

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1981 00:44:13-PDT
From: CSVAX.wildbill at Berkeley
Subject: Errata and R.R.

When Noodles Romanoff threatens to play some music on his "violins" 
(i.e., not e.g. machine guns), he pronounces it "wye'-o-lince". There 
is another verse to the Roger Ramjet theme song, and the refrain as 
originally sent is incorrect. The corrected version is:

Roger Ramjet Theme Song

    Roger Ramjet and his Eagles,
    Fighting for our freedom.
    Fly to win in outer space
    Not to join 'em, but to beat 'em.

    REFRAIN: Roger Ramjet, he's our man
    Hero of our nation.
    For his adventures just be sure
    And stay tuned to this station!

    So come and join us all you kids
    For lots of fun and laughter
    As Roger Ramjet and his men
    Get all the crooks they're after.

    (refrain)

Roger Ramjet Closing Theme

    When Ramjet takes a proton pill,
    The crooks begin to worry.
    They can't escape their awful fate
    From proton's mighty fury.

    (refrain)

    So come and join us ...

------------------------------

Date: 31 May 1980 8:40 PST
From: The Moderator <JPM at MIT-AI>
Subject: Digest Correction - duplicate message

In the Friday digest (volume 3, issue 134), a message by Bruce
Hamilton (Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC) appeared twice.  The second
occurance of this message should be replaced by the following
message.

Jim

Date: 26 May 1981 1431-PDT (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Re: new mailing lists

I am glad, but I am also sorry.  It would have been fun.  Someday, on
another network!

--Lauren--

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  1-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #137
*** EOOH ***
Date:  1 JUN 1981 2132-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #137
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 1 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 137

Today's Topics:
   Administrivia - Science Fiction Convention Calendar for FTPing,
                 SF Books - Cyber-SF & Book Prices,
    SF Movies - Clash of the Titans,  SF Topics - Space Command & 
      Physics Today (Anti-Sugar) & Children's TV (Roger Ramjet)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 05/31/81 00:00:00
From: The Moderator <JPM@MIT-AI>
Subject: Science Fiction Convention Calendar

Due to the ever increasing size of our Science Fiction Convention
Calendar, direct distribution through the digests will no longer
be possible.  However, updated copies of the calendar will be made
available via the FTP mechanism for those of you interested in this
material.

Everyone interested in reading this material should obtain the file
from the site which is most convenient for them.  If you cannot do so,
please send mail to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST and we will be happy to make
sure that you get a copy.

Please obtain your copies in the near future however, since the files
will be deleted in one week.  A copy of the material will also be
available upon request from the SF LOVERS archives.  Thanks go to Rich
Zellich, who has taken over the task of compiling the calendar in the
wake of Richard Brodie's departure, and Alyson L. Abramowitz, Roger
Duffey, Richard Lamson, Doug Philips, Bob Weissman, Don Woods, and
Paul Young for providing space for the materials on their systems.


   Site          Filename
  
MIT-AI          AI:DUFFEY;SFLVRS CONS
CMUA            TEMP:CONS.TXT[X440DP0Z]
PARC-MAXC       [MAXC]<WEISSMAN>SFL.CON-CAL
SU-AI           CONS.SFL[T,DON]
MIT-Multics     >udd>sm>rsl>sf-lovers>cons.text
DEC VAX/PDP-11  KIRK::DB1:[Abramowit.SF]cons.txt
DEC TOPS-20     KL2137::FTN20:<SF>CONS.TXT


[Note, you can TYPE or FTP the file from SAIL without an account.]

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1981 1014-PDT
From: Wmartin at OFFICE-3 (Will Martin)
Subject: Animal robot

There was a robot dog in Woody Allen's movie, "Sleeper" (if I'm
remembering this correctly). I think it was called "Rags". Does this
count? (If there was ever a novelization of that movie, it could
qualify as printed SF.)

Will Martin 

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1981 at 0147-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 
Subject: A revised version of that robot animal message...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF-- robots ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

To make a general answer to some queries...

We are only concerned with BOOKS, tho that includes single-author 
collections like THE REST OF THE ROBOTS as well as novels such as 
CAVES OF STEEL.  So if, for instance, Asimov has a robot dog in TRotR 
or in I, ROBOT, it's eligible.  But otherwise cy-devices from short 
stories are not within the scope of the study.

The books to be covered should have had their initial appearance in 
the last 50 years, roughly 1930 to the present.

Cy-devices from other media, like Dr Who's K-9, are included if they 
appear in a novelization.

Tho not ignored, juveniles and kiddie books are not being hunted down 
and will generally receive only minimal attention in the write-up.

Fantasy is not excluded, but the robot probably needs to be a clock- 
work device, not just a magically animated statue.  So TicToc of Oz is
okay but as Pettit at PARC-MAX advised, the Tin Woodman is dubious.

As for some specific nominees missing from the following update of the
robot-animal list, the Godwhale will be in the CYBORG category rather
than the ROBOT one currently under discussion.  The critters in Wells'
THE PARASAURIANS, if I recall rightly, were biological constructs, not
robotic ones like those in Disneyland.  If there are some such in
fictitional amusement parks (and I, too, feel there must be), we've
not found them yet.


The list has grown some more as messages and some SF-L's trickle in, 
yet still remains overwhelmingly canine and avian:

   Anderson: A CIRCUS OF HELLS
   Asimov: LUCKY STARR AND THE MOONS OF JUPITER [dog]
   Asimov: {unidentified source} [dog(s)]
   Bradbury: FARENHEIT 451 [Mechanical Hound]
   Bunch: MODERAN
   Dick: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
   __________: DR WHO <K-9>
   Goulart: AFTER THINGS FELL APART [dogs]
   Goulart: CALLING DR. PATCHWORK
   Goulart: HAIL HIBBLER
   Goulart: WHIFF OF MADNESS: A [guard dogs: horse: birds]
   Harrison, M.J.: THE PASTEL CITY [birds]
   Heath: THE MIND BROTHERS [nightingale]
   Heath: ASSASSINS FROM TOMORROW [hound-like tracking device]
   High: INVADER ON MY BACK [birds: dogs]
   High: THE MAD METROPOLIS [insects]
   High: NO TRUCE WITH TERRA
   High: THE PRODIGAL SUN [ducks, insects]
   Knight: THE WORLD AND THORINN [bird]
   Larson: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
   Leiber: THE SILVER EGGHEADS [auto-dog]
   Norton: {unidentified Witch World novel(s)} [birds]
   Saberhagen: {unidentified Berserker novel} [wolf]
   Schmitz: THE WITCHES OF KARRES <the Sheem Spider>
   Sheckley: JOURNEY BEYOND TOMORROW <the Beast>
   Stasheff: THE WARLOCK IN SPITE OF HIMSELF <Fess>
  (Wells R.: THE PARASAURIANS [dinosaur]) ?
   Zelazny: THE CHANGELING [birds+]
   Zelazny: LORD OF LIGHT [beetles: Mechobra]

Any more data?  

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 81 15:20-PDT
From: mclure at Sri-Unix
Subject: paperback

Thanks to the people who responded to my query about paperback book
prices.

The replies varied greatly, some people predicting the disappearance
of books altogether, to be replaced by electronic tablets and plug-in
libraries. Perhaps.

But assuming this doesn't happen, and there are no major upsets in the
paperback publishing industry, we arrive at the figure of $20 - $22
for an "average" book in 2001.

Gee, libraries are looking better all the time...

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 16:29:02-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: CLASH OF THE TITANS

  Has everyone else who saw the sneak preview punted mentioning it
here?  (SP was a week ago at MIT.) Brief review: I wasn't highly
disappointed at most of it, because I'm not all that impressed with
Harryhausen's recent work, but I was disgusted by the fact that the
people who did this film seemed to have no sense of self-criticism at
all. I'm not much at spotting matte lines, but when the background to
a stop-motion model is obviously way out of focus that's irritating,
as are his incredibly feeble attempts to mimic the movements of living
things (there are repeated cuts between a real seagull and a
stop-motion one and the contrast shows up the process work), the fact
that quality actors were acting down to the level of the unknowns
playing the mortals, the awful script, and the massive ripoff of STAR
WARS (Burgess Meredith instead of Alec Guinness, and a 
pseudo-mechanical owl (i.e., stop-motion movement instead of
clockwork, so far as I could see) in place of R2D2). I just barely
didn't resent the time I took to see this, or the hour wait to be sure
of getting a seat, but I'm glad I didn't pay to get in.

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 1206-PDT (Thursday)
From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: Animal/Magical Robot

   In the forthcoming hi-budget Harryhausen epic "Clash of the
Titans", the hero is provided with a not-too-convincing mechanical
robot by the gods.  Since it is magical, however, everyone but the 
viewer fails to notice that it's mechanical.  Expect merchandising.

        Mike 

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1981 10:55:10-PDT
From: CSVAX.upstill at Berkeley
Subject: sf-lovers--Harryhausen tribute in Berkeley

   Ray Harryhausen came to town last Saturday night, attracting a
good-size crowd and thumping like crazy for Clash of the Titans.  He
brought along with him a trip down memory lane for dimensional
animation enthusiasts-- clips from half a dozen Harryhausen
spectaculars.  Most enlightening to see the dramatically better
realism in the later films, especially CotT.
    I've seen the previews too, and they do look pretty cheesy, but to
judge from the clips shown here, we'll be seeing some fine work next 
month.  For a scene of Perseus taming Pegasus, he alternates
medium-long shots of his model with closeups of a real horse; very
dangerous, see the Tauntauns in TESB.  But he pulls it off admirably,
with movements on the model that are astonishingly graceful and
realistic (in Q&A later, he mentioned using a real horse for a
'guide': has he ever admitted the like before?).
    Another clip showed Perseus confronting Medusa in her den, a
dungeon gloomily and spookily lit only by flickering torches--with the
lighting on the model in perfect synch!  Jaded eyes popped.  His
Medusa is truly memorable, genuinely creepy and effective, and in
general, he has come great strides in optically integrating the models
with the live actors.
    I regret to warn you that this film is not above having its own
R2D2--a mechanical owl that clunks down to guide Perseus.  However,
since the sound effects are mostly cuckoo-clock noises, it may be that
the thing is around mainly for satirical purposes.
   On the whole, I came away with a sharply enhanced desire to see the
film.  Moreover, I think this one will break him through into the
mainstream.

--Steve

------------------------------

Date: Sunday, 31 May 1981 16:10-PDT
Subject: ATTENTION ALL SPACE CADETS!!!!  PREPARE YOUR ROCKETS!
From: mike at RAND-UNIX

From Aviation Week, May 25, 1981

Page 40:

        Serious consideration within the Defense Dept. and Congress of
        establishment of a new branch of the armed services for space
        warfare, probably Space Command.  The reasoning is that the
        Air Force and Navy are seeking to avoid developing space
        weaponry for defense and that any effort in this area takes
        away from total obligational authority for other planned
        strategic weapon systems. ...

The article, "Beam Weapons Technology Expanding" goes on to mention, 
several times, about white house concern that the Pentagon branches 
are hindering development of space technology, as it is not in their 
traditional mission areas. (Most famous example, the Navy's effort to 
delay and destroy air power, Billy Mitchell, et alia).  The 
implication is that a special service will support and not hinder 
development of a new form of defense.

If a Space Command, perhaps also a Space Academy?

Michael Wahrman

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 1657-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: mirror sugar wonderland; Red Moon, Black Mountain

        There is a discussion of mirror proteins in The Annotated
Alice (in through the looking glass Alice would have been able to eat
but get no sustenance).  I think Martin Gardner is the annotater.
        Joy Chant's Red Moon and Black Mountain was originally
published in the U.S. in 1971 as part of Ballantine's fantasy series
(Lin Carter, editor.)  Unfortunately someone took mine out on an
extended loan, so I got the hardback children's market edition (1975
or 76) to replace it.  A very good fantasy book.
                                good reading,
                                                --cat

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 23:22:21-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Stereo-isomers

Getting a little tired of all the speculation with few facts behind
it, I decided to ask a biochemist friend and an immunologist friend
about dextro-sugar.  Neither was willing to make any firm statements,
but both agreed it sounded a bit fishy -- they'd be far more likely to
believe it of amino acids than sugars.

On a science-fictional note, in Zelazny's "Doorways in the Sand", he
points out that reversal can take place in more than way.  I can't
quite visualize an example, but I suspect that there are some 
symmetries that would require more than one reversal.  Comment,
anyone?

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 1008-PDT
From: LEWIS at SRI-AI (Bil Lewis)

        Dolata at SUMEX-AIM mentioned something which implied the 
existence of reverse "whisk(e)y". Was this a reference to somebody's 
idea in a story, or is it that the stuff actually exists?

-Bil

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 1545-EDT
From: MD at MIT-XX
Subject: Roger Ramjet

        If there is a demand for it, I can get information on Roger
Ramjet cartoons.  We've been showing them for years at LSC films
(semi-legitimately).  One of our members worked for a television
station and rescued a couple dozen episodes from the trash bin (in the
50's and 60's local TV stations were sent much of their material on
16mm film; warehousing was expensive, so eventually it was thrown
away).
                                Mike

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  3-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #138
*** EOOH ***
Date:  3 JUN 1981 0808-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #138
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 2 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 138

Today's Topics:
             SF Fandom - Awards,  SF Books - Cyber-SF,
      SF Radio - HHGttG & Star Wars & HitchHiker Guide Guide,
               SF TV - Space: 1999 & The Champions,
        SF Topics - Children's TV (Rocky and Bullwinkle and
            Crusader Rabbit and Jay Ward Productions and
          Super Chicken) & Physics Today (Moons of Jupiter)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1981 1023-PDT
From: Wmartin at OFFICE-3 (Will Martin)
Subject: Awards

It's sad that the various awards for good SF, or children's books, or 
whatever, have to nominally give an award to a weaker book in a series
in order to acknowledge the series itself. Does any book award scheme 
even acknowledge the existence of any multi-book form, such as
trilogies, or open-ended series which all fit in some larger
structure? What sort of lobbying effort would it take to get such a
category added to the Hugo or Nebula awards? It would have to be a
break from the "annual" orientation such awards currently have, but it
would free them to consider an author's entire output, or any
selection from it they chose. I think that it would be a good thing to
have such a category.

Will Martin 

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1981 at 2122-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "Magical" CY-DEVICES ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Originally, "magical" TYPEs were set up to characterize cy-devices 
which either functioned in a fantasy environment, or whose operation 
smacked more of magic than mechanics.

For the former there was Tic Toc of Oz.  For the latter, we had odd 
devices such as Clayton's cyborging Diadem, Trimble's City Machine 
robot, and some very strange "computers" of Norton's (and often 
Dickson's), Foster's Tar Aiym Krang, and on Chalker's Well World.

Our object was to have a way of indicating that these were somehow 
different... that despite superficial similarities, Dickson's 
psionically operated computer in TIME STORM just wasn't the same kind
of thingie as Hogan's in THE GENESIS MACHINE.

Well, it turns out that we were wrong to introduce this distinction as
a TYPE difference.  TYPEs \are/ groupings by superficial similar- 
ities.  Tic Toc and C-3PO and R Daneel Ovilaw \are/ all humanoid 
robots.  The Tar Aiym Krang and Dickson's and Hogan's psionically 
operated computers form a TYPE because of the similarity of their 
operation.

So we've scrapped the "magical" TYPEs.  The difference it represented 
is now coded elsewhere in the database entry for the given cy-device.

(Tho TYPE is the most crucial characteristic, a full entry has a lot 
more info than that.  If anyone is interested, I can send him/her a 
copy of the full range of data we are trying to collect for each cy- 
device.)

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 06:43:31-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Radio SF in the Research Triangle Park area

Starting Sunday, June 7, WUNC-FM (91.5) will rebroadcast all of "The 
Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and "Star Wars."  "Hitch-hiker's" 
will be on at 6:00 PM Sundays (and 11:00 pm Tuesdays, I think); "Star
Wars" at 6:30 pm Sundays and 11:00 pm Thursdays.

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 10:46:02-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: SPACE: 1999

   I'm a bit surprised at this being included in Anderson's
highly-praised work without even a caveat.  I could only sit through a
couple of shows (usually when the TV was background to something else)
but don't recall (even allowing for the effect of seeing them on video
rather than in a theater) any particularly daring or innovative
effects. It was widely held that the largest expense on that show was
Barbara Bain's Novocain(r) supply so her face could stay as wooden as
that of Anderson's marionettes.  The show's ultimate putdown was one
of Bob Chartrand's better puns:  "SPACE: 1999--marked down from 2001".

------------------------------

Date:  1 June 1981 14:34 edt
From:  JRuggiero.PDO at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #136

Hello there, this is in response to an inquiry about the hitch-hikers'
guide to the galaxy. There are currently 12 episodes in the guide. I 
have taped them all. the series is broken into sets of six episodes so
if you hear episode 6 it will say that it is the last episode. For 
further idenification, episode 6 is the one where everyone is eaten by
the Hagunenon admiral while he has evolved into a carbon copy of the 
Ravenous Bugblattar Beast of Traal. For more info send me mail.
                                -john

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 06:46:09-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Next fall's Sat. TV and comix

From the latest issue of the Comic Reader:  Rocky and Bullwinkle will
be rerun on NBC.  New episodes of Space Ghost.  And a new show,
Superhero High, 'bout a HS for guess who.  The only one mentioned was
Captain California, a surfer type with a wave that always follows him
around.

As for comix, yes i too wasted my youth, adolescence, and my current
young adulthood on them.  I learned to read from them, and even won
the trivia contest at the only comicon i ever attended (do YOU know
what Phlon is?  No, not Mexican egg custard, its Chemical King's home
planet).  I doubt that Aquaboy and Aquaman are related, especially
since back around 66-67 Aquaman had his own Sat. show.

Personal inquiry:  i'll be working in Waltham this summer.  Would some
nice MIT person let me read news over there?  Pretty please?

tom galloway @ unc

------------------------------

Date:  1 Jun 1981  8:22:48 EDT (Monday)
From: Ben Littauer <littauer at BBN-NOC>
Subject: rocky and bullwinkle

If Boris Badinoff and Natasha are from Pottsylvania, where (and what)
is Rongivia.  There is a bar in upstate NY called the Rongovian
Embassy, and I felt sure it was named for a country in Rocky and his
Friends.  Anybody remember?  [By the way, the Rongo has great mexican
food and a large beer menu...]
                                        Ben

------------------------------

Date:  1 June 1981 12:35 edt
From:  JSLove at MIT-Multics (J. Spencer Love)
Subject:  Crusader Rabbit and Title Query
Sender:  JSLove.PDO at MIT-Multics

I remember Crusader Rabbit.  I think that I became aware of it at
about age 5 (circa 1861), although it could be as much as two years
later.  I lived at that time in the NYC broadcast area, and it was on
very early in the morning, perhaps on Saturday.

My memories of the show are fond, although I don't remember much
detail and haven't seen it in at least 18 years.  The show was broken
up into cartoon-length segments, and several different series were
interleaved.  I particularly remember one about a skunk named Odie,
but there were others.  Does anyone know when or where these might be
seen?  Even if I don't like them anymore (a distinct possibility), I
would like to see them again for curiousity's sake.

I also remember another show, in the late sixties, probably of English
make, which was about three secret agents who crash landed in the 
Himalayas (or someplace like that) and were nursed back to health by 
monks (or aliens pretending to be monks) and given mysterious powers 
that weren't entirely dependable but which included telepathy and 
precognition, as well as some amazing physical abilities.  I have 
forgotten almost everything about it; I think it was called The 
Champions, and it had some really far-out (read, great) theme music 
which I would very much like to get a tape of or music to.  Does
anyone remember enough to identify the music?  Other details would be 
appreciated.  If you reply directly to JSL at MIT-Multics I will 
digestify the replies and submit them, eliminating duplication.

[ The show in question was called "The Champions" (see the next two
  messages for more about this show).  If anyone can identify the
  music for this show, then please send your replies directly to
  JSL at MIT-Multics, not SF-LOVERS.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 11:55 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: The Protectors/Champions

Could "The Protectors" be the show I remember as "The Champions"?  
Three agents of some British government organization acquired various 
super powers (telepathy plus?) when their plane crashed in the 
Himalayas(?) and some remote tribe of advanced beings operated on them
to save their lives.  The leads were two men and a women; one of the 
men was American (Stuart Damon or something?)

Karen

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 2035-PDT (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: The Protectors/Champions

No -- There is no relationship between the two shows.  The characters
in "The Protectors" were quite "normal": no super powers, no remote
tribes helping them.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 0838-PDT (Monday)
From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: Jay Ward etc.

   Where to begin?  First of all, back in the 50's, Crusader Rabbit
and Ragland P. Tiger lived in Galahad Glen and went out to foil the
villains Dudley Nightshade and Bilious Green.  Crusader Rabbit was a
serial, and each episode ended with a promise of the next episode by
title, usually a bad pun.  If the format sounds like Rocky and
Bullwinkle, it's probably because Jay Ward created Crusader Rabbit.
Unfortunately, unlike his later creations, he didn't retain his rights
on the characters. I don't know any more details than that. I can
remember quite a few things about the show, since it aired not too 
long ago in the LA area.
  Recently, on the local Los Angeles program, "Two on the Town", a
couple of reporters visited with June Foray Donovan, who did the
voices of Rocky and Natasha and a host of others (as they say).  It
seems her CB club (she's a CBer) has started a push to get R&B
revived.  No more details were given.  They also interviewed William
Conrad ("Cannon", "Nero Wolfe") who you will no doubt recall was the
Narrator for Rocky and Bullwinkle.  He read a few lines of narration,
then confessed that he couldn't maintain the high pitch for long
nowadays.  He agreed that R&B was one of the best things he'd ever
done.  Then there was a segment filmed at the Dudley Do Right
Emporioum on Sunset, run by Jay Ward's wife, I believe.  Jay Ward
himself is VERY shy and won't talk to reporters.  Not much new
information in that segment.  But Ward has all the merchandising
rights to his post-Crusader Rabbit creations.
   Nobody has mentioned Hoppity Hooper and Uncle Waldo, a R&B clone
also from Ward and Company.  Not as good, but certainly in the same
vein.
   Evidently, the only new stuff Jay Ward is doing nowadays seems to
be Captain Crunch commercials.  A pity.  Television NEEDS rocky and
Bullwinkle.
   The three George-of-the-Jungle segments air on Sunday Mornings in
LA mixed in with old Popeye cartoons on Tom Hatten's "Popeye and
Friends", I believe.  My information is a couple of months old,
though.  And yes, old-time LA TV watchers, that's the SAME Tom Hatten.

   When you find yourself in danger
   When you're threatened by a stranger
   And it looks like you will take a lickin'
   (cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck)
   There is someone waiting who
   Will hurry up and rescue you:
   Ca-a-a-a-all for SUper CHicken

   Fred, if you're afraid we'll have to overlook it;
   Besides you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

   He will drink his super sauce
   and throw the bad guys for a loss
   and he will bring them in alive and kickin'
   (cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck)
    There is one thing you should learn
   When there is no one else to turn
   to, Ca-a-a-a-ll for Super chicken
   (cluck cluck cluck cluck)
    Ca-a-a-a-all for super chicken
   (b-GAK!)

        Mike 

------------------------------

Date: 1 June 1981 12:37-EDT
From: "Kenneth W. Haase,  Jr." <KWH at MIT-AI>
Subject: Jupiter or the Asteroids


There is no problem with getting a mining base on Io, in fact, it may 
very well be easier and more profitable than putting one out in the 
asteroids.  The delta-vee and fuel required to reach a moon of Jupiter
is very close to that required to reach a specific asteroid.  It might
even be less- you have to use energy to be "captured" by the asteroid 
or by Jupiter, and it takes a LOT less to get caught by Jupiter (the 
problem may be staying away!)  So it may actually be cheaper in terms 
of fuel and energy to go to Io than to, say, Ceres.

Further, if you want to go to another asteroid, it takes a truly 
incredible amount of energy, while jumping from Jovian moon to Jovian 
moon is cheap in terms of energy.  There are very large delta-vees for
capture to capture trajectories.

We also know where there are water and other materials in the Jovian
system, so se don't have to search too much - and when we do search it
will be a lot cheaper than a similar search of asteroids.

And finally, there is a REALLY great view!

A good portion of these arguments came from an article of POURNE's
[ Dr. Jerry E. Pournelle -- Jim ], which is anthologized in A STEP 
FARTHER OUT.

                        See you on the ski slopes of Encaladeus,

                                                Ken Haase

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 10:59:16-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: mining on Io

   As an acquaintance of the person who deduced Io's structure and 
dynamics (and got a couple of publications in SCIENCE for it) I would 
agree with all of REDFORD's points about the untenantability of Io.
   HOWEVER, the end of the msg again forgets ?'s point that we can't 
expect continuous linear advances over the course of history.  In
particular, he makes a false analogy with mining in Colorado.  After
all<esm>, Colorado today is practically civilized (with the exception
of Coors)---they're even going to hold a World SF convention there
this summer!<lsm> I would argue that there are a couple of believable
analogies between \\1880's// Colorado and Io-as-it-could-be: both are
a substantial amount of travel time removed from what is called
civilization, both are populated mostly by people you wouldn't want in
your house, and people without skins and personalities of leather
leave both to go "back East" in search of smoother life.
   OUTLANDS is \\precisely// the sort of story that H. L. Gold said in
the first issue of GALAXY that he would never publish, but that
doesn't make this vision of the future completely illegitimate.
Consider Bester's portrayal of 2450 in THE STARS MY DESTINATION; this
is a reasonable extrapolation of the results of a specific innovation,
even though much of the resulting society strikes us as a reversion to
some of the more unpleasant attributes of previous centuries.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  4-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #139
*** EOOH ***
Date:  4 JUN 1981 0814-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #139
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 3 Jun 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 139

Today's Topics:
                      SF Fandom - UFO Fan Club,
     SF Movies - Script query & Outland,  SF TV - It's About Time,
         SF Topics - Children's TV (Rocky and Bullwinkle and
      Jay Ward Productions and Super Chicken and Thunderbirds and
     Johnny Quest and Crusader Rabbit and George of the Jungle) &
              Physics Today (Anti-Sugar) & Space Command
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 2 Jun 1981 0025-PDT (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: UFO Fanclub

The official from the "UFO Fanclub" which I mentioned in a previous 
digest definitely prefers to remain anonymous.  However, they have 
provided me with the address to which any questions can be directed:

        SHADO USCC
        7825 Riverton Ave.
        Sun Valley, CA.  91352

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 0821-PDT
Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3
From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)
Subject: Film query

Since FILM-BUFFS bit the dust before it even started, I am forwarding
this initial query/contribution to SFL instead, in the hope that the
filmic wizards hereupon can answer it.
        
Begin forwarded message

Date: 27 May 1981 1011-PDT
From: Wmartin
Subject: Source for scripts

Is there any commercial or Motion-picture-academy source for movie
scripts? Or do the studios sell copies? If so, are these in final,
released and edited form, or the original script as written without
cutting-room or on-the-fly or ad lib changes? What sort of prices do
they sell for?

Will Martin (WMartin at Office-3)

End forwarded message
                
------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 17:49:06-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: more on Outland


Must we go through this again?:

        From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE Subject: more on Outland

           Second, a thematic nit...  Mining Io two hundred years from
        now will not be like mining Colorado in the 1880s because
        mining Colorado today is not like mining it in the 1880s.

This may be true, this may not be true.  Knowing that A<>B says
nothing about C, which we know little about.  Not being able to read
your mind, I have to guess that you hold the belief that social
innovation and technological innovation follow some kind of linear
trend over time.  This is not demonstrable even with regard to
technological "progress" (how do you explain the dark ages?) much less
with social "progress;" a term whose definition eludes me completely.

I don't think anyone is saying that Ladd's prognostication is 
necessarily correct, the point is that it is not necessarily incorrect
either.  I think, however, you need to make your assumptions explicit.

Byron Howes

------------------------------

Date: 2 Jun 1981 11:41:00-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Harryhausen

  He may have studied live models, but he still doesn't have the 
foggiest idea of how to imitate the motion of an organic (i.e., 
non-mechanical) wing.

------------------------------

Date: 2 Jun 1981 11:38:52-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: inversions

   Various forms of inversion have been described in SF.  --There was
the objection that full inversion (ala DOORWAYS IN THE SAND) would
turn particles into anti-particles. The inverter is specifically 
described as an historic artifact---the second one ever built, because
the first one didn't exclude elementary particles from its inversion.
Inversion at the particle level was suggested in at least one STAR
TREK episode, although not very realistically; inverted duplicates
were not true anti-matter but blew up only when in contact with the
uninverted forms from which they were copied.  --George Gamow
discusses topological inversions in ONE, TWO, THREE. . .  INFINITY;
these are also very effectively illustrated in the Time/Life Series'
book on mathematics. Consider turning a tire tube inside out through
the valve stem (Gamow's example produces a human with guts on the
outside and the universe on the inside; other writers apparently 
consider this extreme.) This is described as a surgical procedure in
Leiber' THE BIG TIME (\\highly// recommended).  This kind of inversion
is also a key to possibly psychokinetic murders in Ian Wallace's
DEATHSTAR VOYAGE; if you PK-invert a tennis ball without allowing for
the fact that you started with more material on the outside than on
the inside, it blows up.  --The inversion in DitS is also not a simple
pair operation (the hero becomes uninverted only by resetting the
controls). An inverted coin sent through a second time comes out with
the raised portions depressed.

------------------------------

Date:  2 Jun 1981 (Tuesday) 0059-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: more kiddee cartoon answers

  I think the professor in Tennessee Tuxedo was named "Phineas T.  
Whoopie".  TT was voiced by Don Adams, later to star in "Get Smart".

[ Thanks also to Antonino Mione <MIONE at RUTGERS> for pointing out
  the correct name of Mr. Whoopie.  --  Jim ]

  I'm not sure, but Aesop&Son is probably a Ward production.  The 
animation style was similar to the others, and each ended in a 
horrendous pun.  Is there a list anywhere/does anyone remember the 
"continued" titles of the "next episodes" for Bullwinkle?
  Super-chicken, as I remember, lived in Pittsburgh. (I remember a 
phone call in one episode, "long distance to Pittsburgh, Pa, please".
  Wasn't one of the vehicles in "Thunderbirds" contained within
another?

[ Yes, one of the vehicles was.  Thunderbird 1 was a rocket craft
  meant to travel through the atmosphere (and thus for air rescues
  and general purpose transport).  Thunderbird 3 was an interplanetary
  spacecraft, designed for space rescues.  Thunderbird 5 was a space
  station that acted as the communications center for operations.
  Thunderbird 2 was a general purpose transport, that carried special
  rescue equipment to the scene of an accident.  Finally, Thunderbird
  4 was the sea rescue craft, rather small and designed to operate
  at great depths.  It was often carried by Thunderbird 2, since it
  could only travel at sea.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date:  1 Jun 1981 1928-PDT
From: First at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Superchicken Song, Tennessee Tuxedo corrections...

The Professor on Tennessee Tuxedo was NOT a Professor--his name was 
Mr. Whoopee and the walrus sidekick was named "Chumley".  And the
voice of Tennessee was, of course, Don Adams.

The DEFINITIVE (maybe) words for Superchicken (according to my
roommate who has spent his childhood behind a CRT--and I don't mean a
terminal!):

        When you find yourself in danger,
        When you're threatened by a stranger,
        When it looks like you may take a lickin'
        [PA-CAWK!]
        There is someone waiting who
        will hurry up and rescue you
        just caaaaaaaaall for SUPERCHICKEN!

        And though it looks like you may have to overlook it,
        Besides you knew this job was dangerous when you took it,

        He will drink his super sauce,
        and throw the bad guys for a loss,
        and he will bring them in alive and kickin'
        [PA-CAWK!]
        There is one thing you should learn,
        when there is no one else to turn
        to Caaaaaaaaaaall for SUPERCHICKEN (x2)
        [PA-CAWK!]

His companion's name was Fred, the lion (who always wore a red
sweatshirt with a backwards "F").

Anybody know about the continued existence of the Doodley Do-right
Emporium in LA??

BTW:  the voice of Roger Ramjet was done by that well-known "To Tell
the Truth" personality, Orson Bean!

Space-Ghost was Gary Owen (of Laugh-in) ...and Pebbles and Bam-Bam are
Sally Struthers and Jay (Dennis the Menace) North!

(and the voice of Rockey the Squirrel was a female--I don't remember 
her name-she was on the Tomorrow show a couple of years ago with Mel
Blanc)...

Thanx for the memories....

--Michael 

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 2319-PDT (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: misc. madness

I can't possibly argue with a source like the Stanford Trivia Bowl, so
I stand corrected:  Gidney and Cloyd.

---

We've been discussing ALOT of different animated programs, and have 
strayed a bit from pure SF -- but, what the hell?  Here are a few 
goodies from some of the shows already mentioned (and a couple of 
others as well):

Tennessee Tuxedo (voice was done by Don Adams [Maxwell Smart]):
   "Tennessee Tuxedo WILL NOT fail!"

Tom Slick (the "racer" from George of the Jungle):
   "There's no such word as FAIL in Auto Racing!"

Super Chicken (whose sidekick, Fred the Lion, always wore a t-shirt 
with a big F on the front -- BACKWARDS):
   "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it!"

George of the Jungle (friend to you and me):
   [Everyone TO George]:
   "Watch out for that tree!  "
   [George]:
   "ARRRRGHHH! [splat]"

Professor Wierdo (from "Milton the Monster"):
   "Six drops of the essence of terror,
   Five drops of sinister sauce..."
   [Count Kook]:
   "When the stirring's done, may I lick the spoon?"
   [Wierdo]:
   "Of course!  Ah hah... of course!"

---

Some more randomness:

Johnny Quest:
   Was the son of a famous research scientist ("Dr. Quest").  They
   flew around in a jet which was more like a Concorde than a Lear!
   The pilot (an all-around helpful he-man type guy) was named "Race
   Bannon".  Johnny had an Indian (from India!) friend named Hadji,
   and a dog named Bandit.

Crusader Rabbit deserves special mention.  I do not think this was a 
J. Ward production -- and it definitely predates Rocky by some ways.  
Crusader and his pal Rags (Ragland T. Tiger) were always engaged in
all sorts of bizarre, episodic adventures.  Quite a show.  The theme
music, by the way, was a rather slow tempo version of a segment from 
"Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch" (Burl Ives fans take note!)

---

Ever notice how so many characters in animated and other programs in
the 60's (not including the greatest comedy of them all, DRAGNET), 
were involved with drugs?

Mr. Terrific had his power pill.  Captain Nice had his super liquid.  
Roger Ramjet had his proton pill.  Super Chicken had his super sauce.
Underdog (voice by Wally Cox) had some chemical enhancement as well.

Alot of kids grew up watching this stuff... is it a small wonder that 
drugs became such an influence on many of their lives?

---

Some people have asked me why I remember so many ridiculous old TV
theme songs and such.  I'll admit to having a good memory, but I also
have an audio aid!  In the early 60's, I had a cheap little tape
recorder.  I had this silly habit of recording TV themes.  I used to
drive people crazy!  "Why would you want to record this theme?  You 
can hear it every week!"  But I didn't listen, and continued to madly 
record almost every theme of interest (to me) that I could find.  I
still have a copy of that tape!  So whenever I have the urge
(infrequently) to hear the theme to "The Invaders", "Time Tunnel",
"Rango", or "It's about Time" (either version!), I whip out the tape
and let it play.  Great nostalgia value.

---

Finally, a few words concerning "It's About Time".  This live-action
show involved a pair of astronauts who find themselves back in
prehistoric times.  This comedy (yes, comedy!) did not do too well in
the ratings, so in an attempt to save it, they had the two main
cavepeople return with the astronauts to the 20th century.  This
involved reworking the theme song a bit, which was rather amusing to
begin with:

  It's about time, it's about space.
  About two men in the strangest place.

  It's about time, it's about flight.
  Traveling faster than the speed of light.

  Here is our tale, of the strange crew...
  As through the barrier of time they flew!

    Past, the fighting minutemen...
    Past, an armored knight...
    Past, a Roman warrier...
    To, this ancient site!

    ... and so on.

---

Man, does this message ever ramble!  Sorry about that.  Consider it a
slice of life -- or the ravings of a madman if you wish.  Until next
time...

--Lauren--

P.S.  Coming soon in a future message:  Colonel Bleep and ZERO ZERO
      island!  Spunky and Tadpole!  And a river into the past.

      Stay tuned.

--LW-- 

------------------------------

Date: Monday,  1 Jun 1981 11:59-PDT
Subject: Crusader Rabbit and Jay Ward
From: mike at RAND-UNIX

Crusader Rabbit has been mentioned as a precursor of Rocky and
Bullwinkle.  How true!  C.R. was made by Jay Ward Productions and was
their first animated series.

I saw a Jay Ward retrospective last year which began with Crusader
Rabbit.  The animation was primitive (!!! talk about limited animation
!!!) but the story line was good, and it was fun to watch.

Currently Jay Ward makes commercials.  Captain Crunch, etc.

Their studios are on Sunset Blvd right off the strip here in LA.  If
you drive down the strip past Larrabee you will see a giant Moose,
Bullwinkle T.  Moose himself, beckoning you to the world-famous Dudley
DooRight Emporium where you can order animated cells of your favorite
heroes, Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris, Natasha, Gidney, etc.  That's also
where I got my "Moosylvania Farkling Squad" Tshirt.

Two years ago at the ASIFA (international animated film society)
annual Cell Sell, June Foray and the others did a live performance of
some old Jay Ward scripts.  It was wonderful.

Michael

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 19:20 PDT
From: Newman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: New Pentagon branch for Space Warfare

Just what we need, a Department of Space Warfare.

Aren't there some treaties prohibiting the use of space for military
weaponry?

/Ron 

------------------------------

Date: Tuesday,  2 Jun 1981 10:28-PDT
Subject: Space treaties
From: mike at RAND-UNIX


Re: treaties prohibiting weapons in space,

       As I recall, there is a treaty prohibiting the basing of
       atomic weapons in space.  [ Actually, the UN Space Treaty
       prohibits weapons of "mass destruction," which can include
       biological nasties and even energy weapons (if they could
       destroy whole cities for instance).  -- Jim ] I don't
       believe there is any treaty against reconnaissance, beam
       weapons or conventional weapons.
       (Conventional weapon example: comrade soviet satellite noodging
       up to friendly innocent tourist american satellite (taking
       pretty pictures of dashas in the south of motherland) and then
       exploding sending tourist satellite to hell).

Re: treaties in general,

       Treaties of this type are, it appears, made out of convenience
       to the major parties of the treaty.  When the technology
       changes, or the advantage changes, the treaty ceases to be.

       This is probably a misquote, but didn't the Mice That Roared
       define a Peace Treaty as "that agreement between countries in
       effect until the next war"?

Michael Wahrman

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  5-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #140
*** EOOH ***
Date:  5 JUN 1981 0827-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #140
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 4 Jun 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 140

Today's Topics:
        SF Fandom - Convention Change (this weekend) & Awards,
              SF Books - Cyber-SF,  SF Radio - HHGttG,
       SF TV - The Champions & The Protectors & Superhero High,
     SF Topics - Children's stories (The Mad Scientists Club and
        Rick Brandt) & Children's TV (Rocky and Bullwinkle and
             Secret Squirl and Underdog and Road Runner) &
                   Physics Today (Moons of Jupiter)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: MCB@MIT-MC
Date: 06/03/81 05:47:03
Subject: FilkCon Change

I got a phone call this evening from Bjo Trimble who has been 
organizing FilkCon West, scheduled for this coming weekend. She told
me that because of a lack of needed support, the Hotel originally
designated for the convention had to be ruled out. There were six
others besides myself who had reserved rooms for the con, and I
imagine Bjo called them too.

Bjo told me that arrangements have been made to have the Con at the 
LASFS buildings, which have been rented for the same weekend, instead.
Also, The cost will now be 5.00 instead of 12.00.

The LASFS is at:

        11513 Burbank Blvd.
        North Hollywood, Ca.

Phone for those who call during the filking is: 760-9234.

------------------------------

From: DP@MIT-ML
Date: 06/03/81 22:38:52
Subject: New hugo/other category.

   first a few points.

1. SF Fan politics is truly a thing unto itself. It is amazing the
   amount of time consumed by the topic.
2. Hugo awards are somewhat at the whim of the con committee. At
   various times differing committees have added additional awards.
   (that is how Asimov got his)

   To add an award, simply propose it as an amendment to the WSFS
(World Science Fiction Society) constitution. This can be done at the
business meeting that occurs at all Worldcon's. (All members of the
current World SF convention are members of WSFS, and eligible to
propose amendments, vote at the business meeting,etc.)  I have some
doubts as to possible success, but it will generate *LOTS* of
impassioned debate.

   Some advance campaigning is in order. This would include letters to
fanzines concerned with running conventions ( Avenging Aardvark aerie,
File 770 [general fannish news zine], Rocky Mountain Oysters 
[published by the Denvention concom], or to the Chicon committee).  
This will (if nothing else) make your name known to fandom.

   As to the nebula, contact your friendly swfa member and ask heesh 
to sponsor it. If the pro in question likes the idea, it may happen.

                                        Jeff

------------------------------

Date:  2 Jun 1981 1507-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: animals

With the book criterion in mind:  The mice, fleas, etc. I mentioned
before from The Martian Chronicles.  (The Silver Locusts is another
name for the Martian Chronicles).

The robot vulture in Goulart's Quest of the Gypsy, a story in volume I
of Weird Heroes, also appears (and is a major character) in the full 
length novel Quest of the Gypsy which is volume IV of Weird Heroes.

One of the robots made by Smythe and Tinker, (the OZ folks who made 
Tik-Tok,) appears in Volume VI of Weird Heroes, Doc Phoenix: The Oz 
Encounter.

The robot birds appear in Web of the Witch World (second in the
series), and possibly in Witch World, as well.
                                                --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 3 Jun 1981 18:21:03-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: animal robots

The Norton novel with a robot bird is "Witch World", the first one in 
the series.

------------------------------

Date:  3 June 1981 12:34 edt
From:  Roach at MIT-Multics (Roger A. Roach)
Subject:  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Sender:  Roach.SysMaint at MIT-Multics

Schedule in the Boston area:

 Sunday at 7:30pm on WBUR (90.9).  June 7th will be episode 8.
 Monday at 10:30pm on WGBH (89.7). June 8th will be episode 1
   (2nd time thru).

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jun 1981 1052-PDT
From: Friedland at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: champions and protectors

As others have stated, the two shows were indeed separate.  The 
Protectors starred Robert Vaughn and a well known English actress 
whose name escapes me at the moment.  The champions starred Stuard
Damon, Richard Gaunt, Alexandra Bastedo, with Anthony Quayle as their
boss, the head of Nemesis (headquartered in Geneva).  Their super
powers included telepathy and the ability to run faster than runaway
delivery trucks.

Peter 

------------------------------

Date:  3 JUN 1981 2345-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Superhero High, etc...

    Having recently begun working at Filmation, I was interested to
note that Superhero High is already mentioned here in SFL.  The first
drafts of the characterization sheets just came out in the office 
yesterday.
    It is, as mentioned, about a high school for young superheros, who
usually haven't gotten the hang of their powers yet.  There are a
number of them --- Captain California (nuclear flying surfboard, a
"Mega Smile" that can stop a train in its tracks) Glorious Gal (the 
superstrong sex interest) Rex Ruthless (aspiring arch-villain) plus 
such as Awol, Trixie, Bratman, Punk Rocky, et. al...
     Speaking of the old and the new, cartoon wise, it's interesting
to be trying to storyboard the new cartoons so they'll be at least
interesting, especially as compared to the old stuff.  We're hampered
by a few restrictive rules -- and oddly enough, it isn't really money
that makes Saturday cartoons so blase (accent grav).  It's simply that
it is hard to make an action program like the Lone Ranger or Zorro
real exciting when you realize that not only is it a no-no for the
Lone Ranger to shoot people, he also cannot hit or kick them, or
shoot, hit or kick anything higher on the evolutionary scale than
photosynthesis.  They were even afraid to give Zorro a sword, though
they finally did.  And not only is personal violence out, but the Lone
Ranger, wishing to stop a train, for instance, would not be allowed to
roll a boulder across the tracks.  Too imitatable.  Might give the
kids ideas.
     So remember, next time you see the Saturday morning cartoons and
wonder where all the excitement went, remember that the guys in the 
company probably sweated blood to make what you're seeing as exciting
as it is -- without blood.  But at least the kids are saved from the
corrupting influence that ruined US, and the studios are safe from
lawsuits.  

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 14:07:39-PDT
From: ARPAVAX.ghb at Berkeley
Subject: Nostalgia  (Rick Brandt and The Mad Scientists Club)

        Ah, what memories keep flowing out under the prodding of this 
discussion.  Two books (or series) were recently mentioned, and I
can't resist adding my little bit.
        Rick Brandt:  I have actually only read the first of what I
gather was quite a large series, but as I recall it concerned the
teen-age son of a famous scientist, who gets involved in all sorts of
adventures.  The first book (published ~1949 (I know it was soon after
WWII, as Rick meets up with a friend who has just gotten out of the
Marines, and fought on Guadalcanal)), involves firing an (unmanned)
rocket to the moon.  From our current position, it is a bit out of
date (I remember Rick racing around the city trying to buy replacement
tubes for the launch console), and some of the science is silly (the
rocket took 2 minutes (!!!) to fly to the moon, and Rick's father
explained to a reporter, "We could have made it in 30 seconds.").
        The Mad Scientists Club was one of my prime delights.  They 
were a bunch of high school students who used all sorts of
(non-science- fictional) gadgets in interesting ways.  In one, they
built a Loch Ness style monster on a canoe hull and, with radio
control, sailed it around the lake, giving tourists a scare.  Another
time they took a mannequin and outfitted him with all sorts of
gadgetry, such as a speaker, and some helium balloons in a backpack,
all radio controlled.  They put the dummy on a monument in the center
of their little town (somewhere in Illinois, I think) on the day
before the towns founders day celebration (they constantly harassed
the poor mayor).  So this dummy stands up on top of the monument and
threatens to jump, and generally ruins the mayor's day, and then flies
away on balloons just as the fire department runs a ladder up to
rescue him.  I used to love the stories.
        Sorry, folks, I don't know the authors of either book.

                                        --george bray

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jun 1981 1651-PDT
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-CSL
Subject: Secret Squirl & Friends.
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow

Re:  Jeff Sharger's message on 'Secret Squirl'...  I literally think 
of good old 'Secret' (even in the voice that his chauffeur 'mole' used
to say his name in) every time I go out of town and wished that my BMW
would be able to fold up into a briefcase like his Limousine did, so I
could take it with me!

Speaking of such classics's, let's not forget "Underdog"!  ...Another 
one of my favorites of the time.  Anyone remember the news paper 
reports name and the name of that evil scientist 'Simon(?)' something 
or other who was always menacing the city.  (What was the city's 
name?).


Lastly, another one of the "Kiddy-type-shows" you get to appreciate 
the humor in more the older you get was BATMAN (& Robin)...  "Stately 
Wayne Manor" and all...  What a gas.

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jun 1981 (Wednesday) 1451-PST
From: DWS at LLL-MFE
Subject: Trivia time ...

For 17 trivia points, what was Natasha's (of R&B fame) last name?

------------------------------

Date:  2 Jun 1981 (Tuesday) 0111-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Official ACME SF-Lover's entry --- This side up  --->

My absolute favorite kids TV show...probably still my favorite cartoon
of all time was certainly the road runner.  I think that its visual
jokes were probably on par with the verbal ones in Rockie (I've now
repelt that name 6 times and can't get it right) et al.  Although more
like engineering than sci-fi, the coyote had some truely marvelous
Rube-Goldbergs.  I remember one scene where he got an "ACME Univac
Electronic Brain."  I wanted to write for a copy of the frame since
our engineering main machine is a Univac.  Everything was of ACME
origin.  The chain reactions and visual puns were really well
conceived -- always to the detriment of Wiley E. Coyote (Fendishis
Hungrius!).  The other great Warner Brothers set was the Daffy Duck
series featuring Space Duck (or something like that) -- Oh, I
remember!


                DUCK DODGERS -- in the 25th Century!!!!!!!

... and the little martian man.  I think WB was (were?) the greatest
cartoonist (s?) alive -- are they (he?) still?

------------------------------

Date: 3 Jun 1981 12:23:32-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Jupiter's moons vs the asteroids

   I have read that Jerry Pournelle publicly retracted most of the 
suggestions made in the article quoted by Ken after the first close 
fly-by of Jupiter discovered, among other things, that Jupiter's 
magnetic field would make life extremely difficult on any of the 
moons. Saturn's moons (e.g. Enceladus) could be less unlivable (I
don't recall anyone specifically determining this from the Voyager 
data) but Saturn is also much further away---a set of colonies based 
on its moons would be fundamentally isolated (by time if not by
delta-vee) even if somebody faxed them up-to-date editions of the New
York TIMES, PRAVDA, SCIENCE, etc.

------------------------------

Date: 2 June 1981 10:42-EDT
From: James M. Turner <JMTURN at MIT-AI>

Shade and Sweet water,
        Doesn't the idea of mining Iota seem just a little far
fetched?  I haven't seen Outland, but Jupiter is a little far off to
be an economically feasible.

------------------------------

Date:  4 June 1981 01:36 edt
From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Shotguns in *Outland*

I can't think of any reason why a shotgun shouldn't work in a vacuum.
You would need to use special grease so that the lubricant doesn't 
evaporate and parts seize. And perhaps some of the critical parts 
would need a bonded layer lubricant, but those differences would be 
strictly internal and not visible. Seems like a very useful weapon to 
me.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  5-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #141
*** EOOH ***
Date:  5 JUN 1981 1021-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #141
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 5 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 141

Today's Topics:
            SF Poll - Favorite Rare SF,  SF News - Locus,
             SF Books - Fantasticats & The Right Stuff,
     SF Movies - Capsule Movie Reviews & Script query answered,
    SF TV - Sex in Star Trek,  Digest Correction - Wording Error,
   SF Topics - Children's stories (Mushroom Planet and Mr. Bass) &
     Children's TV (Super President),  Spoiler - Star Trek (Sex)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4 Jun 81 16:00-PDT
From: mclure at Sri-Unix
Subject: Locus blurbs

The June issue mentions that 1) Asimov has signed a contract for a new
novel in the Foundation series, called Lightning Rod.  2) A new Star
Trek movie is in the works, but with a $6 million dollar budget
instead of $40 million+ for the last one, and reportedly Spock is
killed in the preliminary script (since Nimoy apparently wants out of
the entire thing), 3) Omni's successful science fiction anthologies
may coalesce into a new magazine called Omni Science Fiction (the
first anthology sold 350,000 copies in 3 months, the best for any SF
anthology).

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1981 at 0120-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 
To: sf-lovers at mit-ai

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ FANTASTICATS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I've been invited down to San Antonio to give a talk to a cat club on
cats in SF, and would like to give them a "recommended reading" list
of books which feature felines prominently and IN A FAVORABLE LIGHT.

The books should be fairly readily come by-- if not in the public
library, in paperbacks preferably not too long out of print.

Here's what I've come up with, and would welcome further suggestions.
For instance, I remember seeing a SF/F cat anthology I lack data on.

Poul Anderson: OPERATION CHAOS  <witch's cat>
A. Bertram Chandler: THE INHERITORS  <feline-homo cross-breed>
Cynthia Felice: GODSFIRE  <feline alien culture>
Robert Heinlien: THE DOOR INTO SUMMER  <realest SF cat>
Fritz Leiber: THE GREEN MILLENIUM  <cat aliens on Terra>
Clive S. Lewis: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA  <Deity as cat>
Anne McCaffrey: DECISION AT DOONA  <cat aliens vs. human colonists>
Patricia McKillip: FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD  <magical cats>
Andre Norton: BREED TO COME  <sapient cats inherit Earth>
              CATSEYE  <telepathic cats>
              EYE OF THE MONSTER  <feline alien as trek partner>
              JARGOON PARD  <were-cat hero>
              ORDEAL IN OTHERWHERE  <cat-like alien pet>
              STAR MAN'S SON/DAYBREAK-2250 A.D.  <mutated super-cat>
              UNCHARTED STARS and THE ZERO STONE  <alien in cat body>
              YEAR OF THE UNICORN  <"Beauty and the Were-Cat">

------------------------------

Date: 4 Jun 1981 0832-PDT (Thursday)
From: Heath at UCLA-ATS (Frank Heath)
Subject: The Right Stuff

   I have just completed Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff", and I
highly recommend it.  It is about the X-1, X15 rocket planes and the
original Mercury astronauts.  The title and the theme of the book
relate to a quality supposedly possessed by all the hot military and
test pilots.  It seems to be a combination of macho, bravery, massive
ego and superior flying skills.

   It is good reading and very humorous in parts.  It fills in the 
background for events which I remember growing up with, i.e. the first
satellite and manned launches and the space race.  Also you can see
why NASA got so fanatical about all astronauts being pilots for so
long. No one else could possibly have had the "Right Stuff" to handle
it otherwise, despite the fact that in most of the early missions the
astronauts couldn't have flown the thing if they wanted to.

   Wolfe's style of writing is exaggerated to say the least and could 
easily have distorted the reality of the situation.  Does anybody know
of any other good references or experiences to give more opinions on
the topic?

                        Frank S. Heath

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 1737-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Capsule Movie Reviews   

     (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    ''Excalibur''-John Boorman directed this version of the Camelot 
legend. It's wonderful to look at, but the characters are maddeningly 
arbitrary and unexplained. Nicol Williamson (witty and fun as Merlin),
Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay and Cherie Lunghi star. Rated
R. 2 1/2 stars.
    ''The Hand''-Science-fiction thriller stars Michael Caine as a 
cartoonist whose hand transplant goes awry. It's silly enough not to 
be frightening, but notobe enjoyable. With Andrea Marcovicci. Rated R.
1 star.
    ''Knightriders''-George (''Dawn of the Dead'') Romero's new movie
is the Camelot story on motorcycles.
    ''The Legend of the Lone Ranger''-The masked man's life story
stars Klinton Spilsbury and, as Tonto, Michael Horse. Rated PG.
    ''Outland''-Sea Conery stars in this science-fiction thriller, set
in a mining colory on Jupiter's moon, Io. With Peter Boyle, Frances 
Sternhagen, Kiki Markham. Rated PG.

------------------------------

Date: 4 Jun 1981 12:10:09-EDT
From: deryl at CCA-UNIX (Deryl Humphrey)
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #139

In response to your message of Thu Jun 4 11:10:11 1981:

        One can usually find copies of scripts in a number of places.
 1) Fan clubs
 2) nostalgia stores or husters at conventions
 3) The Drama bookstore in NYC
 4) The film studio

The price will range greatly and availability is scarce.

                                -deryl@cca-unix

------------------------------

Date: Wednesday,  3 Jun 1981 21:26-PDT
Subject: More on Mr. Bass
From: obrien at RAND-UNIX

        Like everyone else, I've been vastly enjoying the nostalgia
discussion, and like everyone else, it's been reminding me of things I
enjoyed more than any reasonable person should.

        It now occurs to me that Margaret Cameron's Mushroom Planet 
series was the first SF I ever read, back in second grade.  Well, I 
decided to do everyone one better by not just remembering how great it
was, but by going out and trying it again at the age of 32.  I was
very pleasantly surprised!  I just read "A Mystery for Mr. Bass",
which, to be fair, I had never read before, and found it quite
acceptable.  Ms.  Cameron obviously is a fan of Welsh mythology and
people, which I had not remembered, and this lends the book a very
pleasant air.  The series is dated, sexist, and strictly for the
childish of mind, but I still have to say I enjoyed it.  A much better
experience than one has any right to, in re-reading childhood
favorites.

------------------------------

Date: 4 Jun 1981 0737-PDT
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-CSL
Subject: Another Saturday Cartoon.
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow

When I read Lauren's message about drugs in cartoons, it reminded me
of another one: Super President.  (he could change himself into any
substance), Perhaps with the aid of a drug?

------------------------------

Date: Thursday,  4 Jun 1981 10:13-PDT
Subject: Correction
From: obrien at RAND-UNIX

        To correct my message yesterday to the digest:

        "Margaret" -> "Eleanor"

        How embarrassing.

------------------------------

Date:  2 Jun 1981 1545-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: favorite rare sf poll

****************** FAVORITE RARE SF POLL PART 2 ******************

At last! (sorry for the delay) here is the second part of the poll of
your favorite obscure science fiction and fantasy.

How to vote:  all the works are labelled below as Ax or Bx, x integer,
A for book length entries and B for shorter works. For each entry you
can vote on obscurity and quality.

Obscurity:  0 -- never heard of it (except on the sfl rare sf
discussion).
            1 -- heard of it.
            2 -- read it.
            3 -- many of my friends have read it, too.

Quality:  Use a scale of 1 (terrible) to 5 (excellent).

Important:  the default for Obscurity is 0, so you don't have to vote
A2 0 if you've never heard of A2.  A vote of "A4 0,5" means you saw A4
mentioned on sfl, read it, and thought it excellent.  People who
submitted entries \should/ vote for them, but do not need to repeat
their comments, (e.g. "Shook my belief in reality"), which will appear
in the poll results.  Additional comments are welcome .  We do have
publishing information on almost all the entries and will include it
in the poll results.

******* SEND YOUR VOTES TO SF-RARE@MIT-AI WITHIN ONE WEEK *******

A1)     Chester Anderson //  The Butterfly Kid (forms a trilogy with A74, A126)
A3)     Baker  // The Garden of the Plynck
A5)     J. G. Ballard // The Crystal World
A6)     "       " // The Overloaded Man
A10)    T.J.Bass // Half Past Human
A11)    T.J. Bass // The Godwhale
A15)    Alfred Bester // Starburst (especially the story Oddy and Id).
A17)    Fredric Brown // "Angels and Spaceships"
A20)    John Brunner // A Planet of your Own 
A22)    Anthony Burgess // The Wanting Seed
A24)    G.K. Chesterton // The Ball and the Cross
A25)    "       " // Tales of the White Horse
A26)    "       " // The Club of Queer Trades
A28)    M. Collins // Lukan War
A30)    Michael Coney // Syzygy
A31)    Michael Coney // Brontomek!
A34)    Authur byron Cover // Autumn Angels
A35)    " " Cover // An East Wind Coming
A40)    Samuel R. Delaney, ed. // Quark 1,2,3,4
A42)    Thomas M. Disch  // Camp Concentration
A44)    Finney // Circus of Dr. Lao
A45)    Finney // The Unholy City (includes The Magician out of Manchuria).  
A46)    Finney // The Ghosts of Manacle
A48)    Randall Garrett (pub as Darrel Langert) // ANYTHING YOU CAN DO.
A50)    Mark Geston // Out of the Mouth of the Dragon
A51)      "     " // The Lords of the Starship
A52)    "       " // The Siege of Wonder
A54)    Philip E. High, in general
A60)    Hubbard // Return to Tomorrow
A64)    William Johnston // Get Smart books:  `And Loving It',
A65)    Sorry Chief,
A66)    Missed it by That Much'.
A68)    M.K.Joseph // The Hole in the Zero 
A70)    Walter Karig // Zotz 
A72)    Damon Knight // Hell's Pavement
A74)    Michael Kurland // The Unicorn Girl
A76)    R A Lafferty // Space Chantey
A78)    Keith Laumer // The Great Time Machine Hoax
A80)    Harold Livingston // The Climacticon
A82)    Angus MacVicar // SUPER NOVA AND THE ROGUE SATELLITE
A84)    Ellen K. McKenzie // Taash and the Jesters 
A86)    Hope Mirrlees // Lud-In-The-Mist 
A88)    Ward Moore // Bring the Jubilee
A89)    Ward Moore // Greener Than You Think
A90)    H. Warner Munn // Merlin's Ring
A91)    "       " // Merlin's Godson
A92)    John Myers Myerson // Silverlock
A94)    Elizabeth Pope // PERILOUS GARD
A96)    John Rackham //  The Double Invaders
A98)    Eric Frank Russel // The Great Explosion
A100)   Arthur Sellings // THE POWER OF X
A101)   Arthur Sellings //  THE UNCENSORED MAN 
A102)   Sellings, in general
A105)   Olaf Stapledon // The Flames
A110)   Leon Stover and Harry Harrison, eds. //  Apeman, Spaceman:
         Anthropological Science Fiction        
A112)   Theodore Sturgeon // Some of Your Blood
A114)   Dan Thomas // The Seed
A116)   Ruth Plumly Thompson // Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz
A118)   Jack Vance // The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph
A120)   VerCours // And Ye Shall Know Them
A122)   Alexander Volkov // The Wooden Soldiers of Oz
A124)   Per Wahloo // Murder on the 31st Floor
A126)   T.A. Waters // The Probability Pad
A128)   A.T. Wright. // Islandia


B1)     A.C. Clarke  //'The Transit of Earth'
B2)     Larry Niven // "The Magic Goes Away" in its original novella-length
        version.  (\Not/ the version published in paperback)
B3)     Theodore Sturgeon // "The Man Who Lost the Sea" 
B4)     Sturgeon // "Maturity"


again, send your votes to SF-RARE @ MIT-AI.
                                                        --cat 

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 6/5/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last in the digest.  While concentrating
on the topic of Sex in Star Trek, it reveals details about the plot
development in the episode entitled "The Doomsday Machine."  Those
unfamilar with this episode may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 11:27:31-PDT
From: C.dasilva at Berkeley
Subject: Sex in star trek

Forwarded from Dan'l Oakes.  Re: Sex in strek

The \UNQUESTIONABLE/ dirtiest strek episode of them all is Norman 
Spinrad's "The Doomsday Machine" -- the perfect blend of sex and 
violence. Norman deliberately infused this apparently-innocent episode
with every bit of Freudian psychosexual symbolism imaginable.
        Consider: The planet eater itself, viewed sidelong, is the 
ultimate phallic symbol; viewed head on, it is a classic \vagina 
dentata/.
        The other captain (the lesser male) attempts to ram his ship
down the thing's maw (fuck the thing) and dies trying.
        Kirk (the dominant male) succeeds, with the following 
resultant event-chain:

               -- The people on the Enterprise are trying to beam
                  him back on board.
               -- The shuttlecraft rams into the thing's maw.
               -- In a side view that looks remarkably like a male
                  orgasm, the thing ejaculates white stuff which we
                  assume to be flames (In a vacuum ???).
               -- The Enterprise crew \finally/ succeeds in beaming 
                  kirk aboard: his hair is disshevelled, he's
                  sweating hard. No doubt if he turned around (he
                  doesn't), we'd see fingernail-scratches on his back.

               Is this or is this not the dirtiest strek ?

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  6-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #142
*** EOOH ***
Date:  6 JUN 1981 0912-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #142
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 6 Jun 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 142

Today's Topics:
                      SF Books - The Right Stuff,
SF Movies - Here's the Plot,What's the Title & Script query answered,
  SF Topics - Children's TV (Underdog and Rocky and Bullwinkle and
    Jay Ward Productions and Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse and
      Crusader Rabbit and Ruff and Reddy and Duck Dodgers and
             Violence in Cartoons) & Children's stories
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1981 14:22:52 EDT (Friday)
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-RSM>
Subject: re: the right stuff

Rusty Schweichart (nth person to walk on the moon, Skylab astronaut,
and California's Energy Secretary) reviewed "The Right Stuff" in
Coevolution Quarterly about a year ago.  He said the book "felt
right," and that Wolfe had done a good job of capturing the atmosphere
of the early NASA days.

By the way, those of you who haven't picked up Coevolution Quarterly
should.  Last issue reprinted a large portion of the AI jargon file,
the issue before that was "The Next Whole Earth Catalog" (that's
right, the whole thing) and several issues ago they published an
entire issue devoted to Gerard O'Neill and his space colonies.  It
tends to be lots of fun, since the editor is interested in Neat
Things.

Anyone interested in details like their address can send me mail.

dm@bbn-unix

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 81 0:07-PDT
From: mclure at Sri-Unix
Subject: here's part of the plot, what's the title?

I remember seeing a film quite a while ago which starred Lloyd Bridges
as a man desperately trying to evade some bad guys in his dreams...  
the dream sequences involved Bridges being pursued through large 
factory complexes at night with large gas flames burning throughout 
the plant. That's about all I remember, but it's pretty vividly 
imprinted in my mind. Anyone know the name of the film?

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1981 14:45:47-PDT
From: ARPAVAX.ghb at Berkeley
Subject: Movie scripts (not to buy, but at least to look at).

        In the LA - Hollywood area, a good source for looking at movie
scripts is the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and 
Sciences.  The AMPAS library is located in their headquarters building
in Beverly Hills (I forget the address, sorry, it's been a while since
I was there).  The library is open to anyone, but has rather odd
hours, so I recommend calling first.  I know they have copy machines,
so you can copy stuff.

        Another good source would be UCLA or USC film libraries, 
although I haven't ever used them, so I can't make any specific 
recommendations.

        Hope this is of some help to someone.

                                -- george bray

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1981 00:15:01-PDT
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: WOW

Lauren, you are amazing.  Your message about old shows shook out 
mental cobwebs I didn't know I had!  Could someone tell me more about
ASIFA?  Maybe others on the list would like to know, too.

David Ungar

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1981 1119-PDT (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Underdog

For the record...

The reporter was Miss Polly Purebred.
The villain was Simon Bar Sinister.

IT'S A BIRD!
IT'S A PLANE!
IT'S A FROG!

A FROG?

NOT BIRD NOR PLANE NOR EVEN FROG, IT'S JUST LITTLE OLD ME ...
UNDERDOG!

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1981 0605-PDT
From: Lynn Gold <G.FIGMO at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Cartoons

1) The evil scientist in Underdog was Simon Barsinister, if I am
   correct.  [ Thanks also to Peter (f at Berkeley) for sending
   in a reply to this query.  --  Jim ]
2) I remember Boris (Rocky and Bullwinkle) Badanov; was Natasha's
   last name the same?
3) Does anyone know the name of the girl in the Good-and-Plenty
   commercials with Choo-Choo-Charlie?

--Lynn 

------------------------------

Date:  5 June 1981 2101-EDT (Friday)
From: Lee.Moore at CMU-10A

Natasha's last name was "Nogoodnick".

------------------------------

Date: 6 Jun 1981 00:11:54-PDT
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: Natasha's last name was

Fatale!!
Is there a TPTP (Trivia Point Transfer Protocol, not what you think)
for sending me my 17 points?

David Ungar

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1981 08:48:26-PDT
From: f at Berkeley
Subject: J Ward Enterprises.

        Apparently still exists, and supposedly has agents in
Disneyland with the following recognition sign:
        "That's something you don't see every day Chauncey",
        "What's that, Edgar ?"
        "A Flying Bull Moose in a bathrobe (?)"
        "Oh I don't know, Edgar".

        Also if at the top of the Matterhorn you shout "Hooray for J
Ward Enterprises" the whole structure is supposed to shake and give
you a MUCH more interesting (scary) ride.

        They sell all sorts of R+B Trivia items, as well.

                                -- Peter.

------------------------------

From: EGK@MIT-MC
Date: 06/01/81 02:08:17
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #124

Does anyone remember Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse?  They lived in a
Cat Cave and whose guns could do more tricks than were in Felix's bag.
Anyone remember The Frogs name?  How 'bout Crusader Rabbit and Rags??

-- Edjik

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1981 09:50 PDT
From: Weyer at PARC-MAXC
Subject: more cartoons

two more series come to mind (apologies if these have already been
mentioned in previous megabytes of SF lovers)

Ruff and Reddy -- cat and dog, I think.  several of their shows were
about extraterrestrial creatures from "Muni-mula" (aluminum spelled
backwards).

in a another series (the name of which I forget, but if I had to guess
I'd say something like Willie Winkie), the heroes got into trouble at 
various times and you got to stick your magic transparent screen on 
the tv screen (probably not too safe radiation-wise), and draw in 
various aids, for example, ladders, shields, etc.  needless to say, as
soon as I mailed away for my magic screen and received it, they 
discontinued the show.  somewhat reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451 (at 
least the movie version), where tv programs were participatory.

Steve

------------------------------

Date: 06/05/81 1622-EDT
From: THOKAR at LL
Subject: A correction and more Warner Brothers

    First a correction to Thursday's Digest:

                 DUCK DODGERS -- in the 24&1/2 Century!!!!!!
                                        ------

    Speaking of WB cartoons, Mel Blanc did (does?) the voice over on
 most of them.  For anyone who has watched them lately, they have
 been badly mutilated.  As RODOF (Bob?) mentioned, cartoons must have
 most of the violence removed from them now-a-days.  Unfortunately
 this includes the Road-Runner "classics," which leads to very choppy
 story lines. (Pun somewhat intended.)  No longer does Wiley E. Coyote
 splatt on the bottom of a seemingly endless canyon. Sigh -- for the
 lost days of mispent youth.

    As for my vote for the all time best cartoon:

                       DUCK AMUCK

 One of the funniest cartoons ever scripted.  Luckily it can still be
 seen at SF cons.  Usually shown to a packed and cheering house.

                                   Tanstaafl,
                                     Greg

 P.S. For those who don't remember, Duck Amuck is about Daffy Duck's
      problems with an illustrator who keeps changing the scene --
      and Daffy.  

------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1981 11:12:57-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: bookworms

   Let's hear it for weird kids who raid libraries! I misplaced this 
habit for a few years when I was living in areas where there wasn't 
much of a library, but picked it up again when I went to boarding 
school, where I was severely bored (sorry . . .) for a variety of 
reasons.  The school had an arrangement with the central country 
library, a marvelous old granite and sandstone pile that looked as if 
it should have had bats flying out of and around it and skeletons in 
the dungeons, that students could take out books for assigned papers; 
it took me over two years to persuade an English teacher to let me do 
a paper on SF, so in the meantime I persuaded the library to let me 
buy a card like any out-of-towner from within the county and took out 
a bicycle-load of books (~12) every Saturday.

------------------------------

From: TRB@MIT-MC
Date: 06/05/81 09:42:24
Subject: Re: Violence in Cartoons

RODOF@USC-ECL explains that cartoonists today are severely restricted 
by no-violence rules.  I grew up in the Bronx, and I really don't 
think that we Bronx kids of the sixties, who were weaned on 
imaginative TV, were nearly as violent as the Bronx kids are today, 
who watch trash all day.  Maybe they're so rebellious because they're 
fed garbage all day, gigo, did you ever consider that?  If you believe
that the reason that old cartoons are better than new cartoons is 
violence, well, you're mistaken.  We've been doing a lot of 
reminiscing in this space recently, and I haven't heard anyone say 
that they miss the old cartoons because they were violent.

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1981 at 1052-CDT
From: clyde at UTEXAS-11
Subject: Fond video memories.

        Fie on those naysayers who have forced our cartoon writers and
artists into producing electronic pablum for the kiddies consumption!!

        Perhaps I'm not quite normal, but those 'toons I enjoyed the
best (and still am willing to get up at 8:30 Saturday morning for) are
those Chuck Jones Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck/Sylvester and
Tweety/ Roadrunner cartoons which feature the 'villian' getting
mangled in 20 different ways within the space of 3-5 minutes.

        Even as a kid, I knew that I couldn't stop a freight train
with my hand, or could survive the hundred-foot falls that Wile E.
Coyote took with such frequency. Gone are those days where the good
guys could beat the living crap out of the baddies (or the baddies
would beat the crap out of themselves -- a favorite thing for Elmer
Fudd and Mr. Coyote to do). Now we must be "non-violent", "show
alternatives to conflict", and other such well-intentioned but
blanderizing things.

        Sigh. Why does it always seem that the best things in popular
culture always have been in the past? I hate think of these rug rats
growing up and being nostalgic about "The Drac Pack" (or some other
such pseudo-animated teen-identification junk), perhaps never to have
seen a few good Rocky and Bullwinkle 'toons or laughed as Sylvester
bites the dust under the pile driver while trying to swing over to
Tweety's cage so he can EAT the little birdie, (of course).

        I guess that's what happens when you "grow up"......  

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  7-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #143
*** EOOH ***
Date:  7 JUN 1981 0213-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #143
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 7 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 143

Today's Topics:
        SF Fandom - Awards & APAs,  SF Books - Fantasticats,
  SF Topics - Children's TV (Winkie Dink and You and Planet Patrol)
          Compu-fiction & Children's stories (Jane Langton),
                  Humor - "About a Secret Crocodile"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 6 Jun 1981 12:44:32-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Hugos

  To say that Hugo awards are "at the whim of the con committee" is no
longer anywhere near correct. A committee can give special awards
(e.g., St. Louiscon (1969) gave Armstrong/Aldrin/Collins an award "for
the best moon landing ever", and I'm working on lobbying the
Denvention II committee for a similar award for Young&Crippen) but for
the past several years concoms have specifically been forbidden to
call these awards Hugos.
  A concom can include \\one// additional category, which must go
through the same process of nomination and balloting as the rest of
the Hugos.  (One such tried to use this as a mechanism for giving a
Hugo to Tolkien, offering the RingS as an example of a "series";
nominees included the Lensmen and the Foundation trilogy, which won.)
The problem is that it would be easy to exhaust the worthwhile series
if this were made permanent (look at what happened to the Gandalf
(Life Master of Fantasy), which is about to be banned from the Hugo
ballot); mechanisms for non-annual awarding could be very painful.
  As it happens, SFWA already has a Life Master award for SF; I think
past winners include Heinlein, Williamson, and Simak, all of whom are
a long way past their primes.
  If there's anyone seriously interested in this, I'd suggest they
draw up a proposal and knock it around a while. I would \\not//
suggest trying to get it into the Denver business meeting; they'll
have enough problems with pass-on business and you'll probably get a
much better motion if you pass it around some people who know the
history of the Hugos.

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1981 23:55:40-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: cats in sf

As a true cat-lover (almost more than an sf-lover) I cannot help but 
respond to this:

  (1) Larry Niven's Kzinti (known space series) may not be the most 
flattering image of cats, but are remarkably accurate representatives 
of feline psychology (predatory, but not seriously; always making war 
just a little bit before they are ready to; immensely proud with great
dignity and always a little embarrassed at a show of extreme pleasure
or emotion...I always wondered why Wu didn't dangle a rubber ball on a
string in front of one.)

 (2) The artificially evolved cat-people in Cordwainer Smith's
stories, notably Alpha Ralpha Boulevard.

Many more, many more...just have to get back to my library to get 
authors and titles correct.

purringly, Byron Howes

------------------------------

Date: 6 Jun 1981 1145-PDT
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Cats in sf
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

Do the cat-people in Cordwainer Smith's stories count as being of 
interest to a cat club?

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1981 23:51:11-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Purr-fect SF

Phyllis Eisenstein also has a race of cat-like aliens, though the
title escapes me at the moment.  It might have been "Starcats".

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1981 23:52:32-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: Purr-fect SF

Don't think I have read that.  I am also trying to remember the name 
and author (possibly Laumer) of a short story about a kitten who can't
figure out why dumb babies grow up to be intelligent humans (and drink
coffee!) and lively intelligent kittens grow up to be dumb lazy cats.
Is convinced that he won't do this but along the narration somehow has
to give up his kitten-soul to the child in order to protect it.

------------------------------

Date:  4 June 1981 01:37 edt
From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Postal APA for cartoon lovers

Since there seem to be such a large number of cartoon fans around:

There exists a postal apa for animation buffs. This is presently 
circulated by mail every other month. (For those used to SF-Lovers, 
this interval is comparable to the reversing of the magnetic poles.)

There will be a membership limit of about 30, but there is presently 
space. If you have an interest, type up a contribution of at least one
page (no upper limit), make 30 copies of it, and send them to

        ApaToons
        c/o Gigi Dane
        3433 W. Sierra Vista
        Phoenix, AZ 85017

Deadline for the first mailing is July 9, 1981. Future deadlines at 
two month intervals.

For those who aren't familiar with postal apa's, I will let Ye Ed 
dredge up the last explanation that went through here and insert it
                   <right after this line>


[ OK, I'm caught.  APAs are Amateur Press Associations.  The members 
  of the APA all submit some contribution (usually having something
  to do with the purpose of the APA, like Science Fiction or
  animation buffs - however, a lot of biographical material and
  random (although often enjoyable) noise is also submitted).  Some
  poor soul then goes through the mush and orders them into an issue
  of the APA, adding appropriate editorial comments (mainly restricted
  to administrative matters), and mails out an issue to each member of
  the APA.

  Variations on the same theme: some APAs (like the one Paul refers
  to) require you to send enough duplicates of you contribution for
  all the issues that are to go out.  Others only require an original.
  Some editors of the APAs charge the members (for time, postage,
  supplies, and duplicating costs, if any), while others are silly
  enough to do it out of love.  Some APAs come out weekly, but usually
  new issues come out monthly or so.  --  Jim ]


                                Paul

------------------------------

Date:  6 June 1981 14:27 edt
From:  Margolin.PDO at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Winkie Dink

The name of the cartoon which had viewer participation was "Winkie
Dink and You".  Our heroes would get into trouble with bad guys, and
we could save their asses.  The only situation I remember is them
being stuck in a pit, so the viewer had to draw a staircase or a rope
or something.  They were then able to climb out and get the bad guys.

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 2037-EDT
From: Antonino Mione <MIONE at RUTGERS>
Subject: 1960's Sci-fi.

I am trying to find someone who remembers something about a series
called 'Planet Patrol'. It was done with puppets similar to those in
'Fireball-XL5'.  I do not remember the names of the characters. All
I remember is the ship which they used to travel throughout the solar
system. It was similar to any cylindrical rocket but it had a doughnut
shaped tube around this rocket. It landed on a platform similar to the
one which the Millenium Falcon lands on in TESB. An access arm was
used to enter and exit from the ship. Does this sound familiar to
anyone???

Tony:<mioNE>

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 1137-PDT
From: LEWIS at SRI-AI (Bil Lewis)
Subject: "Compu-fiction"

        As I remember, at the West Coast Computer Faire there were 
some people pushing some sort of computer based fiction story that 
allowed the user\\\\reader? to stick in their two-bits worth and 
redirect the story. Anyone out there know more about this?

        There is method to my madness here, as some of us are going to
meet with a gentleman from a large publishing firm next week that is
interested in exploring the possibilities. Now I have a good idea of
the general type of things that are possible, but would love to her
what others think.

        Full text generation from some sort of formal schema is out of
course (See Mann & Moore in AJCL V7 N.1.  They cover the work of 
Badler, Meehan, Schank, Carbonell, &c.). Thus we can't pretend to use 
AI, but are rather stuck with writing out all of the text ourselves 
and using "clever programming". The real question is "How clever can 
that programming be?" Ideas?

-Bil

------------------------------

Date: 1981-5-20-12:59:39.71
From: Martin Minow at PHENIX at METOO
Sender: Paul Young (YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO)
Subject: Jane Langton Mysteries -- re: Morris Keeshan's comment in issue 122

Jane Langton has written three murder mysteries that I know of, all
HIGHLY recommended.  Two of them, The Transcendental Murder (also
called The Minuteman Mystery), and The Memorial Hall Murder are
currently available in paperback.  All of her books are enjoyable and
highly literate.

The Transcendental Murder is set in Concord Mass. during Patriot's Day
festivities.  Among other things, it suggests a love affair between 
Thoreau and Emily Dickenson.

The second book, Dark Nantucket Noon, concerns a murder that takes 
place during an eclipse of the sun.  To say more would spoil the 
ending, but SFL readers should enjoy it.  Check your local library.

The Memorial Hall Murder is set in Harvard's Memorial Hall during 
rehearsals for an annual performance of Handel's Messiah.

The first two were featured on WGBH's "Reading Aloud" about two 
summer's ago.


Regards.

------------------------------

Date: 19 May 1981 13:51:35 EDT
From: Ralph Muha <muha at BBN-NU>
Subject: time and tin cans ...

They fed the problem to the computer by pieces and by wholes.  The
machine was familiar with their lingos and procedures.  It was
acquainted with the Non-Valid Context Problems of Morgan Aye and with
the Hollow Shell Person Puzzles of Tony Rover.  It knew the Pervading
Environment Ploy of Maurice Cree.  It knew what trick-work to operate
within.

Again and again the machine asked for various kinds of supplementary
exterior data.

"Leave me with it," the machine finally issued.  "Assemble here again
in sixty days, or hours--"

"No, we want the answers right now," John Candor insisted, "within
sixty seconds."

"The second is possibly the interval I was thinking of," the machine
issued.  "What's time to a tin can anyhow?"

[from "About a Secret Crocodile" by R. A. Lafferty]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  8-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #144
*** EOOH ***
Date:  8 JUN 1981 0654-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #144
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 8 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 144

Today's Topics:
      SF Fandom - DENVENTION and L-5,  SF Books - Fantasticats,
          SF Movies - Raiders of the Lost Ark & Film query
                 (The Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird)
        SF TV - Star Trek Guide & Rocky and Bullwinkle Guide,
          SF Topics - Children's TV (Winky Dink and You and
 Colonel Bleep and The Big World of Little Atom and Fireball XL-5) &
   Compu-fiction & Children's stories (The Three Investigators and
 Spaceship Under the Apple Tree and Here's the Plot,What's the Title)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: POURNE@MIT-MC
Date: 06/04/81 03:27:43
Subject: DENVENTION and L-5

The L-5 Society will be having a big presence in the Denvention, with
booth and parties and the like.  OMNI will be working with us, as will
some aerospace companies.

Those who would like to help--we'll need people for the booths and for
hospitality and for lotsa other stuff, such as assisting Rotlser
who'll be doing badges for new recruits and decorating badges for old
hands--and some authors who will autograph books ONLY at the L-5
table--and like that--

Anyway if you would like to help, make contact with Tom Morgan and
Jane Campbell, 40 West Fair Ave., Littleton, COLO 80120, 303-797-8342
and offer services.

For those tiny few who don't know what a Denvention is, it's the World
Science Fiction Convention held over Labor day Weekend, in Denver.

[ Specifically, Denvention will be held in the Denver Hilton from
  September 3 till September 7.  Please see the Convention Calendar
  for specific details.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

From: LEOR@MIT-MC
Date: 06/07/81 04:34:24
Subject: Purr-sonal reminiscence of purr-nicious feline in short story

I may have read many stories involving cats (and their derivatives),
but one really GOT me. It was called "Fluffy", by PKDick, from "Golden
Man." If you're the type who KNOWS deep down that those damn
hair-shedders are nothing more than demonic manifestations, you'll
just LOVE this story...
        -leor

------------------------------

Date: 7 Jun 1981 1036-EDT
From: PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling)
Subject: Smart Kittens -> Dumb Cats

"Spacetime for Springers" by Fritz Leiber.  Leiber has written a lot
of "cat stuff."  Another example is "Wanderer," whose heroine is
Tigerishka, a felinoid star-traveller.

------------------------------

Date: 7 Jun 1981 11:38:41-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: bch@berkeley's cat story

In response to your message of Sun Jun 7 02:58:20 1981:

   is Fritz Leiber's "Space-Time for Springers"; it has been reprinted
a couple of times. (Those of you who are continually looking for book 
printings of short stories are encouraged to get Contento's index.) I
believe it is the first of a small group of stories dealing with a
[kitten] named Gummitch (or something similar and equally improbable).
Most of the later stories were undistinguished and have not been
reprinted.

   I question the comparison of Terran cats with Kzinti; I feel that
Kzinti were created by someone who doesn't like cats. There is no
indication of actual playfulness in any of the Kzinti (beyond
Speaker's fondness for having his ears scratched, which is a pretty
slim analogy) and most cats have more patience than the Kzinti---in
particular, Speaker's declaration that Louis Wu's challenge was
excessively verbose ("A simple scream of rage is sufficient." Louis:
"You scream and you leap. Great.") is far short of the elaborate
formalities of Terran cats about to battle.

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1981 2309-PDT
From: Zellich at OFFICE-3 (Rich Zellich)
Subject: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Just caught a sneal of RotLA - it's a definite must-see.  Maybe some
of the effects could have been done a little better, but the whole
things a gas - funnier 'n hell (and because it's supposed to be, not
because it's so bad it's funny).  

------------------------------

Date:     5 June 1981 2251-edt
From:     Paul Schauble              <Schauble at MIT-Multics>
Subject:  Episode guides for Star Trek and Rocky & Bullwinkle

One of the people who reads SF-Lovers over my shoulder asked about 
episode guides for Star Trek and for R & B. I think that if these
don't exist, they should. Judging from the conversations recently,
there are people out there who have the data handy. Anyone care to get
those flying fingers in action and produce something we can FTP??

------------------------------

Date: 7 Jun 1981 0531-PDT (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: misc. comments and a query

Here we go...

The program where you would draw on your television screen to "aid" 
characters was called "Winky Dink and You".  Luckily, at the time the
show aired, few people had color televisions, so the radiation risk
was not as bad as it COULD have been.  Still... not a great idea to
play around so close to the screen.  Probably almost as bad as using a
modern "touch-with-your-finger" type CRT!  Personally, I refuse to use
color CRT terminals close-up for long periods...

---

Remember Colonel Bleep?  This was a "minimum animation" type cartoon,
largely consisting of still frames.  The Colonel (who was some sort of
alien who always wore a fishbowl type space helmet) operated from
"ZERO ZERO ISLAND".  He had two "pals", -- Squeak, who was a puppet
(and I believe often wore a cowboy hat), and Scratch, who was a
caveman.  This program is so obscure I can hardly remember it -- the
only plot I can recall involved Squeak and Scratch having helmets
locked on their heads that turned them into zombies of a sort -- the
work of the Colonel's enemies.

---

In this same era we come to two programs which occasionally bordered 
on SF.  The first is "Spunky and Tadpole".  This animation paired a
boy (Spunky) with a bear (Tadpole).  Don't ask me to explain it.  I
believe it was episodic.  It also has faded deep into the mustier 
regions of my brain, where few dare to tread.

The second show is "Herjay's Adventures of Tin Tin".  Tin Tin was a
boy who had a number of non-SF type adventures in his various episodic
segments -- but one series of shows had him on a rocket to Mars.  
These shows were later re-edited (much to my surprise) into a feature
length film, which actually runs on television occasionally.

---

One program that lies on the boundary between entertainment and
education involved a pair of (live action) boys who take a rowboat
ride down a river in some basically metropolitan area.  They pass
through a tunnel, and when they come out the other side, discover they
are millions of years back in time, and moving rapidly farther back as
they move farther down the river.  The show involved their seeing
various animals at different stages of evolution as they moved deeper
and deeper into the past with each episode.  Eventually, in a somewhat
unclear segment, they reach the "creation" of the Earth as a molten
mass in the Big Bang.  It is unclear what happens to them at this
point (at least to my memory) -- but I believe there was some
implication that they looped back around in cyclical time.

---

Gee, here's one that's pretty obscure!  How about "The Big World of 
Little Atom?"  This animated program taught science facts in the guise
of entertainment.  Anyone remember?

---

And now, a query.  For years I have been trying to locate a print of a
film/TV show that nobody but me seems to remember -- a bad sign to say
the least!

The film version was called "The Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird", I
believe.  It was later broken up into many episodes and aired on
television under the name "The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep".

This was an animated feature, involving a shepherdess who was being 
held prisoner by a king.  A chimneysweep was trying to rescue her,
with the help of a strange bird -- Mr. Wonderbird.  The element of
this film that made it so fantastic was the technology that this king
had at his disposal.  He lived in a tremendous mechanized palace.  He
was continually dropping enemies down trap doors that would appear 
beneath them at the pull of a lever or the push of a button.  He had a
fantastic transportation system for getting around the castle, and a 
large robot which also was important to the plot.  It has been years 
since I have seen it, but I remember it very fondly.  Any information 
about where it might be hiding -- such as who produced it, would be 
appreciated.  Even someone else verifying that THEY remember it would 
make me feel a bit better.  Thanks much.

[ Please send any information about this film directly to Lauren,
  not to SF-LOVERS.  --  Jim ]

  --Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date:  7 Jun 1981 (Sunday) 0637-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: The mechanics of Winky Dink

Firstly, one was asked to purchase a special clear plastic mat that
was taped to your TV screen and included a set of water soluble
markers.  W.D. was mainly a line drawn cartoon and on occasion the
main character would say...

"Ok, boys and girls, now, trace that door over there so that I can
escape."

Then they would pause for little jeffy to trace the door on his mat in
erasable marker (or on the TV screen in indelible black marker if 
mommy hadn't bought a mat for him -- clearly the entire point of the 
show was to get the parents to buy these things) and after a
reasonable interval the screen would shift and "lo and behold!" the
door appeared on the once bare wall by virtue of its having been
traced on the mat.

This was actually quite clever on several counts...(1) the obvious 
cleverness of the design of the system, (2) the marketing strategy of 
providing an extra income to the program (who was, I'm sure, getting 
some percentage of the mat profits), (3) the writers didn't have to do
much work... most of the show was pauses to draw and erase the mat.

Another technique that I count as quite clever along the same lines as
the Winky Dink mat is the little teaching machine that looks like a 
robot and houses an eight-track cassette.  Now, I had always 
considered 8-t a useless pursuit until I saw this thing....  On t-1 
they ask a question that has several possible solutions and then ask 
the listener to choose the correct solution from one of the "answer" 
buttons labeled A,B,C,D.  How clever-- of course, the "answer buttons"
were the track selectors and the track that had the right answer said 
"very good" and then played some music while all the other tracks were
catching up with an error report and detail explanation of the correct
answer.

One of the neatest things about that is that, since 8-ts are 
continuous loops, you can do all sorts of clever q-a mapping from one 
tack to the next.  Actually, I have to think about this some more to 
see whether it is really capable of having simultaneous questions on 
the different tracks.

------------------------------

Date:  7 Jun 1981 (Sunday) 1904-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Compu-fiction

  In regards to the user-input fiction story...  I seem to recall a 
similar device at the '64 World's Fair (NYC) using segmented motion 
pictures ("movies").  After every few minutes, (at a possible split in
the plot,) the audience was allowed to vote on which course of action
to take (binary choices).
  The trick was, rather than having 2^n movie segments, was to have 
the two courses after choice reconverge to a common next-decision.  
Thus, only 2*n movie segments were needed.

           -Steve

------------------------------

Date: 7 Jun 1981 0926-PDT (Sunday)
From: Mark at UCLA-SECURITY (Mark Kampe)
Subject: theme to Fireball XL-5


Mike Urban, knowing of my strange tastes and talents asked me to
submit this to you - saying that you had been searching for it.  I may
have missed a final verse, but I am fairly certain that these are the
first two verses of the fireball XL5 theme song.

The person who relayed the question also gave me a bonus problem (far
more difficult) that being the theme tune to "clutch cargo".  I offer
only an attempt at that.

Now, without further adieu....

        I wish I was a spa-a-ace man,
        I wish that you were too.
        We'd cruise around the universe,
        together, me and you.

Chorus: Through a wonder-world of stardust,
        We'll zoom away to mah-ahrs....
        My heart would be a fireball...
           (doo-doo-oo-doo)
                          a fireball...
        And you would be my venus of the stah-ah-ahrs


        We'll take a trip to Jupiter,
        and maybe very soon,
        we'll cruise along the milkyway
        and land upon the moon

Chorus


Clutch Cargo, however, was a far more difficult problem.
I remember the rhythm and harmony, but the melody was quite illusive
(and of course I know it was instrumental).

The rhythm was quite simple

         4/4 - moderate

                                          _       _
                        _       _   _    |       |
                       |       |_  |_    |       |
                       |       |   |    O       O
                      O       O   O



      played on bongo like drums with the last two notes struck
      on a drum tuned about 1/4 higher than the first three

The harmony was more an (american) indian like tune played on a wood
flute.  I have a pretty good memory of it, but I can't write music
without a keyboard in front of me - but it might have been
                                                 _
                              _                 |_   _
         _   _   _      _    |_   _  _     _    |   |_   _       _   _
  _     |_  |_  |_     |     |   |_ |_    |    O    |   |_   _  |_  |_
 |      |   |   |      |    O    |  |     |        O    |_  |_  |_  |
 |     O   O   O      O         O  O     O             O    |_ O   O
O                                                          O

My memory on the melody is not good, but I seem to recall that it was
also played on a wood flute (about 1/2 octave lower) and that it
started with the harmony and then danced around scales while keeping
the same rhythm - but no bets on that.


---mark---

------------------------------

Date: 17 May 1981 15:17-EDT
From: "Kenneth W. Haase,  Jr." <KWH at MIT-AI>
Subject:  The Three Investigators


Ah! Fond remembrances!  The Three Investigators were three high school
kids (one an abnormally precocious one) who started their own 
detective agency based in the precocious ones uncles junkyard.  They 
had Alfred Hitchcock as their more-or-less mentor, whom they hardly 
ever saw.  It was a neat series with all kinds of "kids show up 
adults" scenes in it.

Louis Slobdkin's stories about the "spaceship under the apple tree" 
also strike a familiar bell.  It was about an alien boy who lands on a
farm and becomes friends with a terran boy, joins the boy scouts etc; 
Fun reading.

Does anyone out there remember a series of short stories about a group
of boy scouts who find a time machine behind a rock fall and have a 
lot of fun traipsing through the ages with it.  There are some really 
nice scenes in them, like life in an underwater farm, or an obnoxious 
boy-king's visit to the twentieth century..  Anybody remember who 
wrote them?

Ken Haase

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line:  9-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #145
*** EOOH ***
Date:  9 JUN 1981 0451-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #145
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 9 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 145

Today's Topics:
        SF Fandom - APAs,  SF Books - Fantasticats & Tin-Tin,
                 SF Movies - Raiders of the Lost Ark,
   SF Topics - Compu-fiction & Children's TV (Warner Brothers and
      The Thunderbirds and Merry Marvel Marching Society's and
        F.A.B. query and Courageous Cat and Colonel Bleep and
               Larriat Sam and Rocky and Bullwinkle) &
         Children's stories (Spaceship Under the Apple Tree)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 7 Jun 1981 11:44:33-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: apa description

  is a bit inaccurate; I don't know anyone to whom you can send a true
original (as opposed to a cut stencil or typed ditto master) without 
money for xeroxing and expect to produce a finished zine. With no 
exceptions that I know of, each member of an apa is responsible for 
assuring that a sufficient number of copies of hir contribution is 
produced. There's also an unclarity in the remarks about editorial 
comments; I don't know anyone who has gotten away with putting such 
remarks on people's contributions.

[ The editorial comment reference in the original description of APAs
  was made in a context that implied that the comments were upon the
  issue as a whole (and mainly administrative), not individual
  contributions.

  Also, the description separately discussed duplication of
  contributions and possible costs of belonging to the APA.  Many
  APAs will accept simple originals (although then there is usually
  a charge for xeroxing, as chip points out), while some will demand
  X number of copies.  Sending ditto masters is frequently the
  cheapest thing to do all around (if the APA in question is set up
  to handle then of course).

  The best strategy to follow if you wish to join an APA is to first
  find out all their requirements and discover whether membership is
  open at this time (some APAs are so popular that contributing
  membership is restricted, although you can usually purchase copies
  of the APA).  -- Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 8 June 1981 21:35-EDT
From: Brian J. Kreen <KREEN at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Cats and SF

 Another book dealing with such beasties (lovable though!)  is
Decision at Doona, where humans meet 8' tall walking and talking
feline "people."
                Decision at Doona
                Anne McCaffrey
                Ballantine Books, 1969

------------------------------

Date:  8 Jun 1981 at 0100-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ MISCELLANY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

RE-- cats: Thanks to all who sent suggestions.  Cordwainer Smith's 
works were the overwhelming majority of the nominees.

The kitten-story recalled by BCH at Berkeley is Leiber's "Spacetime 
for Springers".  It couldn't help but make a cat lover puddley around 
the eyeballs.

As for cat-lovers in the \other/ sense, I would recommend the Catteni 
spaceman in McCaffrey's short story, "The Thorns of Barevi".  (SF-Lers
familiar with "...Barevi" will surely forgive the pun, as the story 
itself is almost one in narrative form.)

RE-- SILVERLOCK: The author's (middle AND) last name is Myers.  Saw a 
note in LOCUS a while back to the effect that some 30 years after the 
original, he's done a sequel.  Hoo-raaaaaaaaay!

RE-- Compu-fiction: Aha!  Reality is catching up with SF.  We've come 
across a couple fiction-writing machines in the CYBER-SF project.  Off
hand I recall the "wordmills" in Leiber's THE SILVER EGGHEADS, and the
heroine in Compton's THE UNSLEEPING EYE worked at Computabook.

------------------------------

From: RP@MIT-MC
Date: 06/08/81 08:19:13
Subject: Raiders of the Lost Ark

I agree with Zellich, ROLAids is a super winner. We (+kids) found this
to be the most entertaining film since TESB. Superman II will have
serious competition.

------------------------------

Date: Sunday,  7 Jun 1981 20:18-PDT
Subject: Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark
From: mike at RAND-UNIX

Screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saturday, June 6th.  Directed by
Steven Spielberg.  Lucasfilm, Ltd production.

This is a non-spoiler review.  Don't let anyone spoil this movie for 
you: don't read the book, leaf through the magazine, color in the 
coloring book or any of the other ways you could spoil the movie.
JUST GO SEE THE MOVIE, and be surprised.

Don't be a fool!  Go see this movie as soon as it opens!  Go see it 
twice.  Seeing this movie the first time was as fun as seeing Star 
Wars the first time.  And I don't say that lightly.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is an adventure film of the old cinematic 
school: the romantic setting is not outer space but a far-away jungle
or desert, the villains are not Storm Troopers from the Empire, but
Nazi's from Germany.  Our heroes don't use the force, just good ol'
American pluck and spirit.  They drink their whiskey straight, too.
So does Lauren Bacall, er, whatever the name of the heroine is.

Supposedly the inspiration for the film comes out of the Saturday 
morning serials that used to run in the theatres for a nickle.  Does 
anyone know what these might be?  I suppose the original Flash Gordon 
fits into this mold.

The Action is continuous!  The Danger immense!  How can our Hero 
Survive?  Will Paramount's stock Double?

NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH:  Warning to parents of very small children:
many of the images in the movie are strong.  Maybe strong isn't the
right word.  Maybe TERRIFYING is the right word.  The woman next to me
in the theatre cringed continuously.  As Indiana Jones said peering
into a sacred crypt where-man-was-not-meant-to-be, "Snakes.  Why did
it have to be snakes?"

Michael Wahrman

------------------------------

Date:  8 Jun 1981 1617-PDT
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: do it yourself movie editing

Forgive me if this has recently been mentioned, but the discussion of
movies with audience decision branch-points brings to mind the "Aspen
Project" of the Architecture Machine Group. This was (is) a "movie
map" of the town of Aspen Colorado. It is based on optical video disk
and midi-computer networks. The user sits in front of a color video
monitor which is touch-sensitive (Lauren's favorite) on it you see a
view down a street in Aspen, you press the GO button and your
point-of-view starts to move down the street (images coming 
sequentually from the disk). When you come to an intersection, you can
continue straight through or turn to the right or left. Usually any of
these choices involve hopping to some other part of the disk to fetch
the pictures for the street you are turning onto. By using two disk
drives (with two copies of the same disk) the idle one can be
prefetching the "most likely" branch for the next intersection.

In this manner the user can "drive" all over the city, without any 
real restrictions. One way to look at this is a movie which is always
edited on the fly by each viewer, this leads to any number of possible
"drives" (or plotlines, if you prefer).

        Craig 

------------------------------

Date:  8 Jun 1981 1448-PDT
From: CSD.BOTHNER at SU-SCORE
Subject: Tin-Tin comic books and films

The creator of Tin-Tin was Herge, not the abomination Lauren called
him.  @digression [I think there is an accent aigu over the final e -
aigu means sharp or accute which is the angle it makes with the
direction of reading. The other one is an accent grave - someone mixed
them up in a recent message. ]

Tin-Tin is primarily a comic book, and Herge is part of the French- 
Belgian comic book culture. Tin-Tin has starred in at least a dozen of
the big glossy comic book which are so typical in Europe.  Tin-Tin's
adventures weren't really all that exciting, but the books' big win is
the supporting cast of eccentric friends and helpers.

------------------------------

Date:  7 Jun 1981 1958-PDT
From: First at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: WB Cartoons

The best cartoons ever produced (both technically and 
plot/clever-idea-wise) were the WB cartoons produced in the 40's and 
early 50's under the names "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies".  
These cartoon lasted 8 (9??) minutes and took about 9 months per 
cartoon to create.  The artwork and detail in a typical Bugs Bunny 
cartoon of this era rivals the best work from Disney-- each frame was 
drawn separately, and complete orchestral scores were written and 
recorded for each cartoon.  With the escalating costs of production 
and the advent of computer-controlled animation (SIGH!!--maybe the 
vast improvement in computer-graphics in recent years will reverse 
this--I hear Lucasfilm is experimenting with full-screen animation 
which is totally generated by a computer), this type of meticulous 
animation is only a thing of the past.

  Besides the technical superiority, the story-lines of these cartoons
were nothing less than brilliant.  The main reason for this was that 
the audience for these cartoons was in fact adult--they originally 
appeared before feature films in the 40's (now all we get is Woody 
Woodpecker--does anybody really LIKE those damned things?) and were 
therefore targetted for adult tastes (unlike Jay Ward which targetted 
for adults but still had to deal with the reality that these cartoons 
were being screened for kids).  Besides Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck/Elmer 
Fudd/Tweety and Sylvester/ Foghorn Leghorn/Tasmanian Devil/Yosemite 
Sam/Wile E. Coyote, etc, there were also some excellent cartoons of 
mice appearing as Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, the Honeymooners, 
and other film characters of the day, often with the real actor's 
voices (Like Laugh-in, Sat. Night Live, etc., it was hip to appear in 
a WB cartoon satire).  Those Bugs Bunny cartoons on Saturday are often
repackaged/re-edited cartoons from the 40's.  When they use newer 
animation, it really pales in comparison.  I saw Mel Blanc give a talk
recently (after the talk, which is interspersed with WB cartoons, 
there is a Q&A session where he "takes requests", i.e. "Mel, could you
do Bugs saying "What a moroon!"")  He did say that they (WB) are 
considering doing those 8 minute pre-feature-film cartoons again!!  
Although I don't think they will ever be able to be done with the same
care that went into those gems...

--Michael

P.S. For a reasonably good anthology of these cartoons, "Bugs Bunny 
Superstar" and "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie" are good, but they 
only contain the standard WB characters.  The weirdest thing of all to
see are certain Bugs Bunny cartoons done in the early forties which 
were meant to support the war (i.e. Bugs in the army, Bugs encouraging
the audience to enlist, etc). These are not seen too often although 
the local UHF station would consistently screen these for the kiddie 
afternoon shows!

------------------------------

From: KARIM@MIT-MC
Date: 06/08/81 09:25:47
Subject: Lauren's zero-zero island, thunderbirds, etc.

        Hmm. I thought "ZERO ZERO ISLAND" was the turf of "Dodo, the
Kid from Outer Space". Anybody remember this? Lauren?  In case you
don't know, Zero-zero Island was supposed to be the one place on the
globe where there was zero latitude and zero longitude. Is this place
really on water, and is there an island there (or did they expect the
kids to be that stupid...evidently I am)?
        Another bit: someone mentioned a few days ago, or hours (or is
seconds the unit of time I'm looking for? How's a sentient tin can
supposed to know, anyway?) something they used to say on "Captain
Scarlet" -- S.I.G., I think it was.  The used to say F.A.B. on that
wonderful show, "The Thunderbirds".  Now that is really driving me up
a wall. Meanings, anybody?  In case you don't know, Home Box Office
(for those of you with cable of satellite dishes) has been and is
showing, that Gerry and Sylvia Anderson Classic (yes, "U.F.O.",
"Space: 1999") "Thunderbirds to the Rescue". For a few laughs, don't
miss it.
        I would say more, but I was supposed to be at work sixty days
ago (or minutes, or seconds...sigh).
        -Karim

------------------------------

From: TRB@MIT-MC
Date: 06/08/81 11:17:14

Ah, do I remember Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.  They had a real
hep theme song with a standing bass.  The catmobile comes out of the
cat cave on the edge of town trailing smoke.  The story was always
called something like "The Case of the Missing Jewels."  Courageous
was courageous, and Minute was a wimp, always getting in trouble, like
Robin in Batman.  Their archenemy was the Frog (see?) and Courageous
had the gun which did outrageous things.

My favorite recollection of Colonel Bleep was an enemy of his called 
"The Black Knight of Pluto."  I thought that was clever, right up 
there with "Vassa, Queen of the Sea," who was the Submariner's enemy 
on the Merry Marvel Marching Society's tv show.  MMMS was neat, they 
showed Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Spiderman too, if I 
rightly recall.

Please, please, does anybody remember, on Captain Kangaroo, there was 
a cartoon called Larriat Sam.  His sidekick/horse was Tippy Toes.  His
archenemy was Bad Lands Meany.  What was Bad Lands Meany's sidekick's
name?  I can't for the life of me remember, and I've never met anyone
who has.  I've been asking people for years and years, I haven't yet
sunk so low as to write to Bob Keeshan.  I know this isn't SF, so
sorry.

[ Please respond diretly to TRB@MIT-MC on this query, not SF-LOVERS.
  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date:  7 June 1981 0228-EDT (Sunday)
From: Lee.Moore at CMU-10A
Subject:  Natasha's last name

I still claim her name is Nogoodnick.  It is the same sort of
alliteration as Boris Badenoff.  (spelling doesn't count) (also a pun
on a certain Russian Czar...)  Any debate?

Lee Moore

------------------------------

Date:  6 Jun 1981 2131-PDT
From: Friedland at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: trivia and SF books

        I noticed that the two common answers "Fatale" and
"Nogoodnick" were given for Natasha's last name on R&B.  The former is
actually correct, although the confusion arises because Boris often
used the latter to refer to her affectionately.

Peter

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 06:05:07-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree

I remember it well!  It was about an alien visitor, age 11 Earth years
(they allegedly measure age in light years -- *sigh* -- but I guess 
that's no worse than the Millenium Falcon being able to make the
Kessel run in under 12 parsecs) and his new-found human companion,
also 11.  The alien had a spool of wire that powered his space ship,
his gadgets, and his shoes, but this spool had somehow gotten lost.
And when it was found, it was found at the bottom of a pond -- ruined.
Fortunately, his friend's grandmother had snipped off a piece to mend
a screen door, so he had just enough.  One classic scene was where the
alien and his friend (I don't remember either name) went fishing.  The
alien, with his quick reflexes, was able to reach in and grab fish.
The human complained that he was supposed to catch fish on a hook.
So, after he grabbed another fish, he stuck the hook through its tail.
"Me catch fish on hook."  Hiking with him wasn't any fun either:  he'd
just set off in a straight line towards the destination, walking over
obstacles such as houses and haystacks, and walking under ponds.
Obviously, a major part of the action was an attempt by the human to
teach him Earth customs without letting on to his grandmother just
what was going on.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 10-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #146
*** EOOH ***
Date: 10 JUN 1981 0721-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #146
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 10 Jun 1981    Volume 3 : Issue 146

Today's Topics:
                 SF Books - Fantasticats & Tin-Tin,
           SF Movies - Outland,  SF TV - Star Trek Guide,
          SF Topics - Compu-fiction & Computer Animation &
       Children's TV (F.A.B. query and Rocky and Bullwinkle) &
    Children's stories (Query answered and Tom Swift and Homer and
 Spaceship Under the Apple Tree and Richard Purtill and Mary Renault)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 11:00 EDT
From: Marshall.WBST at PARC-MAXC
Subject: cats in sf

I cannot resist touting Cordwainer Smith's cats in "The Game of Rat 
and Dragon".  This is a delightful story about mental combat between 
cats and human partners on one side and mental dragons on the other.  
The cats in this story are real cats and act very feline. There is 
also a cat planet in "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" but
the cats are not as feline. If anyone has not read all of Smith's 
Science Fiction I suggest they do so. The author sketches entire 
civilizations and societies with only two or three sentences. His 
universe is vast but we are permitted only small glimpses of it.  
Unfortunately when he died in 1966 his science fiction only filled 
four books:

        Quest of the Three Worlds
        Norstrilia
        The Best of Cordwainer Smith
        The Instrumentality of Mankind

The first two are novels and the last two are collections of short 
stories. I believe he left notes for future sf stories but I don't 
know if they will ever be published.

--Sidney

------------------------------

Date: 8 Jun 1981 00:04:08-PDT
From: CSVAX.wildbill at Berkeley
Subject: SF felines

The Leiber story mentioned in a recent SFL is "Space-Time for
Springers".  Another Leiber story involving cats is the fifth book in
the Fafhrd-Grey Mouser series, "The Swords of Lankhmar". Cats play a
very important role in this story.
     Another Cordwainer Smith story in which one encounters cats qua
cats is "The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal", in which the
Commander uses a time-warp device and a hypnosis device capable of
implanting racial goals (i.e affecting the memories of descendants as
well as the originally hypnotized beings) on a pair of cats to extract
himself from a particularly nasty situation.

Yours in the ancient and honorable society of felinophiles,
                                        Bill Laubenheimer

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 11:35:27-PDT
From: Cory.5 at Berkeley
Subject: Kitten Anthologies

Here are a few anthologies of kitten stories for you, viz.:
        'Kitten Caboodle' edited by Barbara Silverberg
        'Supernatural Cats' edited by Claire Necker

                Yours ever so,

                        John R Blaker (Cory.cc-13@Berkeley)

------------------------------

Date: 9 June 1981 1818-EDT
From: Steven Clark at CMU-10A
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #145

Someone mentioned computers that write fiction.  Remember in 1984, the
fiction was written by computer.

I know of a short story about a grey cat that spotted an alien that
was transparent to humans.  Can anyone remember the author/title?  The
title had "grey" in it ("All cats are grey"?).

-Steve

------------------------------

Date:  9 Jun 1981 1748-PDT
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: Computer Animation

First@SUMEX-AIM is correct in saying that "Lucasfilm is experimenting 
with full screen animation which is totally generated by computer", 
but it is rumored that other groups are also barking up that tree.

I'm not sure just what the first theatrical use of computer generated 
animation was, but at least back around '74 there was "Westworld" and 
later "Futureworld", both of which had computer generated and computer
image processed scenes (by III and some stuff from U of Utah).

The last feature we worked on was "Looker" which is due to be released
in early July. This includes lots of computer generated stuff (some of
which is supposed to look like "computer graphics" and some which is 
supposed to look real). One unique sequence is the "scanning room" 
where "Cindy" (Susan Dey) is being encoded by the evil computer
company, in the control room we see the computer displaying the
evolving models it is building of her body. Remind me to tell you how
we got the 3D coordinate data for her body ...

We are currently working (along with MAGI-Synthavision and NYIT) on 
the Disney/Lisberger production of TRON. This film will be a
combination of computer animation, hand animation, optical image
processing ("the Bob Able look") and live action. Only about 10% is
live action. While the plot of TRON may be hard for hackers to take
(its about computers, and so computer hackers will get picky about the
details of the fantasy plotline) it looks like it will be very
striking visually.

        Craig 

------------------------------

Date: 8 Jun 1981 20:08 PDT
From: TManley.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject:  Episode guides for Star Trek

        I have an Episode guide to Star Trek, but it would be a rather
large document to set up for FTP. But if anyone is interested, I will
research the publisher and see if they are still available.

                        \TMP. . .

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 10:22 PDT
From: TManley.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #144

I have more on that Star Trek Guide:

        "Star Trek Concordance"
         Copyright 1979 by Paramount Pictures Corp.
        Author BJO Trimble
        Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-9778
        First Edition 1976
        Published by Ballantine Books/New York

                        \TMP. . .

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 12:57 PDT
From: Woods at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Episode guide for Star Trek

I have a Star Trek episode guide that I put together N years ago with 
help from my fellow Trek-watchers in college.  I consider this guide a
win in that the plot descriptions tend to avoid spoilers.  I'll get
around to typing it in sometime soon unless some eager beaver wants to
beat me to it.

        -- Don.

------------------------------

Date: 8 June 1981 09:54-EDT
From: James M. Turner <JMTURN at MIT-AI>

Shade and Sweet water,
        The stories dealing with boy scouts using a time machine that 
Ken Hasse was looking for appeared in Boy's Life, not on TV. Other
than suffering from that banal morality that BL applies to everything,
it wasn't that bad. One story I remember used the idea of raiding SF
during the earthquake so no one would notice (this is post-"Flight of
the Horse").

        Quick though on "Outland". If those are the best hired killers
in the system, why do they fall for such obvious tricks? They are
obviously familiar with survival on the moons of Jupiter (they didn't
get shipped in from Earth) so why were they walking around in
shirt-sleeves when the safest thing would have been to put their suits
on...I guess they don't make hit men like they used to...
                                        James

------------------------------

Date: 10 June 1981 02:25-EDT
From: Steve Strassmann <STRAZ at MIT-AI>
Subject: The official Boy Sprout Mag: Time Machines & Tripods

The short stories about a bunch of kids who find a time machine behind
a rock were written (as far as I remember) for Boy's Life in the late 
60's and 70's.  The group that found the machine was a patrol (for 
folks who weren't/aren't Boy Scouts, a patrol is a unit of 4-8 kids in
a troop of ~12-80) of modern scouts who went and picked up a Spartan 
kid from ancient Greece, a bald kid from the n+1th century, and I 
believe a cave-kid. These kids actually stayed in their home-whens ; 
the patrol leader only picked them up when they were needed.  The time
machine possessed an event scanner which allowed the pilot to scan an 
area (in X,Y,Z, and T) without having to materialize the machine. Does
anybody remember the author? Some hardcover anthologies of these 
stories were published, I think.

Boy's Life just recently started serializing Christopher's trilogy
about people controlled by aliens ("tripods") via metal skullcaps ( I
believe two of the books were "The White Mountains" and "The City of
Gold and Lead") in cartoon format.  I think I remember their
cartoonizing in the past, among other things, excerpts from the Bible
and a Heinlein story.

             Steve Strassmann <STRAZ @ AI>

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 13:06:12-PDT
From: IngVAX.kalash at Berkeley
Subject: S.I.G. on Captain Scarlet


S.I.G. stands for "Spectrum Is Green" they used the expression to
indicate that everything was alright. When they used S.I.R.  (Spectrum
is Red), it meant that something was very wrong.


                        Joe Kalash

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 1227-PDT (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Tin Tin, Dodo, and animation

I have never claimed to be a French comic book fan (... just a minute
...  just a minute ... Did I really just say that?  How about French 
postcards?  Oh never mind, you know what I mean... ) -- so I apologize
for mispelling the name of Tin Tin's creator.

As for that "Dodo" kid from outer space... I've never heard of him,
and I've had "zero-zero island" sloshing around in my brain pans for 
years .. so I am pretty sure it's from Colonel Bleep.

By the way ... In my opinion, the finest animation ever done, overall,
was that for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves".  Shadows under
EVERYTHING throughout.  Absolutely perfect.

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date:  9 Jun 1981 0144-EDT
From: JHENDLER at BBNA
Subject: Rocky and moose

*sigh* imagine my disappointment in discovering that during the past
two weeks when I was out of town NO ONE ELSE chastised Lauren for his
error concerning the Kirwood derby.  I have checked with many of my
R&B Fan friends, and they point out that the Yale Film Society
presented an R&B night last year, and featured the Kirwood Derby
episode.  Sure enough, the derby makes the wearer incredibly SMART not
childlike, as Lauren mistakenly claimed.
 An interesting side note to my search for the truth about the Derby:
  Apparently Dirwood Kerby (remember him?) SUED the show for lible and
won a large settlement!!!  Some people have no sense of humor--
  --Jim 

------------------------------

Date: 9 May 1981 11:45-EDT
From: Steven C. Bagley <BAGLEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: Star War's revelation

Did you know that Darth Vader's wife is named Ella?

------------------------------

Date: 1981-5-11-17:55:29.53
Sender: Paul Young (YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO)
From:   STEVE LIONEL at STAR at METOO
Subject: Children's SF

Ah, the memories of childhood, filled with that mind-rotting science 
fiction.  I can still recall the day when I was 8 (18 years ago) when 
my mother, a loooong-time SF fan, presented me with my first Tom
Swift, Jr. book.  By the way, no one so far has mentioned that there 
WAS a Tom Swift Sr., a much older series of books from which the term
"a Tom Swift" came from.  What is "a Tom Swift"?  It's when you use an
adverb that relates to the topic of the statement.  For example:

        "What sharp teeth you have," he said bitingly.
        "I'll do it tomorrow," he said lazily.

and so on.

Mentioned in passing was "Spaceship Under the Apple Tree".  This was
either a sequel or prequel to "The Three-Seated Spaceship" (sequel, I
think), by <?>.  The stories told of a small alien who dressed in
seersucker suits and who transported some friendly kids around the
Earth seeing the sights.  Does anybody have more info on these?

Previously mentioned in SFL is the absolutely delightful "Space
Child's Mother Goose" by Fredrick Winsor.  I found it in Books in
Print last year, but I haven't been able to locate a copy. (I haven't
tried too hard, I'll admit.)  My all-time favorite from this is:

                Flappity, floppity, flip
                The mouse on the moebius strip
                The strip revolved
                The mouse dissolved
                In a chronodimensional skip

Of course, I fondly recall Danny Dunn, and I recently picked up three 
of the stories just to refresh my memories.  Sort of a cross between 
Danny Dunn and Tom Sawyer was Homer, of "Homer and the Donught
Machine", "Homer and the Unplayable Record", etc.  Also, how about
Encyclopedia Brown?  Remember him, and his bodyguard-girlfriend Sally?

It's a shame that the impact of stuff like Star Wars is probably going
to dramatically alter children's SF away from the likes of Danny Dunn
and more towards "Luke Skywalker Comix".  Luckily, the old stuff is
still around.
                                Steve Lionel

------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1981 08:04-EDT
From: Steven C. Bagley <BAGLEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: more walking down memory lane

Hey kids, don't forget about "The Mad Scientists Club" and the various
Encyclopedia Brown stories, all from Scholastic Book Services.

------------------------------

Date: Friday, 15 May 1981 10:30-PDT
Subject: Richard Purtill vs. Mary Renault
From: obrien at RAND-UNIX

        The one thing that struck me about "The Golden Gryphon 
Feather" was that Richard Purtill must have been a big fan of Mary
Renault, who did that stuff much better in all of her books set in
Classical Greece.  The styles are very similar, though Renault is much
more mainstream and does not involve such heavy elements of fantasy.

        For a completely different look at Crete there's always "The
Age of Wizardry", by Jack Williamson.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 11-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #147
*** EOOH ***
Date: 11 JUN 1981 0827-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #147
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 11 Jun 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 147

Today's Topics:
           SF Books - Dream Park & Fantasticats & Tin-Tin,
                   SF Movies - Clash of the Titans,
               SF Topics - Science in Science Fiction &
            Children's stories (Boy's Life Time Machine) &
           Children's TV (Dodo the Kid from Outer Space and
       Rocky and Bullwinkle and Traffic Zone and Teen Titans and
                Beanie's Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 1981-6-3-12:57:56.05
From:   AL LEHOTSKY at METOO
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
Subject: Dream Park by Niven and Barnes

I just got my SF Bookclub copy of Dream Park and want to respond to
some earlier gritching in SFL on the book.

pico-review:  Couldn't put it down...


nit-picking:

    When I first started reading DP, I had a lot of skepticism about
    the economics of running a disneyland and fantasy-gaming park
    at such low rates (10^2 $/day), but barring that single nit, the
    story hangs together fairly well.

    As a mystery story, it is a flop, there aren't enough clues to
    figure whodunnit.  But as a "sword-and-sorcery" novel, I really
    liked it.  I also wish that it was about 100 pages longer.  It
    really should of had additional "puzzles" for the gamers to solve.

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 1451-EDT
From: RICHARDSON
Subject: SF cat stories

For <whoever it was looking for SF cat stories>:

What about the short story (Heinlein, probably) about the cat who has 
kittens in someone's spacesuit?  The unsuspecting owner gets the shock
of his life when, while out in space, a small furry thing touches him!

Doesn't anyone else remember flatcats?  That is probably also
Heinlein, maybe Asimov -- something I read a long time ago.

What about the "cattails" on Ringworld?

I think Kzinti make fine cats -- remind me of my own two felines.

/CLR

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 1454-EDT
From: RICHARDSON
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
Subject: SF Lovers cats query (more stuff)

Anyone out there want to write new short stories rather than dig up 
obscure ones?  I always thought that what my two cats (JFCL, the no-op
cat (enormous black and white female meatloaf) and Coalsack Nebula 
(black, half-Siamese)) needed is: 1) vocal chords, and 2) opposing 
thumbs.

------------------------------

Date: 10 June 1981 10:13-EDT
From: David Vinayak Wallace <GUMBY at MIT-AI>
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #146

The story about the invisible alien which cat's could see was, I 
believe, an Andre Norton, with a title like 'Queen of the Spaceways', 
or somesuch.  The hero was an out-of-work space captain who goes to 
salvage (loot) an old derelict with some old lady; she is...I won't 
spoil it, but this might make you remember.
        As for the boy scouts with the time machine, they were also 
published in novels, I belive, as I was never a boy scout, I never
read Boy's Life.  The thing that impressed me at the time was that I
read them in ~1973, when I was ~9-10 yers old; the books I read
forecast great wonders for the far future age of 1976!  Teaching
machines, the daily rocket to africa, etc....
        Has anyone read a book in which the predictions for the future
are reasonably accurate?  I'm just reading Gernsback's 'Ralph 124C 
41+' which forecasts such marvels as travelling from Paris to New York
in only 12 hours...  The main problem with it is that the characters
act like they were born in 1900, not 2600.  Unfortunately, most
stories like this have the same problem.

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1981 0957-PDT
From: Achenbach at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Time machine, boy's life et al

        I can remember from back in my days as a Boy Sprout that Boy's
Life ran several SF stories from time to time.  E.g. "Wind from the
Sun" by Arthur C. Clarke first appeared in BL (this was a story about
a regatta in space, using solar wind and mylar sails).  Also there was
a series about a troop of boy scouts on a generation ship aimed
somewhere out in space.  I can only remember one scene of a patrol
taking a quarter mile hike outside the ship in space suits to fulfill
the requirement for the hiking merit badge or some such.  Then of
course there was the time machine stories.  As a matter of fact, a
novel of the time machine was published, which covered the discovery,
a few adventures, and the origin of the time machine.  It came from
the future, and was hijacked by a couple of badies, who the patrol
meets.  I know I bought that book, but I can't find it.  I guess it's
buried with all the other relics of that time in my life (Tom Swift Jr
books, Hardy Boys, etc.)

        By the way, my entry for the best animation is Pinochio.  Much
better than Snow White.

/Mike 

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1981 11:02:30-PDT
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: No science in science fiction ?

At least, that's what a magazine article that I recently read claimed.
No doubt that many of you out there are already gaping at your
terminal screens in disbelief, and this provides an excellent
opportunity for this digest to stop talking about kiddy shows and
start talking about science fiction.  In any case, I am willing to
play the devil's advocate and set forth the arguments which this
article used.  (I don't recall the name of the magazine right now.)

The main premise is this: science fiction attacks the belief that the 
universe is knowable to man.  SF, of course, has plenty of gadgets and
devices and other sorts of technology, but SCIENCE??? Let's take the 
example of a story which uses a hyperspace drive for interstellar 
travel.  OK, so the story assumes its existence, and it is used.  Why 
is that science?  How does the drive work? How is the conflict with
the fact that nothing can go faster than light resolved?  What are the
physics behind it?  Often, when there is an attempt at explaining how 
the drive works, matters only get worse.  For example, the conflict 
with the speed of light is resolved by simply stating that while in 
hyperspace, you are not in this universe, and therefore such laws do 
not apply.  When stories deal with alternate universes and fancy stuff
like that, this type of reasoning gets carried to the extreme.
Science is not the process of making up arbitrary rules.

Now, some of you might point out at this time that science fiction is 
science FICTION.  True, and that is a handy excuse for completely 
disregarding what we KNOW about the universe today, and to come up
with something totally arbitrary, and justifying it by simply saying
that it's a piece of fiction, and therefore it doesn't matter.  Some
of you might say: aha! I caught you!  What we KNOW about the universe
today is not what we will know about it tomorrow.  That is absolutely
correct.  Science is the process of discovering the lawful ordering of
the universe, and it is inevitable that in the future, someone will
come up with something that will supersede what we know today.  Is
science, as thus defined, present in science fiction?  Or is there
merely at lot of gadgetry that is not and cannot be explained by
anything we know today?

That is merely the passive side of the problem.  A lot of science 
fiction actually encourages anti-scientific thought, such as that 
written by H.G. Wells.  So that this letter does not get excessively 
long, I will continue with that in another letter tomorrow.

To conclude.  Even for a person who completely agrees with the 
arguments presented, there is still the question, "why all the big 
fuss?  I like reading science fiction and it really doesn't matter to 
me that there is no 'science' in it."  For us, that's probably true.  
None of us, as far as I know, have been "damaged" in any way by
reading science fiction, but what about the kids who read this stuff?
They are rather impressionable, and if they get the idea that science
means a lot of gadgets for which there is no explanation, or that a
lot of phenomenon in the universe, such as hyperspace, are simply
unknowable, then what are the implications?

Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 7 Jun 81 18:59-PDT
From: mclure at Sri-Unix
Subject: Clash of the Titans ripoffage

Just saw a commercial for Clash of the Titans and almost fell back in 
my chair when I recognized the film score that they were playing
during the commercial; it was a number of extracts from the excellent
score by Carmine Coppola for The Black Stallion from last year.

What sort of ripoff is this? I'd be interested in hearing from anyone 
who goes to see the film on whether the score in the film is the same
as the one in the commercial.

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1981 12:40:35-PDT
From: Cory.cc-13 at Berkeley
Subject: Tintin

        First off, that's Tintin, not Tin-Tin.  Here are the few
titles that I can come up with off the top of my head:

        1 Secret of the Unicorn
        2 Red Rackham's Treasure
        3 The Crab with the Golden Claws
        4 Tintin in Tibet
        5 Destination Moon (Pure Science Fiction)
        6 Explorers on the Moon (These two sparked my interest in SF)
        7 Tintin in America
        8 The Broken Ear
        9 The Seven Crystal Balls
       10 Prisoners of the Sun
       11 Tintin and the Picaros
       12 Cigars of the Pharoah
       13 King Ottokar's Scepter
       14 Flight 714
       15 The Shooting Star
       16 The Calculus Affair
       17 The Castafiore Emerald
       18 The Black Island
       19 Land of Black Gold
       20 Tintin in the Land of the Soviets
       21 Tintin in the Congo

I have all but the last two on the list, and there are probably
others.  Some of the characters are
    Major Characters in several books:
        Tintin:---------Our hero boy reporter
        Captain Haddock:Wealthy(In later books) former sea captain,
and
                                Tintin's companion (A heavy drinker)
        Professor Cuthbert Calculus:Deaf (and daft) inventor and
                                scientist
        Thompson and Thomson:Incompetent Detectives
        Nestor:---------Captain Haddock's butler
        Bianca Castafiore:Milanese opera singer.  Powerful lungs
        Rastapopoulos:--Arch villain
    Minor Characters (Or pivotal to only one or two books:
        Jolyon Wag:-----Typical insurance salesman
        General Alcazar:Deposed South American Dictator
        General Tapioca:His rival (now in power)
        Lazlo Carreidas:"The Millionaire Who Never Laughs"
        Skut:-----------Esthonian pilot
        Captain Chester:Friend of Captain Haddock

                        Yours ever so,

                                John R Blaker
                                (Cory.cc-13@Berkeley)

P.S.  Someone looking over my shoulder tells me that "Herge" is a pen
name based on the French spellings of the written out form of the
letters "R" and "G", apparently the initials of the real name of the
author. JRB

P.P.S Also, since these were all originally published in French, the
names of many of the characters are different.  Professor Calculus is
Professor Tournossol (or something like that).  The Thompson and
Thomson were originally Dupon and Dupond.  JRB

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1981 1145-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: The Derby

Actually, I did get one piece of direct mail claiming I was wrong
about the Derby, but I dismissed it as the ravings of a deranged
person (it takes one to know one?  Never mind...)  I will accept the
concept that I might be wrong on this one -- I suppose the Moose put
on the Derby and got real smart, or some such.

One of the nice things about having 3000+ people reading this stuff is
that there is always somebody who can correct any errors.  At least, I
*THINK* that's one of the nice things?!

Back to my cage...

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1981 1505-PDT
From: Lynn Gold <G.FIGMO at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Derwood Kirby

What ever happened to him, anyway?

--Lynn 

------------------------------
From: KARIM@MIT-MC
Date: 06/10/81 09:05:44
Subject: Yes, Virginia, there is a "Dodo"

        Honestly now, I wasn't kidding! Anyone else remember "Dodo, 
the Kid from Outer Space"? Maybe I'm getting something else mixed up, 
but I thought that was the title of a show...I even remember part of 
the theme song. Hard to forget, it was.
        This was aired in NYC, around the mid-60's. Anyone?
        -Karim

------------------------------

Date: 1981-6-9-02:18:22.40
From:   PAUL WINALSKI at METOO
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
Subject: Saturday morning memory dump


     The continuing discussion of old cartoon favorites really brings
back some fond memories....  One of the things I find fascinating when
I think back to those cartoons is how many of the jokes are aimed at
grownups and just whizzed right over my head.

Take, for example, the Traffic Zone episodes of Hoppity Hooper and
Waldo Wigglesworth.  The Traffic Zone was an extra-dimensional space
where really strange things happened.  It could only be detected in
the real world by sound; when Hoppity was near the entrance to the
Traffic Zone, he would hear car horns honking and police whistles.  I
think you entered the Zone via a traffic light.  You could only enter
the Zone when it was green.  As I recall, Hoppity and/or Waldo got
caught there when the light changed to red.

Anybody remember Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog (who was
almost as depressive as Marvin from HHGttG) from Captain Kangaroo?
Tom lived in a tree and was capable of several marvelous things.
Recurring villains were Isotope Feeney and Crabby Appleton (rotten to
the core).

And who can forget Saturday Morning's contribution to real SF?  Time
for Beanie's Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent is cited as the reason why
Niven's aliens are named Pierson's Puppeteers.  There was also an
episode on Beany & Cecil that featured two rabbits, an iron-pumping
father and his brainy son, who used to get into all sorts of fixes and
were pulled out of the mess by "brains, not brawn."

------------------------------

Date: 1981-6-9-02:20:55.08
From:   PAUL WINALSKI at METOO
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
Subject: Aquaman/Aquaboy

Aquaboy bears the same relationship to Aquaman as Robin does to
Batman, Speedy to the Green Arrow, Kid Flash to the Flash, and Wonder
Girl to Wonder Woman.  Aquaboy was his teen sidekick.  The five of
them (Aquaboy, Robin, Speedy, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl) made up the Teen
Titans.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 12-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #148
*** EOOH ***
Date: 12 JUN 1981 0817-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #148
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 12 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 148

Today's Topics:
     SF Movies - Capsule Movie Reviews & Raiders of the Lost Ark,
  SF Books - Fantasticats,  SF Topics - Science in Science Fiction &
          Children's TV (Dodo the Kid from Outer Space and
               Beanie's Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 2133-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Capsule Movie Reviews

     By Chicago Sun-Times Reviews
     (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    ''Clash of the Titans''-Laurence Olivier plays Zeus in this 
spectacular fantasy. Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom, Ursula Andress and 
Susan Fleetwood also star. Rated PG.
    ''Outland''-''High Noon'' on the moon, this uncompromising 
science-fiction thriller stars Sean Connery, Peter Boyle and Frances 
Sternhagen. Rated PG. 3 stars.
    ''Raiders of the Lost Ark''-Harrison Ford stars as an adventurer 
looking for the Ark of the Covenant in this new George Lucas 
production, directed by Steven Spielberg. Rated PG.
    ''Screamers''-Science-fiction thriller about a mad scientist on a 
remote island. Barbara Bach, Joseph Cotten and Mel Ferrer star.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 1158-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: RotLA, another view

We had a sneak preview of Raiders of the Lost Ark here a little while
ago.  As others have said, it's non-stop slam-bang action.  I think I
empathized too much with the villains, though.  In one scene a baddie
is pounding the hell out of Indiana Jones, the hero, when he gets
caught in an airplane propeller and chopped to bits.  We're meant to
take a gruesome delight in his destruction, but I felt nauseated.
Five minutes before this guy was just moseying along and now his
brains are all over the pavement.  In "Star Wars" you had (literally)
faceless enemies, and it didn't matter so much.  They were just robot
dolls to knock down.  Here they scream when killed.  It's getting 
tough, I know, to find sufficiently unsympathetic bad guys.  Nazis are
about as close as you can get in modern times.  You can't even use 
yelling savages anymore; in an early part of the movie they make it 
clear that the yelling savages pursuing our hero have been duped by 
the fiendish French archaeologist.  Even Nazis, though, have wrinkles
and bald spots, and most of them are just doing their job.  If they
become more than just tenpins to be knocked out of our hero's way,
then you start to feel it when they get run over by trucks or pushed
off cliffs.  

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 2138-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Raiders of the Lost Ark

[ The following review of Raiders of the Lost Ark is not quite a
  spoiler, although it is comprehensive.  Note that this movie
  opens today throughout the nation.  --  Jim ]

                        By VINCENT CANBY
                c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service

    NEW YORK - From the first moments, when the star-circled mountain
in the Paramount Pictures logo fades into a similarly shaped, 
fog-shrouded Andean peak, where who knows what awful things are about 
to happen, ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' is off and running at a 
breakneck pace that simply won't stop until the final shot, an ironic 
epilogue that recalls nothing less than ''Citizen Kane.'' That, 
however, is the only high-toned reference in a movie that otherwise 
devotes itself exclusively to the glorious days of the B-picture.
    To get to the point immediately, ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' is
one of the most deliriously funny, ingenious and stylish American 
adventure movies ever made. It is an homage to old-time movie serials 
and back-lot cheapies that transcends its inspirations to become, in 
effect, the movie we saw in our imaginations as we watched, say, 
Buster Crabbe in ''Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars'' or in Sam Katzman's 
''Jungle Jim'' movies.
    The film is the result of the particularly happy collaboration 
between Steven Spielberg, its director, and George Lucas, who is one 
of its executive producers and who, with Philip Kaufman, wrote the 
original story on which Lawrence Kasdan's screenplay is based.
    As Lucas's ''Star Wars'' helped itself to all sorts of myths, folk
tales and characters from children's fiction and fused them into a 
work of high originality, and as Spielberg's ''Close Encounters of the
Third Kind'' made sweetly benign a kind of science-fiction film that
had turned paranoid, ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' refines its tacky
source materials into a movie that evokes memories of movie-going of
an earlier era but that possesses its own, far more rare sensibility.
    The film is about Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), a two-fisted 
professor of archaeology with a knack for landing in tight situations 
in some of the earth's more exotic corners, and his sometimes 
girlfriend Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the daughter of a 
world-famous archeologist and who, when we first meet her, is running 
a lowdown bar in remotest Nepal. Just how Marion has come to be 
running a gin mill in Nepal is never explained, but ''Raiders of the 
Lost Ark'' is great fun as much for the things it explains as for the 
explanations it withholds.
    The time is 1936, which not only attaches ''Raiders of the Lost 
Ark'' to the films it remembers but also makes possible its fondly 
lunatic plot, which is about the attempts of Indiana Jones and Marion,
at the behest of the United States government, to find the lost Ark of
the Covenant before a team of Nazi archeologists can lay their hands
on it.
    Hitler, who is described as being obsessed with the occult, is 
hellbent on finding the Ark, which once contained the Ten Commandments
as handed down to Moses on their originally inscribed tablets. The Ark
is reported variously (1) to confer magical powers on the person who
possesses it, (2) to be ''something that man was not meant to
disturb,'' being ''not of this world'' and, more picturesquely, (3) as
''a radio for speaking to God.'' No wonder Indiana and Marion risk
life and limb to prevent the Ark from finding its way to Berlin!
    After their initial reconciliation in Nepal, following Indiana's 
narrow escape from death in the Andes, Indiana and Marion fly on to 
Egypt where there is every reason to believe the Nazis are about to 
uncover the Ark in a long-buried temple called the Well of Souls.  
Even before they reach the actual dig, however, there are fearsome 
obstacles to be overcome in Cairo, including attempted assassinations,
a successful kidnapping and a fate worse than death for Marion at the
hands of a renegade French archaeologist named Belloq (Paul Freeman).
    More of the plot you should not know, though it gives nothing away
to reveal that Indiana and Marion, either singly or together, must 
face such tests of their endurance as confinement in an ancient tomb 
with thousands of asps and cobras, an attack by poisoned darts, a 
plate of poisoned dates, torture with a red-hot poker, being tied up 
in a vehicle that explodes before our very eyes and a superchase in 
which Indiana, on horseback, attempts to catch a Nazi truck convoy 
carrying the newly found lost Ark to Cairo for transshipment to 
Berlin.
    The film's climax is almost as dazzling a display as the one that 
brings ''Close Encounters'' to its climax.
     Harrison and Miss Allen are an endearingly resilient, resourceful
couple, he with his square jaw, his eyes that can apparently see out 
of the back of his head and his ever-present fedora, and she with her 
Brooke Adams-Margot Kidder beauty, her ability to outdrink, shot glass
for shot glass, Nepal's toughest barflies, her ever-ready sarcasm and
her ability to screech without losing her poise.
     Spielberg has also managed to make a movie that looks like a 
billion dollars (it was filmed in, among other places, Tunisia, 
France, England and Hawaii) yet still suggests the sort of production 
shortcuts we associate with old B-movies. The Cairo we see on the 
screen is obviously a North African city but, also obviously, it's not
Cairo. There's not a pyramid in sight. My one quibble with Spielberg
is that he didn't insert a familiar, preferably unmatching stock shot
of Cairo into the scene to make sure we got the point. I suppose, we
can't have everything.
    ''Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' which has been rated PG (''Parental 
Guidance Suggested''), includes virtually nonstop action that involves
a lot of violence, but this is less horrifying than scary in a most
pleasurable way.

------------------------------


Date: 11 Jun 1981 11:21:41-PDT
From: CSVAX.wildbill at Berkeley
Subject: cats

   The Flat Cats are indeed Heinlein, and appear in his novel \\The
Rolling Stones//, which is about a couple of brother child geniuses 
living in Luna who earn enough credits to buy a spaceship (!!!), with 
the avowed intention of becoming interplanetary merchants. Their
parents (grandmother is Hazel Stone, first mentioned in Future History
stories as the chief of Baker Street Irregulars in \\The Moon is a
Harsh Mistress//) decide this is not a good idea, so get talked into
underwriting the whole venture and coming along themselves in
exploration of outer Solar System.

   Flat cats are not properly cats, but literary ancestors of
Tribbles.  Feed a flat cat and you get more flat cats. Starve a flat
cat and keep it at about 50 degrees Kelvin (their normal environment
is vacuum) and it estivates or something...but who would want to
starve such a harmless, friendly beast? Answer: a family in a
spaceship with a finite food supply and an exponentially growing flat
cat supply.

[ Thanks also to Will Martin (WMARTIN at OFFICE-3) for identifying
  the flat cats.  --  Jim ]

   As for cat-tails, they are not inhabitants of the Ringworld, but
instead of Earth Plus 6 Million (the one that goes around Jupiter) in
Niven's \\A World Out of Time//. They were cats which had been
genetically engineered to have no legs and 3-foot-long tails.

[ Thanks also to Ken Haase <KWH at MIT-AI> for identifying the 
  cat-tails as belonging to \\A World Out of Time//.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

From: MJL@MIT-MC
Date: 06/11/81 12:49:29

Cats?  How about the mutant Cat-People of PJ Farmer's THE STONE GOD
AWAKENS?  (Won't say anything about the story, it'd be a spoiler...)

/Mijjil

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 09:50:51-PDT
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: No science in science fiction ?

I ended the last letter be stating that the science fiction of H.G.  
Wells encouraged anti-scientific thought.  Once you think about the
plots of his books, it becomes rather obvious.

The Time Machine: the evil Morlocks have all the technology, and it's
very obvious as to whom the reader's sympathies are to belong to.  It
was science which destroyed the world in the first place, and it was
science which was holding the beautiful Eloy prisoners of the evil
Morlocks.

The War of the Worlds: Again, the evil Martians have all the 
technology on their side.  After destroying the world and making man
captive, the Martians are defeated by bacteria, NOT BY MAN.  Nothing
man could do would get rid of them, man had no control whatsoever.  It
was only by the unforseeable intervention of disease which freed man.

It is a common theme throughout Well's books that technology causes 
some disaster, and then the world is set straight again at the end 
when all science is put into the control of a few select people, who
could insure that science will not be "misused" again and therefore
cause another disaster.  In short, Wells had the mentality of an
environmentallist, not a scientist!  And yet his books are considered
science fiction classics!!!

--------------------

If science fiction in its written form has some problems, these are 
nothing when compared to the film media.  Here I will attack two very
popular science fiction films:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind:  Isaac Asmiov is well known for 
having declared in his editorials that there is no science in this 
movie.  That is absolutely correct, but the real danger of this film 
is even more ghastly.  Consider what the main characters go through in
the film.  They constantly hear the musical notes, they have an 
obsession with this mountain, so strong an obsession, in fact, that 
one man builds a model of the mountain in his living room!  In the 
process, he drives his wife away.  Any psychologist can tell you that
these are the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, and yet the movie
presents these things as necessary for the obtainment of the "higher
truth"!!!!!  This movie doesn't make science popular with the public,
nor does it give the public an idea what science is, but it does tell
the public that it's OK to have nervous breakdown, because this is the
way to find the higher truth in the universe.

Star Wars: Here I add my few hundred bytes to the few hundred thousand
already said. (Pay attention, George Lucas, if you are reading this.)
On the whole, Star Wars is a simple action film, filled with the 
typical SF gadgetry.  In this fashion it is no worse than the written 
form.  However, there is the question of the Force.  I cannot think of
anything more anti-scientific than the Force.  It follows no rules
that can be discerned, it can do anything, and there is an obvious
connection between the Force, ESP, and mysticism in general.

--------------------

Science fact television shows also are guilt of this gross distortion 
of science, and I will continue with that story in another letter 
tomorrow.

Jeff

------------------------------

Date:  11 June 1981 19:12 edt
From:  Margolin.PDO at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Dodo

Yes, I remember "Dodo, the Kid from Outer Space".  I don't remember
very much, and I'm surprised that Lauren has never heard of it.  The
most I remember is the beginning of the theme song:

        Dodo, the kid from outer space,
        Dodo, he can go anyplace,
        With antennas on his ears,
        Propellers on his feet,
        .
        .
        .

That's as far as my memory goes.  While this is playing, he is zipping
all over the place.  Much of the theme of the show was him trying to
get accustomed to earthly customs (much as in "Mork and Mindy"), while
not getting caught by the authorities.

                                barmar

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 1713-PDT
From: Lynn Gold <G.FIGMO at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Beany and Cecil

Funny...according to Stan Freberg (who created the series), it was
just a children's puppet show back in the '40's which later became an
animated feature.  (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Freberg,
he has released many comedy albums and produced numerous commercials,
such as Sunsweet's "campaign" to remove wrinkles from prunes and more
recently a bunch for Jeno's Pizzas and a Campbell Soup commercial
which had Ann Miller tap dancing on a can of soup.)

While I'm on the topic of commercials, does anyone out there know the
name of the girl who appeared in the Choo-Choo Charlie commercials for
Good-n-Plenty?


--Lynn 

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 13-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #149
*** EOOH ***
Date: 13 JUN 1981 0857-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #149
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 13 Jun 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 149

Today's Topics:
          SF Fandom - APAs,  SF Books - Budrys Book Column
            (God Emperor of Dune and Wandor's Flight and
   Donald A. Wollheim Presents the 1981 Annual World's Best SF and
              An Infinite Summer and First Voyages and
     Creating Short Fiction and the Clarion SF Writing Workshop),
                  SF Movies - Clash of the Titans,
               SF Topics - Science in Science Fiction
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1981 at 0454-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Computer APA ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There was a "computer APA" called something like 'Capaciousness' 
advertised in a couple recent issues of LOCUS ("The Newspaper of the 
Science Fiction Field").  'Twasn't clear whether it was for computers-
and/in-SF or just (probably home-) computers.  I've sent the SASE, as 
directed, to get its rules.  When they arrive, I'll report back to 
SF-L if no one on the net has told us about it in the meantime.

------------------------------

Date: 07 Jun 1981 1741-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Science Fiction Column  

    By Algis Budrys
    (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    If you can't sing good, sing loud. If you can't write good, write 
long. ''God Emperor of Dune'' (Putnam's, $12.95 hardcover) is Frank 
Herbert's bloated codicil to the already overextended ''Dune'' 
Trilogy, whose climactic statement is that the human race will go on 
forever and ever, populating universe after universe, thanks to the 
intricate machinations of the proliferated cast of characters.
    There's reason to believe that when Herbert began all this, many 
years ago, his intention was simply to tell the large but still 
manageable tale of the planet Arrakis, its relationship to the 
Galactic Empire, and the charismatic Atreides family.
    But now the tale is wagging the dog. There is so much genealogy
and accumulated history that talking about it, not acting on it, 
dominates this volume. Furthermore, you can't start here. There's no 
way to understand half the references in this new book without reading
the three old ones first. That's an exercise many have found 
enjoyable. Others have reported it's a little like hitting yourself 
repeatedly with a hammer to see if it feels good when the pain stops; 
they go on because it always seems that Herbert is going to tie it all
together in the next chapter, or the next.
    Herbert can be a very good writer. But he appears to have become 
captive to his own creation, and to have proceeded not to a conclusion
but to an infinite diffusion. Nevertheless, you will find this book
high on the best-seller list - not the SF best-seller list, THE
best-seller list. So I must be wrong.

     Chicago's Roland Green, with his Wandor series, is also a 
practitioner of the popular epic form. ''Wandor's Flight'' (Avon, 
$2.75 paperback), however, does equip the reader to understand this 
fourth book as readily as the previous three.
    Green is clearly in love with classical narrative forms, from the 
work of Homer on up through C.S. Forester, and there are glossaries 
and prologues aplenty, plus a chronology. With that under your belt, 
you're ready to plunge into the world of Wandor of the Duelists, his 
consort, Gwynna, his foe Cragor, and the sweeping political 
contentions of Chonga, Benzos, et al.
    Green has a gift for the creaking iron-age machinery of barbarian 
cultures and the smell of wet armor. If he also has a weakness for the
very large cast of characters not named Sam or Joe or Alice, he at
least has the forethought to provide all those charts.

     ''Donald A. Wollheim Presents the 1981 Annual World's Best SF'' 
(DAW Books, $2.50) hardly needs much explanation after that title.  
Together with old SF timer Wollheim's sometimes acerb commentary on 
the present SF scene, there are 10 shorter examples here of good 
recent science fiction (from 1980, actually), including George R.R.  
Martin's ''Nightflyers,'' Howard Waldrop's ''The Ugly Chickens'' 
-which is about the near survival of the dodo in Tennessee - and Bob 
Leman's ''Window,'' which will scare you. Good stuff from a good, not 
great, year.

     ''An Infinite Summer'' (Dell, $2.75) collects five long stories
by Christopher Priest, whom some consider England's best new SF
writer.  He may be; he is uncommonly ingenious, talented in prose, and
has an original touch with a story. For one, try ''Palely Loitering,''
about a young man who falls desperately in love with a young woman
who, unfortunately, is always at some other place in a park where time
runs differently in different places.

     So you would like to be a science fiction writer? Fine. Here is
the three-step Royal Road to Best Sellerdom:
     Get ''First Voyages,'' (Avon, $2.95), edited by Damon Knight, 
Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander. This collects the 
first-published stories of 20 SF giants and near-giants...well, I'm in
there, too...DeCamp, del Rey, van Vogt, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Clement,
Clarke, Anderson, Merril, Cordwainer Smith, Harness, MacLean,
Pangborn, Zenna Henderson, Dick, Davidson, Aldiss, Ballard, Le Guin,
and that other fellow.
     Good stuff. GOOD stuff, most of it. And just enough crudity and 
obfuscation in it to encourage the novice. If you can't sing good, 
sing young - or sing SOVETIME; you never know.
    Then get ''Creating Short Fiction,'' by Damon Knight (Writers
Digest Books, $11.95). What Knight doesn't know about writing the
short story cannot be put into expository prose anyway. And you can
always string a bunch of shorts together into an Odyssey.
    And finally, sign up for the Clarion SF Writing Workshop, the
famous six-week total-immersion course held each summer at Michigan
State University. It starts June 29, and this year's instructors are
Robin Scott Wilson, Elizabeth A. Lynn, Joe Haldeman, Kate Wilhelm,
Damon Knight and myself. With room and board, it costs about $1,000
for non-residents of Michigan and at that price you'd better be
serious about it.
     Write immediately to Prof. Tess Tavormina, Lyman Briggs College, 
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich. 48824. Enclose a short 
story, because you have to compete to get in. Try not to enclose the 
first chapter of a planned four-volume epic.


[ Thanks also to Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-AI> and Don
  Woods <DON at SU-AI> for sending in a copy of this column.  -- Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1981 1717-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>

                          By Roger Ebert
         (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    CLASH OF THE TITANS, starring Harry Hamlin, Judi Bowker, Burgess 
Meredity, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith and Neil McCarthy, directed 
by Desmond Davis. 3 1/2 stars.

    ''Clash of the Titans'' is the kind of movie they aren't supposed
to be making anymore: a grand and glorious romantic adventure, filled 
with brave heroes, beautiful heroines, fearsome monsters and 
awe-inspiring duels to the death. It is a lot of fun. It was quite 
possibly intended as a sort of Greek mythological retread of ''Star 
Wars'' (it has a wise little mechanical owl in it who's a third cousin
of R2-D2), but it's also part of an older Hollywood tradition of
special-effects fantasies, and its visual wonderments are astonishing.
    The story, on the other hand, is robust and straightforward.
Perseus (Harry Hamlin) is locked into a coffin with his mother and
cast into the sea, after she has angered the gods. But Zeus (Laurence
Olivier) takes pity and sees that the coffin washes ashore on a
deserted island, where Perseus grows to manhood and learns of his
mission in life.
    The mission, in a nutshell, is to return to Joppa and rescue 
Andromeda (Judi Bowker) from a fate worse than death: marriage to the 
hideously ugly Calibos, who was promised her hand in marriage before 
he was turned into a monster by the wrath of the gods. Calibos lives 
in a swamp and dispatches a gigantic, scrawny bird every night to 
fetch him e spirit of the sleeping Andromeda in a gilded cage.
    If Perseus is to marry Andromeda, he must defeat Calibos in combat
and also answer a riddle posed by Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother.  
Those who answer the riddle incorrectly are condemned to die. Love was
more complicated in the old days.
    There are, of course, other tests. To follow the bird back to the 
lair of Calibos, the resourceful Perseus must capture and tame 
Pegasus, the last of the great winged horses. He must also enter the 
lair of Medusa, who turns men to stone with one glance, and behead her
so that he can use her dead eyes to petrify the gargantuan monster
Kraken, who is unchained from his cage on the ocean floor so that he
can ravish Joppa in general and Andromeda in particular.
    All of this is gloriously silly, and there's a lot of laughter in 
the theater, but it's good-hearted laughter because this movie so 
obviously is in love with its fantastic images. Because the movie 
respects its material, it even succeeds in halfway selling us this 
story; movies that look like ''Clash of the Titans'' have a tendency 
to seem ridiculous, but this film has the courage of its convictions.
    It is also blessed with a cast that somehow finds its way past all
the monsters and through all the heroic dialogue and gets us involved 
in the characters.
    Harry Hamlin is a completely satisfactory Perseus, handsome and 
solemn and charged with his own mission. Judi Bowker is a beautiful 
princess and a great screamer, especially in the scene where she's 
chained to the rock and Kraken is slobbering all over her. Burgess 
Meredith has a nice little supporting role as Ammon, an old playwright
who thinks he may be able to turn all of this into a quick epic. And
Laurence Olivier is just as I have always imagined Zeus:  petulant,
but with a soft spot for a pretty face.
    The real star of the movie, however, is Ray Harryhausen, who has 
been working toward this movie during more than 40 years as a creator 
of special effects. He uses combinations of animation, miniatures, 
optical tricks and multiple images to put humans into the same movie 
frames as the most fantastical creatures of legend, and more often 
than not, they look pretty convincing; when Perseus tames Pegasus, it 
sure looks like he's dealing with a real horse (except for the wings, 
of course).
    Harryhausen's credits include ''Mighty Joe Young,'' ''Jason and
the Argonauts'' and ''The Golden Voyage of Sinbad,'' but ''Clash of
the Titans'' is his masterwork.
    Among Harryhausen's inspired set-pieces: the battle in Medusa's 
lair, with her hair writhing with snakes; the flying horse scenes; the
gigantic prehistoric bird; the two-headed wolf-dog, Dioskilos; the
Stygian witches; and, of course, Kraken, who rears up from the sea and
causes tidal waves that do a lot of very convincing damage to a Greek
city that exists only in Harryhausen's art.
    The most lovable special-effects creation in the movie is little 
Bubo, a golden owl sent by the gods to help Perseus in his trials.  
Bubo whistles and rotates his head something like R2-D2 in ''Star 
Wars,'' and he has a similar personality, too, especially at the 
hilarious moment when he enters the film for the first time.
    ''Clash of the Titans'' is just about perfect as summer 
entertainment. It's a family film (there's nothing in it that would 
disturb any but the most impressionable children), and yet it's not by
any means innocuous: It's got blood and thunder and lots of gory 
details, all presented with enormous gusto and style. It has faith in 
a story-telling tradition that sometimes seems almost forgotten, a 
tradition depending upon legends and myths, magical swords, enchanted 
shields, invisibility helmets, and the overwhelming power of a kiss.  
I had a great time.

------------------------------

Date: 12 June 1981 17:32-EDT
From: Steve Strassmann <straz at MIT-AI>
Subject: Clash of the Titans

A recent mention of the soon-to-be released Clash of the Titans 
reminded me to type a review. It's not easy to write a spoiler for a
movie based on a Greek myth, but this is very close to one:

ClotT is as good a name as any for this flick. It was shown in a sneak
preview on the MIT campus a month or so ago, but the most I can
remember is the disappointment at the whole kaboodle. The animation
was acceptable, but varied greatly in quality. A few scenes (Perseus &
the Gorgon) for example, had very imaginative tricks (like the men
getting stoned).  However, some of the visible marionette strings &
ragged matte lines around the Greek temples (What's the Acropolis
doing in the Grand Canyon, anyway?)  took away a lot of the magic.

The mutilation of the Perseus myth was a crime in itself. Perseus
himself is portrayed as the dingbat he never was, and the Olympian
gods as the petty, jealous, bickering pack of children they always
were. There are obvious discrepancies, such as Perseus' flinging the
Medusa's head, and watching its trajectory carefully, and the
introduction of a "mechanical guide" which is a clone of R2-D2 right
down to the whistles & spinning head.  As a matter of fact, a good
deal of the time, heros walk off without their weapons only to find
them in their hands in the next combat scene. (Of course, Perseus does
manage to lose an awful lot of stuff that he never lost in the 
original legend.)

Don't see ClotT to learn about Perseus, to see new special effects, or
even for Laurence Olivier's Zeus (Lately, he's been confused between
his roles as Jews or Nazis. He's a Nazi here.); see it if you will
because it's an O.K. hero/faithful sidekick story with more (if not
better) special effects than, say, Ordinary People.

------------------------------

Date: 12 June 1981 02:00-EDT
From: Stuart M. Cracraft <MCLURE at MIT-AI>
Subject:  H.G. Wells encouraging anti-scientific thought

That's a somewhat dubious claim. You might as well say the same thing 
about Crichton's Westworld, Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man. Carrying 
cynicism of this kind too far could invalidate 99% of SF produced by
so-called hard-science writers like Clarke, Niven, Haldeman.  About
the only writer I can think of who used truly scientific endings was
Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes stories and some of those were pretty
far-fetched too.

First and foremost, Wells was a failed social architect, not an 
environmentalist. I imagine that if Wells had adhered to a strict 
policy of scientifically resolving his tales, his work might have 
faded into obscurity, considering the possibly ludicrous "resolutions"
he might have resorted to. Instead, we're left with situations which 
place Man in a whirlwind of change, both technological and social. I 
don't feel that they encourage anti-scientific thought at all. They 
merely show Wells's discontent with the paths of social change as he 
had perceived them. In my opinion, Wells was one of the best writers 
at dealing with fantastically implausible technology in ordinary 
situations.

THE TIME MACHINE was not written to demonstrate superior technology 
winning out; rather, Wells wrote it to extrapolate the dichotomy in
English society of the 1890's as he envisioned it.

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS has an outside force of superior technology, but
the entire conflict is probably staged just to show how Man might 
react to a supposedly invincible enemy (another good example of this 
is Varley's OPHIUCHI HOTLINE).

Wells was concerned with social change. His scientific devices were
used purely as a means for accomplishing that change rapidly and
allowed him to quickly start examining the effect on people.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 14-JUN  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #150
*** EOOH ***
Date: 14 JUN 1981 1913-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #150
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

   
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 14 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 150

Today's Topics:
                      SF Fandom - Westercon,
     SF Books - Fantasticats,  SF Movies - Clash of the Titans,
               SF Music - Theme from "Dark Shadows",
        SF Topics - Children's stories (Boy's Life stories) &
     Children's TV (Galactic Patrol) & Science in Science Fiction
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  13 June 1981 02:18 edt
From:  Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Sacramento Westercon

I am considering taking the Amtrack costal train from LA to
Sacramento, since this may be the last year that it exists
(considering the Amtrack budget cuts). I would appreciate comments
from anyone who has ever taken this train.

My problem is that the train stops in Davis, not in Sacramento. Is
there perhaps someone on this list that can tell me how to finish the
trip?  Perhaps some Sacramento resident or someone who will be at the
con who will offer a ride?

Anyone from LA interested in riding up in a group??  The train leaves
LA at 10:30 Thursday morning and arrives in Davis at 10:45 PM.

And, although this is much too early by tradition, any interest in an 
SF-Lovers party at the con??

Any answers or other expressions of interest should be sent directly
to me.

                        Thanks,
                        Paul

------------------------------

From: DAA@MIT-ML
Date: 06/12/81 22:17:18

If proof is needed about cats in SF, in Ringworld Engineers, Louis
thinks to himself that "The kzinti males look like fat orange cats
walking on their hind legs. . . almost."

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 1007-PDT
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Cats...

     Enough on cats already!  Or at least include some SF books for 
those of us who HATE cats.  Unfortunately, the two books I can think 
of ("The I Hate Cats Book" and "101 Things to Do With A Dead Cat") 
aren't SF.

-- Mark -- 

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1981 0613-PDT
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-CSL
Subject: Something for the "Dead Cat Panel"?
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow

I wonder if this guy was the artist who did the highly controversy
"How To Kill a Cat" at the San Francisco WESTERCON 2 years ago that
inspired the "Dead Cat Panel" at the following WESTERCON in Los
Angeles the year following?


                    101 Uses For A Dead Cat
                       By TIMOTHY HARPER
                    Associated Press Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) - There may be more than one way to skin a cat, but 
only one man is willing to risk the wrath of 23 million cat lovers 
with 101 suggestions for what to do with the hide.
    That man is Simon Bond, a 33-year-old Englishman who professes to 
love cats even though they make him sneeze.
    His best-selling book, entitled ''101 Uses for a Dead Cat,'' is a 
dementedly whimsical collection of cartoons purporting to show how 
cats can be useful even after they've exhausted their nine lives.
    Some call it disgusting, obscene, sadistic, horrible and sick.  
Others call it very funny. And everybody calls it very, very 
successful.
    Already, 200,000 copies of the $2.95 book published by Clarkson N.
Potter Inc. of New York are in print, pushing it well past the ''cat 
books'' it spoofs.
    It's even more popular than the recent publishing phenomenon ''The
Official Preppie Handbook,''e throw rugs, like bearskins, before the
hearth.
    ''Monstrous and obscene,'' Roy Youngdale of Los Altos, Calif.,
said in one of dozens of outraged letters received by the publisher
from cat fanciers. ''An open call to sadism.''
    Bond, who said he got the idea for the 95-page book during a 
conversation with friends in Britain's zany Monty Python comedy 
troupe, has sketched rigor mortis cats with tails sharpened so they 
can be thrown at dartboards.
    ''Weirdness,'' wrote Nancy Orr of Tampa, Fla.
    One of Bond's kitty carcasses has been hollowed into a bowling
ball bag; several others are mounted above prison fences with their
tiny ears holding barbed wire in place.
    ''The death of a cat is not a funny circumstance,'' Ann 
Green-Cloutier of Warren, R.I., wrote.
    A cat's foreleg serves as a tone arm on a phonograph and a carcass
draped over a teapot as a cozy. One flattened kitty, grasped by the 
tail, serves as a tennis racket. Another squished feline, without 
tail, is a perfect Frisbee.
    One writer, W. Michael Long, suggested another book: ''101 Uses
for a Dead Simon Bond.''
    The book also depicts four cats as dining table legs, while a cat
on its hindquarters with forelegs extended is a functional wine rack.
Two tails are portrayed as windshield wipers and little paws are 
transformed into rubber stamps.
    ''Horrible,'' wrote Laurie Zane. ''This man must be a sad and 
despicable human being.''
    Actually, Bond is a rather impish fellow whose asthma and
allergies led him to move to Phoenix, Ariz., several years ago.
    His cartoons have been published in magazines like Esquire and the
New Yorker, but Bond swore in an interview that he had never earned 
more than $10,000 in a single year - until now.
    He said ''101 Uses'' was put together for fun, not money.
    ''I couldn't have done the book if I thought it was terrible,'' he
protested. ''I'm the first to start sneezing when a cat comes round, 
but I'm also the first to start petting it.''
    Nancy White Kahan, the publicist promoting ''101 Uses,'' says more
than 200,000 copies of the book have been printed, and booksellers are
ordering in quantities surpassing the previous record fast-seller, 
''The Official Preppie Handbook.''
    This week ''101 Uses'' hit No. 7 on the New York Times list of
trade book bestsellers and No. 1 on the Walden and Dalton bestseller
lists, ahead of other books in the cat category like ''The Official I
Hate Cats Book,'' the ''Catcalender'' and ''Garfield Gains Weight.''
    Despite the letters, Ms. Kahan says booksellers report most of the
buyers are cat fanciers.
    ''A few people have just lost their sense of humor and their 
perspective over it,'' she said.
    Psychologist Joyce Brothers agrees. While Bond's catty humor may
be slightly sick, she said, it is nonetheless a harmless sort of
comedy that produces laughter and relieves tension.
    ''It's a put-on,'' she said. ''If you get upset at this, you have 
too much emotional involvement in your pet.''
    There have been favorable letters, too. One arrived on the 
stationery of the Bahrain Dead Cat Society, purportedly from the State
of Bahrain on the Arabian Gulf. The group's motto is ''Felix Morte,'' 
and its cable address is FLATCAT.
    The society said it was ''eagerly'' ordering five copies to share 
with its affiliates. And who are they?
    Well, the letter listed them as the North American Dead Dog
Society, the Kenyan Institute for Crushed Aardvarks, the Fiji Squashed
Squid Squad and the North Scunthorpe Hedgehog Hit Men.

------------------------------

From: RP@MIT-ML
Date: 06/13/81 07:59:25
Subject: Clash of the Titans

CLash Of the Titans or CLOT is a bore from the start (unless you are
under 10). I thought the effects were awful. I was reminded of the
King Kong effort a few years ago because the monsters move in jerks
(so do the actors come to think of it). The acting is outrageous as
well. In one unforgettable scene Zeus makes himself seen to Perseus as
an image on a shield and Sir Larry sounded like he was being
detoxified. Save your bucks for a second round of Raiders!!

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 1311-PDT
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-CSL
Subject: Record of music for greatest serial ever to be on TV.
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow

I was over at someones house the other night and they had a record of
"DARK SHADOWS" (with pictures of Barnibus and Quentin on the front),
by the Robert Orchestra.  Philips, PHS 600-314 - Stereo circa '69.
Anyone have any leads on how i might obtain a copy of this gem?

How many others used to be glued to the TV set at 4PM daily when it
was playing?  I really think it was the best serial ever to be on TV.

P.S.  To possible bay-area Dark Shadows lovers, I'm thinking of 
writing a letter to James Gabbert (of TV-20, where he has revived 
OUTER LIMITS and other greats) to see if I can get him to dig up the
series and rerun it, like Ch44 did for a while when Mary Hartman, Mary
Hartman was on).

------------------------------

Date: 11 June 1981 1210-EDT (Thursday)
From: David.Smith at CMU-10A (C410DS30)
Subject:  Names

The Boys' Life article about the solar sailing regatta was called The
Sunjammers.

That's D-u-r-w-a-r-d Kirby.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 0907-PDT
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at SU-AI>
Subject: Boy Scouts in Space

Heinlein wrote quite a few ``juvenile'' novels for Boy's Life way back
when.  Among them was ``Farmer in the Sky'' which had a bunch of kids
forming a scout troop on board a very large spacecraft (not a
generation ship, though) on its way to Ganymede.

As for the Scouts with the time machine, I remeber the stories, but
not the author (though it definitely wasn't Heinlein).  I distinctly
remember that my junior high school library had a hardback collection
of them, as well.  Boy's Life also carried some reasonably well-drawn
and interesting comic strips with a science-fiction flavor.  I recall
one about a guy who kept wandering through time by going into a cave,
and another about some folks who wandered about in a flying saucer.
As my collection (if it still exists) is about 1700 miles away, I
can't provide facts, just vague recollections.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 10:54:19 EDT (Thursday)
From: Drew M. Powles <dpowles at BBN-RSM>
Subject: Young at dec and Aquaboy

Sorry to nitpick:  but it's Aqualad, not Aquaboy.

------------------------------

Date: 1981-6-11-11:06:24.79
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
From:   NIGEL CONLIFFE at VAXWRK at ORION at METOO
Subject: Marionette TV shows

In answer to Tony Mione's question, I too remember a show called 
something like Planet Patrol; I think that it was called "Galactic 
Patrol"????

The spaceships were called "Galaspheres", and were vertical tubes 
(containing some sort of drive mechanism), surrounded by a circular 
tube which contained the living quarters, control room, "computer", 
etc.

The drive seemed strange -- a glowing semicircular beam of light
connecting the top and bottom of the central tube, but rotating
(faster at increased speeds) outside the area of the living quarters.

The only other two things that I remember about the show were that the
robots involved look incredibly fragile and unstable, and that, back 
on good old mother earth, people used to travel in cars inside
transparent tubes.

Does this ring any more bells???

Nigel

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1981 1221-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: re: lack of s in sf

H. G. Wells feared and disliked science? What a curious statement.  
True, the technological Morlocks in "The Time Machine" are
cave-dwelling cannibals, but the Eloi are not therefore heros; they
are portrayed as passive cattle.  The hero is the vigorous Victorian
and his wonderful time machine.  It's also true that in "The War of
the Worlds" the technological Martians are brought low by the smallest
of creatures, but does that demonstrate a rejection of technology or a
proper humility about its limits?  One of the first things you learn
in the engineering game is that overlooked details can cause
catastrophic failures, and the second thing you learn is that you
always overlook something.
   Nor do I remember where Wells says that science should be kept in
the hands of the elite.  There's a scientific elite in "Things To
Come", but I don't think it kept its knowledge secret.
   In general Wells was not blind to the dangers of science, but that 
is not a sign of fear, it is one of understanding. It is one of the 
reasons why, unlike the likes of Gernsback, you can still read him 
without wincing.

------------------------------

Date: 06/12/81 1058-EDT
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Sender: SORCEROR at LL
Subject: The Force; Science vs. Mysticism is SF ?

     An illustration of the connection between "The Force" of the SW 
universe and the Western tradition of scholarly occultism may be found
on p. 27 of Robert Anton Wilson's recent novel, MASKS OF THE 
ILLUMINATI. "The Force" is the last entry on a list of names which 
have been given to "the Vril force that could mutate humanity into 
superhumanity".

     The major motivation for this message, however, is not simply to
submit a small bit of relevant information from a work of literature,
but to express my dismay at some of the premises which appear to be
implicit in E.jeffc's criticism of SW and CEoTK.

     Denying a place in SF to the tradition of scholarly mysticism is 
to take a very narrow view the genre's values and the human concerns 
that it may address. Modern science relies on an epistemological 
framework which has never been thoroughly justified. Faith in 
induction and belief in the reality of abstract theoretical concepts 
may be manifestations of wishful thinking, just as much as the longing
to wield magic and psionic abilities, or the desire to become an 
entity of the higher planes. Science originates from the desire to 
understand and control the world we live in, while these mystic 
beliefs arise from the desire to transcend existential isolation, the 
possible futility of life when confronted with the fact of death, and 
the ennui which can result. Who's to say that one of these sets of 
needs is more valid than the other, or that one falls more properly 
under the scope of SF?  This genre's ability to use scientific 
knowledge and speculation to address "religious" issues is one of its 
most appealing aspects, for me. I too have been trained as a 
scientist, and I too deplore the frequency with which distorted or 
invented "science" are used to explain the existence of fantastic 
"objects", the occurrence of exotic, voluptuous physical scenery and 
events, or an author's laziness in dealing with the details and all 
the implications of a made-up premise. However, condemning works, 
simply because they allude to ideas from the body of scholarship on 
the occult, seems to contradict and deny one of the major aims and 
functions of SF.

     As a final thought, ponder how one would reconcile a total ban on
the use of mystical thinking, in SF, with Clarke's notion that "A
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."?
EOF (End Of Flame).

                            Sincerely,

                                   Karl G. Heinemann

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 15-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #151
*** EOOH ***
Date: 15 JUN 1981 0802-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #151
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 15 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 151

Today's Topics:
       SF Books - Dream Park,  SF Movies - Clash of the Titans,
    SF Topics - Computer Animation & Compu-fiction & Children's TV
 (Here's the Plot,What's the Title and Space Angles and Colonel Bleep)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 16:29 PDT
From: Ayers at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #147

The 11 June edition of SF-Lovers carried two separated articles that
are well-related:  a review of Niven's "Dream Park" and an editorial
"No Science in Science Fiction?"

Larry Niven is considered a "hard" sf writer.  "Dream Park" is set in
the near future.  It uses computer-generated "holograms" for its
wonderful effects.  Did you ask yourself how those holograms work?

Answer: they don't.  If you're in Dream Park and, between you and an
opaque object, some computer-generated hologram appears, then there
has to be something other than air in that line-of-sight.  [Or the
system is using the non-linear transmissive properties of air, which
become useful only at power densities you wouldn't want to be near.]

Did you notice this difficulty with the story?  Does the fact that 
Niven's use of "hologram" is akin to the use of "hyperdrive" -- that 
is as a noise word, implying the existence of science that the author 
isn't going to explain -- even though "hologram" is currently defined,
and thus you initially accept it as being Science, bother you?

Attempted moral (because otherwise this msg isn't going anywhere at
all):  "E.jeffc at Berkeley" is correct: its science FICTION.

Bob

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 at 0036-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TITANS?  "ClotT" is apt! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The review in a recent SF-L by Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times 
(Field News Service) leaves a great deal to be desired.

Accuracy, for one thing.

Maybe he was just using 'slobbering' to convey the \feel/ of the
scene, in--

     Andromeda is "chained to the rock and Kraken is slobbering
     all over her"

and 'ravish' rather than the more accurate 'ravage' for its greater 
impact in--

     "Kraken, who is unchained from his cage on the ocean floor
     so that he can ravish Joppa in general and Andromeda in
     particular"

For it wasn't that the Kraken was going to ravage Joppa AND Andromeda,
but that the choice had been Andromeda OR Joppa... the old 'it is 
needful that one man die to spare the nation' decision.  And as for 
'unchained', I saw none-- only a grille.

Maybe we could partly blame the special effects for--

     "Medusa, who turns men to stone with one glance"

but the dialog made it clear it was not Medusa's glance, but a glance 
AT her that stoned folks.

For a whole nest of bobbles, tho, consider--

     Danae is "cast into the sea, after she has angered the
     gods.  But Zeus ... takes pity and sees that the coffin
     washes ashore on a deserted island..."

It wasn't the gods she angered, but her father.  'Pity' is pretty 
dubious way to describe a capricious sense of paternity, and if the
island was deserted, who were those people in the background when the
baby was being fed?  (Maybe Mr. E. was too absorbed in ogling Danae's
mammaries to see anything else?)

How could--

     "Perseus ... mission in life [be] ... to return to Joppa"

when he'd never BEEN there?

As for--

     "gigantic, scrawny bird " ... "gigantic prehistoric bird"

it wasn't scrawny, it was a vulture and they're SUPPOSED to look like 
that.  And even tho the related California condor is on its last legs,
a drive thru ranch country would convincingly show that ordinary 
vultures are far from extinct, let alone "prehistoric".

He's mixed up about--

     "a riddle posed by Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother."

Cassiopeia neither originated the riddle (Calibos did) nor spoke it 
(Andromeda did THAT).

Another desiderata for Mr. E. would be critical acumen.  To claim--

     "...its visual wonderments are astonishing."

is something \I/ find astonishing.  This was my first Harryhausen 
film, and with only STAR WARS and TESB among contemporary movies to 
compare it to, I was singularly unimpressed.  ..........

One little touch did intrigue me pleasingly, tho-- the abundance of 
rosy-colored costumes on the populace in the final Kraken scenes-- 
because Joppa would have been in the area famous in antiquity for the 
production of the 'Tyrian purple' (a rich magenta shade) dye.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 2148-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Clash of the Titans

                       By RICHARD FREEDMAN
                      Newhouse News Service

    (UNDATED) Although ''Clash of the Titans'' purports to be about 
Greek mythology, like most movies today it's really about special 
effects.
    Never mind that such class acts have been assembled on Mount
Olympus as Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith and Ursula
Andress to play the Greek gods and goddesses Zeus, Hera, Thetis and
Aphrodite.
    They're only on screen for about 10 minutes (Andress has just one 
line to speak) for advertising purposes, before the monsters take over
the show.
    But what monsters they are! The brainchildren of veteran 
stop-action, three-dimensional animator Ray Harryhausen (''The Seventh
Voyage of Sinbad,'' ''Jason and the Argonauts''), they give ''Clash of
the Titans'' whatever life it has, making it far superior in the
sword-and-sorcery genre to the gloomily pretentious, yet inexplicably
popular ''Excalibur.''
    Beginning with a superb, Zeus-ordained tidal wave that sends
pillars and statues crashing about the engulfed city of Argos, ''Clash
of the Titans'' details the adventures of Zeus' son Perseus (Harry
Hamlin) and Andromeda (Judi Bowker).
    The mythical lovers remain American teen-agers throughout, but in 
the course of their difficult courtship they encounter such delightful
creations of Harryhausen's skill and imagination as Pegasus,
Dioskilos, Bubo, the Medusa and the Kraken.
    Pegasus is Perseus' winged white horse, not on the Lone Ranger's
Silver, especially in traffic jams. Less pleasant is Dioskilos, a
two-headed wolf-dog out of ''The Howling'' whose heads have to be
lopped off separately before Perseus can have the pleasure of meeting
the Medusa, whose hairdo of writhing snakes turns a man to stone just
by glancing at it.
    Bubo, a computerized golden owl fashioned by Hephaestus, is
Athena's gift to Perseus, and serves the same comic-relief function as
Artoo Detoo in ''Star Wars.''
    Bubo is unknown to Greek mythology - as is the Kraken, a sea
monster that swims down from Norse mythology just to give Perseus a
hard time, although the townsfolk standing on the shore when the
Kraken looms from the sea seem totally and notably unimpressed. Like 
present-day New Yorkers, they've seen it all.
    In addition, Harryhausen has devised an awesome Charon, the
skeleton ferryman of the River Styx; the three Stygian witches like
the Weird Sisters in ''Macbeth,'' but with only one eye among them;
and a horde of giant sand scorpions that should keep us all off the
beaches this summer.
    It's all good, clean fun, though, with Zeus emanating neon rays of
electric blue from his noble brow, a talking statue of Thetis, and a 
giant vulture who bears Andromeda skyward in a gilded cage.
    ''Clash of the Titans'' may not turn youngsters on to Greek 
mythology, but it certainly represents the advanced state of the art 
in movie special effects.

    FILM CLIP: ''Clash of the Titans.'' A comic strip of Greek
mythology through special effects, with Perseus and Andromeda
encountering all manner of mechanized beasties, cute and horrific,
devised by wizard Ray Harryhausen. Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom and
Maggie Smith are also aboard, but you hardly notice them. Rated
''PG.'' Three stars.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 1806-PDT
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: Cindy's body data

Okay, okay - I'll talk.

We thought about various schemes for getting 3D coordinate data to 
define the shape of Cindy's body, several were too hard or too 
expensive, some were too messy (slice her up and encode the flat 
sections), some sounded like a lot of fun - but ...

We ended up using a basic photogrammetric technique - we placed 
reference marks on her body, took photographs from several points of
view, digitized the marks from the photos and correlated the data from
several views into the 3D data.

Of course, the fun part was making the marks ... Two of our 
hardworking arts staffers did the honors.

Interestingly, this all happened last summer, during the actors
strike.  Being a good union person, Ms. Dey couldn't pose for us until
after the strike was over, and we needed to get started. The studio
sent us a stand-in. Either they didn't understand what we were doing,
or even the real stand-in was on strike but the woman they sent us was
completely the wrong shape! She was easily 1.5 times Dey's weight!

The synthetic "head" of Cindy was actually taken from Ms. Dey and
looks a good deal like her (modulo the lack of hair on the computer
model).  The body was mathematically "tweaked" to fit her proportions
better, but it is only close - no cigar.

        Craig 

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 (Thursday) 2110-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Computer selected fiction

I think that we have all missed the obvious resource that is right
before our eyes.  It should be possible to write our own SFL story by
some Delphi means.  Consider the following scenario:  One of us is
called "editor" and he writes the first "section" (paragraph, page,
some logically complete concept).  Then whoever would like to do so
simply send in the next section of the story to the editor as they
would like to see it continued.  Now, we don't want to leave the
selection of the "best" next section to him (her) alons so the editor
sends out copies of the storylines to 20 randomly selected sfl members
and they vote on the continuation that will be used.  This, then, is
added to the story (and printed in SFL) and the process loops. I think
that this would be really neat and a lot of fun and, who knows, maybe
we can get it published.  In order to even out both work load and
stylistic considerations, editor will have a tenure of, say, 10
sections and then will nominate a new editor and collect ballots.
That person becomes editor and the process goes on.  The editor may
have to do some minor rewriting in order to match the style of the
story thus far.

Anyone game?

-- Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 0827-PDT
Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3
Subject: Cartoons
From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin)

For the cartoon lovers out there, keep an eye on your local PBS 
station (or maybe even bug them about it) and watch for a rerun of a
series I recall from only a few years back, featuring award-winning
animation from all over the world (Lauren or somebody remember the
exact title of this?  It was hosted by Jean Marsh of "Upstairs,
Downstairs" fame.)

This featured lots of European animation, many really excellent and
some grotesque and eerie, totally unlike the funny cartoons we are
used to here.  There was also a WB wartime one of "Boogie-Woogie Bugle
Boy", which probably wouldn't get aired otherwise, due to racial
stereotypes (it's about a black army training detachment), for those
of you who want to see at least one of those fabled 40's WB pieces.
Walter Lanz did those, right?  (Or at least a lot of them?)

Will Martin

------------------------------

Date:  8 June 1981 2259-EDT (Monday)
From: Lee.Moore at CMU-10A
Subject:  Space Angles

One cartoon that I am surprised hasn't been mentioned yet and has
above average SF connections is "Space Angles".  It was done in the
same wooden style as "Clutch Cargo".  I can't remember it too well but
it did have a handsome hero/pilot with a heavy, eye-patched assistant.
I recall that they took off through the spokes of one of your standard
donut space stations.  I also remember an episode in which they had a
gladiator ring with giant robots.  They robots were controled by
humans inside.  (reminds me of the old "rock-em sock-em robots" game)
(did YOU ever own a "Big Lou"?)  (or have a lunch box w/ space
scenes?)  There was also some planet with a woman enchanter.

I used to watch this cartoon (along with one about Norse Gods and one
about Hercules) on the Capt. Tug show which was broadcast by the
Metro-media affiliate in Washington D.C.  Anybody else remeber things 
with more clarity?

        Lee Moore

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 09:41 PDT
From: Weissman at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: ZERO ZERO ISLAND

I remember ZERO ZERO ISLAND as the home of Colonel Bleep, too.  This 
is not to say that random other cartoons didn't use it also.  ("Dodo, 
the Kid from Outer Space"??!! You are kidding, right?!)

Zero-zero longitude-latitude is indeed water, off the coast of Africa 
(inside the "elbow" of its west coast), and the only maps I can scare 
up at the moment show nothing there besides water.  But WE KNOW that 
exploration will show a tiny island there containing the remains of a 
spaceman, a marionette, and a caveman ...sniff...

In any case, I hereby suggest that Colonel Bleep is the earliest
cartoon show that used elements of (precursors to?) SF.  Anybody care
to refute this?

-- Bob

------------------------------

Date: 14 June 1981 1822-EDT (Sunday)
From: David.Dill at CMU-10A (L170DD60)
Subject:  Science in Science Fiction


As I'm sure everyone has heard too often, the term "science fiction"
is frequently inappropriate since much of the literature in the genre 
doesn't deal with science or technology at all, or the future, for
that matter (I'm perfectly happy with the name as an arbitrary label, 
though).

However, a substantial body of science fiction DOES deal with issues
of science and technology.  The appeal of this literature to me not
the ability to supply convincing explanations for hypothetical science
or technology, but to explore the effects of scientific and
technological developments on people.  Thus, science fiction is
frequently fiction about the IMPACT of scientific discoveries, not the
pursuit or act of scientific discovery.

A major reason that science and technology are prominently featured in
so much "speculative fiction" (or whatever) is that they are major 
factors determining the nature of a society -- if you change them, you
have a new social system (or civilization) to speculate about.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 17-JUN  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #152
*** EOOH ***
Date: 17 JUN 1981 0551-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #152
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

   
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 16 Jun 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 152

Today's Topics:
            SF Books - Dream Park,  SF Movies - CEoTK &
      Clash of the Titans & Special Effects (Ray Harryhausen),
  SF Topics - Physics Today (Holograms) & International Animation &
                     Children's TV (Space Angels)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 JUN 1981 0835-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Holograms, fact and fancy


     I have not read DREAM PARK (If I allow myself the luxury of
reading I don't have time to write), so I can't comment directly on
Larry Niven's use of holograms in the story, but I thought I would
clarify Ayers comment on a hologram image appearing between you and an
opaque object, such as a rock.  Ayres is right if he meant
non-reflective and non-emitting by the word opaque.
     If the rock was the emitter of the laser light, either directly
or by reflection from some hidden laser projector, then your brain 
would interpret the lights coming from the rock as coming from the
position of the holographic image between you and the seemingly 
non-illuminated rock.  The rock does not have to be flat.  The
computer can compensate for its shape.
     What IS impossible is for a holographic image to appear when
there is NO object in the line of sight.  (Of course, the object could
be subtle, such as a holographic tissue lens or mirror that is
completely transparent and non-refractive or reflective except at
three very narrow laser frequencies in the red, green, and blue.

       Bob Forward 

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 09:21 PDT
From: Ayers at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Holograms, fact and fancy

One can of course produce a hologram image between a viewer and a rock
if the rock is a little special.  It could, in theory, be filled with
miniature lasers (diodes?) or, as Dr. Forward suggests, it could be
reflective at several laser frequencies and its shape accurately known
by a computer.

But such a "rock" is basically a laboratory "rock", not an
out-in-the-woods "rock".  DREAM PARK has hologram images appearing
between the viewer and his immediate landscape -- the grass and dirt
he's kicking as he's walking through it -- and between the viewer and
other character's bodies.  I stick with my claim that this is
hologram-as-hyperspace.  That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the book.

Bob

------------------------------

Date: 15 JUN 1981 0928-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: holograms, fact and fancy


     If that's what Niven and Barnes have in DREAM PARK, they are
hypergrams, not holograms.

       Bob Forward 

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 0955-MDT
From: Spencer W. Thomas <THOMAS at UTAH-20>
Subject: CEoTK

Translate please???  =S 

[ CEoTK = Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 15 June 1981 17:58-EDT
From: Daniel G. Shapiro <DGSHAP at MIT-AI>
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #151

Alright, here's my 2 cents.

Pico-review: sucks dead bears, plan on seeing only half of it

Micro-review: foul beyond belief, don't go unless you are forced at
              gunpoint

Mini-review:
        Clash of the Titans has got to be the most misbegotten pile of
trash to be plastered onto a movie screen since "attack of the killer 
tomatoes."  FOUL as a description, is generous.

The acting was absolutely disgusting.  They must have hired Perseus by
stripping a flat full of extra's to the waist (to examine their 
pectorals) and asking them to stare intently off into the distance.  
Perseus won.  And he spends the entire movie doing exactly that.  (I 
think it's because his eyes are close together.)  The woman (girl) who
plays Andromeda was so poorly cast that they had to use a stand-in for
the bath scene.  (Talk about ambarrassing!)  And the cast of thousands
was the most uninspiring bunch of Hollywood locals you have ever seen.
At the very end of the film, when Perseus single handedly defeats the 
500ft tall monster with a craving for human flesh, the villagers clap 
(singular) with appreciation and cheer, "oh yay, not bad, nice."  
Vile, vile, vile and dumb.  The also-rans were pretty notable.  
Imagine being a Greek soldier (destined to die) who's boss climbs into
the ferry piloted by a living skeleton, death's left hand man, Charon 
himself.  What do you do?  Quake with fear?  Turn and run?  NO!  You 
plod onto the boat and take your seat with everyone else, thinking, 
"wher' we goin?  Isle of Death?  Yeah boss, right, you bet."

And the special effects were spotty as well.  A good medusa, a mostly
nice pegasus (although some of the flight scenes were clearly taken
with Perseus astride a bench with a beating wing-machine in the 
background), an acceptable cereberus, a lousy kraken (same scenes 
shown of its release several times) and a worthless vulture.  Why 
bother?

I had one interesting observation tho.. CLoT is the first movie I have
ever seen which pays alot of attention to detail, and has absolutely 
no concern for the larger scale, like plot, photography, sets and
acting.  I wonder if this is a new trend.
        Dan

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 2201-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Film column

                    By RICHARD FREEDMAN
                   Newhouse News Service

    NEW YORK - The ads for ''Clash of the Titans'' boast such big 
box-office glamor names as Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Claire 
Bloom and Ursula Andress.
    They're all in the film - briefly - but the real star of this 
colorful fantasy on Greek mythological themes is a jovial, bald, 
60-year-old man named Ray Harryhausen.
    Ray who?
    Ray Harryhausen is the special effects genius whose handmade 
monsters, filmed by a technique called stop-action animation, have 
enlivened the extravaganzas ''It Came From Beneath the Sea,'' ''The 
Seventh Voyage of Sinbad'' and ''Jason and the Argonauts'' - which 
some Harryhausen devotees consider his masterpiece because of a scene 
in which the legendary hero battles a whole army of animated 
skeletons.
    To honor his unique career in creating special effects, the Museum
of Modern Art has mounted an impressive Ray Harryhausen retrospective 
featuring drawings and the actual working models for such engaging 
creatures as Pegasus the winged horse; Budo the wise owl; the 
fearsome, two-headed dog Dioskilos; the Kraken, who rises from the sea
to terrify everybody; and - Harryhausen's personal favorite - the 
Medusa, whose hairdo, consisting of 12 writhing snakes, can turn a man
to stone just by glancing at it.
    They're all from ''Clash of the Titans,'' but earlier Harryhausen 
creations are on display as well.
    ''When I saw the retrospective I shuddered because I realized all 
the things I should have done,'' the modest artist says.
    ''We had to do the best we could within the limitations of a
budget and bad weather. Reality, I learned, is carting 100 people
around four countries at the mercy of the weather.''
    Harryhausen was turned on to special effects when he saw the 
original ''King Kong'' as a boy of 14 at Grauman's Chinese Theater in 
Hollywood.
    ''It was such a startling revelation to see these things move,''
he recalls. ''You knew they weren't real - and yet they looked real.
It was the illusion of a lifetime.''
    Inspired, the boy went home to create a bear, using what he hopes 
was an old fur coat of his mother's for its realistic pelt.
    From there he went on to study anatomy, sculpture and animation 
techniques until, in 1946, he was able to join his idol, Willis 
O'Brien, who created King Kong, as an assistant on ''Mighty Joe 
Young.''
    The technique he perfected involves filming his monsters a frame
at a time, while he moves the serpents, tentacles or whatever a 
millimeter at a time. It involves immense patience, of course.
    ''I work in my studio at home in London, where I've lived since 
1959,'' he tells an interviewer over lunch during which he passes up 
the soft-shelled crabs because ''I've made so much money from animated
crabs I'd feel I was eating my children.''
    ''The Medusa sequence took two or three months to film,'' he says
of ''Clash of the Titans.'' ''I made the snakes different colors so
I'd know which ones I'd moved and which I hadn't. My great nightmare
is being interrupted by a phone call and forgetting where I've left
off.
    ''For Perseus' fight with the Medusa I first cast it in bronze to 
help the director, Desmond Davis, show the actor, Harry Hamlin, how to
react. Then I modeled the Medusa herself in clay, with liquid rubber
around it. I even gave her hairy armpits ... for Continental 
audiences.''
    Frequently Harryhausen will first make elaborate, gloomy drawings
of his creatures that resemble the doom-haunted dungeons of Piranesi
or the Dante illustrations of Gustave Dore.
    ''I can't draw in any other way,'' he says in acknowledging the 
influences. ''I'm a great admirer of Dore's, and recently found two 
rare oil paintings by him. Did you know that several of his paintings 
are supposed to have gone down with the Titanic?
    ''I also love Piranesi's gigantism. I think he and Dore are coming
back in fashion because people are getting tired of looking at gunny 
sacks pretending to be art.
    ''The drawings are mostly to raise money for making the movie. But
they should help the director visualize the set, as well. It always 
amazes me that certain directors can't judge from the drawings. Then 
they see the completed set and say they don't like it.
    ''Sam Goldwyn once said: 'Start with an earthquake and then build
to a climax.' That's always been my motto in dreaming up my creatures.
    ''But we're not in competition with God. We want the audience to 
know they're watching animated creatures and not the real thing, 
because with most of my monsters there is no real thing - thank God!''
    Harryhausen's hobby, when he isn't inventing, constructing, and 
laboriously moving his monsters for the camera, is collecting film 
scores, about which he has some pungent ideas:
    ''Did you know Max Steiner's score for ''King Kong'' was the first
original movie score? It's still a masterpiece. Too much movie music 
in the last 10 years has been degraded to a pop-rock beat, and a lot 
of the young audience really hates it. They just don't know any 
alternative because not one radio station these days plays sane music.
    ''But television at least gives youngsters a chance to hear those 
wonderful old Warner Brothers scores - Steiner's for Bette Davis' 'Now
Voyager,' for instance. Laurence Rosenthal's music for 'Clash of the
Titans' is in the grand romantic tradition.''
    Strolling up Fifth Avenue to his suite at the Plaza Hotel after 
lunch, Harryhausen stops to peer in the window of Steuben Glass to 
admire a toy trian. Then he enters the F.A.O. Schwartz toy emporium to
check on whether they've got models of his ''Clash of the Titans'' 
creatures in stock yet.
    They don't, and he registers a child's disappointment.
    ''I'm especially interested in Bubo, the computerized owl,'' he 
says. ''It's a development of Athena's wise old owl, but a real owl is
so untalented it would be boring to watch stretched out through a 
whole picture.
    ''So I had Hephaestus, the craftsman of the gods, construct this 
robot owl; you know there have been robots throughout all mythology.  
A good robot should be slightly menacing. What influenced me most 
after 'King Kong' was Fritz Lang's Metropolis,' which has a woman 
turned into a robot.''
    Arrived at his suite to show off the foot-high models for his 
creations, Harryhausen chuckles at the hard time he had getting them 
through U.S. Customs, which didn't quite know what to make of them.
    Then his eye lights on a necktie his Scottish wife Diana Bruce has
bought him during a morning's shopping expedition.
    The tie is lying in its gift wrapping on the coffee table. Its 
pattern is an elaborate assortment of lovely pastel monsters, all 
writhing together.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 15:25:33-PDT
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: more memory fragments

That show W. Martin was asking about-- I think it was the 
``International Animation Festival'' I used to watch it on PBS in the
NYC area on Sunday nights right after (before?)  Monty Python.  It was
certainly worth seeing.

I've been waiting for someone to mention Space Angels.  Wasn't the
heavy sidekick's name Taurus?  I recall that there were three crew,
two men (including Taurus) and a shapely woman.  Finally the seats in
the rocket pitched so that our heroes (oops that's another show) were
always upright w.r.t. the camera, whether the ship was vertical
(take-off and landing) or horizontal (flying through space).

Lastly, a bit of song (not from SA):

        When he gets in a scrape,
        he makes his escape
        with the help of his friend
        a great big ape!

        Then away he'll schlep
        on his elephant Shep
        when Ursula and Andrea(???) stay in step. .

David Ungar

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 1704-PDT
From: Craig W. Reynolds  from III via Rand  <REYNOLDS at RAND-AI>
Subject: International Animation

The animation anthology show Will Martin referred to is "International
Animation" hosted by Jean Marsh on PBS stations.  [ Thanks also to
Andrew Tannenbaum (TRB@MIT-MC) for identifying this series.  --  Jim ]

It is a must-see for any animation fans out there. Many (most?) of the
classic animated shorts can be seen on this show. A very wide
selection of styles, periods, and countries of origin are presented. A
lot of material from eastern Europe was shown, especially the Zagreb
(?)  studio's work. I also like the theme animation of the show.

Pickiness: "cartoon" is a style of drawing (eg "a political cartoon"),
           "animation" is something that moves, or seems to (eg "clay
                       animation", "computer graphic animation") 

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 19-JUN  "JPM at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #153
*** EOOH ***
Date: 19 JUN 1981 1004-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-ML
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #153
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

   
SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 18 Jun 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 153

Today's Topics:
               SF Books - Fantasticats & Cyber-SF,
      SF Movies - Clash of the Titans,  SF TV - Dark Shadows,
       SF Topics - International Animation & Compu-fiction &
  Children's TV (George of the Jungle and Dodo and Space Angels) &
            Children's stories ("The Haunted Spacesuit") &
                      Science in Science Fiction
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 04:20:36-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: SF Cat-tastrophes

Well, if you prefer i'm-purr-fect SF, I can think of one example sure
to give anyone claws-trophobia.  It's a story called "Late Night
Final", and it's really about the morality of TV producers.  A vicious
cat-like alien from an off-limits planet lands on earth, with the
intention of looting the poor weak inhabitants.  She pulls all sorts
of vicious acts, such as killing the skid-row physician she forced to
surgically alter her appearance.  Unknown to her, her progress has
been monitored by a TV network's hidden surveillance cameras.  The
network broadcasts her depredations as a block-buster live feature,
without regard to the people killed, etc.  The censorship board
permits this, as long as sexual or scatalogical scenes aren't shown;
they don't like it, but the public demands such fare.  Finally, when
the police apply too much pressure, they close the episode by hiring a
man who has (apparently) killed several criminals whom he felt had
been wrongly acquitted.  Said vigilante is, of course, a popular hero.
Anyway, the story has enough anti-cat propaganda to satisfy anyone's
evil felines.  Hmm -- could the author have been Leigh Brackett?  I
seem to remember several other

Wait a minute -- why am I trying hard to think of anti-cat stories.  
Look at the bum raps have gotten for thousands of years... hell, just
a week or two ago, Ann Landers said she had to go along with all those
readers who claimed to know of cats who smothered babies.  Me, I think
these folks have never heard of sudden infant death syndrome...

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1981 at 0453-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF: Natural Cy-Devices ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The rarest TYPEs of 'cybernetic' devices are those which are "natural"
rather than constructed.  Because we have found so few, all of them, 
not just the robots, are reported on together here.

     Laumer, K.: RETIEF'S WAR

 has the alien Quoppina, life forms combining the biological and the
 mechanical to form natural cyborgs.  This is the basis of a lot of
 the humor in the book.  The tone of the other books with cybernetic
 life forms, however, is not humorous.

 The circumstances are not described, but robots "grown from seed" in

     Kyle, D.A.: DRAGON LENSMAN

 would seem to be "natural".  Metallic robot-like life forms occur in

     High, P.E.: NO TRUCE WITH TERRA
     Anthony, P.: OX

 In addition to the natural robotic life forms, "Machine Prime" in

     Anthony, P.: OX

 is a similar computer.  And there are the alien purple flowers in

     Simak, C.: ALL FLESH IS GRASS

 which although biological rather than mechanical, have a root system
 which is described as forming a computer.

 'Problematical' is all we can say about the alien ship's denizens in

     Clarke, A.C.: RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA

 They \could/ be natural.  Like the characters in the story, we just
 don't have enough information to extrapolate reasonably from.

 -----

 Has anyone come across any other books with "natural" cy-devices?

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1981 10:40:32-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: bad actors in CotT (CLoT?)

   I'm curious about your statement that the actress(?) playing
Andromeda was so bad they had to hire a stand-in for the bath scene.
Certainly her proportions were extreme enough to satisfy most people;
was it that she refused to do a nude scene (which I find thoroughly
unlikely for an unknown in present-day filmmaking)?  And do you think
that one mark of a good actress is willingness to strip for the
camera?
   Aside from this, I completely agree with your review, except that I
didn't think much of the animated full shots of Pegasus---as with the
seagull at the beginning, too much contrast between stiff animation
and fluid life.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 0853-PDT (Monday)
From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: Dark Shadows, Huzzah!

   Ah yes.  I remember Dark Shadows quite well.  It ran back in the
late 60's and ended in 1970, or 1971, right?  I only caught the last
couple of years of the program with any frequency.  Thoroughly
bizarre, and even more fun when you were up on the things they were
stealing from (Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, Jekyll & Hyde, as well as
some more obscure stories).  Even today, you can hear "Shadows of the
Night", which was "Quentin's Theme" on the show, played on the radio.
This may be unique--a bit of music introduced as incidental music in a
soap opera becoming a successful popular record.
   Channel 9 here in LA (RKO General affiliate) ran Dark Shadows
reruns when MHMH started too.  Clever people they were, they ran it at
11 PM, opposite MHMH.  So it died from poor ratings, never to be seen
again in the LA market, sigh.  Again, unique.  I can't think of any
other soap operas that have gone into syndicated reruns!
   Every now and then, you see Dark Shadows alumni acting in other
things.  Notably Kate Jackson of "Charlie's Angels" (That's ANGEL, not
ANGLE).  However, a DS fan I was talking to at a recent con says that 
J. Frid (Barnabas) has retired from acting, and wants nothing to do
with DS fan activities, unlike the other former cast members.  I have
the impression that Dark Shadows fans are actually fairly active and
well organized.  However, more due to laziness than disinterest, I
haven't followed up any of the pointers.  I assume that there are
those out there who can help?  Maybe the UFO fan coordinator (whom I
know is also a DS fan) can supply information?

        Mike 

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 17:38 PDT
From: Pettit at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows was my favorite TV show next to Star Trek during most of
high school.  In our neighborhood it came on at 3:00, which was the
main factor in my choice of going to school 1st thru 6th periods
(which let out at 2:20) instead of 2nd thru 7th (3:15).  But I did
feel during the last season that the plots were getting too much away
from the central characters, and wished they would start over at the
beginning.  Instead they cancelled it altogether.

If you decide to send that letter, I'll second it.

        /Teri 

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 10:36:10-PDT
From: CSVAX.upstill at Berkeley
Subject: SF-lovers; Animation show


  I'm not sure about the animation series (the International Animation
Festival?) whose host was Jean Marsh, but more important, I can tell 
you who produced it, if you want to badger your local PBS station into
reruns:  KQED in San Francisco.  And yes, it was really good (remember
"Self Service", Bruno Bozetto's story of a mosquito consumer society 
run amok?), with much overlap with the (probably easier-to-obtain) Nth
Annual Torurnees of Animation (for N up to 14 I think now).

Steve

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1981 1709-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: animal robots, joint authorship

        The book version of Clash of the Titans will have Bubo, the 
robot owl (another robot bird).
        Re joint authorship: there is a book called The Floating 
Admiral, by Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, etc. -- one chapter per
author.  To keep themselves honest, each mystery writer was required
to have a solution of the puzzle that was consistent with the clues in
her/his chapter and the preceding ones.  The book works out pretty
well....It might be a good idea to do something like this, to keep the
story more coherent.  (sounds interesting).
                                        good reading,
                                                        --cat 

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1981 1720-PDT
From: Lynn Gold <G.FIGMO at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Song from SA

 George, George, George of the Jungle
 Strong as he can be
 AAOOHHHH (Tarzan-type yell)!
 "Watch out for that tree!
 "Watch out for that (AAOOHHHH -- followed by a loud crash) --
 TREE!"

--Lynn 

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1981 1214-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: G of the J

Sigh... let's see if we can get the George of the Jungle theme RIGHT
(the version sent in by someone in a previous digest was somewhat
mangled).

 George, George, George of the Jungle
 Friend to you and me!
 [Tarzan Yell]
 Watch out for that tree!

 George, George, George of the Jungle
 Lives a life that's free!
 [Tarzan Yell]
 Watch out for that tree!

 When he gets in a scrape
 He makes his escape
 With the help of his friend,
 an A - P - E.

 Then away he'll schlep,
 On his elephant Shep
 While Fella and Bersella stay in step!

 With...
 George, George, George of the Jungle
 Friend to you and me!
 [Tarzan Yell]
 Watch out for that tree!
 Watch out for that...  [Yell terminated with SPLAT--ARRRGHHH]
 Treeeeeeeeeeee...

 George, George, George of the Jungle --
 Friend to you and me!

---

--Lauren-- 

------------------------------

From: TRB@MIT-MC
Date: 06/15/81 10:12:20
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #151

Dodo definitely exists, as real as you or I.  Part of the theme song 
went: "... with propellers on his heels, antennas on his ears, he's a 
science fiction pixie from a strange atomic race, DODO, the kid from 
outer space, DODO!"  Dodo was pretty hip, there was an off the wall 
ingenious scientist, if I correctly recall.  The theme music really 
got your toes tappin'.  I watched this in NYC all the time.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 14:02:17 EDT (Monday)
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-RSM>
Subject: space angel

I can remember watching Space Angel in my early childhood in Missouri 
(circa 1960).  As I recall it was Space Angel himself who had the
eye-patch.  There was a heavy-set bearded fellow (with a Norse
accent?) and a woman on the crew (don't remember their roles).

There were some sort of baddies (a la Klingons) with skeletal
space-ships.

I only remember an episode which involved a race in space, including a
grizzled old prospector (Gabby Hayes-like) and his patched-together
spaceship (the most realistic space ship in films until the
Discovery... lots of lumps and struts...)

Sure seemed like fine stuff to a four-year old...

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 1217-PDT (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Space Angles (sic)

Yeah!  I remember the "Space Angles" show!  It came on right after
"Pythagorian Planet!"

--Lauren--

P.S.  If anyone believes this, may your keyboard melt beneath
      your fingers...

--LW-- 

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 10:49:23-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: kittens in a space suit

   The story is Arthur Clarke's "The Haunted Spacesuit", a short-short
that has appeared in several places. It came out in a mundane magazine
as part of a series about life on the first space station. (I keep 
thinking of the series as a whole being titled "Islands in the Sky", 
but that's a juvenile novel.) I think "The Sentinel", which was the 
inspiration for 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY, came from a similar set of 
short-shorts about the first flight to the moon (a fine fantasy:  
U.S., British, and Russian spacecraft leave together from a thriving 
space station).

------------------------------

Date: 14 Jun 1981 1108-PDT
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: HGWells and science fiction
From:  Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

And even if we can conclude that Wells was in fact anti-science, that
has nothing to do with whether what he wrote was science fiction.  As
someone recently said again (I think it was Baird Searles in IASFM) sf
is about people's reaction *to* science.  Time Machine and War of the
Worlds qualify under that definition in any case.

        Mike

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1981 20:31:32-PDT
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: No science in science fiction ?

Science fiction alone does not suffer from this gross distortion of 
science.  Science-fact shows on television are also guilty of the same
crime.

COSMOS: I know that I supported this show last November, but after 
looking at it from this viewpoint, I have changed my mind.  There is
not one ounce of science in this show.  What this show overflows with
is MYSTICISM.  Sagan's peculiar way of speaking adds to this effect.
The problem with Carl Sagan is that he cannot understand the universe,
and therefore the answer is to be sought in eastern religions, and
stuff like that.  He has this obsession with THINGS, such as the
billions upon billions upon billions of stars in a galaxy, which the
psychodelic animation and music reinforces.  As soon as he comes to
the frontiers of man's knowledge, he turns into a babbling idiot
claiming that anything is possible, and that there is no way for us to
know what is reality.

Connections: This highly acclaimed series by James Burke fails in task
it set out to do - show how science progresses to ever higher and
higher levels of understanding of the universe.  If you listen to this
show, you come away with the impression that all advancements in
science come about through accident, luck, circumstances, greed, 
everything but one - creativity.  Nowhere in this series is creativity
credited as the cause of scientific advancement.  However, it goes 
deeper than that.  The first episode dealt with the power blackout 
that hit New York, and showed how one little device caused the entire
thing.  What Burke emphasizes is this: we are at the mercy of our own
technology.  Something can happen that is totally out of our control
and completely destroy everything.  Technology has become a trap.
Sounds a bit like H.G. Wells.  The last episode is not any better.  He
goes through 4 alternatives that we can follow, everything from going
back to the caves to continuing on our present course.  He chooses the
last one as the lesser of evils, but he does consider it an evil, for
we can continue our scientific progress only at the expense of making
todays breakneck speed seem like a snail's pace in the future.  The
emphasis here is that science will outgrow man's ability to comprehend
it.  In other words, there is a point at which man can no longer
understand the universe, a statement I totally disagree with.

In Search of: this show starring Leonard Nemoy of Star Trek fame can 
be classified as "science-fact" only if you take a grain of salt.  The
show specializes in providing "scientific" evidence that such things
as ESP, witchcraft, voodoo, UFO's, and other such things are real.
One major way of providing evidence is through a "reconstruction" of
what happened, as if by using a lot of special effects and losy actors
the "evidence" is made more "valid".  The show claims that they are
only proposing A solution, and not THE solution, but if that is true,
why is the "solution" the show inevitably uses the most
anti-scientific possible, and why don't they do a show describing
another solution?

Jeff

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 20-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #154
*** EOOH ***
Date: 20 JUN 1981 0010-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #154
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 19 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 154

Today's Topics:
          SF Books - Giant Star,  SF Movies - Superman II &
           Raiders of the Lost Ark & Capsule Movie Reviews,
        SF Topics - Children's stories (Boy's Life stories and
       Zip Zip the Cat and Here's the Plot,What's the Title) &
         Computer Animation & Children's TV (Tom Terrific and
 Banana Man and Rocky and Bullwinkle and Underdog and Gumby and Pokey)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DP@MIT-ML
Date: 06/17/81 03:14:12
Subject: brief review- Giant Star by James Hogan

  New in paper from ballantine, another novel by Hogan.  to start it
has a very ugly thing in the upper right corner, the price. it is
$2.50 for a normal edition.

   This is another in the "gentle giants" series. Lots of hairy pseudo
physics, and a plug for DEC (he hasn't yet realized that he isn't a
lab products salesman anymore).  This time instead of hi space, he has
dimensional tunneling by spinning black holes.

  He still has much to learn about characterization, as they still 
turn out one dimensional, despite the fact that several are from the
previous "Gentle Giants" story. He cann't even keep them consistent.  
he has non preadators (the giants) turning into something resembling 
cowboy/commando/cavalry to make some of the ending work.
  I also feel something else could have been done to the ending, the 
coincidences are to unreal and cliche'.  He does include a neat 
crossword tho.

  the cover features a Darrell Sweet painting of this neat very techie
spaceship, complete with reaction drive. However he expends almost a
page on the earthmen puzzling out the fact that it had a non-reation
gravitic drive. he also has the spectra on the starbow backwards, he
has visible red shift in the direction of flight.  A neat ship despite
the nit. (besides, didn't someone prove that a starbow would not
exist?)

                                        Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1981 0012-PDT
From: Lynn Gold <G.FIGMO at SU-SCORE>
Subject: One sentence review - RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

Looks like LucasFilms has finally discovered a way to keep a plot from
interfering with their special effects.  

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 0656-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Superman II   

                              Superman II
                             By BOB THOMAS
                        Associated Press Writer

    SUPERMAN II demonstrates what can be accomplished by practice.  
While by no means perfect, the new version is far superior to the 
original.  Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder seem more comfortable 
in their cliche-ridden roles and can even handle such lines as ''Let's
go to my place,'' and, ''I think I'll slip into something more 
comfortable.''  (Gee whiz, they even bed down together!) Gene Hackman 
is a tower of strength as the would-be master criminal, and Terence 
Stamp performs splendidly as leader of the space invaders. The 
millions who attended the first ''Superman'' should enjoy this even 
more. Rated PG.

[ Superman II begins showing today at your local theatre.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 1120-PDT
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-CSL
Subject: Superman question.
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow

What is the name of the "place" where the criminals are banished to?
I sorta remember it was called a "zone" of some sort, like perhaps the
"Negative Zone"?  I remember reading about it in the comic books, but
the name slips my mind.  Help?

[ Yes, the criminals were banished to the "Phantom Zone" (or at least
  this is what the place is called in the movie).  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1981 0309-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Capsule Movie Reviews   

    ''Outland''-''High Noon'' on the moon, this uncompromising 
science-fiction thriller stars Sean Connery, Peter Boyle and Frances 
Stern-hagen. Rated PG. 3 stars.
    ''Raiders of the Lost Ark''-Here's a movie of glorious imagination
and breakneck speed. Harrison Ford plays an understated, stubborn 
archeologist-adventurer trying to beat the Nazis to the Ark of the 
Covenant, aided by Karen Allen, a lady of resilient toughness. George 
(''Star Wars'') Lucas produced, and Steven (''Jaws'') Spielberg 
directed. Rated PG. 4 stars.
    ''Superman II''-Christopher Reeve is back as the superhero, trying
to establish a quiet life with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) - but it is 
not to be. Rated PG.

------------------------------

From: DP@MIT-ML
Date: 06/15/81 22:31:38
Subject: SF in BL

  True, there was a lot of the early Heinlein published in boys life.
The clue is a copyright by The Curtis Publishing Co.  (it also helps 
if the story is from the late 40's) Follows is a *partial* list. feel 
free to add.

        Space Jockey 1947
        The black pits of luna 1947
        It's great to be back 1946
        The green hills of earth 1947 (boy was I surprised by this
            one)


  There were some stranger publishers, would you belive "the long
Watch" is copyright 1948 by the American legion?

                                        enjoy,
                                        Jeff

------------------------------

Date:  9-Jun-81 14:51:33 PDT (Tuesday)
From: Sapsford at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: xeroxing

After you scan my originating site you will understand why I bother...

Let me point out that xerox is not a verb.

[ This message refers to the discussion of postal APAs that took
  place in volume 3, issue 145.  --  Jim ]

------------------------------

Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
From:   MARIAH::LARY           11-JUN-1981 20:31  
Subj:   More Neuralgia for SFL

        Gee, with all the nostalgia-freaking going on on the net I'm 
surprised no-one has mentioned Tom Terrific and his dog, the Mighty 
Manfred ("Let's go home, Tom") - about the only visual thing about
them I remember is that Tom Terrific used to wear some kind of funnel
on his head, but Manfred's mournful voice will be with me 'till the
grave...

------------------------------

Date: 11 June 1981 1630-EDT
From: Gregg Podnar at CMU-10A
Subject: Banana Man

Goodness, I remember Tom and his faithful dog Manfred.  But no one 
seems to recall the Banana Man with his car-within-car train, his 
bi-word vocabulary: "Ah...oh..........oh.", and of course the yellow 
bunches.  Podnar@cmua

P.S. Would the recent childhood entertainment nostalgia on SFL
     indicate a need for yet another BB?  It seems to be none
     other than all of us who provide the history of these ephemerals.

------------------------------

Date:  15 June 1981 14:37 edt
From:  York.Multics at MIT-Multics (William M. York)
Subject:  Warner Bros cartoons

As far as I know, Lantz was never involved in the WB cartoon
operation.  Robert Clampet directed most of the very early (30's) WB
cartoons.  He was followed by many others, including Chuck Jones (my
personal favorite, still directs some of the low-quality TV special
stuff), Fritz Freling (of DePate-Freling/Pink Panther fame), Robert
McKimson, and Arthur Davis.  While Disney pioneered most of the
technical advancements in commercial animation (the multi-plane
camera, color, cartoons to music), the people at WB broke away from
the pastoral Disney image and made cartoons where the humor is derived
from sarcasm and slapstick.  When Bugs Bunny first made an appearance,
he was much more obnoxious than he has since become.  I am an avid fan
of WB cartoons, and I think that some of the funniest moments on film
were created by the people at WB studios.

------------------------------

Date:  8 Jun 1981 1323-PDT
From: CSD.JPBion at SU-SCORE (Joel P. Bion)
Subject: Reply to "Where is Frostbite Falls"

        Ah, I can never forget this: "Frostbite Falls", the home of 
Rocky and Bullwinkle, is located in my dear home state, Minnesota (I 
wonder if it was a pun on a pretty dead town in northwest Minnesota 
called Fergus Falls, but I really doubt it...).

        Also, if you are ever in Minneapolis, be sure to go to 
"Bullwinkle's Bar". It is easy to spot as it sports a large picture of
our favorite moose holding up a large mug of beer. It is located on
the University of Minnesota's West Bank.

                                        -Joel 

------------------------------

Date: 7 June 1981 18:52-EDT
From: Dennis L. Doughty <DUFTY at MIT-MC>
Subject:  UNDERDOG


The arch-criminal's name in Underdog was "Simon Bar Sinister." (Lauren
-- wasn't Polly's full name "Sweet Polly Purebred?")  Also, the mentor
in Tennessee Tuxedo was named Phineas *J.* (not T.) Whoopie.

 When criminals in this world appear
 And break the laws that they should fear
 And frighten all who see or hear
 The cry goes up from far and near
 For UNDERDOG (Underdog) UNDERDOG (Underdog)

         Speed of lightening, roar of thunder
         Fighting all who rob or plunder...
         UNDERDOG ...oh oh oh oh... UNDERDOG (Underdog)

 When in this world the headlines read
 Of those whose hearts are filled with greed
 And robbers steal from those who need
 The cry goes up with blinding speed
 For UNDERDOG ... etc

Can anyone remember the opening to Underdog?  I remember the ending of
it:
        Shoeshine Boy (Underdog) accepts a coin from a gentleman, says
        "Thank you sir," bites it, and the narrator continues...
        "Little did anyone know, but whenever there was a cry for help
        (HELP!, HELP! HELP!), Shoeshine Boy became in real life
(sic)...
        UNDERDOG! 

What comes before?  --Dennis

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1981 1210-PDT
Sender: WMARTIN at OFFICE-3
Subject: Assorted Short Subjects.
From: Amy Newell (through WMartin at Office-3)

   All of the cartoon talk has brought back 'Gumby' & his horse 
'Pokey'.  I remember always being terrifically uncomfortable with that
show -- even having nightmares about the way they moved & folded in on
themselves.

 Also - a question, does anybody else remember a book called "The Eyes
in the Fishbowl" or some thing close to that?  Was about people who
lived in a department store at night or some such thing.

  Andre Norton has two juveniles dealing with superior cats from space
who come to Earth to rescue and or observe the way we treat our cats
here.  I just read these a couple of years ago and found them
enjoyable.

                                   Amy Newell

------------------------------

Date: 1981-5-17-17:18:52.59
From:   ALYSON L ABRAMOWITZ AT KIRK
Sender: YOUNG@DEC-MARLBORO
Subject: Cat Stories

People have been talking about Space Cat and other children's sf
stories.  Maybe someone can remember one of the first SF series I
remember reading:  ZIP ZIP THE CAT.

I remember nothing of the plots except that they sound vaguely like 
the Space Cat ones people have been describing. The books were
oriented at VERY young sf readers, tho. Certainly much younger than
kids 'typically' pick up sf reading as a hobby.

Anyone remember these books?

        Alyson

------------------------------

Date: 14 Jun 1981 18:34:51-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Lucasfilms

The cover story of the June 15 issue of Newsweek is about "Raiders of 
the Lost Ark."  One part talks about Lucas's plans for
computerization.

        Like his good friend Francis Coppola, Lucas is fascinated
        by the possibilities of wedding computerization to movie-
        making, and he has hired 22 specialists from such computer
        centers as the California Institute of Technology's Jet
        Propulsion Lab.  "Celluloid strips and sprockets are out of
        date," he declares.  "The things people have to worry about,
        like whether the film will tear or the sound will get out
        of sync -- it's ridiculous!"  Lucas's electronic geniuses
        are developing a computerized digital printing, editing and
        sound-mixing system that will free him, he hopes, from his
        last links with Hollywood -- "the big labs that print thou-
        sands of copies of the finished film and the big studios that
        charge a rental fee for distributing the prints.  When video
        takes over," he prophesies, "we won't need labs anymore.
        'Revenge of the Jedi' is the last picture we'll shoot on
        film."

Anyone wanna comment/flame on that, especially the last sentence?

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 21-JUN  "JPM at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #155
*** EOOH ***
Date: 21 JUN 1981 0859-EDT
From: JPM at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #155
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 21 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 155

Today's Topics:
                Administrivia - Changing of the Guard,
    SF Books - True Names,  SF Movies - Raiders of the Lost Ark &
               Clash of the Titans & Special Effects,
   SF Theater - Bradbury on Broadway,  SF Topics - Compu-fiction &
      Children's TV (George of the Jungle and Space Angels and
           Colonel Bleep) & Anti-Sugar,  Spoiler - Cyber-SF
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 06/20/81 00:00:00
From: The Moderator <JPM@MIT-AI>
Subject: Changing of the Guard

For the next 9 weeks I will be touring Europe and Great Britain.  Thus
Mike Peeler (Admin.MDP@SU-Score) will be assuming the moderatorship of
SF-LOVERS.  Mike has served briefly in this capacity before, so there
should be a minimum of interruption in the flow of conversation
occurring in the digest.

I will probably assume the moderatorship (there has to be a better
word for it!) once again after the 1981 WorldCon (which I will be
attending), approximately September 15.  Till then, here's wishing
each and every one of you a great summer!

Please remember that all digest submissions should still be sent to
SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI, while all messages concerning administrative
problems should be sent to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI.

Jim

------------------------------

Date: 19 June 1981 02:51-EDT
From: Richard M. Stallman <RMS at MIT-AI>

Has anyone else read True Names, by Vernor Vinge?  It has just come
out, in a book called Binary Star, and it captures very realistically
the nature of being a hacker, some time in the future.  It's the first
time I've seen anyone else recognize the similarity between the world
inside computers and magic.

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1981 17:46:20 EDT (Thursday)
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-RSM>
Subject: RotLA

[RotLA => Raiders of the Lost Ark]

Look, if John Carter of Mars is science fiction, then this is a 
reasonable topic for this mailing list.

Milli-review: (from the June 16 Boston Phoenix:

        For all its dash an brio, [RotLA] is a sweetly modest
        undertaking-- a pinball machine of a movie that sparks
        and buzzes and claims no other earthly goal than to give
        us a good time.  This it accomplishes handily....it is at
        once comfortably familiar and absolutely new, a wild
        assemblage of bric-a-brac and spare parts that suddenly,
        unexpectedly takes off into the stratosphere.  Only an
        American-- or rather a pair of Americans--could have
        built such a marvelous toy.  It's the sort of gimcrack
        Tom Swift might have hammered together had he vacationed,
        between semesters, in Hollywood...

The review goes on to give lots of spoilers, but also mentions that,
in true Lucas style, "Raiders has been planned as part of a series of
films, all centering on the exploits of one Indiana Jones, an
impossibly dashing archaeology professor.  Set in 1936, Raiders is
meant to be CHAPTER THREE in the saga of Indy..."

Sigh, I hope we see how these 3-years-per-chapter serials end before
the lunatics in Washington and Moscow incinerate the rest of us...

------------------------------

Date: 19 June 1981 02:48-EDT
From: Richard M. Stallman <RMS at MIT-AI>

I went to see CLOT (a couple of kids just HAD to see it and I was
dragged along).  When I first saw Bubo, I thought:

You want my life to become BORING, don't you?

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1981 0308-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Special Effects    

                            By BOB THOMAS
                          Associated Press

     This is the summer of the special effects, and that worries Ray
Harryhausen, distinguished practitioner of that magical science.
    ''Clash of the Titans,'' for which Harryhausen provided a
menagerie of mythological creatures, is joining other warm-weather
attractions featuring visual wizardry: ''Raiders of the Lost Ark,''
''Outland,'' ''Dragonslayer,'' ''Superman II,'' etc.
    ''I'm worried about all this concentration on special effects,'' 
admits Harryhausen. ''It breeds the seeds of its own destruction.
    ''The problem is over-exposure and too much concentration on
effects for the sake of effects. I'm also concerned about the large
amount of publicity about how effects are accomplished. I have been
noted for my closed-mouth attitude. I've always reasoned that when a
magician explains how he saws a woman in half, the illusion is
destroyed.
    ''The thing that started me in the business was the first 'King 
Kong.' I had to learn how those tricks were done, and by the time I 
did, I was hooked. That same wonderment that I felt about 'King Kong' 
is important to the enjoyment of films of fantasy today.
    Then why does he submit to interviews? ''Because if I don't talk 
about the picture, it might not get talked about.''
    Ray Harryhausen is not exactly a marquee name, but he is lionized
at conventions of fans of science fiction movies. His career dates
back to the 1949 ''Mighty Joe Young,'' which won him an Oscar for his 
animation of a junior King Kong. With the 1955 ''It Came from Beneath 
the Sea,'' Harryhausen began his long association with producer 
Charles Schneer.
    For the past 20 years, Schneer and Harryhausen have worked in 
Europe, creating such fantasies as ''Mysterious Island,'' ''Jason and 
the Argonauts,'' ''The Golden Voyage of Sinbad'' and ''Sinbad and th 
Eye of the Tiger.'' A native Californian, Harryhausen lives in London 
with his English wife.
    Harryhausen's particular magic is the animation of
three-dimensional figures. He doesn't like to call it animation,
because that sounds like cartoon work. After such tags as
''dynamation'' and ''dynarama,'' he now favors ''kinetic sculpture.''
By any name it is tedious, exacting work, photographed one frame at a
time -- and there are 24 frames per movie second.
    ''Clash of the Titans,'' which MGM is releasing via United
Artists, is the most ambitious Schneer-Harryhausen film so far--a
$16-million adventure with Laurence Olivier as Zeus, Claire Bloom as
Hera, Maggie Smith as Thetis and Ursula Andress type-cast as
Aphrodite. Among the mortals, Harry Hamlin stars as Perseus.
    Another major cast member was Medusa, the snake-coiffed lady who
was Harryhausen's biggest headache.
    ''Cellini had sculpted her as a normal woman with snakes on her 
head,'' cited Harryhausen. ''That wasn't enough for us; we had to use 
our imaginations to create someone more dramatic. After all, if Medusa
had the power to turn people to stone, she had to look horrendous.
    ''I gave her a serpentine body and an exotic face of someone who
had been a beauty before she developed this skin problem. Using human 
bone structure, I made her hideous with undertones of beauty.''
    The live action with the actors was shot first, then Harryhausen 
animated Medusa - ''with 12 snakes, heads and tails, that meant 24 
moves even before I got to the face.''
    Other beasts hindering Perseus from his rescue of Andromeda (Judi 
Bowker) include a two-headed dog and the sea dragon Kraken. But then, 
Harryhausen also gave Perseus his winged horse Pegasus to even the 
match.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 2131-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Bradbury on Broadway    

                        By JAY SHARBUTT
                        AP Arts Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) - Ray Bradbury was born in 1920 in Waukegan, Ill. He
sold his first short story 21 years later. Then he commenced becoming 
one of America's major science-fiction writers.
    Now, it turns out sci-fi isn't his only bag. He's taken to writing
plays, one of which, a comedy called ''The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,''
just opened off-Broadway down at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre.
    About six young Mexican-Americans who each kick in $10 for a new 
suit they take turns wearing, it's one of the earliest shows Bradbury 
wrote after deciding to have a go at playwrighting.
    ''I did it about 18 years ago, along with a series of Irish plays 
that I wrote to test myself and see if I really wanted to write 
plays,'' he said by phone from his Los Angeles home.
    ''We'd have readings, with friends like James Whitmore and
Struther Martin doing the parts, and the response - well, it just
encouraged me to continue. So I did just that.''
    He suspects the whole thing actually began ''because I'd been 
getting mail from college students around the country, kids turning 
some of my stories into plays. I thought, 'Why should they have all 
the fun?' ''
    He estimates that since ''Suit'' and the Irish works, he's written
30 plays, including stage versions of his acclaimed ''The Martian 
Chronicles'' and ''Farenheit 451.''
    Many of them, he says, are performed at a tiny 99-seat theater he 
owns near Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, the shows produced at minimal
cost but getting major cheers from the LA critics.
    He's currently working with composer Billy Goldenberg - tunesmith 
for Broadway's ''Ballroom'' two seasons ago - on a new edition of a 
Bradbury musical that briefly played New York a few years ago.
    It's ''Dandelion Wine.'' He says it's based on a novel of his 
''about growing up in northern Illinois, of a child's sense of loss 
and change and having to adjust to the realities of life.''
    It was first performed at a small theater tucked away in a corner
of Lincoln Center here and ran three weekends. Major producers came,
saw and loved it, he said. But it never moved to Broadway.
    ''Hard to explain why,'' Bradbury mused. ''They all said they
loved it, but when you go out to raise money, well, the lovers are not
there. So we couldn't do anything with it.''
    With ''Suit'' bowing here Thursday, preceded by ''Wine'' and
another off-Broadway piece, ''The World of Ray Bradbury,'' he jokingly
claims he's ''creeping up on Broadway.
    ''But actually, I'd be content to stay off-Broadway, to get the
sort of audiences that know and like my work. It'd be nice to get two
or three productions going and stay there.
    ''I'm fearful of all the pressure on Broadway, where the budgets
are so big, $300,000 and more for a play, $1 million and up for a 
musical. I don't mind spending my money, but I wouldn't want to be 
responsible for the money of others.
    ''It's terrible, all that responsibility. I want to stay healthy.
And so, I'd rather stay small.''

------------------------------

Date: Friday, 19 Jun 1981 10:38-PDT
Subject: Joint authorship
From: Jim Gillogly (Jim at Rand-UNIX) at RAND-UNIX
Sender: jim at RAND-UNIX

I disagree with OR.TOVEY's slightly favorable review (V3 #153) of The 
Floating Admiral, by Sayers, Christie, Chesterton, et al.  It was an 
interesting idea, but (as you might expect) lacked coherence.
Further, (as you might expect) only the chapters by good authors were
well written.  Sayers put some good clues into her part that I picked
up on but the subsequent authors did not -- rather frustrating.  I
found it much inferior to random mysteries.

Consistent editing might have helped it, though, pulling together
loose ends and smoothing interfaces.

------------------------------

Date: 19 Jun 1981 1341-PDT
From: Friedland at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: George theme song

As long as the last message pleaded for accuracy, I feel the need to
make two amendments.  It is:

... with the help of his friend an ape NAMED APE ...

and ... while Fellah and Pursula stay in step ...

Peter 

------------------------------

Date: 19 Jun 1981 1153-PDT
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: Scott McCloud...Space Angel & Friends  

Space Angel was Scott McCloud.  His crewmates were Crystal and Taurus
(sp?).  Also, Crystal's father was the head of some triangular tubed
space station, out of which rockets were shot.  One of the episodes I
remember clearly was about a teenage genius who invented and
antigravity device so that his friend could win a local soapbox derby
contest.


Rich

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1981 16:59:55-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: Colonel Bleep, Time For Beany, etc.

A few notes (as I remember them) on the origins of Colonel Bleep:

The series was the product of an animation group in Florida --
possibly Rainbow studios in Miami.  It was created no earlier than
1958 and no later than 1961.  While somewhat innovative in that the
main protagonist was an alien, it was not the first sf cartoon.  Tom 
Terrific (if you want to call that sf) predates it by a number of
years in its original incarnation as part of Captain Kangaroo.

Time For Beany was reincarnated for Saturday mornings as part of 
Matty's Funday Funnies.  It's original form was a filmed (or 
kinescoped) puppet series in the early '50s.

Byron Howes University of North Carolina

------------------------------

Date: 1981-6-12-09:47:49.70
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
From: Steve Lionel at STAR
Subject: Left-handed sugar

Those who have been discussing "left-handed sugars" in past SFL issues
might want to take a look at the July/August "Science 81".  A short
item on page 6 tells how left-handed sugars were always thought to be
bitter tasting, but Gilbert Levin, a bioengineer working on a NASA
experiment to test for life on Mars, discovered that it was in reality
just as sweet as "right-handed sugar"; the bitterness was ascribed to
impurities.

Levin patented the use of the mirror sugar, and hopes to see it in 
soft drinks, food, etc.  The major obstacle is that there is not yet 
an economical method of producing the substance; Levin hopes that 
genetic engineering will yield a technique.  (The same issue features 
articles on an automatic $30K DNA machine, and on Martin Gardner.)

I was surprised that I didn't see anyone mention my favorite "mirror
image" SF story, "MirrorrorriM" by Spider Robinson, a "Callahan's
Place" tale.  Part of the story tells how Callahan's vilest, most
awful whiskey tastes like the best whiskey ever to a guy from a mirror
world.  Not only that, but some booze that the guy brought with him,
which he thinks is awful, tastes great to Callahan's patrons.  The
story's in the new "Time Travellers Strictly Cash".
                                        Steve Lionel

------------------------------


JPM@MIT-AI 6/20/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last in the digest.  It reveals some
plot details involving the novel "The Invincible" ,by Stanislaw Lem.
Those unfamilar with this work may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 19 Jun 1981 1059-PDT
From: Achenbach at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: "Natural" robots, a spoiler (sigh!)


        "The Invincible" by Stanislaw Lem describes a world on which
robots have evolved to the point that they wiped out all land based
normal life, by filling ecological niches.  This is a spoiler, because
the discovery of this fact is mostly the point of the book.

/Mike 

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 22-JUN  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #156
*** EOOH ***
Date: 22 JUN 1981 1944-EDT
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #156
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 22 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 156

Today's Topics:
               Administrivia, SF Books - Rare SF Poll,
        Query - What is Fab?, Reply - The Haunted Space-Suit,
         SF Movies - Lucas comment & Raiders of the Lost Ark,
             SF Topics - Xerox (TM) & Breathable liquids
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: June 22, 1981 00:00:00
From: MDP@MIT-AI
Subject: Administrivia

    As most of you know, I am filling in for Jim McGrath, our regular
Moderator, who will spend this summer traveling around Europe.  SF
lovers have sent in a lot of material of late, and several digests'
worth of messages, dating back to the beginning of May, has built up.
I will draw from the backlog in groups of related messages which may
span long periods of time.  This need not affect your submissions.
The latest, most exciting and most pressing issues I will continue to
run immediately.  When you have something to say, say it!

Thank you,
   Mike Peeler

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jun 1981 (Saturday) 1802-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Comments on Rare SF list

  Well, I've sent out my response to the SF-RARE list, and have now
had some time to sit back and think about the list.  I have come the
conclusion that the list is totally arbitrary, and as such,
meaningless.
  For the most part, the list consists of books individuals have 
suggested as being "rare", with little or no thought as to what makes 
them rare.  Perhaps an old copy in their collection, or they are
having trouble finding any in used bookstores?  Who knows?  (My only 
entry in this list was one of what I found to be a fascinating book 
which is, to my knowledge, out of print and has been so for some
time.)  Some of the entries are of dubious quality, many others are
still readily available.  Were I to make a new set of suggestions for
this list, I could easily fill up a message with the ilk of Joseph
Milard's "The Gods Hate Kansas", a very weak book (to say the least)
printed circa 1965.  I'm quite sure this volume would qualify as
"rare", I doubt any of you (with perhaps 1 or 2 exceptions) have even
*heard* of it, let alone read it.
  Does this make the book rare?  No.
  If you really insist on continuing along this line, I suggest having
each participant type in the titles of each volume in his/her
collection, and eliminating anything which occurs more than
<threshold> times.  I am quite sure this would leave a large set of
low-quality out-of-print volumes, none worthy of the title "rare".
  I hope instead that the SF-RARE people will edit the list
accordingly; as we (the reviewers) have graded the volumes we've seen
as poor to excellent, to just save the cream of the crop as "rare".

  Another point -- the concept of "rareness" expressed here is quite 
relative.  When discussing this list with a friend, he remarked that 
there were probably over 100000 copies of some of these books 
outstanding, !in the possession of anyone who had been a member of the
SF Book Club in the 50's and 60's!  As most of us are somewhat younger
than this, it nicely points out the limitations of our views.

   In summary, I suggest that we restart, examining first what it is
that makes a book rare, and then begin researching the topic.

                  -Steve

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 1537-PDT
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-CSL
Subject: I just got thru watching Thunderbirds To the Resuce on HBO...
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow

..and just about every time they got thru saying something on the
radio they ended it with "FAB".  Is this British for "roger" or
"over"?  I've never heard it used before and am curious as to what
it's suppose to mean or stand for.

------------------------------

Date: 18-Jun-1981
From: JOHN FRANCIS AT EIFFEL at METOO
Subject: Here's the title...

 In answer to an earlier query, the story about a cat having kittens
inside a spacesuit is "The Haunted Space-Suit",  and it is by Arthur
C. Clarke (NOT Heinlein!).  This story can be found in the excellent
anthology "Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales" edited by Isaac Asimov
& Groff Conklin.

 Re Thunderbirds query about the meaning of F.A.B. : beats me !!!!!!  
Neither I or my wife can remember there being any meaning to it, but 
that does not prove anything.  Maybe it stand for "Full Ahead Both"?

        ----John.

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jun 1981 1541-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: Lucas comment

So "Revenge of the Jedi will be the last movie we shoot on film".  
This may sound odd coming from an electrical engineer, but what the 
movie industry does NOT need is more and slicker hardware.  That's 
just following the old path of replacing intelligence with money.  
Lucas has plenty of both so he can make good use of this gimcrackery, 
but the rest of the industry does not.  "Star Trek: The Motion 
Picture" is the prime example.  There were enough experts in the 
effects department to give it all the flashes and bangs anyone could 
want, and enough experts in marketing to promote it heavily enough to 
make money, but nobody there seemed to know that cruising around this 
model of the Enterprise for five minutes was simply dull.  They 
replaced dramatic values with technical ones and so blew off forty 
million dollars.  We don't need better means of producing bright 
lights and noises; we need more stories that we can live in with 
characters that we care about.

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jun 1981 0035-PDT
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Raiders of the Lost Ark & Is "xerox" a verb?

     I was amused by RotLA, but I won't see it a second time, much
less the multiple times I've seen Star Wars or the RHPS.  Perhaps
being too acquainted with the Judeo-Christian mythology spoiled it;
e.g. the ending was totally pagan.  Other parts were a bit excessive.
I guess if you like mysticism, you'll love RotLA.  Oh yeah - I noticed
at the theatre I went to that there were people in the front shouting
at the screen RHPS-style; perhaps Lucas has unintentionally brought
forth a new cult classic?

     I claim that as a result of common usage "xerox" is a verb.  
"Tape" was originally not a verb, but usage has made it perfectly 
acceptable for people to speak of "taping" an event as meaning "to
record on magnetic tape media."  There is no way that XEROX (TM) can
possibly prevent "xerox" being used as a verb in colloquial usage.

     I believe that if XEROX (TM) is smart, they'd be pleased by this
colloquial usage, because people who have a need to "xerox" often
enough to want to buy a "xeroxing" machine may well be subtly inclined
to consider XEROX (TM) over and above other vendors (such as IBM,
which makes fine copiers themselves) in their purchase.  

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jun 1981 14:24:12-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: "xerox is not a verb"

   Oh?  Xerox may be trying to claim this, but it's a losing battle,
like those insisting on the capitalization of "kleenex" and "jeep".
"Xerox" is fairly broadly accepted as a synonym for "copy
electrostatically".

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jun 1981 0058-EDT
From: HEDRICK at RUTGERS
Subject: trademarks

Here is a question for those who know the details about correct legal 
terminology (e.g. "copy with a Xerox brand copier" instead of
"xerox"):  Now that DOD has made Ada a trademark, are we going to find
ourselves programming "in the Ada brand programming language?"  

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jun 1981 0925-PDT
From: Achenbach at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: xeroxing

From Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1977 edition)

xerox -- verb transitive often capitalized (Xerox): to copy on a Xerox
machine.

Don't know what your lawyers think, but it looks like your a part of
the language.

/Mike 

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 2011-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: breathable liquids

A breathable liquid (or gas if it existed) with a density near that of
water would make a great acceleration couch--the idea goes back to
Verne, who didn't get it quite right in From Earth to Moon...  I first
saw it done right in some story I think in Analog I can't remember
very well at all, where "pseudofluid" is used.  Anybody know the
reference or an earlier one?

------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1981 15:19 edt
From: JSLove at MIT-Multics (J. Spencer Love)
Subject: Breathing Water
Sender: JSLove.PDO at MIT-Multics

The problem with breathing water, or liquid, has another twist to it.
I'm told that people drown faster in fresh water than in salt water
because IONS diffuse out of the blood into the water faster than
oxygen is used up or lost, and that if you try to breath real hard you
will die of electrolyte imbalance a minute or two sooner than
otherwise.  Does anyone know more about this than I do?  In
particular, is this problem addressed by adding electrolytes to the
liquid inhaled, or by using a fluid that just won't dissolve the ions
in human blood?

If such a fluid has a specific gravity close to that of the human body
(and in this I don't know if I mean muscle, fat, bone, or some
weighted average), it might be very useful in withstanding high
accelerations.  Clearly, this doesn't come anywhere close to dealing
with the tidal forces found in Dragon's Egg or Neutron Star, but how
much might be possible?  20 gravities?  50?  100?  Some research is
being done into electromagnetic catapults that might throw payloads
into orbit, from either the Earth or the Moon.  Accelerations
mentioned have topped 1000 gravities.  This would seem to preclude the
use of such a mechanism to carry passengers, but perhaps not.  How
much might a suitably prepared (but revivable) human withstand in the
way of acceleration?

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 0805-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: Breathing Underwater In Children's Books

   When L. Frank Baum got sick and tired of writing about Oz around
1911, he wrote a couple of "Borderland of Oz" stories which introduced
two characters named Trot and Cap'n Bill.  These books were only
marginally successful, and he soon bowed to the inevitable and
migrated the characters to Oz in "The Scarecrow of Oz."  Anyway, in
the first of these books, "The Sea Fairies", T & CB are taken on a
(typically Baumanian) very episodic guided tour of an underwater realm
by a group of mermaids.  In order to permit their survival there, they
are transformed to mermaids.  How do they breathe?  Seems that
mermaids "magically" maintain a very thin layer of air around their
bodies, extracted from the water around them constantly.  This allows
them to remain dry, too, by the way, and I think even do nifty things
like light matches, etc.  The evil villain Zog takes the alternative
approach; he gives his human servant fish-like gills.
   "The Sea Fairies" is one of Baum's better fantasies.  Maybe Random
House (who own both Reilly & Lee and Ballantine) will see fit to
reprint it one of these years.

        Mike

------------------------------

Date: 12 May 1981 13:08:20-PDT
From: ihuxi!agk at Berkeley
Subject: Breathable water

In V3, #118, SHRAGE asked about a breathable fluid.  This fluid is
featured in the current issue of either NEXT magazine or Science 81 (I
just finished reading both).  The stuff is used in Japan as an
experimental substitute for blood -- nice because it has no "type" and
will store for two months instead of two weeks (for whole blood).
Experimenters in both the US and Japan have replaced the blood of rats
with the stuff and the animals live normally.  One dog littered twice
(and was arrested both times) after living on the stuff for a couple
of days.  The article also has a photograph of a very soggy mouse that
was dunked in the stuff for a while, and another photo of a very pale
mouse (white eyes, white ears, etc. -- an albino would have been pink
instead of red, but not this bizarre white) with the stuff flowing in
its veins.  I can't recall the name of the stuff beyond S------.  I'll
try to dig up the article when I get home.
        Here's blood in your veins,
        andy kegel

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 22:09:16-PDT
From: CSVAX.wildbill at Berkeley
Subject: Underwater Breathing

There is a good chance that Chip is thinking of Leigh Brackett's
novelette "Enchantress of Venus" when he mentions "Carter on Venus" in
SFL #119.  In this story, Eric John Stark (Brackett's Carter clone) is
on the lam from the local law, and winds up enslaved by the local
high-tech wizards who are performing excavations in what is known
thereabouts as the "Red Sea".  Although no specific details about the
composition of the fluid can be found (this being primarily a work of
fantasy), it seems that the fluid is imperfect in that humans can only
survive for a few years in it.  Those interested in further details
can find this story in the Ballantine/Del Rey book, \\The Best of
Leigh Brackett//.

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1981 17:50:26 EDT (Wednesday)
From: Ward Harriman <harriman at BBNT>
Subject: funny water which animals can breath.

I remember some Onion Carbine 'tube commercials which kind of went:

In the Voice of the commercial:

One of our scientists was doing basic research on a new solvent.  He
had a tank of it and put several items into the tank,

he put a radio in it, and it didn't do anything.  he put a bunch of
fruit in it, and it didn't do anything.  he put a rat in it and it
didn't do anything.

and what's so remarkable about this solvent?

IT DIDN'T DO ANYTHING.......TO ANYTHING!

just thought I'd flash some old memories.

ward

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 17:41:38 EDT (Thursday)
From: Morris Keesan <mkeesan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Breathable liquids

  "Ocean on Top" by Hal Clement takes place in a liquid environment
which is "breathable".  That's in quotes because people living in it
absorb oxygen from it through their lungs, but don't actually breathe.
It's too viscous and under too much to be moved by the human diaphragm
(which is good, because that makes it swimmable in), but oxygen is
bound loosely enough in its molecules and in a high enough
concentration that people get sufficient oxygen by diffusion.  This
book (DAW book No. 57) was published in 1973, with a magazine serial
version in 1967.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 23-JUN  "MDP at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #157
*** EOOH ***
Date: 23 JUN 1981 1954-EDT
From: MDP at MIT-ML
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #157
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

   
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 23 Jun 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 157

Today's Topics:
      SF Books - Breathable liquids & Parallel time plot query,
                      SF Humor - Ann Atomic #2,
   SF Topics - Tom is Terrific & No 300 million year civilizations,
       SF Movies - UFO's Are Real & Outlands & Raiders/The Ark
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 June 1981 2106-EDT (Monday)
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #156

I recall a liquid acceleration couch being described in Haldeman's 
"The Forever War", and I believe the liquid was breathable.

------------------------------

From: PCR@MIT-MC
Subject: breathing liquids

        It would seem to me that animals breathing liquids would get 
tired real fast, from the effort of trying to move the liquid in and 
out through those small nose passages.  The liquid would have to be 
extremely non-viscous (what's the word for that?), or else the animals
would end up breathing through their mouth.  In any event, their 
diaphram would tire out in short order.  Eating might be a problem 
too.
                                       ...phil

------------------------------

Date: 05/15/81 01:53:57
From: MIKE@MIT-MC
Subject: Another here's the plot so what is it...

I have been trying to remember the title of a short story I read a
number of years ago and where I found it. It was in some kind of
collection.  The story was about a region of countryside that was
coexisting with a number of parallel earths.  One could walk into
these various zones from the outside but could not necessarily get
back. To make it more fun, there were different rates of time in some
of the zones. The story involved a man and his wife who for some
reason wandered into this region and became separated.  The man
slipped through into several of these zones (one of which I remember
as being medieval but not exactly) and finally was rescued by being
lifted out by a helicopter by the military I think.  His wife was
trapped in some zone with a different rate of time (faster) and he
seeks only to find her aged tombstone.

Does anyone out there know what or where this story is?

------------------------------

Date: 15 May 1981 0905-PDT
Sender: Daul at OFFICE  
From: Andrews
Subject: Dr. Ann Atomic  #2

Another punful story about that famous space physician..

Cat Cause

        Ann Atomic's home on Observation Asteroid had been invaded by
large half-robot, half-organic rodents.  These cyborg-rats avoided
people, poison, traps, magnets, and cats, but had no fear of the
ten-week-old kitten.  Osgood Ascanby was regaling Ann with stories
from his years as a galactic protocol expert when the kitten entered,
yowling and running back and forth in a distracting manner.
        "What's the matter with Theocat, Ann?" Osgood asked.  "Is he
trying to tell us something?"
        "Oh, just ignore him," she sighed.  "he's full of sound and
furry, but signifying nothing."
        At that moment the rat whizzed into the parlor, bit Theocat on
the tail, and whizzed out.
        "There, there, poor baby," Osgood said, trying to comfort the
distraught kitten.  "We must stop their tormenting him."
        "I suppose your're right."  Ann gazed thoughtfully out the
window at Jupiter, the current view.
        Within the week cyborg-rats had disappeared.  Theocat, no
longer terrorized, was his old , obnoxious, furniture-scratching self.
        "The patter of little metal feet is gone but not forgotten,"
Osgood remarked as he removed the kitten's claws from his sleeve.
"How did you get rid of the rats?"
        Ann shrugged.  "With drugs.  I used massive doses of
antibionics."

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 06:03:44-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Ann Atomic and Tom Terrific

Ann Atomic sounds alot like an ex-girlfriend of mine who used to give
suggestions to the library here under the pseudonym of "The Mad
Punster".  Any relation?

Since i started this whole thing about Sat. morning with a request for
Astroboy let me try to get some info about a favorite of my infancy.
Anyone remember Tom Terrific (with MIGHTY MANFRED THE WONDER DOG!!!!)?
As i recall it came on on Channel One of a TV set in Captain
Kangaroo's show.  Tom had a thinking cap which gave him ideas and
Mighty Manfred fell asleep alot.

One of the advantages of having a common first name like mine; i got
turned on to Tom Terrific and Tom Swift Jr. due to similarities in
naming.  These things got me started on the road to total
insanity/inanity i travel on today.

tom galloway at unc-ch

------------------------------

Date: 16 May 1981 11:04-EDT
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Anybody out there?

There was an article in a recent Physics Today that argues that there
are no civilizations in the galaxy more than about 300 million years
older than us.

The argument runs like this:  If we want to broadcast a message that
we exist across the galaxy, the most efficient way is to build a
spaceship / space factory / computer that will fly into a stellar
system, gobble up asteroids, etc., make a number of copies of itself,
and launch them toward other stars.  The author claims that we will be
able to build such a thing in a hundred years or so that could travel
at 0.0001c.  The nice thing about this message is that it picks up new
"strength" by eating things along the way.  If you wanted to get the
message there faster, you could make plans for an extremely expensive
one that could travel at 0.01c, put the plans in a cheaper one that
could go at 0.0001c, and send it off.  It would take tens of thousands
of years for the first one to complete its voyage, but all the future
ones would go much faster.

The ultimate idea is that it would take only about 300 million years
for such a device to propagate copies of itself throughout the galaxy.
Since we are nearly (100 years) able to launch such a thing, if anyone
is 300 million years or so older than us, we would already have gotten
their message.

Clearly, there are alot of objections that can be raised to this idea,
but are any of them good enough to invalidate the basic point?

------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1981 2223-EDT
From: FISCHER at RUTGERS
Subject: Recent discussions with ET's...

        I am not a UFO nut, now that that's out of the way...

        A few days ago I was at a friend's house and caught the end of
a movie on the HBO channel called "UFO's are Real" (har har).  It was 
your typical wow-lets-cash-in-on-this production of no real note.  As 
far as I can tell it is not a recent film.  Only one thing caught my 
interest.  In the midst of the babblings of various interviewees a 
certain UFO enthusiast mentioned a document written by a gentleman in 
switzerland who claimed to have had lengthly discussions with aliens 
from the Pleiades.  The Pleiadians supposedly reassured him they were 
not gods and proceeded to spend long afternoons discussing matters of 
earth with him in a grassy field somewhere.
        OK, silly you say, well the interesting part is that the guy 
is supposed to have collected around 2000 pages of notes!  They were 
described as containing info about new technologies and the immaturity
of our human culture.
        Some portion of the notes (they said about a quarter) were
translated into english and published.  The enthusiast in the movie
held up a large format paper back book with a white cover.  The only
discernable word on it was Pleiades.
        This sounds like a tech oriented person's Von Daniken.  Has
anyone out there ever seen this book?  Read it?  What was this swiss
person's flamage about??

------------------------------

Date: 22 June 1981 09:02-EDT
From: Steven C. Bagley <Bagley at MIT-MC>
Subject: Outland's rating

    "Outland"-"High Noon" on the moon, this uncompromising science 
fiction thriller stars Sean Connery, Peter Boyle and Frances 
Stern-hagen. Rated PG. 3 stars.

I could have sworn that the version I saw was rated R.  I have seen
the above review at least twice in SFL -- both times the rating was
listed as PG.  Am I going crazy or are there two versions of Outland
out?

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1981 13:17:58-PDT
From: decvax!duke!ndd at Berkeley

        I haven't seen this mentioned in the digest yet, and my
curiosity has gotten the best of me.  In the movie, the manager of the
Io mines was told that \three/ assassins were being sent to get the
marshall, but I only saw two.  The third man who tried to kill Connery
was, I believe, one of his own men.  Did I miss something, or is this
a real goof?

                                Ned Danieley

------------------------------

Date: 22 June 1981 23:47-EDT
From: Daniel G. Shapiro <DGSHAP at MIT-AI>
Subject: lucas comments

yeah, but bright lights and gimcrackery don't hurt.

(agreed, most special effects films have that monomania hollywood is 
so famous for... where one thing is done to the exclusion of all 
others.)

        Dan Shapiro

------------------------------

Date: 22 Jun 1981 1816-PDT
From: First at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Seams in RotLA (NO SPOILER!)

I don't need to add to the accolades which have poured in regarding 
"Raiders"--I'm sure anybody out there who hasn't seen it yet must have
it on top of the queue of films to see.  But for those who haven't 
seen it, plan to see it again, or have a good visual memory, see if 
you can corroborate this observation...

In films as slick as RotLA, I find it fun sometimes to see if I can 
find any embarrassing technical flaws in the production--while errors 
in editing, post-synchronous sound dubbing, and continuity abound in 
such classics as "Plan Nine From Outer Space", because of the 
technical mastery of current Hollywood films, such flaws are 
relatively uncommon...

As far as RotLA is concerned, I think I spotted an error in continuity
(which are probably the most embarrassing types of errors that can 
occur):  when Harrison Ford is driving the truck and gets shot in the 
arm and is then forced outside the truck, he magically has recovered 
from his bloody wound, only to regain it again a couple of minutes 
later--obviously what has happened is that they neglected to inflict 
the "wound" (in left upper arm) on his stunt double--hence its 
disappearance and then reappearance.  Did anybody else spot this or 
was I just hallucinating from the overdose of pure joy in seeing such 
a spectacular film?

(For the non-film buffs in the crowd, "continuity" refers to the 
maintenance of temporal consistency in scenes which are shot out of 
sequence--one of the most blatant lags in continuity in recent memory 
is in "The Goodbye Girl"-- there is a scene in which Richard Dreyfuss 
wanders home drunk, knocks over a coffee table with plates on top of 
it, and then leans his head outside his window to yell.  When he comes
back in, the coffee table is magically upright with the knocked over 
dishes re-assembled.  Maintaining continuity is so important that 
there is a person assigned to the film whose job is exclusively to 
check the continuity--but sometimes they slip up)

--Michael (FIRST@SUMEX-AIM)

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1981 1350-EDT
From: HEDRICK at RUTGERS
Subject: a brief history of the Ark

Because of the popularity of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", I thought some
people might find it interesting to hear a brief description of what
is known about the actual Ark of the Covenant.  As far as I know,
everything we know about it comes from the Bible.  Quotations and
terminology will be taken from the Good News Bible (as that is the
only translation appropriate for people who are not familiar with the
Biblical tradition).  They call the object the Covenant Box, since the
word "ark" is no longer in use, and what it means is "box".

The initial command to make it comes shortly after Moses has received
the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai.  This is probably around 1250
B.C.E.  It is described in Exodus 25 as a box 45" long, 27" wide, and
27" high.  It is covered with gold, with two winged creatures made out
of gold attached to the lid of the box.  The two stone tablets with
the Ten Commandments on it are put inside the box.  That is probably
the only thing that is in the box, though it is also possible that
there was a sample of manna.

The Covenant Box was carried around by priests.  They carried it with
the Israelites as they wandered around in the desert, and sometimes
they carried it with troops when they went to battle.  An example of
the former is in Joshua 3-4.  Here the Israelites need to cross the
Jordan River.  "When the people left the camp to cross the Jordan, the
priests went ahead of them, carrying the Covenant Box.  As soon as the
priests stepped into the river, the water stopped flowing and piled
up, far upstream..."  [Josh 3:15-16.]  An example of the latter is in
1 Samuel 4-6.  The Israelites were fighting the Philistines.  They
brought the Covenant Box out with the army.  Unfortunately the
Philistines still won the battle, and they captured and carried off
the Covenant Box.  However holding it turned out to be a mistake:  It
caused their idol of Dagon to keep falling down, and as punishment,
the God of Israel caused the Philistines to come down with what is
probably bubonic plague.  The Philistines finally get sufficiently
scared that they return the Box.  Interestingly, the Israelites to
whom they return it don't want it either.  It is not the sort of thing
one wants to leave lying about.  "The LORD killed seventy of the men
of Beth Shemesh because they looked into the Covenant Box".  [1 Sam
6:19.]  The Nazis should probably have given this some thought before
trying to take it back to Berlin.

Eventually King David took the Covenant Box to Jerusalem, his new
capital.  [about 1010 B.C.E., see 2 Samuel 6.]  During the trip to
Jerusalem, "the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah reached out and took hold of
the Covenant Box [to steady it?].  At once the LORD God became angry
with Uzzah and killed him because of his irreverence."  [probable text
- Hebrew for "his irreverence" is unclear] [2 Sam 6:6-7.]  David's
son, King Solomon, built a Temple, and had the Box put in a special
room at the center of the Temple.  [about 960 B.C.E.]  This is the
last definite information about the Covenant Box.

There is one more reference to it:  Jeremiah the prophet wrote the
following.  Apparently it was written after the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E.  It is part of a passage
where he is trying to give them hope that Jerusalem and the nation of
Israel will be restored.  "Unfaithful people, come back....  I will
bring you back to Mount Zion ... Then when you have become numerous in
that land, people will no longer talk about my Covenant Box.  They
will no longer think about it or remember it; they will not even need
it, nor will they make another one."  [Jer 3:14-16.]  This certainly
implies that the Covenant Box was lost or destroyed by that time.
Many scholars believe that the Babylonians took it when they destroyed
Jerusalem in 587.  Possibly they even destroyed it, e.g. maybe they
removed the gold covering it and destroyed the box itself.

I don't know anything about the tradition that it was taken to Egypt.
It doesn't sound likely to me, but I am no archaeologist.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 25-JUN  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #158
*** EOOH ***
Date: 25 JUN 1981 2042-EDT
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #158
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS Digest       Thursday, 25 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 158

Today's Topics:
      SF Books - Infinite Summer & Heinlein/Curtis Publishing &
              Wizards poll & SF animals & Animal robots,
   SF Topics - "That does not compute" & Space civilizations & ILM,
      SF Movies - Message from Pleiades & History of the World &
           TRS-80/Star Trek & Light sabers & RotLA flaws &
        The Phantom Zone & Superman II, Spoiler - Superman II
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1981 17:24 PDT
From: Woods at PARC-MAXC
Subject: re: Here's the plot...
cc: Mike at MC

Mike's query, about the story involving a park in which time runs at
different rates in different places, was dated in mid-May, so perhaps
by now he has his answer.  To be certain about it, however, I'll point
out that this sounds exactly like a story mentioned in one of the
recent Algis Budrys columns.  I believe it was described as being in
the collection "An Infinite Summer" by Christopher Priest, but you
might check the SFL archives to be sure.

        -- Don.

------------------------------

Date: 22 JUN 1981 1027-PDT
From: PEDERSEN at USC-ECL
Subject: Heinlein & Curtis Publishing

 The Heinlein short stories mentioned (Space Jockey, The Green Hills
 of Earth, etc) were indeed published by Curtis, but not in Boy's
 Life.  They were in the Saturday Evening Post - which was considered
 the ultimate short story market, at least commercially, of the '40's.
 Although Bradbury had made the breakthrough into literary
 publications about the same time, his stories at best fall into the
 fantasy realm, making Heinlein the first 'straight' science fiction
 author to make the big breakthrough out of the pulps into mainstream
 publishing.

             Ted Pedersen

------------------------------

Date: 8 June 1981 17:48-EDT
From: Daniel G. Shapiro <DGSHAP at MIT-AI>
Subject: wizards

Here is another poll:  what are the names of all the wizards in
fantasy novels?  We should probably limit this to major characters
that are wizards.

Please send replies directly to dgshap@ai, I'll summarize the results.

        Dan

------------------------------

Date: 19 May 1981 0225-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: sf animals

I'm trying to think of SF animals that live in vacuum, and the rarer
sophonts who do.  A random sampling:
 -- the starseeds (huge lightsail creatures, not apparently
    intelligent) in Niven's Known Space; the Outsiders (intelligent)
    in same
 -- siliconies (of varying intelligence) in one of Asimov's Wendell
    Urth stories
 -- radiation-loving space barnacles from some story otherwise
    completely forgotten
 -- The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1981 17:38:20-PDT
From: ucbvax!ihnss!hobs at Berkeley (John Hobson)
Subject: Animal Robots

It surprises me that no one seems to have mentioned the "robass"
(robotic donkey) in "The Search for St. Aquin" by ?.  (As I recall, it
won either the Hugo or the Nebula a few years ago.)  Along some what
the same lines, in the short story "Good News From The Vatican" by
Sturgeon(?, sorry, I have a good memory for titles but not for authors
today), a robot gets elected Pope.

                            May your aspidistras grow and flourish,
                            John

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1981 06:14:18-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Animal robots

Say, wasn't there a robot "mouse" in Star Wars?

[ Yes there was.  Early in Episode 4: A New Hope, R2D2 and C3PO are
captured and locked in.  There they encounter a robot mouse (clearly
intended to be humorous).  -- Jim ]

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1981 1244-PDT
From: Achenbach at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Nostalgia and animal robots

        There is a story, I think by Anthony Boucher, in which there
is a robot mule.  The story is set in the future when religion is
outlawed, the Pope has to keep the papal ring hidden etc.  A priest is
sent out in search of the body of an alleged saint, and is given a
robot side kick to help.  Unfortunately, all the church can afford is
a robot mule, although it does talk.

        As far as nostalgia goes, I remember back in the days when I
was a Boy Sprout, that Boy's Life, the Boy Sprout Magazine, would
occasionally print SF.  My favorite was the Time Machine stories.
There was also a Time Machine book with the same characters, and an
explanation of the origin of time machine.

/Mike 

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1981 1703-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: another animal robot

        I found some robot ducks in a pond at an elegant cafe in P. E.
High's The Prodigal Sun.  There also were mechanical flies for spying
purposes, and robot taxicabs.
                                                --cat

------------------------------

Date: 06/21/81 23:22:09
From: MIKE@MIT-MC
Subject: "Natural" robots

Poul Anderson wrote a short story about humans returning to earth
after having been absent for many thousands (millions?) of years and
discovering that it was now populated by robot creatures of all kinds.
There were robot plants, various higher order creatures which fed on
these and each other and finally the robot equivalent of an
intelligent being.  I can't remember the name of this story but I
remember it was in a collection of Anderson short stories.

   Michael

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1981 17:13:08-PDT
From: ihnss!karn at Berkeley
Subject: "That does not compute"

Several years ago (the fall of 1978), when I was at CMU, I remember
reading a long debate on the origins of the phrase "That does not
compute."  I don't remember if it was on SF-LOVERS or not.

Does anybody remember the outcome of that discussion?  I remember that
it was narrowed to either the Robot on "Lost in Space" or Robbie the
Robot from "Forbidden Planet."

Phil

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1981 11:07:52-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: "Anybody out there?"

   Well, the most obvious objection to this idea is that it assumes
that another spacegoing race in this galaxy would have the same
impulse to speak up when it has little or nothing to say, and such a
megalomaniacal approach to saying it.  (Really, there's no reason to
assume that other systems are going to have as conspicuous an asteroid
belt as ours does, and getting the material by chewing up a random
planet is an unbelievably crass notion.)  Worse, there's no indication
that the asteroids would have the necessary quantities of uncommon
materials that would be needed.  For example, I would expect such a
device to require a fairly substantial (i.e., expensive) "brain"; even
sending along the rarer raw materials would require the device to
duplicate itself without error and without supervision.  Further, if
the device is capable of making a faster but more expensive version of
itself, why not have it do this locally if you so badly want to make
yourself well-known---that would cut some millennia off the time to be
heard from.  Better yet, put the money into a radio station and
appropriate messages, as they will get around orders faster yet (cf.
Spinrad's SONGS FROM THE STARS---it's the one worthwhile idea in that
heap of trash).

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1981 15:28:08-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: computers at ILM

   Recently, someone was talking about the substantial number of 
machines and programmers who were going to be needed at Industrial 
Light and Magic.  Does anyone know the address of ILM and whether 
they're still hiring?  Please reply directly to me, cjh@cca-unix.  
Thanks.

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1981 1639-PDT
From: Jwagner at OFFICE  
Subject: Message from Pleiades

The book mentioned in "UFOs are Real" is titled, I believe, "Message
from Pleiades" and contains some remarkable photographs of what are
purported to be space craft hovering over a Swiss plain.  The book, a
large-format paperback, may be available in some of your more obscure
bookstores -- it never received wide distribution.
Many of the photographs show, with great clarity, saucer-like craft
posing for the author's camera.  The text of the book is mainly
messages from a particularly amiable space traveler from a planetary
system in the Pleiades who says extra-terrestrials are really not much
different than the rest of us, just more experienced.  This space
traveller, whose name escapes me (help?), seemed to have a rather
avuncular tolerance of Earth's primitive culture and technology -- if
I remember correctly (I saw this book once about a year ago) the
message was something like "Peace, and clean up your act."
Like all UFO literature, one can argue over the authenticity of the
photos and literature, but with these considerations aside, it is
thought certainly provoking, besides being real nice to look at.
Jim Wagner/jwagner@office

------------------------------

Date: 16 June 1981 08:51-EDT
From: Steven H. Gutfreund <SHG at MIT-AI>
Subject: "History of the World - Part I"

Last weekend I went and saw History of the World - Part I.  The first
scene was a parody of the first scene of 2001.  (A bunch apes at dawn
on an African plain).  I am sure I have seen several other parodies of
the same scene.  Does anyone remember where else these have been?

                                - mephisto

------------------------------

Date: 10 June 1981 20:54-EDT
From: Edward Huang <ehuang at MIT-AI>
Subject: TRS-80

 Hi.
 According to Softside May 1980,
 A TRS-80 Level I 4K was used in making some of the displays
 (status,maps,etc..) for Star Trek,the Motion Picture.
 How about that?
 Mail to me if you want more info.
 Edward Huang

------------------------------

Date:  2 June 1981 14:18 edt
From: Benson I. Margulies at MIT-Multics
Subject: Light Sabers

It probably comes as no surprise that light sabers are not a starwars
original. Gather, Darkness! by Leiber describes a fencing match (dead
serious) with "force wands" that in most all details is identical to
starwars light sabers.

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1981 0314-EDT
From: Hobbit <AWalker at RUTGERS>
Subject: More RotLA inconsistency

Did anyone notice that when Indy meets with the CIA-types in the
college, he throws that large book down on the desk, and one of the
clasps falls open?  Two minutes later when he opens it, that same
clasp is closed, so that he even has trouble opening it!
_H*

------------------------------

Date: 06/24/81 08:47:11
From: RP@MIT-MC
Subject: flaws in RotLA

I found the film almost flawless but for the pickers of nit here is a
micro flaw:
When Jones comes face to face with the cobra look carefully and you
can see a few specks of sand which bounce off the glass separating
their faces.  I wonder how many of us would be willing to stare down a
cobra under such conditions!

------------------------------

Date: 22 Jun 1981 09:19 PDT
From: Tou at PARC-MAXC
Subject: The Phantom Zone and the Negative Zone

The Phantom Zone is what the place is called in the (DC) comic books,
too.  I believe the Negative Zone is a place in the Marvel Comics
universe.  I seem to remember the Fantastic Four often making trips
there.

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jun 1981 1336-PDT
From: Daul at OFFICE  
Subject: SUPERMAN III

Does anyone know anything about the NEXT movie (plot, characters,
schedule, etc.)?

------------------------------


MDP@MIT-AI 6/25/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following messages are the last in the digest.  They reveal plot
details about the recent movie SUPERMAN II.  Those not having seen the
SUPERMAN movies may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 22 Jun 81 19:45-PDT
From: mclure at SRI-Unix
Subject: Superman II

The battle scenes are reasonably well done but the space scenes are
poor.  There were a LOT of holes in the script (more Mario Puzo),
which children won't mind, but anyone who read a lot of Superman
comics when young will cringe at each one.  The one that had me
sliding down in my seat was when the three villains, without radio or
space suits, converse on the Moon.

------------------------------

Date: 21 JUN 1981 2141-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Superman II

     My personal reaction to this film is, "Yeah, but...?"
     I thought it was a very nice love story, all the acting was quite
satisfactory, and the lady who plays Ursa had me in a semi-erotic
state not experienced since Diana Rigg last ran about in skin-tight
black leathers in The Avengers.  HOWEVER...
     Since when does Superman have the power to shoot blast rays from
his hands?  (I know, he never does, but the villians do, so supposedly
he can, too.)  And where did Lex Luthor find out about Kent/Superman?
And what wiped Lois Lane's memory?  (Super-Hypnotism?  It could have
been shown more clearly.)  And HOW, in the name of all thundering
dammit, did he get his powers back?
     These were all things that I was willing to overlook while
enjoying the film, but they were certainly flaws, (for me), and I do
believe that they could have been handled better than they were.  And
some of the special effects were downright shameful.
     In summary, I liked the film a lot, but I could have liked it a
lot more.

       Bob

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1981 10:11:32-PDT
From: CSVAX.upstill at Berkeley
Subject: Superman II warning

I love a good trashy movie more than anyone I know, but I just can't
understand the effusive reaction to Superman II, and I think sf-lovers
ought to be warned about it.
   The major problem is a certain loss of innocence that must surely
be associated with Richard Lester.  I'm not talking about Supe and
Lois going to bed, but about the violence in the film.  All those
explosions and car crashes really jolt!  I felt unable to watch the
film as a child, whereas most of the charm of the first film came in
enjoying the naivete.
   There are glaring technical problems, too.  The editing is sloppy,
and turns some delicious humor self-conscious.  Geoffrey Unsworth's
gleaming, radiant cinematography in the first film has been replaced
with a (relatively) washed-out, low-tech tone that just looks cheap.
Finally, there are a number of unbelievably enormous holes in the
plot, and inconsistencies in the powers of the Kryptonians.
   But the film does have its big-budget splash, with a vengeance, so
if you enjoy seeing big bucks smeared across the screen, by all means
go.  But to me, this is probably the least satisfying Richard Lester
film I've seen.

Steve

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 27-JUN  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #159
*** EOOH ***
Date: 27 JUN 1981 1131-EDT
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #159
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 26 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 159

Today's Topics:
             SF Books - Robot animals & Vacuum animals &
             "Quest for Saint Aquin" & Palely Loitering,
   SF Topics - "That does not compute" & Many-chefs story formula &
                            Tom Swifties,
      SF Movies - Harryhausen & "History of the World--Part I" &
          "Raiders" flaws & Lucas' non-photographic movies,
                         Spoiler - "Raiders"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 Jun 1981 2147-EDT
From: DAA at MIT-DMS (David A. Adler)
Subject: Robot animals

        Recently I read 'Mockingbird' by Walter Tevis that mostly took
place in New York.  The Bronx Zoo was replaced with animals that were
robots, as many of the people in New York that were around were also
robots.

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jun 1981 (Thursday) 2300-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Vacuum animals
To: josh at RUTGERS

I don't know whether you would consider this to be an animal or not
but in "Creatures of Light and Darkness" (Zelazny) there is this
"horse-like" thing that they call the "abyss".  It is some sort of rip
in space that is somehow related to the other characters (related as
in blood, not just friends).  Zelazny never really makes it clear
exactly what it is.  Its name escapes me.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jun 1981 10:53:56-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: several short topics:
Cc: Mike at MC, Woods at parc-maxc

   "The QUEST for Saint Aquin" is a 50's (? \maybe/ early 60's) story
by Anthony Boucher; it was mentioned by several people when the
subject of robot \\animals// was brought up by hjjh.  As a
sometime-assistant on the Cyber-SF project I should note that of all
the suggestions so far, only the Anderson fits the criteria of
"natural" cybernetic devices---this seems to be an extremely small
category.
   "Good News from the Vatican" is by Silverberg, from the early-mid
70's.
   With the aid of Don Woods' suggestion I can identify a possible
candidate for Mike's story as "Palely Loitering" by Chris Priest.
This was a Hugo nominee two years ago; it concerns a park connected to
the rest of the city by three bridges over a "time river"---one bridge
takes you a day back, one is just a bridge, and one takes you a day
forward.  Obviously, you get a slow and awkward time machine out of
this; you also have unreliable sight across the "river". I didn't like
it, but I don't think much of anything by Priest.
   I'm quite sure that "Does Not Compute" isn't said in FORBIDDEN
PLANET.  LOST IN SPACE is a possibility, but I would swear it's from
STAR TREK if I could remember/hear it being said by a female
voice---which I can't.
   Leaving out comic book and other imitations, I know of one previous
parody of the ape scene from 2001; the beginning of GROOVE TUBE, where
they have a TV set instead of a monolith.
   I don't recall a light-saberish duel in GATHER, DARKNESS, but last
year during my books-into-films survey someone mentioned Gordon
Dickson's WOLFLING, which has a similar idea except there are two rods
per fighter with the force strongest at the intersection of the
"blades".

------------------------------

Date: 25 June 1981  21:09-EDT (Thursday)
From: David Goldfarb <GOLDFARB at MIT-XX>
To: ihnss!karn at Berkeley
Subject: "That does not compute"

It was definitely the robot on Lost In Space; I spent many, many hours
of my otherwise wasted youth watching that show.
                                - David

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jun 1981 2110-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: "That does not compute"

How could anyone even have a QUESTION about this one?

This immortal line is certainly to be credited to the "Lost In Space"
robot, who used it VERY frequently.

Robbie was too classy to make remarks like that!

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 26 June 1981 0019-EDT (Friday)
From: Lee.Moore at CMU-10A
Subject: "That does not compute"

Responses to the origin of that phrase were being collected by Phil
Agre @ MIT.  I believe that he is still absent from the country.

Lee

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1981 (Monday) 1719-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Modified FiCom protocol

A modification to the Fiction Communication system has been suggested
that corrects a problem in my original design:  The initial editor
does not write the initial storyline.  Rather, he controls the voting
for the initial section and then publishes the first winner as the
opening storyline.  The winner of each successive vote becomes the new
editor and may not contribute to the next set of optional lines.
Thus, if someone is very good they do not get to just write the whole
thing.  Also, the editorial workload is well distributed and there is
some "uniform discontinuity" in the editorial style.  This is a better
idea than editorial tenure.

If you would like to either write for this project or take a hand in
the voting procedure please send me mail.  If I get enough responses
(say about 40) we'll go for it on a trial basis.  DO NOT SEND ME MAIL
IF YOU ARE SIMPLY INTERESTED IN READING THE RESULTS -- they will be
sent to SFL for everyone's interest.

Another suggestion was that perhaps instead of writing out the whole
gory thing in vivid detail, we simply collect and vote on one or two
paragraph plot snapshots.  This will ease every body's life but then
someone has to sit down ex post facto and write the whole thing out.
(We could send it off to Alan Dean Foster!)  If you send me mail
include your prefence as to doing the whole text or just the plot
lines.

Anyone who has already sent me mail needn't do so again.  I have
already taken down your addresses.

-- Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 15 June 1981 11:55-EDT
From: James M. Turner <JMTURN@MIT-AI>
Subject: Delphing for literary profit

Shade and Sweet water,
        Some thought on a Delphi short-story. First, imagine the
following scenarios:

        1) Person A writes a passionate love scene.  Person B then
writes the next chapter having one lover kill the other.  Person A
goes on vacation and misses the next chapter or 10.  When he gets
back, he sees what happened to the characters he introduced and goes
into flames mode.  He (or she) refuses to allow his/her chapter to be
part of the story...trash 50 pages.

        2) 400 people write one chapter...do you wanna read 4000
pages?

        3) Miracle of miracles, it's published...who gets the check?

        4) Of course, if it is published, it becomes commercial use of
the net and is verboten.

        Other than those problems, I think it sounds kinda fun.  It
should probably NOT be associated with SFL.

                                        James

P.S. Also, if you are one of the 'jurors', what happens if you are
away and can't answer the ballot.  Perhaps a list-wide ballot with a
limited response time would be more reasonable.

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1981 1023-EDT
From: DYER-BENNET
Subject: Response to 15-Jun SFL

Since I'm new to this, I just went back and read the 15-Jun SFL
(having finished with the 22-Jun edition) and found more to remark
on...

Steve Lionel refers to "a Tom Swift."  Actually, they're called "Tom
Swifties."  My favorite example is "'Gee I wish I had a BB gun,' said
Tom lackadaisically."

Now, are any of you familiar with the "Tom Swift Verbal pun?"  These
are like Tom Swifties, except that the pun is made with the verb
rather than the adverb.  The standard basic example is "'Two plus two
is four,' Tom added."  It's somewhat harder but more interesting to
come up with these.  The worst one I've heard was "'Let's get out of
this Egyptian port,' the Captain said."

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jun 1981 16:34:21-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Harryhausen

   I can see why he's worried; it's not overexposure but the fact that
his work is so bad compared to most of the other sfx stuff done today.
He seems stuck with stop-motion when others use it as one part of a
complex blend.
   A friend in theater told me yesterday that H actually \likes/ and
tries to imitate the jerky 1940's work of his youth---maybe that's why
he now seems so far behind the times or over the hill.  (It was the
general conclusion of the solstice party that his best was JASON AND
THE ARGONAUTS or possibly THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD (better plot,
sfx not as spectacular).)

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jun 1981 1902-PDT
From: Jwagner at OFFICE  
Subject: HotW - Part I -- More Apes

I doubt Mel Brooks will be sued for plagiarism for his opening scene
in "History of the World -- Part I", but another popular comedy began
with a parody of the Ape scene in "2001."
Does anybody remember a movie called "The Groove Tube"?  It was
produced by Ken Shapiro, whose Hollywood career was indeed meteoric --
a real burnout.  At the start of this movie, a group of missing-link
types in some rocky Pleistocene outpost discover not a monolith, but a
television set.  One of the apes accidentally turns the set on, and
the next thing you know they're all dancing to some heavy rock 'n'
roll beat.  Cute, huh?
The most notable thing about "The Groove Tube" is that it's Chevy
Chase's debut on the big screen.  In one vignette, a parody of Geritol
commercials, Chase is praising the aphrodisiac qualities of a product
called "Geritan" which has worked wonders on his wife; and in another,
Chevy is singing "I'm looking over a four-leaf clover" while Shapiro
bongos on his head.
Jim Wagner/jwagner@office

[mdp - Thanks also to Margolin.PDO at MIT-Multics, MD at MIT-XX (Mike
Dornbrook), SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager), Pattin.PDO at
MIT-Multics (Jay Pattin), and cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock) for
pointing out the 2001 parody in "The Groove Tube".]

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jun 1981 11:01:37-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: stunt doubles

   I'm not sure which scene ?? was speaking of in the case of Harrison
Ford being inside and outside the truck in RotLA, since I haven't seen
the movie, but I've seen a "scenes from shooting RotLA" film (it was
shown at Disclave) and I wouldn't swear that Ford ever used a double.
I particularly remember some shots of the setup for the scene in which
he's dragged behind a jeep; it's my impression that "double" in "stunt
double" is a relative term (the stuntman having only a general
resemblance to the person he's replacing) but I could swear it was
Ford they were padding so he could be dragged without too much damage.

------------------------------

Date: 26 June 1981 10:14-EDT
From: Dennis L. Doughty <DUFTY at MIT-MC>
Subject: Raiders of the Lost Ark Rebuttal

Regarding "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (I hate these stoopid abbrevs), I
checked out FIRST'S complaint when I went to see it again.  (This
comment regarded the mysterious disappearence and then reappearence of
Jones' wound.  Well, it was there the whole time.  You see, Jones was
wearing a jacket through which (when the hole was open -- the bullet
tore the jacket) you could see blood.  When he was sliding along
behind the truck, the slit in the jacket folded over itself (check it
yourself) so the wound could not be seen directly.  However, some
blood did impart itself to the outer left sleeve of the jacket, and,
in fact, one could barely see a hint of red on the stunt man's left
shoulder.

Regarding the cobra, I didn't notice the glass partition, but I did
notice a lapse in continuity.  From one angle, Jones is seen staring
down the snake, and starting to back up; then we cut to a different
angle (he still must be two feet or less from the cobra at this point)
and he's looking away as if he's out of danger.  I never did really
understand how he got away -- although we're supposed to believe that
he simply backed up until he was out of danger.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie.  It was a real treat to see a giant
boulder (previously only seen on WB cartoons on Saturday mornings)
racing after our hero.  What a disappointment it was the second time
when I arrived too late to see this!  ***1/2 stars (Four stars for
enjoyment and general style minus 1/2 a star for the snakes [Why did
it have to be snakes?])  --Dennis

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jun 1981 09:41:57-PDT
From: CSVAX.presotto at Berkeley
Subject: Lucas' non-photographic movies

In reply to REDFORD's remark in v3i156, we had a member of Lucas'
Marin Lab come to Berkeley to give a talk some months back (though I
forget his name).  Although he spent a lot of time name dropping or
showing "cute computer generated" films he also dropped in a few
interesting remarks.  It turns out that the number of chemical and
physical processes involved in the simplest matting shots are pretty
expensive.  The switch to all electronic filming would cut down the
expense enormously (once they manage to recoupe research expenses) by
making matting, landscape generation, editting, color control, etc. a
lot easier.  It isn't just the fantastic effects that they're shooting
for.  As a matter of fact that's a minor side effect, though it is
true that making content-free garbage will also become cheaper and
easier.  However, given that soon everyone will be able to make
spectacular effects cheaply, maybe we'll start seeing some good plots
again.
                                dave presotto

------------------------------


MDP@MIT-AI 6/26/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message is the last in the digest.  It gives away part
of the ending to "Raiders of the Lost Ark".  Readers who have not seen
this movie may wish not to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1981 1357-EDT
From: DYER-BENNET
Subject: SFL responses

Some comments on Lucasfilms and Raiders of the Lost Ark:

I felt that RotLA was an insult to my intelligence.  The major
technique for carrying the plot forward seemed to be the "Hackwriter's
Gambit":  Put the hero in an impossible situation, then cut to the
beginning of the next action sequence without bothering to indicate
how he escaped.

Did anyone besides me interpret the ending of the sequence in which
the Ark is opened to be God "taking back" the Ten Commandments?  This
could have interesting consequences, depending on interpretation.

I also read the Newsweek article, including Lucas' discussion of
all-electronic production.  From the sales of TV's and associated
program sources (tape, disk), I appear to be in a small minority...
but unless his "all-electronic" production gives about an order of
magnitude better linear resolution than current broadcast television,
I'm not particularly interested in seeing the results.  I suppose he
could be thinking of some form of high-resolution recording for the
production work only, with theatrical prints released on traditional
film.  That should be perfectly possible.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 27-JUN  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #160
*** EOOH ***
Date: 27 JUN 1981 2337-EDT
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #160
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 27 Jun 1981     Volume 3 : Issue 160

Today's Topics:
           SF Books - Timescape & Lord Valentine's Castle,
         SF Movies - 2001 Parodies & Excalibur & Dragonslayer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 27 Jun 81 2:24-PDT
From: mclure at SRI-Unix
Subject: Timescape

I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion about Benford's
Timescape on this forum.  It is by far the best hard science SF I've
read, vastly superior to Hogan's books or Dragon's Egg.  And there's a
simple reason.  The reader CARES about the characters.  Benford is an
unusual character himself; he seems adept at excellent characteriza-
tion as well as believable science.  Although the plot is somewhat
tame and not terribly original, the book lives through its incredibly
detailed description of the scientific method, academic communities,
research centers, and the like; and yet, it never becomes dry as
Hogan's books do.  The characters do NOT introduce themselves to each
other by reciting their resumes, and there are actually some
believable women.  Benford has drawn very heavily from his own
experience in the Physics community.

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jun 1981 1344-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: Book Reviews

    In "Timescape" by Gregory Benford, the world has gone to hell as
early as 1998.  Political upheaval and ecological disaster are
decimating the world's population.  People speak of "diebacks" in the
poorer parts of the third world as necessary to get the population
down to supportable levels (I might note that this is already
happening in the Sahel and Ethiopia).  In the largely abandoned
buildings of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge University, a last
group of physicists desperately try to send a message into the past to
warn people of the impending catastrophes.  They have found that
tachyons (the faster-than-light particles) can interact with matter
under certain experimental conditions that were being investigated in
the early sixties.  By projecting a beam of tachyons modulated in
Morse code at the position of the earth in 1962 they hope to get
through.  The action moves from one time to the other, from the
efforts of one group to keep transmitting to the other group trying to
convince someone of what they have received.
    As sf plots go this is unremarkable, but what makes this book
stand out is its capturing of the workings of science.  Every detail
rings true.  You feel that this must be the way it is done.  The
characters live and breathe; in fact you read on more to find out what
happens to them than to find out what happens in the plot, a rare
thing in sf.  Some real people are included; Freeman Dyson is in here,
and there's an unflattering picture of Carl Sagan under another name.
    And Benford takes the theme of time travel seriously.  It's not
just a gimmick for meeting Christ or hunting dinosaurs, it's handled
as a real philosophical problem.  Benford is a physicist and so
presumably knows what he's talking about when he says that the basic
equations of physics show no preference for the direction of time.  I
found his means of resolving paradoxes unsatisfying, but at least he's
done some thinking about it.  Here's the counter-example to the
complaints about the lack of science in science fiction.

    "Lord Valentine's Castle" by Robert Silverberg has also just come
out in paperback.  It might make a good short novel, but for some
reason Silverberg bloated it to 450+ pages.  The emperor of the planet
Majipoor is kidnapped and transferred into another body.  He is left
to wander a distant land as an amnesiac, while the kidnappers rule in
his stead with his face.  He falls in with a troupe of jugglers and
finds that he has innate talent as a juggler, part of the aura of
natural grace that still clings to him from the emperorship.  He tours
the continent with them, slowly coming to realize his true identity.
Finally he sets out on a quest to regain the throne, first by
contacting his mother, the Lady of the Isle of Sleep, then by meeting
the Pontifex, the law-giver for all Majipoor, and finally by storming
the thirty mile high mountain on which resides his seat of power, Lord
Valentine's Castle.
    All well enough.  But Silverberg seems to lose interest after a
while.  The characters that he introduces early on seem much richer
and more developed than the ones brought in later, and eventually they
all become a gang of faces on their way to this mountain.  He says
some interesting things about the philosophy of juggling at the
beginning, and then doesn't develop them.  At one point the jugglers
rescue an alien captured by the shape-changing natives, and then he's
hardly heard from again.  So all in all a disappointment.

------------------------------

Date: 26-Jun-81 11:42:35 PDT
From: tou.pa @ PARC-MAXC
Subject: 2001 Parodies

I remember "The Groove Tube" containing a parody of the 2001 dawn
scene.  I think "Being There" showed Peter Sellers walking down a
street with the 2001 theme playing in the background, though that's
not really a parody of the dawn scene.

[Thanks also to First at SUMEX-AIM for reporting the 2001 parody in
"The Groove Tube".  -- MDP]

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jun 1981 17:10:18-PDT
From: ihnss!karn at Berkeley
Subject: Re: Parodies of 2001

I remember one in Mad magazine.  A page from it was reprinted in the
paperback "The Making of 2001".

Phil

------------------------------

Date: 06/26/81 23:21:34
From: ELLEN@MIT-MC
Subject: Parodies of 2001

Sesame Street has a Parody of 2001, same theme song.  I think it is a
commercial for the letter I, but I may be wrong, it has been many
years since my (now 13) year old son watched Sesame Street.  Anyway,
little "glob-characters" (cartoon humanoids) gathered around the
"monolith" to the theme of 2001, and then recited "I I I" (I think...
at least they recited in unison the name of the letter, but I think it
was "I").

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jun 1981 1538-PDT
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: 2001-like Ape Scenes (take II)    

The movie "Simon" also had Alan Arkin doing an ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny.  When he got to apes, he did a good parody of moon-watcher
discovering a bone/club to be an extension of his arm.  I think this
whole scene played sans-music, so it might have been a bit subtle.

Rich

------------------------------

Date: 06/24/81 01:06:49
From: DP@MIT-ML
Subject: Excalibur on the downhill side?

   I just got the schedule from my local cult film house.  They will
show Excalibur next month.  It must not have done all that well for
them to get it so soon.
                                            Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1981 0352-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Dragonslayer  

                              BOB THOMAS
                       Associated Press Writer
    DRAGONSLAYER is another return to boyhood pleasures by young
filmmakers.  This time Matthew Robbins (director-writer) and Hal
Barwood (producer-writer) seek to recreate the fantasy adventure - as
epitomized by the Disney animated features - which they enjoyed in
their recent youth.  The result is a well-made, sometimes inspired
flight of imagination that employs the latest cinematic wizardry.
Peter MacNicol, apprentice to sorceror Ralph Richardson, uses his
newfound powers to save a kingdom - and his love, Caitlin Clarke, from
an evil-tempered dragon.  The young players are engaging, and
Richardson contributes believability to the fantastic happenings.
Robbins-Barwood have captured the feeling of the Dark Ages; their
climax proves a drawback, being overly mystical and extended.  Rated
PG, with ample scares for young children.

------------------------------

Date: 06/25/81 01:12:54
From: DP@MIT-ML
Subject: Dragonslayer. Micro review.

   Dragonslayer is a typical wizards quest story.  A Paramount/Disney
production with a little help from some real wizards (the people at
industrial light and magic).

   A rather atypical production from Disney.  There is a fair amount
of gore in spots, and one brief display of nudity (skinny dipping).
However many of the obvious sexy lead-ins got left flat (I suppose
they must hold slight standards).

   The story was supposedly set in 6'th century Saxon England.  They
did manage to get some of the religious symbols and architecture
correct, but the garb, music, and dance used were solid 14th century.
In addition, the garb worn by the peasants was far richer than people
of their station could afford.  The costumers did not restrain their
technique sufficiently.  There were darts in some of the women's
clothing, (instead of the more typical laced bodice; darts aren't even
14th century) and yokes and separate sleeves on some of the tunics.  I
suppose they don't know how to not use them.

   General idea of film - there is this dragon living in a cave.  To
prevent him from ravaging the local populace, every equinox a fresh
virgin chosen by lot gets offered up as a pacifier.  A group of
disgruntled locals upset about the drain on the marriageable pool,
travels 100 leagues to recruit a great sorcerer.  Due to some rather
bizarre circumstances they wind up with the master's egotistical
apprentice.  The apprentice manages to upset the dragon, who flies
around toasting the countryside.  As expected, they get the dragon in
the end, and the apprentice and the blacksmith's daughter ride out
across the moors into the setting sun.

   The program was amusing, 1/3 of a page of acting credits, and 1 2/3
page of technical credits.. with close to a page being effex credits.

   This was a preview showing, the theater management invited members
of the local Society for Creative Anachronism to the opening.  Tickets
contingent on appearing in garb, and conducting a demo outside to
attract attention to things.  We staged a fighting demo/practice, the
jongleurs played, people danced, the jugglers did their thing, and all
the rest passed out propaganda, and answered infinite questions.

   The movie is reasonable, not up to Raiders, but certainly better
than Excalibur or CloT.

                                        Jeff

(The SCA is a group interested in learning about the middle ages.  The
technique used is to act the part.  At regular gatherings, members
dress in period clothing, eat traditional food, listen and dance to
early music, and a small number fight with padded rattan swords and
body armor.  Groups exist around most universities.)

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jun 1981 11:10:02-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: DRAGONSLAYER ("sneak" preview)

  Nano-review:  not great, but pretty good.
  Summary:  an apprentice sorcerer is called upon to kill a dragon
over the opposition of the rulers, who prefer a quiet sacrifice every
solstice to the general destruction from somebody's unsuccessful
attempt to kill the beast.
  Comments:  a bit too much attempt at political relevance, some
magnificent monsters, good bits of magic, lots of gore, acting mostly
good with some notable weak spots (particularly the king's daughter)
and some annoyances in diction (why does everyone say prinCESS rather
than PRINcess), good camera work, excellent scenery including period
castles.  On the whole, probably the best fantasy film since Cocteau's
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

------------------------------

Date: 25-JUN-1981 12:57
From: KERMIT::PARMENTER
Subject: sf movie

Sneek prevue last nite of "Dragonslayer":  the best damn
kill-the-monster movie I ever saw, and certainly the best monster I
ever saw.

"Dragonslayer" is a joint Disney/Paramount production and Disney did
the dragon.

Plot is that dragon is ravaging the land.  Must be placated with
virgins.  People seek help from sorcerer, but sorcerer dies and must
be replaced by sorcerer's apprentice.  Dragon must die.

Movie has the authentic sword-and-sorcery feel with hardly any of the
usual sword-and-sorcery bits.  That is, no brass breastplates or
barbarians, but plenty of misty mountains and mystery moves by the
sorcerer.

I can say no more, but if you like that kind of thing, "Dragonslayer"
is that kind of thing.

------------------------------

Date: 26 June 1981  08:01-EDT (Friday)
From: Winston Edmond <EDMOND at BBND>
To: Malis at BBNS, WMilliken at BBNE, RClifford at BBNC
Subject: Movie Review: Dragonslayer

My rating:  * * 1/2  I consider the film to be a worthwhile evening's
entertainment, but not a great film.  It contains a couple scenes of a
dragon eating human flesh that may be unsuitable for young children.
I did not recognize the names of anyone associated with film, except
Walt Disney Productions.

   The film is a sword and sorcery adventure.  The story begins with a
weary group of travelers who have come 100 leagues to see Ulrich, one
of the last surviving magicians.  In the olden days, the skies were
filled with dragons, but most of them had been slain by the sorcerers.
There is, however, one aging dragon left, Vermithrax.  Only human
sacrifice twice a year, at the equinoxes, keeps it from ravaging the
nearby kingdom.  The film is the story of the travel to the kingdom,
the initial "sizing up" of the dragon, and the final battle.
Intermixed is some occasional satire about religion and politics in
general.

   I found the beginning of the film to be very uneven.  Scene
transitions were abrupt and, coupled with equally abrupt costume
changes in the principal character, I found it very difficult to
follow.  Fortunately, transitions become much smoother as the film
progresses.  Also, for about the first two thirds of the film, I was
unimpressed (though not unhappy) with the story.  However, the last
third brought together lots of things that had looked like
irrelevancies, the dragon makes its first real appearance (I had begun
to wonder if we would ever see the whole dragon), and the battle
begins to take shape.  I believe this last part "makes" the film.

   I liked the special effects.  The dragon was pretty good.  It isn't
a speaking dragon, but it does have some character.  Stop-action
photography has its limitations, of course, but I think they did it
well.  The lighting in the flying scenes might have wanted to be a bit
brighter.  They were careful with their magic, too, using appropriate
colors for traditional meanings.  I can't say more about that without
giving away part of the story.

   "Excalibur", the legend of a great sword of power, undertook too
much for the time available to tell the story.  This film, not as
complex or with as detailed a history to draw upon, presents a world
of sorcery, feudalism, and dragons that is less realistic but more
appropriate to adventure and imagination.

   Incidentally, I challenge you to guess which character gains the
name "Dragonslayer".

-Winston

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 29-JUN  "MDP at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #161
*** EOOH ***
Date: 29 JUN 1981 0048-EDT
From: MDP at MIT-ML
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #161
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

   
SF-LOVERS Digest         Sunday, 28 Jun 1981      Volume 3 : Issue 161

Today's Topics:
         SF Books - Crystal toy plot query & Islandia query &
            The Gods Hate Kansas & Cyborgs & Pseudofluids,
          SF Movies - Heavy Metal & Caveman & Dragonslayer,
                 SF Topics - Disney World & S in SF,
                        Spoiler - Superman II
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1981 15:44 PDT
From: Kaehler at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Plot query

I have a request:  Where can I find the following short story that I
read once.  A kid has a "toy" that some smallish aliens gave him.  He
is playing in the backyard.  The toy is a crystal glass.  The boy
thinks of a scene, say a house burning down.  The scene appears in the
glass, just as he imagines it.  Little figures race around trying to
save the people.  The boy imagines the scene again, but this time the
crystal won't show it unless he supplies more detail.  He has to
imagine firemen, the fire truck, and what the firemen do.  Each time
the crystal demands a more realistic fantasy before it will show the
scene.  The crystal turns out to be the most seductive and addictive
teaching tool ever seen.  (I read this in a collection of short
stories some years ago.)

Thanks!  Ted Kaehler

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1981 1054-EDT
From: KERN at RUTGERS
Subject: ISLANDIA query

        Seeing ISLANDIA on the rare-sf list got me to thinking that
there might be other fans of the book on the net.  Sylvia Wright, in
the massmarket edition of the book published in the late 60's implies
that there is a companion edition to the book which has been
published.  This would make sense in that half the book was edited out
due to the WWII paper shortage.  Does anyone know if indeed there is a
companion book, by Austin Tappan Wright?  (I'm not referring to THE
ISLAR, by Mark Saxton, a much weaker sequel.)

        If you know any further details about a companion volume,
please send a message to KERN@RUTGERS.  I'll acknowledge any responses
in a future message to SF-LOVERS.

-Kevin B Kern

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jun 1981 06:50:22-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: Rare SF

"The Gods Hate Kansas" was made into a (bad) film whose name I do not
remember.  That to me disqualifies it from being "rare."

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jun 1981 17:12:01-PDT
From: Cory.cc-treas at Berkeley
Subject: Cyborgs & Pseudofluids

        On the subject of Cyborgs & Zelazny, how about The Steel
General from the book "Creatures of Light & Darkness"?  He
(apparently) was human once, but since he embodies the spirit of
rebellion, (and that implies doing battle a good deal of the time) he
sort of lost pieces of himself to prosthetics and so on over the years
until he was entirely mechanical.  It is said that he has been
disassembled many times, and even his parts flung to the ends of the
universe, but always someone reassembles him to help in a rebellion.
He even wears a ring of human flesh to remind him of humanity.  His
horse was something else again!
        The name of the abyss, mentioned in the previous digest, was
(I think) Skagganook (or something with that flavor) and the horse's
name was Thoth.
        The name of the story, by Poul Anderson, with Earth as the
playground for evolving machines was "Zero" and it is indeed part of a
collection of his stuff, but the name still escapes me.  I've got it
in my library and will look it up tonight.
        As for pseudofluid, Mr. joe.newcomer (is that right?) was
correct.  Joe Haldeman used 'breathable' fluid to protect the soldiers
in the transport ships in "The Forever War".  Those ships supposedly
did about 50G's if I remember correctly.  It was 'serialized' in
Analog over about a year as a whole set of short stories some years
ago.  Everyone had a kind of socket or spigot on their hip which led
into the major cavities of the abdomen, and before undergoing the
acceleration, oxygenated fluorocarbon was forced into their bodies and
into a kind of crash couch which surrounded the people completely.

                                Erik Fair
                                Cory:cc-treas@Berkeley

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1981 1027-PDT
From: Geoffrey C Mulligan (at The Pentagon) <GeoffM at RAND-AI>
Subject: New Heavy Metal movie?

Has anyone heard anything about the new HEAVY METAL movie?  I saw some
film clips and it looked very interesting.  I believe it will be rated
R since the 'teaser' had some very sexually explicit scenes.
        geoff

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1981 at 1503-CDT
From: ables at UTEXAS-11 (King Ables)
Subject: looks like 2001 to me . . .

Not to beat a dying horse, but I seem to remember a short scene in
"Caveman" which at least reminded me of 2001.  There was some music
which, although not the same, was very similar to that in 2001 and the
general goings on at the time were much the same (some revelation
coming to the cavemen [or cavepersons if you prefer]).  I don't
remember whether Ringo Starr threw a club into the air or not, though.

King

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1981 1445-PDT
From: FEATHER at USC-ISIF
Subject: Dragonslayer

Question:  How many dragons does it take to make baby dragons?

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1981 (Sunday) 2018-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Disney Standards

Univac sent me to DisneyWorld to talk about APL last year [They use
Univac equipment for management crunching and a combination of
electromechanical and MicroNova for effects].  I spent about half a
day riding "shotgun" with a blonde in the cab of the red monorail
talking about Disney and the "world."  One of the points discussed
might be of general interest:  Seems that when you apply for a Disney
job (in particular, for working in DW or DL) you don't interview, you
"audition".  When you are at work you must wear your hair in the
traditional down-home All-American style and, of course, no smoking or
drinking on the job.  You don't have a boss but, rather, a
choreographer, and you are considered to be on stage at all times
while on Disney grounds.  You cannot take your costume out of the park
or "use your association" in any respect, charitable or otherwise,
without Disney prior approval.

When I was there they were replacing the House of Horrors
Audio-Animatronics with MicroNovas.  Some of us got the "underground"
tour of the nerve center; they call it the "tunnel".  It is just that.
Note that most of Florida is your basic flat state; well... where did
they get that mountain on which to build Cinderella's castle?  Hint:
The lake wasn't there when they bought the land...  Well, in the
process they buried a huge set of corridor areas that are the
underground control center.  It was pretty amazing.  They do not make
as much use of computers as they might although that is changing
slowly.

Note: Last year they began EPCOT -- the Experimental Prototype
Community Of Tommorow.  This was supposed to be a huge international
technology "fest" building a complete city in the heart of the Disney
property.  I'd be interested if anyone knows anything more about that
project.  It sounded very interesting.

-- Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jun 1981 06:54:50-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!bch at Berkeley
Subject: science in science fiction -- creativity

While I would agree with jeff about "Cosmos" (I got mighty tired of
Commander Carl gazing mysteriously off in the distance, presumably to
the east,) and about "In Search of..." I do think he missed the theme
of "Connections".  Burke never said that science has grown beyond our
comprehension, but that the \linkages/ between the various forms of
technology have become so tight and complicated that we cannot
comprehend them.  We cannot control technological development without
destroying serendipitous discovery.

At the risk of puncturing a sacred cow (sorry about the mixed
metaphor) I thought he also stressed that creativity does not exist in
the form of ideas springing forth full-blown from the inventor's head.
Invention is, rather, a process of synthesis and serendipity where old
processes are adapted with possibly new emergent results...it can be
visualized as a process similar to evolution with continuity and
mutation.

So...given a highly complicated sort of technological "organism" (and
I don't want to stretch the comparison too far, so nobody please say I
said that technology \is/ an organism) with the capacity for self
directed mutation, what course should be taken.  That, to me, was the
problem that Burke presented.

Byron Howes -- University of North Carolina

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1981 21:00:53-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: What is SF?

Well, we now have a new example of science fiction to factor into our
attempts to define it.  House Budget Committee Chairperson James
Jones, D-Oklahoma, when referring to Republican objections to the
Democratic budget plans, said that they were dealing in "science
fiction".  Me, I think he's wrong -- science fiction is more logical,
and MUCH more soundly based on facts than is the Reagan economic
plan.....

Gee, should this have been sent to HUMAN-NETS (wherever it may be) or
to politics-d?  One of the relatives of the latter is the usual place
for wild flaming.

More seriously, the reason I bring up the topic is that it illustrates
a popular perception of the nature of science fiction.  Anything that
seems impossible without being in a category generally rejected --
such as "magic" -- is called science fiction.  And it's not just the
public -- many authors are at least as guilty.  As has been pointed
out before, there is (currently?) no basis for believing in
faster-than-light drives.  On the other hand, if one wishes to include
interstellar travel as part of the story, it's almost a necessity
(though Busby's "Rissa Kerguelen" and Haldeman's "Forever War" use
relativity quite well most of the way through.)  Instead, people
generally accept a conventionalized hyper-drive.  Poul Anderson speaks
of "pseudo-velocities", Jerry Pournelle has a friend at Cal Tech (Dan
Alderson) invent an interstellar drive to his specs, other authors
(Niven and Asimov) don't permit their hyperspace drives to be used too
close to a planet or star, etc.  Are these possible?  No, not by
anything we know today.  In the future?  Maybe -- some are more
plausible than others.  The Alderson drive, for example, is reportedly
based on many pages of differential equations derived from an as-yet
undiscovered "fifth force" (after gravity, electro-magnetic, strong,
and weak).  But these authors are often regarded as the hardest of the
hard science fiction writers.  Why do we accept them?

The answer, I think, lies in a unique property of science fiction:
the ability to freely explore changes in society brought about by
arbitrary changes in human capabilities.  What would be the effect of
a true, controllable prophetic ability?  The "Foundation" series
presents one answer.  Running out of living space?  Build a
"Ringworld" or a Dyson sphere.  What might happen to the human race if
we don't control our population but can't leave the solar system?
"The Mote in God's Eye" is a gory example.  Yes, many of these themes
can be dealt with in historical fiction -- and many of them are, to
the tune of a great deal of criticism for inextricably mixing fact
with fiction.  (Is Leon Uris's Ari ben Canaan REALLY based on Yitzhak
Rabin?  What about his Menachem Begin counterpart -- who died in
Exodus?)  Using science fiction provides a more controlled environment
for such experimentation.

How, then, are we to judge a science fiction story?  The best metric I
know is how well a story succeeds at its goals -- one of which MUST be
to tell a good story.  Often, that's the only goal -- and we get space
opera, with or without wiring diagrams.  Much of the very best science
fiction falls into this category, and why many (most?) of us prefer
such stories to similar mainstream stories is itself an interesting
question.  Others endeavor to teach, to use real science -- but then
the author runs the risk of being overtaken by new facts (how many
stories just don't work anymore because Venus isn't ocean-covered, or
at least very humid?) or finding that they haven't considered all
aspects of their imaginary world.  "Ringworld Engineers" is largely a
collection of scientifc (and plot-oriented) patches to "Ringworld",
and even Hal Clement had to recant a bit in "Eye of the Needle".
(Though his suggestion of utilizing otherwise wasted biomass for fuel
production must rank as one of the great predictions of SF....).

But for the most part, the all-time great stories meld many themes.
"Dune" uses ecology, realistic politics, mysticism, feudal patterns
taken from history, and technological changes to tell a marvelously
entertaining story.  "Stand on Zanzibar" is a chillingly plausible
picture of where our technology is heading, mixed in with fairly
extensive sociological commentary, in-depth pictures of many
characters, and a risky literary technique.  And -- hey... you...
what's that you're holding?  Put that down!  No, no -- don't use that
fire extinguisher on meeeeeee....


                Steve Bellovin UNC, Chapel Hill

------------------------------


MDP@MIT-AI 6/28/81 0:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

The following message gives away some of the outcomes of the movie
"Superman II".  Those of you who have not seen it may wish not to read
any further.


------------------------------

Date: 25 June 1981 21:37 edt
From: Margolin.PDO at MIT-Multics
Subject: Re: Superman II spoiler questions

Re: Superman II spoiler questions:
Lex Luthor never claimed to know about the Superman/Kent duality.  He
just knew that he was special friends with the people at the Daily
Planet, especially Lois Lane; it might even be considered common
knowledge.

Yes, some of the powers shown by the Kryptonian criminals are not
taken from the comics (I used to be an avid DC Comics reader).  I was
especially surprised by the levitation and force beams.  The talking
in space could have been an example of "super ventriloquism",
something Supes used sometimes in the comics, although usually to say
something to someone a great distance away (around the world, for
instance), rather than through a vacuum.

I was disappointed by the movie for several reasons, and I am really
surprised that it is grossing more than RotLA.  Hopefully, the return
audience for Raiders will turn this figure around.  A major problem
with the movie was the lack of good climaxes (although Ursa was cute).
They kept on reaching towards high points, and then stopping just
before.  They never actually show how he gets his powers back (Mom
said that the change was irreversible, but we all knew that it
wasn't), and Superman flying off when he was "defeated" was not the
great gimmick that they must have been trying to make of it.  And Kent
beating up the bully in the end was totally out of character.  I think
that he either used super-hypnotism or slipped Lois a mickie to make
her forget his identity (we all knew that had to happen, too).
Another problem with the movie was the predictability.

Well, that's enough for now.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


0,unseen,,
Summary-line: 30-JUN  "MDP at MIT-ML"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #162
*** EOOH ***
Date: 30 JUN 1981 0252-EDT
From: MDP at MIT-ML
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #162
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

   
SF-LOVERS Digest         Mon, 29 Jun 1981         Volume 3 : Issue 162

Today's Topics:
           SF Books - Lord Valentine's Castle & True Names,
   SF Topics - Parallel universes (matter transmission revisited),
 SF Movies - Dragonslayer & Star Wars song & Raiders of the Lost Ark,
                  Spoiler - Raiders of the Lost Ark
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 June 1981 00:18-EDT
From: David Vinayak Wallace <GUMBY at MIT-AI>

  I wish to dispute the claims made about "Lord Valentine's Castle"
(should be underlined).  Rather than be 'bloated', I thought it was
too short for the real story.  It seemed to me that after Valentine's
acceptance of his true identity the plot seems to accelerate.  After
wandering around for a few months (!) as commoner Valentine, he almost
suddenly realises the truth.  From there, victory is an almost
inevitable conclusion.  Silverberg leaves in hundreds of undeveloped
hooks (like the rest of the off-world races) which he never bothers to
develop.  It would have been better to have left them out, rather than
mention them at all.  In my opinion, the book is too short to
adequately express the richness Silverberg tried to put in.
  He is writing a sequel.  Nuff said.

--david

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1981 14:33:04-PDT
From: jef at LBL-UNIX (& Poskanzer [rtsg])
To: rms at mit-ai
Subject: True Names

There was a review of "True Names" in SFL V3 #98 (16apr81).  The
reviewer expressed mixed feelings about the story.

I tend to agree more with Spider Robinson's assesment in the June 22
Analog:  "...Vernor Vinge's 'True Names' is @i[so] damned good it
deserves to be on the Hugo list...  I don't know why Vinge failed to
secure a magazine publication for this splendid novella - I think if
it had run here in Analog it would have been assured a Hugo
nomination, whereas now I'm going to have to do a lot of drumbeating
for it. ... Do not miss this ingenious and truly original story - it
is one of those that, when you're done, you wish the author were
present so you could applaud."

So, get out there and beat those drums!
---
Jef

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1981 1426-EDT
From: SILBER at RUTGERS
Subject: True Names and haunted spacesuits

On Vernon Vinge's excellent story, True Names, not only is it one of
the best studies of hacking written yet, but it seemed to draw heavily
on frp (fantast role-playing) game scenarios.  One touch I really
appreciated was that an understanding of computers as magic was more
useful than knowing the nuts and bolts (though both were necessary).

I have not read the Heinlein story you have been referring to, but it
seems somewhat similar to one of the most striking scenes in The Mote
in God's Eye (Pournelle/Niven, if my memory is at all useful).  In
that scene some of the smaller Moties try to enter a spaceship by
holding a severed head in the faceplate and hiding in the bottom.
Fortunately, someone spots them, and blows apart the spacesuit,
revealing them.

I've been following the discussion on the "lack of science in science
fiction", and while it's true that much of the so-called science has
only a tenuous connection with present scientific knowledge, I don't
believe that the necessary conclusion is that science fiction is
supporting the prevailing "mystical" outlook of our society.  One of
the major tenets of most religious and also most antitechnological
points of view is that the way things are now is the way they have to
be.  Be it the stars, the gods, the earth's limitations, or sheer
human stupidity that takes the blame, we're stuck with the present
condition.  SF by its very existance argues with that premise.  Simply
by imagining faster than light travel, even without explaining
precisely how, (and very few times is it necessary to know how in
order to uderstand the story), you've said "I'm not accepting the way
I currently know the world as the end of man's efforts to know the
world."  Perhaps that is not a strictly scientific viewpoint to take
(for you have no evidence of the knowledge you don't yet have) but it
is certainly opposed to the mystical, anti-technological viewpoint.

My view on this is somewhat similar to Vonnegut's comments on cultural
relativity in the epilog to the book Free to Be ... You and Me.
"Cultural relavity... is also a source of hope.  It means we don't
have to stay this way if we don't want to."  So too with SF.

Sincerely
Rachel Silber

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1981 1358-PDT
From: DHARE at SRI-CSL
Subject: many worlds universe and self-identity

I just got through reading the Metamagical Themas column by Douglas
Hofstadter in the July Scientific American.  In it he discusses modern
quantum mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation as a solution to
the problem of abrupt and seemingly arbitrary state changes on the
quantum mechanical level.  This interpretation theorizes that the
universe is constantly forking into parallel paths, one for each
possible quantum mechanical state.  Hofstadter raises the issue of the
sense of self-identity in this parallel path universe.  I don't find
it so difficult to imagine my being in one branch at a particular
instant and have a sense of self-identity independent of all my other
identities.

However, I remember a fragment of an SF plot I heard about somewhere
(maybe even here) about a matter copying machine which is used to
create a copy of a person (leaving the original untouched).  The copy
of the person is sent to do a job which is necessarily fatal.  The
feelings of the person who enters this machine is described as
thinking to himself "I hope when I walk out that I am not the copy".
Of course, since his universe in a sense "splits" at that point, he
will both find himself the copy and the original, but with different
self-identities.  This kind of example makes it more difficult for me
to imagine my self-identity being preserved through splits in my
universe line.  I can imagine walking up to that matter copying
machine hoping that when I walk out my self-identity is attached to
the original and not the copy, but that kind of thought does not seem
to make any real sense.

Does anyone know if any SF writer has investigated such problems of
self-identity under comparable circumstances?

--Dwight Hare

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1981 2203-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Dragonslayer

     Hey, so the lead bit moldy tuna.  So what?  I don't go to a movie
like that to see humans anyway.  I went to see dragons, and I SAW
dragons, so very satisfied was I.
     Some of the performers were very good, I thought -- the bad guy,
whatever his name was, and the King, and the lead female and her
father, and there were some not-so-goods, like the princess (who
looked good enough to eat, heh heh) and the Master Sorcerer, but that
was okay, cause the dragon had enough character to fill for them both.
I was especially impressed by the sets.
     However, I have one minor point -- if the dragon only eats
virgins, then why go to all the trouble of concealing your daughter in
boy's garb for eighteen years?  (The psychological scars alone...)
     I'm sure SOME enterprising young man would have started a stud
service, complete with Writ of Authenticity signed upon completion of
the task, to remove the daughters from eligibility.  And he probably
wouldn't charge much either.  After all, the only thing they lose is
their chance to marry Prince Charles, and hell, the odds are too damn
great to make staying a virgin a sound investment in risk with a
hungry dragon around.

------------------------------

Date: 22-Jun-1981
From: STEVE LIONEL AT STAR at ZIP
Subject: Star Wars Dementia

Like most people, I'll admit to a few bad habits.  One I wish I
indulged in more often is listening to the "Dr. Demento Radio Show",
which is nationally syndicated and features what might be termed
"novelty music".  Although I have insufficient data, it appears to be
broadcast at a constant time of Sunday nights at 10PM.  In the Boston
area, it's on WCOZ-FM (94.5 MHz).

Well, I tuned in late last Sunday and caught the end of the "Funny
Five", the five most requested songs of the week.  Number two was
sooooo demented, I just had to tape it the next week, transcribe it
and share it with you.  The song's by "Weird Al" Yankovic (spelling
approximate), is sung to the tune of the Kinks' "Lola", is titled
"Yoda", and goes like this:

    I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
    Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
    S-O-D-A soda
    I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
    I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
    Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
    
    Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
    A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
    Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
    Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
    How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
    Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
    
    Well I left home just a week before
    And I never ever met a Jedi before
    But Obi-Wan he set me straight of course
    He said "Go to Yoda and he'll show you the Force"
    Well I'm not the kind that would argue with that
    So it looks like I'm gonna start all over again
    With my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
    Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
    
    So I used the Force
    I picked up a box
    I lifted some rocks
    While I stood on my head
    Well I won't forget what Yoda said
    
    He said "Luke stay away from the darker side
    And if you start to go astray let the Force be your guide"
    Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
    "I know Darth Vader's really got you annoyed
    But remember if you kill him then you'll be unemployed"
    Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
    
    Well I heard my friends really got in a mess
    So I'm gonna have to leave Yoda I guess
    But I know that I'll be coming back some day
    'Cause I'm playing this part 'till I'm old and gray
    'Cause a long term contract I had to sign
    Since I'll be making these movies 'till the end of time
    With my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
    
    Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
    [Repeat]

                                        Stay Demented!
                                        Steve Lionel

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jun 1981 1410-PDT (Saturday)
From: Faigin at UCLA-SECURITY (Daniel Powell Faigin)
Subject: RotLA - The Next Episode

If I recall correctly, the NEWSWEEK article said something about the
next installment of RotLA taking place in Africa.

Does anybody know anything about this?

Also, it may be a while before the next installment of RotLA comes
out.  Spielberg is supposedly working on a number of movies of his
own, and I have heard rumors that Lucas promised him that he could do
the next Star Wars movie [the one after Revenge -- either SW1 or SW7].

------------------------------

Date: 29 Jun 1981 at 0136-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 
Subject: Harrison Ford's stunts in RotLA

I remember catching a quick glimpse in the credits of something like
"stunt man" or "stand-in" or "assistant" followed by "to Mr. Ford".

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1981 0758-PDT
From: CSD.JPBion at SU-SCORE (Joel P. Bion)
Subject: RotLA (not really a spoiler)

        A couple of things:
        1. Re: Hacking through the script.  Was it really Lucas
speaking when we hear Indiana Jones say "I'm making it up as I go
along" (in the scene just before he jumps on the horse)
        2. THX1138.  Has anyone seen this in the movie?  I have looked
in all the obvious places (license plates, plane/ship registration
numbers) and I cannot find it.
                                                        Joel

------------------------------


MDP@MIT-AI 6/29/81 0:00  Re:  SPOILER WARNING!!  SPOILER WARNING!!

The following messages are the last in the digest.  They reveal
details about "Raiders of the Lost Ark".  Those of you who have not
seen this movie may wish not to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1981 (Sunday) 2020-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Spoiler -- Raiders of the Lost Ark -- ending

I interpreted that as the same force that destroyed Sodom/Gomorra.
Reasons:  1) The pillar of fire
          2) Jones knew not to look at it -- how else?
          3) Wrath of God and all that.

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jun 1981 1714-PDT
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIF>
Subject: Spoiler for ROTLA

CAUTION, the following is a spoiler for ROTLA:


I have figured out something about the movie that bothered me.
Remember Indiana had the headpiece of the staff of RA?  Then he found
that the Nazis had made a duplicate of it, but only of the writing on
one side?

The question is:  How were they able to make a copy of it?  Indiana
said that there was never any pictures of the thing.  Well, remember
that the evil Nazi had an imprint of the headpiece burned into his
hand when he tried to steal it.  So they must have used his hand to
make a model, and that is why they only had one side of it.


                                Alan

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1981 0207-EDT
From: HEDRICK at RUTGERS
Subject: Did God take back the Commandments?

If God did take back the Commandments, it was probably not in the
final scene, but rather in the boat, when the box in which the Ark was
placed got charred.  (Can anyone else think of what else the charring
may have meant?)  After all, the box is full of sand when the baddies
first open it, before the special effects start flying around.  The
final scene is perfectly consistent with Biblical reports of what
happened when enemies [indeed even friends] touched the Ark:  they got
zapped.  I think we are intended to be reminded of the Angel of Death
from Cecil B. DeMille's "Ten Commandments".  At the end when the
clouds opened and things ascended through the opening, I rather
expected to see that God had taken back the entire Ark.  But He
didn't, so I think that was just the Angel of Death going back up into
Heaven.

By the way, I finally did manage to locate some evidence of an
Egyptian attack on Israel at the time when the movie claims the Ark
was taken away:  "King Solomon used forced labor ... to rebuild the
cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.  (The king of Egypt had attacked
Gezer and captured it, killing its inhabitants and setting fire to the
city.  Then he gave it as a wedding present to his daughter when she
married Solomon, and Solomon rebuilt it.)" [1 Kings 9:15-17, TEV.]  It
is of course well-known that the kings of Israel did not control all
of the land they claimed, so this sort of thing is no particular
surprise.  [The nearest of those cities to Jerusalem is Gezer, but it
is in the Philistine area, which was never really subdued.]  However
the Ark was in Jerusalem, and it seems a bit less likely that the king
of Egypt would have taken the most important item from their capital
city at the precise period when Israel's secular power was at its
maximum.  But anything for a good story...

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************


1,,
Summary-line:  1-JUL  "MDP at MIT-AI"  #SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #163
Date:  1 JUL 1981 0731-EDT
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #163
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

*** EOOH ***
Date:  1 JUL 1981 0731-EDT
From: MDP at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V3 #163
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  
SF-LOVERS Digest         Tue, 30 Jun 1981         Volume 3 : Issue 163

Today's Topics:
                    Administrivia - Abbreviations,
              SF Fandom - WesterCon, SF TV - VideoWest,
   SF Books - Lord Valentine's Castle & Educational toy & Cyber SF,
                       SF Radio - Dr. Demento,
SF Movies - Theme music & 2001 parodies & THX-1138 & Dragons' virgins
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 Jun 1981 03:42:27-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley
Subject: Abbreviations

I know it's been discussed before, but I'm getting a little tired of
having to decode new abbreviations, acronyms, etc., with each new
digest.  Yes, it's easier to type TESB instead of "The Empire Strikes
Back", but it isn't necessarily easier to read.  If you want to use
abbreviations, fine, but please -- use the full name at least once
earlier in your letter, so that the uninitiated can understand what
you're saying.  (Incidentally, don't assume that everyone will know
that, say, "RotLA" is "Raiders of the Lost Ark" just because it's been
discussed a lot lately.  First of all, people do start reading the
list in the middle of a discussion, and second, depending on the
backlog of submissions, your letter may appear a month or more after
you sent it in.)

[OK, let's see how many readers object to this idea:  I will expand
the first occurrence of each abbreviation in a digest.  This is less
obtrusive than expanding them all and will allow our readers to
abbreviate as they please.  -- Mike]

------------------------------

Date: 30 Jun 1981 1609-PDT (Tuesday)
From: Eps at UCLA-SECURITY (Eric P. Scott)
Subject: Going to WesterCon?  I need a ride...

Attention Bay Area SF-Lovers:

I'm looking for transportation to WesterCon, and a share in a room.
I'm willing to contribute a reasonable amount for gas, etc.  If you'll
be passing through or near Berkeley and can accomodate one more
passenger, give me a call at home:  (415) 540-8690.  Ask for Eric.

                                Thanks in advance,

                                        -=EPS=-

------------------------------

Date: Monday, 29 Jun 1981 17:06-PDT
From: mike at RAND-UNIX
Subject: Westercon party

Has anyone planned an Sf-Lovers get together at the Westercon in
Sacramento this 4th of July ?

Does someone have a suite they could offer ?

Reply to me.

------------------------------

Date: 29 Jun 1981 11:51 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: videowest

SF Bay area message:  the topic on VideoWest (KQED, channel 9) last
night was science fiction.  I think they said it would be repeated
this Saturday night.  It was truly painful to see some author slaving
away over a typewriter instead of using a terminal.

------------------------------

Date: 30 Jun 1981 1010-PDT
From: Yeager at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Lord Valentine's Castle

Actually, Bob Silverberg is NOT writing a sequel, but rather, a
collection of adventures that take place on Majipoor, the world on
which LVC took place.  He mentioned the name of this collection to me,
but it slips my mind just now...

Bill

------------------------------

Date: 30 Jun 1981 1320-EDT
From: G.BLIC at MIT-EECS
Subject: The Glass Toy with the funny fire engine

                The story which dealt with a crystal cube toy in which
        children could play "pretend" by visualizing a burning house
        and having a fire engine come and put out flames (all in the
        cube) is found in the story "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by
        <I'll look it up later>.  It was part of the Science Fiction
        Hall of Fame series, which were a collection of short stories
        deemed the best by the editors.  This toy was used in
        instructing children of the future in a non-Euclidean logic,
        but it wound up in the 20th century via a time experiment
        (also in the future).  It is an entertaining story, and the
        whimsical title is from that great poem by Lewis Carroll,
        "Jabberwocky."  I'm new to SF-Lovers, so I hope that this gets
        through!

                  'Twas brillig and the slithy toves
                          Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
                  All mimsy were the borogoves
                          And the mome raths outgrabe.

        Smile in the sun ---                 Arthur (G.Blic) @MIT-EECS


["Mimsy Were The Borogoves" by Henry Kuttner appeared in 1943 under
the pen name Lewis Padgett, and I believe it was not a collaboration
with his wife, C. L. Moore, though many of his other stories were.
The influence of Lewis Carroll is plain in many of the Lewis Padgett
stories.  "Mimsy" is included in THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME
(Volume I); Charles E. Haynes tells us it is also in THE BEST OF LEWIS
PADGETT, and Scot Drysdale tells us it is in MATHEMATICAL MAGPIE.
Thanks to Lauren Weinstein (Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY), P. David Lebling
(PDL at MIT-DMS), Tou at PARC-MAXC, Morris Keesan (mkeesan at BBN-NU),
Don Woods (Woods at PARC-MAXC), Charles E. Haynes (CEH at MIT-MC),
Scot Drysdale (Drysdale at PARC-MAXC), Erik Fair (Cory:cc-treas at
Berkeley), and Steve Weiss, UNC-CH (decvax!duke!unc!sfw at Berkeley)
for (coming close to) identifying this story.  -- Mike]

------------------------------

Date:  1 Jul 1981 at 0051-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF PROJECT (& STAR WARS) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

With an on-going project like this it is difficult to know how much
background info to repeat from prior messages in order to bring new
readers up to date without boring long-standing readers with repeti-
tiousness.  But for those who have notes the absence of cy-devices
like the robass in "Search for St. Aquin" or natural robotic flora and
fauna in a Poul Anderson story-- these are not eligible because (so
far as I know) they're "stray" short-stories.

The focus of the project is on BOOKS... primarily novels, but also
single-author-collections-and-topical-anthologies featuring cy-
devices, such as Asimov's THE REST OF THE ROBOTS, and THE COMING OF
THE ROBOTS ed. by Sam Moskowitz, or SCIENCE FICTION THINKING MACHINES
ed. by Groff Conklin.

As for the robot "mouse" in STAR WARS, it is not referred to as such
in the film, and gives little evidence of being one.  (It does squeak
but it doesn't hide when people are around.)  As a devoted SW freak,
my best guess is that it's most likely rationalized as being some kind
of cleaning robot.

------------------------------

Date: 30 Jun 19x1 1717-PDT
From: Lynn Gold <G.FIGMO at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Dr. Demento

I have been a big fan of his for many years, and I miss the show.
Does ANYONE out there know what station(s), if any, the "good doctor"
might be on in the San Francisco Bay area?

While I DO know that he tapes out of KMET in Los Angeles, I also know
that he is not always there, and does a lot of running around the
country to promote his show (I met him last October on one such trip).

--Lynn Gold
G.FIGMO@SCORE

[It has been a while since I tuned in The Dr. Demento Show, but KSFO
(AM 560) used to broadcast it every Sunday night at ten.  -- Mike]

------------------------------

Date: 30 June 1981 13:51-EDT
From: Michael A. Patton <MAP at MIT-AI>
Subject: Star Wars Dementia

There are a couple of places where you got the "YODA" lyrics different
than the way I remember them, maybe you could check your recording,
and I'll check the show next time I hear.

You:    How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
Me:             ...lift...

You:    Well I'm not the kind that would argue with that
Me:                                             ... Ben
        (Thus it rhymes [more or less] with the next line:
        So it looks like I'm gonna start all over again


                        STAAAYYYY DE-Mented!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
                        Mike (MAP@MIT-AI)

------------------------------

Date: 06/29/81 22:09:16
From: DP@MIT-ML
Subject: Movie Music, A Complaint.

   People always seem to call an old piece of music used in a movie by
the name of the movie, not the proper name of the music.  It is "Also
sprach Zarathustra", not the theme from 2001.  Most people think that
it is a recent piece written for the movie, rather than a piece
written by R. Strauss in the 19'th century.

   It is very nice that the music is being presented again, but the
composer should get a little credit.  (In the same vein, my local hifi
dealer tells me that most people assume "ride of the valkyries" was
written for Apocalypse now, by R. Wagner the actor)

                                                Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 29 Jun 1981 17:07:19-PDT
From: ihnss!ihuxp!rjsmith at Berkeley
Subject: 2001 Parody

In one episode of 'Monty Python', there is an animated takeoff of part
of the 'dawn of man' scene.  Remember when the ape throws a bone up in
the air, and the bone is transformed into a space ship in orbit?  In
the M.P. version, the space ship falls back to earth and konks the ape
in the head (the ship is the same size as the original bone).

                                Roy Smith
                                ihuxp!rjsmith


[Thanks also to Steve Weyer (Weyer at PARC-MAXC) for pointing out this
2001 parody.  -- Mike]

------------------------------

Date: 30 Jun 1981 2322-PDT
From: First at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: THX-1138 reference

I don't think THX-1138 appeared in RotLA in any form, but then I would
not expect it to be--this was basically Spielberg's film, not Lucas'
and THX-1138 was Lucas' first film....  for those confused by what
we're talking about, THX-1138 appeared in "American Graffiti" (as the
license plate number of the hot rod) (actually I think it was THX-138)
as a homage by Lucas to his first film.  I was actually planning to
get a vanity plate made up with this but in the end I didn't want to
spent the extra $30.00.  Did THX-1138 appear in "Star Wars"?  Also,
does anybody know of any other "in" references to previous films like
this by other directors?  I know of two off-hand...Kubrick uses CRM
1234 (I don't remember the actual digits) in "Dr. Strangelove" as the
access code or something, and "serum 1234" in "Clockwork Orange" as
the name of a drug given to Malcolm McDowell.  Also, Altman has a MASH
poster appear in a scene in "Brewster McCloud".  Also, in "Clockwork",
when McDowell picks up those two girls in a London Record Shop, the
soundtrack LP to "2001" is plainly visible in the racks.  Any others?
--Michael (FIRST@SUMEX-AIM)
P.S. There's no doubt they used a stunt double in RotLA--no studio
would allow their star to take chances like that--those were dangerous
stunts during the chase--they would lose their insurance coverage,
among other things...

[The recall-sequence decoder in "Dr. Strangelove" was called a CRM 114
Discriminator.  -- Mike]

------------------------------

Date: 30 Jun 1981 11:50:39-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: virginity in DRAGONSLAYER

   I assume that the suggestion was intended to be funny, since even a
brief examination of more recent literature shows the problems with an
unmarried female acknowledging unchastity.  It could be argued that in
such a village there were probably a number of unmarried females who
technically were not virgins---but as long as they weren't obvious
about it there wasn't anything that could be done.  Even allowing for
the suggestion that Christianity (with its sick attitudes) has only
begun to get a foothold in the village, it is quite likely that there
were social strictures against premarital sex---quite possibly, with
the large number of girls in the village it was considered safer to
take one's chances with the semiannual lottery than to subject oneself
to public shame and the consequent ostracism/expulsion (which in that
wild country would probably be as certain a death as being chosen).
   (The latest issue of TOURNAMENTS ILLUMINATED has an interesting
sidelight on this; it claims that the English feudal lord was not held
to have the right to every woman's maidenhead (as he did in much of
the continent) but that a lord might fine a vassal substantially for
not preventing his daughter from bedding someone before her engagement
and thereby decreasing her market value.  This wasn't in the Dark Ages
either; the period described was ca. 14th century.)

   As for someone's question about how many dragons does it take to
make more, how does anyone know what Vermithrax does with its nights
in the six months between virgins.  It must go somewhere for food, and
in that wild country it would be easy for a less senile beast to stay
away from people.

------------------------------

Date: 30 Jun 1981 2033-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Hymen Hijinx

It was SUPPOSED to be funny (my previous letter) -- but it's hard to
get the proper leer across in a written message, much less the nudge
of the elbows.  And those who have watched the movie will remember
that there is a sly referral to that very point in the scene just
before the descent into the cavern.  Those of the audience with impure
minds (about 98%, barring those under the age of six or deaf or both)
were quick to chortle with subdued but nonetheless titillated
snickers.
    And I still hold, semi-seriously, the opinion that, with a dragon
feeding twice yearly (and the crowd of eligibles didn't look all that
big to me) that there would be either a change in the social status
for virgins, or people would be getting married before they reached
puberty.  (A point to ponder -- is there a minimum age for virgins?
They all seem to fit within an age span of about five years.  Are
babies not big enough to fill a dragon?  (If so, does a fat virgin
count for two?)  Or are they just not "ripe" yet?  I was also
wondering about starting a virgin farm, but then realised that, as far
as the king was probably concerned, he already had one.  At least the
dragon was satisfied with common virgins.  Daughters were nowhere near
as desirable as sons in that era and social class.  Frankly, I'm
surprised anybody even fussed.  A lot of people gave their daughters
away because they cost too much to feed.)
     Bob

------------------------------

Date: 1 Jul 1981 00:09:07-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Re: Hymen Hijinx

  In traditional magic, there is no mana in a prepubescent virgin
(another form of the rule that it doesn't work if it doesn't hurt; cf.
Clubfoot in THE MAGIC GOES AWAY).  Presumably it's the mana as much as
the meat that matters; there were a couple of suggestions in the movie
paralleling Niven's that these creatures require mana to survive.  The
age bracket is obvious:  if they aren't married soon after puberty in
that society, there's something seriously wrong, e.g. something makes
the female in question such an outcast that there's probably no mana
in her anyway (but the incidence of really unmarried females beyond
the line would be small; widows don't matter but widowers can start
"fresh").
  I suspect that "giving daughters away because they cost too much to
feed" is not common, though I'd want to consult a local anthropologist
(and unfortunately the local anthropologist is in Kenya or South
Africa at the moment).

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************
